The Northern Clemency. Philip Hensher
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he’d put together, with ham and sandwich spread, cheese and salad cream, all bursting out from the sides, then took an enormous bite. Much of it fell out, splattering his red shiny shorts and his brown legs.
‘That’s disgusting,’ Jane said. ‘You know what? Dad came home this lunchtime.’
There was a noise from upstairs, a little thud and a door opening – Tim coming downstairs. ‘I thought he’d gone out,’ Jane said. ‘I haven’t seen him all day.’
‘Upstairs reading his snake books,’ Daniel said. ‘He’s made himself a sandwich, though.’ He nodded at the mess on the work surface. ‘He’ll not have been starving.’
‘That was me,’ Jane said. ‘I was saying, I thought you’d gone out.’
‘No,’ Tim said. ‘I was upstairs in my room. Can I have a sandwich?’
‘Make it yourself,’ Daniel said. ‘Upstairs with your snake books?’
‘Yes,’ Tim said, and then, in a singing tone, ‘Do you know—’
‘Probably not,’ Daniel said.
‘Do you know what the most venomous snake in the world is?’
‘No,’ Jane said, with a feeling she’d been asked this before.
‘Lots of people would say the cobra or the rattlesnake. But it’s not. It’s the inland Taipan. It can get up to eight feet long. If it bites you you’re bound to die. It’s brown, it’s called Oxy, Oxyripidus something. Oxyripidus – Oxy – I’m almost remembering it—’
‘Where’s it live?’ Daniel said.
‘Australia,’ Tim said.
‘Just so long as it doesn’t live near me,’ Daniel said.
‘It wouldn’t hurt you,’ Tim said. ‘It’s quite timid, really. It would avoid you and it’s probably more scared of you than you would be of it. You wouldn’t have to worry about it even if you were in Australia. Most people think snakes would attack you but they wouldn’t, really. They only bite if they’re in danger. I like snakes. I wish I could have one. Do you think if I asked they’d let me have a snake in my bedroom? I’d keep it in a glass case. I wouldn’t let it out and it wouldn’t have to be venomous – or not very.’
‘What do you mean, “if” you asked?’ Daniel said. ‘You ask them all the time, about once a week, and they always say no. You’re not getting the most venomous snake in the world to keep under your bed. Face facts.’
‘I’d save up,’ Tim said, reciting his case stolidly on one note, ‘and I’d pay for it myself. I wouldn’t want an inland Taipan – I wouldn’t want any venomous snake, really. And I’d buy the mice with my pocket money. They don’t need to eat very often, it wouldn’t be expensive. I wish I could have a snake. It’s not fair.’
‘I dare say,’ Jane said. ‘Go and make yourself a sandwich or something. I’m going to watch the telly.’
‘There’s nothing on,’ Daniel said. ‘It’s rubbish.’
‘It’s better in the holidays,’ Tim said. ‘There’s stuff on in the mornings. For children.’
‘It’s still rubbish.’
‘This boy told me a joke,’ Tim continued with his dull reciting voice, though the subject had changed.
‘What boy?’ Daniel said.
‘This boy I know,’ Tim said.
‘You haven’t seen anyone for five weeks,’ Daniel said.
‘Yes, I have,’ Tim said, not crossly, but setting things right. ‘I saw Antony last week. We went to the library.’
‘Did smelly Antony tell you a joke?’ Jane said incredulously. Tim occasionally gave the impression of a rich and varied social life once out of sight of his family, but Antony was its only visible representative. They’d all concluded, with different degrees of worry or amusement, that Antony, a boy as pale and quiet as a whelk, was not the tip of some festive iceberg but probably Tim’s best or only friend.
‘No, it wasn’t Antony’s joke,’ Tim said. ‘It was another boy, at school.’
‘You’ve been saving it up for five weeks?’ Daniel said.
‘I only just thought of it,’ Tim said. ‘There are these three bears, right?’
‘I thought this was a joke,’ Daniel said. ‘I don’t want to hear Goldilocks.’
‘It isn’t Goldilocks,’ Tim said. ‘And these three bears, they’re in an aeroplane.’
‘Not very likely,’ Jane said. ‘They wouldn’t let three bears on an aeroplane. They’d eat all the meals and then they’d eat all the passengers. And they’d open the doors at the other end and there’s no one there except a lot of bones and three bears who weren’t hungry any more.’
‘Well, there’s mummy bear and daddy bear and baby bear,’ Tim said, persevering, ‘and they’re in an aeroplane.’
‘Where were they going?’ Daniel said. ‘I can’t remember stories like this if I don’t know where they’re going.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Tim said. ‘They never got there, anyway. Listen to the story and you’ll find out.’
‘Is this a joke or a story?’ Jane said. ‘You said it was a joke. Now it’s a story.’
‘I want to know where they were going,’ Daniel said. ‘Can they be going to Spain? I’d like a bear who went to Spain. Or can they be coming back? Then they’d have those hats on, those sombreros. A bear in a sombrero, there’s a sight you don’t see every day.’
‘They weren’t going anywhere,’ Tim said. ‘Stop interrupting. I’m telling a joke.’
‘They’ve got to have been going somewhere,’ Jane said, ‘or they wouldn’t have been in an aeroplane in the first place. Go on, tell us your joke.’
‘All right,’ Tim said. ‘So they’re in this plane, and suddenly the engines catch fire. I forgot – I should have said there’s only two parachutes on the plane.’
‘There’s only two parachutes on the plane?’ Daniel said. ‘For three bears, and a plane full of passengers, and the crew as well? That’s not very sensible.’
‘There’s not a plane full of passengers,’ Tim said, getting red in the face. ‘There’s only three bears.’
‘But even supposing there are only three bears – I suppose they’ve eaten all the other passengers, or maybe everyone in the departure lounge saw three bears getting on the plane, and thought, Hmm, do I want to get into a confined space with three hungry bears or, really, do I want to go to Spain that much anyway, and changed their mind and went home – I mean, even supposing that, there’s got to be someone flying the plane.’
‘Or even two,’ Jane said. ‘I think you have to have two pilots. When we went to Paris last year there were two pilots in case something went wrong with one of them.’
Tim thought for a very long time, breathing noisily. Finally, he said, ‘Daddy bear was flying the plane. Because he knew how to.’
‘Oh, that makes perfect sense,’ Daniel said. ‘An untrained savage wild beast from the Canadian wilderness who’d learnt how to fly a jet plane. One of the most majestic yet complex machines ever invented by the human race.’
‘No, it was invented by a moose,’ Jane said. ‘Everyone knows that.’
‘Called Harold,’ Daniel said.
‘And the daddy bear said to the mummy bear, “There’s only two parachutes, one for me and one for you.” So