During our childhood days we all had something that we
were scared of, when the lights went out. Mine was the box of toys stored
underneath my bed.
During the day I loved that box, the box that contained
all of my favourite toys, the ones that I especially loved playing with
on Saturday mornings, when I had a lie in, when mum gave me breakfast
in bed. I can still remember it so clearly, rushing through breakfast
as fast as was humanly possible, so mum could take away the tray and replace
it with my box of toys. And once it was there, safely ensconced in front
of me, I would methodically make my way through it, playing with each
and every one of my toys, totally oblivious to the world outside. I was
so happy.
During the day my toy box posed no threat to me; it was
my best friend. Unfortunately, after dark, when the light in my bedroom
had been turned off, that very same toy box changed into something so
scary it had me shaking with fright.
I know now that I was just being silly, that a simple toy box could never
have posed a real threat to me, but all those years ago, in the quite,
in the dead of the night, I was so very scared of it.
It happened without fail every single night. I would
be lying in bed, relaxing and beginning to drift off into blissful slumber,
when a thumping, bumping sound would awaken me with a start. The first
few times this happened, I had absolutely no idea what it might be or
where it was coming from, but over the course of time I realized this
thumping, this bumping noise was originating in my very own toy box. Don’t
ask me why – that’s just how it was.
Despite hearing this sound on so many occasions, the
only thing I felt brave enough to do was shut my eyes tightly and try
as hard as I could possibly try, to simply ignore it and to fall asleep.
I was only seven years of age at the time – what else do you think
I could do?
‘BUMP. I heard a sound; I froze still in such fright.
BUMP. I closed my eyes; I closed them so tight.
BUMP. I prayed to my god, to save me this night.
BUMP. I heard it again; it was away from the light
BUMP. Should I reach down and fight for what’s
right?
No, it’s too dangerous, too risky–this is
my plight
BUMP. It went on and on and into the night…’
To this day I have no idea what it actually was. I never
had the courage to look into my toy box when I heard these noises. All
that I know is that I heard them, and they almost scared me to death.
This situation continued in an uneasy stalemate, with
me playing happily with my toy box by day, yet fearing it by night. Then
one day, a particular incident brought this to a head, an incident that
haunts me to this very day...
It was a Saturday morning and, as per usual, I rushed
through my breakfast, eager for mum to remove the tray and place my beloved
toy box onto my bed. I was so eager to begin playing with my toys. It
was winter and so cold outside, with a smattering of snow on the ground.
Mum lit our old oil stove and placed it carefully at the end of my bed.
“Now don’t you be going near it, Gerrard,” she warned.
“Leav
it alone and it will be just fine.” Mum had a fear
of fires. I was soon as warm and snug as can be.
I listened to mum’s footsteps as she made her way
down the stairs, through the hallway and into the kitchen where she banged
the door closed and turned on the radio. I could hear Jimmy Young chatting
away happily. Is he still alive?
“Which one of you shall I play with first?”
I said, looking into my toy box with an enthusiasm that is only possible
with the innocence of youth. Everything was new to me then. I loved waking
up to each new day, knowing that I would see so many things that I had
never before witnessed, things that I knew would without a shadow of a
doubt would amaze me no matter how ordinary they actually were.
Custard. I can still remember the first bowl of custard
that I was given. It was wonderful; so very thick and creamy. We even
had packets of flavoured custard, in those days. They came in sachets,
six flavours to the packet – orange was my favourite. I wonder why
they are no longer available?
Back to the story…
As I methodically removed my toys from the box, giving
each one a quick inspection before placing them on top of the growing
and untidy heap over to my right, I found my eyes drawn to the oil stove
standing silently at the end of my bed. I have no idea why this was so,
I had seen it there on so many other occasions, but despite this they
kept on returning to it anyhow.
Cups and saucers; I could hear mum washing the crockery
in the sink. Jimmy Young was still chatting away to her.
Smoke. I thought I saw wisps of smoke coming out from the top of the oil
stove. “Nah, that can’t be happening,” I said, though
studying it intently. A few more wisps of smoke wandered out lazily from
the grating at top of the heater. “It’s Essso Blue,”
I whispered, “It’s supposed to be a smokeless fuel, with no
smuts.” There were no smuts, but there was smoke. Smoke was definitely
coming out from the top of the heater.
Returning my toys to their box, I pushed
it over to one side and then I got out of bed. It was much colder than
I had thought. I put on my dressing gown, pulling the cord tightly and
sliding my feet into my slippers. They were cold. I glanced through the
window; it was snowing again, and quite heavily at that. Leaving the snow
for later, I tentatively made my way across to the end of my bed, and
the troublesome oil heater.
The room was so quite, like a morgue, as I listed for any signs of mum
downstairs, doing the dishes, but I heard nothing. Jimmy Young said nothing.
The heater, the black painted oil heater stood there in front of me, in
silence like it was sulking, less than six feet away.
More smoke; I saw more wisps of black smoke emanating from the top off
the heater, but they were bigger this time. I called out, “Mum,
the heater is smoking.”
No reply.
“Mum,” I called out to her again,
“I said, the heater is smoking!”
Again, I received no reply.
“Mum” I shouted. “The
oil heater is beginning to smoke.”
Yet again, I heard nothing.
“Where is she?” I moaned, afraid to take my eyes away from
the troublesome heater, but desperately wanting to summon her, and to
secure her help.
Some more smoke, a few puffs, floated silently
away from the top of the heater.
Feeling braver, I approached it and crouched
down taking a closer look. Looking through the small glass inspection
window, I studied the flame at its source – the wick. The flame
was a yellowy orange colour.
“That’s not right,” I gasped. “It’s supposed
to be blue – I am sure of it…”
My eyes drifted to the rickety knob protruding
from the front of the heater. “Mum uses this to turn the wick up
and down,” I said quietly, half afraid, yet still wanting to touch
it. “And if she can do it, so can I.” I said with a renewed
sense of purpose. Placing a finger and thumb on the knob, I tried to move
it. It moved. I turned in clockwise one full turn. The flames suddenly
shot high up the inside of the old heater, sending black smoke billowing
through the grading at its top.
With shaking fingers, I struggled to turn
the knob the other way, to diminish the flames and the black smoke that
was beginning to make me cough and my eyes water.
The flame returned to its original yellowy
orange colour, and I watched, relieved, as a few wisps of smoke drifted
through the top of the heater.
“At least it’s not billowing
out,” I whispered, coughing and wiping my stinging eyes.
I opened the window and pulled back the curtains, allowing the choking
smoke free reign to exit.
Although the smoke was soon gone, the oily
smell stubbornly remained in my room, leaving me wondering how I might
deal with the bothersome heater, without letting mum know that I had dared
touch it.
“Are you all right, up there?” mum shouted
up to me from the bottom step of the stairs.
“Where has she come from?” I hissed. “When
I wanted her, she wasn’t there.” I knew that if I showed any
hint in my voice that I had a problem, mum would come bounding up the
stairs, catching me red-handed at the stove. So I said, ever so calmly,
“Yes, I’m fine. I’m playing with my dinosaurs.”
Mum hated my toy dinosaurs. In fact she hated everything older than the
time scale portrayed in her bible. Things of a so great an age had no
part in her strict Catholic view on life and its creation, and she wanted
absolutely nothing to do with them.
“That will keep her out for a while,”
I said quietly to myself, “but not forever. Come on, Gerrard, get
your thinking cap on…”
Although I was young, my mind raced like that of an adult,
like that of someone who has been in sticky situations before, and come
out the far side smelling of roses. Then I had it, I had the solution
to my predicament, to the oily smoky smell clinging so stubbornly to my
room, and to the fact that I had interfered with the oil stove against
mum’s express orders – I would set it on fire, but properly
this time, burning it completely, and thus hiding the incriminating evidence.
I had my plan, but I had yet to work out how to get myself
safely out of the room, after the fire had been started. My brain clicked
into gear once again…
Raising a finger, I whispered, “I think I know how to do it, and
with a bit of luck we won’t lose the house in the process.”
Pulling carefully at the base of the stove, I moved it a few inches over
to one side, to the position where I felt it would do the least damage
to my room as it burned the incrimination evidence that I had been tampering
with it. For how can there be evidence after it has been destroyed? I
also ensured that I had enough room for safe passage to the door.
Happy that it was placed correctly, I pushed hard on
the lever to fee-up the top half of the stove, the part that should only
be opened when refilling the apparatus. It was no sooner open when the
flames shot upwards, far beyond the meagre height of the stove, scorching
my bedclothes, the wallpaper and the ceiling in the process. I smiled.
Shouting, screaming, I cried out, “MUM, MUM, the room’s on
FIRE! HELP!”
I heard her; I heard mum bounding up the stairs two steps
at a time. Jimmy Young was listening.
“What is it,” she shouted as she burst into
the room. Then seeing the flames, she made a beeline for me, and bundling
me in a heavy blanket she whisked me safely past the fire and smoke, out
onto the landing. “Now you stay there,” she said quite, calmly.
“Everything will be okay.”
By now the black smoke was coming out onto the landing,
and I feared that I might have bit off more than I could chew. “Is
there anything I can do?” I asked, coughing from smoke inhalation.
“With eyes burning into me, like they were saying
‘I know what you did’, mum said, “Go into the bathroom
and fill up the bucket, the one next to the bath. Now GO!!”
I dashed into the bathroom, obeying her words without
question.
Mum followed me into the bathroom, and began filling the bath with water.
Tearing the blanket off my back, she flung it into the bath, thoroughly
soaking it. Without wasting a second, without saying a single word, mum
ripped the blanket from out of the bath and dashed away through the open
doorway, returning to the scene of the fire, where she threw the dripping
wet blanket over the oil stove, extinguishing the flames at once.
I followed her with my bucket. She grabbed
it and emptied its contents over my smoldering bed. I watched from the
landing. I watched my mum the hero, and I was ashamed of what I had done.
At this point you must be wondering what has all this
got to do with the box of toys beneath my bed, the box that I loved so
much during the day, yet feared equally as much through the hush of the
night. Let me explain…
Although the fire was out, mum had no intention of letting
me into my room until every last vestige of smoke had disappeared. I was
clod, standing there on the landing, in my dressing gown and slippers.
Downstairs Jimmy Young was now talking to some woman who, for some strange
reason, kept bursting into song.
After a good ten minutes, standing on that cold landing shivering, craning
my neck to see what condition my room was now in, mum felt it safe enough
to enter again. She said, “You wait outside, Gerrard, and I’ll
take a look-see.”
My eyes followed her into the room. It looked like a bomb had exploded
withn it. Rummaging through my chest of drawers, mum searched for some
clothes.
“Put these on,” she said handing me a trousers,
shirt and pullover.
I took them and quickly got dressed. It felt good, to
be warm again.
“It’s okay, it’s safe to come in, Gerrard,”
mum finally said, “but be careful.”
I entered my room, and from the inside it looked as if
two bombs had exploded in it. The wallpaper was ruined, scorched into
oblivion by the fiery hot flames, the ceiling was as black as a tar pit
and my bedclothes had the appearance of something you might find on a
bonfire the next morning after a night of heavy rain – they were
a stinking black mess.
Then I saw it, I saw my toy box, the box that contained
all my wonderful toys, the toys that I cherished so much – it was
now a cube of charcoal, burned almost beyond recognition. My eyes followed
a few wisps of smoke rising from it.
“I’m afraid they are all ruined,” said mum, looking
into the ruins of my toy box, and then back to me.
“Everyone of them?” I asked, hoping for a
miracle.
Prodding the charcoaled remains, she replied, “I’m
afraid so. But we must see the bright side, mustn’t we, that the
whole house wasn’t burned dawn.”
“That couldn’t happen,” I blurted out,
“the stove was too far away…”
Distracted by something under my bed, mum missed the
gist of what I was saying, what I was admitting to, and she said, “Pardon?
What were you saying?”
“Oh, nothing,” I lied. “What are you
looking at?”
“There’s something down there,” she
said. “Reach down and get it, will you?”
Crouching down, I stared under my bed, and then beamed
with excitement. “It’s one of my dinosaurs,” I shouted
out happily.
“Oh, one of them…” said mum, steering
away from the antiquity it represented.
“Yes, and my favourite one, “I cried out,
“A Diplodocus, did you know they had two brains?”
Mum didn’t want to know anything about them, whether
they had one, two, three or even a hundred brains.
I clung onto my toy like it was made of gold.
No more was said about that incident, and if mum did suspect
I had something to do with it, she certainly wasn’t saying. The
oil heater was thrown out, but despite being reimbursed by our house insurance,
mum didn’t buy another one. No, she bought a brand-new oil filled
radiator. There were going to be no more flames for her to worry about.
My toy box? Well, it was gone, wasn’t it? It was
dumped, consigned to oblivion, thus freeing me from the worry of hearing
things that go bump in the night. I had nothing more to worry about from
now on…
