our house

 

Sometimes I feel really old. I’m sitting in the kitchen  when my niece sneaks in the back door. I kid on I hadn’t heard the clatter of hurried feet, or whiff clean sharp Johnson shampoo and Lux soap, or  register her smiling face until she juts out in front of me. My hands jump to my mouth in fright when she shouts ‘Boo!’

    She’s smart as a crow, and isn’t really fooled by my theatrics, giving me one of those crooked smiles that suggests she knows more than me. We usually play noughts and crosses at the kitchen table and I let her win when she wins, but I admit to  a competitive streak and a gambler’s  aversion to truth.

For example, when she went to the toilet, and came back to the table, I was trying to explain to her that I didn’t use her school rubber to put an X in a box, but that sometimes happens naturally, and that an O turns into an X when you’re not looking at it. She didn’t believe me, or let me win that game. I call that  the cheats-never-win rule. We stand up and shake hand about it, but before she sat down again she asks me, ‘Uncle Joe, why are some people rich and some people so poor?’

I know all kids go through a phase of asking about the facts of life, but I was hoping to avoid it, hoping that her parents, or other kids at school would use their smartphones and show her pictures and giggle and elbow each other and pick it up by a kind of osmosis, like I did, although, obviously without the smartphone, or any kind of phone, or even two pence in my pocket for a phone call in the nearest phone box that didn’t work because it had been vandalised and worse, somebody had done a shit on the concrete floor, smeared it on the windows,  smashed the receiver and spiked the slot where you slot the two pence - you didn’t have - with the gunge of pink chewing gum.   

I put on my serious face and try to explain.  

    ‘We live in one the smallest countries in the smallest continent in the world, yet compared to other nations in the world we live in one of the richest places in the planet. But you know and I know that not everybody in this country is rich. Some people  have parents with nice houses, big cars which drop them off at school every day and they’ve got the latest phones, games and tablets. They’re rich, compared to you. But compared to other kids in the rest of the world you are rich.’

I look at her. She has the haughty shiny-haired look of the super rich, thin, yet well nourished and didn’t seem to mind a jot.

‘These kids,’ I explain, ‘don’t get enough to eat and have to go to work and not school.’

 'I’d rather go to work,’ she snorts, rolling her eyes, ‘than go to school with Mrs Golightly’.  

Dismantling my overly contrived explanation of relative wealth, has an upside, I wasn’t sure I understood it myself.

I hit on a new tactic, as old as the New World. The best way to tell her the facts of life was to tell her a story. It works equally good for young or old people. ‘Go and get a pack of cards and I’ll show you why some people are rich and some people are poor’.

She springs up and away from her seat. ‘Where are they?’

‘They’re in the drawer.’

She couldn’t find them. I couldn’t find them. We went to the local shop for sweets, to chew and help us think, and a spanking new shiny pack of cards.

We still have our jackets on when we sit back down at the kitchen table.

‘Right,’ I hand her the packet of cards. ‘Open these and I’ll tell you the story of Bertie Bungalow.’

‘Who’s Bertie Bungalow?’ she asks ripping off cellophane with sharp little teeth.

‘I’m Bertie Bungalow. You’re Bertie Bungalow. We’re all in it together Bertie Bungalow.’

Kids have these great huffy faces,  pools of flesh-coloured rubber that they sometimes put on when they don’t understand something and want to kick you.

‘Sit over there and shuffle the cards. And I’ll show you what I mean by Bertie Bungalow.’

She isn’t very good at shuffling cards, stuffing them together, pulling them apart and piling them higgledy-piggledy on top of each other, but bit on her bottom lip and persevered. ‘There,’ she says, triumphantly, putting the pack of cards down in a bundle across from me.

‘Right,’ I say. ‘I want you to shut your eyes and  imagine that pack of cards is all the money in the world that’s ever existed and everything you can buy with money in the world.’

She squints owl-like out of one eye, opening both eyes, blinking rapidly as she thinks.  ‘Could I buy a new car with it?’

‘Yes. Now you’re getting it. It’s a new car and an old car. The cards represent a new house and an old house, a castle and a yacht and an aircraft carrier and a squadron of Harrier Jump jets.’

‘I don’t want to go on a plane.’

‘Ok.’ I hold my hand up. ‘You don’t need to go on the plane. The pack of cards represent all the things that have ever been made. You can buy 100 elephants put them a mile apart and get them to carry you in a silken sheet if you want.’

‘No,’ she says. ‘I don’t like elephants. They might trample you.’   

‘Ok,’ I say. ‘You don’t need to like elephants. We’re going to play a game of cards. What do you want to play?’

‘Snap!’ she claps her hands.

‘No,’ I say. ‘It’s my house and I’m Bertie Bungalow - we’ll play Pontoon.’

‘Don’t want to play Pontoon.’ She huffs her lips. ‘Want to play Snap!’

‘Do you know how to play Pontoon?' I tease her. ‘You don’t know how to play.’ But being an adult sort of person and noticing that this was upsetting her I tell her. ‘That’s even better.  Bertie Bungalow will teach you.’    

‘Don’t want to play.’ She put the cards flat on the table. Pushing herself back on the chair, with her feet dangling, she picks up the pencil, sketches a naughts and crosses table on the scrap of paper we had been using, and takes first shot, with an X placed defiantly in the middle box. She chews on a wine gum and looks at me expectantly.  

A bit of toffee is stuck in my back teeth. I pick at it with my tongue. ‘Wait I wee minute,’ I say. ‘Bertie Bungalow isn’t adverse to a bit of bribery.’

I leave her sitting at the table and go upstairs to my bedroom and bring down my piggy bank. It’s full of loose change, silver and the odd pound coin. It’s sealed with a plastic cork. I spill the money out onto the table and her eyes sparkle as I slosh it backward and forward and stir it. ‘This represents all the money supply in the world. All the notes and coins and various forms of credit.’ I was going to mention liquid capital, but she doesn’t care and can’t resist pushing the coins about with me.  

I’ve got her attention. I count out £10 and push it to her side of the table. She knows, because it’s in front of her,  that’s lots of money. I keep £10 at my side and I push the pool of other coins over towards the salt and pepper shakers out of the way.  

She can do her sums and is good at counting. I explain the rules of Pontoon to her and explain the playing cards represent all the wealth that has been ever created and the coins on the table represent all the money that is in the world at this time. She nods. Doesn’t care, is impatient to get started. But I need to tell her, for her own good, about what happens when we play using the Bertie Bungalow house rules. She looks bored.  

I deal her two cards. She studies them.

‘You need to post 10p to play.’

I push 10p from my pile of coins. She tentatively pushes 10p forward to meet it.

‘Whoever gets closest to 21 wins,’ I explain about how to twist and how to stick. ‘What have you got?’

She shows me a six of hearts and seven of clubs.

I deal her a King of Spades. ‘You can’t stick with 13.’ I pull the 10p to my side of the table. ‘That’s you bust.’ I pull 10p to my side of the table. And then another 10p from her pile of coins.’

‘Hi,’ she cries.

‘That’s payment for the other card you needed. You need to bid for it. That increases the size of the bet.’

‘What did you get?’ she asks.

I pick up my cards, they add up to 13. I shuffle them into the pack. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ I explain. ‘That’s one of the Bertie Bungalow house rules. I get to see your cards, but you don’t get to see mine. And because you went bust I can change the cards I’m dealt, or I can keep the cards I already have. If I’ve got 13 and you’ve got 13 I win, because I’m the dealer.’

‘That’s not fair,’ she says.

I deal her hand face up. She has a King of diamonds and four of clubs.

‘Fourteen,’ she says. ‘Is that good?’

‘Post your money and I’ll tell you.’

She pushes 10p to the middle of the table.

‘It’s not bad. But the house rules mean I can change my hand when I get 14, but you can’t. You need to twist.’

She doesn’t look happy about it.

‘And you need to put at least another ten pence in.’

Her finger pushes the coin back and forward, before letting it settle. She gets dealt a five of hearts.

I look at my hand. It adds to 18. I turn the cards over. It takes her a minute to count, some straining of her eyes and shuffling of feet before she realises that 19 is better than 18.

She grins as she pulls the coins to her side of the table. I feel terrible having to tell her that the Bertie Bungalow house rules mean that I’ve also got 19. Every hand I win I get to own particular cards. This represents accumulated wealth over time. I flash the Ace of Spades.  I own it. She must pay me 20p every time she uses cards. I own it when we play a game -and it doesn’t matter which game we play, I retain ownership - and I can decide whether or not they can add to her card total. Now that I’ve won two hands I also own the Ace of hearts.

‘That’s not fair,’ she says.

‘I know,’ I say, ‘but that’s the way life works’.

We play six more hands. I win five and finally she wins one, and with it, 20p. By that time I own four aces and on my way to winning all the face cards.

‘I want a King,’ she says.

I hold my index finger up. ‘The Bertie Bungalow house rules means that you can’t own any of the cards we play with. Although you can use them. Only I can own them.’

She scrambles from her seat, tears in her eyes, ‘I’m not playing. This game is rubbish’.

I grab her arm before she can scoot past, push her roughly back towards her seat. There’s shock in her eyes. She begins to cry, big sobs, mixed with ‘I want my mum’.

‘The Bertie Bungalow house rules means you can’t leave the table until I say you can leave the table.’ I deal another hand and move ten pence from her side of the table to mine. ‘And you need to play until I say you don’t need to play.’

      
http://unbound.co.uk/books/lily-poole