The Bucket by Allan Ahlberg

Author:Allan Ahlberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241989197
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-09-04T16:00:00+00:00

The Degrees of Life

What are the degrees of life in a plastic cowboy, say, or a snail? A dog is alive, a ladybird. Is a digger? My Dinky car goes, ‘Brm brm!’ My teddy talks. If something moves, is it alive? If it makes a noise? The kettle whistles on the hob. The lavatory makes a sucking, gurgling noise. It could suck you down, suck you in. If a thing can suck you in, is it alive?

I am a ventriloquist, lending my voice to a dozen little toys, helping them to live their lives. I play with them, they play with me. They wait for me in my room, in my bed. They behave badly. I forgive them. My teddy is as old as me. I am cruel to him sometimes. I am cruel to the cat. I make her wear a baby’s hat or my teddy’s scarf. I drop my teddy out of the window down into the yard. Is my teddy alive? I tell my friend when we are playing in the yard, ‘You hear a horse!’ I gallop up to him. He shoots me. I am dead. Then I am alive again. His mother smacks him round the head as he rides by. For something.

Tiny ants down in the dirt. I block their way with a matchstick or sweet wrapper. A blob of spit. Ants are alive. Grass grows. Rhubarb grows. Things smaller than ants inhabit the dirt, almost invisible. A mould spreads out on a bruised apple. Is a mould alive?

What is the degree of life in a beetle? A beetle goes crunch beneath the sole of my shoe. Another boy – not me! – pulls wings off butterflies, off moths. The legs off a spider. They crawl or limp away, still alive. I rescue a spider in the lavatory. He scuttles up a piece of paper. I shake him out into the garden.

At the Saturday Cinema Club I watch Flash Gordon and the Claymen. Are the Claymen alive? They appear out of the walls in the underground city, or blend back into them. Alive. Not alive.

Mrs Smith has a baby. My mother takes me against my will to see it. In Mrs Smith’s big bed with Mrs Smith. Inside of Mrs Smith the week before. Was the baby alive?

Our house on Cemetery Road. The black hearse crawling by. The coffin. The body. Is the body alive? Does it die and come alive again? If you shoot it, can it jump back up?

Bedtime. A living wind outside the house. A shifting shadow in a corner of the room. The curtains move. I wrap one arm around my teddy for both our sakes and tell him my important things. This, that and the other. Is Teddy alive? Just a little, as much, say, as a Clayman or an ant, or a beetle, or an unborn baby?

Yes, says Teddy. He thinks he is.

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