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“A is for…”
“Apricot.”
“Good!” Noodle turned to the chalkboard, twirling the teacher’s pointer stick that was once a fire poker and tapped the edge of the board with it. “And which is it?”
“Hmm?”
“Which letter is it?”
Willy frowned for a moment, then sat back with a pleased smile. “Why,” he said, “I believe it’s the circle with the line on it. The one in the middle.”
“Which one?”
“Oh, huh… the one with the long line-? Wait, no! The short line!” He stood up and reached over to point, so far his hat nearly fell off. “That one.”
Noodle sighed. “No,” she said. “Close. That’s a Q. It’s big letters, remember? The big A looks different from the small A. It’s the little A that’s the circle with the line on it.”
“Ah rats,” said Willy, sitting down with a thud. (The chair made a sound a cross between a crack and a creak and they both winced.) “Q for Cumin, right? Q for Cute?”
“Q is ‘kwuh’ like ‘question’.”
“Or ‘quiz’. Oh hang it all, I’ll try for the next one. What’s the next one?”
Noodle tapped the left of the board, near the middle. “What sound does that letter make?”
“That one’s easy. That’s ‘muh’ for ‘mundane’, the upside-down ‘wuh’ of ‘Wonka’.”
“Yes, good. I know you know that one. What’s this one, then?” Another tap.
“Uh… well it’s not ‘muh’. I know that now. It’s the ‘muh’ with one less line. What’s the ‘muh’ with one less line…? AH! N! ‘En’. ‘Nuh’ for ‘no more lines’ and ‘en’ for ‘not anymore lines’.”
“And where’s the letter for ‘lines’, then? The ‘Ell’?”
“The ‘ell’?”
“Yes, the ‘ell’. You had a good memory thing for this one. Remember? And you didn’t want to say the word it sounded like because you said it’s rude but I said it’s not actually rude at all and you said-”
Willy had started nodding thoughtfully through this, finger sideways across his lips in a thinking pose, frowning down at the desk. “‘Ell’ as in… ‘ell’ as in… Yes!” He pointed delightedly, making the letter shape in the air. “The sideways throne. The place the ruler of heck sits in the ‘luh’ for lake of fire.”
“Willy, just say ‘The Devil’. ‘The ruler of heck’ sounds so corny.”
“Hey, hey hey! I don’t go calling you corny! Anyhow, it’s bad luck and Mamma always said you’re not meant to say the names of things like that. Whatever comes out of your mouth is what you’re made of, she’d say, and I stand by that.”
“Yes, alright, but I don’t think it’s such a big deal, that’s all.”
“You have your way, I’ll have mine.”
“Alright, we can agree to disagree-”
“Yes we can. Onwards, my lady!”
“That is even more corny,” said Noodle, smiling, “but I like it, I suppose. Alright. Next one is, can you spell your name? Here’s the chalk. I’ll rub off a space for you.” She grabbed a rag from the sideboard and brushed the board as clean as she could, then put it back on the sideboard for later and handed her longest stick of chalk to Willy, who took it gingerly. He was good with pencils now but he didn’t like chalk at all and had made that very clear. She tried to let him avoid using it as much as possible but there wasn’t a whole lot of spare paper up in the attic and the chalk was the best they had for practice.
He licked his lips nervously and bounced on his feet a little. Put the chalk onto the board, made a shaky line, winced, and drew his hand away. Smudged the line away with a handkerchief.
“It doesn’t have to be perfect, Willy.”
He met her eyes then glanced back at the board again. “No, no, I suppose it doesn’t.” He made another shaky line then rubbed it away again. He paused, bouncing on his feet, then drew another, then erased it again and made a noise of frustration. “But it could be perfect. It could be and it’s driving me mad. I hate not being perfect at something. It drives me nutty, up the wall, round the bend and sideways, and what’s more is that I am forced to make those mistakes and imperfect imperfections in front of another person and that is not the way I want to be at all. At all. At. All.” He put the chalk back onto its ledge with a firm clack. “Most children know this and yet I, I somehow escaped the knowledge. Mamma could read and write – I know she could. She wrote down her recipes. Why did I not ask to learn from her? I didn’t even take her recipes with me! I didn’t think they would be useful since I couldn’t read or write, and I couldn’t take a whole bunch of stuff with me on my travels anyway – I only had one suitcase, but why oh why did I not bother to learn before this? Before I had to learn out of necessity from- You’re a child and I’m a grown person and this is very good of you and all, but you shouldn’t have to be teaching me to read and write and rithmatic (whatever that is) at this advanced old age of mine-”
“How old even are you?”
“Twenty-four. That’s not the point. The point is, the point is, I shouldn’t be burdensome and bother you with this. It just isn’t right. Right?”
“I’m twelve. Mrs Scrubbitt says that’s nearly a woman.”
Willy snorted. “Mrs Scrubbitt hasn’t an ounce of sense then. Twelve is a baby! A young thing! A whippersnapper!”
“Mr Bleacher called you ‘boy’ the other day. You can’t be calling anyone ‘whippersnapper’. And your cane’s for show.”
“Yes. For show. For show. For my show. My chocolate show. And for everything else. It’s a very useful, valuable, magical, wonderful, extendable tool of the trade and there’s even a blade in it if you like, somewhere- it’s jammed, though – not the point- the point is-”
“It’s not for your back, though.”
“It’s a gentleman’s walking cane.”
“But you don’t need it.”
“Of course I need it! I need a cane! I need my cane just like I need my top hat! I’d look silly without it!”
“You don’t need it!”
“I’m not arguing with a twelve-year-old.”
“Good. I win.”
“Hey!”
“Anyway, twelve is nearly a woman. I didn’t say I am one yet. I said nearly.”
“Twelve is a tiny cawing squab – that’s a pigeon baby – not yet ready to fly out of the nest. If you were a cat, you’d be a kitten. If you were a dog you’d be puppy. If you were a rabbit you’d be… a kitten. Huh! Small world! But it remains to be seen that you are, in fact, a child. And a short one at that.”
“I am not short!”
“Petite.”
“Hey!”
“Moderately sized.”
“I’m not that young! Or short. I’m tall for my age! Mrs Scrubbitt says. She complains about it, anyway, and that’s not important, Willy! The important thing is you were meant to be writing your name and I was meant to be teaching you and that’s fine! It doesn’t matter that I’m twelve! We’ve got nothing else to do up here, anyhow, and you need to read and I know how to read and we like each other’s company, so we may as well do this together so you don’t get eaten by a- fine, nearly eaten - by a tiger. Now write your name.”
Willy bit his lip, then made a short decisive stroke on the board and deliberately didn’t erase it, even though it was angled a little wrong. Then he added another stroke up, another down, another up, and he had a ‘W’ of sorts, though it was uneven and the strokes got less and less sure the further they went, leaving them shaky and thin.
“Good!” said Noodle. “It’s a good start.”
Willy frowned. “No,” he said. “No, it’s not a good start. It’s wrong. We can’t have wrongness if I’m going to be good at this-” He brought up his handkerchief to erase it and Noodle snatched it out of his hand and tossed it onto the sideboard with her own eraser rag.
“Not happening,” she said. “It’s a good ‘W’ and you’re keeping it. Now, what’s the next letter?”
“I can’t keep it! It’s a disgrace to the name of Wonka!”
“Keep going!”
He huffed. “Fine. Fine. I will. Very well. Fine. But I’ll rewrite it afterwards, in its entirety, until it’s perfect. I need to be better.” He wrote an ‘o’ without much trouble, then paused before the ‘n’. “Is it the big ‘en’ or the small ‘en’? It’s the small ‘en’, isn’t it? Darn it. I can’t remember the small ‘en’. It looks strange.”
“You said it looked like a sad mouth.”
“Ah, I did.”
“And it has a line on the side, so you start at the top then go down, then up and over. Like a little ‘h’ but with a really short line.”
“And I said that was ridiculous because you can’t even see the line.”
“And I said you can see the line, and anyway it’s for helping to join up the letters when you do that, not really to look at, and you said ‘alright then’ and you keep forgetting it anyway and you said yesterday it’s probably out of spite because of how stupid that extra line is.”
“Because it doesn’t need to be there! It looks much better without it!”
“I said you could tell it apart! You said you couldn’t tell it apart! I knew you could tell it apart!”
Willy blew out his cheeks and let the air out slowly. “I’m not arguing aesthetic priniciples with a twelve-year-old.”
“Now you’re just using big words to be confusing.”
“Reprehensible! Simply crepuscular!”
Noodle looked bemused. “Do you even know what that means?”
“Not entirely. I have a feeling it’s to do with animals but it may have a meaning other than that that conveys my exact point – who knows? Not you and not I, which means you can’t argue it’s the wrong word to use because it’s your word against mine and I’m older so I can tell you it’s correct and you have to listen to my wisdom on the matter. Doncha know?”
“You’re impossible.”
“I am. Six ways to Sunday everyday of the week. Now, what letter’s next?”
Noodle crossed her arms and shrugged with a smirk. “It’s your name,” she said. “What have you already got?”
“Wuh, ohh, nuh. W-o-n. Won. So there’s just ‘ka’ left. Pah! Ka! I can write ‘Ka’! It’s ‘kuh’ with a kay because kay is king-like and in-credible, and ‘ah’ as in only ‘a’ letter left to write, ‘ah’ it’s finished, or ‘aspidistra’, which is a type of plant that tastes terrible I’ll have you know.”
“So do it then.”
Willy grimaced and made a strangled noise of defeat, his chalk hand dropping to his side. “I can never think of how to draw ‘kay’s. They look like nothing else I can remember. And the one on Mamma’s chocolate packet is swirly, which is all very well and good for her-”
“The line with the sideways ‘vee’ on it. Can you remember a ‘vee’?”
With a groan, Willy slumped dramatically down to the floor and lay there, lifelessly in the puff of dust he’d blown up from the floor. “Alas, I cannot! I am done in! Overcome! -Ow this floor is uncomfortable. There’s a knot under my ba-ck-ckhh-kh-kh-” he started coughing and sat up, rescuing his hat from where it had rolled away. “Regardless,” he continued, eyes streaming. “Whooh, this room is dusty- regardless, I have forgotten the letter and thus may need-” He paused to keep coughing, wiping his eyes with his hand as his handkerchief was on the sideboard and covered in chalk. “-may need your assistance, Noodle, if you would be so kind.”
She grabbed his hand and pulled him up to his feet – he was very light for a man, she had discovered; all bird bones and bounce, and he didn’t eat enough of not-chocolate in any case, and in contrast she was solid and muscly from having worked in a laundry so long, so it wasn’t hard. Then, after he’d steadied himself and finished coughing, they traced the letter together; her moving his hand to make the letter next to the ‘n’. A very neat ‘kay’ too if she did say so herself.
With a flourish, Willy finished the word off with a small ‘a’ – a circle and a line – and stood back in triumph to marvel at the word. “Hah!” he said. “My name! I made my name! Noodle, I cannot even begin to describe how gloriously grateful I am that you’ve helped me! I am gargantuanly glad, nay, glitteringly giddy, gobsmackingly gleeful! Most gratified! Gushy! Grinning!”
“Good,” said Noodle.
“Great!” said Willy and laughed. “And giggly. I can write my name!”
“And you can practice it,” said Noodle, pushing back the chalk he’d tried to hand her. “Until you fill up the board. Write small, ok?”
“Mmn.” He looked less excited at this. “Did I ever tell you how much I disliked the sound of chalk? And it feels all shivery against my fingers, Noodle; I can’t stand the stuff. When I can afford things like a good fountain pen and ink, I shall be unstoppable but until then I am very much stoppable.” He shuddered. “Eurgh. Chalk.”
“Just write and stop complaining.”
“Yes miss, no miss, Timbuktu miss, how do you do miss.” But he did start writing, stopping periodically to shudder at every squeak. “I don’t know how people can do this.”
“You’ll get it eventually.”
“I meant writing in chalk.”
“Oh. It’s not that bad… is it?”
“It’s worse than a purse-nosed querse cursing in verse.”
Noodle blinked.
“Badder than a sad adder. Less nice than mice in a vice and more wicked than a little cricket stuck in a thicket. It grates greatly and leaves me in an agitated state.”
“That was a lot of rhymes and I’m kind of impressed but at the same time worried.”
Willy shrugged. “I play little word games with myself sometimes.” His voice was softer; more genuine than usual. “Takes my mind off things.” His mouth quirked. “Like chalk.”
“Well I’d give you paper but I’ve got one pad and I already used half of it writing your letters. Mrs Scrubbitt only gives it to me for receipts. She already doesn’t believe I write that many receipts!”
He was looking like he was about to start thinking up ideas again instead of writing, so she continued:
“And we don’t need a solution, Willy. This is the solution. You just have to put up with the chalk.”
He slumped, sighing. “Permission to continue detesting it.”
“Uhm… permission granted. Just keep practicing.”
“Milady,” said Willy, bowing with a flourish, and, with a grin quirking across his face, kept writing.