Fingers in the Sparkle Jar Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  1 Brand New Savage

  2 The Tadpole Spoon

  3 Empire of Beauty

  4 Agitated Amazement Disorder

  5 My Piece of Sky

  6 Anna, My Other Angel

  7 One Nil to the Mysterons

  8 Tyrannosaurus Dreams

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Every minute was magical, every single thing it did was fascinating and everything it didn’t do was equally wondrous, and to be sat there, with a Kestrel, a real live Kestrel, my own real live Kestrel on my wrist! I felt like I’d climbed through a hole in heaven’s fence.

  An introverted, unusual young boy, isolated by his obsessions and a loner at school, Chris Packham only felt himself in the fields and woods around his suburban home. But when he stole a young Kestrel from its nest, he was about to embark on a friendship that would teach him what it meant to love, and that would change him forever. In his rich, lyrical and emotionally exposing memoir, Chris brings to life his childhood in the 70s, from his bedroom bursting with fox skulls, birds’ eggs and sweaty jam jars, to his feral adventures. But pervading his story is the search for freedom, meaning and acceptance in a world that didn’t understand him.

  Beautifully wrought, this coming-of-age memoir will be unlike any you’ve ever read.

  About the Author

  TV presenter, photographer and conservationist Chris Packham is one of the nation’s favourite naturalists. He is best known for the BAFTA-winning The Really Wild Show and fronting BBC’s Springwatch and Autumnwatch. Packham is president of the British Trust for Ornithology, Hawk Conservancy Trust, the Hampshire Ornithological Society and the Bat Conservation Trust and vice-president of the RSPB and the Butterfly Conservation. In 2011, he was awarded the British Trust for Ornithology’s Dilys Breese Medal for his ‘outstanding work in promoting science to new audiences’.

  Packham’s partner Charlotte Corney owns the Isle of Wight Zoo, and his step-daughter is studying zoology at Liverpool University. He lives in the New Forest with his two dogs, Itchy and Scratchy.

  1

  Brand New Savage

  The Collector

  July 1966

  ‘I’M SORRY, I haven’t got change of a ladybird.’

  The ice-cream man had opened the matchbox expecting a sixpence but instead found a six-spotted beetle that was now scuttling manically over his counter, defiantly refusing reinterment in its crisp little cell despite repeated repositioning. He gently pressed his cupped palm down on the fugitive and as it squeezed free of his fingers managed to flick it back into the box. Green juice specked his nail. He tutted, wiped it on his trousers and stretched over to hand the doomed specimen back to the beetle-keeper just as a girl he knew as Anna simultaneously thrust a thick wodge of bubblegum cards at the little mush and demanded, ‘Why don’t you let it go?’

  The boy ignored her, shook the box next to his ear, fanned through his worn wad of Batman and Tarzan cards and then wrestled them into the bulging pocket of his shorts.

  ‘You wouldn’t like it in there,’ she snapped before she looked up to Mr Whippy and said, ‘He’s had it in there for days and he never lets them go until they die. I’d like a Sky Ray.’

  Yellow chin lights speckled her freckles, radiating from three daisy chains, her morning’s work. Ghostly grey eyes and pig pink cheeks cuddling close to the grubbiest teddy bear. She had sunblown blonde play-curled hair that flopped in tattered curtains over her milky brow and tickled those tickly arcs of soft skin beneath her eyes. The boy was skewy-fringed and silent, gazing at the pavement in mandatory scuffed sandals, and both wore too-tight over-washed T-shirts, hers with a smiling fox’s face, his with fresh pearls of Airfix cement constellating its front.

  ‘Please. I’d like a Sky Ray please,’ she repeated to be sure her manners would be recognised.

  The suns flaring from the side of the van lit the scruffy waifs up like camera flash as they squinted hard at the pictures of lollies in awe of Strawberry Splices and Orange Sparkles. Her fist unfurled into a cup of sweaty pennies that would smell of bitter money till bedtime and when she came to lick the melted lemon as it dribbled down the stick that metallic taint would bite back and make her wince and spit and her big sister would scoff and giggle.

  The bloke picked out six coins and handed her the Sky Ray, which she unwrapped fiercely, leaving strips of paper glued to its frosted sides. She sucked at its cherry red tip and after a pleasurable pause poked the boy, who flinched and magically produced a thrupenny bit for his thrupenny ice-lolly. As they left a gang of panting nippers with rattling trolleys charged up. These dad-made pavement racers rolled on rusty wheels scavenged from dumped prams and pushchairs and were clad in garish strips of threadbare carpets and daubed with the sticky dregs of their parents’ house paint pots. They steered them roughly with their rope loops into the wall and all at once told him there’d been a massive crash in the woods over by the council flats yesterday and that Axell had broken his arm and been taken to the General by his mum. On the bus. He was their hero, king of the juniors. They brandished their scabs, which they squeezed to get fresh blood, and without a shilling between them stormed off to kick a ball against a wall until teatime and Crackerjack.

  With the kids gone the ice-cream man had a quick fag and picked himself out a Woppa. When he slid the freezer shut he saw the ‘ladybird boy’ standing staring at him from the lawn beyond the wall. From each hand dangled a shiny jam jar and it was painfully obvious that he had returned with these trophies because he wanted to share them. The man checked his watch, then flicked his head to beckon him over. The boy snaked across the grass to the gate, put both jars down, clicked the latch, moved them outside, setting each gently on the tarmac before dragging the hinge-less flaking panel shut behind him. He then carefully laid out the string handles and picked up the pots synchronously and slowly so they didn’t swing. These were sacred things.

  The man leaned across the counter and out of the window and the boy offered him one. Through a mist of condensation he could see a muddy base, three or four large pebbles, several sprigs of wilted greenery and a pink plastic dinosaur. It was standing upright, snarling, and just visible beneath it was another pale blue prehistoric form lying on its side. The prey. He scrutinised it; everything was very precisely arranged, a perfect diorama modelled on some encyclopaedia’s illustration of the world one million years ago. He rotated it carefully, judged he had spent just enough time in rapt appreciation and handed it back.

  The second jar held a similarly contrived miniaturised scene but had no discernible ancient reptiles. Its sides were also dripping wet but its lid was roughly ventilated and so presumably housed something living. But the amiable geezer couldn’t be bothered to look that hard. He passed it down and the boy frowned as he adjusted the handle to ensure symmetry and then looked back at him, his eyes slit tight against the hot bright light. He should say something, but what? What do you say to a weird kid with dinosaurs in jam jars who never speaks, who only ever points, who buys your cheapest ice-lollies and seems to think that bartering with various bugs is a viable currency for exchange? So he nodded, a nod which he hoped would signify approval, and grunted, ‘What happened to your lolly?’

  The kid put down the jars with robotic precision and then pulled the stick out of his pocket and held it up. He then reached into his other pocket and withdrew a bundle of about twenty more bound to a small spoon with a bent neck. As he drove off Mr Whippy nodded again and when he checked his mirror at the corner he could see the kid still kneeling on the p
avement. Peering into the pot with nothing in it.

  Back in the garden the boy carefully unscrewed the lid. The jar belched a bitter breath and peering into the sweaty cell he found this afternoon’s ladybirds running unnaturally fast, baked into a panic, scuttling and slipping on the wet sides. He set the lid and jar at the dead centre of a paving stone then rested on his elbows to watch them all escape.

  He could see their flat feet on the grey glass, winding and failing, black-bellied, oval, with their feelers tapping feverously, struggling to find fresh air. The first beetle made it to the lip and at once began to circle the rim, pausing to change direction and crack open its ruddy back, trapping a twist of orange tissue in a momentary tail. Round and round, another appeared and then a third, a crowd, busy bumping, he knew what they wanted. He shuffled across to the unkempt edge of the lawn and pulled a stalk of grass, bit off the limp base and then the flower spike to leave a long straight straw that he placed in the jar leaning against the edge. At once the gyrating carroty beads climbed it and at its pinnacle took flight and wafted away. Finally, as the last prisoner reached the gleaming parapet and trundled to the base of the launch tower, he dragged the jar closer and watched the mini machine’s six legs organise the ascent. He traced its line up the stem and placed his finger at the tip so the insect crawled onto it.

  As it turned he swivelled his wrist to face its front. Two white patches like eyes above its tiny head and waving, it stood up flailing legs and falling back, then shuffled and settled, and he knew it was time. The ripe little ruby split, its concealed wings unfurled, it lifted, hovered, twinkled and sunspun up, glistening for a second before vanishing into his piece of sky.

  He shook the fetid salad out of the jar onto the lawn and pawed at several blackened grains, which had expired before the great escape, crushing one on the tip of his finger. It smelled sharp and strong and stained his skin brown despite a feverish wiping on his shirt. He wondered at how quickly they died and tried to imagine how many died every day in the whole world. It was sad that something so beautiful, so perfect had to die, it seemed unfair and wasteful and was difficult to understand. Things were either dead or alive, they were alive right up to the point they were dead but there didn’t seem to be anything in between. They could be a little bit alive but they were always completely dead. He didn’t know any dead people but one day he would, he knew some old people, they would die, maybe soon, maybe even before he had his next ice cream.

  He wondered how many of the old people he’d seen but didn’t know had already died. He would die too, one day. But he didn’t want to. All this thinking about dying made his chest ache, he was nearly crying. There was a dead ladybird stuck in the bottom of the jar. He shook it hard to get it out but it wouldn’t budge until he used the grass straw to dislodge it and flick it away. He didn’t like it dead.

  He sucked the mark on his shirt and scrubbed his fingertip again and then straightened the T. rex that had fallen over the Brontosaur in his other jar. Then he took out his matchbox and climbed onto the wall alongside Mrs Greenwood’s ladybird bush. It was teeming with blood-red beetles and soon his fingers were stained by their little bleedings and he was shaking the box to listen to the many captives rattling inside. He’d put them in the jar later but now he jumped down and lay on the dusty lawn. Clicking gurgled squeaks rattled and rhythmically wheezed from the bird on the chimney pot whose glossy feathers flashed bits of rainbow from its spiky crest. He lay back and whistled, the bird spluttered on, he wet his lips and whistled again adding a flourish and the bird whistled back mimicking his notes, he waited, the bird rambled through its repetitive repertoire, then he whistled again and the bird replied. The duet went on until the mimic vanished and then he whistled and answered himself, stroking the polka dotting of daisies with sweeping arcs of his arms, in synchrony and symmetry. He swam in his paradise, his heaven of a million living things.

  The Suburb

  August 1966

  BRIGHT AND POLISHED, stacked up like a giant cake iced in layers of brilliant white, sky blue and rich buttery yellow. Chrome quarter bumpers at the back flashed pricks of silverlight and crowning the cab above the windscreen were two freshly whipped cones, each stabbed by a matt chocolate flake. The sun blazed through these plastic lamps and the van’s roof and fluoresced softly on the pages as he pawed over the morning’s news. Myra Hindley was glowering at him, black-eyed, blonde but bloke-ish and so obviously ruddy evil. He turned it over, she was too creepy.

  Predictably there were the boring Beatles and the England team, Moore brandishing the trophy, Stiles’s toothless grin and Charlton looking like his old man. Absolutely bloody marvellous he thought as he tossed the paper on his seat and leaned forward to turn on the radio. The Kinks had it right, he was indeed lazing on a sunny afternoon, in the summertime. He hummed it, filling in between the crackles until the tranny warmed up and settled down.

  At the weekend, the kerbs would be dotted with Cortinas and Victors, Minxes and Imps but this afternoon the sideways were the wickets and Wembleys for England’s fantasising finest. Everywhere there were kids telling tales and blowing bubbles and as he’d steered his way through the roads, crescents and closes, diligently checking his list of stops, his cash tray quickly filled with their pocket money. He passed a row of overcoated old codgers at a bus stop, avoided stray mongrels skipping over walls and dodged abandoned tricycles and bicycles. He watched retired men mowing tiny lawns, their wives hoisting high lines of washing, he heard the ancient strains of grannies and nannies wringing old mangles and saw a bright new football rolling lost in a grassy gutter whilst the goal scorer was at home flob-a-dobbing with the Flowerpot Men. As the last notes of ‘Greensleeves’ crackled from his loudspeaker he pulled up where Cornwall Road met Cleveland Road at four thirty on the nose.

  As he stood in anticipation, arms spread on the counter, he looked up the hill at this stretch of twenty or thirty pebble-dashed houses and smiled. They were clean, tidy, the gardens in front of him were hoed and manicured, filled with ordered greenery, each gate had been carefully closed and painted in colours to match the windows and doors, many of which were neatly two toned. Purple and lilac, dark and pale blue and one in striking yellow and black, the only one with wrought-iron gates. Butterflies jostled over flower beds, a blackbird listened to the lawn, a large tree was laden with clusters of flaming berries, there were house names and numbers and birdsong, a portrait of a perfect suburbia.

  It was also an ant day. The winged masses were rising from a drain immediately in front of the van, a steaming fountain of glossy scales erupting into the hot afternoon sky and this geyser of insects shimmering there in a whorl of twinkling wings showed no sign of slowing up. There must have been millions and millions of them leaving their dirty womb, swarming over a broken blue eggshell and into the sky. How on earth could they all have grown to do this? What tonnage of sweet things had been stolen in how many tens of thousands of forays by the manic workers through the minuscule chasms of this neighbourhood? He played the chimes and still they rose, so hypnotically that his first customer arrived unnoticed. The ‘ladybird boy’ from last week.

  But in an instant he was brushed aside by a soldier, an astronaut, a cowboy and an Indian, a Liverpool striker and two ballerinas. Assorted snot and the smell of fired caps, a few new plimsolls, they spent their pennies and sped away, their dirty little hands catching hundreds and thousands, tiny tongues licking orange, chocolate and blackcurrant drips from pinkening palms, running with stiff arms clenching their soggy cones, staining their dresses with dribbles and their smiles with cherryade, disappearing into the sunniest summers they’d ever have.

  There was a birthday party at number seven. He watched them chasing themselves, hysterically happy, and then turned to find the boy had lingered. He was holding a crocodile. He was cradling the stuffed reptile as if it was alive and not the tattered and broken, sparsely scaled ruin that had been abused by a taxidermist years ago. There was no danger of a crocodile bein
g proffered in exchange for an ice cream though; this was a prized possession. Nevertheless it was offered up and he took it. Its earhole was unusual and prominent, its teeth clean, white and needle-pointed, cotton wool was visible behind its glass eyes, its body was bloated and its tail disintegrating around a rusted twist of wire. It was pretty horrible. He handed it back down. A flaky scale lay on the counter and he pinched it up and reached through the hatch to push it into the boy’s grateful palm.

  ‘Do you want anything?’ He gestured at the lolly pictures.

  Without looking up, the boy shook his head.

  ‘Have you got any money?’

  He nodded and withdrew a coppery tinkle of coins from his pocket. And then he walked, not ran, off, cupping the scale, which was worth more than all the pennies pocket money could provide. He disappeared through the blue gate, head down, in love with his dead pet.

  It was peaceful. The Animal Magic theme plinked around in the distance, two poodles peeked through the side gate of number eight and a spangled starling pitched and scoped the pavement for crumbs. He threw out some broken wafers and was away before the squawking started.

  The boy listened to the noisy party across the road then trod the stairs centrally, opened and closed his bedroom door with his left foot and placed the juvenile caiman – it was not a crocodile – reverentially on his chest of drawers. Then he sat in a preordained spot, his toes touching the dragons he’d drawn on the lino and from where his view of the reptile’s mutilations were minimised. He studied it intensely, rocking his head imperceptibly to improve, with ample imagination, the idea that this withered fragment of worshipped wildlife was actually still alive.

  Outside sparrows argued, the sun flooded over his wall’s mishmash of creased maps and corner-less posters of dinosaurs, Daleks, Spitfires and the solar system. The TV was on downstairs but he didn’t care. It was half-time in a Subbuteo match between Liverpool and Everton and he played both teams, it was twelve all. His games were always draws because he played each team until they scored irrespective of the rules of Association Football, a copy of which his father had bought him. Everton only had eight outfield players, the others having been painfully knelt upon. Repeated gluing had reduced them to blobby dwarves and thus imperfect, thus unacceptable and thus euthanised, banished to the battered and collapsed green box beneath the bed. Table football, played on the floor because they didn’t have a table big enough for the baize pitch, was okay but it wasn’t as good as animals. He turned to his windowsill menagerie, his jam jars, neatly lined up and gently roasting their inhabitants in soft afternoon light.