
Grandma was spending the weekend with her grandchildren, here in the fine county of Surrey, and it was her full intent to get the most out of her visit by spending every waking moment of the day with the little angels, right up until the moment when she turned off the oil lamp on their night stand. She was grandmother to two boys, Oliver and Peter, which meant that when the moment came for their bedtime story, there were often disputes to be arbitrated – usually regarding in whose bed the tale would be narrated. The logical choice seemed to be Peter’s bed, given that he had a tendency to fall asleep after a few pages, but Oliver, being the eldest, had other ideas: “This time, Grandma’s going to read the story in my bed,” he had explained to his little brother, matter-of-factly. For Peter this proposal was out of the question, as he could not abide the thought of listening to a story so full of emotion, adventure, suspense and action in Oliver’s bed. After all, were he to fall asleep in that unfamiliar place, without his favourite teddy close at hand, his dreams might be altogether less than sweet. The story in question was that of Robinson Crusoe, by a writer named Daniel Defoe.
The edition Grandma produced had a brown leather cover with beautiful illustrations inside, and she opened it before their wide eyes. In the lamplight, the two children felt like they were in a waking dream, voyaging to explore the desert island alongside Robinson himself. They wriggled and shuddered, gasping with oohs and aahs. Grandma was a skilled storyteller, expertly weighing her intonation as her soft voice took on mysterious and profound inflections. What would become of their dear Robinson? Peter tried to fight off slumber by rubbing his eyes, loathe to miss out on a single crumb of the story. Oliver clung to his Grandma’s arm to express his enthusiasm. “And I must not forget that we had in the ship a dog and two cats, of whose eminent history I may have occasion to say something in its place for I carried both the cats with me; and as for the dog, he jumped out of the ship of himself, and swam on shore to me the day after I went on shore with my first cargo, and was a trusty servant to me many years; I wanted nothing that he could fetch me, nor any company that he could make up to me; I only wanted to have him talk to me, but that would not do. As I observed before, I found pens, ink, and paper, and I husbanded them to the utmost; and I shall show that while my ink lasted, I kept things very exact, but after that was gone I could not, for I could not make any ink by any means that I could devise.”
“What would you do, boys, if you were stranded on a desert island?” Grandma asked them.
“I’d look for buried treasure!” cried Peter.
“No-one said there was treasure!” Oliver scoffed.
“There’s always treasure on a desert island!”
“Even if there were treasure to be found, gold would not feed you, nor protect you from the wild beasts, nor shelter you from the storm!” Grandma warned.
“I would have taken some pets with me too,” Oliver replied. “It must be very lonely on a desert island. I know – I’d teach them to talk!”
“And how would you do that?” Grandma gasped. “Animals can’t talk – that’s what makes them animals.”
“On my island, the animals will talk – that’s all I know,” Oliver decided.
“Well my boys, I fear that you would not long survive on your desert islands,” Grandma chuckled. “A couple of English house mice is what you are.”
“So what would you do, Grandma?” Oliver asked.
“Well, I should write out all my stories, of course, to help educate my poor, dear grandchildren!”
Alan Alfredo Geday