Eoin Colfer

The Legend of The Worst Boy in the World

Grandad

Every weekend, Dad loads us all into the car and we drive thirty miles down the coast to his mum and dad’s home. Our grandparents live in the seaside village of Duncade, which is on a headland that sticks out into the sea like a Stone Age arrowhead.
 Grandad is one of the two Duncade lighthouse keepers and he lives with our Gran in an apartment on the ground floor. When I grow up, I plan to take over Grandad’s job and live in the lighthouse apartment. I will hang a sign on the door that says NO LITTLE BROTHERS ALLOWED. There won’t be any girls allowed either, except my mum who can come in to make dinners and do washing and stuff.
 Grandad has already started training me for the job. Every Saturday we climb the 116 steps to the very top of the lighthouse to polish the lighthouse lenses in the lamp room. Grandad wears a special canvas belt with pockets for polishing cream, rags and a water bottle. For my ninth birthday Grandad made a belt for me too.
 ‘I learned to stitch in the merchant navy,’ he explained that day, buckling the belt around my waist. ‘Now you are my official helper.’
 I like being Grandad’s official helper because it is something just for me. Marty won’t help because there is no money involved, and my little brothers are not allowed to climb the narrow spiral staircase because it’s too dangerous.
 So Grandad and I climb the steps together. I count every one just in case some have gone missing. But the number is always the same – 116 – if you count the giant first step twice.
 ‘That’s Peg Leg Byrne’s giant step,’ Grandad told me once. ‘All the steps used to be that big, until Peg Leg Byrne, a lighthouse keeper with a wooden leg, chiselled them all down, starting at the top. It took him thirty years, and unfortunately he died before he could do the last one. All that because the steps were a little high for him.’
 It seems as though each step has a story, and sometimes Grandad tells me them all before we reach the top. But finally we make it, and the first thing we do is take a long drink from our water bottles. Not too long though, because there are 116 steps between us and the nearest bathroom.
 The lamp room has glass all the way round, so that the light can get out. This means that anyone in the lamp room has a fantastic view of the sea and the headland. In front of us, lines of white waves roll in from the horizon, and behind us the headland cuts a grey line through the sea.
 ‘People in America would pay big money for a view like this,’ says Grandad. He says this every single time, and he is probably right.
 After a moment admiring the view, we climb up an old wooden ladder into the lamp itself. This is like climbing inside a giant glass vase, and when you are in there you get an idea of how the world must look to a goldfish. The lenses magnify everything until even a fly sitting on the glass looks like a giant bug-eyed monster.
 One Saturday while we were inside the lenses, I told Grandad about my problem.
‘I have a problem, Grandad,’ I said, pouring some polish on to my favourite rag.
 ‘What would that be, Bosun?’
 Grandad calls me Bosun, which means second in command.
 ‘My problem is . . . problems. I have no one to tell my problems to. Mum and Dad are always too busy.’
 ‘That is a problem,’ said Grandad, spreading a blob of polish across one of the lenses. ‘Everybody needs someone to talk to.’
 ‘So, I thought, maybe you could be my someone. Gran says that you don’t do much except polish the lenses.’
 ‘Oh really? Is that what your gran says?’
 ‘Yes. She says the lighthouse computer does all the work, and you just hang around up here pretending to be busy.’
 ‘I see. So you reckon I would have plenty of time to listen to your problems?’
 ‘I reckon so.’
 Grandad stopped polishing. ‘OK, Bosun, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll listen to your sob stories, if you listen to mine.’
 This sounded fair to me, so I stuck out my hand.
 ‘It’s a deal.’
 Grandad shook my hand. ‘Just one story a week though. I don’t want to be crying myself to sleep every Saturday night.’
 ‘One story a week.’
 ‘And if they’re only small problems, exaggerate a bit, just to keep things interesting. I like stuff with jungle animals.’
 ‘OK, Grandad,’ I said, although none of my complaints had anything to do with jungle animals. There was a cat next door that always hissed at me, but that probably didn’t count.
 Grandad finished polishing, and stuffed the rag back into his belt.
 ‘Right then. Round one next Saturday. I hope something really bad happens to you, because I have stories that I’ve wanted to get off my chest for years.’
 And, funny as it seems, I kind of hoped something bad would happen to me too. Something with jungle animals.

Tinfoil

I could not wait to get down to Duncade the next weekend. I was bursting to tell Grandad what had happened to me in school. Even as it was happening, I was thinking that it would make a great story for Grandad. The only thing missing was a gorilla, or maybe a screeching monkey.
 Grandad would not let me start until we had started polishing the lenses.
 ‘OK, Bosun,’ he said then. ‘Let’s hear it. Your face is red from trying to hold it in.’
 ‘It’s so embarrassing,’ I said, scrubbing a large circle in the dusty lens. ‘There’s no way you’re going to beat this.’
 ‘We’ll see, Bosun. We’ll see.’
 And so I told Grandad the story of that week’s problem.
 ‘Nothing much happened all week, and I thought I would have nothing to tell you. Then Thursday came along.’
 ‘As it often does,’ said Grandad.
 ‘So there I was. In class. Being a brilliant student, as usual.’
 ‘What a nightmare,’ said Grandad.
 ‘No. That’s not it. The embarrassing bit happened about two o’clock. When I had to ask our teacher – our female teacher – if I could go to the bathroom.’
 Grandad stopped polishing. ‘Is that it? Tell me there’s more.’
 ‘Yes, there’s more. I went into the toilet and there was no paper. But I didn’t notice this until after I had been. If you know what I mean.’
 ‘Oh,’ said Grandad. ‘This could be nasty.’
 ‘So I had to shout to the teacher to bring some in,’ I said, covering my face with my hands. ‘Everybody heard. I was super embarrassed. It was terrible. You have no idea.’
 It felt good, sharing my story with Grandad. Just talking about it made the memory less embarrassing.
      Grandad snorted. ‘That’s nothing. You want an embarrassing toilet story, listen to this. When I was young, we couldn’t afford toilet paper. So my mother used whatever was lying around. First we used newspaper, then crisp bags, then bits of cardboard boxes. Once I even had to use tinfoil.’
 ‘Tinfoil?’
 Grandad nodded sadly. ‘Yep. My bottom was magnetized for a week. Everywhere I went, compasses and drawing pins followed me. I learned to check before sitting down.’
 ‘Wow,’ I said.
 ‘Yep,’ said Grandad. ‘Now that’s an embarrassing toilet story. Are you sure you want to go on with this swapping complaints thing? Because, to be honest, I was nearly nodding off during your story.’
 ‘Yes, I want to keep swapping stories. I’m sure something really terrible will happen to me next week.’
 Unfortunately, the worst thing that happened the following week was that I lost my pencil. When I told Grandad about this he responded with a tale about having his entire schoolbag stolen by a badger who had mistaken it for another badger.
 The week after that I was certain that I would win. The barber had slipped when he was trimming the back of my head with electric clippers and had shaved a bald strip right up to my crown. Grandad took a long look at the bald strip, then took off his flat cap and showed me where a shark had bitten him on the head.
 ‘That’s a good one,’ I admitted, then asked if I could borrow his cap.
 It was no use. Whatever happened to me, something a million times worse had happened to Grandad. He just reached into the past and pulled out these brilliant stories. I had no chance. He was seventy and I was only nine, so he had a lot more memories to choose from. Anyway, nothing really terrible had ever happened to me. Nothing that could compare with a shark bite on the head. Or if something had happened, it must have been when I was really young. Something that I couldn’t remember.
 I would have to ask Dad, I decided. He would remember if something horrible had ever happened to me as a baby. Something that even Grandad couldn’t top.

The Legend of the Worst Boy in the World © Eoin Colfer, 2007. Published by Puffin Books.