He Keeps it in a Drawer Under His Socks

Leopold has a secret. It is easy to keep secrets when you’re a ten year old boy in a house full of women. No one ever notices him. Mother’s always busy in the kitchen. His older sister’s out chasing boys. His younger sister is pony mad and seems to be living in the stables these days. Grandma Anne is sick in bed with rheumatism. Grandma Margaret appears to have forgotten who she is. Both grandmas require attention. When Mother isn’t in the kitchen, she’s fixing hot water bottles for old ladies, or mixing tonics, or laundering bedsheets, or telephoning the local police station to report Grandma Margaret missing again.

Leopold has a father of course. But his father works in the city. Each morning he catches the seven ten train and doesn’t return ‘til eight in the evening. Leopold only sees him at weekends. He doesn’t much mind this arrangement or the lack of attention he gets from his mother. If nobody’s watching Leopold, he can get up to all sorts of hijinks around the house. He can lift the odd pound from Mother’s purse. He can ransack the larder in the middle of the night. He can chase the cats and hide his sisters’ hair ribbons and play keepy ups in the music room. Nobody’s any the wiser. Leopold could burn the house down and no one would notice him doing it.

Leopold has no notion of torching the house. Leopold’s schemes are more moderate. He has a secret. He’s certainly not sharing it with either sister. He knows they couldn’t keep it to themselves. But as the secret’s reasonably tiny and awfully easy to maintain, he’s able to keep it hidden in his bedroom dresser, two drawers down, beneath his socks. He takes it out from time and holds it carefully under the light, turning it this way and that in his hands, admiring the way it’s been made. He still can’t believe his own good fortune; the way he’d come upon it, just lying there, splayed out on a blanket, in the alley behind the village hall. Leopold had not known if it’d been abandoned or mislaid. He had not stop to find out. Finders keepers, as they said in The Famous Five. He’d lifted it quickly, tucked it under his jacket and hurried home.

Leopold’s bedroom is right at the top of the house. The ceiling slants down on either side, mirroring the descent of the roof. It’s quiet up here and well-insulated from the rest of the house. Leopold doesn’t have to worry about his secret. Nobody can hear what he’s up to in his room. No one ever comes up the steep attic stairs to check on him. He keeps the secret hidden inside his sock drawer and nobody is any the wiser. Leopold’s awfully pleased with himself. 

At first he was a little concerned. For the first few days the secret made a dreadful racket,  crying and getting on all through the night. On the third day it wasn’t quite so noisy. It sounded like it was running out of batteries. Leopold wondered if it might be a little cold in the drawer. He borrowed Grandma Margaret’s hot water bottle. She didn’t even notice it gone. He tucked it in beside his secret, covered it up with an extra blanket and closed the drawer. The whole room fell silent then. So silent, Leopold forgot about the secret, bundled up beneath his socks. He developed a new pash for smashing windows. He was out with his catapult all hours of the night. It was a fortnight before he remembered about the secret. By this stage it has started to smell.

Inspired by a line from Agatha Christie’s 1969 novel, Hallowe’en Party