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J. Mark

Teeth

Eric still lives in the town where we grew up. He says he wants to stay close to his roots. That’s a good one. You can say that again. Roots.

Some people are rich because they are famous. Some people are famous just for being rich. Eric Donnelly is one of the second sort, but I knew him before he was either, when we were at Victoria Road Primary together. I don’t really know Eric any more, but I can read about him in the papers any time, same as you can. He was in one of the colour supplements last Sunday, with a photograph of his house all over a double-page spread. You need a double-page spread to take in Eric these days. He was being interviewed about the things he really considers important in life, which include, in the following order, world peace, conservation, foreign travel (to promote world peace, of course, not for fun), his samoyeds (a kind of very fluffy wolf) and his wife. He didn’t mention money but anyone who has ever known Eric — for three years like I did or even for five minutes — knows that on Eric’s list it comes at the top, way in front of world peace. In the photo he was standing with the wife and three of the samoyeds in front of the house, trying to look ordinary. To prove how ordinary he is he was explaining how he used to be very poor and clawed his way up using only his own initiative. Well, that’s true as far as it goes: his own initiative and his own claws — and other people’s teeth. He didn’t mention the teeth.

“Well,” says Eric modestly, in the Sunday supplement, “it’s a standing joke, how I got started. Cast-iron baths.” That too is true as far as it goes. When Eric was fifteen he got a job with one of those firms that specialize in house clearances. One day they cleared a warehouse which happened to contain two hundred and fifty Victorian cast-iron baths with claw feet. It occurred to Eric that there were a lot of people daft enough to actually want a Victorian bath with claw feet; people, that is, who hadn’t had to grow up with them, so he bought the lot at a knock-down price, did them up and flogged them. That bit’s well known, but in the Sunday supplement he decided to come clean. He came clean about how he’d saved enough money to buy the baths in the first place by collecting scrap metal, cast-offs, old furniture and returnable bottles. “A kind of rag-and-bone man,” said Eric, with the confidence of a tycoon who can afford to admit that he used to be a rag-and-bone man because he isn’t one any more. He still didn’t mention the teeth.

I first met Eric Donnelly in the Odeon one Saturday morning during the kids’ show. I’d seen him around at school before — he was in the year above mine — but here he was sitting next to me. I was trying to work out one of my front teeth which had been loose for ages and was now hanging by a thread. I could open and shut it, like a door, but it kept getting stuck and I’d panic in case it wouldn’t go right side round again. In the middle of the millionth episode of Thunder Riders it finally came unstuck and shot out. I just managed to field it and after having a quick look I shoved it in my pocket. Eric leaned over and said in my earhole, “What are you going to do with that, then?”

“Put it under me pillow,” I said. “Me mum’ll give me sixpence for it.”

“Oh, the tooth fairy”[3], said Eric. I hadn’t quite liked to mention the tooth fairy. I was only eight but I knew already what happened to lads who went round talking about fairies.

“Give it to us, then,” Eric said. I’ll pay you sixpence.”

“Do you collect them?” I asked him.

“Sort of,” said Eric. “Go on — sixpence. What about it?”

“But me mum knows it’s loose,” I said.

“Sevenpence, then.”

“She’ll want to know where it went.”

“Tell her you swallowed it,” Eric said. “She won’t care.”

He was right, and I didn’t care either, although I cared a lot about the extra penny. You might not believe this, but a penny — an old penny — was worth something then, that is, you noticed the difference between having it and not having it. I've seen my own kids lose a pound and not think about it as much as I thought about that extra penny. Eric was already holding it out on his palm in the flickering darkness — one penny and two threepenny bits. I took them and gave him the tooth in a hurry — I didn’t want to miss any more of Thunder Riders.

“Your tooth’s gone, then,” my mum said, when I came home and she saw the gap.

“I swallowed it,” I said, looking sad. “Never mind,” she said, and I could see she was relieved that the tooth fairy hadn’t got to fork out another sixpence. I’d lost two teeth the week before. They started coming out late but once they got going there was no holding them and my big brother Ted was still shedding the odd grinder. She gave me a penny, as a sort of consolation prize, so I was tuppence up on that tooth. I didn’t tell her about flogging it to Eric Donnelly for sevenpence. She’d have thought it was a bit odd. I thought it was a bit odd myself.

It was half-term that weekend so I didn’t see Eric till we were back at school on Wednesday. Yes, Wednesday. Half-terms were short, then, like everything else: trousers, money… He was round the back of the bog with Brian Ferris.

“Listen,” Eric was saying, “threepence, then.”

“Nah,” said Brian, “I want to keep it.”

“But you said your mum did’t believe in the tooth fairy,” Eric persisted. “You been losing teeth for two years for nothing!If you let me have it you’ll get threepence — fourpence.”

“I want it,” said Brian. “I want to keep it in a box and watch it go rotten.”

“Fivepence,” said Eric.

“It’s mine. I want it.” Brian walked away and Eric retired defeated, but at dinner time I caught him at it again with Mary Arnold, over by the railings.

“How much does your tooth fairy give you?” he asked.

“A shilling,” said Mary, smugly.

“No deal, then,” Eric said, shrugging.

“But I’ll let you have it for thixpenth,” said Mary, and smiled coyly.

I started to keep an eye on Eric after that, him and his collection. It wasn’t what he was collecting that was strange — Tony Mulholland collected bottle tops — it was the fact that he was prepared to pay. I noticed several things. First, the size of the tooth had nothing to do with the amount that Eric would cough up. A socking great molar might go for a penny, while a little worn-down bottom incisor would change hands at sixpence or sevenpence. Also, that he would never go above elevenpence. That was his ceiling. No one ever got a shilling out of Eric Donnelly, even for a great big thing with roots. Charlie McEvoy had one pulled by the dentist and brought it to school for Eric but Eric only gave him sevenpence for it.

“Here, Charlie,” I said, at break. “What’s he do with them?”

“Search me,” said Charlie, “he’s had three of mine.”

“D’you have a tooth fairy at home?” I was beginning to smell a rat.

“Yes,” said Charlie. “Let’s go and beat up Ferris.” He was a hard man, was McEvoy; started early.

“No — hang about. How much?”

“Sixpence.” I was quite surprised. I wouldn’t have put it past old McEvoy to keep a blunt instrument under the pillow, bean the tooth fairy and swipe the night’s takings. He was a big fellow, even at eight. I wasn’t quite so big, but Eric, although he was a year older, was smaller than me. That day I followed him home.

It was not easy to follow Eric home. They tended to marry early in that family so Eric not only had a full set of grandparents but also two great-grandmothers and enough aunties to upset the national average. As his mum seemed to have a baby about every six months Eric was always going to stay with one of them or another. He was heading for one of his great-grandmas that evening, along Jubilee Crescent. I nailed him down by the phone box.

“Listen, Donnelly,” I said. “What are you doing with all them teeth?”

Give him credit, he didn’t turn a hair. A lot of kids would have got scared, but not Eric. He just said, “You got one for me, then?”

“Well, no,” I said, “but I might have by Saturday.”

“Sevenpence?” said Eric, remembering the previous transaction, I suppose. He had a head for figures.

“Maybe,” I said, “but I want to know what you do with them.”

“What if I won’t tell you?” Eric said.

“I’ll knock all yours out,” I suggested, so he told me. As I thought, it was all down to the grannies and aunties. They were sorry for poor little Eric — Dad out of work, all those brothers and sisters and no pocket money. If he lost a tooth while he was staying with one of them he put it under the pillow and the tooth fairy paid up. There being two great-grannies, two grannies and seven aunties, it was hard for anyone to keep tabs on the number of teeth Eric lost and it hadn’t taken him long to work out that if he didn’t overdo things he could keep his eleven tooth fairies in business for years. Kids who didn’t have a tooth fairy of their own were happy to flog him a fang for a penny. If he had to pay more than sixpence the tooth went to Great-Granny Ennis, who had more potatoes than the rest of them put together.

By the time that he was eleven I calculate that Eric Donnelly had lost one hundred teeth, which is approximately twice as many as most of us manage to lose in a lifetime. With the money he saved he bought a second-hand barrow and toured the streets touting for scrap, returnable bottles and so on, which was what earned him enough to buy the two hundred and fifty Victorian baths with claw feet which is the beginning of the public part of Eric’s success story, where we came in. I suppose there is some justice in the fact that at thirty-eight Eric no longer has a single tooth he can call his own.

No — I am not Eric’s dentist. I am his dustman, and I sometimes catch a glimpse of the old cushion grips as I empty the bin. Occasionally I turn up just as Eric is leaving for a board meeting. He flashes his dentures at me in a nervous grin and I give him a cheery wave like honest dustmen are meant to do.

“Morning, Donnelly,” I shout merrily. “Bought any good teeth lately?” He hates that.

1. Comment on the functions of the title of the short story.

2. Define the forms of presentation and explain through whose perception the events of the story are filtered.

3. What tone is established throughout the story? Support your opinion by giving references to the text.

4. What is the narrator’s attitude to Eric Donnelly? Explain. Do you view the central character as a sympathetic person?

5. What is the author’s message to the reader?

11.

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