The Bit of Moon in the Marmalade Jar

At the end of Puddle Lane there was a narrow house. At the top of the narrow house there was a round window, and on the sill of the round window there was a jar that said MARMALADE.

There was no marmalade in it. There was a bit of moon.

Benny’s grandpa had caught it. He had been shrimping off the end of the pier one summer night, when the moon was hanging so low that it nearly touched the sea. A little bit of it had come loose, the way a button comes loose, and it was bobbing about by the pier steps. Grandpa scooped it up in his shrimping net. He put it in the only jar he had, which was empty because he had eaten the marmalade in his sandwiches. Then he gave it to Benny, and nobody ever got round to changing the label.

The bit of moon was about the size of a plum, and it glowed. When the moon in the sky was thin, the bit in the jar was thin too, a curl of light like a smile. When the moon in the sky was fat, the bit in the jar was fat and round and bright enough to read by.

Grandpa had given Benny three rules with it. Be polite to it. Keep the lid on loosely, so it can breathe. And don’t fret if it isn’t there one night. “It goes home sometimes,” Grandpa said, “like everybody.”

Benny had been very small then. He remembered the first two rules.

He was very polite. Every night after his bath he climbed into bed and said “Good evening” to the jar. Then he told the bit of moon about his whole day. He did not leave anything out, not even the dull parts. “And then we went to the post office,” he would say, “and then we waited. And then we waited some more. And then we had peas.” When he had finished he said, “Thank you for listening.” He never once went to sleep before he had told it everything.

His big sister Lou said this was babyish. Lou was ten and far too old for nightlights. She had forty stick-on stars on her own ceiling, but those, she said, were for science.

Mom always left Benny’s window open a crack. “Just in case,” she said. She never said in case of what.

* * *

On the night of the full moon, Benny had a lot to tell. He had very nearly learned to whistle, and he had been saving it up all day.

He came upstairs in his pyjamas with his hair sticking up and said, “Good evening,” to the jar.

The jar was empty.

It was still a jar. It still said MARMALADE. But there was nothing in it except a little smell of oranges, and no light at all.

“Mom,” said Benny. “Dad.” Then, because it was serious, “Lou.”

They all came up, and they all looked.

Dad looked under the bed. He found a sock, a crayon and a raisin of great age, and no moon. Mom looked in the bath, in case it had gone in with Benny for a swim. She found the boat and the duck, and no moon. Lou looked in the bread bin.

You might think the bread bin is a silly place to look for a bit of moon. It is. But by then they had looked in all the sensible places, and Lou said a bit of moon was round, and so was a bread roll, and you never knew.

There was no moon in the bread bin. There was a bread roll.

Then Dad looked at the other jar on the kitchen table, the one full of real marmalade.

“Well, it does say marmalade on its jar,” he said. “It might have got muddled.”

He stirred the marmalade with a spoon, slowly, all the way to the bottom. He found a lot of orange peel. He did not find any moon.

They went back upstairs. Benny sat on his bed with the empty jar in his lap. He did not cry, but he looked as if he were thinking about it.

“Right,” said Dad. “Leave this to me.”

Dad was very confident with scissors and tinfoil. He cut a moon out of tinfoil in one go, round and crinkly and as big as a dinner plate. He did not draw a pencil line first, which is how you know someone is confident with scissors. He stuck it to the wall over the bed with tape.

It did not shine. It was tinfoil.

So Dad fetched the torch and pointed it at the tinfoil moon, and then it shone beautifully.

“There,” said Dad.

“Are you going to hold the torch all night?” said Lou.

“If necessary,” said Dad.

Benny was polite. “Good evening,” he said to the tinfoil moon.

“Good evening,” said Dad, in a high, silvery voice.

“That’s you, Dad,” said Benny.

Then Mom tried. She opened Benny’s door and left the hall light on, and a long yellow stripe came in across the floor.

“That’s just the hall,” said Benny. It was. It lit up the carpet and the laundry basket, and that was all.

Then Lou went out without a word. They heard her climb on her bed, and then a lot of small peeling sounds. She came back with both hands full of stars. She stood on Benny’s bed and stuck them up on his ceiling one by one, all forty.

“These are not a nightlight,” she said. “They’re astronomy. You can borrow them.”

Benny looked up at forty stars and a tinfoil moon and a stripe of hall, and his dad holding a torch. He said thank you to all of it, because he was polite, and because he meant it. But you cannot tell a tinfoil moon about your day when your dad is doing its voice. And there is no point telling the hall anything.

He looked at the empty jar. Then he looked out of the round window.

The moon was up over the roofs of Puddle Lane, the whole round of it, bigger than he had ever seen. It filled the window nearly to the edges.

And Benny remembered the third rule.

“It goes home sometimes,” he said. “Grandpa said. Like everybody.”

They all looked at the moon for a while.

“Well,” said Mom. “It’s a very good night for going home.”

Benny knelt up on his pillow. He took the lid off the marmalade jar and set the jar on the sill, right next to the crack where the window was open.

“So it can get back in,” he said.

Then they waited. Benny sat in the middle of the bed, and Mom sat at the bottom, and Lou sat at the top with her knees up. Dad sat on the very edge, still pointing the torch at the tinfoil moon out of habit. Lou yawned and said she wasn’t tired.

Then, at the top of the crack in the window, there was a little light.

It came in sideways, the way a letter comes through a letterbox. It drifted down past the latch, slow as a soap bubble. It floated over the sill and into the marmalade jar, and it turned round once, the way a cat does, and settled.

It was rounder than before. It was brighter, too. You could have read the label by it from across the room.

“It’s got fatter,” said Lou.

“It’s been to see its mom,” said Benny.

“She’s fed it up, by the look of it,” said Dad.

Mom looked at the open window. “So that’s what just in case is for,” she said.

Dad switched off the torch.

Benny put the lid back on, loosely, so it could breathe. He lay down. He said, “Good evening,” and then he said, “Welcome home,” because that is polite as well. Then he told it about his day.

He told it about breakfast, and the post office, and the waiting. He told it about very nearly learning to whistle, and he showed it, and it was very nearly a whistle. “And then it was lunch,” said Benny, “and we had peas.”

He was asleep before he got to the afternoon.

Mom tucked him in. Lou looked up at her forty stars on his ceiling, and she left them where they were. Dad took the tinfoil moon down very carefully and put it in the drawer by the bed with the torch, as a spare. Then they all crept out and left the window open a crack, just in case.

And the bit of moon shone in the marmalade jar all night long, round and full and home again, and in the morning Benny told it the rest.