The Soup Pot on Wicket Street

Wicket Street had ten front doors and only one lamp post, so the people who lived there were good at sharing. They shared the light. They shared the parcels and the step-sweeping. And every evening at six o’clock they shared the sound of Mr. Pocket at number eight playing his tuba, which he played very badly and was very sorry about.

At number seven lived a girl called Mia, who was eight, with her mom and a cat. Mia read everything out loud. She read cereal boxes and street signs and the backs of envelopes. She read them the way a herald reads from a palace balcony, with her chin up and a long pause before the important part.

On the first cold night of the year, Mom had to work late. She left a note on the kitchen table, and Mia read it to the cat.

“Hear ye,” said Mia. “By order of Mom. Home by seven. Make yourself some toast. Mr. Pocket is listening through the wall.”

You may think eight is young to be left with a stove. Mom thought so too, which is why Mr. Pocket was listening.

The cat looked at the note as if toast were a poor idea on a cold night, and Mia agreed. Mom always came home from a late day tired right down to her shoes. Mia did not want her to come home to toast. She wanted Mom to walk in and find a proper hot supper on the table, made by Mia, all by herself.

So she climbed onto the counter and took down Grandma’s pot.

Grandma’s pot was blue and dented and older than Mom. Grandma lived by the sea now and sent postcards instead of soup, but she had left the pot behind. A pot like that, she said, ought to live where there was somebody to cook for. There was a dent in its lid exactly the shape of a thumbprint. It was not Grandma’s thumb, or Mom’s, or Mia’s. Mia had checked. Nobody knew whose thumb it was.

Tucked inside the lid was a card in Grandma’s writing. Mia stood up straight and read it to the cat as loudly as if the whole of Wicket Street were listening. Before the night was out, it would be.

“Grandma’s Soup,” she said. “Step one. Put the pot on the stove.” She put the pot on the stove. “Step two. Say, Bubble up, blue pot, there’s somebody to feed. Step three. Stir clockwise for leek and the other way for tomato.”

Step four was under an old soup stain about the size of a coin. Mia held the card up to the light. She turned it sideways. Then she told the cat that step four was almost certainly “Eat it,” and that she would manage.

“Bubble up, blue pot, there’s somebody to feed,” said Mia.

The pot gave a deep, pleased blup. Then another. Soup came up from the bottom of the empty pot the way water comes up in a bath, and it was hot, and it steamed.

Mia stirred it clockwise, and it turned pale green and smelled of leeks. She stirred it the other way, and it turned red and smelled of tomatoes. She stirred it clockwise again, just to see, and back it went to green, as obliging as you like.

“Let it be known,” Mia told the cat, “that supper is served.”

But the pot was not finished. It went on going blup, blup, blup, and the soup went on rising. It came up to the rim and looked over. Then it came down the side of the pot and across the stove and onto the floor. From there it set off over the kitchen tiles toward the front door, slow and steady, the way soup goes when it has somewhere to be.

The cat went up onto the windowsill.

Just then the clock struck six, and through the wall came Mr. Pocket’s tuba, low and wobbly and full of wrong notes.

“Stop,” said Mia, in her most royal voice.

Blup, blup, blup, said the pot.

“Enough!” said Mia, much louder.

Blup, blup, blup, said the pot, and if anything it bubbled harder, the way people do when they are shouted at.

So Mia tried manners. She made a small curtsy to the stove. “Please,” she said.

The pot made a very polite blup and carried on.

Mia looked at the soup. It had reached the doormat. She thought about it the way a sensible person thinks about things. The soup was going out into the street whatever she did. It might as well go out in bowls.

She got down every bowl in the house. She got the mugs, and the milk jug, and the tall jug for flowers, and the egg cup, in case anybody small turned up. She filled the first bowl with leek and opened the front door, and there was Mr. Pocket on the step, with the tuba still wrapped around him.

“I heard somebody shout Enough,” he said. “I’m so sorry. Was it the tuba?”

“Not you,” said Mia. “The soup.” She held out the bowl. “Leek.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Pocket. “Oh, how kind. Thank you.”

And back in the kitchen, the pot bubbled one bubble fewer.

Mia heard it from the step. When a pot has been saying blup, blup, blup all evening, anyone would notice it saying blup, blup.

Mr. Pocket sat down on his own step to eat. He tried to get the tuba off first. But a tuba takes a long time to get out of, and soup does not stay hot forever, so he ate it still inside the tuba, leaning around the big brass bell to reach his bowl.

The twins at number four had come out to see what the smell was. “Tomato!” they both said, so Mia ran in and stirred the other way, and filled two mugs with red.

“Thank you,” said one twin.

“Thank you,” said the other.

One bubble fewer, and then one more.

The lady at number one, who swept her step twice a day, was out sweeping it for the second time. She looked at the soup on Mia’s step for a long moment. Then she took the flower jug full of leek, and said thank you, and went to fetch her mop.

One bubble fewer.

After that, Mia stopped counting and just ran. Number two had a bowl and number three had two mugs. Number five had the milk jug. The baby at number six had the egg cup and said “Dank oo,” which counted. Numbers nine and ten came out in their slippers holding their own bowls, because by then the whole street could smell it. Every door on Wicket Street opened, and every door had soup, and every door said thank you. One bubble fewer, and one bubble fewer, and one bubble fewer.

The cat had a saucer on the windowsill and did not say thank you, because cats never do. The pot did not count it.

By the time the bowls ran out, the pot was going blup, and then waiting a long while, and then blup. Mia scraped the last of the soup into the last bowl. It was the good bowl, the one with the gold rim. There were no doors left.

Then Mom came up Wicket Street, under the one lamp post, tired right down to her shoes.

She stopped. She looked at the whole street sitting on its front steps in the cold, eating soup. She looked at Mr. Pocket, who waved his spoon at her from inside his tuba. Then she looked at Mia, who was standing on the step of number seven with the good bowl in both hands.

“Sit down,” said Mia. “By order of me. Supper. I made it all by myself.” She thought about it. “Mostly.”

Mom sat down on the step, which was clean now, and still a bit damp from the mop. She took the bowl and had one spoonful, and then she shut her eyes.

“Oh,” said Mom. “Oh, thank you, love.”

And back in the kitchen, the pot gave one small hiccup, and stopped.

* * *

Mia told Mom all of it, the magic words and the bowls and the twins and the egg cup. Mom laughed until she had to put her spoon down.

“The stopping word was always thank you,” she said. “Grandma made it that way on purpose, so nobody could ever keep that pot all to themselves.”

“So step four was not Eat it,” said Mia.

“Step five is,” said Mom, and finished her soup.

Then Mr. Pocket, who still could not get out of his tuba, played one slow tune. It was not a good tune. Everybody clapped anyway and said thank you, and for once Mr. Pocket did not say sorry. He said, “You’re welcome.”

Before bed, Mia took a green marker and wrote on the lid of Grandma’s pot in large letters: STOPPING WORD: THANK YOU. She wrote it right under the thumbprint, so that whoever it belonged to would see it too. Then she read it out loud to the cat, who still had not said it.

And that is why, on the first cold night of every year, Mia says “Bubble up, blue pot, there’s somebody to feed,” and gets down every bowl in the house, and knocks on nine doors, and saves the good bowl for last, for Mom.