My grandfather was not always sick-a-bed. Once upon a time he was strong and the stick he carried wasn't to help him walk. It was to clonk anyone he met who he didn't like.

The day I remember best, of course, is the day we went to see the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum. We took the train first class into London. But after that we walked. Miles and miles! Hard pavement! How tired I was!

"Where are we going, Grandfather?"

"To see the Elgin Marbles, elephant!"

He always called me elephant because I made a noise like one when running down the corridor outside his bedroom.

On the way we stopped at a Roman Catholic church. My grandfather went in because he was a Roman Catholic. I waited outside because I was not.

"Don't talk to any strange women," he warned as he went in. He was immensely dapper-dan in his checked jacket. His trilby was already off his head and in his hand.

I looked out for strange women while he was gone and counted eleven, but none spoke a word to me, although two pointed and laughed at another one.

My grandfather had a sad religious look when he came out of the church. I guessed he was thinking of my grandmother. He looked greyer than when he'd gone in and he didn't put his trilby back on. He fidgeted with it in his hands.

He went into a public bar opposite the British Museum. Again I waited outside. He had friends in there, or friends he'd just made maybe. When he clonked that Irishman with his stick his friends gave him a hooting round of applause. I saw this in one of the seconds when the doors were swinging.

When my grandfather came out he had beer-froth still on his moustache. He kept licking at it but it was mostly still there when we were in with the marbles.

"I saw you clonk that Irishman, Grandfather."

He rubbed my hair with one hand and twirled his trilby on the middle finger of his other hand. I think he did exactly this thing two other times when he was well. When he was sick-a-bed, of course, it wasn't the sort of thing that could have happened.

We walked into the Egyptian room, where my grandfather said good morning to several monkey-faced statues as if he'd met them last week in church or in a bar. Then we crossed a roomful of Greek things and my grandfather stopped in front of a statue of a naked woman with a hand missing and her nose bitten off. He was looking her up and down, and so was I, but he was also looking everywhere else, as if he was expecting that Irishman to creep up on him with a hunting knife.

I counted to 643 in my head while we stood beside the naked woman. Then my grandfather put his hand on my shoulder, licked more beer-froth off his moustache, and said: "Now, elephant, a most important moment in an elephant's education. The Elgin Marbles."

In we went. A huge empty room.

"Where are they?" I asked my grandfather.

He waved his stick to and fro. "There. There. There. All around."

I'd been expecting actual marbles, like mine in the jar at home, only with more sort-of ancient shapes in the glass, rather than the beautiful twirls of colour normal marbles have. But the Elgin Marbles aren't proper marbles. They are what's called a freeze of sculptures, of Gods, people and horses, with some people who are part horse and part people, and you can only tell the Gods from the people by their names and sometimes not even then. The King of the Gods was always going around done up as a goose. The Elgin Marbles are called marbles because they are all made of marble.

My grandfather bent down to my height, which wasn't far, as I was tall for my age and he was short for his. He whispered while looking at a snooty woman who was looking very closely at a headless armless legless marble.

"I want you to go right around the room, starting here. Read all the writing underneath the marbles and study the whole thing carefully. I'll quiz you when I get back."

The snooty woman walked right by us, smiling under her toffee nose. The fox wrapped around her neck had a nicer smile. My grandfather stotted his stick behind her, bap-bap-bap-bap. She stopped in her tracks, didn't even turn around, and let him open the heavy doors to let her out of the big Elgin Marbles room. On the other side of the doors he patted her bottom. I remember thinking: she must be one of the friends of my grandmother who are still alive.

I spent a long hour with the marbles. For the first ten minutes I was so bored I was asleep standing up. Then I found a horse's head, a lovely big wild head stuck on a high plinth. Not the same sort of horse that I'd been lifted up to pat in the winning enclosure at Newmarket races that time. It was more its own man than a racehorse horse. According to Mr Elgin's notes underneath, this horse had pulled the chariot of the moon goddess, and I could believe that. He wasn't broken like the other marbles. He had never been anything but a head. On the building where he came from the rest of him had supposedly been sunk down into the night and you couldn't see it so they hadn't bothered to make it in the first place.

His mouth was open so I reached up and put my hand in. A policeman stepped out from somewhere, the way they do.

"Don't do that!" he said.

"Do what?"

"Touch the exhibits."

"I'm not touching. I've just got my hand in his mouth."

The policeman closed one eye and the fingers of one hand twitched. I suddenly imagined HIS hand in MY mouth, pulling out my tongue. So I ran off like an elephant.

I stopped all the way down at the other end of the room, panting, watching the policeman. He stood beside the horse head, stopping people from putting their hands in its mouth, which I bet he did himself lots when the museum was shut. After an age he suddenly hurried off after murderers. I walked back down the other end and put my hand back in the horse's mouth and in his nostrils and patted his cold marble head. I expect Mr Elgin did the same thing every time he came in when he was hale and hearty. There would have been one day, of course, when he wasn't, just like Grandfather, when he said to Mrs Elgin or one of his daughters: "I'm sorry, poppet, but I don't feel hale and hearty this morning. I'll just lie sick-a-bed for the rest of my life until I die."

I'm not sure that's really what happened to Mr Elgin. But it did happen to my grandfather. But that day in the Elgin Marble room when grandfather came back to fetch me, I had never seen him or anyone look for full of pep.

"I nearly got arrested!" I said, proud of it.

"Oh, what for?"

"Something to do with a horse."

"Ah," he said. Then as we walked out hand in hand he said: "Elephants and horses don't mix." And he laughed a laugh like four parrots exploding which made the six people in the Elgin Marble room jump.

I don't know what went wrong with my grandfather. He was perfectly hale and hearty all summer. Especially one scorcher of a day when he came out onto the patio wearing nothing but a pair of funny shorts and a straw hat. I went potty with giggling. So did my mother, both the aunts and Mrs Faddy. But I was the one he chased. He was haler and heartier than me that day because he chased me right through the shrubbery, into the orchard and back under the arch. I only got away by jumping into the middle of some nettles where he couldn't follow because of those funny shorts.

"I'm going for my gun!" he said.

But even if he had started shooting it wouldn't have taken the jump out of my giggle-box

That was late in the summer, so it was only a week or so later, when I was miserable anyway with the thought of summer being done with, when my tutor gently took my spelling book away and fetched me to my mother and one of the aunts. I thought it was about the Napoleon whose head I had knocked off its neck, which I had balanced back on while wondering if I'd forget that I'd done it by the time it was found out.

"Your grandfather's very unwell, Magnus. You'll not be an elephant about the house, will you?"

"Was it something he ate?"

"He's seriously unwell, Magnus. Do you know what that means?"

I guessed he was used up and done with. I nodded sadly.

"Good boy," said my mother.

"Yes, he's a good boy," said Aunt Chris, but it could just as easily have been the other aunt.

No one bothered me for days after that. I ate all my meals in the kitchen with Mrs Faddy. My tutor had disappeared, arrested for murder I hoped. I daren't ask about him in case by mentioning him he would suddenly appear. I worried more about him re-appearing than I did about my grandfather.

The upstairs was full of doctors and nurses. I had to pass them to get to my room. And I wasn't an elephant. Not once. The landing smelt of medicine. I guessed they were rubbing things on my grandfather's chest.

One night there was a terrible noise on the stairs, worse than a whole jungle not just a small elephant like me. I opened the door. My mother had fainted on the landing. A nurse was slapping her awake. Mrs Faddy was crying her eyes out. And there was a scary murmuring coming from my grandfather's room.

I don't remember walking far from my bedroom door, but somehow there I was in the middle of everyone.

"Take the boy downstairs!" It was the little nurse with the big bottom and the moles.

"Yes, take him downstairs and keep him there!" said the big nurse in charge.

It would have been easier to have locked me in my room. I don't know why they didn't. Mrs Faddy took me downstairs. She made me eleven chicken sandwiches and put me in the library with them.

I'd only eaten half of the second sandwich when a huge man came in wearing a red dress.

"Are you the Pope?" I was as polite as I knew how.

He covered his smile with his fingers. "One day, perhaps," he said. "Couldn't have one of your sandwiches, could I?"

"They're old chicken and quite horrible," I said and lifted the plate his way.

We sat down and ate the sandwiches, watching each other and saying nothing.

"Horrible, aren't they?"

"Horrible!" he said. He ate like a well-mannered pig.

His eyes roamed around the room. I expect he was reading the titles on the spines of the books. There were more books in there than you could count. I tried twice and gave up.

"Has your grandfather read all these books, do you think?" he asked me, with chicken sandwich on the end of his tongue.

"Naw. He's never read any. Not one. Not ever. Never even one book, ever. He's always saying so. I have though."

"Which books have you read, Magnus?"

"Just one. That one there." I pointed into low-down shadows. "It's all about the Elgin Marbles. My grandfather took me to see them."

"Do you love your grandfather, Magnus?" He knew my name but I didn't know his.

"I love my grandfather."

Then there were no sandwiches left. We looked sadly at the plate and then at each other.

I taught him something. "If you wet your finger, like this, you can capture all the crumbs."

He tried, with his big yellow pointing finger. They didn't stick to his finger as well as they did to mine. But he managed a few.

I yawned. "Am I going to have to stay in here all night, or what?"

"Are you tired, Magnus?"

"Not a bit tired, me, no!"

"You can go to sleep on my knee if you like. These robes are smashing for sleeping on."

He was right. They were. In their folds were deep niffy smells, of party cakes, trees and flowers. I was half asleep in a moment. He held me tightly while I snoozed. And though I was floating away, I could hear him crying sad little sobs. For my grandfather, I guessed. And so would I eventually, perhaps tonight even or tomorrow.

I woke up back in my own bed. It was 9 o'clock but no sounds or smells of breakfast. The house felt empty. I put on my Viking helmet and ran out onto the landing. A doctor the shape of a penguin was coming out of my grandfather's room. He made a SHHHH with his finger.

I spoke in a SHHHH. "Is he dead yet?"

"The patient has weathered the crisis," said Doctor Penguin. Then, for some doctor's reason he looked in my ears with a light.

My tutor came back but then he went away again. I don't think he was too well himself. He spent a day in the library sorting through the books. At first I thought he was looking behind them for dead wasps, which I'd done myself at the end of last summer but had forgotten to do this summer. Then I guessed he was looking for particular books to steal so that he could sell them on the Charring Cross Road. I decided to tell my grandfather if I ever saw him again. I put a note in the Elgin Marbles book saying: THIS BOOK IS STOLEN. PLEASE RETURN TO THE ABOVE ADDRESS. HUGE REWARD.

I spent the next few days playing with my girlfriend, Angela. Her tutor had been sacked for looking at her mother in the bath or something, so while they were advertising for a new one her time was as free as mine. Apart from one morning when it rained, we played in the shrubbery. I had this plan of making my own display of Elgin marbles. Angela and me carried every stone we could find and put them along the shrubbery wall. Angela carried the biggest ones because of her enormous strength. They were the bodies. I carried the smaller stones, which were the heads. When we were tired we sat on a log and held hands, admiring our work. I told her all about the Elgin Marbles.

"Maybe when we've been dead a million years," she said, "people will come to the shrubbery from all over the world, just to look at what we have done today."

I loved her for that thought.

Before she had time for another one my Aunt Chris came out with a photo album under her arm.

"Come inside, Magnus. Your grandfather wants to see you."

I didn't know what to expect. The doctor took me in. My grandfather was propped up on half the pillows in the house. They'd even taken one of mine. His moustache looked blacker than usual but his eyes were yellower than custard. When I approached the bed he raised his arms and shouted: "No! An elephant! It's an elephant!"

I couldn't guess if he was mad or being funny.

"The doctor says you weathered the crisis," I said.

He laughed. His tongue was yellow and white.

"Pssssst," he said.

I put my ear closer. He stank of medicines.

"That doctor looks like a penguin, don't you think?"

I nodded, smiled. I felt that my grandfather couldn't ever die. There'd be no more jokes in the world without him.

I quacked like a penguin might quack and the doctor, who was digging around in his bag, looked up.

"That proves it!" said my grandfather.

Then he sort-of sank back like a frog in a pool. He held my hand so tightly that it hurt but I didn't say anything in case it upset him. He looked at the ceiling and his yellow eyes were full of water.

"You're not going to die, are you, Grandfather?"

The doctor came up behind me then walked away again.

"It's all a dream I'm having, Magnus. Everything is just a dream. The whole world. It's something imagined by me. If I was to die what would happen to China? It would just melt away. And all the hippopotamuses and elephants. You too, Magnus."

He wasn't joking. I knew he meant it.

"You mean I'm not really here? You just make me up?"

"Oh, you're there, Magnus. You're there all right. But if I hadn't imagined you then you wouldn't be."

He chuckled and gripped my hand even tighter.

After a bit I said: "I saw God in the library last week."

"Did you now?"

"While you were having your crisis. He ate six sandwiches."

"That many."

"Is God something you made up too?"

"Him most especially," said my grandfather, but not in the voice he had when he spoke to me. It was his to-Angela's-father voice.

Then he let go of my hand and his head slipped away between pillows. I went yikes because I thought he was dead.

The penguin-doctor took me outside. "He's just sleeping. Toddle along quietly now."

"He's weathered the crisis, completely weathered it, has he?" I was keen for an answer.

"Don't you worry," said the doctor, pulling down the skin under one of my eyes and having a good long look.

The woman whose bottom my grandfather had patted that day was in the kitchen, drinking tea with Aunt Chris and Mrs Faddy. Everyone else was lying down somewhere.

The instant I laid eyes on her I said: "Where's your fox?"

"Out in the fields chasing rabbits," she said, and because she didn't hesitate I nearly believed her.

I fell in love with her right then. She was dreadfully toffee-nosed and her mouth was a bit sneery, but otherwise she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Mrs Faddy gave me a cup of tea and I sat down next to our wonderful guest.

"You've come to see my grandfather?"

"That's right."

"He's asleep. I thought he'd dropped dead but he'd just dropped off."

"I see."

"You needn't worry. He's not going to die."

"I'm glad to hear it."

I based my confidence in my grandfather's condition on the thought that if he was indeed imagining the whole world then he'd be daft to kill himself off, wouldn't he not?

Our tea-time guest was so, so, so beautiful! Her name was Miss Borelly. Melanie Borelly. That night I wrote her name in an exercise book 421 times. I'm sure I spelt it right.

I watched her mouth moving as she spoke about recipes with Mrs Faddy. It wasn't such a bad mouth when it moved. She was upset about my grandfather, that was what gave her mouth its sneery look. She blamed the world for my grandfather's illness and was sneering with bitterness at it. I would sneer at I too, I decided.

I wondered if my grandfather loved her. He must do. But I was happy to share her with him. Or perhaps he could imagine a new one just the same for himself and I could have her.

She bit a biscuit with a rough snap, winking at me at the same time. My grandfather ate biscuits like that. I'll bet she was copying him. I loved her even more.

I went very quiet with all these thoughts and stirred my tea until it went cold. But I was also thinking hard what to say and practising saying it in my head.

Then I said it: "The Elgin Marbles, they are quite exquisite, are they not?"

"Exquisite, yes. That's just the word for them."

I had spoken well. But then I went quiet again, because I was deeply thinking: how on Earth could my grandfather, though he was cleverer than a sherbet fountain, imagine the Elgin Marbles? That he was imagining everything, everybody's life and little moments, seemed sensible enough. But the Elgin Marbles and all of history to boot. That was pushing it.

When Miss Borelly came down the stairs after seeing my grandfather I was waiting at the bottom all alone.

"Did you kiss him?" I asked her.

"Yes."

"On the lips?"

"On the brow."

"Did he tell you his secret?"

"Which one?"

Her fingers had reached for my grandfather's stick in the stick holder. She stotted it lightly. Bap-bap-bap-bap.

"The one about him imagining the whole world. The one about him making everything up in his head. You. Me. This house. China. The Elgin Marbles."

"He didn't mention that secret, no. I expect that's one just between you and him."

I felt myself blushing. My head was hotter than if I'd stuck it in hot water. I shouldn't have told her. My grandfather might be angry if he found out that I'd upset her with the truth about herself, that she was nothing more than a dream, that all her thoughts were really an itsy-bitsy part of my grandfather's thoughts. Ooops, so were my thoughts, which meant he knew about my mistake already! Double damn! So I said in my head over and over: Sorry, Grandfather, sorry!

Miss Borelly stood in the porch for a minute, looking at the pictures of my grandfather's father in his uniforms. She peeped into the kitchen. No one was there. She tried the library door, then changed her mind. She was wanting to say goodbye to the others.

"They are all lying down," I said.

"I'll just go then. You can say goodbye for me, Magnus."

I was thrilled that she had called me Magnus. As she went out of the door I hurried up behind her and quickly said: "Melanie, perhaps we, you and me, can go and see the Elgin Marbles together one day soon."

She walked away. Without turning back she said: "That would be lovely. I would like that very much, Magnus."

Suddenly she turned back, a little run, then she bent over to my height, which wasn't far, me being tall for my age and she a petite woman. She kissed me goodbye. Not on the brow. On the lips! The lips!

I didn't know what to do with myself. I shivered. I jumped. I ran around the house like an elephant. And when the nurses chased me away I ran around and around the shrubbery whooping until I had more pant than whoop and then just pant.

Next morning, after breakfast, my grandfather was asking for me again. He'd written me a note on a folded-up piece of limp paper. It told me to fetch up as many spoons as I could. I told Mrs Faddy there was someone at the door and filled my pockets.

My grandfather was heaps better. He looked happy and tricky like a baboon as I passed him the spoons one by one. He hid them under his bedsheets.

"You look much better."

"Elephants are no judge of human health," he smiled, then mock serious: "How is the international situation today?"

"Dreadful, I expect."

"I expect so, yes."

He was speaking in a pretend posh voice, all the while sneaking spoons from under the sheets and tossing them to far corners of the room. When the little nurse with the fat bottom bent over to pick one up, her fat bottom seemed to grow. My grandfather covered his mouth with a tight hand and laughed. I did the same. It was the funniest thing I'd ever seen. When she'd showed her bottom three times picking up spoons my grandfather suddenly threw his whole hoard of spoons at her. She ran out of the room in a tizzy.

How Grandfather laughed. He punched the bed and laughed. I punched the bed too, careful not to punch my grandfather while I was at it. Then in came the penguinish doctor and his cruel chief nurse. They started picking up spoons. We laughed ever harder, not hiding our fun one bit. Their outraged faces! Their silly bottoms! Then suddenly it wasn't funny any more. We stopped laughing. But when I turned to look at my grandfather he was wearing his trilby and a big daft grin underneath it. He looked so funny that I stomped around the room like an elephant in a circus, whooping and giggling. My grandfather whooped also, throwing his trilby in the air and catching it skew on his head. This seemed to go on for hours, but it was only seconds, then the doctor and nurse bundled me out of the room with hands full of spoons.

After that I didn't see my grandfather for over a week. I promised that I wouldn't make noise again. But they said he was weathering another crisis, so no one could see him except Aunt Jo. He sent me a note on the Sunday morning but all it said was YOU'RE AN ELEPHANT!!! with a queer drawing of an elephant underneath.

I told Angela. "My grandfather is imagining the whole world. Everything that happens is just part of his thoughts." I was quite gone on the idea.

"How do you know it's not me who's imagining the whole world?" said she.

"You! How could you? What do you know?"

"Plenty and lots!"

I ran down the road shouting "WHAT DO YOU KNOW?" at the top of my voice. I must have shouted it fifty times. Stuff Angela! Stuff her boots!

At last they let me in to see my grandfather. It was the day before the night when he died. He was too sick-a-bed to hold my hand. I had to hold his.
      "Melanie and I are going to see the Elgin Marbles together."

"Are you now?"

"I hope you don't mind."

"She is a smasher, isn't she?"

"I do think so, yes. She eats biscuits just like you."

He winked a man's wink at me.

"If you are imagining the world, Grandfather, why do you imagine the Elgin Marbles with the heads all broken off? Why don't you imagine them all nice and new and in one good piece?"
      He thought for a long time about his answer. I thought he'd forgotten what I'd said. Then he said: "Perhaps, when you see them again, they'll be all nice and new again."

He fell asleep and away I went - by myself, nobody had to turf me out. I suddenly remembered the Napoleon whose head I had knocked off. He was in the sitting room and so were my mother and aunts. They were whispering things to the man I met in the library that day, who I guessed was my grandfather's idea of God, and therefore was God, because God, like everything, was something imagined by my grandfather. The Napoleon was behind them. I tried his head. It came off in my fingers and I couldn't get it to balance back on.

God put his hand over the sofa. It had cake crumbs on the pointing finger, so I knew he'd been doing the trick I taught him. Perhaps God just wanted to shake hands with me. But I was guilty, panicked. I put Napoleon's broken head in his hand and ran away.

My grandfather's last ever note said: NO MORE ELEPHANTS OR ANYWHERE TO PUT THEM. Under it was a stick drawing of a man walking into the sunset, just like the one my grandfather had drawn on the wet sand at Seahouses when we were up visiting Uncle Bunty's castle two years ago. He must have known I'd remember it. That trip was the first time I'd really got to know my grandfather and I'd loved him more than anyone ever since.

I was asleep in bed when Mrs Faddy came in. She was watching me when I woke up. The door was open. I could see right down the landing. I was in the dark but it was bright. It was like being in the audience in a theatre. The doctor was standing with his bag in his hand, looking into space, just like an actor waiting to go onto stage to act being a doctor.

"Old Mr Ruffle has died, Magnus."

Old Mr Ruffle? Did she mean my grandfather?

"He can't die!" I shouted. "It's ridiculous! He can't die! It's that doctor! He's a penguin! He doesn't know what he's talking about!"

There was no breakfast that morning. My mother played miserable opera music in her room. The aunts went through papers in my grandfather's desk. I tried to sneak in to see him but when I did I couldn't because he was covered with sheets.

I took all the money I had and walked down to the railway station. I bought a ticket for London and watched the fields earnestly all the way. The sun was shining hard, making the river yellow and all London look like it was inside a daffodil. How could it be such a lovely day and my grandfather not a part of it, seeing it himself, calling me an elephant in it?

On my walk to the British Museum I asked four people if they knew how to get there. None knew. One was Chinese. I felt sorry for him. But perhaps out of all the people in London I'd asked the only four who didn't know. Four people who hadn't seen the Elgin Marbles. I felt guilty. I should have taken them with me.

Outside the pub where my grandfather had clonked the Irishman with his stick was that same Irishman. He was holding his head in both hands.

"Top of the morning," I said.

"Do I know you?"

I hurried across the zebra crossing before shouting back: "NO!"

The British Museum was just opening. I was the fourth in. Just a clever-looking man, who'd have made a much better tutor than any of the nitwits I'd been stuck with, and two Americans with big cameras. If I was quick I'd be the first into the Elgin Marbles room. They would all be in one piece, I knew. Why I thought that, I couldn't tell myself. But I was sure. The marbles would be mended, no broken-off heads and arms. I had little doubts, but mostly, yes, I was sure.

Just as I rushed through the museum's doors I glanced back at the sky. It was quite black. But the sun was up there and everything was bright. Some of the people coming towards me up the steps looked unreal, like cutouts. The Irishman was coming too. He was all green and holding his head.

I ran like an elephant through the Egyptian room, across the room with Greek things in it, saying hello to the naked woman Grandfather had introduced me to on my last visit. When I skidded into the Elgin Marbles room the first thing I saw was broken faces and snapped-off arms. Melanie was there with a little fox on a leash.

"Magnus, darling!" she called.

"Melanie, dearest!" I called back.

Suddenly I was all grown up and dressed ever-so dapper-danly, with a moustache that I stroked with my finger. I took Melanie in my arms and kissed her, a man's strong kiss. She let the leash drop and the fox took off. But she didn't care. She wanted kissed again. We kissed forty-three more times. Then the policeman came up to us pulling the fox behind him.

I looked past him and there was my grandfather, in his pale-blue pyjamas, standing in the far-end alcove beside my favourite Elgin Marble: the head of the horse who pulled the chariot that dragged the moon across the night sky. My grandfather was putting his hand into the horse's mouth and laughing.

I ran towards him yelling: "Grandfather! That's my grandfather! Told you he wasn't dead!"

When I arrived beside him we were on a hillside in Ancient Greece. There was a battle going on in the valley below, between horses and women with no clothes on. The horses were winning. It looked something like that day we went to Newmarket, only very different.

"Why is the sky so black, Grandfather?"

He looked up and suddenly it was seaside blue again. But the world was spinning around us, like it was a merry-go-round and we were motionless its the middle. Faster and faster it went. I was hardly dizzy at all. Napoleon stuck his head out for a moment, the real Napoleon.

"Where's my poor broken head?" he demanded.

"Here's your silly head, you old rascal!" shouted my grandfather.

He picked up a stone, which in fact was the bust of Napoleon from home, whole and mended. He threw it into the spin where Napoleon's head had been.

When the merry-go-round stopped we were back in the Elgin Marbles room. The people in the marbles were walking around, all brightly coloured and exquisitely beautiful, their robes not stiff but flowing and soft. The middle of the room was all grass. Grandfather was dressed up for cricket. My grandmother was there. But she didn't seem to know me. Melanie was sitting on the grass eating strawberries.

"My grandfather's dead," I told her.

"Everything's coming to pieces, Magnus!"

She looked so lost and frightened! I hugged her until Grandfather pulled me away saying: "Cummon, elephant. You're in bat!"

On my way to the crease that policeman grabbed me by my arms and shook me: "It's you, you little devil! You're doing this!"

"It's not me, honest. It's my grandfather. The world was just something he was imagining. Now he's dead and everything is wilting away. China's melting even."

The policeman's face was redder than a postbox. He was going to hit me, a big knockout policeman's punch. I closed my eyes. When nothing happened I opened them and he was gone. So was everything. I was alone in the Elgin Marbles room, alone except for whimpers.

They were my grandfather's memories, I guessed, escaping through the cracks in the marbles like air from party balloons left in a corner.

I went outside. There was a statue of my grandfather at the bottom of the steps. A pigeon was flapping its wings while sitting on his head. Yes, it was definitely him: SIR THEODORE RUFFLE it said underneath in seventeen rusty gold letters. It was the dapper-dannerest statue I ever saw. A baby elephant was rolling on the lawn as I walked away backwards.

On the train home I studied the fields most earnestly. So many fields had circuses in them. Or swimming pools full of girls in swimsuits. Or bits of old fashioned streets with astonished people standing about like figures in a train-set come to life. There was a gigantic oak tree with business suits hanging off its branches, hundreds of suits. Paper money blew in the gust from the train.

When I got home I shut myself in the library and began writing down my thoughts. The best of them was this: if my grandfather had imagined the world, why couldn't I? I would imagine a new world to take over from his. I had a week at least, I was sure, to fix my vision of it in my mind. I started leafing through books to get ideas.

My mother came in. She was years younger, hardly much older than me.

"Come and say goodbye to Cardinal Jackson, Magnus."

I looked at her hard, practising imagining. She went old again, her proper age.

"I'll just be a minute," I said.

I imagined Africa full of elephants. I filled my mind with a rush of things. When Cardinal Jackson bounded in I was miles away.

"Magnus, I really must speak to you before I go."

"Hm?"

He pressed a big cross with Jesus on it into my hand. Then he winked a wink as naughty as all of my grandfather's winks put together.

"You'll think about Our Lord, won't you, Magnus?"

"Yes, I suppose I will," I said, in the same flippant voice which always got me into bother with my tutors. "I can imagine that he's here with us now, if you like, and hey presto he will be. I can imagine anything. I can even imagine that my grandfather is alive again. He can be with me always, until forever."

I cried and cried then. I cried all day. Because I knew that the world was mine to imagine now, not my grandfather's. I'd realised that he was the only thing I couldn't have in my new world. My grandfather was dead, his imagination didn't work any more, so all the world could do was wither. I had to imagine the world, it was up to me now, or there would be no world at all. It all meant only this: I would never see my grandfather again.

When I went in to tea, Jesus swinging on the chain around my neck, Miss Borelly was visiting.

"Melanie, darling!" I said and kissed her a big smacker on the lips.

Aunts Chris and Jo were so shocked they dropped their biscuits in their tea. Mrs Faddy nodded her head as if to say: "He's just like his grandfather!" How proud I was! How clever I felt!

I told Melanie all about my tutor being stuck in a snowstorm in Lapland. I'd sent a St Bernard to find him, but it never would. And did she think that France should be further away? And shouldn't wasps be much bigger? And the Elgin Marbles, were they better with broken off heads or whole and unblemished and beautiful like her?