Chapter 25

'Here you are Piers. Two sheets. What are they for?'

'One for cleaning.' He paused to recollect what he had been told so often. 'And one for polishing.'

He sat, contemplating the two pieces while the olfactory evidence of his achievement intensified.

'Come on Piers. Stop pratting about. Get on with it. If you went any slower...'

'You'd go backwards.' Lars had heard it all before.

'Finished, Daddy. Will you check me?'

'Well hang out the flags!'

'And shout hallehojaar.' Piers had heard this before, too.

'What going to happen, Piers?'

'There'll be dancing in the streets.'

'Never mind, Ian. You can be first after me tomorrow,' said Lars.

'Don't worry, Ian. You know, you're first second.' Piers added.

'And you're last, Piers. Come on.'

'Nearly ready, Daddy. Sorr-ee...'

'Hooray, Piers.' I looked out of the window pointedly. 'I can see Auntie Vivienne just coming out with something in her hand. It may be a flag and - what's this? - are they starting to jig about?'

Ian squeezed the tiniest dab of toothpaste on his yellow brush. 'More is vulgar,' he repeated my sentiments of the previous day. He set to work.

'Come on, Ian. More vigour. Kill all those bacteria. I think I can hear them now. They're laughing at you. They're saying 'He's just tickling us' while they slide up and down your teeth. Both sides, the bacteria think they can escape by going where you haven't brushed.'

A beard of green foam showed that he had tried his best. 'They're all killed, Daddy.'

'Can sorry people sit in the front, Daddy?' Piers's limpid blue eyes were almost irresistible. 'Sorry people are good and can sit in the front, can't they? It's only naughty people who can't.'

How to deal with the competitive instinct was something I had hardly considered before having children. Now it dominated all interactions and had to be addressed. I had started by downplaying it, but quickly realised that it needed to be channelled and could be manipulated to advantage. 'Look, X, Y's already done this. Show how well you can do it.' Sitting in front was what motivated them at the start and end of the day. Whoever was first dressed had the honour. Whoever sat there could ask for whatever music he wanted; could talk to something other than the back of Daddy's head; could imagine for just the five minutes that it took to drive from home to nursery school that he was the only one in the car; could briefly be an only child.

I'm in the front.' Ian gave his most angelic smile as I lifted him into the back seat. 'This is the front.'

'It's wherever you want it to be, Ian.'

'Lars is in the back.'

'If that's what you want to think. That's fine.'

'Can we have the 'Birdy Song', please?' said Lars. That was, in fact, not the The Tweets' pop hit of the '80s, but Vaughan Williams' 'Lark Ascending'. I had made fluttering hand movements up and down to give them the idea of a bird rising and falling.

'Sorry, I've only got the Japanese song in the player right now.' This was 'Sukiyaki' by Kyu Sakamoto, an unlikely hit that I remembered well when it was new in 1963 and I was 16.

'Wahee! Wahey!' Lars was thrilled. He had heard it many times and sang along to it in Japanese, almost word perfect, without having a clue what any of the words meant.