Gregory Chaplin and the Biggest Hole in England
by Neil Derby
It was a bright summer’s morning, not so very long ago, when Gregory Chaplin, aged 8, marched into his parents’ living room with a plastic spade in his hand, and announced that he was going to the garden to dig a hole.
His mother didn’t look up from her ironing.
“That’s nice, dear,” she said.
Gregory’s father was inspecting the stock prices in the Times. He grunted something about minding the petunias.
Gregory stood there for a moment, looking peeved. This wasn’t the reaction he’d been anticipating. He held the spade aloft.
“It will be a very big hole!” he said. “The biggest in England!”
His father turned to the next page of his paper and scowled at some of the graphs he found there. Gregory’s mother folded a pair of pin-stripe trousers over the back of a chair. The radio burbled quietly in the corner. Gregory lowered his spade.
“I may not be back for lunch,” he said sulkily, turning on his heel and marching out of the room.
In the garden, he selected his spot. It was a good spot, at a quiet, unpopulated end of the flower bed. The soil was soft, but not so soft as to be muddy. This was where he would dig.
He had been thinking about the hole for some time now. His reasoning was that there really was no limit to the size of hole you could dig, provided you were prepared to put in the time. After all, if it took you an hour to dig a hole three feet deep, in two hours you could dig a hole six feet deep, and in three hours you could build a hole nine feet deep. And in four hours you could build a hole twelve feet deep.
After that, his maths was a little hazy, but he understood the fundamental arithmetic progression. The more you dug, the deeper the hole would get. Deeper and deeper until… well, until nothing. You could dig forever. What, after all, was there to stop you?
He tested the soil with his spade. It felt springy but forgiving. There were a few clouds in the sky, but none of them seemed likely to bring rain. It was good weather for digging. Gregory felt optimistic. He took a deep breath, and began to work.
*
When Gregory’s mother came out into the garden four hours later, to call her son in for his lunch, Gregory was waist deep in his hole, and sweating profusely.
“Lunchtime, dear,” said his mother.
“I’m not hungry,” said Gregory, hurling a spadeful of soil over his shoulder. “I have work to do.”
“I’ll put the sandwiches in the fridge,” said his mother and went back inside the house. Gregory wiped his brow with a towel he had brought from the kitchen.
*
Four hours after that, Gregory’s mother came outside again, to announce dinner. At first she couldn’t see Gregory – just a hole in the flowerbed with lumps of earth flying from it. She went over and peered down. All she could see was the top of Gregory’s head, matted with dirt, and the plastic spade flying back and forth.
“Dear, dinner’s ready,” she called down into the hole.
“No time!” shouted Gregory, and another shower of damp soil flew from his spade, narrowly missing his mother’s dress.
“But dear, you really must eat!” implored his mother. Gregory ignored her.
By bedtime, when his mother came out in her gown and slippers, Gregory was nowhere to be seen. Piles of earth were scattered around the lawn, forming a miniature mountain range, but when his mother peered down into the hole, she could see only darkness.
“Gregory!” she called down into the black. “Gregory, dear, are you there?”
There was a long pause. Gregory’s mother held her hands to her breast and listened intently. She was starting to get distinctly worried.
“Gregory!” she called again. “It’s past your bedtime!”
Again, silence. Starlings scattered overhead, silhouetted by the setting sun. The wind was starting pick up, whipping coldly at Gregory’s mother’s gown. And then, impossibly distant, came a thin reedy cry, spiralling upwards from the hole in the ground.
“I’m not tired!” said the voice. “Ten more minutes!”
Gregory’s mother looked again into the hole, and could see nothing. It looked muddy and unpleasant in there, and she didn’t fancy clambering down after her son. She toyed briefly with the idea of lowering down his evening cocoa on a piece of string, but soon decided the project beyond her engineering skills. And, having faith in Gregory’s practical nature, she concluded that he would be safe enough overnight. So she went to bed.
*
The next morning, the rising sun found Gregory’s mother and father peering down into a hole in their garden. It was no wider than it had been at the start – around three feet across – but it was uncommonly deep. Gregory’s father had just dropped a small piece of gravel into it, and had timed eleven seconds before they had heard it hit their son on the head.
“It won’t do him any harm,” Gregory’s father had said. “It was only small.”
“You must be careful, though, dear,” had said Gregory’s mother.
Gregory had clearly been busy during the night. Constructed around the perimeter of the hole were crude pulleys, made from wheelbarrow parts and gardening string. Every now and again a plastic bucket would be hoisted up from the depths, deposit its load on the lawn, and disappear back down. Gregory’s mother, congratulating herself on her quick thinking, had managed to secrete a buttered scone, wrapped in a doily, into one of these receptacles before it went.
“He’ll be pleased with that,” she had said.
“Not much of a breakfast for a working man,” had said Gregory’s father.
And now they stood, side by side, hands behind their backs, staring down into the hole like mourners at a graveside, even though the buckets continued to rise and fall, and the piles of earth around them grew.
“I expect he’ll get tired of it soon,” said Gregory’s mother. “You know what Gregory’s like. Remember when we bought him that hamster? He got bored of it in two days and you had to drown it in the bath. Dreadful business. Remember, dear?”
“Yes, yes I do,” said Gregory’s father. “Never could keep his mind on anything, that boy.”
“It just seems like he’s so far away. It’s like he’s left home. My little boy, leaving home. Just imagine!”
“It’s the lawn I’m worried about,” said Gregory’s father. “Look at all this mud.”
*
Two days later, Gregory’s parents found an addition to the earth-removing system by the side of the hole. It was a smaller pulley, apparently made from a wheel from Gregory’s bicycle stabilisers, and tied to the string was a clothes peg. Clasped in the jaws of the clothes peg was a letter. It was from Gregory.
“Dear Mother and Father,” read Gregory’s father out loud. “The hole is now so deep that this is the only way we can communicate. I have tried shouting, but half the time you cannot hear me. Please be assured that I am in good health, although I have been forced to start eating worms. Some of them are quite tasty. Otherwise, work on the hole progresses well. I will keep you updated. Your son, Gregory. PS. Please stop throwing pebbles down the hole.”
“Well!” said Gregory’s mother. “Will we ever see Gregory again?”
“The boy had to leave home sometime,” said Gregory’s father.
“But worms, dear! Really. And I did tell you to be careful with those pebbles.”
Gregory’s father grunted something unintelligible and fingered the stone he held concealed in his hand. It was rather larger than the others.
“I’ll go and get my writing things,” said Gregory’s mother.
Gregory’s father tossed his stone sullenly back into the flowerbed.
*
It was almost midnight, two weeks later, when Gregory’s father found himself in the garden, alone. The lawn was ruined. Huge piles of earth teetered around him, most of them taller than him by many orders of magnitude. Additional pulleys had been installed around the hole, along with what appeared to be a ventilation system. Some sort of irrigation pipe had been connected to the garden tap. The excavated soil was now flying out of the hole in a steady stream, and Gregory’s father doubted that his son was doing all this work by himself. God alone knew who Gregory had managed to recruit, but there must certainly be someone else down there. Perhaps one of those awful friends he sometimes brought home, who trod mud into the carpet.
A light went on in an upstairs window, and Gregory’s mother called down.
“Are you coming to bed, dear?”
“Shortly,” said Gregory’s father.
“Any letters from Gregory?”
Gregory’s father looked at the mail pulley. There was an envelope held in the clothes peg.
“No, dear,” he shouted. “Go back to bed.”
The window closed and the light went off. Gregory father went to the shed and returned with his shovel. For a long while he stood, staring down into the ground, and resting his elbow on the shovel, like a cane. Then he went over to what remained of his flowerbed and picked the sole surviving petunia. He held it sadly in his hands for a moment, as if it were a dying infant, and then carefully, tenderly, he dropped it down the hole, watching intently as it whirled away into the darkness. He paused. He looked up to the sky. And then, experimentally, he took a shovel full of earth, and tipped it after the petunia. He didn’t hear it hit the bottom. Another pause. The garden seemed so quiet. He shovelled in another spadeful, then another, then another. There was no sound from the hole. He kept digging.
The sun was rising as he patted the remaining earth flat on what had been the biggest hole in England. The petunias that had been lost beneath the mounds of dirt were beyond rescue, but it looked as though the grass might be in with a chance.
He plucked Gregory’s final letter from the clothes peg, tucked it into his inside pocket, and went to bed.
--
Gregory Chaplin and the Biggest Hole in England by Neil Derby was read by Jane Hollington at the Liars' League Leeds Down and Out event on Monday 19th September 2011, at Milor Bar, Call Lane, Leeds.
Neil Derby is currently studying for a degree in radiology at Bristol University, but secretly wishes he'd done English Lit instead. He makes up for this by writing bizarre and generally unpublishable short stories in his spare time, and by ostentatiously reading high-brow literature on the bus.