The next day it was Sophie's turn to go to the Chinas, so I hung out with Fred. I decided to clean the place up. Fred helped me. I washed the dishes and let him dry the plastic stuff and the cutlery that he couldn't break. He asked me questions the whole time. It was driving me bugshit. "Why you use the hot water?" he said, and "Where's Mummy gone?" and "Why'd we go to the big sick place last night?" and "What's the 'tergent for?"
When I bagged up the rubbish and sent it down the chute he wanted to know what that was all about too, so I told him about the nice old rubbish-eater living down there. I told him to listen real hard and he'd hear it chomping away. He put his ear to the opening. He didn't move for ages.
"Suddenly he said, "I heared it!"
"Did you, Freddy-babe?"
"I heared it," he whispered.
"What sound did it make?" I said.
Fred's eyes had gone black. He stepped away from the open chute.
"Ah Fred, you just imagined it."
"No I didn't!" he cried, and burst into tears.
I picked him up and held him to my chest. "There's no rubbish-eater," I said. "I made it up."
"There is," he said. "It's in the baysmen."
In the basement, I thought, and shivered. I put him down and went over and shut the rubbish chute.
"It dussent matter," Fred said. "It can't climb."
I wondered how he knew this.
He never mentioned the rubbish-eater again, but he became its custodian, which is someone that looks after something, in case you didn't know. Whenever there was any rubbish to throw out it was Fred who put it down the chute. He didn't let us do it. He'd sit cross-legged in front of the chute and feed rubbish into it one piece at a time. When all the rubbish was gone and the chute was closed again he'd go to the bathroom and wash his hands, which he never usually did without us telling him to. A couple of times I went into the kitchen and put my ear to the opening, but all I heard was echoes. I would imagine the rubbish-eater down there, curled up asleep on a great pile of rubbish, dreaming darkly to itself.