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Small Stakes: Spoons

The power went off in the launderette at a quarter to seven on a wet Thursday in November.

Kezia heard it go. The big dryers downstairs stopped all at once, mid-turn, and the whole flat went quiet in a way it never was. A minute later there was a knock on the door. It was Mrs Oduya, who ran the launderette, with her grandson Tobi behind her and a torch in her hand.

"I'm so sorry," said Mrs Oduya. "The electrician says an hour. Tobi's homework is done and it's cold down there with the doors open. Could we sit somewhere warm?"

"Come in," said Kezia, who had been brought up to say yes to that question before it had finished being asked.

The lights were on upstairs; it was only the launderette's circuit that had gone. Sim was at the kitchen table with a screwdriver and a lamp in pieces. He looked up, saw the torch, and said, with real interest, "Is it the breaker or the supply?"

"I've no idea, love," said Mrs Oduya. "A man is coming."

Tobi was twelve. He stood just inside the door with his hands in his coat pockets, looking at the floor in the way of a boy who has been brought somewhere he did not choose. Kezia had seen that look on a hundred children at the start of a hundred school trips. There was only one cure she knew of.

"Do you play Spoons?" she said.

The drawer

She went to the drawer. Under the paprika jar of buttons and the ball of garden string there was a pack of cards with a rubber band round it, and further back, a tangle of odd teaspoons from every place Kezia had ever lived.

"Four of us," she said, counting. "So sixteen cards." She sorted through the pack and took out four kings, four queens, four jacks and four tens, and put the rest back. "Four of each kind, one kind for each person. And one spoon fewer than there are people." She put three teaspoons in the middle of the table, handles pointing out. "Three."

Tobi had come a little closer. "What do you do?"

"You get four cards," said Kezia. "Every turn you take one from the person on your right and pass one to the person on your left, as fast as you can, and you're trying to collect four the same. The moment somebody has four the same, they take a spoon. And the moment anybody takes a spoon, everybody grabs one. Whoever's left without a spoon is out of that round."

"What does the loser do?" said Sim. He had put down the screwdriver.

"Nothing," said Kezia. "Deals the next one."

Sim looked faintly disappointed, but he pulled his chair in.

Sim solves it

The first round was chaos. Cards went the wrong way. Mrs Oduya laughed so much she could not pass anything. Kezia got four queens, slid her hand out and took a spoon very quietly, and nobody noticed for three whole passes. Then Sim saw the gap in the middle of the table and lunged, and so did Mrs Oduya, and Tobi was still looking at his cards when the last spoon went.

"You're out," said Sim cheerfully.

Tobi went a bit red, and dealt.

The second round, Sim won. The third round, Sim won again. By the fourth round he was not looking at his cards at all. He held them loosely, passed whatever came, and kept his eyes on the three spoons and on everybody's hands.

"I've solved it," he said, with the satisfaction of a man who has found the fault in a lamp. "You don't need four the same. You never need to look at your cards. You just watch the spoons, and you grab the second anybody else does. Whoever's fastest always gets one."

He was right. Kezia could see that he was right. He won the fifth round without collecting a single pair.

And every round, Tobi was left without a spoon.

He was not slow, exactly. He was careful. He was the kind of boy who read his cards properly, who wanted to get four kings because he was trying to play the game he had been told about. By the time he looked up, the spoons were gone. After the fifth round he stopped saying anything at all. He dealt, and passed, and looked at the table.

Across the table

Kezia had stopped watching the spoons a round ago. She was watching Tobi's face.

"Sim," she said. "Who's going to win the next round?"

Sim thought about it honestly. "Me," he said. "Or you. Whoever's quickest."

"And who's going to be out?"

Sim looked across the table, properly, for the first time since he had solved it. Tobi had his cards held tight against his chest, as if someone might take those away too. Mrs Oduya was watching her grandson with the patient, slightly sad expression of a grandmother who has seen this before.

"Ah," said Sim.

"It isn't a card game any more," said Kezia quietly. "You've made it a game about fast hands. And the fastest hands in the room were always going to win a game about fast hands."

"It's still a fair game," said Sim. "Same rules for everyone."

"It is fair," said Kezia. "And it's pointing at the wrong thing. A game you play for nothing ought to turn towards the person opposite. This one's turned away from him."

Sim was quiet for a moment. Then he did the thing Kezia liked most about him, which was to treat a problem as a fault to be found rather than an argument to be won.

"Then change the rule," he said. "If it can be solved, you solve it, and then you change it. The fault is that you can win by watching spoons. So make it so you can't."

He thought for a bit. Mrs Oduya refilled the kettle.

"Here's a rule," said Sim. "When you've got four the same, you don't take a spoon. You touch your ear. Just once, quietly, like you're scratching it. Nobody is allowed to touch a spoon until they've seen someone touch their ear. Grab before that and you're out."

"So you have to watch people," said Tobi suddenly. It was the first thing he had said in four rounds.

"You have to watch faces," said Kezia. "Not hands."

"And whoever's left without a spoon," Sim added, "chooses the secret sign for the next round. Not the ear. Anything. Nose, eyebrow, tapping the table. And they don't tell anyone but the dealer."

The sign

The next round was completely different.

Nobody looked at the spoons. Everybody looked at everybody else. Sim, who was used to winning by speed, kept glancing at Mrs Oduya's hands and missing the point entirely. Kezia got four tens and touched her ear so slowly that nobody saw it for two whole passes, and she sat there trying not to laugh.

It was Tobi who saw it. He had been watching everyone's faces carefully, the way he had been reading his cards carefully, and he saw Kezia's hand go up, and he looked at it, and he reached into the middle and took a spoon while everybody else was still passing.

There was a silence. Then Mrs Oduya saw the spoon in his hand and grabbed, and Kezia grabbed, and Sim, who had been watching the wrong person, looked down at an empty table.

"You're out," said Tobi. He was trying very hard not to smile, and failing.

"I'm out," said Sim, delighted. "I choose the sign."

He chose a twitch of the left eyebrow. Mrs Oduya could not do it on purpose and did it by accident every time she laughed, which caused two false alarms and an argument. Tobi won that round too. Then Mrs Oduya won, and chose tapping the table twice, and Sim got very good at it, and Kezia lost three in a row because she could not stop watching Tobi's face, which had changed completely. He was leaning forward now, elbows on the table, looking from one person to the next.

At twenty to nine the dryers downstairs started up again with a great shudder, and the lights in the launderette came back on and spilled up the stairs.

"That's us," said Mrs Oduya, getting up.

"One more," said Tobi.

So they played one more. Tobi was left without a spoon, and he chose the sign, and it was a tiny nod, and he did it with four kings in his hand and his eyes on Sim's face, and Sim never saw it at all.

Afterwards

When they had gone, Sim put the teaspoons back in the drawer, one by one.

"I did solve it," he said. "The first version."

"You did," said Kezia. "That's how we found out what was wrong with it."

"Fastest hands always wins," said Sim, thinking aloud. "Then it's not a game about the cards. It's not even a game about the people. It's a test." He shut the drawer. "With the ear, the person who notices wins. And the person who's out gets to choose. So nobody's out for long."

"Small stakes," said Kezia.

"Teaspoons," said Sim. "Smaller than that."

The question for your own table

Which game in your house does the same person always win? Is it a game about the thing it says it is about, or a game about something else, like speed or being the oldest?

Something to do

Play a round of Spoons with one fewer spoon than players, the ordinary way. Then play it Sim's way: four the same means a secret sign first, and whoever is left without a spoon chooses the next sign. Afterwards, ask who won each version, and why.

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