Fizzlebert Stump and the Bearded Boy (5 page)

Someone just wandering into Fizz’s caravan and seeing that Mrs Stump had lost her nose might suggest to her that she borrow a nose. They might point out that Larry Yellow,
The King of Custard
, had got concussion when he dropped an invisible ball on his head yesterday and was laid up in bed. His nose is going spare tonight, they might say. Why not ask him if you could borrow it?

If they did suggest that (oh dear, oh dear, oh dear), they would be met with bemused, puzzled, dumbfounded stares from both Fizz and his parents. What a silly suggestion. What a bizarre, weird, downright stupid idea.

A clown’s nose is as individual as their face. No two clowns have the same one. They’re like fingerprints. They’re unique to the clown whose nose the nose nuzzles. They’re like underpants. You simply don’t lend them out. You don’t ask for a borrow. It’s an absurd idea.

And besides, it probably wouldn’t fit.

By now Fizz’s mum was frantic. (She tried pulling her hair out, but settled for just taking her wig off.) Both Fizz and his dad were looking too, through drawers and on top of shelves and in the sink and under the table and behind one another. None of them could find it.

Outside a hush fell and then the band struck up the opening fanfare. In the Big Top the evening’s show was beginning.

Mr Stump had to go because this evening he was the second act on, but Fizz stayed for a while to help his mum look. She knocked things over and he rummaged through the piles.

After a fruitless twenty minutes Mrs Stump sat down at her dressing table in the middle of all the chaos and began wiping off her makeup. Without her nose she couldn’t go out in public. Without her nose, she wasn’t even a
real
clown. Other clowns wouldn’t recognise her. They wouldn’t include her in their act. That was the Clown Code: ‘
No one knows one with no nose on.
’

Fizz tried to cheer her up by looking on the bright side. ‘Maybe it’ll be nice to have an evening off?’

And she looked at him with her real face which looked even sadder than her sad clown face had looked, and she sighed. She didn’t believe Fizz. (Fizz didn’t really believe Fizz either.) She loved being a clown. Tonight no one would laugh at her, no one would clap her, no one would remember her.

‘We’ll find it tomorrow,’ Fizz said, hopefully, ‘and then you’ll be back in the ring. Better than ever.’

She honked her horn quietly and tried to give him a bit of a smile.

Not a hundred yards from the caravan the show has begun. Later on Fizz is going to do his trick with Charles, the lion, but before that everyone who’s spare is gathered either backstage or out in the aisles of the audience waiting to see the first performance of the
Great Barboozul Family Frenzy of Fur, Fear and Fun
, the new act.

And I have a sneaking suspicion that’s where I’ll be for the next chapter. It’ll be more fun than hanging around with a noseless clown.

Chapter Five

In which some beards are exhibited and in which a boy is shot from a cannon

Fizz got ringside just in time to catch the end of Dr Surprise’s daring display of magic and mind-reading. (He correctly guessed the name of a small girl randomly picked from the audience (even though she had only volunteered when her mum loudly said, ‘Go on Debbie, put your hand up, he might pick you’), and then he pulled a rabbit from his hat, some celery from behind her ear and a modest round of applause from the crowd.)

The Ringmaster walked out in his smart red coat, with his polished boots and his top hat with the red ribbon, and made the announcement Fizz had been waiting for.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, budgies and giraffes, Brian and Geraldine. It is our great honour to give you a brand new act never before performed under the canvas of this, or any, Big Top. An act so full of daring, mystery and downright fear that I must issue a warning beforehand. If there is anyone here of a nervous disposition, who is afraid of the unusual, or who is anxious around the bizarre, then this is the time to close your eyes, put your fingers in your ears and hold tight to your mummy’s hand. For anyone still looking, I give you
The
Great Barboozul Family Frenzy of Fur, Fear and Fun!
’

The crowd clapped and cheered and fell silent as the lights in the Big Top dimmed into darkness.

The band struck up a mysterious winding tune, all exotic and odd sounding. A pair of spotlights began roving round the sawdust of the ring.

One caught on the corner of something and stopped.

There was a creak from the stalls as the audience leaned forward in their seats to see what it was.

There, in the middle of the small circle of light was a foot. Wrapped around the foot was a dark boot and as the light began to creep upwards it became obvious the boot was on the end of a leg and then that the leg was beside a second leg and that they were both covered by a long coat.

The light edged upwards and just above the bottom of the coat was the frondy end of the blue-black beard Fizz had been expecting to see.

It seemed to twist and ruffle in the white light, as if it were alive.

The light inched further up the beard, up and up and up.

Fizz should’ve seen the face of one of the Barboozuls by now, but this beard seemed to go on forever.

The beard was three feet long, then four feet, then five feet, and still the spotlight went up.

The endless coat shimmered behind the glossy purple-black, blue-black furriness of the beard as if it were sewn with sequins or crushed jewels, and the beard itself seemed to be shimmering as it shifted about like a bed of black worms or a river of dark furry snakes.

Eventually the spotlight stopped on a head. It must have been twelve feet in the air. Fizz thought he recognised Wystan’s face underneath the top hat that topped the figure off, but wasn’t sure, not until the band burst into a blaring upbeat, jolly, vigorous circussy tune.

As it did so Wystan leapt from the top of the elongated person, like a squirrel off a trampoline, landing in the sawdust with a forward roll, his beard springing out into its usual unruly shape.

Behind him the tall figure tottered and wobbled, its super-long beard still in place.

Fizz recognised the thinning hair on the newly exposed head and guessed that Lord Barboozul was sat on top of Lady Barboozul’s shoulders. Somehow his beard hung low enough that it mingled with hers, making it look like one giant beard hanging from his chin. Clever stuff.

One of the spotlights followed Wystan as he did acrobatic rolls and handstands round the ring, and after a particularly impressive backflip he surprised everyone by landing in the audience. He grabbed the hand of a young girl who was sat in the front row and pulled her after him back into the ring.

The crowd applauded as they always do when someone volunteers (especially when their volunteering is less than voluntary).

Fizz had been watching his new friend being brilliant and was surprised by a loud bang as a cracker went off with a great blast next to the strange double-height Barboozul. A great gush of smoke whooshed up and hid them from view.

Lady Barboozul stepped out of the cloud looking elegant and beautiful in a glittering white dress. Her beard was jet black against the bright frock, and she held a smooth pale hand out to the young girl.

She giggled nervously before taking hold of it. Lady Barboozul turned her round to face the crowd, who applauded again.

She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, with a pair of scuffed trainers and a green jacket. She had a neat blonde fringe and was looking both scared and excited, as well as uncertain as to what to do.

She didn’t see Lord Barboozul appear out of the quickly clearing cloud of smoke behind her.

He was dressed like a magician: a smart dinner jacket and incredibly well-ironed trousers. There was, presumably, a bow tie, but no one but a barber would be able to find it under his beard. As he walked forward he held his hands in the air, showing them off to the audience, in the way a magician shows you the nothing-up-his-sleeves before he produces a pound coin from behind your ear.

He held his hands still. They didn’t move.

But his beard moved.

Everyone could see that.

As the crowd watched, puzzled and shocked, his beard dipped into the girl’s jacket pocket, like a searching pair of fingers or inquisitive furry tentacles, and when it came out it was holding a camera by the strap.

He’d just pick-pocketed her with his beard!

The crowd was silent, but in a good way.

Lady Barboozul whispered something to the girl and everyone laughed as she put her hand in her jacket pocket and found her camera gone. She looked worried, puzzled, amused.

Lord Barboozul knocked the camera against his head as if to prove it were real. And then, with Wystan pointing at it so that no one could miss what was happening, he put it
inside
his beard.

He held his hand up to show it was empty.

Lady Barboozul slid her hand deep into
her
beard and pulled out . . . a bunch of flowers. They were the usual paper flowers that magicians produce from up their sleeve and it was clear that the audience weren’t very impressed.

She handed the flowers to the girl and reached into her beard again. Her arm vanished right up to the elbow and when it came out it was holding a violin. The crowd ‘oohed’ at that. Hiding a violin in a beard is pretty impressive.

She gave the girl the violin to hold and had a third rummage.

This time Wystan helped her. What they pulled out was the end of a ladder. Wystan took it and walked away from her as she fed out rung after rung, until he was holding a ladder all of four feet long. I’ll admit, four feet isn’t very long for a ladder, but for a ladder hidden in a beard, it’s rather good.

As Wystan took the ladder off into the dark toward the back of the ring, Lady Barboozul pulled one final thing out of her beard.

The girl, who had tucked the violin and flowers under her arm, jumped and clapped her hands together.

Lady Barboozul gave her her camera back.

Once the audience had settled down Lady Barboozul took hold of the girl’s arm and guided her fingers into her beard.

She pushed further and further into the fur, just as the bearded lady was urging her to, and soon her whole arm was in there.

But it didn’t come out the other side.

Instead, it came out of Lord Barboozul’s beard, even though he was standing six feet away.

The amazed crowd clapped and roared their approval, especially when the girl waved and watched her own fingers all the way over there waving back at her.

As the crowd died down she pulled her arm out, the hand vanishing from Lord Barboozul’s beard and reappearing on her wrist where it belonged, and he led her back to her mum, who was sat with her mouth open in the audience.

Fizz was sat with his mouth open too. He’d seen women cut in half before (and, happily, put back together), and Dr Surprise could make his rabbit disappear inside his hat, but never had he seen someone’s arm travel between two beards. That had to be as impressive as sticking your head in a lion’s mouth, surely? Maybe even more. He was feeling a little worried now. Would the audience expect him to pull things out of Charles’s mouth later on? Would they be disappointed when he couldn’t?

The music rose as the lights came up at the back of the ring.

Wystan was stood there with the ladder. Silence fell as the audience saw what it led to.

A cannon, Fizz thought. Oh no!

(Fizz had once heard his mum and dad talking about a human cannonball who had been with the circus years ago. He no longer worked there because he’d been fired.)

Wystan climbed the steps and strapped a helmet onto his head.

A stage hand lit a long fuse at the rear of the cannon. It fizzed and sparked.

Wystan climbed into the cannon’s mouth and lowered himself in feet first.

Back in the ring Lord and Lady Barboozul faced one another. His beard reached out and took a hold of hers and as they backed apart the two tangled beards formed a woolly night-black ribbon of rippling fur between them.