Fizzlebert Stump (13 page)

‘It's Fizzlebert,' she gasped, ‘he's—'

Dr Surprise waved his finger.

‘Don't talk to me about that boy,' he said. ‘I've had quite enough of him today. Flopples is still in tears.'

‘But, he's—'

‘No. Not one more word.'

And with that he climbed the steps to his front door and fumbled for his keys.

This was no good. Miss Tremble ran on.

‘
Excusez-moi
, Madame Plume de Matant,'
she said in a beautiful French accent.

‘What?' said Madame Plume de Matant.

‘
C'est
Fizzlebert,
il est en difficulté
.'

‘What?' said Madame Plume de Matant. ‘Something about Fizzlebert?'

‘
Oui, il est en difficulté, dans le Chapiteau
.'

‘I don't want to hear another word about zat boy,' Madame Plume de Matant said in an accent somewhere between Turkish and Orcadian, turning her back on Miss Tremble. ‘He's a little monster.'

And with that she walked away, leaving Miss Tremble standing trembling in the dust.

Of course Madame Plume de Matant was right, Fizz had been a little monster that morning, running over the backs of her horses when they weren't expecting it. But that didn't mean he didn't need help when he
was in trouble, did it? The circus family was a family after all, and even when a member of the family acts like an idiot, you don't just turn your back on them when they need you, do you?

Not seeing anyone else about, and time being short, she ran back to the Big Top.

Over in the little caravan with the row of handsome potatoes on the windowsill William Edgebottom had vanished as if he had never existed.

In his place, in front of the mirror, with a big painted grin on his face and a bowler hat too small for his head on his head and a pair of purple silk gloves on his hands, sat Bongo Bongoton, the circus's finest and only mime artist clown.

He said nothing to his reflection, got up and began to walk over to the caravan's door.

After struggling through the invisible, but strong, wind, after pushing his way through the invisible, but long, grass and after climbing out of an invisible, but cardboard, box, he reached the door, opened it and fell down the steps into the sunshine.

In the Big Top, Mrs Stump was clinging to the platform at the top of the ladder, watching her son (as she thought) swinging back and forth in smaller and smaller swings. There was no way she could reach him. He wasn't coming close to the platform at all any more. Yet here she was. Up in the air, with a shoe almost falling off one foot, her wig askew and her nose feeling loose.

Every time she wiggled, her horn honked.

‘Fizz!' she shouted. ‘Just hold on! Help's on its way! Don't let go!'

Piltdown could hear the clown (the wind didn't rush in her ears any more, not now she was swinging so slowly) and thought it the most stupid load of old obvious advice she'd ever heard. ‘Hold on?' Well, what else was she going to do? Let go?

She looked up at the rough canvas roof above her, and tried not to think of the ground.

Bongo Bongoton pushed his way through invisible crowds looking for his friend Unnecessary Sid, with whom he could begin rehearsing a new bit of clownish business.

Instead of Sid he bumped into Mr Stump,
who was nailing boards up over the hole in the Stumps' caravan.

‘It'll have to do for now,' he said to Bongo.

Bongo Bongoton pulled a big surprised face, pointed at Mr Stump, and held an imaginary light bulb over his head.

‘What is it?' asked Mr Stump.

Bongo raised his finger as if to ask for silence.

Mr Stump stared.

Bongo coughed silently and unrolled an invisible scroll.

He had news to share. Mr Stump began to concentrate. He wasn't very good at charades.

Bongo Bongoton began moving in mysterious ways.

Not far away, at that very moment, Piltdown was dangling by one hand, thirty feet in the air.

Mrs Stump was clinging to the platform still higher, reaching out rather pointlessly with a limp fake flower that squirts water at inopportune moments, saying, ‘Grab hold of this, Fizz.'

Below them Miss Tremble's twelve beautiful white horses circled hungrily, glancing up at the boy who'd trodden on them. They bared their teeth and neighed menacingly.

Piltdown Truffle was
really
worried now.

It was a long way down.

Her arm really hurt.

Her fingers were beginning to slip.

A clown was threatening her with a plastic flower that dribbled water in fat drops from the middle of its colourful petally face.

Oh, why was she doing this again?

Now the clown was honking and people were shouting.

If only she'd waited for the evening, when there would've been a crowd to see her and look up to her and applaud her and rescue her properly. But no, like a stupid person, she'd been impulsive and hasty.

Angry horses circled hungrily beneath her.

And now her fingers were really beginning to slip.

She shut her eyes as she fell.

And …

Crikey. That was all a bit dramatic, wasn't it? It's a shame that's where the book ends, isn't it?

ONLY KIDDING

Now, read on . . .

CHAPTER TWELVE

In which discoveries are uncovered and in which a boy risks a mouthful of lunch

Meanwhile (actually, a few minutes earlier to be precise), several streets away and under a real roof, Fizzlebert Stump was sat at a desk, next to presumably-Charlotte, colouring in a map of the Isle of Wight, which the class was studying in order to learn the difference between blue and green. (The green went on the inside and the
blue on the outside.)

Mr Carvery was hovering over him (not in the way a fly or a kestrel or a helicopter might do, but like a teacher) tapping a ruler in his hand.

‘If you ever find yourself on the Isle of Wight,' he was saying loudly in a droning-on sort of teachery voice. ‘Be very careful not to stand underneath a palm tree. Up to half of all serious injuries on the Isle of Wight are caused by falling coconuts.'

In an extra chair next to the board sat Mr Mann, his feet up on Mr Carvery's desk, picking dirt out from underneath his fingernails with a penknife. He smiled to himself.

Scribble, scribble, scribble, went Fizz. He didn't know what else to do (he'd been
made to get dressed again, so he was back in Piltdown's school uniform, in case you were trying to picture the scene). He had failed. He'd got so close to the circus, but he'd been beaten, bested, caught and now he felt defeated, deflated, depressed.

But it would only be a few more hours, surely, before the school day ended and he'd be allowed to walk out of the gate and make his way back to the circus again (unless Mr Mann was planning on taking him back to Piltdown's gran). But the time passed so slowly here, surrounded by kids who weren't making him feel welcome (Dympna had given him a kindly sad ‘sorry' smile when he was dragged back into the classroom, but she was on the other side of the room and they hadn't been able to talk again), and by grown-ups who treated
him like a kid (and not a nice kid at that, but a dirty, unpleasant, vulgar one). This day would last forever and all the time his mum and dad must be going mad with worry.

That was what upset him most, the thought that they were probably still out in the woods looking for him. Unless what Bongo Bongoton had told him was right, that they'd already found Fizz and taken him back to the circus. Fizz had been hanging upside down with all the blood in his head when the un-made-up clown had said it, so he couldn't remember the exact words, but it had sounded like Bongo thought Fizz was already home. It was all so confusing.

‘Keep drawing, Truffle!' Mr Carvery shouted, leaning over Fizz and banging his fist on the table.

Fizz picked up the blue pencil and began colouring the paper around the outside of the Isle of Wight.

Carefully, so he didn't go over the lines.

Meanwhile again, a mile away, back at the circus, Mr Stump had just run into the Big Top.

‘Gloria!' he shouted. ‘Are you in here?'

There was a distant honking high above.

He looked up.

‘What are you doing up there?' he shouted, and then he fell silent.

He'd seen the colourful silky clown, way up high on the trapezeist's platform, and then he'd seen, much lower down, dangling right in the middle of the Big Top, Fizzlebert hanging by one hand from the trapeze itself.

Underneath him were a dozen dangerous-looking horses.

And between Fizz and the horses was an unbroken fall of ten metres or so.

Miss Tremble appeared beside him and said, ‘Thank goodness you're here, Mr Stump. Fizz is scaring my horses.'

Mrs Stump honked her horn and pointed at ‘her son'.

Mr Stump sprang into action.

He was a big man but he could move surprisingly quickly when he ran (once he'd built up momentum and especially if he was heading downhill), and he ran now, carefully pushing horses aside, and saying, ‘Sorry,' and ‘Excuse me,' as he did so.

In less than six seconds (but more than four) he was in the middle of the ring, lying on the
ground directly underneath the just-landed wriggling shape of ‘Fizzlebert Stump'.

The ‘boy' had landed on Mr Stump's head, which was one of the softest landing spots in the circus.

‘I'm alive!' Fizz shouted in a strange voice.

‘Oh, Mr Stump,' Miss Tremble said, running over. ‘You saved my horses from being squashed. You saved Fizzlebert from the fall. You are a hero!'

She helped the fake Fizz to ‘his' feet, and then watched as Mr Stump clambered on to his.

There was a thin round of applause from somewhere out in the darkness.

‘Very good, Mr Stump,' said the Ringmaster. ‘I'm always open to new ideas, and I like this one. I have a few concerns though.'

There was a honking from above. Vigorous, urgent.

‘It's not an act, Ringmaster,' Mr Stump said. ‘I don't know what he was doing up there.' He turned to look at ‘Fizz' who was
rubbing ‘his' sore hands. ‘What were you doing up there?'

‘Fizz' said nothing.

Honk! Honk!

‘Oh, Gloria!' Mr Stump shouted. ‘Don't panic. I'll go get some custard.'

Meanwhile, back at school, Fizzlebert stood over the bin in the corner of the classroom. Mr Carvery loomed behind him and said, ‘Come on, Truffle. Hurry up.'

Fizz carefully turned the blue coloured pencil in the conical hole of the pencil sharpener so that a long and continuous shred of wafer-thin wood emerged from the sharp-edged slot.

He always enjoyed this, the smell of the wood shaving, the sound of it. But he didn't
appreciate the man's shadow covering him and the impatient huffing.

‘Get a move on, Truffle.'

Back in the Big Top a small pool had been filled with custard and Mrs Stump refused to dive into it, so some riggers put up the safety net.

Mrs Stump bounced happily into that.

‘It's my new nose,' she explained. ‘It's afraid of custard.'

Once she'd climbed out and straightened her wig, had fallen over her missing shoe and picked herself up again, Mr Stump began to tell her what Bongo Bongoton had told him.

‘I just bumped into Bongo Bongoton,' he began. ‘He said … it was difficult to understand,
I didn't have my reading glasses on, but
I think
he said … “There's some fresh champagne being drunk by some dolphins and the champagne we've got has gone off.” Something like that. He seemed to think it was important.'

‘Champagne?' Mrs Stump asked.

‘Fizz?' Mr Stump said. ‘Have you got any idea what he's talking about?'

‘'Oo? Me?' said ‘Fizz', looking pale, ‘his' voice sounding a bit more like that of an unpleasant and unpopular girl than a charming circus lad.