Fizzlebert Stump (15 page)

Fizz lifted his fork up in front of his face. The mush twitched and dripped. He put it in his mouth. (He hadn't eaten since breakfast and that burnt toast had hardly been the most
appetising meal and since then he'd run miles and suffered all sorts of difficulties. In short: he was hungry.)

He was a little surprised to find that it didn't taste as bad as it looked.

It tasted
horrible
, but it looked
revolting
.

If only lunch had been some sort of fish dish, he thought sadly. He had used fishy smells several times to attract his friend Fish the sea lion from great distances, but Fish didn't care for potatoes or broccoli or meat or rice pudding. It was hopeless.

He'd have to find his own escape route, again. But this time it would have to be better than the first time.

But what could he do? Mr Mann was going to be beside him all afternoon. They were handcuffed together now, but even in the classroom,
when they took the handcuffs off, there was no way he could make a run for it without the Truant Office jumping on him, or catching him in his net, or shooting him with the tranquilliser dart gun he'd let Fizz see was strapped to his belt.

He'd have to wait, he thought, until they were in the car again at the end of the day. You can't drive a car when handcuffed to a child, can you? Fizz would be able to open the door and then unclip his seat belt and roll out on to the road. Mr Mann wouldn't be able do anything about that if the car was moving, would he? It might give Fizz enough of a head start to make it to the circus before Mr Mann caught up with him.

But he'd have to be careful about rolling out of a moving vehicle in the mid-afternoon traffic. The rolling didn't bother him too much, he was circus-trained and was pretty good
at falling and rolling without hurting himself (though it would've been easier if he'd had his ex-Ringmaster's coat to provide extra padding), but it was the dodging other cars and not getting knocked down and splatted and turned into traffic jam that worried him a little.

But he'd have to cross that bridge when he came to it.

And then he heard the oddest of sounds.

It was coming from outside.

It sounded a bit like screaming and shouting, mixed with the distant thundering rattle of a horse race.

(There'd been screaming and shouting from outside all through his lunch, of course, because all the kids who weren't having lunch at the same time as him were out there, but this was a suddenly different sort of shouting.)

And you know what shouting means, don't you?

It means I've got a headache now, so I'm going to stop writing and go have a lie down until it goes away.

Then I'll get up, have a cup of tea, and get on with writing the next and last chapter for you. Just for you. Because I care.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

In which a rescue is mounted and in which the circus puts on a show

Mr Mann pushed his way through the dining hall to see what the commotion was outside. Fizz had no choice but to follow, not that he minded.

When they reached the windows the truant officer carefully prised apart two slats of the venetian blinds that had been keeping the sunshine off their food and peered out.

The playground was full of horses and excited children excitedly poking the horses.

And on top of the horses were people Fizz knew.

The cavalry had arrived!

He was rescued.

At last!

He started towards the door, but when the handcuff chain reached its full extent and Mr Mann showed no sign of moving, Fizz stopped.

‘Come on,' he said, breathlessly. ‘That's my mum and dad out there.'

‘Don't be ridiculous, Truffle,' Mr Mann snapped. ‘There're too many of them to be parents. And besides, they look … strange.'

He let the blinds clatter shut and loosened the catch on his tranquilliser gun's holster.

Fizz didn't like the look of that. It wasn't friendly. But he was excited, at long last, after so long in the wrong place, he was within shouting distance of his family.

Fizz banged on the blind-covered window with the hand that wasn't chained to the truant officer. If he could attract his mum and dad's attention, then …

‘Stop that,' Mr Mann shouted, pulling the boy backwards, away from the window.

The blinds rattled and popped as they unbent themselves.

‘We don't know who's out there,' Mr Mann said. ‘They look strange. They could be escaped from somewhere, from prison or something. I'd best call for back up.'

‘They're not from prison!' Fizz shouted. ‘They're from the circus! I've been trying to
tell you all along. Why won't anyone listen to me!'

He was getting angry. Once again he was so close, he could smell the smell of sawdust, and once again this unhelpful, deluded, mistaken man was stopping him. And not just stopping him, but actively ignoring him.

Mr Mann turned his back and pulled his mobile phone from his pocket. He quickly tapped three numbers in and held it up to his ear. After a moment he said, ‘Yes. Get me the police.'

Outside, the rescue party milled around in the playground.

Miss Tremble had led the charge, since she was the one who could ride best.

She was sat in the middle of the playground on Basil Bunting, a handsome white horse with feathers in its headdress.

Beside her Mrs Stump clung to the neck of T.S. Eliot, another handsome white horse with an equally flamboyant feathery headdress.

Beside
her
the Ringmaster sat astride Arkle, the fastest and proudest of all the handsome white horses with feathery headdresses that Miss Tremble had ever trained. (He was the Ringmaster, so it was only right he got to ride the best horse, he said, even though he'd had to stop twice to be horsesick on the way over.)

He dabbed at the corner of his mouth with a handkerchief. He still looked a little green.

Dr Surprise and Flopples had ridden
Seamus Heaney, a handsome white horse with … Do you know what? Miss Tremble had twelve horses and they were all handsome, they were all white and they all wore showy feathery headdresses. They're circus horses, they're showbiz horses, there aren't any ugly horses in showbiz.

Eric Burnes, the fire eater, was on W.B. Yeats.

Bongo Bongoton was on Emily Brontë (backwards, trapped in an invisible box (or possibly cleaning invisible windows, or maybe building an invisible cat, it was hard to say)).

Captain Fox-Dingle had ridden Papillon. He had not brought Kate the crocodile with him, a decision he did not regret as he sat there calculating how many children it would have taken to satisfy her hunger.

Unnecessary Sid had fallen off Gerald Bostock and was honking his horn to try to keep the crowd of children that were surrounding him at bay.

Percy Late (of Percy Late and His Spinning Plate ‘fame') sat astride Emily Dickinson. He looked nervous.

Emerald Sparkles (the circus's knife thrower) rode Stanley Unwin. Her sequinned top hat glittered in the sunlight and the belts of knives that criss-crossed her chest dazzled as she breathed.

Piltdown lay across the saddle of A Horse Called Sue, tied in place by some clever and hard-to-untangle rigger's knots.

And finally, on top of Sylvia Plath, sat Mr Stump, slightly queasy, sore on the bottom but eager to find his son.

‘Where's Fizzlebert?' he asked a small boy who'd been busy gently poking the horse.

Before the boy had a chance to say, ‘What are you talking about?', a crackling tinny voice echoed across the playground.

‘Children! Move away from the horses!'

It was Mr Carvery, rolling up in his golf cart, his megaphone raised to his lips.

‘And you people on the horses, go away! Clear off! Get out of here!'

Mr Stump climbed down from his horse and walked towards Mr Carvery's cart.

‘Hello,' he said, holding his hand out. ‘Are you in charge round here?'

Mr Carvery reversed his buggy, very nearly avoiding knocking over several children.

(The other children were mostly ignoring him and were still poking and stroking the horses.)

‘Go away,' Mr Carvery repeated through his megaphone.

‘Is Fizzlebert here?'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘It's all right, Mr Carvery, I'll handle this,' said Mrs Scrapie as she walked up. She looked the very definition of cool, calm and ever so slightly concerned as she turned to face Mr Stump. (She made sure she kept a dozen children between them as a buffer zone.) ‘I'm the headmistress here. How can I help?'

Mrs Stump honked as she fell off her horse.

‘Are
you
in charge?' Mr Stump asked. ‘We're looking for my son. Apparently you've got him.'

‘Nonsense,' she said. ‘I'd remember
you
from parents' evening.' She laughed with false
gaiety, hoping her joke might calm this strange small-moustached and large-muscled man.

Mr Stump didn't know what ‘parents' evening' was and so he ignored it and just got on with what he'd come to say, ‘He's called Fizzlebert and he came here by accident, just today.'

‘No new children here today. Maybe you want St Jude's, over on the other side of town.'

Honk! Honk!

Mrs Stump wandered over, her big feet slapping the tarmac with each step. She pointed back over her shoulder with her thumb.

‘Oh yes! That's right,' Mr Stump said, slapping his forehead. ‘D'oh! I almost forget. We've brought you one back. To swap.'

*   *   *

Inside the dining room Fizz could see a bit of what was happening, but he couldn't hear any of the words.

Still, his friends were here and his heart was singing.

And then he heard the sirens.

The police were coming.

‘That's my family,' he pleaded with Mr Mann. ‘You've got to let me go back to them.'

‘Oh shut up and sit down,' said the truant officer.

Looking around the dining hall Fizz realised they were the only people left. All the other kids had run out to see what the commotion was and to poke Miss Tremble's beautiful white horses.

No, that wasn't quite right. Dympna was still there. She was sat at a table in the corner.
(It looked like she had been sat all by herself, and not just because there was no one else there, but because hers was the only plate. The rest of the tables were covered with abandoned crockery.)

She smiled shyly and gave him a little wave.

‘The circus is here,' Fizz called to her, happy and sad all at once. ‘They're outside in the playground. Go and look. Go and tell them I'm here. Tell my mum and dad to come rescue me.'

Dympna said, ‘I'd really like to, Fizz. Really. I want to help you get home, but I can't go outside. I'll start sneezing and crying and I haven't got a clean hanky and I won't be any good. Sorry.'

Her eyes looked a bit weepy already, just at the thought of going outside.

It wasn't her fault, Fizz knew, but it was
annoying
. He gave her a smile and, without being mean, turned back to the window.

Mr Mann was peering between the blinds again and Fizz leant forward to look too.

The truant officer was chuckling a thin little mean-spirited nasty sarcastic sneering chuckle.

Outside, two police cars had pulled up and a couple of policemen and women had climbed out and were trying to get the circus folk down from the horses and to keep the children away, and they weren't doing a very good job.

Every time they shooed the children in one direction the kids would circle back from the other, and every time they went near one horse it tiptoed backwards and the rider of a different horse would tap the police person
on the shoulder and it would all begin again. It was like trying to organise cats in a choir. That is to say, it was no good.

All Fizz needed to do was to get out there, but Mr Mann was determined not to budge.

And then Mr Mann fell to the floor in a crumpled heap.

Fizz turned around and there was Dympna holding a large can of baked beans.

‘I found it in the kitchen,' she said, nodding towards the serving hatch. ‘Please don't tell anyone I hit him. I don't want to get in trouble.'

‘Dympna,' Fizz said. ‘You're brilliant. You're a marvel. Thank you!'

Fizzlebert heaved the snoring truant officer over his shoulder and headed for the door.

‘Watch out,' he said. ‘Here comes the fresh air.'

He kicked the door open and headed for the playground.

He heard Dympna shut it quickly behind him and then there was a muffled sneeze, but she still shouted, ‘Go Fizz!' loud enough for him to hear.

‘Mum! Dad!' called Fizz, pushing his way through the crowd of children.