Fizzlebert Stump (9 page)

The world looked upside down and wobbled from side to side as the man began the long walk back to his car.

Fizz could only watch, helplessly, as he saw the park and the Big Top begin to get further away.

Every time he struggled or wriggled it made the net pinch tighter around him. After a few moments he gave it up as hopeless and turned to a subtler and more classically elegant escape method.

‘Help!' he shouted.

‘Shut up!' Mr Mann snapped, poking Fizz with a leather-patched elbow.

‘I want a word with you,' said a woman's voice from somewhere Fizz couldn't see.

Mr Mann stopped walking, shifted the net on his shoulder, and said, ‘Madam, I don't have time for this. I'm duty bound to return this
thing
to its place of education. Time is ticking.'

(Fizz could imagine him tapping his watch as he said this.)

‘You're not going anywhere until I get my
Josephine's frock back. And an apology from you.'

It was the woman whose daughter's dress Fizz was still half wearing.

‘Out of my way!' Mr Mann barked impatiently.

‘No!' she replied forcefully. ‘Put the child down and give me the dress. Do it now!'

She sounded angry and Fizz couldn't stop himself from saying, ‘I think you should do it.'

‘You keep out of this,' Mr Mann hissed over his shoulder.

‘Yeah, don't you interfere,' the woman agreed.

Then they continued their argument.

Mr Mann wouldn't give up his prize. He
would
open the net, he said, but not until they were back in school, for fear the child would
run away again. But the woman wasn't willing to wait that long to get her daughter's dress back. ‘She's going to a party,' she explained aggressively.

Back and forth they traded insults and impolite suggestions, while Fizz dangled in the air behind the truant officer.

A little old man sidled into view (by which I mean, specifically, into the small bit of view Fizz could see). He was shuffling along the pavement towards the park, past the arguers, and he stopped and looked at the boy in the net.

He had a kindly face, a big bow tie and a round bald head with little tufts of hair spurting from behind each ear. In his hands he was carrying two bags of food from a popular, but cheap, supermarket.

He winked at Fizz.

‘Um, could you help me?' Fizz asked.

‘Oh!' said the man, seemingly surprised to hear Fizz speak. ‘I thought you were a large sack of potatoes.' He leant in and peered closer, squinting his eyes and turning his head.

‘But you winked at me,' Fizz said.

‘I like potatoes,' the man said, twisting so he was almost upside down now, which meant he could finally see Fizz the right way up. ‘They're a very sad vegetable. They often need cheering up. Sometimes a wink works wonders.'

‘Could you get me down from here?' Fizz asked.

The old man lifted his hands up to show that they were full of carrier bags.

‘Sorry,' he said. ‘I've got to get this lot home before they melt.'

‘Or can you go for help?' Fizz asked, growing desperate. The argument round the front of Mr Mann was bound to end soon. This old chap was his only hope. ‘Can you go to the circus and tell them I'm here. I'm going to be taken back to the school in a minute. They could come find me there.'

‘The circus?' the old man asked, a twinkle in his eye. The wind ruffled his tufty hair and his bow tie fluttered. ‘What does a potato want with the circus?'

‘I'm not a potato,' Fizz said, hurriedly. ‘I'm a boy called Fizzlebert Stump and I live at the circus. I'm trying to get back there, but I'm being kidnapped.'

‘Oh no, no, no,' the man said. ‘I don't
think that's the case at all. You don't look like Fizzlebert Stump at all. He's the other way up, usually, and less potatoey. And he doesn't normally wear a dress.'

‘I'm not wearing a dress,' Fizz said, even though he sort of was.

‘Now a
potato
in a dress, that's not so odd. I saw one at the World Circus Expo in Ipswich back in '78. It was the largest potato then known, and it was opening the fire station so it had dressed up lovely for the occasion. Had difficulty with the scissors though.'

‘Hang on,' said Fizz, squinting. It was hard looking at things upside down. All the blood had run to his head and he had a bit of a headache and, on top of that, everything was
upside down
. He looked harder at the little old man. ‘Are you
with
the circus?' It was unusual for
normal people in the street to know about the 1978 World Circus Expo in Ipswich.

‘
With
the circus? Why, dear potato, I practically
am
the circus.' The old man stood up straight, polished an imaginary medal and then added, ‘Well, I am a
part
of the circus. There's lots of us and everyone plays their part. No one is more important than anyone else.' Fizz recognised the Ringmaster's words, he was forever telling them things like this, even though some people
were
more important than others. (For example, Captain Fox-Dingle, the animal trainer, was more important than Kate, the crocodile. A circus with the Captain but no Kate would be a safe circus, albeit one with a bored animal trainer looking for a project, whereas a circus with Kate but no Captain would be a circus with
a loose crocodile wandering around with no one in charge.)

Fizz looked as hard as he could at the old man. It was difficult to tell who he was. He was in street clothes, not his circus gear. He wasn't the Ringmaster because
he
never went anywhere without his top hat. He wasn't one of the Twitchery Sisters, because neither of them were old men. He didn't look like anyone he knew.

‘I'm Fizz,' he said desperately. ‘I really am.'

‘No, no, no,' said the old man. ‘Fizz is at the circus. I saw him this morning. His parents picked him up in the woods, like you might pick a potato up in a field. If it were a potato field.'

This conversation had been so weird Fizz had almost forgotten where he was.
(However, the fact that he was dangling upside down in a net right next to two loudly arguing people, (Mr Mann and the woman had been shouting at one another all through Fizz's conversation) with the sinking sensation that he was about to be dragged back to school any moment now swirling in his stomach, did a good job reminding him.)

Suddenly the little old man flew away, zooming out of Fizz's vision.

It took Fizz a second to understand what had just happened, as the world slowly stopped wobbling. The old man hadn't flown away, but Mr Mann had just turned around, sharply.

‘Who are
you
?' he snapped at Fizz's friend.

‘Me?' the old man said.

‘Yeah, were you talking to my prisoner?'

‘Prisoner? No, no, no. I was just chatting
with your potatoes. Very impressive, I must say. Have you considered a career on the stage?'

‘What?'

Fizz couldn't help but smile, even as he watched a woman walking away counting five-pound notes. (It looked like Mr Mann had ended the argument with a small cash payment.)

‘The stage,' the old man said, slowly and loudly. ‘Your potatoes there.'

Mr Mann grunted something unpleasant and spun around again.

He resumed walking and Fizz resumed bouncing.

‘Cheerio,' called the old man, waving with a carrier bag-filled hand. ‘I'll mention you to the circus. The Ringmaster will give you a call.' He made a telephone shape with his
hand, but the bag was too heavy for him to lift it to his ear. Fizz understood anyway. And what he understood was that he was never going to escape, never going to get home. Whoever this old chap was, they weren't going to send the cavalry to Fizz's rescue.

The old man turned his back and began walking towards the park, and as soon as he did Fizz knew him. He recognised the walk.

You can scrub all the make-up off a clown, you can swap their huge colourful silk costume for a shabby old suit, but you can't hide the years of training that have gone into the unique, graceful, sad, unfortunate way they walk.

Fizz had just had the first conversation he had ever had in his entire life with Bongo Bongoton, the circus's greatest (and only) mime artist clown.

And it's there, with the sinking feeling in his stomach as all his hopes drain away, that we leave Fizz. Poor boy. Captured and hauled off. Oh dear, oh dear. Whatever could happen next? You'll just have to read on and find out. Except …

CHAPTER TEN

In which we go ‘meanwhile elsewhere' and in which we go ‘wind the clock back a bit, buddy'

OK, so what exactly happened last night? What have Fizz's mum and dad been up to? Have they even noticed he's missing? What did the off-duty and surprisingly talkative Bongo Bongoton mean when he said the things he said (and I don't mean the stuff about potatoes, but the bits about Fizzlebert Stump) and did he
really
mean them? (Is an
off-duty clown with an unnatural interest in the potato a trustworthy source of information in this story?)

Well, let's just wind the clock back a bit, buddy, and I'll tell you just exactly what has been happening meanwhile elsewhere.

Mr and Mrs Stump heard the slam of the caravan door (we're back in the middle of the night now, keep up) and Mr Stump turned to Mrs Stump and he said, ‘Did you hear that, Gloria? I reckon Fizz is back in the caravan.' And she said, ‘I do believe you're right.'

And with that she pressed the button that made the clown car go and slowly they began to move off down the hill.

After five minutes the dark trees that
loomed over the road on both sides cleared and they were driving along between the first few houses of the new town where they were due to set up circus for the next four days.

‘Turn left here, dear,' said Mr Stump, pointing at a road on the right.

‘You mean “right”, right?' said Mrs Stump, slowing the car and switching on the indicator.

‘Right right?' repeated Mr Stump, getting confused.

‘Right,' said Mrs Stump, turning the car.

‘Where are we going now?' Mr Stump asked. ‘Stop! Stop!'

She pressed on the brakes and the car and caravan juddered to a halt. They were halfway across the junction, the car nosing into the new road, the caravan parked on the old one,
but since it was the middle of the night, there was no one else around, so they weren't getting in anyone's way.

‘What is it now?' Mrs Stump asked, turning to face her husband.

‘You went the wrong way,' Mr Stump said.

‘But you pointed over here,' his wife replied.

‘No I didn't,' he said. ‘All I did was say, “Turn left here, dear”. Then you went right.'

‘Right,' she said. ‘Because you
pointed
right.'

‘I wasn't pointing,' he said. ‘I was doing my finger exercises.'

(As a strongman it is important that Mr Stump keeps his muscles in a state of prime physical fitness, even the finger muscles, which are amongst the most important ‘picking things up' muscles there are.) (Note
to pedantic people: yes,
I
know that there aren't any muscles in your fingers (they're moved by ligaments and tendons connected to muscles in the wrist and forearm), I'm not an idiot, but Mr Stump doesn't know this. No letters, please.)

‘Oh, sorry,' she said. ‘So it's back there?'

‘Yep,' he said, pointing over his shoulder.

‘Were you pointing that time?' she asked.

‘Yes,' he said.

‘OK,' she replied, fiddling with the gearstick and putting the car into reverse.

Before they began moving there was an almighty crash and blare of a horn and the car shuddered as a thunderstorm passed by.

‘Was that you?' Mrs Stump asked.

‘I don't think so,' Mr Stump replied, patting his tummy.

Mrs Stump looked into the wing mirror and saw, back to front and behind her, the whistling sight of a hurtling huge lorry. Its tail lights flashed and were gone.