Lionboy (9 page)

“This is absolutely amazing,” he said. “This is amazing. I am amazed.”

The girls—acting together as always—found the chocolate. Then they unfolded their cot, and there was just room for all three to sit on it (there was no floorspace left) and start to nibble their way into a happy chocolate reverie.

A knock at the door made them jump. “Password!” cried the twins.

“Bucket!” said a voice, and the door opened and in marched the curly boy who had been with the clowns.

“Ah,
you’ve
got him!” he cried in a cheerful tone. “The twins have got him!” he called over his shoulder, and from behind him Charlie could hear a chattering, scrabbling sound, which turned out to be the muddy-faced boy and four or five of the smallest Italians, who had come to investigate Charlie. They all tried to come into the twins’ cabin, the twins told them there wasn’t room, and then a great coo-cooing noise started up from behind one of the walls, and the twins said, “Now look! You’ve woken the doves,” and shooed everybody, including Charlie, out.

“Where’re you sleeping?” said the curly boy to Charlie.

“Don’t know,” said Charlie. “I’m supposed to be in with the monkeys, but since they’ve been through my bag and eaten everything, I don’t want to.”

“Do you want to come and bunk with us in the rope storeroom?” asked the curly boy. “It’s above the galley so we never get cold. It keeps the ropes dry too so they don’t rot. It’s next to the lions . . .”

The boy was going on about the lions needing the heat too, but Charlie wasn’t listening. Next to the lions! There were lions! He’d been told, and he knew it, but only now did it really get through to him. There really were lions on this ship and he was going to be next door to them.

CHAPTER 8

T
he curly boy was called Julius, and the thin clown was his father. The muddy boy was called Hans, and he looked after the Learned Pig, which was why he was so muddy. (The boy, not the pig. Though the pig was muddy too. But the boy was muddy because of the pig, not vice versa. In fact, the pig would have been a lot muddier were it not for the boy.)

Hans and Julius slept on piles of coiled-up ropes in the rope storeroom. Each had his own shelf, quite big enough for a smallish boy, though without much headroom. Julius had the top shelf and Hans the bottom one, so there was a shelf for Charlie in the middle.

“There’s a sleeping bag here already,” said Charlie. “Does someone else sleep here?”

Hans started to giggle nervously. Julius shushed him with a furious look.

“What is it?” said Charlie.

Julius snorted. “Oh, well, there was a boy,” he said. “He helped with the lions.”

“Really?” said Charlie, interested. “And what happened to him?”

“Major Tib had him thrown overboard,” hissed Julius.

Charlie stared. “Why?” he whispered, adopting Julius’s air of mystery.

Julius shook his head and made a zip-the-mouth gesture. Charlie looked at the shelf and its sleeping bag again, and wrinkled his nose a bit. “Bad luck isn’t contagious,” he said to himself. “Bad luck doesn’t exist. It’s all in the mind.” This is what his mum always said—though when she did, his dad tended to raise an eyebrow and say, “The mind is a very strong thing, Professor.”

Charlie decided that he wasn’t going to mind about the sleeping bag: “It’s all in the mind and I don’t mind,” he said to himself.

“You staying then?” said Julius. “Or have we scared you off?”

“No way,” said Charlie. “I’m staying.”

“Well, if you need any help, I know everything,” said Julius in such a friendly way that Charlie decided to try him out then and there. He liked the look of Julius: He liked his curly hair and his freckly nose.

“What’s a
funambuliste,
what’s a
trapeziorista volante,
and why are monkeys called Dandy Jack when they ride on ponies?” he blurted out.

“Tightrope walker, flying trapeze artist, and after Major Jack Downing, who was a very famous trainer of trick horses,” said Julius, without batting an eye. “That’s also why naughty people are called Jackanapes—an ape who thinks he’s as talented as Major Jack was.”

Charlie blinked. “Thanks,” he said.

“De nada,”
said Julius.

“What does that mean?” said Charlie.

“It’s nothing, in Spanish,” said Julius. “I mean, it means nothing, the word nothing, not that it doesn’t mean anything, though of course it doesn’t mean anything, it means something: It means nothing. Nothing is what it means. Not it doesn’t mean anything.”

“No, it means nothing. I know what you mean,” said Charlie with a straight face.

They started to giggle.

 

Although things on this boat were so interesting that it was easy to be distracted, the thought of his parents was only ever a speck away from the surface of Charlie’s mind.

He needed to check his phones and see if there were any messages. But privacy is very hard to find on a ship—especially when you’re sharing a ropelocker with two other boys—so he went out on deck into the cold night to be alone. The moon was up, like a big pearl button on a navy blue suit. Charlie shivered and pulled his jacket around him, then curled himself up in a corner by one of the smokestacks and tried first his own voicemail, then his mum’s.

There was still nothing on Mum’s. Why wasn’t anyone calling her? Probably they’re just leaving messages at home, sending her e-mails . . .

He tried his own line.

The voice leaped out at him.

“Now listen here, you disgusting little rodent. Personally I don’t know why your stupid smug stubborn parents didn’t just drown you at birth, but as you seem to exist, and as your existence is giving me grief, I just have this to say: I know where you are, I know what you’re doing, so you just stay there and I’ll be along soon to get you. All right? I’ll be along. Soon. To get you.”

And the phone banged down.

Charlie stood staring at his cell phone. He was shaking. He’d never heard such anger in anyone’s voice. He’d lived his whole life in the city, he’d seen fights and been in fights, he’d yelled and been yelled at, but no one had ever spoken to him with such—such deep nastiness.

Very quickly he pressed the delete button.

Then he cursed himself. He should have kept it for—evidence. To listen to again and learn from . . . But he knew he wouldn’t ever listen to that again.

He had heard what it said. He knew whom it was from. He didn’t need anything else.

It wasn’t that he’d thought Rafi would just let him go. He just . . .

His hand was still shaking from the violence of Rafi’s message. He’d had no idea Rafi could be like that. But he still couldn’t quite believe Rafi was involved in his parents’ disappearance—not directly. How could a kid kidnap adults? Anyway he’d been at the fountain that afternoon, relaxed and playing football—

And talking intently on the phone, and taking notice of Charlie for the first time ever . . .

So there must be other people involved too. Someone had paid Rafi to take him, Charlie, out of the way . . .

When Charlie curled up on his ropes that night, he pulled his tiger out of his bag, secretly so the other boys wouldn’t notice. Listening to Hans scratching himself on the shelf below and Julius shouting orders in his sleep on the shelf above, for a moment Charlie wished that his mum were there to say good night to him and check that he had taken his asthma medicine (he had), and that his dad could come up and look at him just as he was dropping off to sleep. He said a prayer quickly and firmly under his breath: “All gods, watch over my mum and dad and help them be safe, please please please.” His mum and dad hadn’t brought him up to be religious at all, but so many other people believed in so many different gods, and seemed to get help from them, that sometimes Charlie did join in, quietly. “All of you, whatever your name is, please, watch over them,” he whispered. Just in case.

Lying there sleepless on his shelf, he felt very unwatched over. He couldn’t get comfortable—either his mind or his body.

It occurred to him to check where the call had come from.

The number lit up turquoise in the dark. Charlie smiled grimly, and stored it. What name should he give it? He didn’t want to put just Rafi, as if Rafi were a friend of his.

Funny. He used to really want Rafi as a friend.

He stored it as Cocky Slimy Git. It was childish, but insulting Rafi made him feel a tiny bit better.

When he felt a lot better, he might give him a call. See how he’d like that.

 

No one, though, was watching over his parents—just skinny snivelly Sid. He was in a dilemma. Winner said he would punch him if he gave Aneba back his phone, and tell on him to Mr. Rafi so he would be fired and then Winner could get a partner with more than four brain cells and a vocabulary bigger than one word, because it was bad enough being hired by a sniking teenager without having to put up with a half-wit partner as well. Aneba, however, was still staring at him and muttering.

Which was scarier? A punch on the nose and being fired, or a curse from a giant African wise man?

“I’m going on deck,” said Winner. “You keep watch.” (Subs do have decks, for when they come to the surface, which is where they were now.)

“Yeah,” said Sid.

Winner’s heavy footsteps echoed down through the metal of the sub’s hull. Aneba, still lying on the bunk (there was nowhere else to go), heard them. He pulled himself to his feet, smiled to himself, and squatted down. Then he started to mutter again, in a deep, low, chanting voice:

In Twi it sounded pretty bad.

Sid heard his name. He sat there getting more and more scared. After some minutes of this Aneba leaned forward and started to sketch a big circle on the floor, muttering and staring the whole time. He went on and on. “Sid,” he repeated, often. “Sid.”

He could keep it going for hours. He didn’t have to. He looked up and in a quiet but deadly voice in English addressed the two-way mirror.

“You’re going to give me my phone now, aren’t you, Sid?”

“Yeah,” said Sid in a tiny voice, green and sweaty-faced on the other side of the mirror.

And that was how Charlie’s parents got his message, which was why his mum was crying, which was how Winner noticed what had happened, which was why he punched Sid, and took the phone off them again, and threw it overboard.

And when the marmalade cat saw that, he knew that he had to act swiftly.

 

If Charlie had expected the next day to be quiet, from the circus point of view, because of being at sea, he was very wrong. On his way to find Madame Barbue to go to breakfast, he spotted the little Italians swinging around in the rigging. He was right—they were acrobats. The father, wearing a rather worn-looking all-in-one leotard outfit, was hanging by his tremendously muscular little arms from a cross beam, swinging gently to and fro like a piece of laundry. Then suddenly he began to speed up his swinging, going higher and higher until he was flat out at the farthest extent of each swing, then higher than flat, then—If he’s not careful he’s going to go right over!, thought Charlie. And he did. Right over, holding for a moment at the top, standing on his hands as it were, and then right down the other side and then up again, and he was spinning around and around, his toes pointed, his legs straight, his hands shifting a little on each spin to allow the movement. And then—and it looked even more impressive—he started to slow down again, gradually, bit by bit, until he didn’t go over the top, until his body made a flat line again, and until once again he was hanging like a piece of laundry. Charlie couldn’t help himself. He burst into applause.

The Italian looked down, saw Charlie, and started to laugh.

“You think that’s good?” he said, and when Charlie nodded enthusiastically the Italian grinned, did a little flick or flip of some kind so quick that Charlie hardly saw it, and then he was standing on the cross beam that a moment before he had been hanging from, grinning, foot cocked, arms crossed, and saying, “Ta-dah!”

“How did you do that!” howled Charlie. He was no slouch himself when it came to hanging and swinging, but that was something else. “How did you do it?”

“It’s an old family secret,” said the Italian. “My father taught me, his father taught him. I teach my boys. You want to learn, first you join my family, then after ten years I show you. If you’re good.”

“
Could
you teach me?” said Charlie. Suddenly it seemed important—vitally important.

The acrobat jumped down from the beam—a distance of about twenty feet. He landed lightly like a cat, and fixed Charlie with an intent look.