Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again

by Frank Cottrell Boyce

  Most cars are just cars. Four wheels. An engine. Some seats. They take you to work. Or to school. They bring you home again. But some cars — just a few — are more than cars.

  Some cars are different.

  Some cars are amazing.

  And the Tooting family’s car was absolutely definitely not one of those.

  Not amazing.

  Not different.

  It was so undifferent and so unamazing, in fact, that on the last day of the summer term when Lucy and Jem strolled out of the school gates and into the holidays, they walked straight past it. They didn’t even notice it was there until their father popped his head out of the window and shouted, “Lucy! Jem! Jump in! I’m giving you a lift!”

  “I don’t need a lift,” said Lucy, who was fifteen years old. “I need to be alone.” Lucy always dressed completely in black, ever since last Christmas.

  “Why aren’t you at work?” asked Jem.

  “Special occasion,” said Dad. “I have Big News.”

  “Good Big News? Or Bad Big News?” said Jem, who was a bit of a worrier.

  “All Big News is tragic,” said Lucy sadly. “Nothing good is ever news.”

  “Wait and see,” said Dad. “First we’ll collect Little Harry from the child-minder.”

  Little Harry hated being strapped into his car seat. As he struggled to get free, Jem said, “You have to be clipped in, in case we crash.”

  “I lost my dinosaur,” said Little Harry.

  “Are you going to tell us the Big Bad News now?” asked Lucy.

  “It’s not bad news. First we’ll collect Mum from the shop.”

  “You don’t usually collect me from the shop,” said Mum as she climbed into the front seat. “Has something terrible happened?”

  “Tragic news,” said Lucy.

  “What tragic news?”

  “Not tragic news,” said Dad. “Big News. Excellent Big News.”

  “Well, what is it?”

  “I lost my dinosaur,” said Little Harry.

  “Oh, no,” said Mum. “Not the lovely red remote-control one that Santa brought you?”

  “Can we stop talking about the dinosaur and talk about my news, please?” said Dad.

  “What news?”

  “Well . . .” said Dad, “I think we’re going to need takeaway to help us celebrate.”

  They got the Celebration Banquet for Four with an extra portion of chicken in black bean sauce for Lucy — who liked to eat black food whenever she could. When it was all set out on the table, the lovely spicy smells curling into the air around them, Dad finally told them the excellent Big News.

  “Children,” he said, “and, wife — my Excellent Big News is that”— he looked around the table, enjoying their expectant faces —“I never have to work again! What do you think of that!?”

  “Wow!” said Little Harry.

  “Brilliant!” said Jem.

  “That was unexpected,” said Lucy.

  “How come?” said Mum.

  “Because,” said Dad, “I have been sacked! Hooray!”

  “Hooray!” yelled Little Harry.

  “Hooray!” re-yelled Dad.

  “I’m pleased that you’re pleased,” said Mum, “but are you sure it’s entirely excellent news?”

  “If you have no job,” said Jem, “doesn’t that mean we’ll be really poor and starve to death?”

  “No,” said Dad. “It means we’ll be able to do whatever we want and go wherever we like. The word today,” he said, “is opportunity.”

  “I want my dinosaur back!” yelled Little Harry.

  Dad explained the details. “Since the day I left school,” he said, “I have worked in a factory making tiny, tiny parts for really big machines. But now the company has a new contract making even tinier parts for even bigger machines. My fingers are just too big for the job. So they said they had to let me go.”

  “Go where?” said Jem.

  “Go anywhere we like,” said Dad.

  “When you say anywhere,” said Jem, “does that include abroad?” No one in the Tooting family had ever been abroad before.

  “Anywhere,” said Dad, “means anywhere in the world.” He smiled at Mum. “And, dearest, you get first pick.”

  Mum blushed a little and said, “Well, you always promised to take me to Paris.”

  “Paris,” he said, “is yours. The moment we are packed. Lucy?”

  “Me?” said Lucy. “I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to spend my days in my room, now that I’ve finally got it the way I like it.” Lucy had got rid of all the ornaments and dancing certificates from her room, painted the walls and her bookcase black. Dyed her duvet. And her pillow slip.

  “You must want to go somewhere?”

  “I suppose I wouldn’t mind seeing the pyramids. I could sit in the desert looking at the Sphinx and think about dead pharaohs, with their gold and jewels, lying there in the desert night. Dead, dead, dead.”

  “I can see we’re going to need to plan our route,” said Dad. “Go and get that map of the world from your bedroom wall.”

  “The map of the world isn’t on my bedroom wall anymore,” said Lucy. “The colours were too bright — yellow and blue and pink. Pastel colours depress me.”

  “But I’ve had that map since I was a little boy. I won it for being punctual. It says so on the back. What have you done with it?”

  “I stuck it up on Jem’s wall.”

  “Jem —”

  “It was completely out-of-date. There were countries on there that were shut down years ago and new countries that weren’t even mentioned. Instead of France, it had something called Gaul.”

  “It was supposed to be a historical map.”

  “That’s what I said, out-of-date. I put it in the recycling.”

  “What? Do you know how often I had to be punctual to win that prize?”

  “Why would you want an out-of-date map when there’s really good satnav in the car? A map like that could be dangerous.”

  “Dangerous? How?”

  “If you tried to use it, you would get lost. People get lost all the time. Cities get lost, even.”

  “What cities get lost?” said Lucy.

  “El Dorado. Camelot. Troy. Xanadu. Atlantis. They were all big cities once, and now no one knows where they are. They got lost. I bet it was because of out-of-date maps.”

  “Maps go out-of-date,” said Dad, “because countries change. And people can go out-of-date because their fingers are too big for the machines. That doesn’t mean they should be put in a bin. Just because something’s out-of-date doesn’t mean it’s of no use.”

  “Dad, I was talking about maps, not fingers,” said Jem. “I didn’t mean —”

  “And it’s all fine, anyway,” said Mum, “because I took the map out of the recycling again. Here it is. . . .” She spread it out on the table and touched the back of Dad’s hand. “I’ve always been very proud of your father’s punctuality,” she said. “It’s one of his most attractive qualities, along with his boyish smile.” Dad smiled his boyish smile. “Now, Jem, you said you wanted to go to El Dorado. Show your dad where it is on the map.”

  “I don’t know where it is on the map. That’s the point. It’s lost. I was making a point about how easy it is to get lost. If a big city can get lost, a small person can get lost.”

  “It’s somewhere around here,” said Dad, pointing to South America.

  “Well, then,” said Mum, “we’ll stop and ask when we get to the general area. The locals are bound to know. Little Harry, what about you?”

  “Dinosaurs!” yelled Little Harry.

  “We’ll try our best,” said Dad. “So . . . w
hat have we got? Paris for Mum, Cairo for Lucy, El Dorado for Jem —”

  “I really don’t want to go to El Dorado,” said Jem.

  “And last of all, the North Pole for me.”

  “That’s the South Pole,” said Jem. “You’ve got the map upside down. See what I mean about how easy it is to get lost?”

  “Can you really drive to the North Pole in a car?” said Lucy. “Wouldn’t you be overwhelmed by blizzards and buried in avalanches and left untouched and frozen in the snow for hundreds of years, like fish fingers? Dead, dead, dead.”

  “No,” said Jem. “Because our car’s got four-wheel drive and a super de-icer. And satnav. It can go anywhere in the whole world and never get stuck and never get lost.”

  That’s when the doorbell rang.

  At the door was a nice young man in a blazer with a plastic identity card clipped to his lapel. “Hello,” said Dad, reading the badge, “Bernard.”

  “Good evening, Mr. Tooting.” Bernard smiled. “I work for Very Small Parts for Very Big Machines.”

  “Oh!” said Dad. “So do I!”

  “Not anymore you don’t.” Bernard smiled again.

  “Oh, yes, I forgot.”

  “Perhaps you also forgot that this car — with its satnav, four-wheel drive, and super de-icer — belongs to the company?”

  “Oh,” said Dad. “I did forget that. Yes.”

  “Keys, please.” Still smiling, Bernard put his hand out, and Dad gave him the car keys. Bernard drove away in the car. Mum put her hand gently on Dad’s shoulder. “Never mind,” she said.

  “I’ve got no job.”

  “We’ll manage,” said Mum.

  “I’ve got big fingers.”

  “I like your fingers.”

  “I’ve got no car,” said Dad.

  “We’ll walk,” said Mum.

  “Not to Paris.”

  “No.”

  “Not to Cairo.”

  “No.”

  “Not to El Dorado or the North Pole. We’ll never go to any of those places. We’ll never go anywhere.”

  He stood and watched until the car had disappeared around the corner.

  “The word today,” he said, “is stuck.”

  Mum went back to the supper table.

  “When your father comes back,” she said, “he may well be very unhappy.”

  “Why?” asked Jem.

  “Because he’s got no job, no car, and no prospects,” said Lucy.

  “I wouldn’t say ‘no prospects,’” said Mum.

  “He’s much too old to get another job.”

  “I lost my dinosaur,” said Little Harry.

  But when Dad came back to the table, he said, “Pass me a prawn cracker, Jem,” and leaned back in his chair with a big smile on his face. “I am so glad,” he said, “that that car has finally gone. I never wanted to travel the world. Now I’ll be able to concentrate on my plans for this house.”

  “You’ve got plans for the house?” asked Mum. “What sort of plans?”

  “The word today,” said Dad, “is home improvement.”

  “That’s actually two words,” said Lucy.

  “Not if you say it really fast,” said Dad. “Homeimprovement. See?”

  There was a terrible, bloodcurdling scream, a scream that rattled windows seven streets away.

  When Lucy woke up on that first day of the summer holidays, she was confronted with her worst nightmare. While she was sleeping, someone had somehow covered her black walls with jolly blue wallpaper with daisies on it.

  “My eyes!” shrieked Lucy. “The wallpaper is blinding me!” She covered her face with her hands and, peeping out through her fingers, saw Dad up a ladder hanging a strip of the blue daisy wallpaper.

  “What do you think?” he asked. “Thought I’d brighten the place up a bit. Your room was so gloomy.”

  “I like gloomy,” said Lucy. “Gloomy is the point. I worked hard on gloomy. I painted it with three coats of gloomy paint. And what is that terrible smell?”

  A little cloud of thick black smoke was curling from a hot, bubbling hole in the top of her skull-shaped reading lamp. “My skull,” she shrieked. “My skull is melting!” The lamp was charred and twisted and slumped to one side.

  “The light seemed a bit dim, so I put a more powerful bulb in it. Maybe a bit too powerful.”

  “I’m being poisoned by my own bedside lamp!”

  From the next room came a cry of “Help! Help! Help me!”

  “Oh,” said Dad. “Sounds like Jem’s awake.”

  “It sounds like Jem’s in mortal danger.”

  “I think he’s just really surprised at what I’ve done to his room.”

  Jem had been woken up by a strange electric whining. When he opened his eyes, a small blue object whizzed right past his face. He barely had a chance to blink when a small red object rattled past even closer. He just had time to see that the objects were car-shaped. Tiny cars were flying round his room, skimming by his face, like angry insects.

  “Help!” he yelled, sliding under the duvet. “Help!” He didn’t shout anything more specific because he couldn’t figure out what kind of help a person should ask for if attacked by tiny cars — presumably driven by tiny men.

  The explanation was simple enough. When Dad was ten years old, he had woken up on his birthday to find that his dad had assembled an amazing Scalextric track in the bedroom he shared with his brother. It was one of the happiest memories of his life: a plastic racetrack, two racing cars — one blue and one red — and a little man with a chequered flag, all set up and ready to go. They spent the whole day racing each other round and round that track. For years afterward they used pocket money to get extra track, and the round circuit grew into a spaghetti of twists, turns, chicanes, and flyovers. They grew out of it, but Dad could never bear to give it away or throw it out, so it had ended up in the loft. He always meant to get it down and fix it up so that Jem could play with it. Now that he’d been sacked, he finally had the time to get the pieces down, make sure the wheels were oiled and the wires were snug, sneak into Jem’s room, and snap together a racecourse that whirled around the table legs, soared over his bed, swung in and out of the windowsill, and filled the room with speed and the smell of hot metal.

  “What do you think?” asked Dad, sticking his head round the door.

  “What’s it for?”

  “We can race against each other.”

  “Haven’t you heard of computers? We can race against each other on a range of platforms in any format we like. We can race as elephants, rockets, chariots — not red and blue plastic cars. And you don’t have to tidy up afterward, and it’s not dangerous. That’s why people like to play on their computers and why they put this stuff in the dump.”

  “How is this dangerous?”

  “Electric wires, bits of plastic flying around the room at speed. Of course it’s dangerous. . . .” Just as he said that, the blue car missed the turn, shot off the end of the track, tumbled through the air, and whacked Dad in the middle of his forehead. For a second, it looked like he was going to fall over. Then, “That’s all part of the fun of it!” He smiled and wiped the blood away. “The word today is fun.”

  Little Harry had a dream about dinosaurs. It wasn’t a nightmare. He loved dinosaurs, and in the dream they were picking him up and throwing him to each other, slapping him into the air with their tails, and bouncing him off their horns, and all the time he was laughing and gurgling.

  When he woke up, Dad was sitting on the end of his bed.

  “I know what you’re going to say, Little Harry,” he said. “You say the same thing every morning. Every morning you say, ‘Play with me.’ Every morning I say I can’t because I’m going to work. But this morning is different. Go on, say, ‘Play with me.’”

  “Dinosaur!” said Little Harry.

  “No, like this . . . Play with me.”

  “Please dinosaur.”

  “Play. With. Me . . .” The moment Dad said this,
there was a strange whirring from the toy box at the end of Little Harry’s bed. The whirring was followed by a clicking.

  “You’re always asking people to play with you,” Dad explained, “when they’re too busy. So I’ve used some of the skills and expertise I learned in the twenty years I worked without complaint and never once being late at Very Small Parts for Very Big Machines. I have used those skills so that instead of playing with toys like other children, you will have toys that play with you!”

  Little Harry was staring at the toy box. His eyes were growing wider and wider.

  “Voice-activated,” said Dad. “From now on, whenever you say ‘Play with me,’ your toys will just get up and play with you. . . .”

  Harry’s eyes were now so round they looked as though they were going to fall out of his face. A dozen Playmobil men clambered out of the box and marched toward his bed, their plastic arms held out in front of them like tiny primary-colour zombies. They were followed by some wooden knights brandishing sharp little wooden lances, and a family of grinning yellow ducks that rocked themselves bit by bit across the carpet. Toy cars whizzed toward him from every dusty corner of the room.

  Little Harry saw this brightly coloured army of toys coming toward him, and he cried like a baby. He was a baby.

  A large snake made of red and blue felt reared up from behind the washing basket and flung itself onto the bed. A massive fuzzy blue giraffe stood up, steadied itself, and began to goose-step jerkily toward him.

  “They all want to play,” said Dad. “You want to play, and they want to play. It’s the ideal arrangement.”

  The pterodactyl mobile that hung from Little Harry’s lampshade spun faster and faster until the tiny pterodactyls broke free and came buzzing round his head like Jurassic fighter planes. Desperately, Little Harry tried to bat them away.

  “Don’t worry — they won’t hurt you.” Dad smiled. “I fitted little sensors to the front so that they don’t bump into you. I’m particularly proud of those. Well, you have fun. I’m going to go and make some tea.”

  Dad strolled out of the room, but when Little Harry tried to follow him, the big blue-and-red snake wrapped its fluffy coils around his middle and began to squeeze. Little Harry screamed louder than ever, though his screams were muffled slightly by the massive giraffe, which was now head-butting him, softly and repeatedly. He was still there being cuddled by the snake and head-butted by the giraffe when Lucy came into his room to look for a paintbrush.