Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again

by Frank Cottrell Boyce

  “Well,” said Dad, “would anyone like a larger-than-average jelly baby? They’re in the shape of our family. Look . . . I’m the raspberry one.”

  “Not just now,” said Mum. “Just now we want to know how we are going to get down. Alive.”

  “Well, if you remember, when she went over the cliff in Dover, the wings just opened. I think the wings are probably some kind of emergency device, so all we have to do is create an emergency.”

  “Found them! Found them!” yelled Little Harry.

  No one took any notice.

  “You mean,” said Lucy, “all we have to do is go off a cliff or fall off the top of the Eiffel Tower?”

  “That’s right,” said Dad. “Anyone want to come with me? Or shall I go on my own?”

  “Found them!” yelled Little Harry again.

  “No!” said Mum. “No one is going to do that. Jump off the tower? No.” She let go of the girder and put her arms around all three children. “I’d rather pay the parking fine.”

  “I think it’s just a matter of having a bit of faith in Sneezy,” said Dad.

  “No one on Earth would put their faith in something called Sneezy,” said Lucy. “Or Scamper,” she added before Mum got the chance.

  “I don’t want any of you to take any risks,” said Dad. “That’s why I’m going to do this myself. I’m going to drive Sneezy off the roof, and if she flies, I’ll be back.”

  “No, Tom, that can’t be right,” said Mum. But Dad was already pushing through the wind, toward the van. “Tom, come back!”

  “At least leave us the jelly babies,” said Lucy. “They’ll be no good to you if you plummet to your doom.”

  Dad was at the van. He put the family of larger-than-average jelly babies on the passenger seat. He braced himself to go around the front to crank the starter . . .

  He distinctly heard the parp of a car horn.

  There couldn’t be another car up here, could there? He looked around. He couldn’t see one.

  The parp sounded again. It seemed to come from somewhere in the cab. He looked around and saw that the raspberry larger-than-average jelly baby was glowing. The car horn sound was a mobile-phone ringtone. The jelly babies weren’t sweets at all. They were mobile phones. “Hello?” said Dad, picking it up.

  “Hello. Mr. Tooting?”

  “Yes. Who’s that?”

  “Mr. Tooting, what’s your favourite-ever car?”

  “Me? I don’t know. Maybe the Aston Martin DB5. Who is this?”

  “So . . . not a camper van from the 1960s, then?”

  “Well, I like this van, but . . . Who is this?”

  “Who am I? I’m your stroke of luck, Mr. Tooting, because tonight I’m ringing to offer you a shiny little Aston Martin DB5 just for you.”

  “What?”

  “In exchange for your heap of rust.”

  “Really?”

  “Best of all, Mr. Tooting, I will collect. I will come over and take the camper van off your hands. You don’t need to worry about how to get it down off the Eiffel Tower. I, Tiny Jack, will do it for you. How does that sound?”

  “That sounds very nice, thank you, er, Mr. Jack . . .” said Dad.

  “But?”

  “It’s a kind offer, a very kind offer. I’d love to accept it, really. But there are five of us and a lot of luggage. We wouldn’t fit in a little sports car. We need a camper van.”

  “OK. I’ll get you a new camper van.”

  “We like this one.”

  “Let me get this clear. I’m offering you your pick of the most elegant, stylish, enviable cars in the world, and you won’t swap it for your ridiculous rustbucket?”

  “Sneezy may be just a pile of rust to you, Mr. Whatever Your Name Is. But we are proud of her. We rebuilt her. We painted and polished her. Now, look, the whole of Paris is watching her. We’re proud of her, and we’re proud of ourselves.”

  “Sneezy? What’s Sneezy?”

  “It’s the name of this vehicle.”

  The voice of Monsieur Roué came booming through a loudspeaker. “Monsieur Tooting, what is happening? Paris is waiting. We can hear you. Ernestine has a long-range microphone.”

  Before Dad could answer, Tiny Jack snapped, “I’ve just offered this fool anything. Anything he wants in exchange for his rusty old van.”

  “Monsieur Tooting, will you take that offer?”

  Dad looked around him. At the lights of Paris. At Mum waving cheerily at him. At the children standing there expectantly. At the beautiful interior of the van he and Jem had refurbished. “The thing is,” he said, “I already have everything I want.” Then, bracing himself again, he went round to the front of the van. He heard Ernestine say with a sigh, “Beautiful. Car Stupide loves the Tooting family. Paris loves the Tooting family.”

  Proudly Dad turned the crank handle as hard as he could. Turned it once. Turned it twice . . . Nothing.

  The engine didn’t roar.

  Didn’t even cough.

  Didn’t so much as splutter.

  Or sneeze.

  Most of all, it didn’t start.

  He tried again, turning it harder than ever this time.

  Nothing.

  Again.

  Nothing. Then there was a beep.

  It was a different jelly baby. The lime one. When Dad picked it up, a little screen flickered into life in its stomach. On the screen Dad could see a man sitting on a chair. A man whose legs barely came to the edge of the chair’s cushion and whose hands didn’t reach the seat’s arms.

  “Tiny Jack?” said Dad slowly. “You really are tiny, aren’t you?”

  “You just said you were proud of the van and proud of yourselves. Ha! Still proud now that it doesn’t even start?”

  “Well, you know, it’s cold up here and damp. The engine is nearly a hundred years old.”

  “I know how old that engine is! Don’t try to tell me about that engine!” Tiny Jack began howling and crying and pulling his hair. “Give me your van now. I want it now! NOW! NOW! NOWWWWWWWWWW!”

  “Tiny Jack,” said Dad, “do you know what we do in our house when people behave badly? We ignore them.” With that he dropped the phone out of the window.

  Straightaway the phone started to ring again. “Answer me!” it yelled. “Don’t ignore me! It’s not fair!” It buzzed around on the roof of the tower like a big angry cockroach.

  Dad didn’t answer the phone. He had something more interesting to do.

  When Jem had realized how important it was to listen to the engine, he had started listening to people, too. Jem remembered that when they first arrived back on the roof, Little Harry kept shouting, “Found them! Found them!” They all ignored him then, thinking it was just some baby nonsense. Jem decided to listen to his little brother. So when Little Harry said, “There they are!” Jem looked to where Little Harry was pointing. There were two big brass lamps fitted to the girders of the Eiffel Tower. They were directed upward, lighting a sign advertising motor oil. With Dad busy in the van, Jem edged nearer to the lamps, holding on to the wires and struts of the tower. He looked closely at the lights. They were brass car headlights — big, old-fashioned, with a slot in the back where they were fitted to the sign. When Jem looked closer, he gasped. For there, engraved on the brass fittings in lovely curvy writing, just like the writing on the plaque on the engine, was that name again — Zborowski. These were no ordinary headlights. These were the lamps that went with the engine.

  Carefully Jem tugged at them. They lifted smoothly off the metal girders, and it was easy to unplug the wires at the back. Jem picked one up — it was warm and very heavy — but he managed to carry it over to the van, open the door, and show it to Dad.

  “Zborowski,” he said.

  Dad looked at Jem. Then he nodded. “Let’s give it a go.”

  So Dad and Jem slotted the lights into the brackets on each side of the radiator.

  They looked completely at home there because they were at home there. The front of the van
looked more like a face than ever now that those big, round eye-shaped headlamps were in place.

  “The word today,” said Dad, “is Let’s hope she starts now that she’s got her old headlights back.”

  “That’s actually twelve words,” said Jem.

  Dad didn’t even have to turn the crank handle. He had barely fitted it into the slot when the engine roared like a happy elephant. The headlights flashed on and off three times very fast, as though the car was blinking or trying her new eyes for size.

  When Dad clambered into the driving seat, Jem naturally tried to follow him. “Oh, no, you don’t,” said Dad, shutting the door in his face.

  “But, Dad . . .” called Jem.

  “If I’m going to drive over a thousand-foot drop, I’m going to do it by myself. I’m not taking anyone with me.” He revved the engine, slipped the brakes, put it in gear, and — as Jem stood and watched him — drove the van off the top of the Eiffel Tower.

  “Dad!” yelled Jem.

  “Tom!” screamed Mum.

  “Fly!” burbled Little Harry.

  Then there was silence.

  The lights twinkled.

  The wind blew.

  Jem looked back at Mum. She was still holding tight to Little Harry and to Lucy.

  Then . . .

  Boom!

  There was another rush of wind — but an oily, warm wind this time as, wings and all, the van went soaring up over Jem’s head and flew once round the aerial of the Eiffel Tower. The cheering down below was so loud that Jem could hear it a thousand feet away.

  After flying once round the tower, Dad brought the van in to land. “Jump in, everyone,” he said. “She’s running better than ever.”

  Everyone climbed in. The engine sounded just as powerful as before, but smoother, less sneezy, as though it was happier. As the van launched itself into the air, its nose swung from side to side, sweeping the night with her dear old headlights.

  “Sneezy’s showing off!” said Dad.

  “It doesn’t even sound like a sneeze now,” said Lucy. This was true. The engine made a busy, metal noise and then a couple of sharp little explosions, which everyone knew was the pistons firing with beautiful regularity.

  “It’s more of a chitty chitty sound,” said Jem.

  “Bang! Bang!” yelled Little Harry, as the van drew a big, graceful spiral round the Eiffel Tower.

  “Chitty Chitty.”

  “Bang Bang.”

  “Now, that,” said Lucy, “is a good name.”

  Jem looked down at the strings and knots and clusters of light spreading out below. They were not flying as high as a plane — so high that all you could see were clouds. They were flying just a bit higher than the tallest building imaginable. He could easily see the woodlands and motorways, the fields and the hypermarkets, the boating lakes and big car parks, the spires and the schools. He felt like a bird. He thought of all the people down there — the families watching TV, the children reading in bed, the people out walking their dogs, or on their way home from work at the end of a long day, or trudging out to work at the beginning of a night shift. Thousands of people. Thousands of different lives, and none of them knew that the Tooting family was skimming high above their heads.

  “We are now flying over Orléans,” said Lucy, who had a map feature called YouFinder on her mobile phone.

  “All we have to do is head south,” said Dad, “then turn left at Africa, and we can’t miss Cairo. Just look at this, everyone.” Through the windscreen, they could see the two cones of orange light made by the headlamps. At Limoges the children pulled the curtains and went to bed.

  By the time YouFinder pointed out Lyon, Mum was sleeping, too, and Dad, at the wheel, was the only one awake. By Marseille he was feeling sleepy himself. He yawned. Dawn was breaking on the horizon.

  “Dad,” said Jem from his bunk. “Can I drive?”

  “Of course not. You have to be seventeen to drive.”

  “That’s on roads. This is in the air.”

  “That only makes it worse. What if we crashed?”

  “Why would I crash? I more or less built this van. I know exactly how it works.”

  “I said no. Now please wake your mother.”

  Jem tugged the floral curtains open just above Mum’s bed. She stretched and said, “Oh!” because there is something especially cosy about pulling open the floral curtains in your camper van and finding the Mediterranean Sea shining hundreds of feet below you and seabirds twirling all around you. Especially if the kettle has just boiled.

  Everything was peaceful and bright. Lucy woke up and rummaged around for her pot of black paint. It was time to give her corner another coat.

  “Can I open the window?” asked Jem as they flew over a ferryboat.

  “Of course,” said Mum.

  Jem leaned out and waved. The passengers on deck waved back. The captain gave them a toot on the horn. Unfortunately, ferry horns use steam from the engines, so Jem was quickly covered in soot and grime.

  He was still getting the soot out of his eyes when the rest of the family started screaming.

  “Where did they come from?”

  “They’re coming toward us!”

  “What is that?”

  “Make it stop!”

  “Go higher, go higher! We’re going to crash!”

  “Reverse! Reverse!”

  Jem looked up just in time to see a wall of rock and snow rushing toward them. “Is that a mountain?” he said.

  “You are now in,” said YouFinder, “the Atlas Mountains.”

  “No one mentioned the Atlas Mountains to me,” said Mum, who was driving now. “This is supposed to be Africa. I thought it was going to be sunshine and giraffes, not rocks and snow.”

  “The Atlas Mountains, current height — four thousand one hundred and seventy metres,” said YouFinder, and added helpfully, “Your current height — one hundred and seventy metres. Thank you for your time.”

  “Go higher!” yelled Dad. “Go a lot higher.”

  “Chitty Chitty High High!” Little Harry laughed.

  “We can’t go that high!” said Mum calmly. “I’ll turn back.” She pulled really hard on the wheel. As soon as Chitty turned side on, the whole camper van rolled over completely, sending cups and books and bedding everywhere. Mum was trying to drive with a duvet on her head. When she managed to peep out from under it, the mountains were still heading toward them.

  “The problem we have here,” said Lucy, “is wind turbulence. You see, the wind comes over the mountains, and a combination of air-pressure fluctuation and temperature gradient sucks it downward. It’s like a river of wind flowing down the mountain. It’s called a downdraught.”

  “Just give me the headlines,” said Mum, still tugging at Chitty’s steering wheel.

  “OK, to put it in two words,” said Lucy, “we’re doomed.”

  “Can’t we just turn back?” said Dad.

  “I’m trying. You try. It’s as if the van just doesn’t want to —” They swapped seats.

  “There!” yelled Jem. “Over there! Look!”

  There was a valley. Over to the left and down below them. A narrow valley. But definitely a valley.

  “If we could get to that, then maybe we could get through without going higher . . .”

  Dad tried to turn Chitty left, but once again, as soon as she was side on to the wind, she rolled right over and caused another Mug-and-Duvet Avalanche. He tried again to turn toward the valley, but as soon as he pulled the steering wheel, Chitty’s engine snarled, as if she was telling him not to.

  “Just nudge her a bit,” said Jem. “You have to listen to her.”

  Dad did as Jem suggested, and Chitty moved just a tiny bit nearer to the valley, then floated for a while, her wings fluttering. She was shuddering but not moving much — like a kite in a high wind. Dad nudged her again, and she purred again. And again. And again. Inch by inch they got nearer to the valley without losing any more height. It seemed to Jem
that every time they gained an inch, Chitty’s engine purred a little louder, as though she was telling them how pleased she was. Then she coughed, an annoyed, pointed kind of cough.

  “Something’s wrong,” said Jem. “She sounds like she did before she got her headlamps back.”

  “Headlamps wouldn’t affect the engine,” said Dad.

  Jem could still hear the coughing and the spluttering.

  “I’m not sure if anyone is interested in indicators and gauges and so on,” said Lucy, “but I’m fairly sure that red light there means we have no petrol. As I believe I mentioned earlier, we are doomed.”

  As she said this, Chitty made one last shift to the left, and finally she was facing the entrance to the valley. As though a switch had been flicked, the wind stopped, and the van dropped like a stone through the freezing air, plunging toward the jagged rocks below.

  The Tooting family didn’t fall as fast as the van. They lay with their backs on the ceiling, their heads pinned to the roof, their stomachs still somewhere thirty metres above them, watching the cliffs and boulders stream past outside the window when suddenly . . .

  They were hurtling through the valley as though they had been shot out of a catapult.

  What happened?

  Lucy explained. “The valley — actually a pass between two of the highest points in the Atlas range — slopes steeply from north to south and forms a kind of corridor linking the mild air of the seaside with the hot air of the Sahara Desert on the other side. The resulting pressure gradient sucks air from north to south, just as at the summit, the temperature gradient was pushing air from south to north. At the summit, there was a downdraught. In the valley, there’s an updraught. Chitty has got caught in the updraught — a current of air that is more or less rushing the van from the mountains to the desert. You see, what happens often is —”

  “Lucy,” said Dad, “how do you know so much about meteorology?”

  “What do you think I was doing in my bedroom all these years?”

  “You did say you were studying French. But I thought you were mostly sulking and staring out the window.”