Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again

by Frank Cottrell Boyce

  It was the voice of Tiny Jack. They spun round and stared at the door, expecting him to walk in at any second.

  The door didn’t open. The voice was coming from somewhere in the room. In fact, it was coming from Little Harry’s hand. He was holding a plastic bluebird with an aerial. Nanny’s alarm. It had an on-off switch and the words “A-Little-Bird-Told-Me Baby Monitor” written across its belly. Nanny must have left it on the breakfast table, and Little Harry had brought it with him. They could hear every word that Tiny Jack and Nanny were saying to each other. As they carried on putting Chitty Chitty Bang Bang back together, they listened. . . .

  Jem stared at Lucy in horror.

  Lucy clutched Little Harry. She thought of their parents driving round in that very car, being shot at wherever they went. She was only half listening to Tiny Jack now.

  Jem was listening fully. Tiny Jack’s lack of appreciation of her getaway-car-buying ability was making Nanny cross. . . .

  Once again Lucy and Jem stopped working. “How could Tiny Jack’s dad have known that our camper van was called Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?” said Lucy. “We only thought of the name when we fell off the Eiffel Tower.”

  “Did we think of it, though?” said Jem slowly. “Or did we hear it? Wasn’t that the noise Chitty was making? The truth is she came up with her own name.”

  Nanny and Tiny Jack were still bickering. . . .

  “The Lightning again,” muttered Jem. “They keep going on about this Lightning thing. What d’you think it is?”

  “We can’t think about that now,” said Lucy. “Any minute, Nanny is going to notice that the fish didn’t eat us.”

  “We don’t need to worry about Nanny. Or Tiny Jack,” said Jem. “Look . . .”

  There was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, completely back in one piece. Jem had even hung the little silver aeroplane from the rearview mirror as an ornament. Lucy pulled open the garage door and jumped into the van with Little Harry. Jem turned the crank handle.

  Nothing happened.

  Not a cough, not a sneeze.

  “You’ve put her together wrong. You’ve left the batteries out or something.”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Then why doesn’t it start? Stupid car.”

  “Chitty is not stupid. If she doesn’t start, there must be a reason. I just need to think. . . .”

  “Nanny’s coming now. She’ll be here any minute. . . .”

  “I need time to think.”

  “OK,” said Lucy. “Listen — Little Harry and I will go and distract her.”

  “Distract her? How can you distract a woman who . . . ?”

  They were already gone.

  Lucy and Little Harry watched from behind a palm tree as Nanny strolled over to the swimming pool. They saw her lift her red sunglasses and stare into the water with her little spidery eyes.

  “Fishieeees,” she cooed. “Anybody feed you today?”

  Cautiously she put her fingers into the water. Straightaway the water boiled as frenzied fish thrashed around her. She pulled her hand out and held it up. Blood was spurting from a red-taloned fingertip.

  “Yuck,” said Little Harry.

  The really surprising thing was that Nanny didn’t seem to mind. She didn’t yelp or try to bandage it. She just carried on chatting to the fish while blood dripped around the pool. “You haven’t been fed, have you? You haven’t eaten even one little child. Good. That’s good. Because Tiny Jack wants those children alive.”

  Lucy picked up Little Harry and strolled out of the cover of the palm trees with a big smile on her face. “Did you find Tiny Jack? Oh, what happened to your finger?”

  “There you are. What are you doing? And where is your brother?”

  “We were wondering, Nanny, if Tiny Jack would like to play a game today.”

  “I think he definitely would,” said Nanny. “How about Snakes and Ladders?”

  Remembering the board with the real snakes, Lucy shook her head. “Can’t,” she said. “Little Harry is allergic.”

  “What about “What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf?” Do you know that one? It’s one of Tiny Jack’s favourites.”

  As she said this, Lucy heard quite distinctly the lonesome howl of a hungry timber wolf from somewhere on the lower deck. “Does ‘What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf?’ involve real wolves?” she asked.

  “So much more fun that way,” said Nanny.

  Lucy had to think of a way of distracting Nanny that didn’t involve being eaten alive. “I’ve got a better idea,” she said, desperately trying to think of a game that Tiny Jack might want to play.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s called Hot and Cold. Jem goes and hides something, and you and Tiny Jack have to find it. As you go looking, you’re allowed to ask if you’re getting hotter or colder.”

  Nanny didn’t seem convinced.

  “What is Jem going to hide?”

  This was Lucy’s stroke of genius. She said, “Oh, nothing special. A thing that fell off our van. I think it’s called the Lightning.”

  We may not know what it is, thought Lucy, but we know you want it.

  Nanny looked as if an electric current had shot through her. Although she tried to speak calmly, her whole body seemed to light up with excitement.

  “Well, that sounds like a nice idea,” she said, flashing Lucy a mega-kilowatt smile. “I’ll just call Tiny Jack on his mobile and tell him to get down here.”

  “No!” said Lucy. “He’s not to move yet. You’ve got to close your eyes and count to a hundred. Tiny Jack’s got to do the same. If you peek, we can’t play. We’ll just throw the Lightning over the side. That’s the rules.”

  “Oh, don’t do that. I’ll call him and tell him.” She called Tiny Jack on her jelly-baby phone.

  “Make sure his eyes are closed,” said Lucy. “We’ll come and check.”

  “Make sure your eyes are closed. She’ll check. She means it,” said Nanny after she had explained the game to Tiny Jack. Then she covered her own red sunglasses with her long, red-nailed fingers and started to count.

  Lucy and Little Harry ran back into the house. If things went according to plan, Nanny and Tiny Jack would still be searching while the children made their getaway. As Lucy passed a big doorway, she heard a voice quietly muttering, “Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight . . .” She stopped. She listened. Tiny Jack was behind that big walnut door. Lucy was suddenly overwhelmed by the desire to see what he looked like. All she had to do was stick her head around the door. She tiptoed closer and peeked inside.

  “Forty-one, forty-two . . .”

  There was no one there. But she could hear Tiny Jack’s voice. From behind a second door. Should she walk in and look behind that, too? She shushed Little Harry and took a step forward. Then she froze.

  There was something in the outer room. A chair. A massive chair. The biggest chair Lucy had ever seen. A chair whose seat was the size of a double bed, whose legs were twelve feet high. Mounted on the wall opposite the chair was a plasma screen with a webcam. Why would anyone need a chair this big, and why would you put a camera facing it?

  Lucy realized in a flash: if you sat on a chair this big and had your photograph taken or filmed yourself, the chair would make you look tiny. Even if you weren’t. Even if you were man-size. Or bigger. In the photographs Tiny Jack’s feet came almost to the end of the cushion and his shoulders almost up to the armrests. Tiny Jack must be absolutely huge.

  “Seventy-eight, seventy-nine . . .” came the voice behind the door.

  Lucy stared at the door in terror. In twenty-one seconds’ time, this giant would come looking for her with his armies of wolves and snakes. She picked up Little Harry, but before she left, she saw one really useful thing — the other piece of the baby monitor plugged into the wall. She grabbed it and ran out through the house. On her way, she stopped to plug the speaker end of the monitor into a wall socket behind a cupboard. She took the listening end away with her.

  Wh
ile Lucy was organizing her genius distraction up on deck, Jem was doing his genius car maintenance in the garage. He began by thinking the situation through. What would Dad do? Chitty wouldn’t start. It wasn’t a mechanical problem. He had put all the parts in the right place. He’d put everything exactly as it was. Maybe the battery was dead. No, the fabulous headlights were still working. Chitty was not stupid. When she didn’t start in Paris, it was for a reason. There had to be a reason now, too. In Paris she had wanted her headlights. . . .

  Maybe she wanted something here.

  Lucy burst in, carrying Little Harry. “I think we’ve got about a minute to get out of here,” she said. “We also have another problem. Tiny Jack is not tiny.”

  “Lucy,” said Jem, “why did we go to Paris?”

  “Because Mum wanted to.”

  “I don’t think so. It was Chitty who wanted to go to Paris. Why did we go to Cairo?”

  “To see the pyramids. It was my idea.”

  “What if it wasn’t your idea? What if it was Chitty’s?”

  “Camper vans don’t have ideas.”

  “Camper vans don’t have wings. But Chitty does.”

  “So she wanted to be nice to us.”

  “I don’t think Chitty is interested in us at all. I think she’s only interested in Chitty. She landed on top of the Eiffel Tower right next to her old headlights. Why would she land in the desert?”

  “Wheels!” yelled Little Harry.

  “Shh, Little Harry, we’re trying to think,” said Lucy.

  “Wheels!”

  “Wheels?” said Jem. “Of course! Remember? Nanny found those Zborowski wheels. They must be Chitty’s original wheels. She wants her old wheels back just like she wanted her old headlights back. She won’t move until she’s got them!”

  From far away, a voice called, “Coming! Ready or not!”

  “It’s them. They’re looking for us now!” Lucy ran to the door of the garage and looked out. Nanny was heading for the house. The front door was opening. Maybe Tiny Jack was going to come out. Earlier Lucy had had an overwhelming desire to see what he looked like; now she had an even bigger desire not to see what he looked like. Her genius plan was this: she switched on her end of the baby monitor and spoke into it. “Warmer. Getting warmer, Nanny.” She quickly turned it off.

  Lucy had plugged the other end of the baby monitor into the socket behind the cupboard on the landing. Nanny now heard the voice coming from inside the house. Thinking that Lucy was in there, she rushed inside to find her. Lucy ran back to help Jem.

  In the corner of the room, Jem spotted something covered with tarpaulin. He pulled the canvas off and smiled. The wheels — the speedy-looking wheels with their dazzling spokes and Zborowski written on the hub, the wheels that Nanny had excavated in the desert.

  “Lucy, help me move these. Ten minutes and we’ll be out of here,” he said.

  Lucy turned her end of the baby monitor on again and said, “Warmer and warmer, Nanny,” into it, then hurried back to help Jem. But something was wrong. Very wrong. Jem was standing still, barely breathing, staring down at his wrist as though under some magic spell. Lucy followed his gaze. There, twitching on the back of Jem’s hand, was a fat, hairy tarantula.

  “This is the security system,” said Jem, trying not to move even his lips. “Maybe it’s not poisonous.”

  “It’s a Venezuelan flying tarantula. It’s as poisonous as they come,” said Lucy. “Stay very still and maybe it’ll think that you’re dead.”

  “Why’s it called that?” As he asked that, the tarantula seemed to screw itself up in a ball and then sprang onto his head. “Can you knock it off, maybe?”

  As Lucy very gingerly lifted her hand to brush it away, something dark and twitchy shot up and landed on her shoulder. She froze. She could see another spider climbing out from among the tyres. . . . Trying not to move her left side, she put her right hand on Little Harry’s head and pushed him away. Just in time. He fell over as another spider went arcing over his head.

  There was a spluttering noise behind them. Then a rumble. Someone had turned on Chitty’s engine. Smoke was pouring out of the exhaust.

  “Football!” shouted Little Harry, kicking a spider into the air.

  Who had started Chitty’s engine? She must have started herself. The room was filling with deadly petrol fumes from Chitty’s exhaust. Little Harry was struggling to breathe. Lucy wanted desperately to cough but was scared that if she moved, the spider would bite her. Dead.

  “Stupid car,” she muttered.

  Chitty’s not stupid though, thought Jem. She’s up to something. I just don’t know what. . . . He was desperate to cough, to breathe. His eyes were streaming; the inside of his nose was burning from the poisonous fumes. He heard something fall at his feet with a soft, pulpy splat. He looked down. The spider! If it was bad for the children to breathe in the fumes, it was even worse for the spiders. Another splat. The spider had fallen from Lucy’s shoulder, too. They were saved! Jem picked up Little Harry and put him in the van, where there was still some fresh air. He tried to turn the engine off, but Chitty was having none of it.

  “Oh, Chitty, I can’t change your wheels if I can’t breathe. You have to stop. We have to get out of here right now.”

  “Jem,” Lucy said, coughing, “Jem . . .” She could barely speak.

  “What?”

  Even through the smoke, he could see the fear and despair in her eyes.

  “What’s happened?”

  “I forgot to turn the baby monitor off. Nanny and Tiny Jack . . . they must have heard everything. They know what we’re up to.”

  Suddenly the smoky room filled with light. Someone had opened the garage door, letting the light in and the smoke out. They could hear the someone coughing. They could see a giant wobbling shadow looming in the smoke.

  “The wheels,” hissed Jem. “Throw them in the back.”

  Gasping for breath, they rolled the wheels over to Chitty and hurled them into the back of the van. Jem jumped into the driving seat. “Chitty,” he said, “I know you’re a camper van, but I think you understand us. We can’t fit the wheels right now, but we have got them. I promise, we’ll fit them as soon as we are . . .” The smoke had thinned now. He could see someone standing right in front of him. “As soon as we are safe.”

  “Found you!” said the figure in front of the van. It was Nanny. She smiled and lifted her sunglasses. “Tiny Jack is very, very upset. But I’m sure I can cheer him up.” She held out a hand. “Give me the Lightning. I can’t wait to see his smile when he sees it.”

  Jem and Lucy wound the windows down and gulped in the fresh air. They had barely taken one lungful when Nanny was standing beside Lucy’s door. Quickly Lucy wound up the window and made sure the door was locked.

  “Put the car back, and Nanny will make it all better,” said Nanny through the glass.

  “There’s one thing you don’t know about our car,” yelled Jem. “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang can fly!”

  “What a lovely coincidence,” chirped Nanny.

  “What does she mean?” said Jem. Then outside, beyond the door, he noticed something strange about the palm trees. They were thrashing around in an insane dance, their branches whipping about like mad hairdos, their trunks bending over as though an invisible hand was pressing down on them.

  “What’s that?”

  “Helicopter!” yelled Little Harry.

  He was right. A sharp-nosed blue-and-yellow helicopter, its tail raised high behind it like a scorpion’s, shot into the sky in front of them, hovering there like a terrible hornet.

  “There’s something funny about that helicopter,” said Lucy. “It’s all kind of squarey on the edges.”

  “It’s made of LEGOs,” said Jem. “That must be Tiny Jack. . . .”

  The helicopter came plunging down toward them, its rotor blades battering the air like raging swords.

  Jem drove quickly forward, shooting right out of the garage, under the helicopt
er, heading for the edge of the deck.

  Chitty went faster and faster toward the barrier. The blades of Tiny Jack’s evil helicopter spun in a blur. Chunks of LEGO came thudding down on top of the van, exploding into cascades of blue and yellow bricks.

  “Look out!” yelled Lucy. “We’re being blitzed with LEGO bombs.”

  Nothing could stop Chitty. She was powering toward the metal fence that was all that stood between them and the ocean.

  “It’s not me. It’s Chitty!” shouted Jem. “We have to trust Chitty. She’ll save us. She’ll fly us out of here.”

  Lucy gripped her seat. They really were a long way up, and underneath them was the shark-infested ocean.

  Jem’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. In the rearview mirror, he could see the helicopter right on his tail. It was getting so close, he could make out the outlines of the individual bricks. Even as adrenaline flooded his veins, Jem found himself thinking, You have to admire Tiny Jack, building a LEGO helicopter that can really fly.

  Chitty smashed through the handrail and shot into the air.

  There was a whistling noise and then an almighty splash and a jolt as the van hit the water in a blaze of foam and bubbles.

  This time, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang had not taken off into the wild blue yonder.

  She was sinking like a stone into the cold blue sea.

  The sea into which Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was sinking was the Arabian Sea. It’s famous for its clear waters, its turtles and tuna, and for its stunning coral reefs, which are thronged with brilliantly coloured clown fish, triggerfish, angelfish, lionfish, sea anemones, sea urchins, and dugongs.

  Jem and Lucy and Little Harry didn’t see any of these things. All they saw was a storm of bubbles whirling past their windows as they plunged down, down, down toward the unlit, lifeless deep.