Fizzlebert Stump

by A. F. Harrold

  Fizzlebert was caught in something of a pickle. He didn’t know what to do for the best.

  Wiping away his tiny tears he grudgingly began down the road toward the trees, through which the path led back to the park. There wasn’t a lot else he could do.

  But as he started off a voice behind him called, ‘Little boy, do wait a moment, won’t you?’

  He turned round and there was a little old lady stood outside the library waving at him. Beside her was a gentleman he assumed was her husband. They were both very short, not much taller than he was.

  The old woman walked towards him.

  ‘We couldn’t help but overhear what you were saying to the lady in there,’ (she gestured behind her towards the library) ‘and we wondered if we might be able to help. You did look sad.’

  And it’s there that this chapter stops.

  Who are these old people? How might they be able to help? What will Fizz do next?

  These questions are the sort of things an author dangles at the end of a chapter in the hope that they will make you want to read the next one, in order to find out the answers. It’s an old trick.

  I do hope it still works.

  Chapter Five

  in which two old people are met and in which a kindly favour is done

  So, you’ve come back? That’s good. This is one of the more dramatic chapters in the book. It’s quite a good one. I think you’ll like it.

  If you remember Fizz was outside the library after having just found out that he couldn’t join up (and borrow brilliant books) unless he came back with his parents. And he couldn’t ask his parents to sign him up because he hadn’t told them he was going to the library. So he had just resigned himself to a future leading a library-less life.

  However, as he was about to walk away an old lady called out to him and offered to help. This is where we pick up the story.

  ‘Little boy,’ the old lady said, ‘Arthur and me, we can’t bear to see such a little angel as you, you poor little thing, wander away unhappy. You look so down, so sad, so lost. Might we be able to help, do a good deed for you?’

  Fizzlebert wondered what she meant.

  She looked about the same age as his grandmother. (In case you were wondering, his gran had retired from circus life and now lived in a caravan park by the seaside (which is why she’s not in this book).) This old lady had a back curved a bit like an upside down L (or a right way up 7), and if she were straightened out she’d have been much taller than Fizz was. As things were she was about the same height. Her face was wrinkly at the edges and her mouth was small and puckered and painted pink. Her eyes stared out from the middle of carefully applied green smudges and her cheeks were soft and red and fuzzy like peach skins. Sprigs of blue hair poked out from underneath a little hat shaped like a round chocolate box. It was a shade of purple which clashed horribly with her hair and face. Her coat and shoes were the same colour. She squinted at him from behind the smallest pair of glasses Fizz had ever seen. They were clipped to the end of her pointy nose and she had to lean her head back and peer down the length of her long face if she wanted to look at him properly.

  Her husband was shorter than she was. Or rather he would have been if she’d stood up straight. With her back bent like it was, they were about the same height. He had two enormous ears (one on either side of his head) which whistled from time to time as his hearing aids played up. (There’s no way Fizz could possibly have known this next fact, but I’m going to tell you it anyway, just because I think it’s an interesting thing to know: when the old man held his head at a certain angle his hearing aids picked up the horse racing on the radio. The precise angle at which this happened made him look like he was thinking deeply, and because he usually closed his eyes in order to picture the race better, people often mistook him for someone who was frightfully intelligent and full of deep thoughts. For the most part, though, he wasn’t either of those things. He just liked horses.)

  As well as huge ears, the old man had a great big nose too (right in the middle of his face, unsurprisingly). This didn’t whistle. Underneath his nose was a bushy moustache which drooped down over his mouth. Where the moustache met his nose it was hard to tell which hairs belonged to the moustache itself and which ones snaked down out of his nostrils. They all seemed to twine together as one furry mass, and from time to time they tickled him so much that he sneezed, and a sneeze so close to a moustache as bushy as that (especially if the sneezer had a cold at the time) is not something you want to think about. Really, don’t think about it. Really.

  Fizzlebert thought he glimpsed a bit of toast dangling in a web of hair by the corner of his mouth (not a whole slice of toast, of course, just a large crumb), but he couldn’t be sure. He tried his hardest not to stare. (Fizz was a polite boy, when he remembered.)

  The old man was wearing a scarf tucked into a brown overcoat, even though it was a warm summer day. On the top of his head, above a few wispy strands of grey hair, was a battered little trilby (which is a sort of hat). It seemed to be too small for his head (definitely too small for those ears) and he was forever reaching up to make sure it was still on.

  These were the two people Fizz faced.

  ‘You can help me?’ he said.

  ‘Maybe,’ the woman replied.

  ‘How?’

  ‘You need someone to vouch for you.’

  Fizz didn’t know what ‘vouch for’ meant, so he said, ‘Do I?’

  ‘Yes! You need someone to say you are who you say you are. I thought I heard Miss Toad say you needed your parents to help you join the library. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Fizz said.

  ‘Well, I suppose you’re just off to find them now, aren’t you?’

  ‘Um, well, no . . . they’re . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Too busy,’ Fizz said. Telling part of the truth.

  The old woman looked at him closely through her vertiginously balanced spectacles for a moment.

  ‘That’s not all, is it?’ she asked. ‘You can tell me . . .’

  When Fizz said nothing (he didn’t know what to say), she stepped closer and pulled another pair of glasses out of her handbag. These were on a little stick, so that instead of looping the arms round her ears and letting them rest on her nose (like you would do with ordinary glasses), she held them out in front of her and moved them backwards and forwards to get him into focus.

  Peered at through two pairs of spectacles Fizz felt he was under uncomfortably close scrutiny.

  He scuffed his feet in the dirt and thought that maybe he should be leaving.

  ‘Your parents don’t know you’re here,’ she said suddenly.

  Fizz nodded.

  ‘Oh, you poor thing,’ she went on, ‘left to wander, uncared for and all alone. I can’t bear to see a little chap like you dangling dolefully at a loose end like this, abandoned and forgotten. Let us help you.’

  The old man looked thoughtful and closed his eyes, as if he was thinking about what good deed they might be able to do for the poor boy.

  ‘I tell you what,’ she said, putting the second pair of glasses back in her handbag, ‘we shall pretend to be your parents for you. That way you can join the library and get your lovely library card. And then you can borrow as many books as they will let you and go home and read them all to your dear heart’s content. What do you say, you poor boy? Just our little good deed for you, yes?’

  For a moment Fizz didn’t know what to say. It sounded sort of like a good idea and it was tempting, but he knew it was wrong to lie. Even to someone who looked like Miss Toad. It didn’t seem right to let these two old people tell lies for him either, even if it would get him a library card.

  ‘I don’t mean to be rude,’ he said, suddenly coming up with a good excuse, ‘but I think you look . . . um, well, too old to be my parents.’

  ‘Oh!’ the old lady said, as if she were surprised. She thought for a moment. ‘Well,’ she went on, ‘we could say we’re your grandpare
nts. Yes, I think that when it comes to filling in forms the one is just as good as the other.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely,’ she said. ‘There’ll be no trouble there.’

  Thoughts of all the books in the library, all the exciting adventures that would become available for him to read, flooded through Fizz’s head and washed all his worries about lying clean out. Wow! This was too good to be true. He could get his library card and his mum and dad would never need to know that he’d wandered off. Brilliant.

  ‘Oh, thanks, that’s really kind of you,’ he said to the old couple. He was aware, of course, that time was drawing on and the longer he stayed away from the circus, the more likely it would be that someone would notice he was missing. ‘Can we do it now? Please? I’m in a bit of a hurry.’

  ‘Yes!’ shouted the old man. His head was still cocked to one side and his eyes were shut but a big grin had sprung out from underneath his moustache. He was rubbing his hands together.

  ‘Yes, of course we can,’ the old lady added. ‘By the way, before we go in, what’s your name, little boy?’

  ‘My name?’

  ‘Yes. We’ll need to know your name to fill in the forms, won’t we? Must get our stories straight before we go in.’

  Fizz mumbled his name so hurriedly and so quietly that it sounded a bit like, ‘Fll-ll-ll Lump.’

  ‘Pardon?’ the old lady said.

  She’d got a notepad and a pencil out of her handbag and was waiting to make a note.

  This was where it had all gone wrong before, Fizzlebert thought. Up until he told those kids his name they’d been all friendly and kind, but the moment he’d said it out loud they’d all laughed and ran off. They’d thought it was stupid.

  He didn’t want the same thing to happen again. It was one thing to be laughed at by kids your own age, but to be laughed at by a pair of OAPs would take the biscuit. (Interesting phrase that: ‘takes the biscuit’. I’m not sure what sort of biscuit it is that’s being taken, but I’m in favour of biscuits generally and to have them taken away is never a good thing. (Unless, of course, you’ve eaten a whole packet already, in which case it’s probably in your own best interests that they be removed.))

  Suddenly a thought came into Fizz’s brain, like the ping of a microwave oven saying ‘this idea is now ready’.

  ‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Smith. John Smith.’

  (There was a rigger at the circus called John Smith and Fizz had heard him moaning about having such an ordinary name, which was probably why it had come to him at just that moment, when he needed a normal name to use.)

  The old lady wrote it down on her pad and said, ‘Okay. You call us “grandma” and “grandpa” and let us do the talking. You’ll be a fully signed up member of the library in no time at all.’

  Now, while they’re going into the library and signing Fizzlebert up, I’d best have a few words with you readers. (After all, filling in forms isn’t the most interesting bit of the story and I’m sure they can get on with it perfectly well without my having to describe every move.)

  Fizzlebert had grown up, you must remember, surrounded by grownups. There weren’t any other kids in the circus (although some of the clowns acted like kids with their makeup on). In some ways this meant he was more sensible than a lot of boys his age. He could talk to adults as if they were normal human beings and didn’t feel he had to simplify things or talk slowly so they would understand. He wasn’t shy. He could play several sorts of poker, lasso a runaway horse, and wasn’t afraid to put his head in a lion’s mouth.

  However, growing up in such surroundings also meant he’d never learnt that, as a general rule, it’s not a good idea to talk to strangers in the street.

  Think of it this way. Every lion Fizz had ever met had been sweet and friendly and liked being scratched behind the ears. But if Fizz were to meet a lion out on the plains of Africa one day, that is to say in the wild, then he would be silly to assume that the lion would behave like the lion he had grown up with. Does that make sense?

  Just because all the people he knew were adults who were also good people, it doesn’t mean that all adults elsewhere are going to be so friendly and kind. (Some of them will be, but some of them won’t. Some people are just mean.) And it’s for this reason that you should be careful about talking to strangers, especially if you’ve wandered away from the circus and no one knows where you are.

  While I was saying all that, Miss Toad filled in the forms and Fizz was now the owner of a brand new library card.

  ‘You’ve got one book here already, Mr Smith,’ Miss Toad rumbled, pointing to The Great Zargo of Ixl-Bolth and the Flying Death Robots of Mars which was still on her desk. ‘Do you want to go choose some more before we check them out?’

  ‘Go on little Johnnie,’ said his ‘grandma’, ‘you get yourself a couple more. What fun, eh?’

  Fizz walked very quickly round to the children’s section. (He did that sort of walk where really you’re running, but you want everyone else to think that you’re just strolling, not in any hurry, you know, all casual like, but which actually ends up looking nothing at all like walking or running, just a sort of rapid upright stiff-backed silliness.) He quickly picked out three other books and brought them back to the desk.

  Miss Toad scanned his card and then scanned each book and stamped the due date in the front.

  ‘There you go,’ she belched, and pushed them over the counter towards him.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, excitedly.

  Tucking the books under his arm he headed for the library door, followed by his pretend grandparents. They all waved goodbye to Miss Toad who pushed her glasses back to the top of her head, popped the blue biro back in her mouth and slumped happily back down into her chair.

  Once the door had trundled open and shut again and all three stood on the pavement outside Fizz said, ‘Goodbye then. Thanks very much for your help, you were really kind. Thanks again.’ (Like I’ve said before, he was a polite boy.)

  The old lady leaned towards him, peering down her nose at him.

  ‘What do you mean, “goodbye”?’ she said. ‘Oh dear. You can’t leave us just like that, little Johnnie. You’re going to have to walk us home.’

  ‘Walk you home?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. That’s what grandsons do for their grannies, isn’t it?’

  ‘But I’m not your – ’

  ‘Oh yes you are,’ she said sharply before he could finish his sentence. ‘You are my grandson now, darling little Johnnie, and you’d better start behaving properly. I don’t believe we brought you up to have manners like this.’

  Fizz was confused. Was she playing a game? Was she being silly? Was she, perhaps, mad? He hadn’t been worried before, but now he began to find doubts crawling around inside his head, their little spidery legs tickling his brain.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, sounding braver and more confident than he felt. ‘I’ve really got to go now. You’ve been really kind and I don’t mean to be rude, but . . .’

  ‘Little boy,’ she hissed, leaning in so close that he could smell her pepperminty breath, ‘you are coming home with us, and you are coming now.’

  (There are only two reasons people eat mints: either they have something to hide; or they like mints.)

  ‘Oh yes!’ shouted the old man, punching the air. He had his eyes shut and looked as if he was listening to something no one else could hear.

  ‘You don’t know much about libraries do you?’ she asked. ‘Do you know what happens if you don’t take a library book back on time? Do you?’

  ‘No,’ Fizz said, quietly.

  ‘It’s the cane, my boy,’ she said. ‘It’s one smack on the palm of your hand for every hour the book is late. And you’ve taken four books out.’

  ‘But . . .but,’ he stuttered, ‘they’re not late back . . .’

  ‘Ah, but the library is ever such a strict place. They punish you for all sorts of things. You were lucky you didn’
t run, weren’t you? You could’ve been kept behind, could’ve been in big trouble. You’re lucky you didn’t make a loud noise either. You didn’t know it’s against the rules to chew gum or to whistle or to dance, did you? You didn’t break any of those rules, because you were lucky. But if you had . . . oh, then you would have been in big trouble.’

  ‘But I didn’t – ’

  ‘No, you didn’t. I know. But now you know what the library is really like, the sort of strictnesses they impose. So, what sort of punishment do you think they’d have if they found someone stealing their books? What sort, eh?’

  She prodded him with a bony finger.

  ‘Um,’ he gabbled, ‘a bad one?’

  ‘Oh, yes. And look at you, my little thief. Four stolen books under your arm, bright as day and bold as brass. For four books they’d probably lock you up downstairs. Throw away the key. No one likes a rotten thief, do they?’

  ‘But, I’ve not stolen – ’

  ‘Well, that depends on how you look at it,’ she said, slowly running her dry wrinkled finger down the side of his face. ‘Our grandson hasn’t stolen any books, no. He’s borrowed some books. And our grandson is coming home with us. If, on the other hand, you tell anyone that you’re not our grandson, then your library card is invalid, because the forms weren’t filled in correctly . . . because you lied to the authorities . . . and those books under your arm have not been borrowed. They have been stolen . . . and you’re in big trouble indeed.’ She hissed these last words right into his face. He could feel the mist of her minty spit moistening his eyeballs.