Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Over the Moon

by Frank Cottrell Boyce

  Mum heard long-ago Dad call through the trees one more time: “Red! Come now or we will go without you!”

  They could see the little boy now, hesitating through the trees. In a minute he would run to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and fly away to New York and a life of crime.

  This is it, thought Mum. This is where it all went wrong for Red. This is the moment that Tiny Jack began. If we can fix this moment, then we won’t end up abandoning him in New York. If we can fix this moment, then all the bad things that happened — the Himalaya-stealing, the Basildon-shrinking, the Nelson-decapitating, the World Cup–losing — will never have happened. If we repair this moment, we can repair Tiny Jack.

  Through the trees, she heard the boy call, “OK, OK, I’m coming.”

  “No! Don’t!”

  The boy looked round. He was amazed to see Mum standing there in the forest clearing with all the other Tootings and Potts — people he’d never seen in his life.

  “Don’t go. Stay where you are. Play in the forest,” said Mum.

  “But you just told me to hurry up!” complained the little boy. “I’m confused now. And how are you here when you were over there a second ago?”

  “I was wrong to tell you to leave,” said Mum. “I should have let you stay here and play. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Who’s that?” asked Red, looking curiously at Tiny Jack — his own much older and bigger self. “Do I know you?”

  “Not yet,” said Mum. “Red, would you like to stay here forever?”

  “I’ll say, ma’am.”

  “But if we had to go? What if we had to leave you here? Wouldn’t you be lonely?”

  “Lonely? In El Dorado? Where everyone knows everyone? And everyone wants to play?”

  “Go on, then. You stay here and play. No, wait . . .”

  He stopped.

  “Red, what have you got under your shirt?”

  Shamefaced, he undid his shirt. They blinked. Glinting fiercely in the shafts of jungle sunlight was a diamond as big as his head.

  “You have to put that back, OK? No more stealing.”

  “Really? But I love stealing.”

  “OK. You can steal it, for a little while — as long as you put it back later. Now, go. Hide. Have fun, fun, fun. Play the game that never ends.”

  “Thanks!” sang Red, and he ran off.

  “Wait!” called Tiny Jack. He ran after his younger self.

  “No! Don’t do that!” called Lucy.

  But Tiny Jack had already caught up with Red. Red put out his hand to him. “Come on!” he cried.

  “Don’t touch!” pleaded Jem.

  But too late. Tiny Jack had taken his own younger self by the hand.

  The moment their fingers touched, the forest shrank. Suddenly it was one picture among thousands again.

  Pictures of New York, El Dorado, the North Pole, the Pyramids. Earth rushing up to meet them. France, Africa, the Indian Ocean, and — bang — a picture of a ball slamming into the back of the net.

  Jem and Lucy were standing on the terraces at Wembley in 1966, jumping up and down with joy as England scored a third goal in extra time. Dad was hugging Mum.

  When she saw this, Lucy stopped jumping up and down. “No goal,” she snarled, “no matter how beautiful or historic, can justify that kind of behaviour. Please stop hugging.”

  Dad let Mum go. “We’re going to miss the next goal,” he said.

  Mimsie Pott shot him an inquisitive look. “There’s another goal?”

  “Any minute now. And this time the ball goes right over the line.”

  Some people were on the field. They thought it was all over. Then a brilliant ball from Geoff Hurst set the back of the net billowing. And it was all over. England had won the World Cup. The stadium erupted.

  After the game they strolled down the streets of Wembley to where they somehow knew that racing-green Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was parked.

  Dad patted her bonnet. “Very nice of you to let us see the World Cup Final, Chitty,” he said.

  Jem twirled the little propeller of the Zborowski Lightning.

  “Will you come back with us for tea?” asked Mimsie.

  “Thank you, but I think that really would be pushing the laws of physics to the limit,” said Mum. “I think you should give us a lift home and then take Chitty back to your own time.”

  All the Tootings knew what this meant. They would probably never see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang again.

  The Commander took the wheel but then thought better of it. “It’s probably best if you drive her,” he said to Dad.

  “Thanks,” said Dad. He took his time adjusting his seat, relishing the smell of the wood and the leather. Jem took his time turning the crank, listening for that moment when Chitty’s engine sparked to life. But soon enough they were driving out along Great Central Way and through the second half of the twentieth century, heading for Basildon and the present.

  “It’s nice to see World of Leather back to its old self,” said Mum as they breezed past it. “And the esplanade is in immaculate condition.”

  They drew up outside their own old house. There was a car in the drive. Not a fabulous fully restored Paragon Panther, but a car just like any other car. Four wheels. An engine. Some seats. The kind of car that could take you to work or to school or on holiday. Then bring you home again. Though it did have a super de-icer, satnav, and four-wheel drive.

  “There’s our old car,” said Dad. “We’ve come back in time to before I lost my job. I’m still working for Very Small Parts for Very Big Machines. Will you come in for a nice cup of tea?”

  “Thank you, but I think that really would be pushing the laws of physics to the limit,” said Mimsie with a smile.

  “So this is the future,” said the Commander, looking up and down the terraced street. “It’s not quite what I expected.”

  “Yes, you should go now,” said Dad. “Don’t look at the future; it’ll spoil the surprise.”

  “Righty-ho.” He climbed into the driver’s seat while the Tootings and the Potts started saying their good-byes.

  “We think,” said Mum, “that when you get home you should uninvent Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. At least not Chitty, but her Chronojuster. Travelling in time is too dangerous.”

  “I agree,” said the Commander, “but —”

  “Wait,” said Lucy, “if you do that — if you go back into the past and uninvent the time machine — then when I wake up tomorrow morning, I’ll still be at school and Dad will still be at work and we’ll just be some people who live in Zborowski Terrace.”

  “Yes,” said the Commander, “though Zborowski Terrace does seem like a very nice terrace.”

  “But . . .”

  “The truth is,” admitted the Commander, “I didn’t invent the Chronojuster. There was always an ebony handle on the dashboard. When I tried it, we found ourselves sailing in South America. It’s not an invention. It’s magic. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is not a masterpiece of British engineering. She’s a masterpiece of magic.”

  “I knew that!” cried Jem. The others looked at him. He just shrugged. “I mean . . . nothing.”

  Dad could see that Commander Pott was disappointed by the way the future had turned out. “Never mind,” he said, placing his hand on the Commander’s shoulder. “At least England will win the World Cup after all. And you can fly Big Ben around to celebrate the victory.”

  “I think it might be wiser to leave Big Ben on the ground this time,” said Mimsie. “But we could have a nice family picnic.”

  “In space? Just once around the planet in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. In low orbit,” said the Commander. “Nothing too fancy.”

  “Could we ask you a favour?” said Dad. “There’s a 1966 split-screen VW camper van in your Secret Laboratory.”

  “A foreign car! In my laboratory?!”

  “Yes. Only . . . she’s sort of precious to us.”

  “I see.”

  Dad whispered, “I call her Sneezy.
You could call her that, too, if you liked.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “If you could take care of her . . . make sure that Bucklewing’s doesn’t crush her. It would be nice to see her again . . . one day.”

  Jem crouched down in front of Chitty’s wide, warm radiator. “Good-bye,” he whispered.

  “Good-bye,” said Jeremy, who had come to crank up her engine. “Been nice knowing you.” They shook hands. Then Jeremy bent down and wedged the compass out of the sole of his shoe. “Take this,” he said. “Can’t see how you’ve managed so long without one.”

  “Thank you,” said Jem.

  Chitty Chitty Bang Bang never said good-bye.

  That night they got takeout food. As they were about to eat it, there was a knock on the door. A smiley young man with a plastic name card round his neck shook hands with Dad. “Mr. Tooting?” he said. “I’m from Very Small Parts for Very Big Machines.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Dad, thinking, I know what’s coming next — he’s going to sack me and take the car.

  “The company has just amalgamated with another company called Average-Size Parts for Colossal Machines. We’re looking for an engineer with fat fingers. Would you like to come and join us? Nine to five. Five weeks’ holiday a year and a company car.”

  Dad wanted to say, “I’ve been to the moon, you know. And beheld the lost city of El Dorado, not to mention landed a flying car on top of the Eiffel Tower and had a run-in with a Tyrannosaurus rex,” but he didn’t say any of those things. He just said, “Oh, thanks a lot. That would be nice.”

  “I’m afraid it would mean a move to Kent. Average-Size Parts for Colossal Machines is based near a place called Bucklewing Corner.”

  Dad looked at the others. “I think we could cope with Kent,” he said.

  When she was just settling down under her black duvet, Lucy heard a knock on her door. Jem came in and sat on the end of her bed with Dad’s punctuality map of the world on his knee.

  “Re-entry,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I always wondered how the parts of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang were scattered so far across the world. Bodywork in the Indian Ocean, headlamps on the Eiffel Tower, wheels in the Sahara Desert . . .” He pointed to those places on the map. He remembered seeing them from space. And in Chitty’s memories.

  “You’re saying Chitty went into space but Commander Pott got the angle of re-entry wrong . . .”

  “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang broke into pieces in the upper atmosphere. And the pieces were scattered all over the world.”

  “And the Pott family . . .” said Lucy, but her voice trailed off.

  “That’s why none of the Commander’s fabulous inventions caught on. The whole Pott family was wiped out.”

  “The last thing they said to Dad is that they were going to have a low-orbit picnic to celebrate the World Cup.” Lucy bit her lip. She looked at the map.

  “So when we wake up in the morning,” Jem said, sighing, “none of this will ever have happened.”

  “Jem! You’re going to be late for school!”

  “I know.” Jem hurried to the front door, pulled it open, and then stepped back. Banks of cloud rolled by beneath his feet.

  “The house went up in the night!” called Mum. “You’ll need your antigravity shoes.”

  The house always floated into the air on cloudy days so that it could catch the sunlight.

  “There’s no bread,” called Mum. “Do you mind old gramophone records for lunch?”

  “No, that’s fine. Can I have a Count Basie one? They’re sort of fruity.”

  “There you go.” She gave him a kiss and waved him off.

  But that lunchtime he couldn’t bring himself to eat the gramophone record, so he bought a packet of Doritos and listened to the music instead. What was it about that music? It was nice enough — bouncy and unpredictable — but that wasn’t it. The music seemed to remind him of something — something wonderful that he had somehow lost.

  He got the feeling again that evening when he was playing with his brother, Little Harry, in Bucklewing Gardens — the beautiful aerial play-park near their house. Here you could hire jet packs and go for races around the treetops. Or bounce around the green in burst-proof bubbles.

  That evening, as Lucy and Jem chased Little Harry around the turreted towers of Bucklewing House, they saw a small crowd of people gathered on the gravel path outside the main entrance. Something made Jem drop down to see what was happening.

  They were gathered around a strange machine. Its bodywork was glossy racing green. It had wheels with flashing silver spokes.

  “What is it?” asked Jem of the man who was standing with his hand on the strange metal grille at the front. Under the grille was a panel with the letters “GEN II” written on it.

  “Piece of junk that belonged to my father,” said the man, whose name was Hornblower Bucklewing XI.

  “It’s obviously a car,” said Lucy. “You must have heard of cars.”

  “I’ve heard of them. I’ve seen pictures in books. But I never saw one so big and so beautiful,” said Jem.

  “No. Nor me. It reminds me of something.”

  “Me too. But I can’t think what.”

  There was a tiny metal aeroplane on top of the grille. Jem had an overwhelming urge to flick its propellers. He did. They spun around.

  “Do I have any bids?” The auctioneer was Hornblower Bucklewing XI. There was only one car for sale.

  “Does it actually work?” said a man with a moustache.

  “Absolutely in full running order, thanks to my good friend Professor Tuk-Tuk here . . .” He pointed to a skinny man with a beard who was wearing shorts. “The professor came all the way from the Indian Ocean when he heard about this item.” The professor was leaning on a strange blue vehicle. It looked like a shed on wheels. It had a glass windscreen that was split down the middle so that when the sunlight glittered on it, it looked like a pair of twinkling eyes. Written along one of its side panels was the slogan “There is no such thing as rubbish.”

  “Ice cream!” yelled Little Harry.

  “Shh. In a minute,” scolded Jem. “I want to see what happens.”

  “Anyone bid five pounds?”

  “Five pounds,” said a rather dashing elderly gentleman in a tweed jacket with a twinkle in his eye.

  “Ten pounds,” said another man in oily coveralls.

  “Is there any petrol in it?” asked someone else, and the bidding continued.

  “Shall we try to buy it?” said Jem. “I’ve got some birthday money. I don’t know why — I don’t know where we’ll put it — but I really want it.”

  “Her. It’s not an it, it’s a her.”

  “Yes, it is. How did you know that?”

  Lucy was about to say “Yes, let’s buy her.” Then something made her look at the old man with the moustache and the twinkle in his eye.

  “Jem, I really want her, too. But I think that man wants her even more.”

  “Sold!” said Hornblower Bucklewing XI. “To the man in the lovely tweed coat. Name, sir?”

  “Zborowski,” said the man. “Louis Zborowski the Third.”

  Hornblower Bucklewing took the money from him and helped him into the seat.

  “I say,” said Count Zborowski to Jem, “would you mind awfully cranking the engine for me?”

  He handed Jem the hand crank. Somehow Jem knew exactly how to slide it onto its sprocket and wind it round until the engine sparked to life. The little crowd applauded him.

  “Where’s Little Harry!” asked Lucy.

  “Ice cream!” called Little Harry. He was in the back of the car with his hand down the seat. Lucy pulled him out just as Count Zborowski pressed the starter motor. In Little Harry’s hand was a small silver foil packet marked “Space Ice Cream.”

  Little Harry is always right.

  Jem pulled the hand crank off its sprocket. Something made him whisper “Good-bye” into the huge car’s radiator. But
the car didn’t say good-bye back. Of course it didn’t. It was just a car.

  The gravel crunched under its great tyres as the car moved away.

  “Ga gooo ga!” bellowed its enormous Klaxon as it picked up speed. Count Zborowski waved over his shoulder.

  Like sunlight suddenly warming your bare skin, Jem was filled with a strange sense that the lovely world he lived in — with its floating houses, its jet packs, its antigravity shoes — was somehow a present from this big old smelly petrol-guzzling machine.

  Then everyone gasped. Some people began to applaud. Up in the air, children stopped playing, and they hovered, amazed. The great big green machine had spread a pair of huge wings. It trundled forward into the air and flew. It flew over the trees, banked around toward the house. They could still see the driver waving.

  The exhaust was belching smoke. The car dipped and curved. What was it doing? It was writing something, spelling something out in puffs and wisps of exhaust. G . . . it began . . . O . . . it continued . . . O . . .

  They watched as the dying sun coloured the smoke red and the letters rolled out across the evening . . .

  Good-bye, it said. Good-bye, Jem.

  Good-bye . . .

  Good-bye . . .

  Good-bye.

  Stories are like cars. If you fill up the tank, pack a good picnic, and just keep going, they can take you to amazing, unexpected places. But they can also get stuck in traffic, or run out of petrol, and — if you’re not careful — crash.

  Then you need to call the emergency services.

  My emergency services are my wonderful editors — Polly Nolan and Sarah Dudman. When I crashed, they came and towed me to their magical garage and straightened out the bumps. When my battery went flat, they gave me a jump-start. When my tyres burst, they blew them up again. Once I got lost in the fog and Sarah came and blew it away and handed me a map. When I drove straight into a wall, they patiently spread all the damaged nuts and bolts and springs and screws out on the pavement and reminded me where they all went.