Second Childhood

by Morris Gleitzman

  It answered.

  ‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Is that the TV news-room?’

  The person at the other end said yes.

  ‘I’ve got some big news for you,’ said Mark. ‘Phar Lap’s just been kidnapped. He’ll be giving a press conference in thirty minutes at the casino.’

  16

  ‘Don’t slow down,’ said Mark.

  Now that there were only three of them to do the pushing, the going was harder.

  They were clattering along a back street that ran parallel with the main street the museum was in, and the road surface was full of cracks and potholes.

  ‘Phar Lap coming up on the outside in the Supermarket Trolley Handicap,’ said Daryl in his best racecaller’s voice.

  Mark could see that Annie wasn’t amused.

  ‘Daryl,’ he said, ‘shut up.’

  Daryl muttered something.

  Mark ignored him.

  He had other things to worry about.

  Like whether Pino and Rufus were going okay.

  Pino and Rufus pounded on Mr Cruickshank’s front door until Mr Cruickshank opened it and stood staring at them in surprise.

  ‘Abrozetti, Wainwright, what are you doing here?’

  ‘You’ve got to come with us, sir,’ said Pino. ‘We’re doing our project.’

  Mr Cruickshank tried to make sense of this.

  ‘Your project?’

  ‘Yes sir. Hurry up.’

  Mr Cruickshank looked at the two agitated boys on his front doorstep and wondered if picking up litter on the oval would teach them not to disturb teachers at home.

  ‘See me in the morning if you want to talk about your project. Now go away.’

  He sighed and started to close the door.

  ‘We want you to see our project tonight, sir, in person, sir,’ said Rufus. ‘In case the TV news leaves bits out.’

  Mr Cruickshank opened the door and stared at them in alarm.

  ‘TV news?’

  The museum attendant strode through the dark museum, torchlight flashing around him, calling himself a number of words he wouldn’t usually have used in front of the exhibits.

  He’d been halfway home, looking forward to giving his wife her birthday present, when he’d remembered he’d left it in his locker.

  ‘Forget my own head if it wasn’t prominently displayed,’ he muttered.

  He strode on, torchlight flashing over an empty platform with four hoof-marks on it.

  He took three more strides, then stopped and turned and shone his torch all over the platform.

  The empty platform.

  He shone his torch all around the room.

  Even up on the ceiling.

  Then he ran for the phone.

  Mark heard the police sirens just as he thought his legs were going to seize up.

  He and Annie and Daryl dragged the trollies to a halt and looked round, trying to work out where the sirens were coming from.

  The museum.

  Then Mark saw a girl and a boy leaning against a wall on the other side of the street locked in a kiss.

  The girl, looking over her boyfriend’s shoulder, was staring at them and making loud moaning noises.

  Mark realised why.

  When they’d stopped suddenly the tarpaulin had slipped down and Phar Lap’s head was poking out.

  They dragged the tarpaulin back in place.

  Mark heard the young man, whose back was to them and who thought his girlfriend was making noises of approval rather than alarm, make some of his own.

  ‘Mmm mmmmm mmmmmmmm.’

  Mark and Annie and Daryl threw themselves at the trollies and rattled and clattered off towards the casino.

  Soon the moans were left behind and all they could hear were sirens.

  Mark realised his legs weren’t hurting any more.

  It was a quiet night in the television newsroom.

  The journalist wandered out of the viewing room where she’d been looking at some standby dog stories.

  ‘Thin night,’ she said to the new cadet on phone duty. ‘Might have to use a fido.’

  The cadet looked at his shorthand pad.

  ‘All I’ve got’s some racehorse owner’s been kidnapped,’ he said. ‘Asian I think.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ said the journalist with a bored yawn.

  The cadet struggled to read his shorthand.

  ‘Har Lap.’

  No, that wasn’t right.

  ‘Far Lap.’

  The journalist stared at him, then dived for the phone.

  *

  This was the tricky bit.

  Crossing the main road to get into the underground carpark.

  Once they were in there they could go underground all the rest of the way to the casino, safe from the police cars.

  Mark peered round the corner and down the street towards the museum.

  The museum was surrounded by flashing blue lights.

  The sirens were deafening now.

  Jammed traffic was building up. Soon the road in front of them would be blocked and they’d never get across.

  ‘Come on,’ said Mark.

  ‘They’ll see us,’ said Daryl. ‘I bet you four litres of strawberry ripple they see us.’

  ‘Isn’t there any other way we can go?’ said Annie.

  Mark shook his head.

  Then they heard it.

  The police helicopter.

  It was over the museum, beaming its spotlight down onto the surrounding streets.

  It was heading in their direction.

  ‘Come on,’ yelled Mark.

  There was a break in the traffic and they hurled the trolleys into it, feet pounding on the tarmac, trolley-wheels screeching, vibrations from the trolleys stinging their hands.

  They hit the opposite kerb with a thump that had Phar Lap rearing up so high Mark thought they were a goner but the four legs clanged back down into the trolleys and they clattered down the ramp into the underground carpark.

  Safe.

  For now.

  ‘He’s been like it for several days,’ said Joy, wiping the suds off her hands.

  Bob stopped trying to watch the news.

  ‘Like what, exactly?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Joy. ‘Sort of tense and secretive. Ever since you had that chat with him about that D he got.’

  Bob frowned. That chat was meant to make Mark feel relaxed, not tense.

  ‘Where did you say they both are?’ he asked.

  ‘Daryl’s at Nick Chen’s and Mark’s at Pino Abrozetti’s,’ said Joy. ‘Mark said he was working with Pino on the project and Daryl said something about Queen Victoria.’

  ‘Daryl’s not studying Queen Victoria, is he?’ said Bob, puzzled.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Joy. ‘And Bob, there’s something else. Mark said he was working with Pino on the project, but he didn’t take this.’

  She held out Mark’s folder.

  Bob took it, heart sinking.

  A one-off D was one thing. Mark going off with Pino when he was meant to be working was another.

  Let’s see just how far he’s got with this project, thought Bob.

  He opened the folder.

  And found himself looking at a hand-drawn map. It showed a route from the museum to the casino. In the museum was an X and next to it was written Phar Lap. A dotted line ran from the X to the casino.

  Bob stared at the map.

  In his day if you’d handed in a crummy hand-drawn map for a piece of schoolwork you’d have got a belting. Nowdays it could be part of a new-fangled, prize-winning project.

  Then Joy grabbed his arm and pointed to the television.

  ‘In a report just to hand,’ the newsreader was saying, ‘Phar Lap, on loan to the Australian National Treasures Exhibition, has been taken out of the museum building . . .’

  Bob and Joy stared at scenes of police searching the museum grounds by floodlight.

  Then at a reporter standing outside the casino
.

  ‘An anonymous phone tip-off,’ said the reporter, ‘claimed that Phar Lap would be arriving here at any minute. So far, no sign of the legendary horse . . .’

  Bob leapt to his feet.

  ‘Stay by the phone, love,’ he said.

  He ran out to the car with a lead weight growing in his chest.

  17

  Mark crept up the exit ramp of the underground carpark and peeked out at the casino.

  Chaos.

  Traffic was banked up as far as he could see, horns blowing and angry heads poking out of car windows.

  At the casino entrance a crowd was milling around, shoving and shouting. Mark could see casino doormen and people in evening dress and people in ordinary clothes and people with TV cameras and police trying to get everyone to shut up.

  He could hear the police helicopter almost overhead.

  No way they’d get in that way.

  He ran back down the ramp to the others.

  ‘Back way,’ he said, and they wheeled Phar Lap between the parked cars to the service lift.

  It was slow going, just as it had been all the way through the carpark, because Phar Lap’s head almost brushed the roof and they had to makesure they didn’t brain him on the sprinklers.

  They reached the lift and Mark pressed the Up button.

  ‘Do they still hang people for stealing horses?’ asked Daryl.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Annie, ‘we’ve got my permission.’

  The lift doors opened and they wheeled Phar Lap in.

  ‘Got the press release?’ said Annie as they went up.

  Mark nodded.

  ‘Got the emergency stuff?’ he said.

  Annie pulled a plastic cylinder from her pocket and gave it to him.

  Nautical Flare, it said, For Emergency Use Only.

  Mark stuffed it into his pocket.

  ‘Let’s hope we don’t need it,’ he said.

  He tried to sound more at ease than he felt. He hadn’t actually been up in the lift when he’d checked out the route, and he wasn’t sure what they’d find when the lift doors opened.

  The lift doors opened and they wheeled Phar Lap out into a long corridor.

  From the clattering of plates and banging of utensils, Mark guessed the corridor ran past the casino kitchens.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘we don’t stop for anything.’

  ‘Can I go to the toilet first?’ asked Daryl.

  ‘No,’ said Mark.

  They clattered down the corridor, the walls blurring past.

  Mark glimpsed the startled faces of a couple of men in white hats, but nothing got in their way until they reached the door at the end of the corridor.

  Mark took a deep breath, flung the door open and they clattered through.

  Chaos.

  People milling around, falling over themselves to get out of the way of the advancing trolleys.

  Mark realised they were in the casino foyer, and that the crowd from outside had come spilling in.

  ‘Keep going,’ he yelled to Annie and Daryl.

  He could see a pair of big wooden doors on the other side of the foyer.

  ‘Aim for the doors,’ he shouted, ‘that must be the casino.’

  Suddenly other hands were grabbing the trolley handles and for a moment Mark thought people were trying to drag Phar Lap away.

  Then he saw it was Pino and Rufus.

  ‘Cruickshank’s here,’ said Pino, ‘but we’ve lost him.’

  ‘Tarpaulin,’ yelled Rufus, ‘where’s the tarpaulin?’

  Mark realised it had fallen off.

  ‘We don’t need it,’ he shouted. ‘We’re here.’

  With a crash they hit the doors and burst through.

  In the huge chandelier-hung gaming room, startled faces turned from the card tables and roulette wheels and spinning two-up coins to gape at the huge auburn-coloured horse clattering into the room, fire from the chandeliers reflecting in its angry eyes.

  Mark and the others dragged the trolleys to a halt.

  They looked around at the hundreds of faces staring at them.

  Reporters and TV cameras had followed them in and were jostling for position.

  A roulette ball tinkled to a stop.

  Silence.

  Mark pulled the press release from his pocket, unfolded it and started reading in the loudest voice he could.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ he said. ‘I have here a press release issued tonight by Phar Lap, Henry Ford, Albert Einstein, Enoch Wainwright and Queen Victoria.’

  He glanced at Annie, Pino, Rufus and Daryl and saw the proud and determined expressions on their faces.

  Suddenly Annie pointed to the back of the crowd.

  ‘Mr Cruickshank!’ she shouted. ‘Mr Cruickshank! Could you let Mr Cruickshank through, he’s our teacher.’

  The crowd parted.

  Mr Cruickshank looked behind him, trying to pretend he wasn’t Mr Cruickshank.

  Everyone was looking at him.

  He felt his face turning beetroot and his knees turning to jelly. He wished he was a mining executive like his father so he could make a hole appear in the floor and disappear into it.

  Mark carried on with the press release and all eyes turned back to him.

  ‘We’re here to say sorry,’ he said, ‘but before we do, we want to say something else. Men and women of Australia, we’re gambling with more than the housekeeping. We’re gambling with the planet . . .’

  Mark realised there was movement in the crowd.

  Dinner-suited attendants and uniformed policemen were pushing towards him.

  ‘They’re not listening!’ yelled Annie. ‘Run for it!’

  Darting into the crowd, weaving and twisting past startled bodies, they ran for it.

  18

  Bob saw the traffic jam ahead and braked and thumped the steering wheel in frustration.

  Further up ahead he could see blue lights flashing and hear sirens wailing.

  Cop cars?

  Ambulances?

  All those times the cops down the pub had joked about shooting first and asking questions later.

  And he’d laughed.

  Now Bob found himself staring at the Saint Christopher medal stuck to the dashboard.

  Please, Mate, he thought, please don’t let Mark or Daryl get hurt. Nothing else is important. The house, their careers, nothing. Just don’t let them die.

  He got out of the car and ran towards the casino.

  *

  Mark burst through the crush of bodies at the casino entrance.

  Cars.

  Cars everywhere.

  He could hear shouts from the attendants and police further back in the confusion of bodies.

  He saw Annie looking round wildly next to him and Pino next to her. Rufus and Daryl clawed their way out of the crowd.

  They tried to press forward but there were too many cars.

  The road was jammed.

  People staring at them out of car windows.

  Even the footpath was blocked.

  Police cars, doors open and blue lights flashing.

  Mark saw two uniformed figures scrambling out of one, pointing and shouting.

  Annie grabbed him and yelled in his ear.

  ‘Emergency plan!’

  It was all they had left.

  Mark jumped up onto the bonnet of the nearest car and pulled the flare from his pocket.

  Okay, Mr Cruickshank, he thought, it worked for you, let’s hope it works for us.

  He grabbed the striking plate and scraped it over the live end.

  Red sparks hissed out.

  Mark held the cylinder above his head as a blinding red flame erupted from it.

  The crowd at his feet froze.

  Reporters, camera crews, police, attendants, doormen, casino patrons and other onlookers stared up at the flame and the boy holding it.

  Good on you, Shanksie, thought Mark.

  He looked down at the faces. The cameras. The microphones.


  Now or never.

  ‘Me and my friends’ll be arrested in a minute,’ yelled Mark, ‘and go to court and all that stuff. We’re not going till we’ve said this.’

  ‘That’s right,’ yelled Pino.

  Mark saw Pino and Rufus and Annie and Daryl, standing at his feet facing the crowd defiantly.

  He didn’t see Bob, standing in the crowd to one side, staring at him and Daryl in stunned horror.

  ‘We came here to apologise,’ yelled Mark, ‘me and Albert and Enoch and Victoria and Phar. And we are sorry. But we also think it’s not fair. We think it’s not fair that when we were stuffing the planet up we were heroes and now we want to fix it up we’re just kids.’

  Bob looked around at the journalists and TV people and police and casino officials and expensively dressed punters hanging on every word being yelled by his son.

  ‘Saying sorry,’ said Mark, ‘is the first part of our project. It’s just the beginning of it. It’s going to be a long project. We don’t know when it’ll finish. Our teacher, Mr Cruickshank, probably won’t be around to mark it.’

  Bob stared.

  This?

  The project?

  Mark still hadn’t seen him.

  ‘My dad’s always going on about being successful,’ said Mark, ‘and he’s right.’

  Next to Bob the door of a big BMW opened and a man in a dinner suit looked out.

  ‘I’ll shift that kid,’ growled the man, climbing out.

  ‘Let him speak,’ said Bob, pushing him back down.

  ‘When we’ve been arrested and punished and all that’s over,’ said Mark, ‘we’re going to spend the rest of our lives trying to make a success of it. The planet.’

  ‘That’s right,’ yelled Annie.

  ‘Yeah,’ yelled Daryl and Pino.

  ‘Tarpaulin yes, plastic no,’ yelled Rufus.

  Then Mark saw Bob, leaning against the door of a large BMW with a red-faced man inside it.

  He didn’t have time to look at Bob for long because he could feel the flare getting hot as it got close to burning out and he could see the police starting to move forward.

  ‘We dunno how we’ll solve all the problems yet,’ Mark said, ‘but we’ll think of something. What we’ve learnt from history is you can’t wait for somebody else to do it. There isn’t a somebody else. We’re the somebodies.’

  He looked back down at Bob.