Fizzlebert Stump and the Bearded Boy

by A. F. Harrold

  Before Fizz could scuttle out of the way he was gripped round the neck by her sharp fingers, hoisted up into the air and dumped into the trunk.

  The lid was slammed down and he heard things being put on top. They sounded like heavy things.

  He was back in the dark.

  He could hear the Barboozuls moving around in the caravan and even as he banged on the side of the trunk he knew they were no longer paying him any attention.

  After a while it all went quiet.

  Fizz thought he heard the caravan door shut but he couldn’t be sure. The noise had been quite faint. He waited another few minutes, just to be on the safe side.

  Then he banged once more on the side of the trunk.

  There was no reply. They must have gone off to the afternoon show.

  So, all he had to do now was escape and go and warn everyone.

  He pushed at the trunk lid.

  He didn’t know exactly what they’d piled on top of it, but it wasn’t budging.

  He closed his eyes (in the darkness not much changed) and took a deep breath. He was lying on his back, the beard-wigs providing him a pillow, and he thought about what he knew.

  He knew which side the hinges were on and he knew that the further away from the hinge you pushed, the more effect it had. So he lifted his feet up and pressed them against the lid, over on the other side, with his knees right up in his chest and he pushed. Still the lid barely moved, but for just a moment there was the slightest chink of light.

  That meant it was working.

  All Fizz had to do was push harder, and he did so, with both his hands and feet. Remember, Fizz’s dad was The Mighty Stump, the great circus strongman. For a moment it seemed that just a little of that amazing strength flowed into his son. Fizz pushed a third time and the lid rose slowly, then there came a crashing clatter as stuff fell off and then, with one final shove, the lid was upright.

  Fizz clambered out, sneezing once and brushing the dust off his clothes.

  There was a mess of things on the floor: crockery, an iron, saucepans and heavy books. Some of the plates were broken, but since he’d seen what Lord Barboozul had done to Percy Late’s plate, he didn’t feel guilty.

  He ran through the kitchen to the caravan’s front door, which, this time, they had locked.

  He tried putting his shoulder against it and pushing, but even with his junior strongman strength it wouldn’t give.

  He went back into the kitchen and looked at the windows. They were locked (he couldn’t find the key) and were double glazed (he threw a tin can at them, but it just bounced off and rolled under the kitchen table).

  He banged on the window anyway, but there was no one passing.

  The afternoon show had already begun. Anyone who was still on their feet would be over at the Big Top by now, trying their hardest to impress the anonymous Circus Inspectors and their clipboards, little knowing that the Barboozuls were working their hardest in the opposite direction.

  He sat down at the kitchen table and looked at the remains of the lunch he’d interrupted.

  It was lemonade (Fizz had correctly guessed the fizz) and he drank some. Then he ate half a tuna sandwich that one of them had left. It was pretty good. In fact, he preferred it to the ones his mum made. (Because Mrs Stump couldn’t think of another food which rhymed with tuna (and neither can I), she’d always invite Signore Alberto Volumo, the circus’s semi-resident singer of operatic arias, to come and sing while Fizz ate, making them tuna and crooner sandwiches. When it came to fish sandwiches, both Fizz and the neighbours preferred her more straightforward salmon and gammon.)

  He thought about the bit of fish he’d seen dangling in Lady Barboozul’s beard. And then he thought of the smell of it.

  And suddenly a plan popped into his head.

  At least he thought it was a plan. It looked a bit like a plan. It was plan-shaped.

  It was certainly brilliant, if, by some crazy chance, it actually worked.

  All he needed was some tuna.

  Fizz looked down at the empty plate.

  He looked at his plan again, in his head. His plan just needed some tuna.

  He looked again at the empty plate, a sinking feeling in his stomach, and pushed the breadcrumbs round with his finger.

  He’d just eaten the tuna.

  He felt like a fire-eater who’s swallowed an ice cube.

  The fate of the entire circus rested in his hands and he’d spoilt his only chance of escape by eating the remains of someone else’s lunch. (I expect there’s a lesson there (I only mention it on the off chance you’re taking notes).) If he couldn’t expose the Barboozuls’ acts of sabotage to the Circus Inspectors, they’d think that the circus was always like this (dangerous, clumsy, short on acts) and they would almost certainly shut it down. He could just picture the scene as the Inspector pulled the report off his clipboard and gave it to the Ringmaster. He would bark instructions at everyone, even as the Big Top was being dismantled for the last time. All the clowns would have to take their makeup off and go get ordinary jobs, in offices, photocopying and filing. Miss Tremble would have to say goodbye to her horses and become an accountant. Dr Surprise would have to give Flopples away, sell his top hats and become a used car dealer. And Fizz and his mum and dad would be made to live in a house in the suburbs that never moved and he’d have to go to a big grey school where there were no lions, cannons or any sort of fun at all.

  The thought of it made Fizz regret eating anything ever.

  He slumped in the chair trying to think of a different plan.

  But his mind was empty of anything except the dreadful things that would befall the circus if the Barboozuls got away with their rotten scheme. Not a single new plan popped up into his head.

  I’m afraid I’ve got to interrupt this chapter at that point because there’s all sorts of other stuff going on around the circus at pretty much the same time that I need to tell you about. It’s important stuff and some of it has Fish the sea lion in, and he’s always entertaining. I promise we’ll get back to Fizz and his despondent leg-swinging just as soon as we’ve looked around elsewhere.

  Chapter Eleven

  In which we go ‘meanwhile, over there’ a lot

  Meanwhile, away across the circus, things were afoot. (Which just means ‘happening’, not actually ‘a foot’. Of course, some things were ‘a foot’, mainly things on the bottom of people’s legs or things which were twelve inches long (such as rulers), but we’re not interested in those right now.)

  The matinee had begun in the Big Top.

  Percy Late had opened the show by spinning his plate.

  Bongo Bongoton (the mime) had been stuck inside an invisible box (although he might have been cleaning some invisible windows, or, now I have another look, perhaps he was actually building an invisible cat).

  And Unnecessary Sid had fallen off a bicycle. (This wasn’t his usual act, but the unicycle had gone missing and he got confused by the second wheel.)

  The Ringmaster was stood backstage with his arms crossed and his cheeks pink, hoping that the reduced show would be enough to impress the Circus Inspectors.

  He’d cut the stiltless stilt-walkers from the show. They were sad but he had to insist that just-walking is not a good enough routine.

  In the night, the ropes that held the trapeze forty feet in the air had somehow stretched and although the trapeze artists (the twins, Simon and Simone Vol-au-Vent) were both present and correct and uninjured, the brilliance of their act was diminished by the fact they had their feet on the ground as they performed their breathtaking feats of derring-do. Leaping from one trapeze to the other in mid-flight is less impressive when you can stop to do your shoelace up halfway through, without falling forty feet to the sawdust.

  Miss Tremble had woken to find half her horses facing the wrong way. Obviously a backwards horse is no good, she had explained to the Ringmaster slowly and clearly, even as he stood there going, ‘But . . . ?!’ She’d agreed to allow the f
our horses who were the right way round to do a shortened routine.

  He looked out through the tall curtains and watched as they thundered by, hooves spraying up clods of sawdust, and thanked his lucky stars that he still had the Barboozuls. Their act, he hoped, would be good enough to save them all from the Inspector’s chopping block (or clipboard and red pen).

  Not only did he have his arms crossed, he had his fingers crossed as well, and if you had looked at his boots, you’d have seen strange lumps down the front of those, where his toes were uncomfortably squashed on top of one another. He needed all the luck he could get, no matter how uncomfortable it made him.

  Meanwhile, in his caravan Dr Surprise put on his (slightly fizzing) spare top hat.

  (Earlier, after he’d given the bearded Barboozuls the carefully crafted letter from the Ringmaster (he’d copied the handwriting exceedingly well, he thought), he’d gone back to his own caravan to hide. He regretted letting the boy talk him into doing it. What if Fizz got in trouble? What if he got into trouble? He decided to tuck up in his bed, cuddle poor Flopples and keep quiet. But five minutes later there’d been a knocking on his door which just wouldn’t go away.

  The Doctor wasn’t a coward, but neither was he a brave man. He was that much more common thing, someone in between.

  He had stood behind the door and said, ‘Who is it? I’m not dressed. You can’t come in. The rabbit’s just been sick again. You’d best go away. So sorry.’

  ‘It’s me, Doctor,’ had said the Ringmaster’s voice.

  ‘Ringmaster?’ asked Dr Surprise.

  ‘Yes. Me. We need you, Doctor, with or without the rabbit. We need you. The circus is sinking and it’s all hands on deck. You have to do something. Please.’)

  And so now, half an hour later, the Doctor was packing what rabbit-free tricks he could think of into his spare top hat.

  He looked down at Flopples, who was still more green than brown, and stroked her head. She just looked up at him with big ears as if to say, ‘Don’t leave me, Doctor.’

  He felt absolutely rotten. But in the Circus the Ringmaster was an absolute ruler (like a King, but with more sawdust), and if he said do something, you probably ought to do it. The Doctor couldn’t imagine how he’d impress the Inspectors on his own, but if the Ringmaster believed in him, then he would try.

  The Doctor was so busy and so flustered working out what tricks he could do without Flopples that he’d completely forgotten about Fizz and the Barboozuls.

  He shut the caravan door behind him and walked toward the Big Top, where the crowd was already roaring and the band were playing. Ah! He could almost smell their applause. Or worse, he thought slumpingly, their silence.

  Meanwhile, away across the circus, somewhere else again, Fish was arguing with a seagull. There was a pile of spilt chips on the grass that the seagull had spotted first, but which the sea lion had decided looked interesting (that is to say, edible) to him too. (Fish had seen the seagull and assumed that a fellow sea creature would be looking for fish too, so he was slightly disappointed to see it was just chips, but still some food is always better than no food.)

  The seagull squawked and flapped furiously at the sea lion.

  Fish honked back and showed his teeth.

  A sea lion may not have quite as scarily big teeth as a land lion has, but they are still sharp, pointy, long and filthy. (In fact, they were black, which, although bad news in your mouth, is actually quite healthy and normal for a sea lion.)

  The seagull grumbled, muttered, squawked and finally flew raggedly off, out of reach of Fish’s snapping jaws, leaving the sea lion to enjoy the chips all by himself.

  Fish gobbled them up, savouring the rich vinegary flavour, and was left sitting sadly, looking longingly at an empty wrapper.

  He was still hungry.

  Chips were all very well, but a sea lion like Fish was only really interested in the thing that usually came along with them, the bit that normally appears before the words ‘and chips’ in the shop sign.

  In short, Fish loved fish.

  If you could see inside his brain it went like this: Fish? No. Oh . . . Fish? No. Oh . . . Fish? Yes . . . Mmm . . . More? No. Oh . . . And so on.

  He burped a lazy hazy halibut-burp and lifted his nose in the air.

  He sniffed.

  He leant his head on one side and sniffed again.

  There, what was that?

  He sniffed for a third time, with his head cocked on the other side, and then slowly lowered it.

  Oh, he’d smelt something. Even above the fishy smell of his own breath, he’d caught the scent of something interesting.

  He began waddling between caravans, lifting his head from time to time and snorting a big noseful of air. Oh yes, the scent seemed to say, this is the way! And he’d waddle along just a little bit quicker.

  And after a minute or so he stopped waddling, and began flolloping, which is like waddling but faster.

  And then he skidded round a corner between two tents and he was almost where his nose had sent him. He flolloped at full speed, right toward the fish smell that was filling his nose, and bang!

  There he was with his head stuck through a bit of wood, wolfing down his favourite food.

  Back in the Barboozuls’ caravan, Fizzlebert had put his plan into action. But hang on, you’re probably saying, what plan? When we left Fizz he had reached a dead end. He was locked in with the useful escape-plan tuna sandwich halfway to his stomach. And now he’s put his plan into action? This, you’re probably thinking to yourself, is not very good storytelling. I mean, it’s not been told, has it? So, okay, give me a moment to backtrack a bit and explain what it is that’s happened.

  As Fizz was sat swinging his legs idly, trying to think of a new plan, his shoe hit something hard. Something hard that rolled away when he kicked it. It was, he saw when he bent down, the tin he’d thrown at the window. It had bounced off and ended up under the table. And what do you think was in that tin? The tin he hadn’t read the label of before he threw it? (If you just said ‘tuna’ you’re right and deserve a housepoint (or whatever equivalent writers are able to give to their readers); if on the other hand you said ‘sweetcorn’ or ‘pineapple chunks’ then you’d best stay behind after the book for detention as you clearly haven’t been paying attention.)

  It was tuna! (Da-dah!)

  And with the tin of tuna Fizz was able, at last, to put his plan into action, and his plan was this:

  (a) He knew he could rely on Fish to track down the source of any fish-flavoured stink.

  (b) Fish had a problem being quiet. (He was like a clown with a sensitive horn. He honked and barked all the time. That was simply what he did.)

  (c) If Fizz could attract Fish to the Barboozuls’ caravan with fish, he could be relied on to make a loud noise outside the door and someone would hear it, know something fishy was going on, and come and force the door open. All it would it take was a couple of riggers with a crowbar and he’d be free.

  It was a pretty good plan. Fizz couldn’t see a flaw in it. It made sense. It was logical. Give him a few minutes and he’d be out of there.

  He used a can opener from the kitchen drawer to get the lid off and poured the tuna-y fish brine on the floor, right at the bottom of the front door. With his fingers he sloshed the juice into the gap underneath the door, and then squidged and squeezed as much of the tuna as he could in there too.

  As he squished the fish into the thin slot, it pushed the briny juices even further through and in his mind’s eye Fizz could imagine them oozing out the other side and dripping down the caravan’s steps, leaking their strong pong into the fresh air.

  All he had to do now was wait.

  He went back into the kitchen and washed his hands. As he wrapped the tuna can in a plastic bag (they stink out the rubbish and attract flies otherwise (what a thoughtful boy he was)) and went to put it in the bin, he glanced out the window.

  What was that?

  Oh, it had worked!
Already!

  There was Fish, flolloping at top speed along the grass between the tents opposite.

  Fizz waved his arms and banged on the window, trying to get the sea lion’s attention.

  ‘Hey, Fish!’ he shouted. ‘Go get help! Fish, it’s me! Look over here!’

  But Fish wasn’t paying attention to the boy in the window, and to Fizz’s eye it didn’t look like he was slowing down either.

  And suddenly there was a smashing noise.

  Oh, poor Fish, Fizz thought, as he ran back to the door.

  But to his surprise all he found was the sea lion’s head, poking through a sea lion’s head-shaped hole in the bottom of the door slurping and scoffing and wolfing the tuna.

  Fizz patted his nose (which is a dangerous thing to do while a sea lion is eating with such abandon – please don’t try this at home), and was happy to see that his friend seemed entirely uninjured.

  It didn’t take Fish a moment to finish the tuna and as soon as he had, he slid backwards out of the hole, ready to start looking for the next meal.

  With just a little extra kicking and banging Fizz was able to make the hole big enough to fit through himself and once he was out he shouted, ‘Fish, let’s get to the Big Top!’

  Fish, thinking there might be fish, flolloped along as Fizz ran.

  I should really put some dramatic music here, don’t you think? Will they make it to the next chapter in time to save the circus? (Dum-dede-dum, dum-dede-dum, dum-dede-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum . . . ) Will they even make it to the next chapter in time for the next chapter to start? (Dum-dede-dum, dum-dede-dum, dum-dede-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum . . . ) Who knows? (I know.)

  You know the drill by now. Turn the page for the new chapter, and find out what happens next.

  Chapter Twelve

  In which a whole load of stuff happens, in and around the Big Top