‘Afraid of what, Grandad?’ asked Walter, as a little tingle of excitement ran up his spine.
Just then, Nurse Hatchett marched into the room. ‘Don’t you listen to a word that old codger tells you,’ she said. She started fussing around Grandad, brushing dandruff from his shoulders and checking his pulse. Walter noticed that Grandad Speazlebud’s brow was becoming furrowed with deep thought. Just as Nurse Hatchett started to tidy a pile of books on the bedside table, the wheelchair zipped backwards, giving her a hefty bump in the rear end.
‘What happened?’ she snapped, as she spun around. ‘Did you press reverse?’ But Grandad Speazlebud had his hands raised innocently in the air, far away from the controls.
‘Must be a faulty switch,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to have it looked at.’
‘Indeed,’ replied Grandad. ‘You must. We don’t want wheelchairs going backwards without warning.’
Nurse Hatchett gave Grandad Speazlebud a very suspicious look. Then she turned on her heels and left.
When he was sure that Nurse Hatchett was out of earshot, Grandad continued, ‘Mr Strong is afraid of “The power of Noitanigami”.’
‘But “Noitanigami” is just the word “imagination” backwards, Grandad,’ said Walter.
‘Imagination,’ said Grandad, ‘is one of the greatest gifts that we human beings possess. Without it, man would never have landed on the moon, Mozart’s Jupiter symphony would not have been composed, and we would still believe that the world was as flat as a pancake. And while everybody possesses imagination, Walter, Noitanigami is a very rare gift indeed.
Sometimes even Walter found it difficult to understand what his grandad was on about, but he would never say it – he didn’t want to sound like Nurse Hatchett.
‘I don’t think that Mr Strong has any imagination, Grandad,’ said Walter. ‘He certainly doesn’t like it when I use mine, and he laughs at me when I spell backwards.’
‘Aha, Walter,’ Grandad replied, ‘you would be wrong to think that Mr Strong has no imagination. He has a wonderful imagination; he just chooses not to use it.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Walter, with a look of total disbelief.
Grandad Speazlebud took Walter’s hand in his, looked around to see if Nurse Hatchett’s razor-bill was poking around the corner and, happy they were alone, he began his tale:
‘When Frank Strong was a young teenager, he loved making things from wood. He would come to my workshop for scraps of wood. I was taken by his enthusiasm and, after a while, I gave him a small bench in the corner. Every evening after school he would arrive and, for hours, carve animals and birds, flowers and insects. He was like you, Walter, truly gifted. He was also very gentle and intelligent, and I was very fond of him.’
Walter shuffled uneasily in his chair. When Grandad continued his story he spoke slowly. There was a tinge of sadness in his voice:
‘As he got older, Frank often spoke of wanting to make chairs and tables about which people would say, at one glance, “I see you have a Strong table there,” or “Those are two very fine Strong chairs.”
When he was about to finish school, I offered to take him on for three years, as my apprentice. After that he would go to Berlin, to study with some of the finest furniture-makers in the world.’
‘What happened?’ asked Walter, still looking ill at ease. ‘Why did a good furniture-maker become a bad teacher?’
‘Well,’ continued Grandad, ‘one day, Frank’s parents visited me and told me to stop putting silly notions into their son’s head. They were both teachers, they reminded me, and a teacher is what Frank was destined to become. They very firmly said that they didn’t want their son to become a “mere” carpenter and that he would pursue a “proper” career as a teacher.
‘Frank came to see me a few days later. He barely spoke. He told me that his parents said that I was a dreamer and that I had wasted his time.
‘I told Frank that, unless we follow our dreams, we will never be truly happy.
‘Frank ignored me and gathered all his woodwork and took it away. He did, however, leave one single piece of furniture behind, because it was too heavy to carry. Later that evening, I saw smoke rise from a fire in the Strongs’ garden out on Railway Road. He had burnt everything, except for the chair he had left behind.’
‘What happened to the chair?’ asked Walter.
‘Nothing happened to it,’ replied Grandad, a hint of a smile now appearing on his lips. ‘It’s the Condor Chair – the one you’re sitting in right now.’
Walter jumped out of the chair like he had just seen a seven-headed dragon with piranha teeth appear at the end of Grandad’s bed.
‘The Condor Chair is my chair, my favourite chair,’ he said, totally confused. ‘I thought that you had made it.’
‘I must admit that I don’t say I did not make it unless I am asked,’ replied Grandad. ‘It’s such a wonderful piece of work.’
Walter found it hard to believe that the chair he loved to sit in was made by the teacher he despised.
Slowly, very slowly, he sat back down again.
Grandad chuckled. ‘It’s exactly the same chair you sat in before, Walter.’
‘I know,’ replied Walter. ‘But I don’t like it as much, now.’
‘If there’s one thing in life I really regret,’ said Grandad with a sigh, ‘it’s not being able to convince Frank Strong to follow his dreams. If I had, he would be happier, and so would you, Walter, and a lot of other children.’
Walter sat rigidly with a look of total horror on his face. Grandad liked Mr Strong! he thought. My favourite chair was made by Mr Strong! He felt as though his head was like a pumpkin with a big stick of dynamite stuck inside. And it just might explode any second. Walter wished that the condor hovering over his head would come alive and carry him out of this bad dream. He decided to change the subject, although a quiver of anger could still be heard in his voice.
‘Grandad,’ he asked, ‘if it’s true that we must follow our dreams, how come Dad, who has always followed his dreams, is still not successful, and has very little money? He can’t even afford a proper car. He has to drive the loomobile around town.’
‘Harry may be as poor as a church mouse, and as daft as a brush,’ Grandad replied with a smile. ‘But he’s as happy as a lark.’
Nurse Hatchett returned with a tray of hot food. ‘Visiting time is over,’ she said to Walter. ‘It’s time to get some food into this old troublemaker.’
‘Bye, Grandad,’ said Walter. ‘I lliw ees uoy eht yad retfa worromot. Ew nac og rof a klaw.’
‘I kool drawrof ot ti,’ his grandad called back.
Nurse Hatchett raised her crooked eyes to heaven. ‘You’ll end up in a mental hospital if you’re not careful, talking gobbledegook like that,’ she said.
4
Pig-Donkey saves the Day
Walter walked down the lane and out onto Runyon Hill. From around the corner, Danny Biggles appeared, freewheeling downhill on Levon Allen’s bicycle. He swerved towards Walter, causing him to jump back, stumble, and fall into a shallow stream.
Danny jammed on the brakes and turned menacingly towards Walter. ‘Walter Speazlebud, the moon-pet-psycho,’ he said, ‘and he’s all on his ownio. What a stroke of luck.’
Danny Biggles was nearly ten centimetres taller and looked a lot older than Walter. With his flat face and buck-teeth, he looked as if a large vehicle had driven into him at high speed.
‘Why are you riding Levon’s bike, Danny? Isn’t it a bit small for you?’ Walter asked, as he climbed out of the stream, his heart beating against his chest-bone, thump, thump, thump, like a big fist pounding on a wooden door.
Everybody knew that Danny Biggles was really eleven – two years older than Walter, and the other boys in the class. Danny’s parents had forgotten to put him in school, and when they finally remembered, two years later, they pretended that he was the same age as everybody else so that Danny wouldn’t be left behind.
Danny dropped the bike and walked towards Walter like a demented gunslinger. ‘I’m on my way to dump your friend’s bike in the river, where I dumped your bike, and where I dump all the bikes I steal – sorry, borrow.’
‘So it was you who took my bike,’ Walter said, as his heart thumped even louder. ‘You know I had to cancel my planned trip to the moon because of you. It’s way too far to walk.’
‘You know, smarty-pants,’ Danny snarled, with an increasingly nasty tone, ‘when you ran out of class today, Mr Strong told everybody that your grandad was going simple, and that your dad was crazy and that you’d probably end up like them.’
‘Oh no!’ shouted Walter suddenly, looking at the sky, ‘It’s a flying pig-donkey with a serpent’s tail and an Ynnad Selggib face. He’s going to crash into the church steeple.’
Danny looked up at the sky with glee. ‘Where is he?’ he said. ‘I want to see him crash.’
‘He’s just disappeared behind that cloud,’ Walter answered. ‘Keep looking. Just keep looking, and you’ll see him.’
Walter legged it past Danny, picked Levon’s bike off the road and hopped onto the saddle.
Danny was still examining the sky with great interest, like an astronomer without a telescope. ‘I don’t see him. I don’t see the flying pig-donkey. Where is he?’ he asked, sounding suspicious.
‘He’s in your spotty underpants, holding his nose,’ Walter yelled, as he pedalled furiously down the hill.
Danny realised that Walter had made a complete fool of him. ‘I’ll get you, Speazlebud,’ he screamed. ‘Ya stinkin’ spittlethrop, ya septic oozlescab, I’ll get you.’
Walter returned the bike to a very thankful Levon and ran home, still shaking from his close encounter with Danny Biggles.
His mum and dad were in the middle of painting the outside of their house, too busy to notice that Walter was dripping wet, out of breath, and unhappy. Maharaja, the cat, sat in the window, his bright ginger coat clashing violently with the new colour-scheme.
‘What do you think, Retlaw?’ asked Walter’s mum, Peggy, as she pointed proudly to the ‘exploding orange’ house with green polka dots and purple window frames.
‘Well,’ Walter replied, shielding his eyes from the blinding brightness, ‘it’s better than bright pink, Mum,’
‘The tidy village competition is coming up so we thought we would do our bit to brighten up the place.’
‘Mum,’ Walter began, ‘I had a horr–’ He was about to say ‘I had a horrible day,’ when his mum cut across him.
‘Don’t you think there are too many boring cream-coloured houses these days?’ she asked. ‘Cream paint must be half-price. That’s the only reason I can think …’
Walter drifted into a daydream as his mum chattered away to herself, while painting another big green polka dot onto the front of the Speazlebuds’ house.
Peggy Speazlebud was a tall, pretty woman with long black hair. She was an artist, and her big, bright, garish paintings hung all over the house. Walter thought that they should be looked at only while wearing sunglasses. However, he never had to suffer the paintings for too long as, one by one, they were sold to people of odd taste, bringing in enough money to feed the three of them.
Walter was still in a daydream, thinking about his talk with Grandad, when he heard his dad’s voice. ‘You’re a million miles away, Retlaw,’ Harry said, as he put his hand on Walter’s shoulder.
‘Dad,’ Walter asked, ‘if Grandad can spell backwards and I can spell backwards, why can’t you?’
‘Well,’ said Harry, ‘sometimes gifts can skip a generation. That’s why you’re not an inventor like me.’
‘Oh,’ said Walter, looking slightly worried, ‘does that mean that when I grow up and have kids they might turn out to be inventors?’
‘I’m afraid so, son,’ Harry chuckled.
‘And Dad,’ Walter continued, ‘Can Grandad really make things go backwards? He says he has a special power called Noitanigami.’
Harry Speazlebud crouched down and placed his hands on Walter’s shoulders. ‘Walter,’ he said, ‘your grandad believes that the stories he tells you are true. Doctor Kilroy calls them delusions – this means that Grandad imagines things that never happened. He slips between this world and the world of fantasy just like a child. The best thing to do, Walter, is to smile and agree with him.’
Walter didn’t like one little bit the idea of his grandfather going funny in the head. Had Grandad ever really known Mr Strong? he now asked himself. Had Grandad actually made the Condor Chair himself and now imagined that it had been made by Mr Strong? Was his grandad, who always had time to listen to Walter and make him smile, going crazy? He didn’t want to think so. He didn’t want his grandad to change.
Later that night, Walter’s mum sat on the end of his bed, like she did every night, and read him a story.
‘Mum,’ Walter said, ‘I’m almost ten years of age. Doesn’t it annoy you that you still have to read to me every night?’
‘Walter,’ Peggy replied, giving him a gentle kiss, ‘Leonardo da Vinci, Alexander Graham Bell, Walt Disney – they all needed help with their reading, all their lives. I enjoy reading to you. It helps me to slow down.’
Walter smiled at his mum. Maybe I’ll tell her about Mr Strong and Danny Biggles, he thought. Maybe now is a good time.
‘Yeeeaaaah!’ Peggy shouted with excitement, just as Walter was about to open his mouth. She jumped to her feet and raised her hands in the air. ‘I’ve just had an idea for a painting: an electric blue tree, with pink fish, hanging like apples on canary yellow strings! Better paint it before I forget it.’ She gave him a big hug and ran from the room, down the hall and into her studio, like a ferret into a rabbit burrow.
Walter sighed. He felt like calling after her but he was too tired and weary. He leaned over to grab his telescope which sat on the table beside the bed. He pointed it through the skylight at the grapefruit-coloured moon over Nittiburg Hill. Its craters looked so close, he was afraid that he might fall in.
5
Danny Biggles gets up his own Nose
Danny Biggles gets up his own Nose Danny Biggles was sitting directly behind Levon Allen. When Mr Strong turned to write on the blackboard, Danny saw a chance to bully Levon. ‘Hey, Hoppedy Foureyes, how about a race?’ he hissed. Levon had a slight limp as the result of an accident, and Danny never missed an opportunity to taunt him about it. ‘I’ll tie my feet together and wear a blindfold and I’ll still win.’
Levon ignored him.
Then Danny jumped up, ran over, grabbed Levon’s glasses from his face and returned quickly to his seat.
Mr Strong turned around to face the class. As always, he had an angry, unhappy look on his face. Then, as he did before every class, he placed his hand on the desk covered in the heavy black material and, for an instant, a look of calm crossed his face. ‘OK, Levon Allen, read what’s on the blackboard.’
‘I can’t, sir. I left my glasses at home,’ said Levon nervously. He was too scared to tell Mr Strong what had really happened.
‘Outside the door, Levon,’ shouted Mr Strong, as the calm disappeared from his brow and the familiar furrows reappeared, ‘and take your good-for-nothing friend, Speazlebud, with you.’
‘What did I do, sir?’ asked Walter who was sitting quietly at the back of the class.
‘You tore my good blue shirt, Speazlebud – remember?’
‘Welcome to the corridor of dreams,’ quipped Walter once they were outside the door. ‘I like to be out here during reading,’ he continued, ‘because when I try to read, it’s like you trying to read without glasses.’
‘You mean you have bad eyesight too, Walter? Why don’t you get glasses?’
‘Aha,’ said Walter, ‘my eyesight’s fine, but the words look a bit backwards and upside down.’
‘But what about tests, Walter? I’ve seen you read whole chapters.’
‘If there’s a test coming up, I get my mum to read the chapter to me the n
ight before and I remember every word. I just turn the pages to make it look good.’
‘You remember every word? Wow!’
‘I’m a bit like my grandad. He has over five hundred books in his room. Every day Nurse Hatchett reads to him for an hour. He knows every book off by heart and every word backwards.’
‘He’s a backwards wizard!’ Levon said excitedly.
Walter froze as if he had just seen an angel land on Levon’s head with a bag full of sweets. He looked up and down the corridor. ‘Can you keep a secret, Levon? A big, big secret the size of a tnahpele?’
Levon’s eyes lit up like fireflies in the night. Being Walter’s friend, he knew enough backwards spelling to understand that a secret as big as a tnahpele was about as big as secrets can possibly get.
‘OK,’ he said.
‘Well, you see,’ said Walter very quietly, while looking around for nosey parkers, ‘he may be some kind of wizard. He says he has the power of Noitanigami, whatever that is … or else he may be going crazy. I’m just not sure.’
‘Walter,’ said Levon. ‘That magic stuff only happens in books. I know you wish he was a wizard, and so do I, because then he could help us with our problems – with Biggles and Strong.’
‘You’re right, Levon. I’m just dreaming as usual.’
The bell rang. Danny Biggles came out of the classroom and dropped Levon’s glasses on the ground.
‘I found these in my pocket, Hoppedy.
Better pick ’em up before someone steps on ’em.’
Then Danny stuck a finger right up his left nostril until he could feel his eyeball from behind. He moved his bulging eyeball from side to side, and up and down, and he looked like a monster from a medieval swamp. Walter and Levon felt sick.
Danny slowly pulled his finger out and wiped his putrid, slimy snot across Walter’s shirt. ‘You’re next, boy,’ he said with a grisly laugh.
Walter Speazlebud Page 2
