The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket

by John Boyne

  Chapter 19

  Setting Free the Freaks

  At Dún Laoghaire Harbour in Dublin, two long barriers had been erected on either side of the road. To the left a crowd of about two hundred people, freakophiles all, were waiting to see the extraordinary creatures who had made their way across the ocean. Opposite them stood a much smaller crowd, a quarter the size, made up mostly of students who waved placards in the air.

  LET THE FREAKS GO FREE! said one.

  IRELAND SAYS NO TO THE CAPTIVITY OF FREAKS! said a second.

  STOP CALLING THEM FREAKS, THEY’RE JUST PEOPLE LIKE YOU AND ME, ALBEIT WITH SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS AND IN ONE CASE A MOST UNUSUAL MANNER OF SPEAKING, said a third, held by a boy who didn’t appear to understand how to make the most of his protest.

  Both groups fell silent when a door was flung open on deck and Captain Hoseason appeared, looking resplendent in his freshly pressed ringmaster’s outfit, a funereal black hat on his head, his whip locked carefully into the pouch at his side.

  As he set foot on dry land, he indicated that the Gardaí might allow the television reporter and cameraman through for a short interview.

  “Captain Hoseason,” said a smartly dressed woman, thrusting a microphone between them. “Miriam O’Callaghan, RTÉ News. There’s a large crowd gathered here today in protest at what they see as the forced imprisonment of freaks. How do you respond to this accusation?”

  “With a sarcastic reply, of course,” said Captain Hoseason, smiling at her. “And a patronizing aside to remark on your extraordinary beauty. Although this is hardly a large crowd, dear lady. The large crowd will be the one that gathers to see our wonderful performances over the next week. That crowd will put this crowd to shame.”

  “A lot of people feel that this form of forced servitude is genuinely unacceptable,” continued Miriam. “Do you have anything to say to your critics?”

  “I make a point of never listening to my critics,” said Captain Hoseason, spreading his arms wide once again in a magnanimous gesture. “I find that they give me indigestion.”

  “But all these students who’ve taken time off from their studies—”

  “My dear Miss O’Callaghan, do you really think that’s what they’d be doing if they weren’t here today? Let’s be honest—if it wasn’t me, they’d be protesting about something else. The latest war, the price of alcohol, giving women the vote, something like that.”

  “Captain Hoseason, here in Ireland women already have the vote.”

  “Do they indeed? What a very progressive nation you are.”

  “So you have no message for all these people who want to see the freaks set free?”

  “Actually, I have four words,” replied Captain Hoseason with a smile. “Over my dead body. And I have a wonderful new specimen that I picked up in Toronto only last week. A very interesting little fellow. Disobeys the law of gravity.”

  “Little boys can be terribly disobedient at times,” cried one mother from behind the railings, looking down at her own son, who stared back up at her with an angry expression on his face. “They can be a curse.”

  “They can indeed, madam,” replied Captain Hoseason. “They can indeed. But fortunately this boy is kept in a cage so the public is perfectly safe. And for only one hundred of your devalued Irish euros, you can view him for four nights in your capital city, Dublin, and three more in the town of Skibbereen in the People’s Republic of Cork. Check the press for details. Until then, ladies and gentlemen, I bid you all good day.”

  And with that he made his way toward the front of a lorry as the last of the freaks’ cages were loaded into the back—but before he could climb aboard, an elderly man rushed forward to shake his hand, locking him in a fierce embrace, and it took three Gardaí to pull him away. A little shaken, Captain Hoseason brushed himself down and was driven off into the Dublin afternoon.

  “It sounded like there were some people on our side back there,” said Francis as the lorry made its way through the city.

  “They can’t save us,” said Liam. “No one can.”

  “The man’s a monster,” said Delilah.

  “Tyrant despicable a,” added Felicia.

  Thirty minutes later the lorry came to a halt and the back doors were thrown open. A team of men were waiting for them, each wearing bright red polo shirts and yellow chinos, and they carried the cages into a specially constructed Portakabin where they looked at each freak with interest—particularly Jeremy, the boy with flippers where his feet should have been.

  “You must be a great swimmer yourself, are you?” asked one of them.

  “Your remark is both insensitive and ignorant,” replied Jeremy.

  “And you must be the new arrival,” said another, looking at Barnaby, who was lying flat against the top of his cage. “Look at you, you’re floating!”

  Barnaby stared at him and thought about happier times, like the day Captain W. E. Johns kicked a football past Henry into the goal in their back garden.

  “Ah, don’t look so miserable,” said the man. “We’ve put something very special in here, just for you.”

  Inside the Portakabin, Barnaby was astonished to see that a mattress had been nailed to the ceiling in the corner, just like Alistair had done when he was a baby. The very sight of it made him long for home.

  “Is it a David Jones Bellissimo plush medium mattress?” he asked hopefully.

  “No, it’s from the Argos economy line,” replied the man, releasing the boy from his cage. “But it should do the trick.”

  “What a curious place,” said Francis when they were alone, gazing out at the mansion where the president of Ireland lived.

  “Look over there,” said Delilah, pointing at the big top, which had been constructed in the center of the park with a sign that proclaimed FREAKITUDE! It was surrounded by caricatures of various strange-looking individuals, none of whom bore any resemblance to the people currently being held captive. “That’s where they’ll parade us like … like …”

  “Like freaks,” said Jeremy, sitting down in a corner and burying his face in his flippers.

  Later that night, however, after dinner, something unexpected happened. Captain Hoseason had been invited to dine with the president, who was intending to give him a stern lecture in two languages on how much he disapproved of what he was doing, and the freaks were gathered in a corner of the room playing cards, with Barnaby watching the action from above and trying not to shout out when he saw that someone had a particularly good hand. It was in the middle of a game of poker that they heard a curious scraping sound coming from the keyhole.

  “What’s that?” asked Jeremy in fright.

  They made their way back to their respective cages as the scraping continued—until finally the lock gave way and the door was flung open to reveal an elderly man: the same man who had thrown himself at Captain Hoseason earlier in the day.

  “Hell’s bells!” cried the man triumphantly. “I did it!”

  “Who are you?” asked Liam McGonagall.

  “Shush, keep your voices down,” he said, poking his head back out of the door and looking around nervously. “Is everyone here?”

  “Everyone who?” asked Barnaby.

  “Everyone from the show. Everyone they call ‘freaks,’ ” he added, looking a little embarrassed as he said the word.

  “We’re not performing for you now if that’s what you’re hoping for,” said the first Siamese twin.

  “Pay your money tomorrow night like everyone else,” said the second.

  “I don’t want to see the show,” said the man. “I’ve come to set you free.”

  “To set us free?” asked Francis, standing up.

  “To set us free?” asked Jeremy, flapping his flippers.

  “Free us set to?” asked Felicia, putting her hands to her mouth in delight.

  “I read all about you in the paper,” said the man. “And Hell’s bells! I said to myself. That’s just completely wrong. Nobody shou
ld be kept in captivity like this. You should be able to go home to your families. But we need to keep our voices down. There might be more security people around. We can’t let them hear us.”

  “There’s half a dozen outside somewhere,” said Jeremy. “They’ve been there since we arrived this afternoon.”

  “Well, they’re not there anymore,” replied the man, laughing heartily as he held up an empty bottle in front of them—the same bottle that Captain Hoseason had offered to Barnaby when he took him inside the Toronto tower. “I stole this from that awful man earlier! Then I gave some to each of the guards. They should be out for the rest of the night.”

  “You managed to get them all to drink from that little bottle?” asked Francis in surprise.

  “No, I bought a big box of doughnuts and sprinkled some of the water on top,” he explained.

  “That’s not water,” said Barnaby.

  “Well, whatever it is. The point is, they’re out for the count, and if you want to escape from this place, now’s your chance. You want to go home, don’t you?”

  “I do,” said Barnaby quickly. “I’m trying to get back to Sydney.”

  “Let’s save the chitter-chatter for later,” said the man. “We need to get going.”

  He opened the door and looked left and right. “You’d better jump on my back,” he said to Barnaby. “We can’t have you floating away. The rest of you, follow on behind.”

  Barnaby did as he was told, and a few minutes later the entire troupe was making its way through Phoenix Park in the moonlight. Two stags appeared in their path; stared at them for a moment, confused by the flippers, hooks, and—as there was a lot of pollen in the air—the woman who kept appearing and disappearing every few seconds; but in the end simply bowed their antlers and took off in the opposite direction.

  In the distance, parked along the road, was a small fleet of cars and motorbikes. “I bought all these earlier today,” said the man, chuckling away to himself. “Hell’s bells, I have so much money it wasn’t any problem at all. The students are going to take each of you in a different direction, so you’d better say your goodbyes now. That way, it’ll be harder to track you down. We’ll be heading for bus terminals, train stations, airports, and harbors. If you travel together, you’ll stand out from the crowd too much.”

  Which, Barnaby thought, was what had got them into this situation in the first place.

  The freaks all said goodbye to each other, promising to write once they got where they were going. Some of them had been together a long time, and although they were looking forward to going home, they were very sorry to be leaving the others behind.

  “It was good seeing you again,” said Liam McGonagall, offering his hook to Barnaby, who shook it warmly.

  “Where will you go?” he asked.

  “Back to India. If I can make my way there.”

  “I hope we meet again someday.”

  “Well, we didn’t expect to meet this time, so you never know. Safe home, Barnaby!”

  They sped off in different directions until there were only two people left by the final motorbike.

  “You haven’t told me your name yet,” said Barnaby to the man who had saved them.

  “Stanley Grout,” he said. “And you’d better hold tight or you’ll go shooting off into the night sky. These bikes go pretty fast, you know.”

  Barnaby did as he was told and locked his arms around Stanley’s waist. “Where are we going anyway?” he shouted in his ear as they pulled out.

  “The airport,” he roared back, and twenty minutes later they were abandoning the bike in the car park.

  “I bought a couple of tickets earlier,” he said.

  “To Sydney?”

  “No, sorry. I didn’t realize that was where you’d want to go. I’m on my way to Africa, so you’ll have to come too, I’m afraid. But we can get you back to Australia once we arrive there.”

  Which was good enough for Barnaby. They went up the escalator toward departures, Barnaby clinging onto Stanley’s back again as he didn’t have any other way of staying on the ground.

  “I’m too old for this,” said Stanley a few minutes later, setting the boy down. “How are we going to keep you from floating away?”

  “Rucksacks are best,” explained Barnaby. “Filled with heavy items. I put them on my back and they keep me grounded.”

  “Right,” said Stanley, leading the way to the shops, where he bought one—along with eight liter bottles of water, which they packed into the rucksack before strapping it onto Barnaby’s back. And a few minutes later, Barnaby and Stanley were making their way down the ramp, boarding passes in hand. They found their seats, where they quickly fell asleep. And when they woke up again, they were already in Africa.

  Chapter 20

  Stanley’s Wish List

  “Six months,” said Stanley the following afternoon as they made their way toward the Zambezi River, where the old man had an appointment scheduled for twelve noon precisely. “Does that seem like a long time to you?”

  “A very long time,” said Barnaby, who was only eight years old, after all, so six months accounted for one-sixteenth of his life to date.

  “It’s a blink of an eye,” replied Stanley. “But it’s all I’ve got left.”

  Barnaby stared at him, uncertain if the old man meant what he thought he meant. “You’re dying?” he asked hesitantly.

  “That’s right. Two months ago the doctors gave me eight months to live, so I must be down to six now. I’d been having these terrible headaches, you see, so I had them checked out and they said there was nothing they could do for me. My number’s up. And I said, Well, if that’s the case, then hell’s bells, I’m going to live the way I want to live before I die.”

  “Is that what brought you to Ireland?”

  “In a manner of speaking. I spent my whole life working. Built up one of the biggest businesses in America. Never took a day off. Never did a thing I wanted. Focused all the time on being on top, being number one, getting richer than the next guy. So when I found that I was on my way out, I thought, If I don’t do something for myself now, then I never will. I made a list and started to tick things off one by one. My family came from Ireland originally and I’d never been back, so that’s where I was last week. When I saw that freak-show circus—I tell you, Barnaby, I just about dropped dead right there in anger at the way you people were being treated and swore that I’d save every last one of you. And I did too! But that’s not all. Over the past couple of months, I’ve scuba-dived off the Great Barrier Reef, walked a tightrope across Niagara Falls, rappelled down one of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, and run with the bulls in Spain. And now I’m on my way—we’re on our way—to the Victoria Falls Bridge for the world’s biggest bungee jump. After that I plan to do a parachute jump. What do you think of that? You think I’m crazy?”

  “Of course not!”

  Stanley smiled and shook his head. “I wish everyone had such an open mind,” he said. “My family say that I’ve gone gaga. Completely loony tunes. Crazier than a coyote in a chicken coop. They even tried to get me locked up. Here I am with only a few months left and they want me to spend my last days in some god-awful nursing home getting bed baths every day. How’s that for a way to go? I told them, Hell’s bells, just let me have my fun, but they wouldn’t have it. They say it’s not normal to be doing things like this at my time of life. What’s normal? I asked them. This! they said, pointing at their own sorry lives. So I’m on the run. If they catch up with me, I’m toast.”

  “But don’t you miss them?” asked Barnaby. “They are your family, after all.”

  “Sure I miss them,” said Stanley. “I miss them every minute of the day. But I’ve spent my whole life in a three-piece suit. I’ve done what was expected of me. I’ve crushed my competitors and outfoxed my rivals. And do you know something? I haven’t enjoyed a single minute of it. But these last two months? Pure pleasure. Every day. Now look ahead, Barnaby, my boy. Here we a
re.”

  They were standing close to a deep gorge on the Zambian side of the river. The Victoria Falls Bridge stretched out before them, a magnificent construct of shimmering steel, in the center of which stood the platform from which bungee jumpers made their leaps. They headed toward the platform, where a group of volunteers were helping to tie the harnesses. They looked at the old man and the boy and scratched their beards.

  “Don’t tell me I’m too old!” snapped Stanley, fixing them with a gaze that was as steely as the bridge they were standing on.

  “And don’t tell me I’m too young!” added Barnaby, who wasn’t going to allow himself to be left out of this adventure.

  The bungee assistants shrugged their shoulders and strapped the cords around the old man’s legs as Barnaby held on to the side of the bridge to stop himself from floating away.

  “Here goes nothing,” said Stanley as he leaped off the platform and fell three hundred and sixty-five feet into the ravine, coming so close to the rocks and river below that Barnaby almost shouted out in horror; a moment later he bounced back up, went down, came back up again, down again, up again, over and over, until he was simply bobbing in the air, at which point he was dragged back to where he’d started.

  “Hell’s bells!” cried Stanley in delight, taking the goggles off. His thin hair was spread out at extraordinary angles, giving him a rather demented appearance. “If my kids could see the fun I’m having, they’d understand. What about it, Barnaby? You want to have a go?”

  “Absolutely!” said Barnaby, allowing the volunteers to tie the cord around him now. He made his way to the edge of the platform, looked down, took a deep breath, and jumped; however, he only descended a couple of dozen feet before he started rising again—until the bungee cord was extended vertically into the clouds, with Barnaby at the end of it looking down rather than sinking into the gorge below.

  “We should have seen that coming,” said the old man, turning to explain things to the astonished people on the platform. “Kid refuses to obey the law of gravity. Better reel him in again.”