by R. A. Spratt
So not even Mum heard the intruder sneaking up to the house. Not until the front door smashed open.
Mum might not have heard the approach, but the second the door flew off its hinges she was wide awake and in motion. She whipped out of bed, along the corridor, down the staircase and had crash-tackled the home invader before they had taken three paces inside.
The grappling match that ensued was brutal. But Mum had not paused to turn the lights on, so she had no idea whose arm she was twisting and neck she was squeezing. She just knew they were a highly trained operative. She was wrestling with someone who knew just as much about violence as she did. Every attack was met with ingenious counterattack. Mum had never confronted such an equal opponent. She began to think about weapons. If she couldn’t overpower the intruder with physical force, she would have to get to the kitchen and the knife drawer.
But it never got that far. The lights suddenly flashed on, Joe was standing at the top of the staircase, his hand on the switch. April, Fin and Loretta were with him. Mum discovered she was wrestling with her old boss – Professor Maynard.
This was enormously shocking. But Mum had been trained not to pause no matter how terrifying a position you find yourself in. There was no way she could beat Maynard in unarmed combat. Maynard had trained her. She was a master of the martial arts jiu jitsu, judo and hapkido, as well as the unsportsmanlike art of biting. Mum had only one chance to save her family. She suddenly released Maynard, rolled away and sprinted full speed for the kitchen. She had to get a weapon. A good one.
Mum slid across the kitchen floor in her socks and wrenched open the drawer. But the big knife wasn’t there. Then she remembered, Harold had been chopping pumpkin the night before. She lunged for the dishwasher, wrenched it open, found the knife and sprinted back to protect her family.
But when she got back to the hallway, she discovered there was no need for protection. Joe, Fin, Loretta and April had made their way downstairs and they were standing over Professor Maynard, who was still lying on the floor groaning a little. For once Pumpkin wasn’t barking, he was nestled quietly in April’s arms. Even Harold was hovering a short distance away. Normally he would be running out the back door, screaming just at the sight of Professor Maynard, his old arch nemesis.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Mum. ‘Don’t get too close to her. She can’t be trusted.’
‘She’s hurt,’ said Fin.
‘Stay back,’ said Mum, ‘It could be a trick.’ Mum carefully edged closer. Maynard’s face was a deathly pale, almost grey colour. Her breathing was shallow.
‘Bertha! Thank goodness you’re still all right,’ Maynard struggled to get the words out between laboured breaths. ‘I came as fast as I could.’
‘What happened to you?’ asked April. ‘Have you had some sort of accident? Or are you dying a natural death of old age?’
‘I was ambushed at my office,’ gasped Maynard. She pulled up the sleeve of her blouse. Her arm beneath was hideous. It was swollen and discoloured a horrible red and purple hue.
‘Urgh,’ said Fin as his eyes rolled back in his head and he fainted. Joe caught him before he hit the ground.
‘That doesn’t look good,’ said Loretta.
‘It was a dart,’ said Maynard. She pulled something out of her pocket and held it out to Mum.
Mum carefully took it from her grasp. ‘It’s a poisoned dart,’ she said. ‘The only operatives I’ve known to use them are in South America or . . .’
‘Papua New Guinea,’ interrupted Maynard. ‘That’s why I came here.’
‘You realise you’re not in Papua New Guinea, right?’ asked Fin.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Mum. ‘I can’t help you with this.’
‘Not you,’ said Maynard, impatiently. ‘You.’ She pointed her other hand weakly at Dad. ‘You’re the world-leading expert on the toxic plants of Papua New Guinea.’
Everyone turned to look at Dad.
‘Is that true?’ asked Loretta. ‘I didn’t know you were secretly so interesting, Mr Peski.’
Dad was biting his lip. ‘Yes, I was contracted to study orchid toxins as part of my Masters thesis. That’s how I met your mother. She wandered into the wrong office one day at the university.’
Mum smiled fondly at Dad. There had been nothing accidental about this meeting. She had needed to acquire a nerve agent and stole it right off Dad’s desk. She had been ordered to pursue a relationship with him because his toxin research was so promising and the agency wanted to monitor it more closely.
‘I have seen this before,’ said Dad, crouching down and taking a closer look at Professor Maynard’s arm. ‘It is very serious. If the poison is allowed to continue, it will eventually cause a collapse of the nervous system, which will lead to heart failure.’
Maynard closed her eyes, bracing herself for the worst.
‘But . . .’ said Dad. ‘There is an anti-toxin that can be made from the flowers of the minerva orchid. It’s a very rare orchid found in the mountains of North-Eastern Papua New Guinea.’
‘That’s a six-hour flight and three-day hike from here,’ said Mum.
‘Yes,’ agreed Dad. ‘If you had to find one in the wild, it would be a difficult journey. But I do have a specimen growing in my greenhouse and it’s in flower right now. I could prepare a balm.’
Maynard’s eyes flickered open.
‘Do it!’ urged Mum.
But Dad didn’t move. ‘Are you sure?’ said Dad. ‘Should we be saving her?’
‘What is wrong with you?’ demanded April. ‘All life is sacred. Even the life of no-good psychos like her. You don’t get to make decisions like that. Just save her. It’s the right thing to do!’
Dad nodded. April was right. He took off running, well shuffling quickly. Dad couldn’t really run. He hurried out the French doors, disappearing into the darkness of night.
‘Bertha,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘My whole operation has been compromised.’
‘I don’t really care,’ said Mum. ‘You hung my family out to dry here. This place is swarming with operatives. You’re on your own.’
‘No,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘I’ve been protecting them all.’ Maynard broke down into a coughing fit. She struggled desperately, wheezing for breath before she could talk again. ‘I’ve been stashing defectors and witnesses in Currawong for decades. Anyone who needed protecting from the Kolektiv, or double agents within our own organisation.’
‘You’re kidding,’ said Loretta. ‘Why Currawong?’
‘This place is perfect,’ said Maynard. ‘The igneous rock beneath the subsoil combines with the water table to release naturally occurring radioactivity.’
‘I knew there was something wrong with the water here,’ said April.
‘It makes it impossible to observe with electronic or satellite surveillance,’ said Maynard. ‘In the world of espionage Currawong is invisible – until now.’
‘What happened?’ asked Mum. ‘Who betrayed us? I’ll kill them.’
‘You did,’ said Maynard. ‘When you escaped from prison. You were tracked here.’
‘No!’ said Mum.
Maynard coughed, her breathing was rattly because there was so much fluid in her lungs. ‘The Kolektiv lured me into sending my entire team to their new base in Siberia. It was a trick. They are on their way here now. You have to get out.’ Maynard broke down into another coughing fit.
Mum looked up at the kids. ‘We’ve got to get out. Put as much distance between ourselves and this town as possible.’
‘No,’ said Joe.
‘You’re not the parent here, Joe,’ said Mum. ‘We’ve got to . . .’
‘NO!’ interrupted Joe. ‘You left. I had to step up. You can’t come back and act like that did not happen. I say “no”, we are not going anywhere.’
The others were stunned. He had said several sentences without a single stammer. Even Mum was taken aback.
‘Besides,’ said Loretta, ‘it’s the Potato Pageant tomo
rrow and we’re all involved.’
‘But it’s just a stupid Potato Festival,’ said Mum. ‘This is life and death.’
‘That’s such an un-Currawongian thing to say,’ chided Fin. ‘It’s a festival and it’s potatoes. Both of those things are important in this town.’
‘Besides, we never did what Maynard wanted before,’ said April. ‘So I’m not going to start listening to her just because her arm has gone purple.’
‘But she said the Kolektiv are coming,’ said Mum.
‘For all we know she is Kolektiv,’ said Fin.
‘This is madness,’ said Mum.
‘It’s the Potato Pageant,’ said Loretta. ‘It always makes people go a bit loopy.’
It was a crazy day in Currawong. The whole town had set aside dignity, normality and reason, coming together as one to enjoy a celebration of potatoes.
It sounds ludicrous – potatoes being celebrated. But which of our public holidays isn’t ludicrous when you think about it? At Easter we celebrate a bunny rabbit hopping around leaving chocolate eggs in the garden. At Christmas we celebrate an overweight man breaking into houses through the chimney. Even New Year is ridiculous. Everyone goes out in the middle of the night and the government sets off fireworks, just because the numerical system by which we keep track of our calendar is going to change by one digit. Really, all holidays are bizarre, people just don’t think about it because they’ve been celebrating them the same way for centuries.
So why not stop everything and take a day off to celebrate potatoes? Potatoes are delicious, particularly when fried and covered liberally in salt. They’re lovely mashed or baked or roasted too. Really, it’s amazing more people don’t celebrate these wonderful tubers. The town of Currawong had been celebrating the Potato Pageant for fifty-seven years so for anyone younger than that, it was every bit as much a part of their heritage as all the more traditional holidays celebrated by the rest of the world.
As such, when the sun rose over the Daffodil Gardens everyone proud to call themselves a Currawongian was in a buoyant mood. The flowerbeds looked beautiful. The gardeners had made sure they were crowded with blooms especially for the occasion. And the fish pond that snaked the length of the garden had even been cleaned, so it looked nice. Crowds of excited locals and bemused tourists were milling about, getting food from street vendors, finding the best viewing spot and catching up with friends as they waited for the Capture the Potato Game to kick off.
Currawongians took these celebrations seriously. Lots of people were dressed up in potato-themed clothes, or wearing potato earrings made out of actual potatoes so they must have had very strong ear lobes. Two people were even dressed up as potatoes in very convincing human-sized potato suits.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Mr Lang’s voice resounded over the PA system. He was standing at the rostrum in the centre of the gardens. Everyone was ignoring him, being much more interested in the baked potatoes they were eating or potato costumes they were gossiping about than what the local high school teacher had to say.
‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ he repeated.
Still no one fell silent.
April heckled, ‘I don’t think there are any ladies or gentlemen here.’
‘Citizens of Currawong!’ tried Mr Lang. That got more attention. ‘As your acting mayor, it gives me great pleasure . . .’
Everyone had started talking again.
‘YOU LOT! SIT DOWN!’ Mr Lang barked into the microphone, using his best teacher’s voice.
This worked. The crowd begrudgingly started making their way to the stands set up all around the outer perimeter of the gardens.
‘Thank you,’ said Mr Lang. ‘Welcome to the first stage of the potato festivities, the Capture the Potato Game between Currawong High and St Anthony’s College.’ There was polite applause.
‘St Anthony’s has won for the last seventeen years in a row,’ said Mr Lang. ‘Currawong High hasn’t won since the great food-poisoning outbreak at St Anthony’s eighteen years ago.’
There was booing from the St Anthony’s fans as they remembered this, and snickering from the Currawong supporters. It was widely known that the St Anthony’s team had been tricked into giving themselves food poisoning when a chocolate mud cake laced with laxatives had been left in their team dressing room the night before the match.
‘Allow me to introduce the teams. This year, competing for St Anthony’s we have . . .’ Mr Lang read from a list of names. ‘Bretta Magnusson, Peter Von Der Portern, Sue Burnet, Beau Devereux, Victor Cheung and . . .’ The crowd was clapping politely as each competitor jogged onto the field. There were a few polite whoops and hurrahs from the St Anthony’s section of the crowd for specific players. Mr Lang continued, ‘. . . and their captain, Daisy Odinsdottir!’
The rest of the crowd exploded into a storm of booing. Eventually everyone got exhausted with booing and started branching out into hissing and abuse hurling just to mix things up. Daisy didn’t seem to mind. She bounced athletically on the spot, smirking to herself, occasionally shaking her fist at individual spectators if she caught a particularly offensive piece of abuse.
‘And from Currawong High,’ continued Mr Lang, ‘we have . . . Kieran Peterson, Animesh Jain, Wendy De Groot, Simon Pomphreys, Loretta Viswanathan . . .’
‘BOOOOO!’ The St Anthony’s portion of the crowd started howling at this name, but Loretta just smiled and waved back at them charmingly, and the booing soon lost steam. After all, St Anthony’s had expelled her, so if she wasn’t playing for them, they only had themselves to blame.
‘. . . And their captain,’ continued Mr Lang. ‘Joe Peski!’
There was loud cheering at his name. In the crowd, Mum was surprised by all the fuss.
‘Why is everyone cheering Joe?’ Mum asked Fin.
‘’Cause everyone loves him,’ explained Fin.
‘They do?’ asked Mum. Joe had always been so shy. She’d been to one parent teacher interview when Joe was in year 5 where his teacher hadn’t even realised he was in the class. ‘Why?’
‘He’s the best lawn bowls player in town,’ said Fin. ‘That’s a big deal round here.’
‘Plus he won the mud run,’ added April.
‘Yeah,’ said Fin. ‘And I doubt there is an old lady in town who he hasn’t helped by carrying her groceries to her car.’
Mum looked about at the crowd. Everyone was smiling, clapping and cheering for her oldest son. She had always thought of him as a mushroom boy – someone who grew in the quiet and shadow. But here he was in the spotlight, thriving. He had grown up while she was away.
‘The only person who doesn’t like him is Daisy Odinsdottir,’ said Fin, as he pointed her out on the field.
Daisy’s teammates had to grab hold of her jersey and hold her back, as she lunged forward with her fist raised clearly trying to plant a punch on Joe before the game had even begun.
‘I’ll go over the rules,’ said Mr Lang.
Out in the gardens the teams were talking among themselves. ‘Why bother?’ said Kieran. ‘Everyone knows them. They’re always the same.’
‘I don’t,’ admitted Joe. Standing in the gardens in front of thousands of spectators was making him feel physically ill. He was regretting the three baked potatoes he had eaten just before he walked on.
‘Didn’t you teach him?’ Animesh demanded of Loretta.
‘Of course,’ said Loretta. ‘Time and time again, but the problem with being this beautiful,’ Loretta indicated her own face, ‘is that boys tend to take in visual information at the expense of auditory information. So when I’m talking, particularly if I’m smiling, they don’t hear a word I say.’
‘Huh?’ said Animesh, he’d stopped listening to Loretta to marvel at how pink her lips were.
‘Exactly,’ said Loretta.
Mr Lang was continuing with his explanation. ‘Each team shall be given a sack full of Bronwyn Browns . . .’
The crowd broke out in cheers just at the name of the beloved
potato.
‘Each Bronwyn Brown is marked with a CH or SA to show which team it belongs to and prevent anyone trying to make substitutions.’
The crowd booed at this. In the crowd Matilda turned beetroot red. This is what she had done the previous year, which is why you now had to be over thirteen to compete.
‘Poor Matilda,’ said Loretta. ‘She will persist in cheating at every possible opportunity and yet she is always so bad at it.’
‘The object of the game is to protect your sack while trying to steal the other team’s,’ said Mr Lang. ‘To aid them, they will be given two more sacks of unmarked potatoes to throw at their opponents to fend them off. Any player hit by a potato must immediately return to their home base and cannot rejoin the game until they have done so.’
The crowd clapped and cheered.
‘St Anthony’s, your home base is the bluebell bed at the south end of the fish pond,’ announced Mr Lang. ‘Currawong High, you are based in the delphinium bed on the north side. Whoever gets the opposing team’s marked potatoes first – wins!’
The crowd cheered and stomped their feet on the temporary seating, which was really unwise because Constable Pike had erected the seating the night before. He had no idea about engineering and the ‘easy-to-follow instructions’ were in Swedish and therefore not easy to follow at all.
‘Take your positions!’ called Mr Lang. He was starting to enjoy himself. Normally when he yelled at people, he was telling them off. This made a nice change.
The teams picked up their sacks and started jogging, or more realistically shuffling to their designated flowerbeds. It is hard to run when you’re carrying thirty kilograms of spuds.
‘On your marks!’ said Mr Lang.
All the competitors stood with one foot on the flowerbed and another on the turf, ready to run.
‘Remember our strategy,’ urged Loretta.
‘Get set!’ called Mr Lang.
‘Good luck, everyone,’ said Joe.
‘GO!’ Mr Lang bellowed.
The crowd burst into a roar of cheering. All the competitors started running off in different directions. Wendy and Simon dashed over to a pine tree to take cover. Joe dragged all three sacks behind a rubbish bin where he would be shielded and the others followed. They only just got there in time before a hail of potatoes thudded into the steel side of the bin. Joe flinched, but better the bin than his head.
