Fizzlebert Stump and the Girl Who Lifted Quite Heavy Things

by A. F. Harrold

  ‘How dare you?’ said Fizz, standing on his tiptoes, nose to chin with Cedric. He was angry, his eyes were getting itchy and his ears were getting hot. His hands were bunching into fists at his side.

  ‘How dare I?’ Cedric said, taking a step back (but not in a cowardly way, just so they could see each other properly as he said what he was going to say). ‘Do you know who you’re talking to, Fizzlebert Dump? I’m Cedric Greene, The Boy Who Sticks His Head in the Lion’s Mouth, and,’ he paused here to let the words sink in before delivering his last, final and last words on the subject, ‘I’ve still got a lion.’

  Fizz was dumbfounded.

  A second later he found himself less dumb, though still founded (whatever that means).

  ‘I-I-I thought you did something with fire?’ he stuttered.

  ‘Used to,’ Cedric said, casually. ‘But fire is so last year. My dad bought us a lion and a new lion tamer for my birthday, because if you’re too scared to do the act now, then I might as well give it a go, yeah? And, do you know what, Shunt? Even if I say so myself, I do it so much better than it’s ever been done before. I’m a natural.’

  ‘Well,’ said Fizz, angrily beginning a sentence he didn’t know the end of. ‘Well,’ he repeated, starting the sentence again in the hope it would sort itself out as it left his mouth, ‘that doesn’t matter, because when the people see my new act, well, they’ll forget all about lions and heads and mouths and stuff, because what I do now is amazing. Oh gosh, you’ll shut up when you see what I do now.’

  ‘I ain’t heard about any new act,’ said Cedric, not looking in the slightest bit concerned, just nibbling his fingernail as cool as anything.

  ‘Well, it’s secret, isn’t it?’ Fizz said, secretly wishing somebody had let him in on the secret too. ‘It’s a surprise.’ You could say that again, he thought. ‘You’ll see on Friday.’

  He hoped no one could hear the quaver in his voice that he felt vibrating with each fib he told, but it looked like the other kids had bought the story because they started muttering things like, ‘Ooh, that sounds special,’ and ‘I wonder if it’s really better than a lion,’ and ‘Well, we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we,’ until Cedric waved his hand and they fell silent.

  ‘Stump,’ he said slowly, using Fizz’s real name like a threat. ‘You’d better tell me what this act is right now. I don’t like surprises.’ He paused and looked at Fizz through squinting eyes. ‘Do you know what?’ he said. ‘I don’t think I even believe you. I reckon you’re making it up.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Then tell me all about your brilliant new act.’

  When Fizz remained silent for a second longer than he should’ve, Cedric turned to his friends. ‘Look, he ain’t got an act. He’s lost his lion, and he’s lied to you. Dizzybert Stimp, the most pathetic kid in the circus.’

  As his cronies were slapping their sides with laughter, as Fizz could feel his cheeks burning and the rumours of frustrated, embarrassed tears welling behind his eyes, Cedric spat the nibbled edge of a fingernail high in the air where it spun in the sunlight, glinting and twirling.

  The laughter stopped as every eye followed the sparkling arc of the paring (which is the technical term for the bit that comes off when you clip your nails) as it tumbled through the air above them.

  Then: POW!

  Cedric flew backwards through the air and landed in the dust clutching his stomach, his eyes bulging out of his face with a mix of surprise and pain.

  Someone had just punched him, and, although I can’t in anyway condone violence or support it and certainly wouldn’t encourage anyone reading this book to attempt to solve their problems using it, I must say, he did rather have it coming to him.

  izz looked down at his fist.

  Cedric had made him mad, teasing him like that, taunting him like that, bullying him like that. Circuses are supposed to stick together, not take the mickey out of each other. Nobody could blame him for having punched the nasty show-off.

  Except . . .

  Except Fizz hadn’t punched him. His fist, while still clenched, was hanging by his side, exactly where it had been hanging before Cedric had gone flying. As far as Fizz could tell (and it was his arm, so if anyone could tell it was him) it hadn’t moved at all.

  He looked around.

  The other kids were staring open-mouthed at where Cedric had landed, in the dust several yards away. (All except Simon Pie, the clown-in-training, who honked his horn, slapped his belly and pointed at the prone show-off, in almost exactly the way a qualified clown would do.) Now it was their turn to be struck dumb: ‘But . . .’ ‘What . . . ?’ ‘Uh . . . ?’

  Abercrombie Slapdash, the magician’s stooge, was the first to move. He ran over to the older boy going, ‘Hey, Cedric. You alright, mate? It wasn’t me.’

  No, that’s not quite right. He wasn’t the very first to move. Just before he ran to help his friend, the girl, the one whose name Fizz didn’t know, grabbed hold of his hand and dragged him backwards.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Probably best not be here when he gets up.’

  Fizz wasn’t used to girls holding his hand and pulling him backwards between caravans but he quickly decided to go with the flow and followed her. (She had a very strong grip, and if he hadn’t gone with her there was a possibility that when she stopped running in order to explain what was going on she’d find herself talking to a boy’s arm instead of a boy. Fizz thought it best to stick together.)

  After thirty seconds’ sprinting, looking over their shoulders and ducking to and fro between caravans and tents, they finally stopped.

  ‘Oh boy,’ she said, leaning on her knees to get her breath back. ‘That was fun.’

  Fizz stood there, his back against the back of what he recognised as Dr Surprise’s caravan. (He recognised it because he saw it every day and wasn’t stupid. Even though to you and me caravans probably all look pretty much the same, once you’ve spent time among them you soon notice the little distinguishing features. (Dr Surprise’s, for example, was a subtle shade of silver not entirely unlike moonlight in the midwinter and smelt slightly waxy and had the words Dr Surprise’s Caravan painted in large mysterious letters on the side.)) Once Fizz had got enough breath back to form a sentence, he formed one and offered it to the girl in the shape of a question.

  ‘What just happened?’

  ‘We ran away, Fizzlebert Stump,’ the girl said with a laugh.

  ‘You know my name?’ said Fizz.

  She gave him a look that said, Yes. Obviously.

  ‘But,’ said Fizz, ‘who are you?’

  ‘You don’t know my name?’ she asked, running a hand through her hair (which was a reddish blonde and fell to just above her shoulders).

  ‘No,’ he said in a small voice.

  ‘No reason you should. I’m Alice. Alice Crudge.’

  She looked at him very closely as if she were waiting to see whether he made a joke about her name (by singing, ‘Alice look on the bright side of life,’ for example) and when, after a moment, he said nothing she nodded and said, ‘He deserved it, you know.’

  ‘Who? Deserved what?’ Fizz asked. For some reason his words weren’t coming out as well as they normally did. His brain was a bit muddled. Alice had very blue eyes.

  ‘That Cedric kid. He was bang out of order talking about your lion like that. So, I’m not sorry for what I did and you don’t have to thank me.’

  ‘Sorry? Thank you?’

  ‘That’s very kind of you.’

  She looked away and examined her right hand, which she flexed in front of her eyes as if she were checking it still worked properly.

  ‘You punched him?’

  ‘Bang!’ she said. ‘Right in the stomach!’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Me? Yep.’

  As she nodded she raised her eyebrows and pulled a face as if to say, What a good world this is where a poor defenceless girl can stand up to bullies and give them a taste of their own medicin
e and then go for a healthy run so soon after breakfast. It was a very expressive face. It had a slightly bent nose that skewed to the left and was speckled with freckles, and a pair of fair furry eyebrows that nearly met in the middle.

  ‘It looked like you were about to do it, and I figured Why miss out on the fun? And besides even an unpleasant oik like Cedric’s less likely to punch a girl back.’ She rocked her head from side to side and added, ‘Well, the first time. But I bet he’s dead angry now.’ She laughed. It sounded like a shy chimpanzee falling out of a tree of medium height, but in an oddly pleasant manner.

  For the second time that morning Fizz was struck dumb.

  He’d been in scrapes before, been teased and bullied a bit before, he’d even been rescued before, but never by a brilliant stranger like this. Gosh, he thought.

  ‘Which . . . which circus are you with?’ Fizz managed to stutter. (It was an important question. Fizz’s circus was one of half a dozen circuses all parked up next to one another, and some of them, such as Cedric’s A Ring & A Prayer, were rivals of long standing with whom his Ringmaster wouldn’t want him making friends.)

  Alice’s face lost its smile for a second and she said, ‘Mumble mumble.’

  ‘Um? Pardon?’ asked Fizz, like a dogged detective unwilling to let mumbling pass as an answer, but half mumbling his own question all the same, because he felt a little unbalanced by the person he was talking to and her blue eyes and their sudden recent bout of exercise.

  ‘I said,’ she said,‘Neil Coward’s Famous Cicrus.’

  Fizz looked at her for a second, wondering if her eyes perhaps weren’t quite as blue as he’d thought. Then he shook his head. It didn’t matter that her circus was the circus other circuses laughed at behind the back of its Medium Top (a Big Top was too big for Neil Coward’s Famous Cicrus (and money was so tight they had never been able to afford to repaint the name on the side of their lorry to correct the spelling mistake that’s already upsetting my editor, Kate, who likes things to be spelt properly in these books)). Coward’s was the place acts ended up when they’d run out of talent, luck or custard. But Fizz couldn’t hold it against Alice, could he? It wasn’t her fault, she just had to live where her parents lived. That’s the way it goes.

  After all, he knew she wasn’t rubbish, was she? She’d just sort of rescued him.

  He gave her a smile and was about to ask her what she did, what her act was, when a thin wavering voice interrupted him.

  ‘Fizzlebert Stump?’

  For half a second he thought it was Cedric back for more, but then he looked up and saw Dr Surprise’s head sticking out the caravan above him.

  ‘Dr Surprise,’ Fizz said, finding his words at last. ‘I’m down here.’

  ‘I knew that,’ the Doctor replied. He was, in case you didn’t know, the circus’s mind reader, hypnotist, illusionist and general go-to man for magic and mystery (and history lessons (and rabbit-related facts (and carrots))). ‘But, you see, Wystan didn’t.’

  ‘Didn’t what?’ asked Fizz, confusedly.

  ‘Know you were down there. He was just here, looking for you. At that point I didn’t know you were here either, because you weren’t. It was only after he’d gone that I heard the thud of your arrival.’ (The two of them had stopped running quite suddenly, when they hit the caravan.) ‘It made Flopples jump, Fizzlebert. I had to calm her with an extra soothing between-meals carrot.’ The Doctor paused and thought about it. ‘She is a rabbit, though, and they are meant to have a little jump every now and then, so no harm done, eh?’

  ‘Where is he now?’ Fizz asked, interrupting Dr Surprise before he went off on a long lecture about Flopples’s likes and dislikes.

  ‘Oh, Fizzlebert, I am surprised at you,’ the Doctor said. ‘Not “he” but “she”. And she’s right here on my bed, chewing the blanket and dreaming sweet dreams. As I said, she’s quite recovered from the shock –’

  ‘No, I meant Wystan. Where’s Wystan now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Dr Surprise. ‘What am I? Some sort of mind reader?’

  Fizz looked at the Doctor, raised an eyebrow and said nothing.

  ‘Okay. Yes,’ the Doctor agreed, reading Fizz’s mind, ‘I am some sort of a mind reader and I think he was going back to his caravan to pick something up before resuming the search for you. So maybe he’s there.’

  ‘Thanks, Dr Surprise,’ Fizz said as the Doctor vanished back inside the caravan.

  ‘Who’s this Wystan?’ asked Alice.

  ‘Oh, he’s just a boy I know. Lives in my circus,’ Fizz said. ‘He’s a bit . . . hairy.’

  ‘Well, if he’s looking for you, let’s go find him first.’

  That seemed a sensible plan to Fizz. He could show his new friend off to his old friend. (Was she his new friend? She seemed friendly and was certainly new. Wystan would be very jealous.)

  Wystan wasn’t very jealous. In fact, when they tracked him down to just outside Miss Tremble’s caravan, he was so eager to tell Fizz his news that he didn’t even ask who the feisty red-headed bent-nosed bully-basher was.

  ‘Fizz,’ he gabbled instead. ‘Something brilliant’s happened! Something amazing!’

  This was odd, this enthusiasm, because Wystan was normally a quiet lad, a bit dour maybe, you might even say grumpy (which was one of the reasons he sometimes got on Fizz’s nerves). It made a change to see him so excited.

  ‘What is it?’ Fizz asked.

  ‘It’s me mum and dad,’ Wystan replied. ‘I don’t think they’re dead after all. I’ve seen them! This morning!’

  His beard wobbled excitedly as he spoke. Fizz noticed that Wystan had had cornflakes for breakfast, and not just any old cornflakes, but the special ones with nuts stuck to them.

  ‘But . . .’ Fizz said, beginning a sentence he wasn’t sure he knew how to end.

  (I should probably insert a word of explanation at this point. When Wystan Barboozul first appeared at Fizz’s circus (an appearance recounted in a book aptly called Fizzlebert Stump and the Bearded Boy (a book also probably still available in some good bookshops, a few rubbish ones and that place Keith runs at the side of his house which mainly sells spare parts for train sets)) he was accompanied by a pair of not-parents, Lord and Lady Barboozul, who turned out to be . . .well, I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who’s not read that book yet, but let’s just say, ‘They turned out to be . . .’ and add that Wystan was left behind in the care of the circus.

  The reason he was with them was that they’d been left in charge of him after his parents had died, or more specifically (as mentioned in Chapter Three of the aforementioned (or ‘previouslysaid’ which is a word I just made up meaning the same as ‘aforementioned’ but am not allowed to use on account of having just made it up) volume) after they’d gone missing, presumed dead.

  Since that book he’d lived under the protection of Fizz’s circus, in the caravan of Miss Tremble and her horses (although, to tell you the truth, the horses were only allowed in the caravan for special occasions (birthdays, Christmas, weekends, heavy rain), and even then only ever two at a time. More often they spent their time outside in a portable paddock.)

  Fizz was naturally surprised at the sudden and unexpected news of Wystan’s parents’ sudden and unexpected reappearance. He tried to imagine how it might feel to find your mum and dad again after you’d believed, for years, that they were gone forever. How strange it must be. How odd a feeling. His stomach was twirling just thinking about it, and he knew that he couldn’t really share a hundredth of the real excitement Wystan must have been bubbling with inside.

  During the months that Wystan had been in the circus Fizz had only ever once or twice been in his bedroom (Miss Tremble’s caravan was pretty big, having two bedrooms plus a place for hanging hay bales). Next to his bed Wystan had a photo of his parents in a little frame. At least, Fizz had assumed they were his bearded companion’s parents because of the moustaches and the tiny bearded baby one of them held in his arms, but when Wystan h
ad seen him look at it he’d coughed into his beard, pointed out the window, knocked the picture face down and changed the subject.

  But now there was no need for Wystan to be embarrassed about his dead parents any more because they weren’t dead any more. That was great news.

  But, Fizz suddenly thought, why wasn’t he with them? Where were they?

  ‘Why aren’t you with them?’ he asked. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Ah,’ Wystan said, coughing and lowering his beard shyly. ‘Well, I’ve not actually been up and said “Hello” or nothing.’

  ‘Why not?’ Alice asked.

  Wystan seemed to notice her for the first time. He looked her up and down and frowned as if he wasn’t impressed with what he saw.

  ‘Fizz,’ Wystan said, turning back and twirling his whiskers not like a villain might do, but like a little boy who was scared of something lurking in the dark. ‘I’m nervous. What if they don’t want me?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t they want you?’ Alice asked.

  ‘It’s been years,’ the bearded boy replied, not really looking at her. ‘I was just a baby when they went missing. How come they never came looking? How come they left me with the Barboozuls for so long?’

  ‘I’m sure there’s a perfectly ordinary explanation,’ Fizz said, without offering an example, because he couldn’t think of one right there and then (although he was sure if you gave him long enough he’d be able to come up with something).

  ‘Where were they?’ Alice asked. ‘You know, when you saw them?’

  ‘Did they see you?’ Fizz asked.

  ‘They were over by the Big Big Top,’ Wystan replied. ‘I reckon they work there. But I don’t think they saw me . . .’

  ‘Well,’ Fizz began. ‘We’d best go find them.’

  ‘No,’ said Wystan. ‘I don’t want to.’

  Fizz looked at his friend and scratched his head.

  ‘You have to,’ he said. ‘It’s the right thing to do.’

  ‘I’m . . . I’m scared.’

  ‘But, Wystan, you’ve been juggled by a sea lion, attacked by a shark, hurled through the air by elastic beards. You stood up to Lord and Lady Barboozul, you’ve wrestled a koala, you’ve done a triple beardflip from the high wire and landed in a blancmange.’ (Not all of these happened in books I’ve written, but some of them did.) ‘How can you be scared of this? How can you be scared of your mum and dad?’