Fizzlebert Stump and the Girl Who Lifted Quite Heavy Things

by A. F. Harrold

  ‘Shall we get out of here?’ she asked, holding Fish casually under her arm, like you or I might carry a large cat or a small dog, or a normal-sized sea lion if you or I were strong enough.

  Fizz looked around at the angry clown crowd and nodded.

  They strolled as calmly, as coolly, and as collectedly as they could out of the Big Top.

  Fish was silent as they walked, just looking around hopefully, assuming there would be more fish at the end of the journey, and burping fishily with each jiggle.

  ‘Wow,’ said Fizz when they’d got out into the fresh air. ‘You’re really strong.’

  Alice lifted Fish above her head and shrugged her shoulders (which sounds a weird thing to do, as if it wouldn’t work, but it’s perfectly possible, because she did it).

  ‘Yeah, I suppose,’ she said. ‘My grandad was a Strongman. I guess it runs in the family.’

  ‘So is that what you do?’ he asked.

  Fish honked excitedly. From up there he could see a duck pond.

  ‘I wish,’ Alice began, ‘but –’

  Before she could finish her sentence a man came running over, shouting.

  ‘Alice!’ he shouted as he ran. ‘Alice Crudge! Put that thing down at once. Put it down. What will people think?’

  Alice put Fish down gently and he waddled away, leaving behind the smell of kippers, smoked salmon and spangly waistcoat.

  ‘Dad,’ Alice sighed. ‘I was just –’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it, young lady,’ her father said, cutting her off. He was a short man with a flowery haircut and a shirt that tried to outdo Christmas for sparkles. For someone who looked so colourful, he seemed remarkably sour. ‘We’ve been looking for you all morning. Your mother’s sick with worry. You need to be rehearsing. You’ve got to be perfect. We can’t have you letting us down again. Now come on home.’

  He turned around, completely ignoring Fizzlebert, and flounced off, obviously expecting his daughter to follow.

  ‘I’ve gotta go,’ she said, glumly. ‘I’ve gotta rehearse.’

  ‘Weightlifting?’ Fizz asked, knowing how often his father had to practise to keep his muscles in tiptop condition, to keep the act fresh, always trying to lift something a little bit heavier or a different colour than the last thing.

  ‘Flerrajin,’ Alice mumbled, running off. ‘Sorry,’ she added, giving Fizz a sad smile over her shoulder.

  Fizz stood and watched her go until he was alone outside the Big Top, until even the smell of fish/Fish had vanished.

  He pondered what she’d just said.

  He rolled the strange word round and round in his head until the sounds of it fell into place and made the noise of something that seemed to make sense, except it didn’t make sense at all.

  ‘Flower Arranging?’ he said out loud.

  He was busy thinking, his brain buzzing with questions. Firstly, why was a girl as strong as Alice doing a Flower Arranging act? Secondly, how could they get Wystan’s parents (if that was who they were, and it looked like it was) to remember him? Thirdly, someone had put those fish in Simon Pie’s bucket: who? And fourthly and finally, Fizz still needed to learn a new act in order to be in with a chance of being picked for the Circus of Circuses show on Saturday night and to show Cedric that he wasn’t a loser and so on and so forth.

  Goodness but it’s busy inside Fizz’s head. I think we’ve all earned a break.

  hen Fizz found Wystan, later that morning, the bearded boy was quiet and grumpy and didn’t say anything about what had happened earlier on, but Fizz hadn’t really expected anything else. He told Wystan that he had to get his mum and dad back and to do that he’d have to get them to remember him. Wystan grumbled but Fizz told him he had a plan. Fizz told him that he knew who they should talk to. Fizz told him that everything would be alright. (Fizz was being very decisive, other people’s problems being easier to be decisive about than one’s own.) Wystan grumbled even more, but agreed to listen to Fizz’s plan because if he didn’t, he knew Fizz would tell him it anyway.

  Naturally, I won’t tell you what Fizz’s plan actually was because I don’t believe in listening in to other people’s conversations. It’s rude, and if there’s one thing I never am it’s rude. You can ask anyone. Well, not anyone, obviously, but anyone who knows me. (Except Abigail Bigginshaw because she’s an idiot who doesn’t know what she’s talking about.)

  Anyway, the next thing Wystan knew, he and Fizz were having lunch in the circus’s Mess Tent, sat opposite Dr Surprise.

  ‘Doctor,’ Fizz said. ‘We’ve got a problem.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Dr Surprise, poking a carrot under his top hat.

  ‘Wystan’s found his mum and dad, but they’ve forgotten him.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Dr Surprise, removing a carrot stump from under his top hat.

  ‘We reckon they’ve got amnesia.’

  ‘That would explain the forgetfulness,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘I thought you might know how to get their memories back. I mean you’re the doctor here.’ Fizz thought for a moment. ‘And the mind reader.’ Another moment. ‘And the hypnotist.’

  Dr Surprise nodded his head slowly at each statement. There was no way he could argue with the description. Fizz knew him too well.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  Wystan, who’d been looking anxious (or as anxious as a boy can look behind such a big beard (if you’d not met him before you’d have the feeling of being watched by someone from behind a small brown bush)), mumbled something. It hadn’t been his idea to ask Dr Surprise for help.

  ‘Speak up,’ said Fizz, nudging him in the beard.

  ‘Can you help?’ Wystan grumbled.

  ‘Oh no,’ Dr Surprise said, sounding startled. ‘No, I don’t think that would be right. I think when people have forgotten things they tend to forget them for good reasons. Why, I met an old man once who had been in the French Foreign Legion. He’d hated it. Turned out he was allergic to camels. And sand. And sunshine. I met him in a hut just outside Aberdeen where he’d been living for twenty years as a hermit. I’d heard he was the only person who still remembered how to perform Finnegan’s Wave, a glorious illusion I’d read about in Smith’s Muddled Arcana, the foremost book of –’

  Fizz interrupted with a cough, to which he added a, ‘But, Doctor, what about Wystan’s mum and dad?’

  ‘What I was saying, Fizzlebert, if you’d let me finish, was that this chap had become a hermit in order to forget about the Foreign Legion, and he had managed to almost entirely forget it. He’d also forgotten the trick. I tried to jog his memory and he got very upset with me.’

  Dr Surprise began to roll up his trouser leg.

  ‘But, Doctor, what has all that to do with us?’

  ‘A scar, Fizzlebert. Look, a scar.’

  The Doctor pointed at his leg.

  ‘I don’t dabble in memories,’ he said. ‘That’s all. It’s too dangerous.’

  Wystan stuffed the end of his beard in his mouth and muttered.

  ‘Well,’ said the Doctor, seeing how important it was to the boy. ‘I’ll tell you what. Rather than upset them, I could have a word with Mr Gomez. He might be able to shed some light on the situation. They’re probably not your parents, Wystan. There are lots of moustaches in the world.’ He took his off and gave it a polish (he had a collection of them from Christmas crackers (good-quality crackers, mind you)). ‘This is probably just a case of mistaken identity. But I will ask for you.’

  With that the Doctor stood up, stuck a handful of carrots in one pocket and a small bowl of ice cream in the other, and left the Mess Tent.

  ‘I think that went quite well,’ said Fizz, not believing a word of it.

  ‘No harm done,’ Wystan mumbled gloomily. ‘But I’m still stuck where I am.’

  Fizzlebert had a thought.

  ‘Have you shown them the photograph?’

  ‘What photograph?’

  ‘The one by your bed.’

  Wystan looked cross (as cross as a
boy can look over the top of a big beard, as mentioned before).

  ‘How did you know about –’

  ‘It was an accident,’ Fizz said quickly. ‘I saw it once, by accident.’

  Wystan scrunched the edge of his beard in his hand.

  ‘Well, okay,’ he said.

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Worth a try?’

  Wystan shrugged.

  There were trials of one act after another going on in the Big Big Top all afternoon. Wystan wouldn’t be able to get close to his folks before the evening, when they all broke for dinner. He told Fizz he was going to spend the afternoon rehearsing with Fish (they did acrobatics together). Fizz on the other hand spent his afternoon searching for an act that would let him join.

  He went from caravan to caravan knocking on doors and asking if anyone needed an extra hand.

  As dispiriting afternoons go, this one was a winner. As winning afternoons go, on the other hand, this one was dispiriting.

  Emerald Sparkles, the knife thrower, threw knives at her husband as he spun round on a big wooden wheel. The trick was that the knives didn’t hit him, but stuck in the wood of the wheel next to him. It was a very impressive act, and would have been even more impressive if she wasn’t on her fourth husband.

  Fizz didn’t volunteer to be a target (or non-target, as it were), but wondered politely if she needed someone to hand her the knives. He thought he could do that in a suave and sophisticated manner. He wouldn’t say anything, just look dashing in his ex-Ringmaster’s coat.

  They didn’t need him.

  William and Bill Clubs, the circus’s favourite juggling brother combo, were intrigued by the idea of adding a new little brother into the act, but when they threw their flaming sticks at Fizz he yelped, leapt aside and set fire (briefly) to their tent. They decided to pass on his offer. He visited the Two Robbies. These were two grown men, one called Robert and one called Robin, who dressed up in cardboard boxes, painted themselves silver and did a robodancing turn. How hard, Fizz wondered, could that be to do?

  It turned out he was allergic to tin foil.

  Abelard Pratt (of Abelard Pratt and his Swinging Cat fame) wouldn’t let Fizz help with his act. It was rather a specialised act which involved him entering a series of rooms of decreasing size (skilfully erected in the ring by his glamorous assistant Dave) in which he swung a series of increasingly small cats in tighter circles. Exactly why the Ringmaster allowed this act in his circus was a matter of some debate (the debate usually centring on whether it was due to blackmail or a bet).

  No cat had been harmed, and everyone had to agree Abelard Pratt was very good at what he did, but that was hardly the point.

  Pratt had no need of Fizz in his act but did have a suggestion.

  ‘Fizzle,’ he said in a creepy creeping accent which might have been Transylvanian, Dutch or Bristolian, ‘you are the boy who did things to a lion, yes?’

  ‘Yes, sort of,’ Fizz said.

  ‘You put your head in the big cat’s mouth part, am I right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Fizz agreed again.

  ‘Well,’ Pratt continued as if having a brainwave, ‘I lend you a loan of my Samantha, a kitten with whom I am training at the moment. Hasn’t learnt to duck. But for you she will be beautiful.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes, no longer will you be Fizzle Stump: The Boy Who Puts His Head in a Lion’s Mouth Part. No. Now you will have new act. It will be Samantha Cat: The Kitten Who Puts Her Head in a Boy’s Mouth Part. Turn tables, yes? No one will have seen such an act. Will be famous again!’

  It sounded good, but Fizz knew it would upset Captain Fox-Dingle to see him working with another cat so soon after . . . The Captain missed his lion. They’d been together for years.

  Reluctantly, he realised he had to say, ‘No,’ to Abelard Pratt. What had he been thinking? Thoughtless Fizz, Fizz thought.

  He went to see Apology Cheesemutter. Apology wasn’t his real name, but he said ‘sorry’ so often that after a week in the circus the nickname had stuck. Nobody remembered what it had replaced. He wasn’t really called Cheesemutter either, but he went on about cheese a lot under his breath, so after another week in the circus that nickname had stuck too. No one remembered what this one had replaced either.

  Cheesemutter trained mice. They were very special mice. Because the arena in which a circus performer must perform is quite large and because there are no big video screens to relay to the people in the back row what it is they can’t quite see down in the ring, normal-size mice doing normal-size tricks would be rather pointless. So Apology Cheesemutter had got himself some giant mice. (I must be very clear about this because some of the people reading this book are probably quite intelligent and are saying to themselves, ‘Giant mice? You mean he trained some rats?’ But Cheesemutter hadn’t trained a bunch of rats and called them mice, that would have been fraudulent (which is the same thing as being a liar, which he wasn’t). What Cheesemutter had instead done was stick mouse ears on some dogs and called them mice (or as everyone else called them, ‘mice’).)

  Cheesemutter was happy to let Fizz help out with the ‘mice’. He gave him a piece of cheese on a string and showed him how to pull it through and across a sort of obstacle course of hoops and seesaws and fences that the ‘mice’ would negotiate, the cheese-flavoured treat on their mind.

  There was only one problem: dogs (by which I mean ‘mice’) don’t like cheese (and please don’t say, ‘But our dog loves cheese,’ or ‘My auntie Jean has a dog which likes nothing more than a chunk of Cheddar,’ or ‘I was rescued from an avalanche once by a St Bernard that refused to go away until I’d given him my cheese and pickle sandwich,’ because I don’t care about all that. The only thing that’s important is that Apology Cheesemutter’s dogs (‘mice’) didn’t like cheese, which is one of the reasons he muttered about it so much, and possibly also one of the reasons he apologised so often).

  Fizz pulled the cheese-laden string through a slalom of poles watched by a German shepherd (who annoyingly kept saying, ‘Schnell,’ which means ‘Faster’ in German). Eventually Cheesemutter asked him to move his sheep since they were distracting the ‘mice’.

  It was a few minutes after the man had moved on and Fizz’s ‘mouse’ had made no effort to chase the cheese for the twenty-fourth time that a different voice, one he’d hoped not to hear ever again, broke his concentration.

  ‘So, Scrimp, moved on to dogs, have we? This looks a brilliant act.’ That was sarcasm. ‘Dogs that do impressions of stuffed dead things. I bet this gets the audience on their feet.’ Cedric Greene paused meaningfully, before delivering his punchline, ‘Leaving.’

  He spat a bit of fingernail as he said the last word and followed it with a wicked laugh.

  ‘They’re not dogs,’ Fizz said, feeling as stupid as he sounded (but Apology Cheesemutter was sensitive and no one ever said the ‘D’ word around him, just in case he began crying again). ‘They’re “mice”.’

  Cedric looked at the pair of mouse ears glued to a headband that the poodle was wearing and frowned.

  ‘Whatever,’ he said, brushing the oddness aside with a long-fingered hand.

  ‘Anyway,’ Fizz said, his stomach bubbling inside him, his heart beating loud in his mouth, ‘this isn’t my act, I’m just helping out for a friend. That’s what we do in our circus, we help each other out.’

  ‘So, you still not going to tell me what this brilliant new act of yours really is, then?’

  ‘No,’ said Fizz. ‘It’s a surprise.’

  You didn’t have to be a mind reader to see that Cedric didn’t believe a word Fizz was saying. He thought Fizz was just making it up to save face, and although you know and I know that he was right, that doesn’t make it any better. He was smug and unpleasant and even though he just happened to be right, I wouldn’t let it count in his favour.

  ‘Alright then,’ he said, slowly and with a big grin. ‘I reckon maybe we should have a little wa
ger.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A bet. On who has the best act. On whose act Gomez picks for the big show. On whose act is simply the most wonderful.’

  ‘A bet?’

  ‘Yes, Fizzlebert Schlump, a wager.’ He leant closer to Fizz, so our hero could smell his chewing gum. ‘Do you read the British Board of Circuses Newsletter?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Everyone does.’

  ‘The letters page. The loser has to write a letter to the editor saying that I, Cedric Greene, am the best juvenile act in the whole country, that only I deserve the right to be the Boy Who Puts His Head in the Lion’s Mouth, and that I do it better than you ever did.’

  Fizz gulped. Everyone read the newsletter, everyone in the circus world anyway. The Ringmaster read bits out during his motivational speeches. Dr Surprise used it to line the bottom of Flopples’s cage. His parents had a scrapbook with family cuttings in, every mention a Stump (or Flange-Wicke, which was Mrs Stump’s maiden name) had ever had, neatly snipped out and saved.

  It may not sound much to you, writing a letter, but this was a big deal for Fizz.

  And he couldn’t not shake Cedric’s outstretched hand. Fizz just knew the bully would make life unbearable if he backed out now. He’d go on and on about it to all the other kids, to everyone he met, and they all thought Cedric was so cool.

  The sun was glinting off Cedric’s leather jacket. He nibbled another nail, squinted at Fizz.

  ‘So?’ he said, his hand outstretched.

  ‘Okay,’ Fizz said, shaking it. ‘But it won’t be me writing the letter,’ he added, trying to sound certain. ‘You’ll be the one doing the writing, saying how great I am.’

  He felt sick.

  Cedric chuckled a cold little laugh and turned to go away. Then he turned back to look at Fizz.

  ‘Oh, do you know what, Lump? That wasn’t even what I came to talk to you about. I only came to tell you that you and your stupid squidge-nosed girlfriend had better watch out. I’ll break every one of her vases and rearrange her flowers if she so much as comes near me again. That was all I wanted to say. You’d both better watch out.’