Fizzlebert Stump and the Bearded Boy Read online

  For Mrs Coates

  What some people said about Fizzlebert Stump: The Boy who Ran Away from the Circus (and joined the library)

  I found myself laughing a lot at the author’s hilarious commentary, and at Fizzlebert’s funny antics. I would definitely recommend this – and the illustrations are awesome.

  – We Love This Book

  A riotous romp which will be loved by all fans of Mr Gum.

  – Lovereading4kids

  An unusual, comical and engaging one-sided conversation with the author – a conversation which would read very well aloud.

  – Books for Keeps

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter One

  In which introductions are made and in which the reader is welcomed to the book

  It began with a pair of false teeth, or rather it began without a pair of false teeth.

  Actually, now I think about it, that’s not exactly the beginning of the story. It might have begun with a red nose. A clown’s red nose, the day that went missing. But really it began well before that too. I suppose it began with the letter the Ringmaster received one Wednesday morning . . . or maybe it started before that, even.

  Oh, beginnings are tricky, aren’t they? You think you’ve got it pinned down and then you look again and there’s some loose thread dangling out the other side. You tug on it and soon the whole thing’s unravelled on the floor at your feet like a horrible jumper you got for Christmas.

  For example, let’s say you wanted to tell the story of why you were late for school this morning. You might start by saying you were late because you didn’t leave the house early enough. That’s pretty straightforward. But why didn’t you leave on time? Maybe your little brother was making a nuisance of himself, and you needed to change your shirt because of the porridge. So, that’s what made you late. But then, you might ask why the little brat was being so annoying, and it might be because he didn’t get enough sleep. There was that thunderstorm in the night and he’s so soft that he’s still scared of storms. Well, surely that’s the beginning? But how did the thunderstorm get there? ‘There was a cold depression over the Bay of Biscay,’ the weatherman might say. ‘But, where’s the Bay of Biscay?’ you might ask. ‘Down near Spain,’ he might explain.

  But even blaming Spain for making you late for school isn’t the end of it. Why do you have to go to school in the first place? After all, if you didn’t need to go, you couldn’t be late. So then you could look back at the history of education and find out who invented the first school (and why they decided it should begin so early in the morning). And on top of that, it might be worth asking your parents some questions. For instance, why on earth did they want to get themselves another child, when they already had lovely little you? And your mother might say that she looked at you as a little baby, fast asleep in your cot, and worried you’d get lonely as you got older, and your father might rustle his newspaper and say that it wasn’t his idea.

  So, you see, beginnings really are hard things to pin down.

  Now I think about it, the missing false teeth actually come later, much later (not until the end of Chapter Seven).

  Before that there’s a boy I ought to introduce. He’s a normal enough lad, about this tall and that wide . . . But, oh dear, hang on – perhaps I’m still getting ahead of myself. I’m assuming that you know what a boy is. Maybe that’s an assumption too far. Let’s backtrack a little.

  A boy is like a girl, but not as clean. Like a man, but not as tall. Like a dog, but not as hairy (usually). They wear clothes, run around noisily and wipe their noses up their sleeves.

  This particular boy’s called Fizzlebert. It’s a silly name, I know. But his mum’s a clown and his dad’s a strongman, so, frankly, he’s lucky he didn’t end up with an even sillier one. He spends his life travelling with the circus, and since most of his friends are circus acts with all manner of weird and wonky names and titles, he doesn’t often think about the Fizzlebertness of his name. At least, not as often as I have to.

  He’s not the one who has to write this book, you see. It’s a long word to type, ‘Fizzlebert’, although thankfully easy to spell, so I shouldn’t really grumble. I mean, if I had to write ‘bureaucracy’ (a word I find almost impossible to spell in one go) on every page, well, then I really would have something to complain about.

  But, fortunately, although in all circuses there is some bureaucracy, which is to say paperwork, Fizz’s story doesn’t involve the accountancy department, the Health and Safety inspector’s clipboard or the filing cabinet of performers’ contracts which sits at the back of the Ringmaster’s office-cum-caravan. Or not very much, anyway.

  So, where were we? I think we’d got this far . . .

  Fizzlebert Stump (who I most often just call Fizz in order to save on ink) is a boy who lives in the circus. He has a selection of library cards, a pen pal called Kevin, red hair, a dashing old ringmaster’s frockcoat, and the ability to hold his breath for just as long as it takes an audience to become impressed by a small boy putting his head in a lion’s mouth, and this book is the story of just one of his adventures.

  And that’s all I’ve got to say to get the introduction out of the way. Now, roll on Chapter Two, eh?

  Chapter Two

  In which lunch is served and in which some strangers are met

  Fizzlebert was sat in the circus’s Mess Tent. If you’re wondering what a Mess Tent is, then I suppose you’ve never been in the army, which, looking at you, doesn’t entirely surprise me. The Mess is the name soldiers give to the place where they eat, what they call their dining hall or canteen. It’s an odd name, especially since they’re usually very neat, but the name is the name, sensible or not, and I’m not going to argue with a soldier.

  Although a circus isn’t an army (it normally has fewer guns and the uniforms are less, well, uniform), the Mess is also what the circus folk call their food hall, or more correctly, their food tent. They do so for much more obvious reasons. (If the reasons don’t seem obvious, why don’t you give a clown a plate of sausage and mash, a bucket of custard and half a dozen soft boiled eggs, and see what happens?)

  Fizz sat at his table stirring a great steaming bowl of stew, dumplings and popcorn. (Cook claimed the popcorn added texture and Fizz couldn’t disagree.) Just as he was about to lift the first dumpling to his lips a loud honking made him jump and a pungent waft of mackerel-flavoured air slapped him round the nose.

  Fish, the circus’s sea lion, was looking up at him with his enormous wet black round eyes. He fluttered his thick eyelashes as if to say, ‘Do you have any food to spare, dear sir, for an ’ungry old sea lion?’

  Knowing he’d get no peace until the old flipper-flapper had been fed, Fizz offered him the gravy-covered dumpling on the end of his fork.

  Fish sniffed deeply at the steaming ball of dough, and with a flick of his head knocked it from Fizz’s hand, balanced it, still stuck on the fork, on the tip of his nose, leant back, and flapped his front flippers together with a great wet noise. Then he jiggled his head from one side to the other, without dropping the fork and dumpling set, honked once and flipped them into the air. They flew high up toward the canvas roof, twirling round and round, before plunging, dumpling first, toward the table.

  In a shocking, sna
pping burst of teeth, Fish caught them in his mouth.

  With a twitch of his whiskers and a horrible slurping sound he started chewing. After a moment it became obvious that there was nothing fishy about the stew-soaked ball of flour, and with a loud harrumph and a mordant kipper-flavoured burp, Fish swallowed the dumpling and spat out the fork.

  Fizz watched as it flew through the air, spinning and soaring in a graceful arc over the tables and clowns, and landed with a tiny tinny tinkle in the dirt, right in front of a pair of highly polished boots. A little dust and a little gravy splattered across the perfect toes.

  Fortunately the Ringmaster didn’t notice Fizz’s stray fork. He was too busy talking. Talking just loud enough for Fizz to be able to hear the noise, but not to be able to make out the words. It was an annoying way for a man to talk, Fizz reckoned, but then half the grownups he knew fitted into that category: annoying.

  Fizz had seen the Ringmaster before. He had seen him almost every day of his life (there was one Thursday three years earlier when the Ringmaster had lost the key to his caravan but even then Fizz had heard him shouting from inside). So he was pretty familiar with how the Ringmaster usually looked and he could tell, from just the merest glance, that today the Ringmaster looked different. His buttons were polished just that little bit brighter, and his boots were polished just that little bit browner and his hair, while not being polished, had been brushed quite thoroughly.

  Stood beside the Ringmaster were three people Fizz had never seen before. Having never seen them before, it was impossible for him to say whether they were more highly polished than usual or not, or whether they had brushed their hair in a new and exciting manner, or if, for once in their lives, they’d decided to not smear their faces with jam. Those are things you can only say after having known someone for a while and got used to their habits.

  That’s not to say Fizzlebert couldn’t say anything about these newcomers. In fact, with just one glance he noticed quite a lot and he could tell, because he wasn’t a stupid boy, that there was something not entirely normal about them.

  (Fizz always said that he had a special sense for spotting things that were odd, that looked out of the ordinary, un(as you might say)-usual. He called it ‘sight’.)

  Behind the Ringmaster stood a man of medium height and medium build. (Nothing particularly unusual so far, I’ll admit.) He was wearing a shabby brown suit, with wide untidy shoulders. (Lots of people have untidy shoulders.) The hair on the top of his head was thin, but that on his chin was not. (Here we begin to approach the meat and two veg of the matter.) His beard reached right down his chest and was thick and glinted oilily in the shaft of sunlight that hung around in the tent’s doorway. (Beards are often a bit odd.) It was also blue. Well, it looked blue now, but then, when the man moved his head, the colour changed in the light. The blue was so dark that at times it seemed a shade of black. And then he moved his head, and his beard shifted again, and, for a moment, it looked like it was a rich purple, then black, then blue again.

  As beards went, Fizz thought, it was a pretty good one. If rather odd.

  But even this wasn’t what made him scratch his head and declare the scene one of the three weirdest scenes he’d seen for a week and a half. I’ve yet to tell you about the really interesting bit.

  Behind the bearded gentleman stood a lady. She was a head taller than the man, and a fair bit slimmer. She wore a pure white trouser suit, smart and sharp, and was wearing dark glasses. Covering her hair was one of those headscarves like a turban that old-fashioned movie stars used to wear to stop their hair getting all ruffled as they rode in open-top sports cars. And on her chin was a beard, almost identical to that of the bearded gentleman described above. (I’ll give you a moment to skip back a couple of paragraphs and reread the bit about the size and colour of his beard. Done it? Fine, let’s continue.) Her beard, it should be emphasised, was no shorter, no thinner, and no less impressive than the gentleman’s. If anything, Fizz thought, it was probably more impressive simply because of whose chin it dangled from.

  As he watched she took her dark glasses off (the tent was, after all, much darker inside than the sunny field she’d just come in from) and instead of tucking them away in her handbag or putting them in a glasses case, she slipped them into her silky dark fur of her glorious beard.

  Fizz laughed at this, not having seen a bearded lady use her beard as a handbag before (indeed, you could add, not having seen a bearded lady before), but quickly turned it into a cough and covered his mouth with his hand. Laughing at anyone other than a clown (unless they’ve made a joke or fallen over (without injuring themselves)) is usually rude.

  She gave him a hard stare from behind the Ringmaster’s back.

  (You’re probably sitting there thinking to yourself, ‘What a magnificent beard that sounds, luxurious and dashing, so beautiful and smooth and elegant,’ and of course you’d be right. But as it happens, it’s not entirely normal for a beard to find itself on a woman’s chin. On the whole, women don’t have beards. (I expect they wish they did, but they just can’t grow them, at least not until they’re really old and have had time to practise.) In previous centuries it was considered so unusual when a woman turned up who did have one that they’d put her in a freak-show and charge people a shilling a time to look at her and point and snigger and gawp. But this is a more understanding age in which you and I live, and we don’t have freak-shows any more because we’ve learnt that no one ought to be pointed at and ridiculed (except clowns), because it’s what’s inside a person that matters, even if the outside does look a bit . . . different.)

  It was only when the bearded lady turned away that Fizz got a good look at the third member of the party.

  It took him a few moments to work out exactly what he was looking at.

  There was a boy with them, probably about his own age (he guessed from the lad’s height), and his beard was, perhaps, the biggest and bushiest of them all. It reached down to his knees and spilt out to the sides, even more than the adults’ beards did. This was an unruly beard, a beard that had clearly fought against the comb, that had obviously beaten the brush, that was definitely and defiantly doing its own thing. From where Fizz sat it looked a little like an electrocuted badger.

  Fizz laughed again, finding this chuckle even harder to hold in.

  A boy who meant to be cruel would’ve pointed and laughed, but Fizz didn’t do that. He’d had enough kids take the mickey out of him (once they found out his name) that he kept his pointing finger to himself. It was obvious, all the same, that he was laughing at the bearded boy.

  The strange boy glared at him and tugged the woman’s sleeve, and she looked over in his direction again.

  Fizz shut up. He tried to look serious (which is the worst thing to do when you have a giggle inside you, because it’s likely to tickle you while looking for an escape route). He knew he’d been rude, but the boy did look silly. Beards are for grown men, he reckoned, and even then they’re still slightly silly-looking things. (I disagree with Fizz on this point, as would anyone with any sense of style, dignity and refinement, but we’ll let that pass.) No one he could think of in the circus had one (one of the fire-eaters had tried to grow one once, but it hadn’t lasted very long). If beards were cool, then surely, he thought, there’d be more of them around?

  The Ringmaster, noticing Fizz, brought the strangers over to his table. Fizz wondered if he was in trouble.

  ‘This is young Mister Stump,’ the Ringmaster said to the bearded lady (and her men (but she stood in front of them and was quite clearly in charge)). ‘He’s the son of The Mighty Stump.’

  ‘Oh, the strongman?’ she said.

  She spoke in a voice that sounded smooth and silky like her beard. It slithered into your ears like an expensive wine. Fizz felt it tickled a bit. Which was odd.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ the Ringmaster replied.

  ‘He had a moustache, I think,’ she said.

  They’d clearly met Fizz’s f
ather already, on their tour round the circus.

  ‘Only a very small one,’ the Ringmaster answered.

  ‘It was oiled, and pointy.’

  ‘That is the traditional style for a strongman’s moustache.’

  She sniffed at this explanation and turned her attention to Fizz. She stood for a moment and looked him up and down. Her eyes flickered like sapphires and her blue-black beard moved softly in the breeze.

  He was feeling sorry he’d laughed at her, and embarrassed. The giggle he’d felt wriggling inside him escaped through his ear, which made him shake his head, but didn’t make a noise.

  ‘Stump?’ she said finally. ‘What an abrupt name. But I suppose you are short.’ She gestured behind her. ‘This is my husband Gildas. This is Wystan.’ She rested her hand on her beard. Almost stroked it. ‘And I am Callisto, but you will call me Lady Barboozul. Yes?’

  ‘Bar-booze-all?’ Fizz repeated. He only meant to make sure he could say it right, but the Ringmaster seemed to think he was being silly with it.

  ‘That’s enough of that, Fizz. Shake hands and then we’ve got to get on. Got a whole circus to show the Bamboozles. New act, you see. Do all sorts of things, just wait until you see the show.’

  ‘I think it’s Barboozul, Ringmaster,’ said Fizz, laughing at the mistake.

  The bearded boy, thinking Fizz was laughing at his name, and having already seen him laugh at his beard, shot him the dirtiest of dirty looks. Fizz only caught the very end of it as the Ringmaster blustered, ‘Oh, yes! Of course. Slip of the, as we say in the business, tongue,’ but still it was enough to make him think the new boy was upset about something.

  ‘Lady Barboozul,’ Fizz said, ‘I’m pleased to meet you.’

  He held his hand out to shake.

  Lady Barboozul looked at it for a moment, before saying, ‘Gildas, shake the boy’s hand. Chop chop.’