Fizzlebert Stump and the Bearded Boy Read online

  Mrs Stump slapped him with a kipper.

  ‘I love you, Herbert,’ she said. (Herbert was Mr Stump’s middle name.)

  ‘I love you too, Gloria,’ Mr Stump replied.

  ‘I’m going to be sick,’ added Fizz, sticking his fingers in his ears.

  This happened every single day. Being a clown, his mum loved surprising her husband, and so whenever she got the chance she hid. However, she’d been doing this for years and since (a) anything that happens every day for years soon ceases to be a surprise, (b) hiding places in a caravan are limited, and (c) no one wanted to hurt anyone else’s feelings, Fizz and his dad had had to grow very good at pretending to be surprised.

  The kettle boiled and Mr Stump made two cups of tea, while Fizz poured himself another lemonade.

  ‘Have you heard the news?’ his dad said as he stirred his tea.

  ‘What news?’ asked Mrs Stump, now back at her dressing table where she was adding the finishing the touches to her clown face.

  ‘The Circus Inspectors are coming on Saturday.’

  She put down the grease paint stick and turned to look at her husband. ‘Really?’

  ‘What’s that mean?’ asked Fizz. ‘Who are these inspectors?’

  ‘They’re from the British Board of Circuses. They’re officials. They have clipboards.’

  ‘Yes, and red pens, too,’ added his mum.

  ‘They decide whether a circus is any good or not.’

  ‘What? How? Why?’ asked Fizz, not sure which question he wanted to get out first and so blurting a little bit of each of them all at once.

  ‘Well,’ said his dad, ‘they just watch the show and see if it’s any good. Sometimes they look around backstage too, to make sure it’s all safe and what-have-you. Sometimes they ask questions. Every Inspector has his or her own way of testing, that’s what they say. It’s usually pretty easy. Nothing to worry about.’

  His mum gently honked her horn in agreement.

  ‘We’ve never failed one yet, have we dear?’

  She honked again.

  ‘No. I’ve been in circuses for twenty years or more,’ his dad said, ‘and I’ve never once been reprimanded, down-graded or expelled. Not once.’

  ‘Expelled? What does that mean?’ said Fizz beginning to feel worried.

  ‘Well, that only happens in the most extreme cases,’ Mr Stump said. ‘When things are seriously bad and the acts are rotten. Sometimes, the Circus Inspectors will recommend an act be removed from the circus and sent back to Civvy Street. Sometimes, if it’s really bad, the whole circus might be expelled. Closed down, you might say. Demobbed.’

  ‘Civvy Street? Where’s that?’ Fizz asked.

  ‘It’s nowhere, Fizz,’ his mum said.

  Fizz didn’t like the sound of being Nowhere. It sounded dull.

  ‘It’s not a real place, son,’ his dad clarified. ‘Civvy Street just means the world outside the circus. Expelled acts get dumped out there and are given ordinary jobs. You know, they’re made to be accountants or shop assistants or the people who tidy up the leftovers in restaurants. Boring jobs. Normal jobs. “Just stuff” sort of jobs.’

  ‘You mean,’ Fizz said, gulping, ‘not circus jobs?’

  ‘Exactly. That’s it.’

  ‘And these Circus Inspectors can do this to a whole circus?’

  ‘Well . . .’ his dad began in a thoughtful tone.

  ‘Monty Marsh’s Mirabelles,’ said his mum.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s right,’ Mr Stump said. ‘They stopped touring about six years back. Never heard from again. Never mentioned again in the British Board of Circuses Weekly Newsletter either. Just vanished.’

  ‘And that was ’cos of these Inspectors?’ Fizz asked. He thought he’d heard of all the circus that were out on the road (Auntie’s Amazing Antipodean Acrobatics and Frobisher’s Freak-O-Rama-Land and Simon’s Simple Circus and La Spectacular De La Spectacular De La Rodriguez’ Silent Circus Of Dreams and so on), but he’d never heard of Monty Marsh’s Mirabelles.

  ‘Well, the Circus Inspector’s bad report is just one theory,’ his dad said. ‘Some people say Monty retired to open an outward bound centre in North Wales, and some people reckon he never could read a map right and is still out there somewhere looking for the next town.’

  ‘But what do you think, Dad?’

  ‘I’m with your mum, Fizz. A Bad Report.’

  Fizz was in a lather now. He thought about the act he did with Charles, Captain Fox-Dingle’s elderly lion. Would it be enough to impress these Inspectors?

  ‘Easy-peasy,’ his mum said, adding an upward toot on her swannee whistle.

  ‘What?’ Fizz said, startled out of his thoughts.

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about, Fizz,’ his dad said. ‘Your mum’s right. This circus will pass easily. We’ve got some great acts going on. I’ve been lifting heavier things than ever, and your mum’s at her very clumsiest. And then there’s the new act.’

  ‘You’ve heard about them?’

  ‘Yes, I met them this afternoon. I don’t know what they do, but the Ringmaster said it would knock my socks off.’

  ‘But you don’t wear socks,’ Fizz said.

  ‘I told him that, and he said he’d lend me some.’

  Fizz cracked a small smile at that, but couldn’t help the panic that was swimming through his head making it onto his face round the edges (and over a fair bit of the middle too).

  ‘Fizz,’ his dad said, ‘we’re going to be fine. I remember the last time the Circus Inspectors came. Three boring blokes with clipboards at the back of the Big Top. It was ticks all the way. We’ll pass with flying colours, just you wait and see.’

  Although Fizz trusted his dad, he determined at that moment to do his part in making the circus the best it could be, and to make sure that his act was as good as ever, if not better. He had a horrible picture in his mind of the family being kicked out of the circus. They’d end up living in a brick house that never moved, with the same view out the window every day, and he’d have to go off to a boring grey school while his mum and dad carried grey briefcases off to their offices and made him eat cabbage and fish fingers for tea. No candyfloss, no sea lions, no acrobatics, no fun.

  But if his mum and dad weren’t worried, he wouldn’t worry. Not yet. Not for now. There was no need, was there?

  ‘I hear it’s sold out tonight,’ Mr Stump said, changing the subject. He meant the Big Top would be absolutely full. ‘Should be a good show, eh? You and Charles been practising, Fizz?’

  ‘Yes, dad, we’re ready. The Captain is trying out a new toothpaste, so I should be able to keep my head in there for even longer,’ he said. ‘Catch the custard tonight, Mum!’ (There are superstitions in show business. Actors, for example, never say ‘Good luck’ or ‘Have a good show’, instead they say, ‘Break a leg’. Clowns say even funnier things, including what Fizz just said.)

  There was a silence where there would normally be a horn honk.

  ‘Gloria,’ said Fizz’s dad, ‘Fizz said, “Catch the custard tonight”?’

  She didn’t answer, again.

  Mrs Stump was busy rummaging through the drawers of her dressing table, throwing the contents left and right over her shoulders. Fizz could tell this wasn’t simply the usual untidiness of a clown.

  ‘Mum,’ he asked anxiously, ‘what’s wrong?’

  She honked once as she paused in her search and pointed at the middle of her face.

  Oh!

  Her nose.

  Her face was all painted, and she’d pulled her frizzy yellow wig on, but the red nose that should have sat at the middle of it all was nowhere to be seen.

  Fizz’s mum didn’t need to say anything for Fizz to know what this meant. But since you’ve probably never lived with a clown, I will.

  A clown’s nose is as much a symbol as it is a real thing. It’s their badge of office, you might say. A clown treasures his or her nose. It is precious to them. It is what they are awarde
d at Clown College (instead of a certificate) when they pass their exams. To have a nose (and not just one of those cheap plastic ones anyone can buy in a joke shop, but a real handcrafted specially-fitted-by-an-expert one) is what every hopeful student clown is aiming for.

  Someone just wandering into Fizz’s caravan and seeing that Mrs Stump had lost her nose might suggest to her that she borrow a nose. They might point out that Larry Yellow, The King of Custard, had got concussion when he dropped an invisible ball on his head yesterday and was laid up in bed. His nose is going spare tonight, they might say. Why not ask him if you could borrow it?

  If they did suggest that (oh dear, oh dear, oh dear), they would be met with bemused, puzzled, dumbfounded stares from both Fizz and his parents. What a silly suggestion. What a bizarre, weird, downright stupid idea.

  A clown’s nose is as individual as their face. No two clowns have the same one. They’re like fingerprints. They’re unique to the clown whose nose the nose nuzzles. They’re like underpants. You simply don’t lend them out. You don’t ask for a borrow. It’s an absurd idea.

  And besides, it probably wouldn’t fit.

  By now Fizz’s mum was frantic. (She tried pulling her hair out, but settled for just taking her wig off.) Both Fizz and his dad were looking too, through drawers and on top of shelves and in the sink and under the table and behind one another. None of them could find it.

  Outside a hush fell and then the band struck up the opening fanfare. In the Big Top the evening’s show was beginning.

  Mr Stump had to go because this evening he was the second act on, but Fizz stayed for a while to help his mum look. She knocked things over and he rummaged through the piles.

  After a fruitless twenty minutes Mrs Stump sat down at her dressing table in the middle of all the chaos and began wiping off her makeup. Without her nose she couldn’t go out in public. Without her nose, she wasn’t even a real clown. Other clowns wouldn’t recognise her. They wouldn’t include her in their act. That was the Clown Code: ‘No one knows one with no nose on.’

  Fizz tried to cheer her up by looking on the bright side. ‘Maybe it’ll be nice to have an evening off?’

  And she looked at him with her real face which looked even sadder than her sad clown face had looked, and she sighed. She didn’t believe Fizz. (Fizz didn’t really believe Fizz either.) She loved being a clown. Tonight no one would laugh at her, no one would clap her, no one would remember her.

  ‘We’ll find it tomorrow,’ Fizz said, hopefully, ‘and then you’ll be back in the ring. Better than ever.’

  She honked her horn quietly and tried to give him a bit of a smile.

  Not a hundred yards from the caravan the show has begun. Later on Fizz is going to do his trick with Charles, the lion, but before that everyone who’s spare is gathered either backstage or out in the aisles of the audience waiting to see the first performance of the Great Barboozul Family Frenzy of Fur, Fear and Fun, the new act.

  And I have a sneaking suspicion that’s where I’ll be for the next chapter. It’ll be more fun than hanging around with a noseless clown.

  Chapter Five

  In which some beards are exhibited and in which a boy is shot from a cannon

  Fizz got ringside just in time to catch the end of Dr Surprise’s daring display of magic and mind-reading. (He correctly guessed the name of a small girl randomly picked from the audience (even though she had only volunteered when her mum loudly said, ‘Go on Debbie, put your hand up, he might pick you’), and then he pulled a rabbit from his hat, some celery from behind her ear and a modest round of applause from the crowd.)

  The Ringmaster walked out in his smart red coat, with his polished boots and his top hat with the red ribbon, and made the announcement Fizz had been waiting for.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, budgies and giraffes, Brian and Geraldine. It is our great honour to give you a brand new act never before performed under the canvas of this, or any, Big Top. An act so full of daring, mystery and downright fear that I must issue a warning beforehand. If there is anyone here of a nervous disposition, who is afraid of the unusual, or who is anxious around the bizarre, then this is the time to close your eyes, put your fingers in your ears and hold tight to your mummy’s hand. For anyone still looking, I give you The Great Barboozul Family Frenzy of Fur, Fear and Fun!’

  The crowd clapped and cheered and fell silent as the lights in the Big Top dimmed into darkness.

  The band struck up a mysterious winding tune, all exotic and odd sounding. A pair of spotlights began roving round the sawdust of the ring.

  One caught on the corner of something and stopped.

  There was a creak from the stalls as the audience leaned forward in their seats to see what it was.

  There, in the middle of the small circle of light was a foot. Wrapped around the foot was a dark boot and as the light began to creep upwards it became obvious the boot was on the end of a leg and then that the leg was beside a second leg and that they were both covered by a long coat.

  The light edged upwards and just above the bottom of the coat was the frondy end of the blue-black beard Fizz had been expecting to see.

  It seemed to twist and ruffle in the white light, as if it were alive.

  The light inched further up the beard, up and up and up.

  Fizz should’ve seen the face of one of the Barboozuls by now, but this beard seemed to go on forever.

  The beard was three feet long, then four feet, then five feet, and still the spotlight went up.

  The endless coat shimmered behind the glossy purple-black, blue-black furriness of the beard as if it were sewn with sequins or crushed jewels, and the beard itself seemed to be shimmering as it shifted about like a bed of black worms or a river of dark furry snakes.

  Eventually the spotlight stopped on a head. It must have been twelve feet in the air. Fizz thought he recognised Wystan’s face underneath the top hat that topped the figure off, but wasn’t sure, not until the band burst into a blaring upbeat, jolly, vigorous circussy tune.

  As it did so Wystan leapt from the top of the elongated person, like a squirrel off a trampoline, landing in the sawdust with a forward roll, his beard springing out into its usual unruly shape.

  Behind him the tall figure tottered and wobbled, its super-long beard still in place.

  Fizz recognised the thinning hair on the newly exposed head and guessed that Lord Barboozul was sat on top of Lady Barboozul’s shoulders. Somehow his beard hung low enough that it mingled with hers, making it look like one giant beard hanging from his chin. Clever stuff.

  One of the spotlights followed Wystan as he did acrobatic rolls and handstands round the ring, and after a particularly impressive backflip he surprised everyone by landing in the audience. He grabbed the hand of a young girl who was sat in the front row and pulled her after him back into the ring.

  The crowd applauded as they always do when someone volunteers (especially when their volunteering is less than voluntary).

  Fizz had been watching his new friend being brilliant and was surprised by a loud bang as a cracker went off with a great blast next to the strange double-height Barboozul. A great gush of smoke whooshed up and hid them from view.

  Lady Barboozul stepped out of the cloud looking elegant and beautiful in a glittering white dress. Her beard was jet black against the bright frock, and she held a smooth pale hand out to the young girl.

  She giggled nervously before taking hold of it. Lady Barboozul turned her round to face the crowd, who applauded again.

  She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, with a pair of scuffed trainers and a green jacket. She had a neat blonde fringe and was looking both scared and excited, as well as uncertain as to what to do.

  She didn’t see Lord Barboozul appear out of the quickly clearing cloud of smoke behind her.

  He was dressed like a magician: a smart dinner jacket and incredibly well-ironed trousers. There was, presumably, a bow tie, but no one but a barber would be able
to find it under his beard. As he walked forward he held his hands in the air, showing them off to the audience, in the way a magician shows you the nothing-up-his-sleeves before he produces a pound coin from behind your ear.

  He held his hands still. They didn’t move.

  But his beard moved.

  Everyone could see that.

  As the crowd watched, puzzled and shocked, his beard dipped into the girl’s jacket pocket, like a searching pair of fingers or inquisitive furry tentacles, and when it came out it was holding a camera by the strap.

  He’d just pick-pocketed her with his beard!

  The crowd was silent, but in a good way.

  Lady Barboozul whispered something to the girl and everyone laughed as she put her hand in her jacket pocket and found her camera gone. She looked worried, puzzled, amused.

  Lord Barboozul knocked the camera against his head as if to prove it were real. And then, with Wystan pointing at it so that no one could miss what was happening, he put it inside his beard.

  He held his hand up to show it was empty.

  Lady Barboozul slid her hand deep into her beard and pulled out . . . a bunch of flowers. They were the usual paper flowers that magicians produce from up their sleeve and it was clear that the audience weren’t very impressed.

  She handed the flowers to the girl and reached into her beard again. Her arm vanished right up to the elbow and when it came out it was holding a violin. The crowd ‘oohed’ at that. Hiding a violin in a beard is pretty impressive.

  She gave the girl the violin to hold and had a third rummage.

  This time Wystan helped her. What they pulled out was the end of a ladder. Wystan took it and walked away from her as she fed out rung after rung, until he was holding a ladder all of four feet long. I’ll admit, four feet isn’t very long for a ladder, but for a ladder hidden in a beard, it’s rather good.

  As Wystan took the ladder off into the dark toward the back of the ring, Lady Barboozul pulled one final thing out of her beard.