Fizzlebert Stump and the Great Supermarket Showdown Page 6

  ‘What about Ringmaster Moondust of Moondust & Daughters Interstellar Circus of Surprises?’

  ‘Well, apart from that time.’

  ‘Abner Palmer’s Circus of Bees?’

  ‘And that one.’

  Fizz couldn’t think of any others so Alice continued.

  ‘What you ought to ask is, “What does this supermarket bloke have that made the Ringmaster sell up?”’

  ‘A lot of money?’

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ Alice said. ‘Yours is … was … a good circus. People actually came to see you. They bought tickets. You weren’t struggling, were you?’

  ‘No,’ Fizz had to admit. Ticket sales had been strong recently.

  ‘So, it’s not the money, or not just the money. You say you overheard the supermarket bloke say he’d spent five hundred quid. Well, that’s not a fraction of what the circus was worth. Something else is going on here.’

  ‘But what?’ asked Fizz.

  She looked around, as if to make sure they weren’t being listened to, tapped the side of her nose and whispered one word: ‘Blackmail.’

  ‘Blackmail?’ said Fizz.

  ‘Blackmail,’ she repeated.

  ‘Blackmail,’ said Fizz.

  Alice looked at him and squinted.

  ‘You do know what blackmail is, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ said Fizz. ‘But do you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Alice. ‘It’s when you make someone pay you money or do something for you, because you know some special secret they don’t want shared. You threaten to expose their secret if they don’t do what you say.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Fizz, nodding. ‘So, you reckon Pinkbottle’s blackmailing the Ringmaster?’

  ‘Why else would he sell up?’

  Fizz stroked his chin and wished he had a beard.

  Let’s change places again! Back to the supermarket!

  It was six o’clock.

  The last customer was hurried out of the doors by Mrs Leavings and her clipboard.

  Silence descended.

  Mr Pinkbottle snatched the bucket from Mrs Stump.

  It jangled and clinked.

  It was heavy. He smiled as he hefted its weight in his hand.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You’re done for now. You can get out of that costume and go help Ms Sparkles in the laundry. Them uniforms won’t wash themselves, will they?’

  The gorilla-boy-that-can’t-actually-be-Fizz-because-he’s-at-the-cicrus didn’t move.

  It looked at Mr Pinkbottle and then at Mrs Stump and then up and down the aisle as if looking for something. Not seeing what it was looking for it slumped where it sat and gave a big sigh, followed by an ‘Uh-oh’ noise.

  Are you getting dizzy yet? Confused? Hang on to your hat one last time.

  Meanwhile! At the same time! Back in the cicrus!

  Fizz and Alice had come up with a plan to find out what Mr Pinkbottle was holding over the Ringmaster’s head, blackmailwise. (Naturally I’m not going to tell you, right now. Patience, after all, is my middle name. (Actually it’s Francis, but that’s not important right now.))

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ Fizz said, looking at his watch and seeing the time.

  ‘You can’t stay for the show?’ Alice said.

  Wild horses couldn’t have dragged Fizz to see a show at Neil Coward’s Famous Cicrus, even if it did have Alice in it, but he didn’t say that. Instead he said something else, which was also the truth.

  ‘If I don’t get back quick Kevin’s gonna be in trouble.’

  ‘Kevin?’

  ‘He’s a friend of mine. He –’

  ‘What act’s he do?’

  ‘Kevin? He doesn’t do an act. He’s … he’s normal.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Alice.

  ‘But he’s wearing a gorilla suit cleaning things up off the floor for charity.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Alice. ‘Why’s he doing that?’

  ‘He’s a friend.’

  Fizz looked at his watch. It had just gone six and he knew the doors to the supermarket would be shut by now. He was already too late to get back in time. He just had to hope that Kevin wouldn’t have had to take the mask off yet. Maybe Pinkbottle was busy elsewhere, or maybe Kevin would think of something.

  ‘He came in the shop after school and I managed to convince Mr Pinkbottle to let me have a toilet break and while no one was looking we swapped places. And I escaped. Only now I’m afraid he’s going to get caught. Again.’

  ‘Well, you’d best run,’ Alice said.

  And Fizz did run, back through the park and past the library, in the hope that his friend wasn’t in the trouble you and I know he’s probably already in.

  This chapter began with Fizz running and it will end with him running. That’s what we call, in the book-writing business, ‘a symmetrical structure’ or ‘a mirror-image opener-closer technique’ or maybe ‘a chapter in which a boy runs in and runs out’. I don’t know really. I never took any classes to help me do this stuff. I don’t know the technical terms. I just write it down as it occurs to me.

  In the next chapter things get tricky (trickier), but I won’t spoil it for you by telling you all about it now; instead you can just go and read the next chapter which tells you everything you need to know about what happens in Chapter Eight.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  In which a boy falls over a dustbin and in which a single chocolate bar is eaten by three people

  We pick up the story with Mr Pinkbottle clutching a bucket of unethically earned ‘charity’ donations and looming over a boy-in-a-gorilla-suit, demanding that he get changed and go help Emerald Sparkles, the former circus knife thrower, in the laundry, washing and starching and ironing all the supermarket uniforms (and, presumably, shortly, the gorilla suit).

  ‘Come on, Fizz,’ Mrs Stump said. ‘Let’s get you out of this costume. You can have a sandwich before the laundry.’ (She looked at Mr Pinkbottle as she said this, and he scowled meaningfully.) ‘Your dad found some out-of-date fish paste which Mr Pinkbottle’s let us have.’

  The boy-in-a-gorilla-suit slowly climbed to his feet.

  ‘Quicker than that,’ Mr Pinkbottle snapped. (He wanted to go and count the money while he had his dinner.) ‘Hurry up. Five minutes, then I want him in the laundry. Understood?’

  Mrs Stump took the gorilla by the hand and hurried it off towards the back door.

  ‘Oh,’ she grumbled under her breath as they went. ‘Oh, that man.’

  Once they’d gone through the storeroom and out into the dark car park, climbed the steps up to the caravan and shut the door behind them, she lifted the gorilla head off the head of a boy she thought was her son and looked into the face of a boy who she suddenly suspected wasn’t her son.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, trying not to look too surprised.

  ‘Hello,’ said Kevin, who wasn’t surprised at all. (He’d known he was him all day.)

  Mrs Stump dropped the gorilla head on the table and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

  ‘Why aren’t you Fizz?’ she asked. ‘I was expecting Fizz.’

  ‘Therein,’ said Kevin, who liked to begin explanations by saying ‘therein’, a word he’d learnt during the summer holidays, ‘hangs a tale.’

  He explained and Mrs Stump shook her head wearily.

  As Kevin came to the end of his explanation there was a loud knocking on the caravan door. (Actually ‘knocking’ is too kind and gentle a word to describe the noise. It was a thunderous hammering like a truck driver smacking the bottom of a particularly claggy bottle of ketchup in a roadside cafe full of hundreds of other burly truck drivers all banging their bottle bottoms too.)

  ‘Yes?’ called Mrs Stump.

  ‘He’s late,’ shouted Mr Pinkbottle from outside. ‘If he’s not out here in ten seconds I’m going to dock his wages and put your husband to work on the soft fruit section.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ whispered Mrs Stump.

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Kevin. ‘I’ll do it.’ (
He wanted to help Fizz out. He liked Fizz and even though they’d only written a couple of letters to one another since their first adventure Kevin had treasured them.

  Although being kidnapped just once by an old lady had taught him to be wary of going off with strangers again, and although he was glad he’d learnt that lesson, he was still a bit bored just doing his homework and watching telly and playing football and going to his Junior Knitters Kitten Knitting Club. Secretly he’d been longing for an adventure of the sort Fizz had written to him about and this was his big chance (possibly his only chance) to be a part of one.

  That was why he’d come to the supermarket in the first place. He’d been sure, when they’d met in the library, that something was going on, and he’d come to see if he could help. His mum and dad would probably be out looking for him by now, maybe they’d even have already phoned the police, but Kevin knew he wasn’t lost. He wasn’t worried. He’d go home to them when he was ready. In the meantime it was adventure time.

  (I’d like to point out at this point that Kevin wasn’t thinking entirely straight. His mum and dad were worried he’d gone missing again and they had indeed phoned the police and it was very serious because Kevin hadn’t told them he was planning on having an adventure and staying out late. Just because he knew where he was didn’t mean he wasn’t missing and it was wrong of him to, knowingly, cause his parents so much worry. Especially on a night like this when their favourite programme, Stop! Look! Redecorate!, was on telly.))

  Mrs Stump looked down at the boy who had just volunteered to take Fizz’s place in the laundry, to save his friend from getting in trouble, and immediately spotted a problem.

  So long as Kevin kept the gorilla suit on he was the spitting image of Fizz-in-a-gorilla-suit (of, in fact, almost any boy-in-a-gorilla-suit), but the moment he took it off he looked like an entirely different boy. Mr Pinkbottle might be mean and cruel, but he wasn’t an idiot and he would spot the deception within, literally, minutes. (A half-hour at the most. Unless he was distracted, say, maybe by an amusing pigeon or a hard sum or a bucket of cash, in which case I’d say … forty-six minutes at the outside.) And then they’d all be in trouble. Again.

  ‘I can’t let you do that,’ she said.

  ‘Awww,’ complained Kevin.

  ‘Hurry up!’ yelled Mr Pinkbottle.

  ‘Just a minute!’ Mrs Stump shouted back. ‘He’s getting changed.’

  She had to think! Think! Think think think! Think …

  Try as she might she couldn’t see a solution. She considered getting her clown make-up out and painting Kevin’s face and claiming Fizz had developed a rash, but that wouldn’t explain why the boy’s hair was a different colour. Or she could put the gorilla head back on and explain that Fizz was stuck inside the suit, but she knew that wouldn’t work. All it would take was one yank by Mr Pinkbottle and the head would come off again. Deception discovered!

  Argh! There was nothing she could do.

  Mr Stump would be sent to work on the soft fruit section and his big strong hands were no good with delicate soft things. And then he’d have the squashed produce deducted from his wages. It was a nightmare! Why had Fizz decided to run off anyway? (He’d told Kevin he’d be back by six, so where was he? How worried, she wondered, should she be?)

  And then her thoughts were interrupted by a noise from outside.

  There was a crash, like someone knocking over a dustbin and falling into a puddle in a heap, and then the shout of a supermarket owner.

  ‘You! What are you doing out there? Boy!’

  Let’s turn the clock back a few minutes.

  Fizzlebert Stump knew he was late. As he ran through the streets between the park, the library and the supermarket (not following Dr Surprise’s short cut) he muttered under his breath, ‘Faster, Fizz, faster!’ But it didn’t help.

  No nearby church clock tower tolled the six o’clock chimes slowly as they would in a really good book, the sort where the hero gets home just as the last chime strikes and all is well (though sweaty and out of breath). No, six o’clock had long since passed and Fizz was just running, hoping that Kevin had managed to stay out of trouble this long.

  As he turned the corner into the supermarket car park he heard a banging and saw Mr Pinkbottle outside the Stumps’ caravan.

  ‘Hurry up!’ he was shouting.

  Fizz thought quickly, his brain spinning and buzzing and whirring in his head, even as his lungs heaved, burnt and wheezed in his chest.

  Kevin must be in the caravan.

  Pinkbottle looked angry, but not incredibly angry, which must mean that the subterfuge had subterfuged well, so far.

  If Fizz could quickly climb in the window and then go out through the door, Mr Pinkbottle would never know he’d been away and Kevin would be able to just go home and everything would be back to ‘normal’ (the bad new normal, not the good old normal, but still …) and all he’d have to do was wait for Alice to come, later on, and they could put their plan into action.

  There was a dustbin just by the side of the caravan, underneath his mum and dad’s bedroom window.

  Brilliant!

  Using all his finest circus skills he climbed up on top of it, but after all that running his legs were a bit wobbly (not having got their breath back (not having lungs of their own (and Fizz, rather selfishly, using the two in his chest all for himself))) and he slipped, fell and crashed to the ground, splashing in a puddle and sending the dustbin flying.

  Mr Pinkbottle’s face darted round the side of the caravan and his eyes immediately saw the boy lying on the wet ground and his brain immediately recognised exactly which boy it was and his mouth snapped out the words, ‘You! What are you doing out there? Boy! Oh … You push me too far. Out of the kindness of my too-big heart I allow you five minutes for a sandwich and you sneak off into the dark breaking other people’s dustbins.’ He paused to wipe some foam and froth from the side of his froth-foaming lips. ‘Oh, you little vandal, you vex me greatly.’

  ‘Sorry, Mr Pinkbottle,’ said Fizz, climbing slowly to his feet.

  ‘Sorry? Sorry!? Look at your uniform, you wretch. Look at it!’

  Fizz looked down. He was muddy and wet and covered in grit and bin juice. A leaf of limp lettuce dangled from his shoulder.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Pinkbottle,’ he repeated, feeling as limp as the aforementioned lettuce leaf.

  Mr Pinkbottle made a noise like an unimpressed panda and turned his back on the boy.

  ‘Everything I do, Stump, is for your own good. All my kindness. All my generosity. I take you in, give you work. I give you food off my very plate … and this … this is how you repay me.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘What’s going on out here?’ asked Mrs Stump, coming round the corner of the caravan.

  ‘Ingratitude,’ said Mr Pinkbottle.

  ‘Fizz?’ said his mum. ‘What are you doing there?’

  ‘It’s obvious,’ hissed Mr Pinkbottle, looking at where Fizz was standing, at the spilt dustbin and at the caravan window above. ‘He was running away … again.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ Mrs Stump said. ‘He probably … um … fell out the window, while getting changed.’ (She winked at Fizz as she said it.)

  ‘That’s it,’ said Fizz.

  There was a quiet donk! at the window and everyone looked up to see a boy’s face looking out at them. A boy’s face that quickly vanished.

  ‘Who’s that?’ snapped Mr Pinkbottle, looking from one face to another.

  Fizz’s heart thumped. Oh no!

  Mr Pinkbottle lurched round the caravan, round to the side with the door, and Fizz heard the thwack of a clipboard meeting boy-skull and the banging succession of thuds as a body fell down several steps.

  He ran, with his mum, to see what had happened.

  They found Mr Pinkbottle stood over the shape of a crumpled Kevin (still half in the gorilla suit (the bottom half)) lying in a puddle at the foot of the caravan’s steps.

  �
��I seem to have found a burglar,’ Mr Pinkbottle said. ‘He was in your caravan, Mrs Stump. You really ought to be more careful.’

  ‘Kevin,’ said Fizz, kneeling down at his side. ‘You OK?’

  The boy was groaning and rubbing the side of his head, but seemed otherwise unharmed.

  ‘Oh?’ said Mr Pinkbottle, acting surprised. ‘You know this little miscreant, do you? He seems to have stolen half of my charity costume. Only the lowest sort of pond-life steals from a charity, Young Master Stump. You really should keep better company than this.’

  He tutted and shook his head.

  Kevin looked at Fizz and Fizz looked at Kevin and Fizz’s mum looked at Kevin and Kevin looked at Fizz’s mum and Fizz looked at Fizz’s mum too and then Fizz’s mum looked at Fizz, at which point everyone had looked at everyone else and so they all looked at the floor instead.

  It was ten minutes later and they were sat on boxes of tinned peas and baked beans and baked beans with little sausages and tinned green beans and pies and potatoes and chicken soup and tomato soup and mushroom and chicken soup and … Well, basically on boxes of tinned food, various.

  They were in one of the supermarket’s storerooms and Mr Pinkbottle had locked the door on them.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ said Fizz.

  A single lightbulb flickered yellowly above them.

  ‘I don’t know what you were playing at,’ his mum said. Not angrily. Tiredly.

  She meant running off and swapping places with Kevin and all that.

  Mr Pinkbottle hadn’t taken it very well, not that Fizz had tried to explain to him what he’d been up to. (That’s always a stupid idea, telling your arch-enemy all your plans (it’s where most villains fall down, for example: when they’ve captured the hero, instead of just dropping them straight in the shark tank, they spend so long boasting about their plans for world domination that the hero has time to escape from his or her ropes and THWACK! a sudden uppercut puts pay to the fiend and her or his plans).)