Fizzlebert Stump and the Girl Who Lifted Quite Heavy Things Read online

  ‘Yes,’ said Fizz. ‘And they got lost. We think they must’ve landed here. Maybe they crashed.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said Mr X. ‘We’d’ve noticed something like that. What colour did you say the balloon was?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what colour the balloon was, but –’

  Wystan was standing behind the other two. Fizz had made this sound like it would be easy, as if they’d just walk in and show them the photo and watch their eyes de-cloud, see the mist lift and hear them say, ‘Welcome back, son’. But it wasn’t that easy. He was holding the photo in its frame under his jacket. It felt hard and real, but showing it off, that seemed the opposite – it seemed unreal. In short, it was scary. What if it didn’t work? What if they got angry? What if he had it wrong? What if it was all just an act? What if they knew full well who he was, but didn’t want a freak like him for a son?

  ‘Look at this,’ he said, interrupting Fizz and surprising himself.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Mrs X.

  ‘It’s a short man with a beard, dear,’ said Mr X.

  ‘No, I wasn’t talking to you, silly. I was talking to the short man with the beard.’

  ‘I’m not a man,’ Wystan said.

  ‘Sorry,’ Mrs X corrected herself. ‘I was talking to the short woman with the beard.’

  ‘I’m not a woman, either,’ Wystan said, stamping his feet.

  ‘Oh, I know this one,’ Mr X said, stroking his moustache. ‘A short hallucination with a beard.’

  ‘No,’ said Wystan. ‘I’m not a hallucination, I’m real and I’m a boy. Just a boy.’

  ‘That explains a lot,’ Mr X said, not explaining what he thought it explained.

  ‘My name’s Wystan,’ Wystan said, not beating about the bush any more. ‘And I reckon you’re me mum and dad. Look at this photo.’

  He handed the picture frame over to Mrs X, who had stood up from her place at the table.

  ‘What a handsome couple,’ she said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Mr X, looking over her shoulder.

  ‘Is that you in the middle?’ she asked, pointing at the bearded baby in the photo.

  ‘Yes,’ said Wystan. ‘And that’s you either side of me. You’re me mum and dad.’

  Mr X looked at Mrs X and shook his head.

  ‘I’m sorry, lad,’ he said. ‘But I think you’ve mistaken us for someone else.’

  ‘That can’t be us there,’ Mrs X said, handing the photo back. ‘We’ve never been in a photograph. We’re from France, you see.’

  ‘You’re not from France,’ Wystan said. ‘You’re from Basingstoke. Your names are Wilfred and Hester Humphreys. You’re famous balloonists who flew a hot air balloon called the Golden Goose, you are explorers of places people have already been to, you’re aerial musicians, fashion models and disc jockeys, and you’re me mum and dad.’

  He stamped his foot again in frustration.

  ‘Don’t you mean Barboozul?’ asked Fizz quietly, confused.

  ‘That’s a stage name Lord and Lady Barboozul came up with, Fizz,’ Wystan said. ‘No one has such silly names in real life.’

  ‘Is Basingstoke in France?’ asked Mrs X.

  ‘No,’ said Wystan.

  ‘Well, I don’t think we come from there, then.’

  ‘Where do you come from?’ asked Alice.

  ‘Oh, France. Somewhere. Apparently.’

  ‘Apparently?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what the nice man says. I forget myself.’

  ‘Yes, it’s all a bit of blur, yesterday.’

  ‘Yesterday?’

  ‘Yes, when we arrived.’

  ‘From France?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  Fizz didn’t know what to do. It seemed the conversation was going round and round in circles. There hadn’t been a glimmer of recognition from the moustachioed pair. Not the faintest sign of a spark when they saw the picture or when Wystan told them their real names.

  Then someone began singing. Singing in a furry falsetto.

  ‘Up in the air, the balloon rocks away,

  the baby sleeps well, until break of day.

  The winds blow us up and blow us along,

  the baby sleeps well, all the night long.’

  ‘That’s a nice tune,’ Mrs X said, humming it to herself.

  ‘It’s what you used to sing,’ Wystan said, his beard quivering. ‘It was the lullaby you used to sing me.’

  Mrs X looked blank.

  Suddenly the door burst open and a huge round shape lumbered into the kitchen shouting, ‘What’s going on here!?’

  Fizz stuttered something and Alice coughed and Wystan hid in his beard.

  It was Mr Gomez, squeezing through the doorway. He pulled his dark glasses off and hung them in his shirt pocket.

  ‘These short people,’ Mrs X said, indicating the trio, ‘have come to sing us some songs. About balloons.’

  ‘Balloons?’ said Mr Gomez suspiciously.

  ‘Forget the balloons,’ said Fizz, drawing himself up to his full height and feeling the power of the moment burn through him. ‘We’re here because a boy ought to have parents. If there’s any chance of finding them, of being with them, a boy should grab it with both hands.’

  ‘Too true,’ said Mr Gomez. ‘Perhaps we should go find your parents. I open my fields up to the circuses, but this farmhouse is my home. This is mine, little man. This is where I come of an evening and put my feet up after a long day. I can’t just let anyone come barging in here, especially when I’m not home.’

  ‘But we didn’t come to see you,’ said Wystan, pointing at the large farmer with the corner of the picture frame (he pointed with the rest of the picture frame too, but the corner went furthest). ‘We came to see me mum and dad.’

  ‘Your . . . ? Oh! There was some bloke round here earlier asking about this, wasn’t there? Professor Present or something.’

  ‘Dr Surprise,’ corrected Fizz.

  ‘Yeah, well I told him what I’ll tell you. My friends here don’t speak much English. Whatever you’ve said to them, they’ve not understood because they’re not from round here. They’re French, over here on a holiday. Ain’t that right?’

  He looked at Mr X.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he responded. ‘That’s what you say.’

  ‘They’re nothing to do with you.’ He noticed the picture Wystan was waving and snatched it from his hand. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It’s the only picture I’ve got of me and me mum and dad,’ Wystan said.

  ‘He’s called Winston,’ Mrs X said, looking over Mr Gomez’s fat shoulder. ‘The little lad there. The bearded chap said so.’

  ‘Not Winston,’ Wystan corrected, ‘Wystan.’

  ‘I know you,’ said Mr Gomez suddenly, peering closer and wheezing courgette breath into Wystan’s face. ‘You’re the Bearded Boy. Something Barboozul. Now I recognise you. You’re on the schedule tomorrow morning aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, me and Fish.’

  ‘Well, boy,’ Mr Gomez said with an ugly sneer. ‘You’re not.’

  ‘Not what?’

  ‘Not on the schedule.’

  ‘What?’

  Mr Gomez waved Wystan’s photo round as he spoke, using it to illustrate his points.

  ‘Firstly, your sea lion attacked some clowns. A fish in the custard. Secondly, your sea lion attacked Raymond Piles as he was balancing an occasional table on top of a snooker cue on top of a champagne bottle on top of his chin. Turned out there was a fish in the drawer. His confidence was shattered, as was his snooker cue, and his champagne bottle, and his occasional table. Thirdly, when Madame Long-Plunge jumped off her high platform to swan dive into a small paddling pool forty feet below (an act, might I add, that I adore) her fall was broken abruptly by a sea lion. Your sea lion. There were fish in the pool she hadn’t known about. Fourthly –’

  ‘But it’s not Fish’s fault, he just goes where his nose takes him,’ Fizz said.

  ‘Was the lady alri
ght?’ Alice asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t say she was exactly happy about it,’ Mr Gomez snapped.

  ‘But, how did the fish get there? In the pool and in the custard and in the drawer?’ Fizz asked. ‘Someone must’ve –’

  ‘Dunno, and it’s not important. The problem’s not the fish, it’s the sea lion. I’ve had words with your Ringmaster. He’s locking it up for the rest of the week. I can’t have him running around ruining any more shows. So that means that you, my bearded wonder, are out of an act. So sorry.’ (He didn’t sound sorry.)

  Wystan’s beard quivered.

  ‘Can I have my picture back?’

  ‘Oh, as for this?’ Gomez looked at the photo. ‘It’s nothing. You come in here accusing perfectly innocent French people of being your long-lost parents. What do you expect? They look nothing like this pair here. The moustaches are different. The clothes are different. You’re barking up the wrong tree. Answer me this, were your mum and dad French?’

  ‘No.’

  He shoved Wystan’s photo into the boy’s hands.

  ‘Then, case closed. Now, get out of here before I kick you out.’ He turned back to his moustachioed house-guests-cum-farm-labourers. ‘I’m so sorry you had to be faced with this, this . . . nonsense. It must be upsetting to you. I’m so sorry, but they’re kids.’ He shrugged. ‘What can you do?’

  But Mr and Mrs X had already sat back down at the table and were just putting their cutlery together on their now empty plates.

  ‘Sorry?’ Mr X said. ‘Oh, visitors! How interesting.’

  Fizz and his friends were dejected. Mr Gomez hadn’t exactly been friendly. The meeting hadn’t exactly gone as planned. And Wystan had exactly lost his chance to perform in the Circus of Circuses show, although that bothered him much less than having been so close to his mum and dad while they were so far away from him. But still, poor Fish getting locked up.

  Tomorrow is another day, Fizz thought, climbing into bed later that night, although it looked like being a miserable one for him and his friends.

  izz spent an uneasy night in his fold-down-dining-room-table-cum-bed (this wasn’t a punishment, just a sign that the Stumps’ caravan wasn’t very big). He didn’t get a lot of sleep, lying there thinking about all the things that had happened and worrying and wondering what might happen next. How to solve Wystan’s problem, how to solve his own.

  He also lay awake thinking, if he was having this much trouble sleeping, what must poor Wystan be going through?

  But eventually he did sleep, because the next thing he knew he was being woken up.

  ‘Come on, Fizz. Wakey wakey,’ his dad was saying, lifting him up with one hand and folding his bed back into the wall with the other.

  ‘Okay,’ Fizz said, blearily. ‘Okay.’

  As they had breakfast, a few minutes later, he asked his dad a question.

  ‘Dad?’ he said. ‘You know I’ve been looking for a new act? For something to do?’

  ‘Yes, son,’ his dad said. ‘Course I do. I thought you’d end up helping Wystan out with the acrobatics.’ (Fizz had, very occasionally, joined in with Wystan and Fish’s tumbling and balancing act.) ‘But I hear Fish is in the doghouse.’

  ‘The doghouse?’

  ‘Well, lionhouse. Fox-Dingle’s been told to keep him locked up in one of his cages, just while the trials are on. He’s been doing mischief, apparently.’

  ‘Yeah, we heard that,’ Fizz said gloomily. ‘I was wondering, Dad, if I might help you, in your act?’

  ‘Help me?’

  ‘Yeah, you know. Lifting things up or just pointing at things for you. I reckon I could be useful.’

  ‘I don’t know, Fizz,’ his dad said, stroking his little moustache. ‘It’s not as easy as it looks. You’re only a lad –’

  ‘I know, but I’m pretty strong,’ Fizz said. ‘Remember when I was trapped in that trunk and I heaved all the stuff off the top? That took muscles.’ (He was referring to something that happened in Fizzlebert Stump and the Bearded Boy, just in case you didn’t know.) ‘And what about the time Bongo Bongoton dropped that weight on his foot and couldn’t move? He was trapped there for hours before I came along and lifted it up for him. No one else had been able to.’

  ‘But, Fizz, he’s a mime and it was an imaginary weight.’

  ‘Okay, not the best example,’ Fizz said. ‘Forget that one, but the trunk was real and I carried all those books back to the library for Dr Surprise the other week. He reads dead heavy books.’

  Mr Stump twirled his moustache and made a thoughtful face. ‘Stump & Son,’ he said as if testing the words.

  ‘That sounds good, doesn’t it?’ Fizz asked, eagerly.

  This was one of the things he’d thought during the night. He’d been given the idea by something Alice had mentioned. It definitely wasn’t that he wanted to impress her by becoming a Strongman, by doing an act with his dad (whose poster she had up on her bedroom wall). No, it wasn’t that at all. Definitely not. No. If you’d suggested that that was what it was, Fizz would have protested, told you to stop being silly, blushed, fiddled with his buttons and changed the subject. He didn’t know exactly why he thought it would be a good idea, but all of a sudden he did.

  And if Alice just happened to think it was cool, then that was up to her.

  ‘I tell you what, Fizz,’ his dad said, having stroked his chin (which is how a Strongman makes decisions). ‘We’ll try some stuff out this morning. See how it goes. I’ve got to do the act for Mr Gomez tomorrow. I’m practically the last act he’s going to see. So we’ve got until then. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll do the normal act. Yes? But if we can fit you in, then we’ll do it? That sound okay?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Fizz, enthusiastically.

  (In case anyone was wondering why this was a quite straightforward breakfast (they were eating a custard kedgeree Fizz’s mum had made the night before) with no clown antics, honking, hiding or silliness the answer is easy: Mrs Stump wasn’t there.

  Why weren’t Fizz and Mr Stump worried? Why weren’t they searching for her? Why did they not even seem to notice her absence?

  Well, that answer’s easy too: she left before the two men sat down for their breakfast to go and rehearse with the rest of the clowns. They were being seen by Gomez that afternoon and were busy with final adjustments and preparations. (Checking custard for foreign objects, such as Danish fish.)

  She had said goodbye perfectly sensibly ten minutes ago but I thought it was too boring a scene to put into the book, so I left it out.)

  So, that morning Fizz and his dad practised.

  They began with small things. Mr Stump handed Fizz a tin of custard (not a normal-size tin with one or two portions in, like you or I might eat with a spoon all by ourselves, but a big catering-sized tin that can feed a whole roomful of hungry people, like you or I might eat by ourselves when no one else is watching).

  Fizz took hold of the can, wobbled, slipped and dropped it on his foot.

  ‘Oh golly,’ he said in pain. ‘That hurt.’

  ‘The thing about a Strongman rather than a clown, Fizz,’ his dad explained, ‘is that we don’t just hold things for a second, then drop them. We hold them up and keep them up. That’s what an audience really wants to see.’

  ‘I know that,’ Fizz said, stretching his toes inside his shoe. Nothing was broken. ‘I just didn’t get the grip right. It slipped.’

  He squatted down and wrapped his fingers around the can.

  He took a deep breath and lifted and lifted and the tin didn’t move.

  ‘What’s in here?’ he asked.

  ‘Just custard, Fizz,’ his dad said. ‘Your mum lifts it every day.’

  ‘Not a tin this big,’ Fizz complained. ‘She has it in a bucket.’

  ‘Do you know what?’ his dad said. ‘I’m going to let you into a secret. I’m not very good at lifting things. Not really. Not straight away. I have to think myself strong. Oh, sure I’ve got muscles the size of your head, but they’re no goo
d if I’m not thinking right.’

  ‘How do you do that?’

  ‘You remember when you were in the Barboozuls’ trunk?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It was dark. You were in trouble. We were all in trouble. You were scared.’

  ‘I wasn’t that scared,’ Fizz clarified.

  ‘You were scared enough that your Inner Strongman heard you and when push came to pull, it pushed with you.’

  ‘My Inner Strongman?’ Fizz said, dubiously.

  ‘Yep. You need to find what’s important to you, Fizz, find what makes you want to lift the weight. Me, I think about your mum. Oh, Fizz, I love that clown so much. When I first met her I could barely lift the front end of a blindfolded baby bison. But I so wanted to impress her. I wanted to make her proud. I still do. When I find something’s getting heavy, getting hard to lift, I just think about her standing behind me, her bow tie spinning and her horn sighing with love. Oh!’

  ‘Dad,’ Fizz said, embarrassed and appalled at what he was hearing. ‘Shut up.’

  ‘In my mind’s eye,’ his dad went on, ‘when I’m lifting something really heavy, I see your mum coming over and kissing me. It makes me laugh as her nose tickles my moustache, but –’

  ‘La-la-la-la,’ Fizz sang, covering his ears.

  His dad stopped talking and waved the hands away.

  ‘Fizz,’ he said. ‘If you don’t pick that tin up, I’ll tell you more about how much I love your mum.’

  Fizz bent down and, with one hand, tucked the tin of custard under his arm, balanced it on his knee, got his other hand round it and lifted it above his head. His muscles bulged under his coat and he could feel his heart racing in his chest, but he was doing it, it was working!

  ‘Just so long as you’re quiet, Dad,’ he said.

  Fizz had discovered one of the keys to unlocking his Inner Strongman: the desperate desire to avoid embarrassment. What he would never tell his dad (or anyone, not even you (not even me)) was that at the same time, he was sort of, maybe, imagining Alice Crudge watching and being impressed. But not really, no. It was definitely just the desire to make his dad shut up.

  After experimenting with several tins of custard Fizz got some of his dad’s dumbbells out of the caravan (it rose a little when they were removed).