Fizzlebert Stump Read online

  When he’d got there she’d locked the doors and told him to start cleaning the place.

  ‘Why did she do that?’ Fizz asked.

  There was a banging from the next room and the roaring sound of the television dipped down for a second as Mrs Stinkthrottle shouted, ‘Are you two cooking? Get on with it! We’re hungry!’ Then the telly got loud again and Kevin began to tell Fizz what he’d found out.

  ‘Well, last night, after I’d made them beans on toast, because that’s all I can make . . . Well, they went up to bed after locking all the doors and windows. She told me to keep on cleaning. Look, I’ve done this whole corner over here.’ (He was right, there was one corner marginally cleaner and tidier than the rest, but only marginally.) ‘Well, I had a snoop around. I couldn’t escape and I couldn’t sleep. I was too scared, yeah?’

  Fizz nodded. He didn’t imagine he’d be able to sleep either, but he was impressed that Kevin had had the guts to snoop around with the Stinkthrottles asleep just upstairs. He didn’t know if he would have done that.

  ‘Well, I found this letter in the old woman’s coat pocket. She left it lying on the sofa. I was looking for the keys, but she must’ve taken them to bed with her. But I found this. Look . . . I reckon it must have something to do with it.’

  Kevin handed him a scrunched up bit of paper that he pulled from his pocket.

  ‘You read that while I heat up some beans. We’d best do as she says. I’m a runaway now, and you know what happens to runaways?’

  Fizz shrugged and shook his head, as if to say ‘No’.

  ‘Well, the police, they lock you away. Running away from your mum and dad, even if you didn’t mean to, well, that’s against the law and you’ll be put in prison. And I don’t want to go to prison. I don’t want to. She said my mum’ll hate me for running off. She said Mum wouldn’t even want to visit . . . wouldn’t come to visit me in prison. Oh . . . If we don’t do what she says, she’ll phone the police and they’ll come and take me away . . .’

  Kevin looked as if he were about to cry, but Fizz put his arm round his shoulder and tried to cheer him up.

  ‘Look, it’s going to be alright,’ he said, not knowing if that was true or not. ‘We’ll escape somehow.’

  ‘But I’ll go to prison,’ Kevin sniffed, still not quite crying.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Fizz said by way of an answer. ‘I don’t know. That can’t be true, can it? If we could just find your mum and dad, maybe . . .’

  ‘But she said . . .’

  ‘I know, but . . .’ Fizz didn’t know what to say. The thought crossed his mind that he’d run away from the circus, from his mum and dad too. If what Mrs Stinkthrottle had said to Kevin was true, then it would apply to him too. He just didn’t know.

  (Of course, the whole thing about runaways being sent to prison was just another of Mrs Stinkthrottle’s wicked lies, like the ones she’d told Fizz about the library. And besides, even if it was true, little Kevin hadn’t run away, he’d been kidnapped by the old lady, and there’s a big difference. Right now, somewhere out there, in actual fact, his mum and dad would be very worried, they’d be looking for him high and low. They might even have gone to the police, not to have him punished, but to get help in the search.)

  ‘Do your mum and dad know where you are?’ Kevin asked, between sniffs.

  ‘No. They’re still at the circus,’ Fizz said. ‘They probably don’t even know I’ve gone.’

  ‘At the circus? What are they doing at the circus?’

  ‘Well, they live there, don’t they?’

  ‘At the circus?’

  ‘Yeah, my mum’s a clown.’

  ‘A clown?’ Kevin looked disbelieving. ‘With the face and everything?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You’re joking?’

  ‘No, I’m not. That’s her job.’

  ‘Wow. That’s brilliant. Are you a clown too?’

  ‘No, I’m just a boy,’ Fizz said.

  The look on Kevin’s face had changed. He no longer looked quite so scared. Now that he was distracted by thinking about Fizz’s strange life, he was actually smiling.

  ‘Does she ever let you join in?’ he asked. ‘I once had a clown for my birthday, but he wasn’t a real clown, he was just a friend of my dad’s who dressed up and did some tricks. He tried making animals out of those long balloons.’

  ‘Oh, my mum can do that too, except she’s not very good and they all come out looking like snakes.’

  Kevin laughed. ‘Well, this clown could only make balloon worms. He wasn’t any good either.’

  Fizz laughed too.

  ‘She doesn’t let me join in with the clowns very often, but last night I did the lion act with Captain Fox-Dingle.’

  ‘Lion act?’

  ‘Yeah, I had to put my head in Charles’s mouth. Charles is Captain Fox-Dingle’s lion.’

  ‘You never!’

  Kevin stared wide-eyed at him.

  ‘I did. And I’ve done it before,’ Fizz said proudly.

  ‘That’s amazing. Really? You stuck your head in? Weren’t you scared?’

  ‘No, not really. Charles is an old softie really. He has rubber teeth. But even if he didn’t, I wouldn’t worry, he’d never bite me.’

  Kevin just shook his head, stunned by his new friend.

  ‘But I’ll tell you what,’ Fizz added, ‘his breath doesn’t half stink!’

  Right then there was another loud banging on the wall and Mrs Stinkthrottle shouted, ‘You boys! Less chatter, more dinner! Come on, come on!’

  Kevin suddenly looked serious again. The laughter had stopped and they both remembered where they were. How they were all alone, locked in this strange house with these horrible old people.

  Kevin sniffed again but quickly pulled himself together, wiped his nose on the silvery part of his school jumper’s sleeve and emptied a can of baked beans into a saucepan. He popped a couple of slices of stiff stale bread in the toaster and switched it on.

  Fizz looked at the letter Kevin had found in the night.

  It was from the local council and, as far as Fizz could understand (a lot of it was written in long words and jargon), it said that they had received complaints from some of the Stinkthrottles’ neighbours about the horrible smells coming from their house. An inspector had been dispatched and a report had been filed which said that if the Stinkthrottles didn’t sanitise (which just means clean, but really thoroughly) their house, the council would have to do it for them (which sounded like a good thing until . . .) and put the two old people in an old people’s home while they did so. If they could get the house cleaned up themselves then that would prove to the council that they were still quite capable, thank you very much.

  But it was clear to Fizz that, instead of doing it themselves, they had begun recruiting (or kidnapping) a workforce of kids to do it for them.

  As the beans cooked Fizz told Kevin what he thought was going on.

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I thought too,’ Kevin agreed. ‘It was me yesterday, you today and who knows how many more kids she’s gonna get?’

  The idea was terrifying. Fizz thought of the fairytales his dad had used to tell him (his mum, not surprisingly, preferred reading nonsense poems). Kids like Hansel and Gretel got stolen away by witches, but the kids always won in the end, didn’t they? But how? Fizz couldn’t remember. And what he could remember wasn’t much use: if he was going to stick Mrs Stinkthrottle in her own oven, he’d have to empty out the snooker balls, telephone directory, porcelain figurines and month-old remains of a roast chicken that were currently filling it up. But he didn’t want to kill her (she wasn’t planning on eating him, like a witch might do), he just wanted to escape.

  An idea failed to pop up with the toast, which was soon buttered with butter from the only corner of the tub that wasn’t filled with crumbs and blue things (he didn’t look too closely). Kevin ladled the beans on top and opened the door so they could take lunch through to the old couple.

  The
Stinkthrottles were sitting side by side on the sofa, each surrounded by rubbish that loomed over them, looking as if they might be buried in a landslide (a rubbishslide?) at any moment. They had trays on their laps and knives and forks in their hands, and were clearly ready for their lunch.

  ‘At last,’ Mrs Stinkthrottle shouted over the thundering television (it was horse racing and the hooves were pounding the turf, and the traditional simile for that is ‘like thunder’ and who am I to dodge tradition?). ‘You took your time about it. Give it here.’

  She really had very poor manners. Fizz wondered how he’d ever been taken in by her. It was only an hour or two since they’d first met outside the library and he was amazed at the transformation.

  As soon as he and Kevin had put the plates down she started shovelling her food into her mouth. (Mr Stinkthrottle on the other hand looked surprised when, a little later, he glanced down and saw his lunch had mysteriously arrived. He spooned his beans up more carefully.) In a few minutes it was all gone and she let out a small sideways burp and didn’t say ‘pardon’.

  ‘You, Kevin my little one, get back in the kitchen and get on with your cleaning.’ Kevin scuttled away, looking back over his shoulder at Fizz, his brand new friend, and then looking away, as if he was afraid they wouldn’t see each other again. ‘And you, little Johnnie,’ she said, grabbing Fizzlebert sharply by the ear and pulling herself up from the sofa, ‘I’ve got a special job for you.’

  She pulled him across the front room back towards the hallway, where they’d first come in. (Her pointy fingers hurt where they pinched the skin, and now that he’d had a chance to get a closer look he knew there was all sort of muck underneath her nails: it wasn’t just the house that was dirty.) When they got to the hall she pointed up the stairs.

  ‘Up there,’ she said, ‘straight in front of you, is the bathroom. I want it clean. I want it sparkling. I want it shiny. I want the mirrors so shiny I can see my face in them. Get up there. Go on. Go, go, go!’

  She pushed him and he moved. He climbed the narrow passage up the stairs, squeezing between teetering piles of rubbish, and finally found himself on the landing.

  The bathroom door creaked open and he pulled the cord which turned on the light. Looking around it was obvious why Mrs Stinkthrottle hadn’t washed recently.

  The bathtub was full of things (the usual mix of assorted rubbish, mushrooms and discarded hat-stands), as was the sink. The walls glistened with wiggly silvery stripes, which Fizz had a feeling might have been snail trails. He didn’t even want to think about looking in the toilet.

  He wondered what he could possibly do to make the place cleaner or tidier (other than blow it up, perhaps).

  ‘Get on with it. Don’t dawdle,’ the old crone’s voice shouted from the bottom of the stairs. ‘I’ll be up later to make sure you’re doing it right.’

  Then he heard the door to the front room slam shut. She’d gone back to her husband and the telly.

  Fizzlebert was all alone upstairs, but he was thinking about poor Kevin down in the kitchen. Fizz knew that the Stinkthrottles would take ages getting up the stairs (they’d walked slowly enough coming home from the library), but they could go into the kitchen whenever they liked. Poor Kevin.

  Fizz tried to think of some sort of plan of escape. He knew that he really had to now, because it wasn’t just him in trouble, he wanted to help Kevin get out too. He’d made a friend that he wanted to keep. A friend he liked the idea of chatting with in the fresh air and the sunshine outside. That made escape seem all the more urgent.

  But while Fizz thinks about making daring escape plans, and works out how to make a start on cleaning the bathroom, I think it’s best we take a quick break and let him concentrate without us peering over his shoulder all the time.

  So, I’m going to have a lie down in a darkened room for half an hour, and then maybe a long hot bath, before I head on into Chapter Eight, which will be coming along next.

  Chapter Eight

  in which a search is organised and in which a search runs into difficulties

  While Fizz was trapped in the Stinkthrottles’ house, life was going on just as normal back at the circus.

  It wasn’t until his mum and dad stopped for their afternoon tea-break that they first realised they hadn’t seen him around for a while. (They’d skipped lunch, both being so engrossed with various bits of circus business: rehearsing their routines, obviously, but other important stuff too. His dad, for example, had his moustache trimmed by the circus barber-cum-sword swallower, and his mother did an interview for the local newspaper which ended abruptly when the reporter’s notebook got eaten by Fish, the sea lion.)

  At first they didn’t worry too much, assuming Fizz was just in someone’s caravan, but once his dad had looked all over and had come up with nothing, they began to take it more seriously. At that point his mother went straight to her caravan (only tripping over her clown shoes once and impulsively squirting the Ringmaster in the face with water when he came over to say, ‘Isn’t it beautiful weather today, Gloria?’). Once there she got a sponge and wiped her clown face right off.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s go about this logically. We need to find out who last saw Fizz.’

  (With her pink human face showing she was organised and sensible and anyone who saw her in action wouldn’t realise how worried she was feeling. (They wouldn’t have realised she was worried about Fizz if she had still been wearing her clown face either, not because she hid her worry so well, but because she looked like a clown.))

  ‘When did you last see him?’ she asked her husband.

  ‘Well, I saw him . . .’ he said, pausing to think back through his day. ‘Um . . . at breakfast.’

  ‘After that?’

  ‘Well, he went off for his classes, didn’t he?’

  ‘Of course! Where’s his timetable?’

  Fizz’s timetable, which listed who he saw on what day, was stuck to the little fridge door with a magnet. A quick glance at that showed that his first class had been with Dr Surprise, from ten to eleven. At 11.30 he saw Mr Bleaney, the circus’s sawdust wrangler (in the circus sawdust wrangling was a very important job; outside a circus, not generally so important). After lunch he was due to visit Madame Plume de Matant, but his dad had bumped into her while he’d been looking and she’d told him Fizz hadn’t turned up (which had, secretly, been a relief to her, since she still couldn’t speak French).

  ‘Fine, let’s go see Dr Surprise first and then old Bleaney,’ said his mum (who I shall call Mrs Stump, because it doesn’t seem right to keep saying ‘Fizz’s mum’ or to call her Gloria, which was her real name, or Gloriosus, which was her clown name (‘The Fumbling Gloriosus’ in full)).

  When Mr and Mrs Stump reached Dr Surprise’s caravan, they knocked on the door.

  ‘Hang on a moment,’ a voice warbled from within. ‘I’m just getting out of bed. I wasn’t expecting anyone.’

  ‘We just wanted to ask you a question,’ Mr Stump said. ‘Did you see Fizz this morning? Did he come for his lesson?’

  ‘Fizz?’ called the Doctor. ‘Fizz?’

  He sounded like he was trying to remember something, as if the name sounded somewhat familiar, but it seemed that whatever bells it was ringing were in a church tower several miles away over rolling countryside and only the faintest of tinkles were rolling into his ears.

  ‘Fizzlebert,’ Mrs Stump called up to the window through which the conversation was taking place. ‘Our son. You know him.’

  Dr Surprise opened the door. He was pulling his braces up over his shirt and he had pink creases all over one side of his face, as if he’d been sleeping on something wrinkly.

  ‘Fizzlebert?’ he said. ‘Describe him to me.’

  ‘He’s our boy, Dr Surprise. Don’t be daft. You know him. You’ve known him for years. You were the doctor who delivered him.’

  (Amazingly, Dr Surprise had once been a medical doctor, but that, as are so many things, is a different story entir
ely.)

  ‘Ah. Now, that sounds familiar,’ he said.

  He paused and looked at Mrs Stump, as if trying to place her face. Then his own face suddenly lit up.

  ‘Short chap?’

  ‘Well, yes. He’s a boy.’

  ‘Your son?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Called Fizzlebert Stump?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s a coincidence.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know some Stumps. They live round here somewhere.’

  ‘Dr Surprise, that’s us,’ Mr Stump said impatiently. He flexed his biceps and tattoos danced across his arms.

  ‘Oh yes, I see, of course you are. Well, I saw him just this morning, your boy. Little Fizzlebert Stump. It all comes flooding back. I remember it as if it were only yesterday.’

  ‘It was this morning, Doctor.’

  ‘He came here, the small gentleman, and we studied the great battles of history, and then he . . .’

  Dr Surprise’s face stopped.

  He never moved his head much, far too professional to be animated, but up to now he had been smiling and rolling his eyes as if playing a game. The long loop of thin hair that coiled round his head had been flapping in the late afternoon breeze, and his monocle had glinted in the sunshine. But now suddenly that all stopped.

  His hair settled.

  He looked serious.

  ‘We had our lesson,’ he said, ‘and then he went to the library. Are you saying that he hasn’t come back yet?’

  ‘The library? What library?’ asked Mrs Stump.

  ‘The town library.’ Dr Surprise pointed in the building’s direction, even though half the circus, a park, a duck pond and a row of trees lay in between. ‘Didn’t he tell you?’

  Mr and Mrs Stump looked at each other.

  ‘He didn’t tell me,’ she said. ‘Did he tell you?’

  ‘No,’ he answered. ‘He didn’t come and find me. I was only over there, lifting a horse in the air.’

  ‘He was returning a book. I – ’