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

  He lifted one of them above his head and twirled it like a drum majorette.

  ‘Careful, Fizz,’ his dad said. ‘You could have someone’s eye out with that.’

  It was a silly thing to say, since the dumbbell had a round metal sphere at either end, completely useless for poking things out. But very good for knocking people out. (His dad was right to suggest safety, but wrong in his choice of words. After all, he was a strongman, not William Shakespeare.)

  (It was just at this moment that Alexander Fakespeer wandered past in the background, saying, ‘A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse.’ (Fortunately he was nowhere nearby Miss Tremble’s caravan, because as much as she loved her horses, she might’ve swapped one of them for a whole kingdom. You never know.))

  Fizz lifted a second dumbbell in his other hand and began twirling the pair of them.

  This was going well, he thought.

  He could feel his muscles working. They were strong. They were meaty. They were manly. He had occasionally felt something of his dad’s blood course in his veins, but in his previous act, with the lion, he’d never got to show it off. He might’ve been able to pick Charles up, if he’d only tried. Imagine what sort of act that would have been: The Boy Who Picks a Lion Up and Lowers Its Mouth Around His Own Head. Gosh! Golly! If only he’d thought of it back then.

  But, thinking all this, he lost concentration for a second. He fumbled a spin and the twirling dumbbells clanged into each other, stopped twirling abruptly, jarred his wrist, wobbled themselves and fell in a clattering, thudding pair of deep thuds into the earth either side of him.

  ‘Less twirling, Fizz,’ his dad said. ‘Strongmen don’t do a lot of twirling normally. Lifting it up’s usually good enough.’

  He looked around as if to make sure no one was watching and said, ‘I think it’s time for a tea break, don’t you?’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Fizz, feeling a little less confident.

  ‘Here, catch this,’ his dad said, tossing him a whole cake.

  It looked like a Victoria sponge or something (Fizz wasn’t an expert, although he was a fan): two layers of pale cake with jam gluing them together in the middle.

  He caught the cake easily and looked around for somewhere to put it down.

  His father was unfolding a little picnic table.

  ‘There you go,’ he said.

  He put a plate, just big enough for the cake, on top.

  Fizz gently put the cake on to the plate and stood back.

  There was a creak of wood, a crack of porcelain, and then the table collapsed. The plate and the cake fell straight through it to the ground.

  ‘Dad!’ Fizz shouted. ‘That’s not –’

  ‘Yep,’ his dad confirmed. ‘That’s a Madame Plume de Matant special. I told her it was your birthday.’

  Madame Plume de Matant was the circus’s fortune teller. She usually set up in a little booth by the entrance to the Big Top and audience members would pop in and cross her palm with money before the show to find out what their futures held. She was also the woman who was supposed to be teaching Fizzlebert French, which was why he hadn’t been able to try any French out on Mr and Mrs X. In addition to being a faux French teacher and a fraudulent (yet entertaining) fortune teller, she was also the worst, most self-deluded home baker in the entire circus.

  Her cakes were legendary.

  They broke tables, teeth and cutlery.

  And his dad had got him one for his birthday (even though it wasn’t his birthday for another seven months, two weeks and six days). That was a bit weird.

  ‘I thought at this point we’d invite someone from the audience to try picking it up,’ his dad said.

  Percy Late (of Percy Late and his Spinning Plate fame) happened to be chasing one of his runaway plates nearby.

  ‘Hey, Percy,’ Mr Stump shouted. ‘Come over here a moment.’

  Percy, having captured the errant piece of crockery, wandered over to see what all the fuss was.

  ‘Here, Percy,’ Mr Stump said. ‘We’ve dropped a cake. Could you pick it up for us?’

  Percy looked at Mr Stump, then he looked at Fizz and he said, ‘What’s going on here? Two fine strong lads like you pair and you can’t pick up a little sponge cake like that? There’s something fishy going on here, isn’t there?’

  Nevertheless, despite his suspicions, Percy was a good chap and bent down to lift the cake.

  At first he tried using one hand but the thing wouldn’t budge. Then he got his other hand on it, under it and tried tugging. It still wasn’t going anywhere.

  ‘Is it glued?’ he asked.

  ‘No, no glue,’ Fizz said.

  ‘Let me get a better position,’ Percy mumbled, moving round so his feet were either side of the cake and his fingers were wriggling right underneath. ‘Heave!’

  The only thing that moved was a bead of sweat on Percy’s forehead.

  ‘Hang on,’ he said, straightening up again. ‘Is that one of . . .’

  ‘It’s just a cake, Percy,’ Mr Stump said.

  Percy looked at him. It was a quizzical look, verging on the suspicious.

  ‘Who made it?’ he asked carefully.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mr Stump said, acting all innocent-like. ‘Your plates, Percy, who makes those?’

  Percy lifted the plate from the grass where he’d put it and showed the Stumps the underside.

  ‘That’s easy to find out. Look, it says there: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobw llllantysiliogogogoch Pots and Pans Ltd.’

  ‘See that, Fizz?’ his dad asked. ‘To find the maker of a thing, you have to look on the underneath.’

  Fizz took the cue and heaved the cake up with one hand. It was heavy but he could do it, and do it with a smile as if he were in the ring (never show the strain, not for a cake). He turned it over and there was no writing on the bottom at all. Not a single word.

  ‘How did you . . . ?’ stumbled Percy Late, pointing at Fizz. ‘Oh!’ he said, ‘are you doing a double act now?’

  ‘Maybe, maybe,’ Fizz’s dad said. ‘We’ll see.’

  Some time later Wystan wandered over.

  He looked glum (or as glum as someone with a big beard can look).

  ‘How’s it going?’ asked Fizz, putting a motorbike down. (I say ‘motorbike’ but it was really just a little motorized scooter thing (not even half as heavy as a full-grown sea lion), but still it was something I think would impress an audience. I mean, I probably couldn’t pick one up, so it impresses me.)

  All this lifting things up, all this work, had quite taken Fizz’s mind off his bearded pal’s problems. For a moment he’d forgotten why Wystan was looking so melancholy. (By which I don’t mean looking like the famous hybrid fruit/vegetable, which is spelt quite differently: meloncauli (not to be confused with the hybrid fruit/dog, the meloncollie). Mr Gomez didn’t grow either of those. You can tell because I know their names. And because I just made them up.)

  The bearded boy blew a bearded raspberry by way of answer to Fizz’s question. (And, before you ask, Gomez didn’t grow bearded raspberries either: they’re a fruit and the things he grew were vegetables.)

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ Fizz said.

  ‘It don’t matter,’ said Wystan. ‘It’s just all a bit –’ He blew a second raspberry. ‘Me and Fish were supposed to . . . you know, do the show and he’s miserable. I’ve been sitting with him. He’s in Charles’s old cage. Everything’s a bit miserable over there. Fox-Dingle’s having trouble with Kate.’ (The crocodile, not my editor.) ‘She keeps eating his chair.’ (Lion tamers traditionally use a chair and a whip to train their big cats. They hold the chair out with its legs facing the wild animal so that it can’t jump at the trainer. This works for cats because they don’t like to eat furniture (rip it, shred, it, bite it, yes, but only if it’s upholstered). Crocodiles, on the other hand, are clearly less choosey about what they eat.) ‘He’s not even sure he’ll have an act to show off tomorrow either. And then that Cedric kid was hanging aroun
d.’

  ‘Cedric?’ Fizz asked with a shiver. (It wasn’t that he was afraid, it was just that in the excitement of the act he’d almost forgotten about Greene’s very existence. Sometimes just being reminded that something rotten still exists can be enough to give you a shiver up your spine.)

  ‘Yeah. Leather jacket. Bites his nails. No beard. Thinks he’s the big boss.’

  ‘I know the one,’ Fizz said.

  ‘He kept bothering old Dingle-Dangle with questions.’

  ‘Questions?’

  ‘Yeah: “Here, mate, how do you make a lion like you?” and “Hey, Cap, how do you stop a lion dribbling?” and “Yo, Foxy, how do you find out a lion’s name?” Things like that.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Fizz. He didn’t know if he felt good about this or not. He didn’t like the idea of Cedric talking to Captain Fox-Dingle, but he did like the thought that Cedric needed help with his lion. ‘But he told me his Putting His Head in the Lion’s Mouth act was brilliant. He said it was already perfect. But . . .’

  ‘You should have seen the Captain’s face,’ Wystan said, smiling for the first time. ‘It was a picture.’

  ‘What did he say? Did he answer?’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ Wystan straightened himself up like Fox-Dingle and did his best impression of having a small toothbrush moustache.

  He stared at Fizz and snapped out a one-word answer exactly as the Captain would’ve. ‘“Love”’, he said.

  Fizz laughed.

  ‘Oh gosh,’ he said. ‘What did Cedric say to that?’

  ‘Nothing. He just looked annoyed and left. But before he did he said, “Whatever,” and threw Fish a fish.’

  ‘A fish?’

  ‘For Fish.’

  ‘That’s weird.’

  ‘Just pulled it out his pocket and chucked it in the cage.’

  ‘Did he say anything else?’

  ‘Um, let me think.’ Wystan pulled a notebook out of his beard and flipped the pages. ‘I made a note,’ he said. He found the right page, ran his finger down it and said, ‘“Loser.”’

  ‘He said that?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘It was him.’

  ‘What was him?’

  ‘The fish.’

  ‘The sabotage?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Being the big man means a lot to him,’ Fizz said. ‘He wants to win, and what better way of winning is there than having your circus win the most?’

  ‘His circus?’ Wystan said.

  ‘Yeah, none of the acts that were ruined were from A Ring & A Prayer, were they? He’s trying to take out the competition. Trying to get as many of his circus’s acts into the Circus of Circuses show on Saturday.’

  Wystan mumbled an insult into his beard. I didn’t hear exactly what it was, but somewhere the other side of the farm Cedric’s ears itched.

  ‘Yep and did you know,’ Fizz went on, ‘his dad’s the Ringmaster? I remember reading it in the BBC Newsletter.’

  ‘Do you think his dad knows what Cedric’s doing?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Fizz said. Even if he believed Ringmaster Greene was involved there was no one he could tell. His own Ringmaster would never accuse another Ringmaster of being dishonest. Mr Gomez, whose Circus of Circuses the whole Gathering was about, would never listen to Fizz and Wystan, not after last night.

  There was nothing they could do.

  ‘Fish is locked away, so the sabotage is over,’ Fizz said.

  ‘You mean the sabotage worked,’ Wystan said. ‘I don’t care about the rest, but because of him I’ve got no act. But I don’t even care about that. It’s ’cause of him that Gomez was angry about Fish and angry with me. If he’d not had the sea lion ruining everything all day then he’d’ve been in a better mood last night. He’d’ve listened to me properly when I told him about me mum and dad. If only Cedric Greene hadn’t made poor Fish ruin everything.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ Fizz said, trying to calm his friend down a bit.

  Wystan’s beard was prickling with pent-up rage. His eyes flared over the top of it. They were red, glistening with unfallen tears. Fizz had never seen him so agitated, so passionate, so angry.

  ‘It’s all Cedric’s fault,’ Wystan declared, waving a finger in the air. ‘I’ve made a decision, Fizz. Two can play at that game. I’m going to get him back.’

  ‘Um, okay,’ said Fizz, not certain that revenge was the best plan. ‘How?’

  ‘I’ve got some ideas bubbling,’ Wystan said. ‘You’re not the only one with brains round here. I too have come up with a plan.’

  He waved his finger even further in the air, just as everyone with a plan does.

  hat afternoon, while Wystan was off plotting the finer points of his plan (or so he said), Fizz made his way, with his dad, to the Big Top, where his mother’s troupe of clowns were going to show off their show in front of Mr Gomez and the two Xs. Theirs wasn’t the only act being observed this afternoon, the timetable Fizz had in his pocket also listed ‘Botanic Acts [1]’ and ‘Terpsichorean Acts (Canine) [3]’. (A quick word of explanation about how the timetable was laid out: first there’s the category of the act (‘Botanic’ means ‘to do with flowers’, ‘Terpsichorean’ means ‘to do with dance’ and ‘Canine’ means ‘to do with dogs’ (not mice)) and then the numbers in square brackets tell you the number of different acts competing in that category. Therefore, after the clowns, there was one flower act and three sets of dancing dogs to watch.)

  Fizz was excited for two reasons. Firstly, he’d almost, sort of, got an act together with his dad, which meant he’d be out there in the sawdust tomorrow afternoon, vying for a chance of being in the big show. This made him feel so much better that he practically felt like a new boy (it had lifted a weight off his shoulders, lifting the weights with his hands). And secondly, and this one he was keeping secret, he had a suspicion that there was only one person doing a Botanic Act, and that was Alice. Although she gave the impression that Flower Arranging wasn’t the greatest circus act of all time and although no one expected much from a Neil Coward’s Famous Cicrus act, Fizz was willing to give it a try. He reckoned it might just be better than she made out.

  Fizz and his dad watched the clowns be brilliant. Everything went to plan. Not a single act of sabotage intruded on the comedy gold that was pouring out of their trousers, buckets and flowers-in-buttonholes-that-squirted-water-when-least-expected. They fell over their feet, they hit each other with ladders and planks, and their car fell to bits almost as soon as it drove into the ring. Clowns wept and custard flew and whitewash spilt. The Big Top filled with the noise of swannee whistles, honking horns and deep guffaws as Big Bert Boomer (The Jolly Old Gloomer) pointed at every mishap and boomed his big booming laugh like a joyous schadenfreude bittern (which is a brilliant similie of mine that might make more sense once you’ve looked it up in a dictionary or be friended a German ornithologist).

  Mrs Stump, The Fumbling Gloriosus, lived up to her name. Fizz couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her be so clumsy. The Amusing Graham Smith (the least interestingly named clown in the circus, but he’d only been with them a few months and everyone said he was sure to find a more clownish name in time, when he’d got a bit more experience) handed Mrs Stump things for her to hold: a telescope, a teapot, a tiddlywink, a tortoise (stuffed), a Pterodactyl (model), a turban (cloth) and she dropped every one of them.

  But she didn’t just drop them, she fumbled them. And she didn’t just fumble them, she fumbled them gloriously. For a moment it looked like she had a grip on whatever it was, but then it began to slip, but she got her hand underneath it, and then it wobbled the other way, and as she tried to keep a hold of whatever it was that was slowly escaping her clutches her face was a marvel to see. Oh! The surprise on it. Oh! The disappointment on it. Oh! The sadness, the shock . . . and then . . . Oh! The silly grin as she got a firm hold on, say, the teapot and held it above her head, triumphantly (like a slightly proud Stro
ngman), only for the lid to fall out and hit her square on the bonce.

  The surprise of which caused her to drop the teapot itself, which also bounced off her skull on the way down.

  She was brilliant.

  Had there been an audience there, other than the dozen circus folk scattered around and about in the Big Big Top, then the roars of laughter and applause would have been deafening.

  But there wasn’t an audience there and the smattering of clapping sounded tiny and pathetic in the huge, almost empty space.

  Nevertheless Fizz noticed that Mr Gomez was smiling as he turned to Mr and Mrs X, to compare notes, or to get their opinions before they forgot what they’d just seen (or at least to make it look like he was including them), and they too had big grins under their curled moustaches.

  As the last dribble of custard was swept up by the sawdust wranglers, and fresh sawdust was strewn across the ring (a good word, ‘strewn’, it means ‘strewn’ (I can’t really put it any better than that)), the clowns made their honking, merry way out of the tent.

  ‘You coming, Fizz?’ Mr Stump said, getting up. ‘Let’s go tell your mum how silly she was.’

  ‘Um, actually, Dad,’ Fizz said, staying in his seat. He felt a bit embarrassed. Of course he wanted to congratulate his mum, but he also wanted to . . .

  ‘What is it, son?’

  ‘I thought I’d hang around here if that’s okay. There’s an act I want to see.’

  ‘An act? Isn’t it all dogs and dancing this afternoon? I didn’t think you liked dancing.’

  ‘No, it’s not them. It’s before them. You see, I sort of made a friend the other day and she’s –’

  ‘She?’ his dad said, in the way that dads do when a boy mentions a girl for the first time.

  ‘Dad!’ moaned Fizz.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ his dad said, holding his hands up in a whoa-your-horses gesture. ‘What does she do, this girl you just happened to make friends with?’