‘Oh, Lolli,’ I said. ‘I think –’
But what I thought was cut short by the rather loud scream coming from my cockatoo-hatted mum.
By the time we’d cleared up the mess we looked like a family of mud monsters. The bucket of water Lolli had helpfully poured over the pile of mud to make things clean again hadn’t been a great success. Little rivers of mud streamed across the floor, spreading the mess even further. Dad had stepped in to take control, but actually stepped on Lolli’s spade, slipped and fell face down into the muddy mound, splattering us all. Even the ferret wasn’t looking quite so snowy.
When the doorbell rang we all looked at each other, wondering who was in the best state to answer the door.
‘If it’s Mrs Snoop from Number Ten I’d rather no one answered it,’ said Mum. ‘She’ll have a field day seeing the state of us. She already thinks I’m a bit odd after she came round and saw Eunice and Terence.’
Eunice and Terence were the pythons Mum had looked after last year. I imagine most people would be a bit startled if you answered the door with those draped around your neck.
‘You go, Tomas. You’re a boy. She’ll expect it from you.’
I was going to protest – she was usually the last person to believe girls couldn’t get into just as much mess as boys. And, after all, Lolli was twice as muddy as any of us, which just went to prove it. But I could see she’d reached the end of her usually quite long tether so I let it go.
I squelched my way down the hall and peered through the letter box. And grinned at the carrot waving to me from the other side.
‘It’s OK,’ I yelled to the waiting mud monsters. ‘It’s just Grandad.’
‘Just Grandad, is it, Chipstick?’ Grandad said as I opened the door to let him in. ‘Just Grandad? Well, there’s a welcome for you, I must say. And there was I thinking you were my number-one grandson.’
I was actually his only grandson.
I laughed and cleared my throat. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please.’ I paused and did a drum roll on my leg. ‘It’s only the one … the only … the INCREDIBLE … Grandad.’
‘That’s a bit better.’ He laughed. ‘Still needs some work, mind you.’
He turned to brace himself for the hurtling mud missile that was Lolli.
‘Bit young to worry about mud packs, aren’t you, littl’un?’
He lifted her up, not seeming to mind the mud she was getting all down his jacket.
‘Megroodagon,’ she babbled.
He gave her a grin and winked at me.
‘Well, that sounds just great.’
Luckily for me – and Flicker – no one really bothered to listen to what Lolli actually said. They usually just smiled and nodded.
We all crowded round the kitchen table to see what Grandad had brought. Most days he turned up with a fruit or veg box of some kind, and right now it was strawberry season. My favourite. I’d eaten so many of them one year I’d come out in a rash. No one had cottoned on to why and I got to stay off school, eating more strawberries to make me feel better. Best result ever!
As Grandad unloaded the berries, Lolli grabbed a handful and squished them into her mouth. Sweet red juice mingled with the mud and dribbled down her chin.
He’d also brought the latest of his VIPs – Vegetable Impersonator Produce.
He held up the carrot I’d seen through the letter box. It wasn’t like the carrots you see in supermarkets. All neatly packed in a cellophane bag, all the same size, all the same shape. Grandad’s carrots – and all his veg – were like us, covered in mud. And really strange shapes. This one had split in two at the bottom so it looked like it had legs. And the sprouts off the top grew like wild hair. It even had knobbly bits out the side as if it had its hands on its hips.
‘Thought this one looked a bit like Ringo Starr.’
I knew Ringo Starr was a musician in this band called ‘The Beatles’, because Dad listened to them all the time and had old-fashioned records with their faces on. If you ask me, the carrot didn’t actually look like Ringo at all, but it was pretty fun writing out the nametag and lining it up alongside fellow-carrot Simon Cowell, potato Paul McCartney and Beany Beckham.
‘So, up for a bit of hard graft?’ Grandad asked me.
I nodded, my mouth too full of strawberries to answer properly.
The truth is, I owed Grandad a visit. Well, I owed him a lot more than a visit. Without his grand idea to clear the end of his garden I’d never have found the dragon-fruit tree or carried the dragon fruit home that first day. The same fruit that Flicker had burst out of in the middle of the night. I also owed him for looking after me so well when I was little and had a poorly heart, even though he always said you don’t owe your family for that sort of thing; it’s just what they do.
But I had promised to help him in the garden, and ever since Flicker and the other dragons had arrived I really hadn’t spent much time doing that. I popped in and out to keep an eye on the tree, but until there was a new crop of dragon fruit to keep an eye on, raking weeds and picking slugs off leaves couldn’t really compete with spending time with a dragon.
‘Don’t worry about his tea. We’ll feed him,’ Grandad said to Mum as I raced upstairs to change my mud-splattered clothes.
‘Fancy a trip to Grandad’s garden?’ I said to Flicker, whose claws were shredding one of my comics into pieces to line his bed in the toy box. There was no way I wanted to leave Flicker behind, especially not with beady-eyed ferrets patrolling the house. And he knew the way. He was used to following me, flying from tree to tree to keep out of sight. I opened the window for him and looked across the rooftops to the park and over towards Nana and Grandad’s house beyond. I watched Flicker dart up into sky and then headed back downstairs.
As we turned into the park Grandad stopped to rescue a snail slowly slithering its way across the path. Most people wouldn’t have even noticed the tiny creature, and some like Liam probably would have made a detour to squish it if they had, but Grandad’s philosophy was ‘Let all things be’. It was part of the reason why gardening was proving a challenge. Lots of people would have chucked a load of weedkiller and pesticide over the garden. Grandad said the farmer behind their house did it all the time, spraying everything in sight. But Grandad was different. He was as organic as they came. Which is why I was stuck with a bucket for collecting slugs.
Flicker had stopped too, and was peering down at Grandad from the branch above. I just hoped he didn’t sneeze and rain sparks down on us.
‘You off with the fairies again?’ Grandad asked after he’d settled the snail on a nearby bush. He looked up to where I’d been gazing. Flicker thankfully had already flown to the next tree.
‘Feels like I’m talking to myself half the time these days,’ he added.
I gave an apologetic smile. It was true. A large chunk of my brain was currently tied up reliving the chaos in the canteen. And the rest was in a spin trying to think up how to train the dragons and worrying about keeping them secret from nosy Liam. Any part that was left was keeping an eye on Flicker. How I didn’t fall down through lack of available brain power was quite a miracle.
‘So what’s been going on with you and those mates of yours? You used to bend my ear no end with all your shenanigans. What’s new?’
What’s new, of course, was dragons. So all the stories I had to tell were about Flicker and Crystal, Dodger and Sunny. I racked my brain for something I could share with him. But there wasn’t anything. I chewed my lip. And then shrugged.
‘Nothing really.’
‘Busy with school. That it, hey? Them teachers keeping you busy?’
I nodded awkwardly. I hated fobbing him off with a fib. It was like when I hadn’t told him about being in Grim’s garden that time, or admitted that we’d all been out of the tent the night we had camped. I used to tell Grandad everything and I wished I could now. It suddenly felt like all the little thorny fibs were growing into a great big prickly bush between us.
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When I didn’t answer, Grandad gave a little sigh. His twinkly eyes closed for a second longer than usual as he paused to take a sniff of a rose in a hedge. He pulled it towards me so I could take a whiff.
‘There’s always time to stop and smell the roses,’ he said. ‘However busy and complicated life gets. Remember that, Chipstick.’
While Grandad rootled about in the shed for the tools, I inspected the dragon-fruit tree. Its long, knobbly, cactus-like leaves sprouted out like unruly hair. I could see a few vivid yellow and orange tendrils starting to appear and knew that one night soon the moon-white flowers would bloom. These amazing flowers, some as big as my head, appeared for just one night. Like starbursts they glowed, shining in secret through the darkness. Then the petals drooped and the first fruit of the next crop would start to grow. And there’d be more dragons to look out for!
The tree looked a bit more droopy than usual. I poured some water onto the base of it, soaking the roots like Grandad had shown me with the apple trees. It had been hot for weeks and he said everything needed a good long drink. I also made a mental note to keep a closer eye on the tree from now on.
‘Ho ho ho,’ Grandad said as he came out the shed waving a hoe at me. ‘Time to battle those weeds, Chipstick. Then we can spread that there mulch. It’ll keep the water in and the weeds out.’ He pointed to a huge heap of bark chips and my shoulders sagged at the thought of lugging all that across the garden.
Grandad must have noticed, because he put down his hoe and headed back into the shed.
‘What do you say to a bit of fuel first?’ he said, reappearing with a tin crammed with Nana’s jam tarts and chocolate fudge cupcakes. ‘I keep a secret stash down here,’ he chuckled. ‘Your Nana thinks old Mrs Doodah’s dog ate them.’
I bet she didn’t. Nana knew Grandad far too well. But it made us both laugh all the same.
While Grandad returned to the shed for a flask of coffee for himself and a bottle of lemonade for me, I threw a jam tart into the air like a mini Frisbee. Flicker zipped down from the apple tree, caught it in mid-air and whisked it away.
I once heard my mum telling someone that gardening was good for you, that it kept you fit like doing a workout. I hadn’t believed it. Wandering around pulling a few dead roses off a bush didn’t seem like it would do much at all except bore the pants off you. But since coming to Grandad’s, I could see what she meant. It was hard work. There was always some job to do. It was a shame I couldn’t swap places with Flicker. After an energetic dust bath in the ashy remains of Grandad’s bonfire, he was curling up to sleep in an old flower pot. Lucky him!
After about an hour of hoeing, weeding and watering, Grandad had me soaping the plants. I know, weird or what? But it was one way of dealing with the pests without spraying them with chemicals.
It wasn’t just slugs we were battling against. There were spider mites, aphids, blackfly, caterpillars, snails, beetles, wasps, earwigs, stinkbugs and more. It was a full-on assault. On our side were an army of ladybirds and lacewings that Grandad had bought online. They were the natural alternative to chemical sprays. But I felt as if we were in danger of losing the battle as the enemy marched on, chomping its way through our hard-worked-for fruit and veg.
Grandad wiped his forehead with a hanky and blew out his breath. And then suddenly, from across the fence, an even more beastly enemy loomed.
The huge shape rose up and peered over at us. Grim. His eyes were narrowed and the frown lines set so deep across his face, honestly, you could have skied down them. He also had what appeared to be a lump of jam stuck in his hair. I looked up to see Flicker hiding among the leaves of a tree, nibbling on a piece of pastry. It looked as if the jam-tart filling hadn’t made it up there with him.
‘Hello there, Jim,’ Grandad said cheerily.
There was a grunt that was loaded with more grump than a bad-tempered camel who’d found you standing on his foot.
He glared at me. And swiped at a wasp that was now dive-bombing his head in an attempt to get to the jam.
‘Bloomin’ bugs,’ he said. ‘They’re all over my veg.’
‘Pesky little things, aren’t they?’ Grandad replied.
By the way Grim kept his eyes on me, I could tell he seemed to be blaming us – or at least me – for the onslaught.
Grim’s hand touched his hair and came away covered in the sticky raspberry jam. I stifled a smirk. He narrowed his eyes even more, staring at the soapy bucket I was still carrying as if it was full of jam ready to lob at him.
‘He’d better not be flinging bugs over onto my garden,’ he growled.
I had, in fact, done exactly that the first few times. Released the little band of renegades over the fence. To pay ‘Grim Jim’ back for shouting at Grandad that time. But Grandad had caught me and that was the end of that.
‘Or anything else for that matter,’ Grim added.
And he disappeared back to his shed, still muttering about pesky bugs and pesky kids and wiping his hand on his trousers, which only spread the sticky mess further.
I couldn’t help myself and the smirk erupted into a guffaw. But Grandad’s hard stare soon stopped it.
‘Why’s he got sheets up at the window and locks all over his shed?’ I asked. ‘What’s he got in there anyway?’
Grandad looked across towards Grim and the shed, then shrugged and handed me a rake.
‘Nothing valuable, I don’t expect. He just doesn’t like nosy parkers. He’s all right – just a tad grumpy, that’s all.’
‘A tad?’ I snorted.
‘All right, a big tad. But just let him be, Tomas,’ Grandad said, digging his hoe into the hard ground. ‘He’s still in a huff about old Mrs Dollopsy-Whatsit, or whatever her name is, complaining about the smoke from his bonfires. He’s none too happy about having to cart everything away to the tip when he’s always had a good bonfire to get rid of the rubbish.’
He gave a grunt as he bashed a clod of earth into bits.
‘Besides, it’s a busy time for old Jim. There’s the annual County Flower and Veg Show coming up and I’ve heard he always does really well. People can get real competitive when it comes to the size of their onions. If growing the biggest veg was an Olympic sport he’d be up getting gold, that’s for sure. You should see the turnip he’s got growing over there – he’ll need the whole village to pull that out before long.’
‘So are you thinking of entering?’
‘Might be,’ Grandad said, scratching his whiskery cheek. ‘My beans are looking pretty prize-winning. Never seen ones so big.’
‘You should,’ I said. ‘Mum says you’ve always had green fingers. You’re bound to beat the competition.’ I couldn’t help enjoying the thought of Grandad outgrowing Grim.
Grandad laughed and I had a feeling he’d seen my eyes flicking over to Grim’s shed when I said it.
‘How about you and that sunflower, hey, Chipstick? Going to beat the competition for the biggest and best?’
I grimaced and held up my fingers. ‘Not looking very green to me.’ The truth was I hadn’t given much thought to the sunflower I was supposed to be growing for the competition at school. Compared to dragons, sunflowers didn’t seem that exciting!
Grandad smiled and turned away. But as he headed off he wobbled unsteadily, as if his foot had met a bit of uneven ground. He sat down heavily on the bench outside the shed.
‘Time to shut up shop, I think,’ he sighed. But he stayed there for a few minutes getting his breath back while I gathered things together and tidied up the tools.
I couldn’t help peering over the fence again. Grandad was right – the turnips and onions Grim was growing were huge. My eyes locked on the fortified shed where he was holed away. It seemed to me that Grim was way more than just a bit grumpy and I’d have been willing to bet that there was something going on in that shed that he really didn’t want people to see.
By the time we’d had tea – Nana’s giant toad in the hole followed by steamed jam sponge a
nd custard – Grandad had perked up again.
‘Best be getting you back,’ he said.
‘Take some pudding for Lolli.’ Nana smiled.
As we left the house Grandad peered down the lane.
‘Hey up, isn’t that one of your lot, Tomas?’
I looked to where he was pointing and saw Liam coming towards us.
‘Er … no. Definitely not,’ I said.
‘Well, he looks a bit like someone’s pulled him through a hedge backwards. Perhaps you should see if he’s all right.’
I doubted Liam would like anyone fussing over him, least of all me. But Grandad was right about the state of him. I could see now that his shirt was ripped on one side and he was limping. He looked up and saw us, then quickly turned on his heel and hobbled away.
What had Liam been doing down the lane? It only led out to the fields. And he was usually really fussy about looking smart. So what exactly had he been up to?
Back at home I got ready for bed. Mum came in to say goodnight, bringing the beady-eyed ferrets with her. They squirmed in her arms, trying to jump loose, and I wondered if they could smell Flicker’s smoky breath in the air. I’d have to make sure my door stayed firmly shut. Next came Dad, ready to ‘wrap and roll’. His tuck-ins were legendary, leaving us ‘as snug as a bug in a rug’, all cocooned in quilt. But tonight, after he’d left, I wriggled out of my mummified state and sat at my desk, staring out of the window. Flicker flew over to join me. He laid his wing over my hand, then nudged my fingers so he could tuck his head under them. He peeked out and I smiled as I felt his comforting warmth on my hand.
But it didn’t stop the mess of thoughts tangling themselves up in my head. Liam was up to something. I was sure of it. Which meant it was more important than ever that we had a way of training the dragons, to make sure things didn’t get too out of hand.
Out of the window all I could see was fog. If I was in a book, I bet Miss Logan would say the weather was mirroring my head. Showing how unclear my thoughts were and how I was lost in a fog of confusion.
The Boy Who Lived with Dragons Page 3