The Race Against Time

by Frank Cottrell Boyce

  “Sure we can, kid. What’s your name?”

  “He already tells you his name. His name is Red.”

  “Too hard. Can we call him Jack?”

  “We are already confused on account of the number of Jacks we know. For instance, Jack the Dice, Jack the Hat, Hasty Jack, Two-Face Jack, Three-Face Jack, Halloween Jack . . .”

  “But this Jack is different. He has a Diamond As Big As Your Head and also red hair. How can we confuse him with waste-of-time people such as those you mention? I vote we name him Tiny Jack.”

  “Tiny Jack,” said Red. “I like that. Let’s play bank robbers . . .”

  Hundreds of years in the past, the Tootings were tootling through medieval Mexico on their way home from the Cretaceous period. They paused for a while to watch the Aztecs put the finishing touch to a giant pyramid. The Aztec pyramid rose up, then brambles and cacti grew all over it in the time that it took Chitty to slip into the air.

  They flew across the Atlantic, which was mostly covered in ice, then not very covered in ice, then almost all covered in ice again. Soon Chitty was dipping toward the White Cliffs of Dover, bumping over the turf toward the A20. It was good to be breathing the fresh sea air (which was completely free of pterodactyls or bullets) and to look down on the bright blue bay (which contained neither piranhas nor alligators). Soon they had landed on the dear familiar road with its helpful road signs, so different from the twisting and mysterious forest pathways of Amazonia. When passers-by tooted or waved, they all waved back. Chitty always made people stop and stare. More so than ever, now that she was covered in gold.

  They stopped for petrol. It was the very service station they had stopped at on the day Jem realized that the little model plane he’d been given by the man in the scrapyard was Chitty’s mascot: the magical Zborowski Lightning.

  “We were just about here,” said Jem, looking around nervously, “last time Tiny Jack tried to kill us.”

  They shuddered. They had all forgotten who was waiting for them in Zborowski Terrace.

  “Of course! We can’t go home!” cried Jem. “Tiny Jack is waiting for us. We have to go back to 1966 and get the Potts to help us.”

  “Why should we let Tiny Jack scare us out of our own home?” asked Mum.

  “Because,” explained Lucy, “he’s very scary.”

  “But we are the Tooting family. We’ve faced dinosaurs and gangsters and anacondas. We’re not scared of Tiny Jack. Or Tiny Anything Else. We can defeat Tiny Jack on our own. We don’t need the Potts to help us. Time to go home.”

  It seemed no time at all before they had parked Chitty outside the house in the middle of Zborowski Terrace. They got out and lined up. They all held hands, ready to face whatever danger lay inside. They might have hesitated. They might have changed their minds. But before they had the chance, the front door opened itself and the kettle switched itself on.

  “I’d forgotten all about the automatic welcome!” said Mum. “How lovely.”

  They went inside.

  Everything looked just how they had left it the day they set out on holiday. There on the dining table were the sunglasses Dad had forgotten. Leaning against the wall was Jem’s surfboard — which they’d decided was too big to bring. There was a pile of newspapers ready for recycling. It was as though they had only just gone.

  There was no sign of Tiny Jack. Or Nanny. Or anyone else.

  “Are we sure they’re not hiding upstairs?” said Jem.

  “I’ll go and see,” said Mum.

  “Careful!”

  “I can wrestle anacondas. I’m not scared of a nanny.”

  There was nothing upstairs but their own dear bedrooms. The walls of the landing were covered with framed family photographs: pictures of Lucy holding Little Harry, of Mum and Dad getting married, of Jem in his first school uniform. Of everyone on the beach in Dorset.

  “We used to think it was exciting going to Dorset,” said Dad, who had come upstairs now that he knew it was safe. “But now that we’ve been to El Dorado . . .”

  “It was exciting. It was lovely, too. Oh look!” said Mum, pointing at another photo. “That was the day you caught the fish!”

  “It’s nice to be home,” said Dad.

  “It’s wonderful to be home.”

  “Tea’s ready!” called Jem. “I’m going to go and get some milk and biscuits from Mr. Ainsworth’s shop.”

  Jem felt strangely happy walking round to Mr. Ainsworth’s. He pushed his hands deep into his pockets, felt the sun on his face, and enjoyed the comfortable feeling of knowing exactly where he was going and what he was doing, without worrying about pumas or gangsters.

  A bell rang at the door of the shop as he strolled in. Mr. Ainsworth came through from the back and said, “Hello, Jem.”

  “Hi, Mr. Ainsworth,” replied Jem, thinking how nice it was when people knew your name. He put the milk on the counter along with the packet of ginger biscuits he’d picked out.

  “Not seen you for a while. You want to start delivering the papers again?”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” said Jem, taking a paper.

  “Been somewhere nice?”

  “Just here and there.”

  “Home now, though. Best to be home for Christmas.”

  “Christmas?” gasped Jem.

  “Don’t say you’ve forgotten it’s Christmas?” Mr. Ainsworth laughed.

  Jem grabbed the milk, the paper, and the biscuits and hurried home. He saw them now — the signs of Christmas all the way up Zborowski Terrace. On the lawn of number three stood a highly decorative plastic sleigh and six almost full-size plastic reindeer with lit-up antlers. A twinkly electric shooting star was parked above the door of number seven. On the roof of number nine, a giant inflatable Santa sat hunched over the chimney pot.

  “Dad!” Jem shouted as he burst through the front door. “It’s Christmas . . .”

  “Christmas?” said Dad. “Did you hear that, everyone? It’s Christmas. Come on, let’s get the decorations up.”

  The Tooting family Christmas tree was a real tree — a blue spruce — growing in a pot outside on the patio. Every year they brought it in, and every year Dad played the game of pretending it was too big to bring inside the house. It never quite was, but this year it was close. The top of the tree just touched the ceiling when Jem and Dad moved it into its traditional position in front of the French windows. The Tooting family decorations were kept in a big box behind the water tank in the loft. Dad said that Lucy could climb up and get them since she liked dark, damp spider’s-webby places so much. Lucy climbed up and sat for a while behind the water tank, thinking about how quickly even the most exciting day turns into yesterday, then she brought the box of decorations down to the living room. She and Dad and Jem began to sort them. Mum stood staring out the window.

  The decorations had been collected over many years. In a way, they were like a little history of the Tooting family. Here was the cardboard-and-glitter angel that Lucy had made at playgroup. Here was the robin made from Little Harry’s handprint.

  “And look,” said Lucy. “Here’s the crib that Jem made as a present to us all. Remember? The crib with five kings and no baby Jesus. Because he had silver plasticine for the crowns and forgot about Jesus completely.”

  “And here’s the drawing Lucy did,” said Jem, “of King Herod killing the innocent babies. And when Mum said it wasn’t Christmassy, she said, ‘Well, it must have been round Christmastime.’ ”

  “Oh, yes,” said Dad, “she really loved drawing pictures of severed limbs. And do you know what this is . . . ?”

  “Yes, Dad, you tell us every year.”

  He was holding up a pair of delicate, sparkly little angels. “These,” he said, “were the first decorations we ever bought. We didn’t even have a tree. We just had these two angels — one each.”

  He sneaked up behind Mum and quietly hung the angels, one on each ear. She turned around, ready to tick him off, but then she saw the decorations the children had
put up. Jem had already set the Advent candles on the table. Lucy had already strung red ribbons from the light fittings.

  “Christmas.” Mum sighed. “Christmas in our own house. Where else would we want it to be? Bring me the ladder, I’ll put the angel on top of the tree.”

  “You know,” said Dad, as he helped Mum down from the ladder. “We went to some amazing places and met some amazing people, but no one was as amazing as you are, and nowhere is as wonderful as this.”

  Mum leaned down and kissed him on the nose. Which was bad enough. But then he kissed her on the lips.

  “OK, you’ve just ruined Christmas,” said Lucy. “I’m going to my room. Call me in the New Year.”

  The moment she walked back into her room, though, Lucy’s heart skipped a beat. Here were her books, her models, her drawings, her notebooks. Here were all the pieces of Lucy that Lucy had forgotten about. Plus there was a door. It had been a long time since Lucy had been able to close the door and loll about in a room of her own, just thinking and listening to the house stretch and rumble around her. She turned on her computer, her mind on all the Facebook updates that would be waiting for her — all the bits of news and gossip, everything that had happened while she was away. How lovely it was going to be to catch up with all that. How strange it was to have had so many adventures but be back in their own house, with hardly any time gone.

  She thought about how nearly they had changed the whole course of human history by accidentally taking a dinosaur to New York. But the dinosaur did change the course of the race. The race in which the Count was killed. Maybe he didn’t die after all? She turned on her computer. All she had to do was look him up on Wikipedia, then she’d know his final fate. What if it was something worse? What if he was still alive? While the computer booted up, she knelt upon her bed and looked out the window. Snow was falling through the streetlights.

  That’s strange, thought Lucy. I didn’t notice that it was snowing. She pressed her face against the window to get a better view. “Oh!” she said. “It’s not real snow at all.” Moving down Zborowski Terrace was a machine like a kind of grit-spreader — but it wasn’t spreading grit. It was spreading snow. A thick carpet of perfect white snow. Moving along that carpet, just behind the snow-spreader, was a beautiful, enchanting sight. A sleigh — a real sleigh — pulled by a dozen very real reindeer. In the driver’s seat was a woman dressed like the Snow Queen, and next to her was someone dressed as an elf. Children came running out of all the houses to get a closer look.

  “Mum! Dad!” shouted Lucy. “Look out the window.”

  “What?”

  “Look. Just look.”

  Lucy settled down at her desk, and as her computer went online, she listened to the excited voices discussing whether they really were real reindeer, and how many there were, and what were they doing there, and . . . were those other children getting a ride on it?

  She listened as the front door opened and Mum led Little Harry out into the street. She watched as Mum carried Little Harry right up to the sleigh.

  The Snow Queen lady smiled from under her fur-trimmed hood and asked Mum if Little Harry would like to sit up alongside her.

  “He’s just a bit nervous,” said Mum. “Maybe I could get up there with him.”

  “I’m afraid we have a height limit,” said the lady. “It’s a health-and-safety thing.”

  “I’ll go with him,” said Jem. “Unless I’m too tall, also.”

  “No, you’re just right. Is it OK with Mum? If big brother looks after Little Harry?”

  “I think so,” said Mum.

  So Jem boosted Little Harry up onto the beautiful sleigh.

  “Well, isn’t this exciting?” said the lady with the hood. She raised her whip and cracked it over the backs of the reindeer. The reindeer leaped in their harnesses and galloped off down the street.

  “Doesn’t that look incredibly dangerous?” said Dad, who had come out to see what was happening.

  “Nothing wrong with a bit of incredible danger,” said Mum.

  “But isn’t it a bit odd?” said Dad.

  The neighbours were leading their children back indoors. The children tugged at them, wanting to follow the sleigh. Lucy came out into the artificial snow.

  “There’s something very strange happening,” she said. “According to Facebook, it’s the fifteenth of June.”

  “There’s something wrong with your computer,” said Mum. “Everyone knows that Christmas is the twenty-fifth of December.”

  “That’s what I thought. Then I looked at the newspaper Jem bought earlier. That says the fifteenth of June, too.”

  Just then, Mr. Ainsworth from the shop went by on his bicycle. “Happy Christmas!” he called.

  “Happy Christmas!” said Mum. “See, Lucy? Of course it’s Christmas. Little Harry and Jem just went for a ride on Santa’s sleigh.”

  “Mr. Ainsworth,” said Lucy, “how many shopping days to go till Christmas Day?”

  Without a second’s hesitation and with a merry chuckle in his voice, Mr. Ainsworth replied, “Just a hundred and ninety-one shopping days to go.”

  “A hundred and ninety-one? Isn’t that quite a lot? Doesn’t that mean it’s . . .”

  “June the fifteenth,” said Lucy. “It’s not Christmas at all.”

  “It didn’t used to be Christmas,” agreed Mr. Ainsworth, stopping his bicycle. “But ever since Tiny Jack came to live here, there’s no such thing as Not Christmas. He wants it to be Christmas every day. Always Christmas, that’s his motto. Always Christmas and never winter.”

  “Did you just say,” said Dad, looking down the street to where the sleigh was careering round the corner and out of sight, “did you just say ‘Tiny Jack’?”

  “The very same. Why, he’s the living spirit of Christmas. Well. Must go. Ho, ho, ho.”

  Mr. Ainsworth pedalled off.

  “To Chitty!” shouted Dad. “We have to follow that sleigh.”

  The sleigh bounced down Zborowski Terrace and onto the main road. Cars pulled over to let it past. Drivers leaned out to take photographs with their phones. They didn’t hear Jem shouting, “Call the police! Call my mum!”

  Soon the sleigh was at a slip road to the motorway, where it stopped. Jem grabbed Little Harry and tried to jump free, but with amazing dexterity, the woman in the cloak cracked her whip, and it wound itself around Jem’s feet. Holding him by the shoulder, she pulled Santa’s sack from the back of the sleigh and pushed it over Jem’s head, then stuffed Little Harry in after him.

  Plunged into darkness, the two boys could not see what the drivers could see: a large helicopter made of Legos dropping out of the sky toward them, and the woman whipping off her hood to reveal a mass of gorgeous red hair. It was Nanny.

  Seconds later, a winch descended from the helicopter. Nanny grabbed it and, with the two boys in a bag over her shoulder, she was hauled skywards. Once she was aboard the helicopter, it soared off over the Downs toward Dover.

  Inside the sack, Jem and Little Harry could hear Nanny laughing. “Look behind us, Tiny Jack,” she trilled. “Somebody wants to play . . .”

  Chitty Chitty Bang Bang flew through the night, hard on the tail of the chopper. Into and out of the moonlit clouds, over the White Cliffs of Dover, and out to sea, skimming the waves. Until up ahead they saw what looked like a small town rising out of the waves.

  “Château Bateau!” cried Lucy. “Look! They’re landing on the main deck.”

  “Tiny Jack’s evil lair. We can’t land there — he’ll feed us to the piranhas.”

  “I’d like to see him try,” snapped Mum. She grabbed the steering wheel and brought Chitty skimming in to land between two great chunks of standing stone.

  “Crikey,” said Lucy, as she stepped onto the deck. “Look! He’s stolen Stonehenge.”

  “Yes, that was a bit naughty,” came a voice from behind them.

  Nanny.

  At the same moment, they were all struck by how strangely like Bella Sposa
she looked. But how was that possible?

  “How nice of you to bring the car,” she purred, “and to polish her bodywork so brightly. Why, she almost looks as if she’s made of gold. Tiny Jack will be pleased. He does love gold. He’s tucked up safe in bed just now, the little darling. I’ll wake him. I can’t wait to see his face. This is quite the nicest thank-you present ever. You really shouldn’t have.”

  “Thank you for what?” snapped Dad.

  “Thank you for giving you back your children.” Nanny smiled.

  She pointed to the Santa’s sack, which was dangling from a wire, hanging over the piranha pool. The water in the pool boiled with hungry fish.

  “I have to admit that in the past we have thought of trying to steal Chitty from you, but really you’re all so clever, we found we couldn’t do it. And, besides, it’s so much nicer to get things as a present, don’t you think? Tiny Jack loves it when people just give us things. For instance, you could give us Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. And we could give you Little Harry and Jem.”

  The Tootings stepped away from Chitty. Nanny pressed a button on a small remote she took from her pocket, and the water drained from the piranha pool, leaving the fish gasping and flopping. “Looks like it’s fish for tea again tonight.” She sighed. When the fish had stopped flopping, she let Little Harry and Jem out of the sack.

  “Mummy!” yelled Little Harry, running back to Mum.

  “That’s right,” said Mum. “Mummy is here.”

  “And so, finally, is Tiny Jack.” Nanny smiled.

  A little figure had appeared at Nanny’s side. The Tootings stared. At last they were face-to-face with their nemesis, their evil archenemy. All the Tootings gasped.

  “But Tiny Jack,” stammered Dad, “you’re Red. Our little friend Red. The boy we . . .”

  “The boy,” snarled Tiny Jack, “that you abandoned in New York all those years ago.”

  “Don’t feel too bad about it.” Nanny smiled. “After all, you did leave him with a Diamond As Big As Your Head and two hardened criminals to take care of him. Really a very good start in life.”