Second Childhood

by Morris Gleitzman

  ‘It’s their way of saying g’day . . . I mean hi,’ said Pino. ‘And how much they apologise about all the nuclear weapons.’

  ‘Russian soup?’ said the woman, intrigued.

  Mark and Pino led the couple over to the trolley, where Mrs Karpovsky gave them a winning smile.

  ‘The Russians are great people,’ said Annie to the couple. ‘Reliable, generous, kind to animals. They’re always giving people soup.’

  ‘And tarpaulin,’ said Rufus.

  Mrs Karpovsky ladled out two bowls of steaming beetroot soup and handed them to the Americans.

  ‘Very pleased to meet you,’ she said in her thick accent. ‘You have a wonderful country. I love "The Simpsons".’

  The Americans broke into broad grins.

  ‘Heck, we’re from Hollywood and we thank you kindly,’ said the man.

  ‘Where are you from?’ asked the woman.

  ‘Woodville,’ said Mrs Karpovsky.

  ‘Really?’ said the woman. ‘Is that near Moscow?’

  Mark watched the Americans chatting happily with Mrs Karpovsky and drinking the soup.

  Still only a start, he thought.

  Then Mark had the idea of making the signs and that’s when things started to go wrong.

  The first sign said ‘Detour’.

  They used the biggest piece of wood from the pile at the side of Mark’s house, and some yellow paint left over from when Bob had touched up the rust on the Falcon.

  They carried the sign to Waratah Park, which gave them all blisters on their hands.

  Mark chose Waratah Park because so much traffic used the road through the park as a short cut to avoid the Edgar Street intersection.

  He went over to a tree growing right on the edge of the road.

  ‘I know this isn’t much,’ he said to the tree, ‘not from the bloke who’s responsible for all the car fumes you have to put up with, but it’s all I can manage at the moment. Enjoy your day off.’

  He patted the trunk, then went back to the others and helped them prop the Detour sign up in the middle of the road.

  The first three vehicles, all cars, slowed down and turned up the side street that led away from the park.

  The next vehicle, a semi-trailer carrying bags of cement, didn’t.

  It drove straight over the sign and smashed it to pieces.

  The next sign they made said ‘Sorry’ with a large arrow at the bottom.

  They used the second-largest piece of wood from the pile at the side of the house and some corrosion-resistant lilac paint left over from when Annie’s mum had painted the card-table on the boat.

  They wheeled the sign to the car wrecker’s yard on Daryl’s skateboard, which left one of the wheels wobbly.

  ‘Daryl,’ said Mark gently, ‘what’s more important? A skateboard or saying sorry to the people who have to walk past this every day?’

  He pointed to the piles of rusting cars.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Daryl indignantly, ‘well, there’s probably a place like this somewhere with piles of rusting skateboards, and that’s where mine’s going to end up now, isn’t it?’

  ‘We’ll fix it,’ said Annie.

  ‘You can have my skateboard,’ said Pino.

  ‘I don’t think a monarch should be riding a skateboard in the first place,’ said Rufus.

  They wired the Sorry sign to the wrecker’s yard fence with the arrow pointing to the piles of car bodies and waited for someone to walk past so they could explain what it meant.

  Before anyone did, the wrecker came and made them take it down.

  ‘We’re not having a go at you,’ said Mark. ‘I’m the one who’s to blame.’

  ‘What are you,’ said the wrecker, ‘loony or film students?’

  Nobody made them take the sign down from next to the oil refinery waste pipe at the beach.

  Mostly because in four hours nobody saw it but them.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ said Pino.

  ‘We could be here for weeks,’ said Rufus.

  ‘My skateboard’s leaving now,’ said Daryl.

  ‘It does seem a waste of time,’ said Annie, ‘if no one’s going to see it here.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Mark.

  They loaded the sign back onto the skateboard.

  The sign wasn’t any more successful when they put it in Mark’s front yard with the arrow pointing to the dead saplings.

  A few people walked past, but they ignored the Sorry sign just like they’d been ignoring the FOR SALE sign for the past three years.

  Mark and the others sat leaning against the house and stared gloomily at the sign nobody wanted to see.

  ‘Told you we should have made a larger sign,’ said Rufus. ‘Big bit of tarpaulin.’

  ‘Rufus,’ said Annie wearily.

  ‘We’re not reaching enough people,’ said Mark. ‘We need something people can’t ignore.’

  ‘Mum and Dad won’t ignore it when they get back from the shops,’ said Daryl.

  Mark turned and looked at Annie and saw she had the same expression on her face as the morning of the excursion when her mum had driven off.

  ‘Maybe we’re trying to do too much,’ she said softly.

  ‘What about our projects?’ said Pino. ‘We could use them. People don’t ignore them. Everyone reads my projects at our place. Even Gran, and she can’t even speak English.’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Annie, brightening. ‘We’ll make our projects letters of apology.’

  ‘We could make copies and stick them in people’s mail boxes,’ said Rufus.

  ‘Yes,’ said Annie and Pino.

  Rufus, surprised, beamed happily.

  Mark listened to them and suddenly felt heavy inside and tired all over.

  He knew what they were planning wasn’t enough, and yet what else could they do?

  Annie turned to him and saw his gloomy expression.

  She squeezed his arm.

  ‘We’re only kids,’ she said.

  14

  Mark gave it a go.

  ‘Dear People Of The World,’ he wrote. ‘Sorry.’

  Then he stopped.

  Next to him at the library table, Annie, Pino and Rufus wrote on, filling line after line.

  Mark couldn’t.

  What’s the point, he thought. What’s the point of apologising if you can’t make things better?

  A voice cut into his thoughts.

  ‘Nice of you all to drop in.’

  Mr Cruickshank was striding grimly towards them across the library.

  ‘I’ve just been explaining to my colleagues,’ continued Mr Cruickshank, ‘why none of you have been at school for three days. Working on their projects, I said. Better be good projects, they said. They will be, I said.’

  There was a silence while Mark and the others looked at Mr Cruickshank and Mr Cruickshank looked at them.

  ‘May I see what you’ve written so far?’ said Mr Cruickshank.

  Slowly, one by one, they held up their folders.

  Annie was on her second page.

  Pino had nearly finished his first.

  Rufus had done more than half a page.

  Mr Cruickshank glanced at the pages without reading them.

  Then he glanced at Mark’s line and a half.

  He looked at Mark for a long time.

  ‘This is less than you had a week ago, Smalley,’ he said eventually.

  ‘I’ve had some different ideas, sir,’ said Mark.

  Mr Cruickshank’s voice took on a tone Mark had never heard before.

  ‘I hope they’re good ones, Smalley, because if they’re not I’m going to have to agree with what some of my colleagues are saying. That you’d be better off in a different school.’

  Mark stared at him.

  Annie grabbed the folders and thrust them at Mr Cruickshank.

  ‘Please sir,’ she said, ‘read these and you’ll understand.’

  Mr Cruickshank opened his mouth to say something.

&nbs
p; ‘Please sir,’ she said.

  With a long-suffering sigh Mr Cruickshank took the folders and read what they’d written.

  ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have called Phar Lap a famous person from history, but I suppose I can allow it. The apology approach is a nice idea. Shame whichever one of you had it let the others pinch it.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Mark, ‘you don’t understand.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Mr Cruickshank, holding up Mark’s folder, ‘that nothing I’ve read here excuses this appalling slackness by you.’

  ‘But it’s all true,’ said Annie. ‘I’m Phar Lap. Mark’s Henry Ford. Pino’s Albert Einstein. Rufus is Enoch Wainwright. We’re responsible.’

  Mr Cruickshank looked at Annie.

  ‘Upton,’ he said, ‘don’t be silly.’

  He turned and walked out of the library.

  Mark looked at the others.

  ‘We’ve got to accept it,’ he said. ‘They won’t listen.’

  Walking home from the bus stop, Mark remembered what Annie had said.

  ‘We’re only kids.’

  He realised what she’d meant.

  She hadn’t meant they were only kids.

  She’d meant the world thought they were only kids.

  Which was why nobody would listen to them.

  Mark suddenly wished he still had his Henry Ford body, wrinkled skin and moustache and funny-looking suit and all. Then, when he said he was sorry and explained to the world the mistakes he’d made, they’d listen and understand and help him put things right.

  But his Henry Ford body was a pile of dust in the ground somewhere, or a jar of ashes on a mantelpiece.

  A memory, thought Mark gloomily, like the Mark Smalley who was once Dux of the School. All that was left was the Mark Smalley who got D’s, and nobody had any faith in him at all.

  Bob lay under the Falcon and glared.

  Twenty minutes he’d been trying to loosen the exhaust bracket and all he’d loosened was some skin on his knuckles.

  He tightened the wrench and tried again.

  No good.

  Bloody car, he thought. Whoever invented this bloody thing should be strung up.

  He started bashing the bracket with the wrench.

  Then he stopped.

  Because he wasn’t angry with the car, or the person who invented it.

  He was angry with himself.

  And confused and sad and frightened.

  All because of what he’d just found in Mark’s room.

  *

  Mark walked gloomily in through the front gate and Bob slid out from under the Falcon.

  Mark saw the serious expression on Bob’s face.

  He’s been having trouble getting that exhaust off, thought Mark.

  ‘G’day, champ,’ said Bob. ‘Daryl’s at a mate’s and Mum’s at her gardening class. So we can have a little chat.’

  Mark knew they wouldn’t be chatting about the exhaust.

  The project was on the kitchen table.

  As Mark stared at it, all he could see was the big red D and all he could hear was a siren going past outside.

  He didn’t care any more.

  Bob cleared his throat.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, ‘about why you didn’t show this to me . . . and I reckon I sort of know.’

  Mark started to protest that he’d tried to, then thought, why bother.

  ‘Let me finish, mate,’ said Bob.

  Mark watched him walk slowly around the kitchen, and waited for the disappointment to seep into his weather-beaten face.

  It didn’t.

  Instead Bob came over to Mark and stood in front of him.

  ‘I’ve been putting a lot of pressure on you,’ he said softly, ‘too much pressure, I reckon, ‘cause I was worried you didn’t know what was important, like I didn’t know what was important when I was your age.’

  Mark felt his heart start to beat faster.

  Bob picked up the project from the table.

  ‘I’ve been thinking a bit since I found this . . . and I reckon if you’re the smart kid I’m always saying you are, then you do know what’s important.’

  Mark’s heart was pounding in his chest.

  ‘I’m going to keep off your back from now on,’ said Bob, ‘’cause I know that whatever you do, it’ll be your best.’

  A truck roared past outside.

  Bob thought of the quiet leafy street Mark would live in one day when he was a somebody.

  ‘And I know,’ he said, ‘you’ve got the guts and the ability to finish what you’ve started.’

  Bob looked at Mark to see if Mark felt that way and saw from the determination shining in Mark’s eyes that he did.

  Annie, Pino, Rufus and Daryl stared at Mark in amazement.

  ‘You’re out of your brain,’ said Rufus.

  ‘You’re joking,’ said Pino.

  ‘I don’t think he is,’ said Annie.

  Mark went over to Annie’s window and looked out at the city skyline.

  ‘If we’re serious about making people listen,’ he said, ‘we’ll do a project they can’t ignore. That means telly.’

  ‘How are we going to get on telly?’ said Pino.

  Mark turned to them.

  ‘We’ll get on the news,’ he said.

  ‘How?’ said Annie.

  ‘Mark could do the drying up,’ muttered Daryl.

  ‘We’ll make some news,’ said Mark.

  The others were still staring at him, but now they were fascinated.

  ‘Make some news?’ said Annie.

  Mark looked around the walls at the Phar Lap posters and cuttings.

  ‘With Phar Lap’s help,’ he said.

  15

  The museum attendant switched off the last of the lights and the museum was in darkness.

  ‘Night, Des,’ called a colleague on his way out to the carpark.

  ‘Night, Phil,’ called back the attendant.

  He shone his torch onto a large Egyptian mummy lying in a glass case.

  ‘Night, Gavin,’ said the attendant.

  The mummy didn’t reply, but then the attendant hadn’t expected it to.

  Underneath the display case next to Gavin’s, Mark and Annie huddled down as small as they could and prayed for the attendant to go.

  He went.

  They heard him open the door to the carpark, step out, and close it behind him.

  Mark switched his torch on and looked at his watch.

  Right on time.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘ten minutes to be sure.’

  He switched off the torch.

  They waited.

  As Mark’s eyes slowly got used to the darkness, he became aware of the dark shape of the mummy in the case above them.

  A body, thousands of years old.

  All that trouble those ancient Egyptians took to preserve the body of a king, he thought, and there was no need because the king’s probably alive and well and at this very moment working in a takeaway restaurant.

  ‘Ten minutes is up,’ whispered Annie.

  They crawled out from under the case and stretched their cramped legs.

  Then they moved slowly and carefully to the door, keeping their torch beams low.

  At the door they shone the torches onto the alarm box.

  ‘You’re sure it’s the same?’ said Mark anxiously.

  ‘Yes,’ said Annie. ‘The people at the yacht club are always losing the key to theirs, so they’ve discovered that if you do this . . .’

  She switched it off and on several times, very fast.

  Mark held his breath.

  ‘ . . . you can turn it off without a key.’

  She turned the alarm off and opened the door to the carpark.

  Mark flashed his torch three times and saw a torch flashed three times in reply.

  Then he heard a rattling and clattering as the others approached with the trolleys.

  They’d done a good job. Four matching
supermarket trolleys, two in front and two behind, wired together with old coat-hangers.

  ‘Not a bung wheel on any of ‘em,’ said Pino proudly.

  ‘Unlike my skateboard,’ said Daryl.

  ‘Give it a rest,’ said Rufus.

  They steered the trolleys through the dark museum and into the National Treasures Exhibition.

  Mark went in first, and there, in the torchlight, was a grim, black-bearded face staring at him.

  Mark leapt back and collided with the trolleys and then saw the plough that could jump over tree stumps. He looked back at the bearded face and saw that it was flat.

  ‘It’s a painting, Smalley,’ said Pino, rolling his eyes. ‘You’ll be panicking at your own shadow next.’

  ‘Boo,’ said Rufus, stepping out from behind the door.

  Pino jumped and dropped his torch.

  ‘Come on, you lot,’ said Daryl. ‘Stop mucking around and let’s get the horse into the trolleys.’

  ‘Just a sec,’ said Mark.

  Annie had found Phar Lap.

  As she moved towards it, torch held out, the big horse seemed to loom majestically out of the darkness, glass eyes glinting.

  Annie gently ran her hand along Phar Lap’s flank.

  ‘Sorry about this, body,’ she said, ‘but I need you back for a bit.’

  Then she signalled to the others and they wheeled the trolleys over.

  Lifting Phar Lap up high enough to lower him into the supermarket trolleys took all their strength. At last he was safely in, one leg in each trolley. They caught their breath, panting and sweating.

  ‘Okay,’ said Mark, ‘let’s go.’

  They wheeled Phar Lap through the museum and into the carpark, closing the door behind them.

  Now they were outside, the moonlight gleamed on Phar Lap’s coat.

  ‘The tarpaulin,’ said Rufus.

  They dragged Bob’s picnic tarpaulin out of one of the trolleys and unrolled it and pulled it over Phar Lap so that none of him was visible.

  Then they set off for the phone box.

  It was in a street that ran off the side-street next to the museum.

  They parked Phar Lap in the shadow of a tree, and Mark went into the phone box.

  He dialled the number written on his hand.