The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket

by John Boyne

  “But I’m not happy there,” said Barnaby. “I just told you that.”

  “That’s nice, dear.”

  But, as things turned out, his career at the Graveling Academy would come to an abrupt end anyway. The following Wednesday afternoon the rotten smell, the greasy ceilings, the overflowing wastepaper baskets, the cigarette burns, Mrs. Hooperman-Hall’s lipstick, and the peeling wallpaper all combined to start a spontaneous flame in the corner of the long corridor that separated the newest students, still on probation, from the lifers. The fire trickled along the ancient carpets, giving birth to a number of smaller flames as it licked its way under each door, and once inside Barnaby’s classroom, it quickly climbed the walls, finding fuel to help it grow bigger and stronger at every turn. Within a few minutes, Mrs. Hooperman-Hall and the children were screaming and pulling the ancient steel bars off the windows, jumping out onto the roof, and shinnying down the drainpipe to safety.

  Barnaby was still tied to his chair, however. No one had even thought of saving him.

  “Help!” he cried, pulling at his cords, but the more he did so, the tighter they became. “Help me, someone!”

  The flames were growing larger now, and one entire wall of the classroom was eaten up by fire. Barnaby started to cough, feeling the smoke getting caught up in his throat and choking him as his eyes began to stream with tears.

  “Help!” he cried again, his voice barely audible now. He realized that this might be the last word he ever spoke, that he would die here in the fire and never see Alistair, Eleanor, Henry, Melanie, or Captain W. E. Johns again. He gave one more mighty pull on the ropes around his wrists and ankles, but nothing he did could make them loosen. Looking down, he realized that it would be impossible to set himself free and that he would have to face up to the next horrible few minutes with as much bravery as he could muster. Even if someone came back for him now, the knots had been pulled too tight for any human hands to unpick them.

  Which is why it was very lucky that the only person who came to help Barnaby didn’t have human hands at all: he had a rather fine set of hooks instead.

  “Sit still, Barnaby,” cried Liam McGonagall, coughing too and trying to keep his eyes focused on the ropes as he used the tips in a pincer movement to undo the knots. “Stop pulling at them—you’re making it even harder for me.”

  Barnaby did as he was told and soon began to feel a definite looseness round his left ankle; in a moment he was able to pull his leg free. Then another at his right. Then his left arm, followed quickly by his right. Liam had done it—he had untied the knots.

  “Oh no you don’t,” he said, locking his hooks around Barnaby’s ankles as his friend started to float up toward the ceiling, which was a flaming orange sea of fire by now. “Jump on my back, Barnaby, and hold on tight.”

  Barnaby did as he was told, and the two boys made their way toward the window, jumped out, and slid down the drainpipe, landing on the ground with an almighty bump that knocked them off their feet. Barnaby came very close to floating away again, only Liam was too quick for him and made sure to keep a tight hold.

  “There she goes,” said Barnaby, looking up at the ancient building as it gave in to the flames and collapsed in upon itself.

  “They’ll never be able to reopen it now,” said Liam.

  The two boys looked at each other and broke into wide smiles. It was probably the best day of Barnaby Brocket’s life so far.

  Chapter 5

  The Magician on the Bridge

  Two weeks later, Barnaby was tied to the living-room sofa reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped when Eleanor walked in, dragging behind her a heavy parcel with a tag attached that read: For Barnaby, from Eleanor Brocket (Mrs.).

  “For me?” he asked, looking up at his mother in surprise.

  “Yes, it’s a special present,” she told him. “You’ll like it, I promise.”

  Barnaby pulled the wrapping paper off to discover a brand-new rucksack inside. It was a little too large for his small body and had a pair of strong shoulder straps dangling from the side.

  “It’s for school,” said Eleanor, who had given up trying to find a school that none of her friends might have heard of and had settled, reluctantly, for a local primary.

  “But I already have a bag,” he said.

  “Yes, but that’s to keep all your schoolbooks in. This one, this new one …,” explained Eleanor. “Well, just put it on your back and you’ll see what it’s for.”

  Barnaby reached down to pick it up and, to his great surprise, found that it was almost impossible to lift. “It’s so heavy,” he said. “It feels like it’s full of rocks.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” said Eleanor as Captain W. E. Johns drifted into the living room to check on his master. “Just put it on, all right? I want to see whether it works or not.”

  Barnaby struggled to lift the bag off the ground, but eventually he managed to get his left shoulder into one of the straps. He almost fell over when he did so, but somehow he managed to get his right arm in too, and then everything balanced out. His feet hovered off the ground for a few seconds and he started to float, but after a moment the weight of the bag was too much for him and he came back down to the floor, his shoes landing on the carpet with a satisfying thump.

  Captain W. E. Johns, dissatisfied, barked.

  “It works!” cried Eleanor, clapping her hands together in delight. “I got some sandbags from the council after I told them that I was worried about flooding. I put two inside to balance out your weight. It’s perfect, isn’t it?”

  “But I won’t be able to walk with this on my back,” protested Barnaby. “It hurts too much.”

  “Oh, don’t be such a baby.”

  Barnaby, anxious to please, did as he was told, but it wasn’t easy. During the first week his shoulders turned black-and-blue from the weight that he was being forced to carry, but in time they grew stronger and he didn’t notice it quite so much. As every month passed and he grew a little more, Eleanor put extra sand in the bag and the whole painful process began all over again. The curious thing, however, was that whenever he was forced to stay on the ground, his ears hurt a little.

  In the classroom, Barnaby’s ankles were secured to his chair by a pair of handcuffs and he was able to keep his hands and body free in case an important visitor, like the prime minister or one of the Minogue sisters, happened to stop by on an official visit; the school, like Alistair and Eleanor, was not keen on anyone who stood out from the crowd.

  The only thing that made Barnaby sad was that his friend, Liam McGonagall, had not been sent to the same school. His family had moved to India, where his father had been offered a job designing computer accessories, and they fell out of touch, as sometimes even the closest of friends do.

  A year passed, and then another, and then two more, and Barnaby turned eight. He still slept in the lower bunk in Henry’s room and had been given the top shelf of the bookcase in order to store his growing library. It made a lot of sense, as he could float around the ceilings as much as he liked, reorganizing the volumes, moving all his Three Musketeers books into one place and keeping his treasured orphan collection—Oliver Twist, The Cider House Rules, Jane Eyre—close at hand.

  Barnaby Brocket felt a special affinity with orphans.

  And then, one fine February morning, his teacher, Mr. Pelford, announced to the students that they were leaving the school grounds on a special excursion.

  “What’s the most famous attraction in Sydney?” he asked, looking around the room for the sea of hands that never appeared. “Katherine Flowers?”

  “The Westfield mall?” she said, shrugging her shoulders.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” snapped Mr. Pelford. “Stupid girl. Marcus Foot, the most famous attraction in Sydney, please?”

  “The Opera House,” replied the boy, who had seen a play there once and had dreamed ever since of playing a great Shakespearean hero on the Opera House stage. Preferably someone who wore tigh
ts and carried a sword. Marcus Foot, an unusual boy in many respects, thought there could be nothing better in life than prancing about in a pair of tights while brandishing a sword.

  “Yes, but that’s not the one I’m thinking of,” said Mr. Pelford. “Come on, someone else, please. Someone with a brain in their head.”

  “The Great Wall of China,” offered Richard L’Estrange.

  “The Niagara Falls,” said Emily Piper.

  “Big Ben,” shouted the Mickleson twins, Amy and Aimee.

  “For heaven’s sake, children,” said the teacher, throwing his hands in the air. “It’s the Harbour Bridge, of course. An extraordinary feat of engineering, at the top of which, I might add, one Geena Llewellyn agreed to become the second Mrs. David Pelford on a rainy July afternoon some seven years ago.”

  The children looked a little skeptical that Mr. Pelford could possibly have persuaded one person to marry him, let alone two.

  “And as a special treat,” he continued, “I’ve arranged for us all to climb the bridge this afternoon, like the tourists do. Yes, even you, Stephen Hebden. I don’t want to hear a word about your chronic vertigo.”

  Happy to do something different, the children made their way outside to the waiting bus, and on the short journey that followed, Barnaby looked down from the ceiling as the other children read comics, examined the contents of their handkerchiefs, or listened to their iPods, and wished that he could take the empty seat among them that was rightfully his.

  When they reached the bridge, they were met by a young student named Darren—“Call me Daz”—who had messy blond hair, a sunburned face, and the whitest teeth Barnaby had ever seen on a human being.

  “Good morning, bridge climbers!” he shouted, looking as if he had never been quite as happy as he was at that very moment. “Is everyone ready to see Sydney from above?”

  There were a few grunts from the children, which Daz seemed to take as assent, because he clapped his hands together and roared, “Well, all right, then!” in a hysterical tone. In fact, some of Barnaby’s classmates were starting to grow very enthusiastic now as the great expanse of the bridge appeared before them. Most of them had driven back and forth across it in their parents’ cars hundreds of times, but they had never really looked at it before. And for some, for those observant few, it was a thing of beauty.

  “Of course we can’t climb in our civvies,” said Daz, leading them into a special chamber where a row of gray-and-blue jumpsuits were laid out for them, along with caps, fleeces, rain jackets, special climbing shoes, and a bundle of curious-looking cables. “We’ve got to look the part.”

  They got dressed, each one enjoying the feeling of being bundled up in such fantastic new gear, and the girls gathered their hair up in specially provided scrunchies, so it wouldn’t blow in their faces. “It can get pretty windy up there,” said Daz, laughing happily, as if the prospect of being blown over the side into the harbor waters was a terrific joke. “And we don’t want anyone falling in, do we? Never again, that’s my motto! Now, anyone been drinking?”

  The children looked at each other in confusion, and Marcus Foot raised his hand tentatively. “I had a black-currant cordial in the bus,” he said nervously. “But I’ve already been to the bathroom, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “I’ve been four times,” said Stephen Hebden, who was looking for any excuse to avoid the climb.

  “Not soft drinks,” said Daz, laughing. “Grog! We can’t have anyone climbing the bridge if they’ve been on the sauce. I need everyone to take a Breathalyzer test.”

  “For heaven’s sake,” said Mr. Pelford, momentarily worried that he himself might not pass it. “They’re only eight years old.”

  “Regulations, mate,” said Daz, getting each child to blow into a tube and examining the reading. “More than my job’s worth to let anyone go up without blowing in here first.”

  Ten minutes later, when all had proved sober, a collection of cords and wires were attached to their suits in complicated ways and they were led out to the iron steps. The moment he got outside, Barnaby started to float upward, only slightly held down by the weight of the suit and the equipment he was carrying, but Daz was too quick for him, grabbing him by the ankle and pulling him back to the ground.

  “Where do you think you’re going, mate?” he asked, staring at the boy in surprise.

  “It’s not my fault,” explained Barnaby. “I float.”

  “Well, that’s crackin’!” roared Daz, who was one of those rare people who embraced difference rather than feared it. He held on to Barnaby as he arranged all the children in single file, then locked the harnesses of their suits to the pole that ran along the inside of the bridge itself.

  “You know, we’re not supposed to take kids as young as you climbing,” Daz told them when they were just about to start. “But today is a very special day.”

  “Why’s that?” asked George Jones, a boy who was known for his flatulence—a reputation that, a moment later, he justified.

  “It just is, mate,” said Daz, winking at him. “Think of me as the magician on the bridge. All will be revealed in time.”

  They began to ascend and, connected to the bridge, Barnaby found himself able to walk without anyone holding him down.

  “You’re just like the rest of us now,” said Philip Wensleydale, grinning at him.

  “Yes,” replied Barnaby, frowning so much that a little vertical crease appeared in the gap between his eyebrows. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

  Only, to his great surprise, Barnaby didn’t enjoy feeling like the rest of them. It was as if he was pretending to be someone he wasn’t.

  They made their way up, and one girl, Jeannie Jenkins, tried to start a sing-along with a rousing rendition of “Advance Australia Fair,” but no one joined in and she gave up after the first verse. Donald Sutcliffe and his mortal enemy James Caruthers, stuck one in front of the other, began a conversation about their dogs, both of whom were Cavalier King Charles spaniels; they quickly forgot all the terrible things they had done to each other over the years and forged a new friendship. Katie Lynch, a studious girl, recited poetry in her head. Cornelius Hastings, known to everyone as “Corny,” looked over the side and pointed at every building he saw, gasping in astonishment and saying “I should have brought my camera” over and over, until Lisa Farragher, directly behind him, threatened him with violence. Dylan Cotter counted the steps. Jean Kavanagh played with her hair. Anne Griffin wondered whether the man who lived next door to her might have murdered his recently deceased wife and decided that when she returned to ground level, she would begin an investigation.

  In short, everyone kept busy as they made their way up the side of the Harbour Bridge.

  After about an hour, they reached the top and turned round to look down at the city spread out before them. It was an extraordinary sight. In the distance, a hot-air balloon was coming in to land on one of the green areas beyond the city, and Barnaby could just make out two figures inside the basket, jumping up and down in delight. Beneath them, the lanes of traffic were whizzing across from one side of Sydney to the other, the noise of the engines drowning out the sound of Stephen Hebden’s screams and George Jones’s farting. To their right, they could see almost as far as Cockatoo Island, and when Barnaby turned to his left, he was looking down on the white tiles of the Opera House and the ferries shuttling the Sydneysiders from Circular Quay to the bays and coves beyond.

  Standing there, it was easy to see why Sydney really was the most magnificent city in the world, and Barnaby knew that only a fool would choose to live anywhere else.

  “Right, down we go,” announced Daz after they’d taken some photographs, and the entire group turned to begin their descent.

  Halfway down, Barnaby noticed that a great crowd had gathered at the bridge’s entrance platform; when they got closer, he could make out a group of news vans with satellite dishes on top parked outside on the street and a crowd of photographers taking pictur
es from the terrace of the Harbour View Hotel.

  “What’s going on?” asked Lucy Honeyfield.

  “I told you it was a special day,” said Daz, smiling but refusing to give any more details. When they reached the base, a line of people were gathered on either side to welcome them, standing in two rows like ball boys in the guard of honor at the Rod Laver Arena.

  “Nine million nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven,” they called out in one voice—which wasn’t easy—as Dennis Peel walked between them and unhooked himself from the bridge.

  “Nine million nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight,” they cried when Emily Piper followed him.

  “Nine million nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine,” they shouted, their voices rising now in excitement as Jeannie Jenkins stepped off.

  And then—

  “TEN MILLION!” they roared as Barnaby Brocket placed his foot on the bottom step, and a sudden flurry of cameramen and photographers jostled with reporters for the best position.

  “What’s your name, son?” asked a middle-aged man in a striped tweed suit, shoving a microphone under his mouth with a square attachment that read CHANNEL 9 NEWS.

  “Barnaby Brocket,” said Barnaby Brocket.

  “And what does it feel like to be the ten millionth person to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge?”

  Barnaby looked around, a little dazzled by the attention, and Daz came over, unhooked his chain, and lifted him onto his shoulders before he could float away. He brought him inside to where a press conference was about to begin, and sat him on a chair next to an extremely elderly man who slapped his hand down on Barnaby’s knee and held it there firmly as he scrunched up his face and peered at the boy.

  “I’m the last one alive,” he said.

  “The last what alive?” asked Barnaby.

  “I built the bridge,” said the old man. “Not single-handed, of course, but as good as.”