by Ivan Brett
There were queues outside both restaurants, however, and Julius’s menu was, if possible, even more British than yesterday. Casper dashed inside just in time to dole out the first steaming plates of Haggis and Tartan Sauce, Lancashire Hotpot with Steamed Pound Coins, extra-messy Eton Mess and pots of Royal Jelly (made with real royals). All of the courses had been arranged into the shape of Union Jacks to emphasise The Battered Cod’s Britishness, although the British Beechwood-smoked Rack of Ribs looked more like a skull and crossbones.
Once the diners had found their tables, Julius led a rousing rendition of the national anthem and waved a big flag. Everybody gladly sang along, but Mayor Rattsbulge replaced the word ‘Queen’ with ‘Mayor’ each time it came round.
Amanda skipped in soon afterwards to serve drinks, Cuddles under her arm. The baby’s job for the evening was to be a jukebox; Casper stuck Cuddles to the wall with half a roll of masking tape and let the songs from the TuneBrick™ in her belly float through the restaurant, adding much-needed warmth and clinky piano noises.
Casper surveyed the bustling restaurant in awe – the customers were happy. Betty Woons had removed her teeth to suck on a haggis; Clemmie Answorth had fallen off her chair, clutching a stripped-bare pork rib and singing with delight; and Mitch McMassive was smacking his lips with relish as he polished off his breadcrumb. Casper grinned to himself. At this rate, Jean-Claude stood no chance on Friday. Things couldn’t get much better.
And then, they didn’t.
Ting-a-ling.
Jean-Claude stood in the open doorway with either blood or tomato spattering his chef’s whites, arms held out wide as grandly as a stubbly-faced French food critic could manage without not being a stubbly-faced French food critic any more. “Ladies and ze Gentlemans!”
Julius stomped out of the kitchen, his frying pan held aloft. “OY! What d’you think you’re doing here?”
Jean-Claude spat on the carpet and turned away from Julius to the customers. “Zis evening, at Bistro D’Escargot, ze Lamp Flannigan lecture series is beginning at last. Tonight—”
“GET OUT!”
“Tonight,” continued Jean-Claude, deftly dodging a frying-pan shot, “‘Ze Tidal Patterns of North-East Vietnam!’”
Casper looked on, bewildered, as a shiver of excitement passed over the restaurant.
“Ooh!” squealed Audrey Snugglepuss. “Will it be complicated?”
“Oh, so complicate,” said Jean-Claude.
“And sums?” added Mrs Trimble. “Will there be sums?”
“Ze sums galore, Madame. Follow me!”
Chairs graunched and bottoms lifted, the owners of aforementioned bottoms leaping from their places to follow Jean-Claude.
“No!” screamed Julius. “Are you mad? Who in their right mind wants to hear a lecture about tidal patterns?”
“WE DO!” chorused the villagers, and they piled out of The Battered Cod in an excited heap.
Ting-a-ling.
The sudden silence was shocking. An empty room lay before Casper, save for a stunned Julius standing by the door and a pigeon on Table 4 pecking lightly at a chip.
“Dad, I…” There wasn’t really anything to say. He nodded at the pigeon. “At least we still have one customer.”
“Would it like a cocktail?” asked Amanda.
Julius just stood there, watching the trail of customers file into Bistro D’Escargot.
Casper’s stomach growled more loudly than ever. Lamp was delivering lectures now? And the villagers wanted to hear them? And what about this afternoon with all those new discoveries? And the bus journey, where the kids were doing times tables and reading philosophy… What had happened to everybody? It was as if they’d all changed. It was as if Corne-on-the-Kobb was no longer a village of idiots. More like a village of…brainiacs. “Dad, stay there. I’ll be right back.”
Inspired, Casper dashed out of the restaurant and travelled the length of the square in two twists of a pigeon’s neck.
He reached the door of Bistro D’Escargot. “They can’t be. Not all of them.” He burst through the door shoulder first, like an MI5 agent with a free meal coupon. “Right!”
One hundred sets of cutlery (and one set of Clemmie Answorth) dropped to the floor. The diners gasped and turned to face their invader. Candlelight flickered on each table, casting hundreds of wobbly shadows on the velvet-clad walls. At the far end, Lamp Flannigan stood by a flipchart with a cross-section of a wave covered in dense technical calculations, the drawing of a drowning stick-man and a misfired omelette. He held a long breadstick like a pointer, although there was a bite out of one end where he’d pointed it too close to Mayor Rattsbulge. There was quite a long pause, and then Lamp said, “Hullo, Casper.”
Casper’s face went all red and he felt a bit silly. Why the big entrance? “Um, hi.”
“What you are wanting, boy?” The challenge came from Jean-Claude D’Escargot, his arms folded sternly and another soggy cigarette flopping from his lips. A pitying laugh burst from within him. “Hah! You have come for to steal my customers?”
Casper’s brain ground into motion again as he remembered his task. “No, sir. In fact, I’d like to sing your diners a song.”
A raspberry ripple of excitement spread through the restaurant.
“Ooh!” cried Audrey Snugglepuss “Do you do requests?”
“Sing ‘God Save our Mayor’!” shouted Mayor Rattsbulge.
Jean-Claude snorted. “What is zis nonsense?”
“I give up, sir. I’m swapping sides. Sinking ship and all that. You’re obviously going to win this Friday, so what’s the point sticking with my dad? I thought you might want… some entertainment. Y’know, as an apology.”
A sparkle of victory crossed Jean-Claude’s face. “I am seeing you did not inherit your fazzer’s stupidity. You are forgiven, boy.” He rested a hairy hand on Casper’s shoulder.
Casper shuddered under the Frenchman’s grip. “Yeah.”
“Monsieur Flannigan, do you mind zis interruption?”
“I love songs!” wiggled Lamp, laying aside his breadstick. “Can I do dancing?”
Casper scowled at Lamp. If he let himself say all he wanted to say about breaking promises and batting for the wrong team, he’d give himself away. Later, Casper told himself. For now, the time had come to sing. Casper cleared his throat and took a moment to swallow down his nerves.
Jean-Claude leant back against the wall and watched Casper with a thick-lipped smirk.
A hundred pairs of eyes watched Casper expectantly. His knees knocked, his heart fluttered, his hands couldn’t find a comfortable place to hang. Here we go, Casper thought to himself. This is it. Then he felt his mouth open and a noise tumbled out.
“Oh, pi’s a mathematical constant,
Not a meaty treat you find in your fridge,
If you give it a bit of work you’ll
Find the area of a circle,
Which is useful when you’re building a bridge.”
Absolute silence. Casper’s voice cracked. No point stopping now…
“Sing it with me now: three point one four one…”
He trailed off because he didn’t know the words to the second verse. But if his theory was correct, the rest of the villagers would know it all too well.
Lamp piped up. “Five nine two six,” he sang, “five three five eight nine seven…”
Audrey Snugglepuss joined in as well as two bearded women near the front, “nine three two three eight four,” smiling at each other as if sharing a private joke. Now half the room was chanting along – even Clemmie Answorth from her heap on the floor. Lamp stood up from his chair, hand clutching his heart, and sang the numbers with gusto. “SIX TWO SIX FOUR THREE THREE—”
Casper shuffled backwards. So he was right after all. The whole room was standing proudly, singing together with delight filling their eyes, fire filling their hearts and the first million digits of pi filling their brains. Everyone, that is, apart from Jean-Claude. He stood cross
-armed, his lips curled wryly and his eyes glinting. He turned, flicked the stub of his cigarette at Casper and strolled back into the kitchen with a little wave over his shoulder.
Casper’s brain spun. Reeling, he staggered backwards through the door and scrabbled over to The Battered Cod, the sound of chanting filling the square with its eerie tunefulness.
Julius was standing just where Casper had left him. “OK. This is weird.”
“What is?”
“The villagers, they’ve gone all…” Casper shook his head. It must be some mistake.
“They’ve gone all what?”
At that very moment the crowd burst out into the square in a conga line, each with their hands on the hips of the villager in front.
“They’ve gone all clever, Dad.”
“ONE FIVE ONE ONE SIX OH NINE,” they cheered, kicking out their legs and punching the air.
Julius frowned. “Impossible.”
“But there it is,” muttered Casper. First Lamp had grown a brain, now the whole village. This was getting weirder and weirder. “That’s pi, they’re reciting.”
“What’s pi?” asked Julius.
Ah well, maybe not the whole village.
Here are some things you’ll always see every Wednesday morning in Corne-on-the-Kobb:
• Mrs Trimble and all her cats in matching white tracksuits jogging muddy circuits of the park• Sandy Landscape raking up dead leaves to stick back on to the trees
• Mitch McMassive trapped under the beer barrel that he’d been trying to roll inside his pub
• Another of Mayor Rattsbulge’s broken beds, left in splintery chunks outside the Mayoral Lodge for the binmen
• Betty Woons feeding grain-flavoured jelly beans to the pigeons
Today was Wednesday. Only a fool or a wrongly printed calendar would deny that, but as Casper made his bewildered way to the bus, he saw quite a different picture from the normal.
• Mrs Trimble and all her cats were jogging on a row of brand-new matching treadmills, built from empty tins of cat food and some long woollen scarves.
• Sandy Landscape was raking dead leaves into the portable compost mulchers built into his pockets.
• Mitch McMassive was effortlessly curling beer barrels across the square, watching them roll to a halt at the pub door with pinpoint accuracy.
• Mayor Rattsbulge was loudly boasting about his new unbreakable bed, reinforced with rods of dark matter.
• Betty Woons was preparing for her wheelchair’s first launch to the moon, leaving the pigeons alone to peck at a plate of omelette left outside Bistro D’Escargot.
Casper had given himself the night to think it over, but now he was sure. Somehow, in the last two days, Corne-on-the-Kobb had become a village of brainiacs. The villagers had danced round the square singing ‘The Pi Song’ long into the night, but nobody had returned to The Battered Cod. He clambered up the steps to the train carriage and sat down next to Lamp without a word.
“Hullo, Casper. Want to know what I’m inventing?”
Casper looked down at the blueprint on the table – no more than a dizzying swarm of pencil lead. “No,” he said. Then after a short pause, he added, “You said you’d stop helping Jean-Claude.”
“I did, though.”
Casper laughed drily. “What about your lecture?”
“But that was for everybody, not just Jean-Claude. Every human deserves to know about North-East Vietnamese tidal patterns, Casper. Don’t you think?”
“You drew customers away from The Battered Cod!” cried Casper. “Again! You have to stop doing this. Do you want me to be banished from Corne-on-the-Kobb?”
“No,” said Lamp. “I don’t want that.” Blushing, he pulled a boiled egg from his blazer pocket and poured all his concentration into unpeeling it. “This is the only one today. The hens are being silly.”
Whatever was happening to the village, it was happening even more intensely to Lamp. And whatever it was, Casper didn’t like it. Lamp’s forehead was beaded with sweat, his face furrowed into a frown. He’d glomped the egg down in one and turned back to his invention. But even that was wrong. A week ago, Lamp would never plan an invention. He’d just start bolting things together until they went bing. “Plans, Casper?” he used to say. “Plans are for people who can spell.” Something had changed Lamp and Casper was determined to find out what.
“Casper, will you please stop thinking so loudly?” tutted Lamp. “I’m working.”
“Sorry.”
Casper let his eyes wander around the bus. It was much quieter even than yesterday. The Mollyband twins, Milly and Milly, were locked in a silent game of chess (and thinking so many moves ahead that neither had started yet). Eventually, Milly moved a pawn, prompting Milly to smile knowingly and resign. Samson Jansen had filled up the other side of his pencil case with a full piano concerto and now, with a new pencil case, was three-quarters of the way to solving maths.
Anemonie Blight had noticed the change too. “What you doing?” she yelled at Ted Treadington, who had just completed his tenth Rubik’s Cube of the morning and stacked it with the others on his table. “Gimme one.”
Terrified, Ted passed Anemonie another cube from his bag. “You have to—”
“I know what you have to do, idiot!” yelled Anemonie, gnawing on her lip in concentration. “If you can do it, then I can. It’s easy.”
Five minutes later Ted had built a scale model of the Great Pyramid at Giza with his finished cubes, and Anemonie had ripped hers to pieces and sunk deep into her seat in a ferocious grump. She didn’t move until they passed through the wrought-iron gates of St Simian’s School for Seniors and into its heaving playground.
The first thing Casper saw was little Snivel dashing towards the bus and waving his arms.
“He’s happy to see us,” said Lamp with a smile.
“Not sure that’s a greeting,” replied Casper. “Come on.” He grabbed his bag of Cuddles and hurried out to meet Snivel.
“G-get back on!” squeaked Snivel. “G-get your d-driver to d-drive away!”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“My b-brothers are after you. Normally they forget but—”
KABOOSH! The big front door of the school slammed back on its hinges as Bash Brewster strode into the playground towards Casper. Bash’s right arm was bound in plaster, slung in a sling and thrust in a large pocket on the front of his blazer marked Injerys.
“LUNCH MUNNY!” roared Bash, but Casper was sure he wanted more than that.
“That big boy looks angry, Casper,” said Lamp. “Do you think he needs a hug?”
Casper’s tongue felt dry. “Stay behind me, Lamp. No hugging anyone unless I tell you.”
“Aww.”
Spit and Clobber appeared from each side of the large school building, scattering smaller children like skittles in their wake.
By this point Anemonie had jumped off the carriage behind Casper and Lamp, searching for a quick exit. Sandy Landscape saw the oncoming brute stampede from the top of his tractor, yelped, then drove off in a panic, taking the rest of the class with him. But in the absence of the carriage, Casper could see Pinchnurse striding towards him from the only empty corner of the playground.
Casper’s heart sank. “We’re surrounded.”
“I t-tried to warn you,” whispered Snivel.
Anemonie’s squinty eyes shifted from place to place. “Candlewacks, please tell me you brought your… thing.”
“If you mean my sister, then yes. She’s here.” Casper unzipped his bag and let Cuddles’s head pop out.
Bash Brewster let out a yodelling grunt and stopped in his tracks. The other Brewsters did the same.
“They’re sc-scared of her,” whispered Snivel.
Cuddles growled at the surrounding brutes, rolling back her lips to reveal two sets of eleven-month-old fangs.
Pinchnurse did a sort of trembling whinny.
“Right, guys, listen up,” ordered Casper. “We’re s
afe here while we’ve got Cuddles, and at least this time we’re on open ground. Everyone just stay alert.”
So Casper, Lamp, Anemonie and Snivel sat in a circle on the cold tarmac, facing outwards, passing Cuddles round to thrust at any advancing Brewsters. When the bell rang for class, all the other kids trotted inside, but just as before, the Brewsters didn’t move.
Casper sighed. “This morning was food tech. Thought I could learn some tricks. The only lesson that’d be any use this week and I’m stuck in the playground.”
“Fine by me,” snarled Anemonie. “Cooking’s for plebs.”
“M-maybe your f-friend can teach us fings.” Snivel nodded at Lamp. “He seems p-pretty clever.”
“It’s weird, though,” said Casper. “Before Monday, Lamp could barely walk and talk at the same time. Now look at him.”
“Hmm?” Lamp’s face was buried in a book, while with his free hand he drew out yet another blueprint on a pad of paper balanced on his lap. The book was called ????? ? ???? which was Russian for War and Peace, apparently. It had two thousand yellow pages and it smelt mustier than a grandmother.
“How can you invent stuff without even looking?”
Lamp barely glanced at his friend. “It’s easy. That’s a steam-powered casserole.” He grunted and flipped the pad to a blank page, still without looking, and began to scribble again. “Now, a Crème Brûlée burner.”
“Can we have these for The Battered Cod?”
Lamp shrugged, his attention fully on the book.
“Stop being so brainy,” snapped Anemonie. “You’re driving me mad.”
“Shh, everybody, this is the war bit.” Owing to his lack of free fingers, Lamp turned a page with his nose. “It’s way better than all the peace stuff.”