by Scott Allen
‘You OK, Dad?’ asked Tim.
‘What . . . oh yes, I’m fine . . . I’m fine . . . totally fine.’ Frank continued to stir his now stone-cold tea, looking into its dark brown swirls.
Tim thought about his next sentence for a long time before he said it. He was trying to judge if this was the right time, as Frank looked very sad. Maybe this would help to cheer him up?
‘I was thinking, Dad . . . the seeds, chickens and the pig didn’t work out, but I’ve got a new friend who might be able to give us something that could make money for the farm,’ he said quickly.
‘That’s nice,’ replied Frank, who was clearly not listening. He continued looking blankly into his cold tea.
‘My friend’s mum, Molly, runs an animal shelter, and they’ve got a llama,’ continued Tim. ‘It’s got really soft wool that we could farm.’
Frank remained silent for a few minutes and then looked up. He wasn’t smiling as Tim had hoped. ‘I don’t think one llama is enough for a decent wool farm, Tim. You’d need loads of llamas to produce enough wool for farming, and besides, I don’t know the first thing about llama farming. It’s not like doing sheep or cows.’
‘You didn’t know anything about chickens or pigs, but you were willing to give them a try,’ said Tim, feeling a little hurt that Frank wasn’t taking his idea seriously.
‘That’s true,’ admitted Frank.
‘Well, why not try a llama? My friend is getting another ten soon, so we’d have more than enough. We could have them for free and they probably wouldn’t cost much to keep.’ Tim was just guessing now.
Frank finally stopped stirring the cup of cold tea. The word ‘free’ was one of his favourites. The lines on his forehead deepened. Tim knew this was a sign he was really thinking. He did this every time Tim persuaded him to buy a new computer game, especially if Tim had come up with a really good reason as to why they definitely needed that particular game.
Frank got up without saying anything and wandered out of the kitchen. Tim could hear him walking around the house, muttering to himself, opening doors and then shutting them again. This was also part of his thinking process. A few minutes later he reappeared in the kitchen, the frown lines had gone and his eyes seemed a little brighter.
‘OK, I’ve thought it over . . . and . . . I’m willing to give it a whirl,’ he said. ‘On two conditions.’
‘Name them,’ said Tim excitedly.
‘First, if they spit at me they can go back straight away.’
‘They rarely spit, Dad. In fact, they are a much misunderstood animal,’ said Tim, quoting Cairo.
‘Second, you will be in charge of clearing up all their mess. We can sell it for manure.’
Tim was less sure about this one. But it was worth it if it meant they could have Ludo and his friends living in their field.
‘You have yourself a deal.’ A smile broke out on Tim’s face; he couldn’t hide the delight that was surging through his body. ‘This is going to be brilliant!’
‘It better be,’ muttered Frank under his breath, his face dropping back into serious mode again. ‘Or we won’t be living here much longer.’
8
THE HERD ARRIVES
Cairo was waving at Tim like a nutter through the window of the large animal transporter as Molly parked it up at the Gravys’ farm. Tim waved casually back. He was bursting with excitement inside, but wanted to appear as cool as possible about the prospect of eleven llamas living in their spare field. He was a proper farmer’s son now.
Tim had noticed that his dad was slightly less excited. During the last few days, Frank had started scribbling loads of numbers and sums in a little black notepad that he carried around in his back trouser pocket. He was always checking it and looking worried. Tim didn’t like the little black notepad – it made Frank really unhappy.
Cairo expertly unloaded all the llamas from the transporter and led them into the spare field, which was across the road from the main farmhouse. Frank had started building a disastrous attempt at a princess castle in a corner of the main field, under the orders of Fiona, and it was no place for llamas.
The spare field wasn’t the greatest – as people seemed to use it as a bit of a dumping ground for rubbish they didn’t want – but it had loads of grass and juicy weeds in it for the llamas to munch on.
Frank went and introduced himself to Molly, while Tim and Cairo watched the llamas start slowly exploring their new surroundings. One had teeth that jutted out at the bottom of his mouth, one was very tall, while another had a black flash across his face. At the back was a much happier-looking Ludo. He instantly recognized Tim and strode proudly over for a friendly stroke. Tim patted the llama’s neck and rubbed the side of his face while Ludo casually nodded his approval.
‘They’ll be happy here,’ said Cairo, with a beaming grin. ‘They had a really rough time at their last place. Really nasty.’ His smile dropped away.
Tim noticed the already familiar flash of anger cross Cairo’s face when he talked about animal cruelty. He was impressed by how much his friend really cared about animals.
‘Eventually their hair will grow back and the scars will heal,’ Cairo added, his face softening. ‘Then you can think about what you and your dad are going to do with them.’
‘I know what I’ll be doing,’ said Tim with a sigh. ‘Shovelling manure. I promised my dad that’s what I’d do if we got them.’
Cairo laughed. Tim didn’t.
‘I’ll get you a massive spade for your birthday, maybe one of those snow shovel things,’ said Cairo.
Ludo had now left Tim’s side and had walked purposefully to the main gate into the field. He stood there tall and firm, looking out down the road.
‘What’s he doing?’ asked Tim, slightly hurt that his favourite llama had just wandered off.
‘Hmmm, interesting . . .’ muttered Cairo. ‘I think he might be a guard llama. Some of them are like that – farmers use them like security guards to protect their livestock. Odd, isn’t it?’
‘So he’s just going to stand there as a lookout?’
‘It certainly looks like it. He’s the boss; that’s his job.’
Frank came over to Tim and Cairo. He was furiously scribbling in his notepad, his face a creased ball of concentration. ‘Molly tells me we are going to have to get a big shed for the llamas to live in,’ he said, without looking up from his book.
‘You’ll also need a water trough, regular fresh hay, feed and obviously . . . a manure shovel,’ added Cairo, with a wink at Tim.
Frank gritted his teeth, turned a page in his notepad and began scribbling again.
‘We’ve saved them from some very cruel treatment, Dad. This will be paradise compared to that horrible place they were in.’
Frank ignored Tim, stopped writing and tucked his pencil behind his ear.
‘When do you think the wool will be ready?’ He directed his question straight at Cairo, as though he was an expert on farming llamas.
Luckily for Frank, Cairo’s llama knowledge was pretty good, as he’d some read books about them, unlike yours truly. As a professional footballer, I didn’t have time for reading books . . . I only learned how to spell llama three weeks ago!
‘It’s going to be a while I reckon,’ replied Cairo. ‘However, some good food, shelter and friendly owners, and they’ll be fine after Christmas.’
Frank’s face dropped; this wasn’t the news he wanted to hear, Christmas was months away. It was going to cost him loads just to feed and shelter the llamas before he could make any money out of their wool.
‘Of course you can sell the poo straight away,’ said Cairo, pointing at a huge pile of neat brown pellets, like coffee beans, that had just landed by Frank’s feet.
Tim screwed up his eyes and felt all squirmy inside. He really didn’t want to be clearing up llama poo on his first day as a llama farmer. Suddenly his left leg became very warm. Tim looked down. An arc of llama wee was spraying on to his jeans.
&n
bsp; Next to him stood a grey llama with a huge grin on his face. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all, thought Tim.
9
THE KICK-ABOUT
When he wasn’t shovelling llama poo, which actually wasn’t that bad with a huge snow shovel, Tim found out that Cairo had never properly played football. So he was keen to show his new friend why it was the greatest sport ever and to make him understand the ecstatic thrill of scoring a goal. Cairo didn’t seem to be bothered by these bold claims. He thought snail racing was the greatest sport ever . . . even if it did take three weeks to finish a race.
Tim regretted showing Cairo how to play football almost immediately. He had never met anyone as bad as Cairo. He might have been brilliant at looking after animals, but he was shocking with a ball at his feet.
Cairo’s main problem was that he had no control over the power of his kicks. He just blasted everything from anywhere. Everything was a shot for Cairo. If he was really lucky, he’d get one on target and it would fly past Tim and into the imaginary net. But most of the time the ball would soar high and wide – crashing against the side of the house, the fence, a window or anything that happened to be in the yard or passing by it. Even Fiona was in the firing line. One misplaced volley barely clipped her little finger, but she fell to the ground as if she’d been shot by a sniper.
‘YEEEOOOOOOOWWWWWWLLLLLL! MY BEAUTIFUL FACE!’ she howled at the top of her voice.
Tim and Cairo ran over to her straight away.
‘Calm down, will you?’ begged Tim, hoping Beetroot wouldn’t hear. ‘It didn’t go anywhere near your face.’
‘My beautiful face,’ Fiona sobbed again. Both hands were now clamped firmly across her nose, stemming an imaginary stream of blood. ‘My modelling career is ruined! My eye could have fallen out.’ She let out another piercing scream for good measure.
‘It didn’t go anywhere near your face, Fiona,’ repeated Tim through gritted teeth. ‘Now stop screaming.’
‘YEEEEOOOOOOWWWWWWWW!’ Fiona let out an even louder and bigger scream.
The kitchen door flew open and Beetroot came running out. She scooped up Fiona and gave her one of the biggest cuddles a mum could give.
‘My . . . my . . . my . . . f-f-face, Mummy,’ wailed Fiona. ‘T-T-Tim kicked the ball into my face, from an inch away.’
‘I did not!’ shouted Tim. ‘It just brushed her finger.’
This made Fiona scream even louder. Beetroot nodded sympathetically at Tim, but she didn’t want to get into an argument into who did what; it was never worth it.
‘Let’s see if we can find something inside to make it better,’ said Beetroot soothingly to Fiona, calmly stroking her long hair.
‘Sweets?’ asked Fiona, her tears and sobbing stopping almost instantly.
‘Maybe,’ replied Beetroot. They went back inside the farmhouse and Tim kicked the ground in frustration.
‘I think we’ve lost the ball,’ said Cairo, adding insult to injury.
‘Where did it go?’ Tim huffed.
‘Bounced out across the road.’
‘Probably went in the field opposite; we’ll get it later. I’ve got a bag of spares.’
They played for another five minutes or so before Cairo belted another huge shot wide of the goal and out across the road. Tim shook his head and flapped his hands in a ‘we’ll get it later’ gesture and picked another ball out the bag. That one didn’t last long either.
Tim gritted his teeth and tried to muster up a fake smile to show that he wasn’t annoyed – even though he was inwardly fuming that his new friend had managed to lose three balls in less than ten minutes. In the city he would have gone and played with someone else, but in the country he only had Cairo to play with, and he didn’t want to lose his only friend over a simple kick-about.
‘Sorry,’ called Cairo. He looked embarrassed. ‘I’m not very good, am I?’
‘I think you’re getting better,’ said Tim, trying to be encouraging, ‘But no, at this moment you aren’t the greatest. I’ve only got this ball left, but at least it will be easy to find if we lose it.’
Tim held up a neon orange ball and bounced it on the yard towards Cairo, who immediately swung his left leg at it and lobbed it back over Tim’s head and out across the road into the field opposite.
‘Ooops, sorreeee!’
Tim sighed. ‘Let’s go and get them.’
Tim and Cairo looked everywhere for the footballs but couldn’t find them. They weren’t on the road, in any bushes or up any trees. They scanned the field full of llamas but there was nothing there either. Ludo was by the gate as usual. A few llamas were standing in one corner and a few were sitting down, but there were no balls to be seen. Even the neon orange ball had seemingly disappeared.
‘Have you seen our footballs, Ludo?’ asked Tim, giving the tall black llama a stroke.
The llama stared back at him and then looked away.
‘I didn’t kick them that hard,’ said Cairo, scratching the top of his head thoughtfully. ‘They can’t all have gone missing.’
‘Perhaps someone pinched them all?’ replied Tim.
‘Maybe, but I haven’t seen anyone go down the road.’
‘Do llamas eat footballs?’ asked Tim, as he noticed a white llama with a black flash across his nose chewing furiously on something pink. Possibly part of the discarded sofa.
‘They eat grass, Tim,’ replied Cairo with a chuckle. He followed Tim’s gaze. ‘Well . . . mostly. I doubt they’d have much interest in plastic balls.’
They returned to the farmhouse and found Fiona sitting on the step waiting for them, sucking on the biggest lolly ever. She looked very pleased with herself.
‘I got the biggest lolly ever, because you injured me,’ she said smugly.
Tim tried to ignore her but he wanted one of those lollies as well. This was turning into a bad day. Where had all his footballs gone? Had Fiona pinched them? Had someone from the village stolen them? Had they all exploded with the force of Cairo’s terrible shots? It was a big mystery.
10
THE WAITING GAME
On the way to school the following day, Tim found one of the missing balls sitting in the middle of the yard. It was totally flat – as though someone had been playing with it so much that all the air had come out of it. He held the ball up to his face and sniffed it. I’ve no idea why he sniffed the ball. It offered him no clue as to where it had been whatsoever. It smelt of plastic and grass, like every other football does.
Tim looked out of the farm and up and down the road. There was no one about. He could see nothing but Ludo standing motionless by the gate in the field opposite, like he did every day. Tim paced around looking for unusual footprints in the compacted dirt. This was also a fruitless task, as all he ended up doing was getting confused by the footprints he was leaving himself.
The next day, before school, there was another flat football waiting for Tim in the yard. Once again a sniff revealed nothing. ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ he shouted into the air, to no one in particular. ‘Very, very funny. Good prank guys! You can come out now.’
He waited silently. Nobody appeared. This was very frustrating. Tim sniffed the ball again. He should really stop doing that now, don’t you think?
That night, Tim asked his dad if he knew anything about the missing footballs.
‘Nope,’ replied Frank, in a completely unhelpful manner.
‘I’ve been trying to work out when the wool on these llamas is going to get good enough to sell. Your manure bags aren’t making much. Plus, I’ve got Fiona’s princess castle to build. So I haven’t really got time for your footballs.’
‘But . . . can you get me some new ones?’
Frank did a small intake of breath, which was always a bad sign. ‘We’ve not really got the spare cash to be buying footballs,’ he replied. ‘However, if we can sell the llama wool, then I’ll see what we can do.’
‘But that will be ages away,’ moaned Tim, flapping his arms around in
a sulky manner.
‘I know,’ muttered Frank, getting out his little black notepad. Oh how Tim hated that little notepad. Every time Frank opened it he got more down in the dumps.
(Interestingly, the notepad didn’t want to be the cause of Frank’s sadness either. It’d always wanted to be something a three-year-old scribbled in and then lost down the back of the sofa. But then notepads have different ambitions to humans.)
‘I’m sorry, Tim,’ said Frank after a long pause. He sighed heavily. ‘That’s just the way things are, I’m afraid. You’ll have to be patient.’
Tim gritted his teeth and tried to suppress his frustration. ‘You’ll have to be patient’ was one of his least favourite phrases. It never meant anything good.
The next day was a Saturday, so Tim decided he was going to stay up all night and find out once and for all what was going on with his disappearing/reappearing footballs. He got an essential survival kit together: a sleeping bag, two cartons of juice, some crisps and two Lego figures – and set up camp on the low sloped roof of the toolshed that overlooked the farmyard.
As it got dark, Tim realized he’d forgotten to bring a torch and so couldn’t see anything, apart from large, dark scary shapes; and as I’m sure you already know, the more you look at stuff in the dark, the scarier it becomes. To make things even worse, even though Tim couldn’t see anything, he could hear plenty, and after a while everything was starting to make him jump with fear. A rustle in the undergrowth, the hoot of an owl, a cough from inside the house, the wind through the trees, car wheels on gravel, a chirrup, a snuffle, a light whistle. Everything sounded like it was coming to get him. He pulled the sleeping bag over his head and tried to block out the sounds, but it wasn’t helping.
One sound that didn’t seem to stop was a distinctly familiar tap, tap, tap, thwack noise. It was quite muffled, but it was definitely coming from somewhere not too far from the shed roof. Tim strained his ears and bravely tried to peer out into the darkness. Tap, tap, tap, thwack. There it was again!