Chop-Chop, Mad Cap!

by Juliette Saumande

  Madgie made a grumpy crumple of her wrapper and looked at Norbert. He was still bending over the diary, turning the pages slowly, slowly. Behind the magnifying glass, his eyes looked like two gigantic chocolate buttons going back and forth on the page, back and forth, back … Madgie felt herself nodding off.

  ‘I see!’ Norbert snapped finally.

  Madgie started. She had been half-dozing, thinking about Mum’s funny face earlier and wondering if there really had been tears behind her glasses. Maybe it was just dust. Or onions.

  ‘What?’

  Norbert looked at her sternly.

  ‘I’ll give you the full result of my investigation when I’m finished.’

  With that, he fished a little bottle of clear liquid out of the suitcase. Only then did Madgie notice the sticker on the case: Barnaby Street CSI KitTM, N. Soup Designer.

  ‘What’s CSI again?’ she asked, startling Norbert, who sent the bottle crashing to the ground. ‘Sorry.’

  He gave her a nasty look.

  ‘It stands for Crime Scene Investigation,’ he replied curtly. ‘Now if you don’t mind, I have work to do.’

  And he turned his back on her.

  Soon Madgie was bored out of her mind. She was also getting very cross. After all, she had done all the dangerous work while Norbert was safely in bed with his fat cat. So why couldn’t she do the scientific stuff, too? True, the Rent-a-Hero thing had been Norbert’s idea and he was the genius on the team, but she was the hero for rent – she had the outfit!

  She was about to give Norbert a piece of her mind when he turned round again and handed her a sheet of paper.

  ‘If you ever have any information that’s actually interesting,’ he hissed, ‘please let me know.’

  He packed the case and got up.

  ‘Otherwise,’ he added as he walked away, ‘don’t bother.’

  Madgie was dumbstruck. What had happened? She looked at the sheet.

  Some people? Mad Cap thought. Who’s that? There was only me!

  ‘What? What? There weren’t that many, I’m sure.’

  3

  A RIGHT RIOT

  Madgie sat under the Grand Canal Bridge, completely alone and totally flummoxed. Her best pal had just walked out on her for no good reason that she could see. He had also taken away Colm’s secret diary, and with it Madgie’s last hope of peace at home.

  And what about Rent-a-Hero? Was it all over before it had even properly begun? No more missions?

  This reminded her of her mum. Hadn’t she said something about a mission this morning, before Colm started squealing the house down?

  Madgie decided to find out. Then she would do whatever it was on her own, without telling Norbert, and he would be impressed when she was able to report back to him about her success. And then they could be friends again.

  While she thought this over, she had another go at that frog origami pattern. This time the paper was doing what it was supposed to do and her fingers worked automatically without the assistance of her brain.

  Finally, she made her way home, wondering what she should charge her mother for doing this mission. A new origami book? A whole month without tidying duties? No mushy peas for a year?

  She was so caught up in thought that she didn’t see Colm storming out of the front door as she came through the gate.

  ‘You!’ he said in a cold, hard voice. ‘Empty your pockets. Now!’

  For a minute, Mad Cap just stared at the icy face of Captain Gut on her brother’s T-shirt. She gulped and looked up. Just now, Colm was the spitting image of the comic book villain: white as a sheet, with clenched jaws and a give-no-quarters kind of look in his eyes.

  ‘Your pockets, I said!’ he repeated, grabbing her by the wrist.

  She knew she couldn’t wriggle out of this one, so she complied. Out came two cereal bar wrappers, one elastic band, a piece of paper folded in the shape of a frog and a handful of fluff.

  ‘I’m sure you have it!’ Colm raged as he stomped off. ‘If it’s not in your room or in your pockets, it must be in that secret place of yours down by the canal. I’ll find it!’

  Madgie waited until he was well away from the house before sighing a tiny sigh of relief. At least some good had come of her falling-out with Norbert. If he hadn’t taken the diary with him, she would have been caught red-handed and that would have been the end of Mad Cap.

  She gently stroked the origami frog. If you looked at it carefully, you could just about make out some writing:

  Madgie put the frog gingerly back into her pocket.

  ‘Mad Cap for ever and beyond!’ she whispered as she went into the house.

  But as soon as she was past the door, she felt worried again. What had Colm said? ‘If it’s not in your room …’ How did he know that? she wondered. She ran upstairs to see what damage her brother had done to her bedroom and what else he might have discovered in there.

  ‘Bean!’

  Madgie stopped halfway up the stairs. Her mother’s timing was terrible. What did she want this time?

  ‘Beeeean!’

  Madgie could tell by Mum’s tone that her room would have to wait. She trotted back downstairs again and out to the back garden.

  Mrs Cappock was rummaging in her tool box. She took out a trowel and threw it back into the shed before picking up a tiny rake that was lying in the grass and dropping it into the box. She closed it with a clunk and turned around.

  Madgie looked at her closely. If there had been anything wrong with Mum earlier, she seemed to be grand now. She was wearing her brand new red and tan gloves, her work dungarees and her gardening apron, the beige one with all the pockets, but it was tied in a funny way around her waist, as if it had shrunk in the wash. Madgie suddenly remembered that pack of lemon sherbet she had forgotten in her jeans pocket last week. Her trousers had come out of the machine looking a bit yellow and … fizzy. Surely that wasn’t why Mum’s apron looked odd, was it?

  ‘Madgie,’ her mum said, hauling her heavy case up onto a wheelbarrow. ‘I’m off to sort out Miss Wu’s hedge and then to see what I can do about the ant invasion in the playground. Could you do me a favour and pop into the butcher’s for some mince?’

  The butcher’s! Mad Cap suddenly remembered the flickering light from the Fitzmarcels’ shop the night before.

  So that was Mum’s mission for her. To go shopping for mince. Way below Mad Cap’s abilities, Madgie thought. But still. She was a hero and heroes are here to help those who need it.

  But mince? That sounded suspicious. There was only one person in her family who truly liked mince. And it was not a person Madgie truly liked.

  ‘Could I get rashers instead, Mum?’

  ‘No, sweetpea, Grandma’s coming to dinner and her new teeth haven’t arrived yet.’

  Grandma. Perfect. Not exactly Madgie’s favourite person.

  As Madgie dragged her misery and crushed hopes up the driveway, she heard her mum calling out again, ‘Look on the bright side, young hero. You can keep the change!’

  Madgie grumbled to herself, wondering what was the hardest mince she could possibly get, as she walked the few yards to Mr Fitzmarcel’s butcher shop.

  There was a huge queue of ancient ladies, all come to buy their kitties’ breakfasts. Mr Fitzmarcel was new and quite a talking point with the neighbours, though Mad Cap couldn’t see why he was so interesting. He was just a boring, fat butcher. (Who signalled across the street in the middle of the night … Hmm.)

  She sighed. What a waste of Rent-a-Hero’s time! Seriously, anybody could do it and the chances of a giant hairy monster jumping onto a crowded pavement were pretty slim. Boring. Boring. BORING.

  The lady in front of Madgie in the queue turned round and gave her a sour look. It was Mrs Mudrick, the meanest old thing on Barnaby Street. She lived next door to the butcher, on the other side from Norbert. She hissed at Mad Cap for no earthly reason and turned around again.

  Madgie stuck her tongue out at her – behind her back of course
– and noticed that Mrs Mudrick seemed to have mistaken a bottle of Ribena for her shampoo. Again. She wondered why the oldies never had white hair, always purple or blue.

  As she waited, Madgie thought about the flashing light once more. Had it really come from the shop last night? Or had it just been the headlights of some car on the street? Maybe she could ask Mr Fitzmarcel, she thought, and use this silly mission to investigate a proper mystery.

  The queue moved slowly as the women commented on the weather, the butcher shouted to his apprentice and a man came to ask could he put up his posters in the window please, thanks very much.

  ‘Easy, laddie,’ Mr Fitzmarcel said, although the man had grey hair coming out of his ears and nose and could have been the butcher’s great-uncle. ‘What are the posters for?’

  The older man beamed. ‘The Barnaby Street panto!’ he said to the delight of the grannies. ‘It’s called Tap! Tap! Tap! It’s got tap dancing in it. And rabbits. And plumbers. And …’

  By now, the butcher was glaring at him and stroking his big knife menacingly.

  ‘Do I look like I want to support tap-dancing rabbits?’ he bellowed. ‘And she’s a plumber,’ he roared, pointing at a beefy woman near the back door. ‘So I’ve got enough of those, too. Now get out of my shop!’

  Mr Fitzmarcel wasn’t exactly meek, as the old ladies had discovered since he’d arrived in Barnaby Street, but this was the first time they’d seen him actually threaten anybody, and for such a simple request, too. The women muttered their disapproval behind their shopping bags and Madgie made a mental note never to ask the butcher to put up ads for Rent-a-Hero. They could do with the publicity, but Madgie didn’t want to annoy an already angry man with a big knife.

  Madgie thought she was going to die of starvation and boredom in front of the pork chops counter when, at last, it was Mrs Mudrick’s turn.

  ‘Now, laddie,’ she said pointedly, ‘I’m here for a nice bit of steak for my little Sapphire. I want the best, of course, not last week’s offal like you give every body else.’

  Madgie could see the butcher’s face turning the colour of his apron: very pale from the top of his bald head to his chin, with a scary streak of red across his nose and cheeks.

  ‘I don’t want old meat,’ Mrs Mudrick concluded.

  Mr Fitzmarcel forced himself to put the knife down and took a deep, long breath.

  Obviously too long for Mrs M’s taste, who lifted her chin and squared her shoulders before adding: ‘Hurry now laddie. Chop-chop!’

  The butcher leaned over the counter.

  ‘Chop-chop is right’ he snarled, picking up his knife again. ‘Listen to me, the only old thing in this shop is its customers! Now get out of here, you lot!’ he shouted coming into the queue and shooing people out. ‘We’re closed for the day!’

  He banged the door shut and stomped back into the depths of the shop.

  Had he come out, he would have noticed a crooked poster only inches away from his door that said:

  Madgie, on the other hand, saw it quite well, this poster, as the crowd of old women pressed her against it. There was a picture of a yellow rabbit wearing a top hat. It was so awful she could have drawn it herself.

  ‘Can’t you see you’re in my way?’ came a creaky, mean old voice.

  It was Mrs Mudrick. Madgie wasn’t anything like in her way, but she said nothing. The woman had vengeance written all over her face, so when she walked over to Mad Cap, the girl instinctively stepped back.

  ‘Listen,’ Mrs Mudrick growled, ‘I’m aware you’re a useless child and up to no good and, knowing what I know, I can only pity your poor mother. But I don’t have a choice. Since the shop opened, my Sapphire only eats meat from this …’ – here she said a rude word that was fashionable when she was born and dinosaurs roamed the plains of Ireland – ‘of a butcher.’

  She stuffed two grubby coins into Madgie’s hand.

  ‘Your mother tells me you’re looking for a job of some sort. Well, as soon as he reopens,’ she said, ‘and, you hear me, not a second later, I want you to get a nice juicy steak and bring it to my house. You’ll do this for me every day. Understood?’

  Mad Cap was gobsmacked and, come to think of it, not very pleased. Were all her missions going to involve shopping for meat? And what was that about her ‘poor mother’? Did Manic Mudrick know something Madgie didn’t?

  As Mrs Mudrick hobbled away, laughing her rollers off, Madgie thought for a second that she could hear some crazy music like in the films when the madwoman stabs people in the loo. Or was it in the shower? But it must have been her imagination. Surely?

  4

  ALIENS AND DONKEY SAUSAGE

  Life became very funny for Madgie over the next few days.

  Mum decided to clear the house of what she called ‘junk food’, from fizzy drinks to stinky cheeses, chicken pâté (no loss there) and Jaffa cakes. She kept falling asleep when Mad Cap told her about her day at school and, once, she said she was too tired to do her usual rounds of the neighbourhood gardens. Madgie was quite shocked, but not as shocked as when Mum told her to be a pet and ring Grandma and ask if she could come and stay for a while. (Strangely, when Madgie tried to ring her grandmother, she never could get through …)

  Meanwhile, Norbert was trying his best to avoid her and, since he was a genius, he was succeeding. She caught a glimpse of him at school one day when she went into the boys’ changing room. But that was by mistake and all she saw were his socks. They were furry and had a little pompom stuck on the back of each heel. Then about a dozen boys noticed her standing in the doorway and she’d had to retreat under the attack of smelly T-shirts and sweaty runners.

  As if all this wasn’t bad enough, Colm was forever accusing her of having stolen his diary and thrown it into the canal. On Tuesday, he had started a protest strike and announced he wouldn’t cook so much as banana on toast until he got his diary back.

  There was nothing Mad Cap could do about that, since Norbert still had it, but she couldn’t explain this to Colm.

  As a result of all that, Madgie spent a lot of time on her own, folding her way through Origami for Beginners. That wasn’t so bad. But as soon as she closed her book and left her paper shapes behind, her brain leaped back to the same question over and over again: How come everything’s gone so wrong?

  She felt strange and out of kilter. And that worried her.

  The worst of it all, though, was the business with Mrs Mudrick. On the first day of her new mission, as soon as Mr Fitzmarcel had reopened, Mad Cap had gone back to the butcher’s for Sapphire’s meat.

  Only it wasn’t Mr Fitzmarcel. Maybe he was still sulking at the back of the shop? Anyway, it was Mrs Fitzmarcel, the plumber lady, who was serving now, and she couldn’t tell the difference between a chop and a chicken. She had given Madgie something that looked suspiciously like black pudding, insisting it was what Sapphire usually ate.

  ‘And what is that?’ Mrs Mudrick had raged when Madgie brought her the meat. ‘Donkey sausage?’

  Mad Cap swallowed. Donkey sausage? What kind of a monster did you have to be to even think of turning donkeys into sausages? She had fled the old woman’s house as if an axe murderer was after her.

  It had taken some guts to go back there the next morning. But she had done it. She wasn’t a superhero for nothing.

  The week went by and there was still no sign of the real butcher. People were eating very strange things for their tea, not at all what they had asked for, but at least the sink in the shop wasn’t leaking any more.

  Every night, Madgie tried to make contact with Norbert from the bathroom window with her torch. He did signal back all right, but it was such a flurry of flashes that Madgie could only conclude that he was probably saying ‘eat your shoes’. This would have been typical Norbert on a grumpy day.

  She saw the strange white lights flashing from the butcher’s shop a few times too and still could make nothing of them.

  By Thursday, the batteries of her torch had
died. A whole zoo of paper animals had taken over her bedroom. And people on Barnaby Street were starting to think that Mr Fitzmarcel had been abducted by aliens. Or maybe Mrs Fitzmarcel had clobbered him with a drainpipe. (And maybe he had deserved it.)

  On Friday, Mad Cap found a note stuck with ancient Blu-tack to Mrs Mudrick’s door when she came by with Sapphire’s meat.

  Mad Cap shuddered. She hadn’t actually met Sapphire yet. She had only seen her huge, mean eyes glinting in the dark corridor behind Mrs Mudrick’s legs when Madgie had come to deliver the meat over the past few days.

  But she had heard the terrifying squeals when Sapphire took on other cats. It sounded like a banshee with a sore throat. Sapphire once had a go at Norbert’s cat, Scrum. That’s when Scrum had decided to become a cat hermit, as Norbert put it: Scrum now stayed inside, eating his way to becoming a small elephant.

  Turning the doorknob hesitantly, Madgie wondered if she was doing the right thing. Should she come back later? Should she come back armed? How would Sapphire know it was her and not some unwanted intruder? What would stop the evil beast throwing herself at Mad Cap’s throat? And what in the name of God was that foul smell?!

  The door opened slowly into a Black Pit of Doom which, as soon as Madgie found the light switch, turned into a narrow corridor with flowery wallpaper that was so old, the roses on it looked as if they had actually withered. The same pattern was repeated on the horrible lino that covered the floor, except for a bluish blob further down.

  A blob that was hissing and growling and was very possibly called Sapphire.

  Mad Cap took a deep breath. Holding the bag from the butcher’s in front of her like a shield, she started towards the cat, who seemed to be guarding one of the two doors on either side of the corridor.

  ‘Here, kitty, kitty,’ she faltered, thinking that these weren’t great Famous Last Words for a superhero.