‘She’s not my –’ Fizz began, but Cedric spat another crescent of fingernail at the ground, spun on his fancy heel and strode off.
‘I’m sorry I missed your friend,’ Apology said, coming over. ‘He looked very “cool”. And I’m sorry the mice aren’t being very cooperative today. I don’t think it’s going to work out, Fizzlebert, my boy. I’m so sorry but I don’t think you’re cut out for mouse-taming. You’ve either got it or you don’t. I’m sorry.’
At dinner that evening the boys reconvened and spotted Dr Surprise queuing for his food. They picked their trays up and joined the queue just behind him.
‘Did you talk to the farmer?’ Fizz asked.
The Doctor jumped.
‘Oh, Fizzlebert,’ he said, straightening his top hat and fixing his monocle back in place. ‘I didn’t see you there.’
‘Sorry, Doctor,’ Fizz apologised (spending an hour with Cheesemutter had left its mark).
‘As it happens I did manage to find a minute with Mr Gomez.’
‘And . . . ?’
‘I’m sorry to say, Wystan, dear boy, that Mr and Mrs X aren’t your parents. They arrived several years ago from France. Mr Gomez said, they don’t have amnesia, they’re just foreign, that’s why they seem a bit odd. See, it’s all perfectly clear. I’m sorry, Wystan.’
‘But that can’t be true,’ Wystan said loudly, banging his tray on the serving table. ‘They’re me mum and dad. I know it. I’m sure of it. I knew they weren’t dead.’
‘Ah, Hope,’ said the Doctor, with a capital H. He lifted his hat and slipped a stick of celery underneath it. ‘It is the only thing that keeps the world going. That and Hypnotism.’
‘Hmph,’ said Wystan, flapping his beard.
‘Oh, but there was one good thing,’ Dr Surprise said, his monocle twinkling with delight, as he looked both ways to make sure no one but the boys was listening. ‘The lovely farmer told me, in strictest confidence mind you, that Flopples and I had impressed him very much with the act. Although the actual line-up won’t be announced until Saturday, he hinted that there may well be a certain rabbit and her doctor on the bill.’ He looked around again, straightened his moustache and tapped the side of his nose with a lettuce leaf. ‘Hush-hush,’ he said. ‘Not a word, yes?’
The boys nodded and the Doctor went and sat with the Ringmaster.
Wystan and Fizz went and sat by themselves at a different table.
‘Well, that worked out great, Fizz. Thanks for nothing,’ Wystan muttered, sarcastically.
‘I’m sorry,’ Fizz said. ‘But it might’ve worked. It was worth trying. Mr Gomez was more likely to listen to Dr Surprise than us, wasn’t he?’
‘So, now what?’
‘I don’t believe Gomez’s story. Do you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Madame Plume de Matant showed me a picture of some French people in a book once and they didn’t look like that.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘I suppose we’re just going to have to try to find them and jog their memories ourselves. It’s no use getting anyone else involved. If Dr Surprise believes Gomez, then so will the rest of the adults. You know what they’re like. They never believe us right until the end.’
Wystan tugged his beard in agreement.
‘But there must be loads of ways to get people to remember, if we can get to them. It’s forever happening in books.’ Fizz tried to think of some of the ways people got their memories back in some of the things he’d read over the years. ‘I think we could give them a shock, or a bang on the head, or show them lots of pictures, or just talk to them, maybe let them stroke your beard, or sing them a song that they used to sing to you, or you could make them little cakes that they used to love . . . there are all sorts of ways to reawaken memories. Until we’ve tried them all there’s no giving up, okay?’
It was good to have something to concentrate on. A plan to come up with. It stopped him thinking about his still not having an act, or about Cedric’s threats.
‘I suppose,’ Wystan said, agreeing grumpily with Fizz’s list.
‘Brilliant,’ said Fizz. ‘After dinner, get some dark clothes, your photograph, and be ready for a trip to the farmhouse.’
Again, Wystan had no choice but to agree. When Fizz was in this sort of mood nothing you said would get in his way. And Fizz was determined to be in this mood because the more he thought about Wystan’s problem the less his brain dwelt on his own dreadful dilemma.
Distraction, as the old saying that I just made up has it, is as good as a cure.
izzlebert Stump, hang on!’ Alice said, getting in Fizz’s way.
Fizz and Wystan were creeping along the hedgerow that divided their circus’s field from the next field along (which contained the Franklin, Franklin, Franklin & Daughter’s circus’s caravans). They were heading to the area in the middle of the fields where Mr Gomez’s farmhouse stood.
‘Hi, Alice,’ said Fizz. He looked at Wystan and shrugged a ‘Girls, what can you do?’ sort of shrug.
‘Where you off to?’ she asked.
Fizz wasn’t sure if he should say. His plan went as far as going to the farmhouse and seeing if they could find Wystan’s parents and avoid Mr Gomez. Exactly how they’d do that he didn’t know. Whatever happened he had a sneaking suspicion they’d have to find a way inside the farmhouse. Without asking. And that was just the sort of thing some people saw as being wrong. He didn’t want Alice to come tagging along if they were going to get in trouble.
‘Find me mum and dad, again,’ Wystan said, making Fizz’s decision for him.
‘Oh great!’ Alice said, with what seemed to be genuine enthusiasm. ‘Where are we going to look?’
‘Up at the farmhouse. That’s where we reckon they’re going to be. That’s where they live, you see.’
‘Yeah, but we’ve got to watch out for Gomez,’ Wystan added, pulling a beetle from his beard and flicking it into the hedgerow.
Fizz told Alice what Dr Surprise had said that Mr Gomez had told him about Mr and Mrs X’s origins (Mr and Mrs X being the parentally moustachioed duo, obviously).
‘You’re in luck,’ she said. ‘He’s having dinner with our Ringmaster. That’s where my mum and dad are. Schmoozing with the farmer, hoping a good feed will make him like their acts more.’
‘Brilliant,’ Fizz said. ‘But we’d best get on, in and out before he finishes. Come on.’
And so they scuttled along by the hedge, whistling inconspicuously and trying to look casual.
I don’t want you to think it was just Alice Crudge’s Ringmaster that Mr Gomez was having dinner with. That would have been unfair. It was his habit, each year, to have a big dinner with each of the Ringmasters, all six, but not all on the same night because although he was a very large, round, corpulent (you could even say fat, after all he wouldn’t be able to chase you very fast or very far if you did) man, he didn’t want to look greedy.
Usually the Ringmasters would tell their Cooks to make the finest, biggest, most luxurious slap-up feast they could find in their circus chef’s cookbook, and Mr Gomez rather liked it when that happened. But sometimes a Ringmaster who had done a bit of extra homework, and found out that Mr Gomez farmed those odd-shaped vegetables that neither you nor I nor the farmer himself knew the name of, would get their Cooks to do something special. They would roast or they would boil or they would simmer or fricassee or mash or stuff or toast one of Mr Gomez’s vegetables, thinking that he would appreciate the thought.
Unfortunately for them Mr Gomez hated the vegetables in question. He spent eleven months of the year looking forward to the day the circuses would arrive and trying his hardest to ignore the vegetables that provided his livelihood. Like most people he thought they tasted bland, smelt weird and made an unpleasant noise when chewed. The last thing he wanted was to be reminded of them by a Ringmaster. That wasn’t what Ringmasters were for, they were for serving up funny, exciting, unusual, magical, wonderful acts, shows and eve
nts. Not vegetables.
He had never been happier than on the day the hot air balloon had crashed into his farmhouse. (He wasn’t happy right away, of course, because not only had a hot air balloon crashed into his farmhouse, but it was also raining. But when he’d realised exactly what it was that the balloon had delivered to him, the sun began to shine (metaphorically that is, since it rained for the rest of the morning and well into the afternoon).)
He had run downstairs in his pyjamas and out into the yard to see what damage had been done. It had soon become clear that the balloon’s basket had bounced off the farmhouse without breaking so much as a window and had come to a stop in an old set of stables. The stables hadn’t been used since Mr Gomez’s father’s day, when they had a couple of horses to pull the plough, but since he had bought a tractor thirty-one years ago all that lived in the stables were mice (not dogs).
Searching through the stable he had found two people spilt out of the basket on to the floor. They had had flying hats and goggles and moustaches and amnesia. (Alice had been right.) They had had no idea where they were or who they were. When Mr Gomez had asked them their names they had asked him what names were. When he had asked them what they did, they had asked him what did he mean?
Mr Gomez didn’t become a rotten example of a human being right away. Not right away. His first thought had been to call a doctor, to get these people taken off his hands. After all, who would want a couple of injured people clogging up their farmhouse with broken legs and bandages and balloon-smell? But it had soon become clear that there were no broken limbs, just some bruises, bumps and lumps.
The three of them had sat at his kitchen table that lunchtime, sharing a pot of tea, and listening to the rain when he’d asked three questions that would change his life.
‘Do either of you know anything about farming? About vegetables? Do you know what this is called?’ (He’d put one of his odd-shaped vegetables on the table.)
‘No. No. No,’ his ballooning guests had said.
‘Smashing,’ Mr Gomez had said, rubbing his hands together. He tried three more questions. ‘Do either of you have somewhere better to be? Do you have anyone waiting for you out there beyond the storm? Is anyone going to be looking for you?’
‘No. No. No,’ they’d said (although that hadn’t really meant anything, since they had amnesia and whether someone is looking for you or not doesn’t change whether you believe, remember or hope they are looking for you or not).
And in fact the police had looked for their balloon, for weeks and weeks, but the storm had been so fierce and had blown them so far off course that they’d never thought to search Mr Gomez’s farm.
And so, for years now, Mr Gomez had sat in the farmhouse eating aubergines and cucumbers and potatoes and broccoli and carrots and lots of other things he knew the name of and liked the taste of, while his two house guests, knowing no better, remembering nothing else, and trusting the only person they thought they knew, went out every day and worked his fields. Mr X, as Mr Gomez had named the man with the moustache, enjoyed driving the tractor and Mrs X, as Mr Gomez had named the woman with the moustache, enjoyed packing the odd-shaped vegetables into boxes to be sent to the supermarkets. Neither of them much enjoyed the sowing and reaping and weeding and watering and fertilizing and so on, but they didn’t have anywhere else to be and didn’t know any better.
*
So now you know the truth of what’s going on, we should go back to Fizz and the others as they sneak through the farmyard, past the barn where the hot air balloon is still packed away and past the stable where Wystan’s parents first crash-landed.
Fizzlebert Stump had once broken into an aquarium and had once searched a caravan while its owners were away and he’d once escaped from a house like a (horribly untidy) prison. He wondered if any of those experiences would come in handy for finding their way into the farmhouse.
They peered over the edge of an old stone horse trough and looked at the building. It was a fairly large building with half a dozen bedrooms, most of which were unoccupied, Mr Gomez being the last of his line. It would take them a while to search it. They might have to split up. But before any of that they needed to get in.
‘We could see if they’ve left a window open somewhere, maybe upstairs. I think I saw a ladder over there.’ (Fizz pointed into the open-fronted stable they’d just crept past.) ‘Or we could throw some stones at the roof and then when they come out to see what the noise is we could sneak in. Or . . . Alice?’
‘Yes?’
‘How strong are you?’
‘Pretty.’
‘Yes, I know, but how strong are you?’
(It was only after Fizz said the words that he realised that he’d misunderstood her first answer. He hoped no one noticed. He didn’t want her thinking he was odd.)
‘Very, I think,’ she said, using a more helpful word.
‘Could you push the door in? I mean even if it’s locked?’
‘I expect so. I once lifted the caravan when one of Dad’s plates rolled underneath it. He didn’t half get in a tizz about it. He doesn’t approve. It’s unladylike, he says. That’s cobblers, I say.’
‘Flower Arranging,’ muttered Wystan, beardily.
‘Yes,’ she said, turning away. ‘It’s embarrassing. It’s not an act, is it? Who wants to see live flower arranging? Even when we send the finished arrangement through a fiery hoop it’s not exactly edge of your seat stuff. “Oh, look! Her gladioli’s been singed.” That’s about as exciting as it gets.’
‘Well, maybe you could do it on horseback or something,’ Fizz said, trying to lighten the mood of the moment.
‘Our horses have hay fever,’ Alice said.
‘That’s ironic,’ Fizz said. When no one laughed he went on, ‘Because horses eat hay.’
No one laughed again.
‘What I really want to do,’ she went on, ‘is lift things up. I mean, that’s a real act, isn’t it? Big things! Huge things! That’s a challenge, that’s a spectacle, that’s a proper circus act. But Dad says it’s not interesting enough. He says there are hundreds of Strongmen and Strongwomen out there. Flower Arranging, he says, will get us noticed, make us stand out, and that’s what he wants. If we got a write-up in the Newsletter, some other circus might offer us a contract. It’s pretty rubbish being with Neil Coward’s Cicrus. We all know what people say about it – that it’s where acts end up when they’ve run out of steam. Well, I’m young, I’m fresh, I’ve got a chance to escape. Anyway, that’s what Dad says. I just wish he’d let me lift something up.’
‘My dad’s a Strongman,’ Fizz said, not exactly changing the subject, but distracting it from the quite glum lecture about the Cicrus.
‘I know,’ Alice said, perking up. ‘I’ve got a poster of him on my bedroom wall. I think he’s brilliant. I’ve memorised the list of all the things he lifted last year. It was in the BBC Newsletter New Year Edition. He’s my hero.’
That was weird, Fizz thought. He liked his dad, for sure. He thought his dad’s act was good, but . . . it wasn’t so good that a girl like Alice should have memorised the list of things he picked up. Was it? Did Fizz feel jealous? Was that what this feeling was? Would he have preferred it if she’d memorised the list of things he’d put his head in instead? (To be fair she probably had memorised that list because it contained one thing, a very toothy and impressive thing to be sure, but still, just one.)
‘Fizz,’ Wystan said, either ruining or saving the moment. ‘Look, there’s a light on in the kitchen, I think they’re having their dinner. Why don’t we go knock on the back door?’
‘Oh, alright then,’ Fizz said. ‘After you.’
‘Hello?’ said the moustachioed man called Mr X who was almost certainly Wystan’s father.
‘Hi, can we come in?’ Wystan asked.
‘Well, we were just having our dinner.’
‘It’s important,’ Fizz said over Wystan’s shoulder.
‘Who is it, Mr X?’ called a l
ady’s voice from inside.
‘Some short people,’ Mr X replied. ‘They want to come in.’
‘Will they be long?’
‘No, they’re quite short.’
‘Your potatoes are getting cold.’
‘I’ve got potatoes?’ he said, turning to look back into the kitchen.
‘Quick!’ Fizz said, pushing Wystan through the doorway.
Alice and Fizz followed and when Mr X turned round to look back into the farmyard to continue his conversation he was faced with a cool evening, empty of children and beginning to cloud over. The wind was getting up in the east and it looked like it might rain soon.
‘Wind’s up. Fifteen, maybe seventeen knots, north-north-east,’ he said, shutting the back door.
‘What’s that?’ Mrs X said.
‘What’s what?’
As Mr X turned he jumped in surprise (only a little, he was a full-grown man with an impressive moustache after all; but still, there was a noticeable movement).
‘Who are you?’ he said to the kitchenful of children.
‘They just appeared, dear,’ Mrs X said. ‘Short people all over the place. I wondered if they were with you.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he replied.
‘We’ve come to talk to you,’ Fizz said. ‘We want to ask you some questions.’
‘Oh, questions,’ Mrs X said. ‘Are you from the newspaper?’
Before Fizz could say, ‘No,’ Alice said, ‘Yes.’ She went on, ‘We’re investigating a story about some missing balloonists.’
‘What are they?’
‘You know,’ said Mr X. ‘We saw one this afternoon. Twisting. Turning. Folding. He made a . . . Oh, what was it?’
‘A snake?’ asked Mrs X.
‘No. A worm,’ said Mr X.
‘I think that’s the wrong sort of balloonist,’ Alice said. ‘The ones we’re looking for flew balloons. Hot air balloons.’
‘In the sky?’ said Mrs X, looking at the ceiling as if it weren’t there.
Fizzlebert Stump and the Girl Who Lifted Quite Heavy Things Page 5