by Dyan Sheldon
CONTENTS
The New Kid Arrives and I Fall off the Roof
I Have a Visit
The New Kid Isn’t What I Expected
My First Day as an Environmental Activist
Weirder and Weirder
I Begin to Realize that I Have No Choice
Mr Bamber Snatches Victory from the Jaws of Defeat
Sherlock Holmes in Campton
Mr Bamber and Quite a Few Other People Get a Surprise
Someday the True Story May Be Told
THE NEW KID
ARRIVES AND I FALL
OFF THE ROOF
My name is Elmo Blue. My story sort of begins on the day I fell off the roof. It sort of begins on the day I fell off the roof, because that’s the day the Bambers, who live across the road, brought the new kid home. And that’s when everything started to happen. But technically my story begins the spring before, when my mother declared war on Mr Bamber.
I suppose I’d better explain.
My mother is what she calls an “environmental activist”, which means she’s always plodding through the rain with petitions or placards, trying to stop some road being built or some bird from losing its nesting ground. Among other things, Mr Bamber is a developer. Being a developer means that he’s always trying to put in a new road or build a block of flats over some bird’s nesting ground. Mr Bamber doesn’t call my mother an “environmental activist”. Mr Bamber calls my mother a “bleeding-heart pain-in-the-bum”. When he isn’t calling her “the green menace” or “our local representative of the lunatic fringe”.
Last spring my mother discovered that Mr Bamber, who owned a great deal of land around Campton, was planning to level some nearby woods, dig up a couple of fields, move the old graveyard, drain the lake, and build a private estate with a pool and tennis courts and a golf club and stuff like that. The estate was going to be called Crosswoods Cove, even though Mr Bamber was destroying the woods and we weren’t anywhere near the sea.
My mother went mad. She marched across the road to where Mr and Mrs Bamber were just getting into their car, and she told Mr Bamber that, as Chairman of the local chapter of Keep Our Planet Green, she was going to do everything in her power to stop his plans.
That was the first time I heard Mr Bamber call my mother a “bleeding-heart pain-in-the-bum”.
“I’ve had enough of you and your kind, you bleeding-heart pain-in-the-bum!” boomed Mr Bamber. “And if you think I’m frightened of you and your petitions you’re sadly mistaken.” He laughed. “You and your pack of lunatic vegetarians are a thing of the past,” Mr Bamber informed my mother. “You’re stick-in-the-mud old fogies. Man’s about to colonize outer space, and you’re worried about a couple of trees. Wake up and smell the coffee, Mrs Blue. Your day is over. You don’t stand a chance.”
My mother said, “We’ll see about that,” and marched back home.
My parents and Mr and Mrs Bamber were never friends. They were friendly when the Bambers first moved in, but they were too different to ever be friends. The Bambers are like a couple in a television advert – you know, normal – and my parents aren’t. But they used to nod and smile when they saw one another, and I used to walk the Bambers’ pit bull, Gregory, after school and at weekends. I liked walking Gregory. He’s strong, but Mr Bamber had him specially trained to be a guard dog so he does exactly what you tell him and he never dragged me through hedges or anything like that. Besides, Mrs Bamber gave me five pounds a week to walk Gregory and always invited me inside on Saturday for my pay and a glass of Coke. Since I’m planning to be a billionaire like Bill Gates when I grow up I could do with the money. And since my mother won’t have fizzy drinks in the house (she says sugar is the enemy of the people) I liked the Coke, too. But most of all I liked being in the Bambers’ house, which wasn’t anything like our house. It was clean and neat and modern, like the Bambers themselves.
All that ended with my mother’s declaration of war, of course. After that, I wasn’t allowed near the Bambers, in case they tried to pump me for information about the Keep Our Planet Greeners. My mother said Mr Bamber wasn’t to be trusted, but I sort of thought it was me she didn’t trust. My mother always said I was a stockbroker waiting to happen. She knew that I dreamed of having parents like the Bambers – you know, ones you could take out in public. And she also knew that I secretly agreed with Mr Bamber about chopping down the woods and digging up the fields. Mr Bamber called it progress and so did I. My mother called it rape and murder.
So that was why I was sitting at my bedroom window on the evening the Bambers brought the new kid home for the first time, watching the street for their return.
My father was in his studio making another fountain no one would buy. My mother was in the living-room chairing an emergency meeting of Keep Our Planet Green. The Greeners had collected about a trillion signatures of people who were against chopping down the woods and building houses, but half of them had gone missing from Caroline Ludgate’s post van. My mother wanted me to join the meeting, but I told her I had home work to do. Mrs Ludgate was not a very together person, if you asked me. She was always late for meetings because she had to go back for things she’d forgotten so many times. It didn’t surprise me that she’d lost the petitions. Besides, the country looked green enough to me.
But mostly, I wanted to see what the new kid looked like.
I knew all about the new kid because everyone in town knew about the new kid. There was an article about Mr and Mrs Bamber in the local paper, with a picture of them holding a blurred photograph that sort of looked like a young boy. And they were even interviewed on the evening news. My mother had been on the news a couple of times – usually when she was blocking a road or screaming at someone – but this was different. Mr and Mrs Bamber were on the news for deciding, out of the goodness of their hearts, to adopt an orphan from South America. It was even more impressive than the time Mr Bamber had dinner with the Prime Minister. I read the article and I watched the interview on TV, so I knew that the new kid was twelve years old, like I am. Which I reckoned was pretty ironic. I wasn’t what you could call really popular at school. All my life I’d wanted a best friend, especially one who was normal and lived close by. If I had a best friend close by, I’d have someone to ride my bike to school with, and someone to sit with at lunch, and someone to hang around with in the afternoon. I’d never have to play Monopoly with my computer again. But now that a potentially suitable candidate for the position of my best friend was finally moving in virtually next door, I wasn’t allowed to play with him. If that’s not ironic, what is? Especially since I hadn’t declared war on the Bambers. I couldn’t see anything wrong with the Bambers. I liked their posh house and their big car, and I liked them. Not that I really knew them or anything, the way I knew my parents and my grandparents and my aunt and uncle and baby Gertie. But I liked them because they were so perfect and normal and did ordinary things. And they were always calm and pleasant, unlike some people I knew.
To tell the truth, it sometimes seemed to me that some horrible mistake had been made, and that I really belonged with the Bambers more than I belonged with the Blues. For one thing, I look more like the Bambers than the Blues. The Bambers are short and compact, not big and gangling like my family. For another, I wouldn’t have minded having parents who wear nice clothes and have important jobs and always behave properly. It would have made a pleasant change.
Leaves scuttled down the road in the rain and wind.
I wiped the window where my breath had clouded it over and leaned as far out as I could. The rain made it hard to see through my glasses, but I could see well enough to know that there was still no sign of the Bambers’ car. I sighed. What was keeping them?
This may sound st
upid, but I’d been waiting for the Bambers to bring the new kid home for months. Which just shows you how bored and lonely I must have been. I spent a lot of time imagining the new kid and what the two of us would have done together if I had normal parents and not the ones I had. I could see us playing Monopoly, and messing about with the computer, and riding our bikes while we talked about chess strategies. I even imagined that the new kid would find my jokes funny – which was something no one else did.
I was just picturing the new kid laughing over a joke I’d made when something occurred to me. What if the Bambers were late getting back because something had gone wrong with the adoption? Nothing ever went wrong for the Bambers as far as I could see, so this wasn’t anything I’d thought of before.
My glasses always slide off my nose when I frown. I pushed them back and thought of the things that could have gone wrong with the adoption. I couldn’t think of any. I mean, it wasn’t likely that the new kid had decided that he didn’t want to live with the Bambers, was it? If my parents had turned up to collect him, gibbering about endangered species and musical fountains, he might ask for a few seconds to think things over. But no normal child could see Mr and Mrs Bamber in their immaculate suits and gold jewellery and pleasant smiles and say to himself, “Well, I think I’ll stay in the orphanage in storm-ravaged South America rather than go with them.” I wouldn’t have, I can tell you that.
I wiped the rain from my glasses for the billionth time.
On the other hand, I reasoned, the Bambers might have changed their minds about the new kid. This made sense.
I stared out at the Bambers’ house. My mother said that the Bambers’ house was so perfect because they had a woman to do the housework and a man to do the garden, and (ignoring the fact that I’m the only person in the house who ever puts anything away) no children to mess everything up. The last part of my mother’s words stuck in my mind. Maybe the new kid was messy. My mother was right, most children were. I didn’t know anyone else my age who kept their room as neat and clean as I did. Even my teacher said she’d never heard of a twelve-year-old boy who alphabetized all his books and toys and labelled his drawers. Maybe the Bambers suddenly realized that they didn’t want some kid messing up their house after all.
I was so convinced that Mr and Mrs Bamber had left the new kid where he was and gone out for dinner, that I was about to abandon my post at the window when a car turned the corner at the end of the road. Excited, I banged my head as the Bambers’ black BMW pulled into their drive. I could just make out Mr Bamber behind the steering wheel, and Mrs Bamber beside him. There was a dark figure in the back seat that couldn’t be Gregory because he was much smaller, and anyway I could hear Gregory yapping from inside the house.
I leaned as far out of the window as I could, but from that distance, and with the rain and everything, the Bambers and their house and car were more or less just blurs.
The blur that was Mr Bamber got out first. He had a black raincoat over his suit. I could tell from the way his head was tilted that he had his mobile phone pressed to his ear. Mr Bamber never went anywhere without his mobile phone. Even in the interview on the news his mobile was on the table. It drove my mother mad. “Who on earth does he think is going to ring him in the middle of a television programme?” she’d screamed. I thought it was pretty cool personally. It made him seem really important. Which, of course, he was.
Mr Bamber strode up the path to the front door. Mrs Bamber got out next. She was the blur wearing the light-coloured raincoat and a matching hat. She opened the back door of the car at the same moment that Mr Bamber opened the door to the house. Gregory bounded out into the rain at the same moment that the new kid stepped on to the drive.
The new kid was not what I expected. For one thing, he wasn’t small and compact like Mr and Mrs Bamber. The new kid was tall and wide and seemed to have an awful lot of legs and arms. He was wearing a hat. It wasn’t a sombrero or anything like that, though. It was an old man’s hat.
I squeezed myself through the window for a better look. My room is on the second floor, at the top of the house. I climbed out carefully, holding on to the frame. The roof sloped a lot more than I’d thought.
Gregory was racing down the front path to greet Mrs Bamber. He was going as fast as his tiny legs could carry him, yapping away. Then, about halfway down the path, he stopped so suddenly that he fell over.
I leaned forward to get a better view.
Gregory had stopped yapping, too. He quivered in place for several seconds, his eyes on the new kid. Then, with one shrill howl of horror, he ran back into the house with his tail between his legs.
That’s when I fell off the roof. I was wearing my tiger slippers, which aren’t actually meant for outdoor wear, and my foot slipped on the wet tiles.
At the exact moment that I started sliding off the roof, the new kid turned and looked up at me. I saw him. I know it sounds weird. You’d think I was too busy breaking my neck to see anything, but I did. And then I saw him smile. It was the sort of smile the dentist gives you when they’re about to tell you that you don’t have any cavities this check-up. Even though I was about to crash to the ground, the new kid’s smile made me feel calm.
Then the next weird thing happened.
One second I was sort of hurtling through space, and the next second something wrapped itself around me. It was soft and warm like a fur glove. I drifted to the ground and landed between my mother’s favourite rhododendron and my father’s dragon fountain. I couldn’t believe my luck. If I’d broken either of those things the pair of them would have killed me.
Mrs Bamber missed the whole thing. She shut the car door and started towards the house.
“Come inside,” she called. “You don’t want to catch a cold.”
With a nod in my direction, the new kid turned and followed her into the house.
And I sat there in our front garden, wondering how I could tell that the new kid’s eyes were blue.
I HAVE A VISIT
The Keep Our Planet Green meeting was just ending when I got back into the house. The usual Greeners were in a huddle in the living-room. There were a lot of people in the area who belonged to the group, but no more than a handful of them ever showed up for meetings and stuff. There was Mrs Ludgate, the postwoman, and Mr Meadows, a local farmer, but I didn’t know any of the others by name. I tried to stay aloof. They were all talking at once, as usual, and didn’t notice me dripping in the hallway, even though I looked pretty green because of the grass stains on my shirt and trousers.
I cleared my throat loudly, but they were making so much noise themselves that they didn’t hear me.
Now that I’d recovered from the shock of falling off the roof, I was beginning to feel a little shaky. I mean, it really was a miracle that I hadn’t hurt myself. Or broken the stupid fountain or my mother’s prize bush. I reckoned I was entitled to a little sympathy for what I’d been through.
I slammed the door so hard the wall shook. No one noticed that, either.
My mother started waving her arms in the air and shouting. The cluster of leaves that was caught in her hair shook. Unlike Mrs Bamber, my mother was never neat and presentable, not even when she tried. Tonight, however, she had sunk below even her own low standards. Besides having leaves in her hair, my mother’s old jeans and faded shirt were covered with dirt, and her face was smeared with ink. Most of the time my mother looks like she wrestles hogs for a living, but on days when Keep Our Planet Green meets she looks like she wrestles hogs with leaky ballpoint pens grasped in their trotters.
“This isn’t the end,” announced my mother. “I admit losing all those petitions is a bit of a setback, but with a little extra work we can replace them in no time.”
“You’re right about ‘no time’,” said one of the Greeners. “‘No time’ is precisely what we have. The Council votes next week. They’re not going to postpone the meeting again.”
My mother had had to beg for a little more time after
Mrs Ludgate lost the petitions. Fortunately for the Greeners, one of the councillors had the flu and another was in Bali, so she was able to get an extra week.
I cleared my throat and stamped my feet. And was still ignored. You had to be a tree or a bird or something like that to get any attention from that lot.
“Well, it looks like the end to me,” agreed Caroline Ludgate. “I feel awful about losing those petitions, but we have to face the facts. There isn’t time to replace them, and without them we don’t have nearly enough signatures to make the Council listen to us.”
Alf Meadows, the farmer, nodded. “You know I hate to give up, Grace,” he said to my mother, “but I’m afraid I have to agree with Caroline. Bamber’s won. Maybe not fairly and squarely, but he has won. We might as well save our strength for the next fight.”
Silence followed this remark. Everyone looked from Alf Meadows to my mother.
I took advantage of the sudden quiet to cry “Mum!” I made my voice sort of shrill, so she’d know something bad had happened.
My mother didn’t hear me.
“Et tu, Alf?” she cried dramatically, her eyes on Mr Meadows. “Are you going to desert us now, when we need you most?”
I called, “Mum!” a little louder this time.
Alf Meadows said, “With all due respect, Grace, you don’t need me, or anyone else, now. The time has come for you to admit the truth. It’s over. Bamber gets his houses and his golf course and makes a lot of money, and we lose our woods, and probably get a new road we don’t want to boot. There’s nothing more we can do.”
I moved closer to the Greeners and gave myself a shake.
“Mum!” I cried in a small, terrified voice guaranteed to move the hardest heart. “Mum!”
It was the shake that did it. A fine spray of water settled over several of the Greeners, including their chairperson, my female parent, Grace Blue.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Elmo!” A leaf fluttered from my mother’s hair as she turned to scowl at me. “What is it now?”