Fizzlebert Stump (14 page)

When a story stops, just at the most exciting bit and you have to wait (for any length of time) before you find out what happens, it’s called a ‘cliff-hanger’. Back in the old days, not just before the internet, but before people had televisions at home even, kids used to go to the cinema on a Saturday morning and they’d watch ‘serial adventures’. These would always stop at the most exciting moment, usually when the hero was dangling by his fingertips off a cliff and there was no chance of escape or rescue, and all the kids would be sure to spend their penny (or however much the cinema cost back then) the following week, just to find out what happens. And thus was born ‘the cliff-hanger’. (It was catchier than the ‘tied-to-the-train-tracks-just-as-the-3.47-to-Dodge-City-is-due-to-come-round-the-corner-er’ which was the other name they tried.)

Which is a long way of saying, do read Chapter Ten to find out what happens to Fizz and Kevin. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Chapter Ten

in which an escape is scuppered and in which some home truths come to light

Even as Kevin and Fizz wriggled and argued and pleaded with their captors they found themselves being marched back to the Stinkthrottles’ house. As far as Frank and Tommy (the two builders who’d caught them) were concerned, there was a poor little old lady up the way shouting that she’d been robbed, and here were two lads, with torn and grubby clothes, and muck all over their hands and faces, running away. It was pretty obvious what was going on. (I don’t think you can blame the builders.)

‘But we didn’t do anything,’ Fizz shouted, desperately trying to get free from the hand that gripped his shirt. ‘She’s mad! You’ve got to believe us! You’ve got to help us!’

‘He’s right,’ Kevin added. ‘She locked us up. She’s bonkers! Don’t take us back!’

When Mrs Stinkthrottle saw the two men coming down the street with the boys, she clapped her hands and did a wrinkled little dance in delight.

‘Oh, thank you!’ she said. ‘Thank you, you two lovely young men.’

‘That’s alright, Mrs,’ Frank said. ‘Maybe you can tell us what’s going on. What have these lads taken? Do you know these boys? Do you want us to call the cops?’

(Frank was pulling his mobile phone out of his trouser pocket.)

‘They’re my grandsons!’ she lied, leaning back on the gate to look through her glasses at the builder. ‘My grandsons. And they’re rotten and lazy, but I don’t think we need involve the police, not yet.’

Kevin wriggled and shouted, ‘That’s not true. We don’t know this old woman. She’s mad.’

‘Now, now,’ said Tommy, who was holding him tight by the shoulder. ‘That’s no way to talk to your gran. There’s no need to be rude. Just be quiet for a bit.’

‘But she’s not – !’

‘They were cleaning for me,’ she interrupted. ‘Cleaning my house, and then they stole . . .
things
. And then they ran away. Selfish, ungrateful boys. Just give them back to me. I can deal with them from here.’

‘What did they steal?’ Frank asked her, then he turned to Fizz. ‘You’d better give her back whatever you took. Both of you.’

‘We didn’t take anything,’ Fizz said. ‘She’s been holding us prisoner. She made us into slaves. I had to scrub her bathroom. I’ve never met her before today. I don’t know her. You’ve got to believe me. You’ve got to let us go.’

‘What an imagination it has,’ Mrs Stinkthrottle said. ‘Just give it back to us. Poor little Johnnie. His brain must be addled. Put it back in our house and we’ll deal with it.’

By now the pungent smell that oozed out of the house had become impossible for even the politest builder (Frank was slightly more polite than Tommy) to ignore. The front door was wide open and a fishy, mouldy stink was beginning to fill the street.

‘That’s a bit of a pong, isn’t it?’ Tommy said, holding his nose.

‘A pong?’ Mrs Stinkthrottle repeated.

‘Yeah. Coming from your hall. Have you spilt something in there?’

‘Well, that’s what the boys, my grandsons, that’s what they were supposed to be doing, before they went
snooping
and
meddling
and
thieving
. They were supposed to be doing a tiny spot of cleaning for their poor old granny. I can’t reach the high bits anymore,’ she said, acting all weak and meek.

‘Well then,’ said Tommy, ‘you two had better get on with it.’

The boys looked at each other. They didn’t know what to do. All their protests had fallen on deaf ears and now they were going to be forced back into the house. If they tried to run they’d just get caught again. And neither wanted to think what Mrs Stinkthrottle would be like when that front door closed once more. She’d be livid, angry and extremely dangerous.

Frank let go of Fizz, and handed him over to the old woman.

She clutched onto his arm with her wizened claw of a hand and hissed into his ear, just loud enough so everyone heard, ‘Welcome back, my little Johnnie, my little grandson. I’ve missed you so.’

But just as she turned and pushed him up the path towards the house, a deep thundering roaring noise burst out of nowhere.

Well, I say it burst out of nowhere, but that’s only because nobody had been looking up the street: they’d all been focussed on the foul old lady and her house. But had they looked behind them they would have noticed, running down the road, a great golden shape, something like a giant dog, with a shaggy mane of hair round its shoulders.

It was, of course, Charles the circus lion, and he bounced through the little crowd of builders and boys and leapt on the old woman, pinning her to the ground.

Frank and Tommy screamed and clutched at each other and Kevin leapt out of the lion’s way, landing on the pavement with a bump.

When he got up he was horrified to see that the lion had Mrs Stinkthrottle’s head in his mouth. It was biting her and chewing her and tossing her about. There were disgusting wet slurping noises from the lion’s mouth and deep rumbles from inside its throat. Mrs Stinkthrottle’s muffled screams could hardly be heard at all. She was scratching at the beast with her dirty fingernails and kicking around with her spindly legs, but she really
was
an old woman and quite weak and so the lion hardly noticed.

Fizz was the only one who had any common sense at all, and he walked up and started stroking the lion on his neck, behind the ear like he knew he liked, and he said, ‘Charlie, you’d best put her down now. She’s ever so old and you might break her.’

Charles stopped banging her on the path and looked up at Fizz with big, questioning eyes, as if to say, ‘Are you sure?’

Fizz looked back at the lion with a stern expression on his face and said, ‘Drop!’ in a firm sudden voice, like Captain Fox-Dingle used.

Grudgingly Charles lifted his head up, shut his eyes, sucked in his cheeks and spat the old woman out onto the pavement in one mighty expectoration. (Now, that’s a brilliantly big word that means ‘spitting something out’. I think it’s my favourite word in the whole book.) She collapsed to the ground with a wet slapping thunk, her arms still wiggling and her claw-tipped fingers twitching frantically.

She lay stunned and silent on the pavement with lion saliva dribbling off her face. Her makeup was smeared all round, making her look like a felt tip drawing that’s been held under a tap so all the colours run. The dye had been drained from her hair, so that instead of being blue it was now just a plain dull grey (and a ragged mess too). Her glasses were bent and crooked on the tip of her nose and she was muttering under her breath.

The two builders were amazed and shocked.

‘What? How?’ they said, watching Fizz talk to the lion. They’d expected Mrs Stinkthrottle to have been killed. (They’d never seen anyone eaten by a lion before, and thought that it should have been a more deadly experience. As indeed it usually is, when rubber teeth aren’t involved.) ‘She’s alright? How?’

‘It’s only Charles,’ Fizz said to them. ‘He’s got false teeth, but don’t tell anyone. He’s shy about it.’

‘Charles?’ said Frank, not quite understanding what was happening.

‘Hilda?’ said a voice from the doorway.

Mr Stinkthrottle had wandered slowly through the house (after pocketing his prized pocket-watch in the garden) until he’d reached the open front door. He had arrived just as Charles had let go of his wife.

‘Hilda? What are you doing down there?’ He looked at the lion. ‘Is that a cat? I didn’t think you liked cats, dear?’

As this was happening (the Stinkthrottles being reunited, the builders having the lion explained to them and so on) . . . As all this went on there was a commotion from further up the road.

‘It’s the circus,’ Kevin shouted, pointing towards the strange crowd of strange-looking people. ‘The circus is coming, the circus is coming!’

And indeed it was, the whole crowd of them: Mr and Mrs Stump, Dr Surprise, Captain Fox-Dingle and the pair of riggers. And there at the front, leading them all, was the flolloping shape of Fish, the sea lion.

When we left them outside the library, they were all trying to think of a plan. Mr Stump was all for finding the local police station to get assistance, but Mrs Stump was arguing that would take too long and that they should split up and start searching the nearby streets. Captain Fox-Dingle was explaining to Charles what was going on, hoping the lion might have an idea. But before anyone could decide who should begin looking where, Fish began sniffing the pavement, then sniffing the air, and then he wandered off snuffling along the street.

And after he had been wandering for a minute, he began flolloping, which is to a sea lion what galloping is to a horse: that is to say, top speed.

‘He’s got a scent,’ Mr Stump had shouted, running after him.

He meant that Fish had smelt something, and was following where it led, and Mr Stump
hoped
it was the smell of Fizzlebert.

The whole crowd, including Captain Fox-Dingle and Charles, chased along behind (top flolloping speed for a sea lion (out of water) is just about jogging pace for a human), and after only ten minutes they turned the corner into the Stinkthrottles’ road.

At that point Charles had heard Fizz’s voice, had heard all the commotion going on outside the house, and had recognised his friend. He’d begun to run (and running pace for a lion is a lot faster than you or I or a sea lion could run (or flollop)) and Captain Fox-Dingle was left holding the lead that Charles had broken free of.