Read Time-Travel Bath Bomb Online
Authors: Jo Nesbo
Time-Travel Bath Bomb
First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Simon and Schuster UK Ltd
A CBS Company
First published in the USA in 2011 by Aladdin, an imprint of Simon & Schuster
Children’s Publishing Division
Originally published in Norway in 2008 as
Doktor Proctors tidsbadekar
by H. Aschehoug & Co.
Text copyright © Jo Nesbø 2008. Published by arrangement
with the Salomonsson Agency.
English translation copyright © 2011 Tara Chace
Illustrations copyright © Mike Lowery 2011
Designed by Karin Paprocki
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of Jo Nesbø to be identified as the author and Mike Lowery as the illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st Floor, 222 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X 8HB
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-84738-654-0
eBook ISBN: 978-0-85707-713-4
Printed in the UK by CPI Cox & Wyman, Reading, Berkshire RG1 8EX
5 The Cancan, Snails and Margarine
6 Juliette Margarine’s Remarkable Story
7 Juliette Continues Her Story
8 Nilly Meets Juliette and Vice Versa
9 Doctor Proctor’s Time-Travelling Bath
The Postcard from ParisTHERE WAS TOTAL silence in the gymnasium. Nothing was making a sound – not the twelve sets of brown wooden climbing bars along the walls, not the old pommel horse covered in cracked leather or the eight grey well-worn ropes hanging motionless from the ceiling or the sixteen boys and girls who made up the Dølgen School Marching Band and who were now all staring at Conductor Madsen.
“Ready . . .” Mr Madsen called out. He raised his baton and squinted at them through his dark sunglasses. Mr Madsen, with dread in his eyes, searched hopefully for Nilly. He knew the other kids in the band teased the red-headed trumpet player because he was so tiny, which of course he was. But, unlike the other band members, the little guy had some musical ability. Maybe he could turn things around today. Since Mr Madsen didn’t see Nilly, he looked over at the only friend Nilly had – Lisa, who played the clarinet. She was the only one in the band who always practised at home. Maybe there was hope after all.
“Set . . .”
Everyone put their instruments to their lips. It was so quiet that the sounds of the warm October afternoon outside could be heard: birds singing, a lawn mower humming and the laughter of little, snotty-nosed kids playing. But inside the gym it was dark. And it was going to get even darker.
“Go!” Mr Madsen yelled, swinging his baton in a majestic arc.
At first nothing happened, and still the only things you could hear were birds singing, lawn-mowing and snotty-nosed kids laughing. Then a trumpet gave a wobbly bleat, a clarinet squeaked timidly and there was a tentative thump on a bass drum. An unexpected beat on a snare drum made a French horn splutter out a belching sound, and in the back of the band something big emitted a snort that made Lisa think of a blue whale that had just surfaced after a week underwater. But all that blowing still hadn’t produced an actual note, and Mr Madsen’s face was already starting to turn that colour red that warned he was about to lose his temper.
“Two-three!” Mr Madsen screamed, swinging his baton as if it were a whip and the band members were the slave crew manning the oars of a Roman galley. “Well, play for Heaven’s sake! This is supposed to be the Marseillaise, the French national anthem! Give it some dignity!”
But there was no dignity in this. The faces in front of Mr Madsen stared stiffly at the music on the stands in front of them or their eyes were squeezed shut, as if they were sitting on the toilet, straining.
Mr Madsen gave up and dropped his arms just as the tuba finally emitted a sound – a deep, forlorn mooing sound.
“Stop, stop!” Mr Madsen yelled, and then waited until the tuba ran out of air again. “If anyone from France had just heard you guys, they would have beheaded you first and then burned you at the stake. Let’s show some respect for the Marseillaise!”
As Mr Madsen continued to chew them out, Lisa leaned over to the seat next to her and whispered, “I brought that postcard from Doctor Proctor. There’s something weird about it.”
The voice that answered her came from behind a beaten-up trumpet. “If it’s like the last one, sounds like a normal postcard if you ask me. ‘Dear Lisa and Nilly, Greetings from Paris. Sincerely, Doctor Proctor.’ Isn’t that pretty much what you said he wrote?”
“Well, yeah, but . . .”
“The only thing that’s
not
normal about it is that a person who is as weird and eccentric as Doctor Proctor would write such a normal postcard.”
They were interrupted by Mr Madsen’s thunderous voice. “Nilly? Is that you? Are you down there?”
A voice replied from behind the battered trumpet, “Aye aye, Sergeant!”
“Get up so we can see you, Nilly!”
“Yes, sir, oh great commander of delightful music and all the notes of the universe!”
And a little red-headed boy with big freckles and a broad grin jumped up from behind the music stand, onto the chair. Actually, he wasn’t just small, he was tiny. And his hair wasn’t just red, it was bright red. And his grin wasn’t just broad, it practically split his little head in two. And his freckles weren’t just big, they were . . . well, all right, they were just big.
“Play the Marseillaise for us, Nilly!” Mr Madsen growled. “The way it’s supposed to be played.”
“By your command, great mother of all conductors and king of all military band leaders north of the Sahara and east of the—”
“Stop wasting our time and start playing!”
So Nilly started playing. A warm, resounding melody welled up under the roof of the gymnasium and out of the window on this warm autumn afternoon. When they heard the beautiful music, the birds fell silent, feeling ashamed of their own songs. At least that’s what Lisa was thinking as she sat there listening to her tiny neighbour and very best friend playing his grandfather’s old trumpet. Lisa liked her clarinet, but somehow there was something special about the trumpet. And it wasn’t that hard to play, either. Nilly had taught her to play one song on the trumpet, the Norwegian national anthem. Of course, she didn’t play it as well as Nilly, but secretly she dreamed that one day she would play
their
national anthem in front of a big audience. Imagine it! But imagining is imagining and dreaming is just dreaming.