Fizzlebert Stump (6 page)

‘No,’ he said, surprised that she hadn’t been able to tell.

She put her pen down and laid her plump ink-stained hands either side of the sheet of paper.

‘In that case,’ she said, ‘your parents will need to fill in the form. Are they around?’

Fizz mumbled something that might’ve been a ‘no’ but which also might’ve been a ‘yes’. He knew they weren’t around, but he didn’t want to admit it to her.

He’d had his heart set on this book, and now he couldn’t have it. He wanted to bang it down on the desk and stomp out, but he stopped himself from making a scene. His eyes began to fill with tears and he felt angry with himself for almost beginning to sort of cry. It was only a book after all.

(I’m sure you know what it’s like when you’ve been really looking forward to something that, at the last minute, doesn’t happen. Even if it’s no one’s fault you can still feel rotten about it inside. You feel like you want to cry or shout or throw a hissy fit, even though you know no one’s to blame and no one’s been mean to you. Well, Fizz felt something like that.)

He left the book on the desk and walked out the library door.

It opened for him with a grumbling trundle, and with his head down and his mind full of unfair thoughts he forgot to say ‘thank you’.

He would have to go back to the circus now.

His parents were awfully busy rehearsing and practising their shows, and when they weren’t doing that they were usually helping someone else with their rehearsals, or they were doing odd jobs round the circus. Everyone mucked in on cleaning up, for example, and the Big Top had to look good before the show.

Even if he did ask them they probably wouldn’t have time to come all the way here to sign the forms. And if he asked them to, he’d have to confess that he’d come to the library without their permission in the first place, and he’d definitely get in trouble for that. But he wouldn’t get in trouble if they didn’t know he’d gone and the only way they wouldn’t know was if he didn’t tell them. But if he didn’t tell them, then he’d never get to join the library.

Fizzlebert was caught in something of a pickle. He didn’t know what to do for the best.

Wiping away his tiny tears he grudgingly began down the road toward the trees, through which the path led back to the park. There wasn’t a lot else he could do.

But as he started off a voice behind him called, ‘Little boy, do wait a moment, won’t you?’

He turned round and there was a little old lady stood outside the library waving at him. Beside her was a gentleman he assumed was her husband. They were both very short, not much taller than he was.

The old woman walked towards him.

‘We couldn’t help but overhear what you were saying to the lady in there,’ (she gestured behind her towards the library) ‘and we wondered if we might be able to help. You did look sad.’

And it’s there that this chapter stops.

Who are these old people? How might they be able to help? What will Fizz do next?

These questions are the sort of things an author dangles at the end of a chapter in the hope that they will make you want to read the next one, in order to find out the answers. It’s an old trick.

I do hope it still works.

Chapter Five

in which two old people are met and in which a kindly favour is done

So, you’ve come back? That’s good. This is one of the more dramatic chapters in the book. It’s quite a good one. I think you’ll like it.

If you remember Fizz was outside the library after having just found out that he couldn’t join up (and borrow brilliant books) unless he came back with his parents. And he couldn’t ask his parents to sign him up because he hadn’t told them he was going to the library. So he had just resigned himself to a future leading a library-less life.

However, as he was about to walk away an old lady called out to him and offered to help. This is where we pick up the story.

‘Little boy,’ the old lady said, ‘Arthur and me, we can’t bear to see such a little angel as you, you poor little thing, wander away unhappy. You look so down, so sad, so lost. Might we be able to help, do a good deed for you?’

Fizzlebert wondered what she meant.

She looked about the same age as his grandmother. (In case you were wondering, his gran had retired from circus life and now lived in a caravan park by the seaside (which is why she’s not in this book).) This old lady had a back curved a bit like an upside down L (or a right way up 7), and if she were straightened out she’d have been much taller than Fizz was. As things were she was about the same height. Her face was wrinkly at the edges and her mouth was small and puckered and painted pink. Her eyes stared out from the middle of carefully applied green smudges and her cheeks were soft and red and fuzzy like peach skins. Sprigs of blue hair poked out from underneath a little hat shaped like a round chocolate box. It was a shade of purple which clashed horribly with her hair and face. Her coat and shoes were the same colour. She squinted at him from behind the smallest pair of glasses Fizz had ever seen. They were clipped to the end of her pointy nose and she had to lean her head back and peer down the length of her long face if she wanted to look at him properly.

Her husband was shorter than she was. Or rather he would have been if she’d stood up straight. With her back bent like it was, they were about the same height. He had two enormous ears (one on either side of his head) which whistled from time to time as his hearing aids played up. (There’s no way Fizz could possibly have known this next fact, but I’m going to tell you it anyway, just because I think it’s an interesting thing to know: when the old man held his head at a certain angle his hearing aids picked up the horse racing on the radio. The precise angle at which this happened made him look like he was thinking deeply, and because he usually closed his eyes in order to picture the race better, people often mistook him for someone who was frightfully intelligent and full of deep thoughts. For the most part, though, he wasn’t either of those things. He just liked horses.)

As well as huge ears, the old man had a great big nose too (right in the middle of his face, unsurprisingly). This didn’t whistle. Underneath his nose was a bushy moustache which drooped down over his mouth. Where the moustache met his nose it was hard to tell which hairs belonged to the moustache itself and which ones snaked down out of his nostrils. They all seemed to twine together as one furry mass, and from time to time they tickled him so much that he sneezed, and a sneeze so close to a moustache as bushy as that (especially if the sneezer had a cold at the time) is not something you want to think about. Really, don’t think about it. Really.

Fizzlebert thought he glimpsed a bit of toast dangling in a web of hair by the corner of his mouth (not a whole slice of toast, of course, just a large crumb), but he couldn’t be sure. He tried his hardest not to stare. (Fizz was a polite boy, when he remembered.)

The old man was wearing a scarf tucked into a brown overcoat, even though it was a warm summer day. On the top of his head, above a few wispy strands of grey hair, was a battered little trilby (which is a sort of hat). It seemed to be too small for his head (definitely too small for those ears) and he was forever reaching up to make sure it was still on.

These were the two people Fizz faced.

‘You can help me?’ he said.

‘Maybe,’ the woman replied.

‘How?’

‘You need someone to vouch for you.’

Fizz didn’t know what ‘vouch for’ meant, so he said, ‘Do I?’

‘Yes! You need someone to say you are who you say you are. I thought I heard Miss Toad say you needed your parents to help you join the library. Is that right?’

‘Yes,’ Fizz said.

‘Well, I suppose you’re just off to find them now, aren’t you?’

‘Um, well, no . . . they’re . . .’

‘What?’

‘Too busy,’ Fizz said. Telling part of the truth.

The old woman looked at him closely through her vertiginously balanced spectacles for a moment.

‘That’s not all, is it?’ she asked. ‘You can tell me . . .’

When Fizz said nothing (he didn’t know what to say), she stepped closer and pulled another pair of glasses out of her handbag. These were on a little stick, so that instead of looping the arms round her ears and letting them rest on her nose (like you would do with ordinary glasses), she held them out in front of her and moved them backwards and forwards to get him into focus.

Peered at through two pairs of spectacles Fizz felt he was under uncomfortably close scrutiny.

He scuffed his feet in the dirt and thought that maybe he should be leaving.

‘Your parents don’t know you’re here,’ she said suddenly.

Fizz nodded.

‘Oh, you poor thing,’ she went on, ‘left to wander, uncared for and all alone. I can’t bear to see a little chap like you dangling dolefully at a loose end like this, abandoned and forgotten. Let us help you.’

The old man looked thoughtful and closed his eyes, as if he was thinking about what good deed they might be able to do for the poor boy.

‘I tell you what,’ she said, putting the second pair of glasses back in her handbag, ‘we shall pretend to be your parents for you. That way you can join the library and get your lovely library card. And then you can borrow as many books as they will let you and go home and read them all to your dear heart’s content. What do you say, you poor boy? Just our little good deed for you, yes?’

For a moment Fizz didn’t know what to say. It sounded sort of like a good idea and it was tempting, but he knew it was wrong to lie. Even to someone who looked like Miss Toad. It didn’t seem right to let these two old people tell lies for him either, even if it would get him a library card.

‘I don’t mean to be rude,’ he said, suddenly coming up with a good excuse, ‘but I think you look . . . um, well, too old to be my parents.’

‘Oh!’ the old lady said, as if she were surprised. She thought for a moment. ‘Well,’ she went on, ‘we could say we’re your
grandparents
. Yes, I think that when it comes to filling in forms the one is just as good as the other.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, absolutely,’ she said. ‘There’ll be no trouble there.’

Thoughts of all the books in the library, all the exciting adventures that would become available for him to read, flooded through Fizz’s head and washed all his worries about lying clean out. Wow! This was too good to be true. He could get his library card and his mum and dad would never need to know that he’d wandered off. Brilliant.

‘Oh, thanks, that’s really kind of you,’ he said to the old couple. He was aware, of course, that time was drawing on and the longer he stayed away from the circus, the more likely it would be that someone would notice he was missing. ‘Can we do it now? Please? I’m in a bit of a hurry.’

‘Yes!’ shouted the old man. His head was still cocked to one side and his eyes were shut but a big grin had sprung out from underneath his moustache. He was rubbing his hands together.

‘Yes, of course we can,’ the old lady added. ‘By the way, before we go in, what’s your name, little boy?’

‘My name?’

‘Yes. We’ll need to know your name to fill in the forms, won’t we? Must get our stories straight before we go in.’