Fennymore and the Brumella (10 page)

CHAPTER 24

In which Hubert turns up again and Dr Hourgood is rendered harmless

They had made themselves comfortable on the big sofa in the living room. Fenibald had settled his head on his son's shoulder and was snoring quietly. Dr Hourgood was still unconscious. He lay on the carpet, tied up in Aunt Elsie's washing line. His fat cat sat next to him, licking his fingers in their gloves. Evidently she felt sorry for her master after all.

Fizzy stared at the animal with a disgusted expression on her face.

‘She was supposed to be on our side?' she asked doubtfully.

Fennymore looked up. He was suddenly in a very good mood. He had his father back, after all.

‘Oh, come on,' he said to Fizzy. ‘It's kind of nice that she's sticking by him. He's so defenceless all of a sudden.'

Herr Muckenthaler interrupted them. ‘Fizzy, I'm going to call Frau Plüsch and ask her to tell your parents that you're safe. It could take a while, though. The phone box is halfway to town. Keep an eye on Dr Hourgood while I'm gone.'

He grabbed his cord jacket and went out into the night.

Herr Muckenthaler had hardly gone out the door when the air shimmered and Hubert materialised in the middle of the room.

Fennymore and Fizzy stared at him.

‘Have I missed something?' he asked, seeing their astonished faces.

This time it was Fennymore who found his tongue.

‘Missed? Not really. Only that Fizzy was captured and was attacked by an oversized cat, that Dr Hourgood locked me up and …'

‘You've been with Hourgood?' Hubert's voice shook and he shrank back into himself.

Fennymore kept on talking. ‘… and Monbijou came to the rescue and all the time Herr Muckenthaler and my father were on their way …' He stopped. ‘But this is probably of no particular interest to you. You took good care to dematerialise just before it all started to get tricky. Extraordinary coincidence – don't you think?'

‘Yes, a coincidence,' Hubert said lamely.

He looked around the room. He seemed to be still thinking about Dr Hourgood. His hand was trembling. But then his whole long, unbelievably thin body shuddered and he straightened up. ‘Of course it was a coincidence. You must believe me. I had things to do. Two old gents from the old folks' home and then also –'

‘To tell you the truth, we don't really need to hear the details,' Fizzy interrupted.

Fennymore shivered. He really didn't want to hear any more about Hubert's work than was strictly necessary.

‘We just find it rather odd that you had to go to work at precisely the moment when Dr Hourgood turned up,' he said.

‘Dr Hourgood turned up here?' cried Hubert in alarm, looking around the room. ‘Is he still around?'

Then he finally caught sight of the doctor. For one moment, Hubert's silvery grey face was rigid with dread, but then it relaxed when he noticed the washing line and the red-and-white-striped socks that were still across the doctor's face.

‘You devils!' he murmured, deeply impressed, and went walking around the unconscious doctor, wobbling in his weird way as he went. The cat nestled close to her master and mewed quietly.

Every step Hubert took seemed more and more like a skip. His face was beaming. Then he poked the doctor in the side with the tip of his shoe. The cat gave a disdainful hiss but the doctor still didn't budge. Hubert looked totally blissful by now. Just as he raised his other foot, a firm voice warned, ‘Hubert!'

The silvery grey man winced. Fennymore's father had woken up and was sitting upright on the sofa with one arm around Fennymore. He was still barefoot with tangled hair and beard, but his eyes had changed. They were clear and bright.

He also felt a lot better. It had come back to him who he was. Fenibald Teabreak, inventor.

‘Fenibald,' Hubert replied.

The two men stared silently at each other.

* * *

It was Fizzy who broke the silence. ‘Oh, for goodness' sake, say something,' she said so loudly that even Dr Hourgood seemed to hear it.

His fat body shook, the socks fell from his face and he opened an eye. His gaze wandered around the room and stopped at Hubert. ‘You!' he started in his deep, rumbling voice. ‘I'll –'

But Fennymore's father had leapt up from the sofa and pressed the socks back over his mouth and nose. The doctor's body sank back into sleep.

Fennymore looked at the tied-up doctor and thought,
Creep. I'd love to …
But what exactly
would
he love to do?

It seemed he wasn't the only one to be asking this question.

‘What'll we do with him?' Fizzy asked. ‘Hubert, suppose you … with your wand …?'

Hubert hesitated. The cat mewed so loudly that everyone jammed their hands against their ears.

‘No,' said Fennymore quickly. ‘I don't want that.'

‘So what do you want?' Fizzy snapped, looking at him angrily. ‘Maybe you'd like to present him with a cup for barbaric behaviour?'

‘What about a little brain modification?' suggested Hubert faintly.

Fennymore's father looked thoughtfully at the doctor, who was lying at his feet.

‘Brain modification,' he repeated softly. And then he giggled. Just one little giggle at first and then a louder one, until at last he was holding his sides and snorting with laughter.

‘Obviously that's far too amusing a punishment,' said Fizzy.

‘I think it's just right,' said Fennymore.

CHAPTER 25

In which The Bronx is suddenly swarming with people and everyone is talking at once again

It was past midnight.

Monbijou had sloped off to the kitchen to eat his hay in peace. Fennymore was still sitting next to his father on the sofa. They just sat there, saying nothing, his father's arm still around his shoulder. Fenibald couldn't help giving the occasional giggle and saying something incomprehensible in rhyme, but most of the time he watched his son with bright, clear eyes. Fennymore was just happy.

Fizzy had curled up, yawning, on the carpet.

A car door banged outside and suddenly the night was full of loud voices.

‘There they are,' cried Fizzy, jumping up and running to the front door.

The noise outside was absolutely deafening. Yells, roars, laughter and, if Fennymore was not mistaken, there was also a soft barking in the middle of it all.

And then they all came piling into the living room, led by Fizzy's mother, Frau Kobaldini. Fennymore could tell it was Fizzy's mother. She had the same eyes, the same freckles and a ponytail that was just as shaggy as her daughter's. She put her arms around Fizzy and kept kissing her and saying, ‘Fizzy, oh, my Fizzy.'

Then six lads of varying ages came strolling in, looking around with interest. They all had faces full of freckles and they were all wearing brown hoodies. Only that the eldest was decked out in something that looked suspiciously like one of Aunt Elsie's flowery nighties. They had to be Marlon, Mustafa, Maarten, Marcello, Moritz and Titus.

Frau Plüsch came tripping along behind Fizzy's brothers, wearing a fur coat over her pink nightdress and with her white dachshund, Paula, in her arms. Then came a big friendly looking man in overalls. And last of all into the room came Boris Muckenthaler, wearing a big grin on his face.

‘Fizzy, oh, Fizzy,' Frau Kobaldini was sighing with tears in her eyes.

‘Fizzy, oh, Fizzy.' The boy in the flowery nightdress imitated his mother.

‘That's enough, Marlon,' Fizzy's father warned his son.

‘May I introduce Mama, Papa, my brothers,' Fizzy called out to Fennymore, grinning all over her face.

‘Is that you, Mr Teabreak?' asked Frau Plüsch incredulously, and her dachshund barked.

And then they all sat down, on the sofa, on the carpet, on the three wobbly chairs that Fizzy's father had brought out of the kitchen.

Fizzy's mother explained hysterically how her daughter had suddenly disappeared and her sons had spent two days turning the town upside down, to no avail, and how they'd all been sick with worry. In the end, Fizzy's father had thought of Elsie Grosskornschroth's great-nephew, and how Fizzy had told him, enviously, that he was in her class but hardly ever went to school. They'd asked Frau Plüsch for the address, Frau Plüsch had ordered a taxi and they had all driven out here together, even though it was the middle of the night. And on the way, they had picked up Herr Muckenthaler, who had been standing outside the telephone box with no change in his pocket.

When they had all told their stories, it had gone quiet, and Fennymore's stomach rumbled in the silence. He looked at Paula, the white dachshund, and his mouth watered. He tried to think of something else, but he couldn't.

He couldn't ignore it.

He was most dreadfully hungry. Hungry for salt-baked dachshund. He was desperately hungry for salt-baked dachshund, even though he always had tummy ache for two days after eating it.

Fizzy's mother gave Fennymore an appraising look and then she clapped her hands.

‘Who'd like pancakes?' she asked.

Then everyone started shouting at once.

‘But,' said Fennymore diffidently, ‘I haven't got any ingredients. I only have …' He stopped and looked around, embarrassed.

‘I thought as much,' said Fizzy's mother. ‘That is absolutely no problem.'

Fennymore watched in astonishment as she took a huge carton of eggs, two kilos of flour, a packet of sugar and three litres of milk out of an enormous bag at her feet.

Frau Plüsch was watching her too with undisguised disapproval. ‘I wanted to bring honey cookies, but this person here insisted on packing everything but the kitchen sink.'

Fizzy was just about to make a nasty response, but her father gave her a stern look and then turned to Frau Plüsch.

‘My dear neighbour, we have been meaning all along to invite you to have pancakes with us. Consider this a special invitation to an out-of-house midnight feast. And of course we have something also for your charming little friend.'

And with that he took a piece of salami out of his breast-pocket. Frau Plüsch accepted the heel of salami and looked around uncertainly. Marlon, Mustafa, Maarten, Marcello, Moritz and Titus grinned.

Paula, Frau Plüsch's green-eyed white dachshund, was chomping with gusto on the salami. Frau Plüsch's features relaxed and she smiled at Herr Kobaldini.

Promising smells and hisses were coming from the kitchen and everyone was chattering away madly all at once. A mountain of pancakes appeared on the dining table, reaching nearly up to the ceiling, and everyone set to eating with hearty appetites, singing the praises of Frau Kobaldini's cooking.

Herr Muckenthaler looked up suddenly from his plate and muttered to Fennymore, ‘Tell me, where is Hubert? I'd really like to meet him.' He looked hopefully around the room.

‘No,' said Fennymore, who was just biting into his fourth pancake. He couldn't get enough of them. (He really must note this recipe in the Dictionary of Inventions.) ‘He's working.'

A deep voice came from a dark corner of the room. ‘Harrumph!' it burbled. ‘Hubert Sockbert,' and giggled.

CHAPTER 26

In which the story comes to a close – with an invention and a rain-shower unlike any there has ever been on the face of the earth

Fennymore and his father were alone at last. After the pancake feast it had started to get bright. Frau Plüsch, the whole Kobaldini family and Herr Muckenthaler had said goodbye. They had put the giggling Dr Hourgood along with his cat on the bus and told the furious driver to put them down at Uhrengasse and the cat would take him home. As he was leaving, Herr Muckenthaler had invited Fennymore's father to his place the following weekend – to an evening with experts, as he put it – and had pressed the key of the Invention Capsule from the chocolate tin into his hand.

‘Goodness me, it is my key,' he'd said delightedly, and as soon as the last guest had got into the taxi he'd made straight for the garden.

‘Dad,' asked Fennymore, following him, ‘how did this brain modification thing feel?'

Fennymore's father stood stock still. ‘Actually,' he said, looking up at the sky, in which big fat black clouds were piling up, ‘do you know, it was quite good fun.'

‘Fun?' Fennymore was aghast. ‘But what kind of a punishment is that going to be?'

‘A very good one, as you said,' answered Fennymore's father. ‘Just imagine how things are going to go tomorrow morning in Dr Hourgood's surgery.'

Fennymore giggled. He'd love to have a bout of tonsillitis so he could see how Dr Hourgood was going to manage at work.

‘So, son,' said Fennymore's father in a happy voice, putting his arm around his son's shoulder, ‘let's go and get your girthday subprise.'

‘Girthday subprise?' Fennymore repeated. His father obviously hadn't completely recovered just yet from his brain modification.

‘Fennymore, if I am not very much mistaken – although that is of course quite possible – you have just reached the age of eleven, and I have a subprise for you. Come on.'

He pulled Fennymore along, past the scrubby currant and gooseberry bushes and the compost heap, to the bottom of the garden. Fennymore hadn't been here for three years, since the day Aunt Elsie had forbidden it to him. The Invention Capsule had become so totally engulfed by vines that they could hardly find the door at first. But then a gleam in the foliage indicated where the padlock was. They used an old kitchen knife to free the door of vine tendrils.

The key fitted and the padlock sprang open with a little click and they were soon standing on the wooden floor of the little room. Inside it looked just as Fennymore had remembered. Everything was up in a mad heap. Fennymore's father always said he needed it that way so that he could think logically. And if you were an inventor, you had to be able to think logically. The drawers of the desk were open, tools and materials pouring out of them. The big shelving unit was, as always, stuffed with unfinished commissions. And on top of a pile of old toasters, which provided spare parts for the Mechanical Waiter, lay the Dictionary of Inventions. Like all the books, it was a centimetre thick with dust, but Fennymore recognised it immediately. A draught from outside stirred the dust.

‘Ugh!' Fennymore and his father spat particles of dust out of their mouths. But as the dust lifted, Fennymore Teabreak saw something else lying in the middle of the desk.

Fennymore's father pointed at the little object and said, ‘There you are. It belongs to you.'

Fennymore came closer. The thing looked a bit like a sleeping bat: a kind of handle with pleated dark material wound around it with little wires and hinges.

‘What is it?' he asked, a little disappointed.

This was supposed to be his parents' invention? Didn't look exactly marvellous. He'd expected something a bit more impressive – a flying apparatus maybe or a banana-split machine. Fennymore turned the thing over in his hands. He felt a button under his fingers. Whumph! He leapt back. What he was holding in his hands now hadn't the slightest resemblance to a bat. A kind of fabric roof was stretched out over the end of the rod that Fennymore was holding in his hand. Maybe it was some kind of flying contraption after all?

Just at that moment, a rumbling kind of sound could be heard outside. The sky was totally clouded over and it had gone dark in the Invention Capsule. Then came a crack of thunder and rain started drumming so loudly on the roof that Fennymore could hardly hear what his father was saying.

‘What did you say?' he yelled.

His father came so close to his ear that his long hair tickled Fennymore. ‘Your mother,' his father shouted into his ear. ‘She invented it. I'd got stuck and I wanted to give up. Then she had the idea to …' His voice had got hoarse. He gulped and stopped talking. Then he took a step away, looked his son right in the eye and shouted at him: ‘It's a brumella. Go outside and you'll see.'

Outside? It was pouring rain. Streams of water were running down the window pane and, through the open door, Fennymore could see that huge puddles were forming in front of the Invention Capsule. And he'd left his rain hat in the house. Then his father put an arm around him and said, ‘Come on, we'll go together.'

They went out into the rain, but Fennymore didn't get wet! He looked up in astonishment.

Then Fennymore and his father looked at each other and laughed. They stood arm in arm under the brumella and laughed until the rain stopped. Then they jumped up and down in the puddles until they were both covered in mud and water from head to toe.

And much later, at the end of a long, fun-filled day, Fennymore and his father sat wrapped up in the multicoloured comfy blanket in the living room, with Monbijou, and Fennymore's father told him all about his mother.

And they were happy all the same.