Fizzlebert Stump (4 page)

‘I told you, it's poachers. I 'eard 'em earlier.'

‘Hmm.'

Fizz wanted to reach down and dislodge whatever it was that had snapped shut on his slipper. He assumed it was a mousetrap, and was glad his toes hadn't been right up at the edge. He'd got these slippers for Christmas
and had been told, ‘You'll grow into them'. He was getting there, slowly.

Piltdown's gran had obviously shuffled out of the hallway because the cupboard door opened a sliver and Piltdown's voice whispered in.

‘Boy,' it said. ‘You'd best come out now. She's in the kitchen. We'll 'ide you in me bedroom 'til she's gone out to work. No bother. Quick, run now while she's busy.'

She pointed across the hall to a half-open door.

Fizz did as he was told, because there didn't seem anything else to do.

Secretly he would have liked to have spoken to her gran, because she might have been able to find a way to get in touch with his parents, because that's what grown-ups did.
She'd have more of an idea than her granddaughter would, probably. But at the same time, he'd had a bad experience with an old woman before, and the way Piltdown was so insistent about him not meeting her made him a little bit afraid of her, without even having seen her.

‘I'm goin' back to bed,' Piltdown shouted at the kitchen from her bedroom. ‘Just for a coupla hours.'

‘OK, dear,' her gran shouted back. ‘Just make sure you're up for school. I already had a letter from them. You know
I'm
the one that gets in trouble. You will go, won't you, dear?'

‘'Course I will, Gran,' Piltdown shouted. ‘Dontcha trust me or somefink?'

‘All right then. Night, Piltie dear.'

‘Night, Gran.'

Piltdown shut the door.

Fizz was stood in the middle of the room, slightly dazed. Several thoughts were going through his head at the same time. Firstly, he was thinking he'd never met two people who shouted so much. Secondly, he was amazed because Piltdown had a bedroom all to herself, that wasn't used as the kitchen-cum-living room during the day. Thirdly, he was worried about his parents. How would they be coping with him missing? He hoped they were all right. Fourthly, he was yawning. Fifthly, he thought Piltdown was a boy's name, but didn't say anything because whether Piltdown was a boy's name or not, Fizzlebert was still a silly name. Sixthly … sixthly, he couldn't remember what he was thinking. He was too tired,
hence the aforementioned yawning.

Piltdown noticed.

‘Oh crikey,' she said, whispering again. ‘You look dead on yer feet, boy. Look, you get into bed, get a few hours' kip before morning.'

‘But …' said Fizz, tiredly.

‘No buts,' she answered firmly. ‘I'll keep guard. Ain't nuffink to worry about.'

Half reluctantly, Fizz climbed on to the bed, pulled the sheet up over him, dressing gown and all, and lay his head on the slightly smelly pillow.

‘I can't keep callin' you Boy, Boy,' Piltdown said, switching off the light. ‘What are you called?'

‘Fizzle
mumble
,' murmured Fizz, almost asleep already.

The next thing Fizz knew there was daylight in his eyes and the bed was bouncing up and down like a dreadfully unhappy ship in the middle of a surprisingly sunny storm.

Morning had broken.

And I'm breaking the chapter there too. That's quite enough adventure for one night. What will the morning bring? Oh, mystery and romance, perhaps? Who knows. Who knows? 
I
know.

CHAPTER FOUR

In which breakfast is burnt and in which our hero moves on

‘Stop bouncing, please,' Fizz said with a yawn to the girl who was bouncing on his bed.

‘Get up then,' she said, jumping off the bed and running out of the room.

Fizzlebert reached down to undo the straps and buckles but, of course, there weren't any.

He swung his legs over the edge and said,
‘Where have you gone. Piltdown?'

‘I'm in the kitchen,' she shouted.

Fizz crossed the room and gingerly stuck his head round the bedroom door (gingerly in both senses, being at this moment both a red-headed young man and a cautious, careful one).

‘Is your gran around?' he whispered.

‘Nah,' Piltdown shouted back. ‘She's off at work in the forest, choppin' trees.'

‘Oh?' Fizz said.

‘'Ow d'ya like yer toast?' Piltdown yelled from the kitchen, a trickle of black smoke following her words through the door.

‘Well done?' Fizz said, cautiously.

He followed the smell of burning into the kitchen.

The clock on the wall said eight o'clock. That
was way earlier than he usually got up. At the circus there are a lot of late nights. There's no going to bed until the show's over and the audience has all left, and then there's tidying up and taking off make-up (if you're a clown) or singing lullabies to your horses (if you're a horse trainer), and sometimes the Ringmaster gets everyone together to tell them how brilliant they were, or not, depending on how the show's gone and how much his indigestion is playing up.

Fizz stifled a yawn.

There was a plate with a couple of glistening black squares on it.

‘I buttered 'em,' Piltdown said.

‘Thanks,' said Fizz.

Seeing the toast made him think of his mum, and his heart sank. He was still lost. They must be going mad with worry. They'd
be out looking for him. He ought to find his way back through the woods to the road. That would be the sensible thing to do. (The reason the toast reminded him of Mrs Stump, his mother, was because she'd recently started making toast for the family (instead of the more normal candyfloss and cornflakes or popcorn and popcorn). If you've read some of the previous books about Fizz you might remember her predilection for rhyming sandwiches: ham and jam, cheese and peas, pork and fork (this last one had to be eaten carefully). So she had invented a breakfast of her own: toast and ghost. Some people got cheese on their toast, some got jam, some Marmite. Fizz had to try to eat his toast while Mrs Stump draped a white sheet over Mr Stump and
made him go, ‘
Wooo-oo-oooo!
' Whether that was more annoying than toast burnt to a crisp was a matter of debate, but remembering it made Fizz pause.)

‘I've got to go,' he said, after nibbling the corner of one black slab.

‘Already? But you only just got 'ere,' Piltdown said, sitting opposite him at the kitchen table.

‘My mum and dad will be worried,' he said.

Piltdown took a big bite of her slice of toast and, after a second's thought, spat it out on to the plate.

She scrunched her face up.

‘I don't like toast,' she said, and changed the subject. ‘What was you doin' in the woods last night?'

Fizz explained about living in the circus
and about getting left behind and falling down the slope and getting lost and then getting found and after that he didn't need to explain any more because she'd been there for the rest. (You know all that stuff, so I won't bore you with his exact words, but if you've got a friend nearby maybe you could pretend to be Fizz and let them be Piltdown and you can see how
you
would tell the story. Then when you've done that swap over and do it again. Then when you're satisfied, read on.)

‘So you ain't from round 'ere?' Piltdown said.

‘No.'

‘And no one round 'ere knows you?' she asked.

‘No.'

‘Ain't it funny,' she added. ‘You've got the same hair as me.'

‘Yeah,' said Fizz, ‘funny.'

She was right, they did both have the red hair in the same not-quite-a-haircut.

‘Interesting,' she said, a thoughtful look on her face.

‘What?' asked Fizz.

‘Look at yourself,' she said, changing the subject again.

She pointed at the sleeves of his dressing gown and at the bottoms of his pyjama bottoms. They were muddy, dirty, torn and tatty.

‘Tell you what,' she said. ‘I'll lend you some clean clobber. I mean you can't go wanderin' around all day in yer PJs, can you? That's weird.'

She went off to her bedroom and Fizz could hear rummaging.

‘Here you go,' she shouted.

He went through and found she'd laid out a pair of black trousers and a shirt and jumper.

Fizz got dressed (he always wore clean underwear under his pyjamas in case of a midnight caravan emergency, so luckily he didn't have to borrow her knickers). It all fit, though he had a little trouble doing up the buttons on the shirt (they were the wrong way round to what he was used to).

He looked at himself in the mirror.

‘Piltdown?' he called.

She came back in.

‘Piltdown,' he repeated. ‘Is this a
school uniform
?'

It was. The jumper had a badge on it that he couldn't read in the mirror.

‘Yeah. It's me spare one,' she said. ‘Don't worry about it.'

She was wearing a pair of tatty jeans and had a jacket pulled on over her T-shirt.

She was holding a battered leather satchel.

‘Look,' she said, ‘I've made you a packed lunch for yer journey.'

She handed him the bag and he looked inside.

There was an apple and a chocolate bar and some fluff.

‘Thank you,' he said. ‘Mmm, fluff, my favourite.'

‘Good,' she said, apparently not noticing his joke, or at least being too polite to mention it. ‘You wanna get back to the 'igh road through the woods, yeah?'

She walked him out the front door, on to the little wooden veranda.

‘Please,' he said. He hadn't thought of any better plan than going and waiting where they'd left him.

‘Well, don't go back through there.' She pointed over her shoulder at the looming forest. ‘Nah, you'd just get lost. I know a quicker, easier way. Go down there.' She pointed at the dirt track that lead off from the
cabin, a rutted mud road just wide enough for a car. ‘After a coupla hundred metres you'll hit a road, turn right and that'll take you to another road, turn right again and that's the road through the woods. Bingo.'

‘Thanks,' said Fizz.

‘Go on,' she said, pointing up the track.

Fizz pulled his dressing gown on over the top of his jumper and tucked the pyjamas he'd been clutching into the satchel.

‘Keep it,' Piltdown said. ‘Keep it all, and good luck to ya.'

Fizz walked off, his slippers flip flopping on the dry mud.

After twenty metres he turned around, expecting to wave at the girl who'd saved him but she'd already vanished. The cottage was still there though, looking lived in, so he
was pretty certain she hadn't been a kindly ghost or some weird dream. Which, on the whole, he was pleased about.

And there goes Fizz, trudging down the track on his way back to the place his parents lost him. They're bound to be there, aren't they? Don't you think? Wouldn't your parents have spent the night waiting by the roadside for you to just wander back?

Hmm.

Is this the best plan Fizz has had? Do you think it's going to work out well? (I'll give you a hint: have a look and see how many pages there are left in the book you're holding. If there are only a couple then Fizz probably finds his mum and dad in the next chapter and everything's fine. If it looks like you're only
about a quarter of the way through, then maybe something else happens before Fizz finds his way home. What do you think? (Answers on a postcard to Pointless Fizzlebert Stump Non-Competition, Bloomsbury Publishing, 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK. The best answer gets no prize, as do all the answers. But it'll be a nice way for me to prove to my publishers that someone actually reads these books.))

CHAPTER FIVE

In which a man stands beside a car and in which a name is read from the top of a satchel

‘Ah, there you are, at last,' said the man who was standing by the car at the end of the track. He was tapping his watch and sighing extravagantly. ‘I was about to come in there and get you,' he added.

Fizz looked behind him to see who the man was talking to.

There was no one there.

‘Come on, come on,' the man said, pointing towards the car.

He had a scraggly thin beard and wore a rough dark green suit. The elbows of his suit jacket had leather patches on.

‘Me?' Fizz said, pointing at himself.

The man sighed and ran a hand through his shaggy hair.

‘Yes, of course you. We'll be late if you don't get a move on.'

Fizz was really quite confused by this.

If the man had been someone he knew then he'd have been much happier. If he was someone Fizz knew that would mean he was someone from the circus and
that
would mean he'd been found. But this man was a stranger and Fizz knew better than to start getting into
strangers' cars without asking a whole lot of questions first (and even after the questions he probably still wouldn't get in, because a stranger questioned is still a stranger).