Fizzlebert Stump (7 page)

The door shut with a loud click in the silence.

Mr Carvery's shadow darkened Fizz's desk and Fizz scribbled the beginning of a made-up sentence.

On Saturday we went shopping …

Then the bell rang again.

Now, I know to you, who probably go to school most days, this might not seem like much of an adventure, but, without meaning to be rude, I have to say you're wrong.

For Fizz, this is
exactly
as much of an adventure as it would be if you were dropped in the middle of a circus and told to do an act. For Fizz this is a very weird situation. He's never
had to sit up straight at a table or write about his weekend or listen to other children. He feels a bit like a fish out of the frying pan and into the next lesson.

It's complicated.

It's sometimes (perhaps even always) important to remember that your
normal
is someone else's
weird
, and that someone else's
weird
is probably your
normal
, and vice versa. (That didn't quite come out right, but hopefully you get the gist. It's all about empathy, which means trying to understand by looking through someone else's eyes, but not in a literal drill-a-hole-in-the-back-of-their-head way (which is unkind, unpleasant and usually unnecessary), rather by using your imagination, if you see what I mean.)

Lesson six: Empathy.

CHAPTER SEVEN

In which a boy wears his underwear and in which a puppy makes a surprise appearance

Once the rest of the class rushed in after break and sat themselves down at their tables Mr Carvery began shouting again.

‘All right, everyone,' was the first thing he shouted. ‘In a minute you'll get changed into your P.E. kits, then we'll go out on the big field and you will do some organised running around.'

There were groans from the corners of the classroom but they went silent as Mr Carvery shouted some more, ‘It's for your own good, boys and girls. Exercise is a treat. Now chop chop, get changed.'

Everyone bustled out of their chairs and rummaged in their bags and began changing into their shorts and T-shirts and trainers. The only things Fizz had in his bag were his pyjamas, and they were muddy and torn at the edges and he didn't think they'd be entirely suitable for this PE thing, whatever that was. (None of his teachers in the circus taught him PE, because in a circus you got enough of that by accident: there was always somewhere to run to, someone to jump over, something to lift up. So although the word ‘P.E.' meant nothing to him, the words ‘running around'
and ‘exercise' were enough of a clue for him to not embarrass himself by saying something stupid like, ‘I'm sorry I need a new pencil first,' or ‘William the Conqueror beat King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.')

Instead he embarrassed himself by saying, ‘I've only got some pyjamas, but they're a bit tatty, sorry.'

To which Mr Carvery stormed and blustered, ‘Well then, Truffle, it's a beautiful warm sunny day out there, you can do it in your vest and pants.'

The room went silent. This was getting interesting.

‘Pardon?' said Fizz, who thought the man had just asked him to do exercise in his vest and pants.

‘Vest and pants, now!' Mr Carvery bellowed.

Oh well, Fizz thought. Today started off weird, then it got weirder, but I need to talk to Dympna again. I'd best join in with the weird and not make trouble.

In a minute Fizz was stood in his underwear (and slippers). Fortunately they were relatively clean, even after the night's adventure, and didn't have embarrassing pictures of ponies or flowers on. In fact, odd as it seems, Fizz didn't feel embarrassed at all. He
almost
felt more at home than he had all morning.

As you might be aware, in between the last book I wrote about Fizz (
Fizzlebert Stump and the Girl Who Lifted Quite Heavy Things
) and this one (
Fizzlebert Stump: The Boy Who Did P.E. in His Pants
), Fizz and his father have been working hard to perfect their strongman (and son) act.
Mr Stump, in traditional strongman style, wears a little off-the-shoulder leopard-skin caveman affair, but for Fizz, who, being the smaller partner in the act, gets picked up a lot and twirled a little and who tumbles (in the sense of doing rolls and flips), something else is needed, something less
flappy
. So they made him what is effectively a set of sparkly vest and pants with glittery plimsolls.

So, you see, wearing his vest and pants wasn't the end of the world. In fact, it was a way for Fizz to feel momentarily more comfortable.

‘Come on! Quickly! Out to the field, everyone,' shouted Mr Carvery, opening the outside door.

The kids rushed out, bouncing and hopping and giggling (a lot of them liked to do
anything other than sitting in a classroom learning, but they were the weird ones). Fizz dragged along behind them.

As he reached the door Dympna was waiting for him.

‘I can't go out,' she said. ‘I'll start sneezing.'

Fizz looked sad. He'd hoped he might get to talk to her again.

‘But I made you this,' she said slipping him a folded-up piece of paper. ‘It's a map. The circus is in the field behind my house. I saw them when I got up this morning.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Great big tent? Lots of caravans and trucks and clowns and things?'

‘That's it.'

‘It's not far from here. Ten minutes' walk.'

‘Really?'

‘Yeah, you're practically home, Fizzlebert Stump,' she said.

Her eyes were tearing up and her nose was beginning to run.

‘Truffle,' yelled Mr Carvery, from outside the door. ‘I just knew
you'd
still be here. Get out. And … What's this? You've made Dympna cry? You horrible girl. Get out now! Up to the field! I'll have you doing laps for an hour.'

Fizz, tucking the map into his pants, did as he was told.

‘Thank you,' he said to Dympna as he left.

‘Leave her alone, you horrible bully!' shouted Mr Carvery, slamming the door behind them and pushing Fizz in front of him up to the big field.

Dympna watched them go and went back to reading her book (which coincidentally enough was
Fizzlebert Stump: The Boy Who Ran Away From the Circus (and joined the library)
which had only just come out at this point in time and was another reason she'd suspected he wasn't Piltdown.

Mr Carvery was keeping his tracksuit from getting dirty or sweaty by driving alongside Fizz in a little golf cart.

Fizz was on his third lap of the school's big field. It wasn't actually all that big, Fizz thought, most of the parks the circus parked in were bigger than this, but still after two and a half laps he was growing pretty sick of it.

‘Get those knees up, Truffle,' Mr Carvery shouted through a megaphone.

He was only two metres away from Fizz, so the megaphone wasn't strictly necessary, but at this point in the day Mr Carvery was being a P.E. teacher and P.E. teachers as a general rule aren't strictly necessary either, so it all balanced out.

In the middle of the field the rest of the class were playing rounders.

‘Throw harder, Perkins,' Mr Carvery megaphoned at the boy who'd just thrown the ball.

He turned back to Fizz.

‘Faster, Truffle, faster!'

Fizz was running at a sensible speed, not too fast because doing unlimited laps of a sports field wasn't a sprint. He was just going steady and because he was rather a fit young man, having helped out around the circus a lot, he wasn't even very out of breath yet.
This infuriated Mr Carvery who, wearing his P.E. teacher's metaphorical (and megaphonical) hat, hated children who didn't struggle, whimper and collapse. (It was his job to give children ‘encouragement'. He liked giving them ‘encouragement', through his megaphone, and preferably in front of their friends. If he could give so much ‘encouragement' that the wheezing embarrassed crying child wet itself as well, then his day felt complete. (What fun is there to be had encouraging a child who can actually already run or play cricket or table tennis well?))

As Fizz and Mr Carvery began their fourth lap of the field John Jenkins finally hit the ball with the rounders bat and sent it flying.

Fizz didn't notice until the ball hit the wire fence on his right and bounced across the grass in front of him.

‘Well,' boomed Mr Carvery. ‘Don't run past it, stupid girl. Throw it back.'

Fizz did as he was told, circled round, scooped up the ball in his hand and lobbed it back towards the middle of the field where the kids were roundering.

Unfortunately those kids didn't know that he was a strongboy, that is to say a junior strongman. His muscles were bigger and more excitable than a normal boy's and when he threw the ball he'd given it an extra boost without even thinking about it.

Thwack!

The ball drove straight through the middle of the kids, knocking them flying.

‘Truffle!' yelled Mr Carvery. ‘What have you done?!'

He veered his golf cart to the left and trundled at top speed towards the rounders game.

‘Keep running,' he megaphoned over his shoulder. ‘I've got my eye on you, you horrible little devil.'

Fizz kept jogging, while keeping an eye on what was going on in the middle of the field.

Mr Carvery had climbed down from his buggy, blown his whistle and was pulling children to their feet. Most of them were getting up by themselves, brushing themselves down and laughing. Only one of them, presumably-Charlotte as it happened, was clutching her head. She was on her feet, but it looked like she might be crying.

‘Sick bay!' Mr Carvery shouted through his megaphone to the poor girl, who was stood almost a whole metre away from him. (If she didn't already have a headache from being bashed in the bonce by a ballistic ball, then she certainly had one now.) ‘Come with me!'

Fizz watched as Mr Carvery drove his golf buggy towards the school buildings. Presumably-Charlotte walked alongside, rubbing the side of her head.

‘The rest of you, play rounders!' the teacher shouted. ‘In silence. I don't want any complaints from the neighbours. I'll be back in one minute.'

Fizz took advantage of Mr Carvery's absence to stop running and pull Dympna's map out of his pants. It was warm and a bit
wrinkled and as he unfolded it it flapped in the breeze.

Dympna had very neat handwriting and had labelled the map beautifully.

Here was the school and here was the field. And there was the road Fizz could see on the other side of the fence. And at the top it went round the field, and then there was
another road, and another, and then a house marked ‘My house' and behind that a big green patch she'd coloured in in felt tip with a picture of a tent in it and a sign saying ‘Your house'.

This was going to be easy.

All Fizz had to do was go to the other end of the big field, jump the fence, run down three or four streets (ideally the ones on the map), and he'd be back at the circus. Even if his mum and dad, as he expected, were back in the forest looking for him, he'd be home and someone there would be able to get in touch with them and call them back. It was a foolproof plan. As easy as simple pie (which is the first pie bakers learn to make. It's pastry with a pastry filling: simple).

And I think it only right and fitting that as Fizz glories in the marvel of his having a perfect plan in front of him, we take a break between chapters and go off to have a cup of tea or a slice of pie, cheese, cake, cheesecake, mousse, soufflé, ice cream and/or sandwich, as you see fit.

(Oh, by the way, I didn't mention it at the time, because we were on the other side of the field, but in the street that runs along one side of the school field, an old man called Arbuthnot Crumplehorn was walking a small puppy called Simon, as promised.)

CHAPTER EIGHT

In which a boy runs away and in which a grown man gives chase