Fizzlebert Stump (8 page)

Fizz looked at the fence, and he looked back at the school building.

There were things about his time here that he'd almost enjoyed (Dympna had been nice, but most of it had been less than brilliant). Now it was time for him to take his leave, he thought. He'd go back to where he belonged.

He turned and, as inconspicuously as he could, in his vest and pants, jogged towards the back fence and the golden promise of home.

He didn't get far before he heard someone shout, ‘Mr Carvery, Piltdown's running away,' and then there was a lot of whistle blowing followed by some rapid megaphonage (‘Come back,' and the sort), but as far as Fizz could see when he glanced over his shoulder, no one was following him. (The teacher had only just come back out after dropping presumably-Charlotte at the sick bay. He was climbing back into his golf cart as he megaphoned, and doing two things at once was slowing him down.)

As Fizz reached the fence he leapt, caught hold of the interlocking diamond-shaped wire, and hauled himself up and over. All
those lessons with the Twitchery Sisters and doing the occasional tumbling act with Fish had paid off.

He lowered himself down the other side and saw that the pursuit had begun.

Mr Carvery was finally zooming up the field in his buggy (‘zooming' is perhaps the wrong word, since it suggests great speed: ‘chugging up the field', ‘trundling' maybe?).

Mrs Scrapie, the woman who had first met him when he arrived at the school, was standing by the school door. It looked like she was talking on a mobile phone while staring directly at Fizz. The round otteriness of her face wasn't as friendly as it had been when they'd first met – the eyes were narrowed. She wasn't happy.

Fizz turned his back on them and ran.

*   *   *

All these streets looked the same to Fizz.

He turned another corner, following the line on Dympna's map that linked the school and the circus. There were houses, side-by-side, two-by-two like unmoving square brick animals in a very flat ark filled with neat front gardens, pillar boxes and telegraph poles (so not very much like animals in the ark, after all).

Cats watched him as he ran past.

Dustbins stared at him with wide-open, freshly emptied mouths. (The dustcart turned the corner ahead of him and drove out of this book without doing anything important.)

Fizz stopped for a moment and leant against the pillar box to catch his breath and
to have another look at the map, just to make sure he had it right in his head.

He looked back up the street the way he'd come and there was no one following him. Mr Carvery wouldn't have been able to get his golf cart over the fence; he'd've had to go back down the field and round. For the moment, Fizz was safe.

The map said if he went a bit further down this road, took the first turning on the left, then one to the right, he'd be at the entrance to the park. From there he'd be able to find his own way to the circus.

A postman whistled and Fizz started forwards again. He wasn't exactly running (to be honest, he had a bit of a stitch), but he wasn't walking either. It was something in between: ralking maybe? Or wunning? I don't know.

And it's not important because as he folded the map and as the postman whistled and as he began moving a car skidded round the corner ahead of him and revved its engine noisily.

Fizz recognised the car.

He'd ridden in it only that morning.

Mr Mann opened the door and pointed at Fizz with one hand. In the other hand he was holding something that looked like a bit of holey cloth (which will become important in a little bit, so try to remember).

‘Piltdown Truffle,' he shouted down the street, ‘I've come to get you. By the power invested in me by the Truant, Runaway and Incorrigible Scamps Act (2001, amended 2004) I am serving you notice that you're going back to that school, now!'

He began walking towards Fizz.

He was in between Fizz and the circus. Fizz couldn't go forward. He couldn't go back either: behind him was the school. So he looked around for another way out.

Aha!
he thought.

There, to his left, was an alley that ran between two of the houses. It wasn't on his map, but if he went down it and then, when he got the chance, turned right, he was bound to reach the road he was meant to be on.

He ran.

Footsteps rattled behind him and he didn't turn to see whose feet they were because he knew full well it was the scruffy-bearded Mr Mann.

Fizz ran.

But not for long, because it turned out he had been mistaken.

This wasn't an alley, it was a passage that ran between two walls and then opened out into the garden behind the houses.

A young couple were having a picnic on the lawn (it was very nearly lunchtime) and Fizz apologised to them as he jumped over the picnic cloth and ran further into the garden (it was too late to turn back).

They stared after him, dumbstruck. It isn't often your picnic lunch is interrupted by a fleet-footed child in underpants, and it took them a moment to understand what had just happened.

‘Was that?' said the young woman to her young man.

‘I think?' he replied, not answering her question.

He lifted a sandwich to his mouth which was lucky because a moment later the rest of the picnic was crushed under the feet of a hurtling truant officer.

Mr Mann didn't apologise, he was too focused on the glimpse he'd had of ‘Piltdown' up ahead, clambering over the garden fence. He wiped some cream off his glasses and kept on running.

He leapt at the fence and was pleased when it collapsed under his weight. He did a forward roll and bounced back up on his feet. That was easier than climbing, he would've thought if he'd spared the time to think, but he was far too busy for thinking; he was looking around for Piltdown Truffle.

Fizz had jumped at the fence, pulled himself
up with his hands and propelled himself over into the next garden.

He had expected to land on a lawn, or maybe in a bush, but to his surprise he found himself balancing on a clothes line. Fresh drying laundry dangled from the line under his slippered feet. He took one tightrope-step forward, wobbled and fell (tightrope walking not being one of the circus skills he had mastered).

After struggling through a variety of half-damp clothes Fizz landed on the ground and began running. He could see the garden gate at the side of the house. Through there and he'd be back on to the road, he thought, just as a tremendous crash smashed the air behind him.

He didn't waste time turning to see what it had been, because it was rather obvious. (And
even if it wasn't what he assumed it was (a truant officer), it was still
something
that had just knocked a fence down behind him and that was probably worth running from too.)

So, he dashed across the patio and pulled at the bolt that kept the gate shut.

He yanked it open, slipped through and ran.

He wasn't running as fast as he had been before, he realised. Looking down he noticed that he was wearing a dress. Not wearing it very well, his arms weren't through the arm holes, for example, but the rest of him was through the main hole, the body hole, and his legs were sticking out the bottom.

At least he wasn't running up the street in his underwear any more.

‘Hey! Stop! Thief!' yelled a woman's voice behind him.

The woman whose daughter's party dress he was sort of wearing had been watching an aubergine in the front room when she saw the dress run past the window.

She'd rushed to the front door, pulled it open and shouted the words I just said she said.

Then she began chasing Fizz.

As she ran up the drive, Mr Mann ran straight into her – crash! – and they both tumbled to the ground in a big rolling heap.

Fizz didn't look behind him to see what the new noise was either. He just ran.

He ran past Mr Mann's car, turned the corner and ran towards the last corner before the park. If he could only get there before his pursuers caught up with him he'd be fine. His mum and dad would be able
to explain everything, or if not them then the Ringmaster or Dr Surprise or
someone
. He just had to keep running for another minute.

Behind him the running footsteps had started up again.

This dress flapping round his legs was slowing him. When it wasn't catching the wind like a parachute it was tangling itself round his knees like happy hour at a cub scout knot-tying weekend workshop.

He lifted the hem up, pulled the skirt of the dress above his knees and ran like that.

‘Truffle!' shouted a voice, shockingly close behind him. ‘Come quietly and it'll be better for you.'

‘Stop, thief!' shouted a woman's voice, just as close.

Fizz darted to the right and he could see green ahead of him, at the end of this short road …

It was the park!

And …

His heart leapt!

He could see the blue and yellow stripes of the Big Top.

It was a hundred metres away, hardly any distance at all.

Whish!

What a strange noise, Fizz thought, as he was suddenly wrapped up like a haddock having a bad day. (I'll explain that simile in a moment, so don't panic.) He fell to the ground and rolled along the pavement. He tried getting up, but he couldn't move.

Mr Mann had seen his opportunity and had taken it.

He'd run fast, as fast as he could to beat the weird ‘Stop, thief!' woman to the prize, and as they'd skidded round that last corner he'd been able to nudge in front, to get one of his leather-patched elbows in her way and she'd careened into a hedge.

Ha ha!
he'd thought, like a horrible person.

And he didn't stop running, he didn't slow down.

Mr Mann had one job and he was good at it. He'd done it for six and a half years and had captured and returned to schools two hundred and seventeen and a half truants, not to mention making twice as many ‘preventative pickups' (which was where, like this morning, he collected troublesome kids before they've even had a chance to bunk off). He practised at home of an evening, scouring maps, searching for hideaways, meditating. He lined dummies up in his garden and found inventive and effective means of capturing them.

He was only a few metres behind ‘the girl', as close as he'd been for all the chase, and up ahead was a park. Now was his last chance. He knew when she reached the park there
were a dozen different directions she could go in, there'd be crowds for her to hide in, it would get tricky.

Another metre closer and the running Mr Mann lifted his hand above his head and began swinging the ‘holey cloth' that Fizz had noticed earlier. (Remember?) It was a
very
holey cloth – Fizz had almost been right. It was the most holey sort of cloth you can find. A whole bunch of holes sewn together with very fine thread and weighted with little lead balls round the edges.

It was a net.

And Mr Mann swung it like a gladiator and, at exactly the right moment, he let it fly free from his hand and with a
whish
it wrapped itself around Piltdown Truffle (as he saw things).

To you and I though, it caught Fizzlebert Stump. Like a fish. Which is what's normally caught in nets. Which is why I said what I said a couple of pages ago about Fizz being wrapped up like a haddock having a bad day. It was a most apposite simile, I think you'll agree now, even if it was puzzling at the time.

So, at the end of this, most energetic, chapter, Fizz is lying on the pavement, wrapped up in a net he can't struggle free of with a truant officer determined to return him to the school he'd only just escaped from, and all the time he can see, just ahead of him, the green greenery of the park and the bright stripes of the Big Top.

So near, as they say, but so far, as they also say.

CHAPTER NINE

In which a boy dangles in a net and in which an old man likes potatoes

Fizz was hoisted up over Mr Mann's shoulder and dangled, still tangled in the net, down the truant officer's back.