Selby's Secret (9 page)

The
Golden Doldrum
docked at Dolphin Island and Dr Septimus C. Squirt, the director of the Dolphin Research Station, was there to meet the Trifles.

“Blinky!” Dr Squirt said, clapping Dr Trifle so hard on the back that he nearly fell into the water. “How good to see you and Mrs Trifle. I can't wait to show you all the exciting work we're doing here. Come along, there's no time to waste.”

Selby and the Trifles followed Dr Squirt to a large building where the director had an office packed with every sort of electronic device. There he could sit and look through a window into a huge tank and study a dolphin.

Selby put his nose up to the glass and in an instant the dolphin swam down and put his nose on the other side, giving Selby a start.

“I'm on the brink of a great discovery,” Dr Squirt said, twiddling the dials of his instruments. “Soon I will be able to talk to animals”

“What makes him think that animals want to talk to him?” Selby thought, feeling a bit sorry for the dolphin.

“We captured Dizzy only three weeks ago,” Dr Squirt went on, “and already he's said,
‘bleep beek gleep squeak
.”

“He said what?” Mrs Trifle said, wondering why Dr Squirt would want to talk to a dolphin and what he would say if he could.

“'Bleep beek gleep squeak
‘,” Dr Squirt repeated. “Music to the ears, isn't it?”

“Not my sort of music,” Selby thought as Dizzy tapped the glass in front of him with one flipper.

“And what does it mean?” Dr Trifle asked.

“I'm not quite sure,” Dr Squirt said. “It could mean ‘throw me a herring'. He seems to think about food quite a lot”

“It probably means ‘stop staring at me, you silly scientific twit',” thought Selby, who was glad he'd never said
“bleep beek gleep squeak
“
—
or anything else, for that matter — to Dr Squirt.

Dizzy swam round and round the pool and then pressed his nose to the window and said,
“Squeak bleek beep beek.
“

“Now I think that means, ‘throw me a mackerel',” Dr Squirt said. “I haven't worked out all the finer points of the language but soon Dizzy and I will be having long and intimate conversations.”

“At least you'll be able to tell each other when you're hungry,” Selby thought.

Dr Squirt opened the door that led to the top part of the pool and went upstairs. He pulled a mackerel out of a plastic bucket and held it over the water. Dizzy made a tight circle and then leaped up out of the water and grabbed it out of Dr Squirt's hand.

“Raw fish,” Selby thought, remembering that he hadn't eaten all day, and also remembering his favourite TV cooking show which had told him how the Japanese sometimes eat raw fish. “I think I could go for a munch of mackerel right now.”

“For the rest of the tour,” Dr Squirt said, returning to his office, “we'll have to leave your little dog behind. There are ladders where we're going. I don't think he could manage them.”

No sooner were they out of sight than the thought of raw fish got the best of Selby and he opened the door and dashed upstairs to the top of the pool.

“Sorry Dizzy,” he thought, plunging his head into the fish bucket and pulling out a mackerel, “but we've all got to eat.”

Dizzy, misunderstanding Selby's intention and thinking it was feeding time again, swam in a circle and then leaped into the air, grabbing the fish's tail in his teeth. All of which would have been okay except that Selby, who had just decided that raw fish tasted horrible and that he wasn't going to eat it, didn't let go fast enough and soon he was flying through the air and into the middle of the pool. All of which still would have been okay if Selby hadn't been the only dog in Australia and — for all he knew — the world that couldn't swim.

Selby thrashed about on the surface of the water and suddenly his life flashed before his eyes: he saw himself sitting in front of the TV watching Basil the butler. He remembered the exact moment when he realised that he could understand people-talk. He remembered teaching himself to speak and he remembered deciding that he was going to keep his talking a deep, dark secret — even if it killed him.

“Deep? Dark?” Selby thought, suddenly sinking under the surface and then bobbing up again.
“Even if it killed me?”
he thought again, suddenly thinking that dying would be going
too far and yelling out at the top of his voice, “Help me! Save me! Get me out of this stupid pool! I can talk! I admit I can talk! I'll tell you everything you want to know, just get me out of here!”

Just then Dizzy picked up Selby with his nose and raced up and down, throwing and catching him like a beach ball.

“Squeak bleep,”
Dizzy squealed, throwing Selby out of the pool and watching him race down the stairs through the doorway and into Dr Squirt's office.

“Crumbs!” Selby thought, shaking the water out of his fur, and thinking how happy he was to be alive — but wishing he'd kept his mouth shut. “I hope Dr Squirt didn't hear me.”

Just as Selby closed the door behind him and curled up innocently on the floor, Dr Squirt burst in with the Trifles close behind.

“What's happening?” Dr Squirt asked. “What was all that noise?”

“It sounded like … like a voice,” Dr Trifle said. “I could have sworn it was someone calling.”

“Fortunately I always leave the tape recorder
going when I'm out of the office. I can just play it all back.”

“Gulp,” Selby thought, looking less and less innocent as he heard his cries for help on the tape recorder. “I'm a done dog this time. The evidence is right on the tape. There will be no denying it. I'll have to own up”

“He talked!” Dr Squirt yelled. “He spoke in the honest to goodness Queen's own English! An animal spoke! Oh joy of joys! I knew it would happen one day! And he said he'd tell us everything if we just let him out of the tank! Quick! Help me open the gate!”

“The silly nit thinks it was Dizzy calling for help,” Selby thought, breathing a sigh of relief.

Dr Squirt and Mrs Trifle grabbed the valve and turned it and Dizzy shot out of the pool and into the ocean. They all dashed to the water's edge in time to see Dizzy swimming away.

“Stop!” Dr Squirt yelled after him. “You promised you'd tell me everything you know if I let you out! I upheld my end of the bargain, now it's your turn! Come back!” he called.

Dizzy jumped into the air and called back,
“Gleep bleep squeak bleep,”
and was gone.

“What do you suppose that means?” Mrs Trifle asked.

“I think he's wishing me good luck,” Dr Squirt said, waving and blinking back a tear.

“I think he said, ‘better luck next time',” Selby thought as he and the Trifles boarded the
Golden Doldrum
for their trip back to the mainland. “That'll teach Dr Squirt to mess with not-so-dumb animals.”

Cracker Night was not Selby's favourite night of the year. It was not even his second favourite or his third. In fact it came close to last on his list of favourite nights, not because all the people in Bogusville went to the Bogusville Oval to see the Monster Fireworks Display, which was put on by the Fireworks Committee, but because Mrs Trifle always took him along, too.

“Selby just can't wait to see all the pretty fireworks,” Mrs Trifle said to Dr Trifle as she patted Selby on the head. “Why, last year he just lay on the ground and watched every one of them. You could just tell he loved it.”

“Let's make sure we bring him along tonight,” Dr Trifle said, working on his sketch of the new water-driven floral clock at the Rose Garden. “Now let's see,” he said to himself. “Maybe we should build a rain-barrel to catch the water that will drive the clock. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.”

“Fireworks,” Selby thought as he secretly read the latest episode of
Wonderful Wanda
in the
Bogusville Banner.
“All that fizzing and banging rattles my nerves. Why can't people just sit down and relax? Why do they have to scare themselves silly and call it a good time?”

Just then there was a knock at the door and Phil Philpot, the owner of The Spicy Onion and head of the Fireworks Committee, burst in.

“I've got it!” he yelled. “I've got it!”

“What is it?” asked Mrs Trifle, hoping it wasn't measles or whooping cough.

“All we need is your permission, Mrs Mayor, and Big Beryl will burst into brilliance.”

“I think we've got enough fireworks for tonight,” Mrs Trifle said, remembering that Big Beryl was Phil Philpot's super-duper rocket and also remembering that wherever it went up and
wherever it came down it always started bushfires.

“No, no!” Phil screamed. “You don't understand. It will be wonderful this year! I've ironed out all the problems. Picture this: everyone's down at the park and we set off the usual fizzers and bangers. Suddenly, just when everyone thinks it's over, you push a button and there's a rumbling over on Mount Gumboot. The rumbling builds to a roar and then up comes Big Beryl, the size of a garden shed, streaking across the sky.”

“Spare me,” Selby thought, trying to concentrate on how his favourite comic strip character Wonderful Wanda was going to escape from an enormous tuba.

“And that's not all!” Phil shrieked, pulling at the hair on the sides of his head till he looked like a big bonbon. “As it roars into the sky it drops a shower of colour like a huge rainbow. Then, suddenly, BOOM! Tiny rockets shoot out and burst into the letter B —”

“What tiny rockets?” Mrs Trifle interrupted.

“There are little rockets in the big rocket. They shoot out of holes in the sides of the big
rocket. When the little rockets explode they will make the letter B in the sky,” Phil explained. “Does that make sense?”

“Yes, very good,” Dr Trifle said. “But why a B?”

“I'm getting to that,” Phil said. “Don't rush me. After the B there's another boom and more little rockets shoot out and explode in the shape of an O. Then another boom, and a G. By the time Big Beryl has crossed the sky it will have spelled out BOGUSVILLE FOREVER! Isn't that great?”

“But will it set the bush on fire?” Mrs Trifle asked.

“Impossible,” Phil said. “It will come out of a hole in the ground and when it finishes writing BOGUSVILLE FOREVER a parachute will open and the rocket will drift slowly down. Any fires in the rocket will go out before it touches the ground. It's foolproof.”

“That's what you said last year,” Mrs Trifle said.

“Last year it didn't have the parachute,” Phil said, getting excited again and stamping about the room, nearly tripping over Selby. “I'll tell
you what. If anything goes wrong, this town will get the biggest apology it's ever seen.”

“All right,” Mrs Trifle said, wondering just what a big apology was. “You win. Go ahead with Big Beryl.”

“Yaaaaaaaahhhhoooooooo!” Phil shrieked. “You won't regret this.”

That evening when Dr and Mrs Trifle were about to leave for Bogusville Oval, Selby was nowhere to be seen. In fact he had crept out the back door and was just climbing under the fence in the Bogusville Memorial Rose Garden when the Trifles finally got in their car.

“This,” Selby said, with his copy of the
Bogusville Banner
and a torch to read it by, “will be the quietest place in town”

Selby found a freshly dug hole and climbed in, making himself comfortable on top of a rounded metal object, thinking that it must be something to do with Dr Trifle's new watertank and not knowing that it was Big Beryl and that Mrs Trifle had decided there was less danger of fire if the rocket went up from the Rose Gardens instead of Mount Gumboot.

“This is the life,” Selby said, lying back to reread
Wonderful Wanda
for the fourth time and looking up occasionally to see the coloured glow in the air over the Bogusville Oval where the fireworks were fizzing and banging.

Then suddenly the fizzing and banging stopped and in the ground under Selby there was a rumbling that built to a roar. In a second Big Beryl shot into the air in a hail of sparks with Selby clinging to it for dear life.

“Help!” he screamed. “Get me down! Help!”

The rocket soared higher and higher, making a wide arc over Bogusville Oval where everyone could see the rainbow of colour streaming from its back, but no one could see the screaming Selby in the blackness of the night sky.

“Help!” he screamed again. “Save me!”

Just then there was a boom and tiny rockets shot out of the sides of Big Beryl, narrowly missing Selby's dangling hind legs. The rockets exploded, making a huge letter B, and there was a gasp and then a cheer from the crowd below.

“Please save me!” Selby screamed, and more tiny rockets shot out and exploded into the letter O.

Selby grabbed Big Beryl's nose cone tighter, pulling his feet up out of the way every time the little rockets shot out of its sides.

“Yoooooooowwwwwwwwch!” Selby yelled as the rockets for the first E in FOREVER hit his legs and spun every which way making a G and an I in the sky instead of an E. “Ow! That hurt! Help!”

Selby pulled his feet up as the rockets continued with a V and then an E, and then again the rockets of the letter R hit his feet and when they finally burst they looked more like an M and an E than an R.

“Iiiiiiiiiii-yi-yi-yi-yi-ooooooooooch!” Selby screamed as he tried to beat out the flames on his furry feet, and Big Beryl's parachute opened and he drifted down into Bogusville Reserve.

“Cripes!” Selby cried as he hit the ground and started beating his feet in the leaves. “My blinkin' feet are on fire!”

Selby streaked through the bushes, setting fire to everything as he went, and then jumped into the only wet spot in Bogusville Creek.

“Phil Philpot did it again,” he said, watching as the bushfire brigade arrived and quickly put
out the fire. “If only he'd stay out of the fireworks business and stick to making peanut prawns, I might get a little peace around this town. But I'll have to say one thing for him,” Selby said, looking up and reading the letters in the sky that were supposed to say BOGUSVILLE FOREVER but which now said BOGUSVILLE FORGIVE ME, “that's the biggest apology I've ever seen.”