Circus of Thieves on the Rampage (19 page)
Read Circus of Thieves on the Rampage Online
Authors: William Sutcliffe and David Tazzyman
A
ND THAT, MY PRETTIES,
is more or less that. What more do you want? The shirt off
my back? The shoes off my feet? The teeny tiny hairs in my ears?
So Armitage was on the run again (booooo!), while Billy was reunited with his father (hoorayyyy!), who had now realised that it might be a good idea to change out of his prison uniform. Granny
was reunited with her grandson (yippeeeee!) and Hannah faced a big decision (hmmmmm). Did she want to stay with Queenie and join the circus? But if Queenie was going back into retirement, was there
even a circus for her to join? Could she stay with Billy and Ernesto? But to go where and do what?
Before we get to her big decision, we have to tangle one last time with the puzzling puzzle that has puzzled her since the beginning of this tale. Who was her father? Armitage or Ernesto?
When she finally sat down with Ernesto, and he told her how he had come to marry Wendy, it ended up being a story that was full of answers, but not necessarily to the right questions. Hannah was
horrified to hear that after the Cupcake Test, Wendy had in fact chosen Armitage. Ernesto thought this might have something to do with the fact that he had been sending her flowers every day for a
month, not knowing that she hated flowers and was in fact allergic to them. He never found out why she at first rejected him, but he was heartbroken.
His heartbreak, however, only lasted until an extraordinary day a few months later when by a stroke of luck, the Espadrille and Shank circuses found themselves in Moscow at the same time. Wendy
had burst into Ernesto’s dressing room shortly before his show, in floods of tears. She’d just spotted Armitage stealing, and in an instant had realised that he wasn’t a
wonderful, charming, dashing, charismatic ringmaster, Svengali and entrepreneur, but was actually a stinky pig.
Wendy had looked up after relating her woeful story, with limpid, tear-filled eyes, and in that instant something amazing happened, something that felt a little bit like being lifted up by a
tornado, zoomed around the entire planet, then dumped back down where you started, all in less time than it takes to blink. Yes, Ernesto and Wendy fell in love.
Ernesto had been pining for her since long before the cruel day of the Cupcake Test, but in a magical instant, their love suddenly bloomed into something mutual, deep, and unshakeable. He knew
straight away that she would leave Armitage and join his circus. ‘The day after that, we got married,’ he explained to Hannah, ‘and we were so, so, so happy; and nine months
later, you came along, which made us even happier, because you were simply the most exquisite, delicious, perfect little baby. But the trouble with being happy is that you tend to forget about the
boring things in life, like money. I’d never been good at that stuff anyway, but I got worse than ever, and it wasn’t long before we went broke and Shank took us over. So poor Wendy ran
away from Armitage, only to find herself working for him again, and now he was meaner to her than to anyone else. It was Armitage that made us send you back to your granny. A year or so later, just
after Billy was born, he forced us to take away the safety net. It was all my fault. If she’d never met me, she’d still be alive today.’
Ernesto burst into tears, and Hannah and Billy leapt towards him, holding him as tightly as their four arms could manage. He still seemed to be crying when they heard him say, ‘I’m
so happy to have you both back again. I’m happier than I’ve ever been. This is just the best thing that has ever happened. Joint top with that day in Moscow.’
A splutter now came out of his mouth that was either sobbing or laughter or both. It was hard to tell.
Emotions are strange things. At this moment, Ernesto’s emotions seemed to be rather like an enormous lorry juggernauting at top speed down a motorway, while somehow also juggernauting in
the opposite direction at the same time.
Hannah was still in Ernesto’s powerful arms, wet with his tears and engulfed by his sob-laugh at the moment she asked if he really, a hundred per cent definitely was her father; but for
some reason the question now felt less important than it had done only a short while ago.
He held her close, and responded in a sombre, intense voice. ‘Like all the best trapeze artists, your mother was a quick thinker, and she changed her mind about things very fast. In
Moscow, it took her about 0.03 seconds to fall in love with me. And this was only a day after she’d caught Armitage stealing and had fallen out of love with him.’
After hours of talking and crying and laughing and remembering and explaining and exploring and examining, at the end of it all, they decided, together, that the answer to this question
didn’t really matter after all. Hannah was Hannah. She was herself, no more no less, and nothing that had happened before she was born made any difference to who she was. Granny and Hannah
and Billy and Ernesto and Hannah’s other mother and father back home, they were family now. All of them. And exactly what kind of family they were, or how to explain it to other people, made
no difference whatsoever. All that mattered was that they had found each other after a long and painful separation, and that they cared for one another, and that it was time for cake.
Since we have arrived at slices of cake all round, that can only mean one thing. This, quite clearly, is . . .
Except that . . .
a few questions . . .
. . . remain.
1.
Where will Hannah go now?
2.
Where will Ernesto and Billy go?
3.
Will they all start a new circus together?
4.
What will Armitage do next?
5. Revenge?
6.
You betcha.
7. But betcha isn’t a word and that isn’t a question.
8.
And neither is that.
9. And what is the longest river in Argentina?
1
. Kevin’s story ends here. It wasn’t a very long story, and it was not a happy one, either. Poor Kevin. He was extremely rude to
the branch that looked after him all summer, though, so perhaps he got what he deserved.
2
. Actually, they weren’t his friends. Nobody liked Kevin. He was a brat.
3
. This, as you will remember, is what circus folk call non-circus folk. It’s not an insult. Not to a civilian, anyway, because civilians
don’t know any better. To a circus person, calling them a civilian is about as rude as tipping a wellie boot filled with tadpoles into their underpants (i.e. very).
4
. Health and safety, you may remember, were her mother’s main concerns. In fact, they were her job.
5
. And eggs really is eggs, most emphatically. You can look it up if you don’t believe me.
The Complete History of Eggs
by Daisy
Scramble is the place to look. Another option, for a more light-hearted take on the subject, is
Oh Lay, Oh Lay, Olé
by Ringo Kissinger.
6
. There were in fact 7,362 things Armitage didn’t like, but there isn’t time to go into that here. A few examples: puppies,
rainbows, the flute, lifts, turkey, Turkey and trainers with flashing lights in them.
7
. There were only four things Armitage did like: himself, his enormous lorry, gadgets and revenge.
8
. Maybe we should add lists to the list of things Armitage liked, because he really was unusually keen on making lists, especially lists of
things and people that he didn’t like. Once, he made a list of his favourite lists, but that’s another story. Look out for
Circus of Thieves and the List of Lists
, soon to
be available in all good bookshops, mediocre bookshops, and stinky hovels which happen to have the odd book for sale. 12.3456789% of the royalties will be donated to the Royal Society for the
Protection of Numerically Ordered Items (which was founded in 1234 by the fifth Lord Six-Seven of Eight-Nine Hall in Tenby).
9
. Words in capital letters should be shouted aloud. © Did you just shout out ‘bottom’? Haha! Tricked you.
10
. There’s no such thing as a frontstory, by the way. That’s just the story. The backstory is what happens before the story
begins, then the story is simply the story, and what happens after the story doesn’t have a name, because nobody knows what it is, unless another book is written saying what happens after
the story, in which case that’s a sequel. In fact, this is a sequel, so the last book, which was just a story, is now the backstory to this story, but not the backstory I’m about to
tell you about, which happened before the story in the last story, so it might make more sense to call the next bit a backbackstory. Glad we cleared that up.
11
. This was a few years before he upgraded to an enormous lorry.
12
. If you haven’t read the last book, Narcissus is a camel. If you have read the last book, but have a poor memory, he is also a
camel. If you’ve read the last book and have a good memory, he’s still a camel.
13
. Or perhaps that should be circus-father. Or stolen-from-your-real-father-father. There isn’t really a suitable term for
Armitage’s relationship to Billy. Perhaps father-out-law does the best job. If you’re confused, read the last book. If, after that, you’re still confused, read it again. Then,
if you’re still confused, give up and go to bed.
14
. That’s Billy’s father. His real father. Keep up.
15
. ‘Oi!’ I hear you shout. Unfortunately, I don’t respond to rudeness.
16
. ‘Excuse me, sir?’ I hear you ask. Too much. Sycophantic.
17
. ‘Ahem,’ you cough. ‘I have a question.’ That’s more like it. ‘At the end of the last book it seemed
like Hannah was going to follow Narcissus’s footprints and find Billy straight away. What about that? Eh?’ OK. Good point. Very clever. Very astute. Very alert. You see . . . the
thing is . . . er . . . what happened was . . . um . . . the fact is . . . it rained that night. Really hard. And washed away the footprints. OK? Satisfied? Smartypants.
18
. You can fill in the blank yourself. There are many options. For example: vanity, waste, political insanity, the delusions of power,
brainfreezes, tents.
19
. He had written a book of card tricks which literally nobody understood, but which all the newspapers said was a masterpiece, because
nobody wanted to be the first to admit they couldn’t understand it.
20
. The Kremlin is Russia’s HQ – kind of like Parliament, 10 Downing Street and Buckingham Palace all rolled up together, hidden
behind a massive wall, with a few domes plonked on top and Very Serious Men outside practising silly walks.
21
. I said that thing about a museum just to be polite. Actually, it all belonged in the bin. This is just between us, OK?
22
. See the books mentioned earlier if you still require proof of the egginess of eggs. Alternatively, make an egg sandwich, leave it in your
sock drawer for a week, then shove your face in and take a good whiff. This is one of the eggiest proofs of egginess that can be conducted safely outside a laboratory. Do not attempt this if
you are prone to fainting or share a bedroom.
23
. Middle-class parents reading this aloud have my formal permission to replace the word ‘biscuit’ with the words ‘oatcake
and slices of organic apple’.
24
. This leaf, by a strange coincidence, was Kevin’s cousin, and it was not happy to end up as a swimming costume. Kevin was from a
very unlucky family.
25
. The second ‘p’ is very important in this word. Without it, a very different scene is conjured up.
26
. Most books have a boring bit somewhere that you can skip. Teachers never admit to this, but it’s true. This paragraph is a good
example of a Very Boring Bit. I recommend that you jump immediately to the next paragraph, because what remains of this one is pure, undiluted, top-of-the-range tedium.
27
. On the international markets, questions are always priced in dollars. It’s a financial tradition. At today’s prices, this
query is a £621,920 question.
28
. Before all performances of any kind, sound is always checked. This involves a man in a black T-shirt that is too large and black jeans
that are too small muttering ‘1-2-3 testing 1-2-3,’ into each microphone while a man at the back of the hall in similar clothes shouts back something along the lines of, ‘Yes,
that sounds like sound.’ These people live according to mysterious rules known only to them and are rarely seen in daylight.
29
. That list in full: 1. Being honest. 2. Smiling. 3. Being polite. 4. Playing badminton.
30
. A box office, contrary to logic, is not an office filled with boxes. It is a place from which tickets are sold and, more importantly for
the purposes of our story, a place in which the money raised by ticket sales is kept. Yes, Armitage was a-plotting. Dastardly deeds were afoot.
31
. I like the word auditorium. It comes from the Latin words audit, meaning ‘very expensive’, and orium, meaning ‘a place
where ice cream is’.
32
.
33
. What do you mean, ‘that’s not in the dictionary’? Pah! Dictionaries are overrated. Or should that be over-rated?
I’ll have to look it up.
34
. If you’re only going to have one indulgence in life, why not this one? I can’t see anything wrong with it. If I worked for a
circus, knew how to play the tuba, and looked good in a grass skirt, I’d probably do the exact same thing. Whether or not Reginald Clench looked good in a grass skirt is open to
debate.
35
. That’s thick as in lots of them close together, not thick as in stupid. Maybe some of them were a bit thick, but that’s not
important right now.
36
. That’s thick as in deep, not thick as in stupid. This carpet was, in fact, of unusually high intelligence.
37
. How I wish that could be knocked gnoisily with her gnarled knuckles! If only we could fit a knight’s knitted knapsack of
gnome’s knickers into this scene! Don’t you sometimes just love kpointless gletters?
38
. A factoid is a very small fact. A facticle is a very small factoid. A factini is a very small facticle. You can fit two hundred and
seventy-three factinis on a pinhead.
39
. You see what I did there, don’t you? I skipped the cup of tea – the bit where Queenie has a good old catch-up with Granny
– because who wants to listen to a couple of old people banging on about the olden days, eh? Nobody. Not me, not you, not Little Boy Blue or Jimmy Choo or the mayor of Timbuktu.
40
. Health and safety announcement for very stupid people. Don’t do this. Actually, come to think of it, if you are stupid enough to
want to do this, you should probably go ahead and get it done, because it’s only a matter of time before you wipe yourself out in some act of catastrophic denseness or other, so it might
as well be this one.
41
. Those of you with an interest in mucus will be pleased to hear that a large amount of snot was involved. Others, who find this kind of
detail distasteful, may wish to skip this footnote, which, as you can see, is optional.
42
. If you see the word IT, that doesn’t mean someone is shouting the word ‘it’ for no apparent reason. IT stands for
Information Technology, which is a fancy term for computers. A more accurate term would be MAOTILUPTT, which stands for Mucking About On The Internet Looking Up Pointless Things Technology, but
for some reason this acronym has never caught on.
43
. ME stands for myalgic encephalomyelitis, which is a serious disease, though in this case it’s just Hannah shouting the word
‘me’. Acronyms can be awkward things, as anyone who works for the Paris Osteopathy Organisation will tell you.
44
. Personally, I blame his mother. She was too hard on him as a child. Or too soft on him. One of the two. Or maybe both. But that’s
another story. Suffice to say, any woman who lavishes more love on her collection of pet newts than on her son is unlikely to rear a happy child. (The newts turned out great, though. Pillars of
society, they are.)
45
. It is not possible to look plussed. Only nonplussed. Most people, when they look nonplussed, also look inert, which is interesting,
because it is also not possible to look ert. At least I’ve never managed it.
46
. Grooming is an important form of social bonding for all primates, including humans. If people spent more time picking things out of other
people’s hair, we’d all get on a lot better. We really would. If the United Nations began each session with a spot of international grooming, the planet would be a far more peaceful
place. But that’s enough about world peace. We’ve got more important things to deal with.
47
. That’s rapt, not wrapped. If you ever find yourself thinking that learning to spell is a boring waste of time, remember this as an
example of the confusion that can be caused by clumsy spilling.
48
. These are rhetorical questions, which means they don’t have an answer. Or if they do have an answer, nobody cares what it is. Why,
oh why do people ask rhetorical questions? What is the point? Does anyone know? Does anyone care? What am I talking about?
49
. This adjective is not intended to give offence to any porcine readers. Some pigs have lovely, intelligent eyes, and charming
personalities. But, let’s face it, personal hygiene is rarely a strong point.
50
. It is highly unusual to say the word ‘sniffle’ instead of actually sniffling. Old Bill was wellknown throughout the Middle of
Nowhere regional force as an eccentric weeper and unorthodox sniffler.
51
. Walkie-talkie-holding people in high visibility-jackets appear from nowhere at all public gatherings. Nobody knows where they come from
or where they go or what they are for.