Glubbslyme (9 page)

The rain increased until it was a thick grey blur and Rebecca couldn’t see a thing. She did scream then, but she hung on valiantly to umbrella and shopping bag until suddenly she was in sunshine. She blinked, bewildered, and then dared peer down again. There was the thick grey blur lapping the soles of her sandals.

‘It’s a cloud!’ she announced, ‘Glubbslyme, we’re above the clouds now!’

Glubbslyme did not reply. Rebecca worried about him. She did her best to peer into the shopping bag whilst the umbrella seemed relatively stable. She couldn’t see properly because the inside of the shopping bag was too dark. Perhaps it was just as well. It sounded as if Glubbslyme was being sick.

‘You poor thing,’ said Rebecca.

Glubbslyme groaned very weakly in agreement.

‘You might feel a bit better if you took your head out of the shopping bag,’ Rebecca suggested. ‘Get a bit of fresh air. It’s not raining up here at all, it’s lovely and sunny, look.’

Glubbslyme did not seem interested. But Rebecca was beginning to enjoy her flight. Now that the wind had dropped the umbrella didn’t jerk about so violently. It had stopped its upward rush and was now slowly drifting sideways. It was much less of a strain hanging onto the handle. Rebecca could relax a little, even try stretching out in mid-air and giving her legs a little kick. The umbrella went gently to the left when she kicked her left foot. She tried with the right. It seemed she had learned the secret of steering. She started to get a little bolder. She hooked the shopping bag as securely as she could to the umbrella handle and then pushed upwards. The umbrella flew up. Rebecca pulled down and the umbrella obediently swooped down until they were nearly in the clouds again. Rebecca pushed and the umbrella flew up and she laughed delightedly.

‘I can do it! I can fly! Oh Glubbslyme, I’m flying it! I can make it do exactly what I want.’

‘Then make it return to earth immediately,’ Glubbslyme whimpered from within the swaying shopping bag.

‘But it’s so
lovely
,’ said Rebecca, swerving elegantly to the left to avoid a startled flock of sparrows. ‘Oh goodness, if only I could tell Sarah.’

Sarah had flown in an aeroplane at Easter and had boasted about it for weeks afterwards. But this was a hundred times better than a tourist flight to Benidorm. It was better than looping the loop in Concorde.

Rebecca pointed her toes and smiled idiotically, hoping she looked as decorative as possible. She swooped to the right, she swooped to the left, she swooped right down into the cloud, trailing her legs in the wet mist as if she were going paddling. She swooped up and up and up until her head throbbed and her eyes blurred as she stared at the beauty of the big blue sky.

‘I can fly for ever!’ she shouted, flying faster and faster and faster.

The wind whipped her hair and watered her eyes. It shook her skirt and stung her bare legs. It seized the shopping bag and swayed it violently backwards and forwards. The handles jerked up and down, up and down – and then suddenly slipped right off the umbrella.

‘Glubbslyme!’ Rebecca screamed as the shopping bag and its contents went flying down the way.

Rebecca took hold of the umbrella with both hands and aimed for the earth. She shot downwards, frantically searching for the shopping bag. She saw it for an instant, tumbling over and over as it plummeted, and then it disappeared into the cloud. Rebecca steered the umbrella into the cloud too and fought her way through the wet mist. She came out the other side spluttering and shouting for Glubbslyme. She peered desperately downwards. She couldn’t see the shopping bag anywhere. She shook the umbrella to make it go faster but it was much harder to control in the wind and rain.

‘Glubbslyme, Glubbslyme, where
are
you?’ she shouted, but the wind whipped her words away.

She was flying above the main road and she saw the lorries thundering past underneath her. She saw a little dark speck in the road and for one terrible moment she thought it was a black toad and she screamed as a lorry crunched right over it – but when she swooped nearer she saw it was only a flattened beer can.

It frightened her so badly that she lost all control of the umbrella. It wavered wildly in the air, pulling her up and down and once even upside down. Rebecca shut her eyes and stopped caring. And then something punched her so hard in the stomach that her arms jerked up in the air and the umbrella handle slid from her grip. The umbrella escaped, spinning its spokes so wildly its red and yellow stripes blurred into orange. Rebecca blinked, still stunned. She realized she had stopped falling. Then her eyes focussed. She was at the top of a very tall tree, suspended across a branch with her legs still dangling. And there, caught at the very end of the branch, hanging on a twig, was a very familiar shopping bag.

‘Glubbslyme!’

‘Is that Rebecca?’ came a very feeble croak from within the bag.

‘Oh Glubbslyme, yes it’s me. Don’t worry, we’re safe now, the silly old umbrella’s flown away,’ said Rebecca.

They still weren’t exactly safe. They were at the top of a very tall tree. In fact some boys playing football in the rain spotted Rebecca and came running over the muddy grass, their mouths gaping.

‘How did you get right up there?’ one yelled.

‘Oh, it was easy peasy,’ said Rebecca, trying to sound nonchalant.

‘We never saw you climbing up,’ the boy shouted suspiciously.

‘You can’t see for looking,’ said Rebecca.

‘Are they boys? Do they have bicycles?’ Glubbslyme hissed.

‘Don’t worry, they’ll get fed up in a minute and go away,’ Rebecca whispered. ‘Then we can climb down.’

She was right and she was wrong. The boys did get fed up and went back to their game of football. But Rebecca found climbing down a tall tree with a shopping bag clutched to her chest a very difficult task indeed. It took her five full minutes to edge along the branch, and another five minutes recovering before she could face the descent. But she bravely did her best, although her progress was further hampered by a bossy woman in a blue kagool who kept calling up at her that she was a silly little fool to climb such a dangerous tree and she must come down at once. Poor Rebecca was doing her very best to come down. She slipped and slithered and fell the last six feet, landing with a hard bump – but she still clung on to the shopping bag, keeping Glubbslyme safe.

The woman scolded her very crossly indeed, although she did pick her up and set her on her feet, and then licked her hanky and mopped up the worst of Rebecca’s scratches.

‘Don’t you ever do anything so silly again,’ she said.

‘I won’t, I promise,’ said Rebecca fervently.

She found out the playing field was right the other side of the town. She had no money for the bus so she had to walk all the way home, even though it was miles, she was tired already, and it was still raining.

‘Would it work if we wished for some Seven League Boots, Glubbslyme?’ she said into the shopping bag.

Glubbslyme wasn’t up to answering. When Rebecca at long last got him home she had to give him a thorough bath and hide the ruined shopping bag and her pillow in the cupboard. She had no idea how she was going to explain their disappearance – or that of the umbrella – but she was too worried about Glubbslyme to care.

He groaned feebly, his eyes glazed, his skin dry and burning.

‘It’s because you were so sick,’ said Rebecca, and she tenderly tucked him up in his pot.

He still looked very poorly, opening and closing his dry lips.

‘You need a drink, don’t you, poor little pet,’ said Rebecca.

‘If you please,’ Glubbslyme whispered. His head lolled and a tear rolled down his cheek. ‘Whenever I was tormented with vomitings and pains in the belly my dear Rebecca used to give me camomile juice.’

‘I don’t think you can get that nowadays,’ said Rebecca. ‘What’s it look like?’

‘It’s yellow and bubbly and it is very beneficial.’

‘Hang on, I know something very similar!’ said Rebecca.

She poured him a little beaker of Lucozade, and then another little beaker and another. Glubbslyme drank it much too quickly, the bubbles going right up his nose. He was soon almost his old self, but he hiccupped horribly for hours.

‘Hello Becky.’

‘Who’s that?’ said Rebecca into the telephone receiver.

‘It’s me, Sarah.’

Rebecca had known straightaway that it was Sarah. She hadn’t heard from her since the day Sarah had run off with Mandy while she was floundering in Glubbslyme’s pond. Rebecca had been very hurt that Sarah hadn’t bothered to get in touch. She had decided that Sarah was no longer her Best Friend. Sarah was now her Number One Worst Enemy. And yet . . .

‘What do you want?’ Rebecca asked gruffly.

‘I wondered if you wanted to come round and play,’ said Sarah.

‘When?’ said Rebecca, weakening.

‘Now,’ said Sarah.

‘Okay,’ said Rebecca.

She badly wanted to ask whether Mandy would be there too, but she couldn’t get the words out. So she just said goodbye and hung up. She sat by the telephone a moment, trying to decide whether she was pleased that Sarah wanted to be friends again. She decided she was very pleased indeed.

‘I’m going round to play with my best friend,’ she said happily to Glubbslyme.

Glubbslyme glared.

‘I was under the impression that you were “playing” with me,’ he croaked, and he hopped haughtily into a corner.

It was very hard for him to look haughty because Rebecca had dressed him up in the bonnet and frilly frock and bootees belonging to a very elderly baby doll. She had had to beg and plead and proffer many spoonfuls of syrup before he would agree, and he complained bitterly the whole time, so Rebecca didn’t see why he was upset now.

‘I didn’t think you wanted to play. You won’t do it properly and go coo-coo and google-google like a real baby,’ said Rebecca.

‘I am well over three hundred years old so you can hardly expect me to mewl like an infant,’ said Glubbslyme, tossing his head and knocking his bonnet askew.

‘Quite,’ said Rebecca. ‘So now I’ll go and play with Sarah and you can be left in peace. You can go and have a nice hop in the garden and catch a few slugs.’

‘Indeed I am sick of slugs,’ said Glubbslyme.

‘Well, I don’t know. You could have a paddle in the bath – or a private syrup gorge – or how about trying television? You’re not frightened of it still, are you? I could see if there’s a Nature programme on, you might like that.’

‘Do not trouble yourself,’ said Glubbslyme. The bonnet was now over one eye. He tried to right it but his webbed paws were ineffectual.

‘Here, let me,’ said Rebecca, but he was in such a huff that he hopped out of the kitchen door into the back garden still dressed like a baby doll.

Rebecca stared after him worriedly, but decided she couldn’t let Glubbslyme rule her life.

‘Goodbye then. Try to have a nice time. Don’t be lonely. I’ll be back by lunchtime,’ she shouted into the garden.