The Boy Who Cried Fish (2 page)

‘Thank you.’

At the same time as this very quiet argument, Fizz had observed something else going on. While Cook and the Doctor talked, the slick black shape of Fish, the circus’s sea lion, was sneaking through the kitchen, across to the trays of cooked fish, where he immediately began wolfing down as big mouthfuls as he could manage. And this was what he was doing when Cook turned round and saw him.

Uh-oh
, Fizz thought.

If there’d been a handle to hand, Cook would’ve flown off it. Since there wasn’t, he threw his ladle at Fish.

The sea lion lifted his head at just that moment. His face was covered with thick white fishy sauce, which his fat black tongue was quickly cleaning off, and he wasn’t paying attention to flying utensils. The ladle caught him just above the eye with a loud
bonk!
and went spinning off to clatter into the kitchen.

Cook followed the ladle with some of his choicest swear words, loudly accusing Fish of ruining everyone’s dinner by sticking his smelly filthy head in their food. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, and frankly, Cook said, he’d had enough. He was fed up with the greedy sea lion gobbling everything he could find. He hardly had time to cook, he added, having to constantly watch out for thieves. He pointed out (also) that a sea lion should be out in the ocean, not cluttering up a man’s kitchen, licking pans and sniffing bowls. Fish was a very naughty sea lion indeed, Cook concluded, and on the whole, as the circus chef, he was rather annoyed.

(You’ll notice I’m paraphrasing what Cook said, which means saying what he said but in different words. I’m not telling you the actual words for two main reasons. Firstly, if I did, your parents or teachers would take this book off you right now and bring it straight back to the bookshop or library. They might even make a complaint to the publishers too, and
they
get tetchy enough hearing from
me
, let alone from unhappy bookbuyers. And secondly, even if I
wanted
to use the actual words, I couldn’t, because I don’t know how to spell most of them. They were
that
rude.)

Fizz felt sorry for his friend. He knew the sea lion had done wrong stealing the fish, but he didn’t deserve such a loud and public telling off. And he certainly hadn’t needed a ladle bounced off his head. The poor thing.

As Cook’s tirade (which is another word for a harangue (which is a sort of dessert he rarely made)) went on, Fish sat there, stunned. He wasn’t used to being shouted at. He wasn’t used to having things thrown at him, and even less to things hitting him. He was the cheeky sea lion everyone loved, wasn’t he?

But Cook clearly didn’t think so, and even as the Ringmaster put his hand on the chef’s shoulder and told him to calm down, Fish was waddling out of the Mess Tent, a sorry look on his face, his head hung low and his whiskers drooping.

When it came to show time, a little later, Fish was gone. Wystan looked everywhere he could think of, but the sea lion wasn’t to be found. He’d left and not come back. And since Wystan couldn’t do his act by himself, he had to sit the evening out.

(This is where the flashback ends. The next bit’s no longer in the same sort of black and white that this last bit’s been in, it’s in the
normal
black and white instead. I hope that’s clear.)

So, bearing all that in mind, Fizz was surprised to see his friend so excited after the show.

‘Listen,’ Wystan said, breathlessly (and still between pants). ‘I was lying on my bed, combing my beard, when I thought I heard something
outside
. This was when you were all, you know, doing the show. So I looked out the window and there was this bloke creeping around by the cages. Dead dodgy-looking.’

Wystan slept in the spare bedroom of Miss Tremble’s caravan. She trained the horses and was a woman of delicate, sensitive feelings. Her caravan was always parked next to the animals, alongside the portable paddock where her horses spent the night stood up sleeping. Charles’s cage and Fish’s inflatable pool were round there too. (It was only a paddling pool, but every now and the sea lion liked to have a quick splash in the night in between mackerel-ful dreams.)

‘He had this pirate’s hat on and his chin stuck out like it was reaching for something, like Mr Punch’s, and instead of a hand he had . . . a hook.’ Wystan let this description hang in the air for moment, before finishing it off with what seemed to be incontrovertible proof of wrongdoing. ‘And underneath his nose,’ he said, ‘he had
no moustache at all
.’

‘That’s weird,’ said Fizz, nodding sagely.

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought. He was being all creepy round the animals’ cages, all tip-toeing and peering over his shoulder . . .’ Wystan mimed the look, with one hand curled into a claw and his beard sticking out like a chin (although not very convincingly) ‘. . . and he was halfway up the steps to Captain Fox-Dingle’s caravan when there was this beeping and he stopped. He froze there, just for a second. Then he quickly looked behind him and scarpered. Not really running, you know, but right annoyed at being disturbed.’

‘A beeping?’ Fizz asked.

‘Yeah, like a digital clock or something,’ Wystan said. ‘I went to the door, to go out and see which way he went. And you’ll never believe what happened then.’

‘Did he try to sell you a digital watch?’

‘No, don’t be stupid. I opened the door, and there, straight in front of me, was a flipping crocodile!’

‘A crocodile?’ asked Fizz, sceptically.

‘Yeah, a great big thing, waddling along on the grass between the caravans.’

‘A crocodile,’ Fizz repeated.

‘Yes, a crocodile. Huge mouth, with loads of teeth.’

‘What did you do?’

‘What do you think? I shut the door quick. By the time I got back to the window, it had gone. They’d both gone.’

‘If they were there at all.’ Fizz thought the story sounded distinctly fishy.

‘Of course they were there,’ Wystan snapped. ‘I was nearly eaten by a crocodile.’

‘You weren’t nearly eaten though, were you?’ said Fizz. ‘You
hid
from it.’

‘What would you have done, then?’

‘I’d’ve wrestled it to the ground and then called for help,’ Fizz said.

There was a short, embarrassing silence. The light bulbs strung between the caravans and the Big Top swung gently in the cold evening breeze, flickering to themselves like dim yellow-orange fruits. Wystan gave Fizz a look from over the top of his beard that said, ‘Yeah, right.’

Fizz shuffled his feet and changed the subject. ‘So who do you reckon this strange chap was?’

‘First I thought,’ Wystan said, ‘maybe he was a friend of the Captain’s?’

Fizz shook his head. ‘Then why would he be sneaking round?’

‘Exactly, that’s why I done away with the idea,’ said Wystan.

‘Maybe,’ Fizz offered, ‘he was the new assistant Miss Tremble’s been talking about. She said she needed a new groom to help her since Alberto joined the navy. Maybe he was looking for her, and just got the caravans muddled up.’

‘Well, he’d be a right rum groom, what with that hook and all. You’d be a brave horse to be stroked by him. And anyway, she’d’ve told me if she’d been and hired someone.’

‘Well, I don’t know who he could be then,’ Fizz said, his brain almost empty of ideas.

‘I had one idea,’ said Wystan. ‘One more.’

‘What?’

‘I reckon he’s a
saboteur
, come from another circus.’

‘A saboteur?’

‘Yeah, come to sabotage the circus. Make us look bad.’

‘Twice in one summer?’ Fizz asked, referring to what had happened in
Fizzlebert Stump and the Bearded Boy
. (Wystan scuffed his feet in the dust, embarrassed, thinking about his part in that book.) ‘Bit unlikely, isn’t it?’ Fizz racked his brains to think of another explanation. ‘He was probably an audience member who’d got lost while looking for the loo.’

Wystan looked at Fizz. He mimed the hook. He mimed the chin (though not very well). He mimed the lack of moustache. He mimed the man’s tiptoeing spy-ish-ness. And he mimed the lugubrious waddle of a hungry crocodile.

‘Fancy dress?’ Fizz offered.

‘You’re an idiot sometimes,’ Wystan harrumphed.

‘No I’m not,’ Fizz replied.

‘Yes you are.’

‘No I’m not.’

‘Yes you are.’

‘No I’m not.’

Wystan stepped right up close, so that his beard tickled our hero’s chin. It bristled and crackled with tense static electricity.

‘Yes, you are,’ he said quietly and menacingly.

‘Ah, my happy boys!’ said Fizz’s mum, looking round the edge of the doorway.

‘Hello, Mrs Stump,’ Wystan said, stepping back and waving at her with the tip of his beard.

‘It’s time for bed, darling,’ she said, looking at Fizz. ‘It’s a big day tomorrow.’

‘Mum!’

‘But darling,’ she said, nodding seriously, ‘there was a thing on the news about it. The Prime Minister has decided that Thursdays will be twenty-six hours long. Starting tomorrow. A big day.’

‘But . . .’

Even as Fizz spoke he was trying to see whether she still had any clown’s makeup on.

‘Um . . .’ Wystan lifted his finger as he spoke, ‘ain’t tomorrow Monday?’

‘It was on the news,’ Mrs Stump answered. ‘Mondays are the new Thursday.’

‘But . . .’

Fizz was pretty sure he could see a bit of white face paint on her left cheek.

‘Oh, just go to bed, Wystan,’ he said, knowing when to give up arguing with a clown. ‘It’s getting late.’

Wystan looked at Mrs Stump again and then at Fizz and whispered, ‘What about . . . ?’

‘It was nothing,’ Fizz said. ‘I reckon you fell asleep and just dreamt it all.’

‘Well, I ain’t dreaming now, am I?’ Wystan muttered under his breath. ‘And I weren’t dreaming then, and you’re an idiot to say I was.’ And with that he shoved his hands in his pockets, turned on the spot and stomped off between the caravans, leaving Fizz and his mum behind.

Fizz hadn’t said what he really thought, which was that Wystan had made the whole story up to make it seem he’d had an exciting evening even though he wasn’t performing in the Big Top. And the reason Fizz hadn’t actually come out and said this was that he was polite, and his mum’s interruption had taken the wind out of the boys’ argument.

Nevertheless as Fizz shook his head and climbed the steps into the caravan, he half hoped Wystan had been right (although, of course, Fizz knew he wasn’t), because a strange-looking nautical man pursued by a crocodile did sound
vaguely
interesting.

Chapter Two

In which some questions are asked and in which a lion is discussed

The next morning Fizzlebert woke up, got up and ate up his breakfast. As he swallowed the last slice of doughnut on toast, wiping a spot of red jam from his chin, he began to tell his mum and dad about Wystan’s story. (The more he thought about it the sillier it seemed.)

‘Guess what Wystan told me,’ he began.