Muggles Bereaved Page 5

  The roust-a-bout fished out some tickets from his filthy overalls. Tickets probably sneaked out of the circus ticket office where he had an arrangement with a certain blonde.

  “I expect you will want to let your parents know you are ok, first.”

  They shook their heads in disbelief. Did the roustabout have any parents? Obviously not, or he could have anticipated the shrieks, the smothering and the groundings that would follow admissions of being chased by a Bengal tiger.

  “Gosh, thanks,” said the tiger escapologists in unison, referring to the free tickets, not the chance to be on the carpet in front of mum and dad. To be honest, it was a unison of two. Tracy did not feel that giant tigers should be confined in narrow, smelly cages half a world away from the jungles of India just for exhibit to Muggles. Nor did she buy the oft repeated excuse that it was an essential part of the conservation effort. She felt that conservation should be done in reserves on the asian continent. Later, when the boys gaped and goggled admiringly at the black panther stalking its trainer in the circus ring, Tracy merely sniffed. She felt that such a magnificent beast should be back in the jungle basin of the Amazon. The well fed animal would snarl with genuine menace at the signal from the trainer’s stick and would leap obligingly through a hoop on top of a table. He’d do this all day to live the life of Old Riley. Obedience was its passport back to a snooze in the fresh hay of a cage where it could endure a shivering ‘come down’ from its own dose of psychotropics. No one knew what sanctions any continued disobedience might bring down on the sleek creature’s head if drugs failed, however. Tracy had visions of electric cattle prods and barbed wire whips as the primary training aid. She had no knowledge of the drugs available to circus vets in this universe, if no other. Enhanced obedience in a powder applied in feed was their preferred solution. But generous feeding was usually enough.

  The Companions of the Spectacles experienced their own ‘come down’ after first enjoying the ‘high’ of the animal trainer and his wild beasts. Two had experienced the high, while Tracy sulked. The boys had cheered when the animal trainer, El Domador. was announced by the tiger, their tiger, leaping into the ring constrained by ropes held by four muscly black men dressed as Nubians complete with Pharaonic Nemes headdresses of blue and gold. Such was the tiger’s power that it towed the men forward, their feet surfing the deep sawdust of the circus ring in showers of dust and wood chippings. The ‘Nubians’ grinned despite the splinters in their feet and held the ropes with one hand, the other held dramatically aloft in the imperious, macho arc of a bullfighter’s salute. The entrance was calculated to make the audience members sitting in the front row lean back and away from the roaring predator. If the audience said a prayer it was as nothing compared to the praying of the Nubians. They held on grimly while a team of roustabouts flooded into the ring with sections of a cage constructed of light but strong graphene bars. Soon the Nubians and the tiger were safely meshed in the high walls of the cage. A phantom ringmaster’s voice announced “El Domador” and a man in a bullfighters uniform entered the ring. The Nubians threw up their ropes and bowed deeply to the maestro, but with one eye carefully observing the snarling tiger as it turned. El Domador strode forward his whip curled back into the hand that held it erect and between him and the striped monster. The Nubians fled and the tiger sat back on its hind legs and slashed at the air with its mighty front paws. Even squatting on its haunches the tiger was still a good 8 feet high. El Domador strode forward, turned his back on the tiger and backed into its monstrous cuddle. The tiger gladly licked the alphatromatin dissulphide from the trainer’s trembling neck. Then it dropped down behind him and sat blinking in a daze. A thousand gasps gave way to a hesitant, involuntary “awwww.” From terror the audience had moved into the ‘look at the sweet pussy cat’ phase that so irritated El Domador behind his fixed grin and sweating visage.

  The show proceeded with hoops and trolleys and upturned barrels dragged into the ring and a succession of lions and tigers joining El Domador’s troupe. The animals cocked their heads and did that open-mouthed roar which adorned every Warner Brothers film. Only the trainer could feel the heat of their breath and smell the stench of the horse meat of their evening meal. These animals of his were not just opening their mouths to roar, they were trying to belch away the indigestion that inflated their sore bellies. And when they succeeded, the belch still sounded like the deepest, rumbling, final note of their distaste for all mankind. Womankind too, thought Tracy, sniffing disdainfully. We get included in all the bad stuff because of the men. The male lions shook their magnificent manes at her and the male tigers outdid the lions in sheer size. A stately tigon wandered on and outsized them all its head towering over the trainer even when it stood on all fours. This animal had an electrostun collar and its own watching security man. Just one swipe from a mighty paw could take a man’s head off. As the black panther made its entry, there was the sharpest intake of breath and the loudest gasp from the audience. Folk supposed that the exotic panther was somehow the most fearsome of all the beasts, but in truth it was last in the pecking order of brutality. An average lion or tiger would have eaten the panther for breakfast, but its sleek, lithe blackness was redolent of great evil. Hand-reared and answering to the name of Tommy, it nonetheless sniffed the air and snarled and flashed its yellow eyes before ending its routine with a cuddle from El Domador. The seated lions and tigers leaned forward expectantly in the hope that the trainer was sufficiently off-guard. But no, he snapped out of the embrace and his cracking whip sent all the animals scurrying out of the arena and down the tunnel that led to their cages.

  All three of the Companions of the Spectacles groaned when a troupe of clowns tumbled into the ring to divert attention from the dismantling of the high cage walls needed to separate the audience from lions, tigers and panthers. Teenagers do not ‘do’ clowns and never had throughout circus history, always excepting the Italian youth prone to overexcited states of hysteria at the antics of Pierrot and Harlequin. To English tastes, Coco the clown was like his near namesake of a drink, cocoa. A deadly boring adult imposition intended to induce sleep. Only babies tolerated clowns and small babies actually screamed in terror at the grinning faces. Jim spoke for them all;

  “they should’ve put the clowns in with the lions and tigers.”

  After the show and at Jim’s insistence they wandered around the menagerie kept in trailers behind the big top and said hello to their tiger. It blinked at them wistfully, showing no sign of recognition. Shere Khan did not deign to remember anything it had planned and failed to eat. He turned his back and peed heartily making a considerable noise and smell. Piles of straw swilled out from the cage before the yellow, stinking torrent. Tracy ushered Lim and Jim away to a cage of chimpanzees. She could see that her scruffy boys were wildly amused by the volume of cat’s pee and the strength of the smells emanating from the roiling foam of hay and urine. The chimpanzees seemed to be too close to the tiger pen and they kept looking out at the other animals and chittering pathetically in hope of assistance. Lim decided that he did not want to lose Tracy’s attention for the sake of Jungle Jim’s whimsy. So he took command and led the group back to the long walk where they sat on ‘their’ bench now illuminated by a street light filtered through the leaves of an elm and surrounded by the circus-going crowds who were filtering away homeward, chattering with delight. A bit like those chimpanzees, thought Tracy.

  “About the mission,” said Lim, “I have a suggestion.”

  Jim produced another pencil and the crumpled notebook.

  “I think we should use our powers to see what is going on at RAF Sculthorpe”.

  If Jim had lived at a time when the Simpsons were in vogue, he would have said “Doh!”. As it was he could only manage a question, “Come again?”

  Tracy was a bit more clued up.

  “Lim is referring to newspaper reports which say that a new secret aeroplane, maybe even a flying saucer, is being developed and tested at RAF Sculthorpe.
At least I think that is what he’s getting at.”

  “Quite right, Tracy, and it may be that there are some nuclear weapons there too. Placed there illegally, far away from the Coulsden storage facility. And all very hush, hush.”

  Tracy remonstrated, “But they are OUR planes and OUR weapons aren’t they?” she squirmed squeamishly as she realised she had sort of defended the possession of nuclear weapons.

  Jim joined in the remonstrating process, “That maybe the case, but we who pay for them, don’t know what our money is being spent on – or so says my dad.” This was the ‘said’ dad, no doubt. Husband of the ‘said’ mother. The man who was forced to shell out for nuclear weapons while choosing to limit Lim’s allowance.

  “Well let’s have a wording for the mission statement, then,” said Lim

  Tracy leaned forward, “To discover and disclose the nature of the secret work being conducted at RAF Sculthorpe for the benefit of the taxpayer – and Lim’s dad.”

  “Seconded,” said Lim, “but leave out the bit about my dad. He is very cagey about having his name on anything even slightly subversive. He was an RAF Wing Commander and he might just get his pips ripped off his uniform.”

  “What did he fly?” asked Jim.

  “A desk,” gritted Lim in a passable imitation of his father. “They gave him a desk job after his TSR2 flew too low at an airshow.” The TSR2 was the workhorse of RAF Bomber Command.

  “Did it crash?” asked Jim.

  “No, but it blew down a VIP marquee trapping assorted Air Marshalls and visiting royalty.”

  They all paused to enjoy the imagined images of a swooping white fighter bomber, a collapsing tent and royals trapped beneath with their coronets and tiaras all askew. Jim decided not to ask any other questions. He sucked his pencil before deploying it in expansion of the Mission Statement.

  “.. benefit of the taxpayer... I reckon that’s enough writing for now. We can expand the mission further when we have done the Sculthorpe thing.”

  It was getting late and it was dark enough for any loose tigers to creep up unannounced, so they made for home. Being the ‘Who Dares Winners’ of Muggledom did not mean that you should be incautious around tigers and publicity hungry circus trainers. It was likely that “tiger eats three teenagers’ would be quite a publicity coup. And in the darkness now descending, an actual panther couldn’t even be seen if it kept its yellow eyes shut. Jim giggled at the thought of a stalking panther bumping into trees and benches with its eyes shut. Playing blind panther’s bluff until it found something soft and edible. It was a miracle that he could giggle about it with teeth that chattered quite so nervously. Delayed shock was setting in and they were all affected by a nervous shaking.

  Lim brought them down to earth by tasking them both with brainstorming a route into the RAF base at Sculthorpe. Jim’s first thought was predictably impractical;

  “If we had an A400M or even a glider or microlight, we could fly over Fakenham and declare a May Day. They would have to let us land at Sculthorpe. We could even get to see one of the RAF's Skylons. They are always testing their Sabre engines around here. My dad says they make a noise like a fart in a gimlet.”

  They all puzzled over this expression. Jim thought a gimlet might be a variety of gymslip such as worn by his young sister. But she did not fart, though that was uncharacteristic of the bean loving Bean family. Lim knew that a gimlet was a drink described by the current doyen of detective fiction, Raymond ‘Ships’ Chandler. He was not altogether sure what a ‘doyen’ was, but Chandler was one according the Book of Tomes. That Chandler and Rowling co-existed was a hard thing for the publishers of Angle-land to deal with. Tracy did not care to discuss Chandler or gimlets or farts at all. She was disdainful, returning thoughts to the task set by the Head of the Order.

  “I expect your next idea will be to invent an ACTUAL invisibility cloak big enough for us all to wear while we slipped through the main gates! And while we are stumbling along invisible, one of their low loaders would run over us with all sixteen wheels because the driver couldn’t see,” said Tracy.

  Jim pondered, “If we got run over some blood would splash out from under the cloak and one of us might be saved.”

  Lim cut the nonsense short,

  “I am re-tasking The Companions,” he announced, “the task is to find a practical way into the Sculthorpe base using only existing technology available to teenagers like us. Jim, update the mission statement when you get home. And do not let your dad see what you write!””

  He doubted that cloaking technology was available even to ‘olds’ because master criminals were still disguising themselves in full length burkas and getting caught. Master criminals always had the best technology, but seemingly the worst disguises. They even had 3D printers to spew out their clothing and prosthetics. The prints were facsimiles, of course. You could not get a polycotton twin set out of a pile of resin. Not that most gangsters wanted twin sets so that they could power dress like business women. But false noses could be produced by the thousand. Lim made the mistake of sharing those thoughts aloud.

  Jim shook his red curls wonderingly. He groped for something his father might say and could only come up with,

  “you don’t get many of those to the pound,” he said. He was referring to prosthetic noses.

  Tracy did a final sniff, trying to deflect attention away from a threatened Red Nose Day reference. Anathema to a Goth..

  “Ideas that have most weight have no weight at all.”

  She wondered privately if Jim had inherited his description about poundage from the bullies who poked fun at her bosom. They had said that ‘not many to the pound’ thing many times as they leered at her from close range. She shuddered at the memory. At least that Adebayo had gotten his come-uppance and would never forget the singeing flat top given him by Lim. Not that she, Tracy, would ever mention the flat top’s provenance. Adebayo was still looking for the ‘assassin’ of the perfect afro globe. If he located the inadvertent hairdresser, he had vowed to ‘marmelise’ him. Adebayo had glared at Jim as he vowed, “with added gingery peel.”

  Chapter Three – In Which Jim Discovers His Superpower

  Jim took a new notebook with him to the local library, a magnificent building just opened by the American billionaire Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie was himself a 60 year-old teenager and, in a whirlwind of genius investments had amassed a fortune amounting to some £80 billion. That is how much he had given away in the greatest act of philanthropy that Muggles had ever seen. Carnegie was still in town, enduring the process of being given the Freedom of the Town by Mayor Frederick Savage, himself a great benefactor though on an incomparably smaller scale. He and Newton had agreed to a publicity stunt which included riding on one of Frederick’s carousels, now powered by electric motors, courtesy of those crenellations in Space-Time which had brought scientists and engineers and philanthropists together. The Mayor was not going to miss photo opportunities showing the most eminent scientist in the world riding one of his fairground horses and had negotiated the deal. It was odd that Sir Isaac should lower himself in this way. But a financial inducement had been offered and he reasoned that a ‘win-win’ situation obtained. The Companions of the Order of the Spectacles also tried to join the carousel, but were prevented from doing so by the security guards protecting the Mayor and Sir Isaac.

  In pursuing the Mission of the Order, Jim went to speak to the local Librarian, in her new Library. Margery Kempe, the famous Lollard and reader of palms, indulged him by helping to find maps of the Sculthorpe area and showing him how to use the laser copier. She then led him to a section on stealth warriors of the SAS and left him to scribble thoughtfully in his book. So engrossed did he become that he did not notice the man who approached and stood behind him.

  “Studying the SAS, eh?”

  Distressed beyond measure and still writing on a page headed, “Further Ways of Stealth Approach”, Jim flung a hand across the heading. As he did so, every item of his skin�
�s greasiness and slime slid to his arm and drained from his fingers to completely obliterate the page, the books lying on the table and, indeed, the whole 12 foot by 4 foot table top. The film was not sticky but was opaque and masked everything. Once shaken free of him it oxidised rapidly and turned black. At the same time he expressed an enormous, stinking fart.

  “My goodness, you brought that sheet of stuff into a library?” said Andrew Carnegie, “It’s lucky for you that I can sort this out. But why did you do it, boy. And what on earth have you been eating?”

  “My name is Jim, not boy,” said Jim, biting his lip at the sudden thought that providing ID information was never wise following an act of outright vandalism. His insides were in turmoil at the realisation that he had risked exposing the mission of the Companions of the Order of the Spectacles. But much worse was the discovery that his Superpower was to express sheets of slime and to fart simultaneously. And the smell! Boy, that spoke of an inner turmoil to end all inner turmoils. Ron Weasley had a wand and could use as many spells as he knew words in dog Latin. But he, the other red head, Jim, could only ooze slime and fart. He could not resist lifting a hand and sniffing his fingers. Luckily there was no odour at all. The smell of rancid bowels seemed to attach itself to those people perceived as an imminent threat. Andrew Carnegie would carry the stench with him for days. It explained the two weeks of purdah which history would erroneously link to an alleged affair with the notable King’s Lynn society lady, Fanny Burney. And yes, they did exist in King’s Lynn, both socialites and ladies, though they sat uneasily with the mangleworsels and other Norfolk ‘puddings’. As to the stench created by Jim, it was no worse than that of the midden which was the Mill Fleet with its insanitary tenements. His father would have said about the externalising of stench, “Thank heavens for small mercies.”