The Lampo Circus (2 page)

The children, who had been dreading the return to school bells and dour-faced masters, were surprised to find that Drabville Elementary offered a prime example of how dramatically things had changed. If you listened carefully, you could almost hear top buttons popping open all over the school, followed by sighs of relief. Schools as you and I know them are dark and dismal institutions of torture that are resistant to change. Perhaps in some future golden age things will be different and they will become bright and bubbly places full of laughing children and regular nap times. But at present, our schools have strict codes, stifling uniforms and crabby teachers who often walk around
with the mouldering remnants of last week’s lunch spotting their ties. They will tell you they cannot afford dry-cleaning on their meagre salaries. As students—or perhaps the word ‘victims’ would be more appropriate—we sit stiffly at our desks, eyes slowly rotating with the hands of the clock. We listen with heavy hearts to the droning of whichever autocrat stands at the blackboard screeching instructions and demanding answers to impossible questions. I, myself, once made the foolhardy mistake of saying to a teacher, ‘But, Miss Steelbosom, I am sure Caravaggio isn’t an Italian cheese,’ and found myself staring at the back of a very dusty broom cupboard and balancing an encyclopaedia on my head for the duration of the lesson.

But this kind of torment was no more at Drabville Elementary. The teachers had done away with every blackboard, mathematics chart and grammar book in the building. Instead, the children gathered in the grounds for Socratic-style lessons where questions were not only invited, they were positively encouraged. Perhaps in your eyes this mightn’t sound much of an improvement, but make no mistake:
the curriculum had altered along with the formalities. Tedious lessons had been replaced with a curriculum that followed the theory:
Learning must be fun to be effective.

Not only had the lessons at Drabville Elementary suddenly become engaging but the relationship between the teachers and students had also changed. In the interests of equality, everyone operated on a first-name basis. Can you imagine what would happen if you addressed your teachers by their first names? The whole system would crumble as the prime motivation for teachers is the wielding of power.

Ernest’s idea of heaven was realised in science one day when each student was asked to prepare a one-minute monologue in the persona of a metamorphic rock. Milli’s favourite addition to school life was the introduction of a new subject entitled Hiccups in History, which Miss Linear (now known as Prima) had been appointed to run on a part-time basis. In these lessons, discussions abounded about epochs in time when wickedness had triumphed over kindness, deceit over truth and cunning over compassion. The time of the lost shadows was a topic explored
with much animation. Lord Aldor’s ashen face and a list of the evils he had perpetrated appeared in the new history books, and an official biography was under way with the express purpose of reminding the townsfolk of characteristics to be wary of in upcoming politicians. These included the ability to mesmerise, walk without touching solid ground, twitching pinkie fingers and eyes of shifting colour. Lord Aldor’s reign (as some referred to it) was thought of not dissimilarly to the way we remember the Dark Ages. Already sprinkled throughout conversations the terms BGG and AGG could be heard. The first abbreviation referred to the grim time period before the Great Guzzle and the second to the liberating time after.

In this new spirit of euphoria, no one in Drabville stopped to consider the well-known reality that perfection rarely lasts for long. When it does, one should pinch oneself in order to be reminded that, alas, endless good fortune is nothing more than an agreeable illusion. It brings me great sorrow to inform you that the folk of Drabville had no intention of pinching
themselves. The dream, in which they had all come permanently to reside, was simply far too enjoyable. Would you wish to awake from a dream in which your siblings welcomed you into their bedrooms with open arms instead of putting KEEP OUT and ENTER ON PAIN OF DEATH stickers on the door; where the town baker offered you a Bumbly-Currant Strudel on your way home from school every afternoon and where the milkman whistled as he drove his van from door to door? I know that I should be in no hurry to leave my cosy bed, but might be more inclined to snuggle deeper under the covers, shut out the light and prolong such a delicious dream. Therefore we can hardly blame the townsfolk for being blind to the warning signs when they did finally appear. For appear they did, and Drabville was caught off guard. Little did the town suspect that it would soon be woken from its reverie by the most unpleasant of jolts.

M
illi and Ernest lay in a striped hammock suspended between a fig and a plum tree in the Klompets’back garden. Pencils, books and jotters were scattered between their tangled limbs. They had been brainstorming town names all morning, in between their game of being at sea and under pirate attack (for which stakes pulled from the vegetable garden served nicely as cutlasses). The Custodians of Concord had recently launched a competition to rename the town, as Drabville, everyone agreed, now seemed such a misnomer. Fired by the challenge, Milli and Ernest had spent entire afternoons in animated discussion
over possibilities for the town’s new name and what it ought to suggest. It was not an easy task trying to encapsulate all that Drabville had become in a single word and, being competitive as well as creative children, they had no intention of rushing the process. Their ideas so far included names like Jollyvale, Perkytown and Happy-Chappie, none of which were suitable to be shared with anyone else let alone submitted formally.

This competition was only one of many innovations instigated by the Custodians of Concord. They had also decided on a new and inspiring town motto,
Découvrez L’enfant
(funny how mottos always sound more motto-ish in a foreign language), which had already found its way into everyday speech. For those with a negligible knowledge of French,
Découvrez L’enfant
means
Discover the Child
and was entirely appropriate for a town that liked to describe itself as ‘child-centred’. It was hoped that this motto would ensure that no individual talent or gift was ever overlooked or wasted again. In order to implement this noble objective the dons and scholars of Drabville had set to work pinpointing
areas of uniqueness in each child. Schoolmasters were trained to identify talents and then nurture and give them scope to flourish until their owners became dexterous in their particular gift.

One poor girl, Harrietta Hapless, didn’t seem to have a natural ability for anything, let alone something that might be described as a gift. Harrietta had tried and given up pottery, snorkelling, rose pruning and even skirting-board cleaning, until one day the professors observed her remarkable aptitude for speedily tying shoelaces. From that day on, every child at Drabville Elementary whose laces came undone sought out Harrietta so that she might showcase her skill. Harrietta Hapless soon excelled beyond the average standard of lace tying and moved on to tying (and sometimes even
untying)
more complicated items. Her reputation grew and she quickly established herself as unrivalled champion of this art. She was once even seconded to the Department of Town Planning when they ran into a knotty problem involving scaffolding and ropes.

In the Klompet garden, Milli and Ernest were distracted from their efforts by the arrival
of Mr Klompet bearing a tray of Crispy Clouds, which just happened to be Ernest’s favourite afternoon snack. Crispy Clouds were balls of dough that puffed up into irregular cloud shapes when lightly fried and were then dusted with sugar and cinnamon. The best bit was their surprise centre, which could contain either a blob of tangerine custard, black-cherry jam or hazelnut praline. The amazing thing about Crispy Clouds was that the dough was so aerated you could eat a dozen of them and still have room for more, but it required a master baker such as Mr Klompet to get them just right. Coming from what was usually a confectionery-deprived household (Mrs Perriclof’s idea of a treat was throwing a handful of raisins in with the carrot sticks) Ernest found the Klompet kitchen a veritable paradise.

Tired of warding off another pirate invasion, Milli’s thoughts strayed into more dangerous territory.

‘Do you ever wish we could have another adventure?’ she began tentatively. Her question, apropos of nothing, made Ernest immediately wary. After all, the last time she had said
something like that he had ended up as a yodelling goatherd.

‘Not really,’ he replied casually, hoping to discourage further discussion.

‘But don’t you miss having a problem to solve?’ Milli persisted.

‘Not so long as you’re here.’

‘Very funny.’ Milli scowled. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not proposing anything. I just feel idle sometimes, that’s all.’

‘Well, I don’t,’ said Ernest firmly. ‘I am
very busy
compiling my new lexicon.’

He took such an enthusiastic bite into a Crispy Cloud that a spurt of custard was jettisoned onto Milli’s shirt front. She responded with surprisingly good grace.

‘But you don’t know any Mexicans, Grotty.’

‘A
lexicon,
dunderhead, is a type of dictionary containing words pertaining to a particular field or subject.’

‘And what, may one ask, is your subject?’

‘Piffle, mostly,’ Ernest replied. ‘You see, the English language often falls so short of conveying exact meaning that I have decided to do something about it.’

‘But isn’t piffle just nonsense?’

‘Mine shall be meaningful piffle.’

Milli was sceptical. ‘What happened to geology?’

‘I have been forced to pursue a more secure hobby,’ Ernest said bitterly, thinking of the havoc wreaked on his rock collection by his insensitive younger siblings.

Milli patted his arm sympathetically. ‘I think we need a break,’ she said.

Ernest looked crestfallen at the idea of leaving behind the uneaten mound of Crispy Clouds, but cheered up considerably when Milli took the tray with them into the kitchen and tipped its contents into Dorkus’s floppy-brimmed sunhat. She then had to wait patiently for Ernest to apply a liberal coating of sunscreen before they could venture outside again.

‘Hurry up, Ernest, it’s not even sunny,’ Milli nagged.

‘Just because you can’t see the sun doesn’t mean it isn’t
there
,’ Ernest replied. ‘We’ll see who’s laughing when you start peeling like an onion.’

Milli examined the tube. ‘This looks suspiciously like moisturiser to me,’ she teased.

‘It most certainly is not
moisturiser
,’ Ernest said. ‘It is a specially imported aloe vera protection gel.’ With that, he marched out the front door and down Peppercorn Place just as Dorkus wandered in asking if anybody had seen her sunhat.

Eventually their jaunt through town led the children to the familiar gates of Poxxley Gardens. Inside, they headed directly for the old oak tree they had come to affectionately refer to as their Headquarters. Weeks ago, bored with children ceaselessly begging for stories about magicians and the Hocus Pocus Ball, Milli and Ernest had decided a sanctuary was in order. They had secretly constructed a treehouse in the uppermost branches of the oak; a place they could retreat to when the pressure of having been catapulted to stardom proved too much.

Despite the fuzzy rug and the spotty curtains framing the window, the best thing about the treehouse was definitely its lookout. This was where Milli and Ernest kept an eye out for approaching enemies and ensured that Drabville remained protected and villain-free. Although
such enemies existed mostly in their combined imaginations, occasionally they included a stray child or dog who came dangerously close to discovering the hideaway. Their vigil was assisted by the use of a telescope—an Ernest construction made of cardboard tubes and a series of magnifying glasses fastened together with masking tape. The children were convinced it was as effective as any professional astronomer’s tool.

This afternoon, Ernest busied himself jotting ideas for his lexicon in a pocket notebook while Milli commandeered the telescope. The day was cloudless and she enjoyed looking out over the undulating landscape. The telescope faced away from the ruins of Hog House and looked east to the mountains that separated Drabville from adjoining boroughs. The main road meandered like a white ribbon through fields and hills as green and lush as those seen on postcards. She scoured the horizon for signs of anything amiss, but saw only the occasional horse-drawn cart laden with market produce, and then a rollicking yellow bus carrying a group of Drabville’s octogenarians back from a sky-diving excursion.
Milli shifted the telescope’s focus away from the road and scanned the skies for suspicious-looking clouds. She found one that looked uncannily like the face of a bearded scholar and was busy waiting for his expression to change when something altogether different caught her eye. At first she thought it was a bird, but no bird she had ever seen was this size or colour. It was moving too fast to be a hot air balloon, and it was far too early for the sun to be setting. But a flash
was
streaking across the sky and staining the surrounding hills a blood red. The streak of colour spiralled downward towards an open field, leaving a trail of smoke behind it. But by the time she convinced Ernest to come and look, whatever it was had gone. Milli had been so determined to spot something that she wondered whether she hadn’t imagined the whole thing.

When Milli and Ernest wandered home some hours later, the sound of jubilant shrieks reached them well before they entered Drabville’s main square. There they found young children tugging at their mothers’sleeves and demanding answers,
their faces upturned in anticipation, whilst older children jumped around in a flurry of excitement. Adults gathered in clusters, having abandoned their usual posts, and there was a good deal of gesturing, shaking of heads in incredulity and clasping of hands. What could have caused this degree of animation in the normally decorous town? Was it a good or a bad thing that had occurred? Did the authorities need to be notified?