Bad Dad Page 5

  “What’s that?” asked the boy.

  The man lifted his jumper to show the boy.

  “Sergeant Scoff’s trousers!”

  “DAD!” said Frank, bursting into laughter.

  “I know, naughty, very naughty! Now let’s make that call to Auntie Flip.”

  “And get some sweets!”

  “What did Flip say?” asked Dad. He’d been waiting outside the telephone box in the centre of town as his son made the call.

  “What do you think?” replied Frank, rolling his eyes.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes! Write a poem for church! It was her dream come true. And look,” said the boy, unfolding his hand. “We’ve still got some money left over for sweets.”

  “You go on ahead. I’ll meet you in there,” said the man.

  The sweet shop was just a few steps up the high street.

  Dad seemed restless, as if he needed to be somewhere else.

  “Is everything all right, Dad?”

  “Yes, mate. I’m fine. Fine. I’ll see you at the sweet shop.”

  With that, the man turned on his heel, and limped off down the road.

  “Where are you going, Dad?” the boy called after him.

  “Nowhere!”

  “You can’t be going nowhere. You must be going somewhere…”

  Before Frank could finish what he was going to say, his father had disappeared round a corner. The boy shook his head. This was very odd. Even so, he traipsed over to the shop, still dripping water from the well.

  The bell on the door dinged as Frank entered Raj’s shop, the town’s favourite newsagent’s. Raj himself was a huge jolly jelly of a man, who probably ate more of his sweets than he ever sold.

  “Ah! My favourite but slightly soggy customer! Welcome!” said Raj. To Frank’s surprise, the man was down on his knees picking up sweets from the floor, and placing them back on the shelves.

  Frank looked around the shop. It was often messy, but it was much messier than normal. In fact, it looked as if a had hit it. Magazines were scattered across the floor, pens and pencils had been snapped in half and the freezer had been upturned. Melted ice cream had swirled out of it, forming a multicoloured milky puddle.

  “What on earth happened to your shop, Raj?” asked the boy.

  “Oh, nothing!” replied the man quickly. “Nothing at all. Don’t you worry your little head about it, young sir.”

  Raj frantically continued trying to put everything back in more or less its rightful place. In the hustle and bustle, a large jar of bonbons was knocked off a shelf and fell on to his head.

  The plastic jar broke, showering him in a sugary white dust. Poor Raj slumped down on to the floor in despair.

  Frank sat down next to him. He put his arm round the newsagent. “Please tell me, Raj. What happened here?”

  “It’s these two men. One is big and fat, the other is tall and thin. They come in to all the local shops and businesses demanding money. If you don’t give it to them, they smash the place up. I gave them a hundred pounds, but they said they wanted more next time. Much more. They said they did this as a warning. Next time it would be me they smash up!”

  “I think I know who they are. Fingers and Thumbs.”

  “Yes, that is them!”

  “Why don’t you call the police about it?”

  Raj shook his head sorrowfully. “The men said they will hurt my family if I rat on them. I just don’t know what to do!”

  “Let me help you tidy up first.”

  Together the pair did their best to restore some order to the man’s shop. Frank glanced at the front pages of some newspapers that had been swept on to the floor. The headlines read:

  “I wonder if they were involved in this!” said Raj.

  The boy shrugged. “Who knows? There must be some way to stop them!”

  “It’s a brave person who does. They are bad through and through. They have been poor shopkeepers like me all over town for years. I shudder to think what evil they are capable of.”

  Finally the pair managed to right the freezer. Frank looked on as Raj scooped up the melted ice cream with a rolled-up newspaper.

  “Milkshake, young sir? Five p?”

  “No thanks, Raj,” replied Frank.

  “No matter.” Raj downed the “milkshake” himself. “Mmm, a bit gritty,” he mused.

  The boy looked at his huge haul of coins from the well. “Raj? What can you buy with seven p?”

  Suddenly the newsagent’s mood changed, and he smiled broadly.

  “Seven p! I have always dreamed of the day someone will walk through that door and spend a whole seven p! I am a rich man!” Raj then looked up to the heavens. “Thank you! There is a God! Take your time. Browse. My shop is your kingdom…”

  Even though Frank was a pauper, Raj always treated him like a prince.

  “Thank you, Raj. Mmm…” pondered the boy. “I think I’ll start with three BANANA CHEWS.”

  “Excellent choice, sir! The healthy option! One of your five a day.” Raj looked out of the window. “Ah, there goes your father, Mr Goodie!”

  Frank looked up. His father was hurrying down the high street carrying a petrol can.

  “Is he not coming in?” said Raj.

  “I don’t know. Something’s not right with him today,” said the boy as he watched him go.

  A look of panic crossed the newsagent’s face. “I know that fudge I gave you last week was a couple of years out of date, but only three people have been admitted to hospital.”

  “It’s not that,” replied Frank.

  “He was walking funny. I thought like the others his bottom might explode.”

  “No, he walks funny because he only has one leg.”

  “His leg fell off because he ate my fudge?!” Raj looked to the heavens again and put his hands together in prayer. “Lord, please have mercy on my soul! I am not a bad man. I just use best-before dates as a very rough guide, rounding them up to the nearest decade!”

  Frank smiled as he shook his head. He loved Raj like an uncle, a mad old uncle.

  “No, no, no, Raj. My dad had a really bad car-racing accident years ago. Remember?”

  “Oh yes, yes, of course. I remember. Thank goodness,” replied Raj. “Well, not thank goodness. I am just relieved it wasn’t my fudge that made him lose a limb.”

  “Why do parents always keep secrets from their kids?” asked Frank.

  The newsagent leaned on his counter, lost in thought. To help give the impression that he was a deep thinker, he took one of the toy pipes on the shelf, and it into his mouth. The Sherlock Holmes image was shattered when, rather than smoke, soapy BUBBLES started to float out of the pipe.

  “I suppose mums and dads want to protect their children from stuff. Grown-up stuff that would fill young minds with worry.”

  “I am grown up!” protested the boy, standing on his tiptoes.

  “How old are you?” asked Raj.

  “Nearly twelve.”

  “So you are eleven.”

  “Yes.”

  Raj shook his head, and blew a huge glistening BUBBLE out of his pipe.

  The pair smiled at each other, but the moment was interrupted by a deafening sound outside on the street.

  ROAR!

  The boy knew that sound anywhere.

  It was Queenie!

  Dad had named his supercharged Mini “Queenie” because she was more like a person than a machine. Queenie was an old lady, having come off the production line more than fifty years ago. Gilbert would have to coax the car to do what he wanted. The man would talk to her. He would say, “Come on, Queenie, wake up,” when he was starting the engine. Or if she was low on oil he would say, “Queenie, my love, let me buy you a drink.” When he was about to give her a wash, he would say, “Time for your bed bath, old girl.” Dad loved the car like she was a member of his family. Indeed, when Dad came to in hospital after losing his leg, he was more worried that the car was in bits than that he was.

 
; After the crash, Queenie really was in bits. Lots of bits. . Dad might have got a few much-needed pounds for her as metal, but he loved the old girl too much for that. So what was left of Queenie rusted away in a distant garage on the industrial estate.

  Frank loved Queenie nearly as much as his father did. The car had a feel, a smell and a sound all her own. It was a sound the boy thought he would never hear again. However, as he stood inside Raj’s shop, still choosing how best to spend his seven pence, outside on the road was that sound again.

  ROAR!

  “Queenie?” said the boy, looking around to try to catch sight of her.

  “Her Majesty is here in our little town?!” asked Raj. “She must have heard all about my special offer on Space Dust.”

  “No! Queenie is the name of Dad’s old racing car!”

  Raj nodded. “Yes, of course. That sounded just like her!”

  “I know!”

  The boy raced out of the shop into the street.

  Speeding down the road was indeed a Mini. It was travelling too fast for Frank to see who was driving.

  It certainly sounded like Queenie, but it couldn’t be her because the colour was different. Queenie was emblazoned with a Union flag that you could spot a mile off. However, instead of being painted red, white and blue, this Mini was a lurid shade of yellow. Dad wouldn’t have been seen dead in a car that was the colour of barf.

  Raj rushed out of his shop.

  “Was it her?” asked the newsagent.

  “No. It couldn’t have been,” replied the boy, downhearted. “It was the wrong colour. Besides, Queenie is rusting in some garage somewhere.”

  “That was one special car.”

  “I loved her.”

  “We all did.” The newsagent rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Don’t be sad. Look on the bright side.”

  “What’s that?” asked the boy, looking up at the man.

  “You still have a whole four pence to spend in my shop!”

  Twenty minutes later, Frank still had one mighty p to spend. Buying sweets was such a rare treat that he wanted to make it last.

  “Mmm, what do I go for, Raj? A pink shrimp?”

  “They were caught fresh today.”

  “Or a flying saucer?”

  “They do taste out of this world.”

  “Dad!” exclaimed Frank as his father walked into the shop.

  “Are you all done, mate?”

  “Not quite,” replied Frank.

  “Still one whole pence left to spend,” added Raj.

  Dad stalked over to the penny chews. He picked up the nearest one, a cola bottle, and dropped it in his son’s bag.

  “I don’t like those ones,” moaned Frank.

  “Don’t argue, please. We have to go,” snapped Dad. “Thanks, Raj!”

  “You know, Mr Goodie, we could have sworn we heard Queenie roar down this very street,” called out the newsagent.

  Dad looked uncomfortable. “Really? Well you are wrong.”

  It was a short walk from Raj’s shop back to their flat. As soon as the front door was closed, Dad seemed in a mighty rush to get his son to bed. He opened the last tin of beans, and stood over Frank as he ate it. Then it was time for the boy’s “bath”, which was a dunk in an oil drum full of water that was dirtier than the boy was.

  He came out a shade of grey. Frank used a stained old tea towel to dry himself off. The best part of bedtime was always story-time. They never had books in the house, so Dad would make up stories for his son instead. As the man loved cars, the stories always involved the roar of engines, the smell of burning tyres and speedometers ticking over into red for danger.

  “I’m sorry, mate, no story tonight. It’s way past your bedtime.”

  “It’s still early, Dad.”

  “You are tired.”

  “I am wide awake!”

  “You are too old for stories.”

  “I am only eleven!”

  “Nearly twelve.”

  “Still eleven, though. Come on, Dad. In the time you’ve spent arguing with me you could have told me a story.”

  The man sighed. “Once upon a time there was a banger racing car called Basher. Basher bashed all the other cars off the track and was the last car standing. The end.”

  Frank stared at his dad. “Is that it?”

  “What do you mean, ‘Is that it?’”

  “I mean that’s not a story!”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Why isn’t it a story?”

  “It is too short! Once upon a time the end! That’s not a story! It was rubbish!”

  Dad did not look pleased to be spoken to like this. “Right! Straight to bed!”

  “Nooo!”

  “Yes! Come on.”

  Dad put his hands on the boy’s shoulders and steered him like a car into his bedroom.

  “Put your pyjamas on and get into bed. I mean into Lilo. You know what I mean. Now I need you to be a good boy and go straight to sleep.”

  Frank looked over to the curtains. They weren’t exactly curtains, more bits of cardboard that had been stuck to the window. Round the edges light was shining through. It must still be early.

  “What’s the time, Dad?”

  “I don’t know,” lied his father.

  This seemed very strange to Frank, as his father had been checking his watch all night.

  “Well, look at your watch, then, Dad.”

  “Oh yes,” replied Dad. He studied the face for a moment. “The time is bedtime.”

  “That’s not fair!”

  “Auntie Flip will be here any minute. I need you to go to sleep.”

  “Why is she coming?” demanded Frank.

  “I just need to pop out.”

  “Where?”

  “I am going to watch the banger racing tonight.”

  “Can I come?”

  “No. It goes on too late. Please, mate, I am begging you. Just go to sleep.”

  KNOCK! KNOCK!

  “That will be Auntie Flip. If you don’t want her to read you one of her poems, I suggest you go straight to sleep. Now give us a huggle, mate.”

  Dad kneeled down on to his one knee and the pair embraced.

  “Dad?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m frightened.”

  “What are you frightened of?”

  “I don’t know. Something doesn’t feel right.”

  KNOCK! KNOCK!

  “COMING! Everything will be all right in the morning, mate.” The man gave his son a tender kiss on the forehead. “Trust me.”

  With that, he rose to his foot, and closed the door behind him.

  But Frank didn’t trust his dad tonight. Not one bit.

  The boy lay still on his deflated Lilo, listening to Dad and Auntie Flip talking in the living room. After a few minutes, Frank’s bedroom door opened a little, and Dad peered in. The boy shut his eyes tight in a pantomime of sleep.

  “I’m sorry, mate,” whispered Dad, “but I have no choice. I have to do this. For both of us.”

  Frank opened one eye the tiniest bit. He saw his dad framed in the doorway. It was something Frank thought he’d never see again: his father had his old racing gear on.

  It was a red, white and blue boiler suit, which he’d not worn since the accident. Now the suit was all crumpled, and tight on him since his tummy had expanded. Frank knew his father was up to no good. He had to find out what.

  The next sound the boy heard was the front door opening.

  As soon as he heard the front door closing…

  …the boy leaped up from his Lilo, and made another little dummy of himself in case Auntie Flip poked her head round the door. He pushed his feet into his slippers, in a rush putting the left one on his right foot and the right one on his left. In the living room, Auntie Flip could be heard composing another poem.

  “Looking at you would always make me dotty,

  Your eyes, your toes, even your little bottom �
�

  “No… botty! This is genius!”

  There wasn’t time tonight to wait for the lady to go to the toilet. Frank decided he had to create a diversion. He crawled into the kitchen and turned on the tap.

  He then snuck himself behind the door just as Auntie Flip trundled into the room.

  “Most peculiar,” said the lady, and she walked over to the sink to turn off the tap. “I hope this place isn’t haunted! Ghosts give me the willies!”

  Frank seized his moment. He rushed round the kitchen door, ran down the hallway and with the sound of the tap still gushing he opened the front door.

  The boy closed the door behind him, and peered over the walkway. From up there on the ninety-ninth floor, his father was now a little dot moving across the car park below. Frank leaped into his washing basket and flew down the stairs.

  Just as he reached the bottom he saw his dad limp over to a Rolls-Royce. The last one was white, but this one was silver. Was it the same car? The engine was running and the three men from the other night were inside. This time Fingers was in the driving seat, with little Mr Big seated next to him. The mighty Thumbs was sitting in the back. He was so heavy that the car was tilting over to one side.

  “You’re late!” snarled Mr Big.

  “Sorry, guv’nor,” replied Dad.

  “Get in! And you better do what we say or there’ll be trouble.”

  Dad climbed in and the Rolls-Royce roared off.

  Frank felt as if he’d been punched hard in the stomach. His dad had lied to him. He was going off to do no good with these bad, bad men. The boy had to stop his father before it was too late, but he had a problem. How on earth was he going to be able to follow a car on foot? He wasn’t a fast runner as it was. Frank spotted a discarded shopping trolley upturned on the grass. The boy righted it, and he ran alongside it as if it was a toboggan before leaping in.