Charlie and the Haunted Tent and Charlie and the Big Snow Page 3

  ‘Have you started collecting pennies?’ asked Henry. ‘Is it to help pay for the man-next-door’s windscreen?’

  Charlie decided he would help the ghost if it came. Out loud he said huffily, ‘I’m saving up for a motorbike.’

  ‘That’ll be nice,’ said Henry. ‘As long as it doesn’t go too fast. Like the Thomas the Tank Engine roundabout in the marketplace that you had to have stopped because you were frightened.’

  Then he and Charlie glared at one another.

  ‘You are horribler than you used to be,’ remarked Charlie.

  ‘Me?’ asked Henry. ‘Me horribler? Me who you wouldn’t come and stay with? After I got my mum to say we could camp in our garden? You don’t know what hard work that was! I had to pester until she nearly went mad! And then you went off to your rotten Aunt Emma’s and had a brilliant time going to the pub and trying out motorbikes and scaring off ghosts (in your dreams) and now I don’t suppose you ever will want to come camping in my garden. Not with the man-next-door whose windscreen you smashed living so close!’

  Charlie was silent.

  ‘I s’pose you’re still scared of him!’

  Charlie supposed he was too.

  ‘Although I can’t see why. It’s Max he thinks did it, not you.’

  This was awful.

  ‘Poor Max,’ said Henry.

  Yes, poor Max! agreed Charlie, silently, and he thought, and poor me, too! What had happened since he got home again? he wondered. It had been so easy to be brave at Aunt Emma’s house. Where had all the braveness gone? Would he never be a superhero again? Was he always going to be afraid of the man-round-the-corner, and would the man-round-the-corner always believe it was Max who smashed his windscreen?

  Was there not, Charlie asked himself desperately, even a tiny bit of braveness left to remind him of how lovely it had been?

  Charlie started to walk faster.

  And then to jog.

  And then he was running, sprinting, pounding down the road to the house of the man-round-the-corner, up the steps, hammering at the door.

  ‘It was me!’ he panted as soon as it opened. ‘Me who broke your windscreen! Not Max! Me!’

  The man-round-the-corner was as rude as ever. ‘You,’ he said. ‘Oh. Not the big kid, the little kid. Well.

  Makes no difference to me.’

  But it made a difference to Charlie.

  A wonderful difference.

  He flew past Henry, who was standing staring on the pavement, down the street, into his own house, and up the stairs.

  Max was sitting at the table of the room they shared, staring at his homework.

  ‘I did it Max!’ Charlie shouted, ‘I told him. The man-round-the-corner! I went to his house and told him about breaking his windscreen! I said it wasn’t you! I told him it was me!’

  ‘You did?’ asked Max, and now although he was still sitting at the table, staring at his homework, he was smiling the most enormous smile.

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlie.

  Then he turned and jumped back down the stairs again and rushed outside to find Henry and tell him he would come camping in his garden any time he liked.

  ‘Let’s go and start work on my mum right now!’ said Henry joyfully.

  They hurried off to begin at once, and it was such hard work and took so long that Charlie forgot all about the man-round-the-corner.

  He didn’t think of him once until bedtime, when Max said suddenly, ‘Charlie.’

  ‘What?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Charlie. ‘It was nothing.’

  1

  Max’s Fault (I)

  Charlie was seven years old when the big snow came. It was almost the first time in his entire life there had ever been enough snow to make a snowman. The only other time it had happened he had not been allowed out because he was ill. He had caught the illness from his big brother, Max. Even now, a year later, he had not quite forgiven Max for this.

  However, at last it had happened again. Charlie woke up and found that the bedroom he shared with Max was filled with clear cold light. White splodges patterned the window glass. The sky looked close and grey.

  Snow! thought Charlie as he scrambled out of bed, and then he thought, Nobody bothered to tell me.

  Charlie’s father, who was always the first to be up, would already be on his way to work. His mother was in the shower; Charlie could hear the water running. Neither of them had bothered to shake Charlie awake and tell him that it had snowed at last.

  That did not surprise Charlie very much, because after all they were grown-ups and did not have any sense. But it seemed to Charlie that Max should have woken him. Max was nowhere to be seen.

  So even before he got to the bedroom window and looked out at the garden in the snow, Charlie was feeling a little hurt and disappointed. Looking out made him feel more disappointed than ever.

  Already the clean white snow, the lovely snow that Charlie had waited for for so long, had been walked in.

  The milkman had left a double line of tracks across the lawn to deliver two pints of milk to the kitchen doorstep. Just looking at the milkman’s footprints made Charlie mad. The milkman could easily have walked back in his own footsteps, leaving only a line of prints. But no, he had made two.

  That was not all. Charlie’s father went to work on the motorbike he kept in the shed at the bottom of the garden. He had pushed his motorbike all the way up the garden path, leaving a terrible trail of wheel tracks and footprints behind him. Charlie could tell that his father had not even tried to carry the motorbike instead of pushing it, so as not to damage the snow.

  It was only a small garden. Already half the snow had been messed up and wasted.

  Charlie rushed downstairs and into the living room. There he found his brother, Max. Max was doing his homework and recording a CD for a friend and watching TV and eating cereal all at the same time.

  ‘Max, haven’t you seen?’ demanded Charlie, dragging open the lace curtains at the window so eagerly one of them came off in his hand. ‘Look!’

  ‘Charlie!’ said Max. ‘Mum’ll go mad! Mind that plant, it’s going to fall! There, I told you it would! What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘It’s snowing!’ said Charlie.

  ‘’Course it is,’ said Max. ‘It has been for ages. Football’s cancelled. Get out of the way of the TV, Charlie!’

  ‘But you said you’d help me make a snowman!’ wailed Charlie.

  ‘Well, I will,’ said Max. ‘After school.’

  ‘Why not now?’

  ‘There’s no time now,’ said Max. ‘Not if you want to do it properly.’

  Charlie wanted to do it properly more than anything, and he knew without Max’s help this could not happen. Because Max was good at everything, and he, Charlie, was not. If Max decided to build a snowman, then without doubt, it would be the snowman to beat all snowmen. It was not the same with the things Charlie decided to do.

  ‘After school we’ll do it,’ promised Max, turning back to his homework. ‘Get me some orange juice, will you, Charlie?’

  ‘Get it yourself,’ said Charlie crossly, and went into the kitchen to open the door and look at the snowy garden.

  Suzy the cat was already outside, wandering round and round the bird table, which she had never learned she could not reach. There were black paw-prints everywhere, dozens of them, every one a wasted circle of snow.

  This is terrible! thought Charlie, and he dashed upstairs and bashed on the bathroom door shouting, ‘Help! Help!’ until his mother came out.

  ‘Whatever is the matter, Charlie?’ she exclaimed. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘It’s snowed!’ Charlie told her.

  ‘Oh really, Charlie!’ said his mother. ‘Is that all? I thought something dreadful had happened!’ And she went back into the bathroom and shut the door, so Charlie had to bash even harder to get her out again.

  ‘It’s all being wasted!’ said Charlie. ‘Suzy’s walking in i
t!’

  ‘My goodness, Charlie!’ grumbled his mother. ‘Can’t I even have a shower in peace? Go and get dressed!’ Then she disappeared yet again, and when Charlie hammered on the door some more she yelled at him to go away.

  Charlie went back to Max, who was now eating a jam sandwich, listening to the recording he had made and gelling up his hair with the help of his reflection in the TV screen.

  ‘The snow’s all getting wasted!’ complained Charlie. ‘What’ll we do? It will never last till after school!’

  ‘Shove it in the freezer!’ said Max, pulling the front of his hair into little spikes with a mixture of jam and gel.

  Max said afterwards that he had been joking.

  2

  Charlie’s Mother's Fault

  Charlie went back to the kitchen and looked at the snow again. He wondered how long it would actually take to shove it in the freezer. He didn’t think he could possibly manage to rescue it all. However, he admitted to himself that, like all Max’s ideas, it was pretty good. Much better than doing nothing, anyway.

  At first Charlie only intended to save enough to make one reasonably-sized snowman. But then he got interested in the job, and could not bear to stop. In his pyjamas and slippers he shovelled carrier bags full of snow and packed them into all the empty spaces of the freezer until the door would hardly shut. In fact, it would not shut, but Charlie did not notice that. Nobody did until much later in the day.

  When the freezer would hold no more he filled up the salad box at the bottom of the fridge. He also balanced odd snowballs among the eggs and cheese and yoghurt and things. In this way Charlie got most of the snow in the garden into a safe cold place before his mother came out of the bathroom.

  It was Charlie’s mother’s fault that he was so late for school. She caught him on the stairs and saw the state of him.

  ‘You’ve been outside!’ she squealed.

  ‘Only a little bit,’ said Charlie, hoping to calm her down. ‘And I’ve been inside too. Outside and inside …’

  ‘You’ve been playing in the snow!’

  ‘Not playing!’ said Charlie.

  ‘In your pyjamas!’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d want me to get my school clothes wet,’ explained Charlie, angelically. ‘Your hair looks nice! I like your jumper! Would you like me to get you some toast and orange juice?’

  ‘I don’t believe I am standing here listening to this!’ said Charlie’s mother, and she seized him and dragged him to the bathroom and would not let him out until he had had a hot bath and got all the mud off, and turned a pinkish colour again.

  Instead of blue. Then she made him put on an incredible amount of clothes, and marched him down to the kitchen where she discovered the state of the fridge.

  Already the snowballs were melting and dripping on everything inside.

  ‘WELL!’ said Charlie’s mother in a very shocked voice. ‘And what have you to say about this, Charlie?’

  ‘Well!’ said Charlie, equally shocked. ‘What a rotten fridge! It’s ruined all my snowballs! You should complain to the fridge makers!’

  Charlie’s mother did not complain to the fridge makers. She complained to Charlie instead. As she complained she furiously cleaned out the fridge saying, ‘Snow, snow, it comes every year! I can’t stand the stuff! Max was never the trouble that you are!’

  ‘It was Max’s fault!’ protested Charlie. ‘It was his idea! It was Max who said to shove it in …’

  Then Charlie suddenly shut up. He thought it might be a good thing to keep the snow in the freezer private. He was glad Max was out of the way, gone to big school on the school bus. He said, to change the subject, ‘I don’t mind if I don’t go to school today. I could stay at home and do all the work.’

  ‘Ha!’ said Charlie’s mother, and drove him furiously to school. She took him right into his classroom, where he had already been marked absent.

  ‘Oh hello, Charlie!’ said Charlie’s teacher, not looking very pleased to see them.

  Charlie’s mother said hello to the teacher, and she said that she was very sorry Charlie was late, and that Charlie would have to have school dinners because they had come out in such a rush they had forgotten his school bag and his packed lunch.

  Just as she was leaving she added, ‘And if he had any homework I’m afraid he’s forgotten that too!’

  Charlie could hardly believe his ears. His own mother reminding his teacher about his homework! He wanted to ask her, ‘Whose side are you on?’

  What happened next was definitely Charlie’s mother’s fault.

  Homework had been to find out what it would have been like to be a boy or girl growing up in Roman times. Charlie had not found anything out. He had not even thought about it.

  ‘Well,’ said Charlie’s teacher when his mother had gone. ‘Charlie. Even if your homework has been left at home you can still tell us about what it was like to be a boy growing up in Roman times. I hope.’

  Charlie hoped so too, because she looked very Monday morningish and cross. He thought very quickly, and then he told the class that life in Roman times would have been totally boring. There were no PlayStations, said Charlie, no football and no TV.

  ‘Tell us what things there were!’ said his teacher.

  Charlie ignored her and said there were no cinemas or computers or car racetracks.

  ‘Were there any sort of racetracks?’ asked his teacher hopefully.

  Charlie said there were no skateboards or Rollerblades or mountain bikes, and a lot of people started giggling.

  Charlie loved to hear the class giggling, and he felt he was doing very well on how totally boring life was for a boy in Roman times, so he looked around the classroom and said there were no paint pots or reading corners or guinea pigs.

  The class giggled more than ever. It was their fault the teacher got so annoyed. But it was Charlie she was annoyed with. She said she thought he had not bothered to do any homework at all. Just like last week, when he had not written a Viking Packing List of everything a Viking would need to take when his longship was going to invade an unknown shore. And just like the week before, when Charlie had not drawn a map of dinosaur country with the swamps and ferns and dinosaurs clearly labelled.

  In fact, said Charlie’s teacher, she could not remember when Charlie ever had done his homework.

  At break time everyone went out to play in the snow. More had fallen since school started, enough for snowballs and snow slides and snowmen, too. But Charlie was not out there to enjoy it. He had missed his chance again.

  Charlie had to stay in the classroom with a book about the totally boring Romans.

  3

  Not the Guinea Pig’s Fault

  Charlie said afterwards that what happened at break time was the Romans’ fault for being so boring that he could not bear to do his homework, and the class’s fault for giggling and making the teacher annoyed, and the teacher’s fault for keeping him in with the totally boring Romans.

  He said it was not the guinea pig’s fault.

  Break time began with Charlie and the teacher and her mug of coffee and a pile of books about Roman Times all together in the classroom. Outside it was snowy and wonderful. In the playground Charlie’s friend Henry was making snowballs.

  Henry was sorry for Charlie, and he wanted to make him smile. That was why he began throwing his snowballs accidentally-on-purpose towards the classroom where Charlie sat sulking. One of the windows was a little open at the top. Henry was aiming at the gap.

  Henry missed the gap, but he hit the window.

  Bump! And then again. Bump! And then again, and by this time the teacher was on her feet. She said, ‘I am just going outside, Charlie. I may be some time,’ and hurried out of the classroom to tell Henry what she thought of him.

  When she was gone Charlie gave up pretending to look at the Roman books. Instead, he began wandering around the classroom. His favourite place was the pet corner, where the stick insects lived in their big glass tank an
d Smudge the guinea pig had his cage.

  Smudge’s bag of guinea pig food was kept beside his cage.

  Another thing that had been forgotten that morning, as well as the school bag and packed lunch and homework, was Charlie’s breakfast. So now Charlie was very hungry, and he tried a small handful of guinea pig food and found it was not bad at all. It was a mixture of little orange and red biscuits, peanuts, hard crunchy cornflakes and dark green pellets that tasted bitter and dry. Charlie chomped his way through one handful, and started on another, carefully picking out the dark green pellets first. He offered them to the guinea pig, but he did not seem to like them either.

  ‘Yes, well,’ said Charlie to the guinea pig. ‘I’ll tell you why I’m here! Because of the rotten boring Romans who I didn’t do my homework about. Which no one would have noticed if Mum hadn’t brought me in so late and told everyone about me not having my school bag and homework and no packed lunch either.’

  Charlie paused and took another handful of guinea pig food and asked the guinea pig, ‘Do you mind me eating this?’

  The guinea pig looked like he could not care less what Charlie ate. He did not seem particularly interested in Charlie’s grumbles either, but Charlie carried on anyway.

  ‘And the reason I was late, with no packed lunch and everything was because of Mum moaning about snow in the fridge. Which I put there before it all got wasted with people walking on it. Even the cat. What’s the matter with putting snow in the fridge, anyway? Snow’s clean and the fridge is cold!’