Balloon Brother

There are two little girls who are sisters. Their names are Meg and
Audrey. Meg is a little bit older than Audrey. They have lots of energy
and have hair the colour of ripe conkers, kept fairly short.



Meg tells people that her favourite thing is reading books to
her dolls, or colouring in. This is not true. Audrey tells people that
her favourite thing is picking up pencils with her toes or hugging her
mum. This is not true either.


Meg's true favourite thing is to look at her tongue in the
mirror after she has been eating sweets. The best are Skittles, which
come in all different colours. She tries to make her tongue a rainbow.
She keeps the red ones to the left hand side of her mouth while she
sucks them and she keeps the green ones in the middle and the yellow
ones to the right.


Audrey's true favourite thing (oh dear me) is to make bubbly
noises in the bath. I am sure you know what I mean and hope that you
will not think less of her.


One day, Meg and Audrey come running in to the house to see
their mother.


"Mum," says Meg.


"Mum," says Audrey.


"Mum," says Meg.


"Mum," says Audrey.


"mmmmmm?" says mum.


"Can we have a big brother?"


"Yes, can we?" adds Audrey.


Their mum takes off her glasses and puts down her book of
poetry. She smiles at the children.


"I'm sorry," she says, "But it isn't possible to get you a
big brother. We might be able to manage a little brother, but I'd
rather not?"


Audrey stamps her foot. "Why not?" she says, "Why can't we
have a big brother, tell us that?"


Mum says, "Because you're already here. If you had a big
brother, he'd have to be older than you, so he would have already been
born. Unless I've been hiding him in the wardrobe, you don't have a big
brother."


They run upstairs to look in the wardrobe. I am sure it is an
accident that all of mum's blouses and dresses ended up on the floor.
Sometimes things just do fall down all by their own, you know. They
looked under the bed too, just in case.


Meg is very sad when she comes downstairs and mum gives them
both a hug and kisses them right on the tip of their nose.



"What did you want a big brother for, anyway? Big brothers
are just bullies and they don't wash their PE Kit and they play their
music too loud."


Meg says, "He would always play with us. He would watch us
ride our bikes so we could play outside more."


Audrey says, "He would give us piggy-back rides whenever we
wanted. Meg is too small to lift me."


"And I am too heavy for Audrey to lift me, " adds Meg.



It is two quite sad girls who go to bed that night, dreaming
of an older brother. But they do have Fiona Tressle's party to look
forward to the next day, so things aren't so bad.



* * *



Mum does their hair and puts them in bright, cheerful sun dresses for
the party. She helps them put on their shoes. Meg carries the present,
and Audrey carries the card, which is in a big pink envelope.



Fiona Tressle likes Lego. She always has little blocks of
Lego in her pockets and her purse and at the bottom of her school bag.
It is no surprise then that everyone buys her Lego for her birthday.
She smiles so hard her face hurts.


There is an entertainer at the party, a magician, and the
girls are looking forward to seeing him. He comes out on to the stage.
(Actually, the stage is just Fiona's mother's rug, which she has pulled
away from the sofa and dining table)


The man bows and says, "Hello children, I am The Adequate
Robert!"


Adequate, I'm sure you know is a word that means alright, or
not too bad. It is unusual for a magician to call himself something
like this, rather than the Magnificent Trumpetti, or the Stupendous
Xylophono. However, as we shall see, The Adequate Robert is quite an
unusual magician.


The Adequate Robert has long curly hair the colour of
beetroot. He looks both worried and thin. He is wearing a coat with
nothing underneath and all along the arms of the coat are pegged wooden
clothespegs. His trousers are made of squares of different coloured
tissue paper, pale oranges, bright reds, lime greens.


He does some card tricks for the children and then he blows
up thin balloons, PRRRRFFFFFFFFFT and stretches them and ties them into
knots and makes a giraffe and a dog. He pulls a goldfish out of Fiona
Tressle's nose.


He is nice, but he isn't really very good. Meg feels a bit
sorry for him.


After a while, Meg and Audrey get their slices of birthday
cake, which has yellow icing, and comes wrapped up in napkins with
pictures of Shrek on them. They wander into the kitchen, where The
Adequate Robert is sitting cross-legged on the floor, looking a bit
sad. In front of him, are standing two wooden spoons, and they are
floating in the air and doing a sort of dance.


Meg says to Audrey, "Look at the spoons!"


Audrey is looking.


"How do you do that?" she blurts out to The Adequate Robert.



He blushes and the spoons do the nearest thing that something
that has a face made out of wood can do when they want to blush, which
is to run up the coat sleeves of the Adequate Robert and hide.



"Magic," says the Adequate Robert.


"Real magic," says Audrey, who knows the difference between
real and pretend.


"Would you like some birthday cake?" says Meg, who worries
that The Adequate Robert seems so thin for a grown-up.


He starts to cry, but in a happy way. He smiles, but there
are tears. The spoons run out of his sleeves and dance in the air, then
they fly up to the children's heads and gently stroke their hair. Meg
hopes that the spoons are clean, and that they don't have beans on them
or anything.


The Adequate Robert says, "You are so kind. Birthday cake is
the only thing I can eat. That is why I work at children's parties,
hoping for birthday cake. Sausages make me sneeze, chips give me the
mumps, pasta makes me shiver, toast tastes fizzy and salty all at once;
but I love and adore birthday cake!"


Meg gives him her cake and he unwraps it as though it were
the most precious thing he'd ever seen. He dips a finger into the
yellow icing and licks it off very very carefully.


"Delicious," he says, "Do you know, I am
starving!"


Meg says, "Why don't you just buy birthday cake from the
shops, if it is the only thing you can eat? Then you'd never be
hungry."


The Adequate Robert says, "I tried that, but it only tastes
nice to me if it is someone's real birthday cake. It is the birthday
that makes it taste good. So I come to these parties hoping that
someone will offer me a slice of cake. It hardly ever
happens."


The spoons dance up and down on the palms of Audrey's hands.
It tickles, a little.


"I must do something nice for you two," says The Adequate
Robert, with a mouthful of cake, which is quite rude, but he is very
very hungry, "I could make you something magically alive out of
balloons. A little balloon kitten, or a balloon
goldfish?"


Meg and Audrey look at each other. "How about a balloon big
brother?" they say together (although not quite, because Audrey talks a
little bit faster, so she'd said all of it by the time Meg was saying
'big')


"Phew," says The Adequate Robert, who has eaten all of Meg's
birthday cake and is looking meaningfully at Audrey's slice, still
wrapped up in the napkin, "That's a lot of magic. That is worth much
more than two slices of birthday cake. Sorry, did I say two? For I have
only had one."


Audrey quickly hands over her slice of cake.


"What I would need for that," says The Adequate Robert, "is
to have you both promise to give me a little piece of every single
birthday cake you ever have. Not just for your own birthdays, but every
time you have birthday cake. It doesn't need to be a big bit, but you
must save me at least a crumb."


"Okay," says Audrey.


Meg says, "But you won't always be there every time we have
birthday cake. How will we give it to you?"


The Adequate Robert takes balloon after balloon from his
pockets, all flat and ready to be blown up, "That's simple," he says,
"I am friends with all swans, so just give the cake to any swan and
they will bring it to me. They will not peck you because you are my
friends."


"Okay," says Meg, "That's what we'll do."


He gives a small dark red balloon to Audrey and says, "This
is to be your brother's heart. This is where the magic begins. I need
you to blow the balloon halfway up, and then pinch the end tight and
pass it to Meg to finish off."


"How did you know my name?" asks Meg.


"Magic, of course," says The Adequate Robert, "Now, the best
way to blow up a balloon is just to breathe into it. If you try to blow
hard, like you're trying to be the wind pushing a boat's sails, you'll
just hurt your cheeks and ears. Just breathe into it, slow and
steady."


Audrey blows the balloon halfway up and then gives it to Meg.
A tiny, tiny bit of air gets out, but the balloon is still quite round.
Meg blows it up until Robert says stop.


He takes it from her gently and ties it up. "This," he says,
"Is where it all starts."


And he blows and he stretches and he ties and he twists and
he knots.


And he blows and he stretches and he ties and he twists and
he knots.


And then, there stands a boy, made out of balloons. He is
taller than Meg and his head is a pink balloon and his arms and legs
are long sausage shaped balloons. He has a big smile drawn on his pink
face.


He says, "Hello, my name is Alfie. Are you my little
sisters?"


"Yes we are," say Meg and Audrey together. Alfie has a funny
voice, it is all high-pitched, this is because he is full of air. He is
very light, so when they walk home with him, they need to hold his arms
tight.


Mummy is very surprised to learn that she has a new son, made
out of balloons, but he is very polite and he helps with the washing-up
and he keeps his room tidy, so she grows to love him very quickly. At
first, when he sleeps, he floats up out of his bed and mummy ties
string round his balloon wrist and ties him to the bedpost, but this
seems like having a dog rather than a little boy, so instead she gets
him some heavy boots and puts them on his balloon feet.



When Alfie washes in the mornings, his skin squeaks. They
have to check the house very carefully before he sits down, to be sure
there isn't anything sharp.


Some of the other children at school make fun of Alfie at
first, but he can play football very well and he is very funny and when
he takes one boot off, he can jump very high into the air to catch
things, or reach things, so after a little while, everyone likes him.



And Meg and Audrey go to lots of birthday parties and they
save a little piece of cake every time and then take it to the pond to
give to the swans. The swans are always very gentle when they take the
cake.


Alfie plays with the children all the time, and gives them
both piggy-back rides and watches them ride their bikes up and down.



"Goodness," says mummy, "I don't know what I ever did before
I had Alfie around to help."


Meg and Audrey get invited to a birthday party. Alfie goes
too, of course. He lets children write on his arms in brown felt tip
pen, which makes a squeaky noise. After all the games, the cake is cut.
It really is the nicest cake ever. It is chocolate cake, with cream
inside and it has chocolate buttons stuck to the top and inside the
cake are Smarties. It is delicious. It is lovely.


It is so delicious, and so lovely, that they eat all of it
up, every single crumb.


"Oh dear," says Meg, looking down at her empty plate.



"Oh dear," says Audrey, licking her lips and hoping that
there is a crumb on her face.


Alfie runs over to them and gives them both a big hug, "Don't
worry," he says, "It was great to be your brother, and magic never
lasts forever. Two things never last, magic and balloons. So I was only
meant to be here for a little while. Don't ever forget
me!"


And then he gets smaller and thinner and he starts to
dwindle. He keeps smiling right to the end.


This is why, in a special jewellery box in the children's
bedroom, they have a collection of old thin balloons in all different
colours and why you can still, to this very day, see a pink one with a
big smile drawn on it.


"I wonder," says Audrey, "If we will ever meet The Adequate
Robert again."


And you know, I'm sure that they will.