Lizard's Leap: Chapter One: In the Beginning

Lizards Leap
Chapter One
In The Beginning

An air of excitement popped along with the children’s Rice Krispies at breakfast that morning. This was the long-awaited Saturday that had captured Mark’s imagination and creativity for weeks. It was the day of the school’s summer fair and he had made plans, drawn diagrams and had thought up many bizarre and ingenious ways of conning the stall-holders out of their cakes.

His sister, Vicki, was less impressed and enthusiastic. She felt that, at her age, she had outgrown extracurricular school events. Mark had been making and baking, collecting and selecting, painting and sticking and doing all manner of other fair-related activities. While his sister had moaned and groaned, sighed and ridiculed and generally been as unhelpful and teenage-girlish as possible. For once, the two dominating subjects of conversation were not fit lads and football but how much water should be added to icing sugar to make the cake frosting. The sunny, second Saturday in June had arrived and they would be going with their mothers to St. Mary’s Junior School Summer Fair. As far as Vicki was concerned it was just so un-cool.

That morning, just like every other, Mark and Vicki Forest were arguing. Mrs Forest was busying herself with a batch of hot biscuits that she had just taken from the oven. The smell of the warm treats wafted out from the kitchen and spread through the house. It was tempting and delicious. It was also something of a rarity, Mrs Forest was not given to baking home-made treats, she was especially not given to baking home-made treats at nine-thirty on a Saturday morning when she could be having a lie-in. Mark and Vicki were allowed one each and munched happily. They smaned behind the mouthful of biscuit when their mother burned herself taking a second batch out of the oven and swore. Like baking, Mrs Forest was not given to swearing.

Victoria Anne Forest was the eldest of the four children. At twelve years old, her greatest passion in life was boy bands. She knew everything there was to know about Get This and The Herb Boyz and countless others. Her bedroom walls were covered with bright posters of her heroes, all with dazzling white teeth and big cheesy grins.

Nobody would ever have been unkind enough to call her daft, but ditzy and scatterbrained were two words that fit her as snugly as her neon-print leggings. Vicki was a chatterbox; she always had a lot to say and, very occasionally, some of it even made sense.

Mark Forest was Vicki’s brother. He was eight and clumsy. He regularly fell over his feet, he fell over other people’s feet and he even fell over invisible feet. He walked into things, dropped things, broke things, lost things, stood on things, forgot things, stubbed his toe, skinned his shin, banged his head, cut his hand and grazed his knee—daily. Mark was a walking disaster, he was a public liability and a pest. He was also loud. He saw no sense in talking to somebody quietly. If he shouted, then he could reach a much wider audience and possibly annoy ten people instead of one. He called it value for oxygen.

‘Mu-um, Mark said that Luke Dross is rubbish and that he’s stupid.’

‘Did he, love?’ sympathised Mrs Forest. ‘Well he can’t look good and be clever all at the same time, can he? That would be exhausting for him.’ Mrs Forest smiled to herself as she turned away from her daughter.

Mark was ecstatic with this minor triumph over his sister and wasted no time yelling out his victory chant. ‘Luke Dross is stupid. Luke Dross is stupid. And even Mum thinks so.’

Vicki had heard enough and jumped up from the table preparing to stomp off in her best huffy manner. How dare they insult the Godlike Luke Dross?

‘Er, just a minute, young lady. Where do you think you’re going? I didn’t hear you excuse yourself from the table, and those dishes aren’t going to rise up and float into the dishwasher, you know.’

Vicki turned back to the table and sat down.'I did ask to be excused. You obviously didn't hear me.' but she set about clearing the breakfast debris while bickering over whose iced buns were the most artistic.

In a similar kitchen three streets away much the same morning rituals were taking place. It was the home of Emma and Kerry Taylor. Mrs Forest was Mr Taylor’s sister so Vicki, Mark, Emma and Kerry were cousins. The four children were best friends as well as family but it didn’t stop them fighting, especially when Mark was involved, the girls found him hard work—but then—so did everybody else. Mrs Taylor was icing a huge chocolate cake. It looked almost too good to eat but, given half the chance, neither Emma nor Kerry would care about that. The girls were very excited about the school fair and chatted ten to the dozen as they watched their mother. It was going to be a wonderful day.

St Mary’s summer fair was in full swing and the four cousins had opted to take the first turn on the stalls. Vicki no longer attended St. Mary’s, having moved the September before last to a secondary school, but she was still allowed to take a turn with Emma running the Tombola stall. It felt odd to be back at her old school and was a reminder that she was always getting into trouble when she had been a pupil at St. Mary’s. Like, for instance, the time when Miss Jameson had told her off for humming in the middle of a history lesson.
At playtime, Vicki had been talking to some of the girls. She played to her crowd and had them all laughing as she did an impression of Miss Jameson. Vicki said that her teacher had a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp. The girls had suddenly gone quiet. So to try and get another laugh Vicki just mentioned that the elderly teacher could do with a personality transplant. The girls looked at their feet and shuffled. Vicki didn’t understand this so she tried another joke at the teacher’s expense. ‘Miss Jameson is such an old bag that you could put your shopping in her,’ she said, screeching loudly at her own joke before realising that something was wrong.

‘She’s behind me, isn’t she?’ she asked, following the gaze of one of the girls and seeing none other than the dreaded Miss Jameson standing behind her. The two had never got along well after that and Vicki had tried to keep a healthy distance from the teacher whenever possible.

Mark and Kerry were in charge of the White Elephant stall. Mark was upset because in all the junk they had sold there wasn’t a single white elephant. To be more specific, there weren’t any elephants at all—white or otherwise. Kerry told him not to use the word junk in front of the customers. She used a little creativity and called the chipped ornaments and battered books, finest antiques from the Jurassic era, ‘Which means,’ she said, ‘junk from way back when the dinosaurs still walked the earth.’

Later, having finished their stints as stallholders the children were free to wander around and spend their pocket money.

‘Oh look,’ said Vicki, pointing excitedly at the bric-a-brac stall. ‘It’s a poster of The Big Wet Wusses. I have got to get it before Sharon Lazenby does, otherwise, she’ll brag all next week. If I can get there first she’ll be green with envy. And, anyway, I can brag better than she can.’ With that, Vicki flew across the hall dragging a surprised Kerry behind her. Emma and Mark rolled their eyes at each other and moved on to the cake stall hoping to buy four of Mrs Forest’s chocolate chip cookies if they hadn’t sold out.

‘I got it. I got it.’ Vicki charged back after a couple of minutes. Her cheeks were red with excitement and her eyes shone. She waved the poster of the latest chart-topping boy band over her head.

But she was running too fast and crashed into Miss Jameson just as the class three teacher chose that precise moment to come around the corner. Vicki nearly bonked her on the head with the poster as she went past.

‘Oops, sorry, Miss, didn’t see you there, Miss,’ muttered Vicki, colouring an even deeper red.

Mark smaned into his hands, Vicki’s for it now, he thought.

Miss Jameson looked as sour as always, even amidst the excitement of the summer fair her face was cast as though in stone. Mark thought that she looked like one of the gargoyles on the roof of the Town Hall.

‘Victoria Forest. I see the new school has not begun to make a young lady of you yet. Please try not to do anybody any serious harm with that—that—what is that, anyway?’

‘It’s a poster of the Big Wet Wusses, Miss. They are at number one in the charts.’

Miss Jameson took the poster from Vicki’s hands. Vicki held her breath. What if the old battleaxe ripped it up? I wouldn’t put it past her, she thought, praying silently that the precious, glossy picture of the five young men would survive the scrutiny.

Miss Jameson unrolled the poster slowly and deliberately. She looked at it for a long time. It showed Tommy Knocker in the foreground—and the lead singer wore no shirt, he was baring his entire, naked, chest. Vicki had a bad feeling about this. If she doesn’t rip it up she’s bound to confiscate it, she thought as she hopped from one foot to the other impatiently. If she rips it, Sharon Lazenby will never believe that I ever had the poster. Vicki fretted as Miss Jameson peered at the picture of the young men. When she was finished looking over her half moon glasses, she rolled the picture back up with care. Then did the most extraordinary thing. She sang in a very gruff voice that was very nearly, but not quite, in tune. This woman was no Tommy Knocker but it was his number one song all right:

“If you’re gonna hurt me, don’t hurt me.
Love me good - yeah baby,
If you’re gonna love me, just love me.
Don’t cover me in mud - yeah baby.’

Miss Jameson accompanied this rendition of, Love Me, by bending her knees and wiggling her bottom. She moved her arms in front of her and looked like a strange train chugging towards them. The four children were amazed and stared at the elderly teacher with open mouths. Miss Jameson winked at them and said very formally ‘Good day, children,’ and then she walked off.

The cousins looked at one another in astonishment. They all burst into gales of laughter. Miss Jameson, who was at the other side of the room by this time, must have heard them because she bent her knees and gave one more bottom-wiggle before disappearing out of the door. Vicki watched her former teacher leave with a very new level of respect for the lady.

The children wandered from stall to stall haggling over some little trinket or must-have article that life simply couldn’t continue without. They munched on biscuits and then joined their mothers who were having coffee in the school’s cafeteria. The children were given some orange juice and, to Mark’s delight, more biscuits.

Mrs Taylor was expecting a baby and looked very uncomfortable. The little one was due just before Christmas and would be a new brother or sister for Emma and Kerry. They both wanted it to be a boy and fought constantly over who would change his nappy and bathe him first. Mrs Taylor smiled at the thought of her sensitive children changing a soiled nappy.

Soon the cousins were bored sitting at the table listening to their mothers discuss babies and what to prepare for the evening meal. They still had some money in their pockets that was screaming at them, spend me, spend me, spend me. Vicki and Mark had already parted with most of theirs, but Emma and Kerry had not spent much at all.

This was the way it always was. On pocket money day Mark would go straight to the sweet shop to spend all of his money straight away. It was usually gone, with nothing to show for it, very quickly. Vicki was just as quick to spend hers but it would go on posters and magazines. Emma would spend some of her money on one magazine or one packet of sweets and save the rest to use during the week while Kerry would save all of her pocket money in her raptor moneybox. She would only take it out when she had something really special to spend it on. That day she had grudgingly taken two pounds, leaving her with thirty-six pounds and eighty-seven pence.

The children were having a go on some of the side stalls. Emma had won a bottle of apple and lemongrass bubble bath and Mark had fought hard for a prize only to come away with a knitted-doll toilet roll holder. He’d wanted the box of Celebrations and was sulking. Vicki was sulking, too, because she only had twenty pence left, and she hadn’t won anything at all.

‘Well, Vicki,’ said Emma. ‘It could be worse. You might have won that awful toilet roll holder that Mark got.’

Mark threw it at Emma but hit Kerry on the arm with it. Kerry worried about things and she spent a long time rubbing her arm and looking for a bruise that never arrived. She refused to speak to Mark for over half an hour and then said that, when they got home, she was going to tell on him.

It was then that Kerry saw it. All day people had been coming with bags and boxes, stalls were periodically being added to as people donated their old what-nots, and the stallholders would bring something up from the floor behind them as their tables emptied. They had all been instructed to keep some of the better things back to add to the stalls as the day progressed. This meant that all of the best items wouldn’t be sold within the first five minutes, leaving nothing of interest for the rest of the day.

On the White Elephant stall Mrs Poole, the reception class teacher, had just finished sorting through a box full of bits and pieces and arranging and displaying them to their best advantage. Kerry saw the picture of the Statue of Liberty from across the room but it didn’t interest her in the slightest. What did make her gasp in wonder was the frame that housed the picture. It was beautiful. She made a beeline for the stall, and plucked up the picture as though it was a rare and undiscovered treasure.

Kerry was Emma’s younger sister by two years. She was eight and younger than Mark by just a week–the baby of the four. Yet in some ways Kerry could be mistaken for the eldest. She was the most determined of the children and often got her own way. Once Kerry set her heart on something she could be very determined.

The twelve by fourteen inch frame looked very old. It had broad wood sections four-inches wide and was made from solid rosewood intricately carved with flowers and vines. But what made Kerry crave this item, what made her want it in a way that nothing else in the entire fair had inspired her, were the two carved lizards that climbed up the sides of the frame. The six-inch sand lizards were carved from the bulk of the wood. They were perfect in their detail and scale and looked very realistic. Kerry ran her fingers over each of the lizards lovingly. Like Vicki with the poster earlier, Kerry had to have this frame.

‘Hello, Mrs Poole. How much is this picture, please?’

‘Isn’t it beautiful, Kerry? It’s a picture of the Statue of Liberty, you know? Let’s see, now. How does two pounds grab you?’