An Excellent Invention Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Copyright Page

  MARCUS TINKLER had just finished cooking thirty-three pancakes for breakfast. They weren’t all for him of course. Some were for his sisters.

  Marcus’s older sister, Mila, liked to have chocolate ice-cream on her pancakes. Chocolate ice-cream and bacon. His younger sister, Turtle, liked having lettuce on her pancakes.

  This is because Turtle thought she was a turtle. She also thought turtles liked eating lettuce pancakes for breakfast.

  Marcus liked lemon and sugar on his pancakes. Sometimes Marcus felt like he was the only normal one in his family.

  But here is a secret:

  MARCUS was NoT REALLY that NORMAL.

  For one thing, how many kids are allowed to cook thirty-three pancakes for breakfast? And for another, how many kids are allowed to use the stove without an adult standing there saying, ‘CAREFUL! Remember that’s HOT!’ every two minutes? Not many.

  But the Tinklers were different to other kids. They lived by themselves on the thirty-third floor of thirty-three Rushby Road. You see, their parents worked in a travelling circus. This meant they were often away. It also meant that, most of the time, the Tinkler children got to do things their own way.

  Mila ate five pancakes. Then she pushed her plate away.

  ‘If I try to squeeze in any more I will burst,’ she groaned.

  Marcus was full too. He had eaten eight pancakes.

  Turtle had only eaten two. Then she slid under the table and tried to teach herself to roll over. But it is very hard to roll over with a cardboard box tied to your back. The box was Turtle’s shell.

  Turtle would roll halfway over. Then she would get stuck. Marcus had to keep helping her.

  ‘Turtle, why do you think turtles can roll over and do tricks?’ asked Marcus.

  ‘Because it says so in my Big Book of Turtle Facts,’ said Turtle.

  Everything Turtle knew about turtles she’d read in her Big Book of Turtle Facts. The book was written by Mila. She had typed it up on the Tinklers’ computer. When she had finished, she’d shown it to Marcus.

  ‘Those facts are very interesting,’ said Marcus after he’d read it. ‘But I’m not sure all of them are true. Can turtles really JUMP? I have never seen one fetch a stick. And are you sure they can climb out of their shells when they get dirty and need a bath?’

  ‘Don’t you get it, Marcus?’ said Mila, shaking her head. ‘My book has been typed on a computer. Typing things on a computer makes them true.’

  ‘Is that right?’ asked Marcus. ‘So, if I type “Mila will always wash the dishes” it will be true?’

  ‘No,’ said Mila. ‘It doesn’t work with everything.’

  Outside the window, the town hall clock chimed two. Two o’clock is very late to have just finished breakfast. But the Tinklers often ate breakfast this late. This is because Mila had trouble getting out of bed in the morning.

  Marcus and Turtle had tried lots of tricks to get Mila up. Sometimes they would run into the room shouting, ‘FIRE!’

  Sometimes they ran into the room shouting, ‘Pancakes!’ That worked quite well.

  Once Turtle crawled in with her shell on her back and shouted, ‘Turtle!’ That didn’t really work at all.

  They had tried TICKLING her. They had tried pinching her sleepy cheeks.

  One day Marcus invented a giant bed spatula. The spatula was meant to flip Mila out of bed like she was a giant pancake. The first morning it worked. But then Mila started sticking herself to her bed with circus glue.

  Circus glue is what the Tinklers’ dad used to keep himself from falling off his tightrope. It is what their mum used to stay on the white horse she rode.

  After Mila stuck herself to the bed, Marcus had stopped trying to get her up in the mornings.

  Just then the doorbell rang. All three Tinklers ran straight to the door.

  Visitors!

  The Tinklers LOVED visitors!

  THE VISITOR was Mrs Fitz, the mean old lady who lived downstairs. Actually, Mrs Fitz was not really mean. She just pretended to be mean because the Tinklers asked her to. They knew how important it was to have a mean old lady living in your block of flats.

  Mrs Fitz smiled warmly at them. ‘Hello, my dears!’ she said sweetly. But then she saw the Tinklers frowning at her. Sometimes Mrs Fitz forgot to be nasty. Sometimes the Tinklers had to gently remind her.

  Mrs Fitz pulled a sour face. ‘Hello, you horrible, stinky brats.’

  The Tinklers smiled at that. Mila gave her the thumbs up sign. Mrs Fitz looked pleased. Then she held out a letter.

  ‘This is for you.’

  ‘Oooh! Maybe it’s an invitation!’ said Mila happily.

  But it didn’t look like an invitation to Marcus. It looked more like a letter that asked tricky questions.

  Ones like:

  And:

  ‘The postman keeps putting your letters in my letterbox,’ said Mrs Fitz. ‘I wonder why?’

  Marcus was pretty sure he knew why. A few weeks ago, Marcus fixed the letterbox so no-one could rob it. Whenever anyone put their hand near the letterbox it would roar like a lion. Now the letterbox was burglar-proof. But it was also postman-proof.

  Mila opened the letter and gave a yelp.

  ‘What does it say?’ asked Marcus.

  ‘It is an invitation!’ Mila said.

  Marcus took a look. ‘This isn’t an invitation, Mila,’ he told her. ‘It’s a letter from the school. It says that you and I have to go there tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s still an invitation,’ said Mila. ‘It’s just one where you can’t say no. How exciting!’

  Something was puzzling Marcus. ‘How did the school find out about us?’ he asked Mrs Fitz.

  ‘I expect it was that Splatley family downstairs,’ said Mrs Fitz. ‘They like making trouble.’ She wrinkled her nose like she could smell a rotten egg. There actually was a rotten egg near the door. It was one of Marcus’s experiments. But this wasn’t why Mrs Fitz was wrinkling her nose. She was wrinkling it because of the Splatley family.

  The Splatleys didn’t pretend to be nasty, like Mrs Fitz. They just were nasty. Mr and Mrs Splatley thought that a proper family had to sit at a table and play Ludo every night. They didn’t think children should use stoves until they were twenty-one. They didn’t think ANYONE should eat ice-cream and bacon at the same time.

  But Mr and Mrs Splatley weren’t the real problem. The real problem was their kids. The Splatley kids were AWFUL.

  ‘If you don’t go to school, those Splatleys
will report you,’ said Mrs Fitz.

  ‘I know,’ said Marcus. ‘But what will we do with Turtle?’

  ‘I can look after Turtle,’ said Mrs Fitz. Then she thought maybe she was being too kind, so she added, ‘And she can scrub my floors.’

  ‘No way!’ said Turtle. ‘I am going to school too.’

  ‘You can’t,’ said Marcus. ‘You’re too young. And anyway, aren’t you a turtle? Turtles don’t go to school.’

  ‘Yes, they do,’ said Turtle. ‘It says so on page two of the Big Book of Turtle Facts.’

  ‘Of course you’re coming,’ said Mila. ‘That’s one of our rules.’

  Mila liked rules. She just didn’t think they had to stay the same. Mila thought rules were like socks. They needed to be changed a lot.

  ‘Well, OK. We will all go,’ said Marcus. He was a little bit excited. He had always wondered what school would be like. The only school he had been to was a circus school. It was run by clowns. That was back before he and his sisters started living in the flat on Rushby Road.

  Then Marcus saw the last line of the letter. ‘School starts at 9 a.m. sharp.’

  He showed this to Mila. ‘You can’t get up that early,’ he said.

  Mila tossed her head. ‘Of course I can. Tomorrow I will get up very early. I will go for a run. Then I will come back and clean the house and make breakfast while you and Turtle are still snoring in your beds.’

  Marcus and Turtle looked at each other. They had heard Mila say this before. But it had never happened. Never, EVER.

  ‘The only way we will get you to school by nine o’clock is if the bed comes too,’ said Marcus.

  He meant it as a joke. But the moment he said it, he started to think. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea.

  Maybe I can make a special bed, thought Marcus. A bed with wheels, and an engine.

  The more Marcus thought about it the better the idea seemed. ‘I’m going to my workshop,’ Marcus told Mila and Turtle. ‘I need to do some inventing.’

  He took the lift downstairs. On the ground floor of thirty-three Rushby Road was a bakery.

  The bakery was always warm and smelled good.

  The bakers who worked there were called Barry and Betty. They were very friendly and they liked to give treats to the Tinkler children. Sometimes it was hard to make them stop.

  Today they gave Marcus five sausage rolls, a banana cake and four apple scrolls with pink icing.

  ‘Thanks!’ said Marcus politely. He was still very full of pancakes but he would eat some of these things later. Inventing always made him hungry.

  ‘Have some more,’ pleaded Barry. ‘You look hungry. What about another cake? Or a meat pie?’

  Marcus shook his head and said goodbye quickly to the bakers. He needed to get to his workshop before they forced him to eat date scones.

  At the back of the bakery were all the bags of flour. Marcus moved the bags. Hidden behind them was an old wooden door.

  The door opened with a creak. Marcus felt for the light switch.

  CLICK!

  He walked carefully down the steps and into his workshop.

  Marcus’s workshop was full of lots of very cool stuff.

  It was mostly things he’d found. He was always surprised by what other people threw away.

  He had two old lawnmowers in one corner and a pram in another. Stacked against one wall was a huge pile of wood and a bucket of nails.

  Marcus had a VERY BIG collection of radios and TVs. Some of them even worked a little bit. Right in the middle of the room was Marcus’s workbench and tools.

  Marcus put on his safety goggles. Then he blew his nose with his safety hankie and started to work.

  First he hammered planks of wood together to make the bed. That bit was easy. Then he took off the pram’s wheels. He used some spare wire to fix them to the four corners of the bed. Perfect! The biggest job was taking the engine out of one of the lawnmowers. Then he had to attach it to the back of the bed.

  Marcus worked hard on the bed all afternoon. When he’d finished, it was almost time for dinner. But he didn’t mind. A day spent making things was a good day for Marcus.

  Marcus rolled the bed over to the stairs and with much HUFFING and PUFFING got it up the stairs and through the bakery.

  He rolled it over to the lift and pressed the UP button. When the lift doors

  opened, he pushed the bed into it and sat on top. Then he pushed the button for the thirty-third floor.

  UP, UP, UP, went the lift. Marcus couldn’t wait to see Mila’s face when she saw the new bed. But the lift stopped before it got to the level thirty-three.

  It stopped at level thirty-one. This was the worst floor in the building. It was where the Splatleys lived.

  The lift doors opened and Marcus saw the three Splatley children standing there.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Marcus, ‘but this lift is full. You will have to wait for the next one.’

  The Splatley children stared at him with their sharp little eyes. Then they stared at the bed.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Sarah, the oldest.

  ‘I’m getting ready for school tomorrow,’ said Marcus.

  The Splatley children all smiled in a very nasty way.

  ‘You’re going to our school?’ asked Simon, the middle Splatley kid.

  ‘Yes,’ said Marcus.

  The Splatley children all laughed. They sounded like CAMELS COUGHING.

  Marcus was tired of the Splatleys.

  He was tired of their NASTY smiles and horrible snorts. He pushed the button to close the doors. Just as they started closing, the youngest Splatley, Susan, reached in and pinched him.

  ‘Hey!’ said Marcus. ‘What was that for?’

  But Susie was only little and couldn’t talk yet. She could certainly pinch hard enough, though.

  When Marcus finally got the bed into their flat he found Turtle in the hallway. She was busy painting a new box red.

  ‘This will be my school shell,’ she explained. ‘Turtles always wear a new shell when they start school.’

  Marcus did not ask where she got that idea. He already knew.

  Mila was in the kitchen. ‘I’ve got our lunches ready for tomorrow,’ she said. ‘See? We each have a sandwich.’

  ‘What’s in them?’ asked Marcus. ‘They smell weird.’

  ‘Of course they do,’ said Mila. ‘They’re filled with stinky raw onions and tuna.’

  Marcus pulled a face. ‘Why did you put yucky stuff in them?’

  ‘Oh, Marcus,’ sighed Mila. ‘You just don’t understand about school lunches. You’re meant to take things you don’t like. Then you swap with other kids.

  We’ll swap our yucky sandwiches for something tasty.’

  ‘But why don’t we just take tasty things in the first place?’ asked Marcus.

  Mila shook her head. ‘Then we’d have to swap them for stinky sandwiches.’

 
This did not sound quite right to Marcus. But sometimes it was easier not to argue with Mila.

  ‘I’ve also written a note for our teacher,’ said Mila.

  Mila showed the note to Marcus. ‘This is to explain why we haven’t done our homework,’ she said.

  ‘But we don’t have any homework yet!’ said Marcus. ‘We’ve never been to school before.’

  Mila folded up the note and put it in an envelope. ‘It’s best to be safe,’ she said. ‘Now I think we’re ready for school.’

  ‘We sure are,’ said Marcus. ‘Come and see what I’ve made for you.’

  Marcus showed Mila the new bed. ‘It looks very cool,’ she said. ‘But I already have a bed.’

  ‘But this one is different,’ said Marcus proudly. ‘It’s a bed-mobile. See? It has wheels. And an engine at the back. So you don’t need to worry about getting up in time for school. In fact you don’t have to get out of bed at all.’

  ‘That’s an excellent invention, and I’ll sleep in it if you like,’ said Mila. ‘But I’m sorry to say you’ve wasted your time. Tomorrow I will get up very early. You wait and see.’

  Marcus and Turtle smiled at each other. ‘OK,’ said Marcus. ‘We’ll wait and see.’

  WHEN MARCUS woke up the next morning he saw that one of his sisters was already up. But it was not Mila. It was Turtle. Turtle was already dressed, and she had tied on her new school shell.

  But Mila was still fast asleep in her new bed.

  Marcus got up. He looked at his pile of clothes. The Tinklers kept their clothes on the floor because they were much easier to see that way.