When Mum Went Funny by Jack Lasenby Read Free Book Online Page B

Street to the gate into the school horse paddock.
    “We saw your mother,” all the other kids said. “Playing with the clowns at the circus.” And a little girl whispered, “Our mother said your mother would have shown that old lion. She said your mother would have bitten its head clean off!”
    “That’s why they wouldn’t let her get into the cage!” Wiki Peters shouted.
    “That’s what Mum reckons, too,” we said and felt proud of her.
    Billy Kemp kept away from us all the way home that afternoon. Only, when we were closing the gate, he galloped by going, “Ka! Ka! Ka!” and swung Hiccup away: “Whahhh-meeowrowwww!” which meant he was doing an Immelmann Turn.
    “Ka! Ka! Ka!” went our tail gunner, but the Messerschmitt half-rolled at the top of its loop, and was galloping out of range in the opposite direction. Our tail gunner swung her turret round, but he was alreadydisappearing behind the lawsonianas at the church corner.
    “Why didn’t you let me have a go? I’d have got him.”
    “Never mind,” Kate told Betty. “You can shoot him down tomorrow morning.”
    “You’d think he’d come off his pony,” I said. “That was an Immelmann Turn!”
    I could feel Kate nod. “He’s not bad,” she admitted. “Look! What’s she up to now?”
    Mum was cantering Trixie around and around the house paddock. She must have been doing it quite a while because the grass was worn in a circle.
    She stopped and walked Trixie towards us, pretending to be interested in a patch of ragwort, but Kate said, “So that’s her next cranky idea.”
    “What?”
    “She wants to join the circus and wear spangled tights.”
    “Nonsense! Can you see me in tights?” Mum said when Jimmy asked her. “Joining the circus is the last thing on my mind.” But we knew she was thinking of something; she had that look on her face.
    “Anyway,” she said, “while you were wasting my money looking at the wild animals after the circus on Saturday night, I had a talk to the man who owns it.”
    “What about, Mum?”
    “I asked if he wanted to buy four fat children,” said Mum. Jimmy and Betty stared at her. Kate didn’t lookworried, so I wasn’t worried either. “He said they weren’t interested in buying children any longer. He said they’re closing the circus.”
    “Closing the circus!” we all said.
    “Because of the war,” Mum nodded. “They can’t get the benzine to travel around New Zealand, and the shipping’s getting harder, crossing the Tasman. The circus comes from Australia, you know.” We said we didn’t know that, and Jimmy and Betty got much chirpier, now they knew they weren’t going to be sold to feed the wild animals.
    “I wouldn’t have minded being in the circus,” said Jimmy, and Betty said, “I want to wear spangles and stand on one foot and ride the horse.”
    “That’s because you’re a girl, and girls are showoffs ,” Jimmy told her. “I’d be the lion tamer.”
    “Why do you have to fight all the time?” Mum sighed. “They’ve got a few more shows: Te Aroha, Paeroa, and Thames, then Morrinsville on the way back, then they get on the train, go up to Auckland, do a week there, and go back to Sydney. And over there, they put the tent into storage; and the elephant, and the wild animals, and the clowns and their little dog are all going to the zoo till the war’s over.”
    “Why are they putting the clowns in the zoo?”
    “The owner said they’re very savage. Well, you saw the way they chased me.”
    “And there won’t be any more circuses till the war’s over?”
    Mum shook her head.
    “That old Hitler,” said Jimmy. “I’d like to biff him one!”
    “Musso, too,” said Betty. “And Tojo!”
    “Yeah, them, too. Still, it was fun, the circus.”
    “You bet!” we all told Mum, and Kate said, “We thought you were training Trixie to gallop in circles, so you could run away from us and join the circus and ride around the ring in tights and