5.05pm Thursday
‘I’m not teaching Franklin to speak just so Mum and Dad can put him on a stage with a bunch of talking chimps. He’s a human being not an animal!’
Gertie considered her brother’s grubby feet, sticking out from under his bed.
‘Human beings are animals,’ she pointed out. ‘Anyway, Franklin isn’t even an animal. He’s a dummy.’
‘He was a dummy,’ corrected Joe, re-emerging with one soiled trainer and a slipper. ‘But he’s alive now. He’s a human being. Tell me one way he’s like a dummy.’
‘Well his head and his hands and his legs come off for a start,’ murmured Gertie. ‘By the way, were you looking for this?’ and she produced a second soiled trainer from her sock drawer.
Joe stared at it glumly. ‘Yes. But don’t you see Gertie. It doesn’t matter what Franklin is, he’s still our friend. We can’t let Mum and Dad take him to that conference. Once people find out he’s really a mannequin, they’ll take him away. He’ll end up in a cage in some horrible Government laboratory…’
‘I know,’ said Gertie shortly. She took the slipper from her brother’s hand and dropped it on the floor. The watch on her wrist blinked seven urgent seconds, then: ‘Don’t worry,’ she added, passing Joe his other trainer. ‘We’ll go along, but we won’t help at all. We’ll try to make Mum and Dad see sense and if that fails, well, we’ll save Franklin. Even if we have to tie Mum and Dad up to do it.’
‘Gertie!’ thundered Mr Stein from the staircase.
‘Just coming,’ she shouted, stuffing a pair of knickers and some socks into a plastic bag.
‘Tie Mum and Dad up?’ whispered Joe, appalled.
‘Well have you any better ideas?’ snapped his sister. ‘Look, am I going to have to put those shoes on for you, or what?’
5.15 Thursday
The car door slammed, almost but not quite on Gertie’s fingers, and they were off.
‘All comfy in the back there?’ asked Mr Stein, twisting himself round in the passenger seat to get a better look.
It was a small car and a tight squeeze in the back. Gertie, Franklin and Joe sat side by side, wedged in with bags of clothes and strapped down by a complicated arrangement of seat belts. They looked like convicts, trussed up on the way to jail. And they wore expressions to match. Mr Stein wondered if he was going to have a mutiny on his hands. Even Franklin didn’t look his usual cheery self. This was because he was too tall for the car and every time they went over a bump the roof walloped his head, but: ‘All comfy in the back,’ he agreed dolefully.
‘Oh!’ cried Mrs Stein, from her position hunched over the wheel, ‘What a clever sausage to make such a long sentence!’
Gertie groaned. ‘Please Mum,’ she said. ‘Just drive.
‘Anyway, in case you didn’t notice, Franklin was only copying what Dad said. It’s a trick we taught him ages ago. He’s no idea what the words mean.’ She squeezed Franklin’s hand because she didn’t like having to be nasty about his language skills. ‘Do you Franklin?’
‘No idea what the words mean,’ agreed Franklin.
‘It’s all very well criticising, Gertie, but what are you going to do about it?’ demanded Mr Stein. ‘What books did you bring?’
Gertie folded her arms and didn’t even bother to answer, so it was Joe who held up the slim, tattered volume with the large red apple on its cover. He smiled weakly. ‘Just this, Dad,’ he said.
‘Baby’s First Alphabet? Well that’s not very impressive,’ muttered Mr Stein. ‘I’d have thought you could at least have stretched to an encyclopaedia or a dictionary. This is a prestigious international conference we’re talking about here.’ He slumped back in his seat and began unfolding the map.
‘If we take the road coming up on the left,’ he informed his wife, ‘we can cut 30 miles off the journey.’ Behind his back, Joe flashed Gertie a thumbs up sign: this looked promising. And sure enough, in less time than it takes to miss a sharp left turn Mr and Mrs Stein had embarked on the argument that was to keep them distracted and amused all the way to the ferry terminal. Gertie unfolded her arms and beamed across at Joe. At last they had Franklin to themselves once more.
In three seconds flat, they had relieved their friend of his bow tie, dispatched his book to the back window-ledge, and produced alternative entertainment in the form of a pack of cards.
In three hours flat, Franklin had progressed from Snap, through Spit, Cheat and Whist to the rudiments of Poker. They were getting on famously.
‘Heart,’ said Joe, pointing to the ace. He got Franklin to put his ear to his chest. ‘Heart,’ he explained.
His face a mask of concentration, Franklin listened to the regular thump beneath Joe’s T-shirt. ‘Heart?’ he inquired, pointing to his own chest. Joe leant across and listened. ‘Hey Gertie, I don’t think Franklin’s got a heart.’
‘Oh, poor Franklin,’ said Gertie. ‘It’s like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz. We must find him one.’ Her eyes lit on the only unattached heart to hand.
If Gertie had a philosophy of life, it was to act first and think later. And when she came to think about it, much later, it occurred to her that parents, teachers and the various firemen summoned to extract her from the railings during her first year at school had all been wrong to suggest that this was a bad philosophy. Because, of all the things that anyone did on that disastrous day, what she did next was the right one. And yet it had required no thought whatsoever to pluck the ace from her brother’s fingers and tuck it in the breast pocket of Franklin’s baby-blue shirt.
‘That was pretty thoughtless,’ complained Joe. ‘Now we can’t play Poker.’
‘Well, he wasn’t very good at it anyway,’ said Gertie. ‘No, Franklin,’ she added, as Franklin held the card to his ear with a worried expression. ‘Keep it in your pocket. Pocket, heart.’ She showed him.
9.30pm Thursday
It was beginning to get dark. Mr and Mrs Stein had swapped seats and sides in their argument and they were all eating fish and chips in brown vinegary paper – all except Franklin, who if he couldn’t join in at least took a close interest in what they were doing.
‘Oh, Franklin, get your face of out my food,’ snapped Gertie at last in exasperation.
‘Don’t you think we should give him some?’ Joe asked.
‘No I don’t,’ mumbled Gertie, who was enjoying her fish too much to want to share it. ‘He’s a dummy, he doesn’t need food. Anyway, he hasn’t got a stomach to put it in.’
Joe had to admit the truth of this. If Franklin’s past attempts at eating were anything to go by, his throat stopped at the back of his mouth. But: ‘I bet he’s got taste buds,’ thought Joe, surreptitiously slipping his friend a chip.
‘Oh, Joe, get your food out of my face,’ remarked Franklin some time later, and Joe was forced to oblige.
It was when he rolled down the car window to dispose of the soggy evidence that he smelt the sea. He nearly asked ‘are we there yet?’ when he stopped and imagined what it would be like taking Franklin on the ferry. That’s when he realised: they wouldn’t be able to do it.
He tried to break the news gently and actually got through the ‘I hate to tell you’ bit in the proper funereal tone before an enormous tide of relief flooded over him and he ruined the effect by laughing. ‘Ha! Franklin hasn’t got a passport. We can’t go.’
The car screeched to a halt and pandemonium broke loose in the front. ‘Shut the window, Joe,’ barked his mother, ‘We don’t want the whole South coast to know what an unreasonable man your father is.’
Unreasonable? Mr Stein slumped over the steering wheel. ‘Why,’ he moaned, ‘is everything always so difficult?’
‘Well, it was a stupid idea in the first place,’ interposed Gertie from the back.
‘Stupid idea,’ agreed Franklin. ‘See, even Franklin thinks so,’ said Joe.
‘Shut up in the back or heads will roll,’ yelled Mr Stein. ‘Your mother and I need silence to think!’
‘Come on Jill,’ he begged ‘You’re the brainy one.’
It was dark enough for Mrs Stein to allow herself a smug smile. She folded up the map (they wouldn’t need it any more thanks to her expert navigation) and tucked it away in the bag at her feet. Then she got out the passports, flicked quickly through the mug shots and sighed.
‘It’s funny you should say that about heads rolling,’ she said at last. ‘Because there is one thing we could do…’ She paused and looked over her shoulder. ‘You’re not going to like this,’ she warned the back seat.
‘What is it?’ said Gertie suspiciously.
‘We could dismantle Franklin.’
‘Take him apart?’ Joe was incredulous.
‘Precisely,’
‘No!’ from the back seat.
‘But of course!’ from the driver’s seat. With an enormous shudder of relief, Mr Stein restarted the engine. ‘I don’t see what you’ve got against the idea,’ he said. ‘Franklin’s taken his own head off before, if I recall.’
‘It’s different if he does it,’ said Gertie, ‘anyway, we were trying to teach him not to. It’s like picking your nose. I don’t think it’s very polite.’
‘Polite!’ snorted Mr Stein. ‘Come off it Gertie, you’re scarcely one to preach.’ And with that, he drove the car sedately back on to the road, indicated courteously, and in plenty of time, that he wished to move into the middle lane, and waited decorously behind another car before turning right into the sea-side town from which the ferry departed.
Mr Stein very much doubted there was anything his unruly family could teach him about consideration and good manners. Look at them: Gertie had taken refuge in a sulk, Franklin was whacking the roof with something, God knows what, and Joe… well Joe just wouldn’t let things lie. ‘The point is,’ he was saying, ‘The point is that it’s not kind to do something like that to him.’ He was holding Franklin’s hand, and his wrist, just to make sure that the two stayed attached to one another. ‘I really don’t think he would like it.’
‘Then let’s ask him, shall we?’ suggested Mrs Stein. She turned to look at Franklin, who smiled with pleasure as her face appeared round the edge of the seat. ‘Peekaboo!’ he crowed. ‘Now why couldn’t Joe and Gertie be so sweet-natured?’ thought Mrs Stein.
‘Peekaboo,’ she cooed and ‘Peekaboo,’ responded Mr Stein automatically, glancing in the car mirror and catching Franklin’s eye. Franklin was captivated. ‘Dada!’
He reared forward, seat belts snapping like threads, and tore the mirror off its stem. With an anguished scream, the car bolted across the carriageway and smashed to a halt against the kerb. Franklin bounced back on to Joe and Gertie’s knees. ‘Dada?’ he demanded, examining the mirror closely but finding only his own face.
Mr Stein switched off the engine. ‘Why?’ he asked and buried his head in his hands.
‘Now don’t upset yourself, darling,’ said his wife. She spoke in the sort of soothing sing-song people use when things have gone horribly wrong, but: ‘Everything’s fine,’ she insisted. ‘Just leave this little problem to me.’
‘Please, Franklin,’ she said, ‘give me the mirror.’
Franklin obediently passed her the mirror.
‘Yes, we’re all going to keep very calm,’ observed Mrs Stein, spilling the contents of the first-aid kit on to her lap and selecting some extra-large plasters. ‘I’m going to stick this thing back on. Can someone please give me a hand.’
Franklin obediently passed her his hand.
