Extract from

David and Tomoko

by F C Menzinger

Chapter 1 

David 

He was nearly six years old when he first made time stand still. 

     He didn’t really know how he did it or what happened exactly, but it was when he fell out of the apple tree and he wouldn’t have fallen if it hadn’t been for Dad. It was all Dad’s fault.

It was the middle of October – a sunny day. There were still quite a few apples left on the tree by the little pond where the big frog lived.

You couldn’t exactly see the apples from underneath but from his bedroom window, high up looking down into the garden, you could see the apples alright and there were lots and lots near the top of the tree.

“David,” Mum had said, “I want you and James to pick all the apples before they fall off and all go rotten.”

“You mean climb up?”

“Yes.”

“Okay – I’m good at climbing up.”

“How are you going to get the apples down?” Dad asked, fussing as usual.

“Throw them down of course,” said James.

“What!” exclaimed Dad. “They’ll bruise.”

“We could throw them on a bean bag,” said James brightly.

“What a good idea!” said Mum.

Everybody thought so except Dad. “You might miss the bean bag,” he said, doom in his voice.

“So?”

“What d’you mean – So? Take a plastic bag. You too, David.”

“Okay, Dad,” David said with a sigh, and started climbing up.

It was really the fault of the stupid bag and it was Dad’s fault. It would have been better to throw his apples down than try to climb with a stupid bag in one hand. Anybody, even the best climber, the bestest climber in the world, would fall off - and so he did. He slipped and did fall off.

And that’s when it happened.

One instant he was falling and the next he was floating. He was floating in space like an astronaut repairing a space station. But he wasn’t in space or even on the moon; he was still in the garden.

It was funny really.

He did a couple of somersaults and a big swoop around the tree and came to rest near the top of the birdbath. He reached out and took a bite out of an apple, sitting there quite unmoving in mid-air. He’d have to tell Mum! And then he suddenly realised that Mum and everybody and everything around him was frozen still.

They all looked like the waxworks at Madame Tussaud’s. He had gone there with Mum and James the other day.

It was funny.

He could go round tickling everybody or put squishy things out of the pond in Dad’s pockets. Anything he liked and no one to stop him.

He took a look around.

There was Mum sitting at the round picnic table under the striped umbrella Dad had fixed up, with a sandwich in her hand halfway to her mouth and there it stayed, her mouth open and the sandwich uneaten.

He crumbled a bit off the sandwich and popped it into his own mouth. He liked peanut butter sandwiches. Mum shouldn’t be so greedy.

And there was Dad. What was he doing? He’d tripped over the lawnmower, impatient as usual. His arms were flung out and he was just about to fall flat on his face – but he stayed put at a silly angle.

James was alright. He was still high up in the tree but about to throw another apple to the ground in spite of what Dad had said. That apple in mid-air he’d taken a bite out of must have been another one James had thrown down.

Danny, the big Irish Wolfhound, was lying still in a sort of sulky way, like a stone dog, big haunches sticking up, his heavy head lying on his stretched-out front legs. But in his case it didn’t make any difference because he always lay still like that, unless dad said, ‘coming, Danny?’ Then he’d leap into action to go to the Common, or unless there was some food to steal. He was a head higher than any table and could reach anything – if no one was looking – a whole cake, all the sugar out of the sugar bowl, all the cheese. Mum was always nagging Dad about it. Why wasn’t Danny trained properly? But Dad said there was nothing he could do about it and anyway it was Mum’s fault. She shouldn’t leave things lying about for the dog to steal.

If he was Danny, David thought, he’d have a wicked time now stealing all of Mum’s sandwiches.

Boss Cat, the black Persian kitten, must have wanted to follow him and James up the tree. But there he was. Front legs out, hind legs out, suspended in mid-air like a toy balloon and going nowhere.

And then, suddenly, David became frightened. Were they all dead?

“Mum,” he shouted. “Mum, wake up.”

He shook her, but nothing happened. She had eyes only for the sandwich.

“Mum!”

No answer.

He started to cry.

How was he going to tie his tie in the morning if he had no one to help him? Who would take him to school? Who would read him stories at night? How was he going to put his shoes on the right way round? How could he  jump into Mum’s bed first thing in the morning when dad got up to make the tea and then take the dog out, if Mum was going to sit in the garden all day trying to eat her sandwich?

And it was very boring having no one to talk to.

And then suddenly with a click and a whirr, rather like those machines in the arcades at the seaside, where you put a penny in the slot and things begin to move; wood cutters start cutting wood; executioners start cutting people’s heads off with big swords, trains start going along tracks, in and out of tunnels; drummers drum; fiddlers fiddle; and everything creaks and clangs till the money runs out; so everything in the garden came to life again.

Mum’s mouth closed around her sandwich. Dad fell flat on his face all tangled up with the lawnmower and yelled “Ouch!” Danny stayed as he was. Boss Cat finished his leap, claws digging into the tree. James threw down the apple and it landed on Dad’s head and he yelled, “Ouch!” again and something else and Mum said, “Don’t swear.”

David heaved a big sigh.

Time went on again.

David and Tomoko by F C Menzinger published by Earlyworks Press

ISBN 978 1 906451 00 4

£5.75 + £1 p&p to UK addresses