Floods 9 Read online

  The Cook, who was fifty-seven, put one on and went downstairs to the nearest bar where seven twenty-two-year-old yuppies fell in love with her.

  As well as the magic hats, everyone was given a disguise. All the girls were turned blonde, with big, powerful hairstyles because it is against regulations for women to enter the New York Stock Exchange if they are not blonde. There is actually a special doorman whose sole job is to check female blondeness. If there is a hint of any other colour in their hair or the style is not big enough, they are banned. One of the most successful shops in New York is a hairdressers opposite the Exchange that specialises in blonding and plumping up. It’s called ‘Who Wants To Have A Million Hairs?’13

  Capes, pointed hats and all the other lovely clothes witches and wizards wear were replaced with boring business suits, flashy waistcoats and clipboards.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Aubergine Wealth as he inspected his students. ‘Let’s go to work.’

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Betty, ‘but what exactly are we going to do?’

  ‘We are going to take over the world.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Betty. ‘How?’

  ‘We are going to buy everything,’ said Aubergine Wealth. ‘Or rather, everything that’s valuable.’

  ‘All of the sticks?’ said Satanella. ‘Wow, and can we buy all the red rubber balls too?’

  ‘Sticks, what sticks?’ said Aubergine Wealth.

  ‘On the Stick Exchange,’ said Satanella.

  ‘It’s the Stock Exchange,’ said Aubergine Wealth.

  ‘Now that’s where I come in,’ said the Cook. ‘If there’s one thing I know a lot about it’s stock – chicken stock, beef stock, lizard stock, you name it. I’ve got recipes for them all.’

  Aubergine Wealth sat down and buried his head in his hands.

  ‘Well, I do,’ said the Cook.

  ‘No doubt, dear lady,’ said Aubergine Wealth. ‘But they’re not that sort of stocks.’

  ‘Don’t worry, dear,’ said the Cook. ‘I’ve used them all, even Tasmanian tiger and dodo and cabbage. If a stock exists, I’ve made it.’

  Aubergine Wealth groaned. This sort of thing is a common problem for anyone who is an expert on something that might look a bit complicated, such as building a nuclear-powered spaceship or making soy products actually taste half-decent. Experts who can perform advanced quadratic equations14 in their sleep whilst reciting π to nineteen million places simply can’t get their heads round the fact that there are people for whom adding one and one is a foreign country they will never visit.

  So it was that, after Aubergine Wealth had recovered from explaining stocks to the Cook and finished describing Naked Short Selling,15 most of them thought it meant taking your trousers off and selling them. Of course, Winchflat and the three-legged Maranzio triplets from the Isle of Man16 understood straightaway. So it was decided that the four of them would go to the Stock Exchange and start wheeling and dealing while the other children would do the things they were best at.

  ‘So, at the end of each day, we will all meet back here,’ said the Headmaster, ‘and whoever has made the most money at the end of Summer School will get a prize.’

  ‘But, aren’t there more important things in life than money?’ said Betty.

  The room fell silent. Everyone, including Ffiona, was speechless.

  ‘Wow,’ said Merlinmary finally. ‘Our little sister has turned into a hippy.’

  * * *

  10 WARNING: Do NOT try this at home, or outdoors or in anyone else’s home, and NEVER try it while the egg is still inside the chicken – which the Cook was tempted to, but DIDN’T.

  11 What Aubergine Wealth didn’t say was that Wall Street was probably the third biggest bag of money because his own bag of money, which he kept under his bed, was actually bigger. Yes, he had a VERY BIG bed and ‘under his bed’ was actually seven stories of his house, which were all packed to their ceilings with cash, jewellery, bonds, and metals and diamonds.

  12 We have a problem here and it’s this: most intelligent people fall asleep when someone starts talking about stocks and shares and accounts and sub-prime mortgages. I know I do. And why? Because it’s REALLY, REALLY BORING. After all, there is only one thing you need to know – always try to get more money than you are spending. The trouble is that this story is all about sub-pr . . .

  Oops, sorry, fell asleep there.

  13 One of the most popular souvenirs you can buy in New York is the special New York Stock Exchange Barbie Doll, which has twice as much blonde hair as any other Barbie.

  14 I don’t know what they are, but they sound really complicated and BORING.

  15 I don’t know what that is either, but I do know that it’s illegal. Probably better if you look this up on Google.

  16 Which I believe is about to be re-named the Isle of Non-Specific-Gender Persons because of a European Commission on Equality regulation.

  As you know, it’s a different time of day in different parts of the world. Although this makes life quite complicated, it’s not nearly as complicated as it would be if it was the same time everywhere. If it was, we would have to go to bed before breakfast and eat dinner in our sleep and Desperate Housewives would finish before it had started.

  When work finishes for the day in one country and banks and stock exchanges close for the night, it is just beginning in another and some people make lots of money simply by moving it around the world. If what they are doing is against the law in one country, all they have to do is move to a different country where it isn’t. Transylvania Waters is probably the best country in the world to be if you want to get as rich as possible as quickly as possible without getting into trouble. Most countries have a business district where most of the banks and stocks and shares places are. Transylvania Waters has one too, but because the country is run by witches and wizards, theirs is better. On one side of the street it is always five minutes before the end of the working day no matter what country you are dealing with. And on the other side of the street it is five minutes after work starts. Just by walking over the road, you can have someone’s money to play with for a whole day, before they expect it to arrive, and if you do this on a Friday, their money is yours for a whole weekend.

  When it comes to horse-racing, time is very important too. Obviously, you are only allowed to place a bet before a race starts. But if you are a witch or a wizard that’s not a problem – and if you are an identical twin as well, you can’t fail.

  While Morbid went to the biggest bookmakers in New York, Silent went to the race track to choose the horses. Five minutes before the race was to start, Morbid made every single clock and watch in the whole of New York go back two-and-a-half minutes, except for the starter’s. Silent noted the winners of each race and sent them telepathically to Morbid, who then placed a bet.

  Obviously, if he had bet on every race, it would have looked a bit suspicious. So he only chose the races where an outsider, who wasn’t expected to win and therefore offered much better odds, had won. After a couple of races, Morbid went to a different bookmaker and placed his winnings on another race. At some point between races, when he calculated no one would notice, he changed the clocks back to the right time.

  Humans had tried this sort of thing themselves, but had always got found out. One at the race track talked to one in the betting shop with a walkie-talkie. Of course, humans couldn’t make all the clocks jump backwards and forwards like Morbid so they seldom managed to place a bet in time. The twins also had extra insurance. If anyone ever became suspicious and looked at the security camera records from the race track and the betting shops, they would see what looked like the same person in the same place at the same time, which is impossible.17

  ‘It’s like taking candy from a baby,’ Morbid said at the end of the day as the twins counted out the money they had won.

  One million, six hundred and thirty-four thousand dollars.

  They were at the top of the leader board.

  At
the bottom of the leader board was Betty, who still thought it was all a bit wrong. She had made seven dollars and fifty cents selling lemonade in the street on the coldest day of the month when everyone really wanted a hot drink and had only bought the lemonade because they felt sorry for her. Even Ffiona had made more than Betty just by taking empty bottles she picked up round the streets to the recycling centre.

  ‘There must be some way to make a lot of money that isn’t bad,’ said Ffiona, who quite liked the idea of being rich.

  ‘What, you mean like Robin Hood, taking from the rich to give to the poor?’ said Betty.

  ‘Yes, that would be OK, sort of,’ said Ffiona.

  ‘What do you mean, sort of?’

  ‘Well, as long as the poor was us. I mean, I never really believed Robin Hood. After all, he was an English Lord, so he was probably rich anyway,’ said Ffiona. ‘I don’t think his giving to the poor involved giving them any of his own money. If he’d really been such a great, kind, lovely person, he could have just given his own money away and not bothered with all the robbing and stuff.’

  ‘What’s your idea then?’ said Betty.

  ‘Well, I like the robbing from the rich bit,’ Ffiona said. ‘It’s the giving it away bit I don’t like.’

  ‘So, you think we should rob from the rich and keep it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ffiona, but seeing Betty was not so keen she added, ‘We needn’t keep all of it.’

  ‘I suppose that wouldn’t be so bad,’ said Betty. ‘We rob from the rich, keep some of it and give some of it away?’

  ‘Well, not exactly.’

  ‘What exactly then?’

  ‘Well, we steal from the rich, keep some of it and then go shopping,’ said Ffiona.

  ‘Oh, I see, buy stuff to give to the poor like food and clothes and things they haven’t got?’

  ‘No,’ said Ffiona. ‘We buy stuff that we haven’t got like designer clothes and PlayStations and nice shoes.’

  ‘I think that’s probably bad.’

  ‘Not for us,’ said Ffiona. ‘And we could have brilliant highwayman costumes with, like, black velvet masks with diamonds on, and big leather boots.’

  ‘And horses?’ said Betty, who was maybe, perhaps, possibly, beginning to warm to the idea. ‘Could we have horses?’

  ‘Could do,’ said Ffiona, ‘though I think I’d favour high-speed motorbikes, but we could use horses in Central Park or if we go out to the country.’

  ‘Have you got any pictures of the black velvet masks?’

  ‘I have, actually.’

  So it was decided. The two girls would become highwaymen, or rather, highwaywomen or, to be even more accurate, highwaygirls, which sounded rubbish, so they agreed to stick with highwaymen.

  Unlike the twins, who started their betting with five dollars, and Winchflat and the Maranzio triplets, who started their share dealing with some creative lies, Betty and Ffiona’s project required a much larger investment, and as each student had only been given fifty dollars to start with, they instantly ran into a problem.

  ‘Do you know how much a horse costs in New York?’ said Betty. ‘It’s ridiculous. They’re way more expensive than motorbikes and we haven’t got enough to buy a bicycle. I mean, even a couple of black velvet masks will cost more than we’ve got.’

  ‘Where there’s a will there’s a way,’ said Ffiona. ‘Obviously the first things we need to steal from the rich are horses, motorbikes and black velvet masks.’

  ‘There are horses in Central Park,’ said Betty. ‘You can have a ride in a horse-drawn carriage and there are policemen on horseback too.’

  Central Park was a long way from the Summer School campus, too far to walk, so the girls decided to steal a motorbike. That created another problem.

  ‘Do you know how to drive a motorbike?’ said Ffiona.

  ‘Not as such, but I do know how to drive a flying broomstick,’ said Betty. ‘It can’t be that different.’

  One of the rules of Summer School was that no students were allowed to take flying broomsticks. There had been protests from students and parents. After all, broomsticks are super environmentally friendly. The resources they use up are one stick, a bundle of twigs and a bit of string, and they don’t need any fuel to run. But they were banned in New York because it was decided the sight of children flying around the city on brooms would totally freak out the human population and probably cause a lot of accidents with people driving their cars into things and people walking into signposts.

  ‘Not to mention all the dogs trying to run away with them, like they did when we had that school trip to Paris last year,’ the Headmaster had said. ‘There are still three poodles missing who grabbed hold of them and were carried off into the clouds before their owners could call them back.’

  After they had watched a few motorbikes drive past, the girls decided that maybe it was not quite the same as flying a broom.

  ‘OK then,’ said Ffiona, ‘why don’t we start with the black velvet masks? They can’t be difficult to get.’

  But compared to Transylvania Waters, New York is useless for shopping. As incredible as it may seem, there is not a single branch of DisGuys’n’Gals, where you can buy everything the well-dressed witch or wizard would want to wear from pointy hats to turbo wands.18 In fact, a search of several blocks failed to turn up a single shop where you could buy even a simple black velvet mask.

  That night Betty and Ffiona were still at the bottom of the list. They had spent the entire day on their highwayman plans and hadn’t actually made a single cent between them, apart from the single cent Ffiona had picked up in the gutter. The twins, on the other hand, had another great day at the races and made another million-plus dollars.

  The two girls were too embarrassed to tell anyone what they’d been doing. In Transylvania Waters even a two-year-old could find a black velvet mask. So if they’d told anyone, they’d have been a laughing-stock.

  The next morning they crept out of the building before anyone else was up. Over a bowl of porridge in Auntie Crab’s Greasy Spoon Diner down an alley across the street, they decided what to do next.

  ‘What is a mask for?’ said Ffiona.

  ‘To hide your face, so no one can tell who you are,’ said Betty.

  ‘Exactly, and we can’t find any, can we?’

  ‘So what are you suggesting?’

  ‘Improvisation,’ said Ffiona.

  Ffiona took a thick black texta out of her pocket and drew a mask on Betty’s face.19 She then handed the pen to Betty to do the same for her. This would not have fooled anyone who knew them for an instant, but they were not going to rob people they knew.

  ‘This whole disguise thing a bit pointless,’ said Betty. ‘In fact, it’s actually the opposite of a disguise.’

  ‘How?’ said Ffiona.

  ‘Well, if people we’ve robbed go to the police and the police ask them what we looked like and they say, “They had pretend masks drawn on their faces,” as soon as we set foot outside looking like this we’ll be arrested,’ said Betty. ‘We’re certainly going to be the only two children in New York looking like that.’

  ‘Good point,’ said Ffiona. ‘But if we weren’t the only two, then it would be a brilliant disguise.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘What if all the children the same age as us had black masks drawn on their faces?’

  ‘How on earth are we going to do that?’ said Betty.

  ‘Duh, you’re a witch, remember,’ said Ffiona. ‘You can do magic spells. Couldn’t you make a spell so every kid wakes up tomorrow with a black mask?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Brilliant,’ said Betty.

  ‘Why didn’t you just use magic to give us masks,’ said Ffiona, ‘instead of us having to muck about with textas?’

  ‘You know my magic sort of doesn’t always come out exactly how I plan,’ Betty explained. ‘When I was little I tried to make a Hello Kitty mask appear on my face and I ended up with a bright ginger beard. Which I can tell
you is not a good look for a five-year-old, boy or girl. Mum was furious and made me keep it for a month before she magicked it away. Dad was even more cross because I kept using his razor and made it go all blunt.’

  ‘You don’t think all the children in New York will get ginger beards, do you?’ said Ffiona.

  ‘Who knows?’ said Betty. ‘Be a bit of a laugh if they did, wouldn’t it?’

  Although Betty was a witch and could do magic, most of her spells didn’t come out exactly as she planned.20 She had once turned a small boy into a big fridge when all she had intended to do was give him a fright. On that occasion the result had been a good one. The boy had been vile and made a far better contribution to society as a fridge than he ever would have done as a human.

  This time, however, no one was delighted at the outcome.

  The next morning, every single child in New York woke up with a mask. The masks were not black but bright red like super-neon luminous tomatoes. That alone wouldn’t have been a problem. The two girls could simply have repainted their mask to match. No, the problem was where the mask had appeared. They were not covering the top half of their faces, but splashed across every child’s bottom.

  ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about,’ said Betty after she had Ffiona had re-coloured their own masks red. ‘At least they’re not all hairy.’

  Mothers across New York panicked and traffic came to a total stop as they tried to drive their much-too-big cars with their screaming children in the back to the nearest hospital. The city was thrown into complete chaos.

  The children were not in any pain, but it did appear that the red mask-shaped patches on their bottoms were growing bigger and bigger and a rumour ran round the city that once the two halves of mask met and joined up, you would die. This, of course, was complete rubbish and all everyone would have had to do was wait for a few days until the marks began to fade away. But at the time, no one, not even Betty, knew that and panic spreads very quickly nowadays with newspapers and television all desperate to grab the headlines by turning a simple cold into a plague that is threatening to wipe out the whole world in fourteen minutes.