The Bolds Read online

  First published in 2015 by Andersen Press Limited

  First American edition published in 2016 by Carolrhoda Books

  Published by arrangement with Andersen Press Limited

  Text copyright © 2015 by Julian Clary

  Illustrations copyright © 2015 by David Roberts

  Map copyright © 2015 by Chris Williams

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

  Carolrhoda Books

  A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  241 First Avenue North

  Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

  For reading levels and more information, look up this title at www.lernerbooks.com.

  Main body text set in Century Schoolbook regular 12.5/21.

  Typeface provided by Monotype Typography.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Clary, Julian, author.

  The Bolds / by Julian Clary ; illustrated by David Roberts.

  pages cm

  Summary: Two hyenas from Africa find a pair of passports (memo: do not go swimming in a crocodile pool), and move to Teddington, England, where they live suburban lives, hold jobs, and raise their children to hide their tails and act human—the only trouble is old Mr. McNumpty, their nosy neighbor, who is hiding a secret of his own.

  ISBN 978-1-5124-0440-1 (lb : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-5124-0443-2 (eb pdf)

  1. Hyenas—Juvenile fiction. 2. Neighbors—Juvenile fiction. 3. Impersonation—Juvenile fiction. 4. Secrecy—Juvenile fiction. 5. Humorous stories. 6. Teddington (London, England)—Juvenile fiction. [1. Hyenas—Fiction. 2. Neighbors—Fiction. 3. Impersonation—Fiction. 4. Secrets—Fiction. 5. Humorous stories. 6. Teddington (London, England)—Fiction. 7. England—Fiction.] I. Roberts, David, 1970– illustrator. II. Title.

  PZ7.1.C59Bo 2015

  823.92—dc23

  [Fic] 2015020875

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1 – SB – 12/31/15

  eISBN: 978-1-51240-443-2 (pdf)

  eISBN: 978-1-51240-760-0 (ePub)

  eISBN: 978-1-51240-759-4 (mobi)

  For my great nephews and nieces

  Nico, Jake, Dani, Mia, Alex, and Zac

  JC

  Chapter

  1

  Telling lies is NEVER a good idea. I once told my friends that I was a sausage roll. I really, definitely was, I said. When they finally believed me, they squirted me with tomato ketchup and bit me on the leg.

  “Stop it!” I had to shout in the end. “I’m not a sausage roll—I am a human being!”

  That taught me a lesson, I can tell you. I don’t tell lies any more. Ever.

  So believe me when I say that the story I am going to tell you is ABSOLUTELY TRUE. It’s important that you know and understand this, because it is quite an extraordinary story. And funny. Funny peculiar. Very funny peculiar, in fact.

  But true. Every word.

  The first thing you need to understand before I begin this story is that for some reason human beings have grown rather full of themselves over the years. They now believe that they are far cleverer than all other living creatures.

  This is a mistake. Just because humans can read and write and use knives and forks and computers, they think they are better than other animals? How stupid! Did you know that a squirrel can hide ten thousand nuts in the woods and remember where every single one of them is hidden? Well, I ask you: could you remember where you’d put ten thousand nuts?

  Frogs can sleep with their eyes open. Can you?

  A cat can lick its own bottom! How clever is that?

  The truth is that animals are just as clever as people, but clever in different ways. Animals think people are the stupid ones sometimes.

  Next time you pass a field of sheep, stop and look: they will stare back at you with a steady, sympathetic gaze. If you look closely, though, you might see them shake their heads—amused that we need to wear sweaters and coats made out of wool that grows perfectly naturally on their backs. What a silly business!

  But anyway, back to my story. It begins ten years ago, far away in Africa. Africa, as you may know from photographs and television programs, is a very hot and beautiful place. There are forests and bush and vast open plains where lots of wild animals live—lions and elephants and giraffes. There are brightly colored birds that live in the trees, monkeys and gorillas, lizards, hyenas, porcupines and buffaloes. The place is teeming with life of every size and shape you can imagine.

  And in Africa, let me tell you, the wild animals are also very clever. They watch human beings and chuckle to themselves. “Fancy going around cooped up in air-conditioned buses and cars and eating boring cooked food! Humans all look so uncomfortable!

  “We so-called ‘wild’ animals wander around freely,” they say to each other. “Breathing the fresh air and eating fresh food that we catch or pick or graze for ourselves. Far better, in our humble opinion!”

  Which lifestyle seems nicer to you?

  All the animals in Africa know that the cleverest among them are the hyenas. They aren’t the fastest or fiercest, or—let’s face it—the most beautiful, but they are smart and determined and work together to get what they want. They are very good at scavenging too.

  But the thing hyenas do best, and which drives all the other animals crazy, is: they laugh.

  In fact, they’re known as laughing hyenas. Long, loud shrieks and cackles.

  They can outsmart a pride of lions by running circles around them, laughing and snorting, and then steal their dinner in the confusion.

  To be honest with you, hyenas are not very popular among the other animals. Birds sing prettily, lions roar impressively, but the incessant laughter of the clever hyenas gives the other animals a headache.

  Now then. There was once a large clan of hyenas living in the Masai Mara (which is a huge national park in Africa). And these particular hyenas laughed even more than most.

  They lived in burrows near to a safari camp, where lots of tourists came to see the animals in their natural environment. Slowly these hyenas became accustomed to their strange visitors. They would creep ever closer to the camp, scavenging leftover food, getting bolder and bolder. Eventually, over time, they began to understand the human way of communicating—they learned to understand human languages.

  There were a lot of English visitors at this particular safari camp, so after a while the hyenas began to copy their language and they started to talk. In fact, their first words to each other in English were:

  One day, a honeymoon couple at the safari camp foolishly wandered into the bush alone with nothing but their backpacks for protection. Finding the African midday sun too hot for them, they slipped out of their khaki clothes and went for a dip in a pond. Big mistake. Some hungry crocodiles lived there and ate those silly humans for lunch.

  Two of the English-speaking hyenas, called Spot and Sue, who were actually very much in love, saw what had happened and came to sniff around the couple’s discarded items.

  “Hey!” said Spot to Sue. “Come and look at this!” And he handed her two passports, pulled from one of the bags.

  “Well, well!” exclaimed Sue. “The poor dears were called Fred and Amelia Bold. May they rest in peace.” The two hyenas stopped for a moment and bowed their heads as they thought about the poor dead humans.

  But hyenas are known to be opportunistic creatures, and sure enough, Sue soon had a very daring idea.

  “Can you walk on your h
ind legs, dear?” she asked Spot.

  “Then listen,” Sue said excitedly. “These clothes look like they might fit us. We could put them on and go back to the safari camp as Fred and Amelia Bold!”

  “Then what?” asked Spot, frowning.

  “Don’t you see?” said Sue. “This is our way out of here. I’ve always fancied living in England. Apparently it isn’t as hot as Africa and the humans there love lining up. That would make a nice change from always fighting and diving in for scraps of meat here with the rest of the hyena clan. This is our chance for a new life!”

  “Oh my!” said Spot with an incredulous laugh. “That is one BOLD idea! Do you really think we could get away with it?”

  “Why not?” said Sue as she continued to look through the dead couple’s belongings.

  “Look, here are two plane tickets, drivers licenses, house keys, car keys—and our new address: 41 Fairfield Road, Teddington,in Middlesex, England . . .”

  “It does have a nice ring to it,” said Spot, as he slipped into the large pair of shorts. “And I must say, these are a perfect fit.”

  “Tuck your tail out of the way, for goodness’ sake! It’s peeking out the bottom of your shorts. That would give the game away.”

  Spot laughed. “Oh, Sue, how I love you!” he said, trying on a green sun hat.

  “I’m not Sue any more, remember?” she replied, putting on a fancy voice as she buttoned up her khaki shirt. “From now on, you must call me Amelia. And you, my husband, are Fred! We are Fred and Amelia Bold.”

  And with that they both rolled around laughing, before they got up on their hind legs to walk back to the camp and into a new life.

  Chapter

  2

  I did warn you it was a very unusual story, didn’t I? Good. So, dressed in human clothes and walking on their hind legs, the two hyenas slipped into England and began their new life as Fred and Amelia Bold.

  It wasn’t easy. Their tails had to be kept hidden at all times. As a rule, people don’t have tails, and there was likely to be talk if the Bolds were spotted swishing them about all over the place.

  They also discovered they looked far more human-like if they wore hats (as well as clothes). Spot (now Fred) wore the green hat he had found among Fred’s things, and Sue (now Amelia) made herself a very fetching turban out of Amelia’s scarves—which covered her large ears wonderfully.

  They also realized very quickly that humans don’t laugh nearly as much as hyenas, and it didn’t do to draw attention to themselves. In fact, a flight attendant had gotten angry with them on the plane to England for laughing too much when she did her flight safety demonstration.

  They had to learn to bottle up their laughter until they were safely home, and even then they sometimes had to cover their snouts with a pillow in case the neighbors became suspicious.

  “We mustn’t draw attention to ourselves, dear,” said Fred. “People stare enough as it is.”

  It is true to say that people in Teddington considered them to be an unusual couple. But no one jumped to the conclusion that they were a pair of hyenas. And because they both laughed all day long, people decided they must be a fun couple to be around and they made friends easily.

  Children were sometimes a bit harder to trick. But that’s because children are often a lot cleverer and more observant than their parents. You’ve probably noticed that yourself. You’ll be on the bus and someone gets on who looks very different, or has something rather unusual about them, and as soon as you say, “Mum, why does that man . . . ?” all the adults around you immediately say, “Shush, it’s rude to stare.” And they never seem to notice that the people look different.

  That’s what happened to Amelia a few times in the early days. Children would stare at her and tug on their parents’ sleeves. But they were quickly told not to point, and before long Amelia had learned that once she had glasses on and a colorful turban, not even children noticed her snout-like nose and pointy teeth.

  The hyenas’ new home at 41 Fairfield Road was very nice, they thought. A three-bedroom house with a pretty garden, and a garage with a shiny blue Honda parked inside.

  “It makes our old burrow seem very dirty and dingy. Lovely to have windows to look out of!” said Amelia when they first arrived.

  “I have a very strong urge to dig a hole in the garden,” confessed Fred, biting his lip and pawing the air as if he were digging furiously there and then.

  “So have I!” agreed Amelia. “But we’d better wait till it gets dark.”

  There was a lot they had to learn, and quickly. Crossing the road, for instance, was tricky at first—a bit like diving out the way of a charging rhino, they agreed.

  And shopping was a strange business. It was only by watching how humans behaved that they realized you had to pay for everything.

  “What a nuisance!” said Amelia as they wandered around the supermarket.

  “Yes,” Fred sighed. “It’s called ‘money,’ apparently. You keep it in a purse and you can’t take the food home until you’ve lined up at the checkout and swapped it for bits of paper and round pieces of metal.”

  “It’s all completely bonkers!” said Amelia, trying not to laugh too loudly.

  But this money business was going to be a problem, they realized. They had found some bits of paper known as “cash” in a bedroom drawer, but it wouldn’t last forever.

  “I’ve been reading in a magazine that people have things called ‘jobs,’” announced Amelia one day.

  “Isn’t that when you go to the toilet?” asked Fred innocently. “Big jobs?”

  “Ha ha ha heeee!” shrieked Amelia. “No! People go to work, in an office or somewhere. This is called their ‘job.’”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Well, then you get given money, kind of in exchange for your trouble, so you can buy food and clothes.”

  “Isn’t it silly?!” said Fred when he finally understood.

  “Well, yes it is,” agreed Amelia as she picked up a pile of papers from the kitchen table. “But money will help pay these.”

  “What are they?” asked Fred.

  “They’re called bills.”

  “Bills? Like Bill and Bob?”

  “Unfortunately not. You know the lovely fresh water we drink out of the tap?”

  “Yes—delicious!” said Fred.

  “Well,” Amelia explained, “it isn’t free. We have to pay for it.”

  “No!” Fred was confused. “But water falls from the sky! No one owns water, so how come it costs us money?”

  Amelia shook her head. “Don’t ask me. But here is a bill. And another for the nice warm radiators and the handy electric light. Everything but EVERYTHING costs MONEY!” She threw the pile of papers in the air. The bills fluttered silently down over the two thoughtful hyenas.

  Eventually Fred spoke. “So . . . what are we going to do?”

  Amelia smiled. “Don’t worry. We will have to get jobs, that’s all. Earn some money. What would you like to do? Or be?”

  “A train driver!” answered Fred at once. “All aboard! Mind the gap! Vroom vroom! Mind the doors!”

  When she had finished laughing, Amelia sighed. “No, dear. I don’t think so.”

  “Taxi driver?” suggested Fred. He had learned to drive the little Honda on careful exploratory trips around Teddington Lock, but he wasn’t very good at roundabouts.

  “Er, maybe not,” said Amelia, remembering the time Fred had driven straight across the middle of a roundabout instead of going round it. “You need to work at something you’re good at.”

  There was a bit of a silence after that.

  It wasn’t easy, let’s face it. Two unemployed hyenas disguised as people . . . what on earth were they to do?

  Weeks went by and the money from the drawer was soon gone. The pile of bills grew higher and higher. They got so hungry they had to slip into the park after dark and catch a few squirrels to eat. Fred even went down to the supermarket trash cans and came hom
e with some out-of-date hamburger meat.

  But eventually their luck changed. Amelia started selling her turbans at a stall at the local market, soon branching into unusual hats made of egg boxes, clothes pegs and old birds’ nests, which became very popular for Teddington ladies to wear at weddings. Fred too found the perfect job for him—writing the jokes that went inside Christmas crackers. He didn’t have to be serious at all, and could laugh all day without anyone minding.

  So Amelia and Fred became very happy living their new life. The weather wasn’t as hot and stifling as in Africa. People looked sideways at them sometimes, but no one knew they were really hyenas. And they earned enough money to pay the bills and go shopping.

  They thought they couldn’t be happier, until one night, after what she thought was a bit of a stomachache brought on by a moldy burger, Amelia gave birth to twins—or should I say pups?

  And the Bolds laughed and laughed with joy.

  Chapter

  3

  The Bold children—a boy and a girl whom Fred and Amelia decided to call Bobby and Betty—were delightful bundles of furry fun.

  Of course their parents loved them dearly, but as babies the two children did have a tendency to howl rather than cry, and it took a long time to teach them how to stand on their hind legs. But still, once they were in diapers, wearing baby clothes and floppy bonnets, no one really noticed any difference. And as Mr. Bold pushed them proudly through the park in their stroller, people would stop and say, “Don’t they look like you!” and never finish by saying,“And you look just like a wild animal,” in the same way people don’t say about ugly babies, “Oh, he looks just like a toad,” even if they’re thinking it.

  The twins grew up to be happy and boisterous, full of fun and, of course, laughter.

  They both had big, brown eyes and wide, smiling mouths with sharp, white teeth. Betty had darker wiry hair, which was tied in two small bunches just behind her cute—but rather large—round ears. Bobby’s hair was blond and speckled, and stuck up in tufts on the top of his head.