Like his parents, Henry was a very well-behaved little boy, taking his bottle when it was offered to him, eating his food, looking absolutely mortified whenever he soiled his nappy. He grew at a normal rate, learning to speak by the time he turned two and understanding the letters of the alphabet a year later. When he was four, his kindergarten teacher told Alistair and Eleanor that she had nothing good or bad to report about their son, that he was perfectly normal in every way, and as a reward they bought him an ice cream on the way home that afternoon. Vanilla-flavored, of course.
Their second child, Melanie, was born on a Tuesday three years later. Like her brother, she presented no problems to either nurses or teachers, and by the time her fourth birthday had arrived, when her parents were already looking forward to the arrival of another baby, she was spending most of her time reading or playing with dolls in her bedroom, doing nothing that might mark her out as different from any of the other children who lived on their street.
There was really no doubt: the Brocket family was just about the most normal family in New South Wales, if not the whole of Australia.
And then their third child was born.
Barnaby Brocket emerged into the world on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night, which was already a bad start, as Eleanor was concerned that she might be keeping the doctor and nurse from their beds.
“I do apologize for this,” she said, perspiring badly, which was embarrassing. She had never perspired at all when giving birth to Henry or Melanie; she had simply emitted a gentle glow, like the dying moments of a forty-watt bulb.
“It’s quite all right, Mrs. Brocket,” said Dr. Snow. “Children will appear when they appear. We have no way of controlling these things.”
“Still, it is rather rude,” said Eleanor before letting loose a tremendous scream as Barnaby decided that his moment was upon him. “Oh dear,” she added, her face flushed from all these exertions.
“There’s really nothing to worry about,” insisted the doctor, getting himself into position to catch the slippery infant—rather like a rugby player stepping back on the field of play, one foot rooted firmly in the grass behind him, the other pressed forward in the soil, his two hands outstretched as he waits for the prize to be thrown in his direction.
Eleanor screamed again, then lay back, gasping in surprise. She felt a tremendous pressure building inside her body and wasn’t sure how much longer she could stand it.
“Push, Mrs. Brocket!” said Dr. Snow, and Eleanor screamed for a third time as she forced herself to push as hard as she could while the nurse placed a cold compress on her forehead. But rather than finding this a comfort, she began to wail loudly and then uttered a word she had never uttered in her life, a word that she found extremely offensive whenever anyone at Bother & Blastit employed it. It was a short word. One syllable. But it seemed to express everything she was feeling at that particular moment.
“That’s the stuff,” cried Dr. Snow cheerfully. “Here he comes now! One, two, three, and then a final giant push, all right? One …”
Eleanor breathed in.
“Two …”
She gasped.
“Three!”
And now there was a terrific sensation of relief and the sound of a baby crying. Eleanor collapsed back on the bed and groaned, glad that this horrible torture was over at last.
“Oh dear me,” said Dr. Snow a moment later, and Eleanor lifted her head off the pillow in surprise.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“It’s the most extraordinary thing,” he said as Eleanor sat up, despite the pain she was in, to get a better look at the baby who was provoking such an abnormal response.
“But where is he?” she asked, for he wasn’t being cradled in Dr. Snow’s hands, nor was he lying at the end of the bed. And that was when she noticed that both doctor and nurse were not looking at her anymore, but were staring with open mouths up toward the ceiling, where a newborn baby—her newborn baby—was pressed flat against the white rectangular tiles, looking down at the three of them with a cheeky smile on his face.
“He’s up there,” said Dr. Snow in amazement, and it was true: he was. For Barnaby Brocket, the third child of the most normal family who had ever lived in the Southern Hemisphere, was already proving himself to be anything but normal by refusing to obey the most fundamental rule of all.
The law of gravity.
Chapter 2
The Mattress on the Ceiling
Barnaby was discharged from hospital three days later and brought home to meet Henry and Melanie for the first time.
“Your brother’s a little different from the rest of us,” Alistair told them over breakfast that morning, choosing his words carefully. “I’m sure it’s only a temporary thing but it’s very upsetting. Just don’t stare at him, all right? If he thinks he’s getting a reaction, it will only encourage his foolishness.”
The children looked at each other in surprise, unsure what their father could possibly mean by this.
“Does he have two heads?” asked Henry, reaching for the marmalade. He liked a bit of marmalade on his toast in the mornings. Although not in the evenings; then, he preferred strawberry jam.
“No, of course he doesn’t have two heads,” replied Alistair irritably. “Who on earth has two heads?”
“A two-headed sea monster,” said Henry, who had recently been reading a book about a two-headed sea monster named Orco, which had caused any amount of mayhem beneath the Indian Ocean.
“I can assure you that your brother is not a two-headed sea monster,” said Alistair.
“Does he have a tail?” asked Melanie, gathering up the empty bowls and stacking them neatly in the dishwasher. The family dog, Captain W. E. Johns, a canine of indeterminate breed and parentage, looked up at the word tail and began to chase his own around the kitchen, spinning in a circular direction until he fell over and lay on the floor, panting happily, delighted with himself.
“Why would a baby boy have a tail?” asked Alistair, sighing deeply. “Really, children, you have the most extraordinary imaginations. I don’t know where you get them from. Neither your mother nor I have any imagination at all, and we certainly didn’t bring you up to have one.”
“I’d like to have a tail,” said Henry thoughtfully.
“I’d like to be a two-headed sea monster,” said Melanie.
“Well, you don’t,” snapped Alistair, glaring at his son. “And you aren’t,” he added, pointing at his daughter. “So let’s just get back to being normal human beings and make sure this place is spick-and-span, all right? We have a guest coming this morning, remember.”
“But he’s not a guest, surely,” said Henry, frowning. “He’s our little brother.”
“Yes, of course,” said Alistair after only the briefest of pauses.
It was a little over an hour later when Eleanor pulled up outside in a taxi, holding a restless Barnaby in her arms.
“You’ve got a lively one there,” said the driver as he turned the engine off, but Eleanor ignored the remark, as she disliked getting into conversations with strangers, particularly those who worked in the service industry. Her handbag fell into the gap between the two front seats, and as she reached for it, she let go of the baby for a moment and he floated off her knees, drifted upward, and bumped his head on the ceiling.