CHAPTER EIGHT

POND DIPPING

An hour later Mervyn and Jonny left the house and snuck off down the street.

Jonny felt fizzed-up with eagerness. This was the life, eh? Off out at dusk, eh? With your brother, eh? To have adventures and scrapes and fun and more adventures, eh?

Soon the two boys were standing at the edge of the pond.

‘What do you reckon?’ Jonny asked.

‘It’ll do,’ said Mervyn, and he ripped off his corduroy flares and dived straight in, disappearing under the water.

Jonny watched to see where he would surface.

Nothing.

‘He’ll pop up in a minute,’ he said to himself, scanning the pond.

Nothing. Silence.

‘Come on, Mervyn, up you come,’ Jonny muttered, beginning to feel uneasy. ‘Give me a wave.’

Still nothing. By now the water was perfectly still. Jonny started to feel anxious.

‘Mervyn!’ he yelled. ‘Where are you?’

He needs to come up to breathe, Jonny thought. He’s like a whale, isn’t he, or a dolphin? He needs to pop up and get some air. So where is he? Is he all right? Has he got tangled in a shopping trolley or attacked by killer crayfish?

Jonny hopped about by the pond for a few seconds and then remembered how Ted always teased him for being slow. Right, he thought. I can’t wait. I have to help Mervyn. He’s in a weird brown pond instead of the nice big sea, and he’s my brother. Time to act!

‘Hang on, Mervyn!’ Jonny yelled, pulling off his trainers. ‘I’m going to find you!’

He waded into the water. His feet squelched on the squelchy stuff at the bottom of the pond. He hoped it was mud but guessed it was probably duck poo. Never mind! He had to save his new brother. The water was up to his thighs now but Jonny hardly noticed, he was too busy looking for any sign of Mervyn in the dim light. He called out to him, squinted through the dusk, then …

‘QUACK!’

A duck flew out of nowhere, right under Jonny’s nose.

He jumped in fright, slipped and plunged face first into the middle of the pond. The murky water closed over his head. He couldn’t see. His feet skated on the bottom, his hands grasped at slippery weeds. Help me! he thought.

Then, suddenly, he had the sensation of being pulled along. He opened his eyes for a second, saw a flash of silvery fishtail and then burst up to the surface like a cork out of a bottle.

Mervyn was by his side, holding him up. ‘Did you fancy a swim too?’ he joked.

‘You didn’t come up for air,’ Jonny spluttered as he scrambled back to dry land. ‘I thought you’d drowned.’

‘I can breathe under water,’ said Mervyn. ‘All merpeople can.’

‘Well, that’s just mer-vellous, isn’t it,’ said Jonny, crashing on to the bank like a drunken starfish.