A Magical Pipe Dream

By Keith Homer

10-year-old Arthur Bruce’s trip to hospital turns into the adventure of a lifetime. Whilst time travelling with a magical piper Arthur meets a whole host of weird, disgusting, funny, ridiculous, dangerous and wicked magical characters who take him on a journey through his hopes, dreams and fears.

A Magical Pipe Dream is a festively modern take on a well-loved folk tale which will make you laugh, cry and laugh again. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Dec 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781803134574

Keith Homer

Keith spent 23 years as an advisory drama teacher and 15 years as Head/Artistic Director at Redbridge Drama Centre. Most of his work, storytelling and drama, is for children and young adults. He has written numerous plays for professional and amateur performance. This is Keith’s first published book which started off as a play for children.

Book preview

Contents

Dramatis Personae

Part 1    All Things Are Possible

Even Things That Might Seem Utterly Impossible

1    Being Watched

2    A Promise Made

3    Magical Music and a Magical Dance

4    Making Them Move

Part 2    Off to Hamelin

5    Whooooooooosh!

6    Discovering the Town

7    Discovering the Windmill

8    The Story of Tom Lace

Part 3    Rats

9    Pitter-Patter

Part 4    Terrible Creatures

10    Jannick

11    Victories from the Past

Part 5    The Town Hall

12    Sneaking In

13    A Greedy Mayor and Despicable Daughters

14    Frozen Solid

15    A Deal Is a Deal

Part 6    Beyond Belief

16    A Boastful Mayor

17    Step Up the Terror

18    The Lamp Lighter

19    Snap

20    A Poor Sense of Smell

21    Truly Dreadful

Part 7    Pest Control

22    Plague

23    The Battle Plan

24    Piper Goes to Work

25    A Grim Discovery

26    Real Danger

27    Washed Away

28    Job Done

Part 8    Gifts and Promises

29    A Birthday Gift

30    Collecting 100,000 Gulden

31    Farewell, Dear Friend

32    Promises

33    It’s All Ours

34    The Deadline Approaches

Part 9    The Piper Won’t Be Beaten

35    Piper’s Revenge

36    They Paid a Dreadful Price

37    A Mayor Defeated

38    Can Arthur Do It?

Part 10    Was It a Pipe Dream?

39    Back at the Beginning

Acknowledgements

Dramatis Personae

Arthur a boy of ten, with a broken leg – a football injury. To most people he is plain and ordinary but then most people don’t know what makes him exceptional.

Piper a strange woman with extraordinary skills. Not many people alive today have come across anyone quite like her.

Arthur’s Mum and Dad

Mr Bruce had his own business but lost it. He’d rather be a comedian. Mrs Bruce is kind and smiles more often than not.

(Camelgob) Nurse Gwendolyn Slaughter always seems on the verge of losing her temper.

(Snotlocker) Pankaj Pathak – Orthopaedic Surgeon the doctor who will fix Arthur’s broken leg.

Frankie the much-loved lamplighter. At 2.1 metres he is the tallest person in Hamelin.

Jannick Radermacher a boy of ten also with an exceptional skill.

King Rat uniquely huge, brave and clever. He’s the incomparable leader of his multitude of followers.

Luca Rabis perhaps the scariest, most intimidating rat who ever lived. Luca is King Rat’s chief lieutenant

The Mayor of Hamelin damp and slimy like a huge chubby bullfrog that has crawled from a stagnant pond.

Amelie and Rose the mayor’s fifteen-year-old twin daughters. Amelie is tall and thin, Rose short and squat – both are repulsive and loathsome.

Part 1

All Things Are Possible

Even Things That Might Seem

Utterly Impossible

1

Being Watched

Arthur Bruce yelled, There’s no way I’m going back there. No way. I’m just not going.

A return visit to hospital was absolutely the last thing he wanted to do. Ask most children if they’re happy to go to hospital; they’ll answer something like, Are you kidding? Not in a million years.

If they’re condemned to a stretch inside on their birthday, they might think about escaping. Most never do escape, of course; they surrender to their ‘treatment’. On the other hand, some so hate the idea they decide to make a run for it.

Mum, I’ve told you, it’s just not happening, said Arthur.

Ten-year-old Arthur Bruce would turn eleven tomorrow. He was average height for his age, had dark skin and thick, curly hair. He appeared to be, in every way, a normal boy. Some might describe him as unremarkable, the type you wouldn’t pick out in an ID parade. Then again, he had another side to him that was far from run of the mill. What made him special was his rather exceptional talent but he kept that close to his chest.

I’ve got a busted leg, that’s all, he said.

He had fractured his right leg playing football. It was plastered up to its knee but flatly refused to set properly so required another operation. His left leg was perfectly workable so he was convinced he could manage; his parents insisted they knew better.

It just has to be done, sweetie, said Mrs Bruce.

I hate that place, Mum. I’m not going back, he said.

Despite Arthur’s objections, his dad frogmarched him into the local hospital on December 23rd. Mr Bruce turned him over to the hospital staff and quipped, Here’s the new prisoner. Make sure you don’t operate on the wrong leg. He exploded a full-throated belly laugh.

Mrs Bruce looked daggers at him. Very funny, Richard, she muttered. Very funny in front of Arthur.

I’m only joking, he said. Mind you, it has been known. Operating on the wrong leg is not as rare as you might think.

You don’t know anything about it, she said. They’ll know which one to do. It’s the one wrapped in plaster.

All I’m saying is mistakes are there to be made. Right, Arthur, I’m off now. I’ll be back tomorrow. As you know, your mum will be staying with you overnight.

He couldn’t help himself: She’ll let me know if it all goes wrong. He detonated more booming laughter.

Thanks, Dad, I feel loads better now.

Take no notice of him, Arthur, said his mum. Like most things, he knows nothing about it. Take no notice.

Only joking, champ, just a joke. You’ll be fine, said his chuckling dad.

Mr Bruce drove back to work, giggling the whole way.

Arthur, trapped in the children’s ward, sulked as they waited for the doctor. Doctors irritated him. He’d come across some previously and been put off by their over-friendly demeanour. He also disliked their ‘stuff,’ including thermometers for probing, stethoscopes that swung into your face and pens that peep from pockets. What’s more, they have a nasty whiff of soap about them. Nurses are worse but we’ll get to that later.

Mrs Bruce gave a small shiver. I think there’s a draught in here, she said.

She scuttled across to the large square window but found it tightly closed; winter’s chill securely shut out.

Where’s that draught coming from? Hospitals are always warm.

Arthur slouched in a wheelchair, his mood worsening by the second. He was also secretly plotting his escape. He once read a book about British soldiers who cleverly escaped from prison camps during the Second World War. They all seemed to be Gerald, Roger or Donald.

He loved to mimic those intrepid heroes:

Morning, Donald.

Hello, Roger. Where’s Gerald?

Last seen in the escape tunnel. Damned claustrophobic down there, old man.

Indeed it is, but someone’s got to dig us out of here.

He loved their bravery and creativity and fantasised about joining their ranks. He delighted in devising ingenious escape plans, for which he gave himself the codename Lawrence.

He filled an exercise book with sketches and descriptions of his escape ideas. Among them, the use of ropes, maps, high-tech devices, explosives, forging documents and leaving false trails, using camouflage and making disguises. Across its cover he wrote,

How to Escape

(The Only Book You’ll Ever Need)

by

Arthur Bruce

aka

Lawrence (British Officer – Head of Escape Section)

He stashed the book inside the air vent in his bedroom to keep it from falling into the wrong hands.

One of his greatest escapes was from his own bedroom; it all happened when he’d just turned ten. From who knows where, a brilliant idea popped into his head: I’ll turn the cat into a tiger by shaving stripes into her ginger fur. But what with? Bazinga! I’ve got it.

First, he enticed the cat with fishy treats and lured her into her travel basket. Then, with feverish enthusiasm, he rooted out his dad’s electric razor, and the great shave began. The moggy makeover came to an abrupt end when his father arrived home early from work.

You ridiculous boy, you’re grounded for a week, yelled his dad.

Oh, Dad, Minky didn’t object, too much.

Well, look at her. A semi-shaved cat is a pitiful-looking creature.

If you let me finish her off we’ll have the rarest cat in England. A miniature Bengal tiger.

Minky fled the scene for a few days, to lick her stripes.

The morning after the cat-shaving episode, Mr Bruce switched on his clogged-up razor. It stank of burning cat then exploded and tripped the fuse board under the stairs.

Congratulations, Arthur, you’ve ruined a perfectly good cat and blown out a rather expensive Remington Razor with Pop-Up Stubble Trimmer. You’re a genius.

At last, you noticed. Thanks, Dad.

Arthur’s ill-advised sarcasm did nothing to quell Mr Bruce’s seething rage.

Right, you’re grounded for two weeks.

That’s way over the top.

Two weeks’ solitary confinement in your bedroom. You’re allowed out for school, food and bathroom usage. That’s all. Now, get upstairs. It starts immediately.

That day he christened his dad The Commandant.

Arthur had read about prisoners mentally cracking under the strain of solitary confinement; escaping became a top priority. He fished out the escape book from behind the air vent and devised a plan.

Right, a clever disguise is required.

He drew a moustache and goatee beard on his face with his mum’s eyeliner, frizzed and gelled his hair into an ugly tangle and wrapped a scarf around his head. He slipped into an old waistcoat and a pair of enormous baggy trousers from a school play. He looked in the mirror and was rather pleased with himself.

I’m a dead ringer for Captain Jack Sparrow, he whispered.

In disguise, he sneaked out through his bedroom window and picked his way down the drainpipe. From the garage roof he stepped onto the water butt, jumped into the garden and legged it. He spent his freedom in covert hideouts on his granddad’s allotment or up trees in the nearby wood.

When the coast was clear, Arthur, aka Lawrence, aka Jack Sparrow, scrambled onto the water butt, skipped across the garage, shinned up the drainpipe and through the open window into his room. Throughout two weeks’ solitary, he was in and out quicker than a lizard’s tongue. No one spotted him and The Commandant remained wholly unaware of his exploits. Arthur was proud of these small but significant victories over his dad, and grew confident in his flair for escapology.

The Commandant couldn’t keep me banged up, so breaking out of this hospital won’t be a problem. And when I do, I’ll be on my own - the way I like it. Just me and my pipe.

The musical pipe he always carried was his most treasured possession. About a year previously, he had spotted it in a builder’s skip. It languished inside a rusted metal bucket stuffed with nails, screws and bits of broken brick. The pipe stood upright, the sun reflecting off its midsection, just below the white mouthpiece. It seemed to plead, Please, pick me up, and somehow caught Arthur’s eye.

He grabbed it and gave it a quick once-over. It was about sixty centimetres long and looked a strange combination of a miniature clarinet, a fife and a penny whistle. It was made of bamboo and metal, with an ivory beak. He took it home, scrubbed it with soapy water before drying it with his mum’s hairdryer. He buffed it with a tea towel until it gleamed.

That’s more like it. You look proper smart, now. So, what do you sound like?

He had no prior knowledge of how to play but knew instinctively how to hold it. When he first blew the pipe, his fingers danced intuitively up and down the barrel and he played ‘Happy Birthday’.

Wow. I’m impressed, he said.

He followed up with ‘God Save the Queen’ and ‘Frère Jacques’. Within an hour, he was playing tunes by Adele, Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift.

Arthur Bruce, that’s amazing. You’ve never played a musical instrument in your whole life.

In spite of that, he made the pipe sing with beautiful music. The more he played, the more he became hooked.

That evening, he sneaked into his granddad’s shed to play undisturbed. Showing incredible levels of recall, he reproduced the soundtrack of The Lion King. All of it.

Wow. I remembered the whole thing. Unbelievable.

He recorded himself on his phone and under the bed covers that night played it back through earphones. As he listened, a peculiar sense of calmness settled on him. A combination of serenity and exhilaration gave him a warming, inner glow. A sacred affinity with his pipe was born.

Arthur, you are pretty good. Correction, Arthur, you are very, very good.

He was ecstatic to discover his musical talent, and the whole thing sprang out from nowhere, like a surprise magical gift.

Through regular practice he grew ever more accomplished. After a year, he had perfected ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee’ by Rimsky-Korsakov. He memorised it after downloading it to his iPad.

He kept his newfound passion hidden from everyone, including his parents.

My mum would boast to the whole human race