Stopping for a Spell (9 page)

Erg knew that he was going to have to keep all four grannies very busy.

5

How to Keep Four Grannies Busy

When lunch was over, the grannies all put on aprons to wash up. Erg said he would take some lunch to Emily. Granny One sternly handed him two oranges.

“Eat those for vitamins,” she said.

“That's right, dear,” agreed Granny Two. “Push Emily's under the door for her.”

Erg went upstairs and parked the teddy and the lunch in the bath. Then he wedged the door again and went down to the living room. He peeled both oranges and broke the peel into very small bits, which he scattered all over the carpet. But it takes a lot to keep four grannies busy. Erg was still gulping and feeling much too full of orange when Granny One escaped from the washing up and stood in the doorway, staring grimly at the bits of orange peel.

“I'll use the vacuum cleaner on it, shall I?” Erg said brightly.

“No, you will not,” said Granny One. She went and got the vacuum cleaner herself and firmly plugged it in.

Erg watched expectantly as she switched it on. Since the clip that held the bag together was now part of the prayer machine, there was nothing to hold the dust in the cleaner at all. Dust came out in a cloud, like an explosion. Big wads of dirt followed it. And after that came orange peel, whirling and whizzing. Granny One switched the cleaner off in a hurry and screamed for help.

Granny Four hurried in and turned faint in the dust. Granny Three came and turned the vacuum cleaner upside down. All the rest of the dust fell out of it.

“I don't understand these things,” Granny Three said fretfully. “Telephone for a man.”

“Pull out the plug first!” gasped Granny Two, hastening to the scene. “There's electricity leaking into it all the time!”

“Nonsense!” snapped Granny One, coming to her senses. “Erg, what have you done to this machine?”

But Erg was already tiptoeing into the kitchen. Hastily he unscrewed the salt cellar and poured the salt into the nearest thing—which happened to be the sugar bowl. He snatched up a packet of transparent drinking straws. Finally, he turned the tap on over the half-finished washing up. It was not long before bubbly water was pouring over onto the floor. Erg turned the tap off again.

“Hey!” he yelled. “You left the tap running!”

This fetched all four grannies back at a gallop.

Satisfied, Erg went back into the dust-hung living room and collected the invention from behind the sofa. He took it up to the bathroom and locked himself in with it and the salt cellar and the straws and the teddy and Emily's lunch. He thought he had given himself an hour's peace at least.

But it takes more than dust and water to keep four grannies busy. Ten minutes later Granny Four was rattling at the bathroom door. “Emily, dear, are you all right?”

“It's me in here now,” Erg called. “Emily's gone for a walk.”

“Then could you let me in, dear?” Granny Four called back. “I'd like a little wash before I go for my rest.”

“You can't
rest
!” Erg called. He was horrified. Next thing he knew, they would all be up here, fussing about with cups of tea and hot-water bottles and things.

“Why not, dear?” quavered Granny Four.

Erg cast about for a reason. His eye fell on the washing basket. “There's all the washing to do,” he shouted. “I'll bring it downstairs for you, shall I?”

“I'd better go and tell them,” quavered Granny Four, and tottered away.

But when Erg looked in the washing basket, it was empty. Nothing daunted, Erg took off the clothes he was wearing and put them in the basket. Grannies always said clothes were dirty when you had hardly worn them anyway. Then he went to Emily's room and his own and collected all the clothes he could find there. Erg unfolded them and scrunched them up in his hands and rammed them into the basket. Then he put on clean clothes and staggered downstairs with the basket.

“Here you are,” he said, emptying the crumpled heap on the kitchen floor.

The four grannies were gathered there eating chocolates out of the box Granny Three had brought. They gave the heap various looks of suffering and dismay. Granny Four turned pale. Granny Two sprang up, saying she would fill the sink with nice hot water.

“You're allowed to use the washing machine,” Erg said.

“Oh, no, dear,” said Granny Two. “Electricity doesn't mix with water. It gets into the clothes, you know.”

On reflection Erg thought that washing in the sink would keep them busier. He took the basket back to the bathroom. Then he undid the toilet cistern and took out the blue block in it to make the blue water that was to go
plotterta-plotterta
. Then he thought he had better check to see how busy the grannies were.

He peeped around the kitchen door to find them quite out of control again. Granny Three was standing in the heap of clothes sorting them out. She took up a shirt, shook it fiercely, and passed it to Granny One. “This is clean, too,” she said. “I think someone has been making work for us.”

“Quite right,” said Granny One, holding the shirt up to the light. “Clean
and
ironed.” She passed the shirt to Granny Two, who smoothed it out and folded it carefully and passed it to Granny Four. Granny Four turned to put the shirt on a large heap of others and saw Erg watching.

“Will you take these back upstairs, dear?” she said.

“All right,” said Erg. “And then I'll bring down the rest of the washing, shall I?”

“
Is
there more?” Granny Three asked, transferring her angry look from the next shirt to Erg.

“Oh, yes,” said Erg. There was going to be, if it killed him.

He went upstairs with the pile of clothes and locked himself in the bathroom again. At least, Erg thought, he had kept the grannies too busy to think of Emily for some time. But at the rate they were going, they would be asking about her any minute now.

Erg took the plate of lunch out of the bath and used it to dirty ten of the shirts in the pile. But though he spread the lunch very thinly and carefully with his toothbrush, it would not go around more than ten shirts. He found himself looking longingly at his invention where it sat in the washbasin. Even without the blue water, it had already worked quite well. Erg decided to give it another try.

He wound the eggbeater—
pray pray pray pray-pray-pray
. The tin crunched in and out. The mixer blades, the skewer, and the sardine opener grated and revolved. The vacuum cleaner clip, the mincer cutters, and the chopstick wobbled and twirled. “Make the washing keep them busy,” Erg said, winding away.

6

Erg's Invention Works

Erg's clean clothes had become quite well covered with lunch and the blue from the toilet block. He took them off and put them in the basket with the ten shirts. In their place, he put on the first clothes left in the heap: Emily's nightdress, his own jeans, and Emily's school shirt. Dressed in this flowing raiment, he went down to the living room to roll in the dust there. But Granny Four was there, feebly flicking with a duster.

“What are you doing, dear?”

“Playing oil sheiks,” said Erg. He went out into the garden and rolled in a flower bed.

Granny Four was not in the living room when he came back. To Erg's horror, she met him outside the bathroom, carrying the teddy. “You forgot teddy-weddy, dear.”

It was awful how the grannies kept getting out of control. Erg locked the door and took off the raiment. He put on the next things: Emily's tartan skirt and a frilly blouse. This time he took the teddy with him and wedged the bathroom door shut.

“What are you doing now, dear?” asked Granny Four.

“Playing North Sea oil,” Erg explained. “The teddy is my sporran.” He went and rolled in the flower bed again.

This time he got safely back to the bathroom. But he did not dare leave the teddy behind when he set out again in the next set of clothes, which were his own striped pajamas.

“I'm playing going to bed,” he told Granny Four before she could ask, and went and rolled in the flower bed once more.

While he was rolling, Granny Two and Granny Three came into the garden with a basket of washing to hang on the clothesline. They were struggling to hold a ballooning skirt and a kicking pair of jeans in what seemed a very strong wind. Erg lay in the earth and watched. The skirt made a strong dive and almost got away. Both grannies caught it. It took them some time to get it pegged, and the dress they took up next seemed to be blowing even harder. Erg licked one finger and thoughtfully held it up. There was almost no wind. Yet the row of things on the line was flapping and struggling and kicking as if there were half a gale.

Interesting. But where was Granny One? Erg got up and went through the back door into the kitchen to check on Granny One. She was not there. But while Erg was looking around to make sure, the pile of wet washing on the draining board rolled heavily over and went
flap
, down onto the kitchen floor. Erg could see it oozing and trickling and spreading over the floor. He watched with interest. The washing was definitely working its way over toward the nearest heap of potatoes to get itself nice and dirty again.

Erg was delighted. The prayer machine worked! He went upstairs in his earthy pajamas, convinced that the chopstick really must be some kind of magic wand. He only needed to get the blue water working, and he could turn Emily back again.

But Granny One was outside the bathroom door, knocking and rattling at it. She turned and looked at Erg. He had rarely seen her look so grim.

“Take those pajamas off at
once
! What are you and Emily—?”

“The washing,” Erg said hastily, “has fallen on the kitchen floor.”

To his relief, Granny One pushed past him and went rushing downstairs to rescue the washing. Erg locked himself in the bathroom again and put the teddy back in the bath. He was beginning to feel that four grannies were too much for any boy to control. There was another annoying thing, too. There were no more of his own clothes left to wear. He had got them all dirty. He stayed in his pajamas and got down to work on the salt cellar at last.

He had the salt cellar nicely filled with blue water when he was interrupted again, by quivering shouts from the garden. Erg could not resist opening the bathroom window to look. There was washing all over the garden. Some of it was blowing and kicking in the gooseberry bushes. The rest of it was whirling around and around the lawn with all four grannies chasing it. Satisfied, Erg shut the window. He was determined to finish his invention.

It was much trickier than he had thought. The hole in the lid of the salt cellar was not big enough to get a straw through. Erg had to enlarge it with the skewer. And when he had got the straw to go through, he could not get the salt cellar to stand properly upside down on top of the machine. He had to bend open the blades of the electric mixer to hold it. And when he had done that, he still could not get the blue water to go
plotterta-plotterta
. It simply ran down through the straw and into the inside of the biscuit tin. When Erg wound the handle of the egg-beater, the water came out of the holes in the tin in blue showers.