The Grunts In Trouble (7 page)

“How do you know my name?” asked Larry Smalls.

“Lord Bigg called you that.”

“Lord Bigg spoke to you?”

“Yes.”

“And he mentioned my name?” A HUGE smile broke out on the wiry man’s face.

“That’s good?” asked Sunny.

“That’s excellent,” said Mr Smalls. “I’ve been bugging Bigg for years. Really trying to get under his skin. Hanging around like a
bad smell and he’s never admitted to knowing who I am, until now …” He gave an even BIGGER grin.

“Er, about getting you down,” Sunny reminded him. “How am I supposed to help you get down?”

“If only the Chinn Twins were here. They’d have me down in an instant. Them or Fingers.”

“The Chinn Twins?”

“Oh, never mind. Those two grown-ups you were with,” said Larry Smalls. “The frightening woman and the worrying man?”

“Mum and Dad, you mean?”

“They’re your
parents
?” said Mr Smalls with obvious surprise.

“Near enough,” said Sunny, not wanting to go into the whole taken-from-a-washing-line explanation right there and then.

“Them. Do you think you could persuade
them to come back and help me down? If they drove their – er –” He fumbled for the right word.

“Caravan?” said Sunny.

“Is that what it is?” said Larry Smalls. “If they could drive it right up against the gates, I could easily climb down from here.”

Even from up there, Mr Smalls could see the doubt on Sunny’s face. He thought back to Mrs Grunt’s cries of “Big nose!” and their throwing rocks at his hat. “It’s not going to happen, is it?” he said.

“I don’t think I’d be able to persuade them, I’m afr—” Sunny began.

He was interrupted by a terrible tearing sound as Larry Smalls’ belt – which had been supporting him all this time – finally gave up under the stress, and Larry Smalls came tumbling down.

In that split second, Sunny instinctively put out his arms to try to catch the man. And amazingly, Mr Smalls did land in Sunny’s outstretched arms. Not surprisingly, both man and boy ended up on the ground with Sunny the worse off, because he was the one underneath. Larry Smalls rolled off him and jumped to his feet. “You caught me!” he said in amazement. “You caught me.”

Sunny lay on the hard road surface gulping in new supplies of air (which was surprisingly painful).

“I can’t believe you were willing to catch me!” said Mr Smalls. “Thank you. Thank you so much!”

When Sunny just carried on lying there, Larry Smalls’ euphoria turned to concern. “Are you OK?” he asked.

“I’ll … I’ll … be … f-f-fine,” Sunny managed.

Mr Smalls helped Sunny to his feet.

“Are you sure you’re OK?”

“I’m good,” said Sunny. And it was true. He felt really good. Not just good as in OK, but good as in he felt good about himself. He’d helped save Mimi from the bees and, even though it had been more of a reflex action followed by an accident, he’d helped Mr Smalls too.

Life – like honey – was sweet.

Buzz. Buzz.

Chapter Seven

Blunderbuss

W
hen Sunny finally caught up with Mr and Mrs Grunt they were outside the caravan about a mile and a half further down the road from where they’d been attacked by bees, having a tug-of-war with Ginger Biscuit. Clip and Clop were busy chewing some brightly coloured flowers in the flowerbed of a pretty cottage garden.

“Give it here, wife!” Mr Grunt was shouting, trying to pull the doorstop cat from Mrs Grunt’s grasp.

“He’s MINE,” Mrs Grunt protested, “and he ain’t an
it
, he’s a
he
—”

“It’s nothing but a moth-eaten
sawdust-filled
doorstop!” roared Mr Grunt (who was secretly quite fond of Ginger Biscuit too, but was never going to tell Mrs Grunt that).

“I’m back!” said Sunny.

Mr Grunt stopped tugging, causing Mrs Grunt to topple backwards on to the ground.

“HA!” laughed Mr Grunt. “Serves you right!”

“I meant to fall over,” said Mrs Grunt, sitting up and dusting herself down. “I
loves
falling over … Where did you run off to?” she asked Sunny as she got to her feet, clutching Ginger Biscuit in one hand and rubbing her head with the other.

“I was trying to help Mimi – the girl being chased by the bees,” said Sunny. Hadn’t it
been obvious?

“You took our honey,” grunted Mr Grunt.

“She needed help!” Sunny protested.

“Why?” asked Mrs Grunt. “What does she have to do with us?”

“It was Dad who kicked the pylon and that’s what upset the bees,” said Sunny. “We were responsible. And anyway, shouldn’t we help people?”

Mr and Mrs Grunt looked at each other then burst out laughing. “Help people? You do get some funny ideas sometimes, Sunny!” said Mr Grunt. “Now, go and hitch up creaky old Clip and Clop, will you? We have an appointment to keep.”

That was the first Sunny had heard about any appointment. “We do?” he asked.

“We do.” Mr Grunt nodded.

Sunny was trying to get the two donkeys
out of the cottage garden when Elsie Spawn, the elderly owner of the cottage – a very angry-looking woman with very blue hair – threw open her bedroom window and started shouting.

“Vandals!” she shouted. “Turnip-heads! Vagabonds! Hoodlums! Looters! Pillagers!” She was getting more and more purple in the face.

What Mr and Mrs Grunt and Sunny didn’t know was that Elsie Spawn had been doing a crossword when she’d spotted Clip and Clop eating her lovely flowers. And, along with a sharp pencil (with a rubber on the end) and a nice cup of tea, there were two things Elsie Spawn always kept close to hand when doing a crossword: a dictionary and a thesaurus.

She used the
dictionary
to check the spelling of words she was trying to fit into the little white squares. She used the
thesaurus
to find words with similar meanings to other words in the clues, because that’s what it’s there for. She quickly looked down the page of the thesaurus for more insults: “Mischief-makers! Plunderers! THIEVES!”

Mr Grunt had been merrily ignoring the insults raining down on Sunny as he led the donkeys back to the caravan, but he couldn’t let the word THIEVES pass without action.

He stomped off the asphalt into the garden, trampling flowers as he went. “No, lady,” he bellowed. “THIS is what
thieves
do!’ He wrapped his arms round a pretty flowering bush and with one swift tug pulled the whole thing out of the ground. And using his poshest voice – the one that he usually saved for talking to judges in court – said, “I’ll thank you to remember the difference.” He began
lugging the bush back to the caravan, fuming indignantly.

Elsie Spawn was aghast. She was agape; agog; dumbstruck; dumbfounded. (You get the picture.)

As well as the day’s crossword, a nice sharp pencil, a cup of tea, a dictionary and a thesaurus, there was something
else
Elsie Spawn had readily to hand.

Perhaps I should have mentioned it earlier, but I have a lot to think about, you know. My shiny shoes don’t polish themselves.

She had a blunderbuss loaded with black peppercorns.

Before you could say, “Ready! Take aim! Fire!”, she’d lifted the firearm to the open window and pulled the trigger. There was a bang loud enough to wake a sleeping chicken, and an almost blinding flash followed by a
cloud of soot-like smoke.

When the smoke cleared, Elsie Spawn’s hair no longer looked blue, and Mr Grunt had dropped the bush and was dancing around in circles clutching the seat of his trousers with both hands, howling like someone who’d just been shot in the bottom with a hail of black peppercorns. Clip and Clop had been frightened by the sudden flash-bang-wallop, so bared their teeth, started “Hee-haw”-ing, and kicked the nearest thing, which happened to be Mrs Grunt. She went flying through the air, past her dancing husband, and – much to her utter amazement – landed in a seated position on the top step of the caravan.

Back in her bedroom,
meanwhile, Elsie Spawn was looking around for something to reload the blunderbuss with. She spotted a jar full of hairpins on her dressing table and quickly tipped the contents into her arthritic fingers, stuffing them down the trumpet-like end of the blunderbuss.

Soon she was ready to fire a second time, and thrust the nose of her weapon through the open window once more. Her face dropped in disappointment when she saw that the boy in the blue dress had managed to hitch up the donkeys and the blaggards/brutes/rascals were getting away!

She fired the blunderbuss just for the fun of it anyway, the lethal hairpins glinting in the fading light, like a flash of silvery fish darting through clear waters. They landed harmlessly in the garden, embedded in the lawn, flowerbeds and the trunks of trees.

The flash and the bang were less harmless though: they caused Elsie Spawn’s once-blue hair to catch alight.

She snatched a bedside jug of water and tipped it over her head. There was a hiss like frying bacon.

Elsie Spawn looked down on her damaged garden in dismay and at the bush lying in the middle of the lane. She then caught a glimpse of her reflection in her dressing-table mirror. She looked as if she’d been rolling in the ashes of a camp fire.

The elderly lady sighed. She didn’t know their names but she certainly wouldn’t forget
the Grunts in a hurry. Whoever they were, they were nothing but
trouble
.

The appointment Mr Grunt had talked about was round the back of a dingy old barn about two hours’ ride away by caravan. If the barn was dingy, round the back of it was dingier still. Mrs Grunt gave Sunny a large
nettle-and
-goat’s-cheese roll and a bottle of
home-made
conker fizz, and Mr Grunt told him to wait round the back for a Mr Lippy.

“Don’t talk to anyone else,” he said.

“How will I know he’s Mr Lippy?” said Sunny.

“Ask him his name,” said Mrs Grunt.

“But if he turns out
not
to be Mr Lippy then I’ll have talked to someone who isn’t him, and Dad said—”

Mrs Grunt frowned. “You think too much,
Sunny,” she said. “Bad for your brain. If you want to grow up smart like your dad, don’t think so much.”

“You’ll know Mr Lippy is Mr Lippy when you see him,” Mr Grunt assured the boy. “Now leave us be.”

Sunny left Mr and Mrs Grunt in the caravan, huddled in front of the television set. The television was one of those old box-shaped ones – not a flat screen – but the actual telly part had been taken out long ago and replaced with a fish tank that fitted inside it perfectly.
Beautifully lit, the Grunts loved watching the handful of colourful fish dart around inside it, between plastic weeds. Mrs Grunt was always sure to stick her beloved Ginger Biscuit on the sofa between her and Mr Grunt, his glass eyes facing the little fishes.

The barn and surrounding field were used for everything from dances to amateur plays, fêtes to pig races, and dog shows to
prize-vegetable
competitions. All over the outer walls there were torn remains of posters announcing these various events, which had been pasted up, then pasted over with new ones, over the years.

As the summer evening light began to fade, Sunny found himself finishing off his roll and trying to make sense of the snatches of words:
FOR ONE OR TWO NIGHTS ONLY … back by fairly popular demand … CHILDREN
ALMOST FREE … You Won’t Believe Your Half-Closed Eyes … PAY AT DOOR OR SNEAK IN LATE … in its 3rd quite good year … Singing! Dancing! Falling Over! … Nearly All You Can Eat!
There were also the names of various actors, singers and performers dotted among the shreds of poster, but one name seemed to leap out at him:
THE REMARKABLE CHINN TWINS.