The Grunts In Trouble (8 page)

Where had he heard them mentioned before?

“Boo!” said a voice.

Sunny gave a little jump and turned to find himself face-to-face with a man with unnaturally curly hair and an
enormous
pair of bright-red lips. In the failing light, Sunny could see that his skin was a pale, chalky white.

Sunny suddenly felt nervous. Mr Grunt had told him that he’d know Mr Lippy was Mr
Lippy when he saw him, and here was a man with enormous lips. This could, of course, mean that the man’s real name wasn’t Mr Lippy but that he
called
himself Mr Lippy on account of his lips …

… the only problem was that if the man with the humongous lips
wasn’t
Mr Lippy and Sunny asked him if he
was
Mr Lippy, he might not take too kindly to someone asking such an apparently rude question. And he might punch Sunny on the nose.

“Are you looking for a Mr L?” asked the man.

“Y-yes,” said Sunny. “A Mr Lippy.”

“Then you found him! I’m Lippy by name, Lippy by nature!” said the man in a sing-song tone that somehow suggested to Sunny that he’d said it a thousand times before.

Mr Lippy looked at Sunny closely, taking
in the sticky-up hair, the wonky ears – the left much higher than the right – and, of course, the blue dress. “Have you got something for me?” he asked.

“Er, no,” said Sunny. “Am I supposed to have?”

“Are you sure you haven’t been given something to give to me?”

“All Dad gave me was a nettle-and-goat’
s-cheese
roll and a bottle of home-made conker fizz,” said Sunny.

“Is that it?” asked Mr Lippy, pointing at an old Coke bottle filled with a rich, brown, gravy-thick liquid and stoppered with a small cork. It was propped up against the tree stump where Sunny had been sitting.

“Yup.” Sunny nodded.

“Aren’t you thirsty?” asked the big-lipped Mr Lippy.

“It’s not because I’m not thirsty that I’m not drinking it,” said Sunny, tying himself in “nots”.

“Then why not?”

“Because it tastes disgusting,” said Sunny.

“May I?” said Mr Lippy.

“Be my guest,” said Sunny.

Mr Lippy bent down, put the neck of the bottle between his super-ginormous lips, pulled out the cork with them, spitting it into the grass, and then glugged down the conker fizz in one go. When he’d finished, he smacked his lips – and that was one BIG smack – then wiped them on his sleeve – with one BIG wipe.

“Ah!” said Mr Lippy. “You’re absolutely right, son. That was truly horrible.”

For a fleeting millisecond, Sunny wondered whether Mr Lippy had called him son because he was his real father, or because he was someone who called most boys son if he didn’t know their names. As a reflex action, he found himself glancing down at the man’s
feet to see if he was wearing super-shiny black shoes (as he thought he remembered his father had worn). It turned out Mr Lippy was wearing shoes far bigger than any human being’s feet could ever hope to be. And they were lime green.

Sunny suddenly had a thought. A good one. “Er – Mr Lippy?” he asked. “Are you by any chance a clown?”

“What on EARTH gave you that idea?” asked Mr Lippy, roaring with laughter. “My tight curly red hair? My lips painted bright red, my huge shoes, or my comedy
squirty-flower
?”

“What comedy squirty-flower?” asked Sunny.

Mr Lippy looked down at the lapel of his slightly threadbare mauve jacket. “Oh, botheration!” he snapped. “It must have
dropped off on the way here.”

“Aren’t you off duty?” asked Sunny, more than a little intrigued.

“How do you mean?” asked Mr Lippy.

“I mean, you’re here to meet me, but you’re still in—”

“My clowning clobber? Not all of it. I’m not in my comedy trousers and funny stretch braces. It’s difficult to ride my bike when I’ve got them on.”

“Isn’t it difficult to cycle wearing those?” asked Sunny, looking down at the huge pair of lime-green shoes.

“Oh, not if I splay out my feet and pedal with my heels,” said Mr Lippy. “And, anyway, I couldn’t find my proper shoes. I think Trunk might have hidden them for a joke.”

“Is Trunk a circus elephant?”

Mr Lippy shook his head. “No, no. Not him.
Don’t let Trunk hear you call him that! He’s a circus strongman. No neck to speak of. His body sort of ends and his head sort of begins with nothing in between.”

“Oh,” said Sunny (because he thought he should say something).

“But as much as I’d love to stay and chat, you’re supposed to have something for me.”

“Maybe Dad forgot. Would you mind waiting here?”

“As long as you’re quick,” said Mr Lippy.

Sunny dashed round to the front of the barn and down a small track, veering off across the field to a clump of trees behind which the Grunts had parked the caravan out of sight.

“Did you get it, Sunny?” asked Mr Grunt, eagerly looking up from the sofa.

“He seems to think we’ve got something to give him, not the other way around,” said
Sunny.

Mr Grunt smacked himself in the middle of his forehead with the heel of his palm. “The envelope!” he said. “I forgot to give you the envelope. It’s in the top drawer of the kitchen dresser.”

Sunny went over to the dresser and pulled open the top drawer. On top of the usual mess of bits of string, bottle tops, takeaway menus and a single clothes peg was a sealed envelope. He pulled it out. “This one, Dad?” he asked.

“That’s the one, Sunny,” said Mr Grunt. “You go and give him that. There’s a good lad.” He turned his attention back to the fish in the television.

It was suddenly getting really dark now as Sunny made his way around the back of the barn. He was half expecting the clown not to
be there, but Mr Lippy was sitting on the tree stump. “Got it?” he asked, rising to his (
big-shoed
) feet.

“Got it,” said Sunny, handing him the envelope. “Though why Dad couldn’t just give it to you himself …”

“Better this way,” said Mr Lippy. “This way, if anyone asks, we can honestly say that he and I have never met and certainly didn’t meet this evening.”

“And why should anyone ask?” asked Sunny.

Mr Lippy handed him a similar-sized envelope in return. “Elephants often lead to lots of questions,” said Mr Lippy.

“Elephants?” said Sunny, but he
was talking to thin air. Mr Lippy was already climbing on to his bicycle. Moments later, the clown was pedalling off into the night.

Chapter Eight

On the Trail!

“I
t’s a map,” Mr Grunt explained, opening the envelope at the kitchen table, unfolding the piece of paper from inside it. Mrs Grunt and Sunny sat either side of him.

“Map?” asked Sunny excitedly.

“You heard your father,” said Mrs Grunt. “M-O-P, map.”

“That’s a mop,” snorted Mr Grunt.

“No it isn’t,” said Mrs Grunt. “I know a map when I see one. And anyhows, a mop wouldn’t fit in an envelope that size!”

“M-O-P spells mop!” said Mr Grunt.

“Of course it does,” said Mrs Grunt. “But that’s got nothing to do with—”

Mr Grunt banged his fist on the table. “You just said ‘M-O-P, map’,” he said.

“Didn’t,” said Mrs Grunt (who secretly suspected she might have).

“Did,” said Mr Grunt.

“Didn’t!”

“Did!”

“Didn’t!”

“Did!”

“Didn’t!”

“Did!”

“Didn’t!”

“Did! Did! Did!” said Mr Grunt.

While they were busy arguing, Sunny studied the hand-drawn map lying on the table. The most interesting part was where the big X was, next to what looked like a small wooden building. The other side of the X were two words: ELEPHANT HERE.

“Dad?” he asked.

“What?” asked Mr Grunt.

“Did we just buy an elephant?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No, Sunny.
You
just bought an elephant,” said Mr Grunt. “Nothing to do with me or your mother.”

“If you say so,” said Sunny.

“He did say so!” snorted Mrs Grunt. “I saw his lips move and everything.”

“But it wasn’t my money,” said Sunny.

“Money?” said Mr Grunt (with a grunt). “Who said anything about money?”

“Sunny just did,” said Mrs Grunt helpfully.

Mr Grunt glared at her.

“Well, if it wasn’t money in the envelope, what was it then?” asked Sunny. “What else can you pay for a circus elephant with?”

“Ooooh,” said Mrs Grunt. “So it’s not just any old kind of elephant – it’s a CIRCUS elephant. I had no idea.”

“Of course you had no idea, wife,” said Mr
Grunt. “Because this buying-of-an-elephant business was nothing to do with us, was it?”

“I thought you said—”

“WAS IT?” Mr Grunt glowered.

“Um … No. You’re right, mister,” said Mrs Grunt with genuine pride at her husband’s scheming.

“I’m only guessing it’s from a circus,” said Sunny, “because you … we … I bought it off Mr Lippy, who is a
clown
.”

“We have taught you well, Sunny!” said Mr Grunt.

“What was in the envelope, if it wasn’t money, Dad?”

“Another map, drawn by
me
this time,” said Mr Grunt triumphantly.

“A map leading to something Mr Lippy wants?” asked Sunny. “So it’s a sort of swap?”

“S’what he just said!” said Mrs Grunt.

“Kind of,” said Mr Grunt.

“Why only ‘kind of’, Dad?” asked Sunny. He had an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Because although my map is real, what it leads to isn’t
exactly
what I’d promised it would be,” said Mr Grunt.

Now Sunny was feeling really uneasy. “What did you promise to give him in exchange for the elephant?” he asked.

“It doesn’t matter, because what he’s actually getting is close enough. Just not
precisely
what we agreed!” Mr Grunt laughed.

“Exactly!” said Mrs Grunt, who spent much of the time not really knowing what was going on but doing her best to pretend she did.

“But that’s cheating!” said Sunny. “That’s wrong.”

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong, Sunny,” said Mr
Grunt. “Stealing an elephant from a circus is what’s wrong. Do you really think the elephant was Mr Lippy’s to swap in the first place?”

“Not necessarily—”

“So you could argue that we’re –” Mr Grunt tried to think of the right words. “We’re teaching him a lesson.”

“A lesson that you should never trust people!” said Mrs Grunt proudly.

“Quiet, wife,” said Mr Grunt. “You’re making a fool of yourself.”

“No more than you are!” Mrs Grunt retorted.

“Numbskull!” said Mr Grunt.

“Toolbag!” said Mrs Grunt.

“Armpit!” said Mr Grunt.

“Trench coat!” said Mrs Grunt.

“Don’t you think Mr Lippy will come looking for us when he finds out he’s been tricked?” Sunny interrupted.

“He may not even notice. And if he does, we’ll be long gone from here by then,” said Mr Grunt.

“But circuses travel around too, and surely we won’t be that hard to find,” said Sunny.

“Why not?” said Mr Grunt.

“Because we’ll have a hulking great elephant with us,” said Sunny.

Mr Grunt was about to say something, but stopped. He looked flummoxed. He didn’t have an answer to that.

The following morning – after a night in which both Mr and Mrs Grunt slept beautifully in their bed, and Sunny lay awake for much of it outside their door with a mixture of worry and excitement – the Grunts actually set off for a particular destination for the second time in two days.

Sunny was used to hitching up Clip and Clop and simply going where the donkeys and the Grunts’ moods might lead them. Today, however, they were following Mr Lippy’s map to collect
an elephant
.

Mr Grunt had given Sunny the task of reading the map and making sure that they were going the right way. He didn’t trust Mrs Grunt to be able to do it, and had “important things” to do himself, apparently.

Sunny certainly heard much hammering, crashing and bashing, along with the occasional cry of pain when Mr Grunt must
have hit himself by mistake.

The clown’s map wasn’t particularly detailed but what details he had drawn were very useful. He’d shown landmarks to look out for (linked together by dotted lines and arrows), with instructions for what to do – turn left, straight on, turn right, etc. – once they were reached. (So it wasn’t really a
proper
map. It was not to scale, with places in the right place or anything.)

The starting point was the old barn and the next landmark Sunny had to look out for as he led Clip and Clop westward was a crossroads by a windmill, where they’d have to turn right. They stopped briefly at the mill to give Mr and Mrs Grunt time to laugh and point at the miller in his flour-covered smock, and for Mr Grunt to kick one of the sacks of grain stacked at the roadside. (Mrs Grunt usually liked to
save her kicking-of-things for extra-special occasions.) They then hopped back inside the caravan, ready for Sunny to negotiate the bend.

It was quite a tight turn for the Grunts’ extraordinarily higgledy-piggledy house on wheels. The roads were narrow, and the one he was supposed to be taking them down had high hedges on both sides. Sunny had to manoeuvre the caravan backwards and forwards quite a few times (which wasn’t the
easiest thing in the world when working with donkeys, especially ones that weren’t quite as young as they used to be). Sunny talked to Clip and Clop, gently coaxing and praising them, and promising them juicy carrots in the not too distant future. He also gave them hearty pats on the haunches, stroked their muzzles and, when he
really
needed the pair to go beyond the call of donkey duty, scratched them between the ears. The Grunts’ home was a big haul for Clip and Clop, even though there were actually two of them.

After the windmill crossroads, Sunny had to look out for a left-hand turn just after crossing a three-arched bridge, and a right-hand fork in the road next to a waterfall. He found these, along with the entrance to a shortcut by a fallen tree and a turning by a statue of a white stag – a deer with antlers – into a forest. The
statue had recently been given a fresh coat of white gloss paint, so looked very shiny and unrealistic.

Sunny enjoyed following the map instructions: seeing places first as black-
and-white
drawings on paper, and later as the real thing. He liked being on the move with a purpose – and such an exciting purpose …

He found himself thinking of Mimi, imagining her not as he’d last seen her (in Sack the gardener’s borrowed overalls) but as he’d first caught sight of her before the bee attack, at her very pinkest, when she was still smelling of roses, with the pink ribbon proudly tied in her hair. She’d said that she liked animals and she’d like to travel. And what was he doing right there and then? Travelling with two donkeys on his way to collect an elephant! It would have been great
if she could have come too.

Thinking about Mimi made him think of Bigg Manor and of Larry Smalls hanging from the gate. And then –
bam!
– he remembered where he’d heard mention of the Chinn Twins before he’d read their name on the remains of a poster on the barn wall. Larry Smalls had said that if only
the Chinn Twins
had been there, they’d have been able to get him down from the gate easily (or something like that).

Maybe they were acrobats? On the poster they’d been referred to as being “remarkable”. Sunny imagined one identical twin leaping up on to the back of the other and unhooking Larry Smalls from the top of the gates to Bigg Manor in one swift, graceful movement. What a sight that would have been!

After ten minutes or so of clip-clopping down the forest track, Clip and Clop decided
that it was lunchtime, and they stopped. Sunny knew that there’d be no point in trying to make them go any further until they’d rested and eaten. And anyway, he was hungry too.