The Grunts All at Sea

by Philip Ardagh

  “We upset Old Mr Grunt,” Mimi began to explain, just as a fourth – no, sorry, that should be a fifth – tractor tyre came hurtling towards them. (I almost lost count there.)

  To Sunny and Mimi’s amazement, Mrs Grunt somehow managed to catch the tyre in mid-air, spin it around and throw it back in the direction of Old Mr Grunt, where it had come from … all in one easy action.

  “Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” she cried gleefully.

  It wasn’t exactly graceful, but it was certainly impressive.

  A terrible crashing sound was followed, moments later, by a string of VERY rude words strung together to make one very long one. (If this were a cartoon, there’d be a speech bubble full of lots of stars, exclamation marks and fuming skull-and-crossbones.)

  Mrs Grunt smiled, showing off her proud array of non-matching yellow and green teeth. “That should teach the old fossil a lesson,” she said.

  Don’t forget that Old Mr Grunt wasn’t Mrs Grunt’s husband. He wasn’t the Mr Grunt who’d come across Sunny as a baby, hanging from a washing line by his ears, and had brought him home as a present to her. No, Old Mr Grunt was that Mr Grunt’s father.

  “How did you manage to make him so angry?” asked Mrs Grunt.

  “I asked him who he was knitting the scarf for,” Sunny explained, getting to his feet and adjusting his blue dress. It hadn’t always been his dress. It hadn’t always been blue. It was one of Mrs Grunt’s old dresses she’d passed on to him. She always dyed them blue because she knew that blue was the colour boys wore.

  “Why did asking the silly old goat who he was knitting a scarf for make him throw tyres at you?” Mrs Grunt snorted.

  “Because it’s not a scarf he’s knitting, Mum,” Sunny explained. “It just looks very like one.”

  “It turns out it’s a sweater for Mr Grunt, Mrs Grunt,” said Mimi.

  “The silly old truffle,” Mrs Grunt grunted. (Old Mr Grunt had always liked making things, but had only recently turned his somewhat grubby hands to knitting.)

  Mrs Grunt took a run at the low wall Sunny and Mimi had first ducked behind, and tried to jump over it. The result was inevitable. There was the noise of a Grunt hitting a wall, followed by a noisy grunt … and Mrs Grunt flipped over the wall, head first. A pair of upturned bunny-slippered feet appeared briefly in the air, before she disappeared from view. As Sunny and Mimi rushed forward to help, she pulled herself up, resting her chin on the top row of bricks.

  “Silly place to put a wall,” she muttered.

  “HA!” came a shout.

  No prizes for guessing where the “HA!” came from. Whenever Mrs Grunt had an accident and there was a “HA!” you can bet your bald friend’s hairpiece that the “HA!” was made by Mr Grunt. (No, not Old Mr Grunt. I mean the Mr Grunt who Mrs Grunt is married to. Please pay attention.) And, sure enough, this “HA!” was one of those.

  “HA!” said Mr Grunt, wandering into view. He was being followed by two donkeys: Clip and her brother Clop. (Or Clop and his sister Clip.) These were the donkeys that used to pull the Grunts’ caravan home.

  When I say “caravan”, I use the term loosely. It hadn’t been bought brand new and gleaming from the forecourt of CARAVANS-4-U. Neither had it been built by Romany gypsies and passed down from one generation to the next; nor was it a classic model discovered old and neglected, and lovingly restored by a caravan enthusiast.

  No.

  The caravan occupied by Mr Grunt, Mrs Grunt and their (stolen) son, Sunny, had – as I know I told you earlier – been built by Mr Grunt himself, with more than a little help from his dad (the tractor-tyre-throwing Old Mr Grunt). And they had built it together out of stuff. The end result usually made most sensible people run away when they saw it, especially now that it was being towed by Fingers the elephant.

  Yes, that’s right. Now that the Grunts had an elephant to pull their home, their donkeys, Clip and Clop, had retired. They got to see the countryside from a specially made trailer hitched up to the back of the van. Not that the Grunts spent as much time on the open road as they used to. Nowadays they spent more time in the overgrown grounds of Bigg Manor, which is precisely where they were now.

  “Don’t you ‘HA!’ at me, mister!” said Mrs Grunt. (Do you remember Mr Grunt’s “HA!”?) She grabbed the nearest thing and threw it at Mr Grunt’s head. Fortunately, Mrs Grunt was a rotten shot anyway, so the nearest thing in question – an old squeaky dog toy – didn’t get anywhere near her intended target. “That father of yours has been throwing things at Sunny and Moomoo,” she added.

  “Mimi,” Mimi corrected her. Since the Grunts had settled in the grounds of Bigg Manor – where Mimi used to be the boot boy before Lord Bigg was thrown in jail and his wife, Lady “La-La” Bigg, took charge – she’d spent a lot of time with Sunny. They’d become good friends, but Mrs Grunt still managed to get her name wrong. “Throwing things?” said Mr Grunt, his voice rising.

  “Yes, mister. Throwing things!” said Mrs Grunt.

  “But that’s a disgrace, wife!” he said.

  “Unacceptable!” she said.

  “Unforgivable!” he said.

  “Unimpeachable!” she said (not that she knew what it meant, though she guessed it must have something to do with the fruit of the same name). She very much hoped that Mr Grunt wouldn’t demand that she spell it.

  “My daft old da needs to be taught that throwing things is always wrong!” Mr Grunt announced.

  They all strode between the rhododendron bushes towards the shed that Mr and Old Mr Grunt used as a workshop. In Lord Bigg’s day, the gardens had been beautifully tended by Sack the gardener, but those days were over.

  The minute His Lordship was carted off by the long arm of the law, Sack had packed in his job, because he hated gardening. Now the once-immaculate lawns were growing wild, along with the flowers and the shrubs.

  And the weeds?

  The weeds were having a whale of a time.

  Old Mr Grunt was lying on his back in the long grass, his bottom still resting on a three-legged stool which had been knocked over at the same time as him. In his hand he still held two large knitting needles, from which hung a very long, thin piece of knitting. A large tractor tyre was lying on top of him.

  “Your work, wife?” asked Mr Grunt, looking admiringly at Mrs Grunt.

  “My work.” Mrs Grunt nodded proudly.

  They hugged.

  Sunny and Moomoo – sorry, I mean Mimi – helped Old Mr Grunt to his feet.

  Mr Grunt, meanwhile, had just caught sight of himself reflected in a number of old car hubcaps nailed to the side of the shed; trophies he’d picked up from the road or prised off cars. He turned this way and that to admire his own reflection. Then he rubbed his grubby hands through his hair and, satisfied, straightened up.

  “Enough of this,” he said. “We’re off on a thingummy––”

  “A thingummy?”

  “A – er – whatsit. An adventure,” said Mr Grunt. “There’s important work to be done!”

  Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear. It seemed that whoever that man was in the shadows of the tent in Gilligan’s Field – the one who gave Mr Grunt the task of delivering a POGI (Person of Great Importance) to a certain Mrs Bayliss – he didn’t know the Grunts very well.

  Asking Mr Grunt to deliver a POGI (Person of Great Importance) somewhere is a bit like asking a heap of elephant dung to turn out the light, or do a little dusting, or to buy you a pint of milk on its way back from Elephant Dung School.

  I chose the elephant-dung example for a very good reason, by the way – in the same way that I do most things – because, like the Grunts’ own lives at that time, this story is sprinkled with elephant dung throughout.

  Why?

  You ask why?

  What are you, some kind of nincompoop?

  No, forgive me. That’s no way to speak to anyone. It was just that kind of language which got Lord Bigg into even MORE trouble with the police when he was already being arrested for a whole long
list of other things. The reason why this story is sprinkled with elephant dung is because it features Fingers the elephant, of course.

  Of course.

  And one of the things that elephants have to do, in addition to eating and drinking and being all elephanty, is to have a poo once in a while. And the result? Elephant dung!

  The first proper day of the adventure was the day after Mr Grunt had been handed his instructions, along with the photograph of the first half of his silver coins and the expenses money. That morning, Fingers towed the caravan out past the gates of Bigg Manor, lying crooked and broken in the overgrown grass next to the cracked and crumbling pillars that had once been proud gateposts.

  Sunny was perched on the elephant’s back, with the bright-pink Mimi sitting next to him. She had two hummingbirds (Frizzle and Twist) hovering above her head, which was quite normal (for her). Back down on the wooden driver’s seat of the caravan sat the POGI in his barrel. In silence. Mimi glanced back at him now and again, waiting to be introduced.

  “I like your new shoes,” said Sunny.

  “Thank you,” said Mimi. “They used to be a muddy-brown colour. I painted them pink myself.”

  “I didn’t know you could paint shoes,” said Sunny.

  “I am a girl of many talents,” said Mimi with a grin.

  “I mean I didn’t know anyone could paint shoes a different colour,” Sunny explained. “I didn’t think it was possible.”

  “It is, and I have,” said Mimi. “Have you any idea where we’re going?”

  “Going?” said Sunny. “Yes and no.”

  Just then, Fingers curled his trunk back over his head and out of nowhere handed Sunny an orange with the fingers-like tip of his trunk. Sunny patted him good and hard so that he’d feel it through his thick elephant hide.

  “Thanks, Fingers,” he said. He began to peel the fruit.

  “Well?” asked the ever-so-pink Mimi.

  “I just know that we’re supposed to be delivering this POGI to someone called Mrs Bayliss––” (Mr Grunt had told Sunny and Mrs Grunt everything he felt they “needed to know”, which wasn’t much.)

  “POGI?” asked Mimi (as Sunny had hoped she would).

  “Person of Great Importance,” said Sunny.

  “And the POGI is the – er – person in the barrel?” asked Mimi, jerking her head in his general direction.

  “POGI!” said the POGI.

  “That’s the one.” Sunny nodded.

  “And who’s Mrs Bayliss?” Mimi asked.

  Sunny shrugged, which when sitting on an elephant while peeling an orange with both hands is a tricky manoeuvre. If Mr Grunt had attempted such a thing, he’d no doubt have fallen off the elephant, on to Mrs Grunt and they would then both have rolled into an enormous patch of thistles. As it was, Sunny stayed pretty much upright, allowing for a little elephant sway. Well, a lot of elephant sway. Trying to stay upright on an elephant is a lot, lot harder than you might imagine.

  “And where will we find this Mrs Bayliss?” asked Mimi.

  “I don’t know,” said Sunny. “Dad did give me a list of places we’ll be passing through on the way, though,” he said.

  “And I suppose –” Mimi dropped her voice, “– you’ve no idea who this POGI in a barrel is?”

  “No,” said Sunny. “I think that’s the point of the barrel. So that no one will recognise him.”

  “Whoever he is, he must be very small, to fit so much of himself into that barrel,” said Mimi.

  “I was thinking that,” said Sunny. “He’s probably about the size of Jeremy.” Sunny was referring to a very small man they knew who lived in a fibreglass tomato. (You can find out more about him in The Grunts in Trouble, in which he gave Mr Grunt a very impressive kick in the shins. And, yes, Mr Grunt started it, by kicking Jeremy’s fibreglass-tomato home.)

  “So you don’t know who this POGI––”

  “POGI!” said the POGI.

  “– is, or who Mrs Bayliss is, or where we’ll find her?” said Mimi. “Right?”

  “That’s right, Mimi.” Sunny nodded.

  “Aren’t you curious?” said Mimi. “Don’t you want to know?”

  “Of course I do,” said Sunny, “but there’s not a lot I can do about it.”

  “I suppose not,” said Mimi. “But it is exciting, though, isn’t it? I’m glad I got to come along too.” She grinned.

  “Me too!” said Sunny. “And it means that you’ll also be around for Dad’s birthday. I can’t say I am sorry that Grandad is staying back at the manor.”

  “How old is your dad going to be?” asked Mimi.

  Sunny shrugged. He had no idea. He didn’t think Mr Grunt had any idea either. “I’ve bought him a box of chocolates,” he said, “and hidden it in the caravan where I hope he’ll never come across it, even by accident.”

  “Let me guess where—” said Mimi, but she didn’t get the chance to because, at that moment, Sunny was hit on the back of the head with a currant bun. “Ouch!” he said.

  “Too much noise!” shouted Mr Grunt (who had thrown the bun) from the front of the caravan.

  “Listen to your father and do as you’re told!” shouted Mrs Grunt, from an upstairs window. “Make too much noise!”

  “That’s not what I meant, wife!” shouted Mr Grunt, twisting around to face her.

  “Then say what you mean, mister!” she shouted back.

  “What I mean is that you’re a knapsack!”

  “Fish hook!”

  “Rat poison!”

  “Beanbag!”

  “Gripe-water!”

  “Stingray!”

  And the pair – who loved each other very much, I’ll have you know – carried on trading insults for the next fifty-two or so minutes it took them to reach The Happy Pig.

  The Happy Pig was not a pig (happy or otherwise), though it may very well have been named after one. The Happy Pig was what’s known as a tavern, and it was owned by none other than Lady “La-La” Bigg (though it was run by a man called Peach).

  Yes, of course, this was the same Lady “La-La” Bigg who lived in Bigg Manor and had a pet pig called Poppet. And Peach was none other than the Bigg family’s one-time butler. Now he no longer buttled but ran The Happy Pig for Her Ladyship instead. He loved his work, as long as Mr and Mrs Grunt didn’t pop by. (The happy pig painted on The Happy Pig sign wasn’t based on Poppet but did look very happy indeed.)

  The reason the Grunts had stopped at The Happy Pig was because Mrs Grunt had wailed the word “Stop!” with such upset in her wailing that Sunny knew it was serious. If Mr Grunt had been kidnapped in the night by bad-faeries-with-attitude, for example, she wouldn’t have made such a fuss. This wailing must be to do with one of her not-quite-pets pets.

  And how right he was. Somehow, Mrs Grunt had managed to drop her old cat-shaped doorstop, Ginger Biscuit, from an upstairs window, causing his tail to become wedged between the spokes of one of the wheels … so now Sunny asked Fingers to stop.

  And he did.

  Dead in his tracks.

  And, if you know anything about forward momentum – and if you don’t, you might actually learn something – you’ll be able to guess what happened next. Just because the elephant had stopped dead, it didn’t mean the house that he was attached to stopped dead too.

  No. That kept on moving and then stopped with a sudden jolt.

  Mr Grunt found himself flying through the air and hitting the caravan wall or, to be more precise, a portrait on the wall or, to be EVEN MORE precise, a portrait of Mrs Grunt’s particularly ugly cousin Eva who used to come out only at night to work in an observatory.

  Mr Grunt was seeing stars.

  Mr Grunt was grumpy and in pain, but not in that order. First and foremost he was in pain. Smacking into a portrait hanging on the wall of a caravan can do that to you. And it was the pain that made him grumpy. It made him SO grumpy that he wanted to kick something.

  And that something almost turned out to be a someone because, ju
st as Mr Grunt swung his foot at the door (because he knew it would make a satisfying sound as it rattled on its non-matching, poorly hung hinges), Sunny opened it and stepped into the room.

  Having heard the terrible crashing noise Mr Grunt had made as he slammed into the portrait, the boy had slid down off the back of Fingers, and hurried into the caravan to check if he was OK. Unfortunately, he arrived just in time for the big kick.

  Fortunately there was a “fortunately” as well as an “unfortunately”. Because both Mr Grunt AND Mrs Grunt seemed to spend half their lives falling over, out of, into and under things (just think of the low wall on the previous day), Sunny was used to giving first aid. And recent experience had taught him that Mr Grunt found nothing more soothing on a wound – whether it was a bump on the head or a throbbing knee – than rubbing it with the cool, fleshy end of half a melon. It was for this reason that Sunny had taken to keeping a stack of melons in the kitchen of their mobile home. (I did mention the melons earlier. Look back at page 7, if you don’t believe me.)

  Sunny tried to keep them in a neat pile but, with the movement of the caravan and the fact that Mr Grunt regularly threw them at Mrs Grunt for fun, and Mrs Grunt regularly threw them at Mr Grunt for fun, they could usually be found rolling around on the floor (even the bedroom floor, remember).

  Sunny, with Mimi close behind, had snatched up one of these melons as soon as he’d dashed into the caravan. When he threw open the door and Mr Grunt’s big boot came into view, it was the melon in Sunny’s arms that was on the receiving end.

  It exploded in an impressive spray of melony pulp – along with a very squelchy noise – leaving Sunny’s blue dress so splattered that he looked as if he’d been sneezed on by someone with a VERY big nose.

  “Sorry,” said Mr Grunt.