The Grunts All at Sea

by Philip Ardagh

  “Does she bite?” asked Sunny.

  “No way,” said Speedy McGinty, laughing. “Pick her up. Give her a hug.”

  A little nervously, Sunny reached his hand down into the glass. The tiny dog opened an eye and sniffed his fingers. Then she licked them.

  “That tickles!” said Sunny with a smile, carefully lifting Petal out in the palm of one hand, and holding her against his chest. The dog sniffed the interesting smells on his blue dress. “She’s cute,” he said.

  “Very,” said Ms McGinty.

  “So why is Dad so frightened of her?” asked Sunny. “He’s not usually bothered by dogs.” He had a very clear image in his mind of the time Mr Grunt had wrestled a huge German shepherd dog for a sausage that had fallen from a hot-dog van. The dog had lost.

  “He was frightened he’d tread on her.” Speedy McGinty grinned. “He thought he had once, but it turned out to be one of Petal’s toys. Since then, on the few occasions he’s come by on his bike to borrow things, he’s always stayed out in the garden and shouted through the window.”

  Sunny was now studying the people in the framed photos on the piano. Speedy McGinty herself was in all of them, in her wheelchair, of course, and was shaking hands with some very famous people.

  “Wow!” said Sunny, for a third time. “Is that—?”

  “Sure is,” said Speedy.

  “And that’s … that’s—?”

  “In person.” Speedy nodded.

  “And how come you met—?”

  “I was invited to dinner.”

  Sunny was VERY impressed. “You must be very famous.”

  Speedy McGinty shrugged. “You’ve never heard of me,” she said, and it didn’t seem to bother her in the slightest.

  It was true, Sunny had never heard of her, but there was something familiar about her, none the less.

  “So how come Dad knows you?” he asked.

  “This time around?” She smiled to herself. “This time around I caught him trying to prise the door knocker and door handle off the front door a few years back, to sell as scrap metal … and we got talking.”

  “Oh,” said Sunny. (He didn’t know what else to say.)

  While they’d been talking, Speedy McGinty had been checking the place names on Mr Grunt’s list, pulling various maps and charts off different shelves, and placing them on her lap. When she’d finished, she tidied them together in a bundle and passed them to Sunny.

  “This is a funny-looking map,” he said, lifting the folded blue one off the top.

  “It’s a sea chart,” said Speedy McGinty.

  “A sea chart?”

  Speedy McGinty nodded. “It seems at least part of your journey to deliver this POGI of yours will have to be done by sea.”

  Sunny had that sinking feeling again, but it only lasted a few seconds because his thoughts were interrupted by a cry.

  Sprinting to the window, Sunny saw Mr Grunt dash past as though running for his life, followed, seconds later, by a small black cloud.

  It was then that Sunny and Speedy McGinty heard the humming sound. It was like the drone of the engine of a low-flying aircraft. It was a thousand tiny buzzes buzzing as one big BUZZ …

  “Oh no!” groaned Sunny, his head in his hands. “Bees,” he said. “BEES.”

  Mr Grunt had a history of trouble with bees.

  That night they camped on the roadside, and the following night, and the night after that. By the third night, the bee stings had gone down, and Mr Grunt had stopped wearing the mudpack Mrs Grunt had insisted he wear. (This was not so much to soothe the stinging as to give her something to laugh and point at.) Mr Grunt’s face was left even blotchier than its usual blotchy self: a bee-scarred battlefield a few days after the soldiers had moved on.

  Bee stings aside, the first three days were uneventful. Together, Sunny and Mimi had carefully inspected the first two pages of the instructions Mr Grunt had been given, with Sunny guiding Fingers along the route they’d worked out from Speedy McGinty’s maps. Then – if I’ve counted right – came Day Four: the day they were due in Isaac’s Port. That was the day of The Unplanned Stop.

  Sunny had managed to manoeuvre the hulking great caravan down a narrow hedge-lined lane – nearly being whipped off Fingers’ back more than once by overhanging tree branches – when he discovered their path was blocked.

  Just up ahead was a very large, very expensive-looking, open-topped motorcar. The bonnet was up, and someone was leaning into the engine from the side. All Sunny could see of him from Fingers’ back was the person’s pinstripe trousers.

  The person pulled his top half out from under the bonnet of the car. “Hello there!” he said. Then, taking in the odd caravan being pulled by an elephant being ridden by a wonky-eared boy in a blue dress, added, “What have we here, then?”

  (Things would have seemed even more strange had the barrel-wearing POGI been sitting in his usual spot, but he was currently lying on the sofa in the Grunts’ caravan sitting room.)

  “Hello,” said Sunny, sliding off Fingers in a way he’d perfected after many, many months of sliding-off-an-elephant practice.

  “I’m afraid the bally engine won’t start,” said the man. He was wearing a very dapper pinstripe suit, with a salmon-pink silk tie. He was wiping his hands – which looked perfectly clean to Sunny – on a matching salmon-pink handkerchief. He smelled of expensive aftershave.

  Sunny had no idea whether “bally” was a type of car engine or not, but that didn’t change the matter: the lane was blocked by a car that was going nowhere.

  “Do you know much about motorcars?” asked Sunny, hopefully.

  “Only how much they cost, how fast they go and which colours I like,” said the man. “Why are you wearing that extraordinary dress?”

  Sunny looked down at his clothes. “Er, my mother gave it to me.”

  “Suits you,” said the man, thrusting out his right hand. “Rodders Lasenby.”

  “Sorry?”

  “My name. It’s Rodders Lasenby.”

  Sunny gripped Rodders Lasenby’s hand and shook it. “Sunny,” he said. “I’m Sunny.”

  “Pleased to meet you … Do you deliberately have your hair like that?” Rodders Lasenby pointed at Sunny’s head.

  “Like what?”

  “All sticking up in a complete mess?”

  Instinctively, Sunny reached up and tried to flatten it.

  “It just does that,” he said. “I can’t make it do anything else.”

  “Looks fantastic,” said Rodders Lasenby (who had very little hair of his own except around the ears). “You don’t know anything about making motorcars go, do you?”

  “Sorry, no,” said Sunny.

  “Gosh!” said Rodders Lasenby, pointing at Sunny.

  “What is it?” asked Sunny, looking around.

  “Your ears!” he said. “That one’s way, way, way higher up the side of your head than the other one.”

  “Er … yes,” said Sunny. “It might have something to do with being hung from a washing line, or it––”

  “Marvellous,” Rodders Lasenby interrupted. “Whatever the reason, it’s a great look. Sensational. Wish mine were like that.”

  Mr Grunt suddenly appeared at Sunny’s side. He had twigs in his hair from where he’d had to squeeze between the side of the caravan and the hedges lining the lane.

  “Oi, baldy,” he said (obviously to Rodders Lasenby). “We haven’t got all day. Move your car, will you, or we’ll have to go over it.”

  “Go over it?”

  “You heard. Elephant, caravan, trailer and all.” Mr Grunt turned and squeezed back between the hedge and van, causing some startled wood pigeons to take flight, with a loud slap of their wings.

  “My dad,” said Sunny.

  “Sorry.”

  “Never apologise for your parents, Sunny,” said Rodders Lasenby, walking over to Fingers and stroking him on the trunk. “One’s parents are old enough to apologise for themselves. My mother was a terrible
embarrassment. She used to dig her powdery hanky out of her handbag, suck the corner of it, then use it to rub imaginary dirt from my face.”

  “In front of your friends?”

  “In front of my board of directors. Even when I became chairman of Lasenby Destructions,” said Rodders Lasenby.

  “Constructions?” asked Sunny, not sure that he’d heard right. He knew that “construction work” was a posh way of saying “building”.

  “No, Destructions,” said Rodders Lasenby. “My company specialises in destroying things … like my mother destroyed my confidence.”

  “Oh,” said Sunny. “Sorry.”

  “Can you imagine it?” said Rodders Lasenby. “I was forty-three years old and head of a company, sitting in the biggest chair at the head of the table in the board room… and Mummy would toddle in and do the handbag-and-hanky routine … The shame.”

  “That is embarrassing,” Sunny agreed. “Does she still do stuff like that?”

  “Not since I locked her in the cellar!” said Rodders Lasenby with a laugh.

  Sunny laughed too, but a little uneasily.

  “Joke,” said Rodders Lasenby. “That was a joke.”

  “Oh,” said Sunny. “Good.”

  “My mother’s long since dead.”

  “I’m sorry––”

  “At least I assume she must be,” said Rodders Lasenby, now mopping his forehead with the salmon-pink hanky. “I didn’t leave her any food down there.”

  He could see a look of horror cross Sunny’s face.

  “Another joke!” said Rodders Lasenby, chuckling.

  Mr Grunt reappeared. This time he was holding a squirrel sandwich. The dead squirrel had been roadkill, so was already conveniently flat enough to slip easily between two slices of bread. “Still here?” he said gruffly.

  Rodders Lasenby nodded. “I was wondering if your elephant––”

  “Fingers,” said Sunny.

  “If Fingers could push me into the next turning to a field, and you could sail past in your delightful home?”

  Mr Grunt chewed thoughtfully on a piece of sandwich. “Good idea!” he said. “Sunny can help.”

  “Thank you,” said Rodders Lasenby. He eyed the bee stings on Mr Grunt’s face as he climbed back into the driver’s seat and waited while Sunny unhitched Fingers.

  Once the pushing and shoving was over, and the vehicle was safely parked up off the lane by a five-bar gate, Sunny fed Fingers his reward.

  “Good work, boy,” said Sunny, giving him a currant bun, and rubbing his trunk. The elephant looked back at him with intelligent eyes, then did a big poo.

  (Yes, it’s dung time again. I did warn you!)

  Rodders Lasenby, meanwhile, jumped out of the car and took off his jacket, revealing a very smart yellow waistcoat. He draped the jacket over the passenger seat.

  “Nicely done,” he said, checking the back of the car for any scratches or dents. “I don’t suppose I could persuade your parents to give me a lift to the nearest town, could I?” he asked. “Then I can arrange for a garage to come and pick up Betsy.”

  “Betsy?” asked Sunny, feeding Fingers his final currant bun.

  Rodders Lasenby patted the motorcar. “My Betsy,” he said.

  “With any luck,” said Sunny. “And if Mum and Dad won’t let you in the caravan, you could always ride up front with me.”

  “Too kind,” said Rodders Lasenby. “I don’t deserve it, you know. I can be so very unpleasant.”

  He wasn’t lying on that point, dear reader, but you might have worked that out for yourself.

  The Grunts didn’t seem bothered. They’d just settled down to stare at the fish tank that had taken the place of the screen in their old TV set. Mrs Grunt had propped up the ginger cat doorstop between them on the overstuffed sofa, recently vacated by the POGI. There was a bowl of strips of crispy roadkill badger-skin on the small table in front of them (which, I’m told, taste a bit like pork scratchings).

  “Yes, he can come with us if you like,” said Mrs Grunt.

  “As long as we get moving again,” said Mr Grunt. “We’re in the middle of an important mission, remember.”

  “I remember, Dad,” said Sunny. He went to give Rodders Lasenby the good news.

  All this time, Mimi had been having a nap under the kitchen table, which was also where she slept at night, it being a one-bedroom caravan. Awake now, she emerged to see what was happening, taking the POGI by the hand. As usual, she had the two hummingbirds, Frizzle and Twist, hovering above her head. On seeing Rodders Lasenby, they behaved in a peculiar manner. A most peculiar manner.

  They flew away.

  Mimi was startled.

  First, no Frizzle. Then, no Twist.

  “What’s up with them?” asked Sunny.

  “I don’t know,” said Mimi, looking around for any sight or sign of the birds. “They’ve never done that before.”

  “POGI!” said the POGI.

  “Perhaps they don’t like my aftershave,” said Rodders Lasenby. He stuck out his hand to Mimi. “Rodders Lasenby,” he said.

  Mimi shook it. “Mimi,” she said.

  “You’ve really overdone it with the pink, haven’t you?” he said.

  “I – I –”

  “Pink, pink, pink, pink, PINK. Overdone. Overdone. Overdone,” said Rodders Lasenby. “I just love overdone. It’s how I like my steaks done … cooked to a crisp. Lovely.”

  He then thrust his hand into the POGI’s. “Rodders Lasenby,” he repeated. “Short for Rodney. The Rodders part, that is. Lasenby isn’t short for anything.”

  “POGI,” said the POGI.

  “Why on earth would a fully grown man wear a barrel?” said Rodders Lasenby. “If you are fully grown, that is. You’re very squat, aren’t you? Very dumpy … Look like you’ve been sat upon. Marvellous. If only we could all look that good in wooden clothing … What a fashion!”

  He opened the boot of the car and pointed to an extraordinarily expensive-looking suitcase. It was of light-brown leather, with a studded gold trim. “One of you carry that for me, would you? I don’t really do carrying.”

  Sunny and Mimi ended up having to carry it between them, it was so heavy.

  “He’s very rude, isn’t he?” Mimi whispered as they lugged the luggage over to the caravan.

  “I think so,” said Sunny, “but I’m not sure.”

  “POGI!” said the POGI.

  “What do you mean you’re not sure?” said Mimi. “How can you be not sure?”

  “Couldn’t he be one of those people who other people admire for speaking their own mind? You know …”

  “Well, he sounds rude to me,” Mimi whispered.

  “He said something about being the boss of a company,” said Sunny. “Lasenby Destructions.”

  Sunny stumbled and dropped a corner of the suitcase on the road. A woman passing by on a red bike swerved to avoid it. Her single lemon-drop earring waggled like the clapper in a bell. “Sorry!” Sunny called out after her.

  The lady on the bike looked back, her earring catching the light. “No worries,” she said.

  “Careful!” said Rodders Lasenby. He was more worried about his suitcase.

  “What have you got in here?” asked Mimi. “Rocks?”

  Rodders Lasenby laughed.

  “There’s something strange about him,” said Mimi to Sunny under her breath. “And he certainly upset Frizzle and Twist. Animals instinctively sense these things, like rats fleeing before an earthquake.”

  “But Fingers seems fine with him,” Sunny pointed out.

  “That’s true,” Mimi conceded. “But still, I’m going to keep an eye on Mr Lasenby. Your dad did say that he’d been told other people are after the POGI, remember.”

  They’d reached the front of the caravan – where Fingers was now hitched up again – and heaved the suitcase up into a space beneath the wooden bench that acted as the driver’s seat.

  The POGI scrambled up after it and sat back in his usual place
.

  Rodders Lasenby, meanwhile, had put his jacket back on and was now busy putting up the roof of the motorcar. “In case it rains,” he explained. He patted his beloved vehicle. “See you soon, Betsy, old gal,” he said.

  He strode past Fingers, narrowly avoiding a fresh pancake of elephant dung, nodded to him in acknowledgement of a job well done, and shook him by the trunk (as though it were another hand). He jumped up on to the seat next to the POGI.

  Lasenby turned to the man in the barrel. “Hope you don’t mind sharing?” he said. The POGI said nothing. “Off we go then,” he said. He sounded like a man used to giving orders.

  Sunny and Mimi climbed up on to Fingers.

  “OK, boy,” said Sunny. “Let’s get a move on!”

  Rodders Lasenby stayed with them all the way to Isaac’s Port, sitting up on the wooden driver’s seat at the front of the van next to the POGI, talking to Sunny and Mimi up on Fingers’ back.

  He commented on much of what he saw as they passed. “Did you see the flowers in that garden? Every single colour you can imagine, all clashing with each other. No thought put into planting. Just thrown together all higgledy-piggledy … Looks wonderful!” or “Who on earth would build a house so close to the edge of a river? It’s a health hazard. Fantastic! Such originality!” and “Did you see that woman back there with that crazy bright-green wig? So obviously nylon, and not real hair! It really brought out the colour of her eyes.”

  Sunny found listening to Rodders Lasenby was a bit like listening to two people with totally opposite views. Sometimes a look would pass between him and Mimi, and she’d raise an eyebrow or shrug.

  Then there was the fact that they passed at least two villages and one town with a garage where they could have dropped Rodders Lasenby off to have someone go and collect Betsy, his beloved motorcar. But he insisted on staying with them.