The Grunts All at Sea

by Philip Ardagh

  “But they could be after the POGI!” said Sunny, a little too loudly for Mimi’s comfort.

  “Shhh!” said Mimi, looking around for any sign of Rodders Lasenby. She didn’t trust that man one little bit.

  “Aren’t we supposed to be on the lookout for suspicious characters, Dad?” Sunny reminded him. “Aren’t we supposed to be on our guard?”

  “The only thing you’re supposed to be on is that elephant!” said Mrs Grunt. “But not until the morning.”

  And now that morning had come. And, sure enough, Sunny was back on the back of Fingers as they made their way along the top of the right-hand curve of the harbour wall in search of The Merry Dance. This required some very nifty footwork from the elephant. There were the harbour waters to the left of them and the open sea to the right. One wrong move and the Grunts’ home – along with the Grunts themselves – could have found itself in deep water.

  A few metres from the end of the wall was a tall, thin shed, like a sentry box, so narrow that there was only enough space for one person to sit inside it and the person the Grunts found sitting inside it was an old woman, wrapped in a tatty old octopus-patterned duvet, with a long-stemmed clay pipe sticking from her mouth. She had wispy hair of the most unnatural yellow.

  Sunny slid off Fingers’ back, in that really cool way of his, and coughed politely. The old woman opened one large, milky eye.

  “Yeah?” she rasped.

  “Are you Ma Brackenbury?” asked Sunny politely.

  “Guess how many kids I’ve had,” said the old woman, scratching her leathery, weather-beaten face with her stubby fingers.

  “Three? Four?” Thirteen? Fourteen? Sunny had no idea. (How could he?)

  “HA!” said the old woman loudly, which not only surprised Sunny but also Mrs Grunt who was listening from an upstairs window, and Clip and Clop seated in their special trailer. They stopped chewing for a moment and looked up. Why? Because the old woman’s “HA!” could hardly have sounded more like one of Mr Grunt’s “HA!”s if she’d tried. “I’ve never had a single baby in me life,” she said.

  “So … so you’re not Ma Brackenbury, then?” said Sunny.

  “I am Ma Brackenbury, but I don’t want you to go thinking I’m called Ma Brackenbury simply because I’m a ma, which I ain’t anyways.”

  “I see … at least, I think I do,” said Sunny. “Sort of.”

  Ma Brackenbury sucked on her long-stemmed clay pipe. It wasn’t lit, and it contained no tobacco. The old woman was simply sucking air through it. She now had both milky eyes fixed on Sunny.

  “Er, then why are you called Ma?” he asked.

  “Short for Marlinspike,” said Ma Brackenbury.

  “You’re named after that thing used for separating strands of rope?” asked Mimi, who’d been sitting quietly on Fingers’ back all this time.

  Marlinspike Brackenbury dropped the corners of her mouth and nodded. “You come from seafarin’ folk?” she asked her.

  Mimi shook her head. “I read about them in a friend’s magazine,” she explained. The friend she referred to was another of the ex-servants still living at Bigg Manor. Her name was Agnes and she used to be Lord Bigg’s cook. She was married to yet another ex-servant, Jack the Handyman, also known as Handyman Jack.

  There had been a time when Sunny had thought that Agnes and Jack might be his real parents. This was mainly based on the only two memories he had of his very early childhood: his father’s VERY shiny shoes, and his mother’s beautiful singing voice as she sang about lambs. (And, on both counts, Agnes and Jack had fitted the bill.)

  Nowadays, though, Sunny was wondering whether he might just be the son of Lord and Lady Bigg. They had lost a boy named Horace, who would have been the same age as him, and couldn’t remember where they’d left him. To be honest, Sunny wasn’t thrilled at the prospect that he might turn out to be the son of the oh-so-nasty Lord Bigg and the oh-so-wacky Lady Bigg, but he still wanted – needed – to know.

  Lady Bigg didn’t seemed too bothered either way. On the few occasions he’d tried to bring up the subject, she’d seemed far more interested in discussing pig pellets or nose-rings. He assumed they were for Poppet, but knowing Lady Bigg, he couldn’t be sure.

  Back when Lord Bigg was still master of Bigg Manor, being one of his servants had been so dull and depressing that Agnes had taken out a weekly subscription to Dull magazine.

  Dull magazine is a weekly magazine full of such boring articles that it’s supposed to make you feel better about your own sad life. It was in its pages that Mimi had once read a whole three-page article about unravelling strands of rope with a marlinspike. There had even been photographs of different types of marlinspike and some diagrams. (That was the same edition that had a pull-out guide to How Lampshades Are Made.)

  “You’s come for The Merry Dance, I take it?” said Ma Brackenbury.

  “Yes we has,” said Sunny. “I mean have. Yes we have.”

  As Ma Brackenbury struggled to her feet, Sunny wondered whether she would throw off her duvet to reveal a wooden leg, but that wasn’t the case. She had two perfectly ordinary – if slightly bowed – legs inside a pair of worn black trousers, ending high enough above the ankles to reveal plenty of red-and-white striped sock.

  She grabbed a walking stick leaning against the hut wall to support herself. She saw Sunny looking at the fish-shaped handle.

  “Scrimshaw,” she said. “Carved whalebone.”

  Poor whale, thought Sunny.

  Ma Brackenbury led them with impressive speed to the tip of the harbour and there, moored to the outer wall – the sea side – with two of the thickest ropes Sunny had ever seen, was a large, wooden boat.

  It’s difficult for me to describe the size of the boat because I’m not very good with feet and inches or metres. I think boats might be described in tonnage anyway. What I can say is that it was pretty big.

  “Clinker built,” said Ma Brackenbury.

  “What does that mean?” asked Sunny.

  “The wooden boards she’s made of overlap,” she said, pointing to the hull. (People often refer to boats as “her” or “she”.)

  “Oh,” said Sunny. If they overlapped, surely that made it harder for water to seep in between the gaps and, therefore, the boat was less likely to sink …? And that was a good thing, wasn’t it?

  The Merry Dance was obviously old, but she didn’t look in a bad way (to Sunny’s completely untrained eye). Sunny had been fearing some old rust bucket but – without being made of any metal to go rusty – that wasn’t the case.

  “How do we get on board, Ma?” asked Mimi, back on the elephant. “Gangplank?”

  Ma Brackenbury shook her head. “Tide’s going out,” she said. “That boat’s soon goin’ to disappear behind the harbour wall.” She leaned precariously over the edge. “There’s an iron ladder set in the stonework.” She pointed with her stick … the one she should have been using to help with her balance.

  Sunny held his breath.

  But she was fine.

  “But – er – we want to take everything on board,” Mimi explained.

  “Does ‘everything’ include your big-eared friend?” asked Ma.

  Mimi couldn’t help glancing at Sunny, though she felt sure the old lady was referring to Fingers. “Not just the elephant,” she said. “The whole caravan and trailer too.”

  “Aha!” said Ma Brackenbury. She stood herself a little straighter, stared into the horizon, and sucked on her long-stemmed clay pipe again. “That,” she said, “presents more of a challenge.”

  Getting Clip and Clop on board was easy enough if you knew the right people and, of course, Ma Brackenbury did. Remember that great big hulk of a fisherman by the name of Wellum? Of course you do. He simply crawled under Clip, stood up, and held on to her front legs with one hand and her back legs with the other – like a shepherd might hold a sheep – and climbed down the ladder on to the boat deck, which was now halfway down the harbour wall. Clip wasn’t the slightes
t bit bothered – or even that interested. Sunny had managed to find some of the juiciest thistles he’d seen all year, and Clip was merrily chewing away throughout the whole operation.

  Clop was a little more concerned than his sister. As he was being carried to the edge of the wall, he brayed a few times but – despite the deafening “Hee-haw!” in his ear – Wellum gave a few soothing words of encouragement. (And Clop certainly enjoyed the rest of his thistles once he felt the solid wooden deck beneath his hooves.)

  Getting Fingers aboard wasn’t exactly straightforward either. He could potentially tip over the whole boat. With guidance and encouragement from Sunny, who (bravely) stayed sitting on top of him throughout, Fingers managed to step, gingerly, aboard. With the weight of a fully grown elephant pressing down on it, The Merry Dance leaned dangerously: tipping right down on one side and right up the other, causing a few wobbly, nervous moments. However, Sunny quickly got Fingers to the middle of the boat, levelling it out again, so it simply rocked on the surface. That done, he slipped off Fingers, who gave him a big hug with his trunk, lifting him right up off the deck and then back down with a bump.

  That left the caravan itself.

  Before Fingers had stepped aboard The Merry Dance, he’d pulled the caravan across a huge net laid out especially on the floor of the harbour wall. The rope making up the mesh was as thick as a man’s arm. Now the four corners of the net were gathered together and – through a metal-lined loop – attached to the hook of a large crane.

  Mr and Mrs Grunt stood and watched from the wall. Sunny, Mimi and the animals watched from the deck of the boat.

  With the possible exception of Mr Grunt, everyone was expecting the caravan that he and Old Mr Grunt had made to crack up under the strain: that, any minute now, it would fall to bits, and pieces of it would be raining down on them into the sea …

  Ma Brackenbury gave the signal, and the crane came to life. When it slowly lifted the net, there were a few creaks and groans of protest from the structure, but the big CRACK never came. Next, the raised net was swivelled over the boat and – with Sunny making sure Fingers was well clear – it was slowly lowered on to the deck, where it was fixed in place.

  Sunny clapped. Mimi let out a cheer. Fingers trumpeted (a happy trumpet, this time), the POGI said, “POGI!”, and Mrs Grunt …

  Mrs Grunt fell into the sea.

  F-e-l-l i-n-t-o t-h-e s-e-a.

  They hooked her out with the crane, water pouring from her pockets.

  “You pushed me, mister!” she shouted in mid-air.

  “Didn’t touch you!” shouted Mr Grunt.

  “Did!” Mrs Grunt insisted.

  “Wish I had!” shouted Mr Grunt.

  “And you did!” shouted Mrs Grunt.

  “Hogwash!”

  “Pigswill!”

  “Inkwell!”

  “Bottlebrush!”

  And with that final insult, Mrs Grunt was lowered on to the harbour wall with a “squelch” as her waterlogged shoes touched the stonework.

  “You’re alive!” cried Mr Grunt, and threw his arms around his sodden wife as though he’d actually feared for her safety.

  All that was left to be done was for Mr Grunt to have a quiet word with Ma Brackenbury (during which he handed her a wad of notes from the “expenses” envelope given to him by the man in the shadows in the tent in the field), and for them to wait for the captain, a certain Captain Haunch.

  You see, it turned out that Mr Grunt hadn’t only hired The Merry Dance but also someone to captain her, and Ma Brackenbury had chosen Haunch as the best man for the job.

  While they were waiting, Sunny led Clip and Clop down a narrow ramp into the hold below. The donkeys seemed perfectly happy with this unusual arrangement, munching on their thistles and looking around their new, darker, surroundings with mild donkey interest. He and Mimi soon had an area of the wooden floor scattered with straw from their trailer, and they poured some oats into one bucket and some water into another.

  “Not too full,” said Mimi, “in case the boat lists.”

  “Lists?” asked Sunny.

  “Tilts,” said Mimi. “Rolls about in the sea.”

  Next, Sunny took the opportunity to explore the boat. He started off in the wheelhouse at the front of the deck, which housed the big wheel used to steer The Merry Dance, along with various other gizmos and dials. Next, he took a whirlwind tour around the cabins below.

  Sunny had secretly hoped that there might be hammocks to sleep in, but there turned out to be little beds built into the side of the walls, to stop them sliding around when the vessel rolled about on the waves, he supposed.

  What was really exciting was the porthole in the cabin he’d chosen as his own. The portholes in the outer cabins were small and round and made of (fairly) shiny brass. To open them, you had to unscrew a locking latch at the side. Once closed, they were watertight if rain and waves splattered against them. Why a small, round, brass window – with really thick glass – should have seemed so exciting, I’ve no idea. But it was to Sunny.

  There were more than enough cabins for all of them. There was also enough space for Fingers as well as Clip and Clop in the hold, if they’d been able to get him down there. There was no way the elephant could have fitted through the doorway and on the ramp the donkeys had used. The only opening big enough was a large hatchway but – without using the crane again – there was no way for Fingers to use it. He’d have to spend the voyage on deck (in the middle most of the time, if possible, so as not to rock the boat).

  “He must stay put, see?” Ma Brackenbury had insisted. “If he don’t, I won’t be responsible for your safety and you’ll owe me a new vessel. If you’s don’t drown first. Keep him in the middle. Keep things balanced.”

  The engine room was a dark and dingy place in the very bowels of the ship, which seemed to have water on the floor and smelled of oily machines. Sunny didn’t spend much time in there. He had soon explored the whole ship from bow to stern. Or stern to bow. Or both.

  Back on deck a while later, he was chatting to Fingers and feeding him a stale currant bun, when Mollusc appeared along the harbour wall in his turned-down wellies, with a very nattily dressed man a few paces behind him. Mollusc had a brief conversation with Ma Brackenbury, who then came over to the boat, scrimshaw-topped stick in hand.

  She called out Mr Grunt’s name, wisps of her unnaturally yellow hair blowing in the slight breeze.

  He appeared from behind the wheelhouse.

  “Huh?” said Mr Grunt.

  “Sad to report that Cap’n Haunch has had a bit of a nasty fall, but I’s found you an excellent replacement!” she said.

  “It were me what found him,” muttered Mollusc.

  Mr Grunt looked over to the man next to Mollusc. He was wearing blue canvas shoes, a blue blazer with a gold anchor on the breast pocket, a white shirt open at the collar, and a blue cravat around his neck. On his head he wore a white cap with a blue peak (and embroidered gold anchor). He looked every inch a captain.

  “You any good?” Mr Grunt called from the boat.

  “I’ve sunk two vessels and beached another,” said the captain, “which means I’ve experienced catastrophes and learned how to avoid them. I’m the best!”

  His voice sounded very familiar to Sunny, who peered up at him, trying to make out his face from that distance.

  Suddenly, Frizzle and Twist upped and flew away.

  “Mr Lasenby!” Sunny gasped. And – surprise, surprise – he was right.

  “Frizzle? Twist?” Mimi called up into the clear blue sky.

  Rodders Lasenby began climbing down the iron-runged ladder set in the stone wall.

  “Hello again,” he said to Sunny and Mimi. “There’s been an explosion at the Lasenby Destructions factory I was supposed to be visiting, so my meetings have been cancelled. Couldn’t have turned out better for you, huh? Onwards, I say. Onwards!”

  He jumped from the last rung and gave a little skip as he landed on the deck.


  “Amazing,” said Sunny.

  “Quite a remarkable coincidence,” said Mimi, in such a way that made it clear that she was a girl who didn’t believe in quite remarkable coincidences.

  “Right time, right place,” said Rodders Lasenby. “My luggage will be along in a moment.”

  Sunny heaved an inner sigh of relief, glad that someone else was having to carry it this time. “So you’re a ship’s captain?” he asked.

  “In my spare time,” Rodders Lasenby said. “Happy to help out.” He looked around the deck of The Merry Dance. “What an ancient tub!” he exclaimed. “Love her!”

  Mimi jabbed Sunny in the ribs with her elbow and jerked her head in a “come-and-have-a-private-chat-with-me-over-here” kind of way. So he went to have a private chat with her over there.

  “What’s his game?” whispered Mimi.

  “What do you mean?” whispered Sunny.

  “He happens to break down in front of the caravan on the way here. He happens to be happy to come all the way to Isaac’s Port with us. That other captain, Lunch––”

  “Haunch. Captain Haunch,” Sunny corrected her.

  “That other captain, Haunch, happens to have a mysterious accident –” Mimi made the word “accident” sound as if she meant anything but an accident. “– and Lasenby happens to be able to sail a boat …”

  “The Merry Dance doesn’t have sails,” Sunny pointed out.

  Mimi scowled. “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes,” said Sunny. “Sorry.”

  “And,” said Mimi, “and he happens to have the time to help out too!”

  “I think you don’t like Rodders Lasenby because Fizzle and Twist don’t like him,” said Sunny.