Just then, Jenny Prendergast came into view.
From the road she’d seen the plane containing her beloved Alphonso Tubb disappear behind the line of the hedge, and had instructed Norris to stop the van so that she could clamber over a gate and run across the sheep-filled field.
Kicking off her high-heeled shoes to speed herself up, she ran barefoot across the grass towards the plane. She let out a squeal of horror when she saw that it was upside down, swiftly followed by a squeal of delight when she saw her beloved Tubby was standing on his own two feet talking to a man and a group of children … by an elephant.
“Tubby! My Tubby!” she shouted.
Now the others arrived from across the field. The “others” being people from the country fair who’d seen the plane going down and were coming to help. Or gawp.
Lady “La-La” Bigg had managed to commandeer a tractor, which was exactly the same red as the wing commander’s plane, and was at the front of the crowd, driving it through the gap in the hedge created by Fingers, with Poppet the pig up in the cab at her side. Mrs Lunge’s dog, Squat, was sitting on the roof.
“Is anyone hurt?” shouted her ladyship, bringing the tractor to a halt.
The pig jumped down from the tractor and excitedly trotted towards Fingers. I’d say bounded towards Fingers, but Poppet’s plump body didn’t really allow for much in the way of bounding.
Everyone crowded round the two men and the boy (with the funny ears, sticky-up hair and blue dress), who were quick to assure everyone that there were no bones broken. Then Jenny Prendergast finally reached Alphonso Tubb and the two threw their arms around each other.
“You’re alive!” wailed Jenny.
“Very much so!” said the doctor. He pulled back a little and looked her directly in the eyes. “Well?”
“Well what, Tubby dearest?” asked Jenny, stepping back.
“Well, what’s your answer?” asked Alphonso Tubb. “Will you make me the happiest man alive? Will you marry me?”
Jenny did a little skip in the air, clapping her hands together. “Oh, yes, dearest Tubby! A thousand times, yes!”
They kissed. The crowd cheered.
There…
…was
…a
…howl.
“A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A OOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
It was the kind of howl you’d expect to be coming from a wolf with very bad toothache or its tail stuck in a lift door.
“A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A OOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
The crowd fell silent. Everyone looked in the direction of the noise. There stood Norris. Now he fell silent.
“OOO—”
He bowed his head.
Jenny skipped over to him and squeezed his hand. “Best of friends?” she asked.
Norris Bootle looked deep into her eyes. For a while, he didn’t say anything. Finally he nodded. “Best of friends, old girl,” he said, and gave her a best-of-friends kind of hug. Then Norris walked across the grass and shook Dr Tubb by the hand. “Congratulations,” he said. “You’re a very lucky man.”
“Very lucky,” agreed the doctor, and gave Jenny a more-than-just-best-of-friends kiss.
Just about everyone cheered again, no one louder than Sunny. You feel a certain bond with a man who safely lands an out-of-control plane you’ve accidentally ended up in, take my word for it. He couldn’t wait to tell Mr and Mrs Grunt what had happened. But where were they? They weren’t among the crowd. They were nowhere to be seen.
To say that Mr Grunt was lucky might be a bit of an exaggeration because a lucky man wouldn’t get chased by bees and end up tripping over a rope and setting off a load of fireworks including the prototype OOMPH 5, which in turn brought down a plane.
So no, Mr Grunt wasn’t lucky in that sense, but he was lucky in the sense that he didn’t end up getting stung by all the bees, however many there were. (He hadn’t had a chance to guess the number, remember?)
After he’d tripped over and all the rockets had gone off, lit by Mr Lippy’s flaming juggling club, the sudden flashes and loud noises had made the insects think twice about bugging the strange man with the great big plaster on his nose.
Instead, they suddenly veered away, in one great big living cloud, and decided to visit the tea tent instead, swarming in through the open doorway and landing on a fine selection of cakes and pastries. The only person in there was soon out of there, screaming as he ran, but still managing to cling on to his Bakewell slice. (He was a cake-lover who wasn’t about to surrender that in a hurry.)
Mr Grunt took this as an opportunity to escape, not least because an extraordinarily large and angry man wearing a T-shirt bearing the words PATTERSON’S PYROTECHNICS was lumbering towards him like a daddy bear, furious with someone for snatching away his baby bear’s honey sandwich without asking.
Mr Grunt had no idea that “pyrotechnics” meant the art of making and setting off fireworks, but he could tell when someone much bigger than him wasn’t pleased to see him … so he hauled himself up and started running again.
When he reached the caravan in the car park, he was surprised to see that Fingers had gone. He was also relieved to find that there was no sign of Mrs Grunt and Ma Lunge, so he decided to take the opportunity to have a quick nap.
First, he popped Clip and Clop back in their special trailer. They’d enjoyed their fill of flowers and were ready for a nap too. He was very fond of those old donkeys and chatted to them and patted them as he got them aboard.
He was just making his way up the stairs to bed when Ma Lunge appeared in the doorway of the caravan.
“Bother,” he grunted.
“There you are,” sighed Mrs Lunge, plonking her huge handbag down on the top step beside her. “I suppose it was you who shot down that plane?”
“What are you talking about?” he said. He turned his back on Mrs Lunge and went to climb the remaining stairs. “I’ve been busy with bees.”
“You, as busy as a bee? I don’t believe a word of it,” said the tiny woman. “You’re one of nature’s layabouts.”
Mr Grunt stopped on the stairs a second time, turned back around and glared down at her. “I didn’t say that I was as busy as a bee, I said that I was busy with bees. I was being chased by them.”
“And why would bees want to chase you, of all people?” asked Mrs Lunge. “You hardly look like a pretty flower!”
“More like a dustbin,” said Mrs Grunt, who was now climbing up the caravan steps and joining in the conversation from the doorway.
“Tree surgeon!” snapped Mr Grunt.
“Trowel!” shouted Mrs Grunt.
“Pig iron!”
“Peach stone!”
“Bat’s wing!”
“Fridge magnet!”
“Fridge magnet?” Mr Grunt smiled. He was glad she was back. “What have you two been doing?” he asked. “You’ve been gone a long time.”
“I was trying to make sure that Ma beat Edna Tuppenny in the Preserves, Jams and Jellies Competition,” said Mrs Grunt, “by sabotaging Edna’s efforts.”
“And I was also trying to make sure that I won the Preserves, Jams and Jellies Competition,” said Mrs Lunge.
“And?” said Mr Grunt.
“And what?” asked Mrs Grunt and her mother.
“And what went wrong?”
“Who says anything went wrong?” said Mrs Grunt indignantly.
“Well, it did, didn’t it?” asked Mr Grunt.
“Yes,” said Mrs Grunt.
“I’ve been disqualified,” sighed Mrs Lunge.
“For life,” her daughter added.
“HA!” said Mr Grunt, then laughed so much that he fell down the stairs.
While Mr Grunt lay on the sofa, Mrs Grunt held a soothing half-a-melon to the bump on her husband’s head, and told him about being caught red-handed putting a dead fly in one of Edna Tuppenny’s jars, and about her ma emerging, moments later, from beneath the table.
“You’re useless, you are!” Mr
Grunt laughed.
Ma Lunge sighed. “It’s not my day. The drought… The disqualification… And I lost my purse.”
“If you need money, you just ask me,” said Mr Grunt. “I’ll give you money. We’re family.”
He dug his hand in his pocket and pulled out the purse, holding it up in the air from his position lying on the sofa.
Mrs Grunt’s mum was surprised for three reasons:
1. She was surprised by Mr Grunt’s sudden and unexpected generosity. Usually, getting him to give her money was like trying to talk a brick wall into taking off its trousers. And brick walls don’t even wear trousers.* (*Which is the point.)
2. She was surprised by this talk of her being “family”. Mr Grunt rarely wanted anything to do with her.
3. She was surprised to discover that it was her own purse.
“So you’re the one who stole it,” sighed Mrs Lunge. “I might have known.”
“Who says I didn’t just find it?” he demanded.
“Well, did you just find Ma’s purse?” demanded Mrs Grunt.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“In her handbag.”
“Good work, mister!” grinned Mrs Grunt.
“Thank you, wife!” said Mr Grunt.
“I want a cup of tea now!” said Ma Lunge. She stuffed her purse back in her handbag, and shut the clasp with a loud “CLICK!”
The Grunts heard the others returning to the country fair across the fields before they saw them. It’s hard to be quiet with a tractor, an excited squealing pig, an equally-excited Lady “La-La” Bigg, a trumpeting elephant, a yappy dog, some children (one of whom had escaped an almost plane-crash) and an accompanying crowd of stallholders and visitors, all jabbering away, discussing what they saw and heard and what might have happened as well as what actually did.
Dr Tubb and Jenny Prendergast were sitting on top of Fingers. He, the returning hero. She, the newly engaged fiancée. WingCo Fish was squeezed into the tractor cab with her ladyship.
A dejected Norris Bootle, meanwhile, was driving his van back down the lane alone. He knew that once the initial relief of finding her beloved Tubby was unharmed had worn off, and she’d got used to the idea of actually being engaged to the doctor, she could concentrate on being VERY annoyed with him for all the trouble he’d caused.
“What a racket!” said Mrs Grunt. She’d had enough of holding the half-a-melon to Mr Grunt’s head. She opened the top of the caravan’s stable door and chucked it out into the car park.
The half-a-melon narrowly missed a man holding a book of raffle tickets but did manage to hit a very large man in the chest. He was wearing a T-shirt bearing the words PATTERSON’S PYROTECHNICS.
The letters were now splattered with old melon and pips.
The man didn’t seem very happy about it. He looked down, brushed the front of his T-shirt with his huge, hairy hand – his fingers the size of sausages – licked the melon juice from it and GLARED.
With the beekeeper on one side of him and a policeman on the other, he lumbered towards the Grunts’ caravan like an angry daddy bear furious with someone for setting off his baby bear’s fireworks without asking…
Mrs Grunt suspected that she was imagining it, but she was pretty sure she’d just seen steam coming out of his ears.
“Mister?” she shouted, slamming the top of the stable door behind her and pulling across the large bolt. “We’ve got company!”
When the policeman came up the caravan steps and banged on the door, Mrs Grunt’s first instinct was for them all to hide. “We can pretend not to be here!” she shouted.
“Didn’t you say you just hit one of them with half a melon?” snorted Mr Grunt.
“Yes—”
“And they must have seen you slam the door.”
“Yes, but—”
“But what?” demanded Mr Grunt.
“But… Buttery biscuit base!” said Mrs Grunt with a very impressive snort. She lifted the seat of the sofa to see if she could hide herself inside, but it was already crammed full of stuff. “HUMPH!” she muttered.
Mr Grunt’s first instinct wasn’t to hide but to escape through a window. The one he knew that he could easily fit through was the window in the bedroom – because he regularly fell out of it – but, in his haste to escape, he tried squeezing through the downstairs one at the side.
He got stuck.
The policeman meanwhile was knocking very loudly on the door. He started off by saying, “Open the door, please!”
This was soon followed by, “I know you’re in there!”
Then – by the time the knocking had turned to banging the door with the side of his fist – he was shouting, “Open up in the name of the Law!” He was saying “Law!” with a capital “L,” which meant that there must be no more messing about.
By the time Ma Lunge finally slid back the bolt and opened the door, Mrs Grunt had just managed to free Mr Grunt and pull him back into the room by his belt. His belt – made from two old belts sewn together – had broken in the process. Mrs Grunt was left holding the pieces, while Mr Grunt was left holding his trousers up.
He found himself not only face to face with an officer of the law but also two of his accusers: the beekeeper and the man from Patterson’s Pyrotechnics. In fact, it was getting rather crowded. The pyrotechnics man was SO large that he not only had to duck his head but bend sideways too, one shoulder lower than the other, to be able to stand up in the caravan. Under other circumstances Mr and Mrs Grunt would probably have laughed and pointed. On this occasion they didn’t.
One reason for this might have been that Mrs Grunt had, meanwhile, got down on her hands and knees and was pretending to be a table (and tables don’t laugh). She’d even managed to rest Chocolate Biscuit, her cat-shaped doorstop, on top of her, to look like a table ornament.
“Are you all right, madam?” asked the policeman with a puzzled frown.
“PERFECTLY!” said Mrs Grunt, struggling to her feet. Chocolate Biscuit fell off and landed on Mr Grunt’s toe.
“OUCH!” he bellowed, grabbing his foot. This meant his letting go of his waistband so – beltless – his trousers fell round his ankles. “What are you playing at, wife?” he demanded, pulling his trousers up and tucking them into the top of his pants to try to keep them from falling down again.
“I was simply inspecting a stain on the carpet,” she said, pointing at nothing.
“Good,” said the policeman, for something to say. “Now, I need to ask you both a series of questions but before we go any further I’m going to ask this gentleman –” he nodded at the giant in the T-shirt, “– to formally identify you.”
“I don’t need anyone to formally identify me. I know very well who I am,” said Mr Grunt. It was true. He didn’t even need a mirror.
“He’s idiot-chops,” said Mrs Grunt helpfully. “That’s who he is.”
“Lip-balm!”
“Monkey nut!”
“Child lock!”
“Water-cooler!”
The policeman put up his hand for silence. “Please!” he said.
“I’m Mr Grunt,” said Mr Grunt.
“I need Mr Smith—”
Mr Grunt’s eyes narrowed as he looked up at the Patterson’s Pyrotechnics man. “No one’s really called Smith!” he said.
“Well, I am,” said Mr Smith.
“Then who’s Patterson?” demanded Mrs Grunt, who’d picked up Chocolate Biscuit and now had him tucked under her arm. “Did you steal that T-shirt, you … you … T-shirt thief!” She gave a triumphant grunt.
“Mr Patterson is my boss,” said Mr Smith. His voice was deep.
“Before we go any further,” said the policeman, a little louder this time, “I need Mr Smith here to formally identify you as the man who set off the fireworks.”
“Yes, that’s him,” said Mr Smith.
“By ‘him’ you mean Mr Grunt?” asked the policeman. He was writing things down in his notebook.
“Yes,” said Mr Smith.
“Of course he means him,” said Mrs Grunt. “I don’t see any other Misters in here except you, mister.” She prodded the policeman. One should never prod a policeman or a policewoman. They don’t like being prodded.
“I’m simply following Official Procedure, madam,” he said, making a don’t-even-THINK-of-prodding-me-again face. “It’s the way that things have to be done to stand up in a court of law.”
“What if you want to sit down in a court of law?” demanded Mr Grunt. “HA! Answer me that.”
The policeman chose to ignore Mr Grunt or at least try to, though it wasn’t as easy as it sounds. “Madam,” he said to the beekeeper. “Can you confirm that Mr Grunt is the man who stole your bees?”
“What if you want to lie down in a court of law?” demanded Mrs Grunt this time. “What if you want to float by on a lilo in a court of law? Or you just want to swing by and say ‘Hi!’?” She made a sound like the victory cry of the bull ape (better known as the cry Tarzan makes when he swings through the jungle on those vines of his).
The policeman repeated the question. “Was this man, calling himself Mr Grunt, the man who stole your bees?”
“He tried to, yes,” said the beekeeper.
“Thank you,” said the policeman, scribbling further notes in his little black notebook. “Then I must ask you to leave so that I can now conduct an—”
“Orchestra?” suggested Mrs Grunt.
“A thorough search?” suggested Mr Grunt.
“An ostrich?” suggested Mrs Grunt.
Mr Grunt spluttered. “Don’t be ridiculous, wife. He can’t conduct an ostrich.”
“Can.”
“Can’t.”
“Can.”
“Can’t.”
“Can if it’s an ostrich in the orchestra,” said Mrs Grunt, looking VERY pleased with herself indeed.
Mr Grunt gave Mrs Grunt a loving hug. “That’s my girl!” he beamed.
The Grunts In a Jam Page 7
