The Grunts In a Jam

by Philip Ardagh

  He paused, looked down and pointed to a blank piece of paper on the desk in front of Sunny, who was sitting to his right. Sunny passed him the blank piece of paper, which Sack then looked at as though referring to important notes.

  “…according to the Public Crouching, Lounging and Seating Act of 1892. So I would submit that there is no case to answer!”

  Judge Humperdink was clearly impressed by the lawyer’s deep knowledge of the law. If truth be told, Humperdink had rather given up on keeping up with the law in recent years. When he was a younger judge he’d loved reading big, fat, juicy leather-bound law books. Nowadays he much preferred to hum and look out of the window, or imagine that the gravy stains on his ties were islands. He’d give these islands names and then think about who might live on them, or where they’d set up the fish market. Humperdink thought it was very useful that this bright new lawyer from the Accelerated Law Programme was up to date with all this stuff – and clearly remembered all the older laws too – so that he didn’t have to be.

  “No case to answer?” Judge Humperdink asked Sack.

  “That is my belief, your honour,” said Sack.

  “Agreed,” said the judge.

  There was a cheer from someone. Mr Grunt hugged Mrs Grunt. Mrs Grunt hugged Mr Grunt.

  “Right then, we’ll be off,” said Mr Grunt, turning to leave.

  “Silence in court!” shouted the clerk of the court, because that was pretty much all he ever got to say and he liked saying it.

  “Control your clients, Mr Sack and Mr Withayew!” said the judge. He didn’t only need knowledgeable lawyers to make his life easier. He needed ones who could make their clients behave. “Mr and Mrs Grunt, this is just the first of the charges put to you. There are many more still to answer.” Humperdink hoped this wouldn’t take too long. He was planning to have soup for lunch – that was bound to mean more stains on his tie, more imaginary islands to visit and more fish markets to position.

  Then came the next charge. Criminal damage: smashing a quantity of locally-made-lovingly-made-home-made pottery.

  “Yup, that was me,” said Mr Grunt. “Tripped and smashed the lot of it. Ugly stuff.”

  “It is irrelevant whether or not the pottery was ugly,” said Mr Benderby for the prosecution.

  “Not if you had it on your sideboard,” said Mrs Grunt. “Someone might come in and say, ‘What hideous pottery!’”

  “Ugly!”

  “Disgusting!”

  “Sickening!”

  “Downright horrible!”

  “This is irrelevant!” repeated Mr Benderby.

  “He’s picking on my husband again, Your Judgementship!” said Mrs Grunt.

  “IT’S HIS JOB, MRS GRUNT,” said Judge Humperdink, raising his voice a little more than was truly necessary.

  Sack cleared his throat. “Your honour, it was in fact the pottery that was at fault, not my client. It was a potential danger to the public with its jagged edges, should it break. It was a dangerous accident waiting to happen. It should have been stored in such a way to prevent it being a potential hazard to country-fair-goers…” He paused.

  Sunny, warming to his role, shuffled around a few more sheets of blank paper on the table in front of him before picking up one and passing it to Sack, who pretended to read from it.

  “… as laid out in the Safe Display of Items Which Can Get Pointy Or Sharp If Broken Act of 1922. Once again, I beg to suggest that there is no case to answer!”

  “Agreed!” said Judge Humperdink, though he looked far from pleased about it and glared at Mr Benderby of the prosecution.

  A much happier look passed between Sunny from the bench where he was seated and Mimi up in the gallery. Ace, meanwhile, let out a little cheer.

  “Silence in court!” shouted the clerk of the court, delighted to have an opportunity to say it again. (If truth be told, he was secretly hoping for even more cheering.)

  Mrs Winterbottom looked glum and shook her placard in polite silence.

  Judge Humperdink was getting more than a little fed up with these interruptions. The more interrupting, the longer he would have to wait for his soup. And the longer the judge would have to wait for his soup, the longer he would have to wait for fresh soup stains on his tie. Humperdink looked down at the next charge on the sheet: sabotaging a knitting machine and wasting wool. Now, surely THAT was something Mr Grunt couldn’t deny or wriggle out of? And nobody liked a wool-waster!

  “The knitting machine in question is of such a size and power that the National Union of Knitting requires that it be attended by one of their members at all times if used in a public area, including fair grounds or trade shows,” said Sack patiently. “As everyone in this courtroom knows, with great knitting comes great responsibility––”

  He was interrupted by a loud “Hear! Hear!” from an elderly gentleman in the public gallery, who was busy knitting a cosy for his son’s bicycle.

  His son was the clerk of the court, who now called out, “Silence in court, Dad!”

  Such was the silence that followed, all that could be heard was the click-clack of knitting needles.

  “Please continue, Mr Sack,” said Judge Humperdink.

  “Thank you, your honour,” said the ex-gardener. “It was because the knitting machine was illegally left unattended that my client, Mr Grunt, had the opportunity to express his artistic temperament by creating the very long scarf indeed––”

  “No case to answer!” Sunny interrupted, excitement getting the better of him.

  “I am inclined to agree,” squeaked Humperdink, who was beginning to get rather annoyed with Mr Benderby and the prosecution for bringing the charges in the first place. He was hoping that the courthouse canteen would serve a thick brown soup today. Brown soup made the best tie stains.

  He looked down at the charge sheet and sighed. Oh dear! Now, here was a charge that Mr Grunt and his hotshot lawyer team would find almost impossible to wriggle out of: blowing up a public toilet.

  “Do you admit to filling it with lighted fireworks, Mr Grunt?” demanded Mr Benderby.

  “Well, I’d hardly used unlighted ones, now, would I?” said Mr Grunt. “Numbskull.”

  “Trout net!” added Mrs Grunt.

  “Kiwi fruit!”

  “Sausage skin!”

  Although the insults were directed at the lawyer for the prosecution, Mrs Grunt was so used to throwing them at Mr Grunt that she kicked her husband for good measure.

  “OUCH!” he yelled.

  “Silence in court!” said the clerk of the court and Mrs Grunt at exactly the same time, her in a sing-song voice. That made him AND the judge very angry.

  “Mr Sack! Mr Withayew!” said Judge Humperdink. “If you cannot control your clients I will hold them in contempt of court!” And, from the way that he said it, even Sunny could tell that “contempt of court” was not a good thing.

  Sack gave Mr and Mrs Grunt a warning glare, which was a bit like glaring at a bag of rice for all the good it did.

  “Your honour,” said Sack. “The Provision of Public Conveniences Act, 1977, gives a visitor to an outdoor attraction the right of access to a free-flowing toilet with flushing facilities and the right to unblock said toilets should they become unusable, by any means necessary… So I would suggest that there is no case to answer!”

  Whereas before, those in the front row of public gallery had been fearful for the Grunts’ future, it was now beginning to look like they might even be backing a winning team.

  “Go, Sack, go!” muttered Lady “La-La” Bigg.

  “Oink!” went Poppet.

  “You tell ’em, Sack!” said Mimi under her breath.

  Next came the charge of bee rustling (like cattle rusting but stealing bees not cattle).

  “The bees were after my client. He wasn’t after the bees,” said Sack, getting a bit theatrical.

  “No case to answer!” shouted Mrs Grunt.

  “No place like home!” shouted Mr Grunt.

  �
��No place for gnomes!” shouted Mrs Grunt.

  Judge Humperdink looked like his head might POP. “This is my final warning, Mr and Mrs Grunt –” he said. He then turned his attention to Sack. “As for the bee rustling, however, I agree, Mr Sack. No case to answer.”

  A few people actually started to clap in response to this one, but the clerk of the court gave them the benefit of his very serious clerk-of-the-court stare, which he’d been taught at Day One of Clerk of the Court School, and they fell silent.

  Next came the unlicensed setting-off of fireworks.

  “This was clearly an accident resulting from Mr Grunt being chased by bees and trying to fend them off with a smoking juggling club and, what’s more, an accident made possible by the poor safety measures taken by Mr Smith of Patterson’s Pyrotechnics,” said Sack.

  From his seated position to Sack’s right, Sunny grabbed a piece of blank paper from the desk and thrust it into Sack’s hand. The ex-gardener-cum-almost-lawyer obviously had no use for it so, after a split second, he blew his nose on it, crumpled it up and thrust it in a trouser pocket. “I say, no case to answer!” he said.

  “Agreed,” sighed Judge Humperdink.

  The prosecution lawyer, Mr Benderby, really looked as if he might cry.

  Next up was the charge of destruction of the prototype of the OOMPH 5 firework rocket.

  “Being a prototype, this rocket should never have been part of any public display! It hadn’t undergone all the official safety tests required for it to be launched outside test conditions, under the Fireworks and Loud Bangs Act, 1998,” said Sack. “Mr Grunt can’t be blamed for what was accidental damage to something that shouldn’t have been there in the first place. I therefore suggest … no case to answer!”

  Now even Mr and Mrs Grunt had fallen silent…

  Sack felt amazing. This was the best day of his life! This was even better than the day he’d quit gardening! And Sunny was caught up in the whole excitement too. He didn’t feel like a real lawyer, of course, but he was beginning to feel like a real lawyer’s assistant!

  Endangering aircraft and birdlife?

  “It was the illegal OOMPH 5 that hit that aeroplane, not Mr Grunt.”

  “NO CASE TO ANSWER!” shouted just about everyone in the public gallery as one. Then they stomped their feet, or jumped up and cheered. Everyone, that is, but Miss Winterbottom, of course. She felt something battering her knee and looked down to see a mighty small woman with a mighty big handbag. She was hitting her with it.

  It was Mrs Lunge.

  Sunny had left his grandmother back in the caravan, but Mrs Lunge had had other ideas.

  Mimi was grinning from ear to ear and gave Sunny and Sack a double-handed thumbs-up. It was all going better than they could ever have hoped for.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  And so it was that the amazing Sack, an ex-gardener who hated gardening, demolished each and every single one of Mr Benderby’s charges against Mr Grunt.

  When Judge Humperdink announced that Mr Grunt didn’t have a single case to answer and was free to go, a huge cheer went up throughout the courthouse and a delighted clerk of the court got to shout, “Silence in court!” three times, each time more loudly than the last. Humperdink was delighted because, with all these charges so expertly dismissed, he’d probably be sitting in front of a bowl of soup far sooner than he’d imagined.

  It was only when Mr Grunt turned and left the dock, and Mrs Grunt turned to follow her husband but found her way blocked by a policewoman, that all fell quiet.

  “Not you, I’m afraid, Mrs Grunt,” said Sack. “You’re still facing your charges.”

  The court went suddenly silent. In all the excitement, even Sunny had forgotten that his mum had two charges to answer. The clerk of the court read them out: attempted poisoning and attempting to obtain money by deception.

  A different kind of hush descended upon the public gallery. This was serious stuff. Far more serious than ripping a glass roof off a hive of bees, it seemed.

  Even Judge Humperdink’s mood changed. The tiny features on his balloon-shaped head suddenly looked very grave indeed.

  Sack would really have to do something pretty magical to save Mrs Grunt from jail. He cleared his throat and straightened his tie.

  “Your honour,” said Mr Benderby for the prosecution. “We now come to the most serious charges of the day, that Mrs Grunt not only placed foreign objects in jellies, jams and preserves belonging to one Edna Tuppenny–”

  “Edna the witch!” cried a voice from the gallery. No prizes for guessing which handbag-clutching, orange-toenailed onlooker shouted that.

  Mr Benderby chose to ignore the interruption. “– but, as she believed that by doing such a thing she increased the chances of her mother winning the competition and the prize money, then the charge of attempting to obtain money by deception also stands.”

  “That’s theft, that is!” shouted Edna Tuppenny in her lizard voice.

  “Your honour—” began Sack, but Judge Humperdink put up his hand for silence. He was being handed a folded piece of paper by the clerk of the court who had, in turn, been handed the folded piece of paper by Mr Harper, the courthouse security guard, who had been handed it by the placard-waving Miss Winterbottom up in the public gallery.

  Judge Humperdink unfolded the piece of paper and read what was written on it. His eyes narrowed and he stared intently at Sunny, who tried to look as small as possible (as though he wanted to disappear).

  “Mr Withayew,” said the judge squeakily. “Is it true that your name is not, in truth, Mr Withayew but Sunny Grunt and that you are not only not really a lawyer but are also a minor?”

  Mrs Grunt let out a snort that would have made Ace and/or Lady Bigg’s pig, Poppet, proud. “A miner?” she cackled. “My Sunny a miner? Do you think I’d let him dig underground? He’s only a child, you balloon-faced baboon!”

  “Silence in—” began the clerk of the court, but Judge Humperdink had had enough and waved his hand for him to be silent. “Well?” he demanded, leaning right forward and glaring at poor Sunny.

  “Yes,” said Sunny. “It’s true. My name is Sunny spelled-with-a-‘u’ Grunt, not Sunny Withayew … and I’m not a lawyer … and I am a boy.”

  “Yes!” cried a triumphant lone voice from the gallery. It belonged to Miss Winterbottom, who’d also leaped to her feet and was now waving her placard high above her. (I wonder how she would have felt if she’d known the trouble Sunny went to to pay for her stolen bags of peanuts?) She looked around sheepishly, then sat down again.

  Judge Humperdink hadn’t taken his eyes off Sunny. The judge looked far from happy. His face was reddening, which made his head look even more like a balloon. “I have never in my twenty-five years as a judge been confronted with such a total and disgraceful disregard for the law,” he said, his voice getting higher and higher. The real reason for his upset was that having to sort out this Sunny’s deception could take ages, and his brown-soup-based luncheon could be seriously delayed!

  Sunny was in BIG TROUBLE.

  Whereas before Mimi and the others had been filled with wonder at Sack’s success in having every charge against Mr Grunt dismissed, they now feared for poor young Sunny.

  “Your honour—” began Sack, sounding far less confident this time.

  “This had better be good, Mr Sack!” said the judge.

  “Sunny Grunt never claimed to be a lawyer. This is my first ever hearing and he is simply assisting me. As for the misunderstanding about his name, he’s explained it. He’s Sunny with-a-u…”

  Mr Benderby was on his feet once more. “Your honour,” he said. “Could we please deal with the important charges levelled against Mrs Grunt first and then deal with this boy?”

  “Very well, Mr Benderby,” said Judge Humperdink. “We shall return to the matter of Master Sunny Whatever-Your-Name is later but in the meantime—”

  “HUMPTY!” cried out a commanding voice.

  The judge shudde
red at the name.

  Lady “La-La” Bigg’d had enough and was taking matters into her own hands. “Judge Humperdink… You know who I am. I know who I am—”

  “Silence in cour—” began the clerk.

  “The hearing recognises Lady Bigg,” said Judge Humperdink. Then sighed.

  “Of course you recognise me, Humpty. I used to talcum powder your bottom when you were a baby.”

  “I mean, that the hearing officially allows you to be heard.”

  “This really is most irregular, your honour,” said the prosecutor, Mr Benderby.

  “Mr Benderby, both of the charges levelled against Mrs Grunt relate to events surrounding the –” The judge consulted a piece of paper. “– Preserves, Jams and Jellies Competition at the country fair. Auntie La-La – I mean Lady Bigg – is not only a member of the country fair committee but was also to have judged this year’s Preserves, Jams and Jellies Competition. So it’s for that reason that the hearing officially recognises Auntie La-La – er – Lady Bigg.”

  “Thank you, Humpty,” said her ladyship.

  Mr Benderby sighed and sat down. He was looking forward to the day being over. It wasn’t shaping up as one of his best.

  “I’d just like to say to the court that, as a committee member and the competition judge, I speak on behalf of the county fair when I say that I don’t believe any rules were actually broken by Mrs Grunt,” said Lady Bigg, sounding very posh and formal and official.

  Mr Benderby hauled himself to his feet again. “And do we have a copy of these rules anywhere?”

  “Yes,” said Lady Bigg. She took a piece of paper out of her pocket, folded it into a paper plane and threw it from the public gallery. It did an impressive loop-the-loop that would have made WingCo Fish or Alphonso Tubb proud, and came to a stop, wedged in Judge Humperdink’s ear.

  “Sorry, Humpty!” laughed Lady Bigg. “I couldn’t have done that if I’d tried!”