The Grunts In Trouble

by Philip Ardagh

  “So you live with your family in that – er – that—”

  “Caravan?” said Sunny. “Yes. Dad built it himself, with a little help from his dad, Old Mr Grunt.”

  “It’s unlike any caravan I’ve ever seen,” said Mimi, which was no word of a lie.

  Sunny didn’t really get much of an opportunity to talk to other people so, despite the unusual circumstances, he really enjoyed his time with Mimi and Sack that afternoon. He enjoyed the tea too, when it had brewed. The so-called tea they drank back in the caravan was usually made of any old leaves Mr or Mrs Grunt decided to pick, dry and put in the tea caddy, and Mrs Grunt sometimes simply held a corner of her dress over a cup, and poured hot water through it to give the water a bit of colour and taste. The tea he drank in the potting shed that day was real tea made from real tea leaves. It was delicious.

  Sack’s conversation was less enjoyable. He spent most of the time moaning about how mean Lord Bigg was, which was fair enough, I suppose, because Lord Bigg WAS very mean. He told Sunny about the servants’ terrible living conditions and bad pay. And what a big old empty shell the manor really was.

  “It looks so impressive from the outside,” said Sunny.

  “It must have been an amazing house once,” Mimi agreed. “But almost everything’s been sold and most of what’s left has been chopped up or ripped to pieces.”

  “Peach and Agnes say that Lord Bigg’s bedroom and sitting room are still beautiful,” said Sack, “but I’ve never been allowed in either, what with being the gardener. My place is out here.”

  “And my place is down with the boots and the polish,” said Mimi. Her hair was already drying out and getting some of its bounce back.

  “Why don’t you both leave?” said Sunny, taking his last sip of tea. “Resign? Give up your jobs?”

  “We have contracts,” said Sack.

  “Signed documents that could land us in a load of trouble if we quit without His Lordship’s permission,” Mimi explained.

  “You could always run away,” said Sunny.

  “But what would I do?” asked Sack.

  “Well, you wouldn’t have to garden, that’s for sure,” said Sunny (who’d had an earful of just how much Sack hated, hated, hated gardening).

  “But that’s all I’m good at.” Sack sighed. “If I mow a lawn I can’t help doing it perfectly, even if I don’t try!”

  “But what would you like to do?” asked Sunny.

  “Wait here,” said Sack. He got up from the large upturned flowerpot he was using as a seat, and disappeared behind some wooden shelving, reappearing with a black plastic seed tray piled high with papers. Sitting down again, Sack grabbed a bunch of papers from the top of the pile and handed them to Sunny. “Take a look at these.”

  Sunny studied the beautifully drawn diagrams. There was one of a screwdriver and screw; one of a light switch; and one of a folding umbrella. All of them had their working parts carefully labelled, with lots of arrows and written explanations. “These are really well done, Sack,” he said when he’d finished. “So you want to be an artist?”

  “An inventor!” said Sack. “I want to invent things!”

  Sunny frowned. “You – er – invented all these yourself?”

  “Yes,” said Sack, suddenly looking glum. “And don’t tell me that someone already invented them before me, because I know that now. That’s the trouble with all of my inventions so far!”

  “But just because someone beat you to it, doesn’t mean that you’re not a genius for coming up with the ideas all on your own,” said Mimi.

  Sack smiled again. “Mimi always says encouraging stuff like that,” he said.

  “She has a point,” said Sunny. “What about you, Mimi?” He placed his empty mug between his feet on the potting-shed floor and twisted to face her more directly.

  “What about me?” she asked.

  “I mean, what would you like to do if you left Bigg Manor?”

  Mimi thought for a moment, taking off her pink-framed glasses and giving the lenses a good wipe with a cloth she’d pulled from a big front pocket of her borrowed overalls. “Well,” she said at last. “I love animals and I’d like to see the world, so something involving animals and travel, I suppose.”

  “Ah, I was meaning to ask you about those,” said Sunny, pointing up at Frizzle and Twist. Now that Mimi had washed off her rose-petal perfume in the fish pond, the two hummingbirds had stopped flying around her head, but they still liked to stay close to her. They were currently hovering high above the three of them, in the pitch of the roof.

  “Lord Bigg has an aviary – a bird collection,” said Sack.

  At that precise moment, the door to the shed was thrown open from the outside. Framed in the doorway, in brilliant sunlight, was the silhouette of a man with bushy side-whiskers.

  Before Sunny knew what was happening, something flapped right up to his face and pressed its big beak against his nose. It was Monty the parrot.

  Sunny’s eyes had quickly become accustomed to the sunlight, and he could see that the face of the man in the doorway was covered with tiny little crosses of sticking plaster.

  “Who the blazes are you?” demanded Lord Bigg. He sounded far from friendly.

  Lord Bigg wasn’t a big fan of children. He and Lady “La-La” Bigg had once had a boy, but they’d mislaid him, which had rather pleased His Lordship and rather upset Her Ladyship. (It was one of the reasons why they were both happy with the arrangement of his living in the house and her living in the pigsty.)

  There were many reasons why Lord Bigg didn’t particularly like children. Firstly, they cost money. You had to feed and clothe and maybe even educate them. Then there was the fact that they didn’t behave like adults. They charged round pretending to be kings or queens or aeroplanes, and had imaginary friends. They asked stupid questions, such as, “How many beans make five?” or difficult questions, such as, “Why’s the sky blue?” Or stupid, difficult questions, such as, “Why aren’t carrots called oranges when they’re as orange as oranges are, and got here first?”

  At meal times, they spent as much time under the table as at it, or they curled up in a ball and squirmed on their chair. More food ended up on the table, the floor and themselves than in their mouths.

  They somehow managed to get their clothes dirty within thirty seconds of putting them on. They collected bugs and mud and little scraps of paper with “important” squiggles on them.

  They talked when you wanted them to be quiet and were quiet when you wanted them to say something. They gave off strange smells and said embarrassing things, such as “Why isn’t Mr Morris dead yet?” when Mr Morris was standing right next to them; or “How come you have big sweat patches under your arms, Mrs Sawyer?”; or “Are you really as dumb as my daddy says you are?”. And that was just for starters …

  So no, Lord Bigg wasn’t one of those lordships who wanted a son and heir who would one day take over Bigg Manor from him and keep the family name alive.

  It wasn’t as if he had a fortune to pass on, like in the old days when the Bigg family was still making railings. If Lord and Lady Bigg hadn’t mislaid their son somewhere – and neither of them could remember which one of them had been supposed to have been looking after him when they did – he’d have inherited an empty house, some beautifully gardened gardens, a handful of servants and, probably by then, some serious debts. So it had all worked out rather well really.

  Lord Bigg eyed the strange child sitting before him now. “I said, who the blazes are you?”

  Sack and Mimi had jumped to their feet, and Sunny now did the same. “My name is Sunny,” he said.

  “And what are you doing on my land?” demanded His Lordship.

  “I – er—”

  “You’re not with Smalls, are you?” Monty had landed on Bigg’s shoulder and they both leaned forward as one, their two pairs of beady eyes boring into Sunny’s. “You do look somehow familiar.”

  “S-S-S-malls, sir?” asked Sunny.<
br />
  “An odious little man with a BIGG IS BAD T-shirt,” said Bigg.

  “AIN’T BEST,” Sunny corrected him. “BIGG AIN’T BEST.”

  Lord Bigg’s eyes widened and flickered with rage. “So you are part of his little circus.”

  “No!” said Sunny. “I’ve read the T-shirt, that’s all.”

  Bigg looked far from convinced, and Monty was itching to bite the boy’s nose. “Then who are you?”

  “He saved me from the bees, Your Lordship,” said Mimi.

  “It’s true, Your Lordship,” said Sack. “Young Sunny here was only trying to help your boot boy, at great personal risk to himself.”

  “Personal risk?” Lord Bigg snorted. “I was stung by a wasp once and didn’t even cry.”

  “But there was a whole swarm of them,” Mimi protested.

  “A whole hive’s worth,” the gardener added.

  “There were a lot of bees, My Lord,” said Sunny. He was feeling more confident now, and was distracted by all the little crosses of sticking plaster. He imagined joining them up with lines to make a picture on the man’s skin, like in a dot-to-dot puzzle.

  “What did you do?” said Lord Brigg. They’d caught his interest now. “Shoot them? Trap them?”

  “At first I tried distracting them with honey, but they found Mimi far more interesting,” Sunny explained.

  “Mimi?” asked Lord Bigg. “Who’s Mimi?”

  “I am, Your Lordship,” said Mimi.

  “Oh. And you’re the boot boy, right?”

  “Well, yes and no,” said Mimi.

  “You either are or you aren’t!” said His Lordship.

  “I mean I’m a boot girl.”

  Lord Bigg snorted like Poppet the pig (or Lady “La-La” Bigg). “No such thing,” he said. “You’re simply a boot boy who happens to be a girl.”

  Mimi looked sad. “Yes, Your Lordship.’

  “So if the honey didn’t work, what did you do?” Bigg asked Sunny.

  “I made her jump in the pond. Cover herself totally with water. That did the trick.”

  “Clever.” Lord Bigg nodded. “Where are the bees now?”

  Sunny thought of the broken jar of honey on the driveway. “We’re not sure, My Lord,” he said.

  “They just flew off,” said Sack hurriedly. “Could be anywhere.”

  “If I get stung, I shall hold you personally responsible,” said Bigg. “Where do you live?”

  “All over the place,” said Sunny. “I mean, we’re always on the move.”

  “Aha!” said Lord Bigg. “You’re one of those No Fixed Abode chaps.”

  Of course, Sunny had NO idea what His Lordship was on about, because although he knew a “chap” was a male person, he wasn’t sure what an “abode” was, fixed, broken or otherwise.

  “Am I?” asked Sunny.

  “You just said you were,” said Bigg, nodding his head. On his shoulder, Monty the parrot tried a little head-bobbing of his own.

  “Then I must be, I suppose,” said Sunny. (“No fixed abode” means “homeless”, more or less.)

  “So if I DO hold you personally responsible for my getting stung, and I do get stung, then it’d be a real bore having to track you down … so do you know what?”

  Sunny didn’t know what, so he shook his head. “No, My Lord,” he said, “I most definitely don’t know what.”

  “I don’t think I’ll hold you responsible after all. Now, please leave my property. Sack will show you out.”

  Sack visibly relaxed. He had been worrying that Lord Bigg might wonder how Sunny had got on to the estate in the first place, and that they might have to admit to the existence of the hole in the wall. But it didn’t seem to have occurred to him.

  “Thank you,” said Sunny.

  Lord Bigg turned and walked away from the potting shed. Monty, however, twisted his birdie neck so that he could keep a beady eye on the newcomer as they made their exit. You could just tell he WANTED TO SINK HIS BEAK INTO THAT BOY’S NOSE.

  “Well,” said Sunny, once Bigg had gone a fair distance back towards the house, “I’d better be off then.”

  “Nice meeting you,” said Sack, shaking the boy warmly by the hand. He sounded like he meant it.

  “Goodbye,” said Mimi. She flung her arms round Sunny and gave him a nice dry hug this time. “It’d be very nice to see you again.”

  “It would,” said Sunny, because it most certainly would.

  Both Mimi and Sack walked with Sunny towards the main gates. They passed the broken honey jar on the driveway, but the honey appeared to have gone and there was no sign of the bees.

  As they neared the gate, they could hear mutterings and the occasional yelp.

  “That’ll be Mr Smalls,” said Sunny. “The man in the BIGG AIN’T BEST T-shirt. I’d no idea he’d still be up there.”

  “Should we help him get down, do you think?” asked Mimi, looking up at the man on the spikes.

  “Good idea,” Sunny agreed.

  “Not sure how we could,” said Sacks. “And anyway, if Lord Bigg wanted him down he’d have told us to do it.”

  “Best leave him then,” said Mimi, but she didn’t look sure.

  Sack dug his hand in his pocket and pulled out the gate key. He turned it in the well-oiled lock and it opened with one satisfyingly smooth action, without so much as a “click”. He then swung one of the gates inwards. The one with Larry Smalls on top.

  “Hey! What? Who? Get me down!” Larry Smalls yelled, shaking a fist. He recognised Sunny at once (which isn’t surprising with the blue dress and all). “Oh, it’s YOU!”

  “Ignore him,” said Sack.

  “IGNORE ME?” shouted Mr Smalls. “You can’t ignore me!” and to make sure they didn’t, he starting to sing a song about a sad clown who falls in love with a stilt-walker who’s afraid of heights. Despite the fact that he was hanging from the top of a gate by his belt and that, in my opinion, the song itself was sentimental twaddle, he sounded rather good.

  “Bye then!” said Sunny above the noise.

  “Bye,” said Mimi.

  Sunny strode out on to the lane, and Sack swung the gate closed behind him (to cries of “Traitors!”). He locked the lock and slipped the key back into his pocket.

  Sunny raised his arm in a final farewell, then headed off back in the direction where he’d last left Mr and Mrs Grunt.

  “Don’t leave me,” pleaded Larry Smalls, his voice more of a whimper.

  To tell the truth, Sunny felt sorry for Larry Smalls. It had been the Grunts’ rock-throwing that got him stuck up there in the first place. He stopped and walked back over to the gate.

  “How am I going to help you get down, Mr Smalls?” he asked. “I don’t—”

  “How do you know my name?” asked Larry Smalls.

  “Lord Bigg called you that.”

  “Lord Bigg spoke to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he mentioned my name?” A HUGE smile broke out on the wiry man’s face.

  “That’s good?” asked Sunny.

  “That’s excellent,” said Mr Smalls. “I’ve been bugging Bigg for years. Really trying to get under his skin. Hanging around like a bad smell and he’s never admitted to knowing who I am, until now …” He gave an even BIGGER grin.

  “Er, about getting you down,” Sunny reminded him. “How am I supposed to help you get down?”

  “If only the Chinn Twins were here. They’d have me down in an instant. Them or Fingers.”

  “The Chinn Twins?”

  “Oh, never mind. Those two grown-ups you were with,” said Larry Smalls. “The frightening woman and the worrying man?”

  “Mum and Dad, you mean?”

  “They’re your parents?” said Mr Smalls with obvious surprise.

  “Near enough,” said Sunny, not wanting to go into the whole taken-from-a-washing-line explanation right there and then.

  “Them. Do you think you could persuade them to come back and help me down? If they drove their – er
–” He fumbled for the right word.

  “Caravan?” said Sunny.

  “Is that what it is?” said Larry Smalls. “If they could drive it right up against the gates, I could easily climb down from here.”

  Even from up there, Mr Smalls could see the doubt on Sunny’s face. He thought back to Mrs Grunt’s cries of “Big nose!” and their throwing rocks at his hat. “It’s not going to happen, is it?” he said.

  “I don’t think I’d be able to persuade them, I’m afr—” Sunny began.

  He was interrupted by a terrible tearing sound as Larry Smalls’ belt – which had been supporting him all this time – finally gave up under the stress, and Larry Smalls came tumbling down.

  In that split second, Sunny instinctively put out his arms to try to catch the man. And amazingly, Mr Smalls did land in Sunny’s outstretched arms. Not surprisingly, both man and boy ended up on the ground with Sunny the worse off, because he was the one underneath. Larry Smalls rolled off him and jumped to his feet. “You caught me!” he said in amazement. “You caught me.”

  Sunny lay on the hard road surface gulping in new supplies of air (which was surprisingly painful).

  “I can’t believe you were willing to catch me!” said Mr Smalls. “Thank you. Thank you so much!”

  When Sunny just carried on lying there, Larry Smalls’ euphoria turned to concern. “Are you OK?” he asked.

  “I’ll … I’ll … be … f-f-fine,” Sunny managed.

  Mr Smalls helped Sunny to his feet.

  “Are you sure you’re OK?”

  “I’m good,” said Sunny. And it was true. He felt really good. Not just good as in OK, but good as in he felt good about himself. He’d helped save Mimi from the bees and, even though it had been more of a reflex action followed by an accident, he’d helped Mr Smalls too.

  Life – like honey – was sweet.