The Grunts In Trouble

by Philip Ardagh

  “Blow it up?” said Mrs Grunt.

  “YES!” said Sunny.

  “Then of course we must go there,” said Mrs Grunt.

  “Definitely,” said Mr Grunt. “I wouldn’t want us to miss a good explosion. I love a good explosion!”

  “Me too!” said Mrs Grunt, thinking back to her science lessons at school. “Come on!”

  Now, Sunny could have wasted time arguing that the whole purpose of his getting to Bigg Manor as soon as possible was to try to STOP there being a big explosion, but a waste of time was all it would have been. With Mr and Mrs Grunt excited at the prospect of witnessing a big bang, Mrs Grunt was quick to get Clip and Clop aboard their new custom-built trailer at the back, while Mr Grunt and Sunny hitched Fingers up to the newly adapted harness at the front of the caravan.

  “A perfect fit!” said Mr Grunt. “Let’s get going!”

  So off they headed, a slightly puzzled Clip and Clop enjoying the view and feeling the wind whizzing between their ears, and an excited elephant pulling them at impressive speed, eager for adventure.

  When they arrived at Bigg Manor, Sunny felt that they were as late as one could be without actually being too late. Sticking out of every window of the house was … was …

  “Dynamite!” Sunny gasped.

  Up above the rooftop, brilliantly coloured birds circled and swooped, and squawked in dismay. Sunny could clearly make out Monty, the parrot that had been eyeing his nose in the potting shed, his beautiful plumage catching the fading rays of the sun.

  There was no difficulty in Fingers pulling the Grunts’ caravan, trailer and all, up the drive because the gates – those hated gates – hung crooked, broken and wide open where something had rammed them apart. One of the lion-topped pillars was badly scraped, the fresh scars showing white against the weathered stone, where something had hit it hard. And that something was stationed on the lawn before them now, right by the pond where Mimi had hidden from the bees.

  It was a giant of a mechanical digger with a huge yellow scoop on the front with jagged teeth of metal. And it was in that scoop – now raised in its highest position – that Larry Smalls stood. Yes, he was wearing his BIGG AIN’T BEST T-shirt but (quite apart from the crazy glint in his eyes) there was something very different about him: it was the bow and arrow he was brandishing. Instead of being pointy, the tip of the arrow was wrapped in cloth. And, from the way that the cloth was burning, it had obviously been dipped in something … something like petrol.

  Sunny could see the servants crowding round the base of the digger. There was Sack the gardener, Jack the handyman (also known as Handyman Jack) and a woman he took to be Jack’s wife, Agnes the cook and maid, and someone else – a spiky red-haired man – who must be Peach the butler.

  There was no sign of Mimi. Sunny gulped. Was she still inside the building?

  He had already jumped down from the caravan and was rushing towards the digger. The servants were being prevented from reaching Larry Smalls by a small but dedicated group of ex-circus performers. Jeremy the juggler was running up and down, juggling flaming clubs and nasty-looking knives. There was also a very large man who had no neck to speak of – his head just seemed to join his body – who was wearing a beautifully tailored pink-striped shirt, and a frightening expression on his face. He was bending enormous metal bars as if they were as floppy as Lord Bigg’s ten-year-and-one-week-old railings. And there was Mr Lippy, in full clown clobber – including a squirty plastic rose on his lapel – cycling around the digger on a tiny bicycle, firing green gunk from a super-soaker at anyone foolish enough to try to get too near.

  Hitched to the front of the Grunts’ caravan, Fingers caught sight of his old friend Mr Smalls, raised his trunk and let out a mournful trumpet.

  Larry Smalls turned and saw Sunny and the others. “Oh, you came!” he shouted. “And you’re just in time!”

  “Wait!” shouted Sunny. “Where are Mimi and Lord Bigg? How can you be sure the house is empty?! WAIT!”

  “Fire the arrow! Fire the arrow!” shouted Mr and Mrs Grunt in an unusual example of unity. “Do it now! Do it now! Do it now!” they chanted.

  There was sudden movement at the right-hand side of the house, and Sunny could make out two figures climbing from a window on the middle floor and shimmying down a drainpipe with the speed and agility of acrobats.

  The Chinn Twins! thought Sunny. It must be the Chinn Twins!

  And how right he was. Having reached the lawn, the Chinns were now cartwheeling and somersaulting to a safe distance.

  “Ready?” shouted Larry Smalls from on high.

  “Ready!” replied the far-off voices of the twins.

  “This is for the animals of Smalls’ Big Top!” cried Larry Smalls. But Sunny hadn’t been idle all this time. As far as he knew, water put out flames, and what was that fish pond over there filled with? Plenty of the wet stuff. He knew from an article (in a newspaper that Mr Grunt had used to wrap up a dead badger before cooking) that elephants were good at sucking up water in their trunks and spraying it everywhere. So all he needed to do was to combine the two: to get Fingers to suck up the water from the fish pond and to squirt out Mr Smalls’ blazing arrow …

  … but Sunny wasn’t altogether sure where Fingers’ loyalty lay. Certainly, he and Fingers were together now, but the elephant had years of history with Larry Smalls and, even if Fingers was now loyal to him rather than Larry, he didn’t feel too comfortable about making him act against his old friend Larry’s wishes.

  What decided it for Sunny was Mimi. Or the absence of Mimi. For all Sunny knew, she was inside the manor stuffed to the gills with dynamite, about to be blown to smithereens.

  So Sunny hurried Fingers to the fish pond and the elephant sucked up water at incredible speed. Sunny turned Fingers to face Larry Smalls … but it was too late.

  As the jet of water squirted from the perfectly aimed elephant trunk towards the flaming arrow tip, Larry Smalls let loose the arrow and it arched through the air landing gracefully in the wide-open front doorway, where it spluttered and sparked, before erupting into the first of a sequence of stupendous explosions. “NO!” screamed Sunny.

  “Nice one!” screamed Mrs Grunt.

  “Yay!” shouted Mr Grunt.

  Handyman Jack, Peaches, Agnes and Sack stopped trying to reach Larry Smalls now – there was little point; the damage was done – and they turned to watch the spectacle. Mr Lippy stopped pedalling the tiny tricycle, Jeremy stopped his dangerous juggling, and Trunk ceased the bar-bending and grimacing (though he continued to wear his very nice pink-striped shirt). All eyes were on the big event.

  As they watched open-mouthed, Lord Bigg suddenly appeared at a window and – without so much as a second glance down – jumped. If Lady “La-La” Bigg hadn’t at that self-same moment appeared round the side of the manor – presumably from the pigsty – with Poppet the pig in hot pursuit, he may well have done himself a serious injury. As it was, he landed directly on top of the pig, who seemed more disgruntled – and grunty – than damaged by the whole experience.

  But there was something odd about these explosions. All but one of the onlookers were expecting crumbling masonry and thick black smoke as Bigg Manor collapsed in an inferno. But instead, as each stick of so-called dynamite ignited, it shot in the air – or wherever it could – with a trailing of glittering sparks, like a firework … which was hardly surprising because that’s exactly what they were: fireworks.

  As everyone suddenly realised that they were watching a fabulous firework display, the mood of the onlookers changed. The servants, Jeremy and Mr Lippy started “Oooo”-ing and “Ahhhh”-ing. Trunk looked absolutely delighted, and a childish grin spread across his face. Sunny let out a sigh of relief, and even Mr and Mrs Grunt settled down on the grass to watch. But Larry Smalls was incandescent with rage. If you didn’t know what “incandescent” meant, you do now, because that was just how blood-vessel-burstingly, humongously ANGRY Larry Smalls was.

  Standing
in the scoop of the metal-toothed digger, he grabbed fistfuls of his BIGG AIN’T BEST T-shirt and began tearing it apart with his bare hands. Soon it was little more than tattered shreds, revealing his string vest beneath. He howled. He ranted. He screamed. He yelled. Then he sat down with a thud and started to sob. It was at this point that three police cars arrived, sirens blaring and lights flashing (which is exactly what you want from a police car, really). Sitting in the front passenger seat of the first car was none other than Mimi, with Frizzle and Twist humming round her head as usual.

  Sunny dashed forward as she clambered out of her seat. “You’re all right!” he yelped. Although he’d been worried about everyone at the manor, he’d been worried about the sweet-smelling, extraordinarily pink Mimi most of all.

  “All right? Yes, I’m all right,” she said distractedly, looking up at the whiz-bangs in the sky. “Fireworks!” She gawped. “They’re nothing but fireworks! I told the police it was dynamite!” For it was Mimi who had grabbed Handyman Jack’s tricycle and pedalled as fast as she could to the local police station. While the others had been running round in a what-shall-we-do kind of way, she’d taken pink, sweet-smelling action.

  And a tricycle.

  “We all thought it was dynamite!” said Sunny and before she knew what was happening, he gave her a big hug. Before he knew what was happening, she gave him one right back. The hummingbirds hovered above them both.

  The police, meanwhile, had poured out of all three cars and were charging about trying to look busy and important, and enjoying the free show.

  “Who’s in charge here?” shouted a policeman, a bent-nosed, cauliflower-eared man by the name of Brown.

  “I am!” boomed Lord Bigg, wearing his dressing gown, which had a perfect impression of a pig – legs splayed out sideways – on the front, in mud. “I demand that you make arrests immediately!” His sticking-plastered face looked even stranger in the blue glow of the police cars’ flashing lights.

  “This is your property, sir?” said Inspector Brown, eyes narrowing. He was staring at the dressing gown with great interest.

  “Yes, yes. I am Lord Bigg. This is Bigg Manor.”

  “And do you have a licence for this firework display, sir?”

  “I am not a ‘sir’, I am a ‘lord’! And no, of course I don’t have a licence for this … this … display, you nincompoop!” Lord Bigg spluttered.

  It’s never a good idea to call a policeman a nincompoop. “Turn round, please, Your Lordship,” said Inspector Brown, scratching his bent nose.

  “WHAT?” demanded Lord Bigg.

  “You heard me, Your Lordship. Turn round, please,” said the policeman.

  “I will not!” said Lord Bigg.

  “That wasn’t a request,” said Inspector Brown. “I am instructing you to turn round in the name of the law!”

  “This is preposterous,” said Lord Bigg, but something in the policeman’s voice suggested that he might punch Bigg on the nose if he didn’t do as he was told. So he turned round.

  When the policeman saw the words BARNEY “THE BRUISER” BROWN written in nice big letters on the back of Lord Bigg’s dressing gown, he nodded in an I-thought-so kind of way … because he thought he’d recognised that dressing gown the minute he clapped eyes on it, Poppet-the-pig-shaped mud stain or no Poppet-the-pig-shaped mud stain.

  “Lord Bigg, I am arresting you for holding an illegal firework display and on suspicion of theft or of receiving stolen goods—” began Brown.

  “STOLEN GOODS?” Lord Bigg bellowed. “What stolen goods?”

  “Is your name by any chance Barney ‘The Bruiser’ Brown, My Lord?”

  “Of course it isn’t, you … you buffoon!”

  “I thought not, Lord Bigg. Because I am Barney ‘The Bruiser’ Brown and that’s MY dressing gown you’re wearing.”

  “Oh,” said Lord Bigg, his mouth itself forming the shape of a little “o”. There wasn’t much he could say to that.

  “And not only am I the rightful owner of that dressing gown,” Inspector Brown added, “I am also arresting you.” He sounded rather happy about it.

  Moments later, Lord Bigg found himself being led away in handcuffs.

  Larry Smalls witnessed the whole thing from his excellent vantage point up in the digger scoop, his eyes filling with tears of joy. Soon he was whooping with delight, which led to Jeremy the juggler, Trunk the strongman, Mr Lippy the clown, and the Remarkable Chinn Twins to whoop too, and before they could stop themselves the Bigg Manor servants – including Mimi – found themselves whooping, which started Sunny off, which finally made Fingers start trumpeting, and everyone burst into song.

  “Do you have a licence to hold an outdoor concert on your premises?” Inspector Brown asked Lord Bigg in the back of the police car.

  “Of course I don’t have a— Er, no, officer,” said Lord Bigg, ending more meekly than he’d begun.

  “Then I’m afraid I’m going to have to add it to my list of charges,” said Inspector Brown, looking very pleased indeed.

  Once the police cars had gone, Sunny turned to Mr Grunt. “Dad?” he said. “You know that stuff you gave to Larry Smalls in return for Fingers, which wasn’t quite what you’d promised it would be?”

  “Yes,” said Mr Grunt with a grunt.

  “You didn’t promise him dynamite and give him fireworks instead, by any chance, did you?”

  “Might have,” said Mr Grunt. And he might even have smiled. Larry Smalls had climbed down from the digger, and now strode across to them both. He’d removed the remains of his BIGG AIN’T BEST T-shirt and was now wearing a colourful one emblazoned with the words “SMALLS’ BIG TOP” across the front. He gripped Mr Grunt’s hand and shook it.

  “I couldn’t be happier with today’s outcome,” he said. “I couldn’t be happier!”

  Mr Grunt put his free hand on Larry Smalls’ arm. “I’m pleased for you,” he said. “Does that mean you don’t want the elephant back?”

  “He’s Sunny’s now,” said Mr Smalls.

  “Sunny’s?” said Mr Grunt.

  Larry Smalls nodded. “And Bigg is in trouble! Bigg is in BIG trouble! I couldn’t be happier …” The delighted ex-circus owner turned and strode off, humming a victory march.

  Just then, a large woman with a large, wide-brimmed, flowery-crowned hat came bounding over, closely followed by an even fatter (and extremely muddy) pig. They both stared up at Fingers with interest.

  “Hello!” she snorted. “So they carted off the old man, did they?”

  “If you mean Lord Bigg, then yes,” said Sunny.

  “Excellent! Excellent!” she snorted. “Glad to see the back of the pompous old plaster-face. All he cared about were his silly old birds.”

  Sunny didn’t know what to say, so said nothing.

  “I’m Lady Bigg,” said the woman, “but you can call me La-La! This little poppet is Poppet.” She pointed down at the far-from-little pig, who was still looking up at Fingers in amazement. She’d never seen such a big pig (or what she thought was a pig).

  “Oink,” said Poppet.

  “Trumpet,” said Fingers.

  “Oink,” said Poppet. She was in love.

  La-La Lady Bigg looked around. “Peach!” she called. “PEACH!”

  The red-haired butler appeared out of the chaos. “You yelled, m’lady?” he said.

  “You’re fired,” she said.

  Sunny was SHOCKED. She’d seemed such a nice lady and now she was kicking the butler out of his job.

  “You, Agnes, Handyman Jack, Sack and Mimi. The lot of you. You can leave any time you wish,” she went on.

  “We can?” said Peach, raising a bushy red eyebrow in surprise.

  “If you like. You’re welcome to stay if you want to, any of you, but otherwise you can just go!”

  Sunny smiled. Now she was making sense.

  “But our contracts, m’lady,” said Peach. “His Lordship made it absolutely clear that if we left we’d be in breach of contract, and t
hat he could sue us for every penny—”

  At that moment, the flames must have found a new batch of fireworks. There was a series of bang-bang-bangs and the skies filled with a whole new shower of multicoloured sparks.

  “Sue you for every penny you don’t have in the first place?” asked La-La.

  Peach smiled. “You have a point there, m’lady.”

  “And do you know where the contracts are, Peach?”

  The butler nodded.

  “Then tear ’em up, Peach! I’m moving out of the pigsty and back into the manor! With the boring old plaster-face out of the way, things are going to change around here.” Lady Bigg turned back to Sunny. “And who are you?” she asked. “You do look rather familiar … and I like your elephant.”

  “Thank you,” said Sunny. “And I like your pig.”

  “You’re not my son, are you? Only I lost him a long time back and he must be your age by now.”

  “No,” said Mrs Grunt, barging between them. “This is my boy, Sunny.”

  “Yes,” said Mr Grunt. “This is Sunny, our son.”

  “Just wondered,” said Lady Bigg with a shrug. “It’s nothing to get het up about, is it, Poppet?” She patted her beloved pig.

  Sunny was about to protest – what if he was Horace? – when La-La went on: “Whoever you are, you and your elephant and family and friends are all welcome to stay at Bigg Manor as long as you like. You all are.”

  There were claps and cheers and more whoops of delight, some from the servants, who Peach had just told about the tearing up of the contracts.

  Mimi turned to Sunny. “You know,” she said. “I might like it here if I don’t have to be the boot boy. I think I might stay.”