by Roald Dahl
'I'm still going!' came the old screechy voice from up above. 'Give me another dose, my boy, and let's go through the roof!'
'No, Grandma, no!' George called back. 'You're busting up the whole house!'
'To heck with the house!' she shouted. 'I want some fresh air! I haven't been outside for twenty years!'
'By golly, she is going through the roof!' George told himself. He ran downstairs. He rushed out of the back door into the yard. It would be simply awful, he thought, if she bashed up the roof as well. His father would be furious. And he, George, would get the blame. He had made the medicine.
He had given her too much. 'Don't come through the roof, Grandma,' he prayed. 'Please don't.'
The Brown Hen
George stood in the farmyard looking up at the roof. The old farmhouse had a fine roof of pale red tiles and tall chimneys.
There was no sign of Grandma. There was only a song-thrush sitting on one of the chimney-pots, singing a song. The old wurzel's got stuck in the attic, George thought. Thank goodness for that.
Suddenly a tile came clattering down from the roof and fell into the yard. The song-thrush took off fast and flew away.
Then another tile came down.
Then half a dozen more.
And then, very slowly, like some weird monster rising up from the deep, Grandma's head came through the roof . . .
Then her scrawny neck . . .
And the tops of her shoulders . . .
'How'm I doing, boy!' she shouted. 'How's that for a bash up?'
'Don't you think you'd better stop now, Grandma?' George called out . . .
'I have stopped!' she answered. 'I feel terrific! Didn't I tell you I had magic powers! Didn't I warn you I had wizardry in the tips of my fingers! But you wouldn't listen to me, would you? You wouldn't listen to your old Grandma!'
'You didn't do it, Grandma,' George shouted back to her. 'I did it! I made you a new medicine!'
'A new medicine? You ? What rubbish!' she yelled.
'I did! I did!' George shouted.
'You're lying as usual!' Grandma yelled. 'You're always lying!'
'I'm not lying, Grandma. I swear I'm not.'
The wrinkled old face high up on the roof stared down suspiciously at George. 'Are you telling me you actually made a new medicine all by yourself?' she shouted.
'Yes, Grandma, all by myself.'
'I don't believe you,' she answered. 'But I'm very comfortable up here. Fetch me a cup of tea.'
A brown hen was pecking about in the yard close to where George was standing. The hen gave him an idea. Quickly, he uncorked the medicine bottle and poured some of the brown stuff into the spoon. 'Watch this, Grandma!' he shouted. He crouched down, holding out the spoon to the hen.
'Chicken,' he said. 'Chick-chick-chicken. Come here. Have some of this.'
Chickens are stupid birds, and very greedy. They think everything is food. This one thought the spoon was full of corn. It hopped over. It put its head on one side and looked at the spoon. 'Come on, chicken,' George said. 'Good chicken. Chick-chick-chick.'
The brown hen stretched out its neck towards the spoon and went peck . It got a beakful of medicine.
The effect was electric.
'Oweee !' shrieked the hen and it shot straight up into the air like a rocket. It went as high as the house.
Then down it came again into the yard, splosh . And there it sat with its feathers all sticking straight out from its body. There was a look of amazement on its silly face. George stood watching it. Grandma up on the roof was watching it, too.
The hen got to its feet. It was rather shaky. It was making funny gurgling noises in its throat. Its beak was opening and shutting. It seemed like a pretty sick hen.
'You've done it in, you stupid boy!' Grandma shouted. 'That hen's going to die! Your father'll be after you now! He'll give you socks and serve you right!'
All of a sudden, black smoke started pouring out of the hen's beak.
'It's on fire!' Grandma yelled. 'The hen's on fire!'
George ran to the water-trough to get a bucket of water.
'That hen'll be roasted and ready for eating any moment!' Grandma shouted.
George sloshed the bucket of water over the hen. There was a sizzling sound and the smoke went away.
'Old hen's laid its last egg!' Grandma shouted. 'Hens don't do any laying after they've been on fire!'
Now that the fire was out, the hen seemed better. It stood up properly. It flapped its wings. Then it crouched down low to the ground, as though getting ready to jump. It did jump. It jumped high in the air and turned a complete somersault, then landed back on its feet.
'It's a circus hen!' Grandma shouted from the rooftop. 'It's a flipping acrobat!'
Now the hen began to grow.
George had been waiting for this to happen. 'It's growing!' he yelled. 'It's growing, Grandma! Look, it's growing!'
Bigger and bigger . . . taller and taller it grew. Soon the hen was four or five times its normal size.
'Can you see it, Grandma?!' George shouted.
'I can see it, boy!' the old girl shouted back. 'I'm watching it!'
George was hopping about from one foot to the other with excitement, pointing at the enormous hen and shouting, 'It's had the magic medicine, Grandma, and it's growing just like you did!'
But there was a difference between the way the hen was growing and the way Grandma grew. When Grandma grew taller and taller, she got thinner and thinner. The hen didn't. It stayed nice and plump all along.
Soon it was taller than George, but it didn't stop there. It went right on growing until it was about as big as a horse. Then it stopped.
'Doesn't it look marvellous, Grandma!' George shouted.
'It's not as tall as me!' Grandma sang out. 'Compared with me, that hen is titchy small! I am the tallest of them all!'
The Pig, the Bullocks, the Sheep, the Pony and the Nanny-goat
At that moment, George's mother came back from shopping in the village. She drove her car into the yard and got out. She was carrying a bottle of milk in one hand and a bag of groceries in the other.
The first thing she saw was the gigantic brown hen towering over little George. She dropped the bottle of milk.
Then Grandma started shouting at her from the rooftop, and when she looked up and saw Grandma's head sticking up through the tiles, she dropped the bag of groceries.
'How about that then, eh Mary?' Grandma shouted. 'I'll bet you've never seen a hen as big as that! That's George's giant hen, that is!'
'But . . . but . . . but . . .' stammered George's mother.
'It's George's magic medicine!' Grandma shouted. 'We've both of us had it, the hen and I!'
'But how in the world did you get up on the roof?' cried the mother.
'I didn't!' cackled the old woman. 'My feet are still standing on the floor in the living-room!'
This was too much for George's mother to understand. She just goggled and gaped. She looked as though she was going to faint.
A second later, George's father appeared. His name was Mr Killy Kranky. Mr Kranky was a small man with bandy legs and a huge head. He was a kind father to George, but he was not an easy person to live with because even the smallest things got him all worked up and excited. The hen standing in the yard was certainly not a small thing, and when Mr Kranky saw it he started jumping about as though something was burning his feet. 'Great heavens!' he cried, waving his arms. 'What's this? What's happened? Where did it come from? It's a giant hen! Who did it?'
'I did,' George said.
'Look at me !' Grandma shouted from the rooftop. 'Never mind about the hen! What about me ?'
Mr Kranky looked up and saw Grandma. 'Shut up, Grandma,' he said. It didn't seem to surprise him that the old girl was sticking up through the roof.
It was the hen that excited him. He had never seen anything like it. But then who had?
'It's fantastic!' Mr Kranky shouted, dancing round and round. 'It's c
olossal! It's gigantic! It's tremendous! It's a miracle! How did you do it, George?'
George started telling his father about the magic medicine. While he was doing this, the big brown hen sat down in the middle of the yard and went cluck-cluck-cluck . . . cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck .
Everyone stared at it.
When it stood up again, there was a brown egg lying there. The egg was the size of a football.
'That egg would make scrambled eggs for twenty people!' Mrs Kranky said.
'George!' Mr Kranky shouted. 'How much of this medicine have you got?'
'Lots,' George said. 'There's a big saucepanful in the kitchen, and this bottle here's nearly full.'
'Come with me!' Mr Kranky yelled, grabbing George by the arm. 'Bring the medicine! For years and years I've been trying to breed bigger and bigger animals. Bigger bulls for beef. Bigger pigs for pork. Bigger sheep for mutton . . .'
They went to the pigsty first.
George gave a spoonful of medicine to the pig.
The pig blew smoke from its nose and jumped about all over the place. Then it grew and grew.
In the end, it looked like this . . .
They went to the herd of fine black bullocks that Mr Kranky was trying to fatten for the market.
George gave each of them some medicine, and this is what happened . . .
Then the sheep . . .
He gave some to his grey pony, Jack Frost . . .
And finally, just for fun, he gave some to Alma, the nanny-goat . . .
A Crane for Grandma
Grandma, from high up on the rooftop, could see everything that was going on and she didn't like what she saw. She wanted to be the centre of attention and nobody was taking the slightest notice of her. George and Mr Kranky were running round and getting excited about the enormous animals. Mrs Kranky was washing up in the kitchen, and Grandma was all alone on the rooftop.
'Hey you!' she yelled. 'George! Get me a cup of tea this minute, you idle little beast!'
'Don't listen to the old goat,' Mr Kranky said. 'She's stuck where she is and a good thing, too.'
'But we can't leave her up there, dad,' George said. 'What if it rains?'
'George!' Grandma yelled. 'Oh, you horrible little boy! You disgusting little worm! Fetch me a cup of tea at once and a slice of currant cake!'
'We'll have to get her out, dad,' George said. 'She won't give us any peace if we don't.'
Mrs Kranky came outside and she agreed with George. 'She's my own mother,' she said.
'She's a pain in the neck,' Mr Kranky said.
'I don't care,' Mrs Kranky said. 'I'm not leaving my own mother sticking up through the roof for the rest of her life.'
So in the end, Mr Kranky telephoned the Crane Company and asked them to send their biggest crane out to the house at once.
The crane arrived one hour later. It was on wheels and there were two men inside it. The crane men climbed up on to the roof and put ropes under Grandma's arms. Then she was lifted right up through the roof . . .
In a way, the medicine had done Grandma good. It had not made her any less grumpy or bad-tempered, but it seemed to have cured all her aches and pains, and she was suddenly as frisky as a ferret. As soon as the crane had lowered her to the ground, she ran over to George's huge pony, Jack Frost, and jumped on to his back. This ancient old hag, who was now as tall as a house, then galloped about the farm on the gigantic pony, jumping over trees and sheds and shouting, 'Out of my way! Clear the decks! Stand back all you miserable midgets or I'll trample you to death!' and other silly things like that.
But because Grandma was now much too tall to get back into the house, she had to sleep that night in the hay-barn with the mice and the rats.
Mr Kranky's Great Idea
The next day, George's father came down to breakfast in a state of greater excitement than ever. 'I've been awake all night thinking about it!' he cried.
'About what, dad?' George asked him.
'About your marvellous medicine, of course! We can't stop now, my boy! We must start making more of it at once! More and more and more!'
The giant saucepan had been completely emptied the day before because there had been so many sheep and pigs and cows and bullocks to be dosed.
'But why do we need more, dad?' George asked. 'We've done all our own animals and we've made Grandma feel as frisky as a ferret even though she does have to sleep in the barn.'
'My dear boy,' cried Mr Killy Kranky, 'we need barrels and barrels of it! Tons and tons! Then we will sell it to every farmer in the world so that all of them can have giant animals! We will build a Marvellous Medicine Factory and sell the stuff in bottles at five pounds a time. We will become rich and you will become famous!'
'But wait a minute, dad,' George said.
'There's no waiting!' cried Mr Kranky, working himself up so much that he put butter in his coffee and milk on his toast. 'Don't you understand what this tremendous invention of yours is going to do to the world! Nobody will ever go hungry again!'
'Why won't they?' asked George.
'Because one giant cow will give fifty buckets of milk a day!' cried Mr Kranky, waving his arms. 'One giant chicken will make a hundred fried chicken dinners, and one giant pig will give you a thousand pork chops! It's tremendous, my dear boy! It's fantastic! It'll change the world.'
'But wait a minute, dad,' George said again.
'Don't keep saying wait a minute!' shouted Mr Kranky. 'There isn't a minute to wait ! We must get cracking at once!'
'Do calm down, my dear,' Mrs Kranky said from the other end of the table. 'And stop putting marmalade on your cornflakes.'
'The heck with my cornflakes!' cried Mr Kranky, leaping up from his chair. 'Come on, George! Let's get going! And the first thing we'll do is to make one more saucepanful as a tester.'
'But dad,' said little George. 'The trouble is . . .'
'There won't be any trouble, my boy!' cried Mr Kranky. 'How can there possibly be any trouble? All you've got to do is put the same stuff into the saucepan as you did yesterday. And while you're doing it, I'll write down each and every item. That's how we'll get the magic recipe!'
'But dad,' George said. 'Please listen to me.'
'Why don't you listen to him,' Mrs Kranky said. 'The boy's trying to tell you something.'
But Mr Kranky was too excited to listen to anyone except himself. 'And then,' he cried, 'when the new mixture is ready, we'll test it out on an old hen just to make absolutely sure we've got it right, and after that we'll all shout hooray and build the giant factory!'
'But dad . . .'
'Come on then, what is it you want to say?'
'I can't possibly remember all the hundreds of things I put into the saucepan to make the medicine,' George said.
'Of course you can, my dear boy,' cried Mr Kranky. 'I'll help you! I'll jog your memory! You'll get it in the end, you see if you don't! Now then, what was the very first thing you put in?'
'I went up to the bathroom first,' George said. 'I used a lot of things in the bathroom and on mummy's dressing-table.'
'Come on, then!' cried Mr Killy Kranky. 'Up we go to the bathroom!'
When they got there, they found, of course, a whole lot of empty tubes and empty aerosols and empty bottles. 'That's great,' said Mr Kranky. 'That tells us exactly what you used. If anything is empty, it means you used it.'
So Mr Kranky started making a list of everything that was empty in the bathroom. Then they went to Mrs Kranky's dressing-table. 'A box of powder,' said Mr Kranky, writing it down. 'Helga's hairset. Flowers of Turnips perfume. Terrific. This is going to be easy. Where did you go next?'
'To the laundry-room,' George said. 'But are you sure you haven't missed anything out up here, dad?'
'That's up to you, my boy,' Mr Kranky said. 'Have I?'
'I don't think so,' George said. So down they went to the laundry-room and once again Mr Kranky wrote down the names of all the empty bottles and cans. 'My goodness me, what a mass of st
uff you used!' he cried. 'No wonder it did magic things! Is that the lot?'
'No, dad, it's not,' George said, and he led his father out to the shed where the animal medicines were kept and showed him the five big empty bottles up on the shelf. Mr Kranky wrote down all their names.
'Anything else?' Mr Kranky asked.
Little George scratched his head and thought and thought but he couldn't remember having put anything else in.
Mr Killy Kranky leapt into his car and drove down to the village and bought new bottles and tubes and cans of everything on his list. He then went to the vet and got a fresh supply of all the animal medicines George had used.
'Now show me how you did it, George,' he said. 'Come along. Show me exactly how you mixed them all together.'
Marvellous Medicine Number Two
They were in the kitchen now and the big saucepan was on the stove. All the things Mr Kranky had bought were lined up near the sink.
'Come along, my boy!' cried Mr Killy Kranky. 'Which one did you put in first?'
'This one,' George said. 'Goldengloss Hair Shampoo.' He emptied the bottle into the pan.
'Now the toothpaste,' George went on . . . 'And the shaving soap . . . and the face cream . . . and the nail varnish . . .'
'Keep at it, my boy!' cried Mr Kranky, dancing round the kitchen. 'Keep putting them in! Don't stop! Don't pause! Don't hesitate! It's a pleasure, my dear fellow, to watch you work!'
One by one, George poured and squeezed the things into the saucepan. With everything so close at hand, the whole job didn't take him more than ten minutes. But when it was all done, the saucepan didn't somehow seem to be quite as full as it had been the first time.
'Now what did you do?' cried Mr Kranky. 'Did you stir it?'
'I boiled it,' George said. 'But not for long. And I stirred it as well.'
So Mr Kranky lit the gas under the saucepan and George stirred the mixture with the same long wooden spoon he had used before. 'It's not brown enough,' George said. 'Wait a minute! I know what I've forgotten!'
