The Grunts In Trouble (5 page)

In the girl’s hair was the biggest pink bow Sunny had ever seen. Yes, you guessed it: she was Lord Bigg’s boot boy, Mimi. She was skipping down the lane with two tiny hummingbirds buzzing around her head like the excited bees. On seeing this most amazing sight, she stopped in her tracks and her eyes widened behind the pink-tinted lenses of her pink-framed glasses.

Waves of her cloying home-made rose-petal perfume wafted through the air. Mrs Grunt
hated
the smell. Mr Grunt couldn’t smell
anything except BEE. And Sunny thought it was rather nice.

But the bees?

The bees?

They LOVED IT!

Before anyone quite knew what was happening, they’d wiped themselves off Mr Grunt’s face – as if he’d had an instant, magical shave – and were heading for Mimi faster than Sunny could shout, “Run for your life!”

Chapter Five

Attack

S
ack the gardener was hiding in the potting shed and he didn’t want to come out. After being hit by a tennis ball-sized rock that some IDIOT had thrown over the wall, he’d gone to the shed to get ready for work, but ended up trying to get back to sleep. Lying among the terracotta pots, staring up at the cobwebby roof, he found himself inventing stuff. He just couldn’t stop it.

In the space of half an hour, he’d invented the collapsible ironing board, toast, fingerless
gloves and lightbulbs. Eventually, he decided that he’d better do some gardening. Unfortunately for Sack, although he really hated it, he was very good at gardening. If he threw away an apple core it would eventually grow into a tree. If he spat out a grape pip, in next to no time a vine would start curling out of the ground where it landed. He had what his gran called “green fingers”.

Sack’s gran (Granny Sack) was not very good at telling greens from browns, or recognising people’s faces unless they were pushed up very close to her own, but she was right about the green fingers part. It’s a phrase that describes someone who seems to have a natural ability to get plants to grow beautifully, without necessarily even trying that hard. (I meant the green-fingered folk don’t have to try hard. The
plants have to, of course. They always do. All that turning-sunlight-into-food and stuff.)

So when Sack had to garden – when there was no way out of it – he did it very well. He had just picked up his least favourite garden tools and put them in his least favourite wheelbarrow and was wheeling it across the loathsome front lawn to one of his least favourite flowerbeds when he heard Mimi.

She was sprinting down the road the other side of the wall, wailing as she went. Or was it a word? What was she saying? Was it “
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesss
!
”?

The walls around the Bigg Manor estate were high: brick-built with no obvious
footholds
or hand-holds. Those gates with their fancy gold-topped spikes were there for a reason and not just for show. When they were closed, entrance was pretty much by invitation – or by ladder – only.

Or would have been, if there hadn’t been a hole in the wall, hidden on both sides by evergreen bushes. The hole was so well hidden that Lord Bigg himself didn’t know about it. But the servants, Peach, Agnes, Handyman Jack, Sack and Mimi, knew about it. And it was through this hole in the wall that Mimi suddenly appeared – well,
charged
– still crying, “
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesss
!”

Sack watched in amazement as the
bright-pink
, rose-petal-smelling, big-bowed Mimi was pursued across the lawn by a swarm
of eager bees. Hummingbirds Frizzle and Twist hovered around her ears, snapping at the buzzing insects with their tiny beaks. Moments later, a boy in a blue dress appeared through the hole, clutching the biggest jar of honey Sack had ever seen, and waving a spoon in the air.

Sunny had a dozen or so bees buzzing around him, but they obviously found Mimi
far
more interesting. Then he spotted the fish pond. There was a big lake in the grounds of Bigg Manor, but that was round the back of the house. Here at the front there was a large, formal, circular stone fish pond. It had a fountain shaped like a dolphin in the middle, which had long since stopped squirting water.

“The pond!” Sunny shouted.

“Jump into the pond!”

He wasn’t sure whether Mimi had heard him. She certainly didn’t veer off in that direction. So he shouted it a few more times: “Jump into the pond! Jump into the pond!”

Finally, Mimi seemed to get the message. Flapping her arms as she ran, she zigzagged across the grass, then with one last cry of “
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesss
!
” she threw herself into the water with an almighty SPLASH! A startled goldfish or two found themselves momentarily in mid-air, and some lily pads flew around like plates in a Greek restaurant, then all was still.

At first, Mimi kept her head above water, but the bees still swarmed around her. It was only when she ducked it below the surface that the bees lost interest and looked around for somewhere else to go. It was then that Sunny lobbed the huge jar of honey high in the air in a graceful arc. It landed on the gravel drive a fair distance away, breaking the glass and revealing a wonderful, golden, gloopy mass of honey.
Now
he had the bees’ attention. They forgot all about Mimi and buzzed over to the honey.

Sunny and Sack reached the pond at about the same time. Frizzle and Twist hovered above the water where Mimi’s head had disappeared moments before, their wings flapping at such a speed they seemed a blur.

As Sunny and Lord Bigg’s gardener leaned over the stone surround, Mimi broke through
the surface of the water, gasping for air. Sack took one hand and Sunny the other and together they heaved her out on to the grass. She couldn’t have looked more soaked. Her clothes clung to her like a flabby second skin, her hair dripped straight and long, and her once-proud bow looked more like a squashed, pink, soggy
something
. And gone was the smell of her rose-petal scent, to be replaced by the faintest whiff of pond water.

The first thing Mimi did was look around nervously for the bees through the pink-tinted lenses of her pink-framed spectacles.

“Don’t worry about them,” said Sunny, pointing towards the broken honey jar on the driveway. “That should keep them busy for a while.”

Mimi’s whole body suddenly seemed to sag and she lowered herself on to the stone rim of the pond, sitting down with a bump.

“Thanks,” she said, looking up at Sunny, who was panting from the chase. “Thanks for rescuing me.”

“Rescuing?”

“For suggesting I jump in the pond. I would never have thought of it,” said Mimi. She seemed to be taking in the boy’s appearance for the first time: the sticky-up hair, the
sticky-out
ears and the blue dress. “I’m Mimi.”

“I’m Sunny,” said Sunny. “Pleased to meet you.”

“And I’m Sack,” said the gardener. “We’d better get away from here before His Lordship starts wondering what’s going on.’

Sack headed off in the direction of his potting shed, with Sunny and Mimi following close behind. Every step she made was accompanied by a squelch from the water in
her shoes.

“Do you know the man with the beard?” Mimi asked Sunny.

“What man?” asked Sunny.

“The man with the beard of bees that decided to chase me?”

“Oh,” said Sunny, looking a little crestfallen. “He’s my dad. He doesn’t usually go around with a beard of bees. I’m pretty sure this was his first time. He kicked an electricity pylon that annoyed them, and they took a liking to his face—”

“Until I came along,” said Mimi as she squelched.

“Well, you do have a much nicer face,” said Sunny, then turned an interesting shade of pink when he realised what he’d just said.

“You think so?” she asked.

“Yes.” He blushed some more. “And
obviously the bees thought so too. And you smell – well, you smell
ed
– fantastic.”

“You liked that? It’s my very own
home-made
rose-petal scent.”