The Grunts In Trouble (9 page)

Mrs Grunt threw open an upstairs window. “Why have we stopped?” she demanded.

“Lunchtime,” said Sunny.

Now
Mr
Grunt threw open a downstairs window. “Why have we stopped?” he demanded.

“Lunchtime,” said Mrs Grunt.

“Good!” said Mr Grunt. “Make me an omelette, wife!” He pulled in his head and slammed the window shut.

“Make it yourself, mister!” shouted Mrs Grunt, slamming her window too.

In the end, Mr Grunt gathered some old fir cones from the forest floor while Sunny fed Clip and Clop. Mr Grunt then tossed the cones
into a blender, ready to make some woody soup or other. Unfortunately, he forgot to put the lid on, and bits of fir cone shot around the kitchen like pieces of shrapnel. Mrs Grunt screamed and dived under the kitchen table, letting out an even BIGGER scream when she landed on Sharpie, the stuffed hedgehog.

“What’s Sharpie doing under here?!” she yelped the moment Mr Grunt had fumbled with the off switch of the blender, and all was quiet.

“Not a lot, I expect,” said Mr Grunt. “He’s dead.”

“I mean, who put him here?” said Mrs Grunt, rubbing her arm where the spines had gone in.

“Then say what you mean, wife!” Mr Grunt grunted.

“I just did,” said Mrs Grunt.

“Oh, well done!” said Mr Grunt. “Do you want a medal?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I can’t make you one because I’m too busy
making lunch because my wife is too lazy to do it
,” said Mr Grunt with enough menace in his voice to frighten the weevils in the cheese. (To be fair, though, cheese weevils are easily frightened, or so I’ve heard.)

“Too busy shooting chunks of fir cone about the place, more like!” said Mrs Grunt. “And I still want to know why you put Sharpie under the table.”

“What makes you think it was me, wife?”

“Well, I didn’t do it, and Sharpie’s dead, so he can’t have walked there by himself … so
that leaves you, mister!” said Mrs Grunt.

“What about Sunny?”

Mrs Grunt gave a puzzled frown. “He’s not dead,” she snapped.

“I mean, who’s to say that
Sunny
didn’t move him?” said Mr Grunt.

“Because Sunny isn’t an idiot,” said Mrs Grunt.

Mr Grunt slammed the lid on the top of the blender, trapping what remained of the fir cones. “Are you saying that I am?” he demanded.

“That you are what?”

“An idiot!”

“Are you call me an idiot?” Mrs Grunt bristled.

“I was calling
me
an idiot!” said Mr Grunt. “No, I mean, I was asking to know whether
you
were calling me an idiot.”

“Work it out for yourself,” said Mrs Grunt, adding the words “you idiot” under her breath. They were drowned out by the noise of the blender when Mr Grunt hit the on switch again. 

Chapter Nine

One Rung at a Time

I
t was with only a slight tummy ache that Sunny set Clip and Clop off again along the track after lunch. It was late afternoon when they left the forest, the trees as close together at the fringes as in its very heart.

Because of the nature of the map – it only showing landmarks to guide them by, leaving out everything else in between – it was impossible to gauge time and distances. On the map, for example, the distance between a blue house they’d had to turn right at and
a tunnel they’d had to pass through was the same (on paper) as the distance between the windmill and the three-arched bridge. But on the ground, it took hours longer to get from house to tunnel.

Once out of the forest and following the road to the right (which was east), Sunny was on the lookout for what looked on the map like a large column with a statue on top. That should be easy enough to spot, he thought. And easy enough as it was – for reasons that will soon become clear – it looked rather different from the picture. There was something like a lay-by – a parking place and resting spot – at the side of the road, where the side of the hill behind had been carved out into a semicircle, with a low stone wall running along the base. In the middle of this area was the impressive column, which was about twenty metres tall.

Sunny led the donkeys into the lay-by, and stood and looked up at the statue on top of the column. It was of a man with side-whiskers and a big top hat. He appeared to be holding a giant bunch of wilted flowers in his right hand. Unlike the column, statue and surrounding wall – which were all obviously made of stone – the wilting flower-like-thingummies were made of some kind of metal. Only they weren’t supposed to be flowers, of course. This was a statue of one of the early Lord Biggs, proudly clutching a handful of his railings, and they had wilted ten years and a week after they’d been made.

Sunny wasn’t familiar with how the Bigg family had made their fortune, so might not have known this was a statue of one of the Biggs if it weren’t for three things.

Firstly, the statue of this particular Lord
Bigg looked extraordinarily like the Lord Bigg he’d come face-to-face with in Sack’s potting shed back at Bigg Manor (though it didn’t have little stone sticking-plaster crosses all over its stone face).

Secondly, there was a big plaque screwed into the base of the column, which read: “LORD BIGG: He Made Our Cliff Tops Safe”. (Well, what it actually said was: “LORD BIGG: He Mad Our li ps Safe”, because some of the letters had worn away.)

And thirdly, dotted all around the semicircle of the lay-by were handwritten placards that read: “BIGG AIN’T BEST”. One placard was even tied round the statue’s neck with old blue nylon rope. The statue’s stone hat was also partially covered by an orange-and-white traffic cone, which had been plonked on top of it at a jaunty angle.

“Mr Smalls,” said Sunny to himself, a slight smile appearing on his lips. He couldn’t help having a sneaking admiration for the man (in much the same way that Larry Smalls had had a sneaking admiration for Lord Bigg when he mistakenly thought that he was the ex-boxer Barney “The Bruiser” Brown).

“What?” said Mr Grunt, tumbling out of the caravan. When he picked himself up, he found himself looking up at the statue with the traffic cone headgear. “Who’s the wizard?” he asked.

“Lord Bigg,” said Sunny. “Not the latest Lord Bigg. Not the one I met, but another one.”

Mr Grunt looked at him blankly. He had
no
idea what the boy was on about. “We’ll stop here for the night,” he announced. “Tomorrow we collect Fingers.”

“Fingers?” asked Sunny.

“Fingers.” Mr Grunt nodded.

“Fingers?” asked Sunny. Again.

“The elephant,” said Mr Grunt.

“That’s a funny name for an elephant,” said Sunny.

“Know many elephants, do you?” asked Mr Grunt, pleased with himself for his quick thinking and clever comment.

“Aren’t they usually called Jumbo, or, er …?” Sunny couldn’t think of any elephant names other than Jumbo, so he stopped there.

Very little traffic passed that way that night, and even Sunny slept soundly until he was awoken by the pop-pop-pop of a passing motorcycle at around three o’clock in the morning. Luckily, he managed to get back to sleep.

First up, Sunny went outside to see what
Clip and Clop were up to (which turned out to be chewing things), only to come face-to-face with a middle-aged man with snow-white hair, a yellow checked waistcoat and an arm in plaster.

“Mornin’,” said the man. “You’ve gotta be Sunny!”

“How do you mean?” asked Sunny.

“The way Mimi described your mobile home and your – er – blue dress an’ that,” said the man, finding it difficult to take his eyes off Sunny’s head, with his sticky-up hair and wonky ears (which were probably something else Mimi had mentioned).

“You know Mimi?” asked Sunny. The world somehow felt that bit sunnier to Sunny, simply at the mention of her name.

“Know her?” said the man. “I taught her everything she needed to know to become an excellent boot boy.” He put out a bandaged hand. (The one on the end of the arm that wasn’t in a plaster cast.) “I’m Jack the handyman,” he said, grasping Sunny’s hand, “also known as Handyman Jack.”

“You work at Bigg Manor?” Sunny asked.

“Yes. I used to be boot boy until Mimi took
over,” he explained.

“So what brings you this far?” asked Sunny.

“Far?” said Jack, raising a snow-white eyebrow. “If you carry on down this road another half-mile and take a right, you’ll find yourself on the edge of the Bigg estate.”

“Oh,” said Sunny. The map had given no suggestion of that. They must have been going around in circles.

“I’ve been instructed to clear up this mess,” said Jack, looking around at the “BIGG AIN’T BEST”s dotted all over the place.

“I see you brought a ladder,” said Sunny, looking at Jack the handyman’s vehicle. It was an adult-sized black-framed tricycle with a matching black metal trailer attached to the back, with a large number of ladders either side and a heap of tools in the middle.

“I certainly came prepared,” said Jack.

“Would you like a hand?” asked Sunny, looking at the bandage and the plaster cast. “I don’t think they’ll be awake for a while.” He jerked his head in the direction of the caravan.

Jack tilted his whole body back to look to the very top of the column. “I could do with someone holding the ladder when I go up there,” he said.

“I’d be happy to,” said Sunny.

Handyman Jack had to fit all the ladders together to make one long one to reach all the way up to the statue. He slipped them into position quickly and efficiently (despite the plastered arm and bandaged hand), but Sunny still felt a little doubtful.

“Will that be safe?” he asked.

“You sound like my wife,” said the handyman, referring to Agnes, the cook and maid back at Bigg Manor. “It’ll be a lot safer
than if you weren’t holding it for me, that’s for sure!”

Sunny gripped the sides of the ladder and gave it a shake. The top, some twenty or so metres above them, wibbled and wobbled (though I’m not absolutely sure “wibbled” is a real word).

“Here I go!” said Jack. “That Larry Smalls has a lot to answer for! If I break my neck, there’s only him to blame!” He sounded very cheerful about it. When Jack’s feet were on the fifth or sixth rung – level with Sunny’s eyes – the boy found himself staring at the shiniest pair of black lace-up shoes he’d ever seen.

Shiny black shoes.

He also noticed that Jack was wearing one spotted sock and one plain. He found his thoughts returning to his one memory of his father.

“Jack?” he called up, almost afraid of the answer before he’d even asked the question.

“Yes, Sunny?” Jack called back down.

“Do you have any children?”

“No,” said Jack.

No?
thought Sunny.
Oh
, thought Sunny. Then another thought occurred to him. “Did you ever lose any?” he asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“I mean, I know you just said you don’t have any children but I was wondering if you meant that you don’t have any children
now
. That you might have had one once and – er – lost it,” said Sunny.

“Oh, like His Lordship, you mean?” asked
Jack. “No.”

Like His Lordship?

“What’s that about Lord Bigg?” asked Sunny, tightening his grip on the ladder, making his knuckles whiten.

Jack kept on climbing as he talked. “He and Lady Bigg had a son but they mislaid him years ago. They can’t remember where they put him,” said Jack.

“How old is he?” asked Sunny.

Jack stopped. He’d now reached the halfway point, about fifteen metres above the ground. “Er, I suppose he must be about your age,” he said.

Sunny suddenly had a funny feeling in his tummy, and he was sure that it was nothing to do with the fir-cone soup this time. He simply stood there in silence, holding the ladder, while Jack reached the top and then
somehow managed to knock the orange-
and-white
traffic cone off the statue’s stone hat – “Watch out below!” – and cut the blue nylon rope off the placard around the statue’s neck. This done, he tossed the placard to the ground.

Caught in a tiny eddy of air, it spun over to the Grunts’ caravan and landed on its roof, before skittering to the ground with a thwack. As Jack made his way back down the ladder, Sunny spoke again. “What’s Lord Bigg’s son’s name?” he asked.

“Horace,” said Jack.

“You remember him?”

“Course I do. My wife, Agnes, used to look after him sometimes. Wash him. Change him. Sing to him.”

Just as Handyman Jack said the words “sing to him”, his shiny shoes had reached Sunny’s eye level again.

“Sing to him?”

“Oh yes, my Agnes has the voice of an angel. She could sing you the list of anti-allergy pills and medicines she has to take, and it would sound beautiful.”

A man with shiny shoes.

A woman with the voice of an angel.

What if these memories weren’t of his actual mother and father, but memories of SERVANTS of his mother and father’s? What if he was the missing son of Lord and Lady Bigg!?!