The Grunts All at Sea

by Philip Ardagh

  “Sorry!” Sunny called out after her.

  The lady on the bike looked back, her earring catching the light. “No worries,” she said, and kept on pedalling.

  The second tyre arched beautifully through the clear blue sky before knocking Martha clean off her seat and into the air, leaving the riderless motorbike to veer out of control off the cobbled street.

  “POGI!” wailed Mr Grunt.

  “Whoaaaaah!” wailed the POGI (which was a first).

  The motorbike careered into a huge pile of hairy-roped fishing nets, the sidecar flying free, and came to an abrupt halt with an ominous judder.

  There was silence but for the laughing of seagulls

  Mr Grunt turned to Mrs Grunt. “I’m proud of you, wife.”

  Mrs Grunt gave the biggest of yellow-and-green-teethed smiles.

  Mimi was already rushing down the road towards the bike, Frizzle and Twist on course above her. Mr and Mrs Grunt were soon following as fast as their legs could carry them. Sunny went in search of the POGI.

  Max’s worst injury seemed to be a little whiplash, dented pride and the loss of one jet-black walrus moustache. In fact, when Mr Grunt managed to disentangle Martha from the mess of netting – where she, too, had landed – she appeared to have reclaimed it, but only when the visor of her full-face crash helmet was in the down position. It was stuck to the front.

  “A strange idea for a disguise,” said Officer Needie, the island’s only policeman, who’d heard the commotion from the kitchen of his tiny Police House and had rushed outside to join the excitement. He peeled the stick-on moustache off the see-through plastic. “Who should I be arresting here?”

  “These two,” said Mimi, indicating Max and Martha, “for attempted kidnap, along with a man called Rodders Lasenby, who we have under citizen’s arrest back on our boat moored in Hydrock Cove.” She thought it best not to mention Mrs Grunt’s many-knotted ropes and the sock-in-the-mouth treatment.

  “Did you say Rodders Lasenby?” said the policeman, looking SO excited.

  “No, we said spoon-feed my antelope with ketchup!” snapped Mrs Grunt.

  Fortunately, Officer Needie appeared not to hear her. He was busy removing a notebook from his back pocket and referring to something he’d written inside. “Mr Lasenby is wanted on the mainland for everything from stealing all his shareholders’ money to locking his DOM in the cellar.”

  “His DOM?” asked Mimi.

  The young policeman referred to his notebook. “Er … It stands for ‘Dear Old Mum’, apparently,” he said.

  “So he wasn’t joking!” Mimi gasped. “Is she OK?”

  “Fine.” The policeman nodded. “It says here that she managed to tunnel her way out of the cellar through the dirt floor, using only her false teeth.”

  “What a remarkable woman,” said Mimi.

  Officer Needie watched the tiny little hummingbirds hovering in a blur above her pink-bespectacled, pink-bowed head. “Quite,” he said. “Would you mind helping me take these two to the island lock-up …? We don’t have much crime in these parts and I’m the only one on duty.”

  “Happy to,” said Mrs Grunt. “Can I throw another tyre at them first?”

  “Best not,” said the policeman.

  “Pity,” said Mr Grunt. “The old saddlebag is an excellent shot.”

  Sunny, meanwhile, had found the POGI, who’d rolled some distance from his would-be kidnappers and come to rest just around the corner, past a shop selling buckets, spades and rubber rings, against a large metal bollard.

  “POGI!” cried Sunny. “Are you all right?”

  “POGI?” said the POGI, sounding confused.

  He was lying on his side in his barrel, but managed to get to his feet. Then it happened. Hitting the bollard had damaged the barrel and one of the metal hoops fell off, causing the whole thing to fall apart, to reveal –

  “JEREMY?!” said Sunny with a gasp.

  And sure enough, there, right there in front of Sunny – in just a pair of snazzy red shorts and a string vest – stood Jeremy, the little man who lived in a fibreglass tomato, who’d once kicked Mr Grunt in the shins. Very hard.

  “Hello, Sunny,” said Jeremy, more than a little sheepishly in his usual voice, rather than the special one he’d used to say, “POGI.”

  Sunny gasped. He remembered having said to Mimi that the POGI must be the size of Jeremy … and it had turned out to be him. “You’re the POGI?” he said in amazement.

  “No, not exactly,” said the ex-circus-performer.

  “So what’s going on?” Sunny demanded. “Why was Dad hired to get you to the island?”

  Jeremy looked at him and sighed.

  “And why did you only ever say POGI?” Sunny added.

  “If I’d said anything else, one of you might have recognised my voice,” said Jeremy at last. Despite the shorts and string vest, he looked very naked without his barrel. “Do you know what a decoy is?”

  Sunny had a sudden memory of a very lifelike wooden duck that Mr Grunt had once found in a pond and thrown at a passing chef, in an attempt to knock his funny-looking chef’s hat off. Mr Grunt had explained that the pretend duck was a decoy duck, designed to attract other ducks, which duck-hunters would then shoot.

  “You’re a pretend Person Of Great Importance designed to attract the real Person Of Great Importance?” he asked.

  “No, not exactly,” said Jeremy, who’d now plonked himself down on the cobbles and was leaning against the bollard, pieces of broken barrel littering the ground around him, like the peel off some large, wooden fruit. “Certain people know that the POGI has to get to the island. My job is to pretend to be the POGI and to attract all the attention so the real POGI can reach here undetected.”

  “Well, it worked with Rodders Lasenby,” said Sunny. “And Max and Martha!”

  “It’s been amazing,” said Jeremy. “And I feel bad about it now. I don’t think anyone believed that your father would succeed in getting me here in a million years!”

  “You mean—”

  “Everyone thought I’d have been captured a long time ago.”

  “Dad is going to be SO angry when he finds out,” said Sunny, peering around the corner, where he could see Mr Grunt talking to the policeman. “What about this Mrs Bayliss we’re going to see?”

  “That’s the point,” said Jeremy. “There is no Mrs Bayliss. The real POGI is making his or her way to the island, but not to see this made-up person!”

  “Made-up?” asked Sunny.

  The little man sighed. “News somehow leaked out that the real POGI was coming to the island for a secret meeting but by then it was too late to rearrange the meeting place. So they had to come up with a fake POGI – me – meeting a non-existent person, Mrs Bayliss, drawing the attention away––”

  “– from the real POGI reaching the island,” Sunny interrupted. “I get it, I get it. But why not have a fake Mrs Bayliss too?”

  “I’ve already told you, Sunny.” Jeremy sighed. “No one thought I’d get this far.”

  Just then, Officer Needie marched past holding Max by the scruff of the neck, closely followed by Mr and Mrs Grunt, who were carrying Martha sideways, like an ironing board. Mr Grunt was at the front and Mrs Grunt at the foot end.

  Mr Grunt turned to look at Sunny, who quickly stood in front of the seated Jeremy.

  “How’s the POGI?” asked Mr Grunt.

  “Fine,” said Sunny.

  “Good,” said Mr Grunt. “We’ll be back in a minute.”

  With Martha and Max safely locked up in the tiny island police station – their moustache returned to them by a kindly policeman – Mr Grunt decided it was time to make a speech. He stood on an empty fish crate.

  “My job was simply to safely deliver the POGI.” He paused and looked around. “Where is the POGI?” he asked.

  “Gone––” began Sunny.

  “– to buy cheese,” Mimi added. (Sunny had quickly explained the whole POGI/Jeremy, Jeremy/POGI situation
to her, before telling her his plan. This had required some frantic running around and finding of things while Mr and Mrs Grunt were with Officer Needie.)

  “Shame,” said Mr Grunt. “He’s missing my speech.”

  “Not fair,” muttered Mrs Grunt. “Why can’t I miss your rotten speech?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  Mr Grunt stared at her as if she were a bag of broken biscuits, and tried again. “My job was simply to safely deliver the POGI and to keep him out of the hands of the … the …” He tried to think of the right words.

  “Handymen?” suggested Mrs Grunt. “Glove-monkeys?”

  “Glove-monkeys?”

  “Glove-monkeys!!!”

  “… evil-doers,” said Mr Grunt. “Out of the hands of the evil-doers who didn’t want him to reach Mrs Bayliss safely.”

  Mrs Grunt started clapping.

  “I haven’t finished, wife!” he hissed.

  “Then get on with it!” said Mrs Grunt. “Eggnog.”

  One or two curious islanders had stopped to see what was going on. Mr Grunt produced a small fish from his trouser pocket and threw it at them, before continuing. “But we managed to do a whole lot more than that. Thanks to you, and Fingers and Speedy McGinty, we actually caught the—”

  “Dandruff? Chickenpox?”

  “Villains,” said Mr Grunt. “We caught the villains. So well done, all!”

  “Have you finished now?” asked Mrs Grunt.

  “Now.” Mr Grunt nodded.

  She started clapping wildly.

  “Now,” said Mr Grunt beaming with pride, “let’s find the POGI and take him to Mrs Bayliss.”

  The raggle-taggle group made their way back up the cobbled street, past the fishermen’s cottages and Stan’s Motor Repairs, where Sunny and Mimi stopped briefly to return the two borrowed tyres. (They’d been carrying one each, and they’d found them surprisingly heavy to lug up a hill.) Now they arrived at the cottage in Mr Grunt’s written instructions. The one where the made-up Mrs Bayliss supposedly lived.

  “Look,” said Sunny, pointing to a postcard which he himself had pinned to the front door not five minutes earlier. “It’s addressed to you, Dad.” He pulled out the drawing pin – which Mimi had taken from the notice board outside the police station – and handed the postcard (a free one from the island’s tourist information kiosk) to Mr Grunt. It read:

  Mr Grunt wiped the corner of his eye with a very grubby sleeve. He sniffed. “That’s nice,” he said. “Truth be told, I grew rather fond of the little fellow.”

  “How do we know that it’s from him?” Mrs Grunt demanded.

  Mimi shot Sunny a worried look.

  “Whatcha mean, wife?” demanded Mr Grunt.

  “What if the note was actually written by one of them glove-monkeys?”

  “HA!” said Mr Grunt (and about time too). “I can tell it was written by the POGI because it was pinned on the door at POGI height. Because it is written in teeny-weeny ankle-snapping handwriting and the POGI is tiny. And …” Mr Grunt trailed off. He appeared to have run out of ideas.

  “And what?” said Mrs Grunt.

  “And it’s signed by him,” said Sunny, pointing at the signature.

  “Precisely!” said Mr Grunt. “It says ‘The POGI’ at the bottom.”

  “Good point, husband,” said Mrs Grunt. “I really can be stupid sometimes.”

  Mr Grunt didn’t disagree with that (except perhaps for the “sometimes” part).

  Mimi and Sunny sighed with relief.

  Speedy McGinty was happy to captain The Merry Dance on its return voyage and, with Rodders Lasenby now crammed into the island’s one holding cell with Max and Martha – whose real names later turned out to be Michael and Mandy Jinx – it was no one but friends and family on board. And more family than Sunny had bargained for.

  The penny finally dropped when he was bringing Speedy McGinty a snack in the wheelhouse on their second day back at sea.

  “I’ve just realised why you look so familiar!” said Sunny. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”

  “You saw my picture in a magazine, perhaps?” she said.

  Sunny handed her a plate – a real plate, not a hubcap – with a sandwich on it.

  “Thank you,” she said cautiously, taking it with one hand while keeping the other on the wheel. She eyed the snack suspiciously.

  “It’s OK,” said Sunny with a grin. “It’s cheese. I made it with the remains of the POGI’s cheese supplies he left behind.”

  Jeremy had decided to stay on the island until his attempted kidnappers came to court. He fancied some sun and sand. It got very stuffy living in a windowless fibreglass fruit.

  “Thank you,” said Speedy McGinty again. And this time she meant it.

  “You have Dad’s eyes,” said Sunny. “They’re the same unusual colour!”

  Speedy McGinty stared down at her plate. She wouldn’t meet his gaze.

  “There’s a strong … what’s the phrase? Family resemblance. You and Dad are related, aren’t you? That’s why you care so much for his safety. That’s why you came to warn us in your plane.”

  Speedy McGinty looked at the boy for a while and said nothing. Eventually, she spoke. “Yes,” she said. “We’re brother and sister.”

  “Wow,” said Sunny. “Wow.” He looked out of the window at the horizon. Nothing but sea and sky. Then another thought struck him. “He doesn’t know, does he?” he said.

  “No,” said Speedy McGinty at last. “When we were kids, I was sent away for treatment for these legs of mine, but I ended up staying. I grew up there and married the most handsome man I’ve ever seen in my life, before or since: Johnson McGinty.” She stared up at the roof of the wheelhouse, but that wasn’t what she saw in her mind’s eye. “He was the finest soup salesman in the West. Won the Golden Ladle eight years in a row. I kept his name even after he died – it was an accident between two tanker trucks, one carrying pea and ham and the other carrying mulligatawny – and I finally came to live back here …”

  “Then one day Dad turns up and tries to steal your door knocker and you realised who it was,” said Sunny. His eyes glistened.

  “Recognised him at once, though he didn’t recognise me,” said Speedy. “As odd lookin’ as ever. That’s my Cankle, I thought. And I was right. I didn’t tell him who I was, though. Too much time passed. Too much water under the bridge.”

  “Wow,” said Sunny (for the third time). Then he grinned. “Dad’s name is Cankle?”

  “Sure is,” said Speedy McGinty. “Cankle Grunt.”

  “That’s cool,” said Sunny. “What’s yours?”

  Speedy McGinty fixed his eyes with hers. “My name,” she said, “is Speedy McGinty, wife of the late, much missed Johnson McGinty. Got that, Sunny?”

  “Got it,” said Sunny.

  “Got what?” asked Mrs Grunt, bursting through the door. “Smallpox? Bedbugs? Time on your hands?”

  “HA!” said Mr Grunt from the deck. “Come and feed that elephant of yours, will you, Sunny? He’s giving me the hungry look.”

  “On my way,” said Sunny. He sighed, but inside he felt strangely happy.

  A few days later, when they arrived back at Isaac’s Port, Ma Brackenbury came out of her sentry-like box to greet them. Speedy McGinty – who, between you and me, was born Miss Kitty Grunt – made steering The Merry Dance into the harbour look easy. Hawsers were thrown and in next to no time the boat was safely moored in place.

  (OK, OK, so you’re wondering why Mr Grunt had the strange name Cankle while his sister was simply called Kitty. The answer is simple: Old Mr Grunt got to name their boy Cankle, while it was his wife who named their girl Kitty. See? Obvious.)

  “Where’s the man in the fancy uniform?” asked Ma Brackenbury when she saw someone else was piloting the boat.

  “Jail,” said Mimi. “Or he soon will be.”

  Ma Brackenbury cackled. “Good,” she said. “I’ll bet it was him who had old
Captain Haunch nobbled, so’s he could take his place on your boat.” She banged her scrimshaw-headed walking stick on the harbour wall with a clack.

  “Nobbled?” asked Sunny.

  “Someone slipped something into his drink,” said Ma Brackenbury. She still had the empty, long-stemmed clay pipe between her teeth and noisily sucked in air. “He fell down the stairs then slept like a baby for two days, he did. Woke up with a headache as bad as the smell of a merman’s armpit.”

  “And that’s bad?” said Mimi.

  “Terrrible,” said Ma Brackenbury, making the word sound like it had three “r”s in it. (Go on. You can count them.)

  Mr Grunt managed to climb up the iron rungs of an inner harbour ladder while carrying Speedy McGinty, which is easier said than done. Fortunately the tide was high, so the climb was a short one.

  Fingers reached up with his trunk from the deck of the boat and placed the folded wheelchair on the harbour wall.

  Mimi unfolded it and wheeled it into position. Mr Grunt placed Speedy in it. “Thanks,” she said.

  “Thank YOU,” said Mr Grunt. “We’d never have got the POGI to the island if it weren’t for you.”

  Mrs Grunt didn’t like not being the centre of her husband’s attention, so chose to change the subject by pushing a passing fisherman off the harbour wall into the sea.

  There was a terrible SPLASH!

  “Sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t help myself.” She gave what she thought was a girlish giggle (which was not a pretty sound).

  “You all right?” Ma Brackenbury called out.

  “Yur, fine,” called out the sodden fisherman, clambering back on to the wall.

  Once Fingers, Clip and Clop and the caravan were back on dry land, with more than a little help from a number of Isaac’s Port’s fishermen – including Wellum and Mollusc, of course – it was time to head back to Bigg Manor, via Hutton’s Vale, to drop off Speedy McGinty at her bungalow.