“No, I haven’t seen any little girl’s faces around here. And I don’t know if you can defeat P’Klawz using a pretend sword,” said Ginalolobrigida.
The Tweed-Faced Boy nodded sadly. “I know. I’m not big enough to be much use yet.” Then he cheered up a bit – he was a brave young person. “Are you a llama in distress? Should I defend you?”
“I am in distress, but that is because I am missing my friend, Uncle Shawn. He has been taken away.”
Tweed-Faced Boy looked at her sharply and said, “Did you send him to the Institution?”
“We didn’t want to…”
Ginalolobrigida was about to explain that Uncle Shawn had asked to go when the boy started to shout, “People and llamas who send their friends to P’Klawz are horrible! I’m going to keep on looking for my sister. We care about each other – the way you should care about your friend.” And he climbed higher and higher into his tree, and soon was climbing into another and another, getting further away.
“Oh dear,” sighed Ginalolobrigida. “I’m too sad to even brush my fur.”
And she knew that the Tweed-Faced Boy was right. They had made a terrible mistake when they sent Uncle Shawn away.
SECTION THIRTEEN
In which there is a little bit of sadness and some very bad baking. And Badger Bill has an idea. It is a very good idea indeed. Hooray!
On Friday, Badger Bill got out of bed after not really sleeping. He went downstairs to find the house neat and tidy and empty. All the llamas had helped him to clean it and now they were too scared to come inside in case they made a mess.
Badger Bill didn’t go outside because he felt guilty for having phoned Dr P’Klawz, even though Uncle Shawn had asked him to. And not one of his friends was there to give him a hug.
Badger Bill had cooked and baked lots and lots of food on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, just to keep himself busy. Everything he cooked turned out sadly, though. He burned the toast. He boiled the ice cream. He fried the chocolate. And big, slow badger tears rolled down his big stripy nose and made everything taste salty.
“Oh, Uncle Shawn…” sighed Badger Bill. He went and sat in Uncle Shawn’s armchair and thought, “What would you do now?”
But he couldn’t think of anything.
His ears flopped miserably.
But then – he thought.
And then – he smiled.
And then – he knew!
“Uncle Shawn smiled when he went away. Uncle Shawn only smiles when he’s happy. And he winked at me. And he said the word PLAN.” Bill stood up and danced a little dance and his ears started to look like badger ears again. “UNCLE SHAWN HAS A PLAN!!!!”
Bill jumped and nearly hit his head on the ceiling he was so excited. “Or maybe … HE WANTS US TO HAVE A PLAN!” Bill thought of all history’s clever badgers and he stood up very straight and really believed that he could rescue his best friend, if he tried hard enough. “I will make a plan.” Maybe he could get a bit of help from his friends, too. “YES! We’ll make a plan! All of us together!”
He ran outside as fast as his short-but-handsome legs would take him and yelled, “EVERYONE!!! WE NEED A PLAN!!!”
Up in the corner of the ceiling in the farmhouse living room, a large and friendly spider called Claude bounced up and down on a length of spider silk and was very excited about what Bill and everyone else might plan. He also thought, “I wonder what Uncle Shawn has been doing all this time?”
SECTION FOURTEEN
In which – here is Uncle Shawn! This section contains smocks. And clogs. And dancing. This would please Claude the spider because he has lots of legs for dancing.
Uncle Shawn had been doing a lot.
All the llamas and especially Bill had looked miserable from their feet right up to their ears as he left on Monday, but Uncle Shawn couldn’t say, “Don’t worry! I have a plan!” P’Klawz couldn’t even suspect there might be a plan. Uncle Shawn needed to get all the way inside the Institution to see what was going on, so he had to let everything seem sad for a little while. Inside the grey van, he thought, “My plan isn’t exactly finished and maybe someone going behind locked gates and locked doors and a high fence should have all of a plan – especially if he will also be dealing with guards and a terrible man who hates happiness. But I’m sure that everything will work out well… Or almost sure, anyway.”
While the van drove to the Institution for Maximum Security and Unusualness Curing – which was beyond the village and behind the Droochit Hills – Dr P’Klawz tried to make Uncle Shawn miserable. “There will be nothing but grey porridge and a grey smock for you.” He tried grinning, but his grin was a bit small – like a little evil pudding basin.
Uncle Shawn crossed his long legs out in front of him and stretched, as if he was enjoying the ride. He hummed a little tune to himself.
“Stop humming!”
“I can’t help it,” Uncle Shawn said. “I always hum when I’m having a lovely time.”
“You’re not meant to be having a lovely time! You’re meant to be heartbroken and lonely and scared!”
“Oh, but that wouldn’t be any fun at all,” said Uncle Shawn. And then he leaned in close to P’Klawz and whispered, “You could do better than this and be much nicer. And you have until we reach the Institution to decide whether you will. After that, it will be too late.” And his very blue eyes looked right through P’Klawz and out the other side and made him shiver.
P’Klawz shook his head and said, “No, Uncle Shawn. It is too late for you. Soon I will have squished the happiest man in Scotland and I will take your farm from your stupid talking animals and build a new Institution on top of it! And I will keep building Institutions until there is no fun or happiness anywhere!”
“Oh dear.” Uncle Shawn frowned.
“Now you’re worried! Ha!” shouted P’Klawz.
“No,” said Uncle Shawn. “I am sorry. That is a very great shame for you.”
And then Uncle Shawn stared at P’Klawz’s hair that looked as if it had been painted on because it was painted on. It was just Hair In A Tin – as sold to gentlemen with reduced head foliage everywhere.
Uncle Shawn stared harder until P’Klawz could feel himself blushing. And then Uncle Shawn winked a very large wink aimed at the top of P’Klawz’s head and closed his eyes as if he felt like a comfy snooze.
After that, P’Klawz couldn’t grin even a tiny bit.
On Tuesday, Uncle Shawn woke up in one of the big, long dormitories of the Institution and discovered that all his clothes had been taken away and replaced with a grey inmate smock that didn’t fit very well and wasn’t very warm.
When Uncle Shawn put on the smock, he thought it looked so silly and felt so flippy-floppy and baggy that it made him giggle. And the wooden inmate clogs he had to wear on his feet were so clacketty that he couldn’t help dancing. This also helped him to get warm in the chilly room.
The other inmates looked at him while he danced and were very puzzled. Some of them had been in P’Klawz’s Institutions for so long, they had forgotten what fun looked like.
They watched as Uncle Shawn clacketty-clicketty danced along the corridor and then they listened while he sang in the cold shower and made brrrrr noises as he dried himself with the thin grey inmate towel, then came back and announced, “That’s the most wonderful shower I have ever had!”
One of the guards said, “Don’t you worry – the grey porridge will soon change how cheerful you are.”
But when Uncle Shawn danced into the long, grey dining hall – clacketty, clicketty, clocketty – and collected his porridge, he looked even happier. He sat down on one of the dining benches between a small child inmate and a grown-up he recognized as once having been the owner of the Pandrumdroochit ice cream shop. Uncle Shawn winked at them both and announced, “Mmmmm! Lovely! This is the greyest porridge I have ever seen!” Then he ate it quickly, as if it was delicious. All the inmates stared at him. But, tucked away in a corner, inmate number 424 (wh
o was really Hughie who liked to play at being a spaceman) smiled a tiny secret smile. Uncle Shawn’s clever blue eyes spotted this and one of them winked at Hughie.
The grey guards also stared at Uncle Shawn. He definitely seemed to be having fun.
When Uncle Shawn joined the inmates at work printing leaflets about Unusualness, he added drawings of smiley faces and hearts and wrote jokes on the back.
The grey guards noticed this and moved Uncle Shawn to the department where inmates folded the washed smocks. But Uncle Shawn folded his smocks into the shapes of mountains and elephants and swans. And he danced while he did it.
So the grey guards put Uncle Shawn outside in the cold to sweep the hard concrete exercise yard. Only this made Uncle Shawn dance his special clog dance even harder and faster, and practise new bits of leaping and twirling so that he got very good at it and kept very warm. And all over the Institution, the inmates could hear him.
Swoosh – click – swoosh – clack – swoosh –spin – swoosh – hop – swoosh – leap.
He sounded Unusually Happy.
On Wednesday, when all the inmates were sent outside to the exercise yard, Uncle Shawn danced in his clogs and smock for the whole of exercise time and several inmates (including Hughie) actually giggled and tapped their feet.
And then two and then four and then lots of inmates decided they would try dancing in the exercise yard themselves, and this made them feel warmer and more like the people they had been. As the big grey yard began to clitter and clatter and clutter and clooter with clogs, the grey guards felt strange and some of them went indoors and had to sit down and have cups of tea and phone their mums.
During dinner, some inmates started humming as if they were happy. And Hughie (who had never forgotten being a spaceman) gobbled his porridge as if it was especially delicious and announced, “My, this is wonderful porridge! It tastes as if it has honey and raspberries in it!”
The others looked at him and then inmate 223, who was really called Hani, shouted, “Mine tastes of sunshine and toffee!” This made some of the inmates laugh. And inmate Angus said quietly, “My porridge tastes just the way it did at home with my children.” And another inmate, called Mary, said, “My porridge tastes how it did when my husband made it on Sundays.” And slowly each one of the inmates started talking about their porridge, but really they were talking about who they used to be and the things they used to like.
The grey guards watched all this happening and didn’t know what to do. They tried yelling but nobody paid any attention. Some inmates even went back and asked for more porridge and the Institution porridge cooks let them have it, because no one had ever appreciated their porridge before (it was quite disgusting), and they suddenly felt happy, too. One of them, called Doreen, thought about actually cooking the porridge with milk tomorrow and putting some bananas on top, because then people would like it even more and be even nicer to her.
All this made the grey guards very worried. They left the inmates alone with Uncle Shawn and went up to Dr P’Klawz’s office, high in the grey tower that watched over the whole Institution for Maximum Security and Unusualness Curing.
P’Klawz was hiding under his desk.
“Why are you hiding under your desk?” asked the biggest of the grey guards, who was called Henry Witherbottom.
“Go away,” whispered P’Klawz. “My shins have gone flaky and my hair hurts.”
(Because P’Klawz was so wicked, all his real hair had left him when he was twelve and gone to be extra chest hair for a rock star called Simon Diamante. That’s why P’Klawz had to paint his head.)
Henry Witherbottom thought this sounded a bit Unusual. “Can we help you with anything, sir?”
“People are being happy. I can feel it. There is fun breaking out. Stop it at once!”
“But how, sir?” asked Henry. “Uncle Shawn is happy all the time. He doesn’t even have an inmate number because he distracted the guard who gives out the numbers by talking to him about the sound dogs’ paws make. We have to just call him Uncle Shawn…”
“Stop bothering me! Just go and do what I told you!” yelled P’Klawz and he curled up in a ball and wouldn’t say anything else.
The grey guards all tiptoed away in their big creaky boots.
When the grey guards got down to the dining hall, Uncle Shawn and the inmates had finished all the porridge and were dancing. They were all clacketty-clicketty-clocketty-clucketty dancing in their clogs and waving their baggy smocks about and swooshing their arms and bowing to each other. And they were smiling.
The grey guards were amazed. Some of them smiled, too, because the dancing was so happy and funny and silly. A small guard called Peter even found that he was bobbing up and down and swaying to the rhythm.
Uncle Shawn grinned and called to them, “Hello, guards! We’re dancing the Clog and Smock Dance. It’s great fun. Come and join us.”
Henry was puzzled. “Your smocks are ugly and they don’t fit and they’re the dullest colour in the world, and your clogs are all clacketty and hard to walk in. How can you be having fun?”
“Why, because we have decided to have fun in spite of them. And the more fun we have, the warmer we get and the more we forget our numbers and remember our names. We don’t have to be inmates – we can be lots of other things. We can be be people who are kind to each other and happy. We could even be not inside this Institution.”
Henry chewed the end of his shirt collar – he had always done this when he was nervous, even at school. He told his guards to surround the dancers and look sternly at them.
The grey guards tried.
But quite a few of them started to giggle and clap in time to the dancing.
Upstairs, P’Klawz’s aches got a lot worse, because suddenly there was even more fun in the Institution for Maximum Security and Unusualness Curing.
On Thursday morning, there were bits of banana on top of everyone’s sweet, milky porridge. Everyone thought this was wonderful and cheered and shook porridge cook Doreen’s hand. By lunchtime, another porridge cook, called Colin, had found some honey and the inmates were so delighted to have honey on their porridge that there was dancing for most of the afternoon and no work. (The grey guards were too slow to catch the dancers and didn’t know whether they should, because P’Klawz couldn’t give them any orders – his teeth hurt too much.) The clacketty-clicketty-clocketty-clucketty-clooketty noise of the clogs shook the loose, draughty windows of the Institution until they rattled cheerfully.
On Thursday evening, everyone was eating their honey-and-banana porridge and thinking about new dances. Some of the grey guards were sitting on the floor and reading letters from home, because it was less tiring than standing up and looking menacing. But then, in the middle of all the happy chatting and laughter and joke-telling, Dr P’Klawz suddenly appeared in the dining hall.
He could hardly control his teeth, which sounded like all the brakes on an express train. “SILENCE – SKREE!” he shouted. The guards stood up and pulled their grey uniforms straight and buttoned their collars. The inmates went quiet and remembered being miserable.
P’Klawz had a towel wrapped around his head to try and keep the happiness out. It was making his head hot and sweaty so that his painted hair was starting to drip into his eyes. It was also running down his neck and ruining his perfectly white collar. “ENOUGH!” he screamed. And he took out his hypnotizing watch and twirled it. “Go to your dormitories! The grey guards will lock you in and you will not get any breakfast or lunch or dinner tomorrow!”
This nearly made Henry the guard say, “That’s a bit nasty.” But then he caught sight of the watch and kept quiet instead.
“You will have all of tomorrow to think about how Unusual you have been! And remember, this is all Uncle Shawn’s fault. He is the one who insisted on making you happy!”
Uncle Shawn could hear some of the small child inmates crying and he didn’t like that. Inside he was angry.
And he was even more angr
y as everyone was marched back to their dormitories and the big locks on the doors were turned with horrible clunks.
While he told the inmates in his dormitory jokes and funny stories to stop them being too sad, Uncle Shawn stayed angry.
It is never a good or a wise thing to make Uncle Shawn angry…
And Uncle Shawn thought, “This all needs to change. I wonder if Bill and the llamas have a plan? Their plan and my plan could join up to make one big gargantunormous plan… That’s what we need.” He smiled and the cold, dark air that chilled the bed frames got a bit warmer. “They are wonderful llamas and a wonderful badger – I think they will have a very fine plan…”
SECTION FIFTEEN
In which there are lots of ears and legs, and a gargantunormous plan that might get Uncle Shawn and all the inmates out of the Institution… At least we hope so.
The next day, while Uncle Shawn and the orphans tried to keep happy by dancing in their dormitories – even though they were getting hungrier and hungrier – Badger Bill and the llamas were trying to make plans.
Only they weren’t exactly good at plans.
Bill had put a big piece of paper on the kitchen table (which wasn’t a llama under a coverlet) and then he had written: PLAN TO RESCUE UNCLE SHAWN.
After that, things had got a bit difficult.
And Claude the spider was wondering how to say he’d like to help, because spiders don’t really speak. So he just bounced on his silk – like a yo-yo with lots of legs.
Brian Llama said, “The Institution has big, high fences and tall iron gates and searchlights and everything.”
“Well, then let’s dig a tunnel,” said Bill. Badgers are good at tunnels.
“That sounds very dusty and dirty,” said Ginalolobrigida.
Uncle Shawn and Bill and the Pajimminy-Crimminy Unusual Adventure Page 5