The Grunts In a Jam

by Philip Ardagh

  This was a good question because there wasn’t the annoying yapping that usually accompanied Squat when she was around.

  “Don’t let anyone step on this or, worse still, park on it,” said Sunny, pointing at the box of preserves, jams and jellies on the ground. He turned and went back inside the caravan to look for his grandmother’s tiny dog.

  Squat was sticking out from under the upturned hubcap that Mrs Grunt used as a bowl, and Sunny had a sudden flashback to the time when Mr Grunt had been hiding under their upturned tin bath until Mrs Grunt had managed to force him out and get under it instead. I’m sure I have a picture of her hiding under it somewhere…

  Oh, here we are. You may even recognise it from The Grunts All at Sea.

  Sunny scooped up Squat in his arms, causing the dog to start her usual yapping. Somehow she also managed to lick Sunny’s face between yaps, which he half liked – it was loving and it tickled – and he half-didn’t, what with all that yucky slobber.

  “Ah, there you are, my gorgeous thing,” said Mrs Lunge to her dog, in that voice of hers she only used when talking to animals.

  But Squat was more interested in Fingers than she was in her mistress. To be more precise she was interested in the way Poppet and Fingers were behaving together. She looked from the pig to the elephant and back again, shook as though she were shaking water off her fur, then started up her yapping again.

  “I think Squat’s jealous!” said Mimi with a laugh.

  “Of what?” asked Mr Grunt.

  “Of Poppet and Fingers!” said Mimi.

  “That pig does get soppy around Fingers, it’s true enough,” said Mr Grunt. “And if that yap-dog has taken a shine to old big-ears—”

  “I do NOT have big ears,” interrupted Mrs Grunt’s mum, hitting Mr Grunt in the stomach with her huge handbag. (The handbag was big by anyone’s standards but, being such a tiny lady, in Mrs Lunge’s hands it looked enormous.)

  “Oooooff!” said Mr Grunt, doubling over, clearly winded. The traffic cone fell from his head, bouncing to the ground, narrowly missing the cardboard box. You would have said exactly the same if you’d been hit in the tummy with that handbag, and you probably didn’t even know that “Oooooff!” was a word.* [*EDITOR’S NOTE: It isn’t.]

  “Dad didn’t mean you, Grandma,” said Sunny. “He was talking about Fingers.”

  “Funny how your mother can hear perfectly well when it suits her!” said Mr Grunt to Mrs Grunt between gulps of air.

  “I heard that!” said Mrs Lunge.

  “That’s just my point!” said Mr Grunt. (And it was a good point.) Mr Grunt was standing upright now but looked a little pained. He stood well back from his mother-in-law in case she took another shot with that bag of hers.

  “Enough of this idle chattering!” said Mrs Lunge. “Let’s get my jars over to the competition marquee… Where is it, exactly? I expect they’re trying to hide it from me.”

  “Follow me!” said Sunny, who had little idea where the marquee was but was beginning to fear that they might spend all day at the bottom of the steps to the caravan. He picked up the big cardboard box marked “BONZO’S DOG TREATS For the Discerning Dog”. “This way!”

  Mrs Lunge followed hot on his heels, as fast as her little legs could carry her, her bright-orange toenails glinting in the morning light. She was looking from left to right, eyes darting here, there and everywhere. She was on the lookout for Edna Tuppenny, the woman who might ruin her chances of becoming Preserves, Jams and Jellies Competition Champion yet again.

  “But not this year,” she muttered. “No, not this year.”

  Norris Bootle brought his van to a halt in the lane leading to the car park of the country fair. He pulled over to one side, parking half up on a grass verge and half on the tarmac. His now-grown-up childhood sweetheart, Jenny Prendergast, had INSISTED that he didn’t park in the field that was being used as the car park because it would be too, too embarrassing to arrive at the country fair in a van with pictures of pants on the side.

  “Come on!” said Jenny Prendergast, already striding down the lane towards the entrance, holding her wooden tray of jars of preserves, jams and jellies out in front of her.

  “Hang on, old girl!” called Norris, quickly locking The Hearty Underwear Company van.

  Just then a shiny red motorbike and sidecar appeared around the corner of the lane, taking the bend rather sharply, causing the wheels of the sidecar to lift off the ground for a moment.

  “Way-hay!” shouted Lara Farp, her operatic voice projecting clearly above the noise of the engine.

  “Cooooooooooool!” shouted Ace from beneath his horned helmet in the sidecar.

  They swerved to avoid Jenny Prendergast – causing her to rattle her jars in surprise – each recognising the other in that instant. Lara Farp didn’t like Jenny because she, like Ace, thought the woman was a “wet drip” and “an insult to womanhood”. Jenny Prendergast didn’t like Miss Farp much because she thought famous people, such as the opera singer, should behave with more dignity in public and not like some loud “wanna-have-fun” person all the time. And she certainly didn’t like Miss Farp’s snorty boy, Ace.

  “Sorry!” shouted Lara Farp as she took a sharp right-hand turn into the field being used as the car park. She didn’t particularly sound as if she meant it.

  Norris caught up with Jenny. “Isn’t that Lara what’s-her-name?” he said excitedly.

  “Farp,” said Jenny. “Yes. She’s one of Alphonso’s patients.”

  “Well, he is a doctor to the stars,” said Norris, quoting the line on the notice outside Dr Tubb’s house in a childish sing-song voice.

  “At least he has a proper job,” said Jenny Prendergast. “He doesn’t sell underwear.”

  “You didn’t think there was anything wrong with my selling underwear before Tubby came along, now, did you?” said Norris, which was half true. As I’ve said before, Jenny had always wished her childhood sweetheart had sold anything other than underwear, but was pleased that he’d got the job because it meant that he could buy her nice things. “By the way, do you know where Miss Farp buys her underwear?” he added.

  Jenny Prendergast gave Norris a look. “Why are you asking me?” she demanded.

  “I thought lover-boy Tubby might have mentioned it in conversation,” said Norris.

  Jenny glared at him. “And why should Alphonso know where Lara Farp buys her undies, I’d like to know?” she said.

  Norris thought about that. “Well, patients do tell their doctors the most personal things,” he said.

  Jenny Prendergast thrust the tray of preserves, jams and jellies into her childhood-sweetheart’s hands. “You carry these for a while. And do be careful,” she insisted. “They’re ever so precious to me … just like Alphonso.” She fluttered her eyelids in a way a butterfly might flutter its wings just before it crash-lands.

  “You used to sigh and flutter your eyelids when you talked about ME,” said Norris, feeling all sorry for himself. He kicked a stone.

  “I did,” agreed Jenny, “but that was when I was young and foolish and before I met Alphonso.” She sighed again, probably to annoy him. No, that’s not true. It was definitely to annoy him.

  “I was just wondering whether I could get Miss Farp to wear Hearty Underwear,” said Norris. “What a coup that would be: World Famous Opera Singer Wears The Hearty Underwear Range!”

  Jenny Prendergast stopped in her tracks. Norris stopped too.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “This is MY day,” she pouted. “We’re at the country fair because I’m entering a competition – not you – and you’re not going to spoil everything by trying to sell people underwear.” Her lower lip quivered and her saucer-like eyes glistened. It looked to Norris as though she might be about to burst into tears; something she did no more than ten or eleven times a day.

  “No, Jenny. Of course not,” he said. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  But Norris did have a surprise in store
. He loved Jenny too and wasn’t about to give her up that easily.

  Sunny found the marquee where the Preserves, Jams and Jellies Competition was to take place. It wasn’t hard. There were plenty of signs dotted around the country fair to point him in the right direction. Sometimes Mimi would run ahead, spot a sign and report back. (She also spotted a number of signs about A SPECIAL GUEST APPEARANCE FROM WORLD-FAMOUS OPERA SINGER, LARA FARP.)

  Sunny, Mimi, and Mrs Grunt’s mother peered through the entrance of the marquee. The Preserves, Jams and Jellies Competition was just one of the competitions that were being judged in the huge tent, each with entries laid out on white-tablecloth-covered tables stretching into the distance.

  “Wow!” said Sunny.

  A woman, wearing blue-rimmed glasses and clutching a clipboard, was standing by the entrance to the marquee. She studied the pink girl with the tiny birds hovering above her head. She eyed the boy with the wonky ears, wearing a blue dress and carrying a big cardboard box marked “BONZO’S DOG TREATS For the Discerning Dog”. Mrs Lunge was up on tiptoe, resting her chin on his shoulder.

  “Entrant?” asked the woman, because only those entering the competition were allowed in before midday.

  “Of course he’s not an elephant!” said Mrs Lunge with a sigh. “We left the elephant back at the caravan. He’s a BOY.”

  “Entrant,” the woman repeated with a sigh. “Competition entrant?”

  Mrs Lunge eyed the woman suspiciously. “I suppose you’re going to disqualify me before I even have a chance to get through the tent door, aren’t you?” she sighed. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that I have to be taller than I am to enter… I’m too small, aren’t I? That’s it, isn’t it? I’m too small.” She turned around. “Come on, you two. Let’s go.”

  “Yes, we’re competition entrants,” said Sunny to the woman, before Mrs Lunge had a chance to say anything else.

  “For the Preserves, Jams and Jellies Competition,” Mimi explained.

  “Name?” asked the woman, lifting the pages clipped to her clipboard until she found the right one for the competition.

  “Lunge,” said Sunny, and then he spelled it.

  The woman found the name on the list and ticked it off. “Very well,” she said, and then directed them where to go to lay out their jars.

  Once Sunny and Mimi had unloaded the jars from the cardboard box on to the tabletop, he pushed the empty box under the table where it was hidden by the overhanging tablecloth. Then they left Mrs Lunge to sort out her display of jars. Had it been Mr or Mrs Grunt, Sunny wouldn’t have dared leave them alone but he was pretty sure Mrs Lunge would be able to cope without ruining everything for everyone. So he and Mimi went to see what else was happening at the country fair.

  They saw some familiar faces as they explored, including – much to Sunny’s surprise – a clown called Mr Lippy, whom he hadn’t seen in a long time. Mr Lippy was dressed in full clown clobber: lime-green giant shoes, comedy trousers with funny stretch braces, checked jacket with a squirty flower in the lapel, clown wig, red nose and full clown make-up. He was sitting on an upturned bucket changing the front tyre of his tiny clown-bike.

  Mr Lippy recognised Sunny in an instant. (Looking and dressing like Sunny made him difficult to forget.) “Hello, Sunny!” he said. “How’s Fingers?”

  “Very well, thanks, Mr Lippy,” said Sunny, thinking back to the time he and Mr Lippy had first met (which I wrote about in The Grunts in Trouble). “He’s in the car park with Mum and Dad.”

  “I might go and say hello later on,” said the clown, “once I’ve repaired this puncture and done a bit of entertaining.”

  A moment later, Sunny bumped into Ace. Literally.

  “Ooof!” went both boys – though not necessarily with the same number of “o”s – and both fell to the grassy ground.

  “Hey, sorry, man!” said Ace, getting to his feet first, grabbing Sunny’s arm and yanking him up too. “Couldn’t see where I was going.” He undid the chinstrap and lifted the horned crash helmet off his head, tucking it under his arm. “This thing kind of keeps slipping over my eyes.” He adjusted a small hearing aid hooked behind his left ear.

  “I like your Viking horns,” said Sunny (though, as I said earlier and I’ll say here for the last time – in this book, at least – Vikings never really had horns on their helmets like that).

  Ace smiled. “Lara’s in this opera where she wears a horned helmet, so she thought it’d be cool to have a couple of crash helmets made like this for us to wear. His ’n’ Hers.”

  “Is she your mum?” asked Sunny.

  Ace shrugged. He had a lot of straw-like hair. “She didn’t give birth to me if that’s what you mean,” he said. “But she’s my mum in everything but name. She once said that even if she were my birth mum she’d never want me to call her ‘Mum’ because that isn’t how she does things… What’s with the dress?”

  Sunny looked down at his clothes. He never really thought about them. He had an elephant and two donkeys to look after, as well as coping with life with Mr and Mrs Grunt. His dress was just one of those things.

  Now he shrugged. “Dunno, really,” he said. “It’s just what my mum gives me to wear. What’s that thing behind your ear?”

  “It’s a hearing aid,” said Ace. “I’m kind of deaf without it. Hi, Mimi.” He remembered their names from their brief encounter in Dr Tubb’s driveway the previous day.

  “Hi, Ace,” said Mimi, strolling up beside them.

  “Cool hummingbirds,” said Ace. “And I like your elephant, by the way.”

  The three of them chatted as they wandered around the country fair.

  During this conversation it turned out that the biggest thing the two boys had in common was that neither Sunny nor Ace knew who their birth parents were.

  “Your dad – Mr Grunt – rescued you from a washing line?” gasped Ace when Sunny told him.

  “That’s what I said,” Sunny nodded. “Pegged up there by my ears.”

  Ace looked at Sunny’s ears, one much, much higher than the other. “Is that why they’re –?”

  “Maybe.” Sunny shrugged.

  “And you never found out whose washing line?”

  “We live in a caravan,” Sunny explained. “We were always on the move back then. I don’t think Dad would have been able to find the washing line if he wanted to.”

  “Don’t you remember anything about your parents?” asked Ace.

  They were passing a clearing between the tents where a blacksmith was showing a small crowd of people how he made horseshoes. He was hammering a red-hot piece of metal into shape on the edge of an anvil.

  “All I can remember is a pair of very shiny men’s shoes and a woman with a beautiful voice. I think the shoes might have belonged to my dad and the voice might have belonged to my mum… I thought I’d found them a while back: Agnes the ex-cook-and-maid and Jack the ex-handyman up at Bigg Manor where we now live.”

  “You live in a manor house?” said Ace.

  “The remains of one,” said Mimi.

  “It’s falling to bits,” said Sunny, “and, unlike Mimi, I mostly live in the caravan in the grounds.”

  “But they turned out not to be your parents?”

  “No,” said Sunny. He decided not to mention that he was now considering the possibility that he was actually the missing child of Lord and Lady Bigg because he didn’t really have any evidence to go on. “What about you?”

  The blacksmith gave the hot horseshoe two final CLANGS with his hammer, then – using a huge pair of metal tongs – plunged it into a barrel full of cold water that bubbled and steamed with a loud HISSSSSSSSSSSSS as the metal cooled.

  “Me?” said Ace. “The way Lara tells it, she found me left by the stage door of the opera house in Pring, in a wicker shopping basket, which is pretty cool.” Pring was a nearby town. “Her fans are always leaving her presents and stuff, so she guessed I must be one. She’s always been too busy to find time to have a kid of he
r own, so she decided to keep me.”

  “Do you remember anything about your birth parents?” asked Sunny.

  “It’ll sound silly…” said Ace.

  “Wearing a Viking crash helmet is silly!” Mimi laughed.

  “It’s just that in my mind…” Ace faltered.

  “What?” asked Sunny.

  “Well, in my mind I have a clear image of my father and…”

  “And?”

  “And I think he was a pirate captain,” said Ace.

  Mr Grunt was quick to make his presence felt at the fair. It began when he sat on the guess-the-weight-of-the-cake cake, protesting, “What does it matter that it’s flat? It still weighs the same!” as he ran away from the furious stallholder. (He was rather overlooking the point that the prize for guessing closest to the weight of the cake was the cake itself … and who in their right mind would want a flat cake with an imprint of Mr Grunt’s bottom on it?)

  Next, he knocked over a stack of locally-made-lovingly-made-home-made pottery on the locally-made-lovingly-made-home-made pottery stall. As the wailing potter chased after him, Mr Grunt shouted out a helpful suggestion.

  “Why not just make it one of them stalls where you pay to throw balls at old china to see how much you can smash!”

  For some reason, this seemed to upset the potter even more.

  Other incidents caused by Mr Grunt’s clumsiness, lack of concern and general being-Mr-Grunt-iness included: the creation of a six-metre scarf in the knitting-machine-demonstration tent and an explosion in the toilets.

  The last one had occurred when Mr Grunt found the only available loo had somehow got blocked with fir cones, and he’d decided to clear it with a firework he’d found in his pocket.