Uncle Shawn and Bill and the Almost Entirely Unplanned Adventure

by A. L. Kennedy

  And if you looked at Uncle Shawn really, really carefully – which is how to find out about anyone properly – you would see that if you were in trouble, he was exactly the right man to help you. He was maybe one of the kindest and best humans in the world. But he didn’t know that and so he was sometimes a little sad.

  Uncle Shawn had no friends he could really talk to at the moment, except for a mainly very serious horse called Paul, who was no good at jokes. And Paul was only visiting him and usually lived in Wales. Uncle Shawn had always wanted lots of friends to enjoy jokes with him, and maybe singing and dancing and cakes and things.

  Uncle Shawn whistled, “Tootle-ootle-tooo,” and tried speaking to the rabbit that was resting near him in the sun: “What do you get if you sit under a cow?”

  The rabbit blinked and nibbled some grass.

  The man tried again. “All right then. What’s brown and sticky?”

  The rabbit blinked once more and then closed its eyes as if it was going to doze off.

  “Oh, dear. You’re no good at jokes, are you?” Uncle Shawn sighed unhappily. “What did the mother brush say to the baby brush?”

  The rabbit started to snore gently and then twitch its back leg as if it was dreaming about running.

  Uncle Shawn decided to pass his time by looking at the path ahead of him. He was particularly good at looking. And what he saw when he looked was very worrying. In the soft earth there were the paw prints of a young badger. First the paw prints had been walking, and then they had been turning, and then walking, then turning again. “Dear me,” said Uncle Shawn. “There’s a little badger lost somewhere.” And when Uncle Shawn stood up and walked and looked further up the path, he saw the small paw prints keep walking and wandering, and then… “Oh, dear. That’s not good.” There were the marks of great big horrible boots, slapping down angrily at the ends of some huge person’s feet, and then the boot prints were stomped on top of the paw prints. And there was a smell of horribleness and stale pies. And there was a place where two little paws had scrabbled and tried to get away from something. “Well, that’s not good.” And then the paw prints disappeared. And the boot prints went back the way they’d come, only they seemed to be sinking into the earth a bit more than they had – as if the boot-wearer was heavier by about the weight of a kidnapped badger.

  Uncle Shawn shivered. Uncle Shawn frowned. Uncle Shawn shook his head and folded his arms. “That needs something doing about it…” He frowned harder. “If that doesn’t need something doing about it, then I’m not Uncle Shawn.” He checked the name sewn inside his jacket, which said UNCLE SHAWN. “And I am Uncle Shawn!” He grinned. “So I must plan a plan – a rescuing plan.” He felt in all his pockets, found a bit of toasted cheese finger and ate it thoughtfully. “Somewhere, there’s a small badger in trouble…”

  Uncle Shawn followed the footprints until they moved onto a big tarmac road and he couldn’t follow any more. But this didn’t mean he’d given up. He peered about so that he could remember the place before he went back to Paul the horse and got him to help search for the badger.

  While he was peering about, Uncle Shawn noticed a hilltop in the west where it appeared to be raining incredibly hard, even though where he was standing the evening was warm and dry and pleasant. He noticed – because he was particularly good at noticing – that there were four llamas on the hill. “Hmmm…” hummed Uncle Shawn. “Llamas are unusual in these parts. And those llamas look unhappy.” Even though the llamas were very far away, Uncle Shawn could recognize an unhappy llama when he saw one. “And they look as if they are homesick. And wet. And it seems they have nowhere nice and dry to keep cosy. That’s not right.” He patted and tugged at his wavy hair and pondered. “Something should be done about that… So… I’ll need another plan…”

  He also noticed that the sun was setting beautifully behind the pine trees and that three young squirrels – one of whom Uncle Shawn suspected still had his sock – were enjoying the view and singing about it. He shuffled his feet and said softly to no one, “How lonely it is to see such a good sunset and have no one to watch it with me. And how sad it is to have never met anyone who is good at jokes.” He had another think to himself and then murmured, “That’s a lot of things that need something doing about them … and maybe not much time to do them in … and there are a lot of plans to plan…” And then he grinned the biggest grin he had ever grinned. “And so I will start now.” He began running on his long, long legs back towards Paul the horse. “I will do my best and then a bit better than that, and it will be a real adventure!” And he ran faster than he ever had done and felt excited and scared and brave and tall and happy, all at once. “I do hope we all get a happy ending and that nothing terrible happens…” And he ran even faster and made whooping noises. This surprised the siskins.

  SECTION FOUR

  In which we meet all of the dreadful McGloones, who are almost too horrible to mention. We do have to mention them, though.

  While the sun set gently and Uncle Shawn raced towards the start of his adventure, over in the west, the McGloone Farmhouse kitchen was filling with McGloones. Every one of the McGloones was there: Farmer McGloone and his wife, Myrtle McGloone, and the little McGloones, who were called Fred, Dusty, Bettina, Socket Wrench and Small. Farmer McGloone was also joined by his two sisters, Maude and Ethel, who we’ve met already.

  That made nine McGloones.

  Even one McGloone was really one too many to have in a kitchen, or anywhere else. They were clumsy, noisy, smelly, selfish and greedy. As well as being cruel, they enjoyed watching other people being cruel when they were feeling too tired to be cruel themselves. And they liked eating. They were also very fond of being ignorant. If they didn’t already know something, then they weren’t interested in finding out about it – unless it might make someone cry.

  The McGloone sisters were sneering as if they might be struck down dead by the furniture at any minute and as if they had never seen anywhere so filthy and dreadful as the farmhouse kitchen. They did this because they hated Myrtle McGloone with all their hearts and they wanted her to feel like a bad housewife.

  The sisters didn’t usually set foot in the farmhouse, but now they had been summoned for a family meeting and were all dressed up in their finest clothes. They wore matching purple gumboots with brown llama-fur trimming, pink tweed skirts, green blouses, orange knitted waistcoats and large, dusty hats decorated with flowers and a few vegetables to replace the flowers that had fallen off over the years. They looked like a jumble sale and smelled of sprouts, but they were standing next to the greasy farmhouse stove and trying to look like duchesses. They were guessing this would mean making their mouths very narrow and tutting and waving their arms about so that their pink plastic handbags slid up and down their leathery big arms. This did make them look a little bit like some duchesses, but mostly they were just frightening.

  Myrtle McGloone was sitting at the kitchen table and pretending the sisters weren’t there. This was difficult because Ethel’s handbag kept hitting her on the back of her head. All the rest of the McGloones were squeezed nastily in round the table. They were jabbing each other in the ribs and shoving slices of lardy cake, jam sandwiches and apple pasties into their big McGloone mouths. And they were all shouting, so wet crumbs and bits of pasty were flying all over the place and sticking to things.

  Farmer McGloone – who really didn’t have any first name apart from Farmer – was shouting loudest of all. “The llamas aren’t producing enough wool! And they’re getting fat too slowly!”

  Maude shouted back, “Well it was a ssstupid idea to bring them here! I told you ssso!”

  “Don’t you call my husband stupid!” yelled Myrtle, forgetting to ignore Maude. “You’ve got sprouts all over your hat! That makes you even stupider than a stupid old llama – you big snake!”

  “Sssproutsss are the most fashionable vegetable for hatsss!” Maude screamed happily – she loved a good argument. “You’re jealousss of how
lovely we are, that’sss your trouble!” And her wet and snaky hisses splashed everybody while she yelled.

  “Now then, my pets,” bellowed Farmer, while his children ate and punched each other. “You are all lovely, elegant and dainty.” He stared at Myrtle, Ethel and Maude while he told them this and didn’t appear to notice that they were as lovely, elegant and dainty as a donkey trying to ride a see-saw.

  Under the cobwebby beams of the ceiling hung bottled spiders and rusty dog collars and lots of boiled bones tied up with ribbons and many, many grubby pie dishes – exactly as if the kitchen was sometimes used to bake many, many pies.

  SECTION FIVE

  In which Brian Llama hears something very horrible and doesn’t know what to do when he was already as miserable as a llama can be. This bit is quite scary.

  Meanwhile, Brian Llama was walking along, dragging his tired hooves. In his mouth he was holding the handle of a solitary, tiny bucket of dinner that was supposed to be shared among four growing, hungry llamas. The bucket was half-filled with old cabbage leaves and crusts and Farmer McGloone’s toe nail clippings and bacon rinds. This wasn’t nice and wouldn’t suit the llamas at all. Everyone – except the McGloones – knows that llamas are vegetarian. Farmer McGloone didn’t believe in feeding the llamas anything expensive and said that leftovers would help their wool get longer. And he’d been getting more and more angry with the llamas for not growing their wool fast enough so that Myrtle could shear it off even faster and knit it into McGloone’s Luxury Llama Wool Socks. He used the llamas’ prize-winning poems to advertise the socks and put his own name at the bottom of each one, which wasn’t fair, because he hadn’t written them.

  Brian needed to cough so he put down the bucket. This meant he was standing under the farmhouse window at exactly the right moment to hear something terrifying.

  The window was open and there were wet bits of food spattering out through it like nasty snow. Brian couldn’t help listening to the McGloones…

  “I want jam, Ma! I want more jam!” bawled Dusty.

  “Yes, I’m hungry! Is there any trifle?” yelled Bettina.

  Each of the children was hungry and most of them were shouting for their favourite food in high, sneaky McGloone child voices. “I want dumplings! I want them right now! Or I’ll bite you!” They didn’t say please. McGloones don’t.

  Then Mrs McGloone yelled, “No more dumplings, you monsters! We’ve run out!”

  “I hate you!” yelled back Socket Wrench.

  “And I hate you all!” screamed their mother. “You’re as bad as those ungrateful llamas. They aren’t even trying to grow wool for us. I’ve only had enough to make twelve pairs of socks this week! And we do nothing but cherish them and pamper them!”

  Farmer McGloone yelled then, “But never mind, dearest. On Saturday morning, we shall take them out of the field and get rid of them, slish-slash. And then we can go to the badger fight. And then we’ll make their meat into delicious llama stews and puddings and dumplings, and especially llama pies, and we’ll make their skins into lovely wallets and shoes and a special handbag for you, dearest – and you children can have their eyes to nibble on with gravy. Won’t that be grand?”

  Brian Llama couldn’t believe his wet, sheared ears. He didn’t want to be a wallet, even a lovely one. And how would he see if his eyes had been nibbled? He didn’t bother to pick up the bucket of rotten food – he wasn’t feeling hungry any more. He just ran as quietly as he could with his shaking knees, all the way back to the other llamas. It was Thursday night. That only left Friday … and then… Slish-slash, stew and maybe handbags. Brian was now absolutely the most depressed and disappointed llama ever. He didn’t know what to do.

  SECTION SIX

  In which the little McGloones intend to spend a whole day being as horrible as usual, but then end up not being very nasty at all, because they get interrupted. And Uncle Shawn studies the McGloone Farm because he is making plans. And we hope he can hurry up, because he doesn’t have much time to save everyone.

  The following morning, an extremely tall, thin person with gingery-browny, wriggly hair and very blue eyes was walking along the lane to the McGloone Farm. It was Uncle Shawn. Last night, he had followed the faint smell of horribleness and boots – with a trace of pies – almost all the way to the McGloone Farm. Uncle Shawn guessed that might be the same farm where he’d seen those very sad llamas. But it had been too dark to do anything, so he had sneaked away again and stayed awake all night, pondering and puzzling and planning. As soon as the sun rose, he had rushed back to the farm in order to find out just a little bit more about the place and what might go on there.

  While he marched along, he considered how llamas might have ended up on a wet hill. And he also considered the size of the boot prints and therefore the size of the big bullying person who had snatched up the little badger.

  Some of his thoughts were making him furious, but he was managing to seem calm and was waving a stick of rhubarb to keep off the flies. He studied that far hillside where it was still raining, even though everywhere else was hot and dry. The llamas were up there, the four of them, huddled together. “What would it be like,” Uncle Shawn asked himself, “to have a llama as a friend? Or four llamas?” He thought he could be very fond of llamas, even though he hadn’t ever met one. “And what would it be like to be a cold, wet llama very far from home?”

  Uncle Shawn reached the rusty, big sign by the farm entrance that read:

  This was part of Guinevere’s sock poem and she would have been very cross to know that it had been stolen.

  Suddenly, out from the farmyard raced a tiny black-and-white cat. Then round the corner came the McGloone children, all rushing along towards Shawn and throwing stones at the cat, which hid behind Uncle Shawn’s legs and peeped out at them.

  The children saw Uncle Shawn and stopped. They were keen to keep on trying to hit the cat with stones, but Uncle Shawn’s sparky eyes worried them a bit. And when he grinned, his grin somehow made them close to being scared.

  “Good morning,” said Uncle Shawn.

  “Go away! You smell!” said the McGloone children. They also said, “Bandy legs!” and “We hate you!” and “Fish face!”

  “What fine, loud voices you have,” said Uncle Shawn. “I am Uncle Shawn.”

  “We don’t care who you are!” said Bettina McGloone.

  “I see you have stones in your hands,” said Uncle Shawn politely. “Are they for throwing at cats?”

  The McGloone children just stared at him, in case he was going to try to get them into trouble. Whenever somebody got them into trouble, the McGloone children would just laugh and then kick them and try to steal their wallets. But they had a feeling this might not be a wise thing to try with Uncle Shawn.

  Uncle Shawn continued very gently, “Yes, I think they are for throwing at cats. You would want to be careful about that.”

  “Why?” said Socket Wrench, the biggest McGloone child, who was named after Farmer McGloone’s favourite wrench. Socket Wrench picked up a fresh, very pointy stone and glowered. “You’re going to get a stone bouncing off your head.” And Socket Wrench McGloone smirked.

  “Well … I don’t know about that,” replied Uncle Shawn quietly. And then his whole face became very serious and anybody sensible would have thought twice about stones and throwing them ever again. But the McGloones were not sensible.

  Uncle Shawn continued, “But I do know that sometimes the Great Grandfather Cat waits until midnight and comes and finds the people who throw stones at his grandchildren and then he sharpens his long, icy claws on their walls and they think, ‘What’s that scraping noise that sounds like kitchen knives outside and coming closer?’ And then maybe he howls for a while and they think, ‘What’s that howling noise that sounds like a whole pack of wolves outside and coming closer?’ And then the Great Grandfather Cat climbs up to their windows and they think, ‘What’s that thumping noise that sounds like enormous paws outside and coming clos
er?’ And then the Great Grandfather Cat squeezes into their houses and opens his eyes very wide and stares at them…” Uncle Shawn opened his eyes very wide and stared at the McGloone children. And leaning around his left ankle, the little cat stared at them, too.

  “Then what?” asked the littlest McGloone child, who was called Small, because by the time he arrived his parents had run out of names and couldn’t think of anything else, apart from Small McGloone. He was quite scared about the Great Grandfather Cat by this time. “What happens?”

  “No one really knows what happens after that…” said Uncle Shawn, bending down close to whisper frighteningly into Small’s ear. “The people who have been stared at are never able to say anything, ever again. And their hair turns white.”

  After that, the McGloone children either dropped their stones, or forgot they were holding them. And then Uncle Shawn picked up the little cat and carried him away, perched on his shoulder, looking back at the McGloones and feeling much happier and safer.

  Uncle Shawn strolled all around the farm, keeping away from the grown-up McGloones, but studying everything closely. And he sniffed the air a lot – and thought he could smell boots and horribleness and pies and… Yes! Badger! The little badger was here!

  This made his heart go galloping in his chest, but he strolled slowly and calmly like a man who is interested in ugly farms.

  The McGloone children followed him at a careful distance and shivered in case he turned round and stared at them again.