Holiday Hullabaloo

by Steven Butler

  ‘Erm, Mummy,’ Herbert said nervously. ‘We were thinking of going on an outing today. You know –’

  ‘An outing?’ Joan spat the words out. She had a headache.

  ‘Yes,’ said Herbert. ‘There’s the donkey sanctuary or the local hop farm. How about the pottery shop? You’d like that.’

  ‘A pottery shop?’ huffed Grandma Joan across the dining table. ‘Why would I want to go and look around a boring, peasant-ridden little pottery shop?’

  ‘I just thought it might be a nice idea, Mummy,’ said Herbert. His bottom lip was quivering like a baby about to have a tantrum.

  ‘Well, it’s not,’ Joan snapped and flung a piece of toast at him. It landed in his lap, jam-side down. ‘I don’t want to go anywhere.’

  ‘There’s the Stamp-collecting Museum,’ said Marjorie. ‘How does that sound?’

  ‘Aaaaagh.’ Joan picked up her cup of tea and emptied it over Marjorie’s head. ‘I travelled all this way to see you and all you seem to want to do is haul me off to a pottery shop or a stamp museum? HOW DARE YOU!’

  ‘Well … erm,’ said Marjorie, dripping wet for the second time in two days, but far too afraid to be angry. ‘I … erm … I –’

  ‘DAAARLINGS!’ An enormous woman burst in through the living-room door. ‘HOW ARE WE ALL?’

  Marjorie and Herbert’s jaws almost hit the table. It was Malaria. She was wearing a huge pink dress with puffy sleeves and a bustle that made her bottom look gigantic. Marjorie recognized the pattern on it straight away and fumed silently. It was made from her bedroom curtains.

  Every bit of Malaria’s grey-green skin was covered in Marjorie’s expensive make-up and was now a lovely peach colour. She even had round, rosy cheeks, drawn-on eyelashes and dark red lipstick. And … to top it all off, Malaria’s bristly hair was crammed under a tall white wig made from what looked like scrunched-up toilet paper.

  ‘Who are you?’ croaked Joan, reaching for her cane to smack the stranger. She squinted to try and get a better look.

  ‘I am … I am … Lady Bulch – ington.’

  ‘Lady who?’ Joan asked, quickly dropping her cane and forcing her foldy face into a smile. This could be her chance to mingle with high society.

  ‘Lady Bulchington,’ said Malaria in a strange, high-pitched voice. ‘I’m just visiting from my … erm … castle. I’m always searching for a posh, rich, better-than-everyone-else friend or two. I do tire of talking to common folk.’

  ‘Well, you’ve come to the right woman,’ Joan cheered, shoving Herbert and Marjorie out of the way.

  ‘MARVELLOUS!’ beamed Malaria. ‘Won’t you join me in a round of … of …’

  ‘Croquet,’ whispered Neville, who was huddled under Malaria’s great dress like a camper in a tent.

  ‘CROQUET!’ shouted Malaria. ‘Yes, I need a new … erm … Mistress of Croquet at my castle.’

  ‘Well, it’s certainly better than a stamp museum,’ said Joan, shooting an evil glare at Herbert and Marjorie. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you lived near aristocrats?’

  ‘Marvellous, m’dear,’ Malaria giggled. ‘You must meet my husband.’

  ‘Husband?’ whimpered Marjorie, trying very hard not to burst into tears.

  ‘Why yes.’ Malaria turned to the door with Neville desperately trying to avoid her big feet below. ‘O HUSBAND O’ MINE!’

  ‘OH … DO BEG ME MY PARDONS, LADY AND GENTLEGEORGES.’ Clod waltzed into the room, doing his best to be as overlingy as he could. He too had peachy skin and was wearing a long coat made from the rug in Neville’s bedroom and … he wasn’t bald.

  Marjorie glared at the toffee-coloured wig sitting atop Clod’s head and then almost fell off her chair in horror. It wasn’t a wig, IT WAS NAPOLEON. The poor little thing was curled up on Clod’s sweaty noggin and held in place with sticky tape.

  ‘Aaaaaaagh!’ Marjorie screamed. ‘AAAAAAGH!’

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Joan hissed. ‘Do not embarrass me in front of the guests. This could cost me a damehood.’

  Marjorie couldn’t speak, so she just pointed at Clod’s head and squeaked.

  ‘OH, FORGIVE ME,’ Clod said grandly. ‘I NEVER INTRODUCTED MYSELF. I AM LORD CLODLY. PLEASURE TO MEET YOU, YOUR HIGHNESS.’ Then he curtsied.

  Neville peeked out from beneath Malaria’s dress. Joan looked thrilled. How had she not noticed the difference between a huge pair of trolls covered in toadstools and a real lord and lady?

  ‘Great job, Mooma,’ whispered Neville. ‘Now just keep her busy till we get back.’

  ‘Course we will,’ Malaria whispered to her dress. ‘She reminds me a bit of old Gristle Pilchard.’

  ‘Well, it’s about time,’ Joan said with a huge smile on her face. ‘Finally some well-bred people. I was beginning to think I was surrounded by peasants and grubby urchins.’

  Joan turned to Herbert and Marjorie, who were both still gawping like a pair of goldfish.

  ‘WELL?’ shouted Joan. ‘Lord Clodly and Lady Bulchington want to play croquet.’

  Marjorie shrugged and mumbled.

  ‘To the garden!’ Joan announced, waving her cane in the air and hobbling off to the kitchen and the back door.

  ‘TO THE GARDEN,’ Clod and Malaria joined in, grabbing Herbert and Marjorie and dragging them outside.

  Neville scrabbled out of the back end of Malaria’s tent dress as his mum, dad, mooma and dooda all trudged off to play croquet on the back lawn with Grandma Joan. It might not have been the sort of plan Captain Brilliant would have come up with, but by some absolute miracle, it had worked.

  London Zoo … Here We Come

  ‘I know it’s here somewhere,’ said Neville, searching under the passenger seat. ‘My dad always keeps a map.’

  ‘Well, look harder,’ said Rubella from the driver’s seat. She smiled to herself. While Neville wasn’t looking, she’d already snatched the map and sat on it.

  ‘It was here before, I know it was.’

  ‘Oh well,’ Rubella sighed. ‘We’ll just have to come up with another plan.’ Then she quickly flicked the locks. Neville, who still had his head stuffed under the seat, heard the clunk and his heart froze.

  ‘What are you doing?’ He scrabbled back up.

  Rubella held up the magazine for Neville to see.

  ‘We’re going for a drive,’ she said with a wicked glint in her eye.

  ‘NO. We can’t,’ said Neville, his eyes bulging with fear. ‘You don’t know how to drive!’ He quickly put his seat belt on. Rubella was going to get them both killed, he just knew it.

  ‘I’ll learn,’ Rubella snapped. ‘How do you make it go?’ She clamped her sunglasses further down her nose. ‘HOW DO YOU MAKE IT GO, SCAB?’

  ‘Erm …’ said Neville.

  ‘C’mon,’ she grumbled, holding tightly to the steering wheel with a crazed look on her face as if it were moving at top speed.

  ‘You need to turn the key,’ said Neville. ‘But you can’t do this, Rubella. If we get caught we’ll be arrested and sent to prison.’ He glanced down and almost screamed. The keys were already in the ignition. Herbert was always forgetting to take them out and now Neville had let Rubella know how to start the car.

  ‘Don’t be such a squirmer,’ Rubella scowled. ‘Mooma and Dooda have distracted your rotsome family and if anyone tries to stop us … I’ll bash ’em.’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘Shut your rat hole,’ Rubella barked. She pulled Neville’s seat belt and then let it go, making it snap back against his belly.

  ‘Ouch!’ wailed Neville. ‘We have to work together, Rubella.’

  Rubella reached down and turned the key. The engine juddered into life.

  ‘I’m the one with the wheely thing,’ she snarled. ‘I’m in charge! What next?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Neville whimpered.

  Rubella started growling.

  ‘You have to push the pedals,’ said Neville, rubbing the red seat-belt mark on his belly.

  ‘Is t
hat all?’ said Rubella.

  Neville nodded. His insides were bubbling and twitching and he felt sick with worry. Rubella would crash the car in no time. He closed his eyes and hummed the Captain Brilliant theme tune to himself.

  ‘Right then,’ said Rubella, as calmly as if she were just switching on the radio. ‘LONDON ZOO, HERE WE COME!’

  ‘NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!’

  She slammed her pudgy foot down on to the pedal and the car screeched down the driveway and out into the road. They were heading straight for the house on the other side.

  ‘TURN!’ yelled Neville. ‘TURN!’

  At the last second Rubella spun the wheel and skidded off to the left, leaving tyre tracks on the grass of the house opposite. The car whizzed round and leapt back on to the road.

  ‘Relax, Nev,’ Rubella laughed at him. ‘You’re such a snivlet!’ Rubella pushed the pedal down as far as it would go. ‘We’ll be there in no time.’

  The car hurtled down the road like a rusty green comet.

  ‘NEEEOOOOORRR!’ Rubella made fast car sounds as she drove. ‘BRRROOOORRRRMMM!’

  The little green car weaved in and out of lamp posts and even other cars. It sped past Neville’s school and the shops like a blur. Rubella didn’t brake at the speed bumps, she just bounced over them instead.

  ‘What’s this do?’ said Rubella and pushed the button on Herbert’s fancy satnav gadget. The screen flickered on and a lady’s voice said, ‘Turn right in two hundred yards.’

  ‘WHO ARE YOU?’ she screamed at the little box.

  ‘Turn right in one hundred and fifty yards.’

  ‘NO!’

  ‘Turn right in one hundred yards.’

  ‘SHUT UP!’

  ‘You have missed your turn-off.’

  ‘I SAID SHUT UP!’ Rubella grabbed the gadget from the dashboard, threw it over her shoulder and through the back windscreen.

  Neville was starting to break out in a cold sweat. His dad loved that satnav box.

  ‘GET OUT THE WAY!!’ Rubella stuck her head straight through the glass of her window and yelled at a lollipop lady crossing the road. She dropped her lollipop sign and gawped back in disbelief at the troll face grimacing at her in a furious, speeding blur. ‘ROADHOG!!!’

  ‘That was Mrs Higgins, the lollipop lady for my school,’ groaned Neville. He’d just have to hope she hadn’t recognized him.

  ‘Woo-hoo! This is squibbly,’ Rubella laughed.

  Neville was struck dumb with fear. He watched in horror as the car reached a roundabout. There were lots of other cars and motorbikes driving round it, but Rubella didn’t care. She drove straight out and across the top of it, sending the other cars skidding in all directions.

  ‘Who put that there?’ she yelled.

  Meanwhile

  Lady Bulchington smacked the ball with her croquet mallet so hard that it flew about fifty metres into the air.

  DONK … It bounced off the chimney.

  SMASH … It shot through the greenhouse.

  CLANG … It bounced off the dustbins and then landed only centimetres from where Herbert was standing with a dull THUMP.

  ‘Well played, Lady Bulchington,’ said Grandma Joan, beaming. ‘What a squiffling swing you have.’

  ‘BRAVOOOO!’ yelled Lord Clodly.

  Next was Grandma Joan’s turn. She deliberately positioned herself just behind Marjorie and then swung the mallet as hard as she could at her head. CLONK …

  ‘OOOOWWW!’ yelped Marjorie, trying not to say something very rude.

  ‘Haha … whoops!’ Joan chuckled. ‘How squibbly.’

  Mungo the Monkey-Seal-Pig

  They drove and drove and drove and drove and drove. By the time they reached London Zoo it was dark and the zoo was closed.

  Rubella had driven the wrong way over Tower Bridge, crashed through the market stalls in Covent Garden and even stopped the car in the middle of Trafalgar Square to demand directions. Anyone she stopped ran away screaming in fear from the walrus in a yellow bikini.

  ‘It’s true what they say,’ Rubella said to Neville as she got back in the car. ‘People in London are so rude – dungle droppings!’

  Finally, Neville peered through the gates. He couldn’t quite believe he was still alive.

  ‘It’s awfully dark,’ he whispered. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘We go in,’ said Rubella. ‘That’s why we came here, you nogginknocker.’

  ‘Yes, but how?’ said Neville.

  ‘Like this.’ Rubella walked straight towards the front gates and smashed right through them. ‘Easy as dunking a dingo.’

  Inside, the zoo was scary and Neville could feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ he whispered, huddling close to Rubella’s bulging side.

  ‘Get off,’ snapped Rubella, shoving him away.

  They walked past the reptile house, the gorillas and the pygmy hippos. It was so spooky. There were strange howls and shrieks and Neville could feel hundreds of eyes glimmering in the darkness as they shuffled along.

  Rubella eyed the pygmy hippos greedily. ‘I wonder what they taste like?’ she said.

  Further along past the bearded pigs and the fountains, they started to hear a strange noise. It was a kind of cooing sound with bits of giggling and yelling in between.

  ‘That sounds like Pong,’ said Neville. ‘Quick!’

  They ran towards the sound and finally, in the square between the tigers, spider monkeys and the lions, they found a big round cage with a sign above it.

  ‘Mungo the Monkey-Seal-Pig,’ Neville read aloud. Pong was hanging upside-down from a rope inside the cage.

  ‘BLLLLUUUUURRRRGGGGGG!’ he blurted when he saw them. ‘OOOOOORRRGGGHHH!’

  Rubella stepped up to the bars and gave them a shake. They wobbled, but didn’t snap.

  ‘Hmmmm,’ she said. ‘These are made of strong ole stuff.’

  ‘Can’t you break them, Rubella?’ asked Neville.

  ‘Of course I can!’ she snapped.

  Rubella took a few steps back for a bit of a run-up and then flung herself at the cage. She hit the bars with a massive THWACK, but they didn’t break. They didn’t even bend.

  Pong howled with glee.

  ‘That’s it!’ grunted Rubella as she clambered to her feet, looking a little dazed. ‘I’ve had enough of this.’ Then she turned on her heels and ran away.

  ‘RUBELLA!’ shouted Neville. He couldn’t believe it. After getting all the way here, the stupid knucklehead was running away just because she couldn’t break the bars. What was he going to do now? Pong was still trapped in his cage and Rubella had abandoned him in the middle of London. Neville slumped down on to his bottom and started to cry. Why was everything so difficult?

  SCCRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECCHH!

  Neville looked up in alarm. Further down the dark pathway he saw the headlights of a car sweep round the corner of the gorilla enclosure and head straight towards him.

  ‘MOVE, NEV!’ Rubella shouted through her broken window. ‘SHIFT YOUR BOTTOM BITS OR GET FLATTENED!’

  The car jerked into the air and smashed straight through a large fountain, but it didn’t stop.

  ‘GET READY!’ screamed Rubella as the car careered into Pong’s cage. The crash was deafening. An alarm went off and all the animals in the zoo woke up and started howling, bleating and roaring. Neville dived for cover as broken bars flew in all directions. His dad’s car … all bashed up and dented … yikes!

  Then nothing moved.

  ‘Rubella?’ Neville said to the steaming car. ‘Are you OK?’

  Nothing …

  ‘Rubella?’

  The driver’s door swung open with an exhausted-sounding squeak and Rubella tumbled out.

  ‘Ooops,’ she mumbled, her eyes crossed and her hair standing on end as if she’d been electrocuted. ‘Ooooh, stars.’

  ‘You did it, Rubella!’ cheered Neville. ‘Look.’

  Pong jumped up on to the
bonnet of the car, chewing on a piece of metal bar.

  ‘Bluuuuuuuhhhhhhh,’ he cooed merrily. Then he tossed the fragment away, which then bounced off Rubella’s head. ‘Coooooooooooooo.’

  Neville grabbed Pong and put him on to the back seat of the car.

  ‘We have to get out of here!’ he said. ‘Do you think … erm … maybe I should drive?’

  Rubella’s eyes straightened instantly and she flicked Neville on the end of his nose. ‘Not on your nelly,’ she said.

  The Longest Game in the World

  Hours later, the car finally juddered on to the front lawn of the Brisket house. One of the back wheels was slightly bent, every window was broken and there was a lamp post buckled across the front bumper.

  Rubella fetched Pong and carried him upstairs while Neville staggered through the kitchen and looked out of the windows to the back garden. Lady Bulchington and Lord Clodly were still playing croquet. He looked at the kitchen clock.

  ‘Three o’clock in the morning!’ Neville gasped. They had been playing since he’d left for London.

  Neville ran out into the moonlit back garden.

  ‘We simply must play one more game,’ said Lady Bulchington to a very exhausted-looking Joan.

  ‘I can’t,’ grunted Joan. ‘I –’

  ‘Did I mention that I’m best friends with the Queen?’

  Joan bolted upright. ‘Maybe one more game,’ she said.

  ‘MARVELLOUS,’ chuckled Lord Clodly.

  Neville dived behind his mooma’s dress. ‘We’re back,’ he whispered.

  Malaria heaved a massive sigh of relief. ‘About time,’ she replied quietly. Then she turned to Grandma Joan. ‘Ooopsy, I forgot … I already have a Mistress of Croquet. Silly me. Sorry. Better luck next time.’ Then Malaria swished her dress dramatically in the old woman’s direction. ‘I’M OFF!’

  Malaria grabbed Lord Clodly, who looked like he was about to fall asleep standing up, and rushed him through the house and up to Neville’s bedroom.

  Grandma Joan dropped her croquet mallet on Marjorie’s toe.