The Grunts on the Run E-Book

Philip Ardagh

• Herausgeber: Nosy Crow
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Serie: The Grunts
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 159

Beschreibung

The fourth book in the hilarious series from Roald Dahl Funny Prize winning author Philip Ardagh and illustrator of The Gruffalo, Axel Scheffler. Over the years, the Grunts have made more than a few enemies. But fortunately they're all safely behind bars. Or are they? There's been a prison break-out, and three of them are after REVENGE. It's time for the Grunts to go On the Run... This last book brings back some familiar faces from the series and solves a couple of mysteries too...

Leseprobe

Praise for The Grunts

“Fans of Andy Stanton’s Mr Gum and Roald Dahl’s The Twits will delight in this disgusting but amiable family.” The Guardian

“…as always with Ardagh, there is the clever word-play, irony and plain silliness that make his books such fun… To add to the enjoyment [it’s] full of wonderfully incisive and daft illustrations by Axel Scheffler… LOL.” The Telegraph

“Axel Scheffler’s illustrations impart a quirky comic charm to Ardagh’s daft and comic story about the Grunts.” The Sunday Times

Look out for:

THE GRUNTS IN TROUBLE

THE GRUNTS ALL AT SEA

THE GRUNTS IN A JAM

Chapter One Making Plans

“Sunny’s right,” said Mr Grunt.

“About what?” said Mrs Grunt.

“We’re going to have to go on the run.”

“The what?”

“The run,” said Sunny. He had his hands in the pockets of his blue dress, to try to keep them warm.

“Why run?” demanded Mrs Grunt. “Why not take the caravan?”

“On the run in the caravan, you stuffed owl,” said Mr Grunt. He was getting hot and bothered and his face was red. It looked even redder against the backdrop of the snow all around them.

Mrs Grunt gave him one of her funny looks. “Then we need to hitch up Fingers,” she said.

“I think we’re going to have to leave Fingers behind,” said Sunny. Fingers, who was technically his elephant, was standing right beside him. He was a very handsome elephant with very intelligent eyes, which were watching Sunny closely. The tip of his trunk was snuffling around in a large bag of stale buns with a light dusting of recent snowfall on top of them.

“Behind?” said Mr Grunt. “But he pulls the caravan!”

“I think we’re going to have to leave that behind too, Dad,” said Sunny.

“Behind the elephant?” asked Mrs Grunt.

“Behind. In front. Why should that matter, wife?”

“Because Fingers should pull the caravan, not push it, you clamshell!”

“Not if the caravan’s not going anywhere, you dough ball!” said Mr Grunt.

“Shark’s tooth!”

“Margarine tub!”

Mr and Mrs Grunt often talked to each other like that. Well, shouted at each other like that. It was their way. It doesn’t mean that they didn’t love each other. They did. Some husbands and wives give each other flowers. Mr and Mrs Grunt took delight in throwing insults (and the occasional melon).

“Watch-strap!”

“Foghorn!”

See?

“Here at the house,” Sunny interrupted.

“We’re going to have to leave Fingers and the caravan here at the house.” The house in question was Bigg Manor (with two “g”s).

“But why?” demanded Mrs Grunt.

“Because they know about Fingers so will be on the lookout for an elephant … and elephants are hard to disguise,” said Sunny. Not that Sunny had ever tried to disguise an elephant.

This is what is called an educated guess.

And even in a jumbo-sized version of one of those all-in-one false-glasses-nose-and-moustache kits, Fingers wouldn’t have looked any less elephanty.

That’s the word: elephanty (even if you won’t find it in any dictionary unless I get there ahead of you and write it in myself).

But who was this “they” that Sunny was talking about? They were four men by the names of:

Lord Bigg (with two “g”s), bird-lover and official owner of Bigg Manor (still with two “g”s) and a parrot named Monty (with no “g”s).

Rodney Lasenby, better known as Rodders Lasenby, who was the former chairman of Lasenby Destructions.

Michael Jinx, a false-moustache wearer who sometimes called himself Max (brother of Mandy Jinx, who sometimes called herself Martha).

Thomas Winkle, better known as Twinkle, a very large and rather frightening man in a bird suit.

Up until their escape, Bigg, Lasenby, Jinx and Twinkle had all been prisoners in Stonewell Jail.

Rodders had done some bad things in his life, such as cheating people out of their money. But the worst thing he’d done was lock his dear old mum in the cellar.

Yes: he locked his dear old mum in a cellar.

Not only that, he’d left her without any food or drink.

She would probably have died of hunger or thirst if she hadn’t managed to tunnel her way out using her false teeth.

He shared his prison cell with the three other prisoners: the tall, beaky-nosed Lord Bigg, whose accent was even posher than Lasenby’s (which was saying something); shifty Michael Jinx, whose upper lip looked positively NAKED without a strip of fake facial hair; and a very large man indeed, who they all called Twinkle because he told them to (and he wasn’t the kind of person anyone would want to argue with).

Lord Bigg was in prison for a whole variety of reasons ranging from receiving stolen goods to having an illegal firework display.

Jinx’s criminal record was even MORE impressive. He was in prison for everything from reckless driving and kidnapping a man-in-a-barrel to impersonating a man with a moustache.

Twinkle was the most recent member of their cell. He’d only been there a few weeks when they planned their escape. He looked as if he should be in prison for breaking into a bank vault using just his bare hands, or illegally wrestling with zoo animals, but he had in fact been jailed for stealing eggs. Not your everyday hen’s eggs you can buy in a supermarket, I hasten to add. No. He had stolen some very rare eggs belonging to a number of protected species, because Twinkle was bird crazy. All but one of the eggs he had stolen had been found, but the biggest and rarest of them all was still missing. Twinkle had refused to say what he had done with it.

Several years previously, Lord Bigg had sold some of the garden statues from the grounds of Bigg Manor. The man who came to take them away was Twinkle. And he had been dressed as an eagle with an orange beak and matching legs and feet. Twinkle carried the big stone statues as if they were lighter than real people. Lord Bigg watched in amazement. It should have taken two or three average men to carry something of that size and weight. And Twinkle hadn’t seemed to tire either. He made light work of the second, third and fourth statues. His face – the only part of him that Lord Bigg could see – didn’t even break a sweat.

And sitting on the passenger seat of his truck had been a dog that looked pretty much all head, and most of that head seemed to be made up of mouth, and most of that mouth seemed to be made up of TEETH. The dog – called Shark – had been very well behaved and sat in total silence, until Lord Bigg had peered through the passenger window. Then Shark had done a very good impression of a snarling ball of hate, throwing himself at the glass and leaving lots of slobber everywhere.

Lord Bigg and Twinkle had chatted quite happily because Twinkle loved birds – the clue was in the costume, I suppose – and so did His Lordship, hence the parrot on his shoulder. The first thing Twinkle had said was, “I like your parrot, My Lord. I’ve got several different varieties of my own.” And the conversation had gone on from there. It turned out Twinkle had an aviary – a large netted enclosure – for his birds, covering his whole back garden. He owned a lot of rare birds, some of which Lord Bigg guessed must have hatched from stolen eggs.

The next time Lord Bigg had seen Twinkle was here in their shared cell in Stonewell Jail. It’s a small world.

At first, none of the prisoners sharing that cell realised that all four of them had something in common (apart from being convicted criminals in the same prison sharing the same cell) until one evening, just before lights out, Rodders Lasenby had said something to Monty.

Monty wasn’t a fifth cellmate. Well, in a way he was, I suppose. But he wasn’t a human. He was Lord Bigg’s parrot that I mentioned earlier and, unlike many pet parrots, he wasn’t used to a life behind bars. Whereas lots of pet parrots spend most of their time in cages, Lord Bigg used to let Monty fly free. But because Monty was obviously as fond of Lord Bigg as Lord Bigg was of him – Monty particularly liked biting him – the bird chose not to fly away but to remain His Lordship’s companion.

When they’d lived together at Bigg Manor, man and bird, Lord Bigg was FAR happier with Monty’s company than his wife’s, which was why she – Lady “La-La” Bigg – chose to live in the (very nice) pigsty with her favourite pig, Poppet. And Lord Bigg had CERTAINLY liked Monty much, much more than his five remaining servants. If any of THEM had bitten him on the nose he’d have flown into a terrible rage. But he’d let Monty the parrot get away with it on numerous occasions (which is a posh way of saying “lots of times”).

And Lord Bigg had been allowed to have Monty in his cell. But only if the parrot was kept in a cage. So, in his own way, Monty was very much a prisoner too. (It also meant that Lord Bigg’s face was no longer covered in lots of little sticking-plaster crosses where Monty had bitten him.)

Then came that evening just before lights out when Rodders Lasenby was passing the bird’s cage on the way to his bunk and said, “Goodnight, Monty! Time for some shut-eye on my hideously lumpy mattress … and to dream of wonderful ways of getting my own back on Sunny and those dreadful Grunts.”

“G’night, Big Nose!” squawked Monty. (He called everyone “Big Nose”.)

On hearing the name “Grunt”, Lord Bigg sat up in his bottom bunk, laying aside his copy of All About Birds Weekly, and Michael Jinx sat up in his bottom bunk – narrowly avoiding banging his head on the bottom of Lasenby’s bunk above. (Twinkle appeared to be already asleep, breathing heavily in the bunk above Bigg’s, his huge hulk of a body causing a huge dip in his mattress so it looked more like a hammock. Bigg knew better than to complain. Twinkle was the sort of prisoner who you let have his own way.)

“I thought we were never going to speak of Mr and Mrs Grunt again,” muttered Michael Jinx. “Or that boy of theirs in the blue dress.”

“Did you say Grunts, Lasenby?” asked Lord Bigg.

“I did, Lord Bigg, I did,” said Rodders Lasenby, turning away from Monty’s cage. (Lord Bigg insisted his cellmates called him Lord.) “Why do you ask? Not that I don’t love being interrogated just before bed.”

Just then a bell rang and Lasenby, who, like the others, was already in his regulation prison pyjamas, quickly climbed up into his top bunk. Then the lights in all the cells went out as a prison guard at the end of the corridor flicked a big red switch.

“I asked because it was the Grunts who landed me in here,” whispered Lord Bigg, his words cutting through the darkness like an angry wasp with a tiny saw. “The Grunts and that ridiculous circus showman Larry Smalls.”

This was, in truth, (almost) totally – well, a bit – untrue. Yes, Sunny and the Grunts had been there when Lord Bigg had been arrested, and yes, Mr Grunt had provided the fireworks that had meant His Lordship had had to throw himself out of a window but was later accused of setting off illegally himself … but Sunny, at least, had been trying to save Bigg Manor and had nothing to do with the unfortunate antics of Larry Smalls. But in Lord Bigg’s enraged and mixed-up mind he had obviously convinced himself that the Grunts and Smalls were “all in it together”.

“Charming people, the Grunts,” said Rodders Lasenby. “Rude, unfriendly and terribly helpful. Hate ’em to bits.” He was remembering being tied up in the bowels of a ship, being thrown in a police cell, being put on trial, shamed in public and ending up in jail.

“Me too,” whispered Jinx, rubbing the back of his neck as he remembered how a well-aimed rubber tyre thrown by Mrs Grunt had knocked him and his sister Mandy off their motorbike and sidecar. “They messed up my plans and my stuff.”

To be fair, what had really landed each of them in Stonewell Jail was their being good-for-nothing scoundrels but, being good-for-nothing scoundrels, they needed someone else to blame. So they spent the next hour or so in the darkness muttering evil thoughts about Mr Grunt, Mrs Grunt and their son Sunny.

And when the next morning came, they talked about the Grunts some more and they actually hatched a plan, with Twinkle listening with interest. Rather than simply grumbling and going on about it, they would all four – five counting Monty – escape and, rather than going into hiding or fleeing the country or starting new lives under new identities, they would track down the Grunts and GET THEIR REVENGE.

Lord Bigg liked the word “REVENGE”. It has a V in it, which looks like just the kind of pointy thing he’d like to jab the Grunts in the bottom with.

Twinkle had said nothing about the Grunts during their discussions but there was no way the other three men would dare escape from their cell without asking Twinkle if he wanted to come too. He might not take too kindly to being left behind. Twinkle wasn’t the sort of person anyone would want to upset. Not only that, it might be useful to take some “muscle” along with them. Secretly, Rodders Lasenby thought Mr Grunt was frightening enough, but Mr AND Mrs Grunt together? They could be real trouble.

But the prisoners had to do the escaping part first though. And escape they did.

Chapter Two The Visitor

The morning after the escape, Mr Grunt was having a bath. (And don’t worry, I’ll come back to the escape in more detail, but nobody said I had to tell this story in ORDER. Nobody said that I had to grow this beard either. I just did.) Mr Grunt usually used the old tin bath they kept in the caravan but, because the tin bath was being used for something else, he was having this bath in a water butt. The water butt was at the side of an old brick outbuilding in the grounds of Bigg Manor.

The house itself was in a dreadful state. For years it had looked OK from the outside but it had been pretty much stripped bare inside. Most of the floorboards had been ripped up and used as firewood. Now it didn’t even look good from the outside, for reasons you’ll have to read elsewhere (unless you already have).

It was a very cold morning. Mr Grunt padded across the snow in his bare feet and lifted out a perfect “O” of ice covering the surface of the water before stepping into the water butt. The water was very c-c-cold indeed. A thin layer of something oozed between his toes. At least it was the wrong time of year for the water to be filled with mosquito larvae. (Before mosquitoes become annoying whiny, bitey, airborne little insects they start off as ’orrible little wriggly water-bound thingummies, though their parents might well love them.)

“What you doing in there, husband?” demanded Mrs Grunt.

“What am I doing? What am I doing? I’m trying to get away from you,” said Mr Grunt. He was cold and his skin had gone all goose-bumpy.

“You’ll need something bigger than THAT to hide in, you pizza pan!” Mrs Grunt snorted.

“Butterbean!”

“Lung fish!”

“Boot sale!”

“Motorbike!”

“Sidecar!” said Mr Grunt. Then stopped. How on earth had the subject got round to motorbikes and sidecars?

“Get dressed,” said Mrs Grunt.

“Why?” demanded Mr Grunt.

“We have a visitor,” said Mrs Grunt. She turned and stomped off through the snow, back in the direction of the part of the grounds of Bigg Manor where they always parked their caravan. Mr Grunt noticed that despite her wearing three cardigans AND a scarf to keep warm, she was still wearing her favourite bunny slippers rather than boots. He gave a happy sigh and began soaping himself under the armpits. (When I say “soaping”, he wasn’t actually using soap. He hadn’t been able to find any, so was using a soap-shaped block of Cheddar cheese instead.)

On reaching the caravan, Mrs Grunt found Sunny, neck wrapped in a stripy scarf of his own, feeding Fingers. The caravan had been built by Mr Grunt and his father Old Mr Grunt, and was made from an old garden shed, part of an ice-cream van, a sidecar from a motorbike-and-sidecar – there’s that phrase again! – and some bobs from some old bits and bobs. This extraordinary-looking vehicle had held together remarkably well.

Sunny was Mr and Mrs Grunt’s adopted son. Mr Grunt had found him when Sunny was a baby, hanging from a washing line.

By his ears.

Mr Grunt had taken him home to Mrs Grunt and he instantly became one of the family.

“Where’s our visitor gone?” demanded Mrs Grunt.

“I showed him into the caravan,” said Sunny, handing Fingers another stale currant bun. The elephant took it delicately with the tip of his trunk and then swung it up and into his mouth. He gave Sunny a very expressive thank-you look with those highly intelligent elephant eyes of his.

“Why did you do that?” demanded Mrs Grunt.

“Because it’s a cold morning, it’s the polite thing to do and he has very shiny buttons on his uniform,” said Sunny.

What he didn’t say was that it was also a pleasant change to have someone in a uniform being NICE to them once in a while, rather than chasing after their caravan shouting, “I’ll get you for this!” Here was someone in authority who’d been extremely polite to him and Mrs Grunt. And being polite to Mrs Grunt was not as easy as it may sound, because she was very good at rubbing people up the wrong way. She once bit a rambler who’d made the mistake of raising his cap to her and asking the quickest way into town.

“Humph,” grunted Mrs Grunt. She stomped off purposefully.

Mr Grunt appeared a few minutes later. He was wearing a string vest, a shirt, a sweater (which was almost more holes than wool) and shoes. He had a towel wrapped round his waist, which made it look as though he was wearing a skirt. (Unlike Sunny, who was actually wearing a dress. Sunny only ever wore dresses. They were Mrs Grunt’s hand-me-downs, dyed blue because he was a boy.)

“Where’s this visitor then, Sunny?” demanded Mr Grunt.

“He’s in the caravan having a cup of tea,” said Sunny.

“Who is it?” said Mr Grunt.