Free The Grunts In Trouble by Philip Ardagh Page B

back down.
    “Do you have any children?”
    “No,” said Jack.
    No? thought Sunny. Oh , thought Sunny. Then another thought occurred to him. “Did you ever lose any?” he asked.
    “I’m sorry?”
    “I mean, I know you just said you don’t have any children but I was wondering if you meant that you don’t have any children now . That you might have had one once and – er – lost it,” said Sunny.
    “Oh, like His Lordship, you mean?” askedJack. “No.”
    Like His Lordship?
    “What’s that about Lord Bigg?” asked Sunny, tightening his grip on the ladder, making his knuckles whiten.
    Jack kept on climbing as he talked. “He and Lady Bigg had a son but they mislaid him years ago. They can’t remember where they put him,” said Jack.
    “How old is he?” asked Sunny.
    Jack stopped. He’d now reached the halfway point, about fifteen metres above the ground. “Er, I suppose he must be about your age,” he said.
    Sunny suddenly had a funny feeling in his tummy, and he was sure that it was nothing to do with the fir-cone soup this time. He simply stood there in silence, holding the ladder, while Jack reached the top and thensomehow managed to knock the orange- and-white traffic cone off the statue’s stone hat – “Watch out below!” – and cut the blue nylon rope off the placard around the statue’s neck. This done, he tossed the placard to the ground.
    Caught in a tiny eddy of air, it spun over to the Grunts’ caravan and landed on its roof, before skittering to the ground with a thwack. As Jack made his way back down the ladder, Sunny spoke again. “What’s Lord Bigg’s son’s name?” he asked.
    “Horace,” said Jack.
    “You remember him?”
    “Course I do. My wife, Agnes, used to look after him sometimes. Wash him. Change him. Sing to him.”
    Just as Handyman Jack said the words “sing to him”, his shiny shoes had reached Sunny’s eye level again.
    “Sing to him?”
    “Oh yes, my Agnes has the voice of an angel. She could sing you the list of anti-allergy pills and medicines she has to take, and it would sound beautiful.”
    A man with shiny shoes.
    A woman with the voice of an angel.
    What if these memories weren’t of his actual mother and father, but memories of SERVANTS of his mother and father’s? What if he was the missing son of Lord and Lady Bigg!?!

    Just behind Sunny came a belch loud enough to frighten the beetles in the undergrowth.There was a familiar smell of pickling vinegar and open drains.

    “Pardon!” said Mrs Grunt with such glee that it was obvious she didn’t mean it. “Where did you get that ladder from, Sunny?” she asked. “It’s the longest I’ve ever seen.” She peered at it more closely. “Did you know that there’s a funny little white-haired man attached to it?”
    “This is Handyman Jack from Bigg Manor,” said Sunny. “Or Jack the handyman.”
    “Make your mind up!” snapped Mrs Grunt.
    “He’s both,” Sunny explained. “It’s his ladder.”
    “Pity,” said Mrs Grunt. “You can never go wrong with a good ladder.”
    Jack took the final few rungs to the ground.“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” he said.
    “Pleased to meet her?” bellowed Mr Grunt, emerging from the caravan. “Then you obviously don’t know her!” He snorted with delight at his witty repartee. “The woman is nothing but walking trouble.”

    Mrs Grunt went off foraging for food for breakfast (returning later with a basketful of what she called “mushrooms” but which Mr Grunt informed her were “highly poisonous toadstools”. She went on to insist that they were perfectly fine to eat and that her cousinLil had regularly eaten mushrooms j ust like them . When Mr Grunt asked which one of her many cousins Cousin Lil was, Mrs Grunt replied, “The one who died from poisoning.”).
    Sunny, meanwhile, took the opportunity to ask Handyman Jack more about Horace.
    “What did he look like?” he asked.
    “Why the interest?” said Jack, who was busy