Freaky Families Read online

  Grannies Two and One did indeed draw breath as if they intended to say something thoroughly crushing, but then they looked at Erg and did not say it. Grannies Three and Four looked at Erg too. All four put on sweet smiles.

  And Erg felt horrible. He discovered he must have a conscience too. He could not think why else he should feel so guilty about that teddy bear. Granny Three said brightly, “Well, what can I do? I brought my apron.” Erg crept away from them upstairs and searched the rest of the house. But Emily was not anywhere. And when Erg went downstairs again, the teddy still sat accusingly on the sofa. Erg was forced to believe that he had indeed turned Emily into a teddy bear.

  He dared not tell the Grannies. When they called him to lunch, he said, “Emily’s locked in the bathroom again.”

  “But she’ll miss her dinner,” quavered Granny Four.

  Granny Three, who had settled in as if she had always lived there, said, “Then there’ll be more for us. No, dear,” she added to Granny One, “you must always mash potatoes with cream. I brought some cream.”

  Granny Two could not take the matter so calmly. “We must get Emily out before she grows up peculiar!” she said, and she set off upstairs to the bathroom.

  Erg raced up with her and was just in time to wedge the landing carpet under the door so that it would not open. He left Granny Two there rattling and calling and raced down to the living room. The teddy still sat there, vast and yellow, on the sofa. But Erg felt it would be just like Emily to turn into something else while he was not looking. Then he might not be able to find her to turn her back. He decided to take the teddy in to lunch with him. That was terrible. Granny Three actually smiled kindly. Granny Four took the teddy and sat it in a chair of its own. “Is it a teddy-weddy then?” she said, and pretended to feed the teddy with mashed potato. Granny One kept looking from Erg to the teddy to Granny Four and snorting sarcastically. And when Granny Two came downstairs, she said, “Oh, the fairies have brought you a teddy! How exciting!”

  In between all this, all the Grannies wondered where Emily was and said she was growing up peculiar.

  But halfway through lunch, Erg noticed the glass salt-cellar, and he saw the way out of his troubles. Let him put that salt-cellar upside down, with a drinking-straw in it. Let both be filled with blue water going plotterta-plotterta. And Erg knew the machine would answer his prayer and turn the teddy back into Emily again. The trouble was, could he do it before the Grannies noticed that the teddy’s reproachful face was exactly like Emily’s?

  Erg knew that he was going to have to keep all four Grannies very busy.

  When lunch was over, the Grannies all put on aprons to wash up. Erg said he would take some lunch to Emily. Granny One sternly handed him two oranges.

  “Eat those for vitamins,” she said.

  “That’s right, dear,” agreed Granny Two. “Push Emily’s under the door for her.”

  Erg went upstairs and parked the teddy and the lunch in the bath. Then he wedged the door again and went down to the living room. He peeled both oranges and broke the peel into very small bits, which he scattered all over the carpet. But it takes a lot to keep four Grannies busy. Erg was still gulping and feeling much too full of orange, when Granny One escaped from the washing up and stood in the doorway staring grimly at the bits of orange peel.

  “I’ll use the vacuum cleaner on it, shall I?” Erg said brightly.

  “No you will not,” said Granny One. She went and got the vacuum cleaner herself and firmly plugged it in.

  Erg watched expectantly as she switched it on. Since the clip that held the bag together was now part of the prayer-machine, there was nothing to hold the dust in the cleaner at all. Dust came out in a cloud, like an explosion. Big wads of dirt followed it. And after that came orange peel, whirling and whizzing. Granny One switched the cleaner off in a hurry and screamed for help.

  Granny Four hurried in and turned faint in the dust. Granny Three came and turned the vacuum cleaner upside down. All the rest of the dust fell out of it.

  “I don’t understand these things,” Granny Three said fretfully. “Telephone for a man.”

  “Pull out the plug first!” gasped Granny Two, hastening to the scene. “There’s electricity leaking into it all the time!”

  “Nonsense!” snapped Granny One, coming to her senses. “Erg, what have you done to this machine?”

  But Erg was already tip-toeing into the kitchen. Hastily, he unscrewed the salt-cellar and poured the salt into the nearest thing – which happened to be the sugar bowl. He snatched up a packet of transparent drinking-straws. Finally, he turned the tap on over the half-finished washing up. It was not long before bubbly water was pouring over on to the floor. Erg turned the tap off again.

  “Hey!” he yelled. “You left the tap running!”

  This fetched all four Grannies back at a gallop.

  Satisfied, Erg went back into the dust-hung living room and collected the invention from behind the sofa. He took it up to the bathroom and locked himself in with it and the salt-cellar and the straws and the teddy and Emily’s lunch. He thought he had given himself an hour’s peace at least.

  But it takes more than dust and water to keep four Grannies busy. Ten minutes later, Granny Four was rattling at the bathroom door. “Emily, dear, are you all right?”

  “It’s me in here now,” Erg called. “Emily’s gone for a walk.”

  “Then could you let me in, dear?” Granny Four called back. “I’d like a little wash before I go for my rest.”

  “You can’t rest!” Erg called. He was horrified. Next thing he knew, they would all be up here, fussing about with cups of tea and hot-water-bottles and things.

  “Why not, dear?” quavered Granny Four.

  Erg cast about for a reason. His eye fell on the washing-basket. “There’s all the washing to do,” he shouted. “I’ll bring it downstairs for you, shall I?”

  “I’d better go and tell them,” quavered Granny Four and tottered away.

  But, when Erg looked in the washing-basket, it was empty. Nothing daunted, Erg took off the clothes he was wearing and put them in the basket. Grannies always said clothes were dirty when you had hardly worn them anyway. Then he went to Emily’s room and his own and collected all the clothes he could find there. Erg unfolded them and scrunched them up in his hands and rammed them into the basket. Then he put on clean clothes and staggered downstairs with the basket.

  “Here you are,” he said, emptying the crumpled heap on the kitchen floor.

  The four Grannies were gathered there eating chocolates out of the box Granny Three had brought. They gave the heap various looks of suffering and dismay. Granny Four turned pale. Granny Two sprang up saying she would fill the sink with nice hot water.

  “You’re allowed to use the washing-machine,” Erg said.

  “Oh no, dear,” said Granny Two. “Electricity doesn’t mix with water. It gets into the clothes, you know.”

  On reflection, Erg thought that washing in the sink would keep them busier. He took the basket back to the bathroom. Then he undid the toilet cistern and took out the blue block in it to make the blue water that was to go plotterta-plotterta. Then he thought he had better check to see how busy the Grannies were.

  He peeped round the kitchen door to find them quite out of control again. Granny Three was standing in the heap of clothes sorting them out. She took up a shirt, shook it fiercely, and passed it to Granny One. “This is clean too,” she said. “I think someone has been making work for us.”

  “Quite right,” said Granny One, holding the shirt up to the light. “Clean and ironed.” She passed the shirt to Granny Two, who smoothed it out and folded it carefully and passed it to Granny Four. Granny Four turned to put the shirt on a large heap of others and saw Erg watching.

  “Will you take these back upstairs, dear,” she said.

  “All right,” said Erg. “And then I’ll bring down the rest of the washing, shall I?”

  “Is there more?” Gra
nny Three asked, transferring her angry look from the next shirt to Erg.

  “Oh yes,” said Erg. There was going to be, if it killed him.

  He went upstairs with the pile of clothes and locked himself in the bathroom again. At least, Erg thought, he had kept the Grannies too busy to think of Emily for some time. But, at the rate they were going, they would be asking about her any minute now.

  Erg took the plate of lunch out of the bath and used it to dirty ten of the shirts in the pile. But, though he spread the lunch very thinly and carefully with his toothbrush, it would not go round more than ten shirts. He found himself looking longingly at his invention where it sat in the wash-basin. Even without the blue water, it had already worked quite well. Erg decided to give it another try.

  He wound the egg-beater – pray pray pray praypraypray. The tin crunched in and out. The mixer-blades, the skewer and the sardine-opener grated and revolved. The vacuum cleaner clip, the mincer-cutters and the chopstick wobbled and twirled. “Make the washing keep them busy,” Erg said, winding away.

  Erg’s clean clothes had become quite well covered with lunch and the blue from the toilet-block. He took them off and put them in the basket with the ten shirts. In their place, he put on the first clothes left in the heap: Emily’s nightdress, his own jeans and Emily’s school shirt. Dressed in this flowing raiment, he went down to the living room to roll in the dust there. But Granny Four was there, feebly flicking with a duster.

  “What are you doing, dear?”

  “Playing oil-sheiks,” said Erg. He went out into the garden and rolled in a flower-bed.

  Granny Four was not in the living room when he came back. To Erg’s horror, she met him outside the bathroom, carrying the teddy. “You forgot teddy-weddy, dear.”

  It was awful how the Grannies kept getting out of control. Erg locked the door and took off the raiment. He put on the next things: Emily’s tartan skirt and a frilly blouse. This time, he took the teddy with him and wedged the bathroom door shut.

  “What are you doing now, dear?” asked Granny Four.

  “Playing North Sea oil,” Erg explained. “The teddy is my sporran.” He went and rolled in the flower-bed again.

  This time, he got safely back to the bathroom. But he did not dare leave the teddy behind when he set out again in the next set of clothes, which were his own striped pyjamas.

  “I’m playing going to bed,” he told Granny Four before she could ask, and went and rolled in the flower-bed once more.

  While he was rolling, Granny Two and Granny Three came into the garden with a basket of washing to hang on the clothes-line. They were struggling to hold a ballooning skirt and a kicking pair of jeans in what seemed a very strong wind. Erg lay in the earth and watched. The skirt made a strong dive and almost got away. Both Grannies caught it. It took them some time to get it pegged, and the dress they took up next seemed to be blowing even harder. Erg licked one finger and thoughtfully held it up. There was almost no wind. Yet the row of things on the line were flapping and struggling and kicking as if there was half a gale.

  Interesting. But where was Granny One? Erg got up and went through the back door into the kitchen to check on Granny One. She was not there. But while Erg was looking round to make sure, the pile of wet washing on the draining board rolled heavily over and went flap, down on to the kitchen floor. Erg could see it oozing and trickling and spreading over the floor. He watched with interest. The washing was definitely working its way over towards the nearest heap of potatoes to get itself nice and dirty again.

  Erg was delighted. This prayer-machine worked! He went upstairs in his earthy pyjamas, convinced that the chopstick really must be some kind of magic wand. He only needed to get the blue water working, and he could turn Emily back again.

  But Granny One was outside the bathroom door, knocking and rattling at it. She turned and looked at Erg. He had rarely seen her look so grim.

  “Take those pyjamas off at once! What are you and Emily—?”

  “The washing,” Erg said hastily, “has fallen on the kitchen floor.”

  To his relief, Granny One pushed past him and went rushing downstairs to rescue the washing. Erg locked himself in the bathroom again and put the teddy back in the bath. He was beginning to feel that four Grannies were too much for any boy to control. There was another annoying thing too. There were no more of his own clothes left to wear. He had got them all dirty. He stayed in his pyjamas and got down to work on the salt-cellar at last.

  He had the salt-cellar nicely filled with blue water, when he was interrupted again, by quivering shouts from the garden. Erg could not resist opening the bathroom window to look. There was washing all over the garden. Some of it was blowing and kicking in the gooseberry bushes. The rest of it was whirling round and round the lawn with all four Grannies chasing it. Satisfied, Erg shut the window. He was determined to finish his invention.

  It was much trickier than he had thought. The hole in the lid of the salt-cellar was not big enough to get a straw through. Erg had to enlarge it with the skewer. And when he had got the straw to go through, he could not get the salt-cellar to stand properly upside down on top of the machine. He had to bend open the blades of the electric mixer to hold it. And when he had done that, he still could not get the blue water to go plotterta-plotterta. It simply ran down through the straw and into the inside of the biscuit-tin. When Erg wound the handle of the egg-beater, the water came out of the holes in the tin in blue showers.

  “Bother!” said Erg.

  As he put more blue water into the salt-cellar, he began to feel that everything was getting out of hand. The machine would not work. The earthy front of his pyjamas was blue and soaking, and so was most of the bathroom. And, to crown it all, there was a new outcry from the Grannies, from the kitchen this time. This was followed by feet on the stairs.

  Next moment, all four Grannies were outside the bathroom door.

  “Come out of there at once!” snapped Granny One.

  “We’re so worried, dear,” hushed Granny Two.

  “It was very unkind of you, dear,” quavered Granny Four, “to fill the sugar bowl with salt.”

  But it was Granny Three who really alarmed Erg. “You know,” she said, “that child has done something with Emily. I’ve not set eyes on her all the time I’ve been here.”

  Erg’s eyes went guiltily to the sad face of the teddy in the bath.

  Outside the door, Granny Two said, “I shall phone the Fire Brigade to get him out.”

  “And spank him when he is,” Granny One agreed.

  Erg listened to no more. He rammed the salt-cellar and the straw back in place and wound the egg-beater. Pray pray pray praypraypray. Blue water squirted. The works of the clock sploshed. Round and round went the chopstick, the mixer-blades, the salt-cellar, the skewer, the sardine-opener, the mincer-cutters, the straw and the clip off the vacuum cleaner.

  “Only one Granny,” prayed Erg, winding desperately. “I can’t manage more than one – please!”

  There was a sudden silence outside the bathroom door. It’s worked! Erg thought.

  “Erg,” said a large quavery voice outside. “Erg, open this door.”

  “In a minute,” Erg called.

  The words were hardly out of his mouth when the bathroom door leapt, and crashed open against the wall. The one Granny Erg had asked for came in. Only one. But Erg stared at her in horror. She was six feet tall and huge all over. Her hair was the baby pink of Granny Three’s. Her face was the stern face of Granny One, except that it wore the worried look of Granny Two. Her voice was the quavery voice of Granny Four, but it was four times as loud. Erg knew at a glance that what he had here was all four Grannies in one. They had blended into Supergranny. He jumped up to run.

  Supergranny swept towards Erg. With one hand she caught Erg’s arm in a grip of steel. At the same time, she was keenly scanning the rest of the bathroom.

  “What is this mess?” she quavered menacingly. “And where is Emily?” />
  Erg dared not tell the truth. He avoided the teddy’s accusing stare. “Emily went to play in the park,” he said.

  “Very well,” said Supergranny. “We shall go and get her. Come along, dear.”

  “I can’t go like this!” Erg protested, looking down at his earthy, blue, wet pyjamas.

  All the Grannies were a little deaf when it suited them. Supergranny was super-deaf. “Come along, dear,” she said. She plucked the teddy out of the bath and planted it in Erg’s arms. “Don’t forget teddy-weddy the fairies brought you.” And she pulled Erg towards the door.

  All Erg could think of was to spare one hand from the teddy and snatch up his invention from the wash-basin as he was pulled away. Blue water from it trickled down his legs as Supergranny towed him downstairs, but Erg hung on to it grimly. As soon as he got a chance, he was going to wind the egg-beater again and get Supergranny sent to Mars – which was surely where she belonged.

  But, in the hall, Supergranny’s piercing eye fell on the prayer-machine. “You can’t take that nasty thing, dear,” she said. She dragged it away from Erg and dropped it on the floor. Miserably, Erg tried dropping the teddy too. But Supergranny picked it up again and once more planted it in Erg’s arms. “Come along, dear.”

  Erg found himself in the street outside the house, in wet blue pyjamas, with one hand clutching a huge teddy and the other in the iron grip of Supergranny. Behind him, the front door crashed shut. Erg could tell by the noise that it had locked itself. “Have you got a key?” he said hopelessly.

  All the Grannies were a little vague at times, when it suited them. Supergranny was super-vague. “I don’t know, dear. Come along.”

  Erg knew he was locked out of the house and the prayer-machine locked in. As a last hope, he tried lingering beside Granny Three’s snake green car. “Can we drive to the park?”