The Giants and the Joneses

  Grishmij knew that birds and small animals could die of shock and she wondered if this creature would still be alive in the morning. Well, they could only do their best.

  While Jumbeelia nursed the iggly plop, Grishmij fetched the old birdcage from the attic. It had sat there ever since Zab had let his canary escape. She gave it a good dust and put some cotton wool inside it.

  The kitchen was the warmest room in the house, so they put the cage on the dresser. They filled the food and water containers with cornflakes and orange juice, which Jumbeelia seemed sure the iggly plop would like. Grishmij wondered how she knew this, but decided to save any questions for the morning.

  They put the creature inside one of the socks which Grishmij had knitted for the bobbaleely, laying it gently down on the cotton wool and covering it with a pile of handkerchiefs.

  Only then did Jumbeelia clap her hand to her mouth and say, ‘O ithry iggly plop!’

  Another one? Surely not? But Jumbeelia insisted that there was another one in her bedroom. They must find it and put it in the cage, to save it from the spratchkin.

  After a quick and unsuccessful search of the messy bedroom, Jumbeelia agreed to go to bed, but only if they first shut the spratchkin in Zab’s bedroom.

  In fact it was already in there, batting a plastic war figure about the floor. There was no sign of any bones or blood, so Grishmij managed to reassure Jumbeelia that it couldn’t have eaten the second iggly plop – if indeed it did exist.

  She tucked her granddaughter up and went back to her own room.

  She was just dropping off to sleep when she was woken again, this time by the ringing of the frangle on her bedside table. It was Jumbeelia’s father phoning from the hospital with the news they had all been waiting for.

  Grishmij didn’t wake Jumbeelia again, but she looked forward to telling her in the morning that she had a new iggly sister.

  22

  Alone

  COLETTE SAT ON the dark stair and shivered. Beside her lay the plastic railway line and her glittery running-away bag. The ribbon had been cutting into her shoulders, so she had taken the bag off for a quick rest. Not that it felt like a proper rest; Colette’s mind was too troubled for that.

  Sitting there, she realised that this was the very same stair on which Zab had discovered them all – only about two weeks ago, though it seemed like a lifetime. That was a dreadful moment, but at least they were all together then.

  She had never felt so lonely in her life. Up to now there had always been Stephen or Poppy, and now there was no one.

  Missing Stephen was an ache which Colette had grown used to, but missing Poppy was a sharp new pain. She could hardly bear to think about her little sister, and yet she could think of nothing else. Where was she? And was she alive or dead?

  Colette realised how much Poppy had changed since their capture: she was no longer just a little pest; she had become a real friend. She had played her part in the milk raid so well, keeping still and then pulling the thread at just the right time to distract the kitten. She had done everything perfectly – right up until the last minute when, with her old fearlessness, she had rushed out of the doll’s house to try to save her big sister.

  ‘And now I’m going to save you, Poppy.’ Colette heaved the running-away bag on to her back and positioned the railway line once more.

  The house was quiet. Colette knew that Jumbeelia and the old lady had gone back to their bedrooms and that the monster kitten was safely shut away in Zab’s room; she had seen all this from the landing, where she had hidden earlier.

  ‘But please, no more phone calls!’ she said to herself. That sudden ringing, as loud as a fire alarm, had startled her so much that she had nearly fallen off her railway-line slide.

  Poppy was downstairs somewhere, and that thought kept Colette going, step by step – slide, bump; slide, bump – right to the bottom of the giant staircase.

  Which way now? When Zab had taken her and Stephen out into the garden he had turned left and carried them through a kitchen. That was as good a place as any to start looking for Poppy.

  It was lighter down here; a lamp in the hall had been left on. In the distance Colette could see that the kitchen door was ajar, and she made her way towards it.

  She was stopped in her tracks by a noise upstairs. The kitten was scratching at Zab’s bedroom door, trying to get out.

  But it can’t get out, she told herself. It can’t. It won’t. All the same, she started to run, the heavy bag bumping against the badge-shield on her back.

  And now she was in the dark kitchen.

  ‘Poppy!’ she whispered.

  She said it a little louder, but still there was no reply.

  The distant scratching seemed to have stopped. The only sound was a low hum coming from the giant fridge.

  As her eyes grew used to the darkness, Colette saw that there was a gap between the fridge and the cupboard beside it. She slid into it. The hum was horribly loud now, but at least this felt like quite a safe hiding place. She turned to have a better look at the room she was in.

  A table and chairs. Cupboards. A stack of vegetable baskets beside a towering dresser. As she gazed up at the dresser, the moon came out from behind a cloud and shone through the kitchen window, and Colette saw the cage.

  What was in it? A bird? A mouse? A hamster, perhaps?

  It couldn’t be Poppy, could it?

  ‘Poppy! Poppy, are you there?’ Colette said it as loudly as she dared.

  Silence.

  ‘Poppy! Poppy, are you all right?’

  Still there was no sound from the cage. But there was a sound of loud footsteps outside the house.

  A key turned in the back door. A sudden bright light flooded the room and Colette edged her way to the very back of the fridge and then behind it.

  The fridge’s hum sounded louder than ever; and there was a different kind of humming too. Whoever had come into the kitchen was humming a cheerful tune. The voice was low – much lower than Zab’s voice. Could it be the giant father?

  The humming stopped suddenly, in the middle of the tune.

  ‘Wahoy!’ Colette heard the giant man murmur. She heard his footsteps, followed by a softer, metallic sound. He must be opening the door of the cage.

  Then she heard him gasp and exclaim, ‘Iggly plop!’

  23

  Beely bobbaleely

  JUMBEELIA’S FATHER, PIJ, was scraping a carrot at the kitchen table.

  The spratchkin jumped up and tried to bat it out of his hand.

  ‘Pecky, pecky, pecky!’ he said with a chuckle. He put down the knife and tickled the spratchkin under the chin. Then he pushed her gently off the table. He was in a good mood. As he began to cut the carrot into thin strips, he burst into song:

  Beely beely bobbaleely,

  Bobbaleely mubbin,

  Oy whedderwhay woor

  jum, woor chay

  Fa sprubbin, sprubbin,

  sprubbin! (Lovely lovely baby,

  Baby mine,

  You fill our home,

  our land

  With joy, joy, joy!)

  It was an old song, and he had never particularly cared about the words before, but now they seemed full of truth and meaning. The new bobbaleely was beely. At five days old, she was absolutely beautiful, from the black hair on her pink head to her ten perfect iggly toenails. And tomorrow she would be coming home!

  Pij got up and poked one of the carrot strips between the bars of the cage on the dresser. ‘Iggly plop! Iggly plop!’ he called softly.

  Usually Jumbeelia or Grishmij fed the iggly plop, but this afternoon they were both at the hospital, visiting Mij and the new bobbaleely.

  ‘Beely frimmot!’ said Pij, waggling the carrot strip about in an attempt to coax the iggly plop from her nest.

  Here she came at last. A sudden dart, and she had snatched the frimmot from his hand.

  She wasn’t much more than a bobbaleely herself, Pij realised. He was surprised at how protective
he felt; maybe it was because he had first seen her the same night that his own bobbaleely was born. If only she wasn’t so timid! If she was this scared of him, how was she going to feel about Zab when he came home from Grishpij’s house tomorrow?

  Pij had been hoping she would learn to say thank you. ‘Oidle oy! Oidle oy!’ he prompted her now, willing her to parrot the words back to him. Five days in the cage, and the iggly plop hadn’t spoken a single word of Groilish, though he, Grishmij and Jumbeelia had all been trying to teach her. Jumbeelia said that the creature could speak a different, nonsense language, but Pij had never heard her.

  ‘Oidle oy! Oidle oy!’ he repeated, but the iggly plop just backed away into her cotton-wool nest and nibbled at the strip of frimmot.

  No one had yet dared to tell Mij about the new pet. Pij feared that she might hand the creature over to old Throg, or else dump her on the compost heap in the garden, which is what she told him she had done with the iggly blebber.

  If the iggly plop could learn to say just a few words of Groilish, maybe she would win Mij’s heart.

  ‘Wahoy! Wahoy, iggly plop!’ Pij tried again, but the only result was a chirrup and a soft thud from the spratchkin. It had leapt up on to the dresser and was staring intently at the cage.

  The iggly plop trembled, cowered, and then burrowed under a handkerchief. Although her wound was healing well, her terror of the spratchkin was as great as ever.

  Pij pushed the spratchkin on to the floor again, remembering the job he had been planning to do. He poked the remaining strips of frimmot into the cage, then fetched a saw and set to work on the back door. He was cutting out a square of wood from the bottom of the door, so that he could fit a flap for the spratchkin.

  The spratchkin watched him briefly, but then padded to her favourite place, which was beside the fridge. She shot a paw down one side of it. A dusty pea rolled out. Instead of playing with it, the spratchkin continued to crouch, wriggle her haunches and stare at the dark gap. Pij wondered if she had seen a mouse, but he was too happy sawing away to bother to investigate.

  As he sawed, he struck up the song again:

  Beely beely bobbaleely,

  Bobbaleely mubbin,

  Oy whedderwhay oor jum, oor chay

  Fa …

  He paused to push at the square of wood, which clattered to the floor. At the same time an iggly voice from the cage completed the last three words of the song:

  ‘Sprubbin! Sprubbin! Sprubbin!’

  24

  The bridge of doom

  AT LAST THERE was a way out!

  And at last it was safe to tell Poppy. The kitchen was dark and the house was quiet. All the giants must be in bed.

  Colette stepped out from her hiding place. It was always a relief to get away from the deafening hum of the fridge. She had spent five days behind it, with only Poppy’s leftovers and anything else she could scavenge during the night to eat.

  ‘Poppy! Poppy, are you awake?’

  ‘Yes. I got carrots,’ said Poppy proudly. ‘One, two, three, throw.’

  A piece of giant carrot as long as Colette’s arm landed on the floor.

  ‘Good shot, Poppy,’ said Colette. (Poppy’s leftovers often landed, uselessly, on the surface of the dresser.) ‘But I won’t eat it now. We can take it with us.’

  ‘Take it in the garden, see Stephen?’ asked Poppy.

  ‘Yes,’ said Colette, trying not to sound doubtful. She didn’t really know if Stephen was still in the garden – she hadn’t heard the lawn mower for days – but there was no point in worrying Poppy. Instead, Colette told her, ‘There’s a cat-flap. We can escape!’

  ‘No,’ said Poppy. ‘Naughty cat might get us.’

  ‘We’ll be fine,’ said Colette, as confidently as she could. ‘It won’t get us. It’s upstairs, I’m sure.’

  Poppy didn’t answer straight away. Then she said, ‘All right,’ very quietly.

  Colette was scared of the giant kitten too, but her main fear was a different one. Before they could escape she would have to climb up and rescue Poppy from her cage, and she didn’t know if she had the strength to do it. Inside her cage, Poppy had been fed and pampered by the giants. Her arm had nearly healed and she had put on weight. But as Poppy had grown stronger, Colette, living on a diet of scraps and leftovers, had become weaker.

  A worse problem than hunger was thirst. If it wasn’t for the juicy tomato which had rolled out of a shopping bag, unspotted by the giants, Colette thought she might have died. She had hidden the tomato behind the fridge and had been nibbling and sucking away at it for the last few days.

  Peering up through the gloom at the cage on the dresser, she suddenly felt dizzy. And I haven’t even started climbing yet, she thought.

  Beside the dresser stood the tall stack of plastic vegetable baskets. They reminded Colette of something. What was it?

  Then it came to her. ‘The Death Tower,’ she said out loud.

  That was Stephen’s name for one of the climbing frames in an adventure playground back home. The Death Tower was taller than a house and had five platforms. To reach the top one you had to walk along a scary sloping bridge which Stephen called the Bridge of Doom.

  Stephen absolutely loved that sort of thing, but Colette had only climbed the Death Tower once, to prove to him that she wasn’t the ‘cowardly cockroach’ he kept calling her. She could still feel the wave of dizzy panic that had hit her when she’d made the mistake of looking down from the Bridge of Doom.

  If only Stephen were here now! But it was no use thinking that.

  ‘I’m coming, Poppy,’ she said, and set out across the kitchen floor, dragging the length of yellow plastic behind her. It had been a railway line and a slide, and now it was going to be a bridge.

  The vegetable baskets were high at the back and sides but low at the front. It was easy enough to heave herself into the bottom one, which was full of giant potatoes.

  Colette clambered up the round dirty boulders to the top of the potato hill. She reached up to dump the railway line into the basket above. Then, gripping the front rim of the basket, she managed to swing herself up into it.

  Onions this time. It was harder to climb them because their papery skins kept flaking off. As her fingernails scrabbled at the flesh beneath the skins her eyes began to sting from the onion juice, and soon they were streaming with painful tears. Still, she struggled to the top and heaved herself up to the next basket.

  ‘Nearly there now?’ came Poppy’s voice, as if Colette was on a car journey.

  ‘Yes, nearly there,’ said Colette, though there were still two more baskets to go. As it turned out, these were full of parsnips and carrots, which were quite knobbly and so easier to climb than the round potatoes and onions.

  Now came the really tricky part. The rim of the top basket was very nearly as high as the surface of the dresser, but there was a gap between them.

  ‘This is where you come in,’ she said to the railway line. It felt like a kind of friend now. After all, it had got her all the way down the giant stairs. But it was one thing sliding down a carpeted staircase, step by step, and quite another to cross a narrow bridge with no railing – especially in the darkness, when the bridge sloped and the drop below her was as deep and steep as a mountain canyon.

  ‘I mustn’t look down,’ thought Colette, remembering the Death Tower again. The plastic bridge (she tried not to think of it as the Bridge of Doom) was in place now, but she was terrified that it would slip. She tested it with one foot and then the other. It felt firm enough – a lot firmer than her legs, which had suddenly started to wobble.

  ‘Come on, ’Lette,’ said Poppy. Colette could see her now, holding the bars of the cage and jumping up and down. Somehow the sight gave her strength, and before she knew it she had crossed the bridge and was on the dresser beside the cage. Poppy’s delighted face and cry of‘ ’Lette here!’ were her reward.

  Colette tried to reach the metal hook of the cage door, but it was just too high. She l
ooked around the surface of the dresser for something she could use to yank it.

  Near the cage was a giant ashtray and in it a match as long as a human-size walking stick. Holding it above her head, she thrust it up against the hook.

  Yes! The hook rose, the door swung open and Poppy ran out of the cage.

  She flung herself at Colette like a puppy. Colette fell over backwards, with Poppy on top of her. They both laughed with the relief of being together again.

  Then there was a clattering sound and they stopped laughing. The railway line had fallen to the floor.

  ‘Bridge gone,’ said Poppy.

  They were stranded on the dresser.

  This was too much to bear. Colette sat down and held her head in her hands.

  ‘Have nice carrot,’ suggested Poppy, trying to cheer her up.

  Colette shook her head and shivered. Poppy went back into the cage and brought out her bedding: a knitted giant baby’s sock and a giant handkerchief. She wrapped the handkerchief round Colette’s shoulders.

  ‘Nice warm sheet,’ she said – and suddenly Colette knew what to do.

  ‘Are there any more of these?’ she asked.

  Poppy dragged out four more handkerchiefs.

  Colette wasn’t an expert on knots like Stephen, but she thought she could remember how to tie a reef knot, even in the dark. Her fingers set to work.

  Poppy realised immediately what she was doing.

  ‘Go down sheets, go in garden, see Stephen,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Colette.

  ‘Take cosy bed too,’ said Poppy, giving the sock a push. The matchstick fell down with it.

  Colette was surprising herself with her knot-tying speed and skill. Soon all five handkerchiefs were tied together. She tied the top one to a bar of the cage and pushed the sheet ladder off the edge of the dresser. Would it be long enough? Yes – she could see that the last handkerchief was touching the kitchen floor.

  ‘Like the Donkey,’ said Poppy.