The Giants and the Joneses (3 page)

‘T
IS IS THE
last button,’ said Colette. She pushed it through the hole in the floor of the bag.

Stephen had scoffed when she had emptied her pockets and produced the buttons – yet another useless collection as far as he could see. But when Colette suggested leaving a trail of buttons, so that they could find their way back to the top of the beanstalk, he had grudgingly admitted this wasn’t a bad idea.

‘I think we’ve arrived,’ he said now, with his eye to
the hole in the bag. ‘She’s opening a door.’

And that was when they heard the second voice. It was even louder than the first one. It sounded angry, and it went on and on and on.

Their kidnapper’s voice sounded a lot quieter now. ‘Yimp, yimp, yimp,’ it kept saying, in reply to the deafening jumble of furious sounds.

‘Big girl got cross Mummy,’ whispered Poppy.

Colette realised she was probably right.

‘I wonder what she’s cross
about
?’ she whispered back.

‘Maybe because her precious little daughter hasn’t collected enough food for supper,’ said Stephen.

At last, after yet another apologetic-sounding ‘yimp’ from the girl giant, the mother giant fell silent and the children were on the move again.

‘We’re in a house,’ hissed Stephen.

Colette heard a door open, and then her stomach lurched as they were plunged to the ground.

‘This is it,’ said Stephen. He was brandishing a clothes peg.

Colette picked one up too. It didn’t feel like a very powerful weapon.

The ceiling came off the bag.

‘Come on, Poppy, get ready to fight!’ ordered Stephen.

But Poppy stretched out her arms. ‘Big girl ’gain!’ she said, as the enormous fingers curled round her.

‘Stop! Don’t you hurt my sister!’ shouted Stephen.

He lunged out at one of the fingers with his clothes peg. But the hand – with Poppy in it – was already too high to reach.

Colette gazed up helplessly and saw a giant face looking down.

‘Beely iggly plop,’ said the giant, lifting Poppy towards her mouth …

‘No!’ Stephen bellowed, and he hurled the peg at the giant. It hit her cheek, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her mouth was touching Poppy now. Soon it would be opening.

But it didn’t open. Instead, a sort of sucking, smacking noise came from it.

‘All wet!’ said Poppy.

‘Yuk!’ said Stephen. ‘Was that a kiss?’

Before Colette could answer, it was her turn. She was lifted up and brought towards the shining pink
lips. She closed her eyes. The next second she felt a dampness all over her cheek and an explosion in her ear.

She dared herself to open her eyes, and caught a glimpse of a hairy nostril before she was lowered again and pushed through a door.

‘Beely jum,’ boomed the giant.

Colette found herself in a sitting room. To her surprise, the furniture was more or less human-size. There was a sofa, two armchairs, one of them on its side, and an upside-down table.

‘Boo!’

Colette jumped as a figure flung itself at her from behind one of the armchairs. It was Poppy.

A second later Stephen was thrust in beside them, an expression of disgust on his face.

‘Yuk!’ he said again. He never had been a great fan of kisses.

‘At least it’s better than being eaten,’ Colette pointed out.

And then, ‘Baa Lamb!’ shrieked Poppy.

A big and rather tatty-looking sheep with magnificent
twisty horns had joined them and was eyeing them suspiciously. Stephen rolled his eyes. ‘Of all the animals in the world to be stuck with!’ he said.

At that moment, the wall with the door in it began to move. It swung right away from them, revealing the girl giant’s huge grinning face.

‘Jumbeelia,’ she said, pointing to herself.

‘What a stupid name,’ muttered Stephen.

‘Jumbeelia! JUMBEELIA!’ the giant mother called from a distance. She sounded impatient rather than angry.

‘Ootle rootle!’ their kidnapper yelled in reply, and the front wall of the doll’s house slid back into place.

For a second Jumbeelia’s shiny giant lips appeared at their window, with a single finger over them. ‘Sshh!’ she whispered. Then she was gone.

‘Now’s our chance,’ said Stephen.

‘For what?’ asked Colette.

‘To get away, of course.’ He was already at the door of the doll’s house.

But Poppy was trying to make friends with the
sheep. ‘Nice Baa Lamb,’ she kept saying as she chased it round and round the room.

The sheep, who seemed to be keener to escape from Poppy than from Giant Land, lowered its horns and pushed a door open. It went through, with Poppy still in pursuit.

‘Look – there’s a kitchen,’ said Colette, following her.

‘Never mind that. Just get Poppy and
come
!’ Stephen urged.

Colette ignored him. She was inspecting the cooker. ‘The knobs won’t turn,’ she said.

Stephen sighed. ‘Okay,
I’ll
get Poppy,’ he said.

Colette looked inside the fridge. It wasn’t at all cold, and the food on the shelves was made of plastic. Suddenly she felt hungry.

‘What are we supposed to eat?’ she asked.

‘I keep telling you – it’s them that does the eating, not us!’ said Stephen, grabbing Poppy’s arm. ‘We’ve got to get away from here!’

Colette saw the desperation in his eyes and her own fear flooded back.

‘You’re right, Stephen,’ she said. ‘Come on, Poppy.’

In any case, the sheep was now leading the way. The children followed it back through the main room of the doll’s house and out of the front door.

‘Grass!’ said Poppy. But it wasn’t grass. It felt more like very deep thick velvety moss. Their feet sank into it as they walked.

‘It’s a carpet, stupid,’ said Stephen. Then, ‘Hey, look at that!’ and he pointed at a huge heap of cars, buses and lorries. He prodded an ambulance.

‘It’s plastic,’ he said, disappointed. ‘They’re just a load of toys.’

Colette didn’t answer him. She was more interested in another heap of objects which looked like big wrinkly pale green bowls.

‘Hat!’ said Poppy, putting one on her head. It had a little stalk coming out of the middle of it.

‘They’re acorn cups!’ exclaimed Colette.

‘She’s completely mad,’ said Stephen.

‘No, she’s not mad,’ said Colette thoughtfully. ‘I think she must like collecting things – just like me.’

‘Yes, mad, like I said,’ said Stephen.

‘Oh shut up! Look, I can see the door. And it’s open!’

It wasn’t easy making their way across the furry green carpet towards the giant door. First they had to climb over giant pencils which lay like fallen trees, and then they found their way blocked by an enormous pile of what looked like shiny coloured plates.

‘I think they’re buttons,’ said Colette.

‘Trust her,’ said Stephen.

Colette found herself springing to the girl giant’s defence. ‘You shouldn’t groan like that. Look how useful
my
button collection was.’

‘Oh yeah?’ said Stephen in his most infuriating voice.

Colette turned on him. ‘What’s the matter with you, Stephen Jones? Why do you have to be so scornful all the time? Don’t you want to get home? Don’t you want to see Mum and Dad again?’

‘That’s great coming from you. Who wanted to stay and explore the doll’s house?’

‘There you go again! Can’t you see, we’re all in this together? We’ll never get home if you keep getting at me.’

‘It’s you that’s getting at
me
!’

‘Hill all slidey!’ called out Poppy, interrupting their quarrel. She was trying to climb the button hill, and laughing as the buttons slithered and clattered under her weight.

‘We need to go
round
it, not over it,’ Colette told her. She turned to Stephen. ‘Coming?’

Stephen shrugged sulkily, but followed her round the hill of buttons. After that the going was a little easier. A bright yellow plastic railway track led them nearly all the way to the door, and when it stopped abruptly there was only one more hill in their way – a soft hairy purple one. ‘It’s a towel,’ said Colette.

Then, ‘Big red field,’ said Poppy.

‘It does look like one.’ Colette gazed across the new empty space. ‘But look at those railings over there – I’ve never seen a field with a fence that high.’

Stephen still said nothing. Colette touched his arm gently, trying to make up, but he shrugged her off.

They made their way towards the wooden railings, past another giant door. The red carpet was thinner than the green one, less squashy to walk on.

Colette’s spirits rose. In her mind they were already out of the house and following the trail of buttons to the top of the beanstalk.

‘I bet Mum and Dad won’t be expecting us back so soon,’ she said.

But then, ‘Cliff,’ said Poppy, and they all stopped.

Colette looked down. Below them the red ground dropped away steeply. They were indeed at the top of a cliff, twice her own height – too tall to jump down, and too steep to climb down.

Of course. The towering wooden railings were banisters. The cliff was a giant stair. And below it was another stair, and another one and another one.

The giant staircase was a mountain of cliffs.

I
T WAS TIME
for Throg to be on his way – back over the wall, back to his patrol. The edgeland mist had thinned during his doze, and it wasn’t quite so cold. Throg felt refreshed and cheerful. When he was in a good mood he sometimes made up a tune for his favourite rhyme, and he did so now as he tottered along once more, straining his eyes to peer out into the emptiness.

Arump o chay ee glay, glay,

Arump o chay ee glay.

Oy frikely frikely bimplestonk,

Eel kraggle oy flisterflay.

His voice felt stronger now, after his sleep, and he was enjoying the sound of it. He screwed up his eyes and flung back his head, singing full-belt, his hobble almost transformed into a stride.

He had nearly sung the song through three times when his foot slipped and he landed with a bump on his bottom.

He sat there for a moment, cursing the slippery ground but most of all himself. There was no excuse for such carelessness, especially with the mist thinner than usual. So thin that he could clearly see the edge of the land. So thin that he could clearly see …

‘O bimplestonk!’ Throg was on his feet in a flash. Yes, there it was, exactly the same as in all the pictures – the frikely thick stalk, the frikely green leaves and the frikely green pods which he knew were full of bimples.

Old Throg’s heart thumped as he peered down.

He couldn’t see far, because of the cloud, but there was no sign of any iggly plops.

So this was it. The moment he had waited for all his life.

Throg picked up the can of weedkiller. He unscrewed the lid, then leant carefully forwards and sloshed some of the powerful liquid on to the top leaf.

The bimplestonk began to shrivel.

‘C
AN’T YOU STOP
Poppy bouncing?’ Stephen said to Colette. ‘It’s getting on my nerves.’

‘Bouncing’s better than moaning,’ replied Colette, secretly smiling to herself because Stephen was talking to her again.

They were back in the doll’s house, where they had discovered a bedroom at the top of a flight of stairs. There were two plastic beds and a giant sardine tin. Inside the sardine tin were the cushions from the swing,
and Poppy – the only cheerful one – was jumping up and down on them.

‘Why did we have to come back here?’ Stephen sat on one of the beds, his head in his hands.

‘You
know
why,’ Colette reminded him. ‘It’s best if Jumbeelia doesn’t realise we tried to escape.’

As if on cue they heard giant footsteps and Jumbeelia’s voice. ‘Snishsnosh!’ she said.

She lifted the front off the doll’s house and started to fiddle about in the kitchen. Poppy ran down the stairs. Colette and Stephen followed more slowly.

On the kitchen table was an object which looked a bit like a very long loaf of bread. But it wasn’t crusty like bread; it was smooth, and slightly greasy-looking, and yellowish. A faint trail of steam was rising from it, and the smell was definitely
not
one of bread. Yet it was a smell that Colette knew very well, one of her favourite smells in fact, a mixture of salt and vinegar and …

‘Nice big chip,’ said Poppy.

‘It’s the biggest chip in the world!’ said Stephen, suddenly in a good mood, and Colette laughed.

‘Snishsnosh!’ said Jumbeelia again. Colette’s hunger
delicious smell was.

The girl giant began to cut the chip into slices.

‘Watch it,’ said Stephen. ‘That’s a giant razor blade. She could be planning to carve
us
up with it.’ But when Jumbeelia handed out slices of the giant chip, he bit into his straight away.

‘This beats McDonald’s,’ he said.

‘It’s lucky she likes the same things as us, isn’t it?’ said Colette between mouthfuls. ‘Supposing they ate slug dumplings or something?’

‘Don’t speak too soon – what’s this?’

The girl giant had put three round dark objects on the table. They looked a bit like bun-size Christmas puddings. Colette sniffed one, then nibbled at it. It tasted familiar.

‘Nice big raisin,’ said Poppy.

As they munched away, Jumbeelia placed something else in front of them. It was a tube of toothpaste longer than the tabletop.

‘Trust her to think we want to eat
toothpaste
,’ said Stephen.

‘Maybe she wants to clean our teeth,’ said Colette.

They were both wrong. Jumbeelia unscrewed the lid of the tube. To the children this was the size of a large vase. She poured a few orange-coloured drops into it from a giant bottle. ‘Beely gloosh,’ she said.

They let Jumbeelia hold the toothpaste lid to their lips and tilt it while they sipped, and only a little of the drink trickled down their chins.

‘It had better not be poison,’ muttered Stephen.

‘Don’t be silly – it’s orange juice,’ said Colette. ‘But what’s she got now?’

‘Peggy line!’ cried Poppy, recognising the washing line that had been in the bag with them.

‘Iggly swisheroo,’ said Jumbeelia.

She picked up Poppy and took off her jumper.

‘All cold,’ complained Poppy as her skirt came off too, and, ‘Not bedtime,’ when Jumbeelia dressed her in a long lacy nighty. But she was delighted with the stripy football jumper which the giant girl then slipped over her head. ‘All pretty now,’ she said.

‘It looks like it’s your turn,’ said Stephen to Colette, as Jumbeelia reached out for her.

Even though the girl giant was gentle in the way she handled them, Colette felt quite nervous.

‘Just keep still and you’ll be all right,’ said Stephen.

Jumbeelia removed Colette’s clothes and coaxed her arms into a fleecy-lined purple anorak and her legs into a pair of lime green Bermuda shorts.

Stephen hooted with laughter, until Jumbeelia picked him up and dressed him in a pink ballet dress with a sticking-out skirt.

Poppy clapped her hands and said, ‘Stephen do dance!’

‘Yes, come on, Stephen – up on your points!’ said Colette, enjoying his outraged expression.

‘I can’t wear this,’ he shouted. ‘Give me some boys’ clothes.’

But Jumbeelia couldn’t understand him. In any case, she had a different plan.

Carefully, she lifted them up again, and put them down in a different part of the bedroom. The carpet here was strewn with life-size plastic farm animals, some of them upright, others lying forlornly on their sides.

Jumbeelia put Colette on a milking stool beside
a plastic cow. Colette realised she was supposed to milk it, but of course no milk came from its hard pink udder.

Poppy was allowed to sit on a big carthorse. She loved this and started making clip-clop noises.

Stephen had his eye on a tractor but instead Jumbeelia gave him a bucket.

‘Stephen feed chickens,’ said Poppy.

‘I’m not throwing imaginary corn to plastic hens!’ said Stephen in disgust, and he hurled the bucket away.

‘Pecky iggly plop!’ Jumbeelia was wagging her finger at Stephen and Colette was frightened that she might decide to punish him for his bad temper.

But a sudden bleating distracted the girl giant. There, among the plastic sheep, was the real one. It was looking more dishevelled than ever, with bits of green carpet fluff mixed up in its dirty wool.

‘Iggly blebber!’ cried Jumbeelia in delight.

‘That’s let me off the hook,’ said Stephen.

‘Yes, but don’t annoy her again – you had me really worried,’ said Colette.

Something else was worrying her too. It was the fact
that Jumbeelia seemed to have forgotten all about the sheep until it reappeared.

Jumbeelia picked up one of the plastic sheep and made it rub noses with the real one, as if to cheer it up. But it didn’t stop bleating.

‘Baa Lamb hungry,’ said Poppy from her carthorse.

Jumbeelia seemed to have the same idea. She started to rummage about inside a huge bag.

‘That’s the bag
we
were in,’ said Colette.

The girl giant produced a handful of normal-size grass from a pocket of the bag. Then she put something else down on the floor.

‘Iggly frangle,’ she said.

‘It’s a phone box,’ said Colette.

‘I bet it’s the one from the village!’ said Stephen indignantly.

‘Phone Mummy, phone Daddy,’ said Poppy, and slithered off the horse’s back.

Almost as if she understood, Jumbeelia opened the door of the phone box and popped her inside.

‘Hello, Mummy, hello, Daddy. Come here,’ Poppy said. Then her face crumpled. She dropped the
telephone receiver and left it dangling.

Colette opened the door for her.

‘Mummy, Daddy not there,’ said Poppy.

‘No,’ said Colette miserably. The sight of the familiar phone box had brought back all her own homesickness.

‘I expect Mum and Dad have found the beanstalk by now,’ she told Poppy, trying to cheer her up. ‘Or else the police have. Someone will come and rescue us soon. They’re probably on their way now.’

Stephen turned on her. ‘What? You want to just wait here playing farms with Jumbo till someone rescues us?’

‘Well, you think of a way of getting down the stairs then.’

‘Ssh!’ said Jumbeelia, and the next second she had thrust them into the doll’s-house bedroom. They heard her mother come into the room.

Colette put her finger to her lips, and Stephen nodded. Even Poppy seemed to understand that the giant woman was more of a threat than the girl. Without saying a word, she lay down on the cushions inside the sardine tin, with her thumb in her mouth. ‘We might as well too,’ whispered Colette,
and she and Stephen lay down on the two beds.

Within seconds, Poppy’s thumb had slipped from her mouth. She was asleep.

Colette lay awake. She didn’t know if Stephen was awake too. She didn’t dare whisper anything to him.

She felt very lonely as she lay there, half-listening to what she guessed must be a bedtime story being told in a droning voice by the giant mother. She tried not to think about her own mother and the three empty beds at home.

The light went off, and before long Colette heard a rumbling sound coming from the direction of Jumbeelia’s bed.

‘Jumbo’s asleep,’ whispered Stephen.

‘I thought you were too!’ answered Colette, relieved that he wasn’t.

‘I’ve just thought of it,’ said Stephen.

‘Of what?’

‘A railway line.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You said to think of a way to get downstairs, and I have. Remember that plastic railway track near Jumbo’s bedroom door? It’s like the one I used to have – it’s made of different sections that clip together. If we can unclip one we could use it as a slide to get from stair to stair.’

‘That’s not a bad idea, Mr Know-All,’ admitted Colette.

‘Let’s do it, then.’

‘What, now? But Poppy’s asleep.’

‘Well, let’s try it out and then wake her up if it works.’

They tiptoed out of the doll’s house, navigated their way to the railway track, and succeeded in unclipping one of the bright yellow sections. They were dragging it towards the door when an anguished, grating sound from under the bed made them jump.

‘What was that?’ whispered Colette.

The sound came again. It was loud enough to wake the whole house, and this time there was no mistaking it.

‘Oh no,’ moaned Stephen softly. ‘Shut up, Baa Lamb!’