The Giants and the Joneses (4 page)

J
UMBEELIA’S MOTHER
, M
IJ
, was pottering about her bedroom when she heard a noise.

She stood still and listened. Nothing, except for the annoying drip of the bathroom tap that wouldn’t turn off properly.

Inside her, the bobbaleely kicked. He or she was already quite a lively character. Mij sat down on the bed and began thinking again about names. Woozly for a girl. (That meant cuddly.) If it was a boy, perhaps
Jinjarn – kind heart.

Not that her other children had lived up to their names, she reflected sadly. Her son’s name, Zab, meant peace, but Zab was anything but peaceful. In fact, it was quite a relief when he was away at school. As for Jumbeelia, her name meant home-lover, but look how she had turned out! Her bedroom was always in a mess and she was forever wandering
away
from home, collecting yet more horrible dirty things.

Where had Jumbeelia been today? Mij was supposed to have a rest every afternoon – it was the doctor’s orders – but how
could
she rest properly if her daughter was going to run off like that?

Maybe Jumbeelia felt lonely playing by herself in the house. It wouldn’t help when Zab came home from school tomorrow; he wasn’t much of a companion for her, more of a tormentor. And how would it be once the bobbaleely was born? What if Jumbeelia felt jealous and neglected? Then she might start wandering off even more.

Mij was no animal-lover, but she did sometimes wonder if she ought to get a pet for her daughter. Zab
had had a bird once, a yellow canary which his grandmother had given him, but he had never cared for it much and didn’t seem to miss it after it flew away when he left its cage open. Jumbeelia would surely be better at looking after a pet – or would she just lose interest in it? Her crazes always tended to wear off quite quickly.

Oh, children were such a worry!

Baaaa!

There it was again! The sound was coming from Jumbeelia’s bedroom.

By the light from the landing Mij saw that Jumbeelia was fast asleep. She was snoring slightly, but the noise she had heard was definitely not a snore.

Mij glanced round the room. There was no sign of any intruder.

Crunch. She had trodden on something. It was almost impossible
not
to tread on something in her daughter’s messy bedroom. She looked down to see what was underfoot this time. It was a section of plastic railway track.

And then something moved and she gasped.

There at her feet was a nasty-looking grubby little creature with horns. She took a step back, in horror.

Calm down, she told herself: it must be an iggly clockwork toy.

She forced herself to squat down and inspect it. The creature made the sound again, and she noticed that it was surrounded by little brown balls, like mouse droppings.

It wasn’t a toy. It was alive!

It looked – but that was ridiculous, it couldn’t be! – like a tiny sheep.

Whatever it was, it was disgusting and unhygienic, and must be disposed of without delay. Bracing herself, Mij trapped the revolting blebbery thing under an empty box. As she did so, she imagined she heard another sound, like a tiny gasp, coming from under Jumbeelia’s bed.

She listened again but all was quiet.

Now wasn’t the time to search the room, but in the morning she would force Jumbeelia to have a thorough clear-out.

Meanwhile, back to her unpleasant task. She couldn’t bring herself to touch the nasty iggly creature. Rummaging under the bed, she grasped a furry slipper. That should do the job …

Colette and Stephen watched helplessly from their hiding place under Jumbeelia’s bed as the giant mother used the slipper to sweep the sheep into the box. They saw her carry it out of the room, closing the door behind her.

They heard footsteps, and more doors opening and closing, and then, a while later, the flushing of a giant toilet.

Z
AB PULLED
J
UMBEELIA’S
favourite scrunchy off her hair. When she tried to snatch it back he laughed. He had only been home from boarding school for half an hour and already he was being unbearable.

Mij had given them a mid-morning snack: two packets of crisps and a bowl of cherries. Jumbeelia loved cherries – not just eating them, but finding the pairs with joined-together stalks and putting them over her ears like earrings. But as soon as Zab saw her do that he
snatched them off and popped them in his mouth. He had already eaten most of her crisps as well as his own.

He was stretching and twanging the scrunchy now. Jumbeelia tried again to grab it from him but he held it above his head.

She called out to her parents: ‘Mij! Pij!’

Pij, in his police uniform, popped his head round the door for a hurried ‘yahaw’ and to tell them not to fight. He was late for his shift and didn’t have time to listen to Jumbeelia’s protests.

Zab was quick to find a use for the scrunchy: as a catapult, to launch cherry stones at his sister.

Jumbeelia tried to escape from the kitchen, sneaking the last two cherries into her nearly empty crisp packet. She hoped the iggly plops would like them. But before she was out of the room Zab came after her and grabbed the crisp bag.

‘Nug! Askorp!’ Jumbeelia’s shriek brought Mij to her rescue, but it was too late to retrieve the crisps and cherries: Zab had already eaten them.

Their mother did her soothing act. She said that Zab must just be tired after his long term and the
journey home, and suggested that he had a sleep. Zab shrugged, and sloped off to his room.

He was such a lazy boy, Jumbeelia thought, but she certainly wasn’t going to complain. Now she would be able to have some time on her own to play with the iggly plops; and to look for the iggly blebber, which had mysteriously disappeared during the night.

But Mij had other ideas. It was time, she announced, to tidy Jumbeelia’s bedroom. They would do it together.

Usually Jumbeelia could wriggle out of this task by putting it off to the next day. ‘Chingulay,’ she would plead. ‘Chingulay, Mij! Beesh, beesh, beesh!’ and finally Mij would cave in.

But not today. Today Mij put her foot down. She propelled Jumbeelia into her bedroom, and there she told her about the disgusting little creature she had discovered during the night.

Jumbeelia gasped. ‘O iggly blebber!’

Mij looked at her suspiciously. So Jumbeelia knew about the creature? In that case, where on earth had she found it?

Jumbeelia refused to say. Instead, she turned on Mij, distraught, demanding where the iggly blebber was now.

‘Queesh? Queesh? QUEESH?’ she shouted. But Mij didn’t reply; she just kept picking stuff off the floor and stuffing it into boxes.

Now she was over by the doll’s house. Any second and she might discover the iggly plops. Silently, Jumbeelia willed them to keep still.

Mij unhinged the front of the doll’s house.

She picked up an armchair and put it the right way up. Then she clicked her tongue in disapproval as she found part of a snishsnosh on the kitchen table. She scolded Jumbeelia. There was lots of nice plastic food in the doll’s-house fridge: why did she have to play with real food?

To Jumbeelia’s relief, Mij moved away and started picking up pencils from the floor.

Jumbeelia peeped into the doll’s house. At first she couldn’t see the iggly plops but then she noticed a bit of pink ballet dress sticking out from under the sofa.

There they lay, the three of them, side by side, the iggliest one, the nice tame one, sandwiched between
the wild girl and the wild boy. Good old iggly plops! They had learnt that her mother wasn’t to be trusted.

By now Mij was putting away the farm animals, which reminded Jumbeelia about the iggly blebber.

‘Queesh? Queesh? QUEESH?’ she asked again. ‘Queesh ez o iggly blebber?’

Mij still wouldn’t tell her, but this time she was more sympathetic. If Jumbeelia would just stop making such a fuss, and clear up the railway lines instead, there would be two nice surprises for her.

Feeling excited now, Jumbeelia tidied up much faster, wondering all the time what the two surprises would be.

The room was beginning to look unrecognisably neat. Mij sat down on the bed and beckoned Jumbeelia to sit beside her.

The first surprise was that Grishmij would be coming to stay in a week’s time.

‘Grishmij! Beely Grishmij!’ Jumbeelia clapped her hands. She loved her grandmother, who always seemed to have time for her. They would make blackberry jam together, and Jumbeelia could show off all her latest collections (though maybe not the iggly plops).

Mij explained the reason for Grishmij’s visit. It was to do with the new bobbaleely. The doctor had said that Mij must go into hospital a week before the bobbaleely was due, so Grishmij was coming to help Pij look after Jumbeelia.

‘Da Zab?’

‘Nug.’ Not Zab too. Zab was going to stay with Grishpij – the grandparents felt that the two children together would be too much of a handful.

This was even better news. To have Zab away from the house for a whole week of the holidays, with Grishmij all to herself!

But what was the second surprise?

Mij smiled, and asked Jumbeelia if she would like to have a pet.

‘Iggly blebber?’ asked Jumbeelia hopefully.

Mij shuddered at the thought. No, not a blebber, she said. A spratchkin. She had heard that a spratch on a nearby farm had had three spratchkins. They weren’t quite ready to leave their mother yet, but Mij offered to take Jumbeelia to the farm now, to look at them and choose one.

‘Iggly spratchkin!’ Jumbeelia hugged Mij. For a moment she forgot all about the iggly blebber and about Zab.

She even forgot about the iggly plops.

‘T
HEY’VE GONE OUT
!’ said Colette. ‘That was the front door.’

Fortunately, Jumbeelia’s bedroom door was open. And, fortunately, Jumbeelia’s mother had not spotted the section of railway track which Colette and Stephen had left hidden under Jumbeelia’s bed last night.

It was easy to drag the railway line out on to the landing, now that Jumbeelia’s bedroom was so tidy. And, as Stephen had thought, it was just the right length
to make a slide from the top stair to the one below.

The giant house was very quiet. Somewhere a tap dripped, but that was all.

‘Poppy go down slide,’ said Poppy.

‘No. Wait,’ said Colette. ‘I’ll go first, to catch you if you fall off.’ She climbed on to the yellow plastic track.

It was scary sitting at the top of a such a steep slide, especially one with no sides. Colette turned over on to her tummy. That felt safer.

‘Here I go!’ she said. She relaxed her grip on the edge of the track and went whizzing down, landing with a bump on the stair below. It was even faster than she’d expected. Colette looked anxiously up at Poppy.

‘Don’t forget to keep holding on!’ she called.

Poppy slid down safely, though she complained that the track was ‘all bumpy’. Stephen followed.

They had managed the first stair, and the others should be just the same.

‘I hope there aren’t too many,’ said Colette.

After three stairs, Poppy started clamouring for Baa Lamb.

‘Baa Lamb isn’t coming. He likes it in Jumbeelia’s bedroom.’ Colette didn’t like lying to Poppy, but she felt that the truth would be too frightening for her little sister. The sight of the giant mother sweeping the sheep into a box and the sound of the giant toilet flushing had stayed with Colette all morning. She wished it had been a bad dream, but she knew that it had really happened. And it could happen to them too.

Slide, bump; slide, bump; slide, bump. They were into a rhythm now with the railway track; they knew exactly what to do and hardly needed to talk to each other any more.

They rounded the bend in the stairs and had a view of the hall below. So very
far
below! Colette felt suddenly tired. Would this never end?

The dripping tap was above them now, and somewhere below they heard a clock ticking the seconds away.

‘Let’s hope we make it before Jumbo and her Mumbo get back,’ said Stephen.

Colette had just reached the next stair when she heard a door open.

She turned round and froze. On the step above her Stephen and Poppy froze too.

Someone was coming down the stairs towards them. There was nowhere to hide.

And now, an enormous boy was standing above them … bending down … picking them up, not gently the way Jumbeelia did, but grabbing them roughly, Stephen and Poppy in one hand and Colette in the other.

‘Wahoy!’ he said. ‘Wahoy, iggly plops!’