Freaky Families. Diana Wynne Jones
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Erg’s Dad and Emily’s Mum found they had to go away to a Conference for four days, leaving Erg and Emily at home.
“I want a house to come back to,” said Erg’s Dad, thinking of the time Erg had borrowed the front door to make an underground fort in the garden.
“We’d better ask one of the Grannies to come and look after them,” said Emily’s Mum, knowing that if Erg did not borrow a thing, Emily could be trusted to fall over it and break it. Emily was younger than Erg, but she was enormous. She needed bigger shoes than Erg’s Dad.
There were four Grannies to choose from, because Erg’s Dad and Emily’s Mum had both been divorced before they married one another.
Granny One was strict. She wore her hair scraped back from her forbidding face and her favourite saying was, “Life is always saying No.” Since Life did not have a voice, Granny One spoke for it, and said No about once every five minutes.
Granny Two was a worrier. She could worry about anything. She was fond of ringing up in the middle of the night to ask if Emily was getting enough vitamins, or – in her special, hushed worrying voice – if Erg ought to be sent to a Special School.
Granny Three was very rich and very stingy. She was the one Emily hated most. Granny Three always arrived with a big box of chocolates. She would give Erg’s Dad a chocolate, and Emily’s Mum a chocolate, and eat six herself, and take the rest of the box away with her when she went. Erg agreed with Emily that this was mean, but he thought Granny Three was more fun than the others, because she had a new car and different coloured hair every time she came.
Granny Four was a saint. She was gentle and quavery and wrinkled. If Erg and Emily quarrelled in front of her, or even spoke loudly, Granny Four promptly came over faint and had to have a doctor.
Granny Four was the one Erg and Emily chose to look after them. If you could avoid making Granny Four feel faint she usually let you do what you wanted. But, when Emily’s Mum rang Granny Four to ask her, Granny Four was faint already. She had been let down over a Save The Children Bazaar and was too ill to come.
So, despite the shrill groans of Erg and the huge moans of Emily, Emily’s Mum phoned Granny One. To Erg’s relief, Granny One was going on holiday and could not come either. So that left Granny Two, because Granny Three had never been known to look after anyone but herself. But Erg’s Dad phoned Granny Three, all the same, hoping she might pay for someone to look after Erg and Emily. Granny Three said she thought it was an excellent idea for Emily and Erg to look after themselves.
Erg’s Dad phoned Granny Two. “What!” exclaimed Granny Two, hushed and worried. “Leave dear Erg and poor little Emily all alone, for all that time!”
“But we’re only going to Scotland for four days,” Erg’s Dad protested.
“I know, dear,” said Granny Two. “But I’m thinking of you. Scotland is covered with oil these days and so dangerous!”
Erg and Emily were not looking forward to Granny Two. They waved their parents off gloomily, and sat about waiting for Granny Two to arrive. She was a long time coming. Emily fidgeted round the living room like an impatient horse, knocking things over right and left. Erg felt an idea coming on. He wandered away to the kitchen to see what he could find.
All the food was wrapped up and carefully labelled so that Granny Two could find it, but Erg found a biscuit-tin. It had holes in the lid from the time he had started a caterpillar farm. Inside were the works of a clock he had once borrowed. It seemed a good beginning for an invention. He collected other things: an egg-beater, the blades off the mixer, a sardine-tin-opener, and a skewer. He took them all back to the living-room and began fitting them together. The invention was already looking quite promising, when the phone rang. Emily bounced up to answer it, and, quite naturally, she trod on the invention as she went and squashed it flat. Erg roared with rage.
It was Granny Two on the phone. “I’m terribly sorry, dear. I’d got halfway, when I thought I’d left my kitchen tap on. I’m just setting out again now.”
“Was your tap on?” asked Emily.
“No, dear. But just suppose it had been.”
Emily went back to the living room to find Erg still roaring with rage. “Look what you’ve done! You’ve ruined my invention!”
Emily looked at the invention. It looked like a squashed biscuit-tin with egg-beaters sticking out of it. “It’s only a squashed biscuit-tin,” she said. “And you ought to put those egg-beaters back.”
But Erg had just discovered that the hand-beater fitted beautifully into a split in the side of the biscuit-tin.
“You’re not supposed to have any of them,” said Emily.