George's Marvellous Medicine Read online

  ‘About what, Dad?’ George asked him.

  ‘About your marvellous medicine, of course! We can’t stop now, my boy! We must start making more of it at once! More and more and more!’

  The giant saucepan had been completely emptied the day before because there had been so many sheep and pigs and cows and bullocks to be dosed.

  ‘But why do we need more, Dad?’ George asked. ‘We’ve done all our own animals and we’ve made Grandma feel as frisky as a ferret even though she does have to sleep in the barn.’

  ‘My dear boy’ cried Mr Killy Kranky, ‘we need barrels and barrels of it! Tons and tons! Then we will sell it to every farmer in the world so that all of them can have giant animals! We will build a Marvellous Medicine Factory and sell the stuff in bottles at five pounds a time. We will become rich and you will become famous!’

  ‘But wait a minute, Dad,’ George said.

  ‘There’s no waiting!’ cried Mr Kranky, working himself up so much that he put butter in his coffee and milk on his toast. ‘Don’t you understand what this tremendous invention of yours is going to do to the world! Nobody will ever go hungry again!’

  ‘Why won’t they?’ asked George.

  ‘Because one giant cow will give fifty buckets of milk a day!’ cried Mr Kranky, waving his arms. ‘One giant chicken will make a hundred fried chicken dinners, and one giant pig will give you a thousand pork chops! It’s tremendous, my dear boy! It’s fantastic! It’ll change the world.’

  ‘But wait a minute, Dad,’ George said again.

  ‘Don’t keep saying wait a minute!’ shouted Mr Kranky. ‘There isn’t a minute to wait! We must get cracking at once!’

  ‘Do calm down, my dear,’ Mrs Kranky said from the other end of the table. ‘And stop putting marmalade on your cornflakes.’

  ‘The heck with my cornflakes!’ cried Mr Kranky, leaping up from his chair. ‘Come on, George! Let’s get going! And the first thing we’ll do is to make one more saucepanful as a tester.’

  ‘But Dad,’ said little George. ‘The trouble is…’

  ‘There won’t be any trouble, my boy!’ cried Mr Kranky. ‘How can there possibly be any trouble? All you’ve got to do is put the same stuff into the saucepan as you did yesterday. And while you’re doing it, I’ll write down each and every item. That’s how we’ll get the magic recipe!’

  ‘But Dad,’ George said. ‘Please listen to me.’

  ‘Why don’t you listen to him?’ Mrs Kranky said. ‘The boy’s trying to tell you something.’

  But Mr Kranky was too excited to listen to anyone except himself. ‘And then,’ he cried, ‘when the new mixture is ready, we’ll test it out on an old hen just to make absolutely sure we’ve got it right, and after that we’ll all shout hooray and build the giant factory!’

  ‘But Dad…’

  ‘Come on then, what is it you want to say?’

  ‘I can’t possibly remember all the hundreds of things I put into the saucepan to make the medicine,’ George said.

  ‘Of course you can, my dear boy,’ cried Mr Kranky. ‘I’ll help you! I’ll jog your memory! You’ll get it in the end, you see if you don’t! Now then, what was the very first thing you put in?’

  ‘I went up to the bathroom first,’ George said. ‘I used a lot of things in the bathroom and on Mummy’s dressing-table.’

  ‘Come on, then!’ cried Mr Killy Kranky. ‘Up we go to the bathroom!’

  When they got there, they found, of course, a whole lot of empty tubes and empty aerosols and empty bottles. ‘That’s great,’ said Mr Kranky. ‘That tells us exactly what you used. If anything is empty, it means you used it.’

  So Mr Kranky started making a list of everything that was empty in the bathroom. Then they went to Mrs Kranky’s dressing-table. ‘A box of powder,’ said Mr Kranky, writing it down. ‘Helga’s hairset. Flowers of Turnips perfume. Terrific. This is going to be easy. Where did you go next?’

  ‘To the laundry-room,’ George said. ‘But are you sure you haven’t missed anything out up here, Dad?’

  ‘That’s up to you, my boy,’ Mr Kranky said. ‘Have I?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ George said. So down they went to the laundry-room and once again Mr Kranky wrote down the names of all the empty bottles and cans. ‘My goodness me, what a mass of stuff you used!’ he cried. ‘No wonder it did magic things! Is that the lot?’

  ‘No, Dad, it’s not,’ George said, and he led his father out to the shed where the animal medicines were kept and showed him the five big empty bottles up on the shelf. Mr Kranky wrote down all their names.

  ‘Anything else?’ Mr Kranky asked.

  Little George scratched his head and thought and thought but he couldn’t remember having put anything else in.

  Mr Killy Kranky leapt into his car and drove down to the village and bought new bottles and tubes and cans of everything on his list. He then went to the vet and got a fresh supply of all the animal medicines George had used.

  ‘Now show me how you did it, George,’ he said. ‘Come along. Show me exactly how you mixed them all together.’

  Marvellous Medicine

  Number Two

  They were in the kitchen now and the big saucepan was on the stove. All the things Mr Kranky had bought were lined up near the sink.

  ‘Come along, my boy!’ cried Mr Killy Kranky. ‘Which one did you put in first?’

  ‘This one,’ George said. ‘Golden Gloss Hair Shampoo.’ He emptied the bottle into the pan.

  ‘Now the toothpaste,’ George went on…‘And the shaving soap… and the face cream… and the nail varnish…’

  ‘Keep at it, my boy!’ cried Mr Kranky, dancing round the kitchen. ‘Keep putting them in! Don’t stop! Don’t pause! Don’t hesitate! It’s a pleasure, my dear fellow, to watch you work!’

  One by one, George poured and squeezed the things into the saucepan. With everything so close at hand, the whole job didn’t take him more than ten minutes. But when it was all done, the saucepan didn’t somehow seem to be quite as full as it had been the first time.

  ‘Now what did you do?’ cried Mr Kranky.

  ‘Did you stir it?’

  ‘I boiled it,’ George said. ‘But not for long. And I stirred it as well.’

  So Mr Kranky lit the gas under the saucepan and George stirred the mixture with the same long wooden spoon he had used before. ‘It’s not brown enough,’ George said. ‘Wait a minute! I know what I’ve forgotten!’

  ‘What?’ cried Mr Kranky. ‘Tell me, quick! Because if we’ve forgotten even one tiny thing, then it won’t work! At least not in the same way’

  ‘A quart of brown gloss paint,’ George said. ‘That’s what I’ve forgotten.’

  Mr Killy Kranky shot out of the house and into his car like a rocket. He sped down to the village and bought the paint and rushed back again. He opened the can in the kitchen and handed it to George. George poured the paint into the saucepan.

  ‘Ah-ha, that’s better,’ George said. ‘That’s more like the right colour.’

  ‘It’s boiling!’ cried Mr Kranky. ‘It’s boiling and bubbling, George! Is it ready yet?’

  ‘It’s ready’ George said. At least I hope it is.’

  ‘Right!’ shouted Mr Kranky, hopping about. ‘Let’s test it! Let’s give some to a chicken!’

  ‘My heavens alive, why don’t you calm down a bit?’ Mrs Kranky said, coming into the kitchen.

  ‘Calm down?’ cried Mr Kranky. ‘You expect me to calm down and here we are mixing up the greatest medicine ever discovered in the history of the world! Come along, George! Dip a cupful out of the saucepan and get a spoon and we’ll give some to a chicken just to make absolutely certain we’ve got the correct mixture.’

  Outside in the yard, there were several chickens that hadn’t had any of George’s Marvellous Medicine Number One. They were pecking about in the dirt in that silly way chickens do.

  George crouched down, holding out a spoonful of Marvellous Medicine Number Two. ‘Co
me on, chicken,’ he said. ‘Good chicken. Chick-chick-chick.’

  A white chicken with black specks on its feathers looked up at George. It walked over to the spoon and went peck.

  The effect that Medicine Number Two had on this chicken was not quite the same as the effect produced by Medicine Number One, but it was very interesting. ‘Whooosh!’ shrieked the chicken and it shot six feet up in the air and came down again. Then sparks came flying out of its beak, bright yellow sparks of fire, as though someone was sharpening a knife on a grindstone inside its tummy. Then its legs began to grow longer. Its body stayed the same size but the two thin yellow legs got longer and longer and longer… and longer still…

  ‘What’s happening to it?’ cried Mr Killy Kranky.

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ George said.

  The legs went on growing and the more they grew, the higher up into the air went the chicken’s body. When the legs were about fifteen feet long, they stopped growing. The chicken looked perfectly absurd with its long long legs and its ordinary little body perched high up on top. It was like a chicken on stilts.

  ‘Oh my sainted aunts!’ cried Mr Killy Kranky. ‘We’ve got it wrong! This chicken’s no good to anybody! It’s all legs! No one wants chickens’ legs!’

  ‘I must have left something out,’ George said.

  ‘I know you left something out!’ cried Mr Kranky. ‘Think, boy, think! What was it you left out?’

  ‘I’ve got it!’ said George.

  ‘What was it, quick?’

  ‘Flea powder for dogs,’ George said.

  ‘You mean you put flea powder in the first one?’

  ‘Yes, Dad, I did. A whole carton of it.’

  ‘Then that’s the answer!’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said George. ‘Did we have brown shoe-polish on our list?’

  ‘We did not,’ said Mr Kranky.

  ‘I used that, too,’ said George.

  ‘Well, no wonder it went wrong,’ said Mr Kranky. He was already running to his car, and soon he was heading down to the village to buy more flea powder and more shoe-polish.

  Marvellous Medicine

  Number Three

  ‘Here it is!’ cried Mr Killy Kranky, rushing into the kitchen. ‘One carton of flea powder for dogs and one tin of brown shoe-polish!’

  George poured the flea powder into the giant saucepan. Then he scooped the shoe-polish out of its tin and added that as well.

  ‘Stir it up, George!’ shouted Mr Kranky. ‘Give it another boil! We’ve got it this time! I’ll bet we’ve got it!’

  After Marvellous Medicine Number Three had been boiled and stirred, George took a cupful of it out into the yard to try it on another chicken. Mr Kranky ran after him, flapping his arms and hopping with excitement. ‘Come and watch this one!’ he called out to Mrs Kranky. ‘Come and watch us turning an ordinary chicken into a lovely great big one that lays eggs as large as footballs!’

  ‘I hope you do better than last time,’ said Mrs Kranky, following them out.

  ‘Come on, chicken,’ said George, holding out a spoonful of Medicine Number Three. ‘Good chicken. Chick-chick-chick-chick-chick. Have some of this lovely medicine.’

  A magnificent black cockerel with a scarlet comb came stepping over. The cockerel looked at the spoon and it went peck.

  ‘Cock-a-doodle-do!’ squawked the cockerel, shooting up into the air and coming down again.

  ‘Watch him now!’ cried Mr Kranky. ‘Watch him grow! Any moment he’s going to start getting bigger and bigger!’

  Mr Killy Kranky, Mrs Kranky and little George stood in the yard staring at the black cockerel. The cockerel stood quite still. It looked as though it had a headache.

  ‘What’s happening to its neck?’ Mrs Kranky said.

  ‘It’s getting longer,’ George said.

  ‘I’ll say it’s getting longer,’ Mrs Kranky said.

  Mr Kranky, for once, said nothing.

  ‘Last time it was the legs,’ Mrs Kranky said.

  ‘Now it’s the neck. Who wants a chicken with a long neck? You can’t eat a chicken’s neck.’

  It was an extraordinary sight. The cockerel’s body hadn’t grown at all. But the neck was now about six feet long.

  ‘All right, George,’ Mr Kranky said. ‘What else have you forgotten?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ George said.

  ‘Oh yes you do,’ Mr Kranky said. ‘Come along, boy, think. There’s probably just one vital thing missing and you’ve got to remember it.’

  ‘I put in some engine oil from the garage,’ George said. ‘Did you have that on your list?’

  ‘Eureka!’ cried Mr Kranky. ‘That’s the answer! How much did you put in?’

  ‘Half a pint,’ George said.

  Mr Kranky ran to the garage and found another half-pint of oil. ‘And some anti-freeze,’ George called after him. ‘I sloshed in a bit of antifreeze.’

  Marvellous Medicine

  Number Four

  Back in the kitchen once again, George, with Mr Kranky watching him anxiously, tipped half a pint of engine oil and some anti-freeze into the giant saucepan.

  ‘Boil it up again!’ cried Mr Kranky. ‘Boil it and stir it!’

  George boiled it and stirred it.

  ‘You’ll never get it right,’ said Mrs Kranky. ‘Don’t forget you don’t just have to have the same things but you’ve got to have exactly the same amounts of those things. And how can you possibly do that?’

  ‘You keep out of this!’ cried Mr Kranky. ‘We’re doing fine! We’ve got it this time, you see if we haven’t!’

  This was George’s Marvellous Medicine Number Four, and when it had boiled for a couple of minutes, George once again carried a cupful of it out into the yard. Mr Kranky ran after him. Mrs Kranky followed more slowly. ‘You’re going to have some mighty queer chickens around here if you go on like this,’ she said.

  ‘Dish it out, George!’ cried Mr Kranky. ‘Give a spoonful to that one over there!’ He pointed to a brown hen.

  George knelt down and held out the spoon with the new medicine in it. ‘Chick-chick,’ he said. ‘Try some of this.’

  The brown hen walked over and looked at the spoon. Then it went peck.

  ‘Owch!’ it said. Then a funny whistling noise came out of its beak.

  ‘Watch it grow!’ shouted Mr Kranky.

  ‘Don’t be too sure,’ said Mrs Kranky. ‘Why is it whistling like that?’

  ‘Keep quiet, woman!’ cried Mr Kranky. ‘Give it a chance!’

  They stood there staring at the brown hen.

  ‘It’s getting smaller,’ George said. ‘Look at it, Dad. It’s shrinking.’

  And indeed it was. In less than a minute, the hen had shrunk so much it was no bigger than a new-hatched chick. It looked ridiculous.

  Goodbye Grandma

  ‘There’s still something you’ve left out,’ Mr Kranky said.

  ‘I can’t think what it could be,’ George said.

  ‘Give it up,’ Mrs Kranky said. ‘Pack it in. You’ll never get it right.’

  Mr Kranky looked very forlorn.

  George looked pretty fed up, too. He was still kneeling on the ground with the spoon in one hand and the cup full of medicine in the other. The ridiculous tiny brown hen was walking slowly away.

  At that point, Grandma came striding into the yard. From her enormous height, she glared down at the three people below her and she shouted, ‘What’s going on around here? Why hasn’t anyone brought me my morning cup of tea? It’s bad enough having to sleep in the yard with the rats and mice but I’ll be blowed if I’m going to starve as well! No tea! No eggs and bacon! No buttered toast!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mother,’ Mrs Kranky said. ‘We’ve been terribly busy. I’ll get you something right away.’

  ‘Let George get it, the lazy little brute!’ Grandma shouted.

  Just then, the old woman spotted the cup in George’s hand. She bent down and peered into it. She saw that it was full of brown liquid. It look
ed very much like tea. ‘Ho-ho!’ she cried. ‘Ha-ha! So that’s your little game, is it! You look after yourself all right, don’t you! You make quite sure you’ve got a nice cup of morning tea! But you didn’t think to bring one to your poor old Grandma! I always knew you were a selfish pig!’

  ‘No, Grandma,’ George said. ‘This isn’t…’

  ‘Don’t lie to me, boy!’ the enormous old hag shouted. ‘Pass it up here this minute!’

  ‘No!’ cried Mrs Kranky. ‘No, Mother, don’t! That’s not for you!’

  ‘Now you’re against me, too!’ shouted Grandma. ‘My own daughter trying to stop me having my breakfast! Trying to starve me out!’

  Mr Kranky looked up at the horrid old woman and he smiled sweetly. ‘Of course it’s for you, Grandma,’ he said. ‘You take it and drink it while it’s nice and hot.’

  ‘Don’t think I won’t,’ Grandma said, bending down from her great height and reaching out a huge horny hand for the cup. ‘Hand it over, George.’

  ‘No, no, Grandma!’ George cried out, pulling the cup away. ‘You mustn’t! You’re not to have it!’

  ‘Give it to me, boy!’ yelled Grandma.

  ‘Don’t!’ cried Mrs Kranky. ‘That’s George’s Marvellous…’

  ‘Everything’s George’s round here!’ shouted Grandma. ‘George’s this, George’s that! I’m fed

  up with it!’ She snatched the cup out of little George’s hand and carried it high up out of reach.

  ‘Drink it up, Grandma,’ Mr Kranky said, grinning hugely. ‘Lovely tea.’

  ‘No!’ the other two cried. ‘No, no, no!’

  But it was too late. The ancient beanpole had already put the cup to her lips, and in one gulp she swallowed everything that was in it.

  ‘Mother!’ wailed Mrs Kranky. ‘You’ve just drunk fifty doses of George’s Marvellous Medicine Number Four and look what one tiny spoonful did to that little old brown hen!’