The Jenius Read online

  Contents

  1 Guinea Pigs Aren’t Stupid

  2 An Unexpected Arrival

  3 Training

  4 A Great Team

  5 Die For Your Country!

  6 A Nightmare

  7 A Bit of a Bighead

  8 Pets’ Day

  9 Eat Your Hat

  About the Author

  Dick King-Smith served in the Grenadier Guards during the Second World War, and afterwards spent twenty years as a farmer in Gloucestershire, the county of his birth. Many of his stories are inspired by his farming experiences. Later he taught at a village primary school. His first book, The Fox Busters, was published in 1978. He wrote a great number of children’s books, including The Sheep-Pig (winner of the Guardian Award and filmed as Babe), Harry’s Mad, Noah’s Brother, The Queen’s Nose, Martin’s Mice, Ace, The Cuckoo Child and Harriet’s Hare (winner of the Children’s Book Award in 1995). At the British Book Awards in 1991 he was voted Children’s Author of the Year. In 2009 he was made an OBE for services to children’s literature. Dick King-Smith died in 2011 at the age of eighty-eight

  Discover more about Dick King-Smith at:

  dickkingsmith.com

  Some other books by Dick King-Smith

  BLESSU

  DINOSAUR SCHOOL

  DINOSAUR TROUBLE

  DUMPLING

  FAT LAWRENCE

  THE FOX BUSTERS

  GEORGE SPEAKS

  THE GOLDEN GOOSE

  HARRY’S MAD

  THE HODGEHEG

  THE JENIUS

  JUST BINNIE

  LADY DAISY

  THE MAGIC CARPET SLIPPERS

  MAGNUS POWERMOUSE

  MARTIN’S MICE

  THE MOUSE FAMILY ROBINSON

  POPPET

  THE QUEEN’S NOSE

  THE SCHOOLMOUSE

  THE SHEEP-PIG

  SMASHER

  THE SWOOSE

  UNDER THE MISHMASH TREES

  THE WATER HORSE

  1

  Guinea Pigs Aren’t Stupid

  ‘If I was the Queen,’ Judy said, ‘I wouldn’t have corgis.’

  ‘What sort of dogs would you have, Judy?’ said her teacher.

  The class were talking about pets and which were their favourites.

  ‘I wouldn’t have dogs at all.’

  ‘What would you keep then,’ said Judy’s teacher, ‘if you were the Queen?’

  ‘Guinea pigs,’ said Judy.

  Everybody burst out laughing and Judy went very red.

  ‘They’re my favourite animals,’ she said defiantly. ‘If I was the Queen I’d keep lots of them.’

  ‘In hutches, you mean?’

  ‘No. In Buckingham Palace.’

  ‘But Judy,’ said her teacher, ‘wouldn’t it look rather odd if someone very important came to call, like, say, the President of the United States of America, and the Queen, I mean you, said “Do take a seat, Mr President”, and there was a guinea pig lying in the armchair?’

  ‘And there’d be messes all over the carpet,’ someone said.

  ‘And the President would step in them,’ said someone else.

  Everybody giggled.

  ‘My guinea pigs would be housetrained,’ muttered Judy, close to tears.

  ‘Palace-trained, you mean,’ said a voice, and now there was so much sniggering that the teacher said ‘That’s enough, children.’

  She put her hand on Judy’s shoulder and said: ‘It’s a nice idea, but even if you were the Queen you wouldn’t be able to train a guinea pig like you can train a dog. Only certain animals are intelligent enough to be taught things by humans, and I’m afraid guinea pigs are not among them. They’re dear little creatures, Judy, but they haven’t got a lot of brains.’

  2

  An Unexpected Arrival

  ‘You have got a lot of brains,’ said Judy.

  As always, she had run down to the shed at the bottom of the garden the moment she arrived home from school, to see her own two guinea pigs. One was a reddish rough-haired boar called Joe and the other was a smooth-coated white sow by the name of Molly. Judy had had them ever since her sixth birthday, nearly two years ago now, and they were very dear to her. Her only regret was that, surprisingly, they had never had babies.

  ‘You have got brains,’ she said, ‘I’m sure of it. It’s just that no one’s ever taught you to use them. Now, if I’d had you when you were tiny, I bet I could have taught you lots of things. If only you’d had children of your own. I’d have chosen one of them and kept it and really trained it, from a very early age. I bet I could have done.’

  As usual, the guinea pigs responded to the sound of her voice by beginning a little conversation of their own. First Joe made a grumbling sort of chatter (which meant ‘Molly, you’re as lovely now as the day I first set eyes on you’), and then Molly gave a short shy squeak (which meant ‘Oh Joe, you say the nicest things!’).

  Then they both squealed long and loudly at Judy. She knew what that noise meant. They were telling her to cut the cackle and dish up the grub.

  ‘Greedy old things,’ she said, and she picked up the white one, Molly.

  ‘Molly!’ said Judy. ‘You look awfully fat. Whatever’s the matter with you?’

  Molly didn’t reply. Joe grunted in a self-satisfied sort of way.

  ‘I’ll have to put you on a diet,’ said Judy firmly, ‘starting tomorrow.’

  But next morning, when she went to feed the guinea pigs, the white one, she found, looked quite different.

  ‘Molly!’ said Judy. ‘You look awfully thin. Whatever’s the matter with you?’

  This time they both answered, Molly with a series of small happy squeaks and Joe with a low proud grumble, as they moved aside to show what had happened. There between them was a single, very large, baby guinea pig, the child of their old age. It was partly white and smooth like its mother and partly red and rough like its father.

  To Judy’s delight it stumbled forwards on feet that seemed three sizes too big, until it bumped the wire of the hutch-front with its huge head. Its eyes were very bright and seemed to shine with intelligence. Then it spoke a single word in guinea pig language. Anyone could have told it meant ‘Hullo!’

  ‘Oh!’ said Judy. ‘Aren’t you beautiful!’

  ‘He gets it from his mother,’ chattered Joe in the background.

  ‘And aren’t you brainy!’

  ‘He takes after his dad,’ squeaked Molly.

  Judy stared into the baby’s eyes.

  ‘You,’ she said, ‘are going to be the best-trained, most brilliant guinea pig in the whole world. And you’re going to start lessons right away. Now then. Sit!’

  Of course, when you’re only a few hours old, standing can be tiring, but was that the reason why Joe and Molly’s son immediately sat down?

  3

  Training

  That night, before she went to bed, Judy wrote the great news in her diary. She was very faithful about putting something in it every day, even if sometimes it was only a bit about the weather. But that Joe and Molly should have had a baby – that was great news and deserved a lot of space.

  JUDY’S DIARY. PRIVIT.

  JUNE 10th: Great surprise! Molly had a baby! Found him first thing this morning and I am going to train him. Alreddy he sits when he is told. He is briliant. He is mostly white like Molly but he has a sort of main like a horse running all down his back and that is reddish like Joe.

  I asked Dad what you call someone who is really briliant and he said ‘A jenius. Why?’ and I said ‘because that is what I’m going to call my new baby guinea pig’ and he laughed but I said ‘You just wait. One day the World will know June 10th is the birthday of Jenius’.

  June 10th was in fact a very good time for Jenius to
have been born, because it meant that he was around six weeks old by the time the long summer holidays began. Now his trainer would be able to concentrate on him without the interruption of school.

  During those six weeks Jenius had grown amazingly. All baby guinea pigs do, of course, but he had benefited particularly, first from being an only child and so getting all his mother’s milk, and secondly from Judy’s spoiling.

  Ordinary guinea pigs, for example, might get the occasional piece of stale bread. Jenius got regular digestive biscuits.

  So that Judy’s diary, which had contained daily reports of the progress of the wonder child, read . . .

  JULY 22nd: Begining of Summer Hollidays. Today I took Jenius away from his parents and put him in the spare hutch, he is reddy to start his training, he is alreddy half as big as Joe, he is alreddy very good at sitting When he is told because that is what I have consentrated on but now I am going to teach him ‘Come’ and ‘Stay’ and ‘Down’. Joe and Molly don’t seem to miss him.

  Joe and Molly were actually quite glad to see the back of Jenius.

  Molly was thankful not to be nagged for the milk she no longer had, and Joe, though at first proud of the obvious cleverness of his son, was growing tired of being patronized.

  ‘Thinks he knows it all,’ he grumbled to Molly, ‘with his “No, Dad, you’ve got that wrong” or “No, Dad, you don’t understand”. I said to him: “When you’ve been around as long as I have, my boy, then maybe you’ll know a thing or two”.’

  ‘Quite right, dear,’ murmured Molly. ‘What did he say then?’

  ‘He said: “When I’ve been around as long as you have I’ll know hundreds of things”. Cheeky young devil!’

  ‘Ah well,’ sighed Molly. ‘He’s only young, Joe dear. We’re all of us only young once.’

  ‘Molly,’ said Joe, ‘you’re as lovely now as the day I first set eyes on you.’

  ‘Oh Joe,’ said Molly, ‘you say the nicest things!’

  4

  A Great Team

  ‘Mum! Mum!’ cried Judy, bursting in from the garden with Jenius in her arms. ‘Guess what!’

  ‘Not now, Judy,’ said her mother. ‘I haven’t got time for guessing games this morning what with the washing and the ironing, and I’ve got a lot of cooking to do, never mind the housework. Off you run and play, out of my way, please.’

  ‘But Mum, Jenius comes when he’s told!’

  ‘Very clever, dear. Now you go when you’re told, there’s a good girl.’

  ‘She just didn’t listen to what I was saying,’ said Judy as she sat on the lawn with Jenius on her lap.

  Jenius replied with a small sympathetic whistle which meant, Judy felt sure, ‘Grown-ups are hopeless, aren’t they? I expect it’ll be just the same when you tell your dad.’

  And it was.

  ‘Comes when you call him, does he?’ said her father from behind his evening paper.

  ‘Yes, Dad! Honest! Don’t you want to see?’

  ‘Not now, pet, I’ve had a long day. You go and teach your precious genius something else.’

  ‘What like?’

  ‘Oh, reading, writing, some sums. Start with the two-times table – guinea pigs are good at multiplying. Buzz off now, there’s a good girl.’

  JULY 23rd: I think Mum and Dad grew up in Vicktorian days, they think that childeren should be seen and not herd. I am not going to bother to tell them anything about Jenius any more but only write about him in this dairy so that the World will know how clever he is when I am DED Dead and Gone.

  In the darkness of the garden shed Jenius squeaked from the spare hutch: ‘Mum! Dad! Guess what!’

  ‘Not now, dear,’ said Molly.

  ‘But guess what I learned today!’

  ‘Hundreds of things, I imagine,’ said Joe sourly.

  ‘No, only one. I learned to come when called.’

  ‘Well, now learn to shut up,’ said Joe. ‘It’s late.’

  ‘Your father’s right, dear,’ said Molly. ‘Go to sleep now, there’s a good boy.’

  Throughout those fine sunny summer holidays the flowering of Jenius came into full bloom.

  Judy was the ideal trainer, patient and hard-working, and her new pet was the perfect pupil. He enjoyed his lessons, he learned quickly, and what he had learned he seldom forgot. They made a great team.

  AUGUST 15th: Here is a list of the things I have trained Jenius to do:

  1. COME

  2. SIT

  3. STAY

  4. DOWN

  5. WALK ON A LEED

  (I do not make him walk to heal because I might tred on him so he walks a little bit in frant of me.)

  Before the end of the Hollidays I am going to teach him three speshial tricks

  (A) ‘Speak’. That is to make a noise when he is told (I suppose I should call this ‘SQUEAK’).

  (B) ‘Trust’. That is balancing a bit of biskit on his nose.

  (C) ‘Die For Your Country’. He has to lie quite still with his eyes shut pretending to be Dead. If I can teach him all these things before the begining of Term I will take him to school and show them all just what a Jenius can do.

  Every day trainer and trainee worked at their lessons. And every night Jenius kept his aged parents awake long after their proper bedtime, telling them all the clever things he had learned to do. He had become, it must be said, a bit of a bighead. Molly, who was rather vague by nature, did not listen very carefully to her son’s boasting, and only yawned and said, ‘Very nice, dear,’ now and then, but Joe became irritable.

  ‘You must be the most brilliant guinea pig there has ever been,’ he would say sourly, but this did not improve matters, for Jenius always replied: ‘I am, Dad, I am,’ in a voice so smug that it made Joe’s teeth chatter with rage.

  ‘Cocky young blighter,’ he would mutter to Molly. ‘One of these fine days he’s going to be too clever for his own good.’

  And Joe was right. One of those fine days came quite soon.

  5

  Die For Your Country!

  Jenius had woken early. He looked out of the shed door (which Judy always left open on warm nights) and saw a number of attractive things outside in the garden. There were lettuces and cabbages and the feathery tops of carrots and the shiny dark leaves of beetroot – all very appealing to a growing lad. Why wait to be fed, he thought. I’ll feed myself.

  ‘Mum!’ he called. ‘I’m going for a walk.’

  Molly came to the front of her hutch and looked across the shed.

  ‘Don’t be silly, dear,’ she said. ‘You can’t.’

  Joe joined her.

  ‘In case you hadn’t noticed,’ he said sarcastically, ‘there’s a door on the front of your hutch.’

  ‘Dad,’ said Jenius in a patient tone of voice, ‘doors are meant to be opened.’

  ‘I know that, boy. By humans. From outside. Not by us from inside. If you can open the door of that hutch from inside, I’ll eat my hayrack.’

  Each hutch had an outward-opening wire door, kept shut by a two-inch turn button, a simple device capable of keeping prisoner every guinea pig that had ever lived. Except the Jenius.

  Sitting up on his bottom as he had learned, he reached a forepaw through the wire mesh and turned the button vertically. The door swung open, and down he hopped.

  He paused at the entrance to the shed.

  ‘Dad,’ he called, ‘don’t forget to eat your hayrack,’ and off he trotted.

  What happened next was recorded by a short dramatic entry in the diary.

  AUGUST 26th: Jenius got out and was nearly killed! I am keeping the doar of the shed shut in case he esscapes again.

  Jenius was sitting happily in the sunlit vegetable garden, nibbling a tender young lettuce plant and thinking what a clever chap he was, when he heard his name called. He looked up and saw Judy leaning out of her bedroom window.

  ‘Whatever are you doing out there?’ she said, and since Jenius made no reply, she issued two commands.

  ‘Sit
!’ she said, and ‘Stay!’

  Jenius obediently sat down, quite content to remain where he was, in easy reach of such nice food.

  Judy was just turning away from her window when to her horror she saw the big tabby tom cat from next door drop down from the dividing wall. Slowly, stealthily, he began to stalk the lettuce-eater.

  Judy thought frantically. If she left Jenius dutifully sitting and staying, he was a goner. If she called ‘Come!’ the cat would surely overtake him before she could get downstairs.

  There was only one thing to be done, only one order she could give that might perhaps puzzle the hunter for long enough for her to rush to the rescue.

  ‘Jenius!’ she yelled in the fiercest, most commanding voice she could manage.

  ‘Die For Your Country!’

  6

  A Nightmare

  Jenius, accustomed as he now was to receiving odd orders at odd times, instantly collapsed flat on his back. He stopped chewing his mouthful of lettuce, he closed his eyes, and even the rise and fall of his ribs seemed to have stopped, so lightly did he breathe. He lay, slack and still, looking every inch as he was meant to look. Dead.

  ‘Dead!’ said a voice in his ear suddenly.

  Jenius’s blood ran cold at the sound of this harsh, cruel voice, at the smell of hot, rank breath, at the tickle of long whiskers as something sniffed him all over.

  ‘Pity,’ said the cat. ‘Could have had a bit of sport if you’d been alive. Ah well, a dead tail-less rat is better than no rat at all,’ and with that he began to lick at his victim’s head.