Published by

  Escargot Books and Music

  Ojai, California

  Text and illustration copyright © 1980 Escargot Productions Ltd.

  First Digital Edition 2013

  All rights reserved. Peter Mayle asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this book.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  ISBN 978-1-908191-90-8 (ePub)

  ISBN 978-1-908191-91-5 (Mobi)

  eBook editions by eBooks By Barb for booknook.biz

  PETER MAYLE

  Footprints in the Butter

  Further adventures of

  the little man who

  lives in the fridge

  ILLUSTRATED BY

  ARTHUR ROBINS

  Early one morning, Chilly Billy was walking round the fridge inspecting things. Suddenly he heard a squeak of surprise coming from the butter dish.

  Chilly Billy put down his carrot brush and walked up the wall of the fridge in his sucker boots. There was his friend, Chilly Lily, staring with wide eyes at the butter.

  “What is it, Lily?” he said. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Oooo, Billy, I don’t know. But if it’s a ghost, it’s got lots of feet. Look!” And she pointed to the top of the butter. Billy looked and very nearly squeaked himself. There were footprints all over the butter!

  “Aha!” said Billy, in as brave a voice as he could. “I think we’d better take a look around. These may not be friendly footprints.

  Billy broke off a long icicle with a sharp point and that made him feel much braver.

  “Come on, Lily,” he said, waving his icicle sword, “follow me.” And they crept through the fruit and vegetables, looking under the lettuce and behind the strawberries. Nothing. There was nobody in the cheese dish, no sign of life among the eggs, nothing except yoghurt in the yoghurt pots.

  By now, they had climbed to the very top of the fridge, and Chilly Billy was feeling braver. Whoever had been stamping around in the butter had probably taken one look at his icicle sword and run off.

  “Just to be absolutely sure that whatever it was has gone,” Billy said, “I’m going to have one last look. But this time, I’m going to use the Snooper.”

  Now the Snooper is a truly remarkable little gadget. It looks like a watch with whiskers, and when you switch it on, it hums. But if you take it anywhere near something that breathes—even something as small as the smallest bug—it stops humming and starts to beep. Billy strapped it on his wrist, adjusted the electronic whiskers and switched on. It hummed.

  Billy and Lily hummed their way all round the fridge, and then, just when they were beginning to think they might have imagined those footprints in the butter after all, the humming stopped.

  “Beep!” went the Snooper. “Beep!” Billy and Lily stopped and looked around. “Beep!” They walked towards a big icy bump next to a bunch of carrots. “BeepBeepBeepBeepBeep!” went the Snooper.

  Billy and Lily saw that the needle on the Snooper dial was pointing to Red Alert. They looked at the bump. It didn’t look like a living bump, but you can never be too sure.

  Billy said, “I’m going to listen to the bump and see if it’s breathing.” He tiptoed up to it and then very carefully climbed on the top and listened.

  “I can’t hear anything,” he said. “Why don’t you come up and have a listen?”

  Lily scrambled up beside Billy. They knelt down with their ears pressed to the top of the bump. Suddenly there was a long, loud grunt. First the footprints, then strange grunts. What was going on?

  They got up off the bump to have another look round, when a gruff voice said, “Well, thank goodness for that! I was getting squashed.”

  Billy held very tight to his icicle sword. “Come out, whoever you are,” he said.

  “I can’t,” said the gruff voice. “I’m stuck to the floor.”

  “Well I never,” said Lily. “It’s a talking bump!”

  “Bump?” said the gruff voice. “I’m not a bump. I’m a ladybird.”

  Billy went up to one end and raised his hat politely. “Billy’s the name,” he said, “and this is my dear friend, Lily. How do you do?”

  “You’re talking to the wrong end,” said the gruff voice. “Haven’t you ever seen a ladybird before?”

  Well, of course, Billy had seen pictures of ladybirds, but they’d been of beautiful red ladybirds with shiny black spots—which looked nothing like this big white bump.

  “Don’t you see, Billy?” said Lily. “The ice has covered up the red overcoat and the shiny spots. Poor thing!”

  “Ah,” said the gruff voice. “At last. A bit of common sense. Now if you’d be kind enough to chip the ice off my front end, I can see who I’m talking to.”

  Billy and Lily each took small icicles and started chipping away gently at the thick layer of ice. The first thing to appear was a clump of white fur, which turned out to be an eyebrow. Then another eyebrow, then an old flying helmet with ear flaps, and below that a cross-looking face, blue with cold. But the ice was so thick that Billy and Lily could only chip away enough to see the ladybird’s head, a small part of the red overcoat and one shiny spot.

  “We’ll have to stop for a rest,” said Lily, who was getting quite puffed.

  “But at least you can waggle your eyebrows,” said Billy.

  “It might help to warm you up if you kept talking,” said Lily. “What’s your name?”

  “Eric,” said the ladybird.

  “Eric? But I thought you were a ladybird,” said Chilly Billy.

  “What you have to remember, young man,” said Eric, “is that not all ladybirds are ladies. In fact, you can always tell a gentleman by the size of his spots.”

  “I can only see one,” said Lily, “but it is the biggest, shiniest, most handsome spot I’ve ever seen.”

  “Quite so,” said the ladybird. “And I have ten of them. That’s why my friends call me Spotty.”

  And as Billy and Lily got their breath back, Spotty told them his story.

  “Every Tuesday afternoon,” he said, “I leave my home in the flower bed to go visiting. Well, as yesterday was a Tuesday, I decided to fly over and see a friend of mine who lives in a cool little corner by the vegetables. Now, that’s quite a long flight for an old gentleman, and I have to stop once or twice on the way, to rest my wings and catch my breath.

  “I’d just reached the edge of the vegetable patch and thought I’d rest for a minute or two. I found a very comfortable carrot, and I was sitting there in the sun and what with one thing and another I dozed off.

  “The next thing I knew, I was woken up by a waterfall on my head. The whole carrot was flooded, and I only just managed to hang on to that leafy bit at the top, otherwise I would have been washed away to goodness knows where.”

  Billy and Lily looked at the old ladybird in horror. Spotty didn’t know it, but he had very nearly been drowned in the sink while the carrot was being washed.

  “There I was with my wings all wet, and then me and the carrot were popped in here. And then what do you think happened?”

  “We sat on you,” said Lily. “How rude of us.”

  “No—even worse than that,” said Spotty. “My wings iced up! And then the rest of me froze.”

  This was serious. “I must have a think,” said Billy. “We have to work out some way of getting all that ice off your wings. What we need here is a stroke of genius.”

  And he started walking up the side of the fridge in his sucker boots until he reached the ceiling, where he hung upside down. (He always does this when he’s thinking hard, because he says it’s good for the brain.)

  “Is he pretending to be an icicle?” asked Spotty. “Because if he is, I can tell him that it’s a very cold way to spend the day.”

  All at once, Billy started to whistle—a small, upside-down but cheerful kind of whistle.

  “I think he’s had an idea,” whispered Lily to the old ladybird. “He always whistles when he has a stroke of genius.”

  Chilly Billy jumped down from the ceiling and rushed off to his bedroom, coming back with his walkie-talkie. He tuned in to the I.C.E. (In Case of Emergencies) wavelength. After a few seconds of buzzing and crackling, a voice came out of the loudspeaker.

  “Fire, police or ambulance?”

  “None of those!” said Chilly Billy. “This is an S.O.S.”

  “What kind of S.O.S.?” said the voice.

  “Save Old Spotty,” said Chilly Billy. “His wings are iced up, his legs are iced up and he’s stuck to the floor of the fridge. He’s in terrible trouble. “

  “Can you defrost?” asked the voice.

  “No time for that,” said Chilly Billy. “I need a Thaw Brigade in here quickly. Can you get them here by lunchtime, when the fridge door opens again?”

  “Roger!” said the voice from the walkie-talkie.

  “Right,” said Chilly Billy to Spotty. “Everything is under control and rescue is on the way. Just stick it out till lunchtime.” And then he realized that it wasn’t a very helpful thing to say to someone already stuck to the floor, so he started playing some warming music on his walkie-talkie and hoped that Spotty hadn’t noticed. At last the music stopped and the operator’s voice cam
e out of the loudspeaker again.

  “Action stations!” it said. “Here they come!”

  And sure enough, the fridge door opened, and in came Billy’s Thaw Brigade. First into the fridge was the Mad Jumper, his eyes rolling with excitement, leaping all over the place because of the secret springs on the bottom of his big boots.

  Next came Chilly Billy’s favorite caterpillar, Stripy Norman, muffled up in his longest stripy scarf, with his back feet running so fast they were almost overtaking his front feet. Then Cousin Albert appeared with his friends, all talking non-stop as they bustled and scuttled around.

  And last of all, puffing away. with the effort of climbing into the fridge, came Orville the Very Fat Beetle, the biggest thing on eight legs.

  They gathered round Chilly Billy, jumping and chattering and puffing when suddenly—

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaa-CHOO!”

  Spotty sneezed such a loud sneeze that they all stopped talking and turned to look at the bump on the floor. Chilly Billy went over to frozen ladybird and, using his icicle sword as a pointer, started to explain the problem.

  “Poor old Spotty is completely iced up. You can see how thick the ice is round that little patch where we’ve chipped some away. Here,” he said, pointing to the top, “is where the ice is thickest. And that’s where you come in, Orville.”

  Everyone turned to look at Orville the Very Fat Beetle but he was nowhere to be seen.

  “Orville?” called Chilly Billy. “ORVILLE!”

  There was a thump from the corner of the fridge. Waddling as fast as he could, Orville appeared, licking a few stray blobs from his whiskers.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “Just checking your peanut butter supplies. Ah yes—emergency rescue. No time to waste. What’s the plan?”

  “Your part of the plan,” said Chilly Billy, “is to climb up there on to the shelf exactly over where Spotty is frozen to the floor.” And he pointed with his icicle to a place way up among the liver sausage.

  “I see,” said Orville, “you want me to supervise operations. Good idea. I’m very fond of liver sausage.”

  Chilly Billy looked stern. “Orville,” he said, “this is not a picnic. This is a dangerous mission and you have been chosen for the most dangerous part of it. You’re going to be a bomb.”

  “A bomb? O my,” said Orville. “I don’t know about that. I’ll have to ask my doctor. Can’t take too much excitement. Bad for the heart.”

  Chilly Billy thought hard. “A double ration of peanut butter will be issued at the end of the mission. And some lemon cream pie.”

  “O my,” said Orville. He licked his whiskers and then heaved and waddled his way up the side of the fridge.

  Chilly Billy turned to the others. “Jumper,” he said, “I want you to take this edge of the bump, all along here, and act like a jackhammer. Jump on your springs where the ice joins the floor and see if you can crack it. Stripy Norman—you get round the back and start nibbling at the ice, as if it was a big piece of lettuce. Cousin Albert, you and all your friends take the other side. Make funnels out of aluminum foil, and use all that hot air for huffing at the ice instead of talking. And Lily, stay at Spotty’s front end and let us know if he feels the ice giving way anywhere. OK everybody—let’s go!”

  The Mad Jumper hammered away with his secret springs; Stripy Norman nibbled and nibbled; Cousin Albert and his friends huffed and puffed down their aluminum funnels, their faces getting redder and redder; Chilly Billy raced round and round the icy bump, waving his icicle and looking helpful and important.

  And way up above, Orville the Very Fat Beetle had a quick bite of liver sausage to keep his strength up.

  “OUCH!” said the old ladybird.

  “STOP!” said Lily. Everybody stopped.

  “Somebody,” said Spotty, “is biting my bottom. Trying to be helpful, I’m sure. But rather painful just the same.”

  “That’s wonderful!” said Chilly Billy. “It means that Stripy Norman has got through the ice. Well done!” Chilly Billy walked all the way round the bump, prodding with his icicle and saying “Hmmm” and “Just as I thought.”

  “Right,” he said. “I think we’re ready. Now we just have to break the thick part on top and Spotty can get out.” He looked up to the shelf above. “Orville! Stand by to bomb the bump!”

  There was no answer.

  “ORVILLE!”

  And then Orville did the bravest thing he’d ever done. Holding his nose, with his eyes tight shut, he jumped off the shelf and hurtled down…

  and down…

  and down…

  until THUMP!

  (that was Orville hitting the bump),

  CRACK!

  (that was the ice splitting),

  OOF!

  (that was Orville),

  AAAAH!

  (that was Spotty) .

  For a moment the air was filled with flying pieces of ice and a cloud of frost, but when it cleared everyone looked to where the bump had been. And there, with ten shiny black spots on his beautiful red overcoat, was the old ladybird, unstuck at last.

  “Well bless my spots,” he said. “That’s better. Good shot, Orville.

  As they all crowded round Spotty, admiring his overcoat and feeling very pleased with themselves, there was a spluttering noise from the corner. It was Orville, lying on his back.

  “If it’s not too much trouble,” he said, “I’d like to remind you that a large beetle lands on his back, he needs a helping hand to get the right way up again.”

  So to make it up to Orville, Lily went to fetch a large plate of cream pie while the others helped him up, dusted him down and generally made a fuss of him.

  “You were so brave,” said Lily.

  “Was I brave enough for another helping of pie?” said Orville, who was already feeling much better.

  Meanwhile, Spotty started to try out his wings. First he waved his left wing. Then he waved the right wing. Then he waved them both together as hard as he could, and went straight up in the air like a spotted helicopter.

  “I can fly again!” he said. “Isn’t it marvelous!”

  “Well, there you are,” said Chilly Billy. “When they open the fridge door tonight, you can fly out and be home in no time.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you all,” said Spotty. And he thought for a moment. “Well, maybe I do. Have any of you ever flown before?”

  Nobody had.

  “Would you like to try?”

  “Yes please!” said Lily and Chilly Billy and the Mad Jumper and Stripy Norman and Cousin Albert and Cousin Albert’s friends.

  “Dear me, no,” said Orville. “I think I’ve had enough flying for today.”

  So while they all took in turn to hold on very tight as Spotty flew them round and round the fridge, Orville the Very Fat Beetle waddled back up to the shelf again, where he had some unfinished business with the liver sausage.

 

 

  Peter Mayle, Footprints in the Butter

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