Vile Visitors (3 page)

ext morning, there was nothing for breakfast. Angus Flint had got up in the night and eaten all the cornflakes and all the milk, and fried himself all the eggs.

“Why is there no food?” he demanded.

“You ate it all,” Mum said.

Angus Flint did not seem to notice how cold she sounded. He just set to work to eat all the bread and marmalade too. He simply did not see how we all hated him. He really enjoyed staying with us. He kept saying so. Every evening when my parents crawled home to him, he would meet them with a beaming smile. “This is such a friendly household, Margaret,” he said. “You've done me a lot of good.”

“I think we must be very profound,” Pip said drearily.

“I suppose I couldn't live here always?” said Angus Flint.

There was silence. A very profound one.

Pip broke the silence by stumping off to do his practice. By that time, the only time either of us dared practise was when our parents were at home. Angus Flint would not let us touch the piano. If you started, he came and picked you up by your hair. Pip and I got so that we used to dive off the stool and under the piano as soon as we heard a footstep. Pip's True-love, when he did manage to practise playing her song, seemed to have developed a squint as well as a stutter, and as for my song that sounded like gloomy elephants, they had got more like despairing dinosaurs. I kept having to apologise to the piano – not to speak of Miss Hawksmoore.

“You should sell that piano,” Angus Flint said, as Pip started bashing away.

Mum would not hear of it. The piano is her best bargain ever. Not everyone can buy a perfect concert-grand for £100. Besides, she wanted us to learn to play it.

By this time, Angus Flint had stayed with us for nearly a fortnight. Cora was due home in three days, and he still showed no signs of leaving. The boys told him he would have to leave when Cora came back, but all they got was the Stare. My parents both realised that something would have to be done and began to show a little firmness at last. Mum explained – in her special anxious way that she uses when she doesn't want to offend someone – that Cora was coming back soon and would need her room. Dad took to starting everything he said to Angus Flint with “When you leave us—”. But Angus Flint took not the slightest bit of notice. It began to dawn on me that he really did intend to stay for good.

I was soon sure of it. He suddenly went all charming. He left me some breakfast for once. He even made his bed, and he was polite all morning. I warned the boys, but they wouldn't believe me. I warned Mum too, when she came back suddenly in the middle of the afternoon, but it was a hot day and she was too tired to listen.

“I only keep buying things if I stay out,” she said. “I'd rather face Angus Flint than the Bank Manager.”

Too right she kept buying things. That week, she'd bought two hideous three-legged tables for the sitting-room, about eight bookcases, and four rolled-up carpets. We were beginning to look like an old furniture store.

Angus Flint heard Mum come back. He rushed up to her with a jolly smile on his face. “Isn't it a lovely day, Margaret? What do you say to me taking you and the kids out to tea somewhere?”

Mum agreed like a shot. He hadn't paid for a thing up to then. The boys had visions of ice cream and cream buns. I knew there was a catch in it, but it was just the day for tea out on a lawn somewhere, and I did feel we ought at least to get that out of Angus Flint in return for all our suffering. So we all crammed into his car. Angus Flint drove exactly like you might expect, far too fast. He honked his horn a lot, overtook everything he could – particularly on corners – and he expected old ladies to leap like deer in order not to be run over. Mum said what about the Copper Kettle? Tony said the cakes in the other place were better. But Angus Flint insisted that he had seen, “A perfect little place,” on his way to stay with us.

We drove three times round town looking for the perfect little place, at top speed. Our name was mud in every street by then. We called out whenever we saw a cafe of any kind after a while, but Angus Flint just said, “We can't stop here,” and sped on.

After nearly an hour, when Pip was near despair, we ended up roaring through Palham, which is a village about three miles out of town. There was a place called “Ye Olde Tea Shoppe” with striped umbrellas. Our spirit was broken by then. We didn't even mention it. But Angus Flint stopped with a screech of brakes. “This looks like as if it might do,” he said.

We all piled out and sat under an umbrella.

“Well, what will you have?” said Angus Flint.

Deep breaths were drawn and cream teas for five were ordered. We all waited, looking forward to cream and cakes. We felt we really deserved our teas.

Angus Flint said, “I've applied for a job in your town, Margaret. The interview's tomorrow. Your husband was good enough to say that I could make my home with you. Don't you think that's a good idea?”

We stared. Had Dad said that?

“There's Cora,” Mum said. “We've no room.”

“That's no problem,” Angus Flint said. “You can put the two girls in together.”

“No!” I said. If you knew Cora—

“I'd pay,” Angus Flint said, joking and trying to be nice. “A nominal sum – a pound a month, say?”

Mum drew herself up resolutely, to my great relief. “No, Angus. It's absolutely out of the question. You'll have to go as soon as Cora comes back.”

Angus Flint did not answer. Instead, he bounced jovially to his feet. “I have to go and see someone for a moment,” he said. “I shan't be long. Don't wait for me.” And he was back in his car and driving away before any of us could move.

hey brought us five cream teas almost at once. It was a perfect revenge.

Mum could not believe that Angus Flint was not coming back. We ate our cream teas. After a while, Mum let the boys eat Angus's cream tea too, and said we could order another when he came back. When they came with the bill, she said we were expecting a friend, who would pay.

Half an hour later, they began to look at us oddly.

Half an hour after that, they took the umbrellas out of the tables and stood the chairs on them suggestively.

A short while after that, they came and asked to be paid. They made it quite clear that they knew we were trying to cheat them. They refused Mum's desperately offered cheque. We had to go through all our pockets and shake Mum's bag out on the table, and even then we were 2p short. They forgave us that, but grimly. They looked after us unlovingly as we went. Mum nearly sank under the embarrassment.

Then we had to walk home. It was still hot. Tony hates walking, and he whined. Pip got a blister and whined too. Mum snarled and I snapped. We were all in the worst tempers of our lives by the time we plunged up the garden path and burst into the house. We knew that Angus Flint would be standing there, upside-down on the hall carpet, to meet us.

“And this time I shan't care that it's his socks I'm talking to!” I said.

But the person standing in the hall was Dad. He was the right way up, of course, and wondering where we'd all got to. Mum went for him with all her claws out. “Have you had the nerve to tell Angus Flint that he could live with us? If so—” I felt quite sorry for my father. He admitted that, in the heat of the first reunion, he might have said some such thing, but – Oh boy! Never have I heard my mother tell someone off like she did then. I couldn't do it half so well. Even Cora couldn't, the time she played the evil headmistress in the school play.

After that, for a beautiful, peaceful half evening, we thought Angus Flint had gone for good. We kept the window shut, played the piano, watched the things we wanted on the telly, and cheered Dad up by playing cards with him. We were all thoroughly happy, when Angus Flint came back again. He knew we were likely to complain, I suppose, so he brought a girlfriend home with him to make sure we couldn't go for him.

The girlfriend was a complete stranger to us. Hand-picked for her big smile, with glasses and a giggle.

“Teach her to play cards,” said Angus Flint. “She's quite clever really.”

She wasn't. But neither was Angus Flint, when it came to cards. Have you ever played cards with somebody who thinks for twenty minutes before he puts a card down, and then puts down exactly the wrong one? He played the girl's hand too, though she was slightly better at it than he was. We went to bed after the first game. But Angus Flint didn't take the girlfriend home until well after midnight. I know, because I heard Mum let fly again when he did.

Angus Flint came back at three and woke me up hammering at the front door.

When I let him in, he said, “Didn't you hear me knocking? I might have caught my death.”

I said, “I wish you had!” and escaped into the sitting-room before he could pick me up by my hair.

Menace was there. He crawled nervously out from under the piano to be stroked.

“Menace,” I said. “Where's your spirit? Can't you bite Angus Flint?”

Then I thought that I didn't dare bite Angus Flint either, and got so miserable that I went wandering round the room. I patted the uncomfortable chairs and the poor ugly tables, and stroked the piano.

“Chairs,” I said, “stand up for yourselves! He insults you all the time. Tables,” I said, “he said you ought to be burnt! Piano, he told Mum to sell you. Do something, all of you! Furniture of the world, unite!” I gave them a very stirring speech, all about the rights of oppressed furniture, and it made me feel much better. Not that I thought it would do any good. But I thought it was a very good idea.