Читать книгу Vile Visitors - Diana Wynne Jones - Страница 9

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.”