Vile Visitors. Diana Wynne Jones

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      All I got from Angus Flint was a blank angry stare, and he went back to my chair. “This is a stupid chair,” he said. “It’s far too low.” The Stare turned out to be his great weapon. He used it on anything he disliked. I kept getting it. Mostly, it was over shutting the window. It’s such a big window that, when it’s open, it’s like having half the sitting-room wall missing. I got colder and colder. I thought Tony’s imaginary germs must have gone by now, so I got up and shut it.

      Angus Flint did not stop his loud jolly talk to Dad. He just got up and opened it again, talking all the time. I wasn’t having that, so I got up and shut it. Angus Flint got up and opened it. I forget how many times we did this. In between, Angus Flint patted Menace. At least – I think he thought he was patting Menace, but Menace had every excuse to think he was being beaten.

      “Good little dog, this,” Angus Flint kept saying. Clout, thump!

      “Don’t hit him so hard,” I said. I got the Stare again, so I got up and shut the window. While Angus Flint was opening it, Menace saved his ribs from being broken by squeezing under one of the cupboards and staying there. The space was small even for a dachshund.

      enace didn’t even come out from under the cupboard for supper, although it smelt delicious. Mum cooks her best food for visitors.

      Mum’s turn to be insulted. Angus Flint cut off a very small corner of his chops and nibbled it like a rabbit. “This is nice, Margaret!” he said. He sounded thoroughly surprised, as if Mum was famous for cooking fried toads in snail sauce. Then he went on telling Dad that the current government was very profound. Mum was looking stormy and Dad seemed crushed by then. So I told Angus Flint that it wasn’t profound at all. I didn’t see why I shouldn’t. After all, I am going to have the vote one day. But I got the Stare Treatment again, and then Angus Flint said, “I don’t want to listen to childish nonsense.”

      I felt almost crushed too. I was glad it was Celebs Have Talent on the telly. Pip and I did the washing up in order to see it, and Tony got out of bed – he’d watch that programme if he was dying. We were all crouched around the television, ready to go, when Angus Flint came bustling in from the sitting room where Mum was giving him polite coffee, and turned it over to the other channel. We all yelled at him.

      “But you must watch Girls Galore,” he said. “It’s very profound.”

      Very profound my left fibula! It’s one of those awful series about girls sharing a flat. They undress a lot, which accounts for Angus Flint finding it profound. And he stood over the knob, too, so we couldn’t turn it back without wrecking the telly. Tony was so furious that he stormed off to fetch Dad, and Pip and I raced after him.

      Dad said, “I’ve had about enough of Angus!” which is strong language from him, and Mum said, “So have I!” and we all thundered back to the dining-room.

      And, would you believe this? Angus Flint was standing on his head, doing Yoga, watching Girls Galore upside-down! You can’t argue with someone who’s upside down. We tried, but it just can’t be done. Instead of a face, you have to talk to a pair of maroon socks – with a hole in one toe – nodding gently at eye-level. The face you ought to be arguing with is on the floor, squashed and purple-looking and the wrong way up. And when you’ve talked to the socks for a while, the squashed face on the floor says, “I have to stay like this for ten more minutes,” and you give up and go away. You have to.

      We went to bed. I don’t know how my parents managed for the rest of the evening, but I can guess. I heard them coming to bed. Dad was most earnestly probing to find out when Angus Flint intended to go. From the strong silence that followed, I gathered that Dad was getting the Stare Treatment too.

      In the middle of the night, we were all woken up by a dreadful smell of burning. We thought the house was on fire at first. We were quite pleased, because that’s one thing that’s never happened to us yet. But the smell turned out to come from the kitchen. It was thick and black, like when you burn toffee.

      So we all rushed into the kitchen. Angus Flint was there, calmly stuffing what looked like clean white sheets into the boiler.

      “I had to burn these,” he said. “They were covered with sugar or something.”

      “I could have washed them,” said Mum.

      She got the Stare. “They were ruined,” said Angus Flint.

      I looked at Pip. He was horribly disappointed. He has always had such faith in putting sugar in the beds of people he isn’t keen on, for a prank. It’s supposed to melt and make the victim sticky as well as scratchy. I’ve told him over and over again that it’s worth taking the time to catch fleas off Menace. But I suppose Angus Flint would have burnt the sheets for fleas too.

      He went to bed with clean sheets – Mum made his bed, because he never then, or any other time, did a thing for himself – saying he would sleep late next morning. In fact, he got up before I did and ate my breakfast. Dad fled then. He said he had an urgent experiment at the lab. The coward. He saw me coming. And I couldn’t complain to mum either, because Angus Flint took her over and told her all morning how his wife had left him.

      We heard quite a lot of it. The story had a sort of chorus which went, “Well, I couldn’t stand for that, and I had to pinch her.” The chorus came so many times that the poor woman must have been black and blue. No wonder she left him! If I were her, I would have— Well, perhaps not, because, as we were swiftly finding out, Angus Flint was quite immune to anything ordinary people could do.

      Mum was tired out by lunch time. “Get lunch, Candida,” she said. “I’m going out. I’ve got the – er – a meeting. I shan’t be in till nearly seven.”

      That was how our heartless and cowardly parents left Tony, Pip and me alone all and every day with Angus Flint.

      f course we objected to being left alone with Angus Flint. Dad said that it was fair shares, because they had him all evening. My mother had the cheek to say to us, “Well, darlings, if you three can’t get rid of СКАЧАТЬ