Stopping for a Spell (11 page)

1

Angus Flint Arrives

The day my sister, Cora, went away for a fortnight, a friend of Dad's called Angus Flint rang up out of the blue. He said his wife had just left him, so could he come and see us to cheer himself up? I don't know how my father came to have a friend like Angus Flint. They met at college. One of them must have been different.

Trust my awful little brother to ruin this paper, when Angus Flint stole all the rest. Pip's never recovered from Cora once rashly telling him he was a genius, and he thinks
he
was the one who got rid of Angus Flint. And I'm not awful. Things just happened to me.

Anyway, Dad was pleased Angus Flint had not forgotten him, so he said, “Yes,” and then told Mum. Mum said, “Oh,” in the blank sort of way I do when I find my brothers have pinched all my chocolate. Then she said, “I suppose he can have Cora's room.” Imagine the way an Ancient Roman might say, “I suppose the lions can have my best friend,” and you'll know how she said it.

That ought to have been a warning because Mum can like people no sane person can stand, but I was doing my piano practice, so I didn't attend. Miss Hawksmoore had given me an all-time big hit to work on called “Elfin Dance,” and I was grinding my teeth at it. It sounds like two very glum medium-sized elephants trying to waltz. And the next number in my book is a top pop called “Fairy Rondeau.” I only carry on because I like our piano so much. It's a great black grand piano that Mum bought for £10, cheap at £1,000 to our minds.

Pip can't decide what he's a genius
at
, but a little while ago he thought he might be a genius at playing the piano. He was doing his practice when Angus Flint arrived. But before that Pip and Tony—Tony's the brother between me and Pip—had been so glad that Cora was not around to henpeck them that they had celebrated by eating—Well, they wouldn't say what they had eaten, but Tony had come out in spots and been sick. Tony has the art of looking bland and vague when any misdeed happens. Mum thought he really was ill. When Angus Flint breezed in, Tony was in a chair in the sitting room with a bowl on his knees, and Mum was fussing.

Now this shows you what Angus Flint was like. Mum went to shake hands, saying she was sorry we were at sixes and sevens. And she explained that Tony had been taken ill.

Angus Flint said, “Then open the window.
I
don't want to get it.” Those were his first words. He was square and stumpy, and he had a blank sort of face with a pout to it. His voice was loud and jolly.

Mum looked rather taken aback, but she slid the big window open a little and told Tony to go to bed. Dad asked Angus Flint to sit down. Angus Flint looked critically at the chairs and then sat in the best one. Dad had just begun to ask him where he was living these days when he bounced up again.

“This is a horribly uncomfortable chair. It's not fit to sit in,” he said.

We hadn't done anything to it—though I wish we had now—it was just that the chair is one of Mum's bargains. All our furniture is bargains. But Pip looked at me meaningly and grinned, because I was shuddering. I can't bear anyone to insult a piece of furniture to its face. No matter how ugly or uncomfortable a chair or a table is, I don't think it should be told. It can't help it, poor thing. I know most of our furniture is hideous, and most of the chairs hurt you sooner or later, but there's no need to say so. But I don't think furniture can read, so I don't mind writing it.

Meanwhile, Dad got out of the chair Tony had been sitting in and suggested Angus Flint sit there. “Not that one,” Angus Flint said. “That's infested with germs.” He ignored all the other chairs and marched over to mine. “I want to sit down,” he told me.

“Let Angus have your chair, Candida,” Mum said.

I was furious, but I got up. People seem to think children have no rights. Pip made his Dying Chinaman face at me out of sympathy. Then he spun around on the piano stool, put his foot down on the loud pedal, and slammed into “How Shall I Thy True Love Know?” He's only got as far as that one. Tony says he'd know Pip's True Love anywhere: She's tone-deaf, with a stutter. She sounds worse with the loud pedal down.

Angus Flint was explaining in his loud, jolly voice that he'd taken up yoga since his wife left him. “You should all do yoga,” he said. “It's very profound. It—” He stopped. Pip's True Love did a booming stutter and made a wrong note. Angus Flint roared, “Stop fooling with that piano, can't you? I'm talking.”

“I've got to practice,” Pip said.

“Not while I'm here,” said Angus Flint. Then, before I could do anything, he sprang up and lifted Pip off the piano stool by his hair. It hurt Pip a lot—as I found out later for myself—but Pip managed to walk out of the room and not even look as if he were crying. My parents were stunned. They are just far too polite to guests. But I'm not.

“Do that again,” I said, “and I shall personally see that you suffer.”

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.

2

The Smell in the Night

Menace didn't even come out from under the cupboard for supper, although it smelled delicious. Mum puts forth her best for visitors. Serve Tony right. He didn't want any.

Okay, okay. Mum's turn to be insulted. Angus Flint cut off a very small corner of his veal and nibbled at it like a rabbit. “This is nice, Margaret!” he said. He sounded thoroughly surprised, as if Mum were famous for cooking fried toads in snail sauce. Then he went on telling Dad that the Common Market 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 “Pass the Buck, Dad” 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 program 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 ‘Battered Brides',” he said. “It's very profound.”

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 “Battered Brides” 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 to 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 had always had such faith in sugar for beds. 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 burned 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 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 hit 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.