Vile Visitors

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.

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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 him, nobody can.”

I raved at her. She didn’t know what it was like. He took Pip’s football away because he said we were making a noise with it. He took all the toy drums, all my new paper, and Tony’s trains. Tony has a way of leaving half-made models about, and Angus Flint used to take them apart whenever he came across them. He said they were in the way. When I went to complain, he was standing on his head.

He always stood on his head after he’d done anything like that. He stood on his head after he stole my paper. All I’d done was to make a bad drawing of Angus Flint standing on his head. He’d no business to look at my private paper anyway. I drew it because I was so mad at the way Angus Flint would keep insulting the furniture. The boys can stick up for themselves, but Cora’s bed can’t. Angus Flint said it was lumpy and hard. He told the dining-table it was rickety and the chairs they were only fit for scrap. He said the sitting-room furniture ought to be burnt.

Tony said that if he hated our furniture so much, he should leave. He got the Stare. Pip asked Angus Flint every day when he was going, but he only got the Stare too. I knew it was no good telling Angus Flint to stop insulting the furniture, so, whenever he complained, I said, “That’s a very profound idea.” And got the Stare.

After that, the boys went round calling everything “very profound,” from the curtains to our comics. Angus Flint must have felt they had something. All our comics suddenly disappeared. After searching everywhere else, we found them in Cora’s room, where Angus Flint had been reading them. I rushed at Angus Flint to complain, and there he was, standing on his head again, maroon socks waving, and his face, squashed and purple, giving me the Stare upside-down at floor level.

“Go away. I’ve got to do this for five more minutes.”

“It looks very profound,” I said, but I went away quickly while I was saying it. By that time, I was scared of being picked up by my hair again.

I got picked up by my hair for rescuing Menace. Menace did not appear very often for fear of being patted by Angus Flint. He lurked nervously under cupboards. But one morning he rashly lay down outside the boys’ room. Pip and Tony decided that Menace would be able to slide into hiding more easily if he had one of my old roller-skates strapped to his middle.

Menace hated the idea.

I heard him hating it and came to help. There was a lot of shouting, and a good deal more yelping from Menace. Then Angus Flint came pelting out of Cora’s room roaring at us to be quiet.

Menace fled. He never let Angus Flint get within a foot of him if he could help it. But the skate stayed. Angus Flint trod on it and shot off downstairs. It was beautiful. We were all sorry when he stopped on the first landing. Then he came pounding upstairs again shouting, “Whose skate was that?”

I said, “Mine,” without thinking.

I was picked up and swung about by my hair. It must have hurt me more than Pip, because I’m heavier.

Still, that put an idea into my sore head. I went and borrowed roller-skates from everyone I knew. I got armfuls. Pip and Tony helped me bring them home in carrier bags. There we laid them out, like you do mouse-poison, in cunning corners. It was an awful nuisance. Kids kept coming to the door saying, “My sister says she lent you my roller-skates, and she’s no right to do that because they’re mine.” But there were quite a few left, even after that.

The result: Pip fell over once, Tony twice, and me three times. Mum and Dad were immune. They said they’d had years of practice. And Angus Flint never said whether he’d fallen over or not. He simply collected all the skates up and threw them in the dustbin. He did it just before the dustmen called, so they were gone before we realised. And kids still keep coming to the door to ask for their skates. I’ve had to part with most of my nicest things in return.

Tony got picked up by his hair because of the plastic stew. He wanted revenge because Angus Flint kept breaking his models. And Tony hated the way Angus Flint always took one rabbit nibble at his food and then sounded so surprised that it was nice. Tony got as annoyed over that as I did at the way Angus Flint kept insulting the furniture. Mum was furious too. After the third time Angus Flint did it, she took to saying pleasantly, “Arsenic does taste nice.” At which Angus Flint always gave the same loud jolly laugh. So I think Mum and Tony put their heads together over the stew.

Tony had collected all the bits of left-over plastic model he could find. You know the things you have left after you’ve made a model. They look like knobby fishbones. Tony had collected them from everywhere he could think of. Because most of them came from the floor or the backs of cupboards, there was a good deal of grit and fluff and Menace’s hair with them too. Mum put the first spoonful of stew on Angus Flint’s plate, and while she was dipping for the second spoonful, Tony dumped a great handful of mixed plastic and fluff on top of it. Mum never turned a hair. She just poured gravy over the lot and passed it to Angus Flint.

We all watched breathlessly while he took up a forkful and did his nibble. “This—” he began as usual. Then he found what it was. He spat it out. “Who did this?” he said. He knew it was Tony by instinct. He answered his own question by picking Tony up by his hair and carrying him out of the room.

Mum knocked over her chair and rushed out after them. But by the time we all got to the hall – we got in one another’s way a little – Tony was upstairs running his head under the cold tap. And Angus Flint was – yes, you guessed it! – upside down on the hall carpet.

“I don’t want any supper, Margaret,” his squashed face said.

Mum said “Good!” to the maroon socks and stormed back to the dining-room.

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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?”