Fame

‘I’m Mrs D,’ said the woman, smiling as she wiped her floury hands on her apron. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Abel Henry Gunning Crewe,’ said Abel. ‘Do you like dinosaurs?’

Before she had time to answer, Mrs Drummond saw Tish lugging an enormous suitcase into the hallway. ‘Darling! Let me help you.’ She relieved Tish of the case, plonking it down at the foot of the stairs, and threw her arms around her former charge, enveloping Tish in a bosomy, cinnamon-scented bear hug. ‘I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you.’

‘You too, Mrs D,’ said Tish with feeling. ‘You met Abel?’

‘I did indeed,’ Mrs Drummond grinned, turning to watch the little boy who was now mountaineering his way up the banisters. ‘He’s gorgeous.’

‘Isn’t he?’ Tish grinned back. ‘I thought he’d be tired after the flight and everything, but he hasn’t stopped talking since six o’clock this morning.’

‘Not to worry,’ said Mrs Drummond. ‘I’ve made some cinnamon pound cake. A couple of slices of that will take the wind out of his sails. Now, what would you like to do first, lovie? Eat? Have a bath? Unpack?’

‘No,’ said Tish resolutely. ‘I’d like to meet our house guests.’

A cloud of anxiety descended over Mrs Drummond’s kindly features. ‘I don’t think you should do that right away, Letitia. They’re not very nice people. Wait till this afternoon and I’ll get Bill and one of the other farm boys to go in there with you. They mostly keep to the East Wing, so they shouldn’t bother us here.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Tish. ‘I don’t need a bloody bodyguard in my own house. If you’d take Abel and get him something to eat, I’ll go and sort them out.’

‘I really don’t think you understand, darling …’ Mrs Drummond began. But Tish was already marching off down the hallway towards the East Wing. She always was a stubborn child, thought Mrs Drummond, watching her retreating back. Perhaps she should call Bill Connelly, just in case.

Walking down the East corridor, past Loxley’s grand, formal rooms, Tish gasped in horror as the extent of the damage wrought by Jago’s ‘friends’ unfolded. Every few feet, dark rectangles of wallpaper revealed the places where paintings had been removed and, according to Mrs Drummond, taken to London to be sold for drugs. In the library, antique bookcases stood with their doors hanging off the hinges and an array of beautifully bound first editions spilling out onto the floor. In the grate, Tish saw torn spines and singed pages: some Barbarian had used her father’s books as kindling! Everywhere there was dirt, Persian runners covered with the imprints of muddy boots, empty mugs and glasses littering every available surface, some of them growing livid green mould on the dregs of whatever vile, stagnant liquid they had once contained. The deeper Tish walked into the East Wing, once the most impressive part of the house, the more the place looked like a squat, littered with empty beer cans and overflowing ashtrays.

Finally, she approached the drawing room. There was music coming from inside – Jimi Hendrix, if I’m not mistaken – and raucous, male laughter. Her hand was on the door handle, but she hesitated.

Not yet, she thought. There’s something I have to do first.

In the kitchen, Mrs Drummond watched in awe as Letitia’s son inhaled his fourth, slab-sized slice of cinnamon pound cake. The child was an eating machine. And he was still talking.

‘If you could make dinosaurs un-extinct and have one for a pet, which one would you have?’ he mumbled through a fine spray of cake crumbs.

‘My goodness, Abel. I’ve never really thought about it. I don’t suppose I’d have any of them. Would dinosaurs make good pets, do you think?’

Abel looked at her pityingly. ‘Of course they would. A T-Rex would be the most excellentest pet you could ever have, and do you know why? Because it would kill all the baddies, and eat them, but it wouldn’t kill you because you’d be its owner. Pets’ owners are kind of like their mum or dad. So pets actually love them. Even a T-Rex would love its owner, but you’d have to help it not to fall over, because do you know what happens to dinosaurs when they fall over?’

Mrs Drummond shook her head.

‘They die!’

‘Do they really?’

‘Uh-huh. And do you know what else?’

Suddenly the clear, unmistakable crack of a shotgun being fired rang out.

‘Good heavens!’ said Mrs Drummond. A few seconds later there was another shot, then another, all of them from the direction of the East Wing.

‘Was that a bomb?’ asked Abel cheerfully. ‘Bombs are cool.’

‘You stay there my darling. Don’t move.’ Running into the hallway, Mrs Drummond picked up the telephone and dialled 999.

In the drawing room, a dreadlocked man in his mid-thirties stared at the petite, blonde woman in front of him in terrified astonishment.

‘What the fuck?’ he shouted, as his cowering companions scrambled to their feet. ‘You could have killed me!’

‘Indeed I could,’ said Tish. She pointed her father’s shotgun slowly and deliberately at the man’s crotch. ‘And if you and your mates aren’t out of this house in the next two minutes, I probably will.’

‘You wouldn’t bloody dare,’ said the man.

Tish cocked the gun’s hammer. ‘Try me.’

Henry’s gun cupboard was upstairs in what had been his dressing room. Deciding it was better to be safe than sorry, and that a loaded shotgun would provide a lot more effective protection than Bill Connelly, Loxley’s elderly farm manager, Tish had retrieved the key from its usual hiding place in the airing cupboard and armed herself for confrontation. When she reached the dressing room her heart was in her mouth. The squatters had evidently been here before her. Deep scratches on the thick oak closet doors documented their multiple, frustrated attempts to break it open. Tish shuddered to think what might have happened had they succeeded, high out of their minds and with poor dear Mrs Drummond in the house.

‘We’re guests here, you mad fucking cow,’ the man snarled, stepping out from behind the Knole sofa. ‘Your brother invited us to stay for as long as we liked.’ His fear seemed to be receding and his aggression returning. His patchwork trousers and CND shirt suggested a peaceful, hippyish, eco-campaigner type, but the bullying look in his eyes said otherwise. You’re a thug, thought Tish. I’ve seen your type in Romania countless times: pathetic little local government Hitlers trying to intimidate the weak and helpless. You don’t scare me.

‘Yes, well, unfortunately for you my brother isn’t here, is he? I am. And I’m telling you to get out.’

‘Fuck you. You’re not gonna shoot me.’ The man took two steps towards Tish, a look of cold hatred on his drug-ravaged face. For a moment, Tish experienced a stab of panic. Mrs Drummond was right. He was menacing. They all were. Sensing a shift in the room’s power dynamics, his previously comatose friends began to rally themselves, lining up behind him like backing singers in some sinister, junkie band.

‘Get her, Dan,’ one of them shouted.

‘Fucking posh bitch,’ hissed another.

In a couple of seconds the ringleader would have reached her. Twice her size, he would easily be able to overpower her and grab the gun. There was no time to think. Switching aim from his groin to his foot, Tish fired.

For a split second there was silence. Then came the screams. ‘Dan’ collapsed in a heap on the floor, clutching his leg. Blood poured from his foot, seeping through his soft moccasin shoes onto the carpet. The noise coming out of him was blood curdling. His friends rushed to his aid.

‘Fuck!’ said the smaller, rat-faced one. ‘We need to get him to hospital.’

‘That’s GBH, you cunt. You’re looking at ten years for that.’ Another of the men bared his yellowing teeth at Tish. ‘I’m calling the fucking police.’

‘Be my guest,’ said Tish, passing him the phone with a nonchalance she was far from feeling. ‘When you’re finished, I’ll fill them in on your thefts of my family property. I might ask them to bring over a few sniffer dogs while they’re at it. Although I doubt they’ll need them. They can just follow the trail of needles.’

Dan looked up, his face white as a sheet. ‘Leave it,’ he whispered, through gritted teeth. The pain was clearly excruciating. ‘Just get me to A and E. Get the others and let’s get the fuck out of here before she kills someone.’

Tish watched as his friends scooped him up off the floor, staggering under his weight as they carried him out of the room. Once they’d gone, she bolted the drawing-room door behind them and waited, Henry’s shotgun still in her hand. There were muffled noises of a commotion upstairs. After about ten minutes, Tish heard the last door slam. Looking out of the window, she saw a straggling group of eight men and women climb into their dilapidated camper van and drive off, spraying gravel noisily behind them in their eagerness to get away. It was only once they’d gone and the rumble of the van’s engine had faded into silence that Tish realized her hands were shaking violently.

Forcing herself to calm down, she unlocked the door and walked upstairs, checking each room to make sure that no one was left hiding or passed out on one of the beds. If it were possible, the squalor upstairs was even worse than it was in the rooms below. Drug-related detritus littered the beds and floors, along with filthy clothes and sheets, and plates covered in rotting food. Bastards. Only once she was convinced they had all gone did Tish carefully replace her father’s gun in the closet, lock it, and go back downstairs to check on Abel.

She found him in the kitchen, along with a visibly shaken Mrs D. And three policemen.

‘There she is!’ cried Mrs Drummond. ‘Oh, Letitia, thank goodness you’re safe! What happened? We heard the shots.’

‘Is everything all right, Miss Crewe?’ The senior policeman stepped forward. ‘Was anybody injured?’

‘Everything’s fine, officer,’ said Tish calmly, scooping Abel up into her arms and kissing him. ‘I’m sorry to have troubled you. There was an accident I’m afraid. One of our unwanted visitors managed to break into my father’s gun closet. I arrived in the drawing room to find him fiddling about with one of the shotguns. Damned fool. Before you knew it the thing went off and he’d managed to shoot himself in the foot. He’s on his way to A and E now. His friends took him in their camper van. I have a sneaking feeling they won’t be back.’

The policeman raised an eyebrow. He was no fool. ‘I see. And that’s the same story he’s going to be telling us, is it? The injured gentleman?’