Stopping for a Spell

by Diana Wynne Jones

  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.

  Mum was tired out by lunchtime. “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.

  3

  Roller Skates and Stew

  Of 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 mouth organs, 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 sto
od 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 burned.

  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 around 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, the way 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 realized. 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.

  No we didn’t.

  Mum just pretended not to see.

  Tony.

  I’m writing this, not you, Tony Robbins. And you said I could have your paper.

  As I was saying, it was stew for supper. Tony had collected all the bits of leftover plastic model he could find. You know the things you have left after you’ve made a model. They look like knobby fish bones. 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 hairs 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 orange 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.

  4

  Cream Teas

  Next 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 practice 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 play her, seemed to have developed a squint as well as a stutter, and as for my gloomy elephants, they had got more like despairing dinosaurs. I kept having to apologize 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 £10. 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 realized 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 t
o 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 the way 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 around 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 café 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 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 as if it might do,” he said.