Nathalia Buttface and the Most Embarrassing Dad

by Nigel Smith

  “I think this is brilliant.”

  Nat was about to tell him to shut up, then she remembered the horrible estate where Darius lived.

  “Posh Barry said he left the front door key under a pot,” said Dad, hunting around.

  “Why did he lock it?” said Nat. “No one’s gonna want to break into THIS.”

  “Maybe it was to stop something breaking out,” said Darius in his best creepy voice. NOW Nat could tell him to shut up.

  Nat creaked open a shutter and peeked through a grimy downstairs window into the living room. It was dark and dusty, but there was a big sofa that looked comfy, and a carved stone fireplace and pretty tiles on the floor. Perhaps it wasn’t so bad …

  “I’ve found the pots,” said Dad, from round the side of the house. There was a pause. “So now …” he said, “I just have to look under them. Yup, just pick up a pot and look under it. Under, under, under …”

  Nat and Darius came up to him, as he stood dithering over a jumbled collection of big stone pots. “What’s the matter?” teased Nat, knowing full well what the matter was.

  Spiders were what the matter was. Dad HATED spiders. And spiders loved hanging around under pots.

  “Nothing,” said Dad. “Just wondering which pot the key is under.”

  “Only one way to find out,” said Darius, immediately lifting up a big one.

  “Spider, spider, massive spider,” said Dad, jumping back several feet in alarm, “and look at its teeth!”

  “It’s just a bunch of keys,” said Nat, bending down and grabbing them.

  “I knew that,” said Dad, taking the heavy pot off Darius, who was struggling to hold it.

  “HERE’S a spider,” said Darius, holding out a big one that had just crawled up his arm.

  “Aaaarrgh!” screamed Dad, dropping the big solid, HEAVY pot.

  On his foot.

  “Aaaarrgh!” screamed Dad again, hopping around on one leg. “Why did I wear sandals today?”

  He hopped around the front of the house, trying not to say rude words in front of the children.

  “Gah – fnuh – ishhh,” he shouted in a strangulated kind of way. Nat giggled; she never minded Dad looking daft as long as no one else saw him.

  But …

  “Can I help you?” said a polite but unfriendly voice. It was definitely French but its English was near perfect.

  “Not unless you can mend toes,” said Dad, still hopping about.

  “I do hope you haven’t broken anything,” the voice continued. Nat and Darius came from the side of the house and looked at the speaker. He was a tall man in a dark suit with a thin hooked nose and a high, superior kind of forehead. He looked like an angry hawk.

  “Well I can’t tell without an X-ray,” said Dad, rubbing his sore toes.

  “No, not your foot, I don’t care about your foot. I mean, I hope you haven’t broken anything in my house.”

  “How could I, I don’t even know where your house is,” said Dad crossly.

  “ZIS is my house,” said the man.

  At this point Dad realised that the newcomer was French, so started talking to him in Dad French.

  “Ah do nurt know what you min,” said Dad. “Zis iss mah friend Posh Barry’s ’owse. You are barking up ze wrong gumtree, mister.”

  “Dad, he speaks better English than you,” said Nat. “Talk properly.”

  The Dog sniffed the man, who gave him a dark look and the cowardly mutt slunk off to find somewhere warm to sleep.

  The stranger held out a thin bony hand to Dad. “Let me explain,” he said. His voice was like silk sliding gently over a razor blade. “My name is Baron du Canard. I own all the land around here. My ancestor, the first Baron, won it after the glorious Battle of Agincourt.”

  “Hang on,” said Nat, who liked history, “the French lost that battle. The English won.”

  “The Baron fought for the English,” said the man, with a shrug. “He was a terrible traitor – but a very good businessman.”

  “Never mind all that,” said Dad. “My mate Posh Barry bought this house last year, off an old lady.”

  “Yes but the old lady was SUPPOSED to sell it to me,” the Baron replied angrily. “It’s on the only bit of land I don’t own around here.”

  “So you DON’T own the house,” said Nat smartly.

  The man realised he’d said too much. “No. But I should,” he replied.

  “But you don’t,” said Dad. “That settles it.”

  “Tough banana, Baron Big Nose,” said Darius, “so off you trot.”

  The man looked at him coldly. “The only people trotting off,” he said, “will be you. Enjoy your stay. If you want me, I’m in the chateau next door.” He turned on his heels and walked quickly off into the woods.

  “If you want me, I’m in the chateau next door,” mimicked Nat. “What a creep.”

  “Right, never mind the welcome committee,” said Dad, “let’s go in and see what needs doing.” He unlocked the door, yanked it hard and the knob came off. Dad put his hand through the letterbox and pulled.

  There was a crash as the door fell on him.

  “We should probably start with the door,” he said, lying down under it.

  tepping inside the long gloomy hallway, Nat could easily see how this house had once been quite grand. The floor was decorated with little patterned tiles, now black with grime. The ceiling was high, with thick wooden beams slathered in dust and cobwebs.

  Downstairs there were two large shabby sitting rooms, with peeling, patterned wallpaper and exposed, dangerous-looking wiring.

  “Do NOT touch the light switches,” said Dad. “In fact, best not touch anything at all.” He sounded nervous.

  At the back of the house, the large, stone-tiled kitchen had a huge open fireplace. “We could roast a pig in here,” said Darius, jumping in the fireplace. “Or torture the Baron.”

  His voice boomed up the chimney. “Come out of there,” said Nat, who wanted a look herself. She stuck her head in and a huge block of soot smacked her full in the face.

  “I’ll get you for that,” she spluttered, wiping the grime from her eyes. Darius dashed out of the kitchen and up a large, curving staircase, Nat following right behind. Each step creaked and groaned as they flew upwards.

  The children paused on the long landing upstairs. The doors to the bedrooms were all closed and the only window was tightly shuttered. The whole landing was dark and quiet, like a tomb. Nat shivered. She looked at Darius and wondered why he’d stopped. She had never known him to be afraid of ANYTHING, not even L’Shaun Wiggins, the terror of Year 10, OR the school’s shepherd’s pie.

  There’s a first time for everything, she thought. Maybe, Darius Bagley, you’re not so different after all.

  “The ghost is DEFINITELY through that door,” said Darius, taking a sudden run at it. “Quick, before it disappears.”

  No, you are very different, Nat corrected herself.

  Darius hurled himself at the door.

  Bang! went Darius. And then OOF! went Darius as he bounced off with a crash. It was a very solid door.

  “All the bedroom doors are locked tight,” shouted Dad, from downstairs. “The place used to be a bed and breakfast, didn’t I tell you?”

  There were a lot of locked doors. And Nat had a nasty feeling they all hid horrible things. Never mind a ghost, they probably all needed LOADS of DIY doing.

  Dad, once again, looked doomed.

  Some hours later they had been through the whole house. It seemed bigger on the inside than the outside. There were rooms everywhere; it was like a rabbit warren.

  “Or a monster’s lair,” said Darius with relish.

  You would know, thought Nat.

  And yes, as Nat had suspected, all the rooms were grotty.

  The only room they hadn’t been in was a room at the top of the house whose door they couldn’t find a key for.

  This made Nat very nervous.

  “What do you think is in there? Do
n’t you think it’s creepy?” she said to Darius later, as they sat in the kitchen drinking pop.

  “The whole HOUSE is creepy,” said Darius. “Good, innit? Whoever built this place knew what ghosts like.”

  Nat was surprised that Dad didn’t panic about how much work it was going to be. Instead, he carefully made a list of all the DIY jobs that needed doing. Then he put the pencil behind his ear because THAT WAS WHAT BUILDERS DID.

  Nat had a horrible suspicion that that was as much as Dad knew about builders. Or DIY.

  Nat and Darius were grubby and tired. They were sitting at a large, battered wooden table in the big, ramshackle kitchen. They were at the back of the house and through an outsized window with six huge panes they could see the inviting, overgrown garden.

  In the distance, half-hidden in trees, they could just make out a couple of pointy turrets. Nat guessed it was the Baron’s chateau.

  Darius was whittling a stick into a point with his little knife.

  “Another jabbing stick?” asked Nat disapprovingly.

  “It’s a stake for the Baron’s heart,” he said cheerfully. “He’s obviously a vampire.”

  “A daytime vampire?”

  “Maybe he’s wearing lots of sunscreen,” said Darius with a shrug. “But I’m not taking any chances.”

  Nat sighed and looked at Dad who was half under the large stone sink hammering at some green-crusted pipes.

  “I’ll have the water running again in no time,” he shouted. “Get ready to put the kettle on. We can’t do anything without a cup of tea.”

  There was A LOT to do.

  In fact, there was so much to do, they had ALL written TO DO lists.

  Dad’s list:

  Fix plumbing.

  Fix electrics.

  Fix ceilings, windows, stairs, boiler,

  floorboards, roof, fountain.

  Redecorate.

  Find out where the smell’s coming from.

  Buy new net for the ping-pong table.

  “A pretty short list, when you write it all down,” Dad had said.

  Nat’s list:

  Demolish house.

  Buy net for the ping-pong table.

  Darius’s list was more positive. It read:

  Turn house into an evil base for our doomsday

  weapon.

  Build doomsday weapon.

  Buy new net for the ping-pong table.

  “How long have we actually got before Posh Barry comes?” said Nat. “Bearing in mind it took you two years to put the lights in my doll’s house. And another six months to fix the damage you made putting the lights in.”

  “Ah well,” said Dad, still clanging away at something under the sink. “I’ve got this theory that things take as long as the time you have to do them.”

  “You what?” said Nat irritably.

  “If you have a weekend to do your history homework, it takes you a weekend, right? If I have six months to write six Christmas cracker jokes, it takes me six months.”

  Nat knew Dad was avoiding the question. “How long, Dad?” she asked again.

  “A whole long week,” said Dad, trying to make that sound like ages. “Which means it’ll be done in a week. Good job we haven’t got six months to do it, right?”

  Nat banged her head on the table. “ONE WEEK?” she yelled. “Dad, I’ve seen you try DIY before, you won’t have worked out how to open the toolbox in one week.”

  “That toolbox was faulty,” said Dad defensively.

  “Posh Barry and Even Posher Linda will turn up and nothing will be fixed and Mimsy will tell EVERYONE at school that you’re a TOTAL FAILURE. And she’ll put pictures on her blog and then we’re all DOOMED forever.”

  “Trust me,” said Dad, “I know exactly what to do.”

  “Really?” said Nat hopefully.

  “Yes, I’m making us all a nice cuppa. Things will look better after that. I just need to get this water running.”

  There was a horrible final clang and Dad emerged from under the sink, face filthy with old grease and mystery under-the-sink dirt. He tried the taps but they just coughed and shook. A trickle of rusty water eventually plopped out.

  “Hmmmm,” said Dad. He flicked through a few pages of his old DIY book.

  “Is the water turned on from outside?” asked Darius. “There’s usually a tap out the back. Oswald once fell out with the whole street and we spent the night turning everyone’s water off.”

  “That’s quite funny,” said Nat.

  “It was so they would burn faster when he set them on fire,” Darius explained.

  “Yeah, not so funny now,” said Nat.

  “It was funny when I hid his lighter,” said Darius, chuckling. “You should have seen him jumping about.”

  “Darius, help me find the tap,” said Dad. “Nat, read about plumbing. It can’t be that difficult.”

  Dad and Darius went out the back door and Nat flicked through Dad’s stupid DIY book. It was full of pictures of useful-looking men with tool belts and check shirts who looked like they knew EXACTLY WHAT THEY WERE DOING. They looked like Rocky.

  They were the opposite of Dad.

  Nat knew the only DIY book with Dad’s picture in would be the ‘Don’t let this idiot anywhere near a power tool’ book.

  She put the book down and peered under the sink. There were a lot of bent pipes that didn’t look anything like they did in the book. There were bits of screws and bolts and metal rings that looked quite useful that Dad had unscrewed and left in a heap.

  Nat wondered if they were important bits.

  Then there was a rumbling noise. The floor under her shook. The pipes rattled and coughed and something that sounded like a waterfall rushed towards her.

  She heard Dad shout: “I think that’s done it – well done, Darius!”

  Then a huge jet of water burst out of a pipe under the sink, hitting Nat directly in the stomach.

  “WAAAH!” she yelled as the power of the water lifted her clean off her feet and rocketed her straight out of the back door.

  “WAAAAAH!” she yelled as she pinged into a pile of old tractor tyres that had been dumped in the garden.

  “WAAAAAAAH!” she yelled, as she bounced off the tyres and straight up in the air. She did a half-somersault and fell head-first, back into the tyres. All that could be seen of her were two little feet sticking up, wriggling furiously.

  “That looks cool,” said Darius, grabbing her legs. “My turn next.”

  He yanked on her feet and she slithered out, soaking wet and covered in tyre muck and garden slime. She lay panting on the grass for a moment. She heard a high-pitched noise and shook the water out of her ears. The water came out but the annoying noise was still there.

  She looked around and eventually saw a boy, about her age, up a nearby tree.

  “Ha ha ha ha, zat is very funny, ha ha ha, stupid English idiot,” said the boy.

  He was laughing and pointing at her. She couldn’t be sure at this distance but he looked a lot like the annoying boy on the moped.

  She shouted something rude back at him. Darius didn’t seem to care. He was scrabbling about in a pile of old rubbish and bits of broken crockery nearby.

  He seemed very interested in an old dinner plate.

  “Thanks for sticking up for me,” said Nat. But Darius just smiled, and then with a powerful throw, launched the plate like a discus.

  It whizzed through the air, spinning so fast it made a humming noise. It was a brilliant shot, heading straight for the boy, who saw it hurtling towards him and gave a shrill shriek. The boy dodged out of the way, but slipped off the branch and disappeared into a bush. A cloud of ducks flew up, quacking in alarm.

  For a few seconds there was silence. Nat turned to Darius, who had lost interest in the proceedings and was wandering off. “Do you think he’s still alive?”

  Just then they heard him cry: “PAPA, Papaaaa!”

  Guess so, she thought. And then, Oh dear, I wonder who his papa is …
>
  ow that the water was back on, it was easy to see where the leaks were.

  The leaks were everywhere.

  The kitchen pipes leaked, the bathroom pipes leaked, the boiler leaked. After running around with buckets for an hour or so, Nat shouted: “I’ve counted sixty-four leaks.”

  “Sixty-four,” shouted Darius, running about. “Brilliant number.” Nat looked at him. They’d driven to a café earlier and filled a flask of strong coffee for Dad. Nat had a sneaking suspicion Dad would find it empty. Darius was bouncing off the walls, literally.

  Very rarely, Darius would let it slip that he LOVED numbers.

  “It’s the square of eight, it’s the cube root of … two hundred and sixty-two thousand, one hundred and forty-four.” He skidded to his knees in the hallway like a footballer who’s just scored. “Go, Dariussssssss.”

  “Why don’t you ever show you can do maths at school?” asked Nat. She had only found out that Darius was a maths genius by accident, and now always got him to do her maths homework for her.

  But Darius immediately stopped playing with numbers as soon as she brought attention to it. “It’s none of their business,” he said.

  Nat sighed and gave up.

  “I don’t remember drinking all that coffee,” said Dad, peering into his flask.

  Dad had decided to take a break. The three of them sat on the stairs, listening to lots of drips in lots of buckets.

  The water was running now. Running and dripping. In fact the only place in the house where there wasn’t water was the loo.

  “And that’s the one place where there definitely should be water, Dad,” complained Nat unnecessarily. “What are you going to do about the leaks?”

  “Technically, you could say the leaks are fixed,” said Dad. “As long as you keep the buckets under them.”

  “Posh Barry is not going to think you’ve fixed the leaks just by putting buckets out,” said Nat.

  “You might have a point, love,” said Dad. “What does the DIY book say?”

  “Dad, you’ve had AGES to swot up on this,” Nat said. “Haven’t you learned anything?”

  “I don’t NEED to learn it,” Dad said. “It’s in the book.”

  “That’s what I said about my history homework and you still made me learn it.”