The Uninvited Guests Read Free Page A

reached Smudge’s room, the only bedroom to abut the Old House, whose gloomy depths were directly through the wall against which her little iron bed stood. She should have liked to tunnel through the wall with a spoon and dance on the minstrels’ gallery.
    If Smudge was often forgotten it stood to reason that her room would be too and, taking advantage of the freedom, she did with it exactly as she pleased. She had stuck shells gathered at Southport beach onto the wall above her fireplace to spell her name: IMOGEN , and then for sure identification added in charcoal afterwards, (SMUDGE). She had attempted to measure herself against the wall, and then the cat Lloyd, the two King Charles spaniels Nell and Lucy, and the stable dog, the lurcher Forthright, called Forth. In truth, none of these measuring experiments had satisfied. She had never solved the vexing question of whether the dogs and cat ought to be measured to the tops of their heads, which they would keep moving about, or their shoulders, which were easy to confuse with spines and necks. More than this, she had begun in inches and then changed her mind and fixed on hands as a suitable unit, as she knew that was the proper way of measuring horses, and ought therefore to do for all four-legged creatures. The brindled cat Lloyd, incidentally, was usually two-and-a-half hands (or ten inches), and the spaniels somewhat more.
    Unfulfilled by her annotated charcoal marks, she had spent many hours drawing the outlines of the animals whilst squashing them against the walls with her legs and body. (Unaccustomed to house manners, the lurcher Forth’s sitting had been less than easy. He was, in his dogs’ way, no respecter of carpets. He had dragged Smudge the length of the corridor, emitting booming cries of distress at being imprisoned for so long in the small upper bedroom between Smudge’s ruthless, childish arms and the damp and dirty wallpaper.)
    She intended to paint the fur in later, but hair and fur are uncommonly difficult to paint well and she hadn’t yet got around to it. Suffice it to say, her walls were less than immaculate.
    Emerald led Smudge to the bed and tucked the quilt around her. ‘Have you been on the roof again?’ she asked.
    ‘Not recently.’
    ‘Well, you’re not to. You’ll fall and break your neck and then what will Ma say?’
    ‘You and Clovis do it.’
    ‘Yes, and look at all the problems with leaks.’
    Smudge burrowed downwards until only her black eyes, set in purplish pools, and her insubstantially dark hair poked above the faded garlands of the quilt.
    ‘Em?’ she said, and her voice was muffled.
    Emerald was at the door.
    ‘Will I be well enough for your birthday party?’
    ‘I should hope so, otherwise who will help me blow out the candles? I’m much too old to manage them all by myself.’
    ‘Are you having a cake, then?’
    ‘Oh Lord! Not unless I see to it,’ said Emerald and went out, closing the door.
    Immediately she had gone, Smudge poked her pale face from the bed. She seemed to listen, sharply, for something. She sat up and laid her ear against the wall behind her, that joined to the Old House.
    ‘Hmm,’ she said, and frowned, ‘nobody there.’ Then she looked around the room and its apparent emptiness, before lying back down and pulling up the covers to her chin once more, while outside the cold spring wind began to blow.
    Emerald, passing the morning room on her way to find Mrs Trieves, came upon Clovis, lying crumpled before the fire and listlessly plucking at the edges of a newspaper. The spaniels Nell and Lucy reclined on the battered velvet chaise near to him, lifting snuffy noses in her direction as she stopped in the door.
    ‘Not taking Ferryman out?’
    Clovis glanced at the window with hooded, gloomy eyes.
    ‘My word, Emerald, have you ever thought of joining the police force?’ he said. ‘I hear they need bullies to suppress the disgruntled.’
    ‘I shall be taking Levi out at ten, if you’ve