You may think it was pathetic that Mr. and Mrs. Warden were so incapable of looking after themselves, but you’d be surprised how true this is of the very rich. They’d been looked after by servants for so long that they didn’t know how to do anything for themselves. Ask the Queen what a Brillo pad is and she’d probably tell you it was a lovely place to live.
Anyway, as the week progressed, the house became dustier and dirtier and more broken down. Joe for the most part avoided his parents and spent most of his time with Mr. Lampy. Chinese had proved impossible to learn, so he was thinking now about volunteering for the American space shuttle to Mars.
And then, on Saturday, Granny came to lunch.
“You know, Maud, darling,” she said, munching on a mouthful of Marks & Spencer’s Instant Saturday Lunch, “you and Gordon look terribly tired.”
“I am tired!” Mr. Warden muttered.
“Don’t you usually go to the South of France at this time of the year?”
“We can’t, Mumsy.” Mrs. Warden sighed.
“Why ever not?” Granny had hardly glanced at Joe, sitting opposite her at the table, but he was suddenly suspicious. Granny knew perfectly well that his parents had an apartment in Cannes. She also knew that the apartment only had one bedroom.
“What about Jordan?” Mrs. Warden said.
“I’m sure he’d love to go with you.”
“There’s no room,” Mr. Warden muttered.
“Well…” There was a pause. “I could look after him while you were away.”
Joe’s mouth went dry. One after another the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Alone with Granny? He’d prefer to be alone with a saber-toothed tiger.
“I could move in, if you wanted me to,” she went on. Her whole face had gone rubbery and there was a sweetness in her voice. But Joe could see her eyes. They were still sly. “Joe would love it. Wouldn’t you, dear?”
“Aaagh!” Joe yelled. For even as Granny had spoken the words, he had felt a terrible explosion of pain. Under the table, a leather-capped shoe had just come into hard contact with his knee.
“I’m sorry, dear?” Granny gazed at him inquiringly.
“You can’t!” Joe gasped.
“What?” Mr. Warden was furious. “Your granny offers to look after you and that’s all you can say?”
“I mean…I mean, it isn’t fair on Granny.” Joe was blushing now. Could he tell the truth? That was what Mrs. Jinks had advised, but looking at his parents now, he knew it was impossible. He forced himself to think. “I’d love to be with Granny,” he went on. “But wouldn’t it be too much work for her? It might make her ill.”
“Oh, silly me!” Granny trilled. “I’ve dropped my fork!” She disappeared under the table.
“Wait a minute…” Joe began.
“What is the matter with you, Jordan?” his mother asked.
A second later, Joe jerked upright in his seat as three metal prongs buried themselves in his thigh. He had been holding a glass of water, but now he cried out, his hand jerked, and the water sprayed over his father, putting out his cigar.
“Have you lost your mind?” Mr. Warden demanded.
“No, Father, I…” Joe put down the glass and reached under the table. There were three holes in his trousers—not to mention in his leg.
“I’ll look after him.” Granny was already back in her seat. For someone so old, she had moved incredibly fast. “It would only be for a few weeks. I’m sure we’d have a lot of fun…”
Joe stared at her. Granny leaned forward and picked up the bread knife: thirteen inches of serrated steel. She looked at him and smiled. Joe shrank back into his chair. When he spoke, his voice was thin and high-pitched. “What about Mr. Lampy?” he quavered.
“What about him?” his mother said.
“He’s a lot younger than Granny. Couldn’t he look after me? That way, you and Father could have your vacation, Granny wouldn’t have to bother about me, and everyone would be happy.”
Across the table, Granny was gripping the bread knife so tightly that her fingers had gone white and the veins were wriggling under her skin like worms. Joe held his breath, his eyes fixed on the knife.
“I did suggest Mr. Lampy,” Mrs. Warden said.
“Maybe it’s not such a bad idea,” Mr. Warden muttered.
“I think it’s a very good idea…”
Granny put down the knife. Her lips had gone all wobbly and there were tears brimming in her eyes like rainwater in the folds of a tent. “Well, if you don’t want me,” she burbled. “if you don’t like me…”
“Of course he likes you, Mummy,” Mrs. Warden said. “Jordan was just worried about you, that’s all.”
“I certainly was,” Joe agreed.
“Well, all right.” Granny forced herself to cheer up. “You two get your tickets, then, and have a lovely time.” But then her eyes narrowed and the next words were aimed directly at Joe. “And if anything terrible happens to Mr. Lampy, if he’s unlucky enough to have a dreadful accident in the next few days, just you let me know.”
“Now, don’t you worry about me, Master Warden,” Mr. Lampy said.
It was the morning before Mr. and Mrs. Warden were about to leave. Mr. Lampy had just come out of the shed carrying a can of gasoline. He had been cutting back the shrubbery at the back of the garden and was about to light a bonfire.
“You and me…we’re going to get along all right.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Joe replied. “It’s Granny…”
“You and your granny!” Mr. Lampy set the can down and rubbed the small of his back. “Ooh!” he exclaimed. “I been to see the doctor today and he goes on about someone called Arthur Itis. Arthur Itis? I never heard of him.”
“Please, Mr. Lampy…”
Mr. Lampy smiled. He was a very old man, and when he smiled, his face folded into a hundred creases. He had spent his whole life out of doors. In ten years in the navy he had never once gone belowdecks—all the more remarkable when you consider that he served on a submarine. “I haven’t seen your granny and I don’t intend to see her,” he went on. He leaned down and picked up the gas can. “I reckon she’ll be leaving the two of us alone.”
Joe watched as Mr. Lampy walked away. He wasn’t convinced, but there seemed to be no point in arguing anymore. The last thing he saw of Mr. Lampy was the old gardener leaning over a great pile of wood chips and leaves, sprinkling it with gas from the can. He didn’t see Mr. Lampy light the match.
The explosion could be heard thirty miles away and at first the police thought it was a terrorist attack. Like Mrs. Jinks before him, nothing was found of Mr. Lampy—which was hardly surprising. He had blown a crater fifteen feet deep in the earth. Four trees, the rockery, the garden shed, and the moles went with him, blown into so many pieces that it was quite impossible to say what belonged to what. One question puzzled everyone. How had Mr. Lampy managed to sprinkle nitroglycerin on his bonfire? And how had it gotten into what should have been a can of gas?
The investigation led nowhere. One witness did come forward claiming that he had seen a figure climbing over the fence into the garden of Thattlebee Hall. But as the witness had been on his way back from the pub and as he insisted that the figure he had seen had been a woman, and one who was over ninety years old, his evidence was discounted.
A few days later, Mr. and Mrs. Warden left for their apartment in the South of France.
The same day, Granny moved in.
6
GATHERING OF THE GRANNIES
Breakfast was cream cheese.
Lunch was cream cheese.
Tea was more cream cheese.
After just one day, Joe was the color of cream cheese. The house had never felt so big and he had never felt so small. His parents were away in another country. Mrs. Jinks and Mr. Lampy were dead. There was just Joe and Granny and he knew with a horrible sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that he was completely in her power.
Of course Granny w
as enjoying every minute of it, moving around the house, warbling to herself like a sick canary as she glued shut the windows and turned up the heat. By lunchtime Joe was sweating.
“You look ill, dear,” Granny trilled.
“I’m hot.”
“It must be the flu. You’d better have two spoonfuls of cod-liver oil. Better still, I’ll go to the fishmongers and buy you a whole cod’s liver.”
That afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Warden telephoned from the South of France. Although Joe was in the room, they didn’t ask to speak to him. Instead, Mrs. Warden gabbled down the phone to Granny at twice her usual speed. She always did this to save money on long-distance calls.
“Are you sure everything’s all right, Mumsy?” she asked.
“Don’t you worry, dear. Jasper and I are having a wonderful time. He’s no trouble at all!”
“There is one thing, Mummy. Could you put an ad in The Lady for a new nanny? We’ll have to have one when we get back.”
“Oh, Jack won’t be needing a new nanny…”
Joe heard the words. They sent a shiver down his spine.
“Mummy…?”
Granny was holding the telephone in a clawlike hand. She smiled into it. “Lovely talking to you, dear. Must go!” The smile evaporated. Granny hung up.
Granny made a number of telephone calls after that, but Joe was pretty certain that none of them were to The Lady. She was careful to close the door before she began, but Joe did manage to hear her checking train times with British Rail and so assumed that she—and presumably he with her—was about to go away.
This was confirmed at the end of the day. Joe had eaten his supper on his own and was settling down to watch television when the door opened and Granny came in.
“Bedtime, Jane, dear!”
“I’m Joe! And it’s only eight o’clock. I never go to bed before nine.”
“Don’t argue with Granny. Granny knows best!”
“But I’m watching The Bill! ”
“So am I, dear.” Granny flicked the television off. “The electricity bill—and that should save a bit! Now up to bed!”
But the torment didn’t even stop there. Although it was a warm night, Granny had insisted on his wearing a hoodie as well as his pajamas, a bathrobe as well as a hoodie, and two extra blankets on top of everything else.
“We don’t want your flu to get any worse, do we, dear,” she said when she came into his room.
“I can’t sleep like this,” Joe said. “I feel like a sausage roll!”
“You can’t have a sausage roll now, dear,” Granny replied. “But maybe I’ll get you one tomorrow.” And with a soft giggle, she switched off the light and went out.
Joe lay in bed for a long time. He was too hot to sleep and also too angry. As he lay in the half darkness, he began to think about how unfair life was. He was twelve (almost thirteen) years old. He could read, write, do math, speak French, swim, juggle, and name over a thousand characters in science-fiction books and films. But did he have any life of his own? No! His every movement was controlled and organized by adults with less imagination than him. His parents, the teachers at his fancy prep school—they were all the same, passing him around as if he were no more than a bag of candy. Of course it wouldn’t be so bad if the grown-ups had more sense. But nobody had to be qualified to be a parent. And his parents were not only unqualified, they had quite happily handed him to a woman who hated him and who in the last few weeks had just killed his two best friends. But who would believe him? Nobody!
If he hadn’t been so hot and angry, maybe he would have slept. But he was still awake at nine o’clock when the doorbell rang. He was awake at ten past nine when it rang again. And he had given up any idea of sleeping by half past when it rang for a third time.
As the evening dragged on, Joe began to hear strange sounds coming from downstairs. The hiss of a can being opened and a peal of high-pitched laughter. A clink of glasses and the slam of a door. More laughter. There seemed to be four or five women downstairs. The muffled sound of arguing and then another cackle of laughter drifted up to his room. In the end he couldn’t bear it any longer. He got up and went downstairs.
The hall was dark, but the door to the living room was half open, which was how the sounds had escaped. Thankful for his bare feet and the thick carpets, Joe tiptoed forward and peeped in. An extraordinary sight met his eyes.
There were five grannies in the room, playing poker. They had assembled a green card table and had two decks of cards scattered over the surface, on the floor, and—in at least two instances—up their sleeves. The room was thick with smoke. Two of the grannies were smoking cigarettes, while a third had helped herself to one of Mr. Warden’s cigars. They had opened half a dozen cans of beer and a bottle of whiskey. There were glasses everywhere. Granny had also provided food. There was a bowl of popcorn, some bright pink hot dogs with fried onions and mustard, a plate of pickled cucumbers, two boxes of Fortnum & Mason chocolates, some corned beef sandwiches, and several packs of chewing gum. Joe wasn’t at all surprised that there wasn’t an ounce of cream cheese in sight.
But what made the spectacle so bizarre as well as so revolting was the old ladies themselves. Their combined ages must have added up to well over four hundred. Joe had once seen a few minutes of a video called Revenge of the Killer Zombies. It had given him nightmares for a week. Well, this was far, far worse.
Granny One was a small, shriveled woman, no more than four feet high. Her head barely came over the edge of the table and she was blinking at the cards in her hand with small pink eyes. She seemed to be finding it difficult to balance on her chair—perhaps because of the enormous amount of jewelry she was wearing and the bulging handbag she was clutching to her chest. This granny’s hands were everywhere at once: holding her cards (and trying to stop her neighbor from seeing them), guarding her bag, tilting her whiskey glass toward her lips, and poking her nose and ears. Look quickly, and you might think she had four arms. Her name was Granny Anne.
Granny Two was wearing what looked like a pair of curtains—but they were curtains you would open at your peril. For this granny was immensely fat. She was so fat that she seemed to have partially melted into her chair. She was obviously a careful poker player, as she was keeping her cards close to her chin—or rather, chins, for she had three of them. The third of these was crowned with a wispy beard. Granny Two was sucking a hot dog. She couldn’t eat it, as, for extra comfort, she had removed her false teeth and placed them in front of her on the table. Her name was Granny Smith.
The first things Joe noticed about Granny Three were her quite horrible eyes. She was wearing a heavy pair of spectacles that, over the years, had stretched her ears and sunk into her nose. In fact her entire face was lopsided, and she hadn’t helped it by putting on too much lipstick—at the same time missing her lips. Her eyeballs, magnified by what looked like inch-thick glass, were a milky shade of white with one a little higher than the other. Granny Three was smoking, eating, drinking, and talking all at the same time. And all the time she was watching. Her eyes, darting about in her drooping sockets, missed nothing. She answered to the name of Granny Adams.
Granny Four, shoveling enormous handfuls of popcorn into her mouth, was a vulture. She had the same long neck, bald head, and cruel eyes. And she was wearing a flowing green cloak mounted with feathers, which added to the illusion. This was the granny who was smoking the cigar. She was using it to point with, and as Joe watched, the glowing tip caught Granny Smith on the chin. Granny Smith cried out and fell backward, two aces tumbling out of her jacket. Granny Adams threw a glass of beer at her and screamed with laughter while Granny Anne pounded the table and chewed gum. This last granny was called Granny Lee.
Dominating the table was Granny herself, looking almost royal in a billowing dress with flouncy neck and sleeves. She was sitting with her arms and legs apart and a scowl on her face. Suddenly she threw her cards down.
“A full house. Kings high. Beat that!” she a
nnounced.
“I’ve got a pair of twos,” Granny Anne exclaimed in a quavering voice.
Granny Smith grabbed them and tore them up. “You lose, Anne. Two twos aren’t worth anything.”
“Well, I’ve got another two in my shirt,” Anne exclaimed.
“Cheat! Cheat! Cheat!” Granny Adams screeched with laughter. “I haven’t got anything,” she added, and threw her cards in a shower over her head.
“Well, I’ve got a royal flush,” the vulture granny snapped. “Ace, king, queen, jack, ten.” She spread the cards on the table.
“How did you do that?” Granny scrabbled at the cards, examining them as if they were forgeries. Her face had gone dark red. “You’ve been cheating as well, haven’t you, Lee?”
“Of course I’ve been cheating,” Granny Lee replied. “We’ve all been cheating. But I’ve just been cheating better than you.”
“Well, how much do I owe you?” Granny was sulking now, her lip jutting out and her shoulders slumped.
“Let me see…” Granny Lee scribbled a few figures on a sheet of paper. “That’s two dollars and twenty cents.”
“How much is that in new money?” Granny Anne asked nervously.
“We don’t have nasty new money here, Anne,” Granny replied. She brought her elbow up sharply, catching the little granny in the eye. “Two dollars and twenty cents is just what it says it is.”
“Oh! Lovely old money!” Granny Smith sighed, her three chins rising and falling in perfect unison. “It used to be worth something once, money did. I could buy dinner for three people with two dollars and twenty cents.”
“Yes,” Granny Lee snapped. “But the trouble was, you’d eat it all yourself!” And her whole body shook as she laughed uncontrollably.