Wild Robert (6 page)

T
he edge of the ordinary world tipped past Heather’s eyes and strangeness took over. All down the Feud Room the glass of pictures swung open like windows. The first person to lean out of his frame was a man in a judge’s wig.

“Damn my eyes!” he said, with disgust all over his long, cruel face. “This place is full of stinking Franceys!”

The large fat Duchess in the portrait opposite was furious. She shook a pink first with diamond rings embedded in it. “And you took bribes, George Toller!” she screamed. “No Judge was ever greedier than you, nor hanged more poor souls who could not pay!”

At this, the people in the other portraits joined in by leaning out of their frames and yelling insults. “Drunk before breakfast!” somebody beside Heather screamed, and the person beside Robert howled, “And you are mutton dressed as lamb, madam!” Robert listened with his head on one side, trying to discover what made them hate one another so, but there was far too much noise.

Meanwhile, the fat Duchess was so angry that she hoisted one bulging leg over the edge of her frame, ready to climb down and go for Judge George Toller. As she did so, Mum came in at the other end of the Feud Room, leading a crowd of tourists.

“Here is what is called the Feud Room,” Mum began. She stopped, gaping, as the Duchess hoisted her other leg across the frame and dropped to the floor with a wallop that rattled every piece of glass in the room.

“Now, eat your words, George Toller!” the Duchess screamed.

Behind Mum, everyone in the guided tour crowded through and stared at the Duchess. They seemed to think this was meant to be happening.

At this, Robert got the giggles. “What are they?” he asked. “How they gape! They are nothing but sheep!” He spread his hand out, laughing so much he had to hold his wrist with his other hand to keep it steady.

“No, don’t!” Heather said, too late again.

The Feud Room was suddenly full of sheep. It was also suddenly full of Franceys and Tollers from past times, all jumping down from their frames to go on with their feud. The sheep ran and bleated and got in the way of people in red robes and black coats and blue brocade and embroidered waistcoats and huge rustling skirts with corsets that creaked. Each of these people had snatched up things from their portraits to use as weapons. Some were lucky enough to have been painted with sticks, or whips and parasols, and one man even had a sword, but that was knocked out of his hand by a small thin man who was belabouring everyone in sight with a huge book. The rest of them
hit one another with fans and embroidery frames and rolls of parchment and silken purses. Hats flew off, and wigs were knocked sideways.

In the midst of it all, Mum was standing holding a shepherd’s crook, staring from the red, angry faces of the Tollers and the Franceys to the running, bleating sheep, and looking more bewildered than Heather had ever seen her.

“Oh, poor Mum!” Heather said. “Robert, stop it this instant!”

But Robert just ran away down the Long Gallery, laughing. Heather ran after him. He was not running very fast, because he kept doubling over to laugh, but he was very good at dodging. Heather almost caught him every time he stopped to laugh, but either he dodged, or the world tipped slightly as she put her hand out to grab him, and she knew that he had got away by magic. In spite of her annoyance, Heather almost laughed once or twice, because Robert so clearly thought of it as a game. She felt more as if she was chasing a small boy, instead of a young man who should have been old enough to know better.

Robert let Heather corner him, down the end of the Long Gallery at last. By this time the sheep had got out into the Long Gallery, too, and were running about on tottery little hooves crying, “
Baaa
!” in almost human voices. The polished floor was getting
sprinkled with their droppings, so that the fighting Tollers and Franceys, who had also spilled out of the Feud Room in a mass of bright-coloured clothes, kept slipping as they tried to hit one another. Heather saw the fat Duchess skid and fall flat on her back under the picture of Sir Francis Toller and Queen Elizabeth I. She stayed there, puffing and mopping at her bleeding nose with a lace handkerchief. Mum was standing beside the Duchess, still holding the Shepherd’s crook, looking round quite wildly.

Heather took hold of Robert’s black silk shoulders and shook him. Doing that crumpled his crisp white collar, but Heather did not care. She felt like Robert’s elder sister.

“Stop them! Turn them back!” she said. “Quickly, before Mum decides she’s gone mad!”

“But you think of them as sheep yourself,” Robert said. “I know you do.”

Heather had to admit he was right. “Yes, but I know they’re people really,” she said. “They probably think they’re mad, too. Turn them back.”

“Now?” Robert asked pleadingly. He made his most charming smile at her. “But all will be back by sunset. Can they not wait?”

“No. Sunset’s far too late at this time of year,” Heather said. “Do it now. Do it or – or I shall never speak to you again!”

She said this because it was what she often said to Janine – not meaning it, of course – and it was the only threat she could think of. She was surprised how well it worked. Robert’s eyes went big and sad. “Never?” he said.

“Never!” Heather shouted firmly, above the bleating and the yelling from the rest of the Long Gallery.

“Then I am gone maybe another hundred years,” Robert said sadly. “Very well, I’ll undo it, if you promise to speak to me again now, and again tomorrow.”

“Of course I promise,” Heather said.

Robert smiled, sighed and held his hand out. This time he tipped it the other way from usual, Heather noticed. Ordinariness swung back across her. The sheep stood up and were real people again, wandering round the Gallery with startled, rather prim looks, as if they had caught sight of something none of them wanted to know about. One or two people were irritably lifting their feet up and obviously wondering where they had trodden in a sheep dropping. Heather looked for the fat Duchess but she was not there at all. Nor were the other Tollers and Franceys. Nor were the wigs and hats that had been knocked off on to the floor.

“Are they all in their pictures again?” Heather asked.

“Yes, I swear it,” Robert said.

“And what would happen if you held your hand out the other way up?” Heather asked. “Does that tip things too?”

Robert put that hand behind him. “Don’t ask me to show you that,” he said. “That is how my brother’s wife came to hate me so.”

Heather did not ask. She looked anxiously to see how Mum was instead. The only thing Robert seemed to have forgotten – apart from sheep droppings – was the shepherd’s crook. Perhaps he wanted to show he still thought the tourists were sheep. Perhaps he meant it as a kindness. Anyway, Mum was still holding it, and leaning on it rather heavily, while the people from the guided tour slowly forgot they had been sheep and gathered round her, waiting for more of the talk.

“We are now in the Long Gallery,” Mum said. She sounded a bit faint, but her voice seemed to come back as she explained how Sir Francis had built the Long Gallery because rooms like that were the height of fashion then.

“That is true, you know,” Robert told Heather. “Shall we follow these sheep for a while? I would like to know the later history of my family and their house.”

This suited Heather. That way she could keep an eye on both Mum and Robert. And she could be
quite sure of not meeting Dad. The tours were arranged so that they went one after another, without ever meeting. Dad would be taking a tour either ahead of Mum’s or behind. Heather was not ready to meet him yet. Dad asked such piercing questions and he was so full of common sense. She knew she had to make him
believe
when he did meet Robert, and there were a lot of things she wanted to think about first.