Diana Jones - Diana Wynne Jones’s Magic and Myths Collection

These people are all my cousins! Hayley thought wonderingly. And I didn’t know about any of them until this moment!

Here she found that Tollie had come to stand in front of her, jeeringly, with his hands hanging in exactly the same useless position that Hayley’s were and his feet planted the same uncertain six inches apart. “Yuk!” he said. “You dirty outcast!”

“You’re my cousin,” Hayley said. Her voice came out small and prim with nerves.

“Nim-pim!” Tollie mimicked her. “I am not so your cousin! Mercer’s my dad and he’s your cousin. But you’re only a dirty outcast in a frilly dress.”

Hayley felt things boiling in her that she would rather not know. She wanted to leap on Tollie and pull pieces off him – ears, nose, fingers, hair, she scarcely cared which, so long as they came away with lots of blood – but luckily at that moment a large lady bustled up and enfolded Hayley against her big soft bosom hung with many hard strings of beads.

“My dear!” the lady said. “Forgive me. I was making the sauce and you know how it goes all lumpy if you leave it. I’m your Aunt May. Tollie, go away and stop being a pain. You have to forgive Tollie, my dear. Most of the year he’s the only child here, but this is the week we have all the family to stay and he feels outnumbered. Now come and be introduced to everyone.”

Hayley, who had gone limp with relief against Aunt May’s many necklaces, found herself tensing up again at this. Now they were all going to despise her.

Although nobody did seem to despise her, the introductions left Hayley almost as confused as before.

The loud, fair cousins were the children of two different aunts. But, beyond gathering that some were Laxtons and belonged to Aunt Geta, and that the rest were Tighs, which made them sons and daughters of Aunt Celia, Hayley had no idea which were which – let alone what all their names were.

Aunt Geta stood out a bit by being tall and fair, with an impeccable neatness about her, like a picture painted very strictly inside the lines. Grandma would approve of Aunt Geta, Hayley thought. But Aunt Celia was a blurred sort of person. Aunt Alice, who didn’t seem to have any children, was like a film star, almost unreal she was so perfect. And the tall, calm Troy turned out to be the son of another aunt who had stayed at home in Scotland. Most confusingly of all, the slender brown lady, whose little pearl earrings echoed the curves of her long cheeks and the shine of her big dark eyes, turned out not to be an aunt at all, but Troy’s elder sister, Harmony. Since Harmony had been bustling about just like the aunts, setting the table and telling Tollie and the Tighs and Laxtons to behave themselves, Hayley supposed it was a natural mistake. But it made her feel stupid all the same.

“Supper’s ready,” Aunt May announced, tucking her flying grey hair back into its uncoiling loose bun. “You sit here, Hayley, my dear.”

Everyone dived for the great table. Chairs squawked on the stone floor and the noise was louder than ever. Harmony and Aunt Alice raced to the kitchen and came back with bowls and casseroles and dishes, while Aunt May bustled behind them with an enormous brown turkey on a huge plate. Aunt May’s hair came uncoiled completely as she put the bird down and she had to stand back from the table and pin it up again. Meanwhile Cousin Mercer came back from wherever he had disappeared to and set to work to carve the turkey.

Aunt May was the untidiest person she had ever seen, Hayley thought, sliding nervously into the chair Aunt May had said was hers. Aunt May’s clothes were flapping, fraying, overlapping layers of homespun wool, decorated in front by at least three necklaces and a lot of gravy stains. Her feet were in worn out fur slippers, and as for her hair…! Remembering that Cousin Mercer had told her Aunt May was Grandma’s eldest daughter, Hayley wondered how on earth Grandma had managed with Aunt May as a child. Grandma always said Hayley was untidy and spent hours trying to make the curly tendrils of Hayley’s hair lie flat and neat. “I despair of you, Hayley,” Grandma always said. “I really do!” With Aunt May, Grandma must have despaired even more. Still, Hayley thought, looking from neat Aunt Geta to beautiful Aunt Alice, the younger daughters must have pleased Grandma quite a lot.

But Aunt May was kind. She sat next to Hayley and, while Hayley struggled with a plate full of more food than she could possibly eat, Aunt May explained that the Castle had once belonged to Uncle Jolyon, but now it was a guesthouse, except for this one week of the year. “I give the staff a holiday,” she said, “and have all the family to stay. Even your Aunt Ellie comes over some years. And of course we have heaps of rooms. I’ve given you the little room on the half-landing, my dear. I thought you’d feel a little strange if I put you in with the other girls, not being used to it. Just tell me if you’re not happy, won’t you?”

As Aunt May chatted on in this way, Hayley looked round the table and noticed that Cousin Mercer, sitting behind the remains of the turkey, was the only grown-up man there. All the family? she thought. Shouldn’t there be some uncles? But she was afraid it might be rude to ask.

The turkey was followed by treacle pudding that Hayley was far too full to eat. While everyone else was devouring it down to the last few sticky golden crumbs, the rain got worse. Hayley could hear it battering on the windows and racing through pipes outside the walls. The Laxton cousins were very put out by it. It seemed that there was some game that they always played when they were at the Castle and they had wanted to start playing it that very evening.

“We couldn’t have played tonight anyway,” Troy said in his calm way. “It’s too dark to see, even if it wasn’t raining.”

Then the Tigh cousins wanted to know if they could play the game indoors instead. The Laxtons thought this was a splendid notion and said so at the tops of their voices. “We could use the big drawing room for it, couldn’t we?” they demanded of Harmony, who seemed to be in charge of the game.

“No way,” Harmony said. “It has to be done out of doors. We’ll do it tomorrow, when the grass in the paddock has dried.”

This raised such a shout of disappointment that Harmony said, “We can do hide-and-seek indoors, if you like.”

There were cheers. Aunt Geta murmured, “Bless you, Harmony. Keep them organised till bedtime if you can and we’ll let you off clearing the dishes.”

So while the aunts cleared away the stacks of plates, everyone except Hayley rushed away into other parts of the house. Aunt May picked up Hayley’s suitcase and showed her up a flight of stairs into a small white bedroom with a fluffy bedspread which Hayley much admired. There Aunt May drew the curtains – which flapped and billowed in the gusts of rainy wind outside – and then helped Hayley unpack the suitcase.

“Are these all the clothes you’ve got, my dear?” Aunt May asked, shaking out the other two floral dresses. “These are not very practical – or very warm.”

Hayley felt hugely ashamed. “Grandma said Aunt Ellie was going to buy me clothes in Scotland,” she said. “To go to school in.”

“Hm,” said Aunt May. “I’ll have a look and see if I can dig you out something to wear while you’re here.” She carefully spread Hayley’s pink and white pyjamas out over the white bed. “Hm,” she said again. “Hayley, if you don’t mind my asking, just what did you do to make your grandmother so angry?”

Hayley knew she would never be able to explain, when she hardly knew what had happened herself. Aunt May would surely not understand about Flute and Fiddle. Besides, Grandma had never seen either of them. She had only seen the boy with the dogs, but why that had made her so very angry Hayley had no idea. All she could manage to say was, “Grandma said I was romancing at first. Then she said I was bringing the strands here and destroying all Grandpa’s work. She said Uncle Jolyon wouldn’t forgive me for it.”