Samantha's Diary

by Diana Wynne Jones

  I instantly thought of the truly unattractive set of fellows Mother had introduced me to on Christmas Eve. ‘That’s it!’ I cried out. ‘Bless you, Liam! I’ll phone Mother this evening.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s your mother doing it,’ he said.

  ‘No, no,’ I said and explained. He agreed that I might be on the right track and we talked it over for a while. Then he said, ‘By the way, the trees will be pear trees,’ and handed me a list. ‘So you’ll know what to expect next,’ he told me and got up and left. Just like that.

  I was too angry to look at the list. I wish I had.

  December 31st 2233 New Year’s Eve

  I’m going to three parties today, so I’m getting out of my bird infested flat as soon as I can. But I did ring Mother. I raved at her rather. She may have thought I was insane at first, but when I calmed down and described the geese— by the way, the one on the sofa had laid an egg when I got back—she began to see I might be having real trouble. She said, in the cautious, respectful way she always talks about money, ‘Well, you might be talking about Franz Dodeca, I suppose. Not that he would do a thing like that, of course. He owns Multiphones and SpeekEasi and Household Robotics and he’s a multi- millionaire and he’s naturally very much respected.’

  ‘Which is he?’ I asked. ‘Of the freaks you introduced to me.’

  ‘Not freaks, darling,’ she said reproachfully. ‘He was the one with the charming diamante teeth.’

  I thought grimly of this Dodeca, a short fat man in an unbecoming pinstriped suit. A pale freckled creature, I recalled, with thin reddish hair scraped back over his freckled scalp. He kept baring those dreadful glittering teeth at me in creepy smiles. And this idiot owns my diary, my phone and my Housebot! I hoped he swallowed one of his teeth and choked. ‘Tell him,’ I said to Mother, ‘to stop sending me birds. Tell him he hasn’t got a chance. Tell him he’s destroyed his already non-existent chances by stalking me this way. Tell him no and go away!’

  Mother demurred. I could tell she was reluctant to pass up the chance of all that money in the family. But after I had told her at least ten times that there was absolutely no chance of my marrying this idiot, even if he owned the universe, she said, ‘Well, darling, I’ll phone him and try to put it tactfully.’

  If she did phone dear Franz, she has had no effect. The swans arrived this morning, seven of them. Along with six more geese etcetera, etcetera. At least I got five more gold rings. They came with a note of dreadful pleading, signed ‘Your eternally loving Franz,’ which looked odd in round shop-assistant writing. I suppose Mother must have phoned the man, since he seems to know that his cover is now blown. But it doesn’t seem to have stopped him

  The swans had obviously been drugged. The delivery crew carried them in big drooping armfuls, through the living room and into the patio, where they carefully wedged them into the pool. The geese waddled in after. There are now twelve of them and they’re laying eggs everywhere. As if it wasn’t enough to be overrun with hens—also laying—and a new set of green screaming parrots. The swans were just waking up when I left.

  Housebot tried to make me an omelette before I went and I nearly threw up.

  January 1st 2234 New Year’s Day

  Thank heavens! Even the Dodeca millions can’t make anyone in this country work on New Year’s Day. No further birds arrived. Nothing came. Relief! Or it would be if the swans didn’t fight the geese all the time. And I realised when I got in around four this morning that the place smells. Horribly. Of bird droppings, rotting seeds and old feathers. Housebot can’t keep up with the cleaning.

  I shall have to stop wearing my Stiltskins. My feet are killing me after last night.

  One of my big toes has gone kind of twisted. I have very hazy memories of the fun, though I do recall that I ran into Liam at the Markham’s firework party and, besides jeering at my Stiltskins, he wanted to know if I’d consulted his list yet. I said I didn’t want to know. I told him about dear Franz too—I think. He was, I dimly remember, insistent that I throw away my phone and scrap Housebot. The man has no idea!

  But this memory has made me realise that I will almost certainly get more swans and more geese tomorrow. I can’t rely on Mother to stop them. There is no more room in the patio pool. But it has occurred to me that the big house next door, which belongs to my last— stepfather-but-two, has a large garden with an ornamental as-it-were lake in it. I shall phone Stepdaddy Five. As far as I know, he’s still in a hut in Bali, recovering from having been married to Mother.

  I got through to him eventually. He was, as ever, sweet about it all. ‘Isn’t that just like your mother!’ he said. ‘I know Franz Dodeca slightly. He’s a total obsessive, too rich for his own good. Come here to Bali and I’ll undertake to keep him off you.’

  Well, I couldn’t do that. It strikes me as incest. Instead I asked him to lend me the garden of his house next door. He agreed like a shot and gave me the entry code at once. But he warned me that his caretaker gardener might not be pleased. He said he would phone this Mr Wilkinson and explain. ‘And keep me posted,’ he said. ‘Nothing happens here in Bali. It suits me, but I like a bit of distant action from time to time.’

  January 2nd 2234

  Just as well I made that arrangement with Stepdaddy Five. They brought yesterday’s swans etcetera today, plus today’s lot.

  Making fourteen inert, heavy floppy swans and twelve more geese. I showed the lot through Stepdaddy Five’s front door and out to the lake in his garden. The geese seemed to like it there. When the trees and the pigeons and the hens came, I showed them out there too. But the parrots had to stay with me because they were not hardy enough, they said. At least I got ten more gold rings.

  We are getting seriously short of birdfood. I went round to the corner shop, but they don’t open till tomorrow. Avian Foodstuffs are on holiday for the week. Again.

  I don’t believe this! The swans were not all. I was just about to cross the road from the corner shop when I saw, trudging and bawling down the street, a whole herd of cows. Eight of them anyway. They were being driven by eight young women who, to do them justice, were looking a bit self-conscious about it. People in cars and on the pavements were stopping to stare. Some folk had followed them from Picadilly, apparently. You don’t often see cows in London these days.

  My stomach felt queer. I knew they were for me. And they were. Honestly, how can this Dodeca even imagine I might want eight cows? Cows are not in the least romantic. Their noses run and they drop cowpats all the time as they walk. They dropped more cowpats through Stepdaddy Five’s nice hallway as I showed the lot of them out into his garden. I said to the girls, ‘If you want to stay, this house has fourteen bedrooms and there’s a pizza takeaway down the road. Feel free.’ I was feeling more than a little light-headed by then. The parrots don’t help.

  Now it’s got worse. Mr Wikinson arrived half an hour after the cows and bawled me out for allowing a herd of cows to trample his lawn. I said I would get rid of them as soon as I could. I was going to phone Mother and extract this Dodeca’s phone number from her and then phone him and tell him to come and take his livestock away. And see how he liked it.

  Before I could, though, a severe woman with a mighty bosom turned up on the doorstep, saying she was from the Bird Protection Trust and that my neighbours across the street had reported me for cruelty to birds. They had, she said, counted one hundred and seven various birds being delivered to my flat— busybodies!—where they were certainly overcrowded. I was to release them to better quarters, she said, or be liable for prosecution.

  After Mr Wilkinson, she was the last

  straw. I told her to get the hell out.

  January 3rd 2234

  No, the last straw was today. I did phone Mother last night and she did, after a lot of squirming, give me Dodeca’s private number. The trouble was that I didn’t know what to say, and all these parrots make it so difficult to think—not to speak of yet another swan versus goose fight erupting
every five minutes. My God those birds can be vicious! Then I sat on an egg when I started to phone Dodeca and gave up. I said I’d do it today.

  Today started with those cowgirls coming round here whining and whingeing. There were beds, but no sheets or blankets next door, they said, and it was not what they were used to. And where did they put the twenty gallons of milk? I said pour it away, why not? And they said it was a waste.

  Anyway, I got rid of them in the end, but only by ordering a stack of sheets and blankets online, which cost a bomb.

  Then the bird deliveries began. By then we were almost out of birdfeed, so I ushered this lot, swans included, into Stepdaddy’s Five’s garden and raced off to the corner shop. They only had canary food, so I bought all they had of that. I was staggering towards my flat with it when I saw an entirely new sort of van drawing up and Housebot, that traitor, blandly opening my front door to it. The men in it began unloading and putting together a large number of frameworks. I crossed the road and asked them what the hell they were doing.

  They said, ‘Out of the way, miss. We have to get all these into this flat here.’

  I said, ‘But what are they?’ ‘Trampolines, miss,’ they said.

  This caused me to bolt into my flat and race about scattering canary food and looking for that list Liam gave me. I found it just as they manoeuvered the first trampoline in. There were supposed to be nine of them. How they thought they were going to fit them in I have no idea. As I opened the list, one of the men got attacked by the broody goose on the sofa and they all went outside to let it settle down. Liam had written, ‘Ninth day: Nine lords a-leaping; Tenth day: Ten ladies dancing; Eleventh Day: Eleven pipers piping...’

  I didn’t read any more. I gave a wild wail and raced into my bedroom, where all the parrots seemed to have congregated, and to shrieks of ‘I love you, Samantha,’ I packed all the parcels of rings into my handbag for safety and raced out again to the nearest public phone, praying it wouldn’t have been vandalised.

  It wasn’t. I got through to Liam. ‘What is it now?’ he said grumpily.

  ‘Liam,’ I said, ‘I’ve got nine trampolines now. Is it really true that I’m going to get ballet dancers and skirling Scotsmen next?’

  ‘Pretty certainly,’ he said, ‘if you got milkmaids yesterday. Did you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Liam, I have had enough.’

  ‘What do you expect me to do about it?’ he said.

  ‘Marry me,’ I said. ‘Take me away from all this.’

  There was a dreadful, long silence. I thought he had hung up on me. I wouldn’t have blamed him. But at length he said, ‘Only if you can assure me that I’m not just an escape for you.’

  I assured him, hand on heart. I told him that the mere thought of Franz Dodeca had made me realise that Liam was the only man for me. ‘Otherwise I’d get on a plane and go to my sister in Sweden,’ I said. ‘Or maybe to Bali, to Stepdaddy Five.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Are you coming round here at once?’

  ‘Quite soon,’ I said. ‘I have to fix Dodeca first.’ We then exchanged a surprising number of endearments before I rang off and raced back to my flat for what I sincerely hope was the last time.

  I got back just as a minibus drove up and unloaded half a dozen fit-looking young men in scarlet robes and coronets and three more middle-aged ones, who looked equally fit. Most of them were carrying bottles of champagne

  and clearly looking forward to some fun. They all poured into my flat ahead of me. I had to sidle among them and past the men squeezing the last trampoline in and past several enraged geese and terrified partridges to get to my phone— a phone dear Franz was certainly bugging. While I punched in his number, the chaps all climbed on the trampolines and began solemnly bouncing up and down. One of the geese accidentally joined them. I had to put my hand over one ear to detect that I had got Dodeca’s answering service.

  Good.

  ‘Franz, dear,’ I said after the beep. ‘I’m so grateful for all the things you’ve been sending me. You’ve really gone to my heart. Why don’t you come here and join me in my flat? Come soon. And then we’ll see.’ And I rang off, with the delightful thought of dear Franz arriving and the traitor Housebot letting him in among all this.

  More than all this it would be, I discovered as I left. Another herd of cows was coming down the street, lowing and cow- patting as it came. From the other direction, I could see the big lady from the Birds Protection or whatever it was, advancing. She seemed to have a police- man with her. And Mr Wilkinson was just storming out of Stepdaddy Five’s front door. I ran the other way, past the herd of cows. And who should I see but the nice courier lad just getting out of his van with a fifth parcel of rings.

  I stopped him. ‘You know me, don’t you?’ I said. ‘Can I sign for them now and save you coming to my door?’ He innocently did let me and I raced away with the parcel. ‘I’ve brought you a dowry!’ I said to Liam as I arrived—

  ‘No, Liam, don’t! I haven’t finished yet!’

  A male voice: ‘Don’t be stupid, Sam. You know he’ll be listening in. Do you want him to know where we are? I’m going to throw this away before you tell him any more.’

  The diary ends here

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