If I were to be

  So soon done for,

  I don't know what

  I was begun for.

  Epitaph on children's

  tombstones in old

  cemeteries.

  Chapter I

  They came in the night, like thieves. The children discovered them first and, through the children, the parents.

  Sylvia rang Kay, Kay rang Alice, Alice rang Marjorie; meanwhile, Sylvia had rung the police and come back to Kay again.

  'Can you imagine?' she wailed. 'The police say there's nothing they can do. No crime has been committed.'

  'I don't suppose it has.' Kay tried to be comforting. 'It only counts as trespass, doesn't it?'

  'That's what the police said.' Sylvia's voice rose. It was apparent that she would not be comforted. 'It isn't even strictly illegal - think of it! And the police said they couldn't do anything about it on my complaint because I don't own the house in question.'

  'It's up to the Norrises to get a Court Order, I believe,' Kay said. 'They'll be back eventually and take care of it.'

  'Eventually!' Such a distant prospect was of no use to Sylvia. 'And what are we to do in the meantime?'

  'We could try to keep calm - ' Kay began, but was immediately interrupted. The question had been rhetorical.

  'Calm?' Sylvia shrieked. 'With squatters in Crozier Crescent? I never thought I'd see the day!'

  'It may not be so bad - ' Kay tried again.

  'Bad? When a pack of scruffy strangers can walk in and take over someone else's home? How much worse can things get?'

  'It isn't as if the Norrises were there very much - ' Kay found herself pushed into the position of almost defending the unseen squatters. That was the trouble with Sylvia - she over-reacted so violently that people had to search for the best of the other side of the question in an attempt to restore some sense of balance. 'They've been in the West Indies for three months and they were in Switzerland before that.'

  'That isn't the point.' Sylvia refused to look at any other side of the question. 'That people could move into their home in their absence - '

  'One of their homes,' Kay murmured.

  'Their home,' Sylvia continued firmly. 'It can't be allowed. Something must be done about it.'

  'What do you suggest?' Kay asked. Sylvia ignored the question.

  'I blame Marjorie,' she said. Sylvia always blamed Marjorie. It was as though she felt that having a lecturer in sociology resident in the Crescent were tantamount to having a disturbed adolescent in an area of intense poltergeist activity. Somehow, Marjorie was to blame for every social phenomenon that had erupted since she moved in, rather as though she had deliberately conjured them out of the atmosphere. 'Things like this never happened when old Mrs Albee was living here.'

  Kay spent a silent moment debating whether to point out that, at eighty-five, old Mrs Albee could hardly have been expected to hurl herself into the fray of social revolution, or whether she should treat the remark as the non sequitur it undoubtedly was.

  'But it's the deceit I object to most of all,' Sylvia went on. 'Those children - those grubby, disgraceful brats - '

  Kay spared a complacent glance into the living-room where Emma, a peaches-and-cream child who had never caused a moment's concern, was placidly watching television.

  'Do you realize those children - ? Children! - dreadful little monsters!' Sylvia's shudder was apparent, even over the telephone. 'Do you realize the - the corruption they carry with them? Why, they've already spread their poison. They told Rupert not to tell me - me, his own mother - that they'd moved into the Norris house. He'd been playing with them - secretly - every day for more than a week before I discovered it. They told him that if I found out about them, I'd forbid him to play with them,' Sylvia snarled. 'They were dead right there!'

  Unexpectedly, Kay felt a pang for the unknown squatter children, so wise in the ways of a world they had never made. They were not, like other children, unsure of their welcome; they knew only too well that there would be no welcome for them in any neighbourhood they moved into. The manner in which they had gained their slow accretion of bitter knowledge did not bear thinking about.

  'Teaching our children their deceit,' Sylvia stormed on. 'You can see what - '

  'How did you find out?' Kay asked curiously. 'I had no idea the Norris house was occupied and I've walked past there every day. Of course, they've got that sign posted on the front door now, but now that they've been discovered, they might as well. Until you phoned this morning, I'd had no idea - '

  'Precisely!' Sylvia said triumphantly. 'They were obviously planning to get away with it for as long as they could. If it hadn't been for the fact...' Her voice dropped, trailed off.

  'What fact?' Kay prompted, intrigued. It was not often that Sylvia was speechless. 'What happened?'

  'Oh, well,' Sylvia appeared to have developed an unnatural reticence. 'It was just that. . .'

  'Just what?'

  'Well, it wasn't just -' Sylvia's voice rose to a crescendo of indignation. 'While Rupert was having his breakfast this morning, I caught him . . . well, scratching.' Despite her righteous indignation, the admission seemed dragged from her. 'Naturally, I burnt the clothes he'd been wearing yesterday, and I shampooed his hair three times in a row -

  'It isn't funny!' She caught Kay's muffled snort and interpreted it correctly. 'Who knows what those disgraceful creatures may have brought into Crozier Crescent with them? And this was always such a nice place. We've got to do something.'

  'What do you suggest?' Kay asked for the second time.

  'Come over for drinks tonight,' Sylvia said. 'I'm asking everyone.'

  'A council of war?' Kay was dubious.

  'Seven-thirty,' Sylvia said decisively, although Kay suspected that the invitation had popped out on the spur of the moment.

  'I'll phone the others now.' Unwittingly, Sylvia confirmed the suspicion. 'If we all put our heads together, someone must come up with some solution. And the men will be home. After all, just because they aren't here all day - most of them - it isn't fair to let us carry the whole burden of - '

  In the living-room, Emma, still intent on the television programme, raised one hand to her head and scratched with uninhibited vigour.

  'I must ring off now, Sylvia,' Kay said. 'I'll see you this evening. And, you're right, I'll see that Crispian comes, too.'

  Before Sylvia could say anything more, Kay replaced the receiver and advanced grimly upon her unsuspecting daughter.

  Chapter II

  Rupert opened the door, having obviously been dragooned into acting as the little-gentleman-doorman for the occasion. Above a dazzlingly white shirt, his face had an unnaturally pink scrubbed look.

  'Good evening, Rupert,' Crispian said, guiding Kay and Emma past the door. 'How are you?'

  'My head hurts,' Rupert said, slamming the door behind them.

  'So does mine.' Emma raised her hand to the yellow thistledown floating from her scalp, encountered her mother's watchful eye, and lowered the hand again. She and Rupert exchanged glances.

  'You're the last to arrive!' Sylvia hovered in the doorway beyond them, accusing even as she greeted them. 'You two run along upstairs.' She shifted her gaze to Emma and Rupert. 'Barnaby is waiting for you in the playroom, and everyone else is here now.'

  Kay and Crispian followed her into the living-room. While they greeted the others, Jeremy was jittering at the bar. He signalled to Crispian urgently.

  'Gin and tonic, thanks. For both of us.' Crispian crossed over to collect their drinks.

  But Jeremy was uninterested in their preferences. 'God! What a day at the Agency!' He picked up one bottle after another, lifting each one a few inches off the tray and setting it back again, like a bell-ringer in an old Music Hall turn. 'We had a Presentation for the most important client - and he didn't let on by a flicker of an eyelash whether he liked it or not. Just "Thank you, gentlemen", and he walked out. I've had three tranquillizers since lunch - and then I come home to this? He swung a bottle of Pernod out to indicate the roomful of people, then lifted it and squinted at the label.

  'I say, old boy, do you think I dare risk it?' He glanced at Crispian for reassurance. 'I know one oughtn't to mix drink and drugs - but it's been hours since my last tranquillizer. And I can't face an evening like this on a glass of tomato juice.'

  'You could try another tranquillizer,' Crispian suggested, but Jeremy wasn't listening. He replaced the Pernod, rang a carillon with Scotch and brandy, then took up the gin, swinging it in a dinner bell 'come-and-get-it' stroke.

  'Don't call us, we'll call you,' Crispian murmured.

  'What?' Still absorbed in his own problems, Jeremy looked at Crispian as though just realizing he was there. 'Sorry, old man, you wanted gin and tonic, didn't you?' Meticulously, he poured a drink, gulped at it, and handed Crispian the bottle. 'Help yourself,' he said and stared meditatively across the room.

  Crispian poured drinks for himself and Kay. Jeremy, he noted, had given himself a treble. One for each tranquillizer, presumably. Adding tonic - a refinement Jeremy had neglected - Crispian carried the drinks over to join Kay.

  She had taken the last space on the sofa, next to Alice and Arthur. Crispian handed Kay her drink and perched beside her on the arm of the sofa.

  'What I want to know -' Sylvia was in full cry - 'is how they came here. I mean, Crozier Crescent is such a secluded cul-de-sac. That's why we like it. It's so out of the way. No one would even know it existed unless they were actu ally looking for it.'

  'I see what you mean.' Arthur nodded. 'It isn't as though they'd gone to ground in one of those empty flats in Cardinal Avenue. Anyone could have noticed they were unoccupied, Cardinal Avenue being right on the bus route -

  'Exactly!' Sylvia cut in triumphantly. 'Crozier Crescent is a place one would have to know about. It's not a place they could have stumbled over by accident - '

  Unfortunately, Candice Carson chose that moment to giggle. She tried to stifle it instantly, looking to her husband, Nick, as though he might be able to persuade the others that it had really been a cough she intended.

  'It's all very well,' Sylvia said severely, 'for some people to laugh. People with nothing at stake - '

  Which was hitting below the belt, underlining the fact that the Carsons were newcomers to Crozier Crescent, newly-weds with no family, and perhaps not even people who would remain for very long, Nick's company being notorious for moving staff around the country - and sometimes 'the world - at short notice and with no concern for the long-term effects on those involved.

  'People who have no intention of putting down roots -' Sylvia's tone relegated them to a rank barely above that of squatters themselves.

  'You're right,' Nick said, rushing in to try to retrieve his bride's blunder. 'About knowing where empty houses are, I mean. They have organizations, haven't they, who issue mimeographed lists of addresses of empty houses? Somehow, the Norris house must have got on to one of those lists.'

  'But how? That's what I want to know.' Sylvia's gaze hovered delicately just above Marjorie's head. 'Who could have told them about the Norris house?'

  Marjorie continued sipping her sherry with a placid smile. Jeremy rattled the bottles at the bar again, lifting each one again and peering at it intently. Searching for the lost chord, perhaps.

  'And? Sylvia continued accusingly, 'how long will it be before more of their friends join them? Before none of us dares to go out, not even to the shops, for fear of coming back and finding our homes occupied by . . . them?

  'Oh, I don't think the situation is so bad as that,' Marjorie said calmly. 'That would be more than the law would let them get away with - and they'd know it. Besides, you have no basis for such a statement. We've seen no signs that these squatters are part of a larger group, nor that they're likely to be the spearhead of a mass invasion. Personally, I should doubt it. I believe that what we have here is merely an isolated incident.'

  'Oh, "merely" - ' Sylvia glared at Marjorie with renewed suspicion. 'An "isolated incident". How comforting.'

  Even some of the others began viewing Marjorie with suspicion at this point. She would not be incapable, they felt, of setting the cat among the pigeons - and then sitting back and making notes on behavioural patterns. Had she set the squatters in their midst? And was she, behind that bland exterior, silently laughing at their alarm?

  'It's always nice,' Sylvia underlined in dulcet tones, 'to have an expert opinion on these matters.'

  Kay began to wonder whether the pigeon had not been set down in the midst of the cats. Momentarily, she felt sorry for the squatters. They began to seem not so much menacing as menaced. Marjorie, too, seemed to be in danger of collecting a few claw marks.

  'I have at least spoken to them,' Marjorie said quietly. 'I should rather imagine that's more than you've done.'

  'What?' Sylvia had been about to sit down, now she straightened up and advanced on Marjorie. 'When?'

  'This morning,' Marjorie said. 'I was posting a letter when I met Elf on her way back from the shops. Naturally, I spoke to her.'

  'Naturally,' Sylvia said bitterly. 'You wouldn't let an opportunity like that pass, would you?'

  Jeremy dropped a clanger, perhaps to distract attention from Sylvia's unchecked rudeness, or perhaps because the tranquillizers and gin had begun their uneasy battle.

  A decapitated bottle of tonic water lay on its side at his feet, its contents pumping out across the carpet like blood from a severed artery.

  'Oh, Jeremy!' Sylvia flew for a mopping-up cloth. Jeremy retrieved the bottle on his second try and set it upright on the bar.

  'Elf - ' Alice said wonderingly. 'Can anyone really be named Elf?'

  'It was the only name she gave,' Marjorie spoke dispassionately. 'Short for Elfrida, I imagine. Although I understand some of them call themselves Mickey Mouse -or Minnie - when they're questioned. Not that I questioned her. I simply passed the time of day.'

  'You do seem to be well up on these things.' Candice had evidently decided it was time she showed more concern about the situation, and further decided that it was wiser to weigh in on Sylvia's side.

  'But why did you even speak to the creature?' Sylvia demanded despairingly, coming back into the room. 'Surely the best thing is to ignore them all utterly?'

  Jeremy snatched the cloth she was holding and dropped to his knees, as though hurling himself out of the range of fire. He mopped violently at the carpet, head down, dissociating himself from the proceedings.

  'Do you really think so?' Marjorie had the disconcerting habit of turning the question back on the questioner. Furthermore, she always gave the impression of being deeply interested in the answer. Noting it down, in fact. Especially when talking with Sylvia. They might all be going to figure in some future tome on sociology in the suburbs, but surely Sylvia was going to have a chapter all to herself.

  'Yes, I do.' Sylvia hesitated, the technique was infectious. 'What do you think we ought to do?'

  Jeremy lurched to his feet and beamed at them all with professional affability. The soggy cloth remained on the carpet and Sylvia might have spoken sharply about it had she not been occupied with other worries at the moment.

  'Perhaps,' Alice suggested timidly, 'we could get up a petition asking them to go away?'

  'Do you really think they'd go?' Now it was Alice who flinched away from the laser beam of Marjorie's undivided attention.

  'Well, they ought to . . .' Alice looked around for support. 'If they understood that we didn't want them here . . .' She faded out. The eldest of them - Barnaby was her grandson - she had been brought up in a different world. Now she found herself one of the over-civilized, unable to cope with the problem of dealing with those who recognized no laws, responded to no social pressure.

  'What do you think we ought to do?' Sylvia repeated.

  'I think - ' Marjorie studied her glass carefully, then raised her eyes - 'I think we ought to befriend them.'

  'Befriend them!' Sylvia's voice rose an octave. 'Are you mad? What do you mean by that?'

  'I mean - ' Marjorie didn't bother to look around for support. The battle was between herself and Sylvia. 'I mean, make friends with them, invite them into our homes, draw them back into the social structure of the community.'

  'You are mad,' Sylvia said flatly. She rounded on her husband. 'Jeremy, talk to her. Do something.'

  Jeremy took another drink.

  Kay and Crispian exchanged a worried glance. Jeremy was already fairly glassy-eyed and he had poured another treble.

  'Jeremy - ' Sylvia had a warning note in her voice.

  'Certainly. Assuredly.' Jeremy beamed another professional smile around the room, although it was uncertain whether he realized the audience consisted of his neighbours rather than his clients. 'Gentlemen. Oh, and ladies.' He sketched an unsteady bow. 'I think you will all agree that the Presentation you are about to see - '

  'No! No!' Sylvia snapped.

  'No?' Jeremy looked around vaguely. 'Oh yes, of course. That was this afternoon.' His smile was a masterpiece of rueful apology. 'Sorry. What I mean to say is, the question before the Board - '

  He stopped automatically at the hiss of Sylvia's indrawn breath. 'Sorry,' he apologized again. He looked at Sylvia. 'What is the question?'

  'Marjorie,' Sylvia said between clenched teeth, 'wants us to make friends with those filthy squatters. She thinks we ought to invite them into our homes.'

  Jeremy stood perfectly still for a moment, as though contemplating all angles of the problem, then slowly pitched forward on to his face.

  Chapter III

  'Strange. That's the first time I've ever seen Jeremy as overtired as a newt,' Crispian said thoughtfully as they re-entered their own house. 'Usually, he can hold his drink. I wonder what kind of tranquillizers he's been taking.'

 

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