Spitball Gutsnuggle Willy Slimebag

In this episode we discussed Angela and Diabola, by Lynne Reid Banks with illustrations by Klaas Verplancke.

Our email address is stillscaredpodcast@gmail.com and we're on instagram @stillscaredpodcast and twitter @stillscaredpod! Intro music is by Maki Yamazaki, and you can find her music on her bandcamp. Outro music is by Joe Kelly, and you can find their music under the name Wendy Miasma on bandcamp. Artwork is by Letty Wilson, find their work at toadlett.com

Credits:
Skjor1 - Traditional Church Organ Music [Florence - Italy] 02
InspectorJ - Dramatic Organ, A.wav
kyles - loop smooth muffled rushing air tone skyline traffic distant wind trees forest.flac

Transcript

Ren Welcome to Still Scared: Talking Children’s Horror, a podcast about creepy, spooky and disturbing children’s books, films and TV. I’m Ren Wednesday, my co-host is Adam Whybray and today we’re talking about Angela and Diabola by Lynne Reid Banks. Enjoy!

Ren Hello Adam!

Adam Hello Ren, how are you faring?

Ren I’m, uhh, sleepy.

Adam You’re quite a constitutionally sleepy kind of person, aren’t you?

Ren I am. I have been referred to as a dormouse before.

Adam Is that the dormouse from Alice in Wonderland?

Ren It is, yes. Just asleep in a teapot, that’s me. If you ever want to imagine me, listeners, just imagine a dormouse sleepily napping in a teapot. And what about you, Adam? What character from Alice in Wonderland would you say you most resemble?

Adam Probably the white rabbit, but hopefully just hustling and bustling trying to get lesson plans done, rather than the scissor-wielding white rabbit in Jan Svankmejer’s animated version, who cuts off heads with scissors.

Ren I don’t associate cutting off heads with scissors with you. I’ve know you a while.

Adam Thank you. I mean, I associate that character with my friend Peter, because when I showed him that film in sixth form he did run after me with scissors, pretending to be the white rabbit.

And we’re talking about a book with similarly diabolical behaviour!

Ren Yes, this is Angela and Diabola, which is the pronunciation that I’m going with, because that’s how I read it, by Lynne Reid Banks from 1997. Lynne Reid Banks’ most famous children’s books were the Indian in the Cupboard series that got adapted into a film that I never saw but I did see the trailer often because it was on one of my most-watched VHS tapes, as a kid.

Adam I liked the Indian in the Cupboard. I always wanted to refer to it as ‘The Indian in my Cupboard’ when I referred to it this week, but that’s like Polly in my Pocket, but that’s not right either. There’s definitely some toy that’s like, in my pocket, or not just my pocket — a pocket.

Ren Um. I don’t know, maybe it will come back to us throughout this episode.

Adam (singing like an advert jingle) Indian in the cupboard, cute as can be! Don’t you want to come play with me!

There’s definitely about three different things from the ‘90s that are merging together in my head. And I want to make clear to anyone who doesn’t know the Indian in the Cupboard series, it’s like a little model of a stereotypical Indian from Cowboys and Indians, a little plastic figure that comes to life. Rather than just like, an actual full-bodied human who has been locked in a kids' cupboard, which would be a very dark premise for a kid’s book. But this is a fun cupboard, and as far as I can remember the toy quite enjoys being locked in the cupboard. I think. Maybe? I can’t remember very much about it, to be honest.

Ren All I know is that it’s a magical cupboard that brings toys to life.

Adam Also she wrote I, Houdini which is one that my sister liked when she was young, which is a crafty animal book. Possibly a hamster, who’s able to escape from things like Houdini.

Ren That does sound vaguely familiar now that you mention it. But yeah, I had no idea that she wrote Indian in the Cupboard because this was the book of hers that I read, several times, it was one of my repeat reads. It came out in 1997, when I was about nine or ten, so I was pretty much exactly the right age.

Adam Do you remember where you came across it, was it bought for you?

Ren No idea, no. I don’t have any memories of acquiring it, it was just one of the books that I had that I enjoyed but also found unsettling.

Adam I was going to ask if you found it scary, when you were a kid.

Ren I mean yeah, I think I found it funny but also it definitely had an edge of disturbing content to it, which it has on a re-read too!

Adam Yeah, before we started recording I said I thought it was like The League of Gentlemen for kids. In that it’s on that knife edge between being comedy that sometimes tips into horror, and it has these broad, slightly grotesque characters. And it has a mean streak to it that sometimes pulls you up short with something that’s quite cruel, I guess.

Ren My copy has a quote on the back that says: “A worthy successor to Roald Dahl”.

Adam Yes, I can see that.

Ren It’s an interesting book — it’s an interesting combination of these quite broad characters and dark comedy, and then theology as well.

The basic plot is that a young couple have twins, unexpectedly - the first twin is a beautiful, placid, gurgling baby who delights everyone who sees her, and the second is a screaming terror who gives the delivery nurse a bite on the thumb so severe she nearly bleeds to death.

They call them Jill and Jane, in the hope that they can instil ordinariness into them, but when it comes to their christening — I think it’s worth reading the christening aloud from wherever you see fit in the chapter.

Adam Okay, I’ll start with the christening of Jill, or at least that’s what the mother wants to call Jill.

(Church organ music)

"I name this child—“ he began. Then he looked down, and saw the baby’s face for the first time. Its heavenly blue eyes were looking straight into his.

He gasped. For some moments there was complete silence.

Then the vicar did a thing he’d never done before. He clasped the baby to his heart and began to cry.
"Angela!” he sobbed.
“No! Jill!” cried both the parents. But it was too late. He had named the baby Angela, which of course means “Angel” in Latin, which all vicars are supposed to speak fluently. Most of them don’t but this one did. When the hubbub had died down, and the two godparents had managed to pry Jill-now-Angela out of the vicar’s arms, it was Jane’s turn.

Reluctantly, Mr Cuthbertson-Jones turned to the other godmother, who stamped her cigarette out on the flagstones, coughed wetly, wiped the palms of her hands down the sides of her dirty old skirt and grabbed Jane, who was securely swaddled in a shawl so she couldn’t use her nails.

The tramp-lady didn’t bother looking at her godchild. She just thrust the bundle straight into the arms of the vicar and took another cigarette from behind her ear. The godfather meanwhile was furtively swigging from his bottle from behind the nearest pillar.

The vicar looked like a person who has just opened the most wonderful present of his life, and before even getting used to that, is given another.
"And what name is to be given to THIS divine and wondrous creature?” he asked, with a smile of radiant happiness on his face.
“Jemima or somefin’,” said the godmother.
Poor Mr and Mrs Cutherbertson-Jones were getting quite unnerved.
"JANE! JANE!” they shouted, so that everyone in the church jumped.

The vicar held the baby as before, looked up to heaven with a seraphic smile, and began: “I name this baby—“
And then he looked down into a pair of glistening little green eyes.

(increasingly discordant church organ music)

This good and kindly man had never been able to believe that anyone could be really bad, let alone a tiny newborn baby. But now he saw for the very first time that he had been wrong.

The shock was so awful that he dropped the baby straight into the font, which was an old-fashioned, deep one.

She made a terrific splash, and disappeared under the water. Before anyone could move, she popped straight up again like a cork, and let out a shriek of outrage so loud that everyone around the font fell back, holding their ears.

At the end of this piercing shriek she had to take in a breath. In the silence while she did this, a single word like a cry of anguish, pierced the church from end to end.

_“Diabola!” _

The vicar, unfortunately, was also fluent in Greek. Diabola means “evil one” in Greek. Coming from this good man, who had never sworn in his life, this terrible cry amounted to the worst word he had ever said.

But with it, he had named the baby."

Ren Thank you, Adam! The context for that is that Mr Cutherbertson-Jones had had to pay some people under a bridge to be Jane-now-Diabola’s godparents, because no-one would take up the task.

So despite very much wanting to call their children Jill and Jane, now have to accept that the vicar knows best, and they are called Angela and Diabola.

We get some details of Diabola’s general activities: spitting, punching, throttling that cat, throwing th