Trudi Madly Obliquely

By Peter Spencer

Trudi Penislow is a seriously feisty (and precocious) nine-year-old Cornish girl on a mission to save the world from climate catastrophe. Though her dad’s a former Prime Minister she reckons she’s got the better handle on political activism. Taking her lead from the famous Scandinavian activist Feta Cheeseburg, she aims for swifter results with the help of her grumpy cat, Fang, and her talkative parrot, Lady Casement. Unfortunately, her online efforts enrage hostile political actors who believe that disruption caused in the west by global warming will work to their advantage.

Sensing danger, Trudi’s dad seeks help from the Foreign Secretary, who’s an old chum. Dazzlingly incompetent though the man is, he does get a couple of colourful, female MI6 operatives on the case. Which is lucky, as Trudi’s in imminent danger of being kidnapped. She likes to hope her strategic brilliance will make it ever so easy to trample all over her enemies.

But there are lots of them, and they’re not stupid …

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Jun 28, 2024
• ISBN: 9781805148722

Peter Spencer

Peter Spencer, after forty years covering Westminster politics first for LBC then Sky News, is now a freelance presenter on GB News, where he provides neutral (if at times frivolous) political analysis. He also writes a weekly political column for Malestrom magazine. Peter has a waterfront home on Cornwall’s rugged north coast, where he handfeeds seagulls as well as writing novels.

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter One

Now We Are Nine

‘OMG, OMG, gotta do something. Gotta do it now.’

Trudi thinks of herself as the coolest dude in the brood, but right now she’s in a right pickle. The worst of it being, she just doesn’t get it.

‘Men never see what’s right in front of them. But the women? Just as bad? How is that even possible?’

Talking to herself does guarantee intelligent conversation and no backchat. But there are still nearly eight billion other people out there. And she is only nine.

Thank god I can multiskill, she thinks, means I can juggle the end of life as we know it with the task in hand. Both hands, come to think of it, now I’ve mastered Mozart.

This bit, anyway, she corrects herself, unwillingly. Trick is to leave the punters gagging for more. It’s my birthday, not theirs, so I can do what I want.

Though it’s boiling hot outside, the thick walls of the stone-faced early Georgian manor house mean inside it’s always cool. Trudi thinks this word sums her up especially well when she’s reminding the world what a prodigy she is. As well as supremely modest.

The worn but homely flagstones do wonders for the acoustics, the more so when set against just the right number of pale green rugs and draperies. All thanks to Trudi’s musical sensitivity, not her parents’, obvs.

Mum’s not as good as me, she thinks, again modestly, but she does know her way round the keyboard. And Dad knows enough, just, to deserve to hear me, probably because he’s Cornish, not English.

Suddenly she wishes she had four hands, one extra for pushing Fang off the battered Bösendorfer piano onto the floor, and another for strangling Lady Casement. Like all cats, Fang has no respect for classical music, or humans. A tad uncertain on his pins these days, but still worse than most.

‘I’ll tie you to a mop and clean the floor with you! Or tie a rocket to your tail and shoot you to the moon!’

Trudi regularly threatens him with this sort of thing when he’s messing up her practising by endlessly miaowing. He responds with a look that clearly states his ancestors are scarier than hers, so she’ll button her lip if she knows what’s good for her. Then he’ll claw his way onto her lap and purr, ironically. He’s an unusual-looking creature – half his face is black, the other white. And while his body is deepest jet, all four feet are the opposite, giving the impression he’s wearing spats. But the oddest feature is his back, which has a natural and curious curvature. There’s a well-deserved consensus among all who’ve ever met him that this archness matches his personality.

Lady Casement, too, is colourful, in both senses. Though she’s predominantly pure as newly fallen snow, she sports a hint of underarm yellow and a vivid splash of it on the top of her head. She also enjoys a superior status in the pecking order of life and has a spectacularly musical ear, picking up the melodies instantly, and the words.

That’s because she’s a parrot. Or rather, as she’ll sharply point out to ignorant people who’re vague about her genealogy, a sulphur-crested cockatoo. They’re generally sociable birds, but she takes it to a whole other level, sharing Fang’s amazing capacity for winding Trudi up. One of her special skills being a knack of getting the girl’s mispronunciations of foreign works off to a tee.

‘But why is it,’ Trudi’s more than once demanded, ‘when I do get it right, you still get it wrong? You trying to drive me mad?’

Lady Casement’s expression at these moments seems to say You’re not wrong there.

Today, Trudi’s against audience participation, barring the occasional gasp of wonderment. Finishing with a few extra notes Mozart would have wished he’d thought of, she smiles in a kindly and understanding way, pushes her unfairly flowingly blonde hair behind her neat little ears, and primes the audience.

‘Sorry, it wasn’t very good.’ Her way of saying: ‘Tell me it was totally brilliant or I shall hate you forever and ever.’

Dad doesn’t tell her anything. He’s too busy wondering how he has such a preposterously talented and good-looking daughter, forgetting he’s a handsome man and his wife, Viv, is a beauty. He’s also forgetting what a monster Trudi can be when she feels victimised, like whenever she’s woken up for school.

A couple of days ago, he asked Viv how come no one from her class had been invited to the party, and smiled at her reply.

‘She says there’s nothing wrong with them, but they’re only kids. And no, I didn’t state the obvious.’

Percy paused for some time before replying. ‘Think I can see where she’s coming from. She’ll be more at home when she gets to uni.’ His smile became ironic.

‘I’ll miss her when the time comes.’ Viv smiled too, but wistfully. Suddenly Percy’s expression matched his wife’s.

Now, taking in her daughter’s party piece, Viv thoughtfully considers her skilfully applied make-up and immaculately matching sparkly pink frock and diamante accessories. She’s also rather struck by the elegant little vintage brooch with a picture of the young Queen Victoria on it that Trudi bought, with pocket money she’d carefully saved up, from a charity shop somewhere. On top of that, there’s the pearl earring that makes her look like the famous Dutch old master’s painting. Viv wonders if that’s where she got the idea from, but doesn’t wonder where she got the bit of jewellery from. Little minx. But she is a surprisingly good pianist, for one so young. And deserves a mother’s recognition for her efforts.

‘Progressing by leaps and bounds, darling. You are an extremely gifted musician, with the makings of a wonderfully accomplished player.’

‘Progressing? The makings of? Is that all?’ Trudi doesn’t need to say this, her blazing blue eyes do it for her. But they cloud over as she remembers the monumental injustice she’s up against. Actually, the most monumental injustice ever.

‘The poor planet? Wrecked by stupid smelly, grown-ups? How’re we going to save it?’ she shouted at Fang and Lady Casement, when the painful reality first struck her. ‘All down to me then,’ she sighed, when it became equally painfully clear neither cat nor parrot had the foggiest idea.

She used to have a million ideas a nanosecond but accepts that maturing slows minds. Can only get worse, she thinks, glancing sympathetically at poor old Dad. Though he’s comfortably the right side of sixty, that’s beyond crinkly. Viv, who’s only just turned fifty, has the same problem, though Trudi doesn’t put it like that.

‘You’re very pretty, Mum, considering your age. Shame I’ll never get there because I’ll have nowhere to live.’

‘Thank you, dear, you know the way to a woman’s heart,’ Viv replies, thinking what a roundabout way kids have of reaching anyone’s heart, and glancing at the pretty little gilt-framed Victorian mirror to reassure herself she doesn’t look quite that bad. ‘But don’t worry too much about where you’re going to live when you’re grown up. Dad and I will always be here to help.’

Trudi despairs at how slow on the uptake oldies are, and how, without her to set them straight, they’d all be doomed. This painful reality dawned when she stumbled on library footage of Greta Thunberg talking about what kids could achieve just by not going to school, and about what would happen if nobody did anything.

‘Excuse me, sir, I don’t wish to alarm you,’ she told her form teacher in the sincere hope that he’d be deeply alarmed, ‘but I’m organising a boycott tomorrow to save the world.’ The menace was unmistakeable. Or should have been.

‘No probs, love, if you lot don’t come in, I shan’t bother either,’ he answered, casually tugging at a bit of cotton sticking out of the frayed cuff of his grubby checked shirt. ‘Much more fun going fishing than wasting my time with you bunch of spotty brats.’ He failed to register that his own complexion could do with some attention, same as the leather patches on the elbows of his jacket.

‘Bloody insouciant.’ Trudi’s muttered verdict was brief and to the point.

Sir was unsure whether to give her a telling off for the first word, or a gold star for the second. But shouldn’t have been surprised by either, given that her mum had a master’s degree and dad a doctorate. Plus, an even more colourful way of putting things.

‘That bloody teacher of yours, darling, he’s fucking insouciant.’

He’d also been a bit careless, given that Trudi’s father, Percy Penislow, was not only on the school’s board of governors but also, as a former prime minister, a personal friend of the secretary of state for education.

Bit late now. It wouldn’t have been age-appropriate to say what he was thinking. ‘Bollocks, I sodding well goofed there.’ More to the point, the whole of humanity’s goofed, in Trudi’s view. But, come her performance, she does manage a wan smile when Percy finally finds his voice.

‘Well played, Twoodie.’

Years ago, she’d frown at the suggestion she was once too ickle to say her own name properly. These days, she can smile indulgently and absolutely not admit it still gets on her nerves. Same as when Mum tells her what a sweet, innocent little creature she used to be, playing with her pretty little pink toy computer.

‘And you’re telling me I couldn’t even change my own nappies, and sucked my thumb when you sang me to sleep? That’s just silly.’

The toy computer’s long gone, of course, eclipsed by such formidable googling skills that she knew what was what, obviously, when all the other kids still thought Father Christmas was make-believe. Until she corrected them. ‘Actually, it’s the true story of a monk thought to have lived in what’s now Turkey, sometime in the third century.’

But she’s got more important things to think about now. Like taking social media, and in the process the world, by storm.

‘I’ll make it much nicer, and last much longer. You see if I don’t,’ she tells Lady Casement. The bird doesn’t look wholly convinced; though, if she did but know it, she has proved she can do her bit for the planet by turning the piano recital into a lusty duet. Nothing short of holding the beak closed would have shut her up, and even Trudi couldn’t manage that while playing.

At least it was easy enough to swish Fang off the piano, though making amends took longer, as the cat was so furious he wanted to claw Trudi to death and eat her. Because there were witnesses present, presumably, he settled for savagely biting the new Apple Mac with its sparkly pink casing that Mum and Dad had got for her birthday. A bit pointless, as computers don’t feel pain. They can dish it out, mind, when they just won’t do as they’re told, and Percy never feels any better when Viv, or Trudi, sets him straight. He’s a vividly creative man, with a grade-A brain, but an old Private Eye line often haunts him – ‘new technology baffles pissed old hack.’ At such times, he delicately rubs his temples in a circular motion with his long, rather graceful fingers. He could be trying to soothe a sudden spasm of neuralgia, or maybe trying to establish whether he’s got any kind of brain, irrespective of grade.

Though he thoroughly approves of Fang’s kill-the-computer campaign, he doesn’t think it’s a winning strategy any more than the animal’s next move, as Trudi’s reaction to having her leg viciously clawed is pretty predictable. Or should have been. Confusingly, however, instead of squealing in agony and threatening him with a slow and painful death, she cuddles him to within what feels like an inch of his life and makes out it didn’t hurt a bit.

‘Dear little Fangy-Wangy, aren’t you the softest and gentlest little moggle-woggle in the whole lovely world that I’m protecting? Isn’t that what I’m always telling you?’

Viv finds this odd, and Percy, mindful of his daughter’s occasionally wayward ways, anxiously checks his brandy decanter. Though Trudi’s relatively sweet-natured, they know when crossed she’s up there with Bloody Mary.

‘In Plan A, the planet will be simply saved,’ she tells herself confidently. ‘But if anything does go wrong,’ she concedes, slightly less confidently, ‘there’s an infallible Plan B.’ Extensive research into witchcraft has taught that when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Upwards.

Against that, Dad once told her his favourite author said that while the old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, and the young know everything. She hopes her tiny hint of uncertainty about flying broomstick technology isn’t a sign of premature middle age.

Chapter Two

Trudi’s Family and Other Animals

The day after her birthday, Trudi thinks about everyone’s reactions to her recital, and tries to work out who really is nearest and dearest to her heart. Tricky one, that. Even, she discovers when she discusses the matter with Percy, for extremely old people.

‘Dad, is Fang your favourite, or am I?’

The correct answer to that is obvious, but she wants him to spell it out. All the more annoying, then, that he can somehow manage mischief, in spite of being beyond Jurassic.

‘Well, dear, I wouldn’t wish to rush to judgement. You just have to accept I love you both in different ways.’ There’s a twinkle in his eye, which he tries a bit too successfully to mask by pretending to carefully evaluate his elegantly manicured fingernails.

Percy didn’t expect Trudi to take this slight quite so personally, but her creased forehead and pursed lips suggest she did. Luckily, Viv’s on hand to prevent things from getting out of hand.

‘Dad’s only joking, darling,’ she says, quickly and soothingly, ‘but favourites are never a good idea. How do you think Fang would like it if you told him you loved Lady Casement more?’

‘But I do love Lady Casement more, Mum. Fang stinks.’

During the night, the cat had decided Trudi’s new leopard-skin-patterned shirt would make a perfect lining for his little bed, when he’d finished spitting on it so he could chew and claw it into shape. Viv spots the problem and decides to leave it at that. She knows the mood won’t last.

It doesn’t. Because when, minutes later, Lady Casement blots her copybook by accidentally blotting Trudi’s notebook with a poo, the cat becomes a big hit again, while the bird is suddenly the stinky one.

‘See what I mean, dear?’ Viv murmurs.

Trudi does, perfectly well. Which is why, to make it perfectly clear she doesn’t, she snorts and flicks back her hair. She flicks it back forward again pretty quickly, however, as the high forehead she has in common with both Mum and Dad doesn’t strike her as her best feature.

Against that, she accepts that her near-perfectly oval face, combined with the neat little dimple on the ever so slightly pointy chin that she inherited from Viv, could look worse. But she’s baffled when people tell her the natural slant of her eyes give the impression she’s always laughing inwardly at some secret joke. Try as she might – and she has, many times – she just can’t see it when she checks in the mirror. It’s never occurred to her that she’s unlikely to when she’s squinting quite so fixedly at the glass.

It rarely occurs to her either to question her knack of thinking one thing one minute, and saying it, then, minutes later, thinking and saying exactly the opposite. Which is why, moments after her little tiff with Dad, she forgives Lady Casement and has a serious discussion with her about why she doesn’t do favourites.

‘I’m not taking anyone’s side, mind, but Mum is the one I do most rely on, after myself, obviously,’ she explains, patiently. ‘Hardly surprising, really, as all men are silly. That’s why sir won’t admit I’m the apple of his eye when he can see how bright I am.’

It’ll be years before she learns he’s always really hated being corrected by a child. Especially one who’s so much cleverer than anyone else in the classroom. Including him.

‘Anyway,’ Trudi adds, warming to her theme, ‘although she’s embarrassing because she’s a grown-up, Mum can be surprisingly sensible, in spite of her age. You know I’m right, don’t you?’

‘You know I’m right, don’t you?’ Lady Casement repeats after her, in exactly the same tone, lots and lots of times. Though Trudi always likes to be agreed with, she decides it’s not birdist to call a bird bird-brained.

‘Thing is,’ she continues, pointedly ignoring the interruption, ‘she’s really quite good at finding out what people think about things.’

This is hardly surprising, as Viv’s a pollster, and good at her job. Trudi’s savvy enough to notice it seems to bring in quite a lot of money, but regrets that she doesn’t seem to know how to spend it.

‘What I don’t get is why I don’t get everything I want. Whenever I want it.’

‘I want it,’ Lady Casement mutters repeatedly. She sounds every bit as aggrieved, but drops the subject when Trudi rolls up a newspaper and stares at her meaningfully.

‘Okay, I’ll admit the Apple Mac must have cost a bob or two. And I made Mum write down in a page in my notebook that you haven’t pooed on, you smelly monster, that she promises faithfully to buy me a pony when I’m ten.’

These last words remind Lady Casement of something Percy once taught her, and she sways from side to side, singing in a perfect Liverpudlian accent a question about whether a person’s partner would need or feed them when they’re sixty-four.

Trudi thinks it’s a pity she’s so obviously losing her marbles, then remembers Dad sometimes teaches her songs he must have learnt in the ark or somewhere. In other ways he seems reasonably okay, in his dad-ish sort of way, except when he’s making heartless jokes and failing to see how much pain they inflict. Obviously.

‘What you have to understand, ahem, bird brain, is that there are millions and millions of people around, but only one at a time gets to be prime minister, so he must be quite clever really. Even though he is only a man, and old.’

Lady Casement’s about to break into Ol’ Man River, but the sight of the still rolled-up newspaper puts her off.

‘Of course, when he gets in a muddle, it’s always down to me to sort it out,’ Trudi adds with a sigh. ‘Like that time when I was only four, for god’s sake, when he declared war on the Chinese. Would have been too much for most overgrown babies. But then again, I am a genius, you must remember this.’

Lady Casement cautiously croons something about remembering that, what with time going by, a kiss is only a kiss and a sigh no more than a sigh. It’ll be a long time before Trudi discovers half the songs Percy’s taught her parrot. At that point she’ll be seriously impressed. At this point being even a little bit impressed is not something she does.

‘Must you butt in? Again?’ she says sharply.

Lady Casement bows her head in a way that implies apology, though the look in her small unblinking black eyes suggests the stupid girl can do one. Trudi pointedly picks up Fang and strokes him.

‘You’ve got drunk enough times with Dad, you naughty pussy,’ she says in the tone of a mummy who can’t help but smile at something a tiny child’s done, even though it was ever so bad. ‘So, you must have realised how mad he is, always picking fights with foreigners.’

That thought calls to mind another member of the audience at her performance yesterday, and how clever she’d been at the tender age of four to bring her into the inner circle. An awfully big adventure, when, thanks to that ridiculous campaign of Dad’s, she got kidnapped by a couple of horrid Chinese men. An awfully clever ruse of hers though, she thinks to herself, teaming up with dear little Yu Yan. Turned out the poor woman was of the wrong sort of ethnic minority and had had to conceal her identity to avoid having her brain stuffed with indigestible nonsense and her stomach emptied of digestible food. She’d also had to kiss goodbye to her promising future as a nuclear scientist and settle for being a skivvy, tasked at the time with keeping an eye on the captive Trudi. But her punt on the girl as a long-awaited ticket to freedom got them both out of a tight spot, and her back on track with her career.

Trudi’s trouble at that time was that Dad was campaigning vigorously to dissuade the British government from buying trains for the HS2 project from the Chinese. His concern that there could be seriously adverse security implications made the authorities in Beijing furious, partly because they wanted the cash but mainly because his fears were well founded. As a result, while he got closer and closer to the action, so did Trudi. But while he managed to escape their clutches, she didn’t. And, naturally enough, wasn’t happy about it.

‘You know something,’ Trudi informs her increasingly sleepy-looking cat, ‘it’d serve