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With baby Herbert gone, Chester (Stella’s father) became the heir. Growing up, Alberta was absolutely beastly to him. As a child she would:
– Give her little brother a highly poisonous tarantula spider for Christmas.
– Collect rocks and dust them with icing sugar. Then give one to her younger brother to eat pretending it was a rock cake.
– Peg him to the washing line and let him dangle there all afternoon.
– Chop down a tree while he was climbing it.
– Play hide-and-seek with him. Alberta would let the boy hide and then she would go on holiday.
– Shove him in the lake when his back was turned feeding the ducks.
– Replace the candles on his birthday cake with sticks of dynamite.
– Swing him around the playroom by his ankles as fast as she could and then let go.
– Cut the brake cables on his bicycle.
– Force-feed him a bowl of live worms saying it was ‘special spaghetti’.
– During a snowball fight, cover cricket balls in ice then hurl them at him.
– Lock him in a wardrobe, and then push it down a flight of stairs.
– Put earwigs in his ears while he was sleeping so he would wake up screaming.
– Bury him up to his neck in sand at the beach, then leave him there as the tide came in.
Despite all this Chester was always kind to his sister. When Lord and Lady Saxby died and he eventually inherited Saxby Hall from his parents, he was determined to look after the old place as best he could. The new Lord Saxby loved the house as much as his parents always had. But because Chester was by nature such a generous man he gave the family’s huge treasure trove of silver and jewels to his sister Alberta.
Altogether it was worth thousands and thousands of pounds. However, within a short while, the woman had lost it all.
That’s because Alberta had a dangerous obsession.
Tiddlywinks.
It was a very popular game at the time. Tiddlywinks was played with a pot and different sized discs or ‘winks’.
The aim was to use your large wink, named a ‘squidger’, to propel as many of the smaller winks into the pot as you could. From childhood, Alberta would force Chester to play with her. To stop her hurling the pot of winks across the room if she lost, Chester would always let her win. Alberta was not only a very bad loser, she was also a cheat. As a child she created her own tiddlywinks moves, all of them completely against the rules:
‘Whipple-scrump’ – to eat your opponent’s squidger.
‘Gnash-gnosh’ – to bite your opponent’s hand while they try to play.
‘Knicker-knocker-glory’ – hiding all your opponent’s winks in your knickers.
‘Boom-shack-a-lack’ – to fire your winks into the pot with an air rifle.
‘Winkferno’ – to burn all your opponent’s winks.
‘Knee-thumper’ – to make the tiddlywinks table shake when it’s your opponent’s turn by bashing it with your knee.
‘Snatcheroo’ – when your opponent’s wink is in mid flight and a highly trained bird of prey catches it in its bill.
‘Sticky-wink’ – gluing your opponent’s winks to the table.
‘Gigantopot’ – when your opponent is not looking, replace the pot with one that is much taller making it impossible for them to fire any winks in.
‘Poot’ – to break wind on your opponent’s squidger, thus rendering it unusable for a short while.
One Christmas, Chester bought his big sister The Tiddlywinks Rulebook by Professor T. Wink. His hope was that together they could consult the rules, and her terrible cheating would cease. However, Alberta point-blank refused to even open the book. The Tiddlywinks Rulebook gathered dust on a shelf of the huge library of Saxby Hall.
Ever since she was a child, Alberta was ridiculously competitive. She had to win. Again and again and again.
“I am the best. B,E,E,S,T!” she would chant. Her spelling was always atrocious. However, this aggressive desire to conquer everyone else is what ended up costing her relatives