Which Witch?

  Terence was possibly the ugliest little boy that Belladonna had ever seen, but now his face was shining like an archangel’s. ‘He’s better! He’s all right again! You healed him! Oh, Rover, you’re fine again, you’re better than before!’ He looked up at Belladonna. ‘Only you didn’t give him any medicine or anything. Are you a vet, then?’ But his face was puzzled because he had seen vets and they did not look like Belladonna.

  ‘Well, not exactly, ’ s a id Belladonna. ‘But sometimes I can—’ She broke off and flinched. Quite the most unpleasant voice she had ever heard was coming at her from the top of the steps.

  ‘Where is that dratted boy,’ it whined. ‘Skulking in the garden again! Really, I don’t know why they bothered to fish him out of the telephone kiosk, he’s been nothing but trouble since the day he arrived.’

  The unpleasant voice belonged to a tall, bony woman with a yellowish skin and a nose you could have cut cheese with.

  ‘It’s Matron,’ whispered Terence and drew closer to Belladonna.

  ‘Oh there you are, you wretched boy! Well, come in at once or you’ll have no lunch. And if you’ve still got that slimy worm I’m going to flush him down the lavatory, And you after him!’

  She began to charge down the steps, and Belladonna could feel Terence shrinking beside her. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Please. I’ll put him away.’

  Matron took no notice at all. She had reached the bottom step and was coming at them along the gravel path. ‘As for you,’ she said, glaring at Belladonna, ‘I’d like to know what you’re doing, trespassing in a private garden.’

  ‘Will you take him?’ Terence whispered.

  Belladonna nodded and slipped Rover into her hand. Then she put her arm round Terence’s shoulders. And as she felt the shivers that shook his thin little frame, a great anger shot through her. Belladonna was almost never angry, but she was angry now. Very angry.

  Belladonna closed her eyes. She took a deep breath. And then she called on a god that white witches do not usually call on. ‘Oh, great Cernunnos, you Horned One, please help me halt this revolting woman!’

  Matron was coming closer. Closer still . . . Then suddenly she stumbled and looked back at her left foot. She tugged at it. She pulled. Nothing happened. Matron’s left foot would not move.

  ‘Oh!’ gasped Terence. ‘Look!’

  A little bulge had appeared at the tip of Matron’s left shoe. Then the leather burst open and a green root appeared and began to snake along the ground and bury itself in the soil. From the side of the shoe came another root, and another . . . The roots grew thicker and stronger; gnarled they were now, like the roots of an ancient beech and always pushing down, down into the ground.

  ‘Help!’ shrieked Matron. ‘Help! Eek!’

  It was happening to the other foot now. From her heels, her toes, her ankles, her knobbly knees . . . Roots that began soft and green and became thicker and more twisted as they grew downwards; roots like great creepers, like ropes – and all tethering Matron as if with bands of steel to the ground.

  ‘Help!’ shrieked Matron again. But no one heard her and now the roots were coming out of her waist, her arms . . . And then she could shriek no more because a tendril had sprung out of her upper lip and was snaking down towards the ground, closing her mouth as firmly as a trap.

  ‘Oh!’ said Terence once again. He was still nestling against her skirt, but when Belladonna looked down she saw that he wasn’t frightened, just amazed. ‘You did it!’ said Terence, ‘I know you did it. You’re magic, aren’t you? You’re a witch!’

  Belladonna nodded. She too, was very much excited, because rooting people to the ground is magic all right but it is not really very white. Rooting a begonia or a cabbage or a clump of wallflowers is white because begonias and cabbages and clumps of wallflowers like to have roots and cannot live without them. But rooting Matrons is a different matter. If it wasn’t actually black magic, it was certainly fairly grey, and Belladonna’s eyes were shining as she looked at Terence.

  ‘You’ve brought me luck,’ she said. ‘You and Rover. That’s the blackest thing I’ve done, ever.’

  ‘You mean you usually do white magic, like healing people and so on?’ said Terence. It struck Belladonna that he seemed to have a natural feeling for magic and not to show any of the fears one would expect in so nervous a boy. ‘But do you want to be black?’

  ‘Yes I do. I do terribly, ’ said Belladonna. And she explained about the competition and Arriman. She was too shy to tell Terence that she loved Arriman, but she thought he had probably guessed. He was that kind of little boy. Suddenly a thought struck her. ‘Terence, you don’t think . . .’ She looked down at the worm, now distinctly perky and inclined to tie himself into knots round her finger. ‘You don’t think that Rover . . . that he might be a familiar. I never had one, you know. The other witches did, but I didn’t. Do you think,’ – Belladonna was growing very excited now – ‘do you think it was because I was holding Rover that I managed to root Matron?’

  ‘It might be.’ Terence was as excited as she was. ‘Only I thought familiars were usually black cats and hares and goats and things?’

  ‘Oh, no.’ And Belladonna explained about the octopus called Doris, and Madame Olympia’s aardvark and the Cloud of Flies.

  ‘He’s so little,’ said Terence. There was a pause, broken only by a furious, suffocated grunt from Matron, up whose legs a large black spider was steadily marching. ‘But if he has helped you,’ Terence went on bravely, ‘then you must have him. Take him with you so’s you win the competition.’

  Belladonna was incredibly touched.

  ‘I couldn’t, Terence. I couldn’t separate you two. You belong together. Anyway, I haven’t a hope of winning the competition even so.’

  But Terence now was clutching her arm and looking up at her, his eyes pleading.

  ‘If you couldn’t separate us, couldn’t you . . . Oh, please, please couldn’t you take me with you? Witches have servants, I know they do. Imps and . . . fiends and things. I’d do anything for you, anything.’

  ‘Oh, Terence, I’d love to, but how can I? I’m staying in this posh hotel and they’d never let you come. And anyway, witches don’t really mix with ordinary people, you know. It never comes right.’

  But her voice trailed away as she said it, for what was ‘right’ for Terence about the Sunnydene Children’s Home? And what would happen to him when Matron stopped being rooted? Belladonna had absolutely no idea how long the spell would last and the glitter in Matron’s eye as she tugged uselessly at her roots boded extremely ill for Terence.

  Terence did not say anything. He just stood there, dejected and beaten, but still holding out to her his worm.

  ‘Oh, heck,’ said Belladonna suddenly, making up her mind. ‘Let’s just do it. It may come right.’

  She climbed over the low wall and turned, stretching out a hand to Terence. Then, followed by the strangled grunts of the rooted Matron, they ran together down the road.

  Six

  When Belladonna got back to the hotel, she took Terence straight to the Manager’s office to see Mr Leadbetter and the ogre.

  She found them in a bad way. There had been a row about Ethel Feedbag’s pig, which was not housetrained, and when the Manager complained, Ethel (who had not been well brought up) said, ‘Oh, go and teach your grandmother to suck eggs!’ Unfortunately she had been clutching her hazel wand at the time and the next moment the Manager found himself in a Nursing Home in Bexhill-on-Sea holding out a raw egg to his mother’s mother, a frail old lady who had been looking forward to her morning Bovril and was very much annoyed.

  The muddle had taken a long time to clear up and then it was discovered that Mother Bloodwort, who had been riding up and down in the hotel lift all morning, had got jammed between floors. Trying to remember the spell for making things go up in the air, she had got mixed up and become a coffee table once again, and since coffee tables cannot press Emergency Buttons, she had caused a great deal of troubl
e to the engineers.

  But when they saw Belladonna, the secretary and the ogre both cheered up and greeted Terence most politely .

  Belladonna lost no time in explaining about Terence and the horrible Home. ‘And he’s brought this absolutely marvellous familiar!’ she went on. ‘He made me able to do a really quite black thing. Me!’

  The ogre and Mr Leadbetter looked round the room, wondering if they had missed a stampeding bufflalo or a wolverine with slavering fangs, but all they could see was a small and skinny boy, his gaze fixed wonderingly on the ogre’s single eye.

  ‘Show them, Terence,’ said Belladonna.

  So Terence felt in his pocket and lifted out Rover and put him carefully down on Mr Leadbetter’s blotter. The secretary and the ogre bent over him and their hearts sank. A small, pale worm whose bristles as he crawled across the paper made a delicate soughing noise like autumn leaves stirred by the softest of winds. And for a moment they’d really hoped!

  ‘Shall I try the typewriter?’ said Belladonna eagerly. ‘ Like you wanted me to yesterday? A nest of vipers, wasn’t it? Come on, Terence.’

  So Terence picked up Rover and stood beside her and Belladonna rested her fingertips lightly on the little worm’s mauve and slightly bulgy middle and closed her eyes. And, lo and behold, the typewriter vanished with a puff and there on the desk was a writhing mass of hissing vipers with darting tongues and slitty, yellow eyes.

  ‘Poor little things,’ said Belladonna, forgetting her blackness for a moment. ‘They look awfully dry. ’

  ‘Vipers is born dry, ’ said Lester, ‘so don’t you go fretting yourself.’

  But the look he exchanged with Mr Leadbetter was eager and excited. If Belladonna could get black so quickly, there was hope yet!

  ‘Amazing!’ said Mr Leadbetter. He looked at Rover again to see if he had missed anything: a hidden poison sac, a lethal sting – but the worm now crawling peaceably up Terence’s sleeve was exactly what he seemed: gentle, modest and moist.

  ‘So I was wondering,’ said Belladonna, putting her arm round Terence’s shoulder, ‘if Terence could possibly stay for a bit? Rover belongs to him and though he offered to give him to me, I just couldn’t take him away.’

  Mr Leadbetter looked worried. What would the Manager say to another guest? And what about the other witches? Would it start an absolute avalanche of witch friends and relations coming to stay at the hotel? Fishy little Wracks and quarrelling Shouter cousins and small Feedbags in nasty Wellington boots?

  Terence said nothing. He just stood there, waiting. He was not a boy who had ever hoped for much.

  Mr Leadbetter cleared his throat. ‘It so happens,’ he began, ‘that I have a sister. Amelia, her name is. Amelia Leadbetter.’

  The ogre and Belladonna looked at him anxiously. They knew how hard he had been working and that overwork can drive people a little mad.

  ‘She didn’t, in fact, marry, ’ Mr Leadbetter went on. ‘But she might have done. There was a swimming bath attendant who was very fond of her.’

  The others waited.

  ‘I’m not saying that the swimming bath attendant was called Mugg,’ the secretary went on, ‘because he wasn’t. His name, actually, was Arthur Hurtleypool. I remember it because jokes were made about hurtleying into the pool, that kind of thing. Still, if he had been called Mugg and if he had married my sister Amelia and if the marriage had been blessed with a son, then this son,’ finished the secretary, ‘would undoubtedly have been my nephew.’

  ‘Your nephew, Terence!’ said Belladonna, seeing the light.

  ‘Precisely. And what more natural than that my sister, Amelia, having to go into hospital to have her appendix out, should send Terence to stay with me?’

  ‘Oh, Mr Leadbetter, you’re wonderful,’ cried Belladonna, throwing her arms round the secretary, a thing he very much enjoyed.

  Terence looked as though he’d swallowed a lighted candle. But when he spoke it was to say haltingly, ‘ If I was your nephew shouldn’t I have . . .’ He was too shy to finish, but his eyes went to the back of Mr Leadbetter and lingered there. The secretary was a modest man, so much so that he usually wore his stump inside his trousers, but Terence was a boy who noticed things.

  ‘A tail?’ said Mr Leadbetter.

  Terence nodded.

  ‘I could make him a little one,’ said Belladonna. ‘Even without Rover. Making tails is growing magic and there’s nothing whiter than that. But I don’t know . . . I feel Terence is sort of perfect as he is.’

  Terence looked up quickly. Surely Belladonna was mocking him? But no – her periwinkle eyes were very clear and very loving as she looked at him and he had to turn away because a lump had come up in his throat.

  ‘Quite honestly, Terence,’ said Mr Leadbetter, ‘if you can manage without one, it would be better. There is, you see, the problem of sitting down. And my sister Amelia – your mother that would be – was perfectly tail-less, as far as I recall.’

  Terence didn’t keep on about it after that. To be able to be near Belladonna, to know that his worm might help her to gain her heart’s desire, was happiness enough. Only someone really greedy and undisciplined would also expect a tail.

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing, though,’ said Lester. ‘I wouldn’t say anything about Rover being such a powerful familiar. I’d let Terence look after Rover and pretend he was just a pet, that’s what I’d do. If it gets round that Rover’s giving Belladonna even half a chance of winning the competition, I wouldn’t give a fig for his chances.’

  ‘Oh, no, surely, no one would hurt an innocent worm like that!’ said Belladonna.

  ‘Now, Belladonna, try thinking black as well as acting it. There’s already been some hanky panky with Doris. Lurching about the bath she was, drunk as a lord and a nasty pea green colour with it – and Miss Wrack saying Doris never touched a drop and someone must have forced it down her throat.’

  ‘Oh, poor Doris – is she all right now?’ cried Belladonna.

  ‘Well, it seems she’d been on the bath salts. But it just shows,’ said Lester darkly. ‘I wouldn’t trust any of those witches as far as I could throw them, let alone that Madame Olympia.’

  A chill spread round the room as they remembered the enchantress’s cruel smile and the necklace of human teeth.

  ‘And what about those Shouter chickens? You know how they follow you about. One peck at Rover and you’ll be back to bloomin’ begonias,’ the ogre went on.

  Belladonna saw the sense of this. ‘They wouldn’t mean to, of course; they’d feel dreadful afterwards, but all the same . . .’ She turned to Terence. ‘All right, you shall be Rover’s bodyguard and keep him, and when I want to do some magic you can come over and stand beside me and I’ll touch Rover without anyone seeing.’

  ‘That’s the ticket,’ said the ogre.

  It was decided that Terence should sleep on a camp bed in Mr Leadbetter’s room and make himself useful generally until it was time to go to Darkington, and when Belladonna had turned the vipers back into a typewriter again, she and Terence went to wash their hands for lunch.

  In the afternoon, Mr Leadbetter took the witches to a big department store called Turnbull and Buttle to buy the long, black gowns and hoods that they were to wear for the competition. He had hoped to have Lester to help him, but Arriman had sent for the ogre, spiriting him away just as he was about to lift a spoonful of banana fritter to his mouth and it was Mr Leadbetter alone who had to shepherd the witches up to the third floor and stop Mabel Wrack from leaping on to the fish slab and return the cigarettes that had mysteriously flown through the air into the handbags of the Shouter twins and explain to the young man behind the glove counter that he couldn’t immediately marry Belladonna.

  Fortunately the gowns were waiting for them: black ones with hoods like schoolteachers used to wear, and long enough to reach right down to the ground and cover Mother Bloodwort’s slippers and Ethel Feedbag’s wellies, so that with the black carnival masks which Turnbull and Buttle
had ordered specially, t here really was no way of telling which witch was which.

  But when it came to Madame Olympia’s turn to try on her gown, she made a nasty scene. All day, the enchantress had kept snootily to her room, insisting that meals be sent up to her, ordering incredible delicacies for the aardvark and putting out seventeen pairs of shoes for the poor boot-boy to clean.

  Now she looked at her plain cotton gown and said:

  ‘Are you out of your mind? Do you imagine I can perform magic in that rag!’

  ‘I’m afraid all the witches have to be dressed alike,’ said Mr Leadbetter. ‘It’s one of the rules of the competition.’

  ‘Then the rules must be broken,’ said the enchantress, fixing Mr Leadbetter with an evil and glittering eye.

  It is impossible to say what would have happened next, but just at that moment Mother Bloodwort, who had been resting on a low gilt chair, gave a shriek of excitement.

  ‘It’s me toe! Me big toe! It’s happened. I can feel it!’

  Belladonna put down her gown and hurried over to her. ‘What has, Mother Bloodwort?’

  ‘It’s my turning-myself-young-again spell! I’ve been working on it all week and just now me big toe gave this splutter. More of a spurt it was, really. Like a spring chicken it felt, rearin’ to go.’

  She began to scrabble under her musty skirt, removed her stockings, shook off a couple of the small, grey bandages which clung like dead mice round her ankles and stuck her naked foot into the air.

  The stunned shop assistants drew closer; the witches clustered round.

  ‘It is . . . pinker than the others, I’m almost sure,’ said Belladonna at last. ‘And sort of . . . fuller-looking.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Nancy Shouter. ‘It’s exactly like the others and nasty with it.’

  ‘You’ve made the whole thing up,’ said Mabel Wrack, pursing her cod-like lips.

  ‘And your toenails need cutting.’