Witch's Business

  “Good morning,” said Biddy. “It’s nice to have some warmer weather, isn’t it?” She looked up at the branches of the willow tree, where powdery bright green buds were just beginning to show. “Yes,” she said. “We can allow it to be spring before long, don’t you agree, my dears?”

  Neither Frank nor Jess knew what to reply. The oddest thing about Biddy Iremonger was that she was educated. She had a sharp, learned voice, rather like Jess’s schoolteacher, which, when she spoke, made it very difficult to imagine her putting the evil eye on people—or, indeed, doing anything that was not just harmless and a little odd. So Jess and Frank nodded, and mumbled things about “nice day” and “no rain,” and Jess went on bravely to add, “There’s a bit of a wind, though.”

  “Not down here,” said Biddy. “This little nook is beautifully sheltered.”

  Then they all stood there without talking. The cockerel stalked to the edge of the roof and peered down at the Piries. The cat came slinking to the door and stared up. Biddy just waited, nodding, with a cheerful smile, as if she was sure they had just called to pass the time of day and would be going away any minute now.

  Frank and Jess very nearly did go. It seemed such a shame to bother this poor, silly old lady because the Adams girls had got it into their heads that she was a witch. It was only Jess’s strong sense of fairness that kept them there. Jess took hold of Frank’s sleeve, took a deep breath of the muggy air, and said, “We’re sorry to bother you, Miss Iremonger, but we wanted to speak to you about—about Jenny Adams.”

  “Oh, yes? What about her?” said Biddy, cheerfully and sharply.

  “Well,” said Jess, feeling very silly, “she—er—she can’t walk, you know.”

  Biddy shook her head at Jess and answered, quite kindly, “Now, my dear, that’s not really accurate, is it? She can walk quite well. I’ve seen her limping about rather nimbly, considering.”

  Jess felt so foolish that she hung her head down and could not say a word. Frank had to clear his throat and reply. “Yes, we know,” he said. “But her foot’s bad all the same, and she says you put the evil eye on her.” He felt this was such a monstrous thing to say to Biddy that his face and his eyes—even his hands—became all hot and fat as he said it.

  And Biddy nodded again. “Yes, my dear. She’s quite right. I did. I have it in for that family, you know.”

  Jess’s head came up. Frank went suddenly from hot and fat to cold and thin with horror, that anyone could talk as calmly and cheerfully as Biddy about a thing like that. “Why?” he said.

  “How unfair!” said Jess.

  “Not at all,” said Biddy. “One has one’s reasons. I have to get my Own Back, you know.”

  “But look here,” said Frank, “she’s only a little kid, and she’s had it for a year now. Couldn’t you take it off her?”

  “Please,” Jess added.

  Biddy, smiling and shaking her head, began shuffling back into her hut. “I’m sorry, my dears. It’s none of your business.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Jess. “It is our business—exactly. Please take it off.”

  Biddy stopped for a moment, in the doorway of her hut. “Then, if it is your business,” she said briskly, “I suggest you give me a wide berth, my dears. It would be wisest. Because, I assure you, Jenny Adams is not likely to walk freely until she has her heirloom in her hands. Which, in plain language, is never. So I suggest you leave the matter there.”

  Biddy shut the door of her hut in their faces with a brisk snap, and left Frank and Jess staring at each other.

  THREE

  The first thing they did was to get themselves out of Biddy’s bare patch and back to the path again. There, halfway to the footbridge, Jess stopped.

  “How awful!” she said. “How terrible! Oh, Frank, Biddy Iremonger must be quite, quite mad after all. She ought to be put in a Home.”

  Frank did nothing but mumble. His skin was up in goose pimples all over, and he did not trust himself to speak. All he wanted to do was to go away quickly. He hurried on along the path toward the bridge.

  Jess followed him, saying, “Of course, she may have been having us on. Mummy says she’s got a strange sense of humor.”

  Frank again said nothing. It seemed plain enough to him that Biddy had meant what she said, and if Biddy believed herself to be a witch, he could hardly blame the Adams girls for thinking so, too. Mad or not, it did not seem to matter. Perhaps witches were mad, anyway. What did matter was what they were going to tell Frankie and Jenny, because it looked as if Own Back had let them down. He was wondering just what they would say when Jess grabbed at his arm.

  “Oh, dear! Listen, Frank.”

  There were voices, distant, but getting nearer, loud and crude, and the sound of wheels and sticks. Buster Knell and his gang were in the field on the other side of the river somewhere. Jess and Frank bundled along to where the bridge began. The river took a bend here, which allowed you to look up along the opposite bank. There they could see the gang coming along the bank toward the bridge in a noisy group, about twenty yards above Biddy’s hut. They could hear, not clearly, slimy and disemboweled language.

  Frank slid quickly down the bank beside the bridge, where there was a tiny beach of gravel. He was hidden there by a bush and some newly sprouting flags, but he could see Buster and the gang. Jess hesitated, then followed him. They crouched side by side, watching the gang come nearer.

  “But it’s all right,” said Jess. “They’ll not dare lay a finger on you, Frank, after Wilkins’s tooth.”

  “That’s what you think,” said Frank. “I’m not taking any chances.”

  “They’ll come over the bridge, though,” said Jess. “Hadn’t we better go across first? Otherwise, they’ll be between us and the Adamses’ house, and then we’ll have to go back past Biddy’s hut and I don’t think I can bear to.”

  “Shut up,” said Frank. “I bet the Adams kids went past it. If they can, you can.”

  “Between the devil and the deep blue Buster,” said Jess. “Oh, dear!”

  To their intense relief, the gang turned aside when they were about ten yards off, and went calling and cursing and splashing down into the river. It seemed they were going to ford it. Maybe it was more manly or more exciting, or both, that way. Jess and Frank waited agonizingly, until the smallest boy, in the last go-cart, had been, with cursing and tremendous difficulty, lugged through the water and onto the bank out of sight. Then they stood up and sprinted over the bridge and out into the field beyond. Halfway to the bare, lonely Adams house, they looked back. The gang appeared not to have noticed them. They were milling about in the bushes and rubbish just above Biddy’s hut, and no one was looking their way. Rather nervously, Frank and Jess followed the path over to the peeling door in the side of the cheese-colored house, and knocked.

  The door was opened, after a lot of hollow-sounding treading about, by a thin, tall, vague-looking lady in a dangling smock. Jess at first thought the lady was covered with blood. Then she saw it was only paint. There was paint on the lady’s hands, too—so much that the lady did not seem to be able to touch the cigarette she had in her mouth. She talked round it, through puffs of smoke, and the cigarette wagged.

  “What do you kids want, eh? No jobs going, I’m afraid. Bohemian household and all that.”

  “Could we see Frankie and Jenny, please?” asked Jess.

  “Oh, yes. Sure. This way.” The lady left the door open and simply walked away inside the house. Frank and Jess, a little doubtfully, stepped inside and followed her down a cold stone passage smelling of mildew and lamp oil. They could not tell which smell was the strongest. Jess thought mildew and did not wonder that Jenny had rheumatism. Frank thought lamp oil. There seemed to be no electricity in the house.

  The lady pushed open a door. “Frankie. Friends for you,” she said. Then, with her cigarette still untouched and wagging, she went off into another room. Before the door to it shut, Frank glimpsed an easel, with a painting on it.


  The two little girls were in a small room that smelled, distinctly, more of mildew than of oil. There were toys about, so it must have been a playroom. But it was, Jess thought, almost as cheerless as the potting shed, and certainly as dark. The reason for the darkness was that outside the window stood a great wooden mill wheel, so old that grass grew on it in clumps, and so big that very little light got past it into the room.

  Frankie bounded to meet them, looking so excited that Jess felt mean. “What happened? What did you do to her?”

  “Nothing yet,” Jess said awkwardly.

  Frankie just looked at her, with her great big famine eyes. Jenny, who was crouched up on the windowsill, said, “I knew you wouldn’t. Nobody dares to.” She was not jeering. She just said it as a matter of fact, rather sadly. She made Frank feel terrible—even worse than Jess was feeling.

  “This is—this is a sort of progress report,” he said. “We saw her, and she said she wouldn’t take it off you. That’s as far as we’ve got.”

  Frankie leaned forward, with her eyes bigger than ever. “Then go on and do something awful to her. Now you know.”

  “At least you didn’t let her deceive you,” said Jenny. “Lots of people won’t believe she’s a witch, but that’s just because she looks jolly and they think she’s joking.”

  “But she isn’t joking,” said Frankie. “She’s wicked. Really.”

  Somehow, now they had talked to Biddy, Jess and Frank found this easier to believe. Jess still knew, somewhere in the back of her head, that Biddy must simply be mad, but she did not know it strongly enough to say so. All she said was “Yes, I know. She said she’s got it in for your family.”

  Both little girls nodded. “Yes, she has,” Frankie said. “So now do something.”

  “All right,” said Frank, “but”—he hesitated, and then said, in a rush, in a rather official-sounding voice, because he felt so mean—“but we’ve got to do it on conditions, because we can’t take your sovereign.”

  The little girls stared. “Why not?” said Jenny. “It’s worth much more than a pound.”

  Jess saw the point. She shook her head firmly. “It’s not legal tender,” she said. She was not quite sure what that meant, but she was sure it was the right phrase, and it sounded beautifully official. Frankie and Jenny were impressed by it and stared mournfully at her.

  “So we’ll do something to Biddy,” Frank went on pompously, although he was out in goose pimples again at the mere idea, “if you promise us to stop calling names after—what’s his name, Jess?”

  “Martin Taylor,” said Jess.

  “Who?” said Jenny.

  “Ginger,” said Frank. “Up at the big house. You know.”

  “Oh, him!” Frankie stuck her head up.

  Jenny leaned forward indignantly and nearly overbalanced from the windowsill. “We hate him. He’s horrible. He lives in our house. It should be our house, but he lives there just because we haven’t got any money anymore.”

  “We’re going to drive him out,” said Frankie.

  “Don’t be silly,” said Jess. “You can’t drive him out, because it’s his parents, not him, the house belongs to. He can’t help living there. It’s not fair to go calling him names. He isn’t allowed to hit girls.”

  Jenny grinned. She looked like a wicked elf thing, all curled up on the windowsill. “We know he can’t,” she said.

  “He calls us names, too,” said Frankie. “And we’re not going to stop. So there.”

  Jess immediately marched away to the damp door. “All right. Then we’re not going to do anything to Biddy. We wouldn’t touch her with a barge pole. So there.”

  There was a painful silence. Jess opened the door and tried to go through it slowly, without looking as if she was waiting. Frank loitered after her. Still neither of the little girls said anything. Frank and Jess had gone most of the length of the stone passage before there was any sound at all. Then, suddenly, behind them, they heard rapid footsteps—light, heavy, light, heavy. Jenny, down from the windowsill, was following them as hard as she could go.

  She ran up to Jess, seized her hand, and smiled up at her. When she smiled, Jess thought, Jenny looked almost as sweet as Vernon’s littlest sister. “Please,” Jenny said. “Please, Jessica Pirie, do something to Biddy and I’ll promise anything.” Then her face became all stiff and famine seeming. “Make her die, so that my foot can be better again.” Great huge tears came streaming down her cheeks.

  Frankie came up without a word, put her arm round Jenny, and led her back to the playroom again. Jess and Frank followed, feeling mean and big.

  Jess said, “I don’t think it would work, making her die. She’d not be able to take it off then. She said—” Jess looked at Frank. It had been nasty, the way Biddy had said never.

  Frank shivered. “Jenny,” he asked. “What’s your heirloom? Or don’t you know?”

  Frankie answered, because Jenny had her odd apron to her face and was giving out shuddering sniffs into it. “It’s an emerald necklace,” she said. “Mine’s diamonds. Only it went. All the things went.”

  “Went where?” said Jess.

  Jenny shook her covered face. “Don’t know. They went. Mother went, too.” She gave a big muffled yell, and the whole of her shook.

  Frank fidgeted. Everything about these little girls seemed odder every second. He felt he could hardly bear another minute in that gloomy room with the big wheel blocking the window. “Well, the best thing would be to get it back,” he said, “but if you can’t, we’ll have to think of something else to do to her.”

  “Make her break her leg,” said Frankie.

  “Or something,” Jess said, as cheerfully as she could. “We’ll do something, provided you stop calling after Martin Taylor.”

  “All right,” Frankie agreed. “We’ll stop, then. It’s worth it, isn’t it, Jenny?”

  Jenny, with her face still covered, nodded violently.

  Jess and Frank escaped from the damp house and went home by the road, in the hurling wind. They were so relieved to be outside again that Jess sang and whirled her arms as they went.

  “At least we’ve fixed Martin,” she said.

  “For no money,” Frank said. “Isn’t that paint lady their mother, then?”

  “No. She’s their aunt,” said Jess. “But Daddy knows Mr. Adams. He’s a bit strange, too. Frank, let’s put Biddy off and stay closed for today. I’ve had enough of Own Back for now.”

  “I’ve had so much enough,” said Frank, “that I wouldn’t mind closing down for good.”

  “We’ll do that,” said Jess. “We’ll just polish off this bit of business, and then we’ll close down.”

  FOUR

  The next morning, Frank and Jess were in the potting shed discussing what to do about Biddy. While they talked, Jess carefully wrote out a very elaborate curly notice, which was to read CLOSED FOR GOOD. She had so far only got to FOR, and neither of them could think what to do to Biddy.

  “An eye for an eye,” said Frank. “What about a foot for a foot? Suppose I went and stamped on her toe?”

  “She might turn you purple,” said Jess. “She might even be a witch. What did they use to do to witches in the olden days?”

  “Duck them in a pond,” said Frank. “Could we push her in the river?”

  “Flop,” said Jess. “Squelch. She’d lose her glasses. And she’d be mad, Frank.”

  “I thought you said she was, anyway,” Frank was saying, when there was a hurried dull thumping on the path outside and the window of the shed was darkened.

  “Martin Taylor!” Jess sprang up eagerly and hastened to the window. “At least we can tell him he’s all right,” she said as she pushed it open.

  But Martin, it seemed, had not come for his Own Back. He leaned down from his pony to look in the window, and they could tell by his face that something or other was wrong. “Can you two come to the Lodge?” he said. “Vernon’s waiting there. He’ll explain. But we thought you ought to see Silas.?
??

  “See Silas!” said Jess. “Whatever for?”

  “Oh, I can’t explain,” Martin said. “Just come and see.” And before they could ask him more, he was gone again, with a further swift thumping and a scatter of cinders.

  Frank and Jess looked at each other, mystified, but rather appalled, too. If they had known Martin better, they might have thought he was having them on; but he was nearly a perfect stranger, and the way he had talked was as if he were too upset about whatever it was to tell them about it. So, after a second, Frank muttered that he supposed they had better go and see. Jess simply put up the AWAY notice instead of the CLOSED notice and they went to get their bikes.

  When they came within sight of the big iron gates, Martin was standing outside with Vernon. The way they both stood was dejected and anxious, and the way Vernon dashed up and seized Jess’s handlebars was almost angry, too.

  “What did you do with that tooth?” he said. “Give it to Buster?”

  “Yes,” said Jess, and Frank added, “And you needn’t eat us.”

  “Then Buster was telling the truth,” Martin said to Vernon. It was clear they were both too worried to bother to quarrel with the Piries.

  “I knew he was,” said Vernon. He turned to Frank and Jess. “You come and take a look at Silas,” he said. “Buster said to me he give the tooth to Biddy Iremonger to give me face-ache. You come and see.” And, as soon as Frank and Jess had leaned their bikes against the gates, he led them to the Lodge. At the door, he jerked his head to Martin. “Go and talk to my mum,” he said. “If she sees them, she’ll throw them out.” The haughty Martin, rather to Frank’s surprise, went into the Lodge without a word. As Vernon beckoned them to follow him also, they could hear Martin saying something quite near, and Mrs. Wilkins answering, rather crossly, “How you think I do it today, Martin, with Silas sick in bed?”