Witch's Business

  Then, quite unexpectedly, everything was quiet. Jess propped herself against the drums and found Stafford backing away, looking sheepish. The heap of boys beyond was opening. Someone was peeling people off in layers. Jess saw it was a tall, vague-looking man. When she looked at him, he had Buster in one hand and Martin in the other, but he tossed them away, bent down and fished again in the heap, quite absentmindedly. He came up with Vernon and put him on one side. The two boys next scrambled up for themselves and backed away. Frank surged up to one side of Buster.

  “Oh, thank you!” said Jess to the man.

  FIVE

  It was plain that Biddy Iremonger was extremely displeased. She wrapped her sack about her, pushed her face forward in a peering, snaky way, and shuffled out from her hut toward the man.

  “What did you have to go and turn up for?” she demanded.

  The man gave her a vague, pleasant look. “I brought the books you wanted,” he said. “They’re on the drum there.”

  “Then go away,” said Biddy.

  “In a minute,” answered the man. “We’ll just settle this roughhouse first, shall we?” He turned to Buster and his gang, who were standing glowering to one side of him. “Beat it,” he said. “Go on. There are at least twice as many of you. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, you little cowards. If I catch you at it again, I’ll teach you something you won’t forget easily. Now beat it. And drop those sticks.”

  Sulkily, the gang cast down its sticks and moved off between the oil drums in a hunched and angry group. They loitered heavily up the path, until they reached the big bramble bush that hid the hut from the allotments. There, defiantly, they stopped. The man took no notice of them. He turned to Vernon.

  “And you,” he said. “You lot get out, too. I can’t have you disturbing Miss Iremonger like this.”

  Vernon nodded and went out through the gap in the drums. Martin and Frank followed him. Jess, before she went, too, tried to say thank you again. The man stopped her by absentmindedly patting her head.

  “Go on, little girl,” he said.

  Jess, rather indignantly, followed the boys. Because the gang was on the path to the allotments, they had to turn the other way, toward the river and the footbridge. The man waited in the gap in the oil drums until they were nearly at the bridge. Buster glowered, but he could do nothing about it. He just had to watch Vernon, Martin, Frank, and then Jess go out across the bridge and make for the safety of the field beyond. As they crossed the bridge, Jess saw the man turn back into the bare patch to talk to Biddy. As he could still see them, Buster and his gang were helpless. The other four were able to hurry out into the very middle of the field beyond the river, where the wind took them and flapped them about.

  There Vernon’s nose suddenly burst out bleeding. They had to stop and sit on the grass, while Vernon lay on his back soaking all their handkerchiefs in blood, and sprinkling more blood over a nearby clump of cowslips. They were all glad to sit down. Jess’s knees were shaking. Frank was bruised all over, and Martin’s lip was cut. Frank and Martin tried to explain why they had been unable to get into the hut.

  “But it wasn’t electrified,” Martin kept saying. “There were no wires.”

  “Should have thought of it,” said Vernon through Jess’s handkerchief. “Seeing she’s a witch. Did you see that paint can miss her? And it was dead for her. I got good aim.”

  “And miss Buster,” said Jess, “at point-blank range, too. They must have come creeping up awfully quietly. I’d no idea they were even near.”

  Frank looked at Martin, because he had an idea there was more to it than that. Martin shrugged his shoulders, as if he gave it up. “But did you hear us?” Frank asked. “We both crashed against the hut like elephants.”

  “No,” said Jess. “Not a thing. I couldn’t think what you were doing.” After that, they all sat very quietly, gloomily pulling up grass, shivering a little in the strong wind, until Jess looked up and said, “But what shall we do about Silas? This has been an awful failure, and I can’t bear to think of his poor face all tight and shiny like that!”

  “Hurts him, too,” said Vernon, from under Frank’s handkerchief. “What was she on about tailors for? Would that do any good to understand?”

  “Haven’t the foggiest,” said Martin. “Except I know the saying. Elizabeth the First once made a joke about it. It’s ‘Nine tailors make a man.’ I get ragged about it at school—that’s how I know, actually.” He gave Frank a look which was half ashamed, half daring him to joke about it.

  Frank did not feel like joking. “But, if that’s right, then she meant Buster gave her nine men to do the tooth! He can’t have done!”

  “How many in the gang?” Jess said, struck by an awful thought.

  “Never counted,” said Vernon, reaching for Martin’s handkerchief.

  “More than nine,” said Frank. “There always seems hundreds.”

  Jess was running over people who had been by the hut. She did not know all the names. She had to do it by saying to herself, “Buster, Stafford, Squeaky Voice, Little Eyes, the one with torn trousers, the little glarey one, the one who imitates Buster, the one with black hair, the very fair one—Do you know, Frank, I think there were nine this morning.”

  “Accident,” said Frank uncomfortably. “Not even Buster would do that.”

  “If he did,” said Vernon, sitting up cautiously, with all the handkerchiefs held ready, “then we can’t equal it. There’s only four of us, and I’m not using Silas again.”

  “Kate Matthews might,” said Jess. “As a special favor.”

  “Still only five,” Martin said. “And Kate wouldn’t. She’s the silliest girl I’ve ever met, and I know she’d be scared.”

  Jess was about to defend Kate when Frank said, “So am I scared. We all should be. Haven’t you heard what happens to people who sell themselves to evil?”

  Jess nodded. “They flourish for a while, but on their deathbeds, evil comes knocking for them and carries them away despite their shrieks. Oh, Frank! Not even Buster would be so stupid!”

  “Why not?” asked Martin. “We were considering it.”

  This made them all quiet again. Jess had a feeling that Frank had managed to pull them away from the edge of a steepling—or was it yawning?—abyss. She gave him a grateful look, but Frank just looked worried.

  “So what do we do?” Vernon said at last.

  “Jenny’s heirloom!” said Jess.

  “What about it?” said Frank.

  Jess knelt up and tried to explain. “She said Jenny will limp until she finds it. Then she got mad with me and Vernon, and added Silas to it. So neither of them will get better till it’s found. Which means we’d better find it.”

  “But she meant never,” Frank objected.

  “I know. She thought ‘never.’ But we mustn’t let it be never. We must do her down by finding it. I vote we go and ask Jenny more about it.”

  Vernon got up at once, saying, “Let’s go now.” Martin, however, muttered, “Oh, no!” and stayed where he was.

  “It’s all right,” said Frank. “Honestly. They agreed to stop, provided we did something to Biddy. And this is something.”

  “But they’re such little creeps,” said Martin, with his face bunched up.

  “Martin,” said Vernon, “you come along and don’t be so silly. No one told me not to hit girls.”

  Martin, to Frank’s relief, got up grudgingly and set off with them across the field to the Adams’s great bare house. They were beside the cheese-colored wall, when Jess suddenly clapped her hand to her mouth and said, “Oh, good heavens!”

  “What?” said Frank.

  “It’s all right. I got your handkerchief,” said Vernon.

  “No!” said Jess. “Oh, dear! I’ve just remembered who that odd man is who rescued us from Buster. He’s their father—Mr. Adams!”

  “Christmas!” said Martin. Vernon stared at Jess with his eyes getting bigger and bigger.

  “Really
,” said Jess.

  “I get you,” said Vernon. “Some tie-up, isn’t there? Shall we not ask?”

  “I think we’d better,” said Frank. “It seems the only way to cure Silas.”

  Very subdued, they went in a group over to the peeling door, and Frank knocked. After the same amount of hollow thumping about inside as before, the door was opened by the same tall, vague lady, who might have had the same cigarette in her mouth for all Jess could tell. At any rate, it looked the same, and wagged in the same way when the lady spoke.

  “Wanting Frankie again?” she said. “I think they’re in. More of you this time, aren’t there? Seems a wider palette,” said the Aunt, looking from Vernon’s black face and blood-spotted sweater to Martin’s red hair. “Quite decorative,” she said, leaving the door open as before and walking away inside. “Red, black, and two fair ones,” they heard her say from down the passage. “And bloodstains to tie it all in.”

  Vernon and Martin hesitated. “She means go in,” Frank whispered. He saw what the Aunt meant about bloodstains. Vernon had bled on Jess’s coat, and there was more blood on Frank’s leg, which he rather thought was his own, not Vernon’s, but he did not at all mind if it were someone else’s. He hoped it was Stafford’s.

  Jess led them inside, after the Aunt. Now that it seemed that Mr. Adams might be a friend of Biddy’s, the damp smell struck her as very sinister indeed. She wondered if the Aunt was sinister, too, and when they found her waiting outside the playroom door, Jess was fairly sure that she was. The cigarette wagged as the Aunt looked them over again.

  “You know,” she said, “you four make a very pretty composition indeed. D’ you think your parents would object if I tried to get you on canvas?”

  “Oh, very much,” said Jess at once. “They’d hate it.”

  “Don’t be daft!” said Frank. “They’d love it.”

  “Okay,” said the Aunt. “Come in here, then.” She walked into the room where the easel was and stood waiting for them to follow.

  “They’ve got very strong objections,” Jess said desperately. “Religious ones. And—and Vernon belongs to an Eastern religion that doesn’t allow him even to be photographed.”

  “I do not,” said Vernon, looking rather scandalized. “But,” he said to the Aunt, “we would like to speak to Frankie and Jenny, please.”

  “Give ’em a knock, then,” said the Aunt. “Have them in here and talk while I get you down. Makes it more natural, anyway.”

  They seemed to be absolutely caught. Jess could have shaken the boys, Martin for just standing looking haughty—she was beginning to think that it was when he was shy that he looked haughty, but she could have shaken him all the same—and Vernon and Frank for being stupid and getting them caught. She tried to kick Frank, but he moved out of reach to knock on the playroom door. Jess overbalanced against Vernon and started his nose bleeding again.

  The Aunt looked interested. “So that’s where it all came from,” she said. “Like a key?”

  “No, thanks,” said Vernon. “It’s stopping.”

  “Don’t stop it,” said the Aunt. “Let it come. It’s a splendid color.”

  Frankie and Jenny came to the playroom door. When they saw Frank, they looked eager, but as soon as they caught sight of Martin and Vernon, their heads went up and their faces went pale and fierce.

  “Why did you bring them?” said Jenny.

  “They’re in league against us,” said Frankie.

  “No, they’re not,” said Frank. “Not now, anyway. We’re all in league against—against—anyway, we’ve got to talk to you. Heirlooms. Witch. You know. Your aunt wants to paint us, though.”

  “Oh,” said Frankie. “She does that. She caught the milkman yesterday.”

  Jess pitied the milkman. The two little girls followed the others into the easel room, which was very cold, but much lighter than the playroom, and there it was all very awkward. Nobody could say anything straight out, because the Aunt was there, sketching fiercely, and mixing blood-red and carrot red paint; and Frankie and Jenny would not talk to Martin, and not much to Vernon, either. Every time Frank or Jess tried to whisper to the girls, the Aunt asked them to sit still.

  “Won’t be five minutes,” she said, at least twenty times.

  Frank became quite desperate. To make matters worse, Jess and Vernon were beginning to find the Aunt painting so interesting that they could not take their eyes off her. They seemed to be forgetting entirely what they had come for. Frank looked at Martin, and Martin made a face back. Neither he nor Frank found anything to interest them, except perhaps the discovery that the Aunt did sometimes touch her cigarette—when it was finished, she popped it in a paint tin and lit another. Apart from this, which was not very interesting, it all seemed rather dull.

  Frank had another try. “Heirloom,” he said to Jenny. “How was it lost, and when?”

  Jenny shook her head. “It just went. When we moved from his house.” She nodded at Martin, and Martin scowled.

  “Splendid!” said the Aunt. “Keep scowling.”

  “When was that?” Frank asked.

  “I don’t remember,” said Jenny. “I was too little. But it was after Mother went.”

  “Why do you want to know?” asked Frankie.

  This was difficult. “Because,” said Frank. “Because—”

  “We’re joined in,” said Vernon unexpectedly. “We find it, do her down, and cure you. She did it to my brother, too, see.” The two little girls put their heads up. “You got to listen to me,” said Vernon, “because we’re on the same side now. Is the stuff up at the big house?”

  “Sit still, shadow,” said the Aunt. “Just five minutes.”

  “I don’t know,” said Frankie. “We were both too small. We think it is.”

  “Hidden?” asked Frank.

  “She did it,” said Frankie intensely. “She’s at the bottom of everything.”

  “It wasn’t sold?” Jess asked, tearing her mind away from the Aunt.

  “No. It went,” said Jenny. “Like the money and the other things.”

  “Money always goes,” said the Aunt. “That’s what it’s for. Leave them alone, Jenny. They’re jerking about like puppets.”

  For some time, everyone sat without speaking. Then Martin turned to Frank. “Ask them what she’s at the bottom of. Remember the man.”

  Frank turned to the girls. “Did you hear? Because I’m not a wireless. What’s your father got to do with her?”

  Frankie and Jenny leaned forward. Frank could see they meant to be fierce but did not like to let the Aunt see. “He doesn’t believe,” said Jenny.

  “But he does lots of things for her,” Frankie added. “We think she makes him.”

  “She’s after all of us,” said Jenny, nodding at the Aunt, to show she meant her, too.

  “But why?” Jess demanded.

  The Aunt stood back. “Just five minutes. Then I’ll have finished this daub.”

  Everyone sat stiff and quiet again. This time, the Aunt meant what she said. After five minutes, she wiped her brush, popped her cigarette into the paint pot, lit another, and said, “There. That’s that for the moment. Like to look?”

  They crowded awkwardly round the canvas. All Frank could see was a pattern of red and blue triangles, and several black ones. They were all wearing blue somewhere, so he supposed the blue was their clothes and the black must be Vernon somehow. Jess thought it was a little disappointing, and Martin was trying not to yawn—or not to grin; it could have been either. Vernon seemed to think it was fine.

  “You like it?” the Aunt said to him, and Vernon nodded. “Needs working up,” said the Aunt. “But it’s coming on nicely. Come again tomorrow.”

  One of them sighed. Jess said, “I’m not sure we—”

  “Nonsense,” said Martin unexpectedly. “Of course we’ll come.”

  “Good,” said the Aunt. “Show them out, Frankie, and then we’d better see if there’s any food.”

  “There i
sn’t much,” they heard Jenny say as they all trooped to the door.

  There Frank rounded on Martin. “Whatever made you say we’d come back? Isn’t once enough?”

  “Stop it. He’s dead right,” said Vernon, and he turned to Frankie. Frankie backed away inside the house and tried to shut the door in his face, but Martin dodged in and put his foot in the way.

  “Leave off,” said Frankie, pushing at the door. “I’ll call names if you don’t.”

  “No, you won’t,” said Vernon. “We need to come back to ask you more about it. You know what it looks like?”

  Frankie nodded. “Sort of. A necklace of green stones. Like glass, rather.”

  “See?” Vernon said to Frank. Then he said to Frankie, “We’ll look in the big house today. Then we’ll have to look here. Can you look, too?”

  Frankie turned her big eyes from Vernon to Martin as if she was going to refuse. Jess cut in hurriedly. “It’s all right, Frankie. It’s to do Biddy down. Honestly. If we find it, then you’ll have got your Own Back.”

  Frankie stopped trying to shut the door and thought about it. “Will she be furious?” she asked. “If you do find it?”

  “Hopping mad,” said Frank, with a shiver running along his shoulders at the thought.

  “Then I’ll look for it again,” said Frankie.

  Martin took his foot cautiously away from the door. “Come and help us,” he said, “this afternoon. You know the place at least as well as I do.”

  Frankie thought again. “We may,” she said haughtily, at length. “See you tomorrow, anyway.” With that, she firmly shut the door.

  The four of them turned away and went, rather drearily, round by the road to the Piries’ potting shed. They were all feeling rather cold after sitting so long to be painted, and rather gloomy at failing to rescue the tooth. But Jess was thinking thankfully that, at least, once they had found the heirloom, wherever it was, that would be the end of Own Back for good and all.

  She was wrong again. Someone had been while they were away. Whoever it was had left a letter for them, stuck under the window of the potting shed and fluttering in the wind. Frank was only just in time to stop it blowing away entirely.