Not Just a Witch

by Eva Ibbotson

  Heckie was very disappointed. She had set her heart on showing the dragworm to this attractive man. But of course the idea of Lionel Knacksap choking to death was too horrible to think about.

  Mr Knacksap, in the meantime, was doing sums in his head. A tiger skin fetched over two thousand pounds. Even after he’d paid someone to kill and skin the beast, there’d be a nice profit. And plenty more where that came from: ocelots, jaguars, lynx . . . All he had to do was butter up this frumpy witch.

  ‘Dear Miss Tenbury-Smith—’

  ‘Heckie. Please call me Heckie.’

  Mr Knacksap gulped. ‘Dear Heckie – I wonder if you would care to have dinner with me next Saturday? At the Trocadero at eight o’clock?’

  ‘How do I look?’ asked Heckie, and Sumi and Daniel said she looked very nice.

  This was true. Heckie had gone to Madame Rosalia for advice about what to wear for her night out with the furrier, but she had made it clear that she wanted to be tastefully dressed.

  ‘I may be a witch,’ Heckie had said to Madame Rosalia, ‘but I am also a woman.’

  So she had decided not to wear black whiskers on her chin, or a blue tooth, and just three blackheads – more enlarged pores, really – on the end of her nose. And her dress was tasteful too – a black sheath embroidered all over with small green toads.

  ‘My shoes pinch,’ said Heckie, but there was nothing to be done about that. Heckie’s Toe of Transformation always hurt when she bought new shoes.

  Mr Knacksap had booked a table by the window and ordered a three-course meal. He hated spending money, but he knew that if he was going to get the witch to do what he wanted, he’d have to make a splash for once. The Trocadero was very smart, with gleaming white tablecloths and a man playing sloppy music on the piano, but the dinner didn’t get off to a very good start.

  The trouble began with a beetle that was crawling about in the centre of a rose in a cut glass vase on the table. Heckie thought the beetle did not look well and she asked the waiter if he’d mind putting it out in the garden, if possible near a cowpat.

  ‘It’s a dung beetle, you see,’ she told him, ‘so it really cannot be happy on this rose.’

  Then the starter came and it was shrimps in mayonnaise.

  ‘Is there anything wrong?’ asked Mr Knacksap. ‘They look nice and pink to me.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Heckie faintly. ‘But you see, shrimps aren’t meant to be pink. They’re meant to be a sort of grey. If they’re pink they’re dead.’

  ‘Well, we could hardly eat them if they weren’t,’ said Mr Knacksap, but he had to keep on the right side of Heckie so he sent them back and ordered vegetable soup.

  After the shrimps came some meat in a brown sauce and when Heckie saw it, she turned quite pale.

  ‘Now what’s the matter?’ asked Mr Knacksap. ‘Those are pheasant breasts done in wine.’

  ‘I know they’re pheasant breasts,’ said Heckie faintly. ‘But you see eating them would be . . . well, like eating a friend.’ And as Mr Knacksap frowned at her: ‘You must know what I mean. Think of a friend of yours. Any friend.’

  Mr Knacksap tried to think of a friend he had had. ‘There was a boy called Marvin Minor at my prep school. He used to lend me his roller skates.’

  ‘Well, now you see,’ said Heckie. ‘Imagine you were served slices of Marvin Minor’s chest in wine sauce. How would you feel?’

  But even now, Mr Knacksap kept his temper. The pheasant breasts were taken away and Heckie was given a mushroom omelette instead. And there was no fuss over the pudding. Even Heckie didn’t think that caramel custard was like swallowing a friend.

  By now they had drunk quite a lot of wine and Mr Knacksap was ready to come to the point.

  ‘I have a favour to ask you,’ he said, leaning across the table and fixing Heckie with his piercing eyes. ‘A great favour!’

  Heckie looked down at the tablecloth and tried to flutter her eyelashes like she had seen Madame Rosalia do. ‘Yes?’ she said shyly.

  ‘I want you to make a tiger for me. I want you to change the next wicked person you see into a tiger. A male tiger – and large.’

  ‘Well, I will if you like, Lionel,’ said Heckie (because she had been told to use his Christian name). ‘But are you sure you can manage it? They’re tricky things to look after, the big cats.’

  ‘It’s not for me personally – I wouldn’t ask you anything for myself,’ said Mr Knacksap soupily. ‘It’s for a friend of mine. An aristocrat. A lord.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  Everyone is a bit impressed by lords, and Heckie was no exception.

  ‘Yes. The poor man was left a great castle . . . I don’t like to talk about him because he’s very shy, but you’d know the name if I told you. But it’s in a very bad state – loose tiles on the roof, dry rot, all that kind of thing. So he’s started a safari park to bring in the trippers and help him get enough money to do repairs. But what the safari park really needs is a tiger.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure he’d care for it properly.’

  ‘It would live like a prince,’ said Mr Knacksap. ‘A heated house, a huge enclosure, children to come and photograph it. And my friend would be so happy.’

  Heckie stirred her coffee. ‘All right, then. Mind you, one can’t be absolutely certain with this kind of magic. Sometimes things sort of happen by themselves. There was an animal witch in Germany who kept being overcome by hippopotamuses. Whatever she tried to turn people into, they always came out as hippos.’

  Mr Knacksap didn’t like the sound of that. No one wore coats made of hippopotamus skins. ‘I’m sure that wouldn’t happen to you, dear Heckie,’ he said. ‘You’re such a powerful witch. I knew the moment I saw you.’

  As soon as he got back to his shop that evening, Mr Knacksap telephoned a man he knew in Manchester. ‘Is that you, Ferguson?’

  ‘Yes, it’s me.’

  ‘Well, listen; I’ve got you your tiger skin. A full-grown male.’

  ‘Go on. You’re kidding.’

  ‘No, I’m not. I take it the Arkle woman still wants one?’

  ‘You bet she does. She’s upped the price to two and a half thousand.’

  Gertrude Arkle was married to a chain-store millionaire and had set her heart on a tiger skin to put on her bedroom floor. She wanted to lie on it in silk pyjamas like she had seen film stars do in pictures of the olden days. And the more Mr Arkle told her that she couldn’t have one because it was illegal to import them, the more she wanted one.

  ‘All right, then,’ said Mr Knacksap. ‘I’ll give you a call when it’s ready.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  For nearly three weeks after Heckie had dinner with Mr Knacksap at the Trocadero, life went on much as usual. Heckie was still trying to get the dragworm to speak. She told him stories and repeated simple words to him, but though he was always polite and listened to everything she said, it didn’t seem as though he was ever going to talk. In other ways, though, he was learning all the time. He could turn the bath tap on now with his front claws, and put in the plug, and he didn’t have to think nearly so long about which of his feet was which. Heckie had worried, as the days grew warmer, that he might become unsettled. Chinese dragons usually fly up to heaven in the spring and she would have missed him horribly if he had done so, but he stayed where he was.

  Still, things were not quite the same as before and this was because of Mr Knacksap. The furrier never came to the flat because of the dragworm, but the children had seen him in the street and they didn’t like what they saw. They thought he looked thoroughly creepy and unreliable and they couldn’t understand why Heckie went out with him.

  The children weren’t the only ones to be worried. The cheese wizard’s shop was next door to the furrier’s and he knew quite a lot about Mr Knacksap. Daniel had met him in the street and been asked in to see a Stilton that could walk at least half a metre.

  ‘And it’s not maggots, either; it’s magic,’ said Mr Gurgle, beaming at the c
heese as it struggled across the floor. But afterwards he became serious. ‘I don’t like the way that fellow’s paying court to Heckie,’ he said. ‘He’s got a bad name in the trade. Up to his eyebrows in debt – and the way he treated those sewing women who worked for him was a scandal. If she marries him, she’ll—’

  ‘Oh, but she couldn’t! She couldn’t!’ cried Daniel, looking completely stricken.

  ‘Well, I don’t suppose she will. But she’s all heart and no head, that witch. Just you keep an eye on her.’

  But this was easier said than done. Mr Knacksap was careful always to see Heckie away from the shop. Since he hated spending money, he took her on picnics. Heckie brought the food so it didn’t cost him anything, and all he brought was a towel to sit on because he didn’t like nature and was fussy about his trousers.

  Mr Knacksap realized that it was no good pretending that he wasn’t a furrier – after all, his shop was in Market Square for everyone to see. So he told Heckie a lot of lies about the coats he sold.

  ‘That beaver cape in my window was made by a tribe of North American Indians who worship beavers. They sing to them and feed them on pine nuts and take them to sleep with them in their wigwams so that they live for years and years and years. And then when they pass on – the beavers, I mean – the Indians make them into coats so that they won’t be forgotten.’

  ‘Oh, Li-Li, that’s wonderful,’ said Heckie, feasting her eyes on Mr Knacksap as they sat on a rock high above the Wellbridge gas works.

  ‘And the stoats I use come from an organic stoat farm in Sweden. They shave the animals and sew the fur on to canvas so that it looks like a pelt, but it isn’t. Only when it’s warm, they shave them; no stoat is ever allowed to get chilled.’

  So Heckie’s last doubts were gone. Not only was Mr Knacksap the handsomest man she had ever seen, but he was kind to animals. But inside, Mr Knacksap was seething. Three weeks and not a sign of a tiger! How long was he supposed to go on buttering up this ridiculous witch?

  Sumi had put her three little brothers to bed. She had sung to them and played Three Little Pigs Go To Market with the fat toes of the youngest, and now they were drowsy and quiet.

  Down in the shop, her mother was putting the CLOSED sign across the door and her father was emptying the till.

  ‘You’re closing early?’ she asked in the Punjabi they always spoke when they were alone. It was only eight thirty, and her parents often served customers till late at night.

  Her mother nodded. She looked tired and her eyes were swollen.

  ‘Is anything wrong?’ Sumi adored her parents and her voice was sharp with anxiety.

  ‘No, no, nothing.’ Her mother managed a smile. ‘We’re just going to have an early night.’

  But there was something wrong. Sumi knew from the way her parents went upstairs, walking very close together, their shoulders almost touching. They weren’t like the parents of her schoolfriends, kissing and hugging in front of everyone. They were dignified and shy, but tonight they needed to be very close.

  Sumi went to bed, but she couldn’t sleep. And her mother and father couldn’t sleep either. She heard their voices, low and sad, going on and on. After a while she got up and crept to the door. If there was trouble in the family she wanted to know and help.

  ‘Shall we tell Sumi? We’ll keep the boys indoors, but she’ll have to have protection when she goes to school. I don’t want her going out of the house while he’s here with his thugs. And we must get metal shutters for the windows.’

  ‘Expensive . . .’ Her father sounded worried.

  ‘Expensive? What does that matter? We can borrow. You know what happened to Ved . . . you saw my sister’s face when they brought him home, and you talk about expensive!’

  Back in her room, Sumi began to shiver. It was a warm night, but she couldn’t stop trembling. For she knew what had happened to Ved. She knew what was making her parents so afraid.

  Oh, what shall I do? thought Sumi. Whatever shall I do?

  Heckie was clearing away her breakfast when Sumi rang the doorbell of the flat. She was pleased to see her – people were always pleased to see Sumi – but worried that she’d be late for school.

  ‘It doesn’t matter if I am,’ said Sumi – and then Heckie knew that there was something seriously wrong because Sumi really loved school.

  ‘What is it, dear?’

  So then Sumi told her. ‘A man is coming to Wellbridge; an absolutely terrible man. He’s called Max Swinton and he’s the leader of something called the White Avengers.’

  Heckie frowned. ‘Those racist thugs who go round bashing up people?’

  ‘Yes. And it’s Swinton that leads them on. He’s worse than Hitler. They shout things that don’t soundsoterrible,likeBRITISH FOR THE BRITISH, but by British they only mean people with white skins and they don’t care what they do to the . . . others.’ She stopped to blow her nose. ‘I have this cousin in London. Ved, he’s called. He was a violinist – he won a scholarship to music college when he was fifteen. He was coming home alone after a concert when a gang of Swinton’s thugs got hold of him. We thought he wouldn’t live at first, he was so badly hurt. But he did live. He’s alive. Only his hands . . . When they saw the violin, they jumped on his hands. They said wogs shouldn’t . . .’

  Sumi gulped and groped for her handkerchief, and Heckie put her arms round her and waited till she could go on.

  Then she lifted her head and said what she had come to say. ‘I told Daniel that I didn’t think it was right to turn people into animals, but I’ve changed my mind. Please, Heckie . . . please will you turn Max Swinton into absolutely anything.’

  Swinton’s picture was in the next day’s paper. The dragworm wouldn’t stay in the same room with it and went to have a bath while Heckie and Daniel studied his face.

  ‘He looks like a pig,’ said Daniel.

  ‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Heckie firmly. ‘Pigs may have small eyes, but they are intelligent eyes, and if they’re fat, it’s a firm fatness, not wobbly.’

  Swinton was coming to Wellbridge on the following Monday, in a motorcade, to make speeches. The police had broken up Swinton’s rallies before; he had even been to prison, but never long enough to keep him and his followers off the streets.

  ‘He’s staying at the Queen’s Hotel, I see,’ said Heckie. ‘Didn’t you say you had a friend whose mother worked there?’

  ‘Yes, I did. Henry, he’s called. He’s really nice, and his older brother has just started as a bell-boy. I’m sure he’d help us. Henry’s black, I expect he feels just like Sumi does about the Avengers.’

  The Queen’s Hotel was very grand. It stood on the edge of the park with its pretty flower-beds and statues, and the pond where Heckie had found the duck that didn’t want to live. Towers and turrets burst from the roof of the hotel and flags blew in the wind, and there were awnings and waiters rushing about and a whole army of chambermaids.

  ‘So you think Henry can be trusted? That he can keep a secret?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Good. Then I suggest you go and find him straight away and bring him here.’

  Mr Knacksap read Heckie’s note and his eyes glittered with greed. A tiger at last! He was to arrange for a closed horse box and a driver, and get hold of a wire tunnel of the kind that circus trainers use to lead animals into the ring.

  ‘Because we don’t want the poor dear creature getting scared and muddled,’ Heckie had written.

  Henry’s brother was going to meet her in the park at daybreak with the key to Max Swinton’s room and a chambermaid’s uniform belonging to his mother.

  ‘Then I’ll slip into his room with his early morning tea and change him. By great good luck, he’s got a downstairs room so you’ll be able to park the horse box almost under his window. Remember to have a nice raw steak ready for him. Tigers can get very hungry when they’re on the road.’

  Oh, yes, the brute would find a steak all right, thought Mr Knacksap. A drugged steak which w
ould knock him out, then a clean shot between the eyes so as to make the smallest possible hole in the pelt – and off to be skinned! Mr Knacksap had even arranged for a man who made pet food to take the carcass!

  Two thousand pounds clear! Alone in his shop, the furrier smiled and rubbed his hands.

  Heckie was up before it was light, feeling extremely happy. She had enjoyed changing Mrs Winneypeg and the chicken farmer, but in ridding the world of Max Swinton she was doing more good than she had ever done before and giving her Li-Li the tiger he wanted so much for his friend!

  Daniel was waiting for her at the gates of the park. She had promised he could come just till she met Henry’s brother, Clem. But no sooner had Daniel run up to her, than Mr Knacksap came round the corner in his bowler hat and fur-collared coat.

  ‘Lionel! I didn’t expect you! Why aren’t you with the horse box?’

  ‘I just wanted to see you safely into the hotel, dear,’ said the furrier.

  But what Mr Knacksap really wanted was to make sure that Heckie didn’t change her mind or go all soft. One thing he couldn’t be doing with was a hippopotamus.

  Daniel wasn’t at all pleased to see the furrier, but he had to be polite and together they walked past flower-beds and the pond, and between smooth lawns that were still wet with dew.

  Clem had kept his promise. He was waiting by the fountain with the key and the uniform.

  ‘Everything’s okay,’ he whispered. ‘He’s in room seventeen like I said.’

  Heckie thanked him and they waited while he ran back to the hotel where all the guests still slept. Then they followed him, making their way along a gravel path between neatly clipped hedges.

  ‘Funny, there’s a new statue,’ said Mr Knacksap, pointing with his cane.

  ‘Yes, there is,’ said Daniel.

  Heckie had been thinking of the job ahead of her. Now she looked up, stopped, took a step towards the statue . . .