Magical Mischief

by Anna Dale

  On the morning of his seventieth birthday, Mr Hardbattle woke to find that he had spent the entire night in his shed. He had slept in a deckchair with a picnic rug tucked round him and was dressed in his shirt, trousers and waistcoat from the day before, all of which were now as creased and crumpled as a tramp’s. ‘Fine place to wake up on your birthday!’ he grumbled, and felt inclined to go back to sleep again. However, when he remembered why he had taken refuge in his shed, he sat bolt upright and threw off the rug.

  ‘Stir your stumps, Scallywag!’ Mr Hardbattle shouted, making a determined effort to get out of the low-slung chair. ‘If we’re to open by nine o’clock, we’ll have to work like Trojans!’

  Scallywag had made a cosy nest for herself in a pile of wood shavings. She pricked her ears, but did not budge.

  ‘There’s bacon and eggs for breakfast,’ Mr Hardbattle said. ‘Do you want me to give your share to the cat next door?’

  His lively tone and the word ‘cat’ had the desired effect. Scallywag sprang out of her bed, scattering wood shavings everywhere, and sat by her master’s ankles while he fumbled with the latch. Once outside, Scallywag made sure that the backyard was cat-free before rejoining her master at the back door of the shop.

  Mr Hardbattle drew the key from his waistcoat pocket and inserted it in the lock.

  ‘Brace yourself, Scally!’ Mr Hardbattle warned, pausing on the doorstep before he opened the door. ‘Remember the terrible muddle the last time the magic went wild? I nearly wore out the bristles on my broom sweeping up the mess!’

  Steeling himself to expect the worst, Mr Hardbattle turned the door handle and went in. The sight that met his eyes made his jaw drop.

  ‘Well, I’m blowed!’ he declared.

  The shop was festooned with decorations. Strung from each corner of the ceiling and from bookshelf to bookshelf all around the shop were long, quivering paper chains. As Mr Hardbattle walked past each bookshelf, dozens of streamers uncoiled themselves and threw out their ribbons of paper so that his shoulders were covered in a cloak of multicolour. When the final streamer had unravelled itself, a team of spiders wriggled into action and lowered a crown made from cobwebs on to Mr Hardbattle’s head.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked, patting the fragile crown with his fingertips. ‘My, how kingly!’ he said.

  The magic had gone to extraordinary lengths to mark Mr Hardbattle’s birthday. Most impressive of all was the banner that the magic had suspended from the ceiling. It was made from the pages of the largest world atlas in the shop and a greeting had been cut into it, which read: MANY HAPPY RETURNS.

  His uncomfortable night in the tool shed forgotten, Mr Hardbattle tried to express how grateful he was to the magic for all the trouble it had taken, but he was hampered in his efforts by a sudden attack of awkwardness and a sizeable lump in his throat, which made his speech shorter and less fluent than he would have wished. ‘Never expected . . . I’m a lucky chap . . . can’t thank you enough . . . very touched,’ murmured Mr Hardbattle, dabbing both eyes with his handkerchief.

  Scallywag had been unfazed by the dangling paper chains and the drifting ribbons of paper. She was used to the magic’s theatrical ways, having lived in the shop for most of her life. Trotting over the streamer-strewn floor to the doormat, she gathered the morning’s post in her mouth and delivered it into her master’s hands. Of the four envelopes, three contained birthday cards, which Mr Hardbattle stood on the mantelpiece. The fourth envelope had a letter inside. The letter had been typed, and began: Dear tenant . . .

  Mr Hardbattle’s face clouded over immediately. He stopped reading the letter and removed his birthday crown. It was not the sort of letter that he felt should be read whilst wearing frivolous attire. Crownless and solemn-faced, Mr Hardbattle sank into a chair by the fireplace. Sensing that her master needed comforting, Scallywag sat down beside him and rested her chin on his knee. For the next few minutes, all was quiet in the bookshop apart from the loud, insistent ticking of the mantel clock.

  When he had finished reading the letter, Mr Hardbattle sat stock-still and stared ahead with unseeing eyes. It took a nudge from Scallywag’s nose to bring the old man to his senses.

  ‘Woeful news, Scallywag!’ he said to her gloomily. ‘Our dear landlord, Henry Honeycomb, has died! You remember him, don’t you, girl? He was the kind old gentleman who visited from time to time and always made a fuss of you. I’ve paid rent to Henry Honeycomb for thirty years!’

  Feeling choked, Mr Hardbattle slipped his handkerchief from his sleeve and blew his nose ferociously before carrying on. ‘This letter is from his son, Piers. It’s Piers who owns the property now – and he’s not a chip off the old block, it pains me to learn. Piers is putting up the rent by five hundred pounds each month! He says that I’ve been paying a pittance and that his father was a mug.’ Mr Hardbattle sighed and clasped his forehead. ‘I can’t see how we’re going to manage. We’re living like paupers as it is!’

  The arrival of magic in the bookshop had wrecked Mr Hardbattle’s chances of running a highly profitable business. It had become a struggle to find the money to pay the rent each month and a hike in the payment was nothing short of disastrous. Mr Hardbattle sat in his chair for several minutes longer, trying to think of a way in which he could raise the extra funds. When he realised that it would soon be time to open the shop, Mr Hardbattle put Piers Honeycomb’s letter in his desk drawer and went upstairs to prepare his birthday breakfast.

  By the time that he had eaten his fill of bacon and eggs, changed his clothes and opened his shop, it had started to rain. It carried on raining all morning and Mr Hardbattle’s waning celebratory mood was further eroded. (There is nothing more depressing than rain on your birthday.) Detecting his glum demeanour, the magic attempted to cheer Mr Hardbattle up. The black cat bookends jumped down from their shelf and wound themselves around his legs and some leather bookmarks ran about on their fringed ends doing somersaults, but their efforts only succeeded in bringing a tired smile to his face, which faded almost as soon as it had appeared.

  It turned cold. Mr Hardbattle put some logs in the grate and lit a fire. Magic turned the flames green, then purple, then green again.

  Outside in the street, umbrellas vied for space and puddles were stepped over by grown-ups and sploshed through by children too young to be at school. Damp pigeons huddled in the eaves of buildings. The sky was dark and overcast.

  In the morning the bookshop had no customers and Mr Hardbattle’s frame of mind grew more and more despairing. Then, in the afternoon, the bell jingle-jangled. Trunk got up to see who it was and sat down again, disappointed. The customer was a thin student with spectacles and a beaky nose who bought a collection of Edward Thomas’s poetry and left.

  Then, at a quarter to four, when Mr Hardbattle’s thoughts had once again turned to his financial problems, something of interest happened in the street.

  The collision occurred on the stretch of pavement right outside the shop. It was a drama worthy of an audience. Magic breathed on the window of the bookshop so that Mr Hardbattle could see out. Putting her paws on the window sill, Scallywag joined her master, and the rumpus proved enough of a lure for Trunk to shuffle along his shelf and peer out too.

  A boy wearing a cagoule, his hood tied tightly around his face, and a woman with an umbrella, were sprawled on the ground. The spokes of the woman’s umbrella were protruding at strange angles and her white, woollen cap had slipped off her head. In a matter of seconds, passers-by had rushed to her aid and pulled the woman to her feet, but the boy jumped up by himself, preferring not to be helped.

  On the ground, close by, were two bags in a puddle. The largest of these, a shopping bag, had spilled its contents over the pavement and, one by one, oranges were rolling into the gutter. Next to this bag was a school bag with a broken strap, which had leaked some books, a lunch box and a pencil case. Before the boy a
nd the woman could make a move to recover their gear, the passers-by had collected the pair’s scattered goods like chickens pecking up grain. Once the Good Samaritans had dispersed, the boy stooped to rescue the last of the oranges from the gutter while the woman tried in vain to close her mangled umbrella. She gave up and looked across at the bookshop, and it was then that Mr Hardbattle realised who she was.

  Her name was Beatrice Quint. She was a spinster, in her forties, and had once occupied the bookshop’s comfiest wing chair by the fire for a whole afternoon, during which time she had drunk three cups of tea and told Mr Hardbattle her life story. So intent had she been on talking that Miss Quint had not noticed any magical shenanigans. Before she left she had bought a paperback romance for ninety-five pence.

  ‘I do believe they’re coming in,’ said Mr Hardbattle, perking up when he saw Miss Quint and the boy approaching his shop doorway. ‘Three customers in the same afternoon!’ he said brightly to Scallywag. ‘How about that, eh? Things are looking up!’

  .

  Chapter Three

  Flaming Peculiar

  The cagoule-wearing boy was called Arthur. His full name was Arthur William Goodenough, but his siblings – of which he had five – called him Artie; his friends shortened this to Art; and his form teacher chose to refer to him simply as Goodenough or more usually Not Goodenough, accompanied by a smirk.

  On the rainy Wednesday in April which was Mr Hardbattle’s birthday, Arthur had been in a hurry to get to the library.

  Plumford Library was where he did his homework every day between the end of school and teatime. With five brothers and sisters at home, a father and mother, two guinea pigs, an axolotl and a cockatiel, it was almost always noisy and crowded and an impossible environment in which to get to grips with schoolwork. Arthur found studying hard, and without plenty of peace and quiet he could not manage to concentrate. His older brother was brainy and his older sister was too and Arthur did not like being described as ‘an average student’ and he absolutely detested being called Not Goodenough by Mr Beaglehole, his bully of a form teacher. Doing well was important to Arthur and that was why he always tried to do his best, even if it meant forsaking games of football with his mates and hanging out in the library instead of the amusement arcade.

  On Wednesdays, the library closed early at five so Arthur tended to make an effort to hurry on this day of the week. On this particular Wednesday, with the rain pelting down, Arthur had hurried all the more. He had lowered his head against the driving rain, droplets running off his hood into his eyes. Miss Quint’s approach had not registered with him until it was too late.

  Neither had blamed the other for the collision. Both had been swift to admit that they had not been looking where they were going. When Miss Quint had mentioned that she knew of a place close by where they could dry off and enjoy a hot drink, Arthur had been only too willing to go with her.

  The bell above the door jingle-jangled as the two dishevelled, dripping wet people lugged their sodden bags into Mr Hardbattle’s shop. Trunk glanced at them with his black felt eyes.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said Miss Quint shakily. Her eye make-up was blotched, her tights laddered, and there were streaks of dirt on her mackintosh. ‘Do you mind if we sit by your fire for a moment? We’ve taken a tumble and as you can see, we’re soaked from head to toe. I expect you saw the whole thing. It was my fault as much as this boy’s. His name’s Arthur.’

  At which point she turned to Arthur and whispered, ‘Say “Hello”, dear.’

  ‘Er . . . hi,’ said Arthur bashfully, pulling down his hood to reveal a thatch of wavy brown hair which grew almost to his shoulders. His ears poked out either side like mushrooms pushing through undergrowth.

  Miss Quint ventured further into the shop, leaving a trail of dark spots on a Turkish rug. ‘I thought I’d have a chance of catching the ten to four bus if I put on a spurt,’ she explained to Mr Hardbattle, ‘but the oranges weighed me down.’ Frowning disappointedly, she poked around in her shopping bag. ‘All split or bruised,’ she declared. ‘I shan’t be making prize-winning marmalade with these!’

  ‘You make marmalade,’ said Arthur, astonished, ‘that wins prizes?’

  ‘If everything goes to plan, I do,’ Miss Quint told him with a wink. ‘I’m a member of the Women’s Institute. They’re holding a cookery contest on Friday. There are prizes for marmalade, jam, fruit pies, cakes . . . all sorts of things.’

  ‘Couldn’t you cut out the damaged bits?’ Arthur asked Miss Quint, taking an orange out of her bag and trying to squeeze it into shape. It seemed very wasteful to write off all the oranges, especially as he and the people in the street had gone to the effort of gathering them up.

  ‘I’ll never win a red rosette with substandard oranges,’ Miss Quint told him with a shake of her head. ‘I know what I’ll do. I’ll make a batch of scones instead. Scones don’t have the prestige of marmalade, of course, but such is life. It can’t be helped. Scones are quick to make, which is just as well. Mirabel gets moody if I hog the kitchen for too long and I can see her point, as it is her kitchen after all.’

  Arthur opened his mouth to ask who Mirabel was, but Miss Quint was too fast for him.

  ‘I’m living with a friend just at the moment,’ she said. ‘I did have my own flat, but there was this explosion. All my belongings were blown sky-high. A faulty gas pipe, they said it was. Luckily, nobody was in that night. Mr and Mrs Jones, below, had gone on holiday to Spain, and Mr Clark, above, had popped out for a takeaway. It took three fire crews to get the flames under control!’

  Arthur gaped at Miss Quint with a mixture of horror and awe. He thought of his own house and his axolotl and cockatiel and everything in his bedroom, which he would be broken-hearted to lose. The only comforting thought was that if his house exploded, his guinea pigs would be all right because their hutch was at the bottom of the garden.

  Arthur thought that Miss Quint was extremely brave to talk about the destruction of her home so matter-of-factly. It appeared that Mr Hardbattle had formed the same opinion because he moved closer to where Miss Quint was standing and held out his hand.

  ‘You told me of your unfortunate mishap the last time you were here,’ he said, seizing her cold hand in his warm, dry grip. ‘In January, I think it was. It’s Miss Quint, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right!’ said Miss Quint, delighted to be remembered. She beamed at Mr Hardbattle and began to unbutton her mackintosh.

  ‘Yes, do get out of those wet things!’ Mr Hardbattle urged, relieving them of their coats, Arthur’s school scarf and Miss Quint’s woollen cap. He hung them on coat hooks by the door. ‘Why don’t you make yourselves comfortable while I put the kettle on?’ he said.

  ‘May I use your bathroom first, if you don’t object?’ asked Miss Quint, patting her hair, which was collar-length, auburn and not looking its best. She plonked her shopping bag in the middle of the floor and, clutching her handbag, disappeared upstairs. Miss Quint had been to the toilet on her previous visit and knew where it was to be found. (You cannot drink three cups of tea and not need to use your host’s facilities.)

  Arthur dragged his school bag over to a wing chair. Rather than being concerned with warming himself up, he unzipped his bag and began to line up his books on the hearth, resting them on their spines and opening each one.

  The young boy’s regard for his books gladdened Mr Hardbattle’s heart. The magic, too, was impressed. It stoked the fire and made the flames leap higher. Arthur had his head bowed and did not see the poker lurch sideways and plunge its tip three or four times into the heap of ash and blackened logs. The tapering flames burned indigo blue.

  ‘It’s Arthur, isn’t it?’ Mr Hardbattle said, stooping to look at the boy’s collection of literature. ‘You’re keen on reading, I can see that. Well, you’ve come to the right place.’

  ‘I’m not
hooked on books, exactly,’ said Arthur. He glanced up at the old man before delving into his bag once more. The book that he lifted out was a small dictionary. With the utmost care he separated its soggy pages. ‘These are for homework. I’ve got a test tomorrow and an essay to finish as well. I was hoping to get some work done in the library. That’s why I was rushing and didn’t see the lady till she nearly knocked me out with her umbrella.’

  ‘Nasty things, brollies,’ Mr Hardbattle said. He pushed his horn-rimmed glasses up his nose and knitted his greying brows together. ‘So, Arthur, what’s your essay about? My bookshop isn’t as well stocked as a library, but I dare say I can find a book or two on your chosen topic, which might help.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Arthur. He sat back on his heels and looked around him. ‘I’ve never been in here before. Mum always takes us to that bookshop in the centre of town: the big one with a coffee shop. She likes their comfy sofas and their offers. Mum won’t buy a book unless it’s got money off.’ Arthur bit his lip, aware that what he had said might have sounded rude.

  ‘Shops like that are two-a-penny,’ Mr Hardbattle said, smiling at the boy’s stricken expression. ‘There are hundreds of bookshops like that the length and breadth of England – whereas my little shop is one of a kind. It’s got something that no other bookshop has.’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Arthur, casting about him. ‘Paper chains? Huge great cobwebs? I know . . . a dog!’

  Mr Hardbattle shook his head at Arthur and grinned. ‘Let’s have a look at that essay first, young man. Then I’ll make us a pot of tea and then, if you haven’t worked it out for yourself, I’ll tell you.’