Magical Mischief

by Anna Dale

  Mr Hardbattle had to admit that Miss Quint was right about one thing. He had been on the go all day, and was certainly too weary to argue the toss. Without another word of protest, he let Miss Quint relieve him of his suitcase, and made straight for the nearest chair.

  While Miss Quint was upstairs making tea, Arthur sat and fidgeted. He tried to join in the conversation with Susan and Mr Hardbattle, but he could not prevent his mind from straying on to other things. He had a fair idea why Miss Quint had been anxious to go upstairs. She had wanted to talk to the house guests before Mr Hardbattle met them. She was probably asking them to pretend to be her old pals, just as she had prevailed upon Susan earlier.

  Arthur looked over at Mr Hardbattle, who was sitting contentedly in a chair with one of the bookends on his lap. Arthur yearned to tell the old man the truth, but he did not dare to reveal all while Susan was in the room. He got up from his perch on the arm of a chair and paced the floor restlessly.

  Within the space of ten minutes, Miss Quint returned with a tray. Behind her, trotting down the staircase like obliging sheep, came Jimmy, Mrs Voysey-Brown and Mr Claggitt.

  Mr Hardbattle heard the clatter of footsteps and glanced at the stairwell, aghast. ‘Miss Quint! Who in the world are these people?’ he asked. ‘Are these your family too?’

  ‘No!’ said Arthur loudly. He planted his hands on his hips. ‘And they’re not her friends either. They’re –’

  ‘They’re relatives of Arthur’s,’ interjected Miss Quint. She turned and nodded at each of them as they stepped off the final stair. ‘This is his Uncle Jim . . . and Aunt Dolores . . . and Uncle Sidney.’

  Arthur was so cross with Miss Quint that he left the bookshop immediately after she introduced the three house guests as his relations, and did not come back until the following afternoon.

  He still had a little homework to finish over the half-term break, and tried to fill his time by concentrating on it. As usual, however, this was anything but easy. Everywhere he went in his house, he was confronted with loud music, arguments, giggling or his cockatiel, Bubbles, who had developed the habit of sitting on Arthur’s head. The back garden was Arthur’s usual sanctuary but, because of the good weather, his family had taken this over too. When Arthur sat at the bottom of the garden, his brothers started a kickabout and clobbered him with their ball, and when he moved to the patio, Arthur’s bikini-clad sisters got on his nerves by squealing as they ran past the sprinklers on the lawn.

  It was late on Wednesday afternoon when Arthur admitted to himself that the only place to study was the bookshop. He moaned and grumbled about it as he packed his schoolbooks into his bag, but secretly he was glad to be returning, having missed his friends.

  When he pushed open the door of the shop, Arthur discovered, to his disappointment, that Mr Hardbattle was not there.

  ‘He’s gone in his van to Down-the-Ages Farm,’ explained Susan, who had leaped up from her chair as soon as Arthur had entered the shop. She had been reading a book, but had thrown it aside to greet him.

  Miss Quint was sitting behind a sewing machine at Mr Hardbattle’s desk. The machine was an odd-shaped contraption, topped with a cotton reel. As Miss Quint turned a handle, a needle dipped in and out of some cloth at speed.

  ‘He wanted to meet Pam Carruthers, and to see the woodsman’s cottage for himself,’ said Miss Quint over the whirr of her sewing machine. ‘Mr Hardbattle’s such an old fusspot! Let’s hope he doesn’t find fault with it!’

  She stopped turning the handle of the sewing machine, whipped the material out from underneath the presser foot and inspected the stitching. Arthur saw that the garment was a child’s skirt and that Miss Quint was altering its length. Plainly, shorts and a T-shirt were not the only clothes that had been purchased for Susan the day before.

  Arthur had made up his mind not to speak to Miss Quint, but found that he could not bring himself to be quite so rude.

  ‘I’ve come to do some schoolwork,’ he said gruffly. ‘It was too noisy to get much done at home and the library’s too crowded in half-term week.’ He lifted his head and listened, but there were no sounds from upstairs. ‘It seems quieter than usual,’ he said. ‘Where are the three musketeers?’

  Miss Quint smiled to herself. ‘You mean, your aunt and uncles, Arthur!’

  ‘That’s not who they are,’ snapped Arthur, ‘and you shouldn’t have said it was!’ He threw his school bag on the floor in a fit of pique.

  Miss Quint abandoned her needlework to glare at him. ‘You didn’t give me much option, did you? I was all set to follow Plan A but, thanks to your little outburst, I had to invent a Plan B on the spot!’

  Arthur was amazed that Miss Quint seemed to think that he should say sorry for inconveniencing her. He curled his hands into fists, and fumed silently.

  The handle of the sewing machine revolved again. ‘They’re out, if you must know,’ said Miss Quint. ‘I advised them to make themselves scarce. Mr Hardbattle wasn’t best pleased to be lumbered with three more house guests. I told him that your parents’ house was too packed to accommodate them. He’s agreed to let them stay here for now.’

  Arthur grunted and started to clear a space on his homework table. He laid out his pencils and exercise books, and Susan picked up the nearest book and leafed through the pages.

  ‘What does “abysmal” mean?’ she asked, peering at a teacher’s scrawl.

  Arthur snatched the book back and told her not to be so nosy. Startled by his hostile manner, Susan decided to leave him alone. She went back to the book that she had been reading when Arthur had come in. It was called Emil and the Detectives.

  Half an hour passed without another word being spoken. The only noises were the whirr and trundle of Miss Quint’s sewing machine and the twangs of rubber bands as they competed in a contest to see which one could fling itself the furthest across the room. Susan read her book and Arthur gnawed his pen and tried to get on with his homework, but he found the going hard. Apart from having impossible questions to answer, there was also the distraction of the temperature. It was the first day of June and the weather was cloudy and close. Inside the dusty, airless bookshop, Arthur felt uncomfortably warm. He had untucked his shirt and taken off his shoes, but neither action had made him feel much cooler.

  At a quarter to five, he sighed and put down his pen.

  ‘How’s business been?’ he asked.

  ‘Quiet,’ said Miss Quint. She had finished altering Susan’s skirt and was trying to put her machine away, but the bobbins had escaped from their compartment and were racing each other across the desk. ‘Come back here, you!’ she said to the fastest bobbin, which was wound with black thread and nearing the table’s edge.

  ‘Have you had a visit from that shoplifter that PC Chubb told me about?’ asked Arthur.

  ‘No,’ answered Miss Quint, snatching at bobbins to the left and right.

  Arthur wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. ‘I bet that other bookshop in town has had loads of customers. When the magic’s gone, Hardbattle Books will be much busier . . . won’t it?’ His tone was faintly anxious.

  Miss Quint slammed down the lid on the last errant bobbin. ‘Are you sure that’s what you want?’ she said.

  ‘For Mr Hardbattle’s bookshop to be successful? Of course it is!’

  ‘But where will you do your homework?’ Miss Quint asked.

  Arthur smiled. He checked his watch, then closed his books and began to place them in his bag, but before he could leave for home, Mr Hardbattle returned.

  He was in a jovial mood, having been greatly impressed by the woodsman’s cottage. He bid Arthur a hearty hello and handed Susan a warm bundle wrapped in newspaper, which had a fishy, mouth-watering smell.

  ‘Haddock and chips!’ Mr Hardbattle said. ‘You’ll stay for some, won’t you, Arthur? And afterwards I wonder if
you’d help me fetch down some packing cases from the loft. I’ve got three or four of them, and each one’s dusty and dry as a bone. They’ll be perfect for transferring the You Know What when I drive it to Thornwick.’

  Arthur nodded. ‘Sure thing!’

  Declaring that the fish and chips smelled scrumptious, Susan hugged the parcel to her chest while Miss Quint went upstairs to fetch some plates and cutlery.

  Arthur helped to unwrap the takeaway meal and share out the portions of haddock and chips, and as he peeled away the layers of the Plumford Gazette, his eyes were drawn to a photograph of PC Chubb underneath a headline that warned: ROBBERS RUN AMOK IN PLUMFORD. Arthur read the start of the article, which revealed that burglaries were on the rise in the area as well as theft from shops. The others did not have the patience to wait for him to finish reading the entire story so Arthur folded up the page of newsprint and tucked it away in his pocket to read later.

  Once their appetites had been appeased, and Miss Quint and Susan had trooped off to the kitchen with the greasy paper and dirty plates, Arthur and Mr Hardbattle fetched a stepladder from the shed. Between them they carried the ladder upstairs and stood it under the hatch to the attic. Then Arthur remained at the bottom, holding it steady, while the old man climbed up the steps. When Mr Hardbattle reached the top step, he gasped and gave a cry.

  ‘Well, that’s a funny thing!’ he said, staring at a large brass padlock a matter of inches from his nose. ‘I don’t remember fitting a lock on this hatch! Where could I have put the key?’

  After an hour of Mr Hardbattle emptying drawers and finding every sort of key except the one that fitted the padlock in question, it was decided that they should postpone their packing case forage until the next day. It made no odds to Arthur. He got on his bicycle and rode home.

  Much later on at Hardbattle Books, when night had fallen, beds were occupied and every light had been switched off, a bumping noise startled Susan awake.

  Scallywag, who had taken to sleeping on Susan’s bed, woke up too. Susan put out her hand to touch the dog’s shoulder and felt her stiffen. The next moment, she started to growl, and then, without warning, Scallywag jumped off the bed and disappeared through the door. Susan sat on her own. She clutched her eiderdown tensely. More noises banged above her head, similar to the first. It sounded as if someone were dropping rocks and boulders on to the roof. Susan suddenly wanted the company of Mr Hardbattle or Miss Quint. She threw back her feather quilt and got out of bed, but before she could reach the door of her room, somebody slammed it shut and a key turned in the lock. Susan tried the door handle, and her worst fears were realised. The door would not open. There were more thumps from above.

  ‘Miss Quint?’ called Susan. She raised her voice. ‘Mr Hardbattle? This is Susan speaking! What’s all that banging, and why have you locked me in?’

  She rattled the door handle once again, but stopped when her ears caught a muffled shout. Susan listened more intently and heard the cries of the same two people that she had called out to a moment ago. Both were demanding to be freed from their rooms. Susan gulped when she realised that all of them had been locked in.

  The situation did not make any sense to Susan at first, then she remembered the article in the paper that Arthur had been reading. Perhaps there were burglars in the house, and they had locked everyone in their rooms so that they could steal Mr Hardbattle’s books without risking capture. Susan’s imagination began to run wild. She fretted about the books that would be lost and the damage that the burglars might do to the shop, but mostly she got herself into a state about Scallywag, who had sped off bravely to scare away the robbers and had not been heard of since. What could be done? Susan racked her brains. Arthur would know, but how could she contact Arthur when she was locked in her room? If only she could think of a way to escape!

  The room’s only window was already open a crack. Susan hoisted it up and leaned out over the sill. Even in the dark she could tell that attempting a jump to the ground would be madness. She would not be able to fetch help with a couple of broken legs! Something moved a few metres away, and Susan saw a shadowy trunk and a branch with quivering leaves. It occurred to her that if she knelt on the window ledge and stretched out an arm, she might be able to swing on to the branch and climb down the tree.

  But not in my bare feet, wearing nothing but my petticoat, she thought, and hastened from the window to get dressed.

  .

  Chapter Nineteen

  A Walk in the Dark

  Once she had pulled on a skirt and jersey, Susan was ready to go. In her skirt pocket she had shoved a one pound coin and a torch that Miss Quint had been kind enough to give her. With the utmost care, Susan climbed on to the window sill and peered out into the night.

  The most frightening part of the whole exercise proved to be at the start, when she shuffled along the window ledge on her knees and made a lunge at the branch. Dithering was not an option. Having made her move, she was forced to leave the window ledge completely and swing from the branch by her arms. For a few anxious seconds, while she found a foothold on the tree, Susan dangled in mid-air and tried not to look down. She felt that hanging from a tree was not half as pleasurable as being on a swing or flying through the air.

  When she had anchored herself, the actual climb was not too bad, although she was torn between shinning down the tree at speed and taking things slowly so as not to risk tearing her new clothes. She plumped for climbing quickly and guessed that Mr Claggitt would not have approved of her technique. It was more of a slither than a measured descent, but Susan’s lack of expertise did not seem to matter and she reached the ground without so much as a scraped knee.

  Although the moon was out, the back of the house was draped in darkness so she switched on her torch and directed its beam down the yard. Susan’s torch beam missed the side-gate, but picked out the tool shed, a dustbin, a washing line and a high fence.

  Intending to clamber over the fence, Susan walked down the garden path, which took her past the shed. As she drew closer to the shed, she heard a scrabbling noise coming from inside it. Susan was tempted to hurry by, but her inquisitiveness prevailed, and, with the aid of the torch, she found the shed door and lifted the latch. Thrusting her torch beam inside, she saw that the maker of the noise was none other than Scallywag, who had been tied to a workbench and muzzled with a scarf. Susan was overjoyed to see that Scallywag was unhurt. She released the excited dog quickly, untying the rope and freeing her bound nose, then, using the rope as a dog lead, Susan ushered the dog out of the shed and continued towards the fence.

  It was Scallywag who found a way out of the garden. She went straight to a loose board and prodded it with her nose. The board swung backwards and Scallywag slipped through. Tugged by the rope lead, Susan had no choice but to follow where Scallywag had gone. In order to get through the gap, she was obliged to squeeze through sideways whilst breathing in. Being fairly slim, she managed it.

  Fighting her way through brambles was more testing, but eventually, covered in scratches, Susan crawled out on to a patch of waste ground next to a retail park. Keeping a firm hold on Scallywag’s lead and pointing her torch at the ground, she made her way over a bumpy terrain of rubble and weeds. Her torch beam fell for a moment on a fox whose eyes shone like foil bottle tops in the unnatural light. Then with a flick of its bushy tail, it was gone. Scallywag yanked Susan’s arm, yearning to go after it, but Susan did not intend to be waylaid even for a moment.

  Once she had reached a pavement, Susan switched off her torch. The amount of light thrown by the street lamps was more than adequate to enable her to find her way. She walked along the street, which was flanked by terraced houses, searching for a telephone box.

  Susan had no clue where Arthur lived. She had thought that she might walk the streets of Plumford until she encountered a person who knew him, but she had quickly dismissed thi
s idea as time-consuming and likely to fail. The plan that she had settled upon was infinitely better. She had remembered being told about telephone boxes and the books called directories, which could be found inside them. These directories were huge, and held the name, address and telephone number of everyone who lived locally. All she had to do was find Arthur’s number in this book, and ring him up.

  It did not take Susan long before she spotted a telephone box. There were a few glass panes missing from it, but the all-important directory was there. Standing on tiptoe to reach the shelf on which the book sat, Susan took it down and flicked through it, searching for the surname Goodenough. Luckily, it was not a common name in the Plumford area, and there were only two Goodenoughs listed. Goodenough, G was a doctor and his address was at a surgery, so she knew that Goodenough, I was the one that she wanted.

  Susan got out her pound coin. She read the instructions on the telephone carefully; lifting the receiver, putting in her money and dialling the number in the order that it said. The telephone on the other end rang and rang for a long time.

  Susan’s heart pounded. Why wouldn’t anyone answer?

  ‘Hello?’ said a sleepy voice at last.

  Susan perked up. ‘Is that you, Arthur?’

  ‘No, it’s Arthur’s mother,’ said the voice. ‘Who are you? What do you want? Don’t you know what time it is?’

  Susan did not have a wristwatch, and anyway she did not see that it mattered what the time was when there was an emergency to report. ‘My name’s Susan,’ she said, ‘and it’s really, really ever so important that I speak to Arthur right away.’

  ‘Well, you can’t,’ said Arthur’s mother in a not-to-be-messed-with voice. ‘He’s in bed, and if I were your mum, Susan, bed is where I would have sent you hours ago. It’s ten minutes to midnight! Call back when the sun is up! Goodbye!’