Witch's Business (7 page)

“It's no good dancing up and down, young man. I don't care what people say or do. You must learn that. The answer is: No Never! Wilkins's face can go the way of Adams's foot, and I don't care. I told you, Jessica, that Jenny will walk when she has her heirloom. You may add that Silas will talk at the same time. Now be off, before I set the dogs on you.”

“Dogs?” said Jess. Things were getting out of hand and horrible. Vernon had lost his temper completely and, although Jess did not blame him, she found him as frightening as Biddy.

“I'll give you dogs!” Vernon shouted. He picked up a paint can off the oil drums and threw it at Biddy. Biddy did not move, but the tin somehow missed her. Vernon roared with rage and seized another tin. Before he had a chance to throw it, Biddy fetched a whistle from under her sack and blew it.

“Right. Get him!” said Buster. The gang were suddenly all round them in the bare patch, grinning and waving sticks.

“Help!” Jess shouted. Vernon threw the tin at Buster instead, and missed again. Biddy laughed and settled in the doorway of her hut to watch, while the gang closed in.
“Help!
” Jess yelled.

“Come on,” said Martin. “I'm okay now.” He and Frank pelted round the hut. By the time they reached the bare patch, Vernon was down, under six yelling boys. Jess was fighting three more, and still calling for help. Martin climbed onto the oil drums and jumped on top of Buster. Frank took the easier way, in through the gap, and charged with his head down at the three round Jess. Before long, he was down, too, and as he rolled and punched, he could hear Biddy laughing.

Jess backed up against the drums, kicked them with her heel as she fought, and went on yelling. The thunder she made nearly deafened her. Perhaps Mr. Carter or someone was in the allotments. Jess hoped he might hear and come. She took Buster's special friend, Stafford, by his hair and shook him. Stafford kicked her.

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.

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.”