Eva Ibbotson - Not Just a Witch

Only where was Bert? He was late. Ticker’s Porsche was parked in the drive, his case was packed — but he certainly wasn’t going to kill four thousand chickens by himself.

What Ralph Ticker didn’t know was that Bert had already done a bunk. He was sick of cutting the heads off chickens for peanuts and he was sick of Ticker. While his employer waited by the death pit, Bert was on the pier at Brighton, playing the fruitmachines.

The wizards and witches, meanwhile, were driving down to Tritlington. It was an uncomfortable journey. They had to sit crowded together on the bench seat in the front because the van had been got ready for the okapi, with padding on the walls and lots of straw. Boris, who had an unhappy nature like most Russians, was worried about Heckie’s hot air balloon. She had asked for a blue one to match the sky and he’d let her have it before he remembered that that was the one he’d been doing experiments on. Boris had always been sure one could invent a hot air balloon that flew on the hot air talked by politicians, but so far he hadn’t managed it — and now he couldn’t remember whether he’d put enough fuel back in the machine.

By the time they reached the poultry unit, everyone was feeling ill-tempered and car-sick. As for Mr Gurgle, he wasn’t just feeling sick, he was feeling extremely frightened. But he had said he would flush Mr Ticker out of the poultry shed, and flush he would. Trying desperately to remember some useful spells, Mr Gurgle crept towards the door.

‘Coo-ee!’ he called. ‘I see you!’

But he didn’t, at first, see anything. He was very short-sighted and the shed was almost dark. Groping his way forward, he felt for his spectacles and put them on — but this was a mistake. Now he could see.

Mr Gurgle was not fond of chickens and had thought he didn’t mind what happened to them, but he was wrong. As he reeled from cage to cage, his stomach heaved and sweat broke out on his forehead. Stumbling on, his foot hit a zinc bucket with a crack like a pistol shot — and a large black rat, carrying a chewed chicken leg, scurried across his path.

It was too much. Mr Gurgle gave a cry of terror and fainted clean away.

After this, things happened quickly, but not exactly the way Heckie had planned.

Ralph Ticker heard the pistol shot, rushed into the shed — and saw a dead man! A gang fighting it out in his buildings! White with fear, he ran to the entrance, meaning to make a dash for his car. But a van was slewed across the road and in it, a man with a long, cruel face. Ticker doubled back — and straight into the arms of a ghastly gangster’s moll!

‘Come into the field, you dear man,’ leered Madame Rosalia. She fluttered her eyelashes so hard that they came off, and the chicken farmer, seeing what he thought was a Black Widow Spider on his trousers, shrieked and bolted for the bridge.

‘You can’t come by! Not here you can’t!’

Ticker stopped dead. A talking bush. A bush with a leafy top, but two fat pink legs — legs which ended in large green Wellington boots. But if Ticker was terrified of a bush in wellies, he was even more frightened of the gangsters behind him. He pushed the bush violently to one side and set off across the bridge.

The station was ahead now, and safety.

Only what was that thing above him? A hot air balloon — and coming down very fast. Dangerously fast. It was going to land on top of him!

Ticker crouched down on the planks, trying to cover his head with his hands. And then, just as it seemed certain that he would be squashed flat, the balloon veered to one side — and landed with a gigantic splash in the water!

‘Ha, ha, ha!’ laughed Ticker, forgetting to run. He was the sort of man who loved to see people in trouble.

But even as he leant over and jeered, something was coming up behind him. A bush in boots, which now lifted one leg and kicked him very hard on the backside.

‘Whoosh! Phlup! Guggle!’ spluttered the chicken farmer as he landed in the deep and icy water.

And then a voice, close by, in the river. A kind voice like a nice nannie’s. ‘Don’t worry,’ it said. ‘I’ll help you. I’ll hold you. Just keep calm because I’m swimming right up to you and I’m going to hold you very tight !’

The journey back was not a happy one. Mr Gurgle still felt faint and was lying down in the straw they had put down for the okapi. Boris was full of gloom and guilt because of what had happened to the air balloon, and Frieda’s left foot was cold.

‘All right, that’s enough ,’ snapped Heckie. She was soaking wet, but what she was worrying about was what was in Frieda’s Wellington boot which she was holding carefully on her lap. She had filled it to the brim with water, but even the best wellies leak a little, and if the poor dear fish that swam inside it should dry out and die before they reached Wellbridge, she would never forgive herself. ‘So Frieda’s foot is cold, so Rosalia’s lost her eyelashes, so you wanted an okapi. I’ve told you, I can’t go struggling about in the water with a kind of giraffe. They’re poor swimmers, giraffes — everyone says so.’

‘We understand that,’ said Madame Rosalia. ‘No one’s making a fuss because you turned Mr Ticker into a fish. What we don’t understand is why you didn’t leave him where he was.’

‘I told you why,’ said Heckie irritably. ‘Because the river’s polluted. No fish could last in it for more than a couple of days.’

‘Well, I can’t see that it matters. After what he did to those chickens…’

Heckie opened her mouth and shut it again. She was absolutely sick of explaining to people that the second someone was a fish, he was not a wicked fish or a fish who had tortured chickens, he was simply a fish.

Everything had gone well, really. She had phoned the RSPCA and they’d promised to send some men at once to see to the hens, and Ralph Ticker would never harm a living thing again. But it wasn’t much fun sharing adventures with these moaners and grumblers. If she’d had her old friend with her, how different it would all have been!

‘Oh, where are you, Dora?’ sighed Heckie, clutching her watery boot.

Dora was sitting on an upturned chamberpot in the back of a swaying furniture lorry. Round her were all the things she had brought from Kidchester: her bed, her kitchen table and chairs, her work bench and her tools.

She had decided to move to the outskirts of Wellbridge, where a nice garden statue business had come up for sale, and she was doing it in secret. She hadn’t said a word to Heckie or to anyone she knew. After all, it might be that Heckie was going to be cross with her for ever. On the other hand, if they lived in the same city, even at opposite ends of it, they just could meet by accident and then…

The lorry lurched round the corner and Dora clutched the metal jam pan which contained her hat. The hat wasn’t well at all — the overfeeding had caused the snakes to start shedding their skins. If she wore it now, people would think she had the most awful dandruff.

‘Should I put it on a diet?’ wondered poor Dora as the lorry ground up the hill past Wellbridge prison. But what sort of a diet was best for hats? It was Heckie who knew about animals. ‘Come to that, I ought to go on a diet myself.’

It was true that Dora, who had never been thin, was now definitely overweight. People who are lonely often eat too much and Dora had really been stuffing herself. Muscles, of course, are important for stonework, but fat is another thing.

Nothing had gone well for the stone witch in Kidchester. She’d managed to do some good all right: Dr Franklin, the one who’d done the awful experiments on dogs, really did look very nice by the fountain in the middle of the shopping centre, and she’d found a comfortable spot for a swindler who’d gone off with the life savings of a lot of poor people. He stood between two pillars in front of the Pensions Office, where the starlings were enjoying him. But Kidchester wasn’t pretty like Wellbridge…