Eva Ibbotson - Not Just a 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 would 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.