Eva Ibbotson - Not Just a Witch

‘Funny, there’s a new statue,’ said Mr Knacksap, pointing with his cane.

‘Yes, there is,’ said Daniel.

Heckie had been thinking of the job ahead of her. Now she looked up, stopped, took a step towards the statue…

And another…

Then she put back her head and screamed.

Daniel reached her first. ‘What is it?’ he gasped. ‘What’s the matter?’

But Heckie couldn’t speak. She just pointed at the statue with a hand which shook as if she had a dreadful fever.

‘It’s Dora,’ she managed to bring out. ‘Dora Mayberry did it. She’s betrayed me, she’s cheated me! She’s done me out of my triumph! This is her work. I’d know it anywhere!’

Daniel went right up to the statue — and then he understood.

It was Max Swinton who stood there, carefully mounted on a marble slab. Max Swinton’s mean little eyes, his silly moustache, his fat chin, were all there in stone. His trousers, tight over his straining thighs, his bulging beer belly, the Avenger’s badge… all were there, for ever and ever, caught in white marble now touched by the first rays of the morning sun.

The night after she found Max Swinton’s statue, Heckie couldn’t sleep. She kept thinking how wicked Dora Mayberry had been, snatching the politician from her and doing poor Mr Knacksap out of his tiger. Copying Heckie’s hat had been bad enough, but this was far, far worse.

But the more she tried to tell herself how awful Dora had been, the more she kept remembering things from the thirty years that both of them had been at school. The time that Dora had cut her toenails for her because Heckie had hurt her back during chimney landing practice. The way Dora always picked the earwigs out of the Hoover bag when it was her turn to clean the dorm because she knew how it upset Heckie when earwigs were put in the bin. And what a netball player the witch had been!

Was it possible that Dora hadn’t meant to upset Heckie? Did she too just think that Max Swinton ought not to be around any longer? And where was Dora? Could she have moved to Wellbridge?

In the morning, as soon as she had fed the animals in the shop and given the dragworm his princess, Heckie went to see Mr Gurgle to ask him if he’d heard anything about the stone witch. The cheese wizard was in a bad mood because his Stilton had developed a limp, but he tried to be helpful.

‘I haven’t heard anything myself,’ he said, ‘but Frieda Fennel did say as how a stone-mason’s business out in Fetlington has changed hands — that’s past the prison, you know. She did say that the quality of work was very high and she was wondering.’

So Heckie went to see the garden witch who was wheeling a single artichoke along in her wheelbarrow, her muscles straining because it was the size of an armchair, and she said, yes, she was almost sure the new owner of the stone-mason’s was a witch. There was something about the garden gnomes that was special.

But when Heckie had got the address, she couldn’t make up her mind. Suppose Dora was still angry with her? Also, there’d been rather a fuss about Max Swinton since statues, unlike animals, can’t run away or be sent to the zoo. Questions were being asked and though no one guessed the truth, there was a lot of puzzlement.

She was still deciding what to do when she met Mr Knacksap for tea at The Copper Kettle.

The furrier had gone off in a rage when he heard that he wasn’t getting his tiger, but since then he had done some serious thinking. A witch who could turn people into animals and another witch who could turn people into stone… What did that suggest? To Mr Knacksap it suggested riches beyond his dreams, a life of plenty in which he need never work again. The plan he now came up with could only have been worked out by someone half mad with cruelty and greed, but Mr Knacksap was exactly such a man.

So he wrote a little note to Heckie saying he was sorry he had lost his temper, but he’d been so upset at disappointing his friend who was a lord, and inviting Heckie to meet him for tea.

Heckie was terribly pleased to see him and she asked him at once what he thought she should do about Dora Mayberry. ‘You see, I do hate to go on quarrelling, but I couldn’t bear it if she was unkind to me. What do you think I should do, Li-Li?’

This gave Mr Knacksap just the opening he was looking for. ‘I tell you what, my dear,’ he said, smiling his gooey smile, ‘since you’re such a shy and delicate little thing, why don’t you let me go? I’ll give her your message and tell her you want to be friends and see what she says.’

‘Oh, would you, Li-Li? That’s so kind of you. So like you. I’ll write her a letter and give it to you.’

So Heckie wrote a letter in which she said that while she had been rather cross about Mr Swinton, who was really hers, if Dora really hadn’t known what Heckie was going to do, then she was happy to let bygones be bygones. ‘Because I have missed you very much, dear Dora,’ wrote Heckie, and then she sealed the envelope and gave it to Mr Knacksap to take to her friend.

But what did Mr Knacksap do?

As soon as he was out of sight, he tore the letter into little pieces and threw them away. Not even into a bin because he was a litter lout as well as a creep — just away in the street where the wind blew them all over the place. Then he hailed a taxi and drove to the stone-mason’s yard.

Dora Mayberry was in her overalls and Wellington boots, chipping with a chisel at the nose of a Greek hero whom a rich businessman wanted to put in his park. Just as Heckie kept an ordinary pet shop to earn her living in which the rabbits and guinea pigs really were rabbits and guinea pigs and not changed people, so Dora did ordinary stonework for anyone who would pay her and she did it very well. The hero was the kind with a lion skin round his shoulder and a lot of muscles and a club, and Mr Knacksap stood for a while watching before he coughed softly and asked if he was in the presence of Miss Dora Mayberry.

‘That’s me,’ said Dora, nodding, and she wiped her chisel and looked at the handsome man in his dark coat with the raccoon collar and the black hat. ‘Come in,’ she said, blushing a little because there had been no gentlemen in the Witch Academy and she was very shy.

Mr Knacksap followed her in, his nose twitching with curiosity. So this homely woman could turn a man into stone. Quite a lot of men if need be!

‘I’ve come with a message from a friend of yours. A Miss Hecate Tenbury-Smith.’

‘Heckie!’ Dora’s round little eyes lit up. ‘How is she? Tell me about her, please. Oh, I have missed her so!’

For it was true, Dora had not meant to annoy Heckie. Though she had moved back to Wellbridge, hoping to make it up with her friend, she had not dared to go and see her. Suppose Heckie snubbed her? Then she had read about Max Swinton in the paper and become very upset. A man like that shouldn’t be allowed to exist, she thought, and when Swinton took a stroll in the park, she’d been ready for him. It had been hard work dragging him to the right spot, mounting him properly, but she’d done it and been proud of her handiwork. In the old days she’d have gone straight to Heckie and shown her what she’d done.

So now she waited eagerly for what Mr Knacksap had to say.

‘I’m afraid your friend is absolutely furious with you. In fact you can hardly call Miss Tenbury-Smith your friend. She never wants to see you again.’

‘Oh, oh!’ Poor Dora put her hand to her mouth and her eyes widened in sorrow and dismay. ‘But why? Why?’

‘She’s very angry with you about Mr Swinton’s statue. She was going to change him into a tiger and everything was prepared. But it isn’t just that. She feels very bitter about the hat and everything. She sent me to tell you that she never wants to set eyes on you again.’