Eva Ibbotson - Not Just a Witch

Daniel was really too young to babysit and so was Sumi who was his friend. But Sumi, whose parents had come over from India to run the grocery shop in the street behind Daniel’s house, was so sensible and so used to minding her three little brothers that the Boothroyds knew she would be fit to look after Basil while they went to the Town Hall to have dinner with the Lord Mayor. What’s more, they knew they would have to pay her much less than they would have to pay a grown-up for looking after their son.

And Sumi had suggested that Daniel came along. ‘I’ll ask you your spellings,’ she said, because she knew how cross Daniel’s parents got when he didn’t do brilliantly at school.

Daniel’s parents were professors. Both of them. His father was called Professor Trent and if only Daniel had been dead and buried in some interesting tomb somewhere, the Professor would have been delighted with him. He was an archaeologist who studied ancient tribes and in particular their burial customs and he was incredibly clever. But Daniel wasn’t mummified or covered in clay so the Professor didn’t have much time for him. Daniel’s mother (who was also called Professor Trent) was a philosopher who had written no less than seven books on The Meaning of Meaning and she too was terribly clever and found it hard to understand that her son was just an ordinary boy who sometimes got his sums wrong and liked to play football.

The house they lived in was tall and grey and rather dismal, and looked out across the river to the university where both the professors worked, and to the zoo. As often as not when Daniel came home from school there was nobody there, just notes propped against the teapot telling him what to unfreeze for supper and not to forget to do his piano practice.

When you know you are a disappointment to your parents, your schoolfriends become very important. Fortunately Daniel had plenty of these. There was Joe whose father was a keeper in the Wellbridge Zoo, and Henry whose mother worked as a chambermaid in the Queen’s Hotel. And there was Sumi who was so gentle and so clever and never showed off even though she knew the answers to everything. And because it was Sumi who asked him, he went along to babysit at The Towers.

The Boothroyds’ house was across the river in a wide, tree-lined street between the university and the zoo. They had been quite old when Basil was born and they dressed him like babies were dressed years ago. Basil slept in a barred cot with a muslin canopy and blue bows; his pillow was edged with lace and he had a silken quilt. And there he sat, in a long white nightdress, steaming away like a red and angry boil.

The Boothroyds left. Sumi and Daniel settled down on the sitting-room sofa. Sumi took out the list of spellings.

‘Separate,’ she said, and Daniel sighed. He was not very fond of separate.

But it didn’t matter because at that moment Basil began to scream.

He screamed as though he was being stuck all over with red-hot skewers and by the time they got upstairs he had turned an unpleasant shade of puce and was banging his head against the side of the cot.

Sumi managed to gather him up. Daniel ran to warm his bottle under the tap. Sumi gave it to him and he bit off the teat. Daniel ran to fetch another. Basil took a few windy gulps, then swivelled round and knocked the bottle out of Sumi’s hand.

It took a quarter of an hour to clean up the mess and by the time they got downstairs again, Sumi had a long scratch across her cheek.

‘Separate,’ she said wearily, picking up the list.

‘S… E… P…’ began Daniel — and was wondering whether to try an A or an E when Basil began again.

This time he had been sick all over the pillow. Sumi fetched a clean pillow-case and Basil took a deep breath and filled his nappy. She managed to change him, kicking and struggling, and put on a fresh one. Basil waited till it was properly fastened, squinted — and filled it again.

It went on like this for the next hour. Sumi never lost her patience, but she was looking desperately tired and Daniel, who knew how early she got up each day to mind her little brothers and help tidy the shop before school, could gladly have murdered Basil Boothroyd.

At eight o’clock they gave up and left him. Basil went on screaming for a while and then — miracle of miracles — he fell silent. But when Daniel looked across at Sumi for another dose of spelling he saw that she was lying back against the sofa cushions. Her long dark hair streamed across her face and she was fast asleep.

Daniel should now have felt much better. Sumi was asleep, there was no need to spell separate and Basil was quiet. And for about ten minutes he did.

Then he began to worry. Why was Basil so quiet? Had he choked? Had he bitten his tongue out and bled to death?

Daniel waited a little longer. Then he crept upstairs and stood listening by the door.

Basil wasn’t dead. He was snoring. Daniel was about to go downstairs again when something about the noise that Basil was making caught his attention. Basil was snoring, but he was snoring… nicely. Daniel couldn’t think of any other way of putting it. It was a cosy, snuffling snore and it surprised Daniel because he didn’t think that Basil could make any noise that wasn’t horrid.

Daniel put his head round the door… took a few steps into the room.

And stopped dead.

At first he simply didn’t believe it. What had happened was so amazing, so absolutely wonderful, that it couldn’t be real. Only it was real. Daniel blinked and rubbed his eyes and shook himself, but it was still there, curled up on the silken quilt: not a screaming, disagreeable baby, but the most enchanting bulldog puppy with a flat, wet nose, a furrowed forehead and a blob of a tail.

Daniel stood looking down at it, feeling quite light-headed with happiness, and the puppy opened its eyes. They were the colour of liquorice and brimming with soul. There are people who say that dogs don’t smile, but people who say that are silly. The bulldog grinned. It sat up and wagged its tail. It licked Daniel’s hands.

‘Oh, I do so like you,’ said Daniel to the little, wrinkled dog.

And the dog liked Daniel. He lay on his back so that Daniel could scratch his stomach; he jumped up to try and lick Daniel’s face, but his legs were too short and he collapsed again. Daniel had longed and longed for a dog to keep him company in that tall, grey house to which his parents came back so late. Now it seemed like a miracle, finding this funny, loving, squashed-looking little dog in place of that horrible baby.

Because Basil had gone. There was no doubt about it. He wasn’t in the cot and he wasn’t under it. He wasn’t anywhere. Daniel searched the bathroom, the other bedrooms… Nothing. Someone must have come in and taken Basil and put the little dog there instead. A kidnapper? Someone wanting to hold Basil to ransom? But why leave the little dog? The Boothroyds might not be very bright, but they could tell the difference between their baby and a dog.

I must go and tell Sumi, he thought, and it was only then that he became frightened, seeing what was to come. The screaming parents, the police, the accusations. Perhaps they’d be sent to prison for not looking after Basil properly. And where was Basil? He might be an awful baby, but nobody wanted him harmed.

Daniel tore himself away from the bulldog and studied the room.

How could the kidnappers have got in? The front door was locked, so was the back and the window was bolted. He walked over to the fireplace. It was the old-fashioned kind with a wide chimney. But that was ridiculous — even if the kidnappers had managed to come down it, how could they have got the baby off the roof?

Then he caught sight of something spilled in the empty grate: a yellowish coarse powder, like breadcrumbs.