Eva Ibbotson - Not Just a Witch

At eight, a nurse came to turn out the light.

‘I’d like a hot-water bottle,’ said Heckie. ‘I’m cold.’

‘A hot-water bottle !’ said the nurse. ‘You must be out of your mind!’

All the kind nurses had left; only the cruel ones could stand working for Mrs Winneypeg and most of them weren’t real nurses at all.

At midnight, Heckie got up and stood by the window. Everything was ready; all her helpers knew what to do. Daniel and Sumi were taking it in turns to mind the shop and sit with the dragworm; Joe had ‘borrowed’ his father’s keys to the West Gate of the zoo and would come with Boris in his van to drive whatever it was to safety.

Only what was it going to be? Heckie wasn’t sure. Nothing cuddly , of course. ‘I’ll just have to see how I feel when the time comes,’ she said, and went back to bed.

Breakfast was lumpy porridge and dry bread.

‘I want some butter,’ said Heckie. ‘I’ve paid good money to be here and I want some butter on my bread.’

After breakfast she said she’d like to go out for a little walk and at eleven she wanted a nice cup of coffee.

By lunchtime it was clear that something would have to be done about Miss Smith and the matron went to ring Mrs Winneypeg.

‘She’s a troublemaker, Mrs Winneypeg. I don’t know what to do with her.’

‘Do with her? Do what we always do,’ snapped Mrs Winneypeg. ‘Undress her, take her teeth out and shut her in her room.’

‘Well, I tried…’ Matron broke off, not really able to explain why it wasn’t easy to undress Miss Smith. ‘Her teeth don’t take out,’ she complained.

‘All right; I’m coming anyway at three o’clock to do the accounts. I’ll soon sort her out.’

And Heckie, who had been listening at the door, held up three fingers to Boris, waiting in the street in his parked van, and settled down to wait.

The residents were sitting in a circle in the lounge when the white Rolls-Royce drew up in front of the door. Heckie could see the way they cowered at the sight of it and her chin went up.

‘Listen,’ she said quickly. ‘How many of you can stand up without help? How many of you can walk?’

The circle of faces stared at her blankly.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Some of you can, I know. I’ve seen you.’

Still the poor browbeaten creatures just stared at her. Then slowly, Major Holden’s hand went up; then Sam’s… then those of the ladies who shared Heckie’s room — until almost everybody’s hand was raised.

‘Good,’ said Heckie. ‘Because I’m going to have a few words with Mrs Winneypeg and I want you to stand quite close in a circle. I need her to come right up to me — I don’t want her running away. And I don’t want… anything else running away either. Can you do that?’

The old people nodded. A little colour had come into their faces and Major Holden put up his hand in a salute.

The door opened and Mrs Winneypeg came into the room. She saw all the residents dozing as usual, and she marched straight up to Miss Smith.

‘Now then, I hear you’ve been making trouble,’ she said. ‘Just exactly what is the matter?’

Heckie rose from her chair. ‘Everything is the matter! Just exactly everything. This place is a disgrace. The food is revolting, the staff are unkind and you are a vicious woman!’

Mrs Winneypeg’s mouth opened; her chins quivered. ‘How dare you! How dare you speak to me like that!’ She marched towards Heckie which was exactly what Heckie wanted. And the old people had heard and understood. They were doing what Heckie had asked. One by one, with their walking frames and their sticks, they stood in a circle round Heckie and Mrs Winneypeg. They were frail and tottery, but there were a lot of them.

‘Well, I do dare. Why can’t Major Holden have some boot polish when he’s paid you thousands of pounds? Why did you take away Miss Merrick’s window-box? And where is Mr Sam’s parrot, answer me that?’

‘Why you… you disgusting old woman. I’ll have you put away! I’ll have you put in a loony bin. I’ll ring the hospital and tell them to come with a strait-jacket.’

This threat had always worked before, but Miss Smith only laughed. ‘Try it! Just you try it!’

Mrs Winneypeg blinked because Miss Smith seemed taller somehow and her voice had changed. But she moved forward and grabbed Heckie’s arm.

And now Heckie had her. Her own free arm came round Mrs Winneypeg’s fat throat. She kicked off her slipper and her toe curled and throbbed with the power that came from it. Mrs Winneypeg was scared now, she wanted to get away, but she was caught in a ring of old people. If she pushed through, someone would probably keel over and die and that meant doctors and people asking questions. And Heckie’s grip was tightening. Her knuckle glowed like a ring of flame!

‘Sploosh!’ spluttered Mrs Winneypeg. ‘Shluroop… Oink !’

And then it was over! At the last minute, Heckie had known exactly what would turn out best. And as they saw what had happened, there appeared on the faces of the old people a look of wonder, and one by one, their wrinkled faces broke into smiles.

But of course no one believed them afterwards. When Mrs Winneypeg had been gone a few days and the police came, and the inspectors from the council, no one believed a bunch of old people when they explained what had happened. Old people have fancies, everyone knows that. But the inspectors were so shocked by what they found in the Sundown Homes that they closed them then and there and moved the residents to council homes where they were properly cared for and had plenty to do. Miss Merrick was given a little bit of garden and Major Holden was put in charge of all the shoe cleaning, not just his own, so that everybody looked smart. And Sam’s parrot stopped saying: ‘Where’s Sam?’ and said some other things instead — things it is better not to mention because he’d been at sea with Sam for many years and had picked up some very fruity oaths.

But still no one believed the old ladies and the old gentlemen. Not even when a brand new warthog turned up in the Wellbridge Zoo — a warthog with a greedy snout and blue eyes and a way of banging its back parts furiously against the sides of the cage. Not even then.

A new statue had appeared in Kidchester Town Park. It was made of marble and very lifelike. You could almost feel the hair on its moustache and the waxy blobs inside its ears.

The council thought that the statue had been put up by the Lord Mayor and the Lord Mayor thought it had been put up by some ladies who called themselves the Friends of Kidchester and wanted to make their town a beautiful place.

But the statue hadn’t been put up by any of these people. It had been dragged there in the middle of the night by the stone witch, Dora Mayberry, who had been Heckie’s friend.

Dora had found a nice garden gnome business in Kidchester which was about thirty miles from Wellbridge. She made dwarves and fairies and mermaids for people to put round their garden ponds, and in her spare time she tried to Do Good because that was what she and Heckie said that they would do. When she turned Henry Hartington to marble and put him in the park, she was certainly making the world a better place. She had heard Henry’s wife scream night after night while he beat her, and seen his children run out of their house with awful bruises, and when she met him rolling home from the pub, she had simply looked at him in a certain way and that was that.

But she was lonely. She missed Heckie all the time. Dora was shy — she was apt to grunt rather than speak and this made it difficult to make new friends. Far from having a bontebok for a familiar, Dora didn’t have a familiar at all. What she did have was a ghost: a miserable, wispy thing which had come with the old wardrobe Dora had bought to hang her clothes in. The ghost was a tree spirit who had stayed in her tree when the woodmen came with their axes, and floated about between the coathangers, begging Dora not to chop down the wardrobe.