The Witch's Daughter

by Nina Bawden

  Now she had told him, he did. He whistled slowly through his teeth. ‘So they must both be in it, him and Mr Smith. And Mr Campbell too. They all found some buried treasure or something, and they want to keep it quiet …’

  Oh, Tim, Tim … He could hear his father’s voice and his gently amused laugh, as clearly as if he had been in the room. Don’t let your imagination run away with you. That sort of thing only happens in books.

  ‘Do you think he’s still there?’ Janey asked.

  ‘Who’s still where?’

  ‘Toffee Papers. Mr Jones. Mrs Tarbutt said she didn’t know where he was. Well, he might be up at Perdita’s house.’

  ‘Could be.’ Tim spoke rather coldly, because he should have thought of this for himself. ‘If it was him, knocked Dad down, he’d have run away because he’d be afraid Dad would tell the police about him. So I suppose he might have gone to—to this place, whatever it’s called.’

  ‘Luinpool,’ Janey said patiently. ‘Don’t you ever listen?’

  ‘I did listen,’ Tim said, ‘but I was busy thinking. And if you’ll kindly keep quiet, I’m going to think now.’

  He frowned and made deep, sighing noises to help the process. I expect there is some perfectly simple explanation, his father would say. And by simple he would mean that it must have nothing to do with smuggler’s caves or buried treasure. What his father would say—what would his father say? Tim frowned more fiercely as he tried to guess what would be the—extraordinarily dull, he thought—processes of his father’s mind. His father would say, he realised, that neither the ruby, nor Perdita’s diamond, were real. Too romantic an imagination, old chap. And he would ruffle his son’s hair with a sigh: imagination was not a quality Mr Hoggart thought highly of.

  ‘But they were real, weren’t they?’ Tim said aloud.

  He stood, biting the side of his thumb nail, and feeling confused. Evidence—he could hear Mr Hoggart saying it—where is your evidence? So far he had only got Janey’s word that there had been a burglar. And, though his father must have seen him and would tell the police as soon as he got better and remembered, he hadn’t told them yet, had he? Suppose he never did remember? Suppose he had lost his memory completely as a result of that bang on the head? Would he believe Janey’s story then? Would anyone? Of course they wouldn’t. Unless …

  He whirled round. ‘Janey,’ he said in a hoarse whisper, ‘Janey—I know what we’ll do.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE HEROIC BEHAVIOUR OF MR JONES

  THE WITCH’S DAUGHTER lay on the rag rug in front of the range fire, her face to the ground. She was crying. She could hardly remember crying before—at least, not for years and years. ‘Witch’s can’t cry, it’s a known fact,’ Mr Smith had once said when she had fallen in the yard and cut her lip on a stone. And to please him, she had sat dry-eyed on the kitchen table while he dabbed at the cut with disinfectant—clumsily, because unlike Mr Jones, he was not a family man.

  But now Mr Smith was going away. Annie had told her, and Perdita had been dry-eyed while she listened, staring at Annie with wide, unbelieving eyes. She had said nothing until Annie had gone out to feed the hens, and then the tears had burst out, gushing up like a fountain. She cried until she felt empty and weak. Then she rolled over and blinked her swollen eyes at the fire. She lay like that until she heard Annie at the back door, stamping the yard mud from her boots. Perdita got up and ran out of the kitchen, into the hall and up the stairs.

  Mr Smith was out. The old house breathed and creaked with the wind. Perdita stood at the end of the long corridor at the top of the stairs and listened to the familiar sounds. Familiar—but there was something different, too. The plumbing clanged as Annie turned a tap on downstairs, but it wasn’t that. It was a new creak, a questioning little whine, like a door hinge. Perdita tiptoed along the corridor and saw that one of the locked rooms was open: the dark wood of the solid door was edged with light. She stood outside it, listening. The hinge creaked and the door blew shut. Then a breathy sigh, and it opened again just that little, lighted crack, as if the wind had sucked it inwards. Gently, Perdita put her hand on the door and pushed it.

  It opened wide, onto a large, light room that was empty except for a camp bed with some blankets tumbled on it, and an open suitcase in the corner. The floor was a mess of mouse dirts and dust; the sunlight, falling through the dirty window, showed up a filmy pattern of cobwebs. Perdita crept across the floor to the window, which looked out onto the loch. The water was rippling with the wind and the wind pump was rattling round like a child’s paper windmill. Across the loch, the sun had gone behind the hills, turning them into sombre shadows, etched with dazzling light.

  Perdita blinked her eyes, which felt hot and sore. She turned from the window and looked at the suitcase.

  There was nothing remarkable about it. Just an old suitcase with a pair of shoes that needed mending, a few, crumpled magazines, newspapers … Newspapers. Suddenly interested, Perdita squatted down to see if there was anything she could read. But none of the letters seemed much like the wobbly ones Janey had drawn in the sand.

  She began to turn the newspapers over. The paper felt brittle, like dry leaves, and smelt musty. She wrinkled her nose and was about to shut the case, when a picture caught her eye. A photograph. There was no mistaking that flat, froggy face. It was Mr Jones’s photograph, staring up at her from the front page.

  There was some print underneath, in blacker type than the rest of the lettering, and easier to read. Mr. That was Mister. She muttered to herself. J should be the beginning of the next word, then. J for Janey and for Jam and for Jones. But it wasn’t. The first letter of the next word was a P.

  P for Perdita. She breathed deeply, concentrating hard, and the letters stopped being just squiggles on the page and became meaningful. P for Perdita. R for Rat. A for Apple. T for Tomato. Then another T. P—she said the sound to herself. R—rolling the R. A. T.T. PRATT. Mr Pratt.

  Exhausted, she sat back on her heels, smiling. She had read a printed word. For a moment that was all it meant to her: a small triumph, the first step on the way to the school on Trull. Then puzzlement set in. Why should Mr Jones have a different name in the newspaper? She stared hard at the smaller print under the headline, but it told her nothing. Her mouth set in temper and she tore the page out, crumpling it in her hand to throw it away. Then, almost at once, her expression changed. Tim could read. He and Janey knew Mr Jones too. She smoothed the wrinkled page on the floor, folded it, and tucked it inside the neck of her dress.

  *

  At the hotel in Skuaphort, the telephone began to ring. Mr Tarbutt came out of the bar and went to answer it. Mrs Hoggart began to talk at the other end, her voice quick and excited. ‘Can’t hear you. Bad line,’ Mr Tarbutt said.

  The voice at the other end slowed down.

  Mr Tarbutt listened, scratching his head with his free hand in a bewildered fashion. ‘I don’t quite understand. Are you sure your husband is quite …’ he began, and then, hastily, ‘Oh, no, Mrs Hoggart, of course I believe you, it’s just that … No, he’s not here, we’ve not seen him all day, and, as a matter of fact my wife was quite worried but if what you say is …’ He cleared his throat loudly. ‘I mean, it looks as if he may have skipped off to avoid trouble … What … Oh, the children are fine, just had their tea … Yes, of course you can speak to Tim.’

  He put the receiver down and went to the foot of the stairs. He called Tim and waited. When there was no answer, he ran up the stairs and opened the bedroom door. A piece of paper blew off the dressing table in the draught. Mr Tarbutt stooped for it, frowned, and went heavily down the stairs. He picked up the receiver and said, reluctantly, ‘I’m afraid they’re not here. Tim left a note. It just says they’ll be back before dark.’

  He listened to Mrs Hoggart’s voice, which had begun to quack in a loud, alarmed way. Then he gave a brief, involuntary smile.

  ‘Oh, please don’t worry, Mrs Hoggart. I’m sure he is not a dangerous crim
inal. Even if he did attack your husband, I can’t believe he’d harm the children, even if he ran into them, which isn’t likely. Tim won’t have gone far, not with the little lass … Yes, of course, I’ll go out and look for them at once … No. No, Mrs Hoggart, I’m afraid there isn’t a police station here.’

  A man had appeared in the doorway of the hotel. He stood there, his hands in his pockets, his face expressionless. Mr Tarbutt promised that he would telephone as soon as he had found the children. Then he put the receiver down and the man in the doorway spoke. ‘Police station?’ Mr Smith said. ‘Who wants a policeman on Skua?’

  *

  ‘We ought to have told a policeman,’ Janey said.

  ‘What policeman? There isn’t even a doctor on Skua. And who’d believe us, anyway? No one would listen, Janey. Not without evidence. We’ve got to get evidence first.’

  ‘Are you going to ask Mr Jones for your ruby back? Are we going to see Perdita, at Luinpool?’

  ‘Well …’ Tim hesitated. That had, in fact, been his first indignant reaction: to walk up to Luinpool and confront Mr Jones. Then doubt had set in. Suppose he was wrong, after all. Suppose there was some ‘perfectly simple explanation’ which had, so far, eluded him? What a fool he would look! Even if someone had knocked his father down, there was no proof it was Toffee Papers. At least, he had no proof. And if he was right—well, if he was right, to go up to Luinpool might be dangerous!

  ‘I think it’s better to go to the cave first,’ he said. ‘If I found the ruby there, I expect that’s where Mr Jones found the treasure. So there might be another one.’ He breathed quickly, with excitement. ‘If we could find another ruby, Janey, then they’d have to believe us.’

  ‘But it’s a long way to Carlin’s Cave,’ Janey protested. ‘You and Dad went by car.’

  ‘It’s only a long way by road. Not if we go round by the headland.’

  If they could go round by the headland. If Perdita was right about the path …

  ‘How far is it?’ Janey asked.

  ‘A bit beyond the bay.’ Tim looked at his sister. She was a good walker, but it was already late in the day and she would soon be tired. ‘I should have left you behind,’ he said. ‘I told you to stay behind …’

  ‘I wouldn’t though, would I?’ Janey said, smiling to herself.

  Tim gave a little sigh. ‘No, you wouldn’t. Well, you mustn’t grumble, then.’

  Janey showed no sigh of grumbling. She walked stoutly beside Tim who still limped a little, and held onto the sleeve of his wind cheater for guidance. ‘We’re nearly at the bay now,’ she said.

  ‘How d’you know?’ Tim said, surprised.

  ‘We’re out of the peaty bog. It’s grassy here, sort of springy. Then you get to the stone wall and over the wall there’s the up and down sandy part with the prickly grasses.’

  ‘The dunes,’ Tim said. ‘I’ll carry you through the dunes, if you like.’

  ‘No. I don’t mind. It tells me where I am.’

  They had reached the bay and were crossing the sand towards the headland when Perdita saw them. She was walking the ridge of Ben Luin. She looked down at Skuaphort and saw Mr Smith’s white Jaguar drive away from the hotel and up the stony road. Then she looked down at the bay and saw Tim and Janey. She called out, but the wind was strong and tossed her voice away like a bird cry. She ran down off the ridge, so fast that her teeth jolted. The wind was very strong now, and the sky was sullen over the sea.

  *

  There was a path round the headland, a narrow path, a goat track. It wound up the cliff a little, through heather, and then descended on the seaward side, a tiny ledge on the sheer cliff face. It was safe enough as long as you didn’t look down and turn giddy. Tim looked down once: beneath him, the sea boiled over rocks that were sharp and pointed like—like dragon’s teeth, he thought. He had to stop. Behind him, holding onto his wind cheater, Janey had to stop too. ‘What’s the matter? Have we got there?’

  ‘No.’ Tim swallowed. There was no point in telling her about that terrible drop. ‘It’s just my foot aching,’ he said, and forced himself on again.

  The precipitous part was mercifully short. Once round the point of the headland—the Point of Caves—the path went a little inland, through two walls of rock, as if here the cliff had split open at some time. The rocky walls were high above them: all Tim could see when he looked up, was the purplish, menacing sky. If it rains, he thought, it’ll be slippery going back, and the thought made his stomach churn, as if he had eaten too much ice-cream. He wasn’t afraid for himself, he thought, but for Janey. She wasn’t frightened, of course. Whenever he stopped, she prodded him in the back and said, ‘Hurry up, lazy. I want to get to the cave.’

  From this approach the cave and the little beach looked quite different from when Tim and his father had come down the side of the torrent. Tim could see, what he had not noticed then, that beyond the rocks was a small, natural harbour. A boat was moored there, rocking among the gingery seaweed. An outboard motor was propped up on the stern and the bottom of the boat was full of fishing tackle and lobster pots.

  ‘That’s Mr Campbell’s boat,’ Perdita said, as she came panting up to join them.

  *

  They sat on the shingle beach and looked at Mr Jones’s picture in the newspaper. Toffee Papers, Frog Face, Mr Jones. Pratt was the name the newspaper used. And Mr Pratt—who was fifty-two, the newspaper said, and had two little girls—was not a burglar, or, indeed, a criminal of any kind. He was an assistant in a big jeweller’s shop in the West End of London, and an extremely brave man. When the shop had been raided by a gang late one winter afternoon, Mr Pratt, who had stayed after closing time to finish stock-taking, had behaved with great courage. Hearing a noise in the shop, he had telephoned the police from the back office, and then, fearing they would not arrive in time, he had attempted to prevent the thieves making a get-away. It was gallant but useless: when the police reached the shop they found the thieves gone, and poor Mr Pratt gagged and blindfolded and trussed up like a chicken ready for the oven. He had been badly hurt, severely bruised and cut about the face, and it was some time before he recovered sufficiently to make a statement. The odds had been terribly against him: there had been seven or eight men, though he could only describe one. ‘It all happened so suddenly,’ he said. The man he had seen was of medium height, not fat, not thin: he wore a hat and a raincoat and Mr Pratt had thought his eyes were brown, but he couldn’t be sure.

  Tim frowned down at the newspaper. ‘Seems to me,’ he said, ‘that that could be a description of just about anybody. I mean—if you had to describe somebody, but didn’t want anyone to know who it was, that’s just the sort of description you’d give.’

  He paused. ‘Perhaps he just isn’t a very noticing sort of person,’ he said. ‘Mum says there are a lot of people who don’t really notice what other people look like. She notices. She’s got a good memory for faces.’ He remembered something, suddenly. ‘She remembered his face, you know. She told me she thought she’d seen him somewhere before. I suppose she’d seen his picture in the paper …’

  He thought a minute. ‘I wonder how long ago this happened. There isn’t any date …’

  ‘Three years, just about,’ said a voice behind them.

  CHAPTER TEN

  UNEXPECTED EVIDENCE

  IT WAS TOFFEE PAPERS. The sea boomed so loudly round the Point of Caves, that even Janey had not heard him come. He bent down and removed the piece of newspaper from Tim’s limp fingers.

  ‘Not a bad likeness,’ he said, regarding it critically. ‘Not bad at all.’ His eyes bulged like pale, boiled sweets as he sat on a rock and looked at the three children. ‘National hero, that’s what I was. A national hero …’

  He took a toothpick out of his waistcoat pocket and began to dig between his yellow front teeth.

  ‘Mr Pratt?’ Tim said.

  He snapped the toothpick between his plump fingers and finished the job with his tongue. ‘Being a hero
can be an embarrassment. Notoriety. Begging letters. So what do you do? You change your name. You get used to the new one and it don’t seem worth changing back.’ He looked at the newspaper story, grinned, and handed it back to Tim. ‘Where’d you find it?’

  ‘Mr Smith’s suitcase,’ Perdita said.

  He looked at her. ‘Thought you didn’t mix with other kiddies. Smithie was wrong about that, wasn’t he? Poor old Smithie.’ He sighed. ‘It’s like him to keep that cutting. He’s the kind of man who’s proud of his old friends.’

  ‘What happened to the thieves?’ Tim asked. He felt very confused.

  Mr Jones—or Pratt—took a toffee out of his jacket pocket. He unwrapped it, popped it in his mouth, and said, ‘Oh, pardon me. Manners!’ He abstracted three more toffees from his pocket and tossed them over to the children. ‘Now. The thieves. The gentlemen of fortune. They got away with it, young man. Deserved to, in my opinion. It was a clever job, a clever job. They weren’t ordinary criminals, you know, not regulars. One job and clean away. That’s the way to do it.’

  ‘What happened to the jewels?’ Tim was hypnotised by Toffee Papers’ broad, rhythmically chewing jaw.

  ‘Never seen again. Of course, the market was watched, but not a sign! That’s the way to be successful, of course. Sit on the loot, don’t spend it—or only spend it carefully, bit by bit. If you start spending money like water it attracts attention. That’s the way fools get caught. These weren’t fools, you know, these were clever men.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have thought you’d have thought so,’ Tim could not help saying. ‘After what they did to you.’

  Toffee Papers looked faintly startled and then laughed. ‘Oh, they rough-housed me a bit. But I don’t bear any malice now.’ He leaned forward, his fat hands on his fat knees. ‘I was angry at first—mad! Then, after a bit, I got to thinking. What harm had they done, after all? Pinched a lot of stuff that was no real use to anyone. You can’t eat diamonds—nor warm yourself by them, neither. No one lost anything, really, except the insurance company, and they could afford it. No—I thought it over, and the months went by and they didn’t get caught and I began to think—well—good luck to them! What are most people’s lives like, in the end? A treadmill. You work so you can eat, you eat so you can work. Round and round like mice in a cage.’ He began to get excited, waving his fists in the air. ‘Here were some men, I said to myself, who’d had the courage to break out. Family men, perhaps, anxious for their children’s future. But having the sense to wait. Bide their time, go on with their nine to five jobs, mowing the lawn Sundays. Then, when the hue and cry’s over’—he snapped his fingers—‘OUT. Out and away …’