Witch Baby and Me On Stage
Page 5
Jamie’s room is dimly lit by a small desk lamp balanced on top of a tottering heap of out-of-date encyclopaedias. Witch Baby tiptoes up to the bunk beds and peers into the lower one. There’s something making snuffling sounds, fast asleep on top of the bedcovers, but it’s not Jamie. Witch Baby creeps closer. It’s a dog, asleep. A very old dog, judging by the grey hairs around its muzzle and the scent of old dog that surrounds it like a cloud.
This is Petra, Jamie’s ancient and much-loved black Labrador. Like Way Woof, Petra isn’t really allowed to sleep on her owner’s bed, but she does it anyway. Gentle snores from the top bunk suggest that Petra’s owner doesn’t mind in the least. Like Petra, Jamie is fast asleep. Daisy pads back out into the corridor till she reaches Annabel’s bedroom, where the lights are still on. Witch Baby turns herself into a shadow* and slips through the keyhole.
Annabel’s bedroom is like a shrine to ponies. In one corner, beneath a shelf crammed with trophies, medals and cups, all with Annabel’s name engraved on them, stands a huge rocking horse, but it’s covered in dust as if it’s been abandoned. Annabel’s bed is a four-poster, with matching covers and curtains printed with horse’s heads. An entire wall is devoted to rosettes and certificates, all won by Annabel riding one of her beloved ponies. There are framed photographs of Annabel astride the bad-tempered Polka, her present pony, Patches, her previous pony, Penny, the pony before Patches, and her very first pony, Pookie. In every single photograph except the most recent one, there’s a grown-up lady holding the pony’s head. This is Annabel and Jamie’s mummy, the Right Honourable Portia Dunlop, who ran away one day with the young groom who used to look after Annabel’s ponies.
Poor Annabel and Jamie. Poor Annabel and Jamie’s dad. The castle hasn’t really felt like home since the mistress of Mishnish left last summer. The children’s nanny does her best, but it’s not the same. The house is too big, the children are too difficult and Mr Dunlop is always working. As a rule, nannies don’t stay very long at Mishnish Castle. This one will probably pack her bags and go quite soon.
Drifting past all these photographs of past ponies and happier days, the shadow heaves a huge sigh. Witch Baby has only been inside Mishnish Castle for a minute, but already she can’t wait to leave. She wafts across to where Annabel is sleeping face-down in the centre of her huge bed, and pauses. Annabel’s shoulders are quivering, and every so often she gives a little sniff.
Poor Annabel. She’s having an unhappy dream; one of the ones that began shortly after her mummy ran away. Witch Baby doesn’t know what Annabel is dreaming about; she only knows that the sleeping girl is feeling very sad. So she does the first thing she can think of to make Annabel feel better. She drifts in close, and closer still; then, very gently, she begins to pat Annabel’s back with a shadowy hand. It’s exactly what Witch Baby’s mummy does when Witch Baby is upset, and it works like magic every time. Even when Witch Baby is a little sobbing blob of misery, if her mummy picks her up and pats her back, very soon she feels much better.
And look – under Witch Baby’s gentle, shadowy back-patting, Annabel turns her head to one side and smiles in her sleep. Brilliant. Mission accomplished. Once Daisy is absolutely sure she’s cheered Annabel up, she floats away, back through the keyhole, along the corridor and out through an open window into the night. She has one more house to visit and then it’ll be time to go home.
Moments later Witch Baby is inside Yoshito Harukashi’s house, this time having turned herself into a moth. She flutters around the darkened kitchen, where the table is already laid for breakfast. There’s a big chair and a little chair, a big bowl and a little bowl, and a big mug and a little cup. Daisy feels a bit like Goldilocks, gate-crashing the three bears’ house, except there are only two places set at this table. In the middle is a small vase of snowdrops next to a little jade statue of a dragon.
When Yoshito wakes up in the morning, she will come downstairs to this warm and welcoming room and have breakfast with her father, just as she has done ever since she learned to walk. Daisy flutters out of the kitchen and up, up, up to the little room at the top of the stairs where Yoshito sleeps in a bed beneath a skylight window full of stars. Every night, before she closes her eyes, Yoshito watches for falling stars streaking across the night sky. When she sees one, she makes a wish. There have been a lot of falling stars this year, and each time she’s seen one, Yoshito has whispered,
‘Starlight, star bright,
I wish I may, I wish I might
have the wish I wish tonight,’
but her wish hasn’t come true yet. Yoshito still wishes on every falling star she sees, but she’s beginning to suspect that her secret wish is so big that it will need something more than a star to make it come true. Despite this, when Daisy flutters into the bedroom, Yoshito is smiling in her sleep. Under her pillow is the letter she is going to send to her fairy godmother. Yoshito is absolutely sure her fairy godmother will make her wish come true. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow or some time very soon, her secret wish will be granted.
Yoshito’s breath is warm, reminding Daisy-the-moth that she should go home so that she can be tucked up in bed, as safe and warm and snug as the little girl asleep under her canopy of stars. Minutes later, Daisy flaps into her very own mum and dad’s bedroom, turns back into a toddler and clambers under the quilt, squeezing into the gap between her parents.
Seconds later, Daisy’s mum wakes up. ‘Phwoarrrr, Daiseee,’ she groans. ‘Not again. Have you—?’
‘Not dunna poo,’ Daisy lies, burrowing deeper under the quilt.
Then Daisy’s dad wakes up. ‘Eughhhh.’ He tries not to breathe through his nose. ‘Oh, Daisy. Was that you?’
‘Notta yoo,’ mutters Daisy, aware that something horrible appears to have landed in her nappy. ‘Notta poo,’ she chants cheerfully. ‘Dunna yoooo. Notta you, notta doo, notta zoo—’
The bedside light snaps on and Daisy’s parents peer blearily at each other.
‘Notta GLOO, notta BOOOOO—’
‘I did her last night,’ Mum says.
‘Honey I did her every night for a week before that,’ Dad says.
‘Notta ploo, notta gruuuu, notta coOoO.’
‘But I’m soooo tired,’ Mum groans. ‘Please? Just this once?’
Daisy’s dad gives way. He takes a deep breath, throws back the covers and plucks Daisy out of bed. ‘C’mon, Smelly,’ he says. ‘Time to get you out of that horrible nappy.’
‘Notta ROO, notta FOOO,’ Daisy chants.
‘It’s a poo, and we’re going to the loo,’ Dad says through clenched teeth, adding, ‘And you need to learn not to do that any more.’
‘Notta DoO?’ says Daisy sadly.
‘Not do a poo, except in the loo,’ Dad insists, his voice fading away as he bears Daisy off to the bathroom. Without a second’s hesitation, Mum turns over, pummels her pillow into shape, pulls the quilt up to her ears and goes straight back to sleep.
* Handy, eh? Shadows are thin enough to squeeze into just about anything, and in a place like Mishnish Castle they’re so common as to be invisible, except in broad daylight.
Nine:
No mummies here
Sunday morning at Arkon House, and the Sisters of HiSS are having breakfast. The Toad is unusually glum, the Chin is in a very bad mood, so for once the Nose is the cheeriest of the three.
‘Deeeliciousss,’ she exclaims, reaching out to help herself to more toast. ‘Can there be anything better than a lazy Sunday morning spent eating breakfast and reading the papers?’
‘You can’t read,’ the Chin mutters.
‘No, I know I can’t,’ the Nose sighs. ‘But you two can, so perhaps you’ll be good enough to read to me, hmmm?’ And she crams toast into her mouth and waves a finger at the ‘Home and Family’ section of the Sunday paper. ‘Peeve?’ she begs, her mouth full of mashed toast. ‘Reef at foo me?’
‘Urrghh,’ the Chin groans. ‘Speak it, don’t leak it. Your table manners are gruesome, Nose.’
Reluctantly the Chin picks up the paper, looks at the front page and flinches. Her eyes mist over and she roots around in the pocket of her cardigan for a handkerchief. A picture has just formed in a secret, hidden place at the back of her mind. It’s a picture of a birthday party and a picnic and breakfast in bed all rolled into one. There are hugs and kisses, strawberries and heart-shaped biscuits, and a tiny child calling her Mummy. It’s a lovely picture, and the Chin would like to savour it, but her sisters are waiting for her to read the paper, so, with a noticeable wobble to her voice, she begins, ‘Things … things to do for M-M-Mothers Day.’
At this, there’s a hiccuppy, choking sound from the other end of the table, followed by a soft THUD as the Toad drops to the floor and hops away to the pantry. Closing the door behind her, she slumps against the vegetable rack, her heart and mind full of the perfect Mother’s Day she will never enjoy. She will never be a mummy; never – not now that she’s a four-hundred-year-old toad. The odds against her ever receiving a Mother’s Day anything are as vast as the number of stars in the sky.
At the table, the Nose frowns at the disappearance of the Toad, but then turns to the Chin and says, ‘Don’t stop. Keep reading …’
But the Chin isn’t paying attention. The Chin is staring out of the kitchen window. She could have sworn she just saw a flash of sea-green weaving and flowing in between the trunks of the trees outside – exactly the same colour of sea-green as the wool she used to knit a hat for Yoshito Harukashi last autumn. It was a very beautiful hat, and took the Chin many weeks to complete, and Yoshito was utterly over the moon with joy when she saw it. In fact she was so delighted with her new hat that she flung her arms round the Chin and hugged her tight, which was the first hug the Chin had enjoyed for approximately four hundred yea—
‘I’m waiting,’ the Nose sighs, picking up another slice of toast and piling marmalade on top of it.
The Chin rolls her eyes and focuses on the newspaper. ‘Things to do on Mother’s Day,’ she repeats, and then she flings the paper across the table. ‘CODSWALLOP!’ she snaps. ‘I’m not reading that tosh. Who cares about Mother’s Day? I’m not a mummy, you’re not a mummy and the Toad’s not a mummy so there’s no point in torturing ourselves imagining the wonderful time all the other mummies are having today. We’ll never be mummies, but we will soon have our very own Witch Baby. As you never tire of saying, Nose, as soon as Daisy MacRae is toilet-trained, we’ll swoop in and remove her from her human family, and then her proper education will really begin – blah-dee blah-dee blah.’
‘You missed out the bit about taking her home to Ben Screeeiiighe,’ the Nose complains.
‘WhatEVER,’ snaps the Chin. ‘The point I’m making is that there is no point in whinging about Mother’s Day right now. We have to be patient and wait till we’ve got our own Witch Baby; then we’ll be able to celebrate Mother’s Day.’ And with this, the Chin stands up and begins to clear the table.
Pulling a hideous face, the Nose picks up the offending newspaper, tears it into little squares and transfers these to the downstairs cloakroom. There. Perfect. Things to do on Mother’s Day: turn an upsetting newspaper article into toilet paper for bottom-wiping purposes. Returning from this little act of revenge, the Nose sees the Chin pluck a white envelope off the mat by the front door and tuck it into her pocket.
‘Where did that come from?’ the Nose demands.
‘Where did what come from?’ the Chin says, backing away from her Sister.
‘That envelope you just picked up,’ the Nose insists. ‘Come on. I saw you do it.’
‘Um. Yerrrrsss. Oh! This old thing?’ the Chin squeaks, tugging a corner of the envelope back out of her pocket and pretending to study it. ‘Pfffff. It’s just a bit of junk mail. Something to do with d-d-double glazing. I’ll take it to the paper recycling bin.’ She edges towards the foot of the stairs and turns to go.
‘How peculiar,’ muses the Nose. ‘It’s Mothering Sunday, isn’t it?’
‘Erm. Yes … Why do you ask?’ quavers the Chin, not waiting to hear the answer.
‘Because there isn’t any post on a SUNDAY,’ shrieks the Nose as the Chin vanishes upstairs. ‘So you’re telling a great big porky—’
‘Splendid,’ interrupts the Toad, appearing at the kitchen door. ‘I was wondering what to make for supper tonight. How clever of you, Nose. A great big pork roast sounds perfect. Mmmmmmm-yum. With apple sauce, sage and onion mini-muffins and …’
Many moments pass as the Nose considers this delicious menu. Her mouth waters at the vision of herself carving a healthy slab of perfectly roasted pork plus crackling, pronging it onto her fork along with half a sage and onion muffin, topping it with a dollop of apple sauce, twirling the lot through a pool of gravy and getting it ready to pop into her open mouth when …
‘Erm,’ the Toad whispers, passing her a clean handkerchief, ‘you’re, um, drooling, Nose.’
Upstairs, in her bedroom, the Chin wedges a chair beneath the door handle to make sure she will not be interrupted. Then she sits on her bed, carefully removes the envelope from her pocket and examines it. There, on the front, is her name, written with ink in a child’s best handwriting:
Mischin
Recognizing the writing, the Chin smiles. This letter is from Yoshito Harukashi; the child who believes the Chin is her fairy godmother. Wondering why the little girl is writing to her on a Sunday, the Chin tears open the envelope and is immediately stunned by what lies inside.
It’s a home-made card with three figures drawn on the front. Even the Chin can see what it represents. There is Hare Harukashi, Yoshito’s father, smiling a huge red smile nearly as vast as the flower in his buttonhole. Beside him is Yoshito in a pale yellow dress with flowers in her hair, and there is—
The Chin gasps. Were she not already sitting down, she suspects she might have fallen to the floor, so weak and faint does she feel. Her eyes are glued to the card – for there she is, chin out-thrust, a bouquet of flowers in her arms, her hair upswept on top of her head and wearing a long white dress with a lacy train. It would appear that Yoshito has drawn the Chin as a bride at a wedding. A wedding? What on earth is the child thinking of? Holding her breath, the Chin opens the card. Inside, Yoshito has written:
Dear Mischin
Happy Fairy Godmother’s Day
Love from Yoshi
P.S. Please, please come to our school
concert on Friday with Papa
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Despite being a very old and SCARY witch, the Chin feels as if she is about to burst into tears. Nobody has ever sent her a card on Mother’s Day. Suddenly all kinds of unfamiliar warm and fuzzy feelings threaten to carry her off on a tide of pink bubbles. To her horror, the Chin feels her brain turning into pink marshmallow. She grits her teeth and sticks out her chin. She must not give way. She must remember her destiny; once a witch, always a witch. She is a Sister of Hiss, not a fairy, not a mummy, and most definitely NOT a bride.
And now she is digging in her pocket to find a handkerchief, because for some reason (why, she has no idea) fat, salty droplets are leaking out of her eyes.
‘Bahhhhh, humbug,’ she snorts at her red-eyed reflection. ‘Pull yourself together. You’re a Sister of Hiss, not a … NOT a Mrs of his.’ And forcing her mouth into a scowl, she drops Yoshito’s card onto her dusty dressing table and heads downstairs to see what the Toad is cooking for supper.
Ten:
Here comes the rain (again)
This morning it’s my turn to be late for school. My turn to roll my eyes at Vivaldi, apologize to Mrs McDonald and hand her a note explaining why I’m late. For once, it’s not Daisy’s fault, but the weather’s. It rained non-stop all weekend, and late last night, water started dripping through Jack’s bedroom ceiling. Jack didn’t hear a thing beca
use he had his earbuds in and was fast asleep. By the time he woke up feeling damp and chilly, it was the middle of the night, his desk was awash, his carpet had sprouted puddles and it was obvious that Something Had To Be Done. The Something turned out to be Jack moving into Daisy’s room until the roof could be fixed and his room drained, dried and redecorated. Jack moved into Daisy’s room, and Daisy, her cot, her magical dog, her toys, her changing mat and ten million tons of her toddler-tat all moved into my bedroom. My small bedroom.
Still, it could be worse. I could, for instance, be Jack. Poor him. All his books are drying out on radiators around the house, his bedroom ceiling has developed so many cracks a huge part of it fell off onto the floor, and his bedroom carpet is ruined, dumped in a heap outside next to the dustbins. By contrast, Daisy’s room is lovely and warm and dry, but I can tell that Jack isn’t too happy about being surrounded by pink flowery fairy wallpaper and posters of baby rabbits and lambs.
By the time Mum and Dad found buckets and pails to catch the drips, then moved everything out of Jack’s room, it was breakfast time, and we only had a few minutes to grab a quick bowl of cereal before setting off to school. Outside it was still pouring, so instead of walking, we all piled into Dad’s car and sat with our breath misting up the windows while he tried over and over again to start the engine.