by Val Thame
“But it’s more comfortable than a broomstick,” she thought. “No draughts and a good speed. So, if nobody wants it — I claim it.”
And content to think that she had got something for nothing Evilyn shot off into space.
While she was washing, at the sink, Goodrun was racking her brains trying to think how she could get hold of another bath. And if she did, how could she get it upstairs and plumbed in without Aunt Nettle knowing? Impossible. She had two alternatives. She could own up to her mistake and risk being sent home in disgrace (for the second time), or she could try magic. It was a risk but she decided on magic.
Dressed in clean clothes, and smelling much sweeter, she crept downstairs. Aunt Nettle was banging about in the kitchen, cooking what smelled like beans on toast. Goodrun’s tummy rumbled. She would have loved beans on toast but that would have to wait. First things first. She pulled the belt on her jeans another notch tighter.
Most of Nettle’s spell books were in her bedroom but there were lots more in the sitting room. Goodrun found a really fat one called The Universal Encyclopaedia of Magic. She thumbed through the index until she came to “Incantations for the return of objects, various. See sub-section X, ‘Mystical Powers’, page 897.”
She found an incantation on page 897 that looked just right. All she had to do was add the last line:
Skies that are dark and winds that are strong,
Snails that are short and worms that are long,
Bread that is dry and cakes that are stale,
Smallness of midge and largeness of whale,
Mystical, magical powers that be . . .”
Then, she closed her eyes and added:
Bring Nettle’s bath back, and bring it to me.
She stood there for what felt like ten minutes but was probably only ten seconds, then a huge clap of thunder exploded overhead. Goodrun opened her eyes. It could be a coincidence. It was the sort of summer’s day that might produce a thunderstorm but she hoped it was her magic working. She said the last line over again and when she said it the tenth time, something large and white crashed into the sitting room, leaving a gaping hole where the window should have been. The large, white object wobbled for a bit, then toppled over onto its side and, to Goodrun’s astonishment, Evilyn, her face mottled with rage, fell out of the bath and rolled onto the carpet.
Chapter 9
Inky, who had been dozing on the sofa, dreaming of endless fish suppers, shot into the air like a rocket when the bath smashed through the window. He went up at least a metre, his black legs stretched below, his toes pointed and his fur spiked out like a hedgehog’s bristles, and his earsplitting yowl was sharp enough to curdle milk. Before his feet touched the ground he was curving round towards the stairs, the bedrooms and safety.
Goodrun, overjoyed at her successful spell and the return of the bath, did not notice Inky’s disappearance nor the broken window.
“Jubilations!” she cried. “Oh, joy and jam custard! Where did you find it, Evilyn?”
“Find what?” snapped Evilyn, rubbing her bruised elbows.
“The bath.”
“Bath?” Evilyn’s face paled to a ghastly green. “What bath?”
“This one, of course,” said Goodrun, proudly polishing the taps with her sleeve. “I zapped it out and I’ve zapped it back.”
“What?” Evilyn’s colour changed from ghastly green to yukky yellow. “Are you telling me that, that . . .” she pointed a trembling finger, “is a BA-A-ATH?” She almost screamed the last word. “But I’ve been sitting in it,” wailed Evilyn. “Wow-ee! Wow-eeeeee!”
Her mournful cry, like wind down a cracked drainpipe, echoed round the room. Trembling and twittering, clasping and unclasping her hands, Evilyn stood transfixed before the terrible bath, unable to look away.
“So, it was spell power that kept it going. I wondered why I couldn’t control it. And to think I’ve been twiddling with those taps!” She shuddered violently, her bony shoulder blades rattling. “There could have been water in those taps.” Her voice rose higher. “I could have been drowned.”
Goodrun had never seen her sister like this before. The amazing and dreadful Evilyn, frightened of a bath. She was about to start wailing again but Goodrun shook her, roughly.
“Shut up, for goodness’ sake!” she hissed. “Aunt Nettle’s in the kitchen, so keep your voice down.”
Evilyn hated being told what not to do and, just to annoy, started to howl again. But luck was on Goodrun’s side because a sudden gust of wind blew in through the open window and carried Evilyn’s rasping cry out into the countryside, where it mingled unnoticed with the harsh voices of the crows.
Then Goodrun noticed the broken glass on the floor and it was her turn to cry out. “Aah! The window.”
“Scabs to the window,” cried Evilyn. “What about me? I’ve been sitting in a bath. A bath!”
“Will you shut up!” said Goodrun, her temper beginning to wander off. “It’s not as if it had any water in it.”
Evilyn was building up to another bellow, but Goodrun smothered it by putting her hand over her mouth.
“Mmm! Mmm! Mmm! Mmm-mm!” grunted Evilyn, struggling to free herself.
“What?” Goodrun took her hand away.
“I said, you know I hate water,” hissed Evilyn.
Goodrun sighed. What a hopeless pickle she was in. What a mess she had made of it all. She wished deeply that she had not tried to use her special powers. She should have known they were not special enough.
“I must learn to control myself and do things the ordinary way,” she told herself firmly. “But how? How do I mend the window and get the bath upstairs without Nettle knowing and without using magic? It’s impossible.”
She paced up and down and round the small sitting room.
“Can’t you keep still?” grumbled Evilyn, sitting hunched up and cross-legged on the back of an armchair. “You know I’m not well, and you’re making me feel dizzy.”
“I’ve got to think,” said Goodrun. “I’m in hot water . . .”
“Don’t say that,” squealed Evilyn.
“Sorry. I mean I’m in serious trouble.”
“That’s not my fault.” Evilyn began to eel better as her sister felt worse. “Look, can’t we go somewhere else? I don’t like being in the same room as a bath. It makes me feel nervous.”
Goodrun stopped pacing. “Does it?” Evilyn’s horror of baths and water had given her an idea. “Evilyn, you always were cleverer than me.”
Evilyn preened. “That’s true.”
“So, would you zap the bath back and fix the window for me?”
“Why should I?”
“Because,” said Goodrun, holding both arms of the chair and leaning towards Evilyn, a menacing look in her eyes, “if you don’t, I shall tell Mother, and Blackheart and Murky Pondwater and Greasey Puddle, and a few others whose names I shan’t mention, that my clever sister spent all morning in a bath. And I shall say it had water in it. And soap. And bubbles!”
Evilyn gasped. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“Oh yes, I would.”
Evilyn, looking as black as a storm at midnight, said nothing. She stared resentfully into her sister’s eyes with a look as deep and as dark as a bottomless pit. Although surprised by the amount of evil in those smouldering eyes, Goodrun did not look away. She was used to Evilyn’s underhand tactics. Evilyn wanted to win by “staring out”. Staring out was a serious business and the first to look away was the loser. And so the battle of wills began. Two pairs of green eyes fixed unblinkingly on the other.
While Evilyn thought of all the wicked things in the world, making her eyes sharp and brittle, Goodrun calmly thought of warm sunshine, spring flowers, butter and fluffy baby rabbits. That was too much for Evilyn. Butter was bad enough, but the idea of a fluffy baby rabbit made her feel sick.
She choked and blinked.
“Rats!” she countered quickly.
“Too late. I’ve won.” Goodrun was
gleeful.
“But you promise, Witches Word,” said Evilyn, “not to say what happened if I move the bath and fix the window?”
“I promise,” said Goodrun, “but on my honour, not on Witches Word.”
“OK. That’ll do. Shut your eyes.”
“Don’t you dare disappear.” Goodrun did not trust her sister. Evilyn snapped her fingers. They made a sharp, metallic crack. “OK. You can look now. The bath’s gone, the window’s mended and I’m off.”
And, with a noise that sounded like the popping of fifty, fizzy lemonade bottles, Evilyn vanished. Goodrun could hardly believe her good fortune. Had she really got her crafty sister to do as she was told? Even under threat? The rain-splashed glass was back in the window. She ran upstairs to check the bathroom. That too was just as she had left it. In fact, exactly as she had left it. Without a bath!
Her shoulders drooped. She felt hot tears of frustration, anger and despair stabbing at the back of her eyes. Then she heard a voice, outside and somewhere overhead.
“Foo-oo-ooled you.”
There was no mistaking whose it was. Goodrun was furious.
“Cheat!” she shouted up to the ceiling. “You said you’d put the bath back.”
“No, I didn’t! I only said I’d move it. If you want it, you’ll have to find it.” Evilyn’s voice was faint but clear. “Can’t catch me, Goodrun Smith!” She was moving away but her cruel, cackling laughter sneaked back across the rooftops, squeezed under the tiles, and shrieked into the bathroom It bounced off the walls and screamed at Goodrun. “Ha-ha! Ha-ha!”
Covering her ears with her hands to block out the awful sound, she shouted up to the ceiling, “You haven’t heard the last of this, Evilyn Badmanners!”
Chapter 10
Goodrun was in utter despair. Why could she not leave things alone? She wished she had left the spiders alone. She wished she had left the garden alone. She also wished she could go back two days and start again. She was especially annoyed with Evilyn and the misery inside her twisted and wriggled and knotted itself into anger. Unhappiness can do that sometimes.
Inky padded into the bathroom and, curious as all cats are, sniffed the space where the bath should have been. Goodrun scooped him up onto her shoulders and took him downstairs. She took him down to the kitchen and held him up to the window. She pointed out the small rain cloud drifting over the trees.
“Is that you, Evilyn?” she called out. “Well, I hope you can hear me.” Inky noted the irritation in her voice and struggled to get down, but Goodrun held on tightly. If she ever needed a black cat to help her, she needed one now. She stared angrily at the cloud. “You sent that bath out in the sky, now find it quick, or I’ll know why! Within this spell there is a curse, so find that bath . . . or you’ll feel worse!”
As soon as she had finished speaking, Inky leaped out of her arms and dived under the table. It had been ages since Goodrun had been annoyed enough to curse somebody. It was not really like her but Evilyn had asked for it.
There was a loud bang outside the back door which made both her and Inky jump. Then a clang. Then another bang. Goodrun swallowed hard. Was this her spell working? No, because the door opened and Nettle bustled in complaining about her dustbin lid.
“I must get a new one,” she said. “That one does not fit. Now, I’ve had my lunch, dear, but there’s plenty of fruit and cheese in the fridge. I’m going out knitting with a friend of mine. Will you be all right while I’m gone?”
“Of course, Aunt.”
Goodrun was delighted. With the cottage to herself she might have a chance to put things right. As soon as Nettle had gone Goodrun started on Plan One. Not that she had a Plan Two, yet. Her aunt had so many mystical and magical books that she felt sure she would be able to find a spell for the recovery of mislaid baths.The dresser shelves were crammed with flour-dusted, finger-greased cookery books, and some very curious and ancient spell books that had pop-up pictures and seep-out smells. She put a pile on the kitchen table, then went through all the indexes for B. There was B for “Backache”, B for “Bandy”, B for “Banish”, “Balmy”, “Battle” and “Bat”. But no “Bath”. She kept on looking. “Baking”, “Bacteria”, “Backbone”, “Bagpipe” and “Bandage”. But no “Bath”. After a while she gave up on the kitchen books. Dare she try looking at the books in Nettle’s bedroom? Yes, but she had no better luck. She found “Babble”, “Backwards”, “Baffle”, “Banana”, “Bamboo” and “Bangkok”, but not “Bath”.
The clock downstairs struck four times. Four o’clock? Nettle would be home soon. Goodrun’s eyes and head ached and she still had not found one single reference to a bath. But was she looking in the right place? Witches did not like baths or anything to do with them. They would cringe at the sight of soap and some of the older ones had been known to fade away at the smell of clean water. The Bath House at the Witches Academy had been a place of horror, dread and fearful punishment. It was kept clean and fresh, and smelled of soap and antiseptic. To the witchlings it was worse than the darkest cellar, worse than the deepest dungeon. If a witch upset her teacher, or failed one of her tests, or wore the wrong colour shoes on a Friday, she was sent to the Bath House and washed. The clean smell did not wear off for weeks — so all the other witches knew.
Soap and water had never frightened Goodrun but she had been wise enough not to tell anybody.
She stretched wearily. She wished she could forget about the wretched bath. But, as old Witch Pickings used to say, “You’ve dug yourself into a hole now, you’ve got to dig yourself out of it.” She put Nettle’s books back as she found them and, once again, went to look at the bathroom. She stared wretchedly at the dusty floorboards and the broken tiles. “If I could stop Nettle coming in here for a day or two it would give me time to think. But how? How could I stop her?” Feeling understandably fretful, Goodrun kicked the door and — clink! A key fell out. “Eureka!” cried Goodrun. Nettle’s old cottage still had old-fashioned doors with old-fashioned locks. “I’ll lock the door and hide the key.”
She put the key in her sock drawer underneath the packet of money and the envelope. As she touched the envelope she thought of her father again. “If only . . .” she thought, gazing fondly at the crumpled, brown envelope. It was one of those long, narrow ones which opened at the short end. She looked inside as she had done a hundred times, usually to see the savings bond but this time, of course, it was empty. Or was it? There was something screwed up at the bottom. She squeezed the envelope into a tube. Whatever it was, it must have been there a long time. She tapped the tube on the cupboard top and . . . plap! A crinkled piece of newspaper fell out. It had been flattened and pressed so much it was no bigger than a matchstick.
Very carefully Goodrun unfolded the concertinaed newspaper and, with trembling fingers, gently smoothed it flat. It was torn in places and the newsprint was smudged and faded but she could read some of it.
“R V O.”
She eased the creases out pleat by pleat. The print was hardly readable but in front of the letters RVO were the letters M and A.
“MARVO!” she cried.
There was a picture too, blurred and fuzzy, but clearly the picture of a man in a top hat. Could this be a photograph of her father? Her legs suddenly felt weak. She had to sit down on her bed and calm down because her heart was racing wildly. There was a caption underneath the photograph:
Marvo the Magician put on a fine show when he entertained children at Broomshill Infant School today.
Wasn’t it Brooms-something on the envelope? She turned it over. It was so difficult to read, but it could be Broomshill. And if it was, she had a picture, a place name and a school. Gasping, because she realized she had been holding her breath all the time, she clutched the piece of paper to her chest. This must be the clue she had been looking for.
Chapter 11
Nettle came home about half past four. Goodrun was watching a cartoon on television.
“I thought you were going to fini
sh the gardening,” said Nettle, flinging her knitting bag onto the floor and flopping heavily into an armchair.
“Oh! The garden.” Goodrun had forgotten all about it. “I’ve been . . .” she did not want to say what she had really been doing. “I’ve been reading.”
“Well, it looks silly only half done,” said Nettle, icily.
Goodrun made a mental note to do the other half first thing in the morning. Nettle kicked off her shoes. “Is supper ready yet?”
“Supper? No, Aunt.”
“I thought you were supposed to be looking after me,” said Nettle. “You won’t be much help if you’re going to sit around reading all day.”
Goodrun did not understand her funny old aunt. One moment she was a happy and cheerful old lady and the next a cross and crabby old witch.
“My bunions are burning,” said Nettle, rubbing her knobbly feet. “I’m always bad-tempered when my feet ache. I need my slippers. I think they’re in the bathroom.”
She started to drag herself out of the chair.
“No, no!” said Goodrun pushing her back into the cushions. “I’ll go. You’re tired.”
“How kind,” said Nettle. “You can take my coat up, too!”
Goodrun ran up the stairs, threw the coat in Nettle’s bedroom, then ran into her own room to fetch the key to the bathroom. She unlocked the bathroom door, found Nettle’s slippers, locked the door again, put the key back under her socks and then tried to walk calmly downstairs.
She had just settled her aunt with a tray of tea and sandwiches when there was a knock at the door. It was Daisy Blazer with an invitation.
“It’s my birthday tomorrow,” she said. “I wanted a party but all my old friends live too far away, so it’ll just be us two. Mum thought it would be a good chance for us to get to know each other. She’s made a proper cake. Can you come?”
“Yes. Thanks,” said Goodrun. “What time?”