The Pinhoe Egg (UK)

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “Mind?” Marianne said. “It’s wonderful! Were these tiles always up the walls like this?” She went over and rubbed her hand across them. “Smooth,” she said. “Lovely.”

  “They were painted over,” Irene said. “When I discovered them under the paint, I just had to have it scraped off. I’m afraid the painting Mr Pinhoe wasn’t very pleased about the extra work. But I cleaned the tiles myself.”

  Uncle Charles was an idiot then, Marianne thought. “It was worth it. They glow!”

  “Ah, that’s Irene’s doing,” Jason said, with a proud, loving look towards his wife. “She’s inherited the dwimmer gift. Dwimmer,” he explained to Cat, “means that a person is in touch with the life in everything. They can bring it out even when it’s hidden. When Irene cleaned those tiles, she didn’t just take the paint and dirt of ages off them. She released the art that went to making them.”

  A slight noise made Marianne look up at the stairs. Uncle Charles was standing near the top of them, in his paint-blotched overalls, looking outraged. None of the adult Pinhoes liked to hear the craft openly spoken of like this. Not even Uncle Charles, Marianne thought sadly. Uncle Charles was becoming more of a standard Pinhoe and less of a disappointment every day. Oh, I wish they’d let him go and study to be an artist, like he wanted to after he painted our inn sign! she thought.

  Uncle Charles coughed slightly and came loudly down the wooden part of the stairs. Marianne knew that, although it looked as if Uncle Charles was trying to keep paint off the mossy carpet, what he was really doing was making a noise in order to stop Jason talking about dwimmer. “I’ve finished the undercoat in the small bathroom, madam,” he said to Irene. “I’ll be off to my lunch while it dries and come back to do the gloss this afternoon.”

  “Thank you, Mr Pinhoe,” Irene said to him.

  Jason said, trying to be friendly, “I don’t know how you do it, Mr Pinhoe. I’ve never known paint to dry as quickly as yours does.”

  Uncle Charles just gave him a fixed and disapproving look and clumped across the tiles to the front door. The look, and Uncle Charles’s head with it, jerked a little when he saw Klartch. For a fraction of an instant, delight and curiosity jumped across his face. Then the disapproving looked settled back, stronger than ever, and Uncle Charles marched on, and away outside.

  He left a slightly awkward silence behind him.

  “Well,” Jason said at length, a bit too heartily, “I think we should show you all over the house.”

  “I only came to find my cat really,” Marianne said.

  “Jane James has got him,” Irene said. “He’s quite safe. Do come and see what we’ve done here!”

  It was impossible to say no. Jason and Irene were both so proud of the place. They swept Cat and Marianne through into the front room, where the moss green chairs, new white walls and some of Irene’s design paintings on it in frames, made it look like a different room from the one where Gammer had shouted at the Farleighs. Then Cat and Marianne were swept to Jason’s den, full of books and leather, and Irene’s workroom, all polished wood and a sloping table under the window, with an antique stand for paints and pencils that Marianne knew Dad would have admired: it was so cleverly designed.

  After this they were whirled through the dining room and then on upstairs, into a moss green corridor with bedrooms and bathrooms opening off it. Irene had had some of the walls moved, so that now there were bedrooms, sunny and elegant, which had not been there when Marianne last saw the house. The trickling cistern cabinet had become a white warm cupboard that was full of towels and made no noise at all. Uncle Simeon, Marianne thought, had done wonders up here, sprained ankle and all.

  “We’re still thinking what to do with the attics,” Irene said, “but they need a lot of sorting out first.”

  “I want to check all those herbs for seeds. Some of them are quite rare and may well grow, given the right spells,” Jason explained as he swept everyone downstairs again.

  Marianne sent Cat an urgent look on the way down. Cat pretended to be waiting for Klartch in order to look reassuringly back. They had to let Jason and Irene finish showing them the house. It was no good trying to talk before then.

  Down the passage from the hall, which turned out to be lined with the same blue, green and white tiles, Jason flung open the door to the kitchen. More of those tiles over the sink, Marianne saw, and in a line round the room; but mostly the impression was of largeness, brightness and comfort. There was a rusty red floor, which the place had always needed, in Marianne’s opinion, and of course the famous table, now scrubbed white, white, white.

  Nutcase leered smugly at her from Jane James’s bony knees. Jane James was sitting in a chair close to the stove, stirring a saucepan with one hand and reading a magazine she held in the other.

  “I’ve taken the scullery for my distillery,” Jason said. “Let me show —”

  “Lunch in half an hour,” Jane James replied.

  “I’ll tell Mr Adams,” Irene said.

  Jane James stood up and put the magazine on the table and Nutcase on the magazine. Nutcase sat there demurely until Klartch shuffled and clacked his way round the door. Then Nutcase stood up in an arch and spat.

  “Don’t be a silly cat,” Jane James said, as if she saw creatures like Klartch every day. “It’s only a baby griffin. Will he eat biscuits?” she asked Cat. She seemed to know at once that he was responsible for Klartch.

  “I’ll eat biscuits,” Jason said. “She makes the best biscuits in this world,” he told Marianne.

  “Yes, but not for you. You’ll spoil your lunch,” Jane James said. “You and Irene go and get cleaned up ready.”

  Cat was not surprised that Jason and Irene meekly scurried out of the kitchen. Nor was he surprised when Jane James gave a secret smile as she watched them go. He thought she was quite certainly a sorceress. She reminded him a lot of Miss Bessemer, who was.

  Her biscuits were delicious, big and buttery. Klartch liked them as much as Cat and Marianne did and kept putting his beak up for more. Nutcase looked down from the table at him, disgustedly.

  After about her tenth biscuit, Marianne found herself searching Jane James’s face for the humour she was sure was hidden there. “That time you brought Nutcase home in a basket,” she said curiously, “you weren’t cross about him really, were you?”

  “Not at all,” Jane James said. “He likes me and I like him. I’d gladly keep him here if he’s too much trouble for you. But I kept seeing you chasing around, worrying about him. Did you get any holiday to yourself this year?”

  Marianne’s face crumpled a little as she thought of her story of Princess Irene and her cats, still barely started. But she said bravely, “Our family likes to keep children busy.”

  “You’re no child. You’re a full-grown enchantress,” Jane James retorted. “Don’t they notice? And I don’t see any of your cousins very busy. Riding their bikes up and down and yelling seems to me how busy they are.” She stood up and planted Nutcase into Marianne’s arms. “There you are. Tell Mr Adams to come for his lunch on your way out.”

  You had to go when Jane James did that, Cat thought. She was quite a tartar. They thanked her for the biscuits and went out into the passage again. As they turned left towards the hall, they nearly collided with a person who appeared to come out of the tiled wall.

  “Ooops-a-la!” that person said.

  They stared at him. Both of them had a moment when they thought they were looking at Mr Adams and that Mr Adams had shrunk. He had the same tufts of hair and the same wrinkled brown face with the big ears. But Mr Adams had not been wearing bright green, blue and white chequered trousers and a moss green waistcoat. And Mr Adams was about the same height as Cat, who was small for his age, where this person only came up to Cat’s waist.

  Klartch clacked forward with great interest.

  The little man fended him off with a hand that appeared to be all long thin fingers. “Now, now, now, Klartch. I’m not food for griffins. I’m on
ly a skinny old househob.”

  “A househob!” Marianne said. “When did you move in here?”

  “About two thousand years ago, when your first Gaffer’s hall was built in this place,” the little man replied. “You might say I’ve always been here.”

  “How come I’ve never seen you before, then?” Marianne asked.

  The little man looked up at her. His eyes were big and shiny and full of green sadness. “Ah,” he said, “but I’ve seen you, Miss Marianne. I’ve seen most things while I’ve been sealed inside these walls these many long years, until the dwimmer-lady, Princess Irene, let me out.”

  “You mean – under the cream paint?” Marianne said. “Did Gammer seal you in?”

  “Not she. It was more than paint and longer ago than that,” the househob said. “It was in those days after the devout folk came. After that, the folks in charge here named me and all my kind wicked and ungodly, and they set spells to imprison us – all of us, in houses, fields and woods – and told everyone we were gone for good. Though, mind you, I never could see why these devout folk could believe on the one hand that God made all, and on the other hand call us ungodly – but there you go. It was done.” He spread both huge hands and brought his pointed shoulders up in a shrug. Then he bowed to Marianne and turned and bowed to Cat. “Now, if you’ll forgive me, dwimmer folk both, I believe Jane James has my lunch ready. And she doesn’t hold with me coming in through her kitchen wall. I have to use the door.”

  Amazed and bemused, Cat and Marianne stepped back out of the househob’s way. He set off at a crablike trot towards the kitchen. Then turned back anxiously. “You didn’t eat all the biscuits, did you?”

  “No, there’s a big tinful,” Cat told him.

  “Ah. Good.” The househob turned towards the kitchen door. He did not open it. They watched him walk through it, much as Marianne had watched Nutcase walk through the wall in Furze Cottage. Nutcase, at the sight, squirmed indignantly in Marianne’s arms. He seemed to think he was the only one who should be able to do that sort of thing.

  Cat and Marianne looked at one another, but could think of nothing to say.

  It was not until they were halfway across the hall that Marianne said, “You think you have an idea for what I can do about Gammer?”

  “Yes – I hope,” Cat said, wishing it was a better idea. “At least, I think I know someone you could ask. I met a man in your wood here who I think could help. He was awfully wise.”

  Marianne felt truly let down. “A man,” she said disbelievingly. “In the wood.”

  “Really wise,” Cat said rather desperately. “Dwimmer wise. And he had a unicorn.”

  Marianne supposed Cat was speaking the truth. If he was, then a unicorn did make a difference. If househobs were real, then might not unicorns be real too? A unicorn was part of the Pinhoe coat of arms and could – surely? – be expected to be on her side. And they were in such a mess, she and the Pinhoes and the Farleighs, that anything was worth a try.

  “All right,” she said. “How do I find them?”

  “I’ll have to take you,” Cat said. “There was a queer barrier in the way. Do you want to come now?”

  “Yes, please,” Marianne said.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Outside, beyond the conservatory, Mr Adams was leaning against Syracuse with his arms round Syracuse’s neck, amid a strong smell of peppermint. Positively canoodling, Cat thought, rather jealously. But then, Cat thought, looking at Mr Adams closely, besides seeming as if he had gnome in his ancestry – or was it househob? – Mr Adams had more than a little of this strange thing called dwimmer. He was bound to get on with Syracuse, because Syracuse had it too.

  Mr Adams, however much he was enjoying Syracuse, was only too ready to hand Syracuse over and go in for his lunch. “There’s no doubt,” he said, in his talkative way, “that working a garden gives you an appetite. I’ve never been so hungry as I am since I moved here.”

  He went on talking. He talked all the time he was helping Cat heave Klartch up across Syracuse’s saddle. He talked while he checked the girths. He talked while he carefully cleaned his spade. But eventually he talked his way through the archway in the wall and round to the kitchen door. They could hear him begin talking to Jane James as he opened it. As soon as the door shut, Marianne put Nutcase secretly down in the beech hedge. “You go on home to Furze Cottage,” she told him. “You know the way.”

  “Not happy,” Klartch said plaintively from the saddle.

  Cat could see Klartch was uncomfortable, but he said, “It’s your own fault. You would follow me. You can’t walk fast enough to keep up, so stay up there and I’ll let you down when we find the road.”

  He and Marianne set off, Cat leading Syracuse, across the stubbly lawn to the row of lilacs at the back. There they found the small rickety gate Cat had come in by. It was green with mildew and almost falling apart with age and they had to shove it hard to get it open again.

  “I’d forgotten this was here,” Marianne said, as they went through into the empty, rustling wood. “Gaffer used to call it his secret escape route. Which way do we go?”

  “Keep straight on, I think,” Cat said.

  There was no path, but Cat set his mind on the whereabouts of that barrier and led the way, over shoals of fallen leaves, past brambles and through hazel thickets, deeper and deeper among the trees. Some of the time he was dragged through bushes by Syracuse, who was getting very excited by the wood and wanted to throw Klartch off and run. Poor Klartch was jogged and jigged and bounced and was less happy than ever. “Down!” he said.

  “Soon,” Cat told him.

  They came to the barrier quite unexpectedly on the other side of a holly bush. It stretched as far as either of them could see in both directions, rusting, ramshackle and overgrown. Marianne looked at it in astonishment.

  “What’s this? I never saw this before!”

  “You didn’t know to look for it, I expect,” Cat said.

  “It’s a mess!” Marianne said. “Creepers and nettles and rusty wire. Who put it up?”

  “I don’t know,” Cat said. “But it’s made of magic really. Do you think you could help me take it down? We won’t get Syracuse past it the way I got in last time.”

  “I can try, I suppose,” Marianne said. “How do you suggest?”

  Cat thought about it for a moment and then conjured the nearest clothesline from Ulverscote. It came with a row of someone’s pants pegged on it, which made them both struggle not to give shrieks of laughter. Each of them had the feeling that loud laughter might fetch the person who made the barrier here. From then on, they spoke in low voices, to be on the safe side.

  While Marianne carefully unpegged the pants and put them in a pile by the nearest tree, Cat fastened each end of the rope to the back of the saddle on Syracuse, using a thick blob of magic to fix it there. Klartch reared up and watched with interest as Cat took the rest of the clothesline and stretched high to loop it along the ragged top of the barrier. Klartch was an actual help here. Because Klartch was attending to the barrier, Cat somehow knew that it was mostly unreal. It had been made out of two small pieces of chicken wire and one length of corrugated iron, plus a charm to make the weeds grow over it, and then stretched by magic to become the long, impenetrable thing it was now. This meant that the clothesline was going to slide straight through it and come loose, if Cat was not careful.

  “Thanks, Klartch,” Cat said. As soon as the rope was jammed in along the ragged spikes of rusty iron, he fixed it there with a truly enormous slab of magic. He jerked it to test it. It was quite solid. “You take one side and pull hard when I say,” Cat murmured to Marianne, and took hold of the rope on the other side.

  “What charm do I use when I pull?” Marianne asked.

  “Nothing particularly,” Cat said, surprised that she should ask. Ulverscote witchcraft must be very different from enchanter’s magic. “Just think hard of the barrier coming down.”

  Marianne’s eyebrow
s went up, but she obediently took hold of the rope on her side. She was terribly obedient, Cat thought. He remembered Janet once telling him that he was too obedient, and he knew that had been the result of the way his sister always despised him. He was suddenly, firmly decided that, however much Marianne protested, he was going to tell Chrestomanci about her.

  “Right,” Cat said to Syracuse, in a low voice. “Work, Syracuse. Walk on.”

  Syracuse turned his head and stared at Cat. Me, work? said every line of him. And he simply planted himself and stood there, whatever Cat said.

  “You can have another peppermint,” Cat said. “Just walk. We need your strength.”

  Syracuse put his ears back and simply stood.

  “Oh, lord!” Marianne said. “He’s as bad as Nutcase. You go and lead him and I’ll pull on both halves of the rope.” She collected Cat’s side of the rope and stood in the middle, holding both lengths of clothesline.

  If Syracuse decided to kick out, he could hurt Marianne there. Cat hurried round to Syracuse’s head and took hold of his bridle. He found a slightly furry peppermint in one of his pockets and held it out at arm’s length in front of Syracuse’s nose, before he dared pull on the bridle. “Now come on, Syracuse! Peppermint!”

  Syracuse’s ears came up and he rolled an eye at Cat, to say he knew exactly what Cat was up to.

  “Yes,” Cat said to him. “It’s because we really need you.”

  Syracuse snorted. Then, when Cat was ready to give up, and to his huge relief, Syracuse started to trudge forward, stirring up clouds of broken dead leaves that got into Cat’s eyes and his mouth and down his boots and even somehow down his neck. Cat blinked and blew and urged Syracuse and encouraged him and willed at the barrier. He could feel Marianne behind them, willing too with surprising power, as she pulled on the clothesline like someone in two tug-of-wars at once.

  The barrier rustled, grated, groaned, and keeled slowly over in front of Marianne. When Cat turned to tell Syracuse he was a good horse and to feed him the peppermint, he could see the long line of metal and creepers in both directions, slowly falling flat, piece by piece, rather like a wave breaking on a beach. He could hear metal screaming and branches snapping, off into the distance both ways. Cat was rather surprised. He had not expected to bring the whole thing down. But he supposed it must be because the barrier had been made out of just the one small piece really.