Witch Week (10 page)

He began crying again, loud jerky sobs. Charles could hear the crying move off into the middle of the playroom, but he could not see Brian at first for the green dazzle. He really could not believe Brian minded being hit that much. It happened so often that Brian must be thoroughly used to it. By this time, he could see that Brian was crouching in the center of the concrete floor. Charles went over and crouched down facing him.

“Is that the only thing that’s the matter?” he inquired cautiously.

“Only!”
said Brian. “
Only thing!
What else do you want them to do? Tear me apart limb from limb or something! Sometimes I wish they would. I’d be dead then. I wouldn’t have to put up with them getting at me then, hour after hour, day after day! I hate this school!”

“Yes,” Charles said feelingly. “So do I.” It gave him wonderful pleasure to say it, but it did not help bring the subject around to the disappearance of Mr. Wentworth. He took a deep breath to encourage himself. “Er—have you seen your father—?”

Brian broke in, almost with a scream. “Of
course
I’ve been to my magicking father! I go to him nearly every day and ask him to let me leave this place. I went to him this afternoon and asked him. I said why couldn’t I go to Forest Road School, like Stephen Towers does, and you know what he said? He said Forest Road was a private school and he couldn’t afford it. Couldn’t afford it!” Brian said bitterly. “I ask you!
Why
can’t he afford it, if Mr. Towers can? He must get paid twice as much as Mr. Towers! I bet he earns almost as much as Miss Cadwallader. And he says he can’t afford it!”

Charles wondered. He remembered the threadbare hearthrug and the holes in Mr. Wentworth’s slippers. That looked like poverty to him. But he supposed it could be meanness. And that brought him back to his guilt. With Mr. Wentworth gone, Brian would have to stay at Larwood House forever. “But have you seen your father since then?” he asked.

“No,” said Brian. “He told me not to keep coming whining to him.” And he began to cry again.

So Brian had not found out yet. Charles felt huge relief. There was still time to get Mr. Wentworth back. But that meant that it really was only being got at which was making Brian so unhappy. Despite the evidence, that surprised Charles. Brian always seemed so perky and unconcerned.

Brian was talking again, through his sobs. “Whatever I do,” he said, “they get at me. I can’t help my father being a teacher here! I can’t help being good at things! I didn’t
ask
Mr. Brubeck to give me a solo to sing. He just did. But of course magicking Simon Silverson thinks
he
ought to sing it. That’s the thing I hate most,” Brian said vehemently. “The way everyone does what Simon Silverson says!”

“I hate him too,” said Charles. “Badly.”

“Oh it doesn’t matter how
we
feel,” Brian said. “Simon’s word is law. It’s like that game—you know,
Simon Says
—where you have to do things if they say
Simon Says
first. And what is he anyway? A stuck up—”

“Prat,” said Charles, “who sucks up to teachers—”

“With golden hair and a saintly expression. Don’t forget the smug look,” said Brian.

“Who could?” said Charles. “He kicks you in the pants, and then looks as if it’s your fault his foot came up.”

He was enjoying this. But he stopped enjoying it when Brian said, “Thanks for stopping them from hitting me this evening. What gave you the idea of burning your finger like that? And trust Simon Silverson to rip you off all your money just for a candle!” Brian hesitated a second and then added, “I suppose I’d better pay you half of it.”

Charles managed to stop himself backing away. That would be really unkind. But what was he to do now? Brian clearly thought Charles had come downstairs in order to comfort him. Probably he would expect Charles to be his friend in the future. Well, Charles supposed, he had deserved it. This was what you got for putting the Evil Eye on people’s fathers. But quite apart from Mr. Wentworth, quite apart from the fact that Brian was lowest of the low in 6B, even quite apart from the fact that Charles did not like Brian, Charles knew he could not be friends with anyone now. He was a witch. He could get anyone who was friends with him arrested too.

“You mustn’t pay me anything,” he said. “You don’t owe me a thing.”

Brian seemed distinctly relieved. “Then I’ll tell you something instead,” he said. “I’ve had enough of this place. If my father won’t take me away, I’m going to
run
away.”

“Where to?” said Charles. He had thought about running away himself, a while back, but he had had to give up the idea because there was nowhere to run away to.

“No idea,” said Brian. “I shall just go.”

“Don’t be a fool,” said Charles. This was one friendly thing he could say at least. “You have to plan it properly. If you just go, they’ll call in tracker dogs and bring you straight back. Then you’ll be punished.”

“But I’ll go mad if I stay here!” Brian said hysterically. Then he appeared to stop and consider, with his teeth chattering. “I think I see a way,” he said.

By this time, both of them were shivering. It was cold in the playroom. Charles wondered how he could make Brian go back to bed without going himself. He could not think of a way. So they both went on crouching face to face in the middle of the concrete floor, until there was a sudden little pattering outside the cracked door. Both of them jumped.

“Caretaker’s dog,” whispered Charles.

Brian giggled. “Stupid creature. It looks just like Theresa Mullett’s knitting.”

Charles, before he could stop himself, gave a shriek of laughter. “It does! It does!”

“Shut up!” hissed Brian. “The caretaker’s coming!”

Sure enough, the cracked glass of the door was showing misty torchlight. The dog began yapping furiously on the other side of it. It knew they were there.

Brian and Charles sprang up and fled, through the playroom and out its other door. As it thumped shut behind them, the cracked door thumped open and the hollow playroom echoed with the dog’s little thunderclaps. Without a word, Charles ran one way and Brian ran another. Where Brian went, Charles never knew. He heard the second door thump open as he ran, and the patter of tiny feet behind him. Charles held his glasses on and ran desperately. It was just like the seniors in the shrubbery. What made everyone chase
him?
Did he smell of witch, or something?

He found an outside door, but it was locked. He pelted on. Behind him, in the distance, he could hear the caretaker bawling to his dog to come back. That made the dog hesitate. Charles, quite terrified by now, put on a spurt and hurled himself through the next door he came to.

There was a feeling of large cold space inside this door. Charles went forward a few cautious steps and hit his foot with a clang on a row of steel chairs. He stood frozen, waiting to be discovered. He could hardly hear for the blood banging in his ears at first. Then he found he could hear the dog yapping again, somewhere quite far off. It seemed to have lost him. At the same time, he found he could see the faint shapes of huge windows, high up, beyond the chairs. He was in the school hall.

It came to Charles that he was not going to get a better opportunity than this. Better summon up his shoes at once. No—forget the shoes. Mr. Wentworth was far more urgent. Get Mr. Wentworth, and when Mr. Wentworth appeared, perhaps Charles could put in a word about Brian.

It was at this point that Charles realized that he dared not fetch Mr. Wentworth back. If Mr. Wentworth did not know who had made him vanish, he
would
know as soon as he arrived back and found Charles.

“Flaming witches!” Charles moaned. “Why didn’t I think?”

The dog, not too distant, gave another yap. Hunted and undecided, Charles shuffled forward and fell across more chairs. He was in a perfect maze of chairs. He stood where he was and tried to think.

He could still get the shoes, he thought. He could say he was sleepwalking with worry about them when the caretaker found him. Uncertainly, he held up both arms. That dog was definitely coming nearer again.

“Shoes,” Charles said hurriedly, and his voice cracked with fear and cold and lack of breathe. “Shoes. Come to me. Hey presto. Abracadabra. Shoes, I say!” The dog sounded almost outside the hall door now. Charles made dragging movements with his hands and then crossed them over his chest. “Shoes!”

A thing that, by the sound, could have been a shoe, fell on the chair next to him. Despite the yapping dog, Charles grinned with pleasure. The second shoe fell on the other side of him. Charles put out groping hands to find them. And two more fell on his head. Several more flopped down near his feet. Now he could hear shoes dropping down all around him. He seemed to be in the center of a rain of shoes. And the dog was scrabbling at the door now as it yapped. A Wellington boot, by the feel, hit Charles on the shoulder as he turned and groped along the chairs, stumbling over gym shoes, football boots, and lace-ups, with more and more dropping around him as he groped.

The caretaker was nearly at the door now. Charles could see the torchlight advancing through the glass. It helped him find his way. For he knew there was no question of any nonsense about sleepwalking now. He had to get out, and fast. He floundered among the pattering, flopping shoes, between the rows of chairs to the side of the hall, where he bolted for the door that the teachers came in by. Pitch dark descended on the other side of that door. Charles supposed he was in the staff room, but he never knew for sure. Stumbling, with his hands held out in front of him, dreamlike with panic, he fell over a stool. As he picked himself up, he remembered his second witch, the one who came through the garden. He should have thought about her earlier, he realized, as he knocked into a pile of books. She had said you couldn’t work magic when you were frightened. She was right. Something had gone very wrong out there in the hall. Obviously, Charles thought, having a mad tangle with a coat of some kind, you needed to
be cool and collected to be sure of getting it right. Oh thank Heaven! Here was a door.

Charles plunged out of the door and found himself not far from the main stairs. He fled up them. As he went, his thumb found the fat painful blister on his finger and he rubbed it as he ran upward. What a waste! What an utter waste of money! Burning his finger seemed to have taught him nothing at all. And here was the beautiful, welcoming green night light of the dormitory corridors. Not far now.

Charles did not remember getting into bed. His last clear thought was to wonder whether Brian had come back or whether he had run away on the spot. When the clanging bell dragged him awake in the morning, he had a sort of feeling that he had gone to sleep on the dormitory floor near the end of Brian’s bed. But no. He was in his own bed. His glasses were hooked on the bedrail. He began to hope he had dreamed last night. But, long before he was awake enough to sit up and yawn, the room filled with indignant voices.

“I can’t find my shoes!”

“I say, what’s happened to all our shoes?”

“My slippers aren’t here either!”

As Charles managed to sit up, Simon said, “Are you a shoe thief now, Brian?” and smacked Brian’s head in a jolly, careless way, to show he did not think Brian was capable of being anything so enterprising. Brian was kneeling up in bed, looking as sleepy as Charles felt. He did not answer Simon or look at Charles.

In the next dormitory, they had no shoes either. And a senior could be heard coming down the corridor, shouting, “Hey! Have you lot pinched our shoes?”

Everyone was annoyed. Everyone thought there was a practical joke going on. Charles just hoped they would go on thinking that. Everyone was forced to go without shoes and slither around in socks. Charles’s shoes were missing too—he was glad he seemed to have been that thorough, and he was just dragging on a second pair of socks, when rumor spread along the corridor. In the way of rumors, it was quite mysterious. Nobody knew who started it.

“We’re to go down to the hall. All the shoes are there.”

Charles joined the slithering rush for the hall. That rush was joined in the downstairs passage by all the girls, also in socks, also making for the hall. The seniors naturally occupied the door of the hall. Everyone from the lower school streamed outside into the quadrangle to look through the hall windows. There, everyone’s first reaction was simple awe.

A school with six hundred pupils owns an awful lot of shoes. There would be twelve hundred even if everyone simply had one pair. But at Larwood House, everyone had to have special shoes for almost everything they did. So you had to add to that number all the gym shoes, running shoes, tennis shoes, trainers, dancing shoes, spare shoes, best shoes, sandals, football boots, hockey boots, Wellington boots, and galoshes. The number of shoes is swiftly in thousands. Add to those all the shoes owned by the staff, too: Miss Cadwallader’s characteristic footgear with heels like cottonreels; the cook’s extra-wide fitting; the groundsman’s hobnails; Mr. Crossley’s handmade suede; Mr. Brubeck’s brogues; the matron’s sixteen pairs of stiletto heels; someone’s purple fur boots; and even the odd pair of riding boots; not to speak of many more. And you have truly formidable numbers. The chairs in the hall were buried under a monstrous mountain of shoes.

Amid the general marveling, Theresa’s voice was heard. “If this is someone’s idea of a joke, I don’t think it’s funny. My bedsocks are all muddy!” She was wearing blue fluffy bedsocks over her school socks.

After this, there was something of a free-for-all. People scrambled in through doors and windows and slithered on the pile of shoes, digging for shoes they thought were theirs—or, failing that, simply a pair that would fit.

Until a voice began bellowing, “OUT! GET OUT ALL OF YOU! LEAVE ALL THE SHOES THERE!”

Charles was pushed backwards by the rather slower rush to leave the hall, and had to crane to see who was shouting. It was Mr. Wentworth. Charles was so amazed that he stopped moving and was left by a sort of eddy inside the hall, just by the door. From there, he could clearly see Mr. Wentworth walking down the edge of the pile of shoes. He was wearing his usual shabby suit, but his feet were completely bare. Otherwise there was nothing wrong with him at all. After him came Mr. Crossley in bright yellow socks and Mr. Brubeck with a large hole in the heel of his left sock. After them came the caretaker. After him of course trundled the caretaker’s dog, which was manifestly wishing to raise a leg against the pile of shoes.