The Kingdom of Carbonel (3 page)

When John knocked again, there was no answer, so he pushed open the flap of the letter box and called through, ‘Do let us in, Mrs Cantrip, we've got something for you!' But he backed away suddenly when he saw a pair of piercing eyes staring at him from the other side of the letterbox.

Rosemary, who had been trying to see, too, nearly fell over when the door was suddenly flung open.

‘Got something for me, have you?' said Mrs Cantrip. ‘That's different, that is! Come inside!'

She stood blinking and bobbing at the open door while the children waited uncertainly on the step. A furry pressure on the back of the knees from Carbonel, which might have been affection, or even a plain shove, sent John stumbling down the step into the house, which was below the level of the road. Of course Rosemary followed.

Mrs Cantrip led the way into an inner room. There was very little furniture, but it was tidy, and on the rickety table was a jam jar which held a bunch of nettles and dandelions. The familiar golden flower faces made Rosemary feel a little braver.

The old woman sat down in a rocking chair by the smouldering fire.

‘Well,' she said eagerly, ‘hand it over!'

‘It's from Miss Maggie at The Copper Kettle,' said Rosemary. ‘She asked us to give you the shoes and the apron you left behind, and the money she owes you.'

As she spoke she put them on the table. Mrs Cantrip hardly bothered to look.

‘Do you mean to say that's all?' she snorted. ‘Coming into my house under false pretences, I call it. I could have fetched them for myself any day.' She started to rock herself violently in the rocking chair, pushing herself off with her big feet.

‘Miss Maggie wondered why you didn't,' said Rosemary.

‘Why did you leave?' asked John.

‘Because the sight of her stirring away at her pots and saucepans made my fingers itch! Hours she spent over her magic books and her mixtures, and never so much as a puff of coloured smoke to show for it! Let alone turning anyone into anything satisfactory, like a blowfly or a spider!'

‘But of course she didn't,' said Rosemary indignantly. ‘She wasn't trying to. That isn't how you run a teashop! She was making nice things to eat out of cookery books, not magic!'

Mrs Cantrip snorted again.

‘Incompetent I call it. And anyway, I'm letting apartments instead. H. and C. in all rooms.' She nodded with satisfaction. ‘R.S.V.P.'

‘Have you really got hot and cold water?' asked John.

‘Who said anything about water?'

‘Well, that's what it usually means,' said Rosemary.

‘Not when I use it, it doesn't,' snapped Mrs Cantrip rocking with renewed vigour. ‘It means air. Cold when the window is open, hot when it's shut – if you build up a good fire. It's up to you. The postman taught me a tidy bit of magic to get a lodger.'

‘The postman?' said Rosemary in surprise.

‘That's what I said! He brought me an invitation to a ball once, by mistake. But a bit of cardboard always comes in handy, so I kept it.'

‘But you shouldn't –' began Rosemary.

Mrs Cantrip ignored her. ‘At the bottom of the card it said R.S.V.P. I asked the postman what it meant, and he said it was foreign for ‘You've got to answer.' A magic rune, you see. That's what I call practical. So I put R.S.V.P. on my card in the window, and it worked. In half an hour I got a lodger and then, because I didn't undo the R.S.V.P. straight away, you two came along.'

‘But we don't –' began John.

‘That's a good thing, because you can't. There's no room. Apartments I said, and I'm not having togetherments, not with nobody.'

Rosemary looked hopelessly at John. They seemed no nearer to the real object of their visit.

‘Mrs Cantrip,' interrupted John firmly. ‘We want to ask you something. It's about Carbonel!'

Mrs Cantrip ceased speaking in mid-sentence and stopped rocking the chair. For a minute, there was complete silence in the dark little kitchen.

‘That animal again!' said Mrs Cantrip, in a hoarse whisper. ‘Who are you?'

‘We are John and Rosemary. Don't you remember?

When you retired from being a witch last summer, you sold me your old broom and your cat, Carbonel, and John and I set him free from your spell to be King of the Cats again. We want you to help us.'

The knuckles of Mrs Cantrip's bony hands showed white where she held the arms of the rocking chair, and her small eyes bored into them like needles.

‘Oh, ah! I remember the pair of you now. Interfering busybodying children. What do you want?'

‘Carbonel is in trouble,' said Rosemary. ‘At least I'm pretty sure he is, and he can't make us understand. Won't you help us?'

‘Why should I help Carbonel?' said the old woman, in a voice as cold as steel. ‘Did he ever help me? Not him. He hampered me at every turn! Besides,' she added sulkily, ‘I've gone out of business, you know that. Broom, books, cauldron – all gone, and everything as dull as puddle water.'

‘What about the dishwater at The Copper Kettle? How did you make it turn red and green?' said John accusingly.

Mrs Cantrip's eyes wavered.

‘That wasn't what you'd call magic. Not real magic,' she muttered. ‘Just using up odds and ends of spells I'd got left over. You wouldn't have me
be wasteful, now would you?' she said virtuously. ‘I couldn't throw them away. Some dear little child might have picked them up, and then what would have happened to it?' She grinned wickedly. ‘It's nearly all gone. I just use a pinch here and a spoonful there, to liven things up a bit. And that reminds me, where's that apron?'

She pounced on the bundle that was lying on the table, shook out the apron, and felt feverishly in the pocket.

‘It's gone! It isn't here! My last little bit of Prism Powder! What have you done with it?'

Rosemary felt hurriedly in her own pocket. The little ball of paper she had picked up from the floor of The Copper Kettle was still there.

‘If I give you back your Prism Powder, will you tell us what we can do to understand Carbonel when he talks to us?'

There was a pause.

‘All right, I'll tell you! I'll tell you and willing!' said Mrs Cantrip, eagerly holding out her hand.

‘Wait a minute,' said John. ‘You shall have it when you have told us what to do and not before!'

Mrs Cantrip pursed her mouth to the size of a keyhole and rubbed the side of her great nose with a bony finger.

‘I can't do it myself, not now. That would never
do. I know. I'll give you a prescription and you must have it made up at the chemist.'

‘At the chemist!' said John.

Mrs Cantrip ignored him. She was ferreting round in the drawer of the table, among bits of string and candle ends. Presently she fished out a crumpled bit of paper, and fetching a bottle of ink and a rather moth-eaten quill pen from the mantelpiece, sat down at the table. For a minute she sucked the end of her pen, then she chuckled, smoothed out the paper, and began writing with great speed. When she had finished, she folded the paper and handed it to Rosemary.

Both children were craning over to see what she was writing, and they were quite unprepared for the pounce that the old woman made on the screw of paper that Rosemary had brought out of her pocket. They unfolded the note she had given them and stared at it.

‘But it isn't writing! It looks like nonsense!' said Rosemary.

Mrs Cantrip took no notice. She was undoing the paper. Inside was about a saltspoonful of what looked like tiny grains of hundreds and thousands.

‘Take it to Hedgem and Fudge to have it made up. Now go away. I'm busy.'

As she spoke she dropped a single grain of the powder into the ink bottle. There was a slight hiss,
and the muddy-looking ink turned a brilliant scarlet. She dropped another grain into the bottle and the ink changed to pure yellow. Her grim face softened.

‘Good heavens!' said John with interest.

‘Go away,' said Mrs Cantrip fiercely, shielding the bottle with her hands.

There seemed nothing else to do, so they went.

John and Rosemary closed the front door behind them and stood blinking in the sunlight. It was like coming out of a cave. Carbonel stopped his restless pacing and ran to them with an anxious little ‘Prrt!'

‘She's given us a prescription, and we've got to get it made up at a chemist's called Hedgem and Fudge. It looks like nothing but a lot of squiggles to me,' said John.

‘But so do the prescriptions that doctors write,' said Rosemary. ‘What's the matter, Carbonel?'

‘I think he wants to read it,' said John.

Rosemary bent down and laid the piece of paper on the pavement. Carbonel held it down with one paw and stared at it with unblinking yellow eyes. They waited anxiously while he examined it. First he sniffed it with delicately twitching whiskers. Then he sneezed violently. Finally, he removed his paw and shook it with distaste. But he purred
loudly, and gave each of the children an approving lick on a bare leg, and set off at a gallop in the direction of the High Street, looking back from time to time to see that they were following.

‘It's all so strange,' said John breathlessly, as they hurried after him. ‘Such a mixture of queerness and commonsense!'

‘I know,' said Rosemary. ‘And whoever could be going as a lodger to Mrs Cantrip? Oh, goodness! I believe Hedgem and Fudge is that big chemist near the Cathedral!'

‘We shall look pretty silly if we hand over a page of gibberish and say “I want this made up, please!”' said John gloomily.

But no one can be gloomy for long if he is running, so Rosemary and John stopped talking because they needed all their breath to keep up with Carbonel. Once, in the High Street full of afternoon shoppers, they thought they had lost him, and several times they bumped into people and had to stop and apologize. When Carbonel reached the top of the High Street where the road widens in front of the Cathedral, he waited for them to catch up.

‘There it is!' said Rosemary. ‘That's the shop on the other side of the road!'

It was a large, old-fashioned building. Above the cars that honked and hurried, they could see the
name in gold letters, as well as two great glass bottles full of glowing red and green liquid that have been the sign of a dispenser of medicine since the days when few people could read.

There was a screeching of brakes as Carbonel stepped without warning on to the pedestrian crossing and with great dignity, tail erect, swept across the road. The drivers who were not angry grinned.

Very red about the ears, John and Rosemary crossed the road behind him.

Although the building was clearly an old one, the shop had been brought up to date inside. Behind the counter, there were rows of little mahogany drawers with cut-glass handles which sparkled in the strip lighting. There were steel chairs to sit on, and one counter, which displayed face powder and lipsticks and shampoos, with a yellow-haired young lady behind it. A smaller counter displayed castor oil, cough medicines and headache pills, with a pink young man behind it. On this counter was a notice which said,
PRESCRIPTIONS
, so Rosemary handed the piece of paper to the young man.

He took it and glanced casually at the writing. Then suddenly his eyebrows shot up and his neck seemed to lengthen as he peered at the paper.

‘Wait for it!' said John under his breath to Rosemary.

But far from being angry, the young man said, ‘Excuse me one minute!' and went to consult an older man who was busy in a glass-partitioned dispensary at the back of the shop. They whispered together for a while, and then the older man came over to the counter. First he read the prescription again through his spectacles, then he peered over them at John and Rosemary.

‘This is most unusual,' he said. ‘I have never been asked for it before. However, it is not for me to question a prescription.'

He turned to the young man. ‘You'd better fetch the steps from the back, Mr Flackett.'

‘What is he going to do?' Rosemary asked John anxiously.

‘Ask me another! I only hope Mrs Cantrip hasn't double-crossed us!' said John.

The young man put the steps against the mahogany partition that divided the window from the shop, and mounted them gingerly, while the older man held them steady. Then he put both arms round the huge glass bottle of red liquid that they had seen from the other side of the road, and breathing heavily with the effort, tottered dangerously down the steps with it into the dispensary.

John and Rosemary stood and listened to the fair-haired young lady serving a customer until the young man returned with a small medicine bottle full of red liquid. There was a pink mark down the front of his white jacket which he was rubbing with his handkerchief.

‘Such an awkward thing to pour from,' he said to Rosemary, who noticed that his fingers were stained with the liquid. He wrapped up the bottle in white paper which he fastened at each end with a little blob of sealing wax.