Witch Week (15 page)

“I told you,” said Nirupam, “I’ve had experience of witches. Each one has their own style. It’s like the way everyone’s writing is different. And I tell you that it was not the same person who did the birds in music and the spell on Simon today. Those are two quite different outlooks on life. But both those people must know they have been very silly to do anything at all, and they will both be wanting to put the blame on you. It could well be one of them who accuses you. So you must be very careful. I will do my part and warn you if I hear of any trouble coming. Then you must ask Estelle to help you. Do you see now?”

“Yes, and I’m awfully grateful,” said Nan. Regretfully, she saw she did not dare try turning the dead leaves into anything. And, in spite of her promise to the old broom, she had better not ride it again. She was quite frightened. Yet she still felt the laughing confidence bubbling up inside, even though there might not be anything now to be confident about. Watch it! she told herself. You must be mad!

T
HE OLD LAB
was not used for anything much except detention. But there was still a faint smell of old science clinging to it, from generations of experiments which had gone wrong. Charles slid onto the splintery back bench and propped Mr. Towers’s awful book against the stump of an old gas pipe. The comics were there, stacked on the shelf underneath, just below a place where someone had spent industrious hours carving
Cadwallader is a bag
on the bench top. The rest of the people in the room were all at the front. They were mostly from 5B or 5C, and probably did not know about the comics.

Simon came in. Charles gave him a medium-strength glare to discourage him from the back bench. Simon went and sat haughtily in the very middle of the middle bench. Good. Then Mr. Wentworth came in. Not so good. Mr. Wentworth was carefully carrying a steaming mug of coffee, which everyone in the room looked at with mute envy. It would
have
to be Mr. Wentworth! Charles thought resentfully.

Mr. Wentworth set his cup of coffee carefully down on the teacher’s bench and looked around to see who was doing time. He seemed surprised to see Simon and not at all surprised to see Charles. “Anyone need paper for lines?” he asked.

Charles did. He went up with most of 5B and was handed a lump of someone’s old exam. The exam had used only one side of the paper, so, Charles supposed, it made sense to use the other side for lines. But it did, all the same, seem like a deliberate way of showing people how pointlessly they were wasting time here. Wasting wastepaper. And Charles could tell, as Mr. Wentworth gave the paper out, that he was in his nastiest and most harrowed mood.

Not good at all, Charles thought, as he slid back behind the back bench. For, though Charles had not particularly thought about it, it was obvious to him that he was going to use witchcraft to copy out Mr. Towers’s awful book. What was the point of being a witch if you didn’t make use of it? But he would have to go carefully with Mr. Wentworth in this mood.

The door opened. Theresa made an entry with her crowd of supporters.

Mr. Wentworth looked at them. “Come in,” he said. “So glad you were able to make it, all of you. Sit down, Delia. Find a seat, Karen. Heather, Deborah, Julia, Theresa, and the rest can no doubt all squeeze in around Simon.”

“
We
haven’t got detention, sir,” Delia said.

“We just came to bring Theresa,” Deborah explained.

“Why? Didn’t she know the way?” said Mr. Wentworth. “Well, you all have detention now—”

“But, sir! We only came—!”

“—unless you get out this second,” said Mr. Wentworth.

Theresa’s friends vanished. Theresa looked angrily at Simon, who was sitting in the place she would otherwise have chosen, and carefully selected a place at the end of the bench just behind him. “This is all your fault,” she whispered to Simon.

“Drop dead!” said Simon.

It was, Charles thought, rather a pity that Nirupam had managed to break the
Simon Says
spell.

Silence descended, the woeful, restless silence of people who wish they were elsewhere. Mr. Wentworth opened a book and picked up his coffee. Charles waited until Mr. Wentworth seemed thoroughly into his book, and then brought out his ballpoint pen. He ran his finger and thumb down it, just as he had done with Simon’s hair, down and down again. Write lines, he thought to it. Write five hundred lines out of this book. Write lines. Then, very grudgingly, he wrote out the first sentence for it—
“What ripping fun!” exclaimed Watts Minor. “I’m down for scrum half this afternoon!”
—to show it what to do. Then he cautiously let go of it. And the pen not only stood where he had left it but began to write industriously. Charles arranged Mr. Towers’s book so that it would hide the scribbling pen. Then, with a sigh of satisfaction, he fetched out one of the comics and settled down as comfortably as Mr. Wentworth.

Five minutes later, he thought a thunderbolt hit him.

The pen fell down and rolled on the floor. The comic was snatched away. His right ear was in agony. Charles looked up—mistily, because his glasses were now hanging from his left ear—to find Mr. Wentworth towering over him. The pain in his ear was from the excruciatingly tight grip Mr. Wentworth had on it.

“Get up,” Mr. Wentworth said, dragging at the ear.

Charles got up perforce. Mr. Wentworth led him, like that, by the ear, with his head painfully on one side, to the front of the room. Halfway there, Charles’s glasses fell off his other ear. He almost didn’t have the heart to catch them. In fact, he only saved them by reflex. He was fairly sure he would not be needing them much longer.

At the front, he could see just well enough to watch Mr. Wentworth cram the comic one-handed into the wastepaper basket. “Let that teach you to read comics in detention!” Mr. Wentworth said. “Now come with me.” He led Charles, still by the ear, to the door. There, he turned around and spoke to the others in the room. “If anyone so much as stirs,” he said, “while I’m gone, he or she will be here for double time, every night till Christmas.” Upon this, he towed Charles outside.

He towed Charles some distance up the covered way outside. Then he let go of Charles’s ear, took hold of his shoulders, and commenced shaking him. Charles had never been shaken like that. He bit his tongue. He thought his neck was breaking. He thought the whole of him was coming apart. He grabbed his left hand in his right one to try and hold himself together—and felt his glasses snap into two pieces. That was it, then. He could hardly breathe when Mr. Wentworth at last let go of him.

“I warned you!” Mr. Wentworth said, furiously angry. “I called you to my room and purposely warned you! Are you a complete fool, boy? How much more frightened do you have to be? Do you need to be in front of the inquisitors before you stop?”

“I—” gasped Charles. “I—” He had never known Mr. Wentworth could be this angry.

Mr. Wentworth went on, in a lifting undertone that was far more frightening than shouting, “Three times—three times today to
my
knowledge—you’ve used witchcraft. And the Lord knows how many times I
don’t
know about. Are you
trying
to give yourself away? Have you the
least
idea what risk you run? What kind of a show-off are you?
All
the shoes in the school this morning—”

“That—that was a mistake, sir,” Charles panted. “I—I was trying to find my spikes.”

“A
stupid
thing to waste witchcraft on!” said Mr. Wentworth. “And not content with a public display like that, you
then
go and cast spells on Simon Silverson!”

“How did you know that was me?” said Charles.

“One look at your face, boy. And what’s more, you were sitting there letting the unfortunate Nan Pilgrim take the blame. I call that thoroughly selfish and despicable! And now this! Writing lines where anyone could see you! You are lucky, let me tell you, boy,
very
lucky not to be down at the police station at this moment, waiting for the inquisitor. You
deserve
to be there. Don’t you?” He shook Charles again. “Don’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” said Charles.

“And you will be,” said Mr. Wentworth, “if you do one more thing. You’re to forget about witchcraft, understand? Forget about magic. Try to be normal, if you know what that means. Because I promise you that if you do it again, you will be
really
in trouble. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” said Charles.

“Now get back in there and write properly!” Mr. Wentworth shoved Charles in front with one hand, and Charles could feel that hand shaking with anger. Frightening though that was, Charles was glad of it. He could barely see a thing without his glasses. When Mr. Wentworth burst back with him into the old lab, the room was just a large fuzzy blur. But he could tell everyone was looking at him. The air was thick with people thinking, I’m glad it wasn’t me!

“Get back to your seat,” Mr. Wentworth said, and let go of Charles with a sharp push.

Charles felt his way through swimming colored blurs, down to the other end of the old lab. Those crooked white squares must be the book and the old exam paper. But his pen, he remembered, had fallen on the floor. How was he to find it, in this state, let alone write with it?

“What are you standing there for?” Mr. Wentworth barked at him. “Put your glasses on and get back to work!”

Charles jumped with terror. He found himself diving for his seat, and hooking his glasses on as he dived. The world clicked into focus. He saw his pen lying almost under his feet and bent to pick it up. But surely, he thought, as he was half under the bench, his glasses had been in two pieces? He had heard a dreadfully final snapping noise. He thought he had felt them come apart. He put his hand up hurriedly and felt his glasses—there was no point taking them off and looking, because then he would not be able to see. They felt all right. Entire and whole. Either he had made a mistake, or the plastic had snapped and not the metal inside. Much relieved, Charles sat up with the pen in his hand.

And stared at what it had written by itself.
I am Watts down scrum Minor ripping this fun afternoon. I fun Minor am half this afternoon Watts
. . . and so on, for two whole pages. It was no good. Mr. Towers was bound to notice. Charles sighed and began writing. Perhaps he
should
stop doing witchcraft. Nothing seemed to go right.

Consequently, the rest of the evening was rather quiet. Charles sat in devvy running his thumb over the fat cushion of blister on his finger, not wanting to give up witchcraft and knowing he dared not go on. He felt such a mixture of regret and terror that it quite bewildered him. Simon was subdued too. Brian Wentworth was back, sitting scribbling industriously, with one eye still turned slightly inward, but Simon seemed to have lost his desire to hit Brian for the time being. And Simon’s friends followed Simon’s lead.

Nan kept quiet also, because of what Nirupam had said, but, however hard she reasoned with herself, she could not get rid of that bubbling inner confidence. It was still with her in the dormitory that night. It stayed, in spite of Delia, Deborah, Heather, and the rest, who began on her in their usual way.

“It was a bit much, that spell on Simon!”

“Really, Nan, I know we asked you, but you should
think
first.”

“Look what he did to Theresa. And she lost her knitting over it.”

And Nan, instead of submitting or apologizing, as she usually did, said, “What’s put it into your pretty little heads that that spell was mine?”

“Because we know you’re a witch,” said Heather.

“Of course,” said Nan. “But what gave you the idea I was the only one? You think, Heather, instead of just opening your little pink mouth and letting words trickle out. I told you, it takes
time
to make a spell. I told you about picking herbs and flying around and chanting, didn’t I? And I left out the way you have to catch bats. That takes ages, even on a fast modern broomstick, because bats are so good at dodging. And you were with me in the bathroom, and with me all the time all this last week, and you
know
I haven’t had time to catch bats or pick herbs, and you’ve
seen
I haven’t been muttering and incantating. So you see? It wasn’t me.”

She could tell they were convinced, because they all looked so disappointed. Heather muttered, “And you said you couldn’t fly that broomstick!” but she said nothing more. Nan was pleased. She seemed to have shut them up without losing her reputation as a witch.

All except Karen. Karen was newly admitted to the number of Theresa’s friends. That made her very zealous. “Well, I think you should work a spell now,” she said. “Theresa’s lost a pair of bootees she spent hours knitting, and I think the least you can do is get them back for her.”

“No trouble at all,” Nan said airily. “But does Theresa want me to try?”

Theresa finished buttoning her pajamas and turned away to brush her hair. “She’s not going to try, Karen,” she said. “I should be
ashamed
to get my knitting back that way!”

“Lights out,” said a monitor at the door. “Do these belong to anyone? The caretaker found them in his dog’s basket.” She held up two small gray fluffy things with holes in them.