The Witches

THE MEETING

Now that the Manager had gone, I was not particularly alarmed. What better than to be imprisoned in a room full of these splendid ladies? If I ever got talking to them, I might even suggest that they come and do a bit of cruelty-to-children preventing at my school. We could certainly use them there.

In they came, talking their heads off. They began milling round and choosing their seats, and there was a whole lot of stuff like, ‘Come and sit next to me, Millie dear,’ and ‘Oh, hel-lo, Beatrice! I haven’t seen you since the last meeting! What an adorable dress you have on!’

I decided to stay where I was and let them get on with their meeting while I got on with my mouse- training, but I watched them for a while longer through the crack in the screen, waiting for them to settle down. How many were there? I guessed about two hundred. The back rows filled up first. They all seemed to want to sit as far back from the platform as possible.

There was a lady wearing a tiny green hat in the middle of the back row who kept scratching the nape of her neck. She couldn’t leave it alone. It fascinated me the way her fingers kept scratching away at the hair on the back of her neck. Had she known somebody was watching her from behind, I’m sure she would have been embarrassed. I wondered if she had dandruff. All of a sudden, I noticed that the lady next to her was doing the same thing!

AND THE NEXT ONE!

AND THE NEXT!

The whole lot of them were doing it. They were all scratching away like mad at the hair on the backs of their necks!

Did they have fleas in their hair?

More likely it was nits.

A boy at school called Ashton had had nits in his hair last term and the matron had made him dip his whole head in turpentine. It killed the nits all right, but it nearly killed Ashton as well. Half the skin came away from his scalp.

I began to be fascinated by these hair-scratching ladies. It is always funny when you catch someone doing something coarse and she thinks no one is looking. Nose-picking, for example, or scratching her bottom. Hair-scratching is very nearly as unattractive, especially if it goes on and on.

I decided it had to be nits.

Then the most astonishing thing happened. I saw one lady pushing her fingers up underneath the hair on her head, and the hair, the entire head of hair, lifted upwards all in one piece, and the hand slid underneath the hair and went on scratching!

She was wearing a wig! She was also wearing gloves! I glanced swiftly around at the rest of the now-seated audience. Every one of them was wearing gloves!

I glanced frantically behind me for a back door to escape through. There wasn’t one.

Should I leap out from behind the screen and make a dash for the double doors?

Those double doors were already closed and I could see a woman standing in front of them. She was bending forward and fixing some sort of a metal chain round the two door handles.

Keep still, I told myself. No one has seen you yet. There’s no reason in the world why they should come and look behind the screen. But one false move, one cough, one sneeze, one nose-blow, one little sound of any sort and it won’t be just one witch that gets you.

At that point, I think I fainted. The whole thing was altogether too much for a small boy to cope with. But I don’t believe I was out for more than a few seconds, and when I came to, I was lying on the carpet and I was still, thank heavens, behind the screen.

Rather shakily, I got to my knees and peered once again through the crack in the screen.