The Witches

IT’S OFF TO WORK WE GO!

For supper that evening my grandmother had a plain omelette and one slice of bread. I had a piece of that brown Norwegian goats’-milk cheese known as gjetost which I had loved even when I was a boy. We ate in front of the fire, my grandmother in her armchair and me on the table with my cheese on a small plate.

‘Grandmamma,’ I said, ‘now that we have done away with The Grand High Witch, will all the other witches in the world gradually disappear?’

‘I’m quite sure they won’t,’ she answered.

I stopped chewing and stared at her. ‘But they must!’ I cried. ‘Surely they must!’

‘I’m afraid not,’ she said.

‘But if she’s not there any longer how are they going to get all the money they need? And who is going to give them orders and jazz them up at the Annual Meetings and invent all their magic formulas for them?’

‘When a queen bee dies, there is always another queen in the hive ready to take her place,’ my grandmother said. ‘It’s the same with witches. In the great headquarters where The Grand High Witch lives, there is always another Grand High Witch waiting in the wings to take over should anything happen.’

‘OH NO!’ I cried. ‘That means everything we did was for nothing! Have I become a mouse for nothing at all?’

‘We saved the children of England,’ she said. ‘I don’t call that nothing.’

‘I KNOW, I KNOW!’ I cried. ‘But that’s not nearly good enough! I felt sure that all the witches of the world would slowly fade away after we had got rid of their leader! Now you tell me that everything is going to go on just the same as before!’

‘Not exactly as before,’ my grandmother said. ‘For instance, there are no longer any witches in England. That’s quite a triumph, isn’t it?’

‘But what about the rest of the world?’ I cried. ‘What about America and France and Holland and Germany? And what about Norway?’

‘You must not think I have been sitting back and doing nothing these last few days,’ she said. ‘I have been giving a great deal of thought and time to that particular problem.’

I was looking up at her face when she said this, and all at once I noticed that a little secret smile was beginning to spread slowly around her eyes and the corners of her mouth. ‘Why are you smiling, Grandmamma?’ I asked her.

‘I have some rather interesting news for you,’ she said.

‘What news?’

‘Shall I tell it to you right from the beginning?’

‘Yes, please,’ I said. ‘I like good news.’

She had finished her omelette, and I had had enough of my cheese. She wiped her lips with a napkin and said, ‘As soon as we arrived back in Norway, I picked up the telephone and made a call to England.’

‘Who in England, Grandmamma?’

‘To the Chief of Police in Bournemouth, my darling. I told him I was the Chief of Police for the whole of Norway and that I was interested in the peculiar happenings that had taken place recently in the Hotel Magnificent.’

‘Now hang on a sec, Grandmamma,’ I said. ‘There’s no way an English policeman is going to believe that you are the Head of the Norwegian Police.’

‘I am very good at imitating a man’s voice,’ she said. ‘Of course he believed me. The policeman in Bournemouth was honoured to get a call from the Chief of Police for the whole of Norway.’

‘So what did you ask him?’

‘I asked him for the name and address of the lady who had been living in Room 454 in the Hotel Magnificent, the one who disappeared.’

‘You mean The Grand High Witch!’ I cried.

‘Yes, my darling.’

‘And did he give it to you?’

‘Naturally he gave it to me. One policeman will always help another policeman.’

‘By golly, you’ve got a nerve, Grandmamma!’

‘I wanted her address,’ my grandmother said.

‘But did he know her address?’

‘He did indeed. They had found her passport in her room and her address was in it. It was also in the hotel register. Everyone who stays in a hotel has to put a name and address in the book.’

‘But surely The Grand High Witch wouldn’t have put her real name and address in the hotel register?’ I said.

‘Why ever not?’ my grandmother said. ‘Nobody in the world had the faintest idea who she was except the other witches. Wherever she went, people simply knew her as a nice lady. You, my darling, and you alone, were the only non-witch ever to see her with her mask off. Even in her home district, in the village where she lived, people knew her as a kindly and very wealthy Baroness who gave large sums of money to charity. I have checked up on that.’

I was getting excited now. ‘And that address you got, Grandmamma, that must have been the secret headquarters of The Grand High Witch.’

‘It still is,’ my grandmother said. ‘And that will be where the new Grand High Witch is certain to be living at this very moment with her retinue of special Assistant Witches. Important rulers are always surrounded by a large retinue of assistants.’

‘Where is her headquarters, Grandmamma?’ I cried. ‘TELL ME QUICK WHERE IT IS!’

‘It is a Castle,’ my grandmother said. ‘And the fascinating thing is that in that Castle will be all the names and addresses of all the witches in the world! How else could a Grand High Witch run her business? How else could she summon the witches of the various countries to their Annual Meetings?’

‘Where is the Castle, Grandmamma?’ I cried impatiently. ‘Which country? TELL ME QUICK!’

‘Guess,’ she said.

‘NORWAY!’ I cried.

‘Right first time!’ she answered. ‘High up in the mountains above a small village.’

This was thrilling news. I did a little dance of excitement on the tabletop. My grandmother was getting pretty worked up herself and now she heaved herself out of her chair and began pacing up and down the room, thumping the carpet with her stick.

‘So we have work to do, you and I!’ she cried out. ‘We have a great task ahead of us! Thank heavens you are a mouse! A mouse can go anywhere! All I’ll have to do is put you down somewhere near The Grand High Witch’s Castle and you will very easily be able to get inside it and creep around looking and listening to your heart’s content!’

‘I WILL! I WILL!’ I answered. ‘No one will ever see me! Moving about in a big Castle will be child’s play compared with going into a crowded kitchen full of cooks and waiters!’

‘You could spend days in there if necessary!’ my grandmother cried. In her excitement she was waving her stick all over the place, and suddenly she knocked over a tall and very beautiful vase that went crashing on to the floor and smashed into a million pieces. ‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘It’s only Ming. You could spend weeks in that Castle if you wanted to and they’d never know you were there! I myself would get a room in the village and you could sneak out of the Castle and have supper with me every night and tell me what was going on.’

‘I COULD! I COULD!’ I cried out. ‘And inside the Castle I could go snooping around simply everywhere!’

‘But your main job, of course,’ my grandmother said, ‘would be to destroy every witch in the place. That really would be the end of the whole organization!’

‘Me destroy them?’ I cried. ‘How could I do that?’

‘Can’t you guess?’ she said.

‘Tell me,’ I said.

‘MOUSE-MAKER!’ my grandmother shouted. ‘Formula 86 Delayed Action Mouse-Maker all over again! You will feed it to everyone in the Castle by putting drops of it into their food! You do remember the recipe, don’t you?’

‘Every bit of it!’ I answered. ‘You mean we’re going to make it ourselves?’

‘Why not?’ she cried. ‘If they can make it, so can we! It’s just a question of knowing what goes into it!’

‘Who’s going to climb up the tall trees to get the gruntles’ eggs?’ I asked her.

‘I WILL!’ she cried. ‘I’ll do it myself! There’s plenty of life in this old dog yet!’

‘I think I’d better do that part of it, Grand-mamma. You might come a cropper.’

‘Those are just details!’ she cried, waving her stick again. ‘We shall let nothing stand in our way!’

‘And what happens after that?’ I asked her. ‘After the new Grand High Witch and everyone else in the Castle have been turned into mice?’

‘Then the Castle will be completely empty and I shall come in and join you and …’

‘WAIT!’ I cried. ‘Hold on, Grandmamma! I’ve just had a nasty thought!’

‘What nasty thought?’ she said.

‘When the Mouse-Maker turned me into a mouse,’ I said, ‘I didn’t become just any old ordinary mouse that you catch with mousetraps. I became a talking, thinking, intelligent mouse-person who wouldn’t go near a mousetrap!’

My grandmother stopped dead in her tracks. She already knew what was coming next.

‘Therefore,’ I went on, ‘if we use the Mouse-Maker to turn the new Grand High Witch and all the other witches in the Castle into mice, the whole place will be swarming with very clever, very nasty, very dangerous talking, thinking mouse-witches! They’ll all be witches in mouse’s clothing. And that,’ I added, ‘could be very horrible indeed.’

‘BY GOLLY, YOU’RE RIGHT!’ she cried. ‘That never occurred to me!’

‘I couldn’t possibly take on a castleful of mouse-witches,’ I said.

‘Nor could I,’ she said. ‘They’d have to be got rid of at once. They’d have to be smashed and bashed and chopped up into little pieces exactly as they were in the Hotel Magnificent.’

‘I’m not doing that,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t anyway. I don’t think you could, either, Grandmamma. And mousetraps wouldn’t be the slightest use. By the way,’ I added, ‘The Grand High Witch who did me in was wrong about mousetraps, wasn’t she?’

‘Yes, yes,’ my grandmother said impatiently. ‘But I’m not concerned with that Grand High Witch. She’s been chopped up long ago by the hotel chef. It’s the new Grand High Witch we’ve got to deal with now, the one up in the Castle, and all her assistants. A Grand High Witch is bad enough when she’s disguised as a lady, but just think of what she could do if she were a mouse! She could go anywhere!’

‘I’VE GOT IT!’ I shouted, leaping about a foot in the air. ‘I’VE GOT THE ANSWER!’

‘Tell me!’ my grandmother snapped.

‘The answer is CATS!’ I shouted. ‘Bring on the cats!’

My grandmother stared at me. Then a great grin spread over her face and she shouted,

‘IT’S BRILLIANT!

ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT!’

‘Shove half a dozen cats into that Castle,’ I cried, ‘and they’ll kill every mouse in the place in five minutes, I don’t care how clever they are!’

‘YOU’RE A MAGICIAN!’ my grandmother shouted, starting to wave her stick about once again.

‘Look out for the vases, Grandmamma!’

‘To heck with the vases!’ she shouted. ‘I’m so thrilled I don’t care if I break the lot!’

‘Just one thing,’ I said. ‘You’ve got to make absolutely sure I’m well out of the way myself before you put the cats in.’

‘That’s a promise,’ she said.

‘What will we do after the cats have killed all the mice?’ I asked her.

‘I’ll take all the cats back to the village and then you and I will have the Castle completely to ourselves.’

‘And then?’ I said.

‘Then we shall go through the records and get the names and addresses of all the witches in the whole wide world!’

‘And after that?’ I said, QUIVERING with excitement.

‘After that, my darling, the greatest task of all will begin for you and me! We shall pack our bags and go travelling all over the world! In every country we visit, we shall seek out the houses where the witches are living! We shall find each house, one by one, and having found it, you will creep inside and leave your little drops of deadly Mouse-Maker in the bread, or the cornflakes, or the rice pudding or whatever food you see lying about. It will be a triumph, my darling! A colossal unbeatable triumph. We shall do it entirely by ourselves, just you and me! That will be our work for the rest of our lives!’

My grandmother picked me up off the table and kissed me on the nose. ‘Oh, my goodness me, we’re going to be busy these next few weeks and months and years!’ she cried.

‘I think we are,’ I said. ‘But what fun and excitement it’s going to be!’

‘You can say that again!’ my grandmother cried, giving me another kiss.