The Witches: Chapters 1–5

Even if she is working as a cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman or driving round in a fancy car (and she could be doing any of these things), her mind will always be plotting and scheming and churning and burning and whizzing and phizzing with murderous bloodthirsty thoughts.

Even if she is working as a cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman or driving round in a fancy car (and she could be doing any of these things), her mind will always be plotting and scheming and churning and burning and whizzing and phizzing with murderous bloodthirsty thoughts.

"Which child," she says to herself all day long, "exactly which child shall I choose for my next squelching?"

She reckons on doing away with one child a week.

She treads softly.

Perhaps she is smiling at the absurdity of such a suggestion.

But there are a number of little signals you can look out for, little quirky habits that all witches have in common, and if you know about these, if you remember them always, then you might just possibly manage to escape from being squelched before you are very much older.

She was a wonderful story-teller and I was enthralled by everything she told me.

My grandmother was tremendously old and wrinkled, with a massive wide body which was smothered in grey lace.

The cigar was the only real thing about her at that moment, and the smoke it made billowed round her head in blue clouds.

And yet she spoke with such conviction, with such utter seriousness, and with never a smile on her face or a twinkle in her eye, that I found myself beginning to wonder.

"Number five", she said, chewing the end of her cigar as though it were a delicious asparagus, "was rather an interesting case. A nine-year-old boy called Leif was summer-holidaying with his family on the fjord, and the whole family was picnicking and swimming off some rocks on one of those little islands. Young Leif dived into the water and his father, who was watching him, noticed that he stayed under for an unusually long time. When he came to the surface at last, he wasn't Leif any more."

"Because she doesn't have finger-nails. Instead of finger-nails, she has thin curvy claws, like a cat, and she wears the gloves to hide them. Mind you, lots of very respectable women wear gloves, especially in winter, so this doesn't help you very much."

There was something indecent about a bald woman.

"An absolutely clean child gives off the most ghastly stench to a witch," my grandmother said.

"It isn't the dirt that the witch is smelling. It is you. The smell that drives a witch mad actually comes right out of your own skin. It comes oozing out of your skin in waves, and these waves, stink-waves the witches call them, go floating through the air and hit the witch right smack in her nostrils. They send her reeling."

"Just don't have one too often," my grandmother said. "Once a month is quite enough for a sensible child."

“What's more," my grandmother said, speaking with a touch of relish, “to a witch you'd be smelling of fresh dogs' droppings."

I was outraged.I simply couldn't bring myself to believe what my grandmother was telling me.

My grandmother leant back in her chair and sucked away contentedly at her foul black cigar.

"Is it like ink?” I asked.
"Exactly,” she said. "They even use it to write with. They use those old-fashioned pens that have nibs and they simply lick the nib.”

"Only if you looked carefully, my grandmother said. "If you looked very carefully you would probably see a slight blueish tinge on her teeth.

"Well," she said, sucking away at her stinking cigar, "their favourite ruse is to mix up a powder that will turn a child into some creature or other that all grown-ups hate."

"She is all-powerful. She is without mercy. All other witches are petrified of her. They see her only once a year at their Annual Meeting. She goes there to whip up excitement and enthusiasm, and to give orders. The Grand High Witch travels from country to country attending these Annual Meetings."

Her voice had a curious rasping quality. It made a sort of metallic sound, as though her throat was full of drawing-pins.

"Delicious," she said. "Cook them in sea-water and they are tender and salty."

My grandmother got pneumonia. She became very ill, and a trained nurse moved into the house to look after her.

"Then don't let her go on a long journey this summer. She's not yet strong enough. And stop her smoking those vile black cigars."

They retired there by the thousand because the air was so bracing and healthy it kept them, so they believed, alive for a few extra years.

Just before we left for Bournemouth, my grandmother had given me, as consolation, a present of two white mice in a little cage and of course I took them with me.

The Manager, whose name was Mr Stringer, was a bristly man in a black tail-coat.

"Rats!" cried Mr Stringer, going mauve in the face. "There are no rats in this hotel!"

"You had better get the rat-catcher in at once," my grandmother said, "before I report you to the Public Health Authorities. I expect there's rats scuttling all over the kitchen floor and stealing the food off the shelves and jumping in and out of the soup!"

"No wonder my breakfast toast was all nibbled round the edges this morning," my grandmother went on relentlessly.

"No wonder it had a nasty ratty taste. If you're not careful, the Health people will be ordering the entire hotel to be closed before everyone gets typhoid fever."

I sidled cautiously into the room.

What a splendid place this was! Ideal for mouse-training!

He only has to take two steps along the string to reach this tasty morsel.

He ventures forward, one paw on the string, then the other.

I let him have a quick nibble of the cake just to whet his appetite.