Charmed Life (UK) Read online

  “It’s your letter,” said Cat.

  “And your sister,” said Janet. “God bless her dear little sugar-coated shining soul! Don’t get me wrong, Cat. I admire your sister. She thinks big. You have to admire her! All the same, I wonder if she’s thought of the clever hiding-place where I’m going to put her letter. I shall feel better if she hasn’t.”

  Janet bounced up in her un-Gwendolenlike way and took the letter over to the gilded dressing-table. Cat bounced up and followed her. Janet took hold of the gold-garlanded mirror and swung it towards her on its swivels. The back was plain plywood. She dug her nails under the edge of the plywood and prised. It came free quite easily.

  “I do this with my mirror at home,” Janet explained. “It’s a good hiding-place – it’s about the one place my parents never think of. Mum and Dad are dears, but they’re terribly nosy. I think it’s because I’m their only one. And I like to be private. I write private stories for my eyes only, and they will try to read them. Oh, purple spotted dalmatians!”

  She raised the wood up and showed Cat the signs painted on the red-coated back of the glass itself.

  “Cabbala, I think,” said Cat. “It’s a spell.”

  “So she did think of it!” said Janet. “Really, it’s hell having a double. You both get the same ideas. And working on that principle,” she said, sliding Gwendolen’s letter between the plywood and the glass and pressing the plywood back in place, “I bet I know what the spell’s for. It’s so Gwendolen can have a look from time to time and see how Dear Replacement’s getting on. I hope she’s looking now.” Janet swung the mirror back to its usual position and crossed her eyes at it, hideously. She took hold of the corners of her crossed eyes and pulled them long and Chinese, and stuck her tongue out as far as it would go. Then she pushed her nose up with one finger and twisted her mouth right round to one cheek. Cat could not help laughing. “Can’t Gwendolen do this?” Janet said out of the side of her face.

  “No,” Cat giggled.

  That was the moment when Euphemia opened the door. Janet jumped violently. She was much more nervous than Cat had realised. “I’ll thank you to stop pulling faces,” said Euphemia, “and get out of your nightdress, Gwendolen.” She came into the room to make sure that Gwendolen did. She gave a croaking sort of shriek. Then she melted into a brown lump.

  Janet’s hands went over her mouth. She and Cat stared in horror as the brown lump that had been Euphemia grew smaller and smaller. When it was about three inches high, it stopped shrinking and put out large webbed feet. On these webbed feet, it crawled forward and stared at them reproachfully out of protruding yellowish eyes near the top of its head.

  “Oh dear!” said Cat. It seemed that Gwendolen’s last act had been to turn Euphemia into a frog.

  Janet burst into tears. Cat was surprised. She had seemed so self-assured. Sobbing heavily, Janet knelt down and tenderly picked up the brown, crawling Euphemia. “You poor girl!” she wept. “I know just how you feel. Cat, what are we to do? How do you turn people back?”

  “I don’t know,” Cat said soberly. He was suddenly burdened with huge responsibilities. Janet, in spite of the confident way she talked, clearly needed looking after. Euphemia clearly needed it even more. If it had not been for Chrestomanci, Cat would have raced off to get Mr Saunders to help that moment. But he suddenly realised that if Chrestomanci ever found out what Gwendolen had done this time, the most terrible things would happen. Cat was quite sure of this. He discovered that he was terrified of Chrestomanci. He had been terrified of him all along, without realising it. He knew he would have to keep both Janet and Euphemia a secret somehow.

  Feeling desperate, Cat raced to the bathroom, found a damp towel, and brought it to Janet. “Put her down on this. She’ll need to be wet. I’ll ask Roger and Julia to turn her back. I’ll tell them you won’t. And for goodness sake don’t tell anyone you aren’t Gwendolen – please!”

  Janet lowered Euphemia gently on to the towel. Euphemia scrambled round in it and continued to stare accusingly at Janet. “Don’t look like that. It wasn’t me,” Janet said, sniffing. “Cat, we’ll have to hide her. Would she be comfortable in the wardrobe?”

  “She’ll have to be,” said Cat. “You get dressed.”

  A look of panic came over Janet’s face. “Cat, what does Gwendolen wear?”

  Cat thought all girls knew what girls wore. “The usual things – petticoats, stockings, dress, boots – you know.”

  “No, I don’t,” said Janet. “I always wear trousers.”

  Cat felt his problems mounting up. He hunted for clothes. Gwendolen seemed to have taken her best things with her, but he found her older boots, her green stockings and the garters to match, her second-best petticoats, her green cashmere dress with the smocking and – with some embarrassment – her knickers. “There,” he said.

  “Does she really wear two petticoats?” said Janet.

  “Yes,” said Cat. “Get them on.”

  But Janet proved quite unable to get them on without his help. If he left her to do anything, she put it on back to front. He had to put her petticoats on her, button her up the back, tie her garters, fasten her boots, and put her dress on a second time, right way round, and tie its sash for her. When he had finished, it looked all right, but Janet had an odd air of being dressed up, rather than dressed. She looked at herself critically in the mirror. “Thanks, you’re an angel. I look rather like an Edwardian child. And I feel a right Charley.”

  “Come on,” said Cat. “Breakfast.” He carried Euphemia, croaking furiously, to the wardrobe and wrapped her firmly in the towel. “Be quiet,” he told her. “I’ll get you changed back as soon as I can, so stop making a fuss, please!” He shut the door on her and wedged it with a page of Gwendolen’s notes. Faint croaking came from behind it. Euphemia had no intention of being quiet. Cat did not really blame her.

  “She’s not happy in there,” Janet said, weakening. “Can’t she stay out in the room?”

  “No,” said Cat. Frog though she was, Euphemia still looked like Euphemia. He knew Mary would recognise her as soon as she set eyes on her. He took Janet’s resisting elbow and towed her along to the playroom.

  “Don’t you two ever get up till the last minute?” said Julia. “I’m sick of waiting politely for breakfast.”

  “Eric’s been up for hours,” said Mary, hovering about. “So I don’t know what you’ve both been up to. Oh, what’s Euphemia doing?”

  “Mary’s beside herself this morning,” Roger said. He winked. For a moment, there were two Marys, one real and one vague and ghostly. Janet jumped. It was only the second piece of witchcraft she had seen and she did not find it easy to get used to.

  “I expect it’s Gwendolen’s fault,” said Julia, and she gave Janet one of those meaning stares.

  Janet was very put out. Cat had forgotten to warn her how much Julia had disliked Gwendolen ever since the snakes. And a meaning stare from a witch is worse than a meaning stare from an ordinary person. Julia’s pushed Janet backwards across the room, until Cat put himself in the way of it.

  “Don’t do that,” he said. “She’s sorry.”

  “Is she?” said Julia. “Are you?” she asked, trying to get the stare round Cat to Janet again.

  “Yes, horribly sorry,” Janet said fervently, not having the least idea why. “I’ve had a complete change of heart.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it,” said Julia. But she left off staring in order to watch Mary bringing the usual bread, the marmalade, and the jug of cocoa.

  Janet looked, sniffed the cocoa steaming from the jug, and her face fell, rather like Gwendolen’s on the first day. “Oh, dear. I hate cocoa,” she said.

  Mary rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “You and your airs and graces! You never said you hated it before.”

  “I – I’ve had a revulsion of feeling,” Janet invented. “When I had my change of heart, all my taste buds changed, too. I – you haven’t any coffee, have you?”


  “Where? Under the carpet or something?” Mary demanded. “All right. I’ll ask the kitchen. I’ll tell them your taste buds are revolting, shall I?”

  Cat was very pleased to hear that cocoa was not compulsory after all. “Could I have coffee, too?” he asked, as Mary went to the lift. “Or I prefer tea really.”

  “But you waited to say so until Euphemia goes missing and leaves me all on my own!” Mary said, getting very put-upon.

  “She never does anything anyway,” Cat said in surprise.

  Mary flounced crossly to the speaking-tube and ordered a pot of coffee and a pot of tea. “For Her Highness and His Nibs,” she said to it. “He seems to have caught it now. What I wouldn’t give for a nice normal child in this place, Nancy!”

  “But I am a nice normal child!” Janet and Cat protested in unison.

  “And so are we – nice anyhow,” Julia said comfortably.

  “How can you be normal?” Mary demanded as she let down the lift. “All four of you are Chants. And when was a Chant ever normal? Answer me that.”

  Janet looked questioningly at Cat, but Cat was as puzzled as she was. “I thought your name was Chrestomanci,” he said to Roger and Julia.

  “That’s just Daddy’s title,” said Julia.

  “You’re some kind of cousin of ours,” said Roger. “Didn’t you know? I always thought that was why Daddy had you to live here.”

  As they started breakfast, Cat thought that this, if anything, made the situation more difficult than ever.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Cat watched his moment and, when Mr Saunders called them to lessons, he caught Roger’s arm and whispered, “Look, Gwendolen’s turned Euphemia into a frog and—”

  Roger gave a great snore of laughter. Cat had to wait for him to stop.

  “And she won’t turn her back. Can you?”

  Roger tried to look serious, but laughter kept breaking through. “I don’t know. Probably not, unless she’ll tell you what spell she used. Finding out which spell without knowing is Advanced Magic, and I’m not on that yet. Oh how funny!” He bent over the table and yelled with laughter.

  Naturally, Mr Saunders appeared at the door, remarking that the time for telling jokes was after lessons. They had to go through to the schoolroom. Naturally, Cat found Janet had sat in his desk by mistake. He got her out as quietly as he could and sat in it himself, distractedly wondering how he could find out which spell Gwendolen had used.

  It was the most uncomfortable morning Cat had ever known. He had forgotten to tell Janet that the only thing Gwendolen knew about was witchcraft. Janet, as he rather suspected, knew a lot, about a lot of things. But it all applied to her own world. About the only subject she would have been safe in was simple arithmetic. And Mr Saunders chose that morning to give her a History test. Cat, as he scratched away left-handed at an English essay, could see the panic growing on Janet’s face.

  “What do you mean, Henry V?” barked Mr Saunders. “Richard II was on the throne until long after Agincourt. What was his greatest magical achievement?”

  “Defeating the French,” Janet guessed. Mr Saunders looked so exasperated that she babbled, “Well, I think it was. He hampered the French with iron underwear, and the English wore wool, so they didn’t stick in the mud, and probably their longbows were enchanted too. That would account for them not missing.”

  “Who,” said Mr Saunders, “do you imagine won the battle of Agincourt?”

  “The English,” said Janet. This of course was true for her world, but the panic-stricken look on her face as she said it suggested that she suspected the opposite was true in this world. Which of course it was.

  Mr Saunders put his hands to his head. “No, no, no! The French! Don’t you know anything, girl?”

  Janet looked to be near tears. Cat was terrified. She was going to break down any second and tell Mr Saunders she was not Gwendolen. She did not have Cat’s reasons for keeping quiet. “Gwendolen never knows anything,” he remarked loudly, hoping Janet would take the hint. She did. She sighed with relief and relaxed.

  “I’m aware of that,” said Mr Saunders. “But somewhere, somewhere inside that marble head there must be a little cell of grey matter. So I keep looking.”

  Unfortunately Janet, in her relief, became almost jolly. “Would you like to take my head apart and look?” she asked.

  “Don’t tempt me!” cried Mr Saunders. He hid his eyes with one knobby hand and fended at Janet with the other. He looked so funny that Janet laughed. This was so unlike Gwendolen that Mr Saunders lowered his hand across his nose and stared at her suspiciously over it. “What have you been up to now?”

  “Nothing,” Janet said guiltily.

  “Hm,” said Mr Saunders, in a way which made both Cat and Janet very uncomfortable.

  At last – very long last – it was time for Mary to bring the milk and biscuits, which she did, with a very portentous look. Crouched on the tray beside Mr Saunders’s cup of coffee was a large wet-looking brown thing. Cat’s stomach seemed to leave him and take a plunge into the Castle cellars. From the look of Janet, hers was doing the same.

  “What have you got there?” said Mr Saunders.

  “Gwendolen’s good deed for today,” Mary said grimly. “It’s Euphemia. Look at its face.”

  Mr Saunders bent and looked. Then he whirled round on Janet so fiercely that Janet half got out of her seat. “So that’s what you were laughing about!”

  “I didn’t do it!” said Janet.

  “Euphemia was in Gwendolen’s room, shut in the wardrobe, croaking her poor head off,” said Mary.

  “I think this calls for Chrestomanci,” Mr Saunders said. He strode towards the door.

  The door opened before he got there and Chrestomanci himself came in, cheerful and busy, with some papers in one hand. “Michael,” he said, “have I caught you at the right—?” He stopped when he saw Mr Saunders’s face. “Is something wrong?”

  “Will you please to look at this frog, sir,” said Mary. “It was in Gwendolen’s wardrobe.”

  Chrestomanci was wearing an exquisite grey suit with faint lilac stripes to it. He held his lilac silk cravat out of the way and bent to inspect the frog. Euphemia lifted her head and croaked at him beseechingly. There was a moment of ice-cold silence. It was a moment such as Cat hoped never to live through again. “Bless my soul!” Chrestomanci said, gently as frost freezes a window. “It’s Eugenia.”

  “Euphemia, Daddy,” said Julia.

  “Euphemia,” said Chrestomanci. “Of course. Now who did this?” Cat wondered how such a mild voice could send the hair prickling upright at the back of his head.

  “Gwendolen, sir,” said Mary.

  But Chrestomanci shook his smooth black head. “No. Don’t give a dog a bad name. It couldn’t have been Gwendolen. Michael took her witchcraft away last night.”

  “Oh,” said Mr Saunders, rather red in the face. “Stupid of me!”

  “So who could it have been?” Chrestomanci wondered.

  There was another freezing silence. It seemed to Cat about as long as an Ice Age. During it, Julia began to smile. She drummed her fingers on her desk and looked meditatively at Janet. Janet saw her and jumped. She drew in her breath sharply. Cat panicked. He was sure Janet was going to say what Gwendolen had done. He said the only thing he could think of to stop her.

  “I did it,” he said loudly.

  Cat could hardly bear the way they all looked at him. Julia was disgusted, Roger astonished. Mr Saunders was fiercely angry. Mary looked at him as if he was a frog himself. But Chrestomanci was politely incredulous, and he was worst of all. “I beg your pardon, Eric,” he said. “This was you?”

  Cat stared at him with a strange misty wetness round his eyes. He thought it was due to terror. “It was a mistake,” he said. “I was trying a spell. I – I didn’t expect it to work. And then – and then Euphemia came in and turned into a frog. Just like that,” he explained.

  Chrestomanci said, “But you were told not to p
ractise magic on your own.”

  “I know.” Cat hung his head, without having to pretend. “But I knew it wouldn’t work. Only it did of course,” he explained.

  “Well, you must undo the spell at once,” said Chrestomanci.

  Cat swallowed. “I can’t. I don’t know how to.”

  Chrestomanci treated him to another look so polite, so scathing and so unbelieving, that Cat would gladly have crawled under his desk had he been able to move at all. “Very well,” said Chrestomanci. “Michael, perhaps you could oblige?”

  Mary held the tray out. Mr Saunders took Euphemia and put her on the schoolroom table. Euphemia croaked agitatedly. “Only a minute now,” Mr Saunders said soothingly. He held his hands cupped round her. Nothing happened. Looking a little puzzled, Mr Saunders began to mutter things. Still nothing happened. Euphemia’s head bobbed anxiously above his bony fingers, and she was still a frog. Mr Saunders went from looking puzzled to looking baffled. “This is a very strange spell,” he said. “What did you use, Eric?”

  “I can’t remember,” said Cat.

  “Well, it doesn’t respond to anything I can do,” said Mr Saunders. “You’ll have to do it, Eric. Come over here.”

  Cat looked helplessly at Chrestomanci, but Chrestomanci nodded as if he thought Mr Saunders was quite right. Cat stood up. His legs had gone thick and weak, and his stomach seemed to have taken up permanent quarters in the Castle cellars. He slunk towards the table. When Euphemia saw him coming, she showed her opinion of the matter by taking a frantic leap off the edge of the table. Mr Saunders caught her in mid-air and put her back.

  “What do I do?” Cat said, and his voice sounded like Euphemia croaking.

  Mr Saunders took Cat by his left wrist and planted Cat’s hand on Euphemia’s clammy back. “Now take it off her,” he said.

  “I – I—” said Cat. He supposed he ought to pretend to try. “Stop being a frog and turn into Euphemia again,” he said, and wondered miserably what they would do to him when Euphemia didn’t.