Witch Week Page 8

He found an outside door, but it was locked. He pelted on. Behind him, in the distance, he could hear the caretaker bawling to his dog to come back. That made the dog hesitate. Charles, quite terrified by now, put on a spurt and hurled himself through the next door he came to.

  There was a feeling of large cold space inside this door. Charles went forward a few cautious steps and hit his foot with a clang on a row of steel chairs. He stood frozen, waiting to be discovered. He could hardly hear for the blood banging in his ears at first. Then he found he could hear the dog yapping again, somewhere quite far off. It seemed to have lost him. At the same time, he found he could see the faint shapes of huge windows, high up, beyond the chairs. He was in the school hall.

  It came to Charles that he was not going to get a better opportunity than this. Better summon up his shoes at once. No—forget the shoes. Mr. Wentworth was far more urgent. Get Mr. Wentworth, and when Mr. Wentworth appeared, perhaps Charles could put in a word about Brian.

  It was at this point that Charles realized that he dared not fetch Mr. Wentworth back. If Mr. Wentworth did not know who had made him vanish, he would know as soon as he arrived back and found Charles.

  “Flaming witches!” Charles moaned. “Why didn’t I think?”

  The dog, not too distant, gave another yap. Hunted and undecided, Charles shuffled forward and fell across more chairs. He was in a perfect maze of chairs. He stood where he was and tried to think.

  He could still get the shoes, he thought. He could say he was sleepwalking with worry about them when the caretaker found him. Uncertainly, he held up both arms. That dog was definitely coming nearer again.

  “Shoes,” Charles said hurriedly, and his voice cracked with fear and cold and lack of breathe. “Shoes. Come to me. Hey presto. Abracadabra. Shoes, I say!” The dog sounded almost outside the hall door now. Charles made dragging movements with his hands and then crossed them over his chest. “Shoes!”

  A thing that, by the sound, could have been a shoe, fell on the chair next to him. Despite the yapping dog, Charles grinned with pleasure. The second shoe fell on the other side of him. Charles put out groping hands to find them. And two more fell on his head. Several more flopped down near his feet. Now he could hear shoes dropping down all around him. He seemed to be in the center of a rain of shoes. And the dog was scrabbling at the door now as it yapped. A Wellington boot, by the feel, hit Charles on the shoulder as he turned and groped along the chairs, stumbling over gym shoes, football boots, and lace-ups, with more and more dropping around him as he groped.

  The caretaker was nearly at the door now. Charles could see the torchlight advancing through the glass. It helped him find his way. For he knew there was no question of any nonsense about sleepwalking now. He had to get out, and fast. He floundered among the pattering, flopping shoes, between the rows of chairs to the side of the hall, where he bolted for the door that the teachers came in by. Pitch dark descended on the other side of that door. Charles supposed he was in the staff room, but he never knew for sure. Stumbling, with his hands held out in front of him, dreamlike with panic, he fell over a stool. As he picked himself up, he remembered his second witch, the one who came through the garden. He should have thought about her earlier, he realized, as he knocked into a pile of books. She had said you couldn’t work magic when you were frightened. She was right. Something had gone very wrong out there in the hall. Obviously, Charles thought, having a mad tangle with a coat of some kind, you needed to be cool and collected to be sure of getting it right. Oh thank Heaven! Here was a door.

  Charles plunged out of the door and found himself not far from the main stairs. He fled up them. As he went, his thumb found the fat painful blister on his finger and he rubbed it as he ran upward. What a waste! What an utter waste of money! Burning his finger seemed to have taught him nothing at all. And here was the beautiful, welcoming green night light of the dormitory corridors. Not far now.

  Charles did not remember getting into bed. His last clear thought was to wonder whether Brian had come back or whether he had run away on the spot. When the clanging bell dragged him awake in the morning, he had a sort of feeling that he had gone to sleep on the dormitory floor near the end of Brian’s bed. But no. He was in his own bed. His glasses were hooked on the bedrail. He began to hope he had dreamed last night. But, long before he was awake enough to sit up and yawn, the room filled with indignant voices.

  “I can’t find my shoes!”

  “I say, what’s happened to all our shoes?”

  “My slippers aren’t here either!”

  As Charles managed to sit up, Simon said, “Are you a shoe thief now, Brian?” and smacked Brian’s head in a jolly, careless way, to show he did not think Brian was capable of being anything so enterprising. Brian was kneeling up in bed, looking as sleepy as Charles felt. He did not answer Simon or look at Charles.

  In the next dormitory, they had no shoes either. And a senior could be heard coming down the corridor, shouting, “Hey! Have you lot pinched our shoes?”

  Everyone was annoyed. Everyone thought there was a practical joke going on. Charles just hoped they would go on thinking that. Everyone was forced to go without shoes and slither around in socks. Charles’s shoes were missing too—he was glad he seemed to have been that thorough, and he was just dragging on a second pair of socks, when rumor spread along the corridor. In the way of rumors, it was quite mysterious. Nobody knew who started it.

  “We’re to go down to the hall. All the shoes are there.”

  Charles joined the slithering rush for the hall. That rush was joined in the downstairs passage by all the girls, also in socks, also making for the hall. The seniors naturally occupied the door of the hall. Everyone from the lower school streamed outside into the quadrangle to look through the hall windows. There, everyone’s first reaction was simple awe.

  A school with six hundred pupils owns an awful lot of shoes. There would be twelve hundred even if everyone simply had one pair. But at Larwood House, everyone had to have special shoes for almost everything they did. So you had to add to that number all the gym shoes, running shoes, tennis shoes, trainers, dancing shoes, spare shoes, best shoes, sandals, football boots, hockey boots, Wellington boots, and galoshes. The number of shoes is swiftly in thousands. Add to those all the shoes owned by the staff, too: Miss Cadwallader’s characteristic footgear with heels like cottonreels; the cook’s extra-wide fitting; the groundsman’s hobnails; Mr. Crossley’s handmade suede; Mr. Brubeck’s brogues; the matron’s sixteen pairs of stiletto heels; someone’s purple fur boots; and even the odd pair of riding boots; not to speak of many more. And you have truly formidable numbers. The chairs in the hall were buried under a monstrous mountain of shoes.

  Amid the general marveling, Theresa’s voice was heard. “If this is someone’s idea of a joke, I don’t think it’s funny. My bedsocks are all muddy!” She was wearing blue fluffy bedsocks over her school socks.

  After this, there was something of a free-for-all. People scrambled in through doors and windows and slithered on the pile of shoes, digging for shoes they thought were theirs—or, failing that, simply a pair that would fit.

  Until a voice began bellowing, “OUT! GET OUT ALL OF YOU! LEAVE ALL THE SHOES THERE!”

  Charles was pushed backwards by the rather slower rush to leave the hall, and had to crane to see who was shouting. It was Mr. Wentworth. Charles was so amazed that he stopped moving and was left by a sort of eddy inside the hall, just by the door. From there, he could clearly see Mr. Wentworth walking down the edge of the pile of shoes. He was wearing his usual shabby suit, but his feet were completely bare. Otherwise there was nothing wrong with him at all. After him came Mr. Crossley in bright yellow socks and Mr. Brubeck with a large hole in the heel of his left sock. After them came the caretaker. After him of course trundled the caretaker’s dog, which was manifestly wishing to raise a leg against the pile of shoes.

  “I don’t know who done it!” the caretaker was protesting. “But I know ther
e was people sneaking around my building half the night. The dog nearly caught one, right in this very hall.”

  “Did you come in here and investigate?” Mr. Wentworth said.

  “Door was shut,” said the caretaker. “Thought it was locked.”

  Mr. Wentworth turned from him in disgust. “Someone was pretty busy in here all last night,” he said to Mr. Crossley, “and he didn’t even look!”

  “Thought it was locked,” repeated the caretaker.

  “Oh shut up!” snapped Mr. Wentworth. “And stop your dog peeing on that shoe. It’s Miss Cadwallader’s.”

  Charles slipped out into the corridor, trying to keep the grin on his face down to decent proportions. Mr. Wentworth was all right. He must have slipped off to bed after all last night, while Miss Hodge was asking Charles the way. And, better still, everyone thought the shoes had arrived in the hall quite naturally. Charles could have danced and sung.

  But here was Dan Smith beside him. That sobered Charles somewhat. “Hey,” said Dan. “Did those seniors catch you last night?”

  “No, I ran away,” Charles replied airily.

  “You must have run pretty fast!” said Dan. It was grudging, but it was praise, coming from Dan. “Know anything about who did these shoes?” Dan asked, jerking his head toward the hall.

  Charles would dearly have loved to say it was him and watch the respect grow on Dan’s face. But he was not that much of a fool. “No,” he said.

  “I do,” said Dan. “It was the witch in our class, I bet.”

  Mr. Wentworth appeared in the doorway of the hall. There were loud shushings up and down the packed corridor. “Breakfast is going to be late,” Mr. Wentworth shouted. He looked very harrowed. “You can’t expect the kitchen staff to work without shoes. You are all to go to your classrooms and wait there. Meanwhile, teachers and sixth graders are going to be working hard laying all the shoes out in the main quadrangle. When you are called—when you are called, understand?—you are to come by classes and pick out the shoes which are yours. Off you all go. Sixth grade stay behind.”

  Everyone milled off in a reluctant crowd. Charles was so pleased with himself that he risked grinning at Brian. But Brian was staring dreamily at the wall and did not notice. He did not move or even yell when Simon slapped him absentmindedly around the head. “Where’s Nan Pilgrim?” Simon asked, laughing. “Turned herself invisible?”

  Nan was keeping out of the way, lurking in the top corridor by the girls’ bathrooms. From there, she had an excellent view of the quadrangle being covered with row upon row of shoes, and the kitchen ladies tiptoeing about the rows in stockings looking for their workshoes. It did not amuse her. Theresa’s friend Delia Martin and Estelle’s friend Karen Grigg had already made it quite plain that they thought it was Nan’s doing. The fact that these two normally did not speak to one another, or to Nan either, only seemed to make it worse.

  7

  BREAKFAST WAS READY before 6B had been called to find their shoes. Theresa was forced to walk through the corridors in her blue bedsocks. They were, by this time, quite black underneath, which upset her considerably. Breakfast was so late that assembly was cancelled. Instead, Miss Cadwallader stood up in front of high table, with her face all stringy with displeasure and one foot noticeably damp, and made a short speech.

  “A singularly silly trick has been played on the school,” she said. “The people who played it no doubt think it very funny, but they must be able to see by now what a stupid and dishonorable thing they have done. I want them to be honorable now. I want them to come to me and confess. And I want anyone else who knows or suspects who did it to be equally honorable and come and tell me what they know. I shall be in my study all morning. That is all.”

  “What is honorable,” Nirupam said loudly, as everyone stood up, “about going and telling tales?”

  By saying that, he did Nan a service, whether he meant to or not. No one in 6B wanted a name for telling tales. Nobody went to Miss Cadwallader. Instead, they all went out into the quadrangle, where a little freezing drizzle of rain was now falling, and walked up and down the rows of damp footgear, finding their shoes. Nan was forced to go too.

  “Oh look! Here comes Archwitch Dulcinea,” said Simon.

  “Why did you do it to your own shoes too, Dulcinea? Thought it would look more innocent, did you?”

  And Theresa said, “Really, Nan! My bedsocks are ruined! It isn’t funny!”

  “Do something really funny now, Nan,” Karen Grigg suggested.

  “Hurry up!” Mr. Crossley shouted from the shelter of the porch. Everyone at once became very busy turning over shoes. The only one who did not was Brian. He simply wandered about, staring into space. In the end, Nirupam found his shoes for him and bundled them into Brian’s lax arms.

  “Are you all right?” Nirupam asked him.

  “Who? Me? Oh yes,” Brian said.

  “Are you sure? One of your eyes is sort of set sideways,” Nirupam said.

  “Is it?” Brian asked vaguely, and wandered off.

  Nirupam turned severely to Simon. “I think you hit him on the head once too often.”

  Simon laughed, a little uneasily. Nirupam was a head taller than he was. “Nonsense! There’s nothing in his head to get hurt.”

  “Well, you watch it,” said Nirupam, and might have said more, except that they were interrupted by an annoyed outcry from Dan Smith.

  “I’ll get someone for this!” Dan was shouting. He was very pale and cross after last night’s midnight feast, and he looked quite savage. “I’ll get them even if they’re a magicking senior. Someone’s gone off with my running shoes! I can’t find them anywhere.”

  “Look again, carefully!” Mr. Crossley bawled from the porch.

  This was a queer fact. Dan searched up and down the rows, and so did Charles, until their socks were soaked and their hair was trickling rain, but neither Dan’s spikes nor Charles’s were there. By this time, 7A, 7B, and 7C had been allowed out to collect their shoes too before they all got too wet, and almost the only footgear left was the three odd football boots, the riding boots, and a pair of luminous green trainers that nobody seemed to want. Dan uttered such threats that Charles was glad that it did not seem to occur to Dan that this had anything to do with Charles Morgan.

  But it meant that Charles had to go to Mr. Towers next and confess that his running shoes had still not turned up. He was fed up as he stood and trickled rain outside the staff room. After all his trouble!

  “I did look, sir,” he assured Mr. Towers.

  Mr. Towers glanced at Charles’s soaking hair and rain-dewed glasses. “Anyone can stand in the rain,” he said. “Are you paying for new ones or writing lines?”

  “Doing lines,” Charles said resentfully.

  “In detention every evening until Christmas then,” Mr. Towers said. The idea seemed to please him. “Wait.” He dodged back into the staff room and came out again with a fat old book. “Here,” he said, handing the book to Charles. “Copy five hundred lines of this out every evening. It will show you what a real schoolboy should be like. When you’ve copied it all, I’ll give you the sequel.”

  Charles stood in front of the staff room and looked at the book. It was called The Pluckiest Boy in School. It smelled of mildew. Inside, the pages were furry and brownish, and the first line of the story went: “What ripping fun!” exclaimed Watts Minor. “I’m down for scrum half this afternoon!”

  Charles looked from this to the fat, transparent, and useless blister on his finger and felt rather ill. “Magicking hell,” he said.

  “Good morning, Charles,” said Miss Hodge, tripping toward the staff room, all fresh and unaware. “That looks like a nice old book. I’m glad to see you doing some serious reading at last.”

  She was most disconcerted to receive one of Charles’s heaviest double-barreled glares. What a moody boy he was to be sure! she thought as she neatly stripped off her raincoat. She was equally surprised to find the staff room in some kind of u
proar, with a pile of boots and shoes in the middle. Still, there was Mr. Wentworth at last, flying past on his way somewhere else. Miss Hodge stood in his way.

  “Oh, Mr. Wentworth, I want to apologize for making that accusation against Charles Morgan.” That was pretty generous of her, she thought, after the way Charles had just looked at her. She smiled generously at Mr. Wentworth.

  To her annoyance, Mr. Wentworth simply said, “I’m glad to hear it,” and brushed past her quite rudely. But he did have a lot on his mind, Miss Hodge realized, when Mr. Crossley told her excitedly all about the shoes. She did not hold it against Mr. Wentworth. She collected books—they had gotten spilled all over the floor somehow—and went off to give 6B another English lesson.

  She arrived to find Simon Silverson holding aloft The Pluckiest Boy in School. “Listen to this!” he was saying. “Swelling with pride, Watts Minor gazed into the eyes of his one true friend. Here was a boy above all, straight alike in body and mind—”

  Theresa and Delia were screaming with laughter, with their faces buried in their knitting. Charles was glaring blue murder.

  “Really, Simon!” said Miss Hodge. “That was unworthy of you.” Simon looked at her in astonishment. He knew he never did anything unworthy. “But, Charles,” said Miss Hodge, “I do think you made rather an unfortunate choice of book.” For the second time that day, Charles turned his glare on her. Miss Hodge flinched. Really, if she had not known now that Charles was a nice boy underneath, that glare of his would make her think seriously of the Evil Eye.

  Nirupam held up his long arm. “Are we going to do acting again?” he asked hopefully.

  “No, we are not,” Miss Hodge said, with great firmness. “Get out your poetry books.”

  The lesson, and the rest of the morning, dragged past. Theresa finished her second bootee and cast on stitches for a sweater. Estelle knitted quite a lot of a baby’s bonnet. Brian gave up staring at the wall and instead seemed to be attacked by violent industry. Whenever anyone looked at him, he was scribbling furiously in a different exercise book.