The Pinhoe Egg Read online

“Are you quite sure you won’t join us for nuts and coffee?” Chrestomanci asked politely.

  “You always talk about things I don’t understand,” Cat explained. “And I need to see Janet.”

  Whatever Roger said, Cat found this was one of the times when he felt a little responsible for Janet. She had been looking very pale. And she was only here in this world of Twelve A because Cat’s sister Gwendolen had worked a thoroughly selfish spell and stranded Janet here. He knew there were still times when strangeness and loneliness overwhelmed Janet.

  He thought, when he went into the playroom, that this was one of those times. Janet was sitting sobbing on the battered sofa. Julia had both arms round her.

  “What is it?” Cat said.

  Julia looked up, and Cat saw she was almost as woebegone as Janet. “Jason’s married!” Julia said tragically. “He got married in London before he came here.”

  “So?” said Cat.

  Janet flung herself round on the sofa. “You don’t understand!” she said sobbingly. “I was planning to marry him myself in about four years’ time!”

  “So was I,” Julia put in. “But I think Janet’s more in love with him than I am.”

  “I know I shall hate his wife!” Janet wept. “Irene! What an awful name!”

  Julia said, judicious and gloomy, “She was Miss Irene Pinhoe, but at least Irene Yeldham makes a better name. He probably married her out of kindness.”

  “And,” Janet wailed, “he’s gone to fetch her here, so that they can look at houses. They’ll be here for ages, and I know I won’t be able to go near her!”

  Julia added disgustedly, “She’s an artist, you see. The house they buy is going to have to be just right.”

  Cat knew by now exactly what Roger had meant. He began backing out of the playroom.

  “That’s right! Slide away!” Janet shouted after him. “You’ve no more feelings than a—than a chair leg!”

  Cat was quite hurt that Janet should say that. He knew he was full of feelings. He was wretched already at being forbidden to ride Syracuse.

  The next day, he missed Syracuse more than ever. What made it worse was that he could feel Syracuse, turned out into the paddock, missing Cat too, and sad and puzzled when Cat did not appear. Cat moped about, avoiding Janet and Julia and not being able to see much of Roger either. Roger, possibly as a way of avoiding Chrestomanci, was spending most of his time with Joe. Whenever Joe was not working—which seemed to be more than half the day—he and Roger were to be found with their heads together, talking machinery in the old garden shed behind the stables. At least, Cat could find them, being an enchanter, but nobody much else could. They had a surprisingly strong “Don’t Notice” spell out around the shed. But Cat was bored by machinery and only went there once.

  The day after that, Jason Yeldham’s small blue car thundered up to the front door of Chrestomanci Castle. This time, Janet and Julia refused to go near it. But Millie rushed through the hall to meet it and Cat went with her out of boredom. Jason sprang out of the car in his usual energetic way and ran around it to open the other door and help Irene climb out.

  As Irene stood up and smiled—just a little nervously—at Millie and Cat, Cat’s instant thought was, Janet and Julia can’t possibly hate her! Irene was slender and dark, with that proud, pale kind of profile that Cat always thought of as belonging to the Ancient Egyptians. On Irene, it was somehow very beautiful. Her eyes, like those of the wives of the Pharoahs, were huge and slanted and almond shaped, so that it came as quite a shock when Irene looked at Cat and he saw that her eyes were a deep, shining blue. Those eyes seemed to recognize Cat, and know him, and to take him in and warm to him, like a friend’s. Millie’s eyes had the same knack, now Cat came to think of it.

  He did not blame Jason for smiling so proudly as he led Irene up the steps and into the hall, where Irene looked at the huge pentacle inlaid in the marble floor, and up into the glass dome where the chandelier hung, and round at the great clock over the library door. “Goodness gracious!” she said.

  Jason laughed. “I told you it was grand,” he said.

  By this time, all the wizards and sorceresses of Chrestomanci’s staff were streaming down the marble stairs to meet Irene. Chrestomanci himself came behind them. As usual at that hour of the morning, he was wearing a dressing gown. This one was bronzy gold and green and blue, and seemed to be made of peacock feathers. Irene blinked a little when she saw it, but held out her hand to him almost calmly. As Chrestomanci took it and shook it, Cat could tell that Chrestomanci liked Irene. He felt relieved about that.

  Julia and Janet appeared at the top of the stairs, behind everyone’s backs as they crowded round Irene. Janet took one look and rushed away, crying bitterly. But Julia stayed, watching Irene with a slight, interested smile. Cat was relieved about that, too.

  Altogether, the arrival of Irene made Cat’s separation from Syracuse easier to bear. She was as natural and warm as if she had known Cat for years. Jason allowed Cat to show her round the Castle—although he insisted on showing Irene the gardens himself—and Irene strolled beside Cat, marveling at the ridiculous size of the main rooms, at the miles of green carpeted corridors, and at the battered state of the schoolroom. She was so interested that Cat even showed her his own round room up in the turret.

  Irene much admired it. “I’ve always wanted a tower room like this myself,” she said. “You must love it up here. Do you think there’s a house in the neighborhood that’s big enough to have a tower like this one?”

  Cat was quite ashamed to say he didn’t know.

  “Never mind,” said Irene. “Jason’s found several for sale that I might like. You see, it’s got to be quite a big house. My father left me money when he died, but he left me his two old servants as well. We have to have room for them to live with us without being cramped. Jane James insists she doesn’t mind where we live or how much room we have—but I know that’s not true. She’s a very particular person. And Adams has set his heart on living in the country and I simply can’t disappoint him. If you knew him, you’d understand.”

  Later, Irene sat in the vast Small Saloon and showed Cat a portfolio of her drawings. Cat was surprised to find that they were more like patterns than drawings. They were all in neatly ruled shapes, long strips and elegant diamonds. The strips had designs of ferns and honeysuckle inside them and the diamonds had fronds of graceful leaves. There were plaits of wild roses and panels of delicately drawn irises. It was a further surprise to Cat to find that each pattern sent out its own small, fragrant breath of magic. Each was full of a strange, gentle joy. Cat had had no idea that drawings could do this.

  “I’m a designer really,” Irene explained. “I do book decorations and fabrics, tiles and wallpaper and so forth. I do surprisingly well with them.”

  “But you’re a witch too, aren’t you?” Cat said. “These all have magic in.”

  Irene went the pink of the wild roses in the design she was showing Cat. “Not exactly,” she said. “I always use real plants for my drawings, but I don’t do anything else. The magic just comes out of them somehow. I’ve never thought of myself as a witch. My father, now, he could do real magic—I never knew quite what he did for a living, but Jason says he was a well-known enchanter—so maybe just a touch of it came down to me.”

  Later still, Cat overheard Irene asking Millie why Cat was so mournful. He went away before he had to hear Millie explain about Syracuse.

  “Huh!” Janet said, catching him on the schoolroom stairs. “In love with Irene, aren’t you? Now you know how I feel.”

  “I don’t think I am,” Cat said. He thought he probably wasn’t. But it did strike him that when he was old enough to start being in love—pointless though that seemed—he would try to find someone not unlike Irene to be in love with. “She’s just nice,” he said, and went on up to his room.

  Irene’s niceness was real, and active. She must have spoken to Jason about Cat. The next morning, Jason came to find Cat in the
schoolroom. “Irene thinks you need taking out of yourself, young nine-lifer,” he said. “How do you feel about driving around with us this morning to look at a few houses for sale?”

  “Won’t I be in the way?” Cat asked, trying not to show how very much more cheerful this made him feel.

  “She says she values your judgment,” Jason said. “She assures me, hand on heart, that you’ll only have to look at a house to know if we’ll be happy there or not. Would you say that’s true?”

  “I don’t know,” Cat said. “It may be.”

  “Come along, then,” Jason said. “It’s a lovely day. It feels as if it’s going to be important somehow.”

  Jason was right about this, although perhaps not quite in the way he or Cat thought.

  Chapter Eight

  Over in Ulverscote, Nutcase was being a perfect nuisance to Marianne. Nothing seemed to persuade him that he was now living in Furze Cottage. Dad changed all the locks, and the catches on the windows, but Nutcase still managed to get out at least once a day. No one knew how he did it. People from all over the village kept arriving at Furze Cottage with Nutcase struggling in their arms. Nicola found him prowling in Ulverscote Wood. Aunt Joy sourly brought him back from the Post Office. Aunt Helen arrived at least twice with him from the pub, explaining that Nutcase had been at the food in the kitchen there. And Uncle Charles repeatedly knocked at the door, carrying Nutcase squirming under one paint-splashed arm, saying that Nutcase had turned up in Woods House yet again.

  “He must think he still lives there,” Uncle Charles said. “Probably looking for Gammer. Do try to keep him in. The wall’s mended and I’ve nearly finished the painting. We put the back door in yesterday. He’ll get locked in there when we leave and starve to death if you’re not careful.”

  Mum’s opinion was that Nutcase should go and live with Gammer in the Dell. Marianne would have agreed, except that Gammer was always saying to her, “You’ll look after Nutcase for me, won’t you, Marianne?”

  Gammer insisted that Marianne walk over to see her every day. Marianne had no idea why. Often, Gammer simply stared at the wall and said nothing except that she was to look after Nutcase. Sometimes she would lean forward and say things that made no sense, like “It’s the best way to get pink tomatoes.” Most frequently Gammer just grumbled to herself. “They’re out to get me,” she would say. “I have to get a blow in first. They have spies everywhere, you know. They watch and they wait. And of course they have fangs and terrible teeth. The best way is to drain the spirit out of them.”

  Marianne grew to hate these visits. She could not understand how Aunt Dinah put up with these sinister grumbles of Gammer’s. Aunt Dinah said cheerfully, “It’s just her way, poor old thing. She’s no idea what she’s saying.”

  Nutcase must have learned the way to the Dell by following Marianne. He turned up there one day just after Marianne had left and got in among Aunt Dinah’s day-old chicks. The slaughter he worked there was horrific. Uncle Isaac arrived at Furze Cottage, as Marianne was setting off to look for Nutcase, and threw Nutcase indoors so hard and far that Nutcase hit the kitchen sink, right at the other end of the house.

  “Dinah’s in tears,” he said. “There’s barely twenty chicks left out of the hundred. If that cat gets near the Dell one more time, I’ll kill him. Wring his neck. I warn you.” And he slammed the front door and stalked away.

  Mum and Marianne watched Nutcase pick himself up and lick his whiskers in a thoroughly satisfied way. “There’s no way he can go and live with Gammer after this,” Mum said, sighing. “Do try to keep him in, Marianne.”

  But Marianne couldn’t. She doubted if anyone could. She tried putting twelve different confinement spells on Nutcase, but Nutcase seemed as immune to magic as he was to locks and bolts, and he kept getting out. The most Marianne could manage was a weak and simple directional spell that told her which way Nutcase had gone this time. If he had set off in any way that led toward the Dell, Marianne ran. Uncle Isaac very seldom made threats, but when he did he meant them. Marianne could not bear to think of Nutcase with his neck wrung, like a dead chicken.

  Each time she found Nutcase was missing, Marianne’s heart sank. That particular morning, when she got back from another useless visit to Gammer and found that Nutcase had vanished yet again, she hastened to work her weak spell and did not feel comfortable until she had spun the kitchen knife three separate times and it had pointed uphill toward Woods House whenever it stopped.

  That’s a relief! she thought. But it’s not fair! I never get any time to myself.

  Upstairs, hidden in Marianne’s heart-shaped desk, her story about the lovely Princess Irene was still hardly begun. She had made some headway. She knew what Princess Irene looked like now. But then she had to think of a Prince who was good enough for her and, with all these interruptions, she wondered if she ever would.

  As she set off uphill to Woods House, Marianne thought about her story. Princess Irene had a pale Egyptian sort of profile, massive clusters of dark curls and fabulous almond-shaped blue eyes. Her favorite dress was made of delicate crinkly silk, printed all over with big blue irises that matched her eyes. Marianne was pleased about that dress. It was not your usual princess wear. But she could not for the life of her visualize a suitable Prince.

  Typically, her thoughts were interrupted all the way up the street. Nicola leaned out of a window to shout, “Nutcase went that way, Marianne!” and point uphill.

  Marianne’s cousin Ron rode downhill on his bike, calling, “Your cat’s just gone in the pub!”

  And when Marianne came level with the Pinhoe Arms, her cousin Jim came out of the yard to say, “That cat of yours was in our larder. Our mum chased him off into the churchyard.”

  In the churchyard, the Reverend Pinhoe met Marianne, saying, “Nutcase seems to have gone home to Woods House again, I’m afraid. I saw him jump off my wall into the garden there.”

  “Thanks,” Marianne said, and hastened on toward the decrepit old gates of Woods House.

  The house was all locked up by this time. Uncle Simeon and Uncle Charles had repaired the damage and gone on to other work, leaving the windows bolted and the doors sealed. Nutcase could not have gotten inside. Marianne gloomily searched all his favorite haunts in the garden instead. She wanted simply to go away. But then Nutcase might take it into his head to go down to the Dell by the back way, beside the fields, where Uncle Isaac would fulfill his threat.

  Nutcase was not among the bushy, overgrown near-trees of the beech hedge. He was not sunning himself in the hayfield of the lawn, nor on the wall that hid the jungle of kitchen garden. He was not in the broken cucumber frame, or hiding in the garden shed. Nor was he lurking under the mass of green goosegrass that hid the gooseberry bushes by the back fence. Big, pale gooseberries lurked there instead. They had reached the stage when they were almost sweet. Marianne gathered a few and ate them while she went to inspect Old Gaffer’s herb bed beside the house. This had once been the most lovingly tended part of the gardens, but it was now full of thistles and tired elderly plants struggling among clumps of grass. Nutcase often liked to bask in the bare patches here, usually beside the catmint.

  He was not there either.

  Marianne looked up and around, terribly afraid that Nutcase was now on his way to the Dell, and saw that the door to the conservatory was standing ajar.

  “That’s a relief—Oh, bother!” she said. Nutcase had almost certainly gone indoors. Now she had to search the house too.

  She shoved the murky glass door wider and marched in over the dingy coconut matting on the floor. The massed Pinhoes had forgotten to clear the conservatory. Marianne marched past broken wicker chairs and dead trees in large pots and on down the passage to the hall.

  There were four people in the hall—no, five. Great-Uncle Lester was just letting himself in through the front door. One of the other people was Great-Uncle Edgar in his tweed hat, looking unusually flustered and surprised. And as for the others—! Marianne
stood there, charmed. There stood her Princess Irene, almost exactly, in her floating dress with the big irises printed on it to match her eyes. As she was a human lady and not part of Marianne’s imagination, she was not quite as Marianne had thought. No one had the masses of hair that Marianne had dreamed up. But this Irene’s hair was dark, though it was wavy rather than curly, and she had the right slender figure and exactly the right pale Egyptian profile. It was amazing.

  Beside the Princess was a fair and cheerful young man with a twinkly sort of look to him that Marianne immediately took to. He was wearing a jaunty blazer and very smart, beautifully creased pale trousers, which struck Marianne as the sort of things a prince might put on for casual wear. He’s just the Prince I ought to have given her! she thought.

  There was a boy with them, who had that slightly deadened expression Joe often had when he was with adults he didn’t like. Marianne concluded that he didn’t care for Great-Uncle Edgar, just like Joe. Since the boy was fair haired, Marianne supposed he must be the son of Irene and her Prince. Obviously the story had moved on a few years. Irene and her Prince were in the middle of living happily ever after and looking for a house to do it in.

  Marianne walked toward them, smiling at this thought. As she did so, the boy said, “This one’s the right house.”

  Irene turned toward him anxiously. “Are you quite sure, Cat? It’s awfully run-down.”

  Cat was sure. They had visited two shockers, one of them damp and the other where the ceilings pressed down, like despair, on your mind. And then they had gone to look at what was advertised as a small castle, because Irene had hoped it would have a tower room like Cat’s, only it had had no roof. This one felt—Well, Cat had been confused for a moment, when the bulky man with a hat like a tweed flowerpot had come striding up to them booming, “Good morning. I’m Edgar Pinhoe. Real estate agent, you know.” This man had looked at Jason and Irene as if they were two lower beings—and they did seem sort of frail beside Edgar—and Jason had looked quite dashed. But Irene had laughed and held out her hand.