The Pinhoe Egg

Each time Marianne came back to Woods House, Nutcase greeted her as if she were the only person left in the world. While she was picking him up and comforting him, Marianne could not help stealing secret looks at the glass dome that had held the ferret. Each time she was highly relieved to see a yellow smear with a snarl on the end of it seemingly inside the dome.

At long last, near sunset, the hooves, wheels and jingling of Great Uncle Edgar’s carriage sounded in the driveway. Great Uncle Edgar shortly strode into the house, ushering two extremely sensible-looking nurses. Each had a neat navy overcoat and a little square suitcase. After Mum, Aunt Prue and Aunt Polly had shown them where to sleep, the nurses looked into the kitchen, at the muddle of provisions heaped along the huge table there, and declared they were not here to cook. Mum assured them that the aunts would take turns at doing that – at which Aunt Prue and Aunt Polly looked at one another and glowered at Mum. Finally the nurses marched into the front room.

“Now, dear,” their firm voices floated out to Marianne on the stairs, “we’ll just get you into your bed and then you can have a nice cup of cocoa.”

Gammer at once started screaming again. Everyone somehow flooded out into the hall with Gammer struggling and yelling in their midst. No one, even the nurses, seemed to know what to do. Marianne sadly watched Dad and Mum looking quite helpless, Great Uncle Lester wringing his hands, and Uncle Charles stealthily creeping away to his bicycle. The only person able to cope seemed to be solid, fair Aunt Dinah. Marianne had always thought Aunt Dinah was only good at wrestling goats and feeding chickens, but Aunt Dinah took hold of Gammer’s arm, quite gently, and, quite as gently, cast a soothing spell on Gammer.

“Buck up, my old sausage,” she said. “They’re here to help you, you silly thing! Come on upstairs and let them get your nightie on you.”

And Gammer came meekly upstairs past Marianne and Nutcase with Aunt Dinah and the nurses. She looked down at Marianne as she went, almost like her usual self. “Keep that cat in order for me, girl,” she said. She sounded nearly normal.

Soon after that, Marianne was able to walk home between Mum and Dad, with Nutcase struggling a little in her arms.

“Phew!” said Dad. “Let’s hope things settle down now.”

Dad was a great one for peace. All he asked of life was to spend his time making beautiful solid furniture with Uncle Richard as his partner. In the shed behind Furze Cottage the two of them made chairs that worked to keep you comfortable, tables bespelled so that anyone who used them felt happy, cabinets that kept dust out, wardrobes that repelled moths, and many other things. For her last birthday, Dad had made Marianne a wonderful heart-shaped writing desk with secret drawers in it that were really secret: no one could even find those drawers unless they knew the right spell.

Mum, however, was nothing like such a peace addict as Dad. “Huh!” she said. “She was born to make trouble as the sparks fly upwards, Gammer was.”

“Now, Cecily,” said Dad. “I know you don’t like my mother —”

“It’s not a question of like,” Mum said vigorously. “She’s a Hopton Pinhoe. She was a giddy town girl before your father married her. Led him a proper dance, she did, and you know it, Harry! It was thanks to her that he took to going off into the wild and got himself done away with if you ask —”

“Now, now, Cecily,” Dad said, with a warning look at Marianne.

“Well, forget I said it,” Mum said. “But I shall be very surprised if she settles down, mind or no mind.”

Marianne thought about this conversation all evening. When she went to bed, where Nutcase sat on her stomach and purred, she sleepily tried to remember her grandfather. Old Gaffer had never struck her as being led a dance. Of course she had been very young then, but he had always seemed like a strong person who went his own way. He was wiry and he smelt of earth. Marianne remembered him striding with his long legs, off into the woods, leading his beloved old horse, Molly, harnessed to the cart in which he collected all the strange plants and herbs for which he had been famous. She remembered his old felt hat. She remembered Gammer saying, “Oh, do take that horrible headgear off, Gaffer!” Gammer always called him Gaffer. Marianne still had no idea what his name had been.

She remembered how Old Gaffer seemed to love being surrounded by his sons and his grandchildren – all boys, except for Marianne – and the way she had a special place on his knee after Sunday lunch. They always went up to Woods House for Sunday lunch. Mum couldn’t have enjoyed that, Marianne thought. She had very clear memories of Mum and Gammer snapping at one another in the kitchen, while old Miss Callow did the actual cooking. Mum loved to cook, but she was never allowed to in that house.

Just as she fell asleep, Marianne had the most vivid memory of all, of Old Gaffer calling at Furze Cottage with what he said was a special present for her. “Truffles,” he said, holding out his big wiry hand heaped with what looked like little black lumps of earth. Marianne, who had been expecting chocolate, looked at the lumps in dismay. It was worse when Gaffer fetched out his knife – which had been sharpened so often that it was more like a spike than a knife – and carefully cut a slice off a lump and told her to eat it. It tasted like earth. Marianne spat it out. It really hurt her to remember Old Gaffer’s disappointed look and the way he had said, “Ah, well. She’s maybe too young for such things yet.” Then she fell asleep.

Nutcase was missing in the morning. The door was shut and the window too, but Nutcase was gone all the same. Nor was he downstairs asking for breakfast.

Mum was busy rushing about finding socks and pants and shirts for Joe. She said over her shoulder, “He’ll have gone back to Woods House, I expect. That’s cats for you. Go and fetch him back when we’ve seen Joe off. Oh God! I’ve forgotten Joe’s nightshirts! Joe, here’s two more pairs of socks – I think I darned them for you.”

Joe received the socks and the other things and secretively packed them in his knapsack himself. Marianne knew this was because the stolen ferret was in the knapsack too. Joe had his very sulkiest look on. Marianne could not blame him. If it had been her, she knew she would have been dreading going to a place where they were all enchanters and out to stop anyone else doing witchcraft. But Joe, when she asked him, just grumbled, “It’s not the magic, it’s wasting a whole holiday. That’s what I hate.”

When at last Joe pedalled sulkily away, with a shirtsleeve escaping from his knapsack and fluttering beside his head, it felt as if a thunderstorm had passed. Marianne, not for the first time, thought that her brother had pretty powerful magic, even if it was not the usual sort.

“Thank goodness for that!” Mum said. “I hate him in this mood. Go and fetch Nutcase, Marianne.”

Marianne arrived at Woods House to find the front door – most unusually – locked. She had to knock and ring the bell before the door was opened by a stone-faced angry nurse.

“What good are you going to do?” the nurse demanded. “We asked the vicar to phone for Mr Pinhoe.”

“You mean Uncle Edgar?” Marianne asked. “What’s wrong?”

“She’s poltergeisting us,” said the nurse. “That’s what’s wrong.” As she spoke, a big brass tray rose from the table beside the door and sliced its way towards the nurse’s head. The nurse dodged. “See what I mean?” she said. “We’re not going to stay here one more day.”

Marianne watched the tray bounce past her down the steps and clang to a stop in the driveway, rather dented. “I’ll speak to her,” she said. “I really came to fetch the cat. May I come in?”

“With pleasure,” said the nurse. “Come in and make another target, do!”

As Marianne went into the hall, she could not help snatching a look at the ferret’s glass dome. There still seemed to be something yellow inside the glass, but it did not look so much like a ferret today. Damn! she thought. It was fading. Illusions did that.

But here Gammer distracted her by coming rushing down the stairs in a frilly white nightdress and a red flannel dressing gown, with the other nurse pelting behind her. “Is that you, Marianne?” Gammer shrieked.

Maybe she’s all right again, Marianne thought, a bit doubtfully. “Hallo, Gammer. How are you?”

“Under sentence of thermometer,” Gammer said. “There’s a worldwide epidemic.” She looked venemously from nurse to nurse. “Time to leave,” she said.

To Marianne’s horror, the big long-case clock that always stood by the stairs rose up and launched itself like a battering ram at the nurse who had opened the door. The nurse screamed and ran sideways. The clock tried to follow her. It swung sideways across the hall, where it fell across the ferret’s dome with a violent twanging and a crash of breaking glass.

Well, that takes care of that! Marianne thought. But Gammer was now running for the open front door. Marianne raced after her and caught her by one skinny arm as she stumbled over the brass tray at the bottom of the steps.

“Gammer,” she said, “you can’t go out in the street in your nightclothes.”

Gammer only laughed crazily.

She isn’t all right, Marianne thought. But she’s not so un-all right as all that. She spoke sternly and shook Gammer’s arm a little. “Gammer, you’ve got to stop doing this. Those nurses are trying to help you. And you’ve just broken a valuable clock. Dad always says it’s worth hundreds of pounds. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

“Shame, shame,” Gammer mumbled. She hung her head, wispy and uncombed. “I didn’t ask for this, Marianne.”

“No, no, of course not,” Marianne said. She felt the kind of wincing, horrified pity that you would rather not feel. Gammer smelt as if she had wet herself and she was almost crying. “This is only because Gaffer Farleigh put a spell on you —”

“Who’s Gaffer Farleigh?” Gammer asked, sounding interested.

“Never mind,” Marianne said. “But it means you’ve got to be patient, Gammer, and let people help you until we can make you better. And you’ve really got to stop throwing things at those poor nurses.”

A wicked grin spread on Gammer’s face. “They can’t do magic,” she said.

“That’s why you’ve got to stop doing it to them,” Marianne explained. “Because they can’t fight back. Promise me, Gammer. Promise, or …” She thought about hastily for a threat that might work on Gammer. “Promise me, or I shan’t even think of being Gammer after you. I shall wash my hands of you and go and work in London.” This sounded like a really nice idea. Marianne thought wistfully of shops and red buses and streets everywhere instead of fields. But the threat seemed to have worked. Gammer was nodding her unkempt head.

“Promise,” she mumbled. “Promise Marianne. That’s you.”

Marianne sighed at a life in London lost. “I should hope,” she said. She led Gammer indoors again, where the nurses were both standing staring at the wreckage. “She’s promised to be good,” she said.

At this stage, Mum and Aunt Helen arrived hotfoot from the village, Aunt Polly came in by the back door, and Great Aunt Sue alighted from the carriage behind Great Uncle Edgar. Word had got round as usual. The mess was cleared up and, to Marianne’s enormous relief, nobody noticed that there was no stuffed ferret among the broken glass. The nurses were soothed and took Gammer away to be dressed. More sandwiches were made, more Pinhoes arrived and, once again, there was a solemn meeting in the front room about what to do now. Marianne sighed again and thought Joe was lucky to be out of it.

“It’s not as if it was just anyone we’re talking about, little girl,” Dad said to her. “This is our head of the craft. It affects all of us in three villages and all the country that isn’t under Farleighs or Cleeves. We’ve got to get it right and see her happy or we’ll all go to pot. Run and fetch your Aunt Joy here. She doesn’t seem to have noticed there’s a crisis on.”

Aunt Joy, when Marianne fetched her from the Post Office, did not see things Dad’s way at all. She walked up the street beside Marianne, pinning on her old blue hat as she went and grumbling the whole way. “So I have to leave my customers and lose my income – and it’s no good believing your Uncle Charles will earn enough to support the family – all because this spoilt old woman loses her marbles and starts throwing clocks around. What’s wrong with putting her in a Home, I want to know.”

“She’d probably throw things around in a Home too,” Marianne suggested.

“Yes, but I wouldn’t be dragged off to deal with it,” Aunt Joy retorted. “Besides,” she went on, stabbing her hat with her hatpin, “my Great Aunt Callow was in a Home for years and did nothing but stare at the wall, and she was just as much of a witch as your Gammer.”