‘She wasn’t a cackler, was she?’ said Miss Level, and when she saw Tiffany’s
expression she said hurriedly, ‘Sorry, sorry. But it can happen, when you’re a witch
who doesn’t know it. You’re like a
ship with no rudder. But obviously she wasn’t like that, I can tell.’
‘She lived on the hills and talked to them and she knew more about sheep than
anybody!’ said Tiffany hotly.
‘I’m sure she did, I’m sure she did-‘
‘She never cackled!’
‘Good, good,’ said Miss Level soothingly. ‘Was she clever at medicine?’
Tiffany hesitated. ‘Urn . . . only with sheep,’ she said, calming down. ‘But she was
very good. Especially if it involved turpentine. Mostly if it involved turpentine,
actually. But always she . . . was . . . just . . . there. Even when she wasn’t actually
there
‘Yes,’ said Miss Level.
‘You know what I mean?’ said Tiffany.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Miss Level. ‘Your Granny Aching lived down on the uplands-‘
‘No, up on the downland,’ Tiffany corrected her.
‘Sorry, up on the downland, with the sheep, but people would look up sometimes,
look up at the hills, knowing she was there somewhere, and say to themselves “What
would Granny Aching do?” or “What would Granny Aching say if she found out?” or
“Is this the sort of thing Granny Aching would be angry about?”‘ said Miss Level. ‘Yes?’
Tiffany narrowed her eyes. It was true. She remembered when Granny Aching had
hit a pedlar who’d overloaded his donkey and was beating it.
Granny usually used only words, and not many of them. The man had been so
frightened by her sudden rage that he’d stood there and taken it.
It had frightened Tiffany, too. Granny, who seldom said anything without thinking
about it for ten minutes beforehand, had struck the wretched man twice across the face
in a brief blur of movement. And then news had got around, all along the Chalk. For a
while, at least, people were a little more gentle with their animals .. . For months after
that moment with the pedlar, carters and drovers and farmers all across the downs would
hesitate before raising a whip or a stick, and think: Suppose Granny Aching is watching?
But-
‘How did you know that?’ she said.
‘Oh, I guessed. She sounds like a witch to me, whatever she thought she was. A good
one, too.’
Tiffany inflated with inherited pride.
‘Did she help people?’ Miss Level added.
The pride deflated a bit. The instant answer ‘yes’ jumped onto her tongue, and yet. . .
Granny Aching hardly ever came down off the hills, except for Hogswatch and the
early lambing. You seldom saw her in the village unless the pedlar who sold Jolly
Sailor tobacco was late on his rounds, in which case she’d be down in a hurry and a
flurry of greasy black skirts to cadge a pipeful off one of the old men.
But there wasn’t a person on the Chalk, from the Baron down, who didn’t owe
something to Granny. And what they owed to her, she made them pay to
others. She always knew who was short of a favour or two.
‘She made them help one another/ she said. ‘She made them help themselves.’
In the silence that followed, Tiffany heard the birds singing by the road. You got a lot
of birds here, but she missed the high scream of the buzzards.
Miss Level sighed. ‘Not many of us are that good,’ she said. ‘If I was that good, we wouldn’t be going to visit old Mr Weavall again.’
Tiffany said ‘Oh dear’ inside.
Most days included a visit to Mr Weavall. Tiffany dreaded them.
Mr Weavall’s skin was paper-thin and yellowish. He was always in the same old
armchair, in a tiny room in a small cottage that smelled of old potatoes and was
surrounded by a more or less overgrown garden. He’d be sitting bolt upright, his hands
on two walking sticks, wearing a suit that was shiny with age, staring at the door.
‘I make sure he has something hot every day, although he eats like a bird,’ Miss
Level had said. ‘And old Widow Tussy down the lane does his laundry, such as it is.
He’s ninety-one, you know.’
Mr Weavall had very bright eyes and chatted away to and at them as they tidied up the
room. The first time Tiffany had met him he’d called her Mary. Sometimes he still did.
And he’d grabbed her wrist with surprising force as she walked past . . . It had been a real shock, that claw of a hand suddenly
gripping her. You could see blue veins under the skin.
‘I shan’t be a burden on anyone/ he’d said urgently. ‘I got money put by for when
I go. My boy Toby won’t have nothin’ to worry about. I can pay my way! I want the
proper funeral show, right? With the black horses and the plumes and the mutes and a
knife-and-fork tea for everyone afterwards. I’ve written it all down, fair and square.
Check in my box to make sure, will you? That witch woman’s always hanging around
here!’
Tiffany had given Miss Level a despairing look. She’d nodded, and pointed to an old
wooden box tucked under Mr Weavall’s chair.
It had turned out to be full of coins, mostly copper, but there were quite a few silver
ones. It looked like a fortune, and for a moment she’d wished she had as much money.
There’s a lot of coins in here, Mr Weavall,’ she’d said.
Mr Weavall relaxed. ‘Ah, that’s right,’ he’d said. ‘Then I won’t be a burden.’
Today Mr Weavall was asleep when they called on him, snoring with his mouth open
and his yellow-brown teeth showing. But he awoke in an instant, stared at them and
then said, ‘My boy Toby’s coming to see I Sat’day.’
‘That’s nice, Mr Weavall,’ said Miss Level, plumping up his cushions. ‘We’ll get the
place nice and tidy.’
‘He’s done very well for hisself, you know,’ said Mr
Weavall, proudly. ‘Got a job indoors with no heavy lifting. He said he’ll see I all right in
my old age, but I told him, I told him I’d pay my way when I go – the whole thing, the
salt and earth and tuppence for the ferryman, too!’
Today, Miss Level gave him a shave. His hands shook too much for him to do it
himself. (Yesterday she’d cut his toenails, because he couldn’t reach them; it was not
a safe spectator sport, especially when one smashed a windowpane.)
‘It’s all in a box under my chair,’ he said as Tiffany nervously wiped the last bits of
foam off him. ‘Just check for me, will you, Mary?’
Oh, yes. That was the ceremony, every day.
There was the box, and there was the money. He asked every time. There was
always the same amount of money.
‘Tuppence for the ferryman?’ said Tiffany, as they walked home.
‘Mr Weavall remembers all the old funeral traditions,’ said Miss Level. ‘Some
people believe that when you die you cross the River of Death and have to pay the
ferryman. People don’t seem to worry about that these days. Perhaps there’s a bridge
now.’
‘He’s always talking about. . . his funeral.’
‘Well, it’s important to him. Sometimes old people are like that. They’d hate people to
think that they were too poor to pay for their own funeral. Mr Weavall’d die of shame
if he couldn’t pay for his own funeral.’
It’s very sad, him being all alone like that. Something should be done for him,’
said Tiffany.
‘Yes. We’re doing it,’ said Miss Level. ‘And Mrs Tussy keeps a friendly eye on him.’
‘Yes, but it shouldn’t have to be us, should it?’
‘Who should it have to be?’ said Miss Level.
‘Well, what about this son he’s always talking about?’ said Tiffany.
‘Young Toby? He’s been dead for fifteen years. And Mary was the old man’s daughter,
she died quite young. Mr Weavall is very short-sighted, but he sees better in the past.’
Tiffany didn’t know what to reply except: ‘It shouldn’t be like this.’
‘There isn’t a way things should be. There’s just what happens, and what we do.’
‘Well, couldn’t you help him by magic?’
‘I see to it that he’s in no pain, yes,’ said Miss Level.
‘But that’s just herbs.’
‘It’s still magic. Knowing things is magical, if other people don’t know them.’
‘Yes, but you know what I mean,’ said Tiffany, who felt she was losing this argument.
‘Oh, you mean make him young again?’ said Miss Level. ‘Fill his house with gold?
That’s not what witches do.’
‘We see to it that lonely old men get a cooked dinner and cut their toenails?’ said
Tiffany, just a little sarcastically.
‘Well, yes,’ said Miss Level. ‘We do what can be done. Mistress Weatherwax said
you’ve got to learn that witchcraft is mostly about doing quite ordinary things.’