“He talked to them,” my grandmother said. “He laughed and joked with them all the time he was giving them rides.”
“But wasn’t there a most tremendous fuss when this happened?” I asked.
“Not much,” my grandmother said. “You must remember that here in Norway we are used to that sort of thing. There are witches everywhere. There’s probably one living in our street this very moment. It’s time you went to bed.”
“A witch wouldn’t come in through my window in the night, would she?” I asked, quaking a little.
“No,” my grandmother said. “A witch will never do silly things like climbing up drainpipes or breaking into people’s houses. You’ll be quite safe in your bed. Come along. I’ll tuck you in.”
How to Recognise a Witch
The next evening, after my grandmother had given me my bath, she took me once again into the living-room for another story.
“Tonight,” the old woman said, “I am going to tell you how to recognise a witch when you see one.”
“Can you always be sure?” I asked.
“No,” she said, “you can’t. And that’s the trouble. But you can make a pretty good guess.”
She was dropping cigar ash all over her lap, and I hoped she wasn’t going to catch on fire before she’d told me how to recognise a witch.
“In the first place,” she said, “a REAL WITCH is certain always to be wearing gloves when you meet her.”
“Surely not always,” I said. “What about in the summer when it’s hot?”
“Even in the summer,” my grandmother said. “She has to. Do you want to know why?”
“Why?” I said.
“Because she doesn’t have finger-nails. Instead of fingernails, she has thin curvy claws, like a cat, and she wears the gloves to hide them. Mind you, lots of very respectable women wear gloves, especially in winter, so this doesn’t help you very much.”
“Mamma used to wear gloves,” I said.
“Not in the house,” my grandmother said. “Witches wear gloves even in the house. They only take them off when they go to bed.”
“How do you know all this, Grandmamma?”
“Don’t interrupt,” she said. “Just take it all in. The second thing to remember is that a REAL WITCH is always bald.”
“Bald?” I said.
“Bald as a boiled egg,” my grandmother said.
I was shocked. There was something indecent about a bald woman. “Why are they bald, Grandmamma?”
“Don’t ask me why,” she snapped. “But you can take it from me that not a single hair grows on a witch’s head.”
“How horrid!”
“Disgusting,” my grandmother said.
“If she’s bald, she’ll be easy to spot,” I said.
“Not at all,” my grandmother said. “A REAL WITCH always wears a wig to hide her baldness. She wears a first-class wig. And it is almost impossible to tell a really first-class wig from ordinary hair unless you give it a pull to see if it comes off.”
“Then that’s what I’ll have to do,” I said.
“Don’t be foolish,” my grandmother said. “You can’t go round pulling at the hair of every lady you meet, even if she is wearing gloves. just you try it and see what happens.”
“So that doesn’t help much either,” I said.
“None of these things is any good on its own,” my grandmother said. “It’s only when you put them all together that they begin to make a little sense. Mind you,” my grandmother went on, “these wigs do cause a rather serious problem for witches.”
“What problem, Grandmamma?”
“They make the scalp itch most terribly,” she said. “You see, when an actress wears a wig, or if you or I were to wear a wig, we would be putting it on over our own hair, but a witch has to put it straight on to her naked scalp. And the underneath of a wig is always very rough and scratchy. It sets up a frightful itch on the bald skin. It causes nasty sores on the head. Wig-rash, the witches call it. And it doesn’t half itch.”
“What other things must I look for to recognise a witch?” I asked.
“Look for the nose-holes,” my grandmother said. “Witches have slightly larger nose-holes than ordinary people. The rim of each nose-hole is pink and curvy, like the rim of a certain kind of seashell.”