“Why do they have such big nose-holes?” I asked.
“For smelling with,” my grandmother said. “A REAL WITCH has the most amazing powers of smell. She can actually smell out a child who is standing on the other side of the street on a pitch-black night.”
“She couldn’t smell me,” I said. “I’ve just had a bath.”
“Oh yes she could,” my grandmother said. “The cleaner you happen to be, the more smelly you are to a witch.”
“That can’t be true,” I said.
“An absolutely clean child gives off the most ghastly stench to a witch,” my grandmother said. “The dirtier you are, the less you smell.”
“But that doesn’t make sense, Grandmamma.”
“Oh yes it does,” my grandmother said. “It isn’t the dirt that the witch is smelling. It is you. The smell that drives a witch mad actually comes right out of your own skin. It comes oozing out of your skin in waves, and these waves, stink-waves the witches call them, go floating through the air and hit the witch right smack in her nostrils. They send her reeling.”
“Now wait a minute, Grandmamma…”
“Don’t interrupt,” she said. “The point is this. When you haven’t washed for a week and your skin is all covered over with dirt, then quite obviously the stink-waves cannot come oozing out nearly so strongly.”
“I shall never have a bath again,” I said.
“Just don’t have one too often,” my grandmother said. “Once a month is quite enough for a sensible child.”
It was at moments like these that I loved my grandmother more than ever.
“Grandmamma,” I said, “if it’s a dark night, how can a witch smell the difference between a child and a grown-up?”
“Because grown-ups don’t give out stink-waves,” she said. “Only children do that.”
“But I don’t really give out stink-waves, do I?” I said. “I’m not giving them out at this very moment, am I?”
“Not to me you aren’t,” my grandmother said. “To me you are smelling like raspberries and cream. But to a witch you would be smelling absolutely disgusting.”
“What would I be smelling of?” I asked.
“Dogs’ droppings,” my grandmother said.
I reeled. I was stunned. “Dogs’ droppings!” I cried. “I am not smelling of dogs’ droppings! I don’t believe it! I won’t believe it!”
“What’s more,” my grandmother said, speaking with a touch of relish, “to a witch you’d be smelling of fresh dogs’ droppings.”
“That simply is not true!” I cried. “I know I am not smelling of dogs’ droppings, stale or fresh!”
“There’s no point in arguing about it,” my grandmother said. “It’s a fact of life.”
I was outraged. I simply couldn’t bring myself to believe what my grandmother was telling me.
“So if you see a woman holding her nose as she passes you in the street,” she went on, “that woman could easily be a witch.”
I decided to change the subject. “Tell me what else to look for in a witch,” I said.
“The eyes,” my grandmother said. “Look carefully at the eyes, because the eyes of a REAL WITCH are different from yours and mine. Look in the middle of each eye where there is normally a little black dot. If she is a witch, the black dot will keep changing colour, and you will see fire and you will see ice dancing right in the very centre of the coloured dot. It will send shivers running all over your skin.”
My grandmother leant back in her chair and sucked away contentedly at her foul black cigar. I squatted on the floor, staring up at her, fascinated. She was not smiling. She looked deadly serious.
“Are there other things?” I asked her.
“Of course there are other things,” my grandmother said. “You don’t seem to understand that witches are not actually women at all. They look like women. They talk like women. And they are able to act like women. But in actual fact, they are totally different animals. They are demons in human shape. That is why they have claws and bald heads and queer noses and peculiar eyes, all of which they have to conceal as best they can from the rest of the world.”