Part 24 (1/2)

Instantly everything began raining back to the ground again. The tables plunged, the carpets sank, vases, pictures and clocks crashed to the floor all around. Dr. Pawson's armchair plummeted with the rest, followed by pieces of the chandelier, but Dr. Pawson himself floated down smoothly, having clearly done some prudent magic of his own. Up above, the roof came down thunderously. Christopher could hear tiles falling and chimneys cras.h.i.+ng, as well as smas.h.i.+ngs and howls from upstairs. The upper floors seemed now to be trying to get through to the ground. The walls of the room buckled and oozed plaster, while the windows bent and fell to pieces. It was about five minutes before the slidings and smas.h.i.+ngs died away, and the dust settled even more slowly. Dr. Pawson sat among the wreckage and the blowing dust and stared at Christopher. Christopher stared back, very much wanting to laugh.

A little old lady suddenly materialized in the armchair opposite Dr. Pawson's. She was wearing a white nightgown and a lacy cap over her white hair. She smiled at Christopher in a steely way. ”So it was you, child,” she said to Christopher. ”Mary-Ellen is in hysterics. Don't ever do that again, or I'll put a Visitation on you. I'm still famed for my Visitations, you know.” Having said this, she was gone as suddenly as she had come.

”My old mother,” said Dr. Pawson. ”She's normally bedridden, but as you can see, she's very strongly moved. As is almost everything else.” He sat and stared at Christopher awhile longer, and Christopher went on struggling not to laugh. ”Silver,” Dr. Pawson said at last.

”Silver?” asked Christopher.

”Silver,” said Dr. Pawson. ”Silver's the thing that's stopping you, Chant. Don't ask me why at the moment. Maybe we'll never get to the bottom of it, but there's no question about the facts. If you want to work magic, you'll have to give up money except for coppers and sovereigns, throw away that tiepin, and get rid of that stupid brace.”

Christopher thought about Papa, about school, about cricket, in a flood of anger and frustration which gave him courage to say, ”But I don't think I do want to work magic, sir.” ”Yes you do, Chant,” said Dr. Pawson. ”For at least the next month.” And while Christopher was wondering how to contradict him without being too rude, Dr. Pawson gave out another vast bellow.

”YOU HAVE TO PUT EVERYTHING BACK, CHANT!”.

And this is just what Christopher had to do. For the rest of the morning he went around the house, up to every floor and then outside into the garden, while Dr. Pawson trundled beside him in his armchair and showed him how to cast holding-spells to stop the house falling down. Dr. Pawson never seemed to leave that armchair. In all the time Christopher spent with him, he never saw Dr. Pawson walk. Around midday, Dr. Pawson sent his chair gliding into the kitchen, where a cook-maid was sitting dolefully in the midst of smashed b.u.t.ter crocks, spilled milk, bits of basin and dented saucepans, and dabbing at her eyes with her ap.r.o.n.

”Not hurt in here are you?” Dr. Pawson barked. ”I put a holder on first thing to make sure the range didn't burst and set the house on fire- that sort of thing. That held, didn't it? Water pipes secure?”

”Yes, sir,” gulped the cook-maid. ”But lunch is ruined, sir.”

”We'll have to have a scratch lunch for once,” said Dr. Pawson. His chair swung around to face Christopher. ”By this evening,” he said, ”this kitchen is going to be mended. Not holding-spells.

Everything as new. I'll show you how. Can't have the kitchen out of action. It's the most important place in the house.”

”I'm sure it is, sir,” Christopher said, eyeing Dr. Pawson's mountain of a stomach.

Dr. Pawson glared at him. ”I can dine in college,” he said, ”but my mother needs her nourishment.”

For the rest of that day Christopher mended the kitchen, putting crockery back together, recapturing spilled milk and cooking sherry, taking dents out of pans, and sealing a dangerous split at the back of the range. While he did, Dr. Pawson sat in his armchair warming himself by the range fire and barking things like, ”Now put the eggs together, Chant. You'll need the spell to raise them first, then the dirt-dispeller you used on the milk. Then you can start the mending-spell.” While Christopher labored, the cook-maid, who was obviously even more frightened of Dr. Pawson than Christopher was, edged around him trying to bake a cake and prepare the roast for supper.

One way and another, Christopher probably learned more practical magic that day than he had in two and a half terms at school. By the evening he was exhausted. Dr. Pawson barked, ”You can go back to your father for now. Be here at nine tomorrow prompt. There's still the rest of the house to see to.”

”Oh Lord!” Christopher groaned, too weary to be polite. ”Can't someone help me at all? I've learned my lesson.”

”What gave you the idea there was only one lesson to learn?” bawled Dr. Pawson.

Christopher tottered back to the lodging house carrying the tooth-brace, the money, and the tiepin wrapped in the gray handkerchief. Papa looked up from a table spread with horoscope sheets. ”Well?”

he asked with gloomy eagerness.

Christopher fell into a lumpy chair. ”Silver,” he said. ”Silver stops me working magic. And I hope I have got more than one life because Dr. Pawson's going to kill me at this rate.”

”Silver?” said Papa. ”Oh dear! Oh dear, dear!” He was very sad and silent all through the cabbage soup and sausages the lodging house provided for supper. After supper, he said, ”My son, I have a confession to make. It is my fault that silver stops you working magic. Not only did I cast your horoscope when youwere born, but I also cast every other spell I knew to divine your future. And you can imagine my horror when each kind of forecast foretold that silver would mean danger or death to you.” Papa paused, drumming his fingers on the horoscope sheets and staring absently at the wall. ”Argent,” he said musingly.

”Argent means silver. Could I have got it wrong?” He pulled himself sadly back together. ”Well it is too late to do anything about that, except to warn you again to have nothing to do with your Uncle Ralph.”

”But why is it your fault?” Christopher asked, very uncomfortable at the way Papa's thoughts were going.

”There is no getting around Fate,” Papa said, ”as I should have known. I cast my strongest spells and put forth all my power to make silver neutral to you. Silver-any contact with silver-seems to transform you at once into an ordinary person without a magic gift at all-and I see now that this could have its dangers.

I take it you can work magic when you are not touching silver?”

Christopher gave a weary laugh. ”Oh yes. Like anything.”

Papa brightened a little. ”That's a relief. Then my sacrifice here was not in vain. As you know, Christopher, I very foolishly lost your mama's money and my own by investing it where I thought my horoscopes told me to.” He shook his head sadly. ”Horoscopes are tricky, particularly with money. Be that as it may, I am finished. I regard myself as a failure. You are all I have left to live for, my son. Any success I am to know, I shall know through you.”

If Christopher had not been so tired, he would have found this decidedly embarra.s.sing. Even through his weariness, he found he was annoyed that he was expected to live for Papa and not on his own account.

Would it be fair, he wondered, to use magic to make yourself a famous cricketer? You could make the ball go anywhere you wanted. Would Papa regard this as success? He knew perfectly well that Papa would not. By this time, his eyes were closing themselves and his head was nodding. When Papa sent him off to bed, Christopher fell onto the tw.a.n.ging mattress and slept like a log. He had meant, honestly meant, to go to The Place Between and tell Tacroy all that had happened, but either he was just too tired or too scared that Papa would guess. Whatever the reason was, he did not have any dreams of any kind that night.

10.

For the next three weeks, Dr. Pawson kept Christopher so hard at work mending the house that he fell into bed each night too weary to dream. Each morning when Christopher arrived, Dr. Pawson was sitting in his armchair in the hall, waiting for him.

”To work, Chant!” he would bark.

Christopher took to replying, ”Really, sir? I thought we were going to have a lazy day like yesterday.”

The strange thing about Dr. Pawson was that he did not mind this kind of remark in the least. Once Christopher got used to him, he discovered that Dr. Pawson rather liked people to stand up to him, and once he had discovered that, Christopher found that he did not really hate Dr. Pawson-or only in the way you hate a violent thunderstorm you happen to be caught in. He found he quite liked rebuilding the house, though perhaps the thing which he really liked was working magic that actually did something.

Every spell he did had a real use. That made it far more interesting than the silly things he had tried to learn at school. And the hard work was much easier to bear when he was able to say things to Dr.

Pawson that would have caused masters at school to twist his ears and threaten to cane him for insolence.

”Chant!” Dr. Pawson howled from his armchair in the middle of the lawn. ”Chant! The chimney pots onthe right are crooked.”

Christopher was balanced on the tiles of the roof, s.h.i.+vering in the wind. It was raining that day, so he was having to maintain a shelter-spell for the roof and for the lawn while he worked. And he had put the chimneys straight four times already. ”Yes, sir, of course, sir!” he screamed back. ”Would you like them turned to gold too, sir?”

”None of that or I'll make you do it!” Dr. Pawson yelled.

When Christopher came to mend Dr. Pawson's mother's room, he made the mistake of trying to treat old Mrs. Pawson the same way. She was sitting up in a bed heaped with plaster from the ceiling, looking quite comfortable and composed, knitting something striped and long. ”I saved the looking-gla.s.s, child,”

she remarked with a pleasant smile, ”but that is as far as my powers stretch. Be good enough to mend the chamber pot first, and count yourself fortunate, child, that it had not been used. You will find it under the bed.”

Christopher fished it out in three broken white pieces and got to work.

”Mend it quite straight,” old Mrs. Pawson said, her knitting needles clattering away. ”Make sure the handle is not crooked and the gold rim around the top is quite regular. Please do not leave any uncomfortable lumps or unsightly bulges, child.”

Her voice was gentle and pleasant and it kept interrupting the spell. At length Christopher asked in exasperation, ”Would you like it studded with diamonds too? Or shall I just give it a posy of roses in the bottom?”

”Thank you, child,” said Mrs. Pawson. ”The posy of roses, please. I think that's a charming idea.”

Dr. Pawson, sitting by in his armchair, was full of glee at Christopher's discomfiture. ”Sarcasm never pays, Chant,” he bawled. ”Roses require a creation-spell. Listen carefully.”

After that, Christopher had to tackle the maids' rooms. Then he had to mend all the plumbing. Dr.

Pawson gave him a day off on Sundays so that Papa could take him to church. Christopher, now he knew what he could do, toyed with the idea of making the church spire melt like a candle, but he never quite dared to do it, with Papa pacing soberly beside him. Instead, he experimented in other ways. Every morning, while he was walking up the Trumpington Road, he tried to coax the trees that lined it into a different pattern. He got so good at it that before long he could shunt them up the road in a long line and crowd them into a wood at the end. In the evenings, tired though he was, he could not resist trying to make the lodging house supper taste better. But food magic was not easy.