Not Just a Witch

He found out the night he went to babysit for Mr and Mrs Boothroyd at The Towers. Mr Boothroyd owned a factory on the edge of the town which made bath plugs and he was very rich. Unfortunately he was also very mean and so was his wife. As for his baby, which was called Basil, it was quite the most unpleasant baby you could imagine. Most babies have something about them which is all right. The ones that look like shrivelled chimpanzees often have nice fingernails; the ones that look like half-baked buns often smile very sweetly. But Basil was an out and out disaster. When Basil wasn’t screaming he was kicking; when he wasn’t kicking he was throwing up his food and when he wasn’t doing that he was holding his breath and turning blue.

Daniel was really too young to babysit and so was Sumi who was his friend. But Sumi, whose parents had come over from India to run the grocery shop in the street behind Daniel’s house, was so sensible and so used to minding her three little brothers that the Boothroyds knew she would be fit to look after Basil while they went to the Town Hall to have dinner with the Lord Mayor. What’s more, they knew they would have to pay her much less than they would have to pay a grown-up for looking after their son.

And Sumi had suggested that Daniel came along. ‘I’ll ask you your spellings,’ she said, because she knew how cross Daniel’s parents got when he didn’t do brilliantly at school.

Daniel’s parents were professors. Both of them. His father was called Professor Trent and if only Daniel had been dead and buried in some interesting tomb somewhere, the Professor would have been delighted with him. He was an archaeologist who studied ancient tribes and in particular their burial customs and he was incredibly clever. But Daniel wasn’t mummified or covered in clay so the Professor didn’t have much time for him. Daniel’s mother (who was also called Professor Trent) was a philosopher who had written no less than seven books on The Meaning of Meaning and she too was terribly clever and found it hard to understand that her son was just an ordinary boy who sometimes got his sums wrong and liked to play football.

The house they lived in was tall and grey and rather dismal, and looked out across the river to the university where both the professors worked, and to the zoo. As often as not when Daniel came home from school there was nobody there, just notes propped against the teapot telling him what to unfreeze for supper and not to forget to do his piano practice.

When you know you are a disappointment to your parents, your schoolfriends become very important. Fortunately Daniel had plenty of these. There was Joe whose father was a keeper in the Wellbridge Zoo, and Henry whose mother worked as a chambermaid in the Queen’s Hotel. And there was Sumi who was so gentle and so clever and never showed off even though she knew the answers to everything. And because it was Sumi who asked him, he went along to babysit at The Towers.

The Boothroyds’ house was across the river in a wide, tree-lined street between the university and the zoo. They had been quite old when Basil was born and they dressed him like babies were dressed years ago. Basil slept in a barred cot with a muslin canopy and blue bows; his pillow was edged with lace and he had a silken quilt. And there he sat, in a long white nightdress, steaming away like a red and angry boil.

The Boothroyds left. Sumi and Daniel settled down on the sitting-room sofa. Sumi took out the list of spellings.

‘Separate,’ she said, and Daniel sighed. He was not very fond of separate.

But it didn’t matter because at that moment Basil began to scream.

He screamed as though he was being stuck all over with red-hot skewers and by the time they got upstairs he had turned an unpleasant shade of puce and was banging his head against the side of the cot.

Sumi managed to gather him up. Daniel ran to warm his bottle under the tap. Sumi gave it to him and he bit off the teat. Daniel ran to fetch another. Basil took a few windy gulps, then swivelled round and knocked the bottle out of Sumi’s hand.

It took a quarter of an hour to clean up the mess and by the time they got downstairs again, Sumi had a long scratch across her cheek.

‘Separate,’ she said wearily, picking up the list.

‘S . . . E . . . P . . .’ began Daniel – and was wondering whether to try an A or an E when Basil began again.

This time he had been sick all over the pillow. Sumi fetched a clean pillow-case and Basil took a deep breath and filled his nappy. She managed to change him, kicking and struggling, and put on a fresh one. Basil waited till it was properly fastened, squinted – and filled it again.

It went on like this for the next hour. Sumi never lost her patience, but she was looking desperately tired and Daniel, who knew how early she got up each day to mind her little brothers and help tidy the shop before school, could gladly have murdered Basil Boothroyd.