A Hat Full Of Sky

‘But you—’

‘I store it in other people. It’s amazing what you can store in other people.’ Miss Level laughed at Tiffany’s expression. ‘I mean, I take what I don’t need round to those who don’t have a pig, or who’re going through a bad patch, or who don’t have anyone to remember them.’

‘But that means they’ll owe you a favour!’

‘Right! And so it just keeps on going round. It all works out.’

‘I bet some people are too mean to pay—’

‘Not pay,’ said Miss Level, severely. ‘A witch never expects payment and never asks for it and just hopes she never needs to. But, sadly, you are right.’

‘And then what happens?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You stop helping them, do you?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Miss Level, genuinely shocked. ‘You can’t not help people just because they’re stupid or forgetful or unpleasant. Everyone’s poor round here. If I don’t help them, who will?’

‘Granny Aching… that is, my grandmother said someone has to speak up for them as has no voices,’ Tiffany volunteered after a moment.

‘Was she a witch?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Tiffany. ‘I think so, but she didn’t know she was. She mostly lived by herself in an old shepherding hut up on the downs.’

‘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. ‘Um… 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.