‘Well, I will if you like, Lionel,’ said Heckie (because she had been told to use his Christian name). ‘But are you sure you can manage it? They’re tricky things to look after, the big cats.’
‘It’s not for me personally – I wouldn’t ask you anything for myself,’ said Mr Knacksap soupily. ‘It’s for a friend of mine. An aristocrat. A lord.’
‘Oh, really?’
Everyone is a bit impressed by lords, and Heckie was no exception.
‘Yes. The poor man was left a great castle . . . I don’t like to talk about him because he’s very shy, but you’d know the name if I told you. But it’s in a very bad state – loose tiles on the roof, dry rot, all that kind of thing. So he’s started a safari park to bring in the trippers and help him get enough money to do repairs. But what the safari park really needs is a tiger.’
‘Well, if you’re sure he’d care for it properly.’
‘It would live like a prince,’ said Mr Knacksap. ‘A heated house, a huge enclosure, children to come and photograph it. And my friend would be so happy.’
Heckie stirred her coffee. ‘All right, then. Mind you, one can’t be absolutely certain with this kind of magic. Sometimes things sort of happen by themselves. There was an animal witch in Germany who kept being overcome by hippopotamuses. Whatever she tried to turn people into, they always came out as hippos.’
Mr Knacksap didn’t like the sound of that. No one wore coats made of hippopotamus skins. ‘I’m sure that wouldn’t happen to you, dear Heckie,’ he said. ‘You’re such a powerful witch. I knew the moment I saw you.’
As soon as he got back to his shop that evening, Mr Knacksap telephoned a man he knew in Manchester. ‘Is that you, Ferguson?’
‘Yes, it’s me.’
‘Well, listen; I’ve got you your tiger skin. A full-grown male.’
‘Go on. You’re kidding.’
‘No, I’m not. I take it the Arkle woman still wants one?’
‘You bet she does. She’s upped the price to two and a half thousand.’
Gertrude Arkle was married to a chain-store millionaire and had set her heart on a tiger skin to put on her bedroom floor. She wanted to lie on it in silk pyjamas like she had seen film stars do in pictures of the olden days. And the more Mr Arkle told her that she couldn’t have one because it was illegal to import them, the more she wanted one.
‘All right, then,’ said Mr Knacksap. ‘I’ll give you a call when it’s ready.’
Chapter Thirteen
For nearly three weeks after Heckie had dinner with Mr Knacksap at the Trocadero, life went on much as usual. Heckie was still trying to get the dragworm to speak. She told him stories and repeated simple words to him, but though he was always polite and listened to everything she said, it didn’t seem as though he was ever going to talk. In other ways, though, he was learning all the time. He could turn the bath tap on now with his front claws, and put in the plug, and he didn’t have to think nearly so long about which of his feet was which. Heckie had worried, as the days grew warmer, that he might become unsettled. Chinese dragons usually fly up to heaven in the spring and she would have missed him horribly if he had done so, but he stayed where he was.
Still, things were not quite the same as before and this was because of Mr Knacksap. The furrier never came to the flat because of the dragworm, but the children had seen him in the street and they didn’t like what they saw. They thought he looked thoroughly creepy and unreliable and they couldn’t understand why Heckie went out with him.
The children weren’t the only ones to be worried. The cheese wizard’s shop was next door to the furrier’s and he knew quite a lot about Mr Knacksap. Daniel had met him in the street and been asked in to see a Stilton that could walk at least half a metre.
‘And it’s not maggots, either; it’s magic,’ said Mr Gurgle, beaming at the cheese as it struggled across the floor. But afterwards he became serious. ‘I don’t like the way that fellow’s paying court to Heckie,’ he said. ‘He’s got a bad name in the trade. Up to his eyebrows in debt – and the way he treated those sewing women who worked for him was a scandal. If she marries him, she’ll—’
‘Oh, but she couldn’t! She
‘Well, I don’t suppose she will. But she’s all heart and no head, that witch. Just you keep an eye on her.’
But this was easier said than done. Mr Knacksap was careful always to see Heckie away from the shop. Since he hated spending money, he took her on picnics. Heckie brought the food so it didn’t cost him anything, and all he brought was a towel to sit on because he didn’t like nature and was fussy about his trousers.
Mr Knacksap realized that it was no good pretending that he wasn’t a furrier – after all, his shop was in Market Square for everyone to see. So he told Heckie a lot of lies about the coats he sold.