Not Just a Witch

But the sea lions, lying about like old sofas, did not look very mean or throbbing and nor did the giraffes with their knock knees and film-star eyes. They passed the aviary and though the cassowary looked interesting with its flabby black wattles and dirty feet, Heckie did not think she really wanted a bird.

‘All that flapping is not very good for magic, I have found.’

But when they got to the hyena, pacing up and down in its cage, Heckie’s face lit up. ‘Now that is something! The way its back end just trails away and those sinister spots, and the smell!’

She wrote something in her notebook and they crossed over to the big enclosure which housed the kangaroos and wallabies – great, rat-coloured beasts with huge feet and mad, twitchy ears which Heckie liked enormously. ‘Oh, I wish I was an Australian witch,’ she cried. ‘Everything over there is so queer and extinct-looking!’

The animal houses were closer together now and Heckie was running from cage to cage, as excited as a child in a toy shop. There were penguins jumping from rock to rock with their feet together like loopy waiters; there was a rusty numbat shovelling up ants – and there was a camel in front of which she stood for a long time. It was a bull camel, tall and sneery with lumpy knees and a lower lip full of froth. Bits of dirty straw stuck to its hump, and a low rumble like thunder came from its throat.

‘I want this camel,’ said Heckie. ‘I want it terribly. But I’m going to be sensible. I’m going to be practical. I’m going to be brave.’

Daniel could see how hard it was for her to tear herself away from the camel, but in the reptile house she cheered up again. It was a silent, sinister place and every one of the animals looked as though it would help one to do magic: the crocodile, smiling in its sleep, the Bearded Basilisk, the iguana like a shrunken dinosaur . . .

In the ape house, they saw what seemed to be a very small ape in blue jeans forking fresh straw on to the floor. This turned out to be Daniel’s school-friend Joe, helping his father clean out the cages.

Joe’s mother had died when he was born and his father had reared Joe like he reared one of his orphaned apes, carrying him round in a blanket, feeding him on bottles of milk and bananas. Joe’s hair was ginger like the orang-utans’ and fell over his face; there was no tree he couldn’t climb, and when anyone annoyed him, he stuck out his lower lip and glowered exactly like a gorilla.

Daniel introduced him to Heckie who was very interested to hear that his father was a keeper.

‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘are there any empty cages in this zoo? Spare cages? In case someone was to send in some animals in a hurry? Unexpectedly?’

Joe gave her a sharp look from under his hair and said, yes, there were. ‘They’re over by the West Gate, behind the tea place.’

He went on staring at Heckie as she talked to the monkeys and the apes. Joe understood animals almost as well as his father and he knew that the way they came up to Heckie and laid their faces against the bars and tried to take her hand was quite out of the ordinary.

‘Is she an animal trainer or something?’ he asked Daniel, and Daniel said that perhaps in a way she was.

‘We’ll just have our picnic now and have a think,’ said Heckie when they had been right round the zoo. ‘Perhaps your nice friend will lend us a saw to cut up this interesting carrot. Or shall we just go across the road to The Copper Kettle?’

Daniel thought this was a good idea and soon they were sitting at a corner table, eating cucumber sandwiches and looking at Heckie’s list.

‘Of course, the baboons are unbeatable. Those red and blue behinds!’ Her eyes glinted. ‘But I like the orang-utans too: the way their hair hangs down from their armpits . . .’ She bit into her sandwich. ‘You notice I’m being brave about the camel?’

Daniel nodded and suggested the Bearded Basilisk. ‘It might fit better into the flat?’

‘Yes, but reptiles are dreadfully snooty. Coldblooded, you know. Oh dear, this is so difficult.’

Heckie was very quiet as they wheeled the carrot back across the river and the tip of her nose had gone quite white from the strain of deciding. But in the street behind Daniel’s house, she stopped and stared at a shop window. It was a Do It Yourself shop full of tools and screws and bits of shelving.

Suddenly she hit her forehead with her hand. ‘What an idiot I am, Daniel. What a complete fool! Why choose a familiar? Why not make one?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Daniel, his eyes shining. ‘A Do It Yourself familiar! The first one in the world!’

And, terribly excited, they hurried back to Heckie’s shop. Once she had made up her mind, Heckie wasted no time.

‘Do you know what I’m going to make?’

Daniel shook his head.