14 Hello, Grandmamma

Hello, Grandmamma As soon as I was out of the Ballroom, I took off like a flash. I streaked down the corridor, went through the Lounge and the Reading-Room and the Library and the Drawing-Room and came to the stairs. Up the stairs I went, jumping quite easily from one to the other, keeping well in against the wall all the time. 'Are you with me, Bruno?' I whispered. 'Right here,' he said. My grandmother's room and my own were on the fifth floor. It was quite a climb, but we made it without meeting a single person on the way because everyone was using the lift. On the fifth floor, I raced along the corridor to the door of my grandmother's room. A pair of her shoes was standing outside the door to the cleaned. Bruno was alongside me. 'What do we do now?' he said. Suddenly, I caught sight of a chambermaid coming along the corridor towards us. I saw at

once that she was the one who had reported me to the Manager for keeping white mice. Not, therefore, the sort of person I wanted to meet in my present condition. 'Quick!' I said to Bruno. 'Hide in one of those shoes!' I hopped into one shoe and Bruno hopped into the other. I waited for the maid to walk past us. She didn't. When she came to the shoes, she bent down and picked them up. In doing this, she put her hand right inside the one I was hiding in. When one of her fingers touched me, I bit it. It was a silly thing to do, but I did it instinctively, without thinking. The maid let out a scream that must have been heard by ships far out in the English Channel, and she dropped the shoes and ran like the wind down the corridor. My grandmother's door opened. 'What on earth is going on out here?' she said. I darted between her legs into her room and Bruno followed me.

'Close the door, Grandmamma!' I cried. 'Please hurry!' She looked around and saw two small brown mice on the carpet. 'Please close it,' I said, and this time she actually saw me talking and recognized my voice. She froze and became absolutely motionless. Every part of her body, her fingers and hands and arms and head, became suddenly as stiff as a marble statue. Her face

turned even paler than marble and her eyes were stretched so wide I could see the whites all around them. Then she started to tremble. I thought she was going to faint and fall over. 'Please close the door quickly, Grandmamma,' I said. 'That awful maid might come in.' She somehow managed to gather herself together enough to close the door. She leaned against it, staring down at me white-faced and shaking all over. I saw tears beginning to come out of her eyes and go dribbling down her cheeks. 'Don't cry, Grandmamma,' I said. 'Things could be a lot worse. I did get away from them. I'm still alive. So is Bruno.' Very slowly, she bent down and picked me up with one hand. Then she picked Bruno up with the other hand and put us both on the table. There was a bowl of bananas in the centre of the table and Bruno jumped straight into it and began tearing away with his teeth at one of the banana skins to get at the fruit inside.

My grandmother grasped the arm of her chair to steady herself, but her eyes never left me. 'Sit down, dear Grandmamma,' I said. She collapsed into her chair. 'Oh, my darling,' she murmured and now the tears were really streaming down her cheeks. 'Oh, my poor sweet darling. What have they done to you?' 'I know what they've done, Grandmamma, and I know what I am, but the funny thing is that I don't honestly feel especially bad about it. I don't even feel angry. In fact, I feel rather good. I know I'm not a boy any longer and I never will be again, but I'll be quite all right as long as there's always you to look after me.' I was not just trying to console her. I was being absolutely honest about the way I felt. You may think it odd that I wasn't weeping myself. It was odd. I simply can't explain it. 'Of course I'll look after you,' my grandmother murmured. 'Who is the other one?'

'That was a boy called Bruno Jenkins,' I told her. 'They got him first.' My grandmother took a new long black cigar out of a case in her handbag and put it in her mouth. Then she got out a box of matches. She struck a match but her fingers were shaking so much that the flame kept missing the end of the cigar. When she got it lit at last, she took a long pull and sucked in the smoke. That seemed to calm her down a bit. 'Where did it happen?' she whispered. 'Where is the witch now? Is she in the hotel?' 'Grandmamma,' I said. 'It wasn't just one. It was hundreds! They're all over the place! They're right here in the hotel this very moment!' She leaned forward and stared at me. 'You don't mean… you don't actually mean… you don't mean to tell me they're holding the Annual Meeting right here in the hotel?' 'They've held it, Grandmamma! It's finished! I heard it all! And all of them including The Grand High Witch herself are downstairs now! They're