Mr. Ronald “Uncle Ron” Swimble liked birthdays because they meant parties, and since he was a part-time conjuror that meant engagements. He could make eggs appear out of nowhere, pull flags of all nations out of people’s ears, do fifty different card tricks, and was generally very good at the sort of magic that’s learned by hard practice in front of a mirror.* He was president of the Blackbury Magic Rectangle too.
Uncle Ron had a parrot called Mimms who could pick cards out of a hat and liked to shout, and a daughter called Lucy who generally stood on the stage saying very little but who took his cloak and handed him Mimms in a cage and so on.
All three were very happy until the night of Jimmy Waddle’s tenth birthday party at the town hall.
Uncle Ron walked onto the stage, and all the children bellowed,
“Hello, Uncle Ron,”
and then his hat fell off and three rabbits tumbled out.
He bent down to pick them up and a flock of pigeons burst out of his jacket, a daffodil shot out of his ear, and his bow tie began to revolve at high speed. It was all very entertaining, and young Jimmy Waddle was wide-eyed with amazement, but the most surprised person in the hall was Uncle Ron. They weren’t his tricks, and anyway, he was allergic to rabbits.
He tried to carry on, but his act went all to pot. He did plenty of tricks, like turning a top hat into a vase of flowers and making a table disappear. But he didn’t mean to. Every time he moved his hands something appeared or vanished. He was almost in tears by the time he reached for his pack of cards, and when that turned into a glass of wine, he ran off the stage.
“That’s a new lot—” began Lucy.
“They’re not mine! I don’t know what’s happening! I haven’t even got any pigeons!”
“Cake!” screamed Mimms.
The audience was still clapping, and Ronald had to go and take two bows before he could say any more. Everyone was shaking his hand and asking him how he did it.
Finally he reached his dressing room and locked the door.
“I don’t know how it happened,” he said. “But it was as if all I had to do was point my finger at something, like that cupboard there, and say ‘Turn into a hat stand’ and—”
It turned into a hat stand.
“Jam!” screamed Mimms.
Ronald pointed his finger at his hat.
“Vanish,” he said hoarsely. It did.
They went home by taxi. Every now and again Ron would point his finger at things on the pavement, just to see if the magic was still there—and three lampposts were turned into a stork, a small yellow elephant on wheels, and a baby’s buggy.
The trouble came when he paid the taxi driver. Because although Uncle Ron could turn things into other things, he didn’t have much control over what might change, or what something would turn into. So when he took his wallet out of his pocket it suddenly became a cheese sandwich. Lucy had to pay the fare out of her lunch money, and the taxi driver drove off hurriedly.
“The front door key is in my waistcoat pocket,” said Ron through clenched teeth. “I don’t think I can touch things anymore. You’d better unlock the door in case I turn it into something unmentionable.”
“Gloves!” said Lucy. “That’s it! Put a pair on, and then you’ll be able to touch things again.”
“I haven’t got any,” Ron said miserably. “And if I had they’d turn into something as soon as I touched them.”
Lucy fetched a pair of her red woolly ones, with daft rabbits embroidered in odd colors on the back. Sure enough, as soon as Ron touched them they changed—into socks. That gave her an idea. She went and got a pair of her father’s socks, and sure enough again these changed into red woolly gloves as soon as he put them on his hands.
Ron slumped down onto a chair and picked up the phone. He asked some of his fellow conjurors from Blackbury Magic Rectangle to come round at once, and soon the little house was filled with people.
“Watch this,” Ron told them, taking his gloves off and pointing at a little potted cactus. It turned into a bowl of marbles! Everyone gasped satisfactorily except for one woman, who had just looked out of the window and seen a small wheeled elephant trundling by towing a stork on a baby’s buggy.
“It’s not trickery,” said Ron. “It’s the real thing—proper magic.”
“Marmalade!” Mimms screeched.
“There’s no such thing,” scoffed Amir Raj, who did card tricks.
“It’s all illusion,” added Presto Changeo, who sawed his assistant in half twice nightly.
“Sandwich!” screamed Mimms, rapping his beak against his cage.
Ronald turned the table into a lawn mower.
“What can I do?” he said. “I could make my fortune, I suppose, but I don’t want to have to wear gloves all the time. And anyway, I might turn something good into something dreadful.”
“Could it have been anything you’ve eaten? Did anything unusual happen today?” asked Presto.
“Let’s see now . . . not much. The only thing unusual that I can remember is knocking over an old lady’s vacuum cleaner when I went to work this morning. It was in the car park—no idea why. She went on something dreadful about it, but she had leaned it against my car.”
“Was it a small lady with a brown coat and a sort of flowerpot hat full of hat pins?” asked Lucy, who had been listening to all this. “It was? Oh dear, oh dear—I never thought of that. That’s Mrs. Riley, and she’s a witch.”*
“Biscuits! Crisps! Ice cream!” came from Mimms.
“You mean she’s put a spell on me?” said Ron, ignoring his parrot.
“That’s ridiculous, magic doesn’t exist—” began Presto Changeo, and stopped when Ron turned a pencil into a small banana.
“I think that just proved otherwise,” said Ron, picking up the banana and absentmindedly peeling it. “The question is, what can we do about it?”
“Go round and plead with her,” said Presto practically.
So Uncle Ron and the other Blackbury conjurors set out for Mrs. Riley’s house, which was number 3 Dahlia Crescent and didn’t look much as though it belonged to a witch—there were lots of pretty flowers in the front garden, for instance.
Lucy rang the bell twice, and Presto hammered on the door. They peered through the windows but couldn’t see very much as she seemed to have a small forest of houseplants on the sill inside.
“It’s no good, she must be asleep or out,” said Ron.
There was a noise above them like a vacuum cleaner. It was a vacuum cleaner, and it was hovering in the air with Mrs. Riley straddling it. A jet of dust was shooting out, keeping it aloft.
“Oh, it’s you, Swimble,” she said. “I suppose you’ve come round to beg me to take the spell off?”
“If you don’t mind—” began Ron, staring at the vacuum cleaner.
“I certainly do! Anyway, you’re a conjuror, always making out that you can do magic—so get rid of the spell yourself!”
“We don’t do that kind of magic, ma’am,” said Presto.
She peered angrily at him. “You don’t even believe in it!” she snapped. “Cats’ teeth! Card tricks and rabbits out of hats? You’re a lot of arrogant usurpers!”
“Eh?”
“She means you’re intruding where you’re not wanted,” said Lucy. “Come away, Dad, before she gets too angry.”
The vacuum cleaner roared and started to rise again.
“What a remarkable lady,” said Ron admiringly, watching the witch zoom away over the rooftops. “Is there a Mr. Riley? Oh, he got lost at sea, eh? Well, well, she sure is a fine woman.”
That night Ron found it was very uncomfortable to sleep wearing woolly gloves, but he couldn’t take them off in case he turned the bed into a knife rack or a horse.
What on earth am I going to do? he wondered. Ron had to take the next day off from his ordinary job because of his magic hands. Lucy phoned up the factory where her father worked and said he had the flu, because she thought it was better to tell his boss that than the unbelievable truth.
Presto Changeo came round at lunchtime. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Can’t we get the vicar to do something?”
“Mrs. Riley is in the choir, and she’s embroidered thousands of kneelers,” sighed Lucy. “Reverend Cowparslie would never believe she’s a witch. Anyway, she’s a nice old soul at heart, just a bit bad-tempered. I quite like her, actually.”
“Perhaps if I went round to see her with a box of chocs and some flowers she might forgive me,” said Ron, blushing.
“Bananas!” screamed Mimms.
“And to think I see her every week when she comes in to change her library books,” said Presto, who worked in the library. “They’re not even magic books, either. Just novels about doctors—you know the sort, Doctor Fingdangle and the Angel of Ward Ten or Love Among the Bedpans—and books on gardening, like My Troublesome Fig and Other Terrible Torments. If I hadn’t seen her on her vacuum cleaner, I’d never have believed she was a witch.”
“Pizza!” added Mimms.*
“Gardening, eh?” murmured Ron, who knew his nettles from his nightshade.† “I have an idea. . . .”
After lunch he put on his best clothes, polished his top hat, stuck a few tricks in his pockets, and set out for Mrs. Riley’s neat little house.
She opened the door a fraction after he’d knocked umpteen times.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “Go away before I—”
“Mrs. Riley, I want to see you,” he said. “Please let me come in or I shall take my gloves off and turn your door knocker into a penguin!”
“Wipe your feet, then.”
Sitting among the tiny tables and highly polished furniture in her little front room, peering at the witch through her little jungle of pot plants, Ron said, “Mrs. Riley, you see before you a bewildered man. Everything I touch won’t stay the same. It’s getting on my nerves, and I’m very sorry, and, erm . . . erm . . . Mrs. Riley, will you marry me?”
“Good heavens!” said Mrs. Riley as Ron produced a small Purple Passion houseplant out of midair.
“Ever since my dear wife died I’ve been looking for another lady who really understood magic,” said Ron, producing a box of chocolates from his top hat. “Marry me, Mrs. Riley, and I’ll be the happiest conjuror in Blackbury—and if you could see your way clear to taking your spell off me, I’d be glad.”
Mrs. Riley blew her nose. “Well, this is sudden,”she said.
“Say yes, Mrs. Riley, or I will throw myself into the Blackbury Municipal Boating Lake!” cried Ron.
“Yes,” she said.
The wedding was a quiet one, and Presto Changeo, who was best man, lost the ring but produced a string of flags of all nations, a box of eggs, pigeons, a pack of cards, glasses, and Ping-Pong balls from his pockets instead.
Then the happy couple walked out of the church under an archway of top hats and broomsticks. The Reverend Arnold Cowparslie, the vicar, thought that was a bit unusual but said nothing—even when Ron and his new wife rode off on a vacuum cleaner decorated with tin cans and ribbons.
Led by Lucy, everyone cheered.
Except for Mimms.
“Brussels sprouts!” he screeched loudly.*