The Pinhoe Egg. Diana Wynne Jones

ladies crowded aside to give Dad and Marianne a view of the bed. Dad said, “My God!” and Marianne did not blame him.

      Gammer had grown herself into the bed. She had sunk into the mattress, deep into it, and rooted herself, with little hairy nightdress-coloured rootlets sticking out all round her. Her long toenails twined like transparent yellow creepers into the bars at the end of the bed. At the other end, her hair and her ears were impossibly grown into the pillow. Out of it her face stared, bony, defiant and smug.

      “Mother!” said Marianne’s dad.

      “Thought you could get the better of me, didn’t you?” Gammer said. “I’m not going.”

      Marianne had almost never seen her father lose his temper, but he did then. His round amiable face went crimson and shiny. “Yes, you are going,” he said. “You’re moving to Dinah and Isaac’s whatever tricks you play. Leave her be,” he said to the aunts. “She’ll get tired of this in the end. Let’s get all the furniture moved out first.”

      This was easier said than done. No one had realised quite how much furniture there was. A house the size of Woods House, that was big enough to have held a family with seven children once, can hold massive quantities of furniture. And Woods House did. Joss Callow had to go and fetch Uncle Cedric’s hay wain and then borrow the Reverend Pinhoe’s old horse to pull it, because the farm cart was just not enough and they would have been at it all day. Great Uncle Edgar prudently left at this point in case someone suggested they use his fine, spruce carriage too; but Great Uncle Lester nobly stayed and offered to take the smaller items in his car. Even so, all three vehicles had to make several trips to the big barn out on the Hopton Road, while a crowd of younger Pinhoes rushed out there on bikes and broomsticks to unload the furniture, stack it safely and surround it in their best spells of preservation. At the same time, so many things turned up which people thought Gammer would need in her new home, that Dolly the donkey was going backwards and forwards non stop between Woods House and the Dell, with the cart loaded and creaking behind her.

      “It’s so nice to have things that you’re used to around you in a strange place!” Great Aunt Sue said. Marianne privately thought this was rather sentimental of Great Aunt Sue, since most of the stuff was things she had never once seen Gammer use.

      “And we haven’t touched the attics yet!” Uncle Charles groaned, while they waited for the donkey cart to come back again.

      Everyone else had forgotten the attics. “Leave them till after lunch,” Dad said hastily. “Or we could leave them for the new owner. There’s nothing but junk up there.”

      “I had a toy fort once that must be up there,” Uncle Simeon said wistfully.

      But he was ignored, as he mostly was, because Uncle Richard brought the donkey cart back with a small Pinhoe girl who had a message from Mum. Evidently Mum was getting impatient to know what had become of Gammer.

      “They’re all ready,” small Nicola announced. “They sprung clent.”

      “They what?” said all the aunts.

      “They washed the floor and they dried and they polished and the carpet just fits,” Nicola explained. “And they washed the windows and did the walls and put the new curtains up and started on all the furniture and the pictures and the stuffed trout and Stafford and Conway Callow teased a goat and it butted them and —”

      “Oh, they spring cleaned,” said Aunt Polly. “Now I understand.”

      “Thank you, Nicola. Run back and tell them Gammer’s just coming,” Dad said.

      But Nicola was determined to finish her narrative first. “And they got sent home and that Joe Pinhoe got told off for being lazy. I was good. I helped,” she concluded. Only then did she scamper off with Dad’s message.

      Dad began wearily climbing the stairs. “Let’s hope Gammer’s uprooted herself by now,” he said.

      But she hadn’t. If anything, she was rooted to the bed more firmly than ever. When Great Aunt Sue said brightly, “Up we get, Gammer. Don’t we want to see our lovely clean new home?” Gammer just stared, mutinously.

      “Oh, come on, Mother. Cut it out!” Uncle Arthur said. “You look ridiculous like that.”

      “Shan’t,” said Gammer. “I said root downwards and I meant it. I’ve lived in this house every single year of my life.”

      “No, you haven’t. Don’t talk nonsense!” Dad said, turning red and shiny again. “You lived opposite the Town Hall in Hopton for twenty years before you ever came here. One last time – do you get up, or do we carry you to the Dell bed and all?”

      “Please yourself. I can’t do with your tantrums, Harry – never could,” Gammer said, and closed her eyes.“Right!” said Dad, angrier than ever. “All of you get a grip on this bed and lift it when I count to three.”

      Gammer’s reply to this was to make herself enormously heavy. The bare floor creaked under the weight of the bed. No one could shift it.

      Marianne heard Dad’s teeth grind. “Very well,” he said. “Levitation spell, everyone.”

      Normally with a levitation spell, you could move almost anything with just one finger. This time, whatever Gammer was doing made that almost impossible. Everyone strained and sweated. Great Aunt Clarice’s hairstyle came apart in the effort. Pretty little combs and hairpins showered down on Gammer’s roots. Great Aunt Sue stopped looking neat at all. Marianne thought that, for herself, she could have lifted three elephants more easily. Uncle Charles and four cousins left off loading the donkey cart and ran upstairs to help, followed by Uncle Richard and then by Great Uncle Lester. But the bed still would not move. Until, when every possible person was gathered round the bed, heaving and muttering the spell, Gammer smiled wickedly and let go.

      The bed went up two feet and shot forward. Everyone stumbled and floundered. Great Aunt Sue was carried along with the bed as it made for the doorway and then crushed against the doorpost as the bed jammed itself past her and swung sideways into the upstairs corridor. Great Aunt Clarice rescued Great Aunt Sue with a quick spell and a tremendous POP! which jerked the bed on again. It sailed towards the stairs, leaving everyone behind except for Uncle Arthur. Uncle Arthur was holding on to the bars at the end of the bed and pushing mightily to stop it.

      “Ridiculous, am I?” Gammer said to him, smiling peacefully. And the bed launched itself down the stairs with Uncle Arthur pelting backwards in front of it for dear life. At the landing, it did a neat turn, threw Uncle Arthur off, bounced on his belly, and set off like a toboggan down the rest of the stairs. In the hall, Nutcase – who had somehow got out again – shot out of its way with a shriek. Everyone except Uncle Arthur leant anxiously over the bannisters and watched Gammer zoom through the front door and hit Great Uncle Lester’s car with a mighty crunch.

      Great Uncle Lester howled, “My car, my car!” and raced down after Gammer.

      “At least it stopped her,” Dad said, as they all clattered after Great Uncle Lester. “She hurt?” he asked, when they got there to find a large splintery dent in the side of the car and Gammer, still rooted, lying with her eyes shut and the same peaceful smile.

      “Oh, I do hope so!” Great Uncle Lester said, wringing his hands. “Look what she’s done!” “Serve you right,” Gammer said, without opening her eyes. “You smashed my doll’s house.”

      “When I was five!” Great Uncle Lester howled. “Sixty years ago, you dreadful old woman!”

      Dad leant over the bed and demanded, “Are you ready to get up and walk now?”

      Gammer pretended not to hear him.

      “All right!” Dad said fiercely. “Levitation again, everyone. I’m going to get her down to the Dell if it kills us all.”

      “Oh, it will,” Gammer said sweetly.