Mr Majeika

by Carpenter, Humphrey

  For once, Hamish Bigmore did as he was told.

  But the next morning the vampire teeth were still there. Thomas and Pete could see them the moment Hamish Bigmore came into Class Three and unwrapped the scarf from around his face. ‘Whatever did your mum and dad say?’ asked Pete.

  ‘They’re away,’ said Hamish. ‘There’s an old aunt of mine looking after me, and she’s too short-sighted to notice. Mr Magic should go to prison for doing this to me!’

  ‘It was all your own fault,’ said Thomas. ‘But what is the dentist going to say?’

  This was exactly the thought that crossed Mr Majeika’s mind when he arrived in the classroom and saw that Hamish’s teeth hadn’t changed back in the night. ‘Oh dear,’ he said, ‘this is going to be very awkward.’

  When the dentist came, it proved to be a lady. Hamish Bigmore had been put in a far corner of the room, in the hope that she would not look at him, but she went carefully round everyone in the class, making them all open their mouths.

  ‘Now,’ she said brightly, peering into Thomas’s, ‘have you been brushing away regularly with Betty Brush and Tommy Toothpaste? You must remember to fight Dan Decay, and Percy Plaque, or horrid old Terry Toothache will come along and make your life a misery.’

  ‘She’s treating us as if we were toddlers in the nursery class,’ grumbled Jody. But there was nothing anyone could do to stop the lady dentist chattering away in this daft fashion. Finally she got to Hamish Bigmore, who, on Mr Majeika’s instructions, had the scarf wrapped tightly around his mouth.

  ‘Who have we here?’ she said brightly. Hamish got to his feet and started to make for the door.

  ‘He’s not feeling very well,’ said Mr Majeika. ‘I think he needs to go to the lavatory.’

  ‘Well, he can just wait a minute,’ said the lady dentist firmly. ‘Let’s unwrap that scarf, my little friend, and see what we find beneath. Are Dan Decay and Percy Plaque lurking there, or have you been a good boy and used Betty Brush and Tommy Toothpaste?’

  Hamish Bigmore had had enough of this. He pulled the scarf from his face and bared his horried long pointed teeth at the lady dentist.

  ‘No,’ he cried. ‘I haven’t been a good boy!

  I’m Victor the Vampire and I’m going to drink your blood!’

  The lady dentist gave a shrill scream, and rushed from the classroom.

  ‘Now really,’ said Mr Majeika to Hamish Bigmore when order had been restored, ‘that was not necessary. You might have given her a heart attack.’ As it was, the lady dentist had driven away very fast in her little car, saying she never wanted to look at schoolchildren’s teeth again.

  ‘I’m sorry you’ve still got those teeth,’ continued Mr Majeika to Hamish, ‘but really, behaving so naughtily won’t help. I’m still trying to find out what it is you must do to get rid of them – I’ve been looking through all my old spell-books – and in the meantime I advise you to be as good as possible …’ Suddenly he stopped.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Jody.

  ‘I’ve just remembered!’ cried Mr Majeika in delight. ‘I’ve remembered what Hamish has to do to get rid of those teeth! He has to be good!’

  8. Hamish the Good

  At first no one could believe it was as simple as that. But in the end Mr Majeika convinced them all. ‘I’ve remembered what I was taught as an apprentice wizard,’ he said. ‘If anyone gets a horrid affliction or disease as a result of behaving nastily to someone,’ he said, ‘they have to be good for a certain period of time, and it will go away. So Hamish will have to be good until – well, I should think until the end of term should just about do it. What do you think about that, Hamish?’

  Hamish Bigmore looked at Mr Majeika gloomily. ‘Isn’t there an easier way?’ he said.

  Mr Majeika shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not,’ he said. ‘For the next week or so, Hamish, you will have to behave like an entirely different person. You must become utterly and completely good.’

  Hamish sat in silence, stunned by this news.

  ‘He’ll never manage it,’ said Pete to Thomas. ‘Not a hope.’

  But the surprising thing was that, by next day, Hamish obviously was managing it.

  Up to now, he had always arrived late at school in the morning, with some silly excuse he’d dreamt up. But today Class Three found him already sitting at his desk when they arrived. And when Mr Majeika came into the classroom, he saw that there was a bunch of wild flowers in a jam jar on his table. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Did one of the girls put this here?’

  There was a general shaking of heads, and Hamish spoke up: ‘No, sir’ (he had never called Mr Majeika or any of the other teachers ‘sir’ before), ‘it was me, sir. I picked them from the hedgerow on my way to school. Don’t you think they’re pretty, sir?’

  Mr Majeika looked at Hamish Bigmore suspiciously. ‘Don’t overdo it, Hamish,’ he said warningly. ‘Just being normally good, like everyone else, will be quite enough.’ But Hamish said nothing.

  They began lessons. Normally Hamish Bigmore interrupted Mr Majeika at least once every five minutes, with some silly question or rude comment. But today he was completely silent. Mr Majeika obviously couldn’t believe it, for he kept casting uneasy glances in Hamish’s direction to make sure he wasn’t up to something nasty. But not at all. Hamish was very hard at work, and at the end of the lesson he handed a neatly written workbook to Mr Majeika. Class Three had been asked to write something describing a scene in the country, and Hamish’s piece was all about sweet little buttercups, and little woolly lambs jumping about in the meadows. ‘Are you trying to pull my leg, Hamish Bigmore?’ said Mr Majeika. But once again Hamish made no reply.

  It was the same at dinner time. Mr Majeika had explained to Mr Potter and the rest of the school that something peculiar had happened to Hamish’s teeth, but they would soon be all right again providing nobody took any notice; so Hamish was allowed to have school dinner with everyone else. Usually he fooled around like mad at dinner time, and made a dreadful nuisance of himself to the dinner-ladies. But today everything was different. He not only ate his own dinner as quietly as a mouse, but after it was finished he began to collect up all the other children’s dirty plates, knives, forks, and spoons, saying to the dinner-ladies: ‘Oh, do let me help! Please, is there anything I can do?’

  After a bit, one of the dinner-ladies went to Mr Majeika to complain. ‘That boy from your class,’ she said, ‘is giving us all the creeps.’

  ‘Do you mean his teeth?’ asked Mr Majeika.

  ‘No, he can’t help those, poor dear,’ said the dinner-lady. ‘I mean his interference. He doesn’t mean to be a nuisance, the poor creature, but he keeps fussing round us, trying to help all the time, and we can’t get the washing-up done. What’s wrong with him? The other kids never behave like that.’

  Mr Majeika sighed. ‘I’m afraid he’s suffering from an attack of being good,’ he said.

  Nor was this the end of Hamish Bigmore’s ‘helping’. At the end of afternoon school he hurried round to the nursery class, and was soon to be seen ‘helping’ the little children on with their coats, and holding the door open for the mothers who had come to collect them. Unfortunately nobody in the nursery had been told about Hamish Bigmore’s vampire teeth, and the air was soon filled with the screams of terrified mothers. ‘It’s Dracula himself, risen from the grave!’ cried one of the more highly-strung ladies. Mr Majeika, summoned to the disturbance, told Hamish Bigmore to stop ‘helping’, and to go home at once, but the damage was done, and it was several days before some of the mothers would venture out of doors again with their toddlers.

  Every day for a week, Hamish Bigmore thought of some new way of ‘helping’ someone at St Barty’s, and by the end of the week everyone in the school was a nervous wreck. Everyone, that is, except Mr Potter. Somehow Hamish’s good deeds had failed to cause any trouble to the head teacher.

  On the last morning of term, Hamish Bigmore arrived at school with his teeth looking perf
ectly normal again. And there was a gleam in his eye. ‘Well, I think I’ve managed it,’ he said to Pete and Thomas.

  ‘Your teeth?’ they said. ‘Yes, you have. They look quite ordinary again. Mr Majeika was right, then – it worked.’

  ‘No, not that, idiots,’ said Hamish Bigmore scornfully. And his ‘goodness’ seemed to have vanished now that his teeth were back to normal. ‘Just you wait and see what I mean.’

  The day ended with the whole school gathered in the assembly hall to listen to Mr Potter. ‘I want you all to enjoy your holidays,’ he said. ‘But before you go, there’s one last thing. Those of you who have been at St Barty’s for some time will know that on the last day of the Easter term I always give a prize, the Headmaster’s Medal for Good Conduct. And as you may also know, beside the medal there’s also ten pounds in cash for the boy or girl who wins it. Each year I look for one boy or girl whose behaviour has been really good, and who has tried to be a real help to everyone at the school. And this term, I have no hesitation in awarding the prize to – Hamish Bigmore.’

  There was a gasp of surprise and, especially from Class Three, a howl of rage.

  ‘So that’s what he was up to,’ gasped Pete. ‘He didn’t care about the teeth at all – he just wanted the money! Well of all the –’

  ‘Jolly well done, Hamish Bigmore,’ said Mr Potter, hanging the medal round Hamish’s neck and giving him an envelope containing the money.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Hamish Bigmore. And he stuck out his tongue at Class Three.

  After it was all over, everyone crowded round Mr Majeika. ‘Wasn’t that wicked of Hamish Bigmore?’ Jody asked him. ‘Did you know what he was up to?’

  Mr Majeika shook his head. ‘I’d never heard of this Good Conduct Medal,’ he said, ‘or I might have guessed. Why, for two pins I’d turn that medal into a toad!’

  ‘Oh, go on, Mr Magic, please do!’ they all said. But he shook his head.

  ‘No, my friends. No more magic, at least not this term.’

  ‘Will you be here next term, Mr Magic?’ Jody asked excitedly.

  Mr Majeika nodded.

  ‘Hooray!’ they all said. And then Thomas added as an afterthought:

  ‘Well, don’t let Hamish Bigmore ever be good again. It’s more than we can bear!’

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  First published by Kestrel Books 1984

  Published in Puffin Books 1985

  Published in this edition 2007

  Text copyright © Humphrey Carpenter, 1984

  Illustrations copyright © Frank Rodgers, 1984

  Introduction copyright © Julia Eccleshare, 2007

  The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-0-141-91438-1