‘Look!’ said Jody. ‘The fog has cleared, and there’s Peter and Melanie and Pandora climbing over the fence. They’re not pigs any more!’
‘All of Class Three are here,’ said Thomas. ‘There’s Mr Potter in that field. He’s managed to scratch his head at last – he couldn’t do it when he had hoofs instead of hands.’
‘And look at all those other people,’ said Mr Majeika. ‘The bank manager and the traffic warden and the policeman, and lots more – all the people who’ve annoyed Wilhelmina. They look awfully pleased to have got their real shapes back.’
‘But what about Wilhelmina?’ said Jody. ‘Won’t she turn them all back again, and us too?’
‘I nearly forgot!’ said Mr Majeika, snatching up the book of spells again just as Wilhelmina emerged from the café, clutching Hamish Bigmore by his ear.
‘Quite right, Wizard Majeika,’ she snarled. ‘My Star Pupil wasn’t being a Star Pupil at all. He’s just eaten Wilhelmina’s entire stock of chocolate drops. Nasty little brat!’ And she tweaked Hamish’s ear. ‘Well, I see you’ve been having fun in my absence, Wizard Majeika. Mucking about with Auntie Wilhelmina’s animals, eh?’
‘Yes, Wilhelmina,’ said Mr Majeika, ‘I have. And since I’ve spoilt your Farm Park, maybe you ought to have one very special animal that you can keep. I’m talking about you, Wilhelmina.’ And before Miss Worlock could stop him, he had mumbled a spell out of her book and waved his arms at her.
There was a puff of smoke and Wilhelmina vanished. On the ground where she had been standing was a fish tank. And inside the fish tank, swimming angrily around, was a large goldfish.
Mr Majeika picked up the fish tank and handed it to the bank manager. ‘You might like to look after it in your bank,’ he said. ‘And then later you can pass it on to the traffic warden and the policeman. It might be kind to let
her go in a few months, but meanwhile you might as well give her the treatment she gave you.’ Miss Worlock had changed the bus driver into an animal too (labelled Donkeyus Busus Driverus), and he was so pleased to have been changed back by Mr Majeika that he let all of Class Three, and Mr Majeika and Mr Potter, ride home in the bus, even though some of them had to sit on the floor.
‘What I don’t understand,’ said Jody to Mr Majeika, ‘is how you knew that Hamish was eating chocolate instead of studying spells. You didn’t even see him.’
‘It was only a guess,’ said Mr Majeika. ‘But if you let Hamish loose in a place that’s full of chocolate, there’s going to be only one thing on his mind.’
Hamish glared at them. ‘If you’d arrived five minutes later,’ he said, ‘I’d have learnt some really clever spells, and then you’d have been in real trouble.’
‘And what was it like as a pig?’ Thomas asked Pete.
‘Not bad,’ said Pete. ‘But we were so hungry we ate everything she gave us, even though it was just kitchen scraps – potato peelings, rotten apples and that sort of thing. And, do you know, it tasted much better than school dinners.’
‘I can believe that,’ said Thomas.
3. The Ghost Hunter
‘Now, everyone,’ said Mr Potter at Assembly, ‘it’s the School Fête on Saturday, and I want you all to behave yourselves. Lady Debenham, the head of the school governors, is coming to open it, and she’s a thoroughly fussy person. I mean –’ he corrected himself hastily, ‘she gets very upset if children behave badly, and quite right too.’
‘You know Lady Debenham,’ whispered Pete to Jody. ‘She’s the silly old bag who lives in the big house at the top of the road.’
‘She’s got a face like a bent bicycle-wheel,’ whispered Thomas, ‘and a temper to match. She’s always telling us off for running home from school and for shouting in the street. She wants us to behave like stuffed dolls.’
‘I’m afraid,’ continued Mr Potter from the platform, ‘that Lady Debenham is particularly cross with this school at the moment. It seems that some of you have been pulling up the flowers in her garden, and she’s very angry about it. Someone even painted
ST BARTY’S IS THE GREATEST
on one of her trees, which made her furious. In fact, she’s talking about closing St Barty’s down and sending you all to St James’s School instead.’
There was a groan from everyone. St James’s was a posh school a short distance down the road. It was half empty, because no one wanted to be sent there. No one except Hamish Bigmore.
‘I wish Lady Windbag would close rotten St Barty’s,’ muttered Hamish to Thomas, Pete and Jody as they crossed the playground on the way to Class Three. ‘Then we wouldn’t have to be taught by stupid Mr Majeika.’
‘I bet it was you who picked Lady Debenham’s flowers and painted on the tree,’ said Jody.
‘Of course it was,’ replied Hamish, grinning widely.
‘Well, if you’re so keen to go to stupid St James’s,’ said Thomas, ‘why don’t you tell your parents to take you away from St Barty’s and send you there? They always do everything you want.’
Hamish scowled. ‘I keep on asking
them. But my mother thinks Mr Majeika is sweet. I ask you! She says that none of the teachers at St James’s would be as kind to me. Huh!’
‘She may be right,’ said Jody. ‘By the way, Hamish, why are you limping?’
Hamish scowled again. ‘That rotten Lady Debenham has put barbed wire round her garden, and I scratched myself getting in. But I got my own back. I pulled up all her rubbishy daffodils! I’ll do anything to close down this rotten old school.’
‘This morning,’ said Mr Majeika to Class Three, ‘we’re going to get on with our project.’
‘Not wild flowers and plants again?’ groaned Hamish Bigmore.
‘That’s right,’ said Mr Majeika.
‘Why can’t we do something sensible,’ grumbled Hamish, ‘like space weapons, or the history of torture?’
‘Come along now, Hamish,’ said Mr Majeika patiently, ‘there’s lots of work to do this morning. I want you all to make drawings of herbs I’ve brought in, and write notes on the things they were used for in the old days.’
‘What sort of things, Mr Majeika?’ asked Thomas.
‘Well,’ said Mr Majeika, ‘before people got pills and medicines from the chemist’s, like they do today, they made mixtures of herbs when people were ill. They gathered plants like lavender and mint from the fields and hedges. They believed these plants could cure things if they were mixed together in the right quantities. And it seems to have worked.’
‘I’ve never heard such rubbish,’ growled Hamish. ‘You can’t cure people with plants! You need X-rays and operations and blood transfusions and antibiotics and things like that. When I grow up, I’m going to be a famous brain surgeon.’
Mr Majeika smiled. ‘Well, Hamish, you’d be surprised at what herbs could cure. In fact, they still can. Am I right in thinking that you’ve got a bit of a scratch on your knee?’
Hamish glared at him. ‘What if I have?’
‘Hmm, yes,’ said Mr Majeika, coming to look at it. ‘A nasty scratch. It looks as if it might have been made by barbed wire… Well, Hamish, I’ve got an old book of herbal remedies here, so let’s see what we can do for you.’
Hamish complained, but in no time at all Mr Majeika had looked up some instructions in his book, and he got the rest of Class Three to mix up herbs that they had been gathering on country walks during the term. Mr Majeika showed them how to make the herbs into a sort of paste. Then he smeared the paste on Hamish’s knee and stood back to see what would happen.
What happened was that Hamish Bigmore vanished. Where he had been sitting, there was an empty chair.
‘Oh dear!’ cried Mr Majeika. ‘I must have got the wrong remedy.’
‘Has he turned into a frog again?’ asked Jody, remembering what had happened when Mr Majeika first came to teach Class Three.
‘No, I haven’t,’ said Hamish’s voice. ‘I’m over here.’ They all turned round, but they couldn’t see him.<
br />
’Where?’ said Pete.
‘Here,’ said Hamish’s voice. And the waste-paper basket rose from the floor, floated across the room in mid-air and emptied itself carefully over Peter’s head.
‘Oh dear,’ said Mr Majeika, examining his book of herbal remedies. ‘Two pages have stuck together. What starts as a recipe for curing cuts and scratches turns into a spell for making people invisible.’
Having an invisible Hamish ought to have been pleasant. ‘After all,’ said Thomas, ‘he’s an ugly brute, and it’s nice not to be able to see him.’ But it was really very tiresome.
Mr Majeika searched desperately through his notebooks to find a spell that would make Hamish visible again, but in the meantime Hamish was having fun. No one was allowed a moment’s peace.
Anything wet, like paints or ink, kept floating off the shelves and into people’s faces, or were smeared all over their clothes. And when anyone tried to sit down their chair was pulled away, so that they fell on to the floor.
When Hamish got bored with tricks like that, he went around pulling people’s hair and pinching them.
Everyone kept trying to catch him, but it was no use. Thomas and Jody managed to get hold of his jersey, though of course they couldn’t see it, and Peter was trying to tie him to a chair with his own belt when Hamish bit him very hard on the ear. Peter yelled and lost his grip, and Hamish wriggled free, upsetting chairs and tables all across the room. After a while they just gave up trying to stop him, hoping that Mr Majeika would soon find the right spell. The invisible Hamish now occupied himself by pulling out everyone’s drawers where they kept their workbooks and things they had brought to school, and then making a great big untidy pile of everything in the middle of the room.
At last Mr Majeika called out, ‘I think I’ve got it! It’s another herbal remedy.’
They helped him mix up the herbs as quickly as they could, though of course Hamish kept getting in the way. At last they’d made up a new paste, and after chasing the invisible Hamish round the room, Thomas, Jody and Peter managed to catch him again, and Mr Majeika smeared some of the herb paste over him.
Suddenly they could see Hamish again. He was grinning all over his face; obviously he’d been having the time of his life.
‘Well, well,’ said Mr Majeika, ‘that should teach me not to meddle with things I don’t understand properly. These herbal remedies are much stronger than you’d expect. Now, Hamish, as the first part of your punishment for such terrible behaviour, you can clear up all the mess you’ve made.’
When Thomas and Pete got to school the next morning, they found Mr Majeika looking very tired and gloomy. ‘What’s the matter?’ they asked.
‘The herbal pastes have disappeared,’ he explained.
‘The paste that made Hamish invisible?’ asked Thomas.
‘Yes,’ said Mr Majeika, ‘and the one that made him visible again. I kept Hamish here for hours after school, making him clear up the mess, and it was only after he’d gone that I remembered I hadn’t put away those pastes, or thrown them away, which would have been the sensible thing to do. If it gets into the wrong hands, that invisibility mixture could do awful harm.’
‘Well,’ said Pete, ‘it’s probably in Hamish Bigmore’s hands, or at least his pocket, and I can’t think of anything more awful than that.’
When Mr Majeika asked him, Hamish said he didn’t know what had happened to the herbal pastes. But he was grinning wickedly. Mr Majeika made him turn out his pockets, but there was no sign of the invisibility mixture.
‘He’s probably hidden it at home,’ said Jody. ‘Anyway, I ’m sure we’ll soon know about it if he has got it.’
But Hamish didn’t become invisible again that day, or the next, or the day after that. He was as badly behaved as usual, but everyone could see him all the time. So, after a while, Mr Majeika decided that the pastes must have been thrown away by the school cleaner. ‘That’s a relief,’ he said, ‘especially with the School Fête tomorrow. We’d have been in real trouble if Hamish had managed to make himself invisible during the Fête.’
‘Ah, here she comes,’ said Mr Potter, who had been waiting at the school gate in his best suit with a flower in the buttonhole, looking anxiously at his watch. He bustled up to meet a very grand-looking woman in a hat.
‘Couldn’t help being late, Potter,’ snapped Lady Debenham. ‘Had to go
to a meeting of the Society for Psychical Investigation.’
‘Bicycles, your ladyship?’ asked Mr Potter vaguely. ‘I didn’t know you rode one.’
‘No, no, man,’ snapped Lady Debenham. ‘Psychical. It means ghosts. The society wants to prove that there really are ghosts, so we go around looking for them.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Mr Potter unsurely. He led Lady Debenham to a small platform that had been set up in the school playground. When she had taken her seat, Mr Potter made a short welcome speech.
Everyone clapped, and Lady Debenham got to her feet and came to the microphone. ‘Thank you, Potter,’ she snapped. ‘Now, children, behave yourselves, or I shall have to think seriously about closing down St Barty’s and sending you all to St James’s. Remember that! And now I declare this Fête well and truly open.’
Everyone clapped again, and Jody came up to the platform carrying a big bunch of flowers, beautifully wrapped. She had been chosen to present them to Lady Debenham.
Lady Debenham smiled rather frostily. She was just about to take the flowers from Jody when they flew out of Jody’s hands, rose in the air and squashed themselves against Lady Debenham’s face.
‘Oh no!’ said Thomas to Pete. ‘I’d just been wondering why we hadn’t seen Hamish Bigmore this afternoon, and now I know.’
‘He must have got that invisibility paste, just as Mr Majeika suspected,’ said Pete. ‘Now we’re really in for it!’
Lady Debenham was very, very angry. Her elegant make-up had been smudged by the stalks of the flowers, and her glasses knocked off. At first she blamed Jody, but fortunately Mr Potter had seen what had happened. ‘It must have been a sudden strong gust of wind, your ladyship,’ he said soothingly to Lady Debenham.
After a few minutes Lady Debenham had calmed down a bit, and she began to go round the stalls with Mr Potter.
Her first call was at the Lucky Dip. She was just bending down to reach into the tub of sawdust when her legs flew into the air and she landed face-first in the tub.
‘Hamish again!’ said Jody to Thomas and Pete. ‘This is awful.’
It took some time for Lady Debenham to get the sawdust out of her hair and clothes. By now she was in a furious temper. Mr Potter was trying to persuade her that she had slipped on a patch of mud, but she didn’t believe him. ‘Somebody is playing a trick on me,’ she snapped.
‘Well, you know what I said I’d do if your children were naughty, don’t you, Potter?’
‘Yes, your ladyship,’ muttered Mr Potter gloomily, wondering if the head teacher of St James’s would give him a job when St Barty’s was closed down. Then he cheered up a bit. ‘I tell you what, your ladyship, why not come and sample one of Class Two’s delicious home-made ice-creams?’
Lady Debenham was still very cross, but she agreed. ‘Oh no,’ whispered Jody, as she and Thomas and Pete followed Lady Debenham and Mr Potter across the playground. ‘I can guess what’s going to happen now. We must do something to stop Hamish!’
‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Pete. ‘There’s a sack race going on over there. Let’s get a sack and try to catch Hamish in it before he does any more harm.’
Snatching a sack, they headed for the ice-cream stall. Already a large vanilla ice was hovering in the air over Lady Debenham’s head. The invisible Hamish must have climbed on to the stall. ’He’s going to smother it all over her!’ said Jody. ’Quick! Jump!’
They jumped and brought the sack
down over what felt like Hamish Bigmore. Unfortunately, they brought it down over Lady Debenham as well.
‘It’s all rig
ht,’ said Mr Majeika, bustling up with two jars in his hands. ‘I’ve found the invisibility paste and the one to make you visible again, both of them in Hamish’s drawer. He must have put them there this afternoon after making himself invisible. Now we can put a stop to his pranks.’
‘Too late,’ said Jody, pointing at the ground where a pair of legs were sticking out of the sack, kicking wildly. ‘It’s Lady Debenham in that sack. And I’m afraid this is the end of St Barty’s.’
From the sack came muffled shouts. Lady Debenham was fighting the invisible Hamish Bigmore.
Mr Majeika, Jody, Thomas and Pete got the sack off her and, while Mr Majeika grabbed hold of Hamish and smeared him with the paste to make him visible again, the others tried to brush her down and calm her. But to their amazement, she was smiling.
‘We’re so sorry, Lady Debenham,’ they said to her.
‘Sorry?’ beamed Lady Debenham.
‘It was the greatest moment of my life. A real ghost! I couldn’t see it, but I could hear it and feel it. My society will be delighted. And as for St Barty’s, far from closing it down, I’m very, very proud of it. It’s the only school in England with its own ghost!’
Jody, Thomas and Pete looked at each other, and at Mr Majeika and Hamish.
‘Hamish Bigmore isn’t going to like this one little bit,’ Jody said, grinning. ‘But he’s saved St Barty’s!’
Mr Majeika and the Dinner Lady Page 3