Mr Majeika (5 page)

‘Good gracious!' he said. ‘What a lot of funny things I have been imagining. Boys and girls, back to your places! I never said you could go yet.'

‘The half-hour's up!' whispered Jody. ‘The flying potion has worn off. Thank goodness for that!'

The door opened, and in came Mr Majeika. He was holding something in this hand. ‘I hope they behaved themselves?' he asked Mr Potter, who nodded rather weakly. ‘That's good,' said Mr Majeika. ‘I found
this
in the kitchen.' He showed Class Three what was in his hand; it was the empty bottle which had contained the flying potion. ‘I just wondered if anyone had been …?' he said, looking at them meaningfully.

Class Three shook their heads.

‘Nothing's happened at all, Mr Magic,' said Hamish Bigmore firmly. ‘It was just an ordinary lesson. But I think Mr Potter would like a cup of tea to calm his nerves. And no sugar in it this time.'

‘Mr Potter wants everyone to clean their teeth very thoroughly tomorrow,' said Mr Majeika to Class Three, one afternoon about a week before the end of term. ‘There's a dentist coming to teach you about careful brushing, and how to fight tooth decay, and Mr Potter says he doesn't want everyone's mouths looking and smelling like the insides of old dustbins.'

‘Please, Mr Magic, my teeth are
always
clean,' said a voice. It was Melanie.

‘Yes, Melanie, I'm sure they are,' said Mr Majeika. ‘But not everyone is as careful as you.'

‘Melanie's teeth are
clean
all right,' said Hamish Bigmore. ‘But look how ugly they are! They stick out all over the place.'

Unfortunately this was quite true. Melanie did have sticking-out teeth. But of course being told this made her cry even louder than usual. ‘Boo-hoo! I hate you, Hamish Bigmore, you're
horrid
!' she wailed.

‘Don't you call
me
horrid,' answered Hamish. ‘Just think how horrid
you
look, with those teeth. In fact you look just like Count Dracula! Melanie's got teeth like a vampire! Ya, horrid old vampire!'

‘Be quiet, Hamish Bigmore,' said Mr Majeika. But Hamish, as usual, wouldn't pay any attention. ‘Vampire! Vampire!' he shouted. ‘Melanie looks like a vampire!'

Mr Majeika suddenly lost his temper. ‘I'll show you who's a vampire!' he cried, and pointed a finger at Hamish.

Hamish Bigmore opened his mouth to say something rude – and then stopped, because everyone was suddenly laughing at him. ‘Vampire! Vampire!' they were shouting.

‘What's got into you, you sillies?' he asked them. But they would only answer: ‘Vampire! Vampire!'

‘Here,' said Pandora Green, ‘take a look at this.' She kept a pocket-mirror in her desk for putting on lipstick, when Mr Majeika wasn't looking. Now she held it up to Hamish Bigmore.

He stared in the mirror, then turned on Mr Majeika. ‘Look what you've done, Mr Magic!' he shouted.

It was perfectly true. Hamish Bigmore had suddenly grown vampire's teeth.

They were very long and pointed, and stuck right out of his mouth. Two were especially long and sharp. It was as nasty a sight as anything in the horror films on television.

‘Oh dear, oh dear,' Mr Majeika was saying. ‘I seem to have done it again. These old spells just come back into my head when I least expect them, and then I say them to myself without thinking, and then hey presto! the damage is done.'

‘But surely you know how to take
this
spell off him?' asked Jody. ‘It can't be as difficult as the frog.'

Mr Majeika shook his head. ‘It's quite an
easy one,' he said. ‘In fact you don't need a spell to get rid of the vampire teeth, I remember that. Hamish himself has to
do
something to have his teeth become normal again. But I can't for the life of me think what it is.'

Hamish Bigmore himself had been sitting silently through this. Now he snarled between his vampire teeth: ‘Well, if you can't take these teeth away, I'm going to
use
them. I'll be a real vampire and bite you all! And you know what happens when you're bitten by a vampire? You become a vampire yourself! Ha! ha!'

‘Don't be silly,' said Mr Majeika. ‘You're not a real vampire. You just happen to have grown a set of vampire's teeth. But I can tell you that if you start behaving in a foolish fashion, Hamish Bigmore, you can be sure of one thing – those teeth will never go away.
Just you put a scarf around your face to hide them, and go home quietly, and tell everyone there that you've got toothache, and go straight to bed, and with luck in the morning they'll have gone.'

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!
'

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 perfectly 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!'