Matilda Read online

  'There it is,' Fred said. 'It's name is Chopper.'

  'Make it talk,' Matilda said.

  'You can't make it talk,' Fred said. 'You have to be patient. It'll talk when it feels like it.'

  They hung around, waiting. Suddenly the parrot said, 'Hello, hello, hello.' It was exactly like a human voice. Matilda said, 'That's amazing! What else can it say?'

  'Rattle my bones!' the parrot said, giving a wonderful imitation of a spooky voice. 'Rattle my bones!'

  'He's always saying that,' Fred told her.

  'What else can he say?' Matilda asked.

  'That's about it,' Fred said. 'But it is pretty marvellous, don't you think?'

  'It's fabulous,' Matilda said. 'Will you lend him to me just for one night?'

  'No,' Fred said. 'Certainly not.'

  'I'll give you all my next week's pocketmoney,' Matilda said.

  That was different. Fred thought about it for a few seconds. 'All right, then,' he said, 'if you promise to return him tomorrow.'

  Matilda staggered back to her own empty house carrying the tall cage in both hands. There was a large fireplace in the diningroom and she now set about wedging the cage up the chimney and out of sight. This wasn't so easy, but she managed it in the end.

  'Hello, hello, hello!' the bird called down to her. 'Hello, hello!'

  'Shut up, you nut!' Matilda said, and she went out to wash the soot off her hands.

  That evening while the mother, the father, the brother and Matilda were having supper as usual in the living-room in front of the television, a voice came loud and clear from the diningroom across the hall. 'Hello, hello, hello,' it said.

  'Harry!' cried the mother, turning white. 'There's someone in the house! I heard a voice!'

  'So did I!' the brother said. Matilda jumped up and switched off the telly. 'Ssshh!' she said. 'Listen!'

  They all stopped eating and sat there very tense, listening.

  'Hello, hello, hello!' came the voice again.

  'There it is!' cried the brother.

  'It's burglars!' hissed the mother. 'They're in the diningroom!'

  'I think they are,' the father said, sitting tight.

  'Then go and catch them, Harry!' hissed the mother. 'Go out and collar them redhanded!'

  The father didn't move. He seemed in no hurry to dash off and be a hero. His face had turned grey.

  'Get on with it!' hissed the mother. 'They're probably after the silver!'

  The husband wiped his lips nervously with his napkin. 'Why don't we all go and look together?' he said.

  'Come on, then,' the brother said. 'Come on, Mum.'

  'They're definitely in the diningroom,' Matilda whispered. 'I'm sure they are.'

  The mother grabbed a poker from the fireplace. The father took a golf-club that was standing in the corner. The brother seized a table-lamp, ripping the plug out of its socket. Matilda took the knife she had been eating with, and all four of them crept towards the diningroom door, the father keeping well behind the others.

  'Hello, hello, hello,' came the voice again.

  'Come on!' Matilda cried and she burst into the room, brandishing her knife. 'Stick 'em up!' she yelled. 'We've caught you!' The others followed her, waving their weapons. Then they stopped. They stared around the room. There was no one there.

  'There's no one here,' the father said, greatly relieved.

  'I heard him, Harry!' the mother shrieked, still quaking. 'I distinctly heard his voice! So did you!'

  'I'm certain I heard him!' Matilda cried. 'He's in here somewhere!' She began searching behind the sofa and behind the curtains.

  Then came the voice once again, soft and spooky this time, 'Rattle my bones,' it said. 'Rattle my bones.'

  They all jumped, including Matilda, who was a pretty good actress. They stared round the room. There was still no one there.

  'It's a ghost,' Matilda said.

  'Heaven help us!' cried the mother, clutching her husband round the neck.

  'I know it's a ghost!' Matilda said. 'I've heard it here before! This room is haunted! I thought you knew that.'

  'Save us!' the mother screamed, almost throttling her husband.

  'I'm getting out of here,' the father said, greyer than ever now. They all fled, slamming the door behind them.

  The next afternoon, Matilda managed to get a rather sooty and grumpy parrot down from the chimney and out of the house without being seen. She carried it through the back-door and ran with it all the way to Fred's house.

  'Did it behave itself?' Fred asked her.

  'We had a lovely time with it,' Matilda said. 'My parents adored it.'

  Arithmetic

  Matilda longed for her parents to be good and loving and understanding and honourable and intelligent. The fact that they were none of these things was something she had to put up with. It was not easy to do so. But the new game she had invented of punishing one or both of them each time they were beastly to her made her life more or less bearable.

  Being very small and very young, the only power Matilda had over anyone in her family was brain-power. For sheer cleverness she could run rings around them all. But the fact remained that any five-year-old girl in any family was always obliged to do as she was told, however asinine the orders might be. Thus she was always forced to eat her evening meals out of TV dinner-trays in front of the dreaded box. She always had to stay alone on weekday afternoons, and whenever she was told to shut up, she had to shut up.

  Her safety-valve, the thing that prevented her from going round the bend, was the fun of devising and dishing out these splendid punishments, and the lovely thing was that they seemed to work, at any rate for short periods. The father in particular became less cocky and unbearable for several days after receiving a dose of Matilda's magic medicine.

  The parrot-in-the-chimney affair quite definitely cooled both parents down a lot and for over a week they were comparatively civil to their small daughter. But alas, this couldn't last. The next flare-up came one evening in the sitting-room. Mr Wormwood had just returned from work. Matilda and her brother were sitting quietly on the sofa waiting for their mother to bring in the TV dinners on a tray. The television had not yet been switched on.

  In came Mr Wormwood in a loud check suit and a yellow tie. The appalling broad orange-and-green check of the jacket and trousers almost blinded the onlooker. He looked like a low-grade bookmaker dressed up for his daughter's wedding, and he was clearly very pleased with himself this evening. He sat down in an armchair and rubbed his hands together and addressed his son in a loud voice. 'Well, my boy,' he said, 'your father's had a most successful day. He is a lot richer tonight than he was this morning. He has sold no less than five cars, each one at a tidy profit. Sawdust in the gear-boxes, the electric drill on the speedometer cables, a splash of paint here and there and a few other clever little tricks and the idiots were all falling over themselves to buy.'

  He fished a bit of paper from his pocket and studied it. 'Listen boy,' he said, addressing the son and ignoring Matilda, 'seeing as you'll be going into this business with me one day, you've got to know how to add up the profits you make at the end of each day Go and get yourself a pad and a pencil and let's see how clever you are.'

  The son obediently left the room and returned with the writing materials.

  'Write down these figures,' the father said, reading from his bit of paper. 'Car number one was bought by me for two hundred and seventy-eight pounds and sold for one thousand four hundred and twenty-five. Got that?'

  The ten-year-old boy wrote the two separate amounts down slowly and carefully.

  'Car number two,' the father went on, 'cost me one hundred and eighteen pounds and sold for seven hundred and sixty Got it?'

  'Yes, Dad,' the son said. 'I've got that.'

  'Car number three cost one hundred and eleven pounds and sold for nine hundred and ninety-nine pounds and fifty pence.'

  'Say that again,' the son said. 'How much did it sell for?'

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