Matilda Read online

  'Be careful!' shrieked the mother. 'Now look what you've done! That's my best Elizabeth Arden face powder!'

  'Oh my gawd!' yelled the father, staring into the little mirror. 'What's happened to me! I look terrible! I look just like you gone wrong! I can't go down to the garage and sell cars like this! How did it happen?' He stared round the room, first at the mother, then at the son, then at Matilda. 'How could it have happened?' he yelled.

  'I imagine, Daddy,' Matilda said quietly, 'that you weren't looking very hard and you simply took Mummy's bottle of hair stuff off the shelf instead of your own.'

  'Of course that's what happened!' the mother cried. 'Well really, Harry, how stupid can you get? Why didn't you read the label before you started splashing the stuff all over you! Mine's terribly strong. I'm only meant to use one tablespoon of it in a whole basin of water and you've gone and put it all over your head neat! It'll probably take all your hair off in the end! Is your scalp beginning to burn, dear?'

  'You mean I'm going to lose all my hair?' the husband yelled.

  'I think you will,' the mother said. 'Peroxide is a very powerful chemical. It's what they put down the lavatory to disinfect the pan, only they give it another name.'

  'What are you saying!' the husband cried. 'I'm not a lavatory pan! I don't want to be disinfected!'

  'Even diluted like I use it,' the mother told him, 'it makes a good deal of my hair fall out, so goodness knows what's going to happen to you. I'm surprised it didn't take the whole of the top of your head off!'

  'What shall I do?' wailed the father. 'Tell me quick what to do before it starts falling out!'

  Matilda said, 'I'd give it a good wash, Dad, if I were you, with soap and water. But you'll have to hurry.'

  'Will that change the colour back?' the father asked anxiously.

  'Of course it won't, you twit,' the mother said.

  'Then what do I do? I can't go around looking like this for ever!'

  'You'll have to have it dyed black,' the mother said. 'But wash it first or there won't be any there to dye.'

  'Right!' the father shouted, springing into action. 'Get me an appointment with your hairdresser this instant for a hair-dyeing job! Tell them it's an emergency! They've got to boot someone else off their list! I'm going upstairs to wash it now!' With that the man dashed out of the room and Mrs Wormwood, sighing deeply, went to the telephone to call the beauty parlour.

  'He does do some pretty silly things now and again, doesn't he, Mummy?' Matilda said.

  The mother, dialling the number on the phone, said, 'I'm afraid men are not always quite as clever as they think they are. You will learn that when you get a bit older, my girl.'

  Miss Honey

  Matilda was a little late in starting school. Most children begin Primary School at five or even just before, but Matilda's parents, who weren't very concerned one way or the other about their daughter's education, had forgotten to make the proper arrangements in advance. She was five and a half when she entered school for the first time.

  The village school for younger children was a bleak brick building called Crunchem Hall Primary School. It had about two hundred and fifty pupils aged from five to just under twelve years old. The head teacher, the boss, the supreme commander of this establishment, was a formidable middle-aged lady whose name was Miss Trunchbull.

  Naturally Matilda was put in the bottom class, where there were eighteen other small boys and girls about the same age as her. Their teacher was called Miss Honey, and she could not have been more than twenty-three or twenty-four. She had a lovely pale oval madonna face with blue eyes and her hair was light-brown. Her body was so slim and fragile one got the feeling that if she fell over she would smash into a thousand pieces, like a porcelain figure.

  Miss Jennifer Honey was a mild and quiet person who never raised her voice and was seldom seen to smile, but there is no doubt she possessed that rare gift for being adored by every small child under her care. She seemed to understand totally the bewilderment and fear that so often overwhelm young children who for the first time in their lives are herded into a classroom and told to obey orders. Some curious warmth that was almost tangible shone out of Miss Honey's face when she spoke to a confused and homesick newcomer to the class.

  Miss Trunchbull, the Headmistress, was something else altogether. She was a gigantic holy terror, a fierce tyrannical monster who frightened the life out of the pupils and teachers alike. There was an aura of menace about her even at a distance, and when she came up close you could almost feel the dangerous heat radiating from her as from a red-hot rod of metal. When she marched - Miss Trunchbull never walked, she always marched like a storm-trooper with long strides and arms aswinging - when she marched along a corridor you could actually hear her snorting as she went, and if a group of children happened to be in her path, she ploughed right on through them like a tank, with small people bouncing off her to left and right. Thank goodness we don't meet many people like her in this world, although they do exist and all of us are likely to come across at least one of them in a lifetime. If you ever do, you should behave as you would if you met an enraged rhinoceros out in the bush - climb up the nearest tree and stay there until it has gone away. This woman, in all her eccentricities and in her appearance, is almost impossible to describe, but I shall make some attempt to do so a little later on. Let us leave her for the moment and go back to Matilda and her first day in Miss Honey's class.

  After the usual business of going through all the names of the children, Miss Honey handed out a brand-new exercise-book to each pupil.

  'You have all brought your own pencils, I hope,' she said.

  'Yes, Miss Honey,' they chanted.

  'Good. Now this is the very first day of school for each one of you. It is the beginning of at least eleven long years of schooling that all of you are going to have to go through. And six of those years will be spent right here at Crunchem Hall, where, as you know, your Headmistress is Miss Trunchbull. Let me for your own good tell you something about Miss Trunchbull. She insists upon strict discipline throughout the school, and if you take my advice you will do your very best to behave yourselves in her presence. Never argue with her. Never answer her back. Always do as she says. If you get on the wrong side of Miss Trunchbull she can liquidize you like a carrot in a kitchen blender. It's nothing to laugh about, Lavender. Take that grin off your face. All of you will be wise to remember that Miss Trunchbull deals very very severely with anyone who gets out of line in this school. Have you got the message?'

  'Yes, Miss Honey,' chirruped eighteen eager little voices.

  'I myself,' Miss Honey went on, 'want to help you to learn as much as possible while you are in this class. That is because I know it will make things easier for you later on. For example, by the end of this week I shall expect every one of you to know the two-times table by heart. And in a year's time I hope you will know all the multiplication tables up to twelve. It will help you enormously if you do. Now then, do any of you happen to have learnt the two-times table already?'

  Matilda put up her hand. She was the only one.

  Miss Honey looked carefully at the tiny girl with dark hair and a round serious face sitting in the second row. 'Wonderful,' she said. 'Please stand up and recite as much of it as you can.'

  Matilda stood up and began to say the two-times table. When she got to twice twelve is twenty-four she didn't stop. She went right on with twice thirteen is twenty-six, twice fourteen is twenty-eight, twice fifteen is thirty, twice sixteen is ...

  'Stop!' Miss Honey said. She had been listening slightly spellbound to this smooth recital, and now she said, 'How far can you go?'

  'How far?' Matilda said. 'Well, I don't really know, Miss Honey. For quite a long way, I think.'

  Miss Honey took a few moments to let this curious statement sink in. 'You mean,' she said, 'that you could tell me what two times twenty-eight is?'

  'Yes, Miss Honey.'

  'What is it?'

  'Fifty