Matilda Read online

  Lunchtime came. Today it was sausages and baked beans, Lavender's favourite, but she couldn't eat it.

  'Are you feeling all right, Lavender?' Miss Honey asked from the head of the table.

  'I had such a huge breakfast,' Lavender said, 'I really couldn't eat a thing.'

  Immediately after lunch, she dashed off to the kitchen and found one of the Trunchbul's famous jugs. It was a large bulging thing made of blue-glazed pottery. Lavender filled it half-full of water and carried it, together with a glass, into the classroom and set it on the teacher's table. The classroom was still empty. Quick as a flash, Lavender got her pencil-box from her satchel and slid open the lid just a tiny bit. The newt was lying quite still. With great care, she held the box over the neck of the jug and pulled the lid fully open and tipped the newt in. There was a plop as it landed in the water, then it thrashed around wildly for a few seconds before settling down. And now, to make the newt feel more at home, Lavender decided to give it all the pond-weed from the pencil-box as well.

  The deed was done. All was ready. Lavender put her pencils back into the rather damp pencil-box and returned it to its correct place on her own desk. Then she went out and joined the others in the playground until it was time for the lesson to begin.

  The Weekly Test

  At two o'clock sharp the class assembled, including Miss Honey, who noted that the jug of water and the glass were in the proper place. Then she took up a position standing right at the back. Everyone waited. Suddenly in marched the gigantic figure of the Headmistress in her belted smock and green breeches.

  'Good afternoon, children,' she barked.

  'Good afternoon, Miss Trunchbull,' they chirruped.

  The Headmistress stood before the class, legs apart, hands on hips, glaring at the small boys and girls who sat nervously at their desks in front of her.

  'Not a very pretty sight,' she said. Her expression was one of utter distaste, as though she were looking at something a dog had done in the middle of the floor. 'What a bunch of nauseating little warts you are.'

  Everyone had the sense to stay silent.

  'It makes me vomit,' she went on, 'to think that I am going to have to put up with a load of garbage like you in my school for the next six years. I can see that I'm going to have to expel as many of you as possible as soon as possible to save myself from going round the bend.' She paused and snorted several times. It was a curious noise. You can hear the same sort of thing if you walk through a riding-stable when the horses are being fed. I suppose,' she went on, 'your mothers and fathers tell you you're wonderful. Well, I am here to tell you the opposite, and you'd better believe me. Stand up, everybody!'

  They all got quickly to their feet.

  'Now put your hands out in front of you. And as I walk past I want you to turn them over so I can see if they are clean on both sides.'

  The Trunchbull began a slow march along the rows of desks inspecting the hands. All went well until she came to a small boy in the second row.

  'What's your name?' she barked.

  'Nigel,' the boy said.

  'Nigel what?'

  'Nigel Hicks,' the boy said.

  'Nigel Hicks what?' the Trunchbull bellowed. She bellowed so loud she nearly blew the little chap out of the window.

  'That's it,' Nigel said. 'Unless you want my middle names as well.' He was a brave little fellow and one could see that he was trying not to be scared by the Gorgon who towered above him.

  'I do not want your middle names, you blister!' the Gorgon bellowed. 'What is my name?'

  'Miss Trunchbull,' Nigel said.

  'Then use it when you address me! Now then, let's try again. What is your name?'

  'Nigel Hicks, Miss Trunchbull,' Nigel said.

  'That's better,' the Trunchbull said. 'Your hands are filthy, Nigel! When did you last wash them?'

  'Well, let me think,' Nigel said. 'That's rather difficult to remember exactly. It could have been yesterday or it could have been the day before.'

  The Trunchbull's whole body and face seemed to swell up as though she were being inflated by a bicycle-pump.

  'I knew it!' she bellowed. I knew as soon as I saw you that you were nothing but a piece of filth! What is your father's job, a sewage-worker?'

  'He's a doctor,' Nigel said. 'And a jolly good one. He says we're all so covered with bugs anyway that a bit of extra dirt never hurts anyone.'

  Tm glad he's not my doctor,' the Trunchbull said. 'And why, might I ask, is there a baked bean on the front of your shirt?'

  'We had them for lunch, Miss Trunchbull.'

  'And do you usually put your lunch on the front of your shirt, Nigel? Is that what this famous doctor father of yours has taught you to do?'

  'Baked beans are hard to eat, Miss Trunchbull. They keep falling off my fork.'

  'You are disgusting!' the Trunchbull bellowed. 'You are a walking germ-factory! I don't wish to see any more of you today! Go and stand in the corner on one leg with your face to the wall!'

  'But Miss Trunchbull...'

  'Don't argue with me, boy, or I'll make you stand on your head! Now do as you're told!'

  Nigel went.

  'Now stay where you are, boy, while I test you on your spelling to see if you've learnt anything at all this past week. And don't turn round when you talk to me. Keep your nasty little face to the wall. Now then, spell "write".'

  'Which one?' Nigel asked. 'The thing you do with a pen or the one that means the opposite of wrong?' He happened to be an unusually bright child and his mother had worked hard with him at home on spelling and reading.

  'The one with the pen, you little fool.'

  Nigel spelled it correctly, which surprised the Trunchbull. She thought she had given him a very tricky word, one that he wouldn't yet have learnt, and she was peeved that he had succeeded.

  Then Nigel said, still balancing on one leg and facing the wall, 'Miss Honey taught us how to spell a new very long word yesterday.'

  'And what word was that?' the Trunchbull asked softly. The softer her voice became, the greater the danger, but Nigel wasn't to know this.

  ' "Difficulty",' Nigel said. 'Everyone in the class can spell "difficulty" now.'

  'What nonsense,' the Trunchbull said. 'You are not supposed to learn long words like that until you are at least eight or nine. And don't try to tell me everybody in the class can spell that word. You are lying to me, Nigel.'

  'Test someone,' Nigel said, taking an awful chance. 'Test anyone you like.'

  The Trunchbull's dangerous glittering eyes roved around the classroom. 'You,' she said, pointing at a tiny and rather daft little girl called Prudence, 'spell "difficulty".'

  Amazingly, Prudence spelled it correctly and without a moment's hesitation.

  The Trunchbull was properly taken aback. 'Humph!' she snorted. 'And I suppose Miss Honey wasted the whole of one lesson teaching you to spell that one single word?'

  'Oh no, she didn't,' piped Nigel. 'Miss Honey taught it to us in three minutes so we'll never forget it. She teaches us lots of words in three minutes.'

  'And what exactly is this magic method, Miss Honey?' asked the Headmistress.

  'I'll show you,' piped up the brave Nigel again, coming to Miss Honey's rescue. 'Can I put my other foot down and turn round, please, while I show you?'

  'You may do neither!' snapped the Trunchbull. 'Stay as you are and show me just the same!'

  'All right,' said Nigel, wobbling crazily on his one leg. 'Miss Honey gives us a little song about each word and we all sing it together and we learn to spell it in no time. Would you like to hear the song about "difficulty"?'

  'I should be fascinated,' the Trunchbull said in a voice dripping with sarcasm.

  'Here it is,' Nigel said.

  'Mrs D, Mrs I, Mrs FFI

  Mrs C, Mrs U, Mrs LTY.

  That spells difficulty.'

  'How perfectly ridiculous!' snorted the Trunchbull. 'Why are all these women married? And anyway you're not meant to teach poetry wh