Matilda Read online

  'He's clever at his business,' Matilda said.

  'Clever my foot!' the Trunchbull shouted. 'Miss Honey tells me that you are meant to be clever, too! Well, madam, I don't like clever people! They are all crooked! You are most certainly crooked! Before I fell out with your father, he told me some very nasty stories about the way you behaved at home! But you'd better not try anything in this school, young lady. I shall be keeping a very careful eye on you from now on. Sit down and keep quiet.'

  The First Miracle

  Matilda sat down again at her desk. The Trunchbull seated herself behind the teacher's table. It was the first time she had sat down during the lesson. Then she reached out a hand and took hold of her water-jug. Still holding the jug by the handle but not lifting it yet, she said, 'I have never been able to understand why small children are so disgusting. They are the bane of my life. They are like insects. They should be got rid of as early as possible. We get rid of flies with fly-spray and by hanging up fly-paper. I have often thought of inventing a spray for getting rid of small children. How splendid it would be to walk into this classroom with a gigantic spray-gun in my hands and start pumping it. Or better still, some huge strips of sticky paper. I would hang them all round the school and you'd all get stuck to them and that would be the end of it. Wouldn't that be a good idea, Miss Honey?'

  'If it's meant to be a joke, Headmistress, I don't think it's a very funny one,' Miss Honey said from the back of the class.

  'You wouldn't, would you, Miss Honey?' the Trunchbull said. 'And it's not meant to be a joke. My idea of a perfect school, Miss Honey, is one that has no children in it at all. One of these days I shall start up a school like that. I think it will be very successful.'

  The woman's mad, Miss Honey was telling herself. She's round the twist. She's the one who ought to be got rid of.

  The Trunchbull now lifted the large blue porcelain water-jug and poured some water into her glass. And suddently, with the water, out come the long slimy newt straight into the glass, plop!

  The Trunchbull let out a yell and leapt off her chair as though a firecracker had gone off underneath her. And now the children also saw the long thin slimy yellow-bellied lizard-like creature twisting and turning in the glass, and they squirmed and jumped about as well, shouting, 'What is it? Oh, it's disgusting! It's a snake! It's a baby crocodile! It's an alligator!'

  'Look out, Miss Trunchbull!' cried Lavender. 'I'll bet it bites!'

  The Trunchbull, this mighty female giant, stood there in her green breeches, quivering like a blancmange. She was especially furious that someone had succeeded in making her jump and yell like that because she prided herself on her toughness. She stared at the creature twisting and wriggling in the glass. Curiously enough, she had never seen a newt before. Natural history was not her strong point. She hadn't the faintest idea what this thing was. It certainly looked extremely unpleasant. Slowly she sat down again in her chair. She looked at this moment more terrifying than ever before.

  The fires of fury and hatred were smouldering in her small black eyes.

  'Matilda!' she barked. 'Stand up!'

  'Who, me?' Matilda said. 'What have I done?'

  'Stand up, you disgusting little cockroach!'

  'I haven't done anything, Miss Trunchbull, honestly I haven't. I've never seen that slimy thing before!'

  'Stand up at once, you filthy little maggot!'

  Reluctantly, Matilda got to her feet. She was in the second row. Lavender was in the row behind her, feeling a bit guilty. She hadn't intended to get her friend into trouble. On the other hand, she was certainly not about to own up.

  'You are a vile, repulsive, repellent, malicious little brute!' the Trunchbull was shouting. 'You are not fit to be in this school! You ought to be behind bars, that's where you ought to be! I shall have you drummed out of this establishment in utter disgrace! I shall have the prefects chase you down the corridor and out of the front-door with hockey-sticks! I shall have the staff escort you home under armed guard! And then I shall make absolutely sure you are sent to a reformatory for delinquent girls for the minimum of forty years!'

  The Trunchbull was in such a rage that her face had taken on a boiled colour and little flecks of froth were gathering at the corners of her mouth. But she was not the only one who was losing her cool. Matilda was also beginning to see red. She didn't in the least mind being accused of having done something she had actually done. She could see the justice of that. It was, however, a totally new experience for her to be accused of a crime that she definitely had not committed. She had had absolutely nothing to do with that beastly creature in the glass. By golly, she thought, that rotten Trunchbull isn't going to pin this one on me!

  'I did not do it!' she screamed.

  'Oh yes, you did!' the Trunchbull roared back. 'Nobody else could have thought up a trick like that! Your father was right to warn me about you!' The woman seemed to have lost control of herself completely. She was ranting like a maniac. 'You are finished in this school, young lady!' she shouted. 'You are finished everywhere. I shall personally see to it that you are put away in a place where not even the crows can land their droppings on you! You will probably never see the light of day again!'

  'I'm telling you I did not do it!' Matilda screamed. 'I've never even seen a creature like that in my life!'

  'You have put a ... a ... a crocodile in my drinking water!' the Trunchbull yelled back. 'There is no worse crime in the world against a Headmistress! Now sit down and don't say a word! Go on, sit down at once!'

  'But I'm telling you ...' Matilda shouted, refusing to sit down.

  'I am telling you to shut up!' the Trunchbull roared. 'If you don't shut up at once and sit down I shall remove my belt and let you have it with the end that has the buckle!'

  Slowly Matilda sat down. Oh, the rottenness of it all! The unfairness! How dare they expel her for something she hadn't done!

  Matilda felt herself getting angrier... and angrier ... and angrier ... so unbearably angry that something was bound to explode inside her very soon.

  The newt was still squirming in the tall glass of water. It looked horribly uncomfortable. The glass was not big enough for it. Matilda glared at the Trunchbull. How she hated her. She glared at the glass with the newt in it. She longed to march up and grab the glass and tip the contents, newt and all, over the Trunchbull's head. She trembled to think what the Trunchbull would do to her if she did that.

  The Trunchbull was sitting behind the teacher's table staring with a mixture of horror and fascination at the newt wriggling in the glass. Matilda's eyes were also riveted on the glass. And now, quite slowly, there began to creep over Matilda a most extraordinary and peculiar feeling. The feeling was mostly in the eyes. A kind of electricity seemed to be gathering inside them. A sense of power was brewing in those eyes of hers, a feeling of great strength was settling itself deep inside her eyes. But there was also another feeling which was something else altogether, and which she could not understand. It was like flashes of lightning. Little waves of lightning seemed to be flashing out of her eyes. Her eyeballs were beginning to get hot, as though vast energy was building up somewhere inside them. It was an amazing sensation. She kept her eyes steadily on the glass, and now the power was concentrating itself in one small part of each eye and growing stronger and stronger and it felt as though millions of tiny little invisible arms with hands on them were shooting out of her eyes towards the glass she was staring at.

  'Tip it!' Matilda whispered. 'Tip it over!'

  She saw the glass wobble. It actually tilted backwards a fraction of an inch, then righted itself again. She kept pushing at it with all those millions of invisible little arms and hands that were reaching out from her eyes, feeling the power that was flashing straight from the two little black dots in the very centres of her eyeballs.

  'Tip it!' she whispered again. 'Tip it over!'

  Once more the glass wobbled. She pushed harder still, willing her eyes to shoot out more power. And