Mr Majeika and the School Caretaker

by Humphrey Carpenter

  It was just then that the trouble started. They were passing a sign on the bank which said: SLOW DOWN FOR MOORED BOATS. When Hamish saw it, he suddenly revved the engine up to full and, with a loud roaring noise, the boat began to move so fast that the moored boats bobbed wildly up and down. A very angry man stuck his head out of one of them. “Can’t you read?” he shouted.

  “Shut up, fathead,” shouted Hamish. “I’m Hamish Bigmore, speed king of the canal!”

  “Stop him, Mr Majeika,” said Jody, who was standing with Mr Majeika in the front part of the boat, which is called the “bow”. Mr Majeika tried to open the door which led into the cabin so that he could run through it and come out at the other end, the “stern”, where Hamish was steering. But the door had banged shut and locked itself.

  “I’ll have to climb along the side of the boat,” said Mr Majeika.

  “Do be careful, Mr Majeika,” shouted Jody above the roaring noise of the engine. She was so worried that she followed him as he started to climb along the very narrow ledge which ran along the outside of the boat.

  At that moment, they reached a bend in the canal. The boat took the bend at a frightening speed – and suddenly there was a very narrow bridge right in front of them. “Stop, Hamish!” yelled Mr Majeika. “Put the engine into reverse!”

  Hamish threw the engine lever into reverse, but it was too late. The boat lurched forward and crashed into the bridge. Jody screamed – and so did Mr Majeika. The boat had squeezed their legs against the side of the bridge.

  They clung on to the edge of the boat, as Hamish Bigmore at last brought the boat to a standstill and switched off the engine.

  “Are you all right, Mr Majeika?” called Jody, whose legs were hurting badly.

  “No,” said Mr Majeika. “I don’t think I am.”

  3. Time to fly

  When they saw what had happened, Thomas and Pete jumped on to the bank, tied up the boat, and helped Jody and Mr Majeika back on to the boat, where they lay down. Their legs were cut and bleeding and looked badly hurt.

  “What are we going to do?” said Thomas, looking very worried. “We’re miles from any houses.”

  “Mr Majeika, can’t you do some magic?” said Pete. “Surely you know a spell to make you and Jody better?”

  “I wish I did,” groaned Mr Majeika. “There is a spell for that in my spell book. But I haven’t got the book here and I can’t remember it.”

  “Perhaps the best thing would be to start the boat again,” said Thomas, “then we’ll take it on to where there are houses, and then we can phone for an ambulance.”

  “Please be quick,” said Jody. “I think our legs are broken – at least I’m sure mine are – and we need to get to hospital as soon as possible.”

  “I’ve been looking at the map,” said Pete, sounding worried, “and there aren’t any houses for ages. What on earth are we going to do?”

  Melanie, who usually started crying as soon as anything went wrong, had been completely silent. Suddenly she said, “What about your magic carpet, Mr Majeika?” She had remembered Mr Majeika’s first day at St Barty’s School, when he had arrived on a magic carpet.

  “That would have helped, Melanie,” said Mr Majeika. “But I haven’t got it here.”

  “No, but you once magicked another carpet into flying,” said Melanie. “Couldn’t you do that again?”

  “I suppose I could,” said Mr Majeika, shutting his eyes because his legs were hurting so much. “But there isn’t a carpet in the boat cabin is there?”

  “What I meant, Mr Majeika,” said Melanie, “is that you could magic the boat into flying. Then you and Jody could get to hospital very quickly.”

  “That’s brilliant,” said Thomas. “But can you do it, Mr Majeika?”

  Five minutes later, two old men fishing by the side of the canal were having an argument about the size of a fish one of them had caught.

  “It was sixty centimetres long,” said the one who had caught it.

  “No it wasn’t,” said the other. “It was only about twenty centimetres. You’re always telling whopping great stories which aren’t true.”

  “And I’ve had enough of your rudeness,” said the first old man, getting to his feet and marching off, over a stile and across a field.

  The second old man started to pack up his fishing rod. Suddenly there was a noise overhead, like a low-flying aircraft. He looked up – and nearly fell into the canal with surprise.

  A moment later, he was running across the field after the first old man. “Jim!” he called. “Jim! You’ll never guess what I’ve seen – a boat that flies!”

  The first old man turned round and laughed at him. “Now who’s telling whopping great stories which aren’t true?” he mocked.

  At the Accident and Emergency entrance of the Bartyshire County Hospital, two ambulancemen were folding up a stretcher and putting it back into their ambulance, when there was a loud whooshing noise, and something very big came down from the sky and landed next to them.

  The men stared. “Bert, what did you put in that coffee I was just drinking?”

  said one of them. “I’m seeing things. I’m seeing a canal boat that flies.”

  “So am I, Fred,” said the other, “so am I.”

  Pete, who had been steering the boat as it flew from the canal to the hospital (he found that he could use the tiller to steer it), climbed off and went up to the ambulancemen. “Can you help us, please?” he said. “We have two injured passengers on board. We think they’ve got broken legs.”

  The ambulancemen looked very white in the face. “We’re not feeling too good ourselves,” said the one called Fred. “You’ve just given us a bit of a shock. But we’ll get two stretchers on to the boat and get the patients off right away.”

  In a few moments, Mr Majeika and Jody had been carefully lifted off the boat and taken into the Accident and Emergency department, where a kind nurse and doctor attended to them at once. The cuts on their legs were cleaned up and they were taken through to the X-ray department, so that pictures could be taken to find out if their legs were broken

  “I’m afraid they are broken,” said the doctor a few minutes later. “But don’t worry. We’ll soon have them mended.”

  “Will I have plaster on my legs?” said Jody. She hoped she would, because then all her friends could write their names on it.

  “Oh yes,” said the doctor. “You’ll be in plaster for weeks and weeks.”

  “Hooray!” said Jody. “Won’t that be fun, Mr Majeika?”

  “I suppose so,” said Mr Majeika gloomily. He didn’t think it would be fun at all.

  Meanwhile the rest of Class Three were ringing up their parents from the payphone at the hospital entrance, to say what had happened and arrange to be collected. All except Hamish Bigmore. He had found another payphone, in a different part of the building, and he was making a secret call.

  “Is that Uncle Wilf?” he said, giggling nastily. “This is your nephew, Hamish.

  If you and You Know Who come quickly to the Bartyshire Hospital, you’ll get the chance you’ve been waiting for!”

  4. Kidnapped!

  At five o’clock that afternoon, Jody opened her eyes. She was lying in a comfortable bed but, though her legs had stopped hurting, they were feeling strange. She lifted her head off the pillow and looked down at them. Both of them were in plaster.

  “Can I be the first to write my name on them?” said a voice. It was Thomas. He was sitting by her bedside, and in the dim light of the hospital ward Jody hadn’t seen him.

  “No, I want to be the first,” said another voice. It was Pete. He was sitting on the other side of the bed.

  “There’s no need to quarrel,” said Jody. “One of you can write on my left leg, the other on my right leg.” So they did.

  A nurse came up to Jody’s bed, took her temperature, felt her pulse, and made some notes on a chart. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “Not bad, thank you,” said Jody
. “When can I get up?”

  “We can fetch you a wheelchair now, if you like,” said the nurse. “You’ll need to get used to going around in it. Then in a few weeks we can take off this heavy plaster and put something more lightweight on your legs to protect them, and then you can start going around on crutches. Your legs weren’t badly broken – the bones are just cracked a bit – so they won’t take long to mend.”

  “Could I really get into the wheelchair now?” asked Jody. The nurse smiled, and went off to fetch it. “How’s Mr Majeika getting on?” Jody asked Thomas and Pete.

  “We don’t know,” said Pete. “We haven’t been to see him yet. He’s in another ward.”

  “Maybe we could all go when you’ve got your wheelchair,” said Thomas.

  The nurse came back with the wheelchair. She and another nurse helped Jody out of bed and into it. Thomas and Pete wanted to push the chair, but the nurse said that Jody must learn to work it herself. It wasn’t very hard – you just turned the wheels with your hands.

  “Can I go round the hospital with my friends?” Jody asked.

  The two nurses looked at each other. “Well, we shouldn’t really let you,” said the first nurse. “But if you promise to be back in ten minutes, I expect it won’t do any harm.”

  They opened the door of the ward, so Jody could get her chair through it, and then they set off down the passage, which was very long. All kinds of notices pointed in different directions: X-RAY, PHYSIOTHERAPY, SURGICAL WARD, MATERNITY WARD, GERIATRIC WARD, ACCIDENT & EMERGENCY. “Which way shall we go?” said Pete.

  “If we start with Accident and Emergency,” said Jody, “they should be able to tell us which ward he’s in.”

  “It won’t be the Maternity Ward,” said Pete. “That’s where people go to have babies.”

  “And it won’t be the Geriatric Ward,” said Thomas, “because ‘geriatric’ means old people, and Mr Majeika isn’t old.”

  They reached Accident and Emergency. There was no one there except a nurse sitting behind a desk. Her cap was very large, and hid the top half of her face. The bottom half was mostly covered by the collar of her uniform, which had been pulled up very high. All that could be seen was her nose, which was very long and had a pair of glasses perched on the end of it.

  Thomas and Pete, and Jody in her wheelchair, went up to the desk. “We’re looking for someone called Mr Majeika,” said Jody.

  The nurse answered them in a strange squeaky voice, “Nobody here with that name. Push off!”

  Jody, Thomas and Pete looked at each other. It wasn’t the way that nurses usually behave, and her appearance was very, very odd.

  “He was brought in this afternoon with broken legs,” said Thomas. “We need to know where they’ve taken him.”

  “None of your business!” squeaked the nurse. “Now, push off, or you’ll get something broken.”

  “Listen,” said Pete angrily, “he must be in one of the wards. Just tell us which one, please.”

  The nurse pointed with a finger. “That one over there!” she snapped.

  They all looked in the direction she was pointing in. A notice said MATERNITY WARD.

  “He can’t be in there,” said Jody. “Do tell us, please.”

  “All right, dearies, I’ll tell you,” said the nurse, getting up from her desk. “Come along with Nurse Ermintrude and see where stupid old – I mean, nice, clever – Mr Majeika has been put, tee hee!” She came out from behind the desk, and they could see that she was wearing big boots beneath her uniform.

  “I don’t think we should go with her,” whispered Jody.

  “But we’ve got to find Mr Majeika,” whispered Thomas. “Something funny is going on, and he may need rescuing.”

  “Come along, dearies!” squeaked Nurse Ermintrude. They followed her through several swing doors and down a dark, narrow passage. Suddenly Nurse Ermintrude stopped and opened a door. “He’s in there!” she squeaked. “In you all go!”

  Thomas and Pete did as they were told, but Jody lingered in the passage.

  “Be careful,” she whispered to them.

  Nurse Ermintrude turned to her.

  “Come along, dearie,” she cooed. “Don’t you want to see your friend, Mr Majeika? Well, come in here, dearie, and you will – for the last time!” And she grabbed the handles of Jody’s wheelchair and pushed it through the doorway.

  “This is just a cupboard full of mops

  and brooms,” said Thomas. “There’s no one in here.” But it was too late. The door had been slammed and locked. They were shut in!

  “Tee hee,” came Nurse Ermintrude’s voice, and they heard her boots thumping away down the passage. “Got you this time, my dearies. And now to get Majeika!”

  They all looked at each other, and said, “Wilhelmina Worlock!”

  Wilhelmina Worlock was a witch. She was the enemy of Mr Majeika and Class Three – except for Hamish Bigmore, who was always helping her with her mischief. She called him her Star Pupil.

  “What are we going to do now?” said Thomas miserably, rattling the handle of the cupboard door. “I suppose if we shout “Help!” for long enough, someone will come.”

  “But by that time, she’ll have done some harm to Mr Majeika,” said Pete. “We’ve got to escape as quickly as we can.”

  Jody was looking around her – and upwards too. “Look,” she said. “There’s a kind of window in the roof. Maybe if you could get up there, you could open it and climb out.”

  “Stand underneath it,” Pete said to Thomas, “and I’ll climb on your shoulders.”

  “No, you stand there,” Thomas said to Pete, “and I’ll climb up.”

  “Oh, do stop arguing,” said Jody. “There’s no time to lose.”

  Pete climbed on Thomas’s shoulders. “Yes, the window opens,” he said. “And gosh! Guess what I can see!”

  “I don’t want to hear about the view,” said Thomas. “Just get that window

  open and get out of it before my shoulders get broken too. We’ve got to rescue Mr Majeika!”

  “But that’s the point!” shouted Pete. “I can see him – I can see Mr Majeika! He’s on a stretcher, and a nurse and a doctor are putting him into an ambulance. And there’s someone helping them. How odd. It’s Hamish Bigmore… Oh no!”

  “What is it?” said Jody anxiously.

  “It’s not an ambulance, it’s a big black van. And it’s not a doctor and a nurse, it’s Wilhelmina Worlock and Uncle Wilf. Mr Majeika is being kidnapped!”

  5. Better than a broomstick

  Before Jody and Thomas had time to say a word, Pete had scrambled out of the window and vanished. “Come back!” shouted Thomas. “What about us?”

  “Perhaps he’ll run round and unlock the door,” said Jody.

  “I bet he doesn’t,” said Thomas. “My brother never thinks.”

  “Listen!” said Thomas. “I can hear Pete shouting something.” They listened, and could certainly hear Pete’s voice. But they couldn’t make out what he was saying. And then there was the sound of Uncle Wilf’s van being started.

  “Oh no,” said Jody. “I think they’re driving off. It doesn’t sound as if Pete has managed to rescue Mr Majeika.”

  They could still hear Pete shouting, and now there was a loud noise of someone banging on what sounded like the side of the van. But then the van drove off, and the banging noise faded away with it.

  There was silence. “What did I tell you?” said Thomas. “Just like my brother to go off on his own adventure, leaving us stuck here. It isn’t fair.”

  “I don’t know that he’s having an adventure,” said Jody. “Perhaps Wilhelmina Worlock and Uncle Wilf have kidnapped him too.”

  “I almost wish they have,” said Thomas. “It would serve him right for being so silly. Oh, if only we could get out of here.” He rattled the door but it remained firmly locked, and there was no sound of anyone in the passage outside. “Help!” Thomas shouted, but no one was near enough to hear.

  �
��Thomas,” said Jody after a few moments, “I’ve been thinking and I’ve got an idea. Do you remember that Mr Majeika made the canal boat fly?”

  “Of course I remember,” said Thomas. “It’s about the only exciting thing that’s happened for years and years and years. Well, several weeks,” he added, because it hadn’t been that long since Mr Majeika last did some magic.

  “And do you remember how he did it?” asked Jody eagerly.

  “Of course I remember,” said Thomas.

  “That’s wonderful!’ gasped Jody. “I was hoping that you might remember, but I didn’t think you would. How did he do it?”

  “He did it by magic, of course,” said Thomas.

  “I know that, you fathead!” said Jody crossly. “I meant, do you remember which spell he used? The actual words?”

  Thomas shook his head. “No, I don’t,” he said. “He was just whispering them to himself, lying on a bunk on the boat.”

  “That’s right,” said Jody. “He was whispering because his legs were hurting so much that he didn’t really want to talk. I was lying next to him, and I think I can remember some of them…” She shut her eyes, and started to whisper some strange words.

  “That sounds like the right sort of thing,” said Thomas.

  “I wish I could remember the rest of them,” said Jody, opening her eyes. “But I don’t think I – Oops! Help! Look!”

  Thomas didn’t need to be told to look. His eyes were almost popping out of his head.

  Jody’s wheelchair was rising up. Just a few inches at first, then slowly up and up and up. The wheels were hovering in front of Thomas’s eyes. Then – whoosh! The chair lifted very fast, just like a rocket taking off, and whizzed right through the open window above them, which luckily was big enough for the chair to go through it.

  “Help!” shouted Jody. “I’m flying!” without thinking what she was doing, she grabbed hold of the wheelchair brake