Mr Majeika and the Music Teacher

by Humphrey Carpenter

  Mr Majeika nodded gloomily. ‘That sounds exactly like Wilhelmina Worlock,’ he said.

  ‘Do you know her well?’ asked Thomas.

  ‘All too well,’ said Mr Majeika miserably. ‘A particularly nasty type of witch. In fact a horrid old crone, not to put too fine a point on it.’

  ‘But you were a wizard,’ said Thomas, ‘and you didn’t do horrid things, did you?’

  Mr Majeika shook his head. ‘I was a white magician,’ he explained. ‘Wilhelmina Worlock does black magic – or at least fairly dirty grey. I wouldn’t want to set eyes on her again.’ He shuddered.

  ‘Well,’ said Pete, ‘I expect Mr Potter will soon get rid of her.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Mr Majeika.

  *

  Mr Potter was still trapped in his office with Miss Worlock. He had agreed that she could teach music at St Barty’s, in return for which she set him free from the door-handle and took the spider off his finger. ‘Pretty little thing,’ she cooed at it, tucking it into her pocket. ‘Now,’ she said briskly to Mr Potter, ‘I want you to pay me a hundred pounds a week.’

  ‘Ridiculous!’ spluttered Mr Potter. ‘Thirty pounds for two mornings’ work is all I can possibly manage.’ He took out his handkerchief to mop his head – and found to his horror that it was full of big slimy worms.

  ‘Uggh!’ he cried, shaking them on to the carpet.

  Miss Worlock gathered them lovingly, and put them in her pocket along with the toad and the spider. ‘Aren’t they sweet?’ she purred.

  ‘Well, fifty pounds,’ said Mr Potter, and sat down wearily in his chair – leaping to his feet

  almost at once, because a live crab, appearing from nowhere, had attached its claws to his bottom. ’Ow!’ he cried. ’I’ve had enough of this! Take a hundred pounds a week, then, you wretched woman, though goodness knows how I can pay you. But get out of my office!’

  ‘Tee-hee!’ said Miss Worlock. ‘Don’t worry, dearie, I’m off! But you never asked about the letters on my card.’

  ‘Letters?’ said Mr Potter weakly.

  ‘DipW,’ said Miss Worlock, ‘and LRCW. My qualifications. They stand for “Diploma in Witchcraft” and “Licensed by the Royal College of Witches”. But I expect you could have guessed that by now. Tee-hee! Bye-bye!’

  3. The orchestra

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ said Jody gloomily, ‘is why a witch should want to come to St Barty’s.’

  ‘Mr Majeika thinks it’s probably for the same reason that he came,’ said Thomas. ‘He says you can’t make any money as a magician these days. You’ve got to get some other job. But it’s an awful pity that she chose St Barty’s.’

  They were walking across the playground to the school hall for the first rehearsal of Miss Worlock’s orchestra.

  ‘Here,’ shouted a voice, ‘give me a hand with my double bass.’ It was Hamish Bigmore.

  Thomas and Pete, who only had recorders to carry, unwillingly picked up the big instrument. ‘Quick march!’ snapped Hamish. ‘Get on with it.’

  ‘You’re only carrying the little end,’ grumbled Pete.

  In the hall, Miss Worlock was putting music on the music-stands. ‘Ugh,’ muttered Thomas, ‘I think she looks horrid.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Hamish. ‘I think she looks very nice indeed. Not like silly old Mr Majeika.’

  One by one, the other children arrived. ‘Quiet, everyone!’ called Miss Worlock when they were all there. ‘I am your new music teacher.’ She smiled a horrible smile. ‘You may like to know a little about my method. There are all kinds of ways of teaching music. There’s the Sol-Fa method. That means you learn the names of the notes: Doh, Ray, Me, Fa, Sol. That’s all rubbish, and I don’t want to waste time with it. There’s also the Suzuki method. That was invented by a Japanese person, and we’re not in Japan, so we don’t want to know about that. My method is called the So-Spooky method. Can anyone guess what that means?’

  There was silence. Only Class Three knew that Miss Worlock was a witch, but everyone could see she was a thoroughly nasty person.

  ‘The So-Spooky method,’ went on Miss Worlock, ‘means that you’ve got to practise your instruments very hard, otherwise something oh-so-spooky will happen to you. Have you got that clear? Very well, let’s get on with the music.’

  Everyone picked up their instruments.

  ‘This term,’ said Miss Worlock, ‘we’re going to learn a piece of music called “The Carnival of the Animals”. We’ll begin straight away. And I want you to play the right notes, or else…’

  She sat down at the piano. ‘The first piece is a March,’ she called out. ‘Off we go. One, two, three, four.’

  She began to play.

  A terrible noise rose up all round the hall. Recorders squeaked like mice caught in a trap, violins scraped like rusty door-hinges, clarinets howled like dogs calling to the moon, trumpets blared like lorries hooting in a traffic jam. ‘STOP!’ shouted Miss Worlock after a moment. ‘That’s terrible! Didn’t you listen to

  my warning? Now, play the right notes, or you’ll know what the So-Spooky method means soon enough. Off we go again. One, two, three, four.’

  This time the noise was even worse. ‘Eee-ooo-uuu-iii-eee!’ squeaked the recorders. ‘Zzee-zzii-zzyy!’ scraped the violins. ‘Wwoo-wwuu-wwoo!’ howled the clarinets. ‘Raa-raa-raaaaaaaa!’ blared the trumpets.

  ‘That’s ENOUGH!’ screamed Miss Worlock. ‘Toads! That’s what I ought to turn you into! Horrid slimy toads, every one of you! I’ve never heard such a noise in all my life.’

  A hand went up at the back. It was Jody. ‘Please, miss,’ she said, ‘it’s not our fault. You told us to get instruments, and bring them to school, but you haven’t taught us how to play them properly. Most of us have never done music before.’

  ‘That’s right,’ murmured everyone. ‘We just don’t know how to play.’

  Miss Worlock glared at them. ‘Well then, teach yourselves!’ she snarled. ‘You’re not babies. Take the instruments home, and find out how to play them. If you can’t discover by yourselves, then get a book. You idiots! Any questions?’

  ‘Yes, miss.’ It was a rather cheeky girl from Mr Majeika’s class called Clare. ‘You’re the music teacher, so you’re supposed to teach us, aren’t you?’

  ‘Do you want to be turned into something very nasty?’ sneered Miss Worlock at her. ‘No? Then don’t be rude. Any more complaints?’

  ‘No complaints at all,’ said a voice from the back of the orchestra. It was Hamish Bigmore. ‘Anyone can play properly if they try. Look!’ And he began to saw away at his double bass, pom pom, pom pom, pom pom, pom pom. It was just the same two notes, again and again. He had propped the big instrument up in a corner, and was using two hands on the bow – he wasn’t nearly tall enough to reach the top of the strings and change the notes. Pom pom, pom pom, pom pom, pom pom.

  Everyone began to laugh.

  ‘Silence!’ screamed Miss Worlock. ‘Well, at least there’s one person who takes his music seriously. Well done!’ she called out to Hamish Bigmore. ‘In fact it looks as if you’re going to be my star pupil.’

  *

  After that, Miss Worlock made the orchestra practise for hours and hours every morning, even though Mr Potter said that music was only supposed to be on Thursdays. But all he got for his trouble was a pocket full of black beetles. Miss Worlock told him she’d think of something nastier if he didn’t shut up. He went to his office and locked the door, to hide from the horrible music teacher. He tried to work out how he could find a hundred pounds to give her each week. In the end he decided to sack two of the dinner ladies, and give her their wages. But that meant that he had to serve out dinner himself.

  The worst time for the children in the orchestra wasn’t, however, the practices with Miss Worlock, but the weekend. Thomas and Pete took their recorders home with them, because Miss Worlock had told the orchestra that everyone must practise hard on Saturday and Sunday. At first they forgot all about it and w
ent off to play football, or on bike rides. However, by lunch time on Saturday, Pete complained to Thomas that his fingers were itching very nastily.

  ‘Mine too,’ said Thomas. ‘I wonder if it’s chickenpox.’

  Then, almost by chance, Thomas picked up his recorder, when he was looking for something in the sitting-room, and the itching stopped. He called Pete, and Pete found that his itchy fingers stopped when he picked up his recorder.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Pete, ‘I’m afraid that this is her So-Spooky method. She’s going to make us practise.’

  Sure enough, on Monday morning everyone else complained that they’d itched all weekend, till they’d done at least two hours’ practice on their instruments.

  Because everyone was working so hard at their music, the orchestra was quite a bit better on Monday, and most of the instruments sounded less like animals screaming. But it was still a fairly terrible noise and Miss Worlock looked as angry as ever.

  ‘ “Carnival of the Animals” indeed!’ she snarled, after they had tried to play the March yet again. ‘The best you’ll ever sound like is a herd of elephants.’ Then suddenly her eyes lit up. ‘Elephants!’ she cried. ‘ “The Elephant!” ’ And she turned to Hamish Bigmore. ‘You alone,’ she told him, ‘are making a nice noise on your instrument. And you shall be the star performer. You shall play the solo in the best of all the tunes in “The Carnival of the Animals”, the tune that’s called “The Elephant”. Listen!’

  And Miss Worlock sat down at the piano and played a heavy, lumbering tune that

  certainly sounded very like an elephant walking up and down: ‘Rum-tum-tum, tum-tiddle-iddle, um-tum-tum-tum…’

  When she had finished, she turned to Hamish and said: ‘Do you think you can play that?’

  Hamish grinned. ‘I’m sure I can,’ he said, ‘if I have some help. Give me two people to change the notes – they’ll do’ (and he pointed at Thomas and Pete) ‘and I’ll play “The Elephant” better than you’ve ever heard it!’

  *

  And so, much against their will, Thomas and Pete found themselves Hamish Bigmore’s slaves. ‘We have to do all the real work,’ grumbled Thomas, ‘while he just stands there and pulls his bow to and fro.’

  They had to stand on chairs, one on each side of the double bass, and, while Hamish sawed to and fro with the bow, they had to do all the tricky work of putting the right strings down with their fingers. Naturally they often made mistakes, and Miss Worlock shouted and screamed at them, and threatened to turn them into toads and other nasty things. Meanwhile she petted Hamish Bigmore, and told him how marvellous he was.

  ‘What I can’t understand,’ Pete said to Hamish one morning, after they had been sweating for hours at ‘The Elephant’, ‘is why you’re being so nice to her. Can’t you see she’s a horrid old bag who means no good to anyone?’

  ‘Of course I can,’ grinned Hamish. ‘But just think what I’m going to get out of it. She’s told me that if I play well in the concert at the end of term, she’ll teach me everything.’

  ‘Teach you everything?’ repeated Thomas. ‘Do you mean music?’

  ‘No, idiot,’ sneered Hamish. ‘I mean magic. I’m going to get my revenge on Mr Majeika. By the time I’m finished, I’ll have learnt how to turn him into a frog. Just you see!’

  4. Trouble in the staffroom

  ‘Please,’ said Jody to Mr Majeika, ‘you must do something. Otherwise Hamish will learn to be a black magician, and we’ll none of us be safe.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ Mr Majeika said, scratching his head gloomily.

  ‘Surely you want Miss Worlock out of the school as much as everyone else does?’ said Pete.

  Mr Majeika nodded. ‘She’s quite impossible,’ he said. ‘She’s taken over the staffroom, and she keeps cooking horrible spells and things in there. None of us dares go in, the smell is so nasty. And we can’t get on with teaching our classes, she’s always having orchestra practice all the time.’

  ‘Couldn’t you get rid of her by magic?’ asked Jody. ‘I mean, you must know some spells that she doesn’t. Wouldn’t that get rid of her?’

  Mr Majeika looked doubtful. ‘Spells are tricky things,’ he said. ‘They often go wrong, or don’t work in the way you intend them to. But I suppose I could have a try…’

  He set off nervously for the staffroom, Thomas, Pete and Jody following him. He seemed very anxious, and was obviously glad to have them with him.

  Outside the staffroom, two of the other teachers were hanging about, looking fed up. ‘We want to make some coffee,’ one of them said, ‘but we can’t go in because of her.’

  Nobody needed to ask who was meant by ‘her’. Even in the passage, the smell was terrible. And when Mr Majeika opened the door, clouds of steam and green-looking smoke came billowing out.

  ‘Tee-hee,’ said a voice from inside, ‘come and have elevenses with Auntie Wilhelmina!’

  Anxiously, they all stepped inside. Miss Worlock had taken over the whole room. She had lit a fire in the fireplace, and bubbling on it was a cauldron of foul-smelling stuff, all green and scummy.

  ‘Have a cup of Auntie’s Morning Mixture!’ said Miss Worlock, who seemed to be much more friendly when she wasn’t teaching music. She dipped a mug into the cauldron and handed it to Mr Majeika.

  Thomas could see that there were nasty-looking things swimming about in it. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, just a touch of this and a dash of that, dearie. Tee-hee!’ said Miss Worlock, pointing at an assortment of half-opened tins scattered around the table. They were labelled, Eye of Newt, Bats’ Tongues in Tomato Sauce, Curried Frog Spawn, and Pigs’ Ears in Ditchwater (with added Vitamin C).

  ‘Yuck!’ said the children. But Mr Majeika, wanting to be polite, had taken the steaming mug from Miss Worlock.

  ‘One lump or two?’ asked Miss Worlock, holding out what looked like a sugar bowl.

  ‘Two, please,’ said Mr Majeika – and then he sprang back in horror, as she dropped two evil-looking things into his mug. ‘What are those?’ he cried.

  ‘Oh, just a little thing I put together myself,’ cackled Miss Worlock. ‘Black beetles coated with mouldy cheese. I’ve got a deep freeze full of them at home.’

  ‘I, er, I don’t think they would agree with me,’ said Mr Majeika unsteadily, putting down his mug. ‘Now, er, Wilhelmina, you and I are old acquaintances, I wouldn’t exactly say friends, but –’

  ‘Not friends, no, dearie,’ Miss Worlock screeched merrily. ‘Do you remember the time on Walpurgis Night when I –’

  ‘Don’t remind me!’ said Mr Majeika, looking pale. ‘But what I have come to say is this. St Barty’s School already has one wizard, that is, me, and any magic that’s to be done here is my concern. There isn’t room for two of us. You’ve no right to come barging in here like this and making such a terrible nuisance of yourself. Now, be a good witch – er, music teacher – and pack your bags and leave us in peace.’

  ‘What a pretty speech!’ cackled Miss Worlock. ‘And what do you intend to do about it, pray, my fine wizard?’

  ‘Do about it?’ asked Mr Majeika anxiously.

  ‘How do you intend to get me out of here, you white wizard?’ Miss Worlock said these last words so that they sounded the rudest thing in the world.

  ‘Well, that is, er,’ muttered Mr Majeika, ‘I do have my magic powers.’

  ‘Magic powers? Magic powers?’ cackled Miss Worlock. ‘You think that you can get me out of here by magic? Just you try! Tee-hee!’ And, with these words, she suddenly flew up into the air and landed on top of the bookcase. ‘Go on!’ she sneered. ‘Show me!’

  ‘Oh dear,’ sighed Mr Majeika. ‘I was afraid it would come to this. Er, let me think, now. Well, I suppose…’ And, after considering the matter for a moment, he suddenly flung one hand out in front of him.

  From his fingers there leapt a blue flame. It crackled and danced about the room, lighting up Miss Worlock’s cooking pot and tins, fizzing round the table and the boo
kshelves, and finally settling on Miss Worlock herself, who seemed about to go up in flames as the blue fire crackled and sizzled over her from top to toe.

  But Miss Worlock merely looked bored, and yawned, and after a few moments the blue fire died away. Mr Majeika seemed tired after the effort of making it, but Miss Worlock was quite unharmed.

  ‘Phosphorescent fire?’ she laughed horribly. ‘Is that all you can do? Lawks, dearie, you can buy that stuff at Tesco’s now. I can see I’ve got a thing or two to teach you.’ And she pointed her finger at Mr Majeika, in just the same way that he had jabbed his arm towards her.

  Thomas, Pete and Jody expected poor Mr Majeika to burst into flames. But in fact nothing at all happened and he looked as relieved as they did, and put his hand into his pocket to get a handkerchief to wipe his forehead. Then suddenly he cried: ‘Ugh! What’s this?’ And the children could see that his hand was covered with a nasty mess.

  ‘Hamish Bigmore’s lunch,’ cackled Miss Worlock from the top of the bookcase. ‘Or at least, what he left on his plate. Half-chewed sausage, mushy peas, and mashed potato. You’ll find it all in your pocket, dearie – by magic!’

  It was true. Mr Majeika’s pocket had suddenly become full of messy food. ‘What a horrid trick,’ said Jody. ‘But can’t you think of something else to do to her, Mr Majeika?’

  Mr Majeika sighed, then said: ‘Well, this might work.’ And he began to chant some strange words in a low voice.

  Instantly the room became dark, and a cold wind seemed to blow through it. The children thought they could no longer be indoors. They seemed to have been transported to a cold, bleak moorland, with a storm blowing all around them. Then, in the distance, they heard a terrible howling which all too quickly

  was getting dreadfully near. In a moment, out of the mist there loomed red eyes. Huge shapes could be seen, and Jody cried out: ‘Wolves!’ The dreadful animals howled and snarled as they bounded past the children, and Thomas and Pete expected to see them snatch