Mr Majeika and the School Trip Read online

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  MR MAJEIKA AND THE

  SCHOOL TRIP

  Humphrey Carpenter (1946-2005), the author and creator of Mr Majeika, was born and educated in Oxford. He went to a school called the Dragon School where exciting things often happened and there were some very odd teachers – you could even call it magical! He became a full-time writer in 1975 and was the author of many award-winning biographies. As well as the Mr Majeika titles, his children’s books also included Shakespeare Without the Boring Bits and More Shakespeare Without the Boring Bits. He wrote plays for radio and theatre and founded the children’s drama group The Mushy Pea Theatre Company. He played the tuba, double bass, bass saxophone and keyboard.

  Humphrey once said, “The nice thing about being a writer is that you can make magic happen without learning tricks. Words are the only tricks you need. I can write: ‘He floated up to the ceiling, and a baby rabbit came out of his pocket, grew wings, and flew away.’ And you will believe that it really happened! That’s magic, isn’t it?”

  Books by Humphrey Carpenter

  MR MAJEIKA

  MR MAJEIKA AND THE DINNER LADY

  MR MAJEIKA AND THE GHOST TRAIN

  MR MAJEIKA AND THE HAUNTED HOTEL

  MR MAJEIKA AND THE MUSIC TEACHER

  MR MAJEIKA AND THE SCHOOL BOOK WEEK

  MR MAJEIKA AND THE SCHOOL CARETAKER

  MR MAJEIKA AND THE SCHOOL INSPECTOR

  MR MAJEIKA AND THE SCHOOL PLAY

  MR MAJEIKA AND THE SCHOOL TRIP

  MR MAJEIKA ON THE INTERNET

  MR MAJEIKA VANISHES

  MR MAJEIKA AND THE LOST SPELL BOOK

  THE PUFFIN BOOK OF CLASSIC

  CHILDREN’S STORIES (Ed.)

  SHAKESPEARE WITHOUT THE BORING BITS

  MORE SHAKESPEARE WITHOUT THE

  BORING BITS

  HUMPHREY CARPENTER

  Mr Majeika and the

  School Trip

  Illustrated by Frank Rodgers

  PUFFIN

  With thanks to Eleanor Henderson, who asked for another Mr Majeika book, and to St Ebbe’s First School, Oxford, who were the first audience for it – and special thanks to the person who thought of the rubber duck

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell,

  Victoria 3124, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,

  New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland,

  New Zealand

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published 1999

  23

  Text copyright © Humphrey Carpenter, 1999

  Illustrations copyright © Frank Rodgers, 1999

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN:978-0-14-193909-4

  Contents

  1. Who’s For Lunch?

  2. St Barty’s For Sale

  3. Just the Job

  1. Who’s For Lunch?

  “I have an exciting announcement for Class Three,” said Mr Potter, the head teacher of St Barty’s School, at assembly one morning in April. “You’ll all be going off for three days to an outdoor activity centre to do all sorts of exciting things.”

  “Hooray!” shouted almost everybody in Class Three, though they weren’t quite sure what an outdoor activity centre was, or what kind of exciting things Mr Potter meant.

  The only person who didn’t cheer was the worst-behaved boy in Class Three, Hamish Bigmore. “Boo!” he said loudly.

  “Now, Hamish,” said Mr Potter crossly, “don’t be so silly. There’s a big river at the outdoor activity centre, and you’ll be able to go swimming and canoeing and caving.”

  “What’s caving, Mr Potter?” asked Jody, who was standing next to Hamish.

  “It’s very exciting, Jody,” said Mr Potter. “You go into a hole in the ground and you follow an underground passage until you get into a cave.”

  “That’s not exciting,” grumbled Hamish. “That’s boring. Who wants to go poking about in a smelly old cave?”

  But everyone else in Class Three was very pleased. So was their teacher, Mr Majeika.

  “It’ll be fun,” he said. “I used to live in a cave myself, when I was young and was still learning my spells.”

  Class Three liked hearing about what Mr Majeika had done before he came to St Barty’s, because he hadn’t been a teacher then. He’d been a wizard.

  “Was it a nice cave, Mr Majeika?” asked Thomas and Pete, the twins.

  “Very nice,” said Mr Majeika. “The walls were covered in bright-green slime, and there was a family of bats living in the roof of the cave.”

  “Yuck!” said Jody. “It sounds horrid. I don’t think I want to go into a cave if it’s going to be like that.”

  “Class Four went to the outdoor activity centre last year,” said Pete. “There was a very narrow passage into one of the caves, and their teacher, Mr Hodgkiss, got stuck. It was ages before they could get him out.”

  Hamish’s eyes brightened. “Ah,” he said. “I want to go caving after all. I can’t wait till Mr Majeika gets stuck” Hamish was the only person in Class Three who didn’t like Mr Majeika. This was because when Hamish was naughty Mr Majeika used spells to punish him.

  “Mr Majeika won’t get stuck,” said Jody. “He’s not as fat as Mr Hodgkiss. And if he does, he can use magic to get free.”

  “Huh,” said Hamish. “We’ll see.”

  It was a very warm day when the bus taking Class Three to the outdoor activity centre set out from St Barty’s. In fact, it was soon uncomfortably hot.

  “Phew,” said Pete, taking off his anorak and pullover, and opening the Coke that he had brought in his packed lunch. “If I’d known it was going to be as hot as this, I’d have brought lots more to drink.”

  “Me too,” said Jody, looking out of the window. “It’s weeks since we had any rain. Look how brown and dried up the grass is.”

  For a while they looked at books and magazines, and the people who had brought Walkmans listened to music. After about an hour, the bus started to jerk a bit, and then it suddenly stopped.

  “Oh dear,” said the driver. “Something has gone wrong with the engine. And we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

  They looked out of the bus windows and could see that he was right. There were no houses, just open countryside, with the fields so brown and dry that it looked like a sandy desert.

  “I’ll have to walk down the road to see if I can get help,” said the driver. “But it’s ages since we passed a house. It may take me some time.”

  Mel
anie, who always started to cry when anything went wrong, went “Boo-hoo!” and complained: “I’m thirsty. I want something to drink.” Everyone else felt thirsty too.

  “Mr Majeika,” said Jody, “do you remember when you were teaching us about the Sahara Desert, you told us that there was something called an oasis – a place in the middle of the desert with lots of water and nice things to eat? I wish we had one of those here, right now.”

  “An oasis?” said Mr Majeika. “Well, as it happens, I did once know a spell for making an oasis in the middle of a desert. It’s quite a tricky one and I’m not sure that I remember it, but I’ll have a go.”

  He muttered some strange words and suddenly everything went very bright. The sun had been hot before, but now it was like a raging furnace. Outside the windows of the bus, the brown fields turned even drier and became powdery yellow sand.

  “Well, there’s the desert,” said Mr Majeika. “But I can’t see the oasis.”

  “I can,” called Thomas. “Look!”

  Sure enough, a little distance away, there was a group of palm trees standing around a small lake of shining water. Everyone got out of the bus and ran over to it through the hot sand.

  “Wow!” said Pete, as they drank from the cool waters of the lake. “And look, there’s a sign saying ‘Abdul’s Motor Repairs – Cars and Buses Mended’.”

  “You’re brilliant, Mr Majeika,” said Jody. “That means we can get the bus mended too. What a wonderful start to our trip.”

  “Yes,” said Thomas. “And I’m sure the outdoor activity centre will be just as exciting as this.”

  But it wasn’t. When they got there they saw it was just a group of ordinary buildings, a bit like school. And the man in charge was very gloomy.

  “Didn’t you get my message?” he said. “We phoned to say it hasn’t rained for weeks and the river has dried up.”

  Sure enough, outside the centre’s buildings, there was a broad river bed, but only a trickle of water was running down the middle of it.

  “We won’t be able to canoe on that, will we?” asked Jody.

  The man shook his head. “There’s not even enough water for swimming,” he said.

  “Never mind,” said Pete. “We’ll just spend all the time caving. I can’t wait to get into those caves. It’ll be really exciting!”

  “I’m afraid you can’t,” said the man. “There’s been a fall of rock at the mouth of the caves and no one can get in. The only thing you’ll be able to do is go for long walks.”

  “Oh dear,” said Jody, and Hamish Bigmore shouted angrily: “I told you it would be boring. I want to go home.”

  “Hang on, Hamish,” said Thomas. “Give Mr Majeika a chance. Look how he saved us all from being thirsty by making that oasis. I’m sure he can think of something else to stop our trip being dull. Can’t you, Mr Majeika?”

  “I’il do my best,” said Mr Majeika. “But it won’t be easy. In fact, it will probably take all night. The best thing you can all do is go to bed. I’ll see what I can manage by the morning.”

  They slept very well, and Jody dreamed that Hamish Bigmore had turned into a hard-boiled egg, which everyone was trying to catch and put into a tin, but it kept bouncing around and shouting: “You can’t eat me, my shell is too hard.”

  When she woke in the morning, she thought she must still be dreaming because there were strange noises all around her – a sort of scratchy, squeaking sound and also some low grunts and the slurping of water.

  Opening her eyes fully, she looked out of the window and saw that everything outside the outdoor activity centre had changed. Yesterday there had been a road with cars passing by, with the dried-up river bed beyond that. But now the road had gone. Instead there was a grassy track lined with trees, and they weren’t ordinary English trees. There were tall palms and giant redwoods, and thick tangles of green stuff from which most of the noise was coming – the sounds of jungle insects and birds and animals. The river was still there, but now it was full of water, which rushed madly past the centre, carrying broken branches and even big logs.

  The sun was shining down through the leaves, but as Jody watched, the sky – or the little of it she could see – grew dark and there was a flash of lightning and a big clap of thunder, followed by a huge downpour of rain. And while the storm raged, a canoe suddenly came into sight up the river. It was being paddled by Mr Majeika.

  Seeing Jody looking out of the window, he waved, paddled himself to the river bank, climbed out – carrying a large basket – and tied up the canoe. The rain hadn’t stopped, and when he came into the centre he was dripping wet.

  “I thought I’d just go along the river and check that everything was all right,” he explained. “Do you like what I’ve done?”

  “Mr Majeika, it’s marvellous,” said Jody “It’s your best spell ever.” And she went off to dress and to wake up the others, who were amazed when they saw the jungle and the swollen river. Even Hamish Bigmore could only say, “Coo!”

  “And now,” said Mr Majeika, “it’s time for your trip. There are enough canoes for everyone, so have a quick breakfast, then put on your life jackets and off you go.”

  “Aren’t you coming with us, Mr Majeika?” asked Thomas.

  Mr Majeika shook his head. “I’ve just got one or two things to do first, but I won’t be far behind you. Here’s your breakfast – I’ve just picked it.”

  From the basket, he took bunches of bananas and coconuts, and handed them round.

  They all ate the delicious bananas and split the coconuts and drank the milk that was inside. Then they put on their life jackets and climbed into the canoes, which were made of hollowed-out tree trunks.

  “This is going to be a real adventure!” said Pete.

  Paddling the canoes wasn’t as easy as it looked. There were four people in each one and if anyone paddled harder than the rest, the canoe raced towards the side of the river rather than keeping on straight down.

  Jody, Thomas and Pete were cross to find that they had to share a canoe with Hamish Bigmore. Of course he immediately made a nuisance of himself. He either paddled too fast, so that they hit the bank, or stopped paddling altogether, complaining that he was too tired and his arms were hurting. It was impossible to keep the canoe straight while he was on board.

  Then there were the rapids. Mr Majeika had warned them about these. “Rapids are when the river suddenly rushes over the rocks” he explained. “You’ve got to be very careful when you canoe through them, otherwise the canoe will turn upside down and you’ll all be thrown into the water.”

  When Jody, Thomas and Pete saw the first rapids coming, they told Hamish to be very careful and hold on tight. As they reached the rapids, the canoe began to race forwards. Then it dived down through the rushing water, just missing some sharp, dangerous-looking rocks, before they passed into a calmer stretch of the river.

  “Phew,” said Pete. “That was frightening.”

  “It was great,” shouted Hamish. “Didn’t I handle the canoe brilliantly?”

  “Don’t be silly, Hamish,” said Jody. “You didn’t do anything and neither did we. We just left the canoe to find its own way through the rapids.”

  “Rubbish!” shouted Hamish. “Look, there’re some more rapids coming up. You watch how I handle the canoe this time. Wheeeee!” And as they reached the rapids, he stood up, waving his paddle in the air and shouting, ‘Tm the king of the river!”

  The canoe swerved and hit some rocks, and Hamish fell sideways, clutching on to the canoe’s edge.

  “Look out!” yelled the others, but it was too late. The canoe turned upside down, throwing them all into the water.

  “I can’t swim,” shrieked Hamish, thrashing about like a mad whale.

  “Don’t worry,” called Jody, “your life jacket will keep you afloat.” But she was worried. The water seethed and bubbled like a boiling saucepan, and they were all being carried down the river at a frightening speed. Then Thomas called out: “Help – a
crocodile!”

  Sure enough, something long and green and scaly, with eyes like light bulbs, was approaching them in the water. As it opened its enormous jaw, Jody decided that she would never see her home and family again.

  Then a voice said: “I think you need a little help, my friends.” The crocodile was speaking to them.

  “No, no, we’re fine,” called Jody, but at that moment she found herself sucked under the water by a hidden current. When she rose to the surface, coughing and spluttering, she felt herself being lifted into the air. The crocodile had plucked her out of the water with its teeth, though it was only gripping her clothes. Twisting itself in the water, it managed to put her gently on to its back.

  “Now to rescue the others,” it said, and in a moment Thomas, Pete and Hamish were sitting on its back behind Jody. “Are you sitting comfortably?” it asked them.

  “Oh yes, thank you very much,” said Thomas.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to eat us?” asked Pete.

  “Shut up, stupid,” whispered Hamish. “Don’t give it ideas.”

  But the crocodile said: “Certainly not. I’m a vegetarian crocodile. I only eat bananas and other fruit.”

  “That’s a relief,” said Jody. “Now, please would you be very kind and take us back to the outdoor activity centre?”

  “If you really want me to,” said the crocodile. “But when Mr Majeika asked me to keep an eye on you, he said I could take you to the Crooked Caves just along the river. Wouldn’t you rather go there?”

  “That sounds exciting,” said Thomas. “Yes, please, do take us to them.”

  In a few minutes they reached a bend in the river, where the crocodile swam to the shore.

  “You can climb off here,” it told them. “The Crooked Caves are through those trees. You can’t miss them. Goodbye, it was nice to have met you.”