Mr Majeika and the School Caretaker

  HUMPHREY CARPENTER

  Mr Majeika and the School Caretaker

  Illustrated by Frank Rodgers

  PUFFIN

  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 LOST SPELL BOOK

  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

  THE PUFFIN BOOK OF CLASSIC

  CHILDREN’S STORIES (Ed.)

  SHAKESPEARE WITHOUT THE BORING BITS

  MORE SHAKESPEARE WITHOUT THE

  BORING BITS

  Contents

  1. Uncle Wilf takes over

  2. Speed king of the canal

  3. Time to fly

  4. Kidnapped!

  5. Better than a broomstick

  6. How to find five million

  7. Hamish in the swim

  For Kate, who had the accident

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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

  www.penguin.com

  First published by Viking 1996

  Published in Puffin Books 1997

  16

  This edition published 2006 for Index Books Ltd

  Text copyright © Humphrey Carpenter, 1996

  Illustrations copyright © Frank Rodgers, 1996

  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: 978-0-14-194441-8

  1. Uncle Wilf takes over

  It was three o’clock on a Friday afternoon, and everybody at St Barty’s School was very, very sad. They were saying goodbye to Mr Jenks, who had been the school caretaker for as long as anyone could remember, but who was now retiring.

  Mr Jenks was always kind and friendly. When you arrived at school in the morning, he always smiled and said “Good morning” to you, and called you by your name – though as he got older, he sometimes got the names wrong. This was because he had known hundreds and hundreds of children, all of whom had passed through the school since he first started working there. That had been a long time before Mr Potter became head teacher, and an even longer time before Mr Majeika had begun to teach Class Three.

  Mr Majeika had been a wizard before he became a teacher, but Mr Jenks had always been a caretaker. Mr Majeika could do magic when he wanted to (though he wasn’t supposed to now that he was a teacher), but Mr Jenks was always friendly, “and that,” said Jody, “is just as nice as magic”.

  She and Thomas and Pete were sitting in the school hall, listening to Mr Potter making a speech about Mr Jenks, who was sitting on the platform next to him. Mr Potter finished the speech by handing a large parcel to Mr Jenks, and asking everyone to give him three cheers. “Hip, hip,” said Mr Potter, and the whole school shouted “Hooray!” – except for a loud “Boo!” which came from behind Thomas, Pete, and Jody.

  They turned round, though they knew perfectly well who was booing. “Hamish Bigmore!” said Jody angrily. “Why do you have to be so rude to Mr Jenks?” Hamish was the nastiest, rudest boy in Class Three.

  “Silly old man,” snorted Hamish. Jody knew why he was angry with Mr Jenks, who was the only person at St Barty’s School who could make Hamish behave. Mr Jenks wasn’t very big or very strong, but there was something about him which made Hamish stop being rude or

  noisy whenever the caretaker looked at him.

  “Thank you, thank you,” said Mr Jenks, looking very happy, but also very sad. He unwrapped his parcel. Inside was a large cuckoo clock. Just at that moment, it struck three, and the cuckoo came out and cuckooed three times. Everyone cheered. Hamish tried to boo again, but Jody put her hand over his mouth.

  Mr Potter took Mr Jenks down to the hall door, and as everyone went out on their way home, Mr Jenks shook their hands. “Goodbye, Rosie,” he said to Jody. “Goodbye, Fred,” he said to Pete. “Goodbye, Timothy,” he said to Thomas.

  “Goodbye, Mr Jenks,” they all said, not minding at all that he had got their names wrong.

  Then it was Hamish Bigmore’s turn. “Goodbye, Hamish,” said Mr Jenks – nobody could ever mix Hamish up with someone else – “and do try not to be quite so naughty.”

  Hamish Bigmore scowled at Mr Jenks, and went past him without shaking his hand.

  Outside, Jody, Thomas and Pete found Mr Majeika looking rather sad. “What’s the matter, Mr Majeika?” they asked.

  “I was just thinking,” said Mr Majeika, “that people won’t be as nice to me when I get old and have to retire. Mr Jenks has done so much to make St Barty’s a nice place, and I’ve really done very little.”

  “That’s nonsense, Mr Majeika,” said Pete. “Your magic has made everything really fun for us.” But he and Jody and Thomas gave each other a look, because the truth was, Mr Majeika hadn’t done any magic for ages. Life in Class Three had been very ordinary, and very boring.

  Just then, Mr Jenks came out of the hall, holding the cuckoo clock. He was looking very unhappy. “I can’t believe it,” he said miserably. “While I was shaking hands with everyone, someone managed to damage the clock. The cuckoo has been pulled out of its doorway and its spring is all bent. It won’t work properly.”

  “I can guess who that was,” said Thomas. “Can’t you do something, Mr Majeika?”

  Mr Majeika scratched his head. “Well, I oughtn’t to,” he said. “But we can’t let you go home with it like that, Mr Jenks.” He shut his eyes and waved his hands and muttered some words, and the cuckoo leaped to life. It whistled a jolly

  tune, fluttered its wings, and then popped back through its door.

  Mr Jenks was delighted. “Can’t think how you did it, Mr Majeika,” he said, beaming all over his face. “Just like magic!”

  On Monday morning there was a notice by
the school gate: CARETAKER WANTED. APPLY TO HEAD TEACHER. Mr Potter sat in his office, hoping that someone nice would knock on the door and ask for the job of caretaker. For a long while, nobody came. Then somebody did knock. “Come in,” said Mr Potter hopefully.

  The door opened. It was Hamish Bigmore. “Go away, Hamish!” said Mr Potter angrily. “I don’t want to see you now. I’m holding job interviews. At least,” he went on gloomily, “I would be, if anyone turned up for them.”

  “Well, they have now,” snapped Hamish. “Come on, Uncle!” He stepped back, and a large, heavily built, very tough-looking man stepped into Mr Potter’s office. He was so big he seemed to fill the whole room.

  “Er, how do you do?” said Mr Potter nervously.

  “Howjadoo?” answered the big man,

  grasping Mr Potter’s hand and pumping it up and down so hard that Mr Potter thought it was going to come off.

  “Who are you?” gasped Mr Potter.

  “This is my Uncle Wilf,” said Hamish from the doorway, laughing nastily. “And you’re going to give him the job of school caretaker, Mr Potter, aren’t you?”

  “Yer, arncha?” said Uncle Wilf, breathing nastily in Mr Potter’s face and grabbing hold of his hand again and squeezing it very, very tight.

  “Er, yes,” gasped Mr Potter. “I suppose I am.”

  Outside, several people had come to apply for the job of school caretaker, because they had seen it advertised in the local newspaper. But Hamish had written JOB FILLED, GO AWAY all over Mr Potter’s notice. So they went away. And during school dinner, Mr Potter told everyone that Hamish’s Uncle Wilf was going to be the new caretaker.

  “We’ve got to do something about it,” said Jody to Thomas and Pete during dinner two weeks later. She didn’t need to say what she meant by “it”. They both knew she was talking about Hamish’s Uncle Wilf.

  “I didn’t know a caretaker could spoil school for everyone like that,” said

  Thomas. “The other day, I was standing outside Mr Potter’s office, writing my name on a list for a theatre visit while Hamish’s Uncle Wilf was hoovering the carpet, and he came up to me and jabbed at my legs with the vacuum cleaner to get me out of the way. He nearly knocked me down!”

  “You were lucky to be in the school building at all,” said Pete. “The other day I was halfway home when I remembered I’d left my backpack in Class Three, with all my homework in it, so I ran back. But when I tried to get into school, Hamish’s Uncle Wilf had locked all the doors. He shouted at me when I tried to get in and said he’d complain about me to Mr Potter if I didn’t clear off.”

  “Talking about Mr Potter,” said Jody, “he’s really frightened of Hamish’s Uncle Wilf. The other day, Uncle Wilf arrived at school in a big black van. He drove it in through the gates and parked it in the middle of the playground, even though no one is supposed to drive in except the mobile library. But when Mr Potter asked him to move the van out into the road, Uncle Wilf shouted at him and waved a broom, and I thought he was going to hit Mr Potter. And Mr Potter just ran away.”

  “There’s another thing about Uncle Wilf,” Thomas whispered to Pete. “Things have been disappearing from people’s bags and coat pockets and lunch boxes. I’m sure Uncle Wilf is stealing them, and giving them to Hamish – I thought I saw Hamish with a calculator that’s gone missing from my bag.”

  “It’s dreadful,” said Mr Majeika, who had come up to them while they were talking. “I thought Hamish was as bad as people can get, but now I know there’s worse.”

  “Can’t you do something, Mr Majeika?” Jody asked.

  Mr Majeika shook his head. “Mr Potter gave him the job,” he said, “and it’s not for me to interfere. But I’ve got some good news for you. Next Wednesday, we’re all going to have a trip on a canal boat.”

  Class Three had been doing a project on rivers and canals, so everyone else was very pleased when they heard about the trip later on. Everyone except Hamish Bigmore. “What a rotten, stupid way to spend a day,” he grumbled.

  “We’ll be starting from a boat-yard just down the road –” Mr Majeika said to the class, ignoring Hamish.

  At that moment, the door burst open. It was Uncle Wilf, who had come in without knocking. “Gotta change a lightbulb,” he shouted.

  “Couldn’t it wait until the next break?” asked Mr Majeika.

  But Uncle Wilf paid no attention. He barged into the room, pushed people out of the way, climbed on to one of the tables, and took out a lightbulb which had been working perfectly well. Then he dropped it so that it burst, and broken glass went everywhere. By the time he had put in a new bulb and left the room, Mr Majeika was looking quite miserable.

  “Oh dear,” he said. “Well, it’ll be nice to get away from him when we go to the canal – even if it’s just for a day!”

  2. Speed king of the canal

  The day for the canal boat trip was fine and sunny, and everyone was very happy when they met at the canal boat-yard not far from school – everyone except Hamish Bigmore. “What’s the point of canals?” he grumbled. “Stupid, smelly ditches. The only boat worth going on is a mega-power-speedboat that can go at a hundred miles an hour. Zoom! Zoom! Zoom!” he shouted in the ear of Melanie, who was always crying. But today Melanie wasn’t going to be bullied by Hamish. She just stuck out her tongue at him.

  “We won’t be going at a hundred miles an hour on the canal boat,

  Hamish,” said Mr Majeika. He pointed at a notice which said: SPEED LIMIT 4 MILES AN HOUR.

  Hamish’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Four miles an hour?” he screamed. “I can walk faster than that.”

  “Well, you’re very welcome to walk if you want to, Hamish,” said Mr Majeika. “You can walk along the path by the canal and get the locks ready for us to go through. But that’s hard work, so I expect you’d rather sit on the boat and do nothing.”

  “You bet I would,” grumbled Hamish. “Wish I’d never come on this silly trip.”

  “But since you have, Hamish,” said Mr Majeika, “you must put on a life-jacket like everyone else.” He handed Hamish a shiny yellow life-jacket, which would keep him afloat if he fell into the water.

  “Life-jackets are for babies who can’t swim!” yelled Hamish. “I’m the best swimmer in the school – I can do hundreds of metres, and I’m training for a cross-Channel race.”

  “That’s rubbish, Hamish,” said Jody. “You know you always find some excuse not to come to the swimming pool with everyone else. I don’t think you can swim at all.”

  “Huh!” snorted Hamish angrily. “I’m too good to swim with you lot, that’s why I don’t come.” But Mr Majeika insisted that he put on a life-jacket with everyone else.

  They all climbed on board, except Thomas and Pete, who had volunteered to walk ahead and get the locks ready. At first, the boat was steered by a man from the boat-yard, but when they reached the first lock, he got off. “I’ll see you through this lock,” he told them, while Thomas and Pete worked the gates and the

  sluices which let water in and out. “After that, you can manage by yourselves.”

  Mr Majeika looked a bit nervous when the man said goodbye. Steering the boat looked easy, but when he had tried it for a few moments, with the man watching, he had found it was actually quite hard. You steered it with a long handle called the tiller. It was all rather confusing. If you pushed the tiller to the left, the boat went to the right. If you pushed the tiller to the right, the boat went to the left. And if you made a mistake, there weren’t any brakes to stop the boat. The only way to slow it down was to put the engine into reverse.

  “Oh dear,” said Mr Majeika. “Doing spells is much easier than making this boat go in the right direction.”

  “Don’t worry, Mr Majeika,” said Jody, when the man from the boat-yard had

  gone. “We’ll manage.” She took over the tiller, and quickly got the hang of steering. The important thing was not to try to go too fast. If you did, the boat got out of control, and
started to zigzag from one bank to another. Also, when you passed boats that were tied up along the bank, it was important to slow right down. Otherwise the water was stirred up so much that the other boats rocked up and down at their moorings and were

  in danger of coming loose from the bank.

  After half an hour, Thomas and Pete came on board, and Jody and Melanie got out and walked along the canalside path to get the next locks ready. This meant turning a handle to open a sluice – which was very heavy work – and then leaning heavily on the beam of the lock-gate to open it. It was very tiring, and Jody wasn’t sorry when it was the turn of two other people.

  By the time they stopped for lunch, everyone had taken a turn at walking along the bank and working the locks – everyone except Hamish Bigmore. “I’m not doing that!” he shouted, when Mr Majeika told him it was his turn. “I came on this trip to ride on a boat, not to do slave labour. No way am I moving.” And he lay on a bunk in the boat cabin, listening to loud pop music on his Walkman.

  When lunch was finished, Mr Majeika said, “Now, Hamish, you really must take a turn at working the locks.”

  “Not till I’ve done some steering!” said Hamish. “Everyone else has had a turn at steering except me.” This was true.

  Mr Majeika sighed. “Very well,” he said. “You can have five minutes at steering, but then you’ve got to do some real work.” Hamish grinned and took the tiller.

  To everyone’s surprise, he steered the boat very well. He kept the engine running very slowly, so that the boat moved gently through the water, and when he came to narrow bridges he lined up the boat exactly right, so that it slipped through the small opening without bumping on either side. “Look, no bumps!” he shouted. “I’m much better than you lot.” It was true that everyone else had bumped the boat a bit.

  “His five minutes is up, Mr Majeika,” said Thomas. “Do make him go and work the locks.”

  “I’ll just give him a moment or two more,” said Mr Majeika. “It’s so nice to see Hamish doing something well.”