The Ghost

There was comparative calm in the Wormwood household for about a week after the
Superglue episode. The experience had clearly chastened Mr Wormwood and he seemed
temporarily to have lost his taste for boasting and bullying.
Then suddenly he struck again. Perhaps he had had a bad day at the garage and had not sold
enough crummy second-hand cars. There are many things that make a man irritable when he
arrives home from work in the evening and a sensible wife will usually notice the storm-signals
and will leave him alone until he simmers down.
When Mr Wormwood arrived back from the garage that evening his face was as dark as a
thundercloud and somebody was clearly for the high-jump pretty soon. His wife recognised
the signs immediately and made herself scarce. He then strode into the living-room. Matilda
happened to be curled up in an arm-chair in the corner, totally absorbed in a book.
Mr Wormwood switched on the television. The screen lit up. The programme blared.
Mr Wormwood glared at Matilda. She hadn't moved. She had somehow trained herself by now
to block her ears to the ghastly sound of the dreaded box. She kept right on reading, and for
some reason this infuriated the father. Perhaps his anger was intensified because he saw her
getting pleasure from something that was beyond his reach.
"Don't you ever stop reading?" he snapped at her.
"Oh, hello daddy," she said pleasantly. "Did you have a good day?"
"What is this trash?" he said, snatching the book from her hands.
"It isn't trash, daddy, it's lovely. It's called The Red Pony. It's by John Steinbeck, an American
writer. Why don't you try it?
You'll love it."
"Filth," Mr Wormwood said. "If it's by an American it's certain to be filth. That's all they write
about."
"No daddy, it's beautiful, honestly it is. It's about . . ." "I don't want to know what it's about,"
Mr Wormwood barked. "I'm fed up with your reading anyway. Go and find yourself
something useful to do." With frightening suddenness he now began ripping the pages out of
the book in handfuls and throwing them in the waste-paper basket.
Matilda froze in horror. The father kept going. There seemed little doubt that the man felt some
kind of jealousy. How dare she, he seemed to be saying with each rip of a page, how dare she
enjoy reading books when he couldn't? How dare she?
"That's a library book!" Matilda cried. "It doesn't belong to me! I have to return it to Mrs
Phelps!"
"Then you'll have to buy another one, won't you?" the father said, still tearing out pages.
"You'll have to save your pocket- money until there's enough in the kitty to buy a new one for
your precious Mrs Phelps, won't you?" With that he dropped the now empty covers of the
book into the basket and marched out of the room, leaving the telly blaring.
Most children in Matilda's place would have burst into floods of tears. She didn't do this. She
sat there very still and white and thoughtful. She seemed to know that neither crying nor
sulking ever got anyone anywhere. The only sensible thing to do when you are attacked is, as
Napoleon once said, to counter-attack. Matilda's wonderfully subtle mind was already at work
devising yet another suitable punishment for the poisonous parent. The plan that was now
beginning to hatch in her mind depended, however, upon whether or not Fred's parrot was
really as good a talker as Fred made out.
Fred was a friend of Matilda's. He was a small boy of six who lived just around the corner
from her, and for days he had been going on about this great talking parrot his father had
given him.
So the following afternoon, as soon as Mrs Wormwood had departed in her car for another
session of bingo, Matilda set out for Fred's house to investigate. She knocked on his door
and asked if he would be kind enough to show her the famous bird. Fred was delighted and
led her up to his bedroom where a truly magnificent blue and yellow parrot sat in a tall cage.
"There it is," Fred said. "Its name is Chopper."
"Make it talk," Matilda said.
"You can't make it talk," Fred said. "You have to be patient. It'll talk when it feels like it."
They hung around, waiting. Suddenly the parrot said, "Hullo, hullo, hullo." It was exactly like
a human voice. Matilda said, "That's amazing! What else can it say?"
"Rattle my bones!" the parrot said, giving a wonderful imitation of a spooky voice. "Rattle
my bones!"
"He's always saying that," Fred told her .
"What else can he say?" Matilda asked.
"That's about it," Fred said. "But it is pretty marvellous don't you think?"
"It's fabulous," Matilda said. "Will you lend him to me just for one night?"
"No," Fred said. "Certainly not."
"I'll give you all my next week's pocket-money," Matilda said.
That was different. Fred thought about it for a few seconds. "All right, then," he said, "If you
promise to return him tomorrow."
Matilda staggered back to her own empty house carrying the tall cage in both hands. There
was a large fireplace in the dining-room and she now set about wedging the cage up the
chimney and out of sight. This wasn't so easy, but she managed it in the end.
"Hullo, hullo, hullo!" the bird called down to her. "Hullo, hullo!"
"Shut up, you nut!" Matilda said, and she went out to wash the soot off her hands.
That evening while the mother, the father, the brother and Matilda were having supper as
usual in the living-room in front of the television, a voice came loud and clear from the
dining- room across the hall. "Hullo, hullo, hullo," it said.
"Harry!" cried the mother, turning white. "There's someone in the house! I heard a voice!"
"So did I!" the brother said. Matilda jumped up and switched off the telly. "Ssshh!" she said.
"Listen!"
They all stopped eating and sat there very tense, listening. "Hullo, hullo, hullo!" came the
voice again.
"There it is!" cried the brother.
"It's burglars!" hissed the mother. "They're in the dining- room!"
"I think they are," the father said, sitting tight.
"Then go and catch them, Harry!" hissed the mother. "Go out and collar them red-handed!"
The father didn't move. He seemed in no hurry to dash off and be a hero. His face had turned
grey.
"Get on with it!" hissed the mother. "They're probably after the silver!"
The husband wiped his lips nervously with his napkin. "Why don't we all go and look
together?" he said.
"Come on, then," the brother said. "Come on, mum." "They're definitely in the dining-room,"
Matilda whispered.
"I'm sure they are."
The mother grabbed a poker from the fireplace. The father took a golf-club that was standing
in the corner. The brother seized a table-lamp, ripping the plug out of its socket. Matilda took
the knife she had been eating with, and all four of them crept towards the dining-room door,
the father keeping well behind the others.
"Hullo, hullo, hullo," came the voice again.
"Come on!" Matilda cried and she burst into the room, brandishing her knife. "Stick 'em up!"
she yelled. "We've caught you!" The others followed her, waving their weapons. Then they
stopped. They stared around the room. There was no one there.
"There's no one here," the father said, greatly relieved.
"I heard him, Harry!" the mother shrieked, still quaking. "I distinctly heard his voice! So did
you!"
"I'm certain I heard him!" Matilda cried. "He's in here somewhere!" She began searching
behind the sofa and behind the curtains.
Then came the voice once again, soft and spooky this time, "Rattle my bones," it said. "Rattle
my bones."
They all jumped, including Matilda who was a pretty good actress. They stared round the
room. There was still no one there.
"It's a ghost," Matilda said.
"Heaven help us!" cried the mother, clutching her husband round the neck.
"I know it's a ghost!" Matilda said. "I've heard it here before! This room is haunted! I
thought you knew that."
"Save us!" the mother screamed, almost throttling her husband.
"I'm getting out of here," the father said, greyer than ever now. They all fled, slamming the
door behind them.
The next afternoon, Matilda managed to get a rather sooty and grumpy parrot down from the
chimney and out of the house without being seen. She carried it through the back-door and
ran with it all the way to Fred's house.
"Did it behave itself?" Fred asked her.
"We had a lovely time with it," Matilda said. "My parents adored it."
 Chapter Four: The Ghost
Summary: For a while, things are calmer in the Wormwood house but then one day Mr
Wormwood comes home in a foul temper. He picks on Matilda and rips up the book she’s
reading. Matilda borrows a talking parrot and hides it up the chimney of the dining room.
Mr and Mrs Wormwood are convinced there is a burglar in the house. Mr Wormwood acts
like the coward he is. They all go into the dining room but there is nobody there. Then the
parrot speaks again. Mrs Wormwood thinks the voice is a ghost. She nearly throttles her
husband in fright.
Again Matilda has outwitted her parents.
1) What makes Matilda decide to play the talking parrot prank on her family?
2) How does Matilda respond when Fred refuses to lend her his parrot?
3) How do you know that Mr Wormwood is a coward? Use evidence from the text to
support your answer (so you need to write down a quotation)
4) Imagine that you are the parrot. How did you feel?
For example:
What was in your mind when you were in the chimney?
As you were stuck in the chimney, you couldn’t see anything. What could you hear, smell,
taste, touch?
Can you say more than “Hello, hello, hello” and “Rattle my bones”? If so, why didn’t you say
other things?
How did you feel when Matilda finally took you out of the chimney?
What do you think of Fred, Matilda, Matilda’s family? Do you like any of them? Why or why
not?
Any other questions that you can think of! Use your ideas above to help with activity 5:
5) Write a description from the point of view of the parrot. You should avoid rewriting
the chapter and rather focus on the experience of being in the chimney. In other
words, describe the situation and how you are feeling using a lot of adjectives