'But Dad ...'
'Shut up,' the father said. 'Stop guessing and trying to be clever.'
'Look at your answer, Dad,' Matilda said gently 'If you've done it right it ought to be four thousand three hundred and three pounds and fifty pence. Is that what you've got, Dad?'
The father glanced down at the paper in his hand. He seemed to stiffen. He became very quiet. There was a silence. Then he said, 'Say that again.'
'Four thousand three hundred and three pounds fifty,' Matilda said.
There was another silence. The father's face was beginning to go dark red.
'I'm sure it's right,' Matilda said.
'You ... you little cheat!' the father suddenly shouted, pointing at her with his finger. 'You looked at my bit of paper! You read it off from what I've got written here!'
'Daddy, I'm the other side of the room,' Matilda said. 'How could I possibly see it?'
'Don't give me that rubbish!' the father shouted. 'Of course you looked! You must have looked! No one in the world could give the right answer just like that, especially a girl! You're a little cheat, madam, that's what you are! A cheat and a liar!'
At that point, the mother came in carrying a large tray on which were the four suppers. This time it was fish and chips which Mrs Wormwood had picked up in the fish and chip shop on her way home from bingo. It seemed that bingo afternoons left her so exhausted both physically and emotionally that she never had enough energy left to cook an evening meal. So if it wasn't TV dinners it had to be fish and chips. 'What are you looking so red in the face about, Harry?' she said as she put the tray down on the coffee-table.
'Your daughter's a cheat and a liar,' the father said, taking his plate of fish and placing it on his knees. 'Turn the telly on and let's not have any more talk.'
The Platinum-blond man
There was no doubt in Matilda's mind that this latest display of foulness by her father deserved severe punishment, and as she sat eating her awful fried fish and fried chips and ignoring the television, her brain went to work on various possibilities. By the time she went up to bed her mind was made up.
The next morning she got up early and went into the bathroom and locked the door. As we already know, Mrs Wormwood's hair was dyed a brilliant platinum blonde, very much the same glistening silvery colour as a female tightrope-walker's tights in a circus. The big dyeing job was done twice a year at the hairdresser's, but every month or so in between, Mrs Wormwood used to freshen it up by giving it a rinse in the washbasin with something called PLATINUM BLONDE HAIR-DYE EXTRA STRONG. This also served to dye the nasty brown hairs that kept growing from the roots underneath. The bottle of PLATINUM BLONDE HAIR-DYE EXTRA STRONG was kept in the cupboard in the bathroom, and underneath the title on the label were written the words Caution, this is peroxide. Keep away from children. Matilda had read it many times with fascination.
Matilda's father had a fine crop of black hair which he parted in the middle and of which he was exceedingly proud. 'Good strong hair,' he was fond of saying, 'means there's a good strong brain underneath.'
'Like Shakespeare,' Matilda had once said to him.
'Like who?'
'Shakespeare, Daddy,'
'Was he brainy?'
'Very, Daddy,'
'He had masses of hair, did he?'
'He was bald, Daddy'
To which the father had snapped, 'If you can't talk sense then shut up.'
Anyway, Mr Wormwood kept his hair looking bright and strong, or so he thought, by rubbing into it every morning large quantities of a lotion called OIL OF VIOLETS HAIR TONIC. A bottle of this smelly purple mixture always stood on the shelf above the sink in the bathroom alongside all the toothbrushes, and a very vigorous scalp massage with OIL OF VIOLETS took place daily after shaving was completed. This hair and scalp massage was always accompanied by loud masculine grunts and heavy breathing and gasps of 'Ahhh, that's better! That's the stuff! Rub it right into the roots!' which could be clearly heard by Matilda in her bedroom across the corridor.
Now, in the early morning privacy of the bathroom, Matilda unscrewed the cap of her father's OIL OF VIOLETS and tipped three-quarters of the contents down the drain. Then she filled the bottle up with her mother's PLATINUM BLONDE HAIR-DYE EXTRA STRONG. She carefully left enough of her father's original hair tonic in the bottle so that when she gave it a good shake the whole thing still looked reasonably purple. She then replaced the bottle on the shelf above the sink, taking care to put her mother's bottle back in the cupboard. So far so good.
At breakfast time Matilda sat quietly at the dining-room table eating her cornflakes. Her brother sat opposite her with his back to the door devouring hunks of bread smothered with a mixture of peanut-butter and strawberry jam. The mother was just out of sight around the corner in the kitchen making Mr Wormwood's breakfast which always had to be two fried eggs on fried bread with three pork sausages and three strips of bacon and some fried tomatoes.
At this point Mr Wormwood came noisily into the room. He was incapable of entering any room quietly, especially at breakfast time. He always had to make his appearance felt immediately by creating a lot of noise and clatter. One could almost hear him saying, 'It's me! Here I come, the great man himself, the master of the house, the wage-earner, the one who makes it possible for all the rest of you to live so well! Notice me and pay your respects!'
On this occasion he strode in and slapped his son on the back and shouted, 'Well, my boy, your father feels he's in for another great money-making day today at the garage! I've got a few little beauties I'm going to flog to the idiots this morning. Where's my breakfast?'
'It's coming, treasure,' Mrs Wormwood called from the kitchen.