Toby Ibbotson - Mountwood School for Ghosts

This house had stood empty for several months, with a ‘For Sale’ sign on a post by the hedge. He and Charlotte had talked quite a lot about what kind of people would move in. Daniel was hoping for an old couple who needed someone to walk their dog, or at least a family with some children of his age. Charlotte wanted someone a bit different, from a foreign country.

‘They might be Romany who are fleeing oppression in Eastern Europe,’ Charlotte had said hopefully. She had been reading about them. ‘And their children will dance and play the violin and be good with horses.’

‘Where will they keep a horse?’ said Daniel. ‘In the living room, I suppose.’

Charlotte had frowned. Sometimes Daniel could be a bit of a sourpuss. But she knew all about Great-Aunt Joyce of course, and she realized that his life was not an easy one.

Daniel went to bed that night feeling sorry for himself. It seemed that the really interesting and exciting things that happened to other people were never going to happen to him. He was wrong.

The Great Hagges were having tea.

‘Well,’ said Fredegonda, ‘this is turning out to be rather a bother.’

‘It certainly is,’ Goneril agreed. ‘We can hardly offer an advanced course in howling and moaning next door to a cinema showing a film called Screams of the Damned .

They had just visited an empty warehouse on the outskirts of a large city. But the smarmy estate agent who had taken them there hadn’t mentioned the huge multiplex cinema nearby. They had spent many days touring the length and breadth of the country, trying to find a suitable place for their school of ghosthood, but it was proving difficult.

Britain had changed quite a lot since they last went motoring. The Ordnance Survey map that was in the glove compartment of the Rolls was very little use. Towns and cities had got much bigger, there were huge roads where there should be open countryside, and there were even completely new towns, such as Milton Keynes and Welwyn Garden City, which weren’t marked on their map at all. And although there were plenty of places for sale or rent, most of them were far too modern and filled with things that ghosts, ghouls and spectres really have no use for at all, such as en-suite bathrooms with flushing toilets and central heating. Even when they had decided only to look at old castles, disused factories and abandoned hotels, the buildings were always too close to a town or a golf course or a railway station.

Luckily Great Hagges don’t need a lot of sleep, and none at all when they have important work to do. But they do need tea. So now they were sitting in a small cafe in a pleasant tree-lined street. They had had some very unpleasant experiences looking for a decent place to stop, and they shuddered when they thought of the way they had seen young people behave, and adults too for that matter. Once they had even been served by a girl with a ring in her nose like a prize porker and another one in her lip and yet another in her eyebrow. Times had certainly changed, and not entirely for the better. But the little tea shop which they had found now was bearable, just a few tables with proper tablecloths and doilies on the saucers and some older customers chatting quietly to each other. They had ordered a pot of tea for three and a plate of scones, and been served by a pleasant middle-aged woman who didn’t have metal in her face.

‘Perhaps we should just accept that it’s hopeless,’ said Drusilla. Of the three of them, she was the one who most missed the comforts of home, especially her kitchen.

‘Don’t be a weed, Drusilla. We must soldier on.’

But even Fredegonda, who was the eldest and most determined, was beginning to have her doubts.

It was late afternoon when they left the cafe, and as they drove, darkness fell. They pressed on through the night, Goneril driving and Fredegonda reading the map. Drusilla was dozing in the back.

Goneril was a good driver, and the Rolls had a fine turn of speed. Suddenly in the headlights they saw a car with flashing blue lights on the roof parked at the side of the road. Beside it a figure in uniform was holding up his hand.

‘I think there’s been an accident. We’d better see what’s going on.’ Goneril braked and stopped.

The uniformed figure walked over to the Rolls.

‘Are you in trouble, officer?’ asked Goneril, sticking her head out of the driver’s window.

‘It’s you who are in trouble,’ came the reply. ‘You were doing seventy-five.’

‘I don’t think that’s anything to worry about. In fact she’s going nicely, considering her age.’

‘Very funny. Show me your licence, please.’

‘My licence? What are you talking about? You are being rather impertinent, young man.’

Goneril had bought her car long before people had to take driving tests.

‘Either you produce a licence, or I shall arrest you for illegal driving. Step out of the car.’

Policemen have very thorough training before they are let out to start policing. They are taught how to deal with violent drunks, armed bank robbers and belligerent teenagers. But nothing in their training tells them what to do when confronted with three Great Hagges in a speeding Rolls-Royce.

If he had been properly trained, this particular policeman would probably not have tried to arrest Goneril, and he would definitely never, ever have told her to get out of the car. He would have asked her politely, and added that vital word ‘please’. A Great Hagge can be both generous and forgiving, but simply will not be told.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Goneril, and a small child would have heard something in her voice that promised no good to come. But policemen are not small children, they are grown-up men in uniforms, and hearing that sort of thing is not their strong point.

‘You heard me. Get out,’ said the policeman.

So what followed was simply unavoidable. It started down at his feet. Suddenly his shoes seemed very tight. And then he felt that his trousers were several sizes too small, and his shirt. His collar started to strangle him, and he went very red in the face and began to splutter and gasp for air. By now his whole head, which had been on the small side, was the size of a football, then a party balloon. He was swelling up, just as though somebody had attached him to an air hose. Then the splitting started, which was lucky for him, or he would have choked to death. Sounds of ripping and tearing could be heard, and as he got bigger and bigger his uniform fell off him in shreds. In less than a minute a huge round pale naked policeman was standing in the road, looking very much like a hot-air balloon about to fly away. His police hat, strangely, remained balanced like a little blue fly right on top of his vast head.

It was Drusilla’s voice from the back of the car that saved his life.

‘Oh, Goneril, please don’t burst him, dear; there will be such a terrible mess.’

With an effort Goneril calmed herself, and the white of her left eye, which always turned green when she was spellbinding, returned to normal. She snorted, put the car into gear and drove off.

Fredegonda had been silent all this time, but now she spoke. ‘Well, that settles it. We’ll have to go home now. We can’t stay here. Really, Goneril, a bit more self-control is to be expected from someone of your experience.’

‘You’re making too much of it,’ said Goneril. ‘He will start deflating in an hour or two.’

‘It won’t make much difference what size he is. You cannot leave a naked policeman in the middle of the road without questions being asked. They will be out looking for us in no time, and the car is not exactly inconspicuous.’