The Unluckiest Boy in the World Read online

  ‘Only occasionally,’ said Miss Murajee. ‘Would you like to come in?’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘Miss Murajee has kindly agreed to look at your… um… your problem,’ the headmaster said, drumming his fingers on the desk as he glanced across at Nicholas, ‘and to give us the benefit of her advice. She’s a psychic expert and might be able to help – if that’s all right with you?’

  Nicholas assured him that it was. He had no idea what a psychic expert was but, after eighteen months under the curse of Toribio, he was prepared to take help from anyone.

  ‘The suggestion is,’ Mr Fender continued, ‘that Miss Murajee follows you round the school today and observes what happens. That way she’ll get an idea of the sort of… accidents that occur.’

  ‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to do anything.’ Miss Murajee spoke in a strong, deep voice. ‘But I’ll be happy to try.’

  ‘I’ve told the staff that she’s doing a background assessment of your social skills. I think it would be wiser not to mention her real purpose. So she’ll sit at the back of the class during your lessons and, at the end of the day, we’ll meet back here and…’

  The headmaster was interrupted by the phone ringing. He answered it, listened for a moment and then stood up.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ he said, ‘that was the caretaker. It seems the toilets in the science block are backing up. I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  Nicholas wondered, as the headmaster left, if the toilets backing up were caused by the curse.

  ‘It might just be coincidence,’ said Miss Murajee. ‘It’s hard to tell. I’ve studied magic most of my life, but the connections aren’t always easy to follow.’ She took out a notebook. ‘Can you tell me exactly what this curse said?’

  Nicholas told her and, when he’d finished, Miss Murajee gave a low whistle.

  ‘I’m surprised you’re still alive after that lot.’

  ‘I’m protected,’ Nicholas explained. ‘By a spell this old lady put on me.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that.’ Miss Murajee peered at him briefly. ‘So the people around you get it instead. That can’t be easy for you.’

  ‘No,’ said Nicholas. ‘It’s not.’

  ‘I know how you feel. I was under a curse myself once. It was meant to be a joke but I couldn’t see or recognize the number nine for over a month and you wouldn’t believe how inconvenient it was. Still…’ Miss Murajee put away her notebook and stood up. ‘Let’s get started, shall we?’

  ‘Started?’

  ‘I presume you’re supposed to be in a lesson of some sort. You just carry on as normal and I’ll tag along behind. If I’m going to be any help, I need to see this curse in action.’

  Nicholas led her out of the main building and along the path to the classroom where he was supposed to be having a French lesson. He wondered, as he went, if Miss Murajee knew what she was letting herself in for.

  They were walking past the corner of the main building when some instinct made him stop and look up. He was in time to see a roof slate falling out of thin air, heading directly for Miss Murajee’s head. He opened his mouth to shout a warning but… there was no need. Miss Murajee was already stepping to one side and the slate landed harmlessly on the tarmac beside her, where it shattered into a thousand splinters.

  The head of an embarrassed builder peered over the edge of the roof two storeys above. ‘Sorry,’ he called. ‘It slipped. You all right?’

  Miss Murajee gave him a cheery wave and walked on without even breaking her stride.

  ‘It’s very kind of you to be concerned,’ she said, ‘but there’s no need to worry. I can look after myself.’

  It was just as well that Miss Murajee could look after herself, because that particular morning was not a good one. The first two lessons were peaceful enough, though one boy did manage to stab himself in the hand with a mathematical compass, but the double science after break was a lesson that Nicholas would never forget.

  It was Mr Daimon’s first day back since the incident with the wasps and he was not in a good mood. He had given out three red cards and a detention before the lesson even started, to children who thought it was funny to make buzzing noises as they came in. Then, as he stood behind his desk to announce the experiment they would be doing, one end of the fluorescent light above him came loose from the ceiling, swung down and smacked him smartly on the side of the head.

  It looked for a minute as if he was going to be all right. He was dazed, but seemed to recover and told everyone to settle down and open their books. But then he told the class to get into their pyjamas as it was bedtime, and began taking off his jacket and shirt. When Fiona went over to stop him, Mr Daimon told her in confidence that he was Father Christmas.

  Nicholas looked across at Miss Murajee, the only other adult in the room, to see if she was going to do something, but she sat there, making no move. He was debating whether he should go and get the headmaster when the door swung open and a mountain lion padded softly into the classroom.

  For a moment, there was total silence, broken only by Mr Daimon asking if it was time for breakfast yet, but then he saw the lion and went very quiet as well.

  Mountain lions are not normally seen strolling through classrooms in English schools. This one had escaped from a lorry that had overturned on the dual carriageway. It had been on its way to the zoo at Longleat, when the lorry crashed into the central reservation, and the lion, along with two zebras and a gnu, had got free.

  It was not a particularly large animal, but it was powerfully muscled and with claws that tapped on the tiled floor as it walked. Like most wild creatures, it would probably not have attacked a human unless it felt threatened in some way and would most likely have gone back out the way it came in, if the wind hadn’t banged the door shut so that it found itself trapped in the classroom. Its lip pulled back in a snarl and it started moving towards Mr Daimon.

  As it did so, a voice rang out with a quiet but commanding authority.

  ‘Nobody move!’ It was Miss Murajee. ‘Everyone stays exactly where they are and nobody moves a muscle.’

  The classroom was frozen and the mountain lion took another couple of steps forward. It sniffed briefly at Mr Daimon’s knees then lifted its head to look at Fiona with a slightly puzzled expression, as if it wasn’t sure what it was supposed to do next.

  At the back of the classroom, Nicholas became aware of a deep humming noise. It was a low continuous sound and, if Mrs Frith had been there, she would have recognized it as the same sound Señor Herez made in the back of the taxi on the journey down from the mountain. The humming came from Miss Murajee, who had come to stand beside Nicholas. The lion seemed to hear it too. It turned away from Fiona and Mr Daimon, and began walking down the aisle between the benches to the back of the class. Behind it, Mr Daimon slid to the floor in a dead faint.

  The humming noise continued without any interruption. Miss Murajee never stopped to take a breath and never took her eyes from the lion as it paced across the floor towards her. It stopped, directly in front of her, and so close that she could have reached out a hand to touch its head. Again, it had that puzzled, uncertain look. It blinked a few times, yawned and very slowly lay down on the floor and closed its eyes.

  In the classroom, nobody dared even to breathe. The humming sound went on… and on… and then stopped.

  ‘All right, everyone.’ Miss Murajee was speaking very quietly. ‘You can leave, but please make as little noise as possible. When you get out, find another classroom, close the door and stay there until someone tells you it is safe.’

  As the children filed quietly of the room, Miss Murajee tapped Nicholas on the shoulder without taking her eyes off the lion. ‘I want you to help Fiona with Mr Daimon, and wait for me outside.’

  Nicholas tiptoed quietly past the lion, which raised its head for a moment to watch him through sleepy eyes, and walked over to Fiona, who was still kneeling by the unconscious Mr Daimon. They each took one foot and dr
agged him into the corridor outside. It was completely empty, there was no one in sight, and they were wondering what to do next when Miss Murajee appeared, quietly closing the classroom door behind her.

  ‘Well!’ She dabbed at her forehead with a handkerchief. ‘That was interesting!’

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked Nicholas.

  ‘We wait.’ Miss Murajee cocked her head to one side. ‘It won’t be long. They’re on their way.’

  A few minutes later, men came running down the corridor. They wore crash helmets with large visors, heavily padded clothing that covered every inch of their bodies, and carried an assortment of nets, poles with wire loops on the end, and rifles.

  ‘Where is it?’ asked one of the men.

  ‘He’s in there.’ Miss Murajee pointed to the classroom. ‘Asleep. If you go in quietly, I don’t think he’ll give you any trouble.’

  Mr Fender had not known a day like it in nearly thirty years of teaching. His phone had been ringing non-stop for two hours, with parents wanting to know if their sons or daughters were still alive, or whether they had been savaged by an escaped lion. It couldn’t go on, he thought. He simply couldn’t let it go on.

  ‘It’s not as bad as you think,’ said Miss Murajee. ‘I’m afraid this morning was partly my fault.’

  ‘Your fault?’ Mr Fender blinked.

  ‘I added my own powers to the curse for a while. So that I could see what was happening more clearly.’

  ‘And…?’

  ‘As I said, it’s not as bad as you think.’ Miss Murajee sipped at a cup of tea. ‘I would say that, with a few precautions, the problem could be contained and you could run this school in perfect safety.’

  ‘Really?’ Mr Fender looked at her doubtfully.

  ‘The first thing to understand,’ said Miss Murajee, helping herself to a biscuit from the plate on the desk, ‘is how the curse works. It uses emotional energy, you see. It gathers its power from the anger and fear of the people around it. As I’ve explained to Nicholas, he’s a sort of lightning conductor. He attracts the negative energy in the people around him and the curse uses that energy to create misfortune. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the people who are harmed by Nicholas’s presence are usually the highly strung, angry, emotional type.’

  The headmaster thought that angry and emotional was a good description of Mr Daimon. He was an excellent teacher but very easily upset by children not doing exactly what he wanted.

  ‘And the people who don’t get hurt are those who are, by and large, calm and accepting of the things that happen around them,’ Miss Murajee went on. ‘Nicholas’s friend Fiona is a good example. She has almost no negative energy at all, and I suspect her father’s the same. It’s not a total protection by any means, but it’s why fewer things happen to them than to others.’

  Mr Fender nodded. It made a sort of sense.

  ‘But what can I do? I can’t make a rule that nobody’s allowed to get angry whenever they’re near Nicholas. It wouldn’t happen…’

  ‘But you could ensure that he was only taught by those teachers who were calmer and less emotional, couldn’t you? And perhaps you could put him in a class with children who were more like Fiona and less… exuberant?’

  ‘I suppose I could.’ Mr Fender still sounded rather doubtful.

  “The second thing I can suggest is that we make a Safe Room,’ said Miss Murajee. ‘My powers aren’t strong enough to lift the curse itself, but I can create a small area where Nicholas would be immune to its effects. If you provided a small office or an old store cupboard, he would be able to go there on the bad days, when he sensed things were going wrong – and then everyone would be protected from him.’

  ‘OK.’ Mr Fender was making notes on a pad.‘I can manage that… Anything else?’

  ‘The animals are the biggest risk,’ said Miss Murajee. ‘They’re drawn to him, you see. They don’t necessarily mean any harm but the reactions of the other children make them dangerous. I’d strongly suggest you set up some sort of alarm system, so the staff can call for help – and you really ought to have someone besides Fiona trained in first aid. Preferably two or three – and they need to have done courses in poisonous insects and venomous snakes.’

  ‘Right…’ Mr Fender had no idea how he was going to achieve this, but he wrote it down. ‘And if I do all this, I won’t have to keep sending my staff and pupils to hospital?’

  ‘You’ll be all right.’ Miss Murajee leant across and patted his hand consolingly. ‘Honestly. You’ll be all right.’

  Nicholas was relieved to hear that Mr Fender had decided to let him remain at the school for a further trial period, provided he followed Miss Murajee’s advice, but the events of the morning had disturbed him more than he cared to admit. In his mind’s eye he could still see the mountain lion walking towards Fiona and Mr Daimon. Suppose that had happened while Miss Murajee was not there? What would he have done? The idea that his friend could have been badly hurt, and that it would have been his fault if she were, was not a pleasant one.

  When Miss Murajee had finished giving him her instructions on how he was to behave in school in future, he asked if there wasn’t anything else she could do.

  ‘Like what?’ asked Miss Murajee.

  ‘You said you were under a curse once, and you got rid of it. Isn’t there some way you can get rid of mine?’

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t do that.’ Then she smiled. ‘But cheer up. It could be worse!’

  ‘Could it?’ muttered Nicholas. ‘I don’t see how.’

  ‘Of course it could,’ said Miss Murajee briskly. ‘I know life’s not easy for you at the moment but that doesn’t mean you have to go around looking so miserable.’

  ‘I’m the unluckiest boy in the world,’ said Nicholas. ‘I don’t have a lot to be happy about.’

  ‘We don’t need reasons to be happy,’ said Miss Murajee firmly. ‘Happiness isn’t something that happens to you, it’s a decision. So stop feeling sorry for yourself and start smiling.’ She took out a card and gave it to him. ‘That’s my number. Any time you need me, give me a call.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  After that day with Miss Murajee, things did seem to get better, and the number of accidents happening around Nicholas was reduced dramatically.

  Mr Fender had panic buttons installed in all the classrooms, connected to the school office. He sent four of his staff on training courses in first aid, and he altered the timetable, as Miss Murajee had suggested, so that Nicholas only had lessons with the more relaxed and easy-going members of staff. Mr Daimon was still away after the mountain-lion incident and Nicholas did science with Mrs Mackintyre, a large, middle-aged woman who never seemed to get upset about anything. His French teacher was replaced by the elderly Mr Dobson, and Mr Fender himself took over the lessons in RE.

  Some children were moved out of his class. Two of the noisier and more excitable girls were replaced, for instance, by boys from another form whose hobby was collecting wild flowers, and the effect of these changes was soon apparent. Miss Murajee had said that the energy of the curse depended on the emotions of the people around Nicholas and, when the people around him were, by and large, calm and relaxed, the energy for real disaster was no longer there.

  Some accidents still happened. There was an incident with a tarantula in a geography lesson that sparked a certain amount of hasty movement, and the number of light bulbs that failed or computers that crashed when Nicholas was around could still reach highly inconvenient levels but, when they did, he knew what to do. As soon as the accident rate threatened to get out of control or to produce an atmosphere of fear and distrust that the curse could feed on, Nicholas would quietly leave the class and head for the Safe Room.

  The Safe Room was an old stationery cupboard a few doors down the corridor from Mr Fender’s office. The boxes of paper and exercise books had been taken out and Miss Murajee had replaced them with a small armchair and a table. The day after her fir
st visit, she returned to the school and spent several hours in the room making strange incantations while burning sweet-smelling herbs.

  Nicholas noticed the difference as soon as he stepped through the door. That sense he had carried for the last eighteen months of malevolent forces swirling around him, waiting to pounce, disappeared in an instant. It was as if they could no longer see him. He was hidden from their view and, while he was hidden, both he and the people around him were safe.

  It was a wonderful feeling. In fact it was so wonderful that a part of him wanted to stay in the room all the time, but Miss Murajee explained that would not be possible. Its power to shield him was limited, she said, and only to be used for an hour or so at a time on those occasions when he could feel the spiral of energy building up around him and needed some way to defuse it.

  Even so, the effect on his life at school was dramatic. Within a matter of days, the number of accidents had dropped to something only slightly above what might be considered normal. When Miss Murajee called in, a week later, the headmaster was able to show her that, apart from Mr Daimon who was still in a convalescent home, he had a full complement of staff for the first time since Nicholas had joined the school. The only accidents in the last two days had been a couple of burst pipes and a girl in Nicholas’s class who had swallowed a pencil sharpener.

  He paid the bill for her services with the greatest pleasure. She was on the school books as a ‘behavioural consultant’ and to his mind she was worth every penny a thousand times over.

  Perhaps the person who appreciated these changes more than anyone was Mrs Frith. For the last eighteen months, her life had been devoted to watching over Nicholas and dealing with the emergencies that arose so regularly in his life – and now all that had stopped, almost overnight. At first she could hardly believe it, but as the days went by she began to entertain the idea that the change might actually last.