3 The Tremendously Terrible Tutor

By R.M. Hamilton

 “Well, look who’s fallen into the river!” in the glow of his torch, Uncle Octavius managed to look both gleeful and sinister. “Tell me, did you take a midnight swim because it’s hot…or did you fall in because you’re so old?”

David and Debbie scrambled out of the river. “We saw a ghost!” blubbed Debbie. “The gaol is haunted, it really is!”

“Rubbish,” said Uncle Octavius sternly. “Don’t talk bilge.”

“But it’s TRUE,” bellowed David. “It’s that old ghost the ladies in the fudge emporium were talking about! We saw the moving lights and then she ran towards us!”

“We could be dead,” howled Debbie. “And you don’t seem to care a bit.”

“I would care a lot if you were dead,” said Uncle Octavius in a pensive tone. “It would be very awkward to explain to your parents. Very well, we will go and look for this ghost.”

“We don’t want to look for it!” wailed Debbie. “We want to go HOME.”

“Nonsense!” Uncle Octavius beamed his torch up the road and began stomping towards the gaol. “Ghosts are a scientific impossibility. Therefore, there is a logical explanation for what you saw, and we will find it.”

They crossed the low chain fence and walked around the corner of the building to the rose gardens. “We saw it over there!” said Debbie, pointing across to the old governor’s residence.

Uncle Octavius swept the area with his torch. Only peaceful rose gardens and the surrounding paths were to be seen.

Uncle Octavius made a low, harrumphing sort of sound. It was a disapproving sort of sound.

“She really was here!” said Debbie desperately.

“It’s true, Uncle,” said David.

“I have found the logical explanation,” said Uncle Octavius grimly. “Ha ha, hilarious joke. Pretend old Uncle Octavius is going dotty. Make up outrageous story and watch the old duffer swallow it. Oh yes, ha ha, good joke.”

“No Uncle, you don’t understand!”

“Of course, I don’t understand!” snapped Uncle Octavius, really mad now. “I’m just a silly old loon who knows nothing. Now get in the car, we’re going home!”

“He seemed really cross,” whispered Debbie to David as they got into bed in the old-fashioned bedroom of Uncle Octavius’s house. The house had been built in the 1920s in a mock Tudor style and the walls were covered with oak panelling.

“He’ll have forgotten it in the morning,” said David. But David was wrong.

“I have been thinking,” began Uncle Octavius in a quarrelsome voice at breakfast. “How long have you been homeschooled?”

“Our whole lives,” said David, digging with a knife at his raisin toast in a disappointed sort of way. “They’re putting less fruit into this bread,” he grumbled to Debbie.

“And that seems to me to be the problem,” continued Uncle Octavius sternly. “You’ve never had to knuckle down and learn respect for your elders. That’s why you make all these rude jokes about me being old!”

“Uncle Octavius, we don’t think you’re old!” snapped David in exasperation. “You don’t understand!”

“That disrespectful tone is just the sort of thing I am talking about,” replied Uncle Octavius loftily. “It is also why I am engaging a tutor for you over the course of the summer. Now, I’m going to my workshop to work on my clockwork car, and I do not wish to be disturbed. I shall be meeting with a Professor Snot this evening at the Briars, to see if I can engage his services for you during the summer.”

“Can we come?” asked David, slicing a giant grape (fresh from the greenhouse) in half for himself and Debbie.

“Certainly not,” snarled Uncle Octavius. “I want him to take the job!”

“I think…” said David thoughtfully as he and Debbie walked down the road in front of Uncle Octavius’s house, “I think we had better find some way of getting to the Briars this evening. We need to see what sort of person Uncle Octavius is going to dump us with all summer.”

“But he said he won’t take us,” argued Debbie.

“His car has a big boot,” said David thoughtfully. “If we pretended to go to our room very early tonight, we could sneak down, hide in the boot, creep out and get a look at this tutor. Then we could come up with a plan, depending on what we think of him.”

“That’s a good idea David,” said Debbie. Then she looked across the road at the golf course that spread along the whole road that ran past Uncle Octavius’s house. A stand of gum trees stood at the corner of the golf course and there, caught in the branches of one of the gum trees was a beautiful, sparkly helium balloon in the shape of a unicorn. “Oh David, LOOK!” Cried Debbie, pointing at it.

“It must have been part of someone’s birthday party,” said David.

“It’s a rather low branch,” said Debbie. “Oh David, you couldn’t get it down for me, could you?”

“I’ll try,” said David.

He slid through the wire fence. He wrapped his legs around the smooth grey trunk of the gum tree and began to pull himself towards the balloon. Suddenly a shout startled him, and he crashed down to the ground.

“What do you think you’re doing?” shrieked the voice. Charging through the gum trees, brandishing a golfing iron, was a tall, horrible looking man with a long, pointy grey goatee. “Get away from that tree! This is a private club! No children allowed! Why aren’t you in school?”

“It’s the summer holidays and we’re homeschooled,” said David, hastily backing away from the wild looking man.

“BAH! HUMBUG!” screamed the horrible looking man. “School holidays ought to be outlawed! Homeschooling ought to be outlawed! Children should be sent to boarding schools as soon as they are born, and they ought not to be released until they are about thirty-seven! Begone, and don’t let me ever again catch you cluttering up this lovely green with your revolting presence!”

“We just wanted the balloon!” said David, hastily scrambling through the fence.

For some reason, this seemed to make the horrible man even madder. “Well, you shan’t have it! You are not allowed on this course, do you understand? You are never allowed to even think about coming onto this course!”

“What an awful man,” said David. “Sorry I couldn’t get you the balloon.”

“That’s alright,” said Debbie. Her voice sounded suspiciously moist.

“Are you crying?”

“No.”

“Look,” said David. ‘We’ll find some way to have a nice summer, I promise.”

That evening, Debbie and David found Uncle Octavius reading the newspaper in a deck chair on his back lawn. “We thought we might just make some sandwiches and go to bed early, Uncle,” began Debbie.

Uncle Octavius folded his newspaper up and gazed at them from behind his small, round glasses. “I have been thinking that I have been too harsh on you.” He said quite kindly. “It’s not your fault that you are youthful and full of Joie de vivre. I am sorry for snapping at you. I should have taken your little jokes in a more, err, understanding manner.”

“That’s alright, Uncle,” said David. “Does this mean you’re not getting us a tutor?”

Uncle Octavius looked at him with surprise. “My dear boy, a summer tutor will be a delightful thing. This Professor Snot that I am hoping to engage for you is a most eminent scholar. He has a PhD in Classical Studies and a PhD in Theoretical Mathematics.”

“What does that even mean?” asked Debbie in a worried voice.

“It means by the end of the summer you and your brother will be proficient in Latin and Trigonometry and whatever else Professor Snot sees fit to teach you” replied Uncle Octavius, taking up his paper in a cheerful manner. “Of course you may make sandwiches and retire early. There is also some Kāpiti ice cream in the freezer. Help yourself.”

Later that evening, David and Debbie emerged from the boot of Uncle Octavius’s car, parked in the car park of the Briars Inn. They crept around to the windows that surrounded the restaurant.  Fortunately, the night was warm, and the windows were open and even more fortunately than that, Uncle Octavius and Professor Snot were sitting at a table near the window.

“They’ve never had any real structure,” Uncle Octavius’s voice rumbled out from the Restaurant. ‘Their parents go trapsing all about the earth filming silly documentaries that will never go anywhere. Of course, I don’t blame the children. But I would be remiss if I didn’t do something to rectify the situation while they are in my care.”

“How right you are,” replied another voice. It was strangely familiar.

Debbie and David looked at each other in horror. Surely it couldn’t be!

Slowly, cautiously, they raised their heads up just enough to peek into the restaurant. There, sitting across the table from Uncle Octavius, sat the terrible man from the golf course!

“Your home is conveniently placed for me,” continued the awful man. “I seldom take students, but as the situation is dire and you live across the road from my favourite golf course, I will make an exception and take the job.”

“I will not pretend that it will be an easy load.” Said Uncle Octavius glumly. “These children are not very bright. In fact, they may even be stupid. They make up idiotic stories about seeing ghosts.”

The horrible man sat up very straight in his chair. “Where do they say they saw these ghosts?” he asked in a low, nasty sort of voice.

“At the Berrima gaol. Ridiculous, of course.”

“Err, yes, of course,” said the horrible man slowly. “I am sure hours and hours of maths and Latin will cure them of these unhealthy fantasies.”

It was late when Debbie and David crept out from the boot of the car and snuck quietly back to their oak panelled bedroom.  “What are we going to do about having him as a tutor,” asked Debbie in a worried voice.

“I don’t know just how yet,” admitted David, “but I’m jolly well going to sort out a plan for getting rid of him. Maybe I’ll have thought out my plan by the morning.”

But by the morning, David hadn’t thought out a plan. And the crunch of a car on the gravel outside the house announced that the tremendously terrible tutor had arrived.

“I can’t stand him just yet.” Muttered David. “Let’s go for a walk down the road.”

And as they neared the end of the road, where the corner of the golf course was shaded by a stand of gum trees, Debbie grabbed David by his arm.

“Look! Another balloon!”

So it was. In the same spot that the unicorn had floated just a day ago, was a big, fresh helium balloon in the shape of a ladybug.

“The unicorn is gone!” said Debbie.

“And now a ladybug is here.” said David.

‘And we know where Professor Snot is.” whispered Debbie.

“Yes.” And quick as a flash, David slid through the fence and began climbing the tree towards the balloon.

 Come back next week to find out what happens next! Follow me on Facebook and Instagram at Ruth Marie Hamilton to never miss an instalment.

Library picture generously provided by Pixabay. All writing and graphic designs are copyright R.M. Hamilton.