Campion's Choice

Redemere is a fairly typical English town.

There is Mr Chaudhry in the corner shop, Mister and Mrs Chantrell in ‘The Golden Brace’ pub. There’s Redemere Autos, and a Chinese fish and chip takeaway, a post office, a hairdressers, a florists, Lowry’s the ironmongers, a chemist, a dentist, a doctor’s surgery and a vegetable seller who is ancient and sells things that rot by the time you get them home.

Redemere church, the church of St Thomas, was built in 1294. It is a Grade I listed building, with many original features, including a stained glass clerestory, original boxed-in family pews, a two thousand year old Roman coffin lid, fifteenth century brasses, a flint tower, limestone walls and, its crowning glory, a six hundred year old font depicting scenes of nudity from the garden of Eden.

On the edge of the town is the Sixties glass and concrete box called Redemere Village College.

That is the town.

Jack, more or less, knew everyone in the village. He knew where they lived, who owned what and, generally, how the little world of Redemere worked. It hadn’t changed much in a thousand years.

On the day after Criel attacked Clamp he walked to school and, with each step, he knew that things would never be the same. Everything had changed.

In Redemere if you bought a nail from Lowry’s and hit it with a hammer it went into the wood but in Ursula Stanhope’s world if you took a razor sharp knife and smacked it down onto someone’s hand it simply bent the blade. In Redemere if the doctor put a thermometer under your tongue and decided you were ill you were given some pills but in Peter Mahan’s world if someone got stabbed you waved your hands around and mumbled and brought them back from the dead.

That memory stopped Jack in his tracks.

To add to his sense of unease his grandmother, Nance, had rung, first thing in the morning, to say that Grampus had been taken into hospital. That’s why he couldn’t call his granddad the day before, because he was at the doctors feeling ill. This meant his grandparents couldn’t look after the Dadster so Olga had agreed to move in and help but she threatened to resign if things weren’t sorted out within a couple of days. Then what? Would they put the Dadster in a home?

Up ahead a tall woman crossed the street and Jack froze. False alarm. It wasn’t Criel.

But she could be behind a wall or in a tree or down a manhole or disguised as a postman or around the next corner sharpening a new knife. Would the coin really protect him?

It was a relief to finally see the school up ahead even if Tia was waiting for him, hopping excitedly from foot to foot

‘So, how was your night? Mine was great. Rashpal is soooo amazing,’ she shouted and ran towards him. Her band of girly groupies shuffled around nearby.

‘Listen Tia, I really …’

‘No, listen, I have to tell you this! Rashpal’s a vegetarian so I’m going to stop eating meat. And that stuff on her face is henna. Look, she did my hand!’ Tia held out the back of her hand to show Jack a beautifully drawn mandala.

‘She does Kung Fu! She’s a fighter. She showed me these cool moves.’

Tia pirouetted around on the spot and flailed out a kick that skimmed past Jack’s chin.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ he groaned, dodging the kick.

‘And I tried it,’ she whispered, dancing close to his side and whispering softly in his ear.

Jack was distracted and her soft breath on his neck made things worse.

‘I don’t want to talk right now! I have a theory … there’s this book … just leave me alone …’ he snapped and stammered.

‘Are you listening! I tried it. Get it? I tried to stick something into my hand! I tried to stab myself!’ she said excitedly.

The words shocked him and he went into one hundred per cent concentration mode.

‘Are you mad?’

She tugged his sleeve and dragged him up the stone steps under the covered walkway.

‘I’m not stupid. I used a needle. I was really careful. At first that is. Then I tried it really, really hard and nothing happened. Not a scratch. It just bent the needle. Wild! I mean, Super Heroes or what? Cool!’

She danced around, throwing a karate punch and flicking out another pointy-footed kick.

‘You are crazy! Did you tell anyone about this? Did you?’ Jack whispered, nodding in the direction of her fan club.

‘No. And Rashpal didn’t know anything about it so I kept schtum!’

He didn’t know what schtum meant, so he ignored it and grabbed her arm.

‘I’ve been reading this book …’ he began to say.

But again an over excited Tia jumped in first. She leant forward. She turned down the collar of her sweatshirt to show him a tiny silver blade.

‘Where did you get that?’

‘Gidean gave it to me.’

‘Gidean!’

‘Yeah. Apparently he saw me wearing it before Clamp took ours away. So he went to the shop in Cambridge and bought the whole lot. Now he’s giving them to people and if you get one you’re in his gang. Get this. They’re called The Blades. Cool.’

Jack was beginning to hate the word ‘cool’. Tia’s face was flushed pink.

‘I’m sure Gid will let you join if you ask, Jack. You know his dad owns that old crate factory outside of town? Well, Gid’s built some kind of hideout there. Some kids went yesterday and they said it’s really …’

He grabbed her.

‘Gid? Gid! Gidean Saint-George’s is a complete ……’

The sound of the school bell drowned out his insult.

‘You’re just jealous.’

Jack pushed her hard against a wall. The minute he did it he was sorry. She stumbled sideways and luckily fell into the arms of one of her shocked friends.

It was on the tip of his tongue to apologise but something stopped him. Instead he turned and ran off down the corridor. Whatever else he did, he would avoid Tia for the rest of the day.

It didn’t work. They bumped into one another, in the afternoon, outside the gym.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jack said.

‘I could have been hurt.’ Tia sulked.

‘I thought you were a Super Hero?’ Jack couldn’t resist the joke.

‘That’s better than being a super jerk.’

Tia’s girl friends all sniggered and oohed as if they were watching the end of a great romance.

‘Why won’t you talk to me?’ she demanded.

‘Because I only have one thing to say to you and you won’t like it.’

‘What?’

‘I forbid you to be a member of The Blades.’

‘What?’

‘I told you that you wouldn’t like it.’

‘You can’t tell me what to do. You’re not the king of me.’

Tia flounced off and her gang followed giving Jack the evil eye for daring to upset their beloved friend.

At the end of the school day it was a surprise when Olga turned up at school in her bright red Clio with the Dadster in the front and a sleeping Lettie strapped in the back.

‘We are going to hospital to see the grandfather,’ she said brusquely and made Jack hurry to squeeze in beside his snoring sister.

Grampus was in a ward with three other old men. They all lay there wheezing away behind half-drawn plastic curtains. Grampus was wide awake, chatty and smiling. He sat up in bed sipping tea.

The Dadster was weird. He sat close to Grampus and kept repeating words.

‘Watch, watch, watch, watch,’ the Dadster mumbled followed by, ‘Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack.’

Grampus patted his son’s hand and waited until the Dadster fell silent, then he leant over to whisper to his grandson.

‘Cheer up! I’m just having some tests for the old gut. Nothing serious. I can get around okay. I’ve already been for a walk.’

‘You look ok,’ Jack lied, leaning on tiptoe to kiss his granddad’s whiskery chin. The old man looked grey and had big dark circles under his eyes.

‘You remember the shooting next door?’ Grampus said.

‘Mister Phillips?’

‘Yeah. Well, he’s in here. I wandered over to his ward and said hello. He told me he fainted when he saw the wound. That’s why it took the police so long to find him. He was out for hours. Apparently, he was lucky the bullet hit a bone and missed the artery. He could have bled to death.’

Grampus dipped his rich tea biscuit in a green hospital cup.

‘Do you know Mister Phillips?’ Jack asked.

‘Yes. We were kids together. He was a right stuck up so and so. His parents were terribly posh. And he taught your father at the old grammar school. That was just before he had his first novel published and he made a name for himself. Since then he’s been too famous to talk to the likes of you and me. Mind you, he was always squeamish. I remember when he got a beamer on the nose in a cricket match against Little Shelford. His face looked like it was dipped in a pot of red paint. He fainted dead away then too. Makes me laugh that he’s famous for writing grisly crime books.’

‘He taught Dad?’

‘Oh yeah. He taught him English.’

‘Dad never said.’

A young nurse called Stella came onto the ward and Grampus sat up.

‘Watch this,’ Grampus said. He grabbed his false teeth from the bedside table and clattered them together like castanets.

‘E Viva Espana!’ he sang badly. He looked terrible, his face was thin and sharp and his skin a dull muddy colour.

Jack wandered to the end of the bed where he watched as his grandfather put the teeth back in a glass, closed his eyes and nodded off to sleep.

It was horrible being in the hospital. The smells were awful. Everywhere there were nurses laughing noisily and old people gasping for breath. Jack angrily clamped a hand around the frame of the bed and squeezed. By the time he looked down it was too late.

‘Oh no!’

There was his handprint, four fingers and a thumb, pressed into the crushed metal.

Try as he might he could not straighten the metal out or undo the damage.

‘We must go to your home now,’ Olga said, appearing from behind a screen and carrying a gurgling Lettie. She helped the Dadster up to his feet.

Gratefully Jack crept away from his sleeping granddad and hoped nobody would notice the accidentally vandalised bed.

He had to talk to someone.

Tia was out of the question because, if he spoke to her, she’d go blabbing to Gidean. Grampus was ill, and Nance was too worried, for a serious chat. Who then? The Dadster? No chance. Who did that leave? His mum? She was the only one left. Okay then. It was time to tell her the truth and show her the coin.

But she phoned at six to say that she had to stay in London for the night.

Much to his annoyance a grumpy Olga forced Jack to go to bed at seven o’clock.

‘But it’s still light,’ he protested.

‘Is school night and you are still small boy,’ she said firmly.

Jack lay in bed, wide-awake. He had to talk this out with someone.

Just before he fell asleep he realised there was one other person who understood what was going on: Liam Dee.

In the morning, in front of the bathroom mirror, Jack used gel to flip the front of his hair up into a quiff. He rolled up his shirtsleeves until they were tight little rolls under his armpits. He thought he looked tough. Hopefully his new look would impress Liam. He sent a text.

‘Liam. Please meet me at lunchtime. In the canteen. 12.30 I need to talk. Jack.’

When he arrived at school Tia was again waiting by the school gates but this time she ignored him, refusing to even to look his way.

‘Tia ..’

He tried to speak to her but she and her flock of friends flounced away, chins up, noses in the air, pointedly silent.

‘Fine. Go your own way,’ he muttered.

He was searching for chemistry and maths books when Gidean and his mob arrived in the Year Eight Area. The six of them, with their heads in lockers, looked like battery hens at feeding time. Jack grinned. Gidean turned and saw him.

‘What are you smiling at, Crazy Horse? Had a bang on the head! That would explain the hair. You look like a demented unicorn.’

Gidean turned to Brett Garner and held up a pile of music magazine. He flicked open the pages.

‘You see these? They’re all autographed. One Direction. Lady Gaga. Justin Bieber. This pile is worth a fortune. One day I’ll be in here, in a magazine like that, and people will want my autograph.’

Jack had his bag packed for the day and was walking towards the English Department when Gidean called after him.

‘Hey, Crazy? I’ve got a badge left. I gave one to Tia.’

‘Badge?’ Jack said, playing dumb.

‘Oh, sorry. I forgot. She’s your ex-girlfriend, isn’t she? Loser.’

‘Moron,’ Jack answered back.

‘Girly boy.’

‘Dork.’

There was a moment of silence as they glared at one another. Jack desperately searched for the next, killer insult but Gidean got in first. He said slowly, ‘At least my dad isn’t a mental defective.’

Jack swung around and stepped forward to pick a fight but his bag caught on a coat hook. The strap snagged and jerked him off his feet and he fell backwards, ending up on the floor covered in a heap of coats and bags.

‘Lamer! Lamer! Lamer.’

Brett Garner started the chant and the rest of the gang sang along.

‘Like father, like son,’ Gidean said casually and added, as he walked away down the corridor, ‘Mental defective!’

The gang followed Gidean laughing and chanting and happily pushing other kids aside.

Jack was furious.

‘What’s the point having a coin that bends bars if it doesn’t protect you from looking like a fool,’ he muttered under his breath.

Kids were looking at him. He could see that they were thinking, there he goes again, the crazy kid talking to himself.

With a sigh Jack got up and walked slowly back to the lockers. It was in his mind to lean forward, and pull the lockers off the wall, one by one, before mashing them up and turning them into scrap metal. That way, when Gidean and his gang came back, their things, including Gidean’s precious magazine collection, would be no more than a pile of useless junk.

Only the bell stopped him causing mayhem when it began to ring for the start of the first lesson. Somehow he got hold of his anger and unhappily headed off in the direction of the Chemistry lab.

At lunchtime he came past the lockers again on his way to the canteen. He was late for the meeting with Liam, and it looked like more bad luck would stand in his way because Gidean and the gang were there again, giving Jack the evil eye and spreading out just enough to block his way.

‘Hey lamo, why is your brain like an Amoeba? Because it’s only got one cell,’ Gidean said. The joke sounded like one he’d been working on all morning but his pack of buddies laughed hard like it was the best ever put down. Brett Garner cut the laughter short. He jumped back from his open locker, shouting and swearing like a maniac.

‘What the ….!’

A waterfall of paper shapes floated into the Year Eight Area. They drifted upwards until the ceiling seemed to be covered by a cloud of Chinese lanterns.

‘Eeeeehhh!’

Another Gidean groupie squealed when he opened his locker.

A large fluffy pig, made up of torn pieces of paper, appeared. The rest of Gidean’s gang threw open their lockers. Origami frogs, paper chains, hearts, roses, and Christmas decorations, a whole collection of paper shapes, poured into the corridor. Schoolbooks had been turned into an explosion of strangely shaped creations.

‘I don’t …’

Gidean finally opened his locker. The colour drained from his face. A giant fuzzy pink elephant, trunk first, lurched out of the locker, spilled into the corridor and crashed to the floor. The paper animal wobbled around on unsteady legs before falling over and ending up with its feet in the air.

By now the Year Eight Area had filled with kids and some began to cheer.

‘My magazines! My autographs,’ Gidean whined and looked around in disbelief until he saw Jack laughing.

‘You!’ he shouted.

A broken chair had been removed from a classroom and propped by the door to await removal by Carl Harrington. Gidean bent over this piece of furniture and pulled off a metal leg. He ran at Jack.

‘My magazines!’ he screamed.

That was when Liam appeared with the fire extinguisher.

The full force of foam hit Gidean in the face, knocking him to the floor where he floundered around, blind and scrabbling on the wooden floor.

‘Get out of here,’ Liam ordered. He dragged Jack and pushed him into the crowd of kids.

‘But … I need to talk to you ..’ Jack began. Liam gave another shove and Jack tottered backwards.

‘I’m going to kill you!’

Liam turned to face Gidean.

There was a ‘whoooosh, whoooosh’ sound. The metal bar in Gidean’s hand had disappeared, replaced by some kind of a medieval, ball on a chain, weapon. The ball was covered in spikes and it whistled and whooshed as it spun in the air. Kids screamed as Gidean flailed the mace around his head. Foam dripped from his mouth like a mad dog.

‘I’m … going … to …’

Gidean shrieked. He threw back his head, and blindly charged into the next face full of foam.

Jack knew it was time to run. He hurtled off down the school corridors with the hiss of the fire extinguisher and the roar of excited kids fading behind him. He ran past the main reception desk and down the front steps and headed out towards the main road.

He stopped running when he saw a bus pulling up at the Bus Stop.

‘Does this go into the city?’ he panted.

‘Yes.’ The bus driver nodded.

‘Does it stop near Cancellarius College?’

‘Yes.’

Jack jumped on board.