Campion's Choice

‘Ouch.’

Jack felt his head for blood and moved his neck expecting to hear bones snapping. The fall had been a shock and at first there had been some pain. Then things felt okay. He stood up. Maybe, he thought, some kind of preservation instinct kicked in and made him go all limp? Maybe.

After giving himself one last shake he hurried around to the school’s front entrance just in time to see Clamp, Liam and Tia coming out of the main double doors.

Liam ran to the covered racks and leapt on his bike. He pulled a wheelie past a policeman, picked up speed and rode off across the school’s cricket pitch.

‘Liam Dee! Get off that wicket,’ Clamp yelled before giving up and striding over to his Fiat 500. Beside him the car looked like a toy. It was painful to watch the man curl his body into a ball and struggle to wedge himself into the driving seat. But then he got out again. The crush of emergency and rescue vehicles were blocking his exit.

Clamp shouted something rude at a zoo attendant and the zoo attendant got out of his lorry.

‘I’d shoot you with a tranquilizer dart but we only have enough drugs for one elephant!’

Clamp angrily banged on the zoo lorry’s door.

When the zoo people ignored him he gave in, crawled back into his car and squeezed it carefully out of the jam of vehicles before racing off down Redemere High Street.

Jack and Tia watched in silence from the steps outside the main entrance. Tia checked her watch.

‘I saw your baby sister in town at the weekend. She is so cute. What’s she called? Lettie?’ she asked.

Jack stayed silent.

‘How old is she now? Six or seven months old?’

Jack ignored her. He stared across the crowded car park.

‘Something really weird happened in there,’ Tia said suddenly.

Jack snorted.

‘You don’t say!’

‘No. Not the elephant. Before that. When you first gave Clamp the coins. There was a flash. I can’t decide if it was inside or outside of my head.’

A siren wailed in the distance and got louder and louder until yet another police car pulled into the schoolyard.

‘What are you doing for your birthday?’ Tia asked. She sat down on the steps and arranged a pink plastic bag across her knees.

‘What birthday?’ Jack asked stupidly. His mind was a million miles away. Tia took out her coin.

‘Isn’t it your birthday, today?’

She looked at the ban liang nestling in the palm of her hand.

‘Birthday? Oh yeah. That.’

‘No party?’

‘No.’ As he said it Jack grimaced. Years ago he used to have people over and they’d do stuff with a bouncy castle or go paintballing or make pizzas and one time, his dad even hired a lecture hall at the university and kids watched a 3D superhero film. Not this year. There was no money. And anyway, he didn’t have time for kids’ stuff like parties and friends.

‘Get any nice presents?’ Tia asked.

‘What?’ Jack snapped tetchily and stretched his neck to see if his lift with Grampus had arrived.

‘Did you get any nice presents? You know? Birthday presents? Little tokens of affection that pass between people once a year?’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘Maybe the postman will bring you something nice when you get home? Although we already both have a special coin. I think they’re real.’

Tia held up her ban liang. For a moment she seemed to be watching Jack through the hole in the middle of the coin. She smiled sweetly before carefully shutting the coin safely away in her pencil case.

If he was honest, Jack hadn’t really noticed Tia over the last year. She was new to the school. Mind you, he hadn’t noticed a lot of things after his dad’s bike accident. He noticed now that she was slim and prettyish with an oval face.

‘You’ve been a bit weird the last few months,’ Tia said quietly.

‘What?’

‘Asking people questions. Hiding behind your hair. You can talk to me if you want.’

The world seemed to stop turning. Talk to someone. That was exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to tell someone how things got really bad when his mum went back to work. He wanted to tell someone that he started a ’Dadster File’ and went from house to house asking people questions on the road where the accident happened.

He asked people if they heard or saw anything on the night of the blackout?

And now, he really wanted to tell Tia that he got no answers and that people thought he was crazy and that the whole Dadster thing was making him seriously miserable.

He also wanted to ask Tia one specific question: was it my fault? Was he to blame for the accident that turned his dad into a walking vegetable?

Just as he opened his mouth to speak a blue taxicab drew up in front of them and a fat little cabbie got out, half running, half rolling, hurrying to throw open the back passenger’s door. A woman stepped into the sunlight and Jack knew, by the way she moved, that she was blind.

‘Hi, mum,’ Tia shouted. The woman, who was the spitting image of her daughter, turned in the direction of the voice.

‘Tia?’

‘Over here.’

‘I got here as soon as I could, darling.’

Dipping into her purse Mrs Cole nimbly counted out the taxi fare and asked her daughter, ‘Is everything okay?’

‘Yeah. No problemo. It’s been peculiar but fun.’

Tia smiled brightly at Jack.

There was that face again. He knew Tia had lots of friends and maybe that was why. Because she had a nice way of pulling a face.

The blue taxicab drove off. It dodged a JCB digger and left the car park. Somewhere in the bowels of the air raid shelter the elephant was still roaring angrily.

‘What on Earth is that noise? Is that the beast? We’d better get a move on and talk to the police,’ Mrs Cole said hastily. Her hair was slightly shorter and blonder than her daughter’s. In the afternoon sunshine it glowed like a halo.

‘What?’ Tia asked.

‘Don’t the police want to see me?’

‘No. I’m not in trouble. I was just a witness to the mysterious appearing elephant.’

‘Has the taxi gone?’

Jack watched as Mrs Cole turned her head. She was listening for the noise of a car.

‘Yeah. It’s gone,’ he offered quickly.

‘I see you have a friend with you.’

The woman turned her head from side to side, smiling, blindly searching.

‘It’s Jack. He’s here with me,’ Tia replied.

’Oh! Jack. I see,’ the blind lady nodded and smiled before adding, ‘well, we might as well walk. By the time we get another taxi we could be half way home.’

Granddad’s silver Toyota Prius came into the car park and headed straight across to where they were waiting. Without thinking Jack grabbed the woman’s hand and gently guided her onto the safety of the steps.

‘It’s my granddad and he isn’t a very good driver, Mrs Cole,’ he explained.

She laughed and bent her head slightly to say, ‘ Call me Angela.’

‘Er … ,’ he mumbled. He felt his face flush as he let go of her hand.

’So, you’re the famous Jack Campion?’ Angela whispered.

He was puzzled. What did that mean? Famous? A half smile appeared on the woman’s face. He noticed little crinkled lines beneath her closed eyes. He thought the crinkles made her look interesting. He blushed again. He coughed as if he’d swallowed a stone.

‘Listen. Do you need a lift home? It will be with Grampus. He’s my English granddad. I call him Grampus and my grandmother Nance,’ Jack burbled. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that Tia was watching him. Was she laughing?

‘Your grandfather may be in a hurry. We wouldn’t want to….’

‘No problemo,’ Jack interrupted. Problemo? Why was he imitating Tia? He felt warm around his neck and loosened his collar before pulling open the back door of the Prius.

‘Grampus, can we drop off Tia and her mum?’

‘I don’t see why not,’ his granddad answered, smiling nervously. Grampus was tall and thin and looked like a well-dressed skeleton. The old man turned to Jack’s dad who sat by his side.

‘Okay with you?’

The Dadster looked silently ahead, staring at a police car, his eyes flinching each time the blue light flashed.

‘I’ll take that as a yes. Hop in everyone,’ Grampus called.

Jack caught Tia’s arm and began to try and explain.

‘Look, my dad might seem a bit odd. He’s okay. He’s harmless but … ’

Jack stopped mid-sentence. The Dadster suddenly climbed out of the car, squinted as if he’d just come out of a mineshaft, and fixed his gaze upon Tia.

Jack’s body began to tense. The Dadster shuffled around the car, stopped in front of Tia and attempted what looked like a funny little bow before holding out a hand for a handshake.

‘Brendan Campion,’ he said.

‘Portia Cordelia Cole.’

Tia shook hands and the Dadster nodded as if satisfied that something important had been accomplished.

‘So pleased to ..’ Tia began but the Dadster turned his back on her and walked away. He slid back into the front seat and immediately returned to staring and flinching at the flashing blue light. Jack sighed with relief. It could have been worse.

Even though he knew Angela Cole had missed the strange performance Jack felt he needed to apologise.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Cole. It’s just, well, Dad’s been a bit … that is .. since his accident ….’

‘I’m sure he’s a very sweet man,’ Tia’s mother whispered as she reached out to take Jack’s hand, smiling as she allowed him to guide her into the back seat of the car.

As they were leaving the school car park Grampus stopped shakily to check that the road ahead was clear and Jack looked out of the side window to avoid eye contact with Mrs Cole. He was just thinking that avoiding eye contact was a pretty stupid thing to do if someone is blind when, up ahead, he saw the young Moped Man called Elvis jump out from behind a bus shelter and start running like a mad man. Before Grampus pulled away Jack watched Elvis sprint over the road, sit on his moped, strap on his helmet and try to accelerate away.

Unfortunately he fell off the bike. It was still chained to the fencing.

Elvis lay in the gutter as the Prius accelerated towards him. At the last moment Grampus swerved, swore loudly and missed the fallen moped rider by inches.

‘He came out of nowhere,’ Grampus shouted. As the old man zigzagged along the road Jack became aware of the fact that Tia was tightly clutching his hand.

On the trip home Jack prised loose his hand and then persuaded his granddad to make a stop at a takeaway. He had decided to use up the last of his pocket money.

‘Birthday treat?’ Tia’s mum whispered to him. Her breath on his neck made the hairs stand up. He shivered. How did she know it was his birthday?

‘Birthday tradition. Dad used to bring me here,’ Jack said. He jumped out of the car and raced into ‘Jacomo’s’ to pick up a pizza.

When he jumped back in Angela Cole leant forward in the back seat and tapped Grampus on the shoulder.

‘Thank you for the lift, Mister Campion.’

‘I nearly hit that boy, on that moped! Did you see him? Kids like that ought to learn how to drive,’ Grampus chuntered, shaking his head and gripping the steering wheel as he again edged out into the rush hour traffic.

‘So, pizza is a birthday tradition?’ the blind woman asked, turning back to Jack.

‘I had to guess the toppings when Dad ….’ he tried to explain but ran out of words. He looked down and stared at the gaudy green, white and red striped box.

Mrs Cole leant very close. She whispered into Jack’s ear, ‘Pulled pork strips …with cherry peppers and …. and … just a dash of sweet chilli sauce!’

She was right.

Jack shook himself, searched in his pocket for the ban liang and anxiously curled his fingers around the coin.

The car radio came on and started to play soothing piano music. Loudly. It took Grampus by surprise. He groped around and finally jabbed at the Off switch. All that time, because he was driving one handed, he swerved sideways. Cars in the traffic behind the Prius braked hard, their horns blaring out in anger.

‘Oops,’ the old man apologised. He gripped the steering wheel. The radio came on again.

‘What the …’ he complained as he pulled back into the left hand lane. He was about to switch off the radio but hesitated and said, ‘Nothing like a nice piece of Chopin.’

Jack let go of the ban liang. The radio stopped playing.

‘Is it just me or does that radio have a mind of its own?’ Grampus asked uncertainly.

Jack turned in his seat just in case there were any road ragers on their tail. He would wave to them and mime apologies.

Everything seemed fine and he was about to turn back when he noticed, in the distance, a moped twitching and swerving dangerously in and out of traffic. Was that Elvis? Before Jack could make up his mind Grampus swung the car violently into a right hand turn and the little moped disappeared around the last corner.