“Check out geek-boy!” Mick sneered through his chipped and tobacco stained front teeth.
Charlie tried to get up but Mick simply applied his foot to Charlie’s stomach and he was pinned there, right to the ground, like a dead insect fastened to display board.
“Got a problem geek-boy? Can’t you get up huh? You’re a newie ain’t ya? Well, newie, listen up. I’m the hardest in the school and I run things around here. Got it? Well have you got it geek?”
Mick took a look around and saw that a small crowd of Cuttleworth pupils had started to gather to watch the ritualistic humiliation of the new boy. Clearly, Mick was hitting his stride now and Charlie assumed that this particular speech was one that Mick had given quite a few times before. Now that the bully had an audience he was warming to his role and had taken on an imperious air. Although he continued speaking directly to Charlie, it was clear that he was talking for the benefit of the crowd as well.
“Now that you know your place, you’ll do exactly what I tell you to do won’t ya geek? Okay geek? You got it straight in your head?”
Mick clearly wanted an answer in the affirmative and Charlie considered his present options. He could be his normal tough-minded, stubborn self and refuse to accept what Mick was saying, no matter what price he ended up paying, or, alternatively, he could simply nod his acceptance. He would lose some face as many others had done before but he would live to fight another day. He chose the latter as it seemed the more sensible thing to do. He could plainly see that Mick Clark was not the kind of bully that could ever be reasoned with or who had a better side which could be appealed to. Charlie looked up at Mick Clark, slowly and reluctantly nodding his acceptance. Mick took his foot off Charlie’s chest cautiously allowing Charlie to get to his feet. Mick brought his face up close to Charlie’s and said in a lower, even more menacing voice, “I’ll be watching you geek-boy. Don’t get in my face or I’ll have you.” Then as if an afterthought, he said, “Got any money? Give me your money.”
“I don’t have any money,” said Charlie, trying desperately hard to sound neither apologetic nor pathetic.
Charlie wasn’t quite telling the truth; he did have £2.20 which was his bus fare home, but he was not going to hand it over to Mick Clark.
“Whatever. Just make sure that you got some cash on you the next time I ask or I’ll slap you about. Got it geek-boy?”
“Yes, I understand,” said Charlie, marvelling at Mick’s ability to effortlessly sneer, hiss, grimace and talk at the same time
Mick turned and walked away leaving his two cohorts, Steve Dibben and Mark Jennings, to shoot their own well-practised sneers at Charlie. After a few seconds of typical henchmen-like gloating they too turned and loped after Mick like two chimpanzees that had been dressed in human clothes earlier that morning.
That was Charlie’s introduction to Mick Clark and ever since that day Mick had been on his case, using him as the butt of cheap, mean-spirited jokes, taking money from him and generally making his life a misery. As he couldn’t think of any adult who could help with this sort of thing, Charlie never complained. At first he considered reporting the matter to a teacher but decided that, in the light of Mr. Auckland’s remarks about the elimination of bullying at Cuttleworth, his complaints would not be effectively addressed. He also considered raising the matter with his mother but he decided that she had enough to worry about: paying the bills, working the long hours her job demanded and dealing with the fact that she was, now, completely on her own.
No, he decided, he could take whatever Mick Clark had to dish out and then some more. He also knew that one fine bright and righteous day he would have his revenge. Revenge is a dish best served cold; Charlie didn’t know who had said that or under what circumstances, but he admired the simplicity of the statement. It was true and also especially comforting when you are the one being bullied, with its suggestion that there will be a time to pay it all back-with interest. Charlie just knew that day would come, he didn’t know when, but he knew it would. Today, unfortunately
for Charlie, would not be that day. He hitched up his backpack once more and began the walk up the approach road.
Sure enough, as sure as night follows day, Charlie was about half way up the road to the school, at the part where the rhododendron bushes were in their full purple majesty, a part shielded from view, when Mick Clark and his goons came crashing out of the bushes laughing and whooping at their marvellous and brilliantly timed ambush. They surrounded Charlie and hustled him to the side of the road and, while Dibben and Jennings held him firmly by either arm, Mick, who was at least six foot and about thirteen and a half stone, stood in front of Charlie and hissed at him through his permanently clenched teeth and twisted mouth.
“So then, geek-boy, you just can’t stop annoying me can you? It’s not enough that I have to put up with seeing your ugly face all day long but now you’ve decided that it would be a great idea to grass me up to Awkward.”
So that was it. Someone had finally decided enough was enough and had gone to the headmaster, Mr Auckland, and had told him exactly what Mick Clark was like. Well bloody good, thought Charlie. Perhaps he had been wrong about Mr. Auckland’s impotence and now something would be done. Perhaps he could look forward to seeing his tormentor suspended or even expelled and he would be given some much needed breathing space and time to review his options and plan his retribution. Expulsion would, of course, be even better. Mick would be removed from the school forever and peace would reign in Cuttleworth. But that was a completely forlorn hope. No one ever got expelled these days no matter what they did. Theft, bullying, bunking off, intimidating teachers and pupils, general unruliness, alcohol, even drugs didn’t matter. The powers that be never allowed schools to expel a pupil for good and, if they tried to, the local education board always made the school take them back. It was a hopeless situation. Though Charlie was pleased that someone had reported Mick, he was definitely not pleased that Mick thought it had been him. There was nothing now that would convince him otherwise.
“Mick, I really didn’t say anything to Mr. Auckland. Honestly.” Charlie refused to refer to the headmaster by his nickname, Awkward, as he felt it was disrespectful; even in light of Mr. Auckland’s naivety about the bullying that went on in his school. Charlie knew that the headmaster had always been civil and helpful and he was not going to turn on him.
Decent teachers were rare enough without giving them a good reason to be the complete gits that some of them could be at times.
Mick said nothing at first, then his eyes narrowed and he began spitting out more words, “You want know something geek-boy? I actually don’t care if you did or didn’t. I really hate you. You’re a stupid little geek who walks around like you own the place. And now you’re gonna get what’s been coming to you for ages.”
Mick turned to Steve Dibben who met his master’s eyes with just a hint of hesitation.
“Hit him,” instructed Mick. “Hit him really hard in the guts-so it won’t leave a mark.”
Steve Dibben, a medium sized boy with an unfortunate set of buckteeth, spiky black hair and freckles, did not react immediately but instead looked a little reluctant. Charlie did not understand this as Mick’s two thugs had always been keen to do his bidding and had never hesitated before giving someone a black eye or a split lip. Charlie felt a surge of confidence at this turn of events. It was now clear to him that Mick Clark did not want to hit him personally and, so it would appear, neither did his henchmen.
“What’s wrong with you?” asked Mick angrily. “Just give him a good dig in the ribs-now!”
Dibben seemed to lose his will to defy Mick any longer. Turning to face Charlie he delivered a punch to his stomach, but it was a curiously soft punch. It was as if he had pulled his fist short so that he failed to connect deeply with the soft tissue of Charlie’s abdomen.
In the fraction of a second
that it took the electrical impulses to travel to Charlie’s brain, from their point of origin within his stomach, to coalesce into a thought, to transform into a decision and then to be transmitted back to the point of physical action, Charlie had weighed up the situation. He guessed that whoever had snitched on Mick Clark had been effective. The consequent investigation by Mr. Auckland must have resulted in the bully realising that he could not go around terrorising people as he saw fit. He was probably under some kind of ultimatum to either clean up his act pretty damn quickly or to leave the school.
As a result, Charlie thought, Mick required his cronies to carry out the actual physical stuff so that they would carry the can if there were any consequences. They, however, were not prepared to do this. Or, if they
were to carry out his instructions, they would do so only half-heartedly. Charlie was elated and realised that perhaps the torment was over. He may, no longer, have to base his entire day on avoiding Mick bloody Clark. Now Charlie knew things were going to be okay. This thought, and the consequent euphoria, occurred in just a few short seconds.
Charlie was not often wrong, but when he was wrong his mistake would often be spectacular. When Mick’s balled rock hard fist connected with Charlie’s stomach, it hit home so effectively that Charlie immediately felt vomit rise in his throat and all the oxygen shoot from his lungs simultaneously. He sank to his knees as involuntary tears welled up in his eyes. All of a sudden he felt extremely small and vulnerable. He knew he had been seriously hurt and that he was not going to be able to get up from this assault for some time. The pain in his stomach was indescribable and he couldn’t hold his sick back any longer. Charlie threw up his breakfast, which seemed to take the other three boys by varying measures of surprise. Dibben and Jennings looked a little shocked and even scared, perhaps, that they had gone too far. Mick, on the other hand, looked fascinated and seemed genuinely intrigued by Charlie’s physical reaction to his punch.
He looked down at Charlie weighing up the need for further violence, perhaps a kick to the groin or head. He settled on no further damage to the boy in front of him but decided instead to hurl a volley of swearwords and abuse, finishing off with; “…. and if you ever… ever… grass on me again, I don’t care if I get expelled, I will do you Watts. I will do you so badly you’ll never walk straight again.”
By this time Mick’s voice had reached a frenzy of emotion and the blood lust was raging through him, he was issuing little balls of spit as he spoke and he bent over to jab his finger into Charlie.
“Don’t even look at me again Watts you little creep.”
With that, he spun around and began to walk away closely followed by Dibben and Jennings. Only Dibben glanced back, just once, at Charlie’s curled up, battered body laying on the side of the road.
TWO
Jerry Squires normally travelled to school on the bus from Hayes, a town next to West Drayton where Charlie lived. Jerry always travelled with Emma Bartholomew who was, without doubt, the most beautiful girl in year nine at Cuttleworth School. She had raven coloured hair that framed an oval face and a smile that could cut through the bleakest of Jerry’s moods-and boy, he had a pretty horrid mood this morning.
His father had also been in a bad temper this morning, leading to an argument between his parents. This ended in insult throwing, shouting and the slamming of doors. Imagine this and you pretty much have the Squires household atmosphere to a tee.
Then there was Jerry’s brother, Damien, who had an entirely appropriate name. Jerry was convinced his brother was the child of the Devil who had been placed in the Squire’s household to live a normal life until it was time to assume his place on the right hand of his true father. There he would rule over the post Armageddon world of despair and perpetual darkness. He was, in short, as far as Jerry was concerned, the anti-Christ. In order to amuse himself until the day of the apocalypse Damien had made it his life’s work to drive Jerry insane and to ensure that he would never reach full adulthood resembling anything like the man he should be.
Damien delighted in tormenting his younger brother much in the way that some sick individuals delight in tearing the limbs and wings from the bodies of helpless insects. He would devise ever more horrible ways to make Jerry’s very existence a misery. His latest piece of villainy had been to pour water into the back of Jerry’s computer and claim to know nothing about it, insisting that Jerry must have left a drink balanced on the monitor or something. Jerry had worked his paper round
for two long years, delivering the same rubbish tabloids and hopelessly overstuffed “quality” papers through snow, wind, rain and hail to earn enough money to buy a second hand PC from the electrical part exchange shop in Hayes high street. He did not expect his parents to buy one for him and he needed one for his hobbies and schoolwork.
It always annoyed him that Cuttleworth assumed that all pupils had access to a computer at home because homework always seemed to suggest that “you could type the document on your computer”. They never seemed to give a thought to the fact that some pupils had distinctly disadvantaged home lives. Jerry was convinced that some teachers treated hand-written homework with contempt.
He recalled an especially nasty teacher, Mr. Torpid, a technology tutor. He had taken in some work from a pupil and had then asked, at the top of his voice, in front of the class, why it was hand-written as he expected “work of this nature to be completed on a PC”. When the boy responded by saying that he did not have a computer at home, Mr. Torpid had suggested that it was high time that his parents bought one and “entered the twenty-first century kicking and screaming”. Jerry had hated Torpid for that because it was clear that the boy would have loved to complete his homework assignment on a computer but his parents probably could not afford one. However, when the OFSTED inspection had taken place last term at Cuttleworth, Mr. Torpid, much to everyone’s delight, had been sacked. Even some of the teachers seemed pleased.
Jerry, suspecting that Damien would do something like this one day, had taken the trouble and time to copy all of his most important files onto floppy disks. He could use these when he went over to stay with Charlie. He tried to stay with Charlie as much as he could these days, Charlie was his best friend, really dependable, and Charlie’s mum was always really nice to him and always seemed delighted to have Jerry around the flat. In fact the atmosphere in Charlie’s home was exactly opposite to the atmosphere in his own. Jerry’s mother had once commented that as he seemed to like it so much at Charlie’s perhaps he should live there-oh, how Jerry wished he could.
So then, just as Charlie was receiving his body blow from Mick Clark, Jerry was getting on the bus and hoping that Emma had saved a place next to her. Jerry had a soft spot for Emma Bartholomew, which was the size of a small country, but there was one huge problem with that; the
rather annoying fact that Emma had an even bigger soft spot for Jerry’s best friend Charlie Watts.
Jerry really valued Charlie’s friendship and, although he was envious of Emma’s affection for Charlie, he did not bear a grudge against his friend because of it. He just felt sad because although Emma wanted to be with Charlie, the feeling was not mutual. Charlie had no interest in Emma whatsoever; in fact he had no interest in girls at all. Whenever Jerry brought the subject up Charlie had developed a habit of just shrugging the whole subject off with his customary comment about how there would be plenty of time for girls when he got older and in the meantime his interests lay in so many other areas.
And there she was, as always, sitting there blissfully unaware of the passions that she aroused in Jerry. She saw him and beckoned him with a smile and a slight nod of her head and Jerry bounded over to her like an excited pet, anxious to amuse and please. He flopped into the empty seat next to her and breathed in deeply. He was not sure what perfume she wore but he always found it intoxicating; it matched her looks completely.
“Jeeez…. Sports tod
ay, I can’t tell you how much I don’t want to run around playing netball this afternoon,” said Jerry
“Well, I can understand that you might not like playing netball but I think the school’s policy of encouraging boys to play girl’s traditional sports and vice versa is a good one, and come on Jerry, you don’t have to do it every week. You only play a girl’s sport once every four weeks.” She smiled and he immediately accepted her point of view, without hesitation or the merest hint of opposition to her statement. That was the effect that Emma had on Jerry.
“Yes, I suppose you’re right it is a good idea. I know that Charlie really hates sport altogether and would much rather be in the library reading up on some exploding star or newly discovered Egyptian tomb.” Jerry knew that Emma quite liked sporty types and couldn’t resist a dig at his friend in the vain hope that Charlie would lose just some of his attraction in Emma’s eyes.
“Oh Charlie is just Charlie you know,” she replied rolling her eyes heavenward, “he always has his nose in a book but that is kind of nice don’t you think? I know he hates sport but I think he could be very good if he put his mind to it. He is a great sprinter and jumper and would make
a really good rugby player when he gets older. I guess he is just different to the other guys and I like that.”
She went all drippy.
That worked then, thought Jerry, and shut up for the rest of the journey.
Charlie Watts and the Rip in Time Page 2