© Nicola Jemphrey 2008
Reprinted 2008, 2009
eBook ISBN 978 1 84427 661 5
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For Mum and in memory of Dad
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 1
It was just my luck that the day I walked into the wardrobe I didn’t end up in Narnia. Instead I was left with a sore shoulder and a massive bump above my right eyebrow.
“I can’t believe you just did that, Jack!” said Mrs Armstrong, the assistant who’d thrown me out of the library at closing time a few minutes earlier. She had finished locking up and came rushing towards me. “That sculpture’s been there for years now and I don’t think anyone’s ever bumped into it before – not before pub closing time anyway!”
She made me sit down on the dining room chair that was also part of the sculpture. Connecting it and the wardrobe was the figure of a man dressed in oldfashioned clothes. Like the chair and the wardrobe, he was made out of brownish metal. No wonder I’d taken such a battering. I felt a right eejit sitting there in front of the library while Mrs Armstrong inspected my forehead and the rush-hour traffic crawled past us out of Belfast. For once I was glad it was still getting dark early. Hopefully no one would notice me.
I was quite surprised Mrs Armstrong was treating me so kindly. After school and during the holidays, me and my mates spent a lot of our time winding up the library assistants. It was hard to miss the look of dread in their eyes as a crowd of us burst through the door at four o’clock, dragging our school bags behind us.
“Now then you lot, what can we do for you today?” Mrs Armstrong would say. One of the others would force themselves to smile.
They already knew the answer. Why else would we all drop everything the minute the school bell rang, and race each other down the road to the library? To be the first to use the Internet computers, of course!
“Stop pushing and form a proper queue!” they’d end up shouting as we all tried to grab the same pen to write our names at the top of the sign-up sheet.
“It’s not fair, Miss, I was here before her,” someone would always moan. But at last, under threat of us all being chucked out, we usually shuffled ourselves into some sort of order. Today I hadn’t been among the lucky ones who got to sit in front of the screens for the next half hour. In fact, it would be five o’clock before it was my turn, which meant I’d only get 20 minutes before the computers were shut down ten minutes before closing time. I hovered behind the row of screens with my mates, watching a curly-haired 8-year-old girl dressing some woman from EastEnders in different outfits, and thinking how unfair life was.
“Right everyone, you know there’s only one person allowed at each computer!” Mrs Armstrong sounded like she needed her tea break. “Find a book and sit down quietly until it’s your turn.”
“But Miss, she’s looking at naughty pictures, Miss!” I pointed to the screen where the EastEnders woman was back in her underwear. “You should throw her out, Miss, and let me on instead.”
Mrs Armstrong came towards me. “Are you going to do as I say, Jack, or will I have to ask you to leave?”
“Can’t leave, Miss. The teacher told us to come to the library and find some books for our project.”
“Oh, really?” She’d heard this one before.
“It’s true, Miss. We’ve got to write about the life of a famous author. Isn’t that right?” I asked some of the others from my class.
“Yeah, Miss, the teacher said we had to stay in the library till we find out all we need,” one of my mates agreed. “You can phone and ask him, if you like.”
“Then what are you all doing hanging around the computers?” Mrs Armstrong sighed. “You can use the Internet to help you look up information when it’s your turn, but in the meantime the biography and autobiography sections are over there.” With a look of relief she spotted one of the other assistants coming back from his tea break and escaped for a few minutes’ peace and quiet upstairs.
Actually the bit about the project was true, but none of us had thought of starting it yet – we’d the whole term to do it. My mates, Rick and Tommy, flipped out a few books from the section Mrs Armstrong had pointed to and pretended to read them; another boy, Steve, sat down with a Spot picture book, opening and closing the flaps. I was about to go up to the desk and ask if I could look at one of the comics that were kept behind it, when I noticed a poster on the wall between the children’s and adult fiction sections:
THE UK’S FAVOURITE BOOKS!
The books you voted as the best of all time.
A few weeks ago, I’d been in our lounge watching All in This Together, the latest TV talent show where people had to ring in and vote for who they wanted to play the main parts in a big new stage version of High School Musical, when my dad came in and slumped down on a chair.
“This country’s gone vote crazy,” he moaned, snapping out a can from the six-pack he’d just dumped on the coffee table. “Toss me the remote control, son.” He flicked over to Channel 4, which was counting down The Fifty Cheesiest Hits of the Seventies, and buried his face in his hands. “Give me strength, what will they ask us to vote for next? Will it be The Top Thirty Pizza Toppings or The Twenty Most Disgusting Things to do with your Old Chewing Gum?”
I laughed, but couldn’t help thinking that he himself could probably present a show about The Top 100 Brands of Lager. He chucked the first can on the floor and cracked open the second one before channel-hopping back to BBC2. “Hang on, this looks more like it.”
For a few minutes we watched a scene from the first Lord of the Rings film, which we’d rented out on DVD a few years before. I hadn’t been too keen on it – the first bit reminded me of Tellytubby land, and the rest seemed very dark, but Dad had enjoyed it and I’d liked just keeping him company. We never seemed to do anything together any more. The clip ended and a celebrity popped up to
tell us why we should vote for the book. (“Heaven help us, there’s no escape,” Dad groaned.) Next up was yet another celebrity, getting all worked up about some old book called Pride and Prejudice. Dad grabbed the rest of his cans.
“Can’t stand books about women in frilly dresses,” he muttered as he left the room. “Sort of thing your mum used to read.”
I got up and closed the door to shut out the sounds of him stumbling upstairs. Dad had always had a thing about Mum being better educated than he was. I switched back over to All in This Together and missed the end of The UK’s Favourite Books. After that Saturday I’d forgotten all about it, but when I saw the poster in the library, I was keen to find out which book had won.
Dad would’ve been pleased; it was The Lord of the Rings. I wondered how many of the people who’d voted for it had actually bothered to read the book, rather than just watch the films. My eyes wandered down the list. There were quite a few children’s books on it and one of them was sitting on the shelf underneath the poster: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis. I’d heard of it; there’d been loads of stuff on TV about the film a while back, though I didn’t get to see it. I picked up the book, wondering if it was any good. If it had made the top ten, it must be.
“Isn’t that a bit young for you?” Steve jeered, looking up.
“You can talk!” I laughed back, sending Spot spinning across the table as I sat down beside him.
Up until a few months ago I’d really quite liked reading, and when I was younger, I’d spent a lot of my time writing stories with complicated plots.
“Jack has a great imagination,” one school report had said. “He just needs to ensure his stories don’t become too far-fetched!”
Mrs Armstrong and the others sometimes used to keep aside for me books they thought I’d like. In those days I didn’t give them too much trouble and it didn’t really bother me if my mates gave me stick for being a big swot. It was worth it, having the chance to duck out of the real world for a while. I’d had a request in for ages for the last Harry Potter book, but when it finally came, I only got halfway through it. The library just gives you three weeks to read a book before you have to hand it back and it goes on to the next person on the waiting list. You’d think they’d give you a bit longer for a Harry Potter. I mean, how is anyone supposed to read all those hundreds of pages in three weeks – especially when you’ve just started a new school and have loads of homework? Back then I still did all my homework. Anyway, I had to give it back without even finding out what happened to Harry. I meant to put my name down for it again, but it was around that time I stopped caring – about flippin’ well most things.
It felt good to get into a story again and before I knew it, I’d read the first three chapters.
“Five o’clock, boys!” I half-heard Mrs Armstrong call in our direction, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Rick, Tommy and Steve bolting past me towards the computers.
“Don’t you want your turn, Jack?” Mrs Armstrong asked. “You only have a short time left.”
I shook my head, keeping my eyes glued to the page. Just a few minutes later, it seemed, Mrs Armstrong came over to the table. “Come on,” she said, taking the book from my hand. “It’s almost half past five. I’ll just mark this out to you and you can take it home.”
I looked up, surprised. My mates had all gone and, apart from the staff, I was the only person left in the library. Mrs Armstrong stamped the book and I thumbed through it until I found the place where I’d left off. Holding it in front of me, I walked out of the library and straight into the metal wardrobe. In other words, I came back to earth with a bump.
“You really should get some ice on this straight away,” Mrs Armstrong said, frowning at the lump on my forehead. “Will there be someone at home to see to it?” Then very quickly, she added, “I’ve been wondering for a while – is everything OK at home, Jack? It’s just that I couldn’t help noticing how your behaviour’s changed lately.”
“Oh, no, things are great,” I said brightly, getting up from the chair and seeing stars. And they weren’t in the sky.
“Steady on!” She grabbed hold of my arm. “Give yourself a few minutes before you rush off. Maybe I should give you a lift home.”
“I’ll be OK.” Already I was feeling better, but I could see she wasn’t going to let me go just yet.
“It’s funny, you bumped into the very wardrobe you were reading about – well of course, not funny exactly, but you know what I mean.”
“No,” I said, gawping. “You mean this is the same wardrobe that’s in the book?”
“Well it’s how Mr Wilson, the sculptor, imagined the one in the book,” Mrs Armstrong explained. “The whole bronze sculpture is a memorial to CS Lewis and his writings. But surely you knew that?”
“I’ve never really looked at it properly.” To tell the truth, I passed it so often I hardly noticed it. It was like the lamp post outside our front door, or the Red Hand of Ulster mural at the bottom of my granny’s street. “Is that guy meant to be CS Lewis then?”
“It’s Digory Kirke, the Professor in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, but he looks like CS Lewis did as a young man.” Her face suddenly lit up. “I know, why don’t you base your project on the life of CS Lewis – there is a project, isn’t there?”
I nodded and she went on, “As well as you having had a personal encounter with the wardrobe, it would be so much more interesting to do a project on a local author.”
“Local?” I asked, puzzled.
“Of course. CS Lewis was brought up in this very area. In fact he was born about half a mile away, where the Dundela Flats are now.”
I must be really thick. Why else would there be a big bronze statue of him in the middle of a pavement in East Belfast?
“And another thing,” Mrs Armstrong was really getting into the idea. “You’ve got something else in common. You’re both called Jack.”
Maybe it wasn’t just me who was thick. “I don’t see any J in his name,” I said, pointing to the cover of the book.
“His real name was Clive,” she told me, “Clive Staples Lewis. But he liked his friends to call him Jack.”
If I had a poncey name like Clive, I’d want to change it too.
“Anyway,” said Mrs Armstrong, “if you want me to help you look for some information about him, I’ll be in the library tomorrow morning. Remember we close at one on Saturdays.”
“OK,” I said. I had nothing else planned, and if I had to do a project on a writer, I might as well choose someone who came from round our way.
“Well, hope to see you then. You seem to be all right now, but do go straight home.” She still looked worried.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’m having tea with my Aunt Kate.”
This did the trick. Mrs Armstrong smiled with relief.
“Oh, that’s all right then. I’m sure she’ll keep an eye on you.”
I smiled sweetly and slipped away, wondering what she would say if she knew the truth.
Chapter 2
Five minutes later, I flapped through the doors of McDonald’s and slid into a seat opposite a pretty blonde-haired girl. I hadn’t really been fibbing to Mrs Armstrong. I wasn’t on a date with my girlfriend – I really was having tea with my aunt, though not the sort of aunt Mrs Armstrong was probably thinking of!
I’d better explain. My granny had my dad when she was 17. He was the first of nine brothers and sisters. I was born when my dad was 19, so when his mum became a granny she was only 36. Less than a year later, my granny had Kate. She’s my dad’s sister, so that makes her my aunt, even though I’m older than her. As well as Kate, who’s nearly 11, I have another aunt and two uncles who are even younger – Dean who’s 9 and the holy terrors, Julie and Grant, who are 7 and 6.
Though I love my granny to bits and she says she loves me just the same as her own kids, there were times when I was younger that I thought it might be nice to have the type of granny you read about in
books. The kind that knits you jumpers and gives you home-made lemonade and chocolate cake, not one you have to keep visiting at the maternity hospital. Then after the babies stopped coming, my granny, (who I’ve always called Eileen, because when I was born she thought she was way too young to be called Granny) was too busy looking after everyone to have time to spoil me. This was before Billy, my grandpa, lost his job at the shipyard and Eileen had to start working full-time at Tesco, as well as cleaning people’s houses, to make enough money to keep everyone. Billy got really depressed after he was laid off and now he spends most of his time in the front room watching TV, so Kate ends up doing a lot of babysitting while her mum’s out at work. She’s really nice and hardly complains at all, so I like to take her out for a treat now and then, when Dad remembers to give me my pocket money.
“Jack, what’ve you done to your head?” she gasped, her blue eyes widening.
I told her what had happened and straight away she went up to the counter to order our meals and ask for some ice. I think some day she’ll make a very good nurse. The queue wasn’t too long for a Friday night and she came back a few minutes later with a tray of food and a cardboard carton, full of the kind of crushed ice restaurants use to make your fizzy drinks look bigger than they really are.
“You hold this on your bump while I sort out the food,” she ordered, unwrapping the burgers and getting straws and napkins. We ate our meal pretty well in silence. I found it hard enough to manage with one hand, without having to talk as well.
“I think I’ve done this long enough,” I said at last, setting the carton down on the table. The arm I’d been holding it up with now ached as much as my forehead.
“I bet you’ll have a right shiner tomorrow,” Kate said. “It’s already started to turn a lovely shade of purple.” She leaned across the table and asked in a lower voice, “So, any news from Caroline this week?”
I shook my head. It had been over three months now since my mum had left and we hadn’t heard anything from her, not even a note to say where she was living. We knew she’d gone to London to try to “sort herself out”, but that was all.
Jack and the Wardrobe Page 1