by Robin Jarvis
Still staring into the distance, Lee nodded.
Charm wondered what else to say. “Shall I tell you what flavour you is?” she asked. “I always do this, it’s one of my gimmicks; you need a gimmick if you’re gonna catch on wiv the public. This is what it is, right – I tell people what their flavour is. So, for example…”
“Girl, if you say ‘dark chocolate’, one of us is going to have to get up and leave, to avoid necessary violence.”
“I wasn’t gonna say that!” she cried. “I was gonna say you’re a Brazil nut, hard to crack but soft and sweet in the middle. Now though, I reckon you’re one of them tiny round chillies, not much to look at, but one bite’ll blow your head off.”
Lee rose and walked away, but he was laughing. Charm noticed he had an empty holdall with him.
“What you doing?” she called.
“Looting me some life insurance,” he answered.
Alasdair wasn’t in the mood for dancing and they weren’t playing his sort of music, but it was good to see the others enjoying themselves on their last night. Leaving the lecture room, he went into the dining hall where the remains of their final tea still covered the tables. It had hardly been touched because most of them had felt too shaken to eat. He was glad it hadn’t been cleared away and filled a goblet with wine, downing it in two gulps. He poured himself another and flexed his hand. His arm was still numb. A number of the children had complained of pins and needles or loss of feeling in their limbs since passing out that afternoon. Old Captain Mainwaring hadn’t shown the slightest interest when informed and told them not to waste his time with their ‘infantile bleating’.
The door swung open again and Maggie came stomping in, clapping her hands and jerking her head from side to side.
“Brilliant!” she shouted above the din. “Dancing always gives me the munchies. I could murder a kebab, but this’ll do just fine. You back to bonnie Scotty land in the morning then?”
“Dinnae have a choice!” he yelled back.
“You know what we should do,” she told him, waving a half-eaten chicken leg. “We should email that website and see if we can get out of this barmy country completely.”
“What website’s that?”
“The one by that maths teacher. The bloke everybody thought was a loony before all this happened, the one the papers had a field day with. What was his name? I tried Googling him before I did my flit to Dover, but couldn’t find anything.”
“Baxter,” Alasdair said. “It were Martin Baxter. I’ve tried his site. Talk about paranoia – the guy’s a nutcase. Says there’s a big conspiracy to get him off the Web and track him down.”
“How is that nuttier than what’s going on here?”
The boy began his third goblet. “Aye, mebbe not.”
“We should all stay in touch though,” she persisted, making short work of a piece of ham and mushroom pie. “Cos being stuck in York with Janice and my dad will drive me totally round the twist. And if one of us does manage to get in touch with that Baxter bloke, p’raps he could help get us all away.”
Alasdair agreed and they decided to swap numbers with everyone tomorrow morning. Then Maggie eyed the untouched syllabubs, fruit tarts and savouries piped with soft cheese. A devilish grin spread over her face.
“You know what we really, really need to do in this place before we go?” she asked.
“What?”
“FOOD FIGHT!” she shrieked, squashing a savoury in the boy’s face then hurrying back into the lecture room with the plate.
That was it. Total, sticky, in your face or wherever hadn’t been splodged chaos reigned for the next half-hour. Food and ale went everywhere. Everybody got completely covered. It was caked in their hair, over their clothes, in their ears, across the faux stone walls and on the floor. Alasdair tried to save a jug of wine, but Jody tipped it down his front and Christina tucked a slice of beef in his trousers. Then, when the tables were bare and the children’s appetite for mayhem still boiled, they tore down the priceless tapestries and dragged them through the slops and swills. Even that was not enough. Their resentment and anger were ripe and ready to explode. They wanted to smash something, to really demonstrate how furious and despairing they were.
Slowly everyone turned to stare at the great model of the White Castle. Could they? Did they dare?
“What are you waiting for?” Jody shouted.
In the lecture room, an old track by the Arctic Monkeys started blaring. Dragging the nearest table out of the way, Jody lunged at the model with a meat skewer. The attack was as fast and ferocious as the music. She stabbed the castle with all the hate and anguish Dancing Jax had brought her. The others stared fearfully for a moment then they too seized knives, forks, cleavers and joined in, swept along by the blind need to destroy or hurt some aspect of that foul book – accompanied by the ballistic guitars of ‘Brianstorm’.
Returning from the woods to refill his holdall, Lee stopped. The noise coming from the main block was different to before. Now there were furious screams and yells amid the music. There was a wild, manic quality he didn’t like.
“This place is out of control,” he muttered. “Why ain’t that old guy stopping it?”
Charm had gone back inside the cabin. Hunched over the bathroom sink, with a towel over her head, she was steaming her pores before removing her make-up. She did not hear the door opening behind her. When she stood up and looked in the mirror, she got the fright of her life and screamed. Jody and Christina were standing directly behind her. At first she didn’t recognise them. They were plastered with food and filth and their eyes were alight with menace. They looked like unholy creatures from a horror film.
Before Charm could speak, they pelted her with raw eggs, raided from the kitchen fridge. They rubbed yolks into her hair and crushed the shells against her face, scratching her skin.
“How’s that then, Barbie?” Jody bawled. “Girls like you make me puke. You make animal-testing big business. Without all that muck on your face, you’re nothing. Your name shouldn’t be Charm, it should be Chum, like the dog food!”
Christina thought that was hysterical and laughed like a small hyena.
Charm stood frozen with shock. Angered by the very sight of her and spurred on by Christina’s laughter, Jody pulled her hair then punched her in the stomach. Suddenly two strong hands caught hold of Jody’s arms and dragged her away. With Christina hurrying behind, shrieking in protest, the girl was hauled out of the cabin.
Standing on the step, Lee glared at her.
“What is wrong with you?” he snapped.
“Hypocrite!” Jody shouted back. “It were all right for you to lay into Marcus the other night!”
“That was different and you don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s that girl in there done to you? She is not the enemy here! Don’t you know that by now? Or is it just cos you’re jealous? Look at you, you’re a freakin’ mess. You’re disgusting. But before you clean yourself up, you best go put a stop to the riot goin’ down in that dinner hall. You think you’re goin’ back home tomorrow? You is seriously foolin’ yourself!”
Jody’s eyes flashed at him. But the night air was cooling her anger rapidly and her sopping, ale-soaked clothes suddenly felt worse than any Glastonbury mud. The last traces of fury drained out of her. She looked at Christina. The seven-year-old was in a wretched state and Jody felt ashamed for what she had done. Then she became aware of the sound of smashing and destruction coming from the main block. Without saying another word, she ran off to try and stop it.
Christina lingered to glower at Lee, but he hissed through his teeth and went back inside.
“You OK?” he asked Charm who was now sitting on her bed, dabbing her face with the towel.
The girl nodded but she really wasn’t.
“Where do Tweedledum and Tweedledumber sleep?” he asked.
She pointed across the room. Lee grabbed handfuls of Jody and Christina’s belongings then threw them out of the
door until there was nothing left.
“They ain’t sleeping in here no more,” he said. “They can bunk in with their horizontally challenged friend.”
Charm tried to thank him, but she was shaking too much and was close to breaking down. More than ever she wanted her mother. She missed her so much it hurt far more than Jody’s punch.
“Hey!” Lee told her sternly. “You stop that. If you got tears, you’d best save them for another time. Cos there’s goin’ to be worse than this, this ain’t nuthin’. You gotta be strong. Now you go wash that crap off and I’ll go tell Absolutely Drabulous they’ve been evicted.”
Charm managed a wobbly smile.
Lee left her to it and went back outside.
“Brazil nut,” he told himself.
The music had stopped. He looked around the camp and wondered what the morning would bring.
In Alasdair’s chalet, Tommy Williams, Rupesh and the six other children who had entered the world of Dancing Jax that day continued to read, rocking backwards and forwards, their eyes dark and glassy.
Just before dawn, a truck drove out of the camp. Inside were five new arrivals, brought into this world by the Bakelite bridging devices. Within the cabins, the children lay where they had fallen. This time they were not returned to their beds. Eight of them, however, had slept peacefully. As the truck rumbled up the forest road, it passed a van coming the other way.
The Busy Needles vehicle parked in front of Jangler’s chalet, where the old man was waiting to meet it. Two seamstresses got out and took the new costumes they had made into the cabin next to his.
Jangler gazed around at the state of the camp and added to the copious notes he had already made.
Maggie was one of the first up. She awoke hungry and, when she went outside, could smell sausages frying.
“Oh, fantastic!” she said.
Jody and Christina had been compelled to sleep on the floor in her cabin. Lee was adamant they stay away from Charm and no one dared oppose him in the mood he was in. They had spent their energies wrecking the dining hall and the memory of what they had done caused Jody to draw a shameful breath. She couldn’t understand why she had gone so far. It seemed to make sense at the time, but now… She wondered if they would have to pay for the damage. She didn’t have any money and there was no way her parents would cough up.
Then she thought of Charm and couldn’t believe how vindictive and unpleasant she had been. That wasn’t like her. Calling the vapid airhead names was one thing, but physical violence? Jody ran her fingers through her mousey hair. What sort of mindless thug was she turning into?
“Let’s go help tidy that mess up,” she suggested. “It’s the least we can do and might show in our favour if we get prosecuted.”
Maggie raised her eyebrows. “That won’t happen, will it?” she asked. “Was only a food fight.”
“And the model, and those tapestries, they were ancient. We could be in serious lumber.”
They hurried to the main block and were appalled by what they saw in the dining hall. It looked even worse in broad daylight, like the aftermath of a hurricane. No one had started clearing it up yet. There were noises coming from the kitchen and the two girls popped their heads round the door.
“Morning,” Jody greeted three women dressed as medieval cooks. “Just wondered if we could lend a hand clearing up and getting the hall ready for breakfast?”
The women stared back at them. They looked totally out of place in that brushed steel kitchen.
“No breakfast,” one of them said curtly.
Maggie looked at the wide serving dish piled high with sausages and at the large frying pan in which even more were squeaking as they cooked.
“Them’s not for the likes of you,” the woman told her severely.
“I’ll be happy with just cereal,” Jody said. “I don’t eat death tubes.”
“No breakfast,” the woman repeated.
“Who are all those bangers for then?” Maggie asked. “There’s mushrooms there as well.”
There was no answer. The women carried on with what they were doing. Jody realised one of them was removing everything from the fridge and another was doing the same to the storeroom.
“If you’ve got a mop and a brush,” she said, “we’ll make a start.”
Again no reply. It was as if they didn’t exist.
The two girls came away, puzzled.
“I’m starved,” Maggie complained. “That smell is driving me mental. My buds are literally squirting.”
Outside, more children were surfacing. Charm appeared, in her sunglasses, her hair tucked under a pink camouflage BAPE baseball cap. She trawled her fake Louis Vuitton cases across to the gates and perched on one. She didn’t want to have anything to do with the others. She just wanted to go home. Fixing her eyes on the long forest road, she waited.
When Lee came out, he saw her. He took a step forward then stopped himself.
“Why don’t you go over?” Alasdair asked.
“What for?”
The Scottish lad laughed. “I’m no blind,” he said. “Get over there and give the lassie your number at least.”
Lee shook his head. “No point,” he replied. “She ain’t goin’ no place.”
Alasdair didn’t understand what he meant, but at that moment, their attention was diverted by Jangler, who called out the names of the eight children from yesterday. Tommy, Rupesh and the others went into his cabin clasping their copies of the book and soon the cooks entered, bearing the steaming food.
“Private brekky club for the chosen ones,” Alasdair observed bitterly.
Lee hardly heard him. One of the cooks had taken a large plate of sausages into the chalet next to the old man’s.
“Who the hell is in there?” he murmured.
The smell of the breakfast passing by drew comments from everyone. Where was theirs? They went to the dining hall, but returned disappointed and famished. The cooks had left and taken every morsel of food with them. The shelves were completely bare. There wasn’t even a stock cube left. An hour dragged by. Phone numbers and addresses were exchanged. An emotional Jody crossed her heart and promised she would be in touch with Christina every single day and that the seven-year-old could come and visit. Maggie gave everybody, excluding Marcus, a big hug. At half past nine almost all cases, rucksacks and bags were on the lawn. Lee’s was still upstairs on his bed. He hadn’t even packed.
The sound of a coach came rumbling up the road. Charm jumped up, excited to greet her mother. She glanced back to where Lee was sitting outside his cabin and decided that before she left, she should say goodbye to him. The coach pulled into the camp and Kate Kryzewski got out, followed by Sam. They wanted the happy reunion footage.
Jangler emerged from his chalet, flicking his moustache and smacking his lips after a hearty meal. Rupesh and the rest followed him; each of them now wore a playing card, and he guided them to the coach.
“Don’t we get any breakfast then?” Marcus asked as he marched by.
The question went unanswered. Tommy Williams’ parents were next off the coach and the little boy raced over to them.
“I am Tully!” he shouted. “A Two of Clubs!”
Their faces lit up and Sam captured a heart-warming embrace. The other seven new converts experienced the same loving reception from their families. The remaining youngsters looked for their parents on the coach, but there was no one else aboard.
“Couldn’t be bothered then?” Jody remarked. “Typical.”
“I came down on my own anyway,” Marcus said to anyone who was listening. “Fine by me.”
“My folks dinnae even know or care where I am,” Alasdair muttered flatly.
Charm went up to Jangler and asked when the other coach would arrive. He stared at her in surprise.
“Other coach?” he said. “There is no other coach. This is it. Now, Patrick, Beth, Oliver, Mason, Daniel, Tommy and Rupesh, climb inside and have a safe journey. Blessed be to you all.�
�
The reunited families thanked him effusively and Kate and Sam got back on to conduct closing interviews. No one else was permitted on-board. The doors closed.
“What do you mean there’s no other coach?” Charm demanded. “That can’t be it. Where’s me ma? Is she driving down with Uncle Frank or what? Has she said?”
Around her the other confused children wanted answers too. Where were their parents? Why hadn’t they been allowed on that coach? What time would their transport get here? Why hadn’t there been any breakfast that morning?
The coach’s engine started. Children had to hurry out of the way as it turned around and departed back through the gates.
“What’s goin’ on?” Charm cried.
On the step of his cabin Lee watched the scene unfold pretty much exactly as he had expected. Jangler was surrounded by hungry, impatient and bad-tempered young people. They wanted answers, but he wasn’t giving them.
“This is where it gets ugly,” Lee said.
The noise of a second engine drew their attention back to the forest road. This had to be the second coach.
“This’ll be me ma!” Charm said confidently. But the smile on her face faded and she removed her Gucci sunglasses for a better look.
Lorries were coming towards the camp: four ordinary builder’s trucks, carrying great bales of wire fencing. One van brought up the rear. The vehicles came in and Jangler went over to have words with the foreman. Ten men jumped out of the van.
“What’s going on?” Maggie asked.