by Rob Campbell
I gazed out of the first-floor classroom window, towards the treetops of Eastbeck Woods, which were just visible above the window frame. The view triggered vivid memories of last year, and I recalled the excitement and the fear when Monkey and I had had our showdown with Charles Gooch in that grim reservoir service tunnel out in the woods. The experience stood in stark contrast to the sterile atmosphere of the classroom. I cast my mind back to that fateful day when George ‘Goofy’ Muldoon had tried to snatch Charles Gooch’s briefcase and, as a result of some unknown power, had been hospitalised, where he still remained in a semi-comatose state. Monkey and I had fled in fear of what, I don’t know, but it was fear all the same.
I wondered what the days and weeks ahead would hold. Monkey and I still saw each other regularly, a bond forged during those strange but exhilarating months when we’d returned Lester Hawkstone’s coin, and he’d proceeded to let us in on the secret of the pieces of heaven, objects that he was convinced could change the fate of their owners.
Mercifully, the clock ticked around to twelve, finally freeing us from the slow torture of Jeremy Holdsworth’s voice. “Remember, I’ll be expecting your essay on sea defences by next Tuesday,” was his parting shot. He didn’t sound inspiring, nor the least bit threatening, and I wondered how much effort most of the class would put into the essay.
Things improved after lunch in Jane Danbury’s English class. She had a pleasant manner, and most of the class seemed to respect her. This made a nice change from high school, where half of the lesson time was spent dealing with troublemakers.
The final subject of the day was history. For the first few weeks, we’d had an introduction to the syllabus from the head of department, Rick Fordham. He was filling in whilst the college hastily attempted to get in a replacement for a teacher who’d retired at the end of the previous academic year. When I reached the classroom, I could see that Rick was engaged in an animated conversation with a smartly-dressed woman. Whatever the head of department had said had clearly amused her, because she leaned forward laughing, pressing her forefinger onto the frame of her spectacles to stop them sliding off. She offered a brief ‘hello’ as I made my way to my desk, and I caught a whiff of lemon fragrance as I passed her. She continued talking to Rick whilst the remainder of the class filed in.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Rick announced as if he was addressing a theatre audience. “I’d like to introduce you to your new history teacher, Miss Halfpenny.”
“Please, call me Victoria,” the new history teacher added quickly.
Conditioned by years of petty rules at a strict high school, I was still struggling with the concept of calling teachers by their first names. After several weeks with Mr Fordham, I’d finally got used to calling him ‘Rick’, but with each new teacher, it felt like I was starting all over again.
“I’ll leave you to it then.” Rick smiled as he exited the classroom, closing the door softly. Miss Halfpenny watched him leave before turning to face the class.
“Hello, everybody, and thanks for joining my history class.”
“I thought it was our history class?” piped up one of the boys from the back row, raising a few half-hearted laughs.
“Well, I suppose that you’ve been here slightly longer than me, but what’s a few weeks in a subject like history?” Miss Halfpenny asked. “Plus, I’m a bit older than you lot, so that’ll probably even things out.” She leaned against her desk and smoothed down the sides of her skirt. When she’d said, ‘a bit older’, she was close to the truth; she can’t have been older than her mid-twenties. Her dark hair, which was dyed a shimmering red, gave her a youthful vibrancy that made it hard to tell. “So, do you all know what you are here for?”
“History?” More laughter.
“Darius, I presume.” I turned to look towards the back of the class and saw that Darius looked shocked that the new teacher knew his name already. “Rick has supplied me with a dossier of known trouble causers,” Miss Halfpenny added as if by way of explanation. “Don’t worry, I’m only pulling your leg, but he did tell me about you, Darius.” This caused a few guffaws from the class and left Darius with an expression of sheer puzzlement written large across his features.
“Yes, history. But it’s such a big subject, isn’t it?” Miss Halfpenny continued. “I assume that Rick has given you a brief introduction to the subject?” she asked, addressing the class in general but smiling as she glanced at me.
“He said that we were going to study the industrial revolution and social change in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain,” I answered, flushing slightly as I realised that it sounded like I was reciting the opening lines of some pamphlet.
“Sounds about right. A bit formal though, isn’t it?” the new teacher replied as if reading my mind. There was a general murmur of agreement. “But don’t worry, I like to keep things interesting.”
“Interesting how?” asked Emily, who was sitting two desks to my left.
“Glad you asked. Sorry, what’s your name?”
“Emily.”
“Well, Emily, in addition to the more formal stuff that… err,” Miss Halfpenny paused at this point, holding her arm out towards me, palm upturned. It took me a moment to realise what she was waiting for.
“Lorna,” I said finally.
“Lorna, thank you. In addition to the stuff that Lorna so eloquently mentioned, I’ll be asking you to do a small project. Nothing to do with the industrial revolution or social whatnot,” she said casually as if dismissing the importance of the curriculum.
“What kind of project, miss?”
“Please, call me Victoria. And you are?”
“Mark.”
“Thank you, Mark. Each of you will choose a project that… drum roll please…” Several of the boys needed no further invitation to make a noise, and when she was satisfied that she had sufficient percussive backing, Miss Halfpenny continued. “A project that involves local history.”
“Local history?” asked Mark, confused.
“It’s history that’s local, Mark. Do keep up!” She said this with a smile; there was no malice, and the class responded with further laughter. “History that concerns local people, local buildings, anything significant that’s happened in the last two hundred years in, let’s say, a twenty-mile radius. How’s that sound?”
And so it went. The next hour flew by, and I’m pretty sure that by the end of the class, our new teacher knew all fifteen of us by name. She managed to engage us, got us asking questions, didn’t appear to take herself too seriously, and was forthcoming with praise when we responded to her questions with what she considered was a good answer.
“Thanks, Miss Halfpenny… I mean, Victoria,” I felt compelled to say as I was leaving. I’d just experienced the best lesson that I’d ever had at either school or college.
“My pleasure, Lorna,” she said with a wide smile. “Now get thinking about that local project,” she added, wagging her finger in what I now knew was her irreverent style and was in no way meant to be condescending.
I was going to enjoy Miss Halfpenny’s history classes, even if it would take me a while to start calling her Victoria.
* * *
Even though the college day had finished on a positive note, I was glad when it was home time. I ate an early tea and headed into town to meet up with Monkey. The warmth of the summer was a distant memory, and at six o’clock in the evening, a chill had descended. People made their way home in coats that were buttoned up to the neck, any joy at heading home for the evening masked by grim features that spoke of a long day in the office or some other place of business.
As I was crossing the road, heading for the green in front of St Stephen’s church, I caught sight of a man donning a sandwich board. My first thought was that this was an odd place to be advertising pizzas, but on further inspection, anybody hoping for a pointer to the nearest Italian meal was out of luck.
‘Repent! The end is nigh!’ proclaimed the large red letters t
hat had been scrawled on a black background. Maybe this went some way to explaining the dour looks of some of the office workers that I’d passed – not exactly a joyous message to cheer the heart. The man holding the board must have been at least seventy. Wispy white hair stood out at all angles from his head as if he’d recently been subject to a violent electric shock. His wild eyes did nothing to dispel this notion, and I quickly decided to take evasive action. But as I altered my route, walking a little further on the road and heading for the pavement several metres to my right, those eyes locked on mine.
“It’s coming! Save yourself. Repent!” the man said to me, the final word a hoarse whisper. I wanted to ignore him but risked a quick glance, wanting to feel sure that he wasn’t about to launch some sudden attack, and as I did, I noticed a large silver cross hanging from his open neck. The cross swung free on its chain, crashing against the top of the sandwich board.
“No thanks,” I said, my brain still operating on the basis that he was trying to sell something. As he switched his attention to a man walking in the opposite direction, I felt relief flooding my gut. Crazy religious types were best avoided with a minimum of fuss, in my admittedly limited experience.
Sitting on a bench bordering the green, I watched from afar as the man continued to accost passers-by; most ignored him, whilst others held out a hand in a placatory gesture, their voices a mixture of apology and embarrassment, evident even at this distance.
“Come on, Monkey,” I whispered to myself. I checked my phone, or to be more precise, the phone that Lester Hawkstone had given to me when Monkey and I started working for him. Monkey had an identical model, and it was still the best way for the two of us to communicate, but in this case, there was no message.
“Gotcha!” At the same time as the sudden voice from behind, a pair of small hands grabbed my shoulders. I spun around, ready to clout any assailant, but found myself staring into Monkey’s small face, my anger dissipating as I took in his cheeky smile.
“Are you okay?” he asked, sensing my alarm.
“You just gave me a shock, you idiot,” I said, slapping him playfully on the arm. “That guy’s put me on edge.” I gestured towards the man with the sandwich board.
“Why? Is he bothering you?” Monkey asked, an edge of concern in his voice.
“No more than he’s bothering everybody else.”
Monkey looked at the man, a wry smile on his face. “What is it about this town? Train Man, him over there. Why do we get all the nutters?”
“I don’t know.” Monkey’s mention of Train Man took me straight back to the previous summer. The night we met in the cemetery, Monkey had promised to show me something worth writing about, and the next day, he’d taken me down to the railway tracks, where we’d witnessed Train Man bellowing out the word ‘TRAIN!’ relentlessly whilst engaging the said mode of transport in a bizarre game of chicken. This had been less than an hour before we’d found an ancient coin in the stream, a find that had catapulted us into the world of Lester Hawkstone and his obsession with the Wardens of the Black Heart. As far as I was concerned, the jury was still out on whether Lester was a nutter himself, but for his part, Monkey had come out of the whole experience firmly believing Lester’s claim that certain objects possessed the power to change fate. Nutters indeed.
The woodland where all of this had happened suddenly held more appeal to me than a busy street patrolled by an end-of-the-world zealot. “Let’s head down to the woods,” I suggested.
On the way, we engaged in idle chit-chat, me telling Monkey about my excitement at Victoria Halfpenny’s history class, him telling me about the boring day he’d had in maths and science. Despite his earlier exuberance and practical joke, I detected an air of seriousness in my friend. By this stage, I could read him like a book; Monkey was the sort who struggled to hide his true feelings for long.
“Everything alright?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he responded flatly. I waited for him to expand, but he remained tight-lipped. Not even the trees close to the path held any attraction for him. Usually, by this point, he’d have attempted to climb at least three trees, me following in his wake as he decided that one wasn’t suitable before darting off in search of a better alternative. Tonight, the most energy he expended was kicking aimlessly at a tuft of grass.
“Hey. Come on, you can tell me,” I said gently. We’d been through so much together in the last year that I hoped that he knew he could confide in me. More than anything that had happened, it was Monkey that had helped lift the gloom following my dad’s death. Nothing would ever be the same again. Nothing could ever be the same after my life had been torn asunder so cruelly, but nevertheless, Monkey’s friendship meant a lot to me; it provided a crutch to lean on. So, from the moment that I’d learned the truth that he lived in an orphanage, I’d felt protective towards him.
“It’s my Uncle Archie,” he said finally, looking me squarely in the eye.
“Mad Uncle Archie?” Not that I knew him, but Monkey had mentioned his estranged uncle on a couple of occasions. “I thought that you’d never met him.”
“That’s just it. He wants to meet me.”
Yet again, I waited for more but soon realised that I would have to be the next to speak. “So, will you?”
“No. I told the principal that I wasn’t interested. But I feel…”
“What?”
“I don’t know. I feel guilty, I don’t know why,” Monkey said glumly.
“What have you got to feel guilty about? Your dad died, you have no mum, and he couldn’t be bothered to come and see you before now.” Before I’d spoken, I thought that I’d be helping him, but laying the situation bare like this, even to me the words sounded more than a little depressing. Monkey looked like he might cry, and I felt compelled to give him a hug. After a few seconds, he withdrew awkwardly.
“Look, whatever you decide, I’m there for you. You know that?”
“I know,” he said simply. “Thanks,” he added, a smile returning to his face.
“You ready for Saturday?” I asked, desperate for a change of subject.
“You’re not expecting much, are you? Probably the same as usual.”
“No, you’re right, I’m not expecting much. But this time I’m going to demand an explanation for the British Museum debacle.”
Chapter 3
“I wouldn’t say it was a debacle,” Lester said defensively.
Off to my right, Frank struggled to stifle a laugh, but he quickly gained control when Lester shot him a black look.
“What would you call it then?” I asked rhetorically. Not for the first time, I felt that he’d given Monkey and me the run-around, and we deserved an explanation. When we’d first met Lester Hawkstone, we’d been overawed by his decadent house and more than a little intrigued by the idea of his organisation: one that he claimed scoured the world for lost objects with the power to alter the fate of their owners. On more than one occasion, I’d kept my mouth shut when I thought that he, or his friend, the Reverend, had short-changed us with a lack of information. After all, it was his idea we start working for him, so why did he have this annoying knack of being evasive when all we wanted was a simple explanation?
“You said that you had good information that the piece in the Incan exhibition held a vital clue to a case that we’d soon be working on,” I pressed, prowling around the large wooden table in his study.
“And I did!” Lester protested. “The Reverend would tell you the same if he was here.” I hadn’t seen the Reverend Jeremiah Dubois since this whole business with the British Museum had unravelled. If he’d been here, maybe he’d have been able to smooth things over between us. He was good like that. “Frank, you explain,” Lester pleaded, gesturing to his driver.
“I’m sure that Mr Hawkstone had his reasons,” Frank said rather unconvincingly.
“You were there, Frank. I can’t believe that you’re not upset about the whole thing.” I felt guilty about dragging Frank i
nto the argument. His employer had put him in a tight spot here.
Frank shuffled uncomfortably. “Mr Hawkstone has been good to me…” he mumbled, a phrase I’d heard more than once before. To be fair, I could forgive him his loyalty. Just like Monkey and me, he’d been pulled into Lester’s orbit by his association with the coin, the difference being that he’d originally stolen it, and we’d returned it all those years later. The fact that Lester, acting on the Reverend’s sage counsel, had given Frank a job when he’d left prison meant that he was hardly likely to go against the millionaire now. I, on the other hand, had no such qualms.
“So, why did you end up calling it off when we’d spent twenty minutes arguing with that security guard and convincing him to call the museum’s director immediately?” I could still see the look on the man’s face. After assuring him that I was the director’s niece, giving Monkey time to hop over the ropes so that he could get closer to the priceless Incan relic and take what Lester had assured us would be a photograph that would cause a stir in the archaeological world, Frank had received an abort message in his earpiece. “How do you think Frank felt when he knocked over that vase trying to help Monkey back over the ropes before he was spotted?” I shouted angrily, but Lester simply shrugged his shoulders sheepishly. “And how do you think I felt when I had to explain to the guard that I wasn’t the director’s niece after all?”
