TWELVE

An Act of God

For the past couple of days, Harry Hodges had avoided his mates altogether and had not even set foot inside the school. He needed peace and solitude. But more than this, he needed time to collect his thoughts. He’d seen some fairly incredible things in his life, but the episode with those geese was something else. It seemed like some form of supernatural happening. Bizarre, spooky, unreal: these were words that sprung to mind. You’d normally only see things like that on the big screen while munching popcorn, he thought. It bore little resemblance to real life. But then, of course, he kept having to tell himself that it was.

Now, as he gazed out at the boating lake on Primrose Park and squinted at the couple of geese flapping their large wings on the water, he wondered whether these specimens before him had taken part in the bombardment. Then it occurred to him that perhaps Roy could have been some kind of wizard and possessed special powers that allowed him to communicate with birds. For a few moments the idea seemed plausible. Until, that is, Harry reminded himself that Roy was also in the line of fire. So that theory was hardly likely. And anyway, nobody in their right mind ever believed stuff like that.

As he sat there on the park bench with its peeling green paint, he began to feel cold and instinctively shoved both his hands into his jacket pockets. It was then that he felt the distinctive object nestling among a couple of conkers and a key ring. He pulled out the blue plastic binoculars and looked at them with a distinct feeling of guilt.

Roy had saved him from a fate worse than death. And yet all Harry had ever done for Roy was inflict bruises and stolen his binoculars. The kidnap plan made him feel even worse. For once, Harry was actually finding it hard to like himself very much. Until now, being horrible to others hadn’t really bothered him in the least. People were generally pretty unfriendly, unhelpful and arrogant. And those who did try to show that they cared, like a couple of left-wing, muesli eating teachers, just seemed to be going through the motions and were so namby-pamby and insincere that Harry would have gladly hit them in the mouth. There was of course a world of difference between saying something and actually doing something. Actions, as some bright spark once said, spoke louder than words. And it was clear to Harry now that the only person who had ever done anything genuinely decent for him was the very boy he’d been bullying. It was ironic, almost funny. Though it didn’t make Harry want to laugh. Far from it.

He bent forward to pick up a small flat pebble to see if he could skim it across the lake towards the geese. But before his fingers could so much as reach the grey stone, Harry felt a most peculiar sensation around the back of his neck as if a large feather had just brushed him. Instinctively, he put his hand to the back of his neck, and as he did so he could now see that a tie had draped itself perfectly around his neck. A pale lilac tie with green spots. Where on earth had it come from? He looked around him expecting to spot Colin or Brian, but instead saw nobody at all. The place was totally deserted, apart from an old lady walking her equally old dog on the other side of the lake.

Harry pulled the tie off his neck. It had a rich silky feel to it as it ran through his fingers. He turned it over and studied the label. ‘Il Prescelto’ seemed to be the trademark. It sounded foreign. And in smaller type were the words ‘Pure silk. Made in Italy.’ It was a smart tie - there could be no denying that. But how had it arrived out of thin air and why had it selected him, of all people, Harry Hodges? For a moment, a cold shiver ran down his spine and a sea of goose pimples spread themselves across his entire body. Could there have been a connection between the geese and the tie? Was this all part of some larger message being sent to him from a superior life force: aliens perhaps? Then his mind turned to the murky world of religion and those individuals who had always looked so ridiculous to him: the Muslim women dressed in black from head to foot with only a tiny pillar box slit for the eyes; the orthodox Jews with their funny broad rimmed hats, long beards and tassels; the Sikhs with their curious turbans; and those biggest fruit cakes of all, the Hare Krishna brigade in their daft orange robes, whose incessantly stupid chanting and drumming could always be heard a mile off. Perhaps they all weren’t so stupid after all. Perhaps they knew something Harry didn’t. Perhaps there was such a thing as a God. And perhaps this very God was talking directly to Harry, talking to him directly from the sky above.

Harry screwed up his eyes and looked up into that vast ocean suspended above his head. Large billowing cloud formations filled his entire field of vision. They moved ever so slowly as if stuck in a celestial traffic jam that was going nowhere very fast.

At first there seemed very little to look at. But the more intently he looked, the clearer the image became. He could see the eyebrows now, the high cheekbones and the strangely bulbous nose. And setting off these distinctive facial features was an unmistakable and majestic beard. Could he be in the presence of the Lord Almighty himself?

Harry closed his eyes, as if deep in prayer. But in truth his mind had gone blank. When he opened his eyes he couldn’t reconstruct the bearded face from the drifting clouds. It had disappeared quite literally into thin air. For some unaccountable reason he was feeling in a better state of mind. It wasn’t that he felt any less guilty about the way he had behaved towards Roy. The guilt was clearly still there. But now it dawned on him that Mr Tonk had had a point when in school assembly last week he had droned on about the importance of faith. “God,” he had said, “has a tendency to move in mysterious ways.” Too right, thought Harry. It was probably the first time he’d found himself agreeing with a single word that the headmaster had ever pronounced at morning assembly.

Harry took the tie and did something he hadn’t done since his granny’s funeral three years ago; he put it on. It actually looked pretty good, he thought, apart from the fact that he was only wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Then he took another look at the label. The words ‘Il Prescelto’ had a distinct Italian ring to them. He said the words to himself over and over again, feigning what he thought was an Italian accent. He wondered if the words had any meaning, or whether it was just a brand name like Tesco or Sainsburys. He would need to find out. But first of all, he would have to return the blue binoculars to Roy.

As Harry now sprung from the park bench with a new sense of purpose in his stride and looked down admiringly at his newly acquired tie, Mrs Nuttersley climbed the stairs of her 1930s semi detached home, clasping the fully laden washing basket.

She may have been perceptive when it came to matters of domestic hygiene and general cleanliness, but as far as her husband’s wardrobe was concerned she had something of a blind spot. While a lurid pink shirt or glittery lame jacket may have struck her as odd for her husband’s rather bland tastes, a wine red tie with a discreet gold stripe wouldn’t have seemed at all out of character. In fact, the tie, which now lay on the top of the washing pile was so innocuous that she didn’t even give it a second glance or a moment’s thought. And so it was that at precisely 2.35pm Mr Tonk’s beloved burgundy tie was transported to Stanley Nuttersley’s wardrobe and now hung alongside eleven other ties, none of which were burgundy coloured or, for that matter, striped.

Stranger still was this: Mr Tonk’s favourite tie - the pale lilac silk one with emerald green spots - now hung round the neck of a scruffy young man in a white T-shirt who was sitting in a slightly dingy cafe.

Harry had never been inside an internet café before. As he sat self-consciously with a cup of something the girl called ‘cappuccino,’ he peered at the screen. He usually only spent time in front of a computer to play violent ‘shoot ‘em up’ games, and was sorely tempted to try his hand at the latest version of ‘Armageddon 4’ but restrained himself. It was just going to have to wait. He nervously found a suitable search engine and keyed in the words ‘Italian Dictionary.’ In an instant the screen filled with countless possible pages to choose from. Harry just clicked on the first one which brought up a green and red website designed like the Italian flag. Carefully he typed in the characters: I…l… space P…r…e…s…c…e… l…t…o… Then he clicked the search button and in an instant the English translation appeared on the screen.

The sound of the ceramic mug smashing against the stone floor broke the silence and the girl behind the counter put down her ‘News of the World’ and went in search of the mop and bucket. “There’s always one isn’t there?” she muttered to herself. By the time she had got to the table with her cleaning items, Harry had gone, leaving behind him a brown puddle of cappuccino on the floor among pieces of the broken mug. The girl patiently cleared the mess and checked that nothing had spilled onto the keyboard. It looked perfectly dry to her, so that was lucky. Then she ran the mouse over the mat to check that it was working. And at this point, she couldn’t help noticing the bold words on the green and red screen. They simply read: ‘The chosen one.’ She thought nothing of it and wiped away the last traces of coffee. This done, she tutted in an exaggerated fashion and addressed the other customers. “It takes all sorts don’t it, eh?”

To say that Harry had received something of a shock would be putting it mildly. Until that moment, the notion that God might be talking to him by moving in ‘mysterious ways’ was no more than a vague possibility that he was toying with. Now, of course, there could be no question that this was the case, and that God had spoken to him directly via the internet. He was indeed ‘the chosen one’. But chosen for what precisely, Harry wasn’t at all sure. What he could be sure of though was this: his hands were shaking; his legs had gone all wobbly; he was sweating; and there was a large damp coffee patch on his trousers in a very embarrassing place.