Battersea Heart : A New Excerpt

Just to let you know, if you don't already, that one of our contributors Graham Gaskin has written a novel called Battersea Heart. It is available at the Kindle Store for a very cheap price. The novel has garnered some very favourable reviews and, it goes without saying we all loved it a lot here at Armchair Towers. Below we have reproduced a short excerpt from the middle of the novel.

So I’d be doing a grand total of six useless C.S.E.’s over two years. These days, kids do about twenty G.C.S.E.’s and the results make the nightly news. To this day there are probably thousands of my contemporaries who still don’t know their C.S.E. results. That’s how much they mattered.

    The C.S.E.’s also meant the breakup of the S1 class. From the fourth year, we’d only be all together for tutor periods. P’haps that’s why Barry Brownlow intensified his campaign against Alan. Any excuse he got to torture the poor bastard he took with his usual, red mist, gusto. It all culminated in Maths.

    The school orchestra, after the Eye Level fiasco, was still in turmoil. Which meant Mr. Evigan was constantly being summoned from our class. That day, when the Maestro, Mr. Fullerton, urgently called him out, Barry immediately started foraging around Mr. Evigan’s desk. Rummaging and throwing stuff around. Suddenly he stopped. He’d found something he liked. He held the stapler aloft, like the ape with the bone in 2001. Then, with predator speed, he was on Alan. Pinning his hand down and slamming in a staple. It looked surprisingly tame, embedded in Alan’s palm. So tame that Barry slammed in another. No one said anything. The whole class just watched in rapt silence, like Barry was dismantling a bomb. Years of torment had conditioned Alan to passive compliance, so perversely he was as engrossed as the rest of us. Barry was obviously disappointed by the dull silver strips embedded in the flesh. So a third went in and hit pay dirt. Blood spurted and Alan’s hand started to twitch and jerk like a sleeping puppy. Another staple went in and, this time, Alan’s fingers seemed to be playing a phantom piano concerto. Barry punched the air, in triumph, as Alan’s face went the colour of skimmed milk.

    “What’s going on? “ Mr. Evigan said, flustering in.

    “He was messin’ with your stapler Sir, “Barry said.

    “Stapler? What, that looks nasty… Well someone better take him to the office, “the orchestra upheaval was obviously enough stress for Mr. Evigan, and he didn’t need any more heaped on his plate.

    Barry magnanimously volunteered for the task, probably beating Alan up on the way. I wonder how real Alan thought Dragon in the Garden was at that moment.