The Red Road (27 page)

“I’ll be okay,” I told them.
“I need to get my exams done.”

Another hug from my mother. “Call
us tonight or tomorrow,” she requested.

Father Benedict had called an
assembly the same day. As well as the pupils themselves, all the
significant members of staff were present. All were seated, the
absence of one hundred and sixty boys freeing up a number of chairs.
I sat in silence as the headmaster waited for the late arrivals to
find places to sit, before starting.

“I will get straight to the point,
to mitigate any further misunderstanding that might soon arise. The
police have made an arrest in connection with the recent events of
the school—”

I noticed how he walked around
saying ‘murders’.

“—and soon hope to press
charges. I am being kept regularly up-to-date with everything that is
going on and will keep you and your parents informed as to any
significant and relevant developments.

“Despite this, you will have
noticed that some pupils have chosen not to return and are in the
process of moving on from the school. This, we do not expect to have
any significant effects on those remaining, and any such issues will
be handled by your housemasters. Please speak to them in the first
instance.”

My eyes flickered around the
assembly room, making eye contact with various other boys as they did
the same as myself and looked to see who had left. As far as I was
able to tell, the departures came largely from the junior school, and
the first and second years of the senior school. I couldn’t tell if
anyone from my year was missing. I doubted it, though. That would
disrupt preparation for their GCSEs quite a bit. I wondered just how
many sixth formers had gone. I didn’t bother to turn around and try
and count them.

Father Benedict continued, “This
term is going to pick up immediately where it left off, with classes
resuming first thing at nine, tomorrow morning. Unfortunately,
due to losing the last three weeks, the spring holiday will only last
one week, and so I urge those preparing for their GCSEs and A-Levels
to make good use of the time available to them and make an effort to
put in extra hours during the weeks.”

Crap. That wasn’t good news. The
spring holidays were usually four weeks long, and I had intended to
devise a good revision timetable and focus on ensuring I was well
prepared to tackle some of my weaker subjects. Now it looked as
though I was going to have to work harder than ever. Unconventional
as it was, I considered raising my hand and asking the headmaster why
they simply didn’t put the exams back, when he then answered my
question.

“Unfortunately, the exam boards
are unable to move the dates of the exams by such a large amount and
consider even a margin of two days to be too much. To sit the exams
so long after the rest of the country could be seen as giving those
involved an unfair advantage.”

“That happened to Ian Sykes, when
he was our dorm prefect, do you remember?” Baz whispered into my
ear.

“Did it?” I whispered back.
Sykes had been my dormitory prefect two years ago, and I honestly
couldn’t remember.

“Yeah, he had a clash with two of
his exams and had to do his classical civilisations exam a day
earlier than everyone else. He wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone
else in his class, and Mr Somers had to escort him to all his meals,
to make sure he didn’t. Remember how no one was allowed to come
into the dorm?”

Damn. If they went through all of
that just for one day, what on earth would they need to do for three
weeks? I couldn’t imagine them unplugging all the telephones and
TVs in the school, or even withholding all the mail and letters to
pupils. In fact, they would have to isolate the third year and upper
sixth entirely. No, that would be practically impossible. I guess it
was just tough luck on us.

“The exam boards, however, have
said that they will be taking recent circumstances into strong
consideration when it comes to the marking,” Father Benedict said.
“Coursework will also be graded with the same considerations.”

I saw a number of the teachers
nodding their heads, and gave a sigh of relief. Things could possibly
work in my favour here. What might have once been a good grade could
now turn out to be a great one. Maybe I would see straight As after
all.

“Football and rugby matches for
this weekend are going ahead as originally scheduled, and voluntary
service and optional activities are unaffected. Games will also be
going ahead tomorrow afternoon, as usual.

“One change to the normal running
of the school will now see the addition of added security, and you
should not be alarmed by the men you see patrolling with dogs. They
are there for your protection, and you are to continue to go about
your day as normal. You are, however, to cooperate with them as much
as possible. You may find them patrolling your house, inspecting your
dormitory and also monitoring the classrooms.”

I had spotted three of the said
security staff earlier. They were dressed in high-visibility jackets
and had had a rather large Alsatian stood next to them, panting. I
had been suspicious at the time that they were part of a new security
team the school had employed and had just been proven right. Well, as
long as it got me through the rest of the term and the summer, I
didn’t care.

Father Benedict continued the
assembly, talking largely about Oxbridge and UCAS applications for
the sixth formers, as well as speaking of the behaviour he expected
from us at all times. We left once he was finished and headed back to
our houses.

~ ~ ~

“What did the headmaster want to
see you for?” Anthony Simmons wanted to know, as I returned to the
third year dorm. He looked quite concerned for a change, but was
likely just fishing for gossip.

“He just wanted to speak to me and
a few of the others about Craig Priest and Ted Osmond. The boy from
the junior school,” I added, seeing that Simmons was unsure of who
I meant.

“Because you saw the bodies?”

“Yes. He wanted to know how I was
feeling about coming back,” I said, unlocking my tuck box and
removing some of my personal possessions that I had stored there
before leaving three weeks earlier. “I was okay. Some of the others
were a little upset still, though. I think he was trying to make sure
that no one else was about to pack up and leave.”

“Have a lot of people left?”

“I don’t know for sure, but
judging by the assembly, about a third?” I shrugged.

“Does anyone know who they
arrested?” Simmons asked, looking from me to Baz.

“Everyone says it’s Quasimodo,”
I said. “He’s always around, so I think if no one sees him in the
next few weeks we can assume it was him.”

“What a fucking freak,” Simmons
growled.

The dormitory door opened and Daniel
Rye, another twentieth of the Clique, entered.

“Hey, Ant, you heard
about what’s happening in the first and second year dorms?” he
asked.

“No?” Simmons asked.

“Because so many of them have
left, they’re now merging some of the dorms together.”

“Really? Fuck.”

“Mr Somers is also getting me to
share with Matthews.”

“Two prefects in one dorm?” I
asked.

“Yeah,” Rye nodded to me.
“They’re going to start making more of us share because of the
number of people that have left. Those dorms are almost empty. It’s
like everyone is away doing the Duke of Edinburgh award.”

This I hadn’t expected. Not that
it was a big deal. Normally, dormitories were looked after by one
prefect. I guessed that the departure of some of the boys had led to
a number of spare beds becoming available in some dorms, with others
lying empty. It would potentially mean that I would be taking a dorm
with one of the other third years next term.

“Is D of E still happening this
year?” Simmons wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” I said after
no one spoke. “I doubt they’ll have cancelled it. It counts as an
extra GCSE.”

“Not that it matters, since it
doesn’t affect us,” Simmons said. “We’ve already done the
bronze and silver parts.”

“You coming to dinner, Ant?” Rye
asked of Simmons.

“Sure, let’s go.”

No invitation for Baz or myself, I
noticed.

“Oh, they’re serving us dinner?”
Baz asked me.

“Yes,” I chuckled. “They said
so in assembly.”

“I wasn’t listening the whole
time,” he admitted. “I was just going to have a Pot Noodle. I’ll
save it for another day.”

“Where’s Sam?” I asked.

“I think he’s on the phone to
his parents, to let them know what was said at assembly.”

“We’ll wait for him before
going, then,” I said.

~ ~ ~

“I swear the food here is getting
worse,” Charlie Moon, a short, skinny boy from Enfield House, said,
moving his dinner around the plate and making little effort to eat
any more of it. “They clearly didn’t bother to take any cooking
classes while we were away.”

“What do you mean?” Baz said.
“This is nice.”

“No, it’s not. This is gross!”
Moon glared at him. “They just shove anything together – ‘bit
of run over chicken and some onions, that will do’,” he mimed the
chef’s actions, “put together some random sauce, whatever’s
within arm’s reach, and then make up a name like ’chicken tikka
masala’!”

I swear that I heard all those in
the immediate vicinity fall silent, knives and forks being lowered
and attentions being turned to Moon.

“Um ... what?” I said.

“That’s what they’ve called
this,” Moon repeated, poking the food with his fork.

“Moon, it’s not made up! That’s
it’s real name, it’s a curry!”

“Curry? This?” he said
incredulously. “Just because it’s got chicken and rice in it,
that doesn’t make it curry.”

I admitted that I didn’t really
know what defined a curry, but I knew that this was one. I told him
so. “It’s a well-known English curry,” I added.

“English curry?” Moon said.

“Yes, it was invented here,” I
said.

“No, it wasn’t,” I heard Ben
Wild say to me from across the other table. “What are you talking
about, Crotty?”

“It was,” I said. “It was
invented in Birmingham.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Wild
repeated.

“It’s from India,” Will Butt,
seated next to him, as always, backed him up.

“It was created in Birmingham,”
I began to repeat the folk legend of how the dish came into being. “A
chef up there put cream into a chicken tikka when someone complained
it was too dry, and called it chicken tikka masala.”

“Bollocks,” Wild scowled.

“Yeah, Crotty, it was made in
India,” Butt added.

I shrugged and decided to ignore the
two. As soon as the Clique got it into their heads that they were
right, nothing would dissuade them other than another well-informed
twentieth or a teacher. But only a teacher they respected.

“Birmingham?” Baz said. “I
thought it was invented in Newcastle?”

“You’re both wrong. It came from
Scotland,” Jeff Armitage said.

“No,
you’re
wrong,”
Marvin Trent said. “It
was
invented in India, like all the
other curries. There was a
rumour
it was invented in England, but
it’s wrong.”

“It’s British!”

“Does anyone know the nationality
of the chef?” I asked as the table descended into petty squabbling,
hoping to end the argument before someone decided to start a fight
over it. “Was he English?”

“He was Indian,” Baz said.

“Exactly, so that means it’s an
Indian curry,” Trent said.

“Not if it was invented here, you
thick twat!” Butt shot from the other table.

“Guys, it really doesn’t
matter,” I said, wishing I hadn’t commented on Moon’s original
statement.

I was ignored, and the squabbling
continued unabated. I looked over at the other tables, as those there
watched the argument continuing, smirks all over their faces. I then
caught Brian Donald’s eye.

“Joe,” he called.

Joe? Normally you call me
‘Crotty’
, I thought. He had done so the whole time he had
been copying Simmons’ CDs earlier in the term. The Clique rarely
ever used my first name. It was either ‘Crosthwaite’ or ‘Crotty’
for them. I knew immediately that he wanted something.

“Hi,” I said.

“Have you finished your English
Lit coursework?” he asked.

Let me guess. You didn’t bother
doing anything during the three-week break and now you want to copy
it
, I thought. I nodded that I had done the work, picking up my
orange juice and taking a sip.

“What did you do it on?” Donald asked.

“
The Catcher in the Rye
.”

“Can I borrow it?”

I considered refusing, citing
plagiarism and reiterating what I had been told about the
consequences of copying geography coursework (a conversation, I
reminded myself, he had been a part of). I then decided to bargain,
instead.

“What do you want it for?”

The question seemed to throw Donald.
He struggled for a moment for an explanation, then said, “I just
want to take a look, to see how much I need to do. I don’t really
get the book.”

Given that I found Holden Caulfield
an obnoxious cretin with few redeemable qualities, I would have
thought that it would be easy for Donald to sympathise with the
character.

“You haven’t actually read it, have you?” I grinned.

“No,” he admitted. “It’s
shit.”

“
The Catcher in the Rye
isn’t shit, it’s actually a very important book,” Seb Silverman
said. “It’s about alienation and teenage rebellion, and one of
the first books to actually acknowledge all those things. It was
actually written for adults, but the themes involved are more
appropriate for adolescents.”

Brief silence followed the
statement. “I actually agree with Brian – it’s shit,” I said.
“I had to force myself to finish it.”