The Red Road (6 page)

“Think they’re students?” I
asked. “Sixth formers?”

Rob nodded. “Definitely. Probably
lower sixth, come to the park for lunch. That year is supposed to be
a complete doss.”

I studied the group some more. There
were three girls and two boys there. Good odds, I figured, if I was
one of the guys in the group. The two guys and one of the girls
appeared to be drinking from cans of beer, while the other two looked
like they had soft drinks. I could see sandwich wrappers and plastic
bags from the local supermarket billowing slightly in the breeze. I
imagined myself in the same situation, having finished classes for
the day that morning, not having any until the afternoon of the next
day, and just hanging out with my friends in the park and having a
few beers. Or perhaps heading off somewhere in a car. We obviously
weren’t allowed cars at St Christopher’s; bikes were the closest
thing we had to independent transport. We could take driving lessons
while we were there, but I could say in all honesty that I wouldn’t
want any of the other boys to see me bunny-hopping my way along a
road anywhere near the grounds.

“I can’t wait to move up to the
sixth form,” Rob said. “We finally get our own rooms and don’t
have to share with first or second years.”

I found his enthusiasm somewhat
amusing, but I said nothing. When I left the school (and I was going
to make sure that I
did
leave), I would get my own room,
anyway. Okay, sure, it would be back home with my mother and father,
but it would be mine nonetheless.

“Does that guy you told me about
still stink out your dorm?” I asked Rob.

“I think it’s gotten worse,”
he said. “I’m glad to get away from that. I might actually buy
him some deodorant on the way home and spray it all over him when I
go back. Hey, did you hear about what Mr Rod did to Mario Daily?”
Rob then asked.

“No?” I said. From the way he
had phrased the question, it almost sounded as if it was some sort of
physical assault.

“He called him up at home when he
messed up his A-Levels and had a go at him over it.”

“What?” I said, flabbergasted.
“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Mr Rod told Daily that
he wasn’t going to get anything higher than a D in any of his
subjects. He told him to give up one of his A-Levels and just do two.
Daily refused and told him he’d get all As and Bs, but he didn’t.
So Mr Rod called him up to gloat.”

“Bastard,” I said. “How did
you find out?”

“Daily’s younger brother told
me.”

“Bloody hell!” I said. “I hope
that doesn’t happen to us. I don’t want Mr Somers calling me up
if I make a mess of my GCSEs. That would be a nightmare.”

“I doubt he’d do that,” Rob
said. “And to be honest, Mario Daily was a bit of a prick anyway,
so he sort of deserved it.”

He reclined back on the bench, raising
his arms in the air, stretching. “But no, sixth form’s going to
be great,” he went on. “We’ll also get to go to dances, get
access to the Common Room, and get the bar. We’ll have to start
taking preps, though, which could end up being a bit shit. What are
you looking forward to most?”

The question caught me a little
off-guard, and I had to fumble for something to say that I would
enjoy. “The dances,” I said after quickly running through all the
options in my mind.

“Hopefully all the girls will be
as fit as she is,” Rob remarked, looking at the girl again.

I nodded but didn’t respond, my
eyes moving once more over the five picnickers. Even now, I could
tell that the benefits of being a sixth former at St Christopher’s
paled in comparison to what I imagined the lives of the five before
me were like. Most likely one of them would have a car, or at least
be learning to drive; the guy and girl sitting next to each other
drinking the beer might well be a couple. The five would be enjoying
going to pubs and clubs, and going around one another’s houses
after school for everything from homework, hanging out, partying, and
... well, shagging while their parents were at work. With all of that
in mind, I found it difficult to get excited about things like dances
and the Sixth Form Common Room.

When I was twelve, having completed
my Common Entrance and moved to the senior school, the Sixth Form
Common Room was the stuff of legend. There were supposed to be luxury
sofas, pinball machines, dartboards, pool and table tennis tables,
and a bar in there. All were maintained to the highest standard,
unlike the ones we had to contend with in the rest of the school that
were falling apart and had most of the accessories missing. The
Common Room was also said to contain a huge flat-screen TV, hooked up
to every Sky channel on offer, including the adult ones (I later
found out that this was nonsense and just something that the sixth
formers liked to tell the first years). The bar itself was said to be
incredible, and I imagined that it looked something like a cut-out
from a country pub, fireplace and all.

My illusions of all this were
shattered the following year when I was collared into helping some
workmen carry a new sofa into the place. Contrary to the images in my
head, the Common Room was more like a poorly converted barn, dank and
dark, with small, old windows through which not much natural light
was able to enter. The carpet was horribly stained and in urgent need
of being replaced, while the walls themselves were chipped and
cracked, paint peeling off and gathering in small flakes on the
floor, which no one had bothered to clean up in months. I never saw
the bar, as it was shuttered when I struggled inside the Common Room
with the huge three-seater sofa. However, I was told that it wasn’t
anything like the country pub cut-out I was expecting it to be. It
was more like a regular tuck shop that also stocked cans of beer.
Disappointment all round.

I only got to stay for a few minutes,
helping to position the sofa, before I was grabbed roughly by one of
the upper sixth and frogmarched back out the door. I had seen all I
needed to, though. The place was far from the utopia it had been made
out to be.

“She is so bloody fit,” Rob said
again. “In fact, they all are, even if the other two are gingers.”

Now that I could see the other two a
little more clearly, it appeared as though they were sisters,
possibly twins. The blonde had finished her beer. She put the empty
can in the plastic bag she had used to carry her lunch in from the
supermarket, along with the stray wrappers, before standing up and
brushing something off her thin white trousers. I caught a glimpse
pink underwear over the top of them, before she made adjustments and
it was gone. Rob looked at me with a grin and raised his eyebrows.

“Which one do you like?” he
said, sounding as though he was trying not to drool.

“I’d be happy with any of them,”
I admitted.

“Really?” Rob asked in surprise.

I only shrugged. Well, what the hell
else would I say? I had been at an all-boys boarding school for six
years. I rarely, if ever, spoke to members of the opposite sex.
Beggars couldn’t be choosers.

“Well, I suppose the gingers
aren’t all
that
bad. Still, I really hope they all look like
the blonde at the dances.”

I chuckled. “Probably not.”

Dance Nights (essentially just a
fancy term for a disco) were events organised by St Christopher’s
for the benefit of the sixth formers. Being populated by nothing but
boys, the school had appreciated that, at some point, interaction
with the opposite sex would become necessary. After all, it wouldn’t
help for all of us to leave and head off to university, only to
encounter other human beings that had breasts and weren’t obsessed
with Baywatch, cars, video games, rugby, or cricket. To deal with
this, St Christopher’s had arranged with some local girls’
schools (who would be suffering the same issue) to bring both sixth
forms together for an evening social.

Though the dances were only for
sixth formers, word of the impending event would send a ripple of
excitement through the entire school; more so if the girls’ school
was considered to be of higher quality than the norm. The excitement
would be most prominent with the second years, who would have
survived their first three terms at the school and grown confident
enough to hang around near the front entrance, to check out the girls
as they arrived and find out exactly what the reward of a three-year
tenure at the school might entail.

Sometime after seven in the evening
on the night of the dance (always a Saturday), a coach would pull
into the school grounds, transporting the aforementioned sixth form
girls. A handful of sixth formers would meet them and take them into
the refectory for dinner (or whatever passed for it). I imagined that
apologies for the quality of the meal would be the first thing that
many of the boys would find themselves saying to the evening’s
guests.

I remembered that in my first year of senior school, there
had been an oddly held perception that as the evening wore on, the
dance would dissolve into some kind of messy orgy of beer and
debauchery. Not that anything like that ever really happened. The
teachers on duty would constantly walk around the couples to ensure
things didn’t get too out of hand.

The week following the night
would then become a Chinese-whispered event in which we would hear
about who pulled, who got a snog, who got a phone number, etc. That
was all by-the-by, with some expressing their disbelief that some of
the less attractive members of the sixth form had pulled a girl.
There would also be much ridicule for any boy that ended up with
whichever of the girls had been unfortunate enough to be deemed
unappealing.

“Joe?” Rob said.

I snapped out of my daydream. “Eh?”

“I said, what do you think you’re
going to study at A-Level?”

Whatever the local sixth form
college offers
, I thought. “Oh, I don’t know, I haven’t
really thought about it yet. I haven’t decided what I want to do
when I finish school or what I want to do at uni, either. How about
you?”

“English, French, and maths,”
Rob said automatically.

“Oh? What are you going to do with
those?” I asked. He had answered quickly; he clearly had everything
all worked out.

“I don’t know,” he grinned,
chuckling. “I just find everything else a bit crap. Art, crap.
History, crap. Geography, crap.”

“Economics?” I suggested.
“You’re doing maths, after all.”

“Sounds boring. I can’t think of
what I’d do with that, except become an accountant or something like
that. That would be dull as hell. Do you know that Stuart Evans isn’t
going to uni?”

“No?” I asked, picturing the
often long-haired sixth former from the preps he used to take when I
was in the second year. He was a nice guy, quite relaxed and enjoyed
playing the guitar. I regularly saw him with a copy of
NME
. “Why’s
that?”

“He says he wants to focus on his
band more,” Rob said with a hint of scepticism.

“He’s in a band?”

“With some people from home, he
says. His parents don’t care – they’re rich as hell, and he
could afford not to do anything for the rest of his life, to be
honest. Lucky bastard.”

“A bit like Timpson, then,” I
pointed out.

“Who? Oh, him. Yeah, probably.
Just not such a little prick.”

We watched as the group of five
picnickers packed up and started off out of the park, before we left
ourselves. Another attempt to get into a pub followed, before we each
returned home.

~ ~ ~

Rob called me early the next day and
invited me to come out with him on our bikes. He proposed we just go
for a ride around the fields and countryside. It was a nice day out
without any threat of rain, and so I went to collect my second, home
bike from the garage.

Unfortunately, my good bike was still at St
Christopher’s. The other I had left neglected in the garage for far
too long. Having not made an effort to maintain it over the past
three years, the bike had rusted and the air had come out of the
tires. I hunted around for a time, to see if I could find a way to
fix the punctures and undo the damage the rust had caused, but I soon
admitted defeat.

In the end, Rob went out on his own. I would catch
up with him that evening, if my parents weren’t too bothered about
him coming around. After sitting about in my room for a time, dipping
in and out of my book, I decided to go back into town and see if I
could find any decent tapes or CDs for sale.

I skipped taking the bus, choosing
instead to walk and extend the budget for my music purchase. It
wasn’t far, only about three miles or so, the same length as the
Red Road. For some reason, I avoided looking into the foliage that
ran parallel to the pavement, just in case I should see three
sickly-looking, pale white fingers poking out of the bushes.

About
three-quarters of the way into the town centre, I found myself
passing the local sixth form college. Having taken the bus the
previous day, I had failed to take notice of it. Now here, standing
in front of it, a compulsion overcame me and I wandered inside. I
knew what I wanted to do.

“Good morning,” said the chirpy
receptionist as I approached the desk.

“Hi,” I nodded back at him.

“What can I do for you?”

“Er ... I, er ...” It had been
so much better rehearsed in my head when I was walking in. “I was
thinking of coming here next year, and I was wondering if you have a
prospectus or something that I could look at?”

“We certainly do. Quite a few of
them right here,” the man said, standing up and starting to hand me
a booklet from a pile just in front of him. He then hesitated,
withdrawing the booklet as I made to take it from him. “Are you
local?” he asked inquisitively.

“I am, yes,” I said. “I live
just up the road, Ropemaker Avenue, Wictedene, about two miles or so
away?”