The Roman and the Runaway

by A. J. Braithwaite

  "Where did all his hair go?" he whispered.

  They both burst into a fit of helpless laughter which turned the attention of the whole class in their direction and brought their teacher, Mr Wilmot, striding over from the front of the room.

  Luke hastily shut down the web-browser but Mr Wilmot turned out to be more technically capable than any other teacher Luke had met. He re-opened the program, displayed the history of pages which had been visited that day, sorted them by the order in which they had been viewed and brought back the most recent one: the encyclopaedia entry on Ned Kelly, together with his extremely hairy photograph.

  Although Luke knew he was getting himself into trouble, the treacherous laugh was building up inside him again as the photograph re-appeared and he had to bite his lips together hard to stop it from spilling out. He didn't dare to look at Jay or at Mr Wilmot.

  "What's so amusing about this entry, Brownlow?" asked Mr Wilmot. His voice was quiet yet somehow full of menace. Luke suddenly found he wasn't in the mood to laugh any more and wondered if he could get himself out of trouble by simply telling the truth. His mind refused to come up with any other options, so he went with his first instinct.

  "Sorry, sir. I didn't know the story, so I searched for it and when I saw that photograph, well, he looks so different from our Mr Kelly that it made me laugh." He looked hopefully up at Mr Wilmot to see if this disarming honesty might work on him. The housemaster was a short man, with a temper to match. Most of the boys in Luke's year were already taller than Mr Wilmot and the rumour was that he had grown his goatee beard to stop people mistaking him for a student. Luke wasn't sure he really liked his housemaster very much but didn't want to get off on the wrong foot with him so early in the year.

  "I'll thank you to stick to the work in hand in future," Mr Wilmot replied. He returned to the front of the class without another word and Luke wiped imaginary sweat from his forehead with his fingers as he glanced over at Jay.

  The lesson proceeded without further incident and Luke found that Jay was beside him as they went down the stairs to lunch.

  "I can't believe you managed to get us out of that." Jay sounded impressed.

  Luke grinned. "Me neither. Maybe he's being soft on me because I'm new."

  Jay snorted. "I don't think Wilmot's ever soft on anyone. I don't know how I didn't burst out laughing again when he brought that page back up."

  "That was a bit creepy," Luke admitted. "I've never known a teacher who could do that before. Though he probably wasn't expecting to find an encyclopaedia page."

  Jay laughed. "That's it! He thought you were looking at something you shouldn't have been. I bet he was really disappointed he couldn't make an example of you for breaking the school's rules on Internet use."

  From that point on, Jay and Luke spent a lot of their free time in each other's company. But although he'd gained a friend and escaped a punishment, the episode in the computer room had also marked a turning point in Luke's relationship with Mr Wilmot. His position as the year nines' tutor and the Romans' housemaster gave him the opportunity of keeping a closer eye on Luke than he had done before, as if expecting to catch him out somehow and Luke began to feel slightly resentful about it. He was careful to obey all the rules and regulations of the school, making sure the man would have no reason to jump on him.

  In fact, it was Jay who unwittingly ended up getting Luke into trouble with Mr Wilmot again. Jay turned out to be very skilled at manipulating digital photographs. He took the image of Ned Kelly from the online encyclopaedia and merged it with a picture of the headmaster that he'd taken from the school's own website. This created a weird hybrid of the two Ned Kellys which had the headmaster's face and the outlaw's luxuriant hair and beard. He then printed it off and carefully painted a Wild West-style ‘Wanted' poster around the image. He presented the poster to Luke a few days after the computer lab incident. Luke thought the poster was excellent and put it up on the pinboard above his bed.

  That night, while the year nines were relaxing in front of the television in the Forum, their dormitory was raided by a party of Vikings intent on plunder and mayhem. This was an occasional hazard of life in the school. The year nines returned to their room at their designated bed-time and discovered that the beds had been wrapped in toilet paper and the contents of a paper shredder had been scattered all over the room. Each of the windows had been daubed with honey in the shape of a capital letter V, to which more of the tiny fragments of paper were sticking.

  The members of each dormitory were responsible for keeping the room clean and tidy. Mrs Mould came in every weekday morning to empty the rubbish bins and to check on the general condition of each room. As Luke had already discovered, Mrs Mould was not a person to be trifled with and all the boys knew that if their rooms were left in anything other than a pristine state she would go straight to their housemaster in the morning to report them.

  In his rush to help clear up most of the mess before Mr Wilmot saw that their lights were still on, Luke did not immediately notice that Jay's poster had been taken by the raiders. The clean-up job made all the year nine Romans late for bed that night and they had to get up much earlier than usual to finish the task in the morning. By the time their room was looking tidy enough to meet Mrs Mould's exacting requirements they were all very late for breakfast. As they made their way blearily past the notice board in the entrance hall Luke was intercepted by Mr Wilmot.

  "Come with me, Brownlow," said the housemaster and Luke found himself being led towards the display of staff photographs on the left hand side of the notice board. Jay followed him, wondering what was going on, while Taj and Fred headed into the hall, more concerned about getting some breakfast before the start of morning school.

  "I take it this is your handiwork?" Mr Wilmot hissed in Luke's ear.

  In front of them, fixed over the usual photo of the headmaster at the top of the display, was the Wanted poster which Jay had produced. It publicly declared that Ned Kelly was guilty of crimes against fashion and cruelty to children and offered a £500,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.

  "Er," said Luke, trying to think of a response that would not incriminate them but finding his sleep-deprived brain slow to respond.

  Jay's was clearly not functioning properly either, because he blurted out "How did that get there?" which landed them well and truly in the frame.

  "We didn't put it there, sir," Luke said hurriedly, attempting to limit the damage Jay had caused. "But it is my poster, yes. Just a joke, you know." He smiled optimistically but sensed immediately that this time they weren't going to escape as lightly as before.

  "This," said Mr Wilmot, ripping down the poster, "is defacing school property." He held up the artwork and tore it in half, with a sickening look of satisfaction on his face.

  Luke thought of the graffiti which had disfigured many areas of his old school (some of it his own work) and felt this verdict was a bit strong. He was also annoyed to see poor Jay's poster destroyed and highly irritated that they were clearly about to become the scapegoats for some Viking idiot's idea of a joke. His temper got the upper hand and he found himself replying angrily. "Oh come on, it's not that bad. Nothing's damaged. Apart from my poster, that is."

  Luke's voice came out louder than he'd expected and seemed to echo around the open space of the entrance hall. Mr Wilmot looked coldly back at Luke. His expression suggested that he thought Luke had finally shown his true colours.

  "Sir," added Luke, as an afterthought. Much too late.

  Mr Wilmot's eyes narrowed and Luke felt Jay shift slightly beside him, as though his body was recommending to his brain that it was time to make a swift exit.

  "You will both report to me at seven o'clock every morning for the rest of the week. I expect your uniforms to be immaculate." He surveyed their appearances and both boys became conscious of their uncombed hair, hastily-done-up ties and the small pieces of shredded paper that were still clinging to their shoes and sweaters. "
If you turn up looking like this you will find yourselves in detention." He glanced at his watch. "Likewise if you are late for registration this morning."

  With that he turned and stalked off to their classroom, crushing the remains of Jay's poster into a tight ball in his fists. Luke looked at his own watch and saw they had precisely five minutes before Mr Wilmot would be checking their names against the register. "Damn, no time for breakfast. We'd better follow him. Hang on." He stopped and straightened Jay's tie. Jay grinned.

  "Thanks, Mum." He returned the favour and they walked glumly down the corridors to their tutor's classroom, which was at the far south-west corner of the school.

  "Sorry about that," said Luke, feeling he'd handled the situation really badly.

  "Not your fault," replied Jay. "If I'd kept quiet we might have got away with it. Wilmot's a complete pain in the arse. If I ever find out who put that poster there, I'll…"

  Luke regarded Jay, whose long hair, slender build and slightly nerdy appearance didn't make him look terribly threatening, even though both his fists were tightly clenched. "Well - what will you do?"

  Jay looked back at Luke, who was shorter but a lot broader than he was and said "Easy, I'll set you on them!"

  With that they had arrived at Mr Wilmot's classroom and neither of them said another word. Both their stomachs were rumbling loudly by the time the mid-morning break came around and Jay was looking quite pale by then.

  "No-one should be forced to do chemistry on an empty stomach," he complained as they hurried to the tuck shop to buy something to eat which would last them through to lunchtime.

  Much of the school had seen the poster on their way to or from breakfast and news of Luke and Jay's encounter with Mr Wilmot had clearly spread. Several people congratulated them on the stunt and Fred and Taj huddled round to commiserate with them and to plan revenge on their Viking raiders.

  Luke would have none of this, however. The last thing he wanted to do was to get into any more trouble. He had more reason than the others for not wanting to be sent to see Mr Kelly.

  "Look guys, it wasn't deliberate. Those Vikings didn't know Wilmot would recognise that picture straight away and know it was us. It was just a silly prank for them and bad luck for us, that's all. And they'll be expecting us to do something now. Let's wait until they're off their guard."

  The others seemed impressed by this logic and this made Luke feel a bit of a fraud. He suspected that if it had been anyone but Ned sitting in the headmaster's office, he would have been leading a raiding party against the Vikings that very night. He was also aware that one of the Viking boys, Benjamin Wharton, had been sitting at the computer behind his in the IT lesson featuring Ned Kelly and would have had a good view of Luke's screen. This meant that the consequences of the prank might not have been as much of an accident as Luke was making out.

  Once their week of early morning starts and inspections by Mr Wilmot had finished, the rest of the half-term passed relatively peacefully. Luke's entire family came to collect him and he showed them all around the school before they went home. He managed to be polite to his father (it actually seemed quite easy, after dealing with Mr Wilmot) and was delighted to be with Mum and the girls again. The week at home was enjoyable but Luke was not sorry to be heading back to the company of Jay and the other year nines once the short break was over. The twins both seemed to have increased in volume since he had been away at school. Or perhaps it just seemed like that because his father was shouting less.

  "You really take after your Daddy," he informed them.

  Chapter Five

  Half-term week was a busy one for the staff of the school. It was always a chance to catch up with jobs which were hard or impossible to do when the school was full of students. The caretakers got on with repairs, the school's Matron re-stocked her medical supplies and the teaching staff planned lessons and started to prepare reports on all the students. The headmaster spent his time meeting with all the other members of school staff and catching up with piles of paperwork. One of his last meetings of the week was with the four housemasters. It was an opportunity to chat about how the term was going so far, to make plans for the forthcoming half-term and to discover whether any particular problems had come to light.

  Three of the four housemasters had been with the school for some years and Ned knew them all very well. John Wilmot had joined the school the previous year and Ned was not sure that he had yet got into his stride in the job. Wilmot had been a pupil at the school himself, which had swayed the board of governors into giving him the post, despite Ned's personal misgivings. He would rather have promoted the year seven tutor and French teacher, Ellen Richmond, but Wilmot's old-boy credentials and (Ned suspected) his gender, had won the day.

  Rachel, Ned's secretary, was serving out biscuits and coffee to everyone and Ned was handing out agendas. "The Saxons are putting up a good performance this term, Charlie," he observed. The first item on the agenda was the inter-house competition. Although the school was so small, there was a fierce rivalry between the houses. Charlie Garnet, the head of the Saxons house smiled smugly.

  "Not bad, headmaster. But the Romans are running us a close second," he conceded, with a nod towards John Wilmot.

  "How's your hockey team shaping up, John?" asked Ned. The next half term would see the houses compete in hockey, swimming and orienteering.

  "Pretty well," Wilmot admitted, "though I have higher hopes of the Romans' orienteering team this year – our new year nine is turning out to be quite a natural."

  Ned thought of all the hours he and Luke had spent map-reading on the South Downs and permitted himself a small glow of pride at these words. "How's he getting on generally?" he asked, not quite able to resist the question and quite as interested in his colleagues' assessment of Luke as Luke had been in his friends' view of Ned.

  Wilmot frowned. "I think he might turn out to be a disruptive influence but that's probably down to his educational background up to now. I'm keeping my eye on him."

  "Wasn't he the boy who put the wanted poster up?" chipped in Rhys Thomas, the Vikings' housemaster and Ned's deputy. "I thought that was rather cleverly done, myself."

  Wilmot's lips pursed in disapproval and Ned turned to Thomas for clarification. Thomas laughed. "You mean you didn't see it, headmaster? It was jolly good. They'd morphed your face with Ned Kelly, the outlaw's, and turned it into a wanted poster – then they stuck it over your photo on the board downstairs for everyone to see as they went into breakfast."

  "I'm sorry I missed it," smiled the headmaster, remembering how he had told Luke to look up Ned Kelly's story on the night that Luke had landed in his flower bed.

  "I don't think Brownlow put it there, to be fair," said Wilmot, grudgingly. "But he was extremely insolent when I tackled him about it. That's what comes of a state education, I suppose. But I think I've got the measure of him now."

  The headmaster felt slightly concerned about this confidence of Wilmot's but now was not the time to pursue the matter. He returned to the agenda and the meeting continued without further mention of Luke.

  *

  The next half term started well for Luke. The Romans won the inter-house orienteering challenge and Luke was chosen to join the team that would represent the whole school. The competitions took him away from the school on several Saturdays and the training for the team was giving him an excellent opportunity of exploring the surroundings of the school. The Chiltern Hills in which the school was situated were similar in many ways to the South Downs of home and Luke loved getting out into the countryside and away from the many restrictions of school life. The only person who seemed unhappy about him joining the school team was the other year nine member of it: Benjamin Wharton. Wharton, too, had joined the team that year, having spent two years as a member of the orienteering club beforehand. He didn't think it was fair that Luke should get on the team in his first term and took every opportunity to put Luke down and to criticise his performance.

&n
bsp; With Jay's help, Luke continued to put in a lot of effort on his school-work and gradually he began to catch up with the other year nine boys. He also managed to keep his head down and his mouth shut while in the presence of Mr Wilmot, although this was quite a struggle, on occasions.

  Early December brought a cold snap to the south of England. The boys began to wonder if they would see snow before Christmas, something that had not happened for many years. On one Friday lunchtime it began to fall, thickly and steadily. Luke and his classmates spent more time staring out at the snow than they should have, excited at this rare sight and desperate to get out and make the most of it. The heating in the school had been turned up high and the classrooms were getting unbearably stuffy.

  The afternoon dragged by until it was the last teaching period of the day. Luke and the other year nines were struggling through a maths lesson on quadratic equations with Mr Wilmot when an announcement came over the PA system, asking Mr Wilmot to go to the school office.

  The housemaster rose from his desk. "Carry on working through that sheet of equations," he said. "I will be back shortly."

  The door swung shut behind him and the boys tried to concentrate on their work. Luke stared at the page but the numbers seemed to be moving around and they were making no sense to him at all. He gazed hopelessly at them for five minutes without solving a single equation. It was too hot. Luke's seat was near one of the tall, narrow windows and he gave up on the impossible task to look longingly out at the snow, imagining the feeling of the fresh air on his face. Before he even really knew what he was doing, he found he had risen from his seat, crossed to the window and pulled the heavy sash upwards.

  A cold draught of air and a swarm of fat, fluffy snowflakes washed over Luke in a refreshing billow. Outside, a smooth blanket of unblemished whiteness stretched away behind the school into the falling darkness of the early evening. It was too inviting to resist. Invigorated by the cold, Luke climbed over the low sill of the open window and jumped out into the snow. He felt fantastic; liberated. He reached down, scooped a handful of snow into a ball and turned to face the school building. All his classmates had left their seats and were gathering at the open window, watching him. He laughed at their astounded faces and threw the snowball straight into their midst, deliberately aiming it at the smirking face of Benjamin Wharton. The missile exploded on Wharton's head in a most satisfactory manner, splattering everyone near him with snow. Shouts went up at this unilateral declaration of war and, as though an enchantment had been broken, the whole class clambered out through the window.