The Roman and the Runaway

by A. J. Braithwaite

  "I didn't actually smell tobacco on the boy, headmaster."

  Ned gave Luke a questioning look. "So you were out of bounds?"

  Luke thought of his visit to Pagan's campsite inside the walls of the country club that afternoon and was able to honestly reply: "Yes, sir, I was."

  The headmaster frowned at Luke. "Acts of retaliation are, as you know, unacceptable under our school behaviour policy. Non-attendance at a detention is also a serious matter, while being out of bounds is something I have had to remind your class about only this week. I'm appalled by your behaviour."

  Luke had no response or defence to offer. He couldn't bear to meet Ned's eyes and dropped his gaze to the carpet, whose pattern was beginning to become sickeningly familiar. He waited to hear what his sentence would be.

  "Since you have clearly abused your orienteering training session today to visit the village without permission, you will no longer be a part of the school team."

  Luke felt devastated but not surprised at this pronouncement. He looked sadly up at Ned, expecting additional punishments for his other crimes. "You will have two further detentions on Monday and Tuesday of next week to make up for missing today's and you will not be permitted to go to the village for the next two weekends as a consequence of your planned act of retaliation."

  Luke nodded in acceptance. None of this seemed terribly unfair and it seemed as though he might still be able to get out to meet Pagan again on Saturday. He had feared he would be gated - confined to the school grounds - which would have made it impossible to see her again.

  The very worst thing about the situation was that he was sure he had managed to destroy any chance of re-establishing a friendly relationship with Ned. With Mr Wilmot in the room he could not talk frankly but he tried to address the neighbour underneath the headmaster's gown with his next words.

  "I'm really sorry. I've let you down."

  The look Ned gave him was hard to interpret. "You have," he agreed. "And if your behaviour doesn't improve I will be talking to your parents about whether this school is the right place for you to be. You can go."

  As he trudged dejectedly back up to the top floor to shower and change, Luke reflected upon the fact that he was now as desperate to stay at Hawley Lodge as he had been to stay at his old school last year. He was lying on his bed when his room-mates came to find him after their detention had finished.

  Jay flopped down onto his own bed. "What happened?"

  Luke gave a small groan at the prospect of reliving the past two hours again but proceeded to tell his friends the edited highlights of his afternoon's experiences, carefully leaving out any information as to the identity of the girl in the woods. They made a good audience; expressing their sympathy in colourful language which made Luke feel slightly better.

  "Why didn't you tell Kelly you got the fags off that girl?" asked Fred, reasonably.

  Luke shrugged. "It probably would have sounded like a lie anyway. What are the chances of bumping into someone who'd be willing to swipe the contents of an ashtray for me?"

  The other boys nodded understandingly and Luke's thoughts drifted to Pagan again. He knew he would be risking his future at the school by climbing over the country club wall to see her on Saturday but there was something about her that was more addictive than any cigarettes he had ever smoked.

  Chapter Twelve

  After lunch on Saturday most of Luke's year were heading off to the village to stock up with their week's supply of sweets and soft drinks from the shop. Luke waited until they had gone and then set off up the path alongside the country club. After making sure there was no-one in sight, he climbed over the wall and waded through the brambles to Pagan's campsite.

  He found Pagan preparing a meal: cutting oddly-shaped slices from a loaf of bread with a knife which was clearly not up to the task and heating up a can of mushroom soup. She grinned at Luke as he arrived and excitedly showed him a handful of small white mushrooms.

  "Look what I found in the woods!" she said. "Proper forager's food!" Luke smiled back at her and admired her harvest as Pagan chopped up the mushrooms and stirred them into her soup. "D'you want some?" asked Pagan.

  Luke wasn't all that keen on mushrooms but didn't want to hurt Pagan's feelings. "Well, I've had lunch, so I'm not that hungry – but maybe a little bit, just to keep you company." Pagan looked pleased and Luke knew he'd said the right thing.

  Pagan busied herself with buttering the bread and then she poured the soup into the two plastic cups from her Thermos flask. They toasted each other and sipped it, enjoying the peace of the woods and the warmth of the sunlight that was filtering down on them through the trees.

  "Oh, what happened about the cigarette ends?" Pagan asked, suddenly.

  "It all went horribly wrong," admitted Luke. "But thanks for getting them, all the same."

  Pagan demanded to hear the story and was horrified to hear that Luke had lost his place on the orienteering team by telling his headmaster he had been into the village to get the cigarettes from the pub himself.

  "But you didn't go into the village!" she cried. "That's terrible."

  Luke smiled at her indignation. "I was out of bounds when I came here, though," he said, "so it doesn't make a lot of difference."

  Pagan looked at him with an expression of affection. "If you'd told him about me you might not have lost your place on the team."

  "I'm not going to risk anyone finding out you're here if I can help it," Luke promised her.

  Pagan leant over and gave him a light kiss on the cheek as a reward for his gallantry.

  "Are you thinking of going home soon?" Luke asked, hoping that the answer would be 'no'. He was already working out how he might earn one or two more kisses.

  "I think I probably should," sighed Pagan. "I've enjoyed camping out here but it will be nice to have a proper bathroom again, where I can enjoy a long shower or bath without worrying that someone is going to catch me and throw me out. I'm looking forward to sleeping in a real bed again, too. I hope Mum will have got rid of that creep by now, so I think I'll head back tomorrow." She looked at Luke. "I'll miss you, though. Will you keep in touch with me once I get back home?"

  Luke smiled at her. "'Course I will. And if the creep is still there, you let me know and I'll come up and tell him what I think of him."

  Pagan put on a soppy, simpering look, fluttered her eyelashes in the style of a silent movie damsel in distress, clasped her hands together under her chin and breathed: "You're my hero!"

  Luke threw what was left of his bread at her in mock disgust and they playfully wrestled with each other for a short while, until the wrestling became hugging and the hugging became kissing.

  After a period of no talking at all, Pagan remarked "Your headmaster sounds really strict."

  Luke thought about this. "He's fair, I think," he said. "He makes it clear what's expected of everyone and we know what will happen if we don't live up to it. It's a bit weird for me though, because I knew him outside of school before I came here."

  He went on to explain to Pagan the odd relationship he had with Ned and how he thought he might have ruined it for good in the past week. It was a relief to be able to talk to someone else about the situation.

  "It might not be as bad as you think," she reassured him. "He's got to be tough on you to prove to himself he's not treating you differently from everyone else."

  Luke snorted. "I don't think there's any danger of that. I think he was really serious about expelling me if I get in any more trouble."

  Pagan sat up and gave Luke a headmistress-ish look herself. "And here you are out of bounds again! What are you thinking of? Get back to school at once! I don't want you getting expelled because of me."

  Luke raised his hands in a gesture of defeat. Pagan handed him back his library books and they exchanged telephone numbers, email addresses and a few more kisses before Luke reluctantly fought through the undergrowth to get back to the path. He climbed to the top of the wall and looked
up and down the path: his way was clear. He gave Pagan one last wave and trotted back to the school, resolving to be a model student for the rest of the term.

  *

  That evening, Luke had only been asleep for an hour when he was woken with a tremendous pain in his stomach, an overwhelming wave of nausea and the certain knowledge that he needed to get to a toilet, fast. Doubled over with cramps in his lower abdomen, he scuttled as quickly as he could to the bathroom, which was at the end of the corridor nearest to the stairs. Once inside, it became clear that his body was doing its best to clear itself of any food he might have eaten that day. Luke was fairly sure he had never been as violently ill as this in his life.

  When the first fits of sickness and diarrhoea had passed, Luke leant his head against the side of the toilet cubicle, feeling washed-out and trying to think about what on earth could be wrong with him. No-one else seemed to be suffering, so it didn't seem likely that he was ill from food-poisoning as a result of anything he'd eaten at school.

  Then a vivid memory formed in his mind, of Pagan putting her foraged mushrooms into the soup at lunchtime. It must be the mushrooms that were making him so sick. He groaned out loud as he thought of poor Pagan, stuck in the woods with these same symptoms but with no access to modern plumbing and with no-one to turn to for help. Luke staggered to a washbasin and rinsed his mouth and face. He looked into the mirror. It was hard to focus on his reflection but what he could see of his face was pale and shiny with sweat.

  Now that he had a suspicion of the cause of his illness, he knew he needed to get help for himself and for Pagan. He didn't know much about mushrooms but was aware from the conversations he'd had on his hikes with Ned that some of them were lethal. He couldn't afford not to tell someone about it. His first thought was to go straight to Ned but there were school protocols involved in these things and he knew it would be seen as highly improper for a student to go and disturb the headmaster without having first spoken to his housemaster. Mr Wilmot's apartment also had the advantage of being in the corridor just around the corner from the Romans' dormitories, in the central section of the top floor. Luke pulled the reserves of his strength together and stumbled towards Mr Wilmot's quarters, still bent double with the pain in his stomach.

  Mr Wilmot answered his door to Luke. As usual, his first response was an angry one. "What are you doing out of bed, Brownlow?"

  Before Luke could reply, Mr Wilmot became aware that something was very wrong. "What's the matter? Are you ill?"

  "Poisonous mushrooms," Luke managed to say, before he found he really needed to be sick again. Realising this was the case, Mr Wilmot ushered him into the bathroom of his small apartment, assuring him that he would call the Matron. Luke emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later to find the school's Matron already there. She must have summoned the headmaster, too, as Ned Kelly was standing next to her. He was dressed in more casual clothes than Luke had seen him wearing at the school, making him seem much more like his next-door-neighbour than the headmaster who had punished Luke on Wednesday.

  Ned guided Luke into a chair and looked at him closely. "Mr Wilmot tells us that you think you've eaten poisonous mushrooms, Luke. Are you able to describe them to me?"

  "They were small and white," Luke said. He grasped Ned's upper arm in his urgency to transmit his news. "But I'm not the only one who ate them. There's a girl hiding out in the country club's woods. She picked them and cooked them and I think she ate more of them than I did. You've got to find her, Ned."

  The Matron and Mr Wilmot were both looking shocked: perhaps at Luke's news or perhaps at the familiar way in which he was addressing his headmaster. But Luke was feeling so dreadful that he was beyond caring about keeping up the pretence of a separation between their home and school lives.

  Ned glanced over at the laptop computer that was open and glowing on Mr Wilmot's desk. "Can I borrow that for a moment, John?"

  Mr Wilmot brought the machine over to Ned, who quickly typed a few words into it and then showed the screen to Luke. A photograph of an innocent-looking white mushroom dominated the page and Luke nodded in recognition. He couldn't help but notice that the caption above the photograph read ‘Destroying Angel'.

  Ned glanced over at the Matron. "Gwen, you need to call an ambulance. Tell them we've got two suspected cases of Amanita virosa poisoning." He put the laptop back on the desk and scribbled down the name of the mushroom on a post-it note for her. The Matron pulled a phone out of her pocket and made the call.

  "Where precisely is this girl, Luke? We need to find her and get her to the ambulance."

  "Go up the path next to the country club for two hundred metres," Luke said, thinking in orienteering terms. "There's a chalk line on one of the stones in the wall, about a metre from the ground. You have to climb over the wall and head due south for about fifty metres." He bent double and moaned as his stomach cramped painfully. "She's got a small green tent. She's fourteen years old and her name's Pagan."

  "Pagan," repeated Ned. He looked sharply at Luke. "Do you mean Pagan Randall?"

  Luke nodded, the cramping rendering him unable to speak.

  "John, you'd better come with me and help get this girl out of the woods. Gwen, get Luke downstairs, ready for the ambulance but don't let it go until we bring Pagan back here."

  The two men left and Matron came over to Luke and helped him to his feet. "We'll go down in the lift," she said.

  *

  Pagan was convinced she was dying. She lay in a tight ball of pain and misery with her sleeping bag wrapped around her shoulders. She badly wanted her mother to be with her but knew there was no point in phoning her when she was so far away. Presently, she became aware of a light approaching her tent from the direction of the footpath. Pushing her upper body off the ground, she shielded her eyes and tried to make out who was holding the torch.

  Two men came into view and she turned on her own flashlight to help them see where she was. She didn't care who they were, she just knew she had to get help.

  "Pagan?" One of the men knelt down next to her. "We're from the school. Luke sent us to find you. Can you walk? We need to get you to the ambulance."

  Pagan sobbed with relief. She struggled to her feet and the two men helped her back to the wall, which she climbed with some difficulty, as her arms and legs were shaking so much. As they supported her along the pathway back to the school, Pagan asked, "Is Luke sick too?"

  "Yes, he is," replied the man on her right. "We've got to get you both to hospital as soon as possible or there's a good chance you will die."

  Pagan's legs wobbled more at this news and the man said "Hold on, John." They stopped and Pagan took a deep breath, trying to pull herself together. "You're doing brilliantly," the man told her. "Not far to go now and we'll get you into the ambulance with Luke." As he spoke, the darkness of the night was pierced with flashing blue lights from the direction of the road. This sight and the prospect of being reunited with Luke, even under these grim circumstances, spurred Pagan into action and she began to walk forwards again.

  *

  As Luke was assisted into the ambulance he heard crunching noises from the gravel driveway behind him. He turned to see Ned and Mr Wilmot emerging from the darkness, supporting Pagan between them. Her face looked ghastly in the flickering blue light being thrown from the ambulance's roof. Once both of the teenagers were securely fastened into the ambulance, Ned knelt next to Luke.

  "I'll call your parents and then I'll follow behind in my car. I'll see you at the hospital." Luke tried to thank him but Ned had already gone and the ambulance was starting to move.

  Luke looked across at Pagan and found her staring back at him.

  "I'm sorry-" they both started to say. Then they both stopped.

  Pagan tried again. "I'm really sorry I poisoned you."

  "I'm sorry I had to give you away," Luke replied.

  "I'm not," Pagan said. "From what that bald man said, if we don't go to hospital we're likely to die."r />
  "Really?" asked Luke, feeling sicker than ever.

  Pagan stared at him. "He wasn't kidding, Luke, I can tell. What if we die anyway?"

  Luke groaned as another cramp caused his guts to spasm. "I think being dead might be an improvement on the way I'm feeling right now."

  It was not long before they arrived at the hospital. They were swiftly admitted and taken to the intensive care unit. In a bewilderingly short period of time Pagan and Luke found themselves hooked up to intravenous drips, gastric tubes and a blood-filtering machine. A kind-faced young doctor explained to them that there were two different types of poison in the mushrooms they had eaten.

  "One is what has made you so sick today," she said, "but the other is much more dangerous and would kill you if you didn't have medical help, by destroying your liver and kidneys." She was sitting between their beds and both teenagers were lying on their sides, facing her. "We have got to make sure we remove every trace of the poison from your bodies, which is what most of these tubes are about. We're also giving you some medicine that will help counteract the effect of it. You might be interested to hear that one of the medicines is derived from a fungus, like the thing that poisoned you. And now I come to think of it, the other one comes from a thistle."

  I don't care if they came from a cockroach and a sewer rat, thought Luke, as long as they work.

  "If all goes well, you are likely to be in hospital for less than a week. But it's going to be a rough couple of days for you and there is still a chance your livers may fail. If they do, you will have a longer stay as we will have to try and get you a liver transplant."

  She turned to talk to Pagan. "I need to know your parents' details, young lady. I know you've been living rough but it's important they know what's happened to you. Especially if you end up needing a liver transplant."

  Pagan nodded, quite ready to co-operate. "My mum's name is Julia Randall." She recited her mother's phone number and the doctor wrote down the details.