by John Booth
The village is not important enough to merit a covered bus stop, so there’s just a round metal sign on a pole painted green with the word ‘Bus’ written in the center to let you know where to wait. No bench either so you have to stand.
I arrived a minute before the bus was scheduled to depart (though there was no sign of it), running down the cobbled road with my rucksack swinging on my arm. I’d been up for hours by then, posting newspapers through letterboxes. I needed to run because the bus has been known to leave early if the driver thinks the traffic is going to be heavy when it gets to Sutton. It was with some relief that I spotted ‘the usual suspects’ waiting at the stop and knew it hadn’t already come and gone.
‘The usual suspects’ were the eight children of the village old enough to go to Sutton Comprehensive, which is right next to Sutton College. It used to be the same place before the school’s sixth form center got too big for its boots and announced it was changing its name to become a college.
The usual suspects range in age from eleven to fourteen and are the cause of all mayhem in the village, hence their name. If a gate gets stolen, (and please don’t ask me why anyone would bother to steal a gate), or a crude image of male or female sex organs appears in the public toilets, or if a car suddenly acquires footprints and dints in its roof, it will be the usual suspects who did it.
They hang around as a gang and have been known to set fire to haystacks and worry sheep. No, I’m serious; they’ve worried sheep. They used to follow me and my friends around. My friends were both called Dave, and it broke my heart when they moved away two years ago, but that’s another story.
Recently the two oldest girls in the gang, Sally and Jane, have taken to taunting me at the bus stop, but I always strive to ignore them, whatever they say. Perhaps it wasn’t too surprising to find the whole gang was crowded around Kylie. You could feel hero worship radiating from them like heat from a hot stove.
“Hi Andy,” Kylie said, giving me a quick grin before Sally was all over her again, asking her what life was like in London and what concerts had she been to and so on. The two older boys, Brian and Peter, were trying to get closer to her, but the girls were more determined.
Kylie was obviously not the sort of person who has any trouble making friends. I stayed about ten feet from the throng and looked anywhere and everywhere but at them. Mainly, I looked at the ground and down the road the bus would be coming along.
The bus arrived ten minutes late, which put me in a bad mood because I’d scrambled down the hill so hard to get there on time. What a waste of effort.
The usual suspects fought each other to scramble onto the bus while I took my time and got on last. This was the next to last stop for the bus and it was three-quarters full. Like all school buses, it was full at the back and empty at the front, as everybody tried to get as far from the driver as possible.
Kylie had taken a window seat near the back and Sally the seat next to her. Two of the others took the seats in front of them and kneeled on them facing back so they could keep on with their questions.
I took the single seat at the front of the bus across from the driver as I always did. It was a quiet place to sit and offered a fantastic view through the bus’s panoramic windscreen.
I live in the most beautiful place on God’s Earth and the views during the journey were fantastic. The road has two S bends as it snakes its way up the side of the hill and over the North Ridge to Sutton. The stream that runs through our village is called the Fell. Over millennia, its waters have carved a deep path through the valley on its way to Darcester. On the way, the Fell joins up with several other mountain streams to become the River Dar. That was in the lowlands to the east. We were going to Sutton, which was over and beyond the North Ridge.
As the bus drove higher, the views became breathtaking. At each steep twist in the road the front of the coach passed close to edge and it looks as though we were about to plunge off the road and into the valley. The fields are separated by low dry stone walls made from the same dark grey granite that pokes its head through the turf with increasing frequency as you rise higher into the hills.
There are only a few trees on the North Ridge, the landscape is mainly grass and heather with large flat slabs of stone rising out of the land as though the grass were a stormy sea and they were wooden rafts. A grass sea that was almost vertical in places, it must be said.
The best bit is when we get to the top of the ridge and see the next valley in the distance. There’s a power plant in that valley and I think the people who decided to desecrate the landscape with those ugly cooling towers should be taken out and shot. But overall, it’s a spectacular view as we wind back and forth along the road on the other side, losing altitude so much that your ears hurt if you have a cold.
When we reached Sutton College and the Comprehensive school, I waited patiently until Kylie got off, so I could show her where she had to go. The usual suspects gave me nasty looks as Kylie came to stand with me. But their school bell sounded in the distance, as we were very late by then, and they had to run to avoid getting a detention.
“Lay on, Macduff,” Kylie said, waving me forward with a sweeping gesture.
I was staggered. This girl knew Shakespeare well enough to get the quotes right. I could see I would have to be careful not to underestimate her.
What can I say about Sutton College? Built in the nineteen sixties, it is all red brick and glass with windows that make it far too hot in summer and freezing in winter. Someone who felt that squares were sophisticated designed it. They must have also thought miles of corridor contributed to a student’s education. The corridors echoed like a swimming pool and it was impossible to walk quietly down them no matter how hard you try.
“I think I’m in the same class as you,” Kylie said. “You’re doing Maths, Physics and Chemistry aren’t you?”
“Almost correct.” I grinned in approval. “I’m also taking an A Level in Art.”
“Had to go one better, didn’t you?” Kylie raised an eyebrow at me, which was pretty much the usual reaction I get when I tell people.
“If you were taking it, you wouldn’t say that. Art is hard.” I was used to dealing with that question and Kylie had no idea how difficult it had been to get on the course in the first place.
Our educators, bless them in their little cotton socks, are incapable of believing people might want to do arts and sciences at the same time. So when you try and mix science and arts courses you discover the curriculum has been arranged so the lessons clash. Then you hear our ‘betters’ in parliament complaining that arts graduates know nothing about science and vice-versa.
Well, I was doing an art course at the same time as science, and stuff them. Achieving this feat had caused me no end of problems with the Principal of this educational establishment, not to mention his teaching staff.
We had run out of things to say to each other and walked the rest of the way in silence. When we reached the classroom, the rest of the class was already there, and to my great relief this included the form tutor, Mr. Lynch.
I had no time for Mr. Lynch in the normal scheme of things. But in this case it meant I wouldn’t receive the heckling I got from certain members of the class when the teacher wasn’t around to stop them. That meant Kylie wouldn’t find out how much people hated me around here for at least a hour or two. For some reason, that knowledge caused a warm glow in my tummy.
Mr. Lynch teaches English Language, which ought to mean that he’s a valuable resource in a college where a single Anglo-Saxon word is used as adjective, noun and verb in almost every sentence uttered. However, he lives in a strange dream world in which, if he is polite to the students, he believes they will be polite to him and do what he asks. How he can continue to believe this despite the evidence, day in and day out, I don’t know.
Mr. Lynch noticed Kylie.
“Ah, you must be the new girl. Quiet down everybody I want to introduce Kylie Brown who hails all the way from London.
” While Mr. Lynch made this speech the noise level stayed exactly the same. Someone jostled me as I made for a vacant table, but apart from that, I got off lightly. While Mr. Lynch was largely ineffectual, he would dish out detentions if he saw something nasty taking place, so I was fairly safe.
“Ain’t she luverly,” an anonymous voice shouted out in mock cockney.
Kylie raised a single finger in the direction of the voice, generating loud laughter. Mr. Lynch chose to ignore a gesture that might otherwise have got her detention, but he coughed loudly enough to get her to lower her hand.
The first lesson of the day was physics and that meant walking over to the labs, which were in another quadrangle. Kylie walked beside me saying nothing.
“Got a girlfriend, Andy-Pandy?” said a familiar and unwelcome voice behind me. The voice belonged to Sheila Armitage, one of my fellow students and the bane of my life these last few months. Sheila is taking A levels in Physics and Biology and so you’d think was a serious student, but all she does is mess around in class. For some reason, she and two of her friends decided to make my life hell from the day I arrived in this godforsaken place. I decided to ignore her, which was probably a mistake in retrospect.
“Better watch out, Kylie,” Sheila continued, “He’ll probably take you from behind like he does the local sheep. You can’t trust a boy from a village, they have dirty habits.”
Kylie spun around and smiled sweetly at Sheila, “Thanks for the warning, especially as it comes from a girl with much experience of dirty habits, I’d say.”
It took Sheila a few seconds to work out she’d been insulted, by which time Kylie and I had entered the lab. Now, we work with partners in physics and mine was a mousey bloke with really thick glasses called Jim Sparrow. However, everyone calls him Jack. He’s okay as a physics partner, but we aren’t friends. We might have been, but he can’t stand the hassle that would generate, so we agreed we would just be science partners.
I suggested Kylie work with us, but when Mr. King the physics teacher came into the room he send her to the back of the lab to partner with Charlie Graham. Charlie’s usual partner was off sick so I suppose it made some kind of sense.
Mr. King is a no-nonsense teacher of the old school. He likes to shout at people and he also likes to ridicule the students when he gets the chance. This is particularly easy for a physics teacher, as half the class haven’t got a clue what he’s going on about. What he definitely doesn’t like is any kind of horseplay, especially when we are doing experiments involving Bunsen Burners and hot liquids.
Jack and I worked out what the answer to the experiment was, so we were setting it up with a view to getting the correct results first time. I don’t know if the other kids did it like that, but it was how the two of us got B plusses on every report we wrote. Mr. King doesn’t give A’s to anyone. I was lighting the Bunsen with a match when a screwed up paper ball bounced on top of it, knocking the match out of my hand and the burner over. Jack dived for the gas tap to turn it off.
“Are you having a problem, Mr. Hawks?” Mr. King’s voice boomed out as he saw my hurried movements
“No sir, the Bunsen fell over,”
“Well, be more careful in future.”
“Yes sir,” Jack winced because we knew that if there was another incident we’d be getting D’s for our work today. Mr. King has his own way of ensuring his students don’t mess with him.
I looked to the back of the room, saw Sheila grinning wickedly, and had no doubt who had thrown the paper ball. Jack lit the Bunsen while I picked up the paper ball and dropped it in a bin. We positioned a tripod over the burner and put a beaker of water on it. The experiment required us to bring the water to the boil. Just in time, I spotted the next ball and knocked it out of the way before it hit the beaker. It was big and weighty enough to have knocked the beaker over.
Jack moved to protect the beaker with his body as I turned to face a remarkable sight. Sheila Armitage was sliding down the polished floor towards me, face down.
Mr. King spotted her and hurried over.
He yelled in my face, “What the hell is going on here? Did you trip her over, boy?”
“Please, sir,” Kylie said from the back, “Sheila was going over to apologize to Andrew when she slipped.”
“Is this true,” Mr. King snapped at Sheila who was having trouble getting to her feet. “What were you apologizing for?”
Sheila looked at Kylie who gave her a certain look back. Females are so much more dangerous than men. I would’ve been frightened if I had received that look from Kylie. Apparently, Sheila was frightened by it too. She shuffled her feet and looked up at Mr. King fluttering her eyelashes at him.
“I threw a piece of paper at him earlier, sir,” she said in a meek voice.
“I won’t have horseplay in the lab. You know that, Miss Armitage. You’ll receive a detention for this. Now get back to work.”
Mr. King gave me a frown like it was all my fault, and strode to the front of the lab. Jack gave me a weak grin. I risked a quick look at Kylie who had a look of satisfaction on her face and she gave me a wink.
Nothing much happened during the rest of the morning. I took Kylie to what passes for a cafeteria in the college and we had pie and chips. The salad, which would normally have been my first choice, looked as though it had been sitting composting since the previous week and the lettuce had turned a nice shade of brown at the edges, so I gave it a miss.
It was mathematics all afternoon, which was fine with me because my three tormentors didn’t take mathematics. Kylie said nothing about how Sheila’s accident had happened, but I got to thank her with a surreptitious hug when no one was looking.
We had barely settled down to the mathematics lesson when a member of staff came to the door and said that Kylie and I had to report to the front office. I wondered for a moment if Sheila had ratted on us, but then realized she wouldn’t survive long in the school if she had, so it was a bit unlikely.
Mum’s calling me down for tea, so I’ll have to finish this story when I get back.
6. The Old Man of Fell
As soon as we were out of the corridor Kylie forced me to a stop.
“What’s going on, Andy? Why does the Headmaster want to see us?”
“The Principal, Kylie. He insists on being known as the Principal.” I paused for breath. “And I don’t have a clue. If it was just one of us I could make a guess, but the only thing involving the two of us, was Shelia’s slide in Physics.”
“Shelia might have grassed us up?” Kylie sounded doubtful.
“Not unless she’s just enrolled in a witness protection program,” I agreed. The students have their own unwritten rules and not grassing was the most important one of them.
Kylie relaxed and we started to make our way down the corridor.
“So what’s wrong with being called headmaster?”
“Anywhere else in England, he would be the Headmaster, but Sutton College likes to forge ahead with its Americanisms. I suspect that Mr. Harris, our Principal, got the idea from watching an old episode of Buffy.”
“Harris likes Buffy?” Kylie asked, disbelief written across her face.
“He has mentioned it.”
“What’s he like? My last Head was an evil twisted witch, on her good days.”
“Arthur Harris is a pro-political educator. Whatever the government is in favor of, he adores. He takes his lead from the Minister of Education’s latest missives no matter how little thought out and stark raving bonkers they are. We have a woman in charge at the moment and she seems to be trying to prove she can be a bigger nutcase than the man before her was.”
Kylie grinned. “You have opinions on everything, don’t you?”
I shrugged; even I think I go on a bit from time to time.
“Harris is a good operator and can be tough as old nails when it suits him.”
Kylie nodded. I could have gone on to tell her it was always best to be absolutely sure of your ground befor
e you took him on. But I decided that I’d said enough. The recent incident where I was attacked was a good example, and I didn’t want to mention that to Kylie. Whatever I said about it would be sure to come out wrong.
Harris’s office was at the middle of the building on the top floor. There was a receptionist’s office between him and the rest of us. Connie smiled at us as we entered the office.
“Hi Andrew, and you must be Kylie Brown. Ms. Green is waiting to see you. If you’d like to go through, Kylie?”
I didn’t have the opportunity to tell Kylie who June Green was, because Connie hurried her through the door and shut it firmly behind her.
“And you can take that look off your face, Andrew Hawks,” Connie said warningly.
“We thought it was Harris who wanted to see us.”
“That’s Mister Harris to you, Andrew. And Ms. Green insisted on the subterfuge. I can’t think why.” That last bit was spoken with a sly grin on Connie’s face.
“Because I would have refused to come,” I said bitterly.
“That might have been the reason. Sit down, Andrew. I’m sure June won’t be long with Kylie.”
I sat down mumbling in disgust; much to Connie’s amusement. I had been up to this office far too many times recently and we had a friendly relationship of sorts. I tend to get on with older women and Connie Graham may have been as old as twenty eight.
It was typical of June Green to hide behind the Principal’s Office rather than to send us a summons as herself. Though since I would probably have refused to leave the class if I’d known it was her, I suppose there was some method in her madness, but it surely served to piss me off.
I waited anxiously, wondering what she was telling Kylie. No doubt warning her of the dangers of the boy with whom she was associating. The dislike between us was deep and mutual.
Eventually Kylie came out of Harris’s office and gave me a most peculiar look.
