The Red Road

by Stephen Sweeney

  “Hey, did you hear about Will Preston?” Rory said, moving to the video to start rewinding the tape.

  “No,” I said, detecting immediately from the tone that this was a piece of derogatory gossip.

  “He’s gone to Cambridge University and joined the gay society.”

  “No way!” I said. “Seriously?”

  “Yep.” Rory grinned. “Within the first couple of days, apparently. A lot of people do that because it’s a new place and a new start and very few people know them.”

  “Yeah, but what’s-his-name’s gone there, too.” I clicked my fingers as I tried to remember his name, failed, and gave up. “The head of Enfield House. They know each other.”

  “Sure, but university’s not like here – there are thousands of people there. If they’re not in the same college and not doing the same classes, then they might bump into each other randomly, but no one would ever know.”

  “Well, we found out,” I said, looking at what remained of the tube of Pringles. A few at the bottom, mostly broken. “So, it’s not entirely secretive.”

  Rory then began laughing. “Marvin’s not saying anything, because Preston was his dorm prefect when he was a first year.”

  I chuckled and looked at Marvin, who just waved away the attention. “Whatever,” he said, crunching on a mint. “I don’t care either way.”

  “Has anyone ever told anyone they’re gay while they’ve still been here?” the second year boy then asked.

  “Don’t be stupid, Turner,” Rory said. “You’d get the shit kicked out of you.”

  “I don’t think so,” Marvin frowned. “It wouldn’t be a very bright thing to do, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone’s told a teacher sometime. But, no, I don’t think anyone’s ever said so.”

  “Do you think maybe that’s what happened to Scott Parker?” Turner asked. “That he found out someone was gay?”

  “Scott Parker?” Rory and Marvin looked at one another.

  “The junior school boy,” I said. “No, I don’t think so. He’d have only been here for, what, four weeks?”

  “Does anyone know how it happened yet?” Rory wanted to know, looking to the four of us. We all shrugged.

  “Who do you think it was?” Marvin asked. “Someone local?”

  “I bet it was Quasimodo,” Rory said. “That’s the hunchbacked gardener you sometimes see around the place, with the monks,” he explained to the first year, who nodded but said nothing.

  “Rob Walker thought the same thing,” I said. “I doubt it. Quasimodo seems pretty harmless to me. A bit weird, but harmless.”

  “No, he’s weird,” Marvin said. “I remember when I was in my first year, and he was always trying to talk to us and stuff. There was one time when he was helping me fix my bike, and he kept touching me. Not in an obvious way, but he always liked making physical contact. It made me feel really uncomfortable.”

  “Cambridge is nice, you know,” I said, changing the subject and not wishing to talk about the murder.

  “You thinking of going?” Marvin asked.

  “No,” I chuckled. “I don’t think I’d ever be able to get in there, but it’s a nice place to visit. My parents took me once.”

  “It is a nice place, yes,” Rory nodded.

  “Have you been to Oxford?”

  “No, but Cambridge as a whole is still nicer from what I’ve heard. Have you decided where you want to go to university yet?” he asked openly.

  “Give us a chance to do our A-Levels first, Rory,” Marvin said.

  There was a knock at the door, a teacher stepping into the television room directly after. It was Mr Finn, one of the history teachers and my assigned personal tutor. He was the acting duty master at the school for the evening. I liked Mr Finn. He was very easygoing and tolerant.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Marvin said. “The film’s just finished, actually.”

  “Ah, good,” Mr Finn said. “Could you pack everything up, lock the VCR away, and put all your rubbish in the bin before you go? Oh, and return the keys to the staff room.

  “Joe, have you got ten minutes? We were meant to have our one-to-one sometime this week, but we might as well do it now, since it won’t take long.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Are you guys okay with everything?” I said to Rory and Marvin.

  “No problem,” they replied, leaving me to depart with Mr Finn.

  ~ ~ ~

  We walked back to the classroom block, Mr Finn taking me to the staff room and offering me a seat at a table, where he had been marking pupils’ work.

  “Would you like some water?” he asked, refilling his own glass from a jug. I told him I would, and so he poured me some. “How’s everything going, Joe?” he asked, pleasant and cheery as always.

  “All okay,” I said. “Nothing major.”

  “None of your classes giving you any trouble?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Your grades don’t seem to suggest so, either. Your housemaster hasn’t told me that you’re struggling anywhere, so I guess everything is all good.”

  “Cool,” was all I said. There wasn’t much more that really needed adding.

  “And you’re all recovered from the incident on the Road?”

  “Yes,” I nodded, keen to move the conversation on from that particular subject as quickly as possible.

  “Good. I won’t talk to you any more about that, then. Now, I know it’s early, but have you given any thought to what subjects you’d like to take at A-Level?”

  “I’ve ... not really thought that hard about it,” I said. It seemed that some were a little ahead of me in that regard. Both Rory and Marvin had an idea of what they wanted to do, and Rob had pretty much decided on his subjects for next year already.

  “Probably want to get your GCSEs out of the way first, I imagine,” Mr Finn smiled. “But you might find it easier after you’ve done your mocks and can see what subjects you’re excelling in.”

  “The mocks are still next term?” I thought I would check.

  “Still next term. Starting within the first three weeks, which unfortunately means you’ll have to revise over Christmas.”

  “At least we never have to revise over the summer,” I said.

  “Yes, that wouldn’t be fair to anyone,” Mr Finn chuckled. “Okay, so you don’t know about A-Level subjects yet, but have you thought about what you would like to do as a career?”

  “No,” I said, chuckling. “I’ve got absolutely no idea.”

  “Fair enough. I thought maybe if you had an idea of that, I could suggest appropriate A-Levels and degree courses. What do your parents do?”

  “They work in the pharmaceutical industry,” I said.

  “Oh, really?” Mr Finn’s face brightened. “That sounds interesting. Do they work where you live? Or in London, or..?”

  “All over,” I said. “They work abroad a lot, too, which is why they sent me here.”

  No, it’s because they don’t want you at home, getting in their way, Craig Priest’s slimy voice suddenly crept into my head. I ignored it.

  “That sounds exciting,” Mr Finn said. “You would get to travel a lot, meet lots of different people, work in different places, and see a lot of the world. Have you thought about perhaps doing that as well?”

  “No way,” I said automatically.

  “Why not?”

  “Because my parents are workaholics,” I blurted out. “They hardly have time for me and mostly just focus on their careers. They were a little annoyed about me having to be home for two weeks if I’m being honest, since one of them always had to be keeping an eye on what I was doing.”

  I realised as I said it how it sounded extremely bitter. It was true, however; my mother and father had never had that much time for me in recent years.

  “Is everything okay back home?” Mr Finn asked. His face had fallen a little, and he was starting to look somewhat concerned.

  “Oh, it’s fine,” I
reassured him. “Nothing bad happening.”

  “I can understand what’s happening with your parents,” Mr Finn said. “Some people put an exceptional amount of effort in with their schooling and training, and work hard to get where they what to be. It can then be hard for them when they have to put their lives on hold on a time for other things. It’s nothing personal, it’s just that they feel that they aren’t making the most of all their skills, and that they might have worked hard for nothing. Do you see what I mean?”

  “I guess so,” I said. I understood what he meant. It must be frustrating when you had worked hard towards something, to become a great success, and needed the validation that all the time and effort had been worth it. Even so, I didn’t really get the live-to-work mentality that some maintained. I was certain I was a work-to-live kind of person.

  “My parents have always been like that,” I told Mr Finn. “I’m not sure how they’ll feel about me being back at home when I’m doing my A-Levels, but it’s something they’ll just have to get used to ... oh.” My ears caught up with what my mouth was saying well after I had let Mr Finn in on my little secret.

  “Ah, you’re not planning to stay here after you’ve done your GCSEs?” he asked, putting everything together admirably quickly.

  “I haven’t told anyone yet, but no,” I said, after gulping down a good mouthful of water to prevent my mouth from drying out completely. I felt as though I had just confessed to a murder.

  “No one at all?” Mr Finn asked.

  “No, not even my parents. You’re the first ... well, second person I’ve told.”

  “Any particular reason you want to leave?”

  “I’m worried that I’ve been in this environment for too long, and it won’t prepare me for real life,” I said, after pausing for a short time to consider how to consolidate all my rights-of-passage desires into one semi-diplomatic sentence.

  “I see. How long have you been here?”

  “Since I was nine,” I said. “This is my seventh year at St Christopher’s.”

  “So, you were in the junior school for four years, rather than the usual three?”

  “Yes. I repeated the first year.”

  “That is indeed a long time,” Mr Finn nodded in understanding. “Okay, well you can trust me not to say anything to anyone. But I’d suggest you talk to your parents about it sooner rather than later, so they can inform the school. The headmaster would also appreciate knowing closer to the time.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Anything else you wish to talk about? Are you taking a dorm this year? Everything okay there?” he asked as I nodded.

  “No problems. First years, so easy to deal with. For now,” I grinned.

  “Yes, for now. They’ll probably gain some confidence after Christmas,” Mr Finn laughed. “Okay, Joe, thank you. It’s nearly time for evening prayers, so you had probably better get back to your house.”

  Chapter Seven

  As well as inter-house competitions (mainly sports, but occasionally music and singing!) we would also engage in inter-school sports matches. These would involve us either hosting or guesting at other schools, the matches taking place on Wednesday or Saturday afternoons.

  When hosting, we would await the arrival of the rival schools’ teams outside the main school. On some occasions, two or three coaches would arrive, the fixture calendar meaning that one school would uproot over half of its pupils to face us that day. We would greet them as they arrived, not only to be courteous to those we were to be playing against that afternoon, showing them to the changing rooms and seeing to any needs they might have, but also to size up the competition. Back when I had still been ten years old, this never made too much of a difference to the match. At that age, some boys might be an inch taller and maybe a little fatter. They certainly weren’t built like brick shithouses or possess thighs like tree trunks, as one might see on televised matches. Approaching your mid-teens, however, it became a whole other ball game.

  I was a little over average height and in good shape for my age, the other boys in my year varying as much as one might expect. Some were shorter, but a lot more nimble on their feet when on the field. In games of rugby, they would form a part of the backs. Others were taller, stockier and overall more beefy. They, of course, would play as the forwards and involve themselves in the scrum. I, myself, played in the backs, usually the inside-centre. I sometimes swapped with the outside-centre, depending on who the fly-half was. Though I was tall enough to play in the forwards, I hadn’t done so since my first year, mainly because I had never gotten on very well with the scrum and often caused it to collapse. For this, I was glad. The sight of the opposition that sometimes departed the coaches of the opposing schools would often make me wonder what on earth those boys were being fed. Such a thing was quite typical of schools’ ‘A teams’, where only the highest calibre players would do.

  “Christ, those guys are huge,” I would hear my team-mates mutter after we’d shown the visitors where to go to change and prepare for the game.

  “Fucking hell, that guy is going to flatten you,” another would say to our captain, whose opposite number may as well have been a foot taller and wider than he. The captain often lost his nerve a little at that and began snapping at the rest of us, suggesting that if anyone was going to having any bones broken that afternoon, it wouldn’t be him.

  Thankfully, only a few bones were ever broken during the matches, and these were very rare occurrences indeed. Not to say that some players didn’t actually try. One of the problems with approaching your mid-teens, effectively locked away in a single-sex school without any significant female company to speak of, would be that testosterone would be running hot all the time. These hormones would fuel pent-up frustrations, resulting in them being released on the rugby field. I had learned in general studies how this had been a technique favoured by some ancient civilisations to make their warriors fight harder on the field, seeking a release. The same pretty much rang true here, and some went out of their way to start a fight if they could, punching and kicking others in the scrum, where it would be too difficult for the referee to notice.

  And woe betide anyone who should attempt to face-off against or tackle any boy whose girlfriend (a very, very, very rare thing indeed) happened to turn up for the afternoon, to watch their other half play. Glory Boys were bad enough at any time during inter-school matches; with a girl watching, the effects could be felt for a full ninety minutes.

  Pass the ball? Not me, I’m the fly-half! I can charge straight through this line of six forwards, no bother. I would see the girl in question walking the sideline, clapping daintily whenever the team they were supporting either scored a try, performed a particularly noteworthy tackle, or successfully converted a kick. In the main, however, women (other than boys’ mothers and sisters) were largely absent from the flock of parents and local people who would come to watch the match.

  Except, of course, whenever we were playing against Mayfield College, a mixed-sex boarding school in Sussex. The boys there were good. Very good. They were our nemesis, our archrivals, both in terms of sport and grades. I use the term archrivals loosely, as I’m not sure it counts if you never actually beat them.

  ~ ~ ~

  “How are your fingers?” I asked Sam as I towelled off from the shower. They were nicer showers than the ones I endured at St Christopher’s, the changing rooms here being part of a dedicated sports complex that Mayfield had constructed some two years previous. It made my own school’s offerings look truly pathetic. Then again, Mayfield’s fees were around one-and-a-half times those of St Christopher’s.

  “They still hurt,” Sam said, awkwardly trying to use just his left hand to dry himself. “I think I might have broken the little one.”

  A few of our team-mates looked over as he held it up. I couldn’t tell myself. It looked okay, other than Sam’s hand quivering slightly. Even so, he didn’t look as though he was able to flex his fingers very easily. That would
make it awkward to hold a pen or do anything else come Monday, if they hadn’t mended by then.

  “I think that guy did it on purpose,” Rory said. “They were trying to make sure we were playing with one less man on the field.”

  “Those twats were cheating like mad today,” Ben Wild, part of the Tudor House Clique, frothed. “And what the fuck was with the ref? I had the ball down over the fucking line. That was a try! We’d have won if he hadn’t disallowed it!”

  “That was a rather convenient penalty next to our try line just before the whistle, wasn’t it?” I added.

  “But they do that all the time; that’s why they win,” Emilio Baxter, our captain, said, stuffing his boots back into his bag, along with his shorts and shirt, all of which were so muddy that the original colours were largely lost.

  Mine were in no better state. A light rain shower had been enough to transform much of the pitch into a mud bath. Usually, it was the forwards that came off the worst following matches, the backs far cleaner by comparison. Today, it had made little difference. The air in the changing room was thick and heavy with the stink of mud and sweat, the spraying of various deodorants doing little to mask it. I had looked forward to washing after the game had concluded, though despite using a generous amount of shower gel, I still felt dirty. Perhaps it was because I could still smell the mud. It would dirty up the base of my trousers between now and my return to St Christopher’s, as it always did, and I would tread the caked-on dirt back into my dormitory for sure.

  I looked back to Sam as he yelped, cradling his hand.

  “You’d better tell Mr Hill when you see him,” I said, as Sam continued attempting to dress without dirtying up his school uniform in the process. “If it’s broken, he’ll have to take you to hospital.”

  “Everything all right in here?” a voice came.

  I looked around to see that the captain of opposing team had entered our changing room. He had a deep voice and was quite a tall guy, looking more like he was eighteen than sixteen. I swore that I could make out the hint of a five o’clock shadow on his chin.