The Red Road

by Stephen Sweeney

  “He just wanted to speak to me and a few of the others about Craig Priest and Ted Osmond. The boy from the junior school,” I added, seeing that Simmons was unsure of who I meant.

  “Because you saw the bodies?”

  “Yes. He wanted to know how I was feeling about coming back,” I said, unlocking my tuck box and removing some of my personal possessions that I had stored there before leaving three weeks earlier. “I was okay. Some of the others were a little upset still, though. I think he was trying to make sure that no one else was about to pack up and leave.”

  “Have a lot of people left?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but judging by the assembly, about a third?” I shrugged.

  “Does anyone know who they arrested?” Simmons asked, looking from me to Baz.

  “Everyone says it’s Quasimodo,” I said. “He’s always around, so I think if no one sees him in the next few weeks we can assume it was him.”

  “What a fucking freak,” Simmons growled.

  The dormitory door opened and Daniel Rye, another twentieth of the Clique, entered.

  “Hey, Ant, you heard about what’s happening in the first and second year dorms?” he asked.

  “No?” Simmons asked.

  “Because so many of them have left, they’re now merging some of the dorms together.”

  “Really? Fuck.”

  “Mr Somers is also getting me to share with Matthews.”

  “Two prefects in one dorm?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Rye nodded to me. “They’re going to start making more of us share because of the number of people that have left. Those dorms are almost empty. It’s like everyone is away doing the Duke of Edinburgh award.”

  This I hadn’t expected. Not that it was a big deal. Normally, dormitories were looked after by one prefect. I guessed that the departure of some of the boys had led to a number of spare beds becoming available in some dorms, with others lying empty. It would potentially mean that I would be taking a dorm with one of the other third years next term.

  “Is D of E still happening this year?” Simmons wanted to know.

  “I don’t know,” I said after no one spoke. “I doubt they’ll have cancelled it. It counts as an extra GCSE.”

  “Not that it matters, since it doesn’t affect us,” Simmons said. “We’ve already done the bronze and silver parts.”

  “You coming to dinner, Ant?” Rye asked of Simmons.

  “Sure, let’s go.”

  No invitation for Baz or myself, I noticed.

  “Oh, they’re serving us dinner?” Baz asked me.

  “Yes,” I chuckled. “They said so in assembly.”

  “I wasn’t listening the whole time,” he admitted. “I was just going to have a Pot Noodle. I’ll save it for another day.”

  “Where’s Sam?” I asked.

  “I think he’s on the phone to his parents, to let them know what was said at assembly.”

  “We’ll wait for him before going, then,” I said.

  ~ ~ ~

  “I swear the food here is getting worse,” Charlie Moon, a short, skinny boy from Enfield House, said, moving his dinner around the plate and making little effort to eat any more of it. “They clearly didn’t bother to take any cooking classes while we were away.”

  “What do you mean?” Baz said. “This is nice.”

  “No, it’s not. This is gross!” Moon glared at him. “They just shove anything together – ‘bit of run over chicken and some onions, that will do’,” he mimed the chef’s actions, “put together some random sauce, whatever’s within arm’s reach, and then make up a name like ’chicken tikka masala’!”

  I swear that I heard all those in the immediate vicinity fall silent, knives and forks being lowered and attentions being turned to Moon.

  “Um ... what?” I said.

  “That’s what they’ve called this,” Moon repeated, poking the food with his fork.

  “Moon, it’s not made up! That’s it’s real name, it’s a curry!”

  “Curry? This?” he said incredulously. “Just because it’s got chicken and rice in it, that doesn’t make it curry.”

  I admitted that I didn’t really know what defined a curry, but I knew that this was one. I told him so. “It’s a well-known English curry,” I added.

  “English curry?” Moon said.

  “Yes, it was invented here,” I said.

  “No, it wasn’t,” I heard Ben Wild say to me from across the other table. “What are you talking about, Crotty?”

  “It was,” I said. “It was invented in Birmingham.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” Wild repeated.

  “It’s from India,” Will Butt, seated next to him, as always, backed him up.

  “It was created in Birmingham,” I began to repeat the folk legend of how the dish came into being. “A chef up there put cream into a chicken tikka when someone complained it was too dry, and called it chicken tikka masala.”

  “Bollocks,” Wild scowled.

  “Yeah, Crotty, it was made in India,” Butt added.

  I shrugged and decided to ignore the two. As soon as the Clique got it into their heads that they were right, nothing would dissuade them other than another well-informed twentieth or a teacher. But only a teacher they respected.

  “Birmingham?” Baz said. “I thought it was invented in Newcastle?”

  “You’re both wrong. It came from Scotland,” Jeff Armitage said.

  “No, you’re wrong,” Marvin Trent said. “It was invented in India, like all the other curries. There was a rumour it was invented in England, but it’s wrong.”

  “It’s British!”

  “Does anyone know the nationality of the chef?” I asked as the table descended into petty squabbling, hoping to end the argument before someone decided to start a fight over it. “Was he English?”

  “He was Indian,” Baz said.

  “Exactly, so that means it’s an Indian curry,” Trent said.

  “Not if it was invented here, you thick twat!” Butt shot from the other table.

  “Guys, it really doesn’t matter,” I said, wishing I hadn’t commented on Moon’s original statement.

  I was ignored, and the squabbling continued unabated. I looked over at the other tables, as those there watched the argument continuing, smirks all over their faces. I then caught Brian Donald’s eye.

  “Joe,” he called.

  Joe? Normally you call me ‘Crotty’, I thought. He had done so the whole time he had been copying Simmons’ CDs earlier in the term. The Clique rarely ever used my first name. It was either ‘Crosthwaite’ or ‘Crotty’ for them. I knew immediately that he wanted something.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Have you finished your English Lit coursework?” he asked.

  Let me guess. You didn’t bother doing anything during the three-week break and now you want to copy it, I thought. I nodded that I had done the work, picking up my orange juice and taking a sip.

  “What did you do it on?” Donald asked.

  “The Catcher in the Rye.”

  “Can I borrow it?”

  I considered refusing, citing plagiarism and reiterating what I had been told about the consequences of copying geography coursework (a conversation, I reminded myself, he had been a part of). I then decided to bargain, instead.

  “What do you want it for?”

  The question seemed to throw Donald. He struggled for a moment for an explanation, then said, “I just want to take a look, to see how much I need to do. I don’t really get the book.”

  Given that I found Holden Caulfield an obnoxious cretin with few redeemable qualities, I would have thought that it would be easy for Donald to sympathise with the character.

  “You haven’t actually read it, have you?” I grinned.

  “No,” he admitted. “It’s shit.”

  “The Catcher in the Rye isn’t shit, it’s actually a very important book,” Seb Silverman said. “It’s about alienation and teenage rebelli
on, and one of the first books to actually acknowledge all those things. It was actually written for adults, but the themes involved are more appropriate for adolescents.”

  Brief silence followed the statement. “I actually agree with Brian – it’s shit,” I said. “I had to force myself to finish it.”

  “Exactly,” Donald leapt back in, “and I don’t really understand what’s so special about it—”

  “I just told you,” Silverman said, incredulously.

  “—which is why I want to borrow your essay,” Donald said, ignoring him.

  “What do I get in return?” I asked.

  The question threw him again. I wasn’t the sort to bargain with people. I would generally just let them look at what I had done, as a gesture of good will. Maybe it was because I now had my mind so firmly set on completing my GCSEs and getting the hell away from the school that I knew I had little to lose by offending people.

  “You like Coke, don’t you? You’re always drinking one every day,” Simmons said, looking from me to Donald. He clearly hadn’t done the work, either.

  “I do,” I said.

  “Okay, how about this,” Donald said. “You lend me your essay, and the next time I go home, I’ll bring you back a bottle of Coke?”

  I knew he wouldn’t. He would conveniently forget until I stopped badgering him about it. I considered asking him for money, but that seemed a little low and entering into a territory that I would rather stay well away from. I tried to think of what else Donald might have that I would want. Sadly, I could think of nothing.

  “How about you lend me your results from your geography practical?” I suggested. “I didn’t finish all of it when I was home and just want to shore up my numbers a bit.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Donald answered immediately.

  “Cool.”

  “Can I get the essay off you tonight?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Just drop by my dorm.”

  ~ ~ ~

  “Joe, don’t copy your results off someone else,” Sam urged me as we walked back to Butcher. “You’ll get in real shit if you get caught, remember?”

  “Exactly, and he’s copied those off someone else already,” Baz added.

  “His older brother,” I reminded them.

  “Anyway, I thought you’d done it already,” Sam said. “You told us in London that you had.”

  “And I did,” I smiled. “I just wanted to see what I could get off Donald. I’m not going to use them at all.”

  Both Baz and Sam looked a little baffled by my revelation, but I added nothing.

  ~ ~ ~

  My remaining coursework began to diminish as the term went on, and I handed more of it in. There would be a small few bits and pieces that would only be finished in the first few weeks of the summer term, but I was pleased to get the vast majority of it out of the way.

  I discovered that one of the security staff that patrolled the grounds with one of the two Alsatians was an Australian man by the name of Josh. He had lived in England for several years, coming over on a student visa and finding employment here. He apparently also had an Irish passport, which meant that he could stay indefinitely. He was from Darwin originally, in the north of the country. A party town it was, apparently. All the backpackers headed there, as the nearby airport provided easy access to Bali. The dog that Josh usually patrolled with was called Max. He was bad tempered and didn’t like being touched. Not like Wonka at all, then.

  Though there were no Australian boys at St Christopher’s, the school had taken on a handful of antipodeans as temporary teaching staff, though mostly to handle sport. I had played Aussie rules football on occasion, and could only describe it as ‘different’.

  One evening, both Josh and the current Australian sports teacher, a man called Stu, were sitting around in one of Butcher’s lounges, talking about home. There were a handful of first years there, listening intently. Stu was drinking a can of beer.

  “Alright, Joe? How’s it going?” Josh said to me as I passed by the door, chewing on a Lion Bar. “Come in and join us,” he added, indicating one of the empty seats. “Have you ever been to Australia, Joe?”

  “No, never,” I said, swallowing the chocolate I was chewing. “I’d really like to, though; perhaps that’s because of an overexposure to Neighbours.”

  “You Brits don’t travel a lot, hey?” Stu said. “Not like us Aussies. We’re all over Europe. England’s a great launch pad for that sort of thing. Though lots of Brits are emigrating to Australia because it’s so cheap for them right now. It’s about three dollars to the pound.”

  “No kidding?” Josh said.

  “Are you going to go back?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m pretty settled here, to be honest.”

  “Could get a lot for your money right now. A house is just a fraction of the price, and you could get it right next to the beach.”

  “True,” Josh said. He looked as though he was torn between going and staying. “I’d probably have a tiny mortgage, too.”

  “Or maybe buy a couple of units.”

  “A unit?” one of the first years asked.

  “Oh, that’s what we call an apartment back home,” Josh said.

  “A flat you call it here, don’t you?” Stu asked.

  “So, if I went over to Australia for a couple of weeks, what would I want to do?” I asked.

  “A couple of weeks?” Stu laughed. “You’d barely have gotten off the plane before it was time to go back. The flight takes about twenty-four hours, and then you need about a week to get over the jet lag.”

  “You’d want to go to Bondi Beach and get some surfing lessons,” Josh said. “And then head up the east coast, go to the Great Barrier Reef and stay in Cairns for a bit. The east coast is great. It’s all beaches and partying and drinking and surfing.”

  “What are the girls like?” asked another of the first year boys.

  “Fucking fit!” Stu said. “Better looking than the girls over here, that’s for sure. They’re always on the beach in bikinis and always up for a good party. They’re nice friendly girls, too.”

  “Oh yeah?” the same first year asked with a cheeky grin.

  “Yeah,” Stu said, taking a glug of beer.

  “I thought you’d be drinking Fosters,” yet another first year said.

  “It’s not really for me,” Stu said. “And it’s not actually that popular back home. Everywhere else, sure, but we don’t drink it that much over there. Are you sure you don’t want a beer?” he asked Josh.

  “No, I can’t,” Josh said. “I have to go on duty in twenty minutes, so I can’t drink.”

  “What else would I want to do in Australia?” I asked.

  “I’d say explore the outback,” Josh said. “You can go to the cities, but after you’ve travelled a bit, a city is a city.”

  “Sydney’s the capital, right?”

  “Ahhhhhhhh!” Stu said, pointing to me and laughing evilly. “Wrong!”

  “Melbourne ...?” I ventured.

  “It’s Canberra,” Josh said. “Everyone thinks it’s Sydney, but it’s Canberra.”

  I had never heard of the place.

  “Sydney and Melbourne had a dispute over which of them would be the capital,” Stu began to explain, “and when an agreement couldn’t be reached, a city was simply built between the two of them to end the problem.”

  “That’s one way of fixing the problem,” I chuckled. “A little extreme, though.”

  Josh just shrugged. “There’s lots of interesting things to see in the outback,” he went on, to another evil chuckle from Stu. “If you don’t mind driving, that is.”

  “There’s almost nothing in the middle, except desert,” Stu explained to all of us. “Everyone lives around the coast, and the middle is largely just ... dirt and sand. You can drive for hours and hours and only ever see one car coming the other way.”

  “Usually a road train,” Josh pointed out. “That’s a truck with three or more trailers on it. B
ut don’t worry, there’s still lots to see – The Devil’s Marbles, Ayers Rock, King’s Canyon ...”

  “... Coby Pedy, if you fancy your luck at opal mining,” Stu said.

  “There are also towns out there with a population of only about seven or eight people. And if you don’t fancy that, in Sydney you have the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. Seriously, you cannot go for just two weeks. You’d need at least six weeks if you were only going for a bit,” Josh advised.

  “Even that’s not enough. I’ve known some travellers who were there for a year and never made it over to Perth. But admittedly that’s because they run out of money and were forced to live and work in the hostels.”

  “Have you been to Ayers Rock?” one of the first years asked.

  “Er ... no,” Stu said, laughing. “We’re like you – if it’s right next door, we don’t bother. I bet half of you have probably never even been to Buckingham Palace.”

  We all nodded in agreement. I had never been anywhere near the it as far as I could remember. I had been to the British Museum on a day out when I was still in the junior school, but it wasn’t somewhere I would choose to visit myself. My weekend up in London to visit Dave and Baz had taken me nowhere near the palace, either.

  “I’ve been to Ayers Rock,” Josh then said. “Or Uluru, to give it its aboriginal name.”

  “What was it like?” I asked.

  “Massive,” Josh said, his eyes growing big, stretching his arms out wide. “It takes about two hours to walk around the base of it. It was baking hot when I went there, in December. Absolutely incredible to see, though. I’d highly recommend it. Don’t take anything from there, though.”

  “Don’t take anything?” one of the first years asked.

  “Nothing,” Josh shook his head.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It’s cursed.”

  “Seriously?” Stu asked.

  “Yep,” Josh said. “It’s sacred ground. You shouldn’t take anything from it, or you’ll end up with loads of bad luck. It happens to people all the time. They decide to take a rock home with them as a souvenir and all sorts of things happen to them. They then usually return it sharpish. Some people have posted them back all the way from America. They’re known as ‘Sorry Parcels’.”