The Red Road

by Stephen Sweeney

  “I don’t see why not. You’re more likely to if you’re a virgin, right?”

  “Really?” another boy asked. “In that case, Pete’s sister’s definitely not going there, then.” He turned to the boy named Pete, smirking.

  “Fuck off,” Pete responded angrily.

  “Doesn’t she work as the admin for your local football team?” another boy pitched in.

  “Yeah, and we all know why she picked that job,” yet another chuckled.

  “Will you fuck off?” Pete said again. “She’s only been doing it a month.”

  “Probably been through all of them already, too,” another boy snorted.

  “Well, at least she’s getting some!” Pete shot back, his face red from his anger. “How many people have you had sex with?”

  The comment, though quite absurd given that we were all boys in a single-sex boarding school and of the ages thirteen through sixteen, was met with silence. Though one could say that, aside from a small handful of the upper sixth, no one had ever slept with a girl, and none were willing to either admit or liked being reminded of it. Inexperience with women was a grand source of ridicule for a reason I was still unable to total fathom.

  “Virgin,” Pete finished.

  “Oh, and you’re not?” one of the other boys shot back.

  “Guys, be quiet,” I said, seeing the fun-poking in danger of boiling over into either a shouting or throwing match. The boys feel silent, though sadly only for a few seconds. An A in R.E? Maybe a B+ now.

  “Are you a virgin, Crotty?”

  I saw that all eyes were suddenly on me, and I felt myself flush, despite all attempts not to. I don’t know why, but I suddenly felt very self-conscious, as if I were contaminated or possessed some sort of undesirable quality. I shouldn’t have felt ashamed; I was sixteen at an all-boys boarding school. It was perfectly understandable that I had never had sex. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time in the past nine months that I had even spoken to a woman that wasn’t either my or someone else’s mother (seriously, go back and check, you’ll see I’m right). Yes, I might be a virgin now, but I would make sure that I wouldn’t be by this time next year.

  “Do some work,” was all I said, pointing to the essay I could see him still attempting to write. He had so far managed to fill only about five lines since the prep had started.

  “Okay, seriously,” one started.

  I suppressed a sigh. A B grade, then. “What?” I snarled, without raising my eyes from my notes.

  “What do you think happens when we die? Do you think we go to Heaven and Hell?”

  “I ... don’t know,” I answered honestly, but without much of a care. It wasn’t relevant to my own revision.

  “Because, do you think that if you’re actually just evil and do bad things, like murder or rape people, then you’ll go to Hell?”

  “Of course not!” Pete’s still-angry voice came. “There’s no such thing! All that happens is you’re either cremated or you rot in the ground. It’s bloody obvious there’s no such thing as God.”

  Pete’s admission jolted me from my revision, and I looked up from my notes, seeing every face in the classroom turning to him in shock. I had never heard anyone say such a thing while they were at St Christopher’s. This was a Catholic boarding school, built on Christian values. It was why we were made to attend church every Sunday, without fail, why we had evening prayers most nights, why the headmaster was a monk, and other little things such as why we were denied meat on Fridays.

  “You don’t believe in God?” one of the class asked.

  “No, of course not,” Pete scowled. “You speak to Mr Tyler, and he’ll tell you it’s just a load of crap created to control people and scare them into doing what you want. People used to worship the Sun, for fuck’s sake. Kings, rulers and conquerors invented the idea of a god to make people think that there was someone more powerful than them, and if they didn’t do as they were told, really bad things would happen to them and their families. Religion is basically just a load of bollocks. It causes the biggest number of problems in the world and should just be banned. Look at the Middle East, for example. They’re always killing each other over there over some mythical being they think lives in the sky, but can’t actually prove exists.”

  Ah, Mr Tyler. The fiercely atheist biology teacher. He made no secret of his utter dislike of anything to do with God or religion. He was a very good teacher, though, and I had to wonder how the man had landed a job at St Christopher’s. Perhaps the founders, the school board and even the monks themselves wanted to give the students perspective and arguments. One couldn’t fault them for that, I supposed.

  The classroom erupted into a small debate, seventeen boys all aiming questions at Pete, wanting to know for how long he had felt this way, as well as his arguments for how the universe and the world came to be.

  “Was Jesus not really the Son of God?” they challenged him.

  “No,” he said.

  “Of course he is,” the others retorted, “the Romans have records of what happened that day and of how he rose from the dead.”

  “History can be altered,” Pete put, simply.

  “Why are you even at this school?” someone asked him.

  “My parents sent me here,” Pete mumbled. He sounded just as fed up with the place as I was.

  I became aware of someone moving by the door. It opened and in walked Mr Wilder, slow and steady, letting his presence be felt. “Now, what’s going on here?” he asked with equal calm.

  “We’re just having a debate on the existence of God, for their R.E. coursework,” I fielded after silence and blank faces met Mr Wilder’s question.

  “I see,” the maths teacher responded. “But I’m not sure all of you are doing R.E., are you?” His eyes strayed to the various magazines that my prep were rapidly attempting to push out of their way and conceal. “I’m trying to teach in the classroom opposite, and I can hear every word you’re saying. Now, you’ve got ten minutes of this period left and I don’t want to hear another word out of you until the bell rings, or you’ll each be punished. Understand?”

  I saw his eyes focus on me as he added the incentive, clearly promising that he would find some kind of suitable punishment for me to undertake, GCSEs to sit or not.

  “Yes, sir,” both the class and I responded.

  “Good,” Mr Wilder said, bending down and reaching for the doorstop. “I think it’s best that we keep the door open from now on, so I can hear that you’re all getting on with your work. And you still have exams to revise for, Joe,” he added with a nod to me.

  The remainder of the prep was spent in silence, but at least I got my revision done.

  ~ ~ ~

  R.E. came on a Thursday morning, at ten, and for the final time I trooped down to the assembly hall, along with all the other third years, sensing a mixture of both fear and excitement in the air that this was our final exam.

  I opened the paper when I was given the go ahead to do so, turning immediately to the last page so I can decide which essay question I would tackle and allocate enough time for. There were three available.

  Write an essay on ONE of the following topics –

  1) Discuss why it is socially acceptable to assist in the death of a suffering animal, yet unacceptable to confer the same right to human beings. Is it ever acceptable to end another person’s life? (20 marks)

  2) Discuss the belief systems of Christianity and ONE other religion, drawing comparisons between the two. (20 marks)

  3) Debate the existence of God, based on both Christian and Atheist viewpoints. (20 marks)

  I grinned to myself as I saw the last option. Before the prep I had been forced to take, I might have chosen question one or two, likely making a hash of the former and stumbling my way through the latter, forgetting key points of Judaism. I immediately scribbled down on a spare piece of A4 what I remembered of Peter Dixon’s arguments against God and turned back to the front of the paper to start on the sh
orter questions.

  By the time the invigilator called for the end of the exam, I had written a good three sides of A4 on my essay question, drawing on history, English, various parts of R.E. itself, and science. It amused me that even though I had written so much and argued both sides effectively, I had left the question of God’s existence itself completely unresolved. I figured that would mean I would be getting an A+.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Are you packing already?” I asked Baz.

  “Yep,” he said, sweeping various folders and notes binders off his shelves and into some cardboard boxes. “I’m going to go and find my suitcase in a minute, too.”

  “We’ve literally just finished our final exam,” I said.

  “And I’m going home tomorrow!” Baz cheered himself. “My mum is coming to get me tomorrow afternoon, and then I’m never ever going to come back!”

  He almost looked as though he was going to burst from excitement. He had skipped his way from the assembly room and back up to Butcher, hardly waiting to speak to anyone else and discover how they had found the exam.

  “When are you going to pack?” he asked me.

  “Not for another couple of weeks,” I shrugged.

  “Seriously?” he asked. “Are your parents away again?”

  “Not at the moment, but they’re going to the Netherlands at the start of next week, for a fortnight. So, I’ve decided to stay and do some of the sixth form classes – economics, maths and English.”

  “Are you mental?” Baz said, looking at me as if I had just deeply offended him. “Do it when you start at the sixth form college.”

  “I might as well make the most of the classes while I’m here,” I shrugged. “Won’t be so much of a shock that way. Besides, there’s no rush to leave just yet – Rob isn’t leaving until the end of term either, so I won’t have much to do when I get home.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t stay here,” Baz said, dumping some of his unwanted course notes into the bin.

  “What are you going to do at home?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Baz shrugged. “I’ll find something. I just don’t want to be here a minute longer than I need to be. Maybe I’ll get a summer job. Want to help me look for my suitcase?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  We retrieved the Butcher House storage room key from Mr Somers and waded through the umpteen bags that were crammed into it. It took us a little longer than we expected to find Baz’s luggage, his suitcase crushed beneath a much bigger one. He cursed as he saw that it had become fatally damaged and would only start to come apart from then on. Not that he cared, he reiterated, he had no use for it after he got home. I spent most of the rest of the day helping him prepare to leave.

  Both Baz’s mother and father turned up the following afternoon, as did several other third year boys’ parents. By my estimation, about half the third years wouldn’t be returning to St Christopher’s next term. If the school was even open, that was. I helped Baz load the car, promising to visit him over the summer when I knew what was happening with my grades and where I would be going in the autumn. We both suggested that we have another day out in London with Dave and Rob, and plan the day a little better this time.

  With that, Baz departed St Christopher’s forever, taking another small piece of me along with him.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Aren’t you leaving, Joe?” Seb Silverman asked as I entered the economics class.

  “I am, yeah,” I said, setting my pens and paper down at a desk and taking the seat. “But I thought I’d take advantage of the classes, just in case I don’t like them.”

  “Fair enough,” Darren Smith said.

  “It’s the same curriculum too, obviously,” I added, somewhat unnecessarily.

  The other boys nodded and turned back to what they had been talking about. Ever since I had declared that I was one of those leaving the school, I had noticed a shift in attention between people. Those staying now clung a great deal closer together, subtly and gradually severing the bonds of friendship they had once held with those they had known since they were nine or ten years old, whether they were a part of the Clique or not. So much for friends for life.

  The teacher soon entered the class. It was Mr Davies, as I had expected. He grinned widely as he moved to the front. This was probably one of the classes that he enjoyed the most – no pressure, no real expectations or goals, and something he could almost breeze through. There would be some prep to do and some tests, I had been told, but nothing taxing and more for the benefit of the pupil themselves, than the teacher.

  Mr Davies introduced himself, getting to know each of us in turn before letting us know what the classes would involve. It would start with an introduction to economics, talking about its place in the world, why understanding it was important, and how it impacted our lives. The first class involved discussing various terms and ended with an example of personal finances. The next few classes went on to cover public finance, national and international economics, and impacts of unemployment, inflation and growth.

  I found that my decisions to also study maths and English at A-Level were serving me well. Maths was helping me to more easily get my head around some the algebra and equations involved in economics, while English was expanding my command of the language and helping me to get a better appreciation of business terms.

  The final couple of economics classes focused on money and banking, a topic that I was very keen on getting to know more about. Mr Davies commenced by showing us how economics was put to work in an investment bank, where various trading principles and practices were used to generate revenue. In some cases, such as foreign change in low volumes, it was only a small amount, but in others it led to tremendous sums of money. Being able to read, anticipate and understand the market were key to succeeding, I was told.

  “Evaluating and anticipating the performance of counterparties is an important aspect to understanding the present and future market conditions,” Mr Davies said, marking down various things on the whiteboard. “We must therefore be able to assess a counterparty’s risk. If we have a large amount of money we intend to invest in a counterparty, then we need to ensure that they are not liable to default on their return payments. In some limited circumstances, the ramifications could be quite disastrous.”

  “Such as?” I asked.

  “It could—”

  He put emphasis on the word.

  “—lead to a recession under very extreme circumstances. But recessions aren’t normally caused by this alone. There are a great number of contributing factors.”

  “What caused the recent one?” I wanted to know.

  “A combination of a stock market collapse, the war in Iraq, a lack of public spending, and a slump in American real estate. Now, on with the risk assessment,” Mr Davies said, continuing to write on the whiteboard.

  I started to struggle a little with what I was looking at. There was logic to it, but I couldn’t help but feel that it was grounded in fantasy. Some of what I was hearing, reading and writing down didn’t seem to make much sense. I guessed that it made more sense when you were actually getting your hands dirty in the actual markets.

  “Now, let us say that we have a counterparty with a credit rating of A,” Mr Davies said, marking the rating on the already quite cluttered whiteboard. “We wish to score against the counterparty so we know what its risk might be and whether we are safe to trade with it. Because it has a number of subsidiaries, we need to take those into account, too. If one of the subsidiaries’ credit ratings fails, then it could impact the future of the parent in the long or short term.”

  He looked around the class to ensure that we were still with him. I nodded my understanding. That much made sense. I raised my hand.

  “Does it bubble up all the way to the top of the chain?” I asked. “We’ve only got two levels here, but if we had a level beneath our current subsidiaries—”

  “Subsidiaries of subsidiaries,” Mr Davies said. “Or
the grandchildren, as they are sometimes known.”

  “Those would all be affected, too? So a single subsidiary could affect the very top counterparty?”

  “It can, yes, but there are ways of dealing with that. Trading and investments allows us to do some very clever things to avoid such problems. We won’t get bogged down in that now. You can learn about it all next year. We’ll keep this example simple and only have five subsidiaries,” he continued, marking them on the board and drawing a line from the parent to each.

  “How many might a company have?” Ben Wild raised his hand.

  “Oh,” Mr Davies said, waving the marker pen around. “They can have anything from one to a few dozen. But to get the full amount, we might also need to take the subsidiaries of those subsidiaries into account, as well. Sometimes we would only descend one or two levels, but in some extreme cases we would need to sum up all the counterparties over a dozen levels.”

  “Bloody hell,” Wild said. “There could be hundreds.”

  “Thousands,” Mr Davies supplied, still holding the grin he hadn’t lost since first entering the classroom. He loved this stuff, I could tell.

  “Thousands?” William Butt said. “Fucking hell!”

  Mr Davies laughed, ignoring the foul language. “Don’t worry, you’ll never have to do such a calculation yourself. It is normally done on a very powerful computer, instead. As I said, we’ll keep this simple so you can understand how this all works.

  “So, we have our counterparty, St Christopher’s, and the subsidiaries companies, Butcher, Enfield, Tudor ... er ... um ...”

  “Cookson and Martin,” Silverman supplied.

  “Thank you. Now, we know that Butcher has a rating of A1; Cookson, a rating of A3; Tudor, a rating of BA, or Baaaa,” he said like a sheep as he wrote it, chuckling. “And Martin, a rating of C. Now, what we’d normally do is simply sum up and average the scores of the subsidiaries, to get an overview of how well the parent might be performing now and in the future.”