The Red Road (17 page)

“As I said,” Mr Hancock
reiterated, “you should go to the toilet only once. I would suggest
that you go now if you need to, so that you don’t have to go at all
during the exam.”

“How long is the exam?” Ben Wild
asked.

“An hour and a half.”

At that, a number of boys – mostly
the Clique, I noticed – pushed back their seats and started out of
the classroom. “Going to the toilet,” they all muttered as they
went.

“Can we bring our own notes?”
Sam asked once everyone had returned.

“No,” Mr Hancock said.

“Can we use calculators in any of
these exams?” I asked. Such things could come in handy when working
out gradients.

“Only if it says so on the paper.
And you can’t use one today. If any of you have brought notes or
calculators with you today, please hand them to me now. Again, if I
see you with them after the exam has started, you will fail.”

“What if we just leave them in our
pencil cases under our desk and not use them?” Simmons asked.

I
wondered if he was attempting to wind Mr Hancock up and be awkward on
purpose. Perhaps he was feeling exceptionally nervous.

“As I said,” Mr Hancock rumbled,
“if you do not hand them over now, you will fail. It doesn’t
matter if they are in your pencil case or not.”

At that, a number of boys began to
unzip and open pencil cases, handing over their calculators and notes
to the teacher to hold on to. A handful of other questions followed,
before Mr Hancock prompted that it was time to get things underway.
He handed out the exam questions, telling us not to turn them over
until we were ready to begin. He then took his seat at the front of
the classroom, declaring the exam start and end times, before finally
telling us to start.

I turned the paper over (more a
booklet of about twelve pages, in actuality) and started to read.
There were three sections. The first was a series of multiple-choice
questions, something I hoped would prove a breeze. The second section
contained a number of short questions. I caught a sample of an
Ordnance Survey map, as well as the questions below:

A) What is at grid reference
212452?

B) How high is the highest point
at grid reference 2043?

C) What is the relief at grid
reference 2244?

D) What do grid references 2145
and 2341 tell us about the past activity in the area? Explain your
answer.

The final section was a choice
between two different essays:

1) Discuss the positive and
negative impacts of tourism on an area.

2) Describe the two main types of
ecosystem, illustrating your answer with examples.

I had a feeling I already knew which
essay question most in the classroom would be answering. I cast my
eyes briefly in Sam’s direction, seeing him looking fairly
confident with what we were being tested on. At least one boy in the
room, Francesco Reed, didn’t look at all confident, though. This
didn’t surprise me. Despite it being his best subject, he had still
always struggled with geography, being threatened with being lowered
to the B stream a lot of the time. In fact, the poor guy seemed to
struggle with
most
subjects.

I knuckled down for the next ninety
minutes, getting the multiple-choice questions out of the way, before
plunging on into the second section and finally starting on the essay
question. I finished about ten minutes early and sat spinning my pen
around my fingers. I heard loud voices out in the corridor as a trio
of sixth formers passed by. Two of them stopped to look through the
window into the classroom, and I made eye contact with Craig Priest.
He glared as he saw me.

“You’re dead,” he mouthed
through the glass.

I made no reaction, even though I
felt my stomach knot.

~ ~ ~

“Who did you have for your French
oral?” Baz asked me as we jogged along together.

“Mr Bertrand,” I grated.

“Oh, bad luck,” Baz said.

“Yeah, he was being an even bigger
twat than normal. I hope I don’t have him for the actual bloody
thing. I swear that he speaks fast on purpose, just to piss us off.”

“He’s actually French, isn’t
he?”

“They all are,” I puffed.

“No, Mr Morin—”

“Ha. It always sounds like you’re
saying ‘moron’ when you say his name,” I laughed.

“He is a bit thick though, isn’t
he? How the hell is he a housemaster? Anyway, he’s not French. He
can just speak it fluently.”

It was surprisingly mild for
January, I thought, many degrees higher than was normal. Hardly a
freak heat wave, but a lot warmer than it rightly should have been at
this time of the year. The snows that usually came with the season,
blanketing the school with several inches of white, were notably
absent. Being in the middle of the countryside, it was normally a lot
deeper than in towns and cities, too.

But no, the temperatures were
apparently on the up, so much so that the teachers had decided that
the running season could begin again. The afternoon’s rugby
training had been cancelled in favour of the term’s first jog along
the Red Road. The mocks had left me hungry for some reason, and so I
had had a big lunch. I therefore wasn’t running too quickly as a
result. It mattered little, as today I didn’t care for the time I
made.

“Who did you have?” I asked Baz
as we passed by a number of second years who had shot past us
earlier. They clearly didn’t have the stamina to maintain the pace.

“Mr Lambert,” Baz said.

“Bastard. Easy?”

“Very.”

“Gave you several attempts to get
the answer right?”

“Yep.”

“I hate you.”

Baz laughed.

I looked around as I sensed someone
moving up behind us and saw one of the sixth formers passing us by at
quite a pace. For an instant, I thought it was Priest. Repercussions
for the incident on the Marble Stairs were to come, I was sure.
Thankfully, I found I was mistaken. I recognised the sixth former,
but didn’t know his name or even the house he was in. Cookson,
perhaps. He carried on past us without so much as a sideways glance.
Maybe he was keen to get back to studying for his A-Levels. Or maybe
he just wanted to get this over and with done with, so he could make
the most of the free time that would follow.

“He’s going fast,” Baz
quipped. “Do you think that Neo Sesay has finished yet?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” I
said. “All the African guys here run bloody fast. I heard he
finished the whole thing in twenty minutes the last time.”

“Three miles in twenty minutes?”
Baz spluttered. “Bollocks! No one can run that fast!”

“He can,” I answered. “He can
do the hundred metres in under eleven seconds.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Shit. How fast is the world
record?”

“About a second faster than that,
I think.”

“I wish I could run this thing
that fast.”

We continued on and soon passed the
part of the Road where I had first seen the body of Scott Parker. I
looked to it as we approached and over my shoulder as we went by. Baz
looked to me as we did so, but I made no comment.

I wondered how much
further we had to go to reach the end. I had never really used any
landmarks to help me measure the distance, and most of the Road
looked the same to me. All I knew was that it ended in a steep
incline. We overtook and were overtaken by other boys, some looking
to be struggling with the task, others walking. Gradually, I began to
see more and more boys coming in the opposite direction, indicating
that they had reached the end. It wouldn’t be too much further for
Baz and I from here, I was sure.

“Hey, can I tell you something?”
Baz then asked as we came to an empty stretch of road, no one in
front or behind.

Oh, Christ
, I thought to
myself.
You’re not about to tell me that you think you’re gay,
are you?
That would be all I needed after being stressed out
about my mocks.

“Sure,” I said.

“I’m probably going to be
leaving at the end of next term,” he answered.

“Really?” I said, automatically
starting to slow.

“Hey, don’t stop,” Baz urged.
“I want to get this thing finished.”

I picked up the pace once more,
though I felt absurdly annoyed. One of my closest friends had just
told me that he was planning on abandoning me. I knew I had no right
to feel this way – I had been planning to do pretty much the same
thing to them. At least Baz had had the dignity to tell me now.
Though I had planned on doing so, I had yet to inform Mr Somers or
the headmaster of my plans. I also wasn’t planning on telling
anyone in my year until my departure was set in stone, which probably
wouldn’t be until the summer term at the earliest.

“Why are you leaving?” I asked.

“Shhh!” Baz said, as Rupert
Daniels came running in the opposite direction. The end was close, I
was certain. If the often-laidback Daniels was more than halfway
done, then we couldn’t have too much further to go ourselves. Baz
didn’t say another word until Rupert had passed us.

“Because I don’t like it here
any more,” Baz resumed. “I want to do my A-Levels somewhere else.
I want a car and to have more freedom. I also don’t want to do the
lower sixth here because that year’s supposed to be a complete
doss, and it absolutely won’t be if I’m here. Most importantly, I
don’t think staying here is going to prepare you for the real
world. We’re pretty sheltered.”

True that. Other boys might rip into
Baz for ‘being a thick cockney boy from South London’, but I
often thought he was quite clued up about real life. Maybe that’s
why some didn’t like him, because he wasn’t so deluded about what
the real world was like.

St Christopher’s was indeed like living in
a bubble. We were told where to go, where to stand,
how
to
stand, what to say,
how
to say it,
when
to say
it ... All our meals and laundry were prepared for us, our shirts,
socks and underwear ironed, sorted and brought to our dormitories,
placed on our beds for us to collect. Sure, if I was living at home,
then my mother would probably be doing largely the same thing, but
still ...

“Do you see what I’m saying?”
Baz asked, picking up on my silence.

“Yeah, yeah, I do,” I said.

“You don’t think it’s a bad
idea?”

“No, not at all. What did your
parents say? Were they okay with it?” I asked more for my own
benefit than his. My initial confrontation with my parents over the
topic had resulted in a cold shoulder from my mother, one that was
only just beginning to turn. Phone calls home would result in
reluctance from her to speak to me. She would have to get used to the
idea, though.

“It was my dad that suggested it,”
Baz answered.

“Really?” I said, somewhat
surprised.

“Yeah. He said that he went
through the same thing and regretted not leaving after his O-Levels.
He said that he had trouble adjusting to life outside boarding school
and thinks we should only do it for a few years. He says it helps you
to focus initially, but you shouldn’t do it for too long.”

“Was he there for the same number
of years as us?”

“No, longer. He was there from
when he was eight and didn’t leave until he was eighteen.”

“Bloody hell.”

“Tell me about it,” Baz puffed.
“But you’ll have been here for almost that long when you’re
done with your A-Levels, won’t you? This is your ... seventh year
now?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“See? You should consider it,
too.”

I nodded but said nothing. We
continued on in silence for a time, and I considered briefly if
preparing for the real world was the real reason Baz was leaving. We
were still in a recession, and St Christopher’s fees could be
deemed an unnecessary drain on most families’ finances, no matter
what the long-term gains of such an education might offer. Two boys
had departed at the start of my third senior school year – Gareth
and James Moyles. Gareth would have been in my year, James, the year
below. The two had simply failed to show up for school, and Mr
Somers, clearly tired of Butcher House’s constant nagging, had
eventually informed us that Gareth and James were now attending a
different school. Various theories were banded about by pupils,
though all finally settled on the same conclusion – the Moyleses
simply couldn’t afford the fees any more.

“What do you think? Are you going
to stay?” Baz asked.

“Um, I don’t know,” I lied.
“I’ve not really given it any thought. Hey, is it much further to
the end?” I then asked of a boy coming the other way, keen to
change the subject.

“Just around that corner,” he
said.

We rounded the bend, and I saw at
long last the hill leading up to the finish. Or rather, the halfway
mark. We jogged up the hill, struggling a little with the incline and
taking a short rest at the top. Mr Falcone ticked off our names and
urged us to carry on instead of standing around. We headed back down.

“What did you think I was going to
tell you earlier?” Baz asked, as we started the long run back
towards the school.

“Er ...” I started.

“You thought I was going to tell
you I was gay, didn’t you?” Baz grinned.

“No,” I said. I swear I heard a
cockerel crow at that moment.

“Don’t worry, I’m not gay.
I’ve heard that Damien Sanderson is, though.”

“What? Seriously?”

“Uh huh,” Baz just smirked.

“Who told you that?”

“No one in particular; I just
heard it mentioned a few times. It’s pretty obvious, though, he’s
really camp. You can tell that he’s going to come out the second he
gets to university. He’s always using loads of stuff for his skin,
and he speaks really softly. He also
looks
gay.”