The Roman and the Runaway
A. J. Braithwaite
Smashwords Edition
Licence Notes
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©A. J. Braithwaite, 2009
For Jill.
PART I: The Roman
Chapter One
"And what the bloody hell d'you call this?"
Luke Brownlow shut the front door behind him as he entered the house. He could feel his start-of-the-summer-holidays happiness seeping away as he turned to see what his father was shouting about this time. He was waving some sheets of paper around which Luke recognised as his end-of-year school report. His happiness was replaced by a rising feeling of gloom as he prepared himself for yet another argument.
In the living room, the shouted greeting had triggered frightened wails from Luke's toddler sisters. He watched his mother rush out from the kitchen to soothe the girls. There was a stressed and reproachful expression on her face; she often seemed to look like that, lately. Luke decided that avoidance was the best response to his father's question and headed towards the stairs. But his dad could move remarkably quickly for a big man and he caught up with Luke at the foot of the staircase and grabbed his arm.
"Oh no, you don't. In there." He pointed at the kitchen and towed Luke inside. Luke shook off his father's grip with an irritable jerk of his arm.
"Well?" Dad asked, holding up the papers to Luke's face.
Luke rolled his eyes and sighed, as though he was dealing with a simpleton. "It's my school report," he said, choosing to answer the original question literally. His father wasn't impressed.
"It's appalling," he snarled. "I don't believe you've done a single day's work at the high school in the two years you've been there."
As this was almost true, Luke did not bother to reply. His mother, having calmed down the twins, came back into the room, still looking worried and upset.
"Hi, Mum," Luke ventured, trying to introduce a bit of friendliness into the conversation.
But Dad turned out to have Luke's mother playing on his team.
"Your mother and I are very concerned about your lack of progress," he said.
Mum nodded and added, "I can't understand it, Luke, when you used to do so well at the village school."
Luke knew he wasn't going to be able to explain the differences between the two schools to them. He might have tried if it was just his mother but he wasn't going to attempt it with Dad there. His father seemed to be constantly on his back about something or other.
"Is the work so much harder, Luke?" his mother asked, her forehead creased with concern.
"Of course it isn't," Dad snorted. "He's just bone idle, that's all. Uncool to work hard is it?"
This was uncomfortably close to the truth but Luke wasn't going to give his father the satisfaction of knowing that. He stared at the floor in silence.
"Dumb insolence, as usual," his dad decided. "Well, I warned you that there would be consequences if you didn't get your act together. For starters you're not going to be spending any time this summer with your so-called friends."
"What?" said Luke, startled into speech. "You can't stop me seeing them!"
"I'm also looking into finding you a different school to go to in September," added Dad. "It seems to us that a clean break is the only thing that's going to work, now."
Luke was horrified at this prospect. "You're fucking joking!"
He hadn't meant to swear and instantly regretted it as his father lost his temper and dealt him a heavy, open-handed blow to the side of his face. Luke cried out in pain and staggered sideways, pressing his hand to his cheek. The three of them stared at one other, all equally shocked by what had just happened. Luke had never sworn at his parents like that and his father had never struck him before.
Dad spoke first, breathing hard and looking annoyed with himself. "I apologise for that, Luke but I think you've just made up my mind for me. Get out of my sight."
Luke dashed upstairs to his bedroom, only too willing to get as far away from his father as possible. He slammed the door shut and threw himself heavily onto the bed, trying to hold back angry tears. The side of his face was throbbing.
After a couple of hours of confinement in his small, hot bedroom, Luke couldn't bear being in the house any longer. He could hear the girls across the landing in the bathroom, splashing and chattering away as Mum got them ready for bed. The cover of their noise provided him with a good opportunity to try to escape. He quietly opened the door and crept down the stairs, keeping to the edges to avoid making the ancient treads creak. On reaching the half-landing where the stairs turned down to the hall he spotted his dad's legs protruding from underneath a newspaper. He was sitting on the bench by the front door and was clearly waiting for Luke to come down, probably to demand an apology.
Luke silently reversed his course and slunk back to his bedroom. Desperate now to get out of the oppressively warm and stuffy little room, Luke leaned out of the open window and looked at the drop below him. Although it was upstairs, the ceilings of the old cottage were so low that the room was not a long way above the ground. A pile of sand due to be used to build a patio was heaped directly beneath the window, conveniently placed to break his fall. The room immediately below his was Dad's study and would not be occupied since he knew his father was stationed on guard duty in the hall. Without thinking any more about it, Luke climbed on to the window sill, lowered himself backwards through the window and dropped onto the pile of sand.
He considered his next move. The cottage was one of a row of several flint-faced homes joined together in a short terrace. The garden was fenced and surrounded by other people's properties. From where Luke was standing now, there was no way out of the garden apart from through the house. The cottage next door was the end one of the terrace, so if he had to escape over a fence, it made sense to do so in that direction and leave through that garden's side gate. The house was sometimes let out as a holiday cottage, with Luke's mum acting as housekeeper for the absent landlord but Luke was fairly sure his mum had said something about there not being any tenants this week. This meant he should be able to sneak out of its side gate without running into anyone. Getting as far away from his parents' cottage as possible was the only thing on his mind.
The twins' plastic push-along car was resting against the fence on that side, making it easy enough to clamber up onto it, grab the fence and pull himself over. As he dropped down on the other side Luke realised he was heading towards a newly-planted flower bed. Trying to avoid treading on too many of the young plants, he lost his balance and ended up squashing several more as he regained control of his legs. It seemed that someone had recently watered the bed. Luke looked down at the destruction he'd caused and let out a further string of swear-words.
"As I've just spent all afternoon weeding and planting that bed, I can approve the sentiment, if not the vocabulary."
Luke looked up. The evening sun was dazzling him, so he shielded his eyes with his hands in order to see who had spoken. There was a man sitting at a wooden patio table in the shade of the fence on the opposite side of the narrow garden. He had fair, close-cropped hair and a stocky, muscular build. Luke's first thought was that this was not someone you wanted to get on the wrong side of. His second thought was that it was probably too late in his case.
"Perhaps you'd like to get off the flower bed, before you destroy any more of my plants," suggested the man. "It's Luke, isn't it?"
Just my luck, thought Luke. This guy must be the owner of the cottage. He's bound to tell Mum and Dad about this. Then there would be yet another row. Luke decided that he couldn't face it. He stepped out of the muddy mess that he'd made of the flower bed and fled past the man, heading for the side gate. For once, luck was on his side and the gate was wide open. Luke accelerated as he passed through it, ignoring the shout of "Hey!" from behind. He sped through the streets of the village until he was sure that no-one was following him, then pulled up, sweaty and panting, in a shady lane. He wasn't in good enough shape for this kind of thing, he thought; something that no doubt his dreadful school report would confirm. Lack of physical fitness was about the only thing he and his dad had in common.
Luke wished that some of his friends lived in the village so that he could meet up with them and see if their reports had been as disastrous as his but they all lived in the town where his school was; several miles away. He either had to catch a bus or get his parents to drive him there. The bus service was infrequent and now it looked as though the chances of getting a lift from Mum and Dad would be non-existent. Luke kicked an old Coke can along the road in frustration, feeling just as imprisoned by village life as he had been in his bedroom earlier. There was just nothing to do.
An angry growl from his stomach reminded Luke that he hadn't eaten anything since lunchtime. He wandered into the newsagent's. There was a bored-looking young woman behind the counter but no other customers, so Luke picked up a newspaper and pretended to read the front page. When a middle-aged man entered the shop and asked the woman for cigarettes, Luke took advantage of the distraction by slipping a Mars Bar into the pocket of his baggy jeans. He then made a show of re-folding the newspaper and placing it back on the shelf. He flashed a smile at the woman as he left, wishing her a cheery "Good night".
After an hour or two of aimless wandering, Luke had to face the prospect of going home. The sun was setting and his parents' general rule was that he should be home before nightfall. It hardly mattered tonight, since he was already going to be in big trouble for leaving the house in the first place but Luke turned back towards home anyway.
His sense of depression grew as he walked down the row of cottages until he reached the one which housed his family. It looked idyllic from the outside, with its grey flint walls and brick-edged doors and windows yet he knew that as soon as he walked through the door, the inside of the cottage would be anything but peaceful.
He opened the door, bracing himself for another onslaught from his father. But the first sound he heard on opening the front door was not an angry bellow but something much more unexpected.
Laughter. Luke was so surprised that he stopped half-way into the house, almost thinking he must have entered the wrong building. He quietly shut the door behind him, wondering what was going on. He slipped into the kitchen and took advantage of the unexpected break in hostilities to raid the fridge for some more food. The stolen Mars Bar had not been enough. He had almost finished a Cornish pasty when his mother entered the room.
"I thought you must be getting hungry by now," she said. "Come through to the living room, I want you to meet Ned."
Luke stared back at her, disorientated by the friendliness of her manner.
"You know, Ned who owns the holiday cottage next door!" his mother said, misinterpreting Luke's puzzled expression. "He's going to be staying in it himself this summer. I did tell you."
Luke followed his mother to the other room, still bemused that he wasn't being shouted at. His father was sitting with the man whose flower bed Luke had destroyed earlier. Luke looked at them both warily. Dad wasn't looking thrilled to see him but he didn't seem furious, either. The other man, Ned, had a look of relief on his face. It occurred to Luke that Ned was the only one who knew that he'd run away.
"This is our son, Luke," Mum was saying. "He's grown up a bit since the last time you saw him."
Not really, thought Luke. The smile on their neighbour's face suggested that he was sharing the joke. He rose from his chair and came towards Luke, holding out his hand.
"Graham Kelly," he introduced himself. "But usually known as Ned."
Curiosity overrode Luke's other emotions. "Why?" he asked, as he shook the man's hand.
"Ah," said Mr Kelly. "Well that's mostly down to your mother." He looked across at Luke's mum, who laughed.
"She thought I was too dull when we were at school together," explained Mr Kelly, "so she named me after Ned Kelly in the hope that it would liven me up a bit."
This explanation made things no clearer for Luke.
"You'll have to look him up one day," added Mr Kelly, detecting that Luke had no idea who Ned Kelly was.
Fat chance of that, thought Luke.
"Well, I'd better be going," said Mr Kelly. Luke's father heaved himself out of his seat and the two men shook hands. "It was good to see you again, Andrew," said Mr Kelly. He nodded at Luke as he walked towards the door of the room. When he reached it, however, he stopped and looked back.
"Luke, If you're interested in earning some extra cash this summer, I could do with some help in the garden," he said.
Luke thought of the plants he had crushed in his escape from the house that evening and had to resist a sudden desire to laugh out loud. He really had no option other than to agree. "OK," he said.
"Shall we say tomorrow at 9am then?" asked Mr Kelly.
Conflicting voices filled Luke's head for a few seconds. His internal argument went something like this:
Voice 1: He's expecting me to get up before nine on a day when there's no school?
Voice 2: He hasn't told your parents about you escaping from the house.
Voice 1: He's expecting me to get up before nine on a day when there's no school?
Voice 2: He hasn't told your parents about you destroying his garden.
Voice 1: He's expecting me to get up before nine on a day when there's no school?
Voice 2: He's kept your parents entertained all evening so they wouldn't notice you weren't in the house.
Voice 2 seemed, on the whole, to have the more persuasive arguments. Luke gave in.
"OK," he said, again. Great, he thought. Not only am I not allowed to see my friends, now I'm going to be spending my summer doing hard labour for a guy who looks like a Sergeant-Major.
At nine o'clock the next morning, Luke reported for duty at Mr Kelly's door. The man led him through the cottage to the back garden and showed him the stump of an old tree.
"I'd like to dig this out," he said, "but it's going to be a two-man job, I think."
It was hard work. They had to dig the soil away from the stump first, then took it in turns to chop through the thick roots underneath with an axe. Luke had never swung an axe before and thoroughly enjoyed this part. After an hour, they took a break and Mr Kelly brought two cans of Coke out to the patio table.
Luke sank down gratefully into one of the chairs. It offered a good view of the flower bed he had landed in the night before. Reliving the events of that evening, Luke's eyes travelled to the fence he'd scaled and on, up to the window he'd climbed out of.
He realised that Mr Kelly had probably had a very good view of all of Luke's actions last night, as he had been sitting in this very spot.
As though reading his mind, his neighbour asked: "Do you often climb out of your window and over the fence?"
Luke wasn't sure if this question was going to be the start of a lecture about his behaviour but Mr Kelly's demeanour remained relaxed and his tone was pleasant enough.
"Er, no," replied Luke, "I'd never done that before." He felt more explanation was needed. "There was a bit of a row."
Mr Kelly was looking at him closely and Luke became more conscious of the red mark on the left side of his face, where his father's hand had connected with his cheek. He put his hand up to touch it. "Mostly my own fault," he admitted. Then he went on to add: "Thanks for not telling them about it."
Mr Kelly acknowledged Luke's thanks with a nod and took a sip from his can. "We all make stupid decisions sometimes," he said. "The important thing is not to repeat them."
Luke found now that he wanted to explain why he had tried to escape. In a low voice, for fear of being overheard by his parents, he tried to justify his actions. "They want to send me to a different school! He wants to stop me seeing my friends!"
His neighbour frowned. "And how are you getting on at the school you're at now?"
A thought that had been lurking on the sidelines of Luke's mind suddenly stepped onto the field and he remembered his mother telling him that Mr Kelly was a teacher. Knowing that the man had a professional interest in the answer to this question generated a wave of embarrassment which turned Luke's face bright red. He had no intention of answering anyway and remained silent. But Mr Kelly appeared to be impervious to the dumb insolence which so enraged Luke's dad. He seemed to think Luke was blushing because he was ashamed of his performance at school.
"Perhaps it's not such a bad idea then, to make a fresh start somewhere new."
Luke said nothing. He downed the rest of his drink and went back to the tree stump. It seemed preferable to having to listen to yet another adult who wanted to send him away to school. Mr Kelly clearly had no idea what he was talking about.
Chapter Two
The arguments between Luke and his parents continued over subsequent evenings. His father flatly refused to allow Luke to take the bus into town to see his friends and was exerting all his efforts into finding a private school which would be able to take Luke in September.
By the end of the first week of the summer break, he announced that a last-minute place had become free at the school he himself had attended when he was a teenager. It was some distance from home and Luke would have to stay there during term-time. The idea of spending weeks at a time at school seemed horrific to Luke.
"We're trying to do the best thing for you," his mother assured him.
But Luke didn't believe her. "No, you're not," he shouted back. You're just trying to get me out of the way!"
One way and another, Luke seemed to be spending the first week of the summer either yelling at his parents or shut up in his bedroom. The only escape he had to look forward to was working next door in Mr Kelly's garden.
On his second visit his neighbour asked: "How are things going with your mum and dad?"
Luke just grunted in response.
Mr Kelly frowned, hesitated for a moment, then said "As it's such a nice day, I was thinking about taking a hike over the Seven Sisters. It's a circular route that'll take about three hours. You can come along if you like."
Luke really wasn't sure about this. He liked walking and had often hiked over the Downs with his mother in past summer holidays but there hadn't been much opportunity since the twins had been born a couple of years ago. And the idea of getting out of the village for three hours was definitely appealing but did he really want to spend it in the company of Mr Kelly, a person he barely knew? And a teacher, for goodness sake!
"I won't be offended if you say ‘no'," smiled his neighbour, who seemed to possess particularly well-developed mind-reading skills. "I know you used to do quite a lot of hiking with Suzanne but if you'd rather not, that's fine. You can come and help me with the garden tomorrow."
The memory of his long walks with his mother came back to Luke strongly at these words and he felt inexplicably emotional at the way things seemed to have changed so much since those days. "No, I mean, yes, I'll come. Please." Luke managed to twist his mouth into a smile.
"Great. I'll fix us some sandwiches and you can go and check with your mum that it's OK."
Luke dashed back home and was relieved to find his mother alone in the kitchen. He told her of the plan.
"Really?" she laughed. "Well, nobody knows the walks round here better than Ned. He used to go on hikes with me and my brother when we were all teenagers. We used to tease him because he was always trying to get us interested in local history, when all we wanted to do was get away from our parents. He was the same, mind you: his dad was a nightmare and Ned wouldn't spend any time in that house if he could help it." She stopped and looked shrewdly at Luke. "I hope you'll be more polite to him than we were."
"'Course I will, Mum," said Luke and he went back to Mr Kelly's house before she could reconsider.
Mr Kelly was loading up a rucksack with foil-wrapped sandwiches and some bottled water when Luke came back into the kitchen. He picked up a well-used map and unfolded it on the kitchen table.
"I used to know the countryside round here off by heart," he said, "but I haven't been back for so long that it might be wise to take the map with us." With his finger, he traced out the route he was planning to take so that Luke could see where they would be going. "We'll go out along the cliffs and then back through the woods. That way we'll be in the shade when it gets hotter this afternoon. It's about eight miles in all. D'you think you can cope with that?"
It had been a long time since Luke had walked so far but he wasn't going to chicken out now. He hoped he wouldn't embarrass himself by collapsing from exhaustion half way round. "Think so," he replied.
They headed out of the village together along farm tracks and footpaths, surrounded by ripening fields of wheat and then by the open grassiness of the South Downs. Soon they arrived at the abrupt edge where the rolling green hills became the cliffs of stark white chalk known as the Seven Sisters. Luke and Mr Kelly looked out over the blue waters of the English Channel. To the left was the lighthouse of Belle Tout, balanced on the brink of the high cliff known as Beachy Head. Mr Kelly told Luke how the lighthouse had been moved nearly twenty metres back from the edge of the cliff in 1999, to prevent it from falling into the sea.
"Of course it had already been badly damaged in the Second World War," he added.
"By the Germans?" asked Luke, trying to be polite by showing some interest.
Mr Kelly laughed. "You'd think so wouldn't you? No, it was the Canadians."
Luke's knowledge of history wasn't wonderful but even he was fairly sure that the Canadians weren't fighting against the British during World War Two. "How come?" he asked, getting intrigued, despite himself.
"They had dummy wooden tanks lined up for artillery practice on the cliff top near Belle Tout," explained Mr Kelly. "They were supposed to be shooting at those but the lighthouse got hit, too. Sounds like they needed the practice."
Luke laughed.
"Have you ever walked along the base of the cliffs?" Mr Kelly asked him.
"No."
"We can't do it today, because the tide will be in soon but it's quite a good walk. Harder than this one, though and takes a lot longer. There's a German submarine down there, you know."
"A whole submarine?"
"No - just bits of one. Well, to be frank, they look like they could be any old bits of scrap metal. But it makes a good story."
They walked on. Mr Kelly turned out to have a vast number of stories about the history and geography of the local area and seemed to be enjoying the opportunity of rediscovering his old haunts and sharing the stories with Luke. The time seemed to pass quickly, although by the time they got back to the village, Luke's leg muscles were complaining and his feet had stopped talking to him altogether.
"How are you feeling?" asked his neighbour.
"Honestly? Absolutely knackered," replied Luke, who was no longer feeling the need to be scrupulously polite to his new acquaintance. "But I think I'll be fit enough to come round and help in your garden tomorrow."
Luke did do some more work for Ned Kelly in his garden that summer but both of them preferred the grander scale of nature laid out for them on the chalky hills and cool woodlands of the South Downs and they went out two or three times a week. Mr Kelly showed Luke how to read a map and, after their first few walks, gave him the responsibility of navigating them home. Luke was surprised at how much he enjoyed the hikes they were taking and it wasn't long before he was thinking of his neighbour as 'Ned' rather than 'Mr Kelly'.
The arguments between Luke and his parents were continuing to make their house an unpleasant place to be and it was always a relief to get out and spend some time away from them. And from his dad, in particular. Four weeks into the six-week break, Luke was brooding over yet another row with his father while he was out on one of his walks with Ned. His resentful thoughts about his dad reminded him of the way his mother had described Ned's troubled relationship with his own father. Luke felt comfortable enough now to be able question his neighbour about it.
"What was your dad like?" he asked. "Mum said you didn't get on too well."
Ned frowned and for a moment Luke thought he had said the wrong thing and that Ned wasn't going to answer. He was worried he shouldn't have mentioned it but, after a long pause, Ned replied. "I think I'll need some sustenance before I even try to address that subject," he said. "Let's have lunch."
They sat down on the grassy slope of the hill and unwrapped their sandwiches. Ned ate some of his in silence then gave Luke a thoughtful look.
"Since I've been back in the cottage," he began, "the thinness of the walls between our houses has become obvious and I can't help but be aware that there are some pretty major rows happening on your side of them."
Luke lowered his gaze to his sandwich, embarrassed.
"Which made me realise," continued Ned, "that your mother and her family must have been equally well aware of the major rows that used to happen in my house when I was around your age."
At this, Luke's interest was aroused and he looked back up at Ned's face. Ned gave him a sad smile. "I don't want to bore you with my entire life history," he said, "but some of my experience then might be relevant for what you're going through now.
"My father was over fifty when I was born and I don't think that large age gap helped us understand each other. He had been a trawlerman since he was fifteen and I hardly saw him when I was small: he was always out at sea. When I was ten, my mother died and he retired from work. We moved here and were thrown together, almost as strangers, and fairly quickly finding we had little in common.
"Our relationship got worse, rather than better, as time went on. He couldn't see why I wanted to stay on at school and then, later, go to university. He thought a man should go out and get work as soon as possible." Ned ate another mouthful of sandwich before continuing. "We fought about it constantly.
"I was miserable living here with him and my reaction (like yours the other week) was to run away from the situation. I had some very supportive teachers – this was at the school you've been going to - and they helped me get scholarships so that I could study overseas without my father's assistance. I left home to go to America when I was eighteen and I didn't come back here until after my father's death. Our relationship had deteriorated so much that he never even told me he was dying."
Ned sighed and rubbed his forehead with his left hand. Luke noticed a white scar there.
"Did he give you that scar?" Luke couldn't help asking.
"Yes, his parting gift just before I left. Although that particular fight, to borrow your words, was mostly my own fault." Luke leaned forward, unable to disguise his keen interest in this story. Ned laughed.
"Oh, it's not a very stirring tale, I assure you. I got home extremely late after a last evening out with my school friends before we all went our separate ways. I'd had a great time and a wonderful moonlit walk home." Ned stopped talking for a moment, apparently lost in the memory of that evening, then seemed to pull himself together again.
"I was feeling buoyed up about being on the verge of leaving for America. I thought I could do anything and my common sense had been diluted with too much beer. So, when my father started on at me for getting back so late, I told him exactly what I thought of him."
Luke's face screwed up and he winced in sympathy for Ned's eighteen-year-old self. Ned nodded in acknowledgment, "Yes, it was another one of those stupid decisions we were discussing." Ned put his hand up to his head again. "He knocked me down and I gashed my head on the hearth. I left for good a few days later and it's only recently I've felt able to spend any time in that house, even though he's been dead now for ten years. Don't let things get that bad between you and your father, Luke."
*
On a day when he and Ned had planned a hike, Kyle Dawson, one of Luke's school friends, rang to invite Luke to hang out in the nearby town with a gang of other boys from school. Up to now, Luke had been coming up with excuses for not seeing his friends but this time he thought he might be able to wangle the trip. He knew his dad wouldn't let him go, so he didn't bother asking either of his parents, continuing to let them think he was going off with Ned. He explained to Ned that he wouldn't be able to go on the hike but would walk with him as far as the bus stop on the main road and go into town instead. He didn't see any reason to lie to Ned about where he was going.
The first part of his plan worked fine; Luke met up with his friends at the entrance to the pier of the seaside town. The pier stretched 300 metres out from the shoreline, over the sea and was a favourite haunt for teenagers from miles around. Luke liked the way he could see the surface of the water through the gaps between the planks beneath his feet but the main attraction for him and his friends was the amusement arcade. As usual, they spent an hour or two feeding coins into the slot machines. Then, also as usual, they left the arcade considerably poorer and invested their remaining funds in stocks of hot dogs, hamburgers, chips and sugar-laced soft drinks to consume on the beach.
"Where've you been all summer, Luke?" asked Kyle, licking spilt ketchup from his fingers. Heads turned in Luke's direction to hear his reply.
"My parents have banned me from seeing you guys," Luke told them, going on to explain about the plan to send him to a new school. He was pleased at the expressions of outrage that greeted these revelations.
"So how come you're here now?"
"I sneaked out - they don't know I'm here."
"Cool," said Kyle. "Oh, that reminds me." He dug into one of the pockets of his cargo pants and produced a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. "I lifted these from my old man's jacket this morning."
Kyle passed around the cigarettes from his dad's packet and the boys lit them.
"What you gonna do about this school thing?" Kyle's attention was back on Luke.
Luke watched the smoke curling up from his cigarette. He had been giving this question some serious thought. "I'm going to prove to Dad that it won't make any difference. I'll make sure I do just as badly at the new school so he sees it's a waste of money. I'm thinking of getting myself expelled."
His friends, who usually made a point of never being impressed by anything, were admiring of Luke's current and planned acts of defiance. They entertained themselves in a discussion of the most effective means of getting permanently excluded from school.
Luke lay back on the pebbly beach, basking in the sunshine and in his friends' attention. This was where he belonged. He knew his parents' plans were wrong, however well-intentioned.
It would have been a perfect day if Luke had not missed the last bus back to the village (there were only four each day). He was stranded in the town with no money left and no way of getting home apart from walking. Realising he was going to end up doing a hike after all, he walked the five miles back to the village. He was glad that it wasn't raining but wished that the day was not quite as hot and sunny as it was. As he approached the terraced row of cottages, footsore and grimy, he found himself hoping hard that Ned had gone for a longer walk than usual and that Mum and Dad had not seen him return without Luke.
He opened the door to the cottage and immediately heard his father's voice, sounding angry, coming from the living room. When he heard Ned's voice replying to his dad he knew for certain that his illicit trip into town had been discovered. "Busted," he muttered to himself. His first instinct was to turn around and walk out of the house again. Unfortunately Elsie, one of his sisters, walked out of the kitchen and spotted him.
"Lu-lu!" she shouted enthusiastically, pinpointing his location with deadly precision. The conversation in the living room stopped and was replaced by a pounding of heavy feet and the appearance of his dad in the doorway to the hall. Ned and Mum were right behind him. Luke snatched up Elsie in self-defence and blew a loud raspberry on her stomach, much to her delight.
The adults appeared considerably less delighted. Mum swung down upon him, detached Elsie and took her off into the back garden with Molly, her twin, without saying a word to him. Luke was left alone with the two men. He was beyond caring about what his father thought of him but felt bad about having dragged Ned into this situation.
"I'm sorry-" he began, talking to Ned but his father cut across him.
"Just shut up, you disobedient little brat."
Luke shut up. He wasn't sure what he'd been going to say anyway. His dad positioned himself next to the open front door and turned to Ned, looking embarrassed. "I'm sorry for the misunderstanding."
Ned nodded at Luke's dad as he left and gave the teenager a look which said "I expected better of you than this," without the need for words. The likelihood of going on any more Downland walks seemed to be leaving the house along with Ned and Luke knew he had only himself to blame. At this rate, he wouldn't be able to leave the village again for the rest of the summer.
Dad's embarrassment and anger were now vented at Luke, who was told, at length, exactly what his father thought of him for sneaking off without permission. Luke, who was tired and also now very conscious of the thinness of the cottage walls, did not shout back, so for once the lecture did not escalate into a full-blown row. Luke spent another evening in his bedroom, without supper and was forbidden to leave the house for the next seven days.
It was a week of chores. Luke's dad seemed to think hard work would keep him out of trouble and he devised a plan of housework and maintenance jobs for Luke to undertake. While he was mowing the front lawn on the evening of his third day of confinement, Luke finally got the chance to talk to Ned. His neighbour drew up in his car and unloaded some bags of groceries. Luke stopped mowing and hurried over to apologise.
"Look, Ned, I'm really sorry. I shouldn't have got you involved. It was so stupid."
Ned regarded him with that serious look of his but said nothing. He began walking up the path to his own cottage.
Luke followed him, words tumbling out of his mouth in a rush.
"I'm grounded for a week but I really want to carry on hiking with you after that, if you'll let me.
"Please," he added, with a note of desperation.
"I'll think about it," Ned replied eventually, as they reached his front door. "But you'll need to ask your parents' permission, too." He shook his head. "It really was an incredibly thoughtless thing to do, Luke. As I said to you before, we all make stupid decisions sometimes. The important thing is…"
"…not to repeat them," completed Luke. Ned gave Luke a small smile and took his shopping into the house, leaving Luke feeling slightly more cheerful. Until his father came outside to see why he'd stopped mowing the lawn, that is.
He was allowed to go out on hikes again with Ned after his week of servitude. Luke suspected Mum had persuaded Dad to agree, as his father was still embarrassed about the whole affair and would have preferred to have stopped all of Luke's excursions. At first, Luke felt awkward about what had happened but Ned was as informative and easy-going as ever and soon he enjoyed the hikes as much as he had before.
Luke never discussed the issue of his new school with Ned. For one thing, he didn't want to think about it and for another, he suspected Ned would be likely to side with his parents. He didn't want to have the same arguments out on the Downs that he was having within the walls of the cottage. Luke preferred to pretend that if he ignored it, the problem would go away.
The last week of the summer was the worst. Ned had let his cottage out to holidaymakers again and returned to work, leaving Luke alone with his family and the realisation that he could no longer ignore the fact that he would be leaving for a new school in early September. Luke now wished he'd talked to Ned about the ways private boarding schools differed from state day schools. He regarded with bewilderment the piles of clothes and sports kit his mother had bought for him: he certainly seemed to need a lot more in the way of stuff.
Chapter Three
The end of the summer break arrived all too quickly and Luke's father loaded his trunk of school things into the back of his car. It was a long drive to make with two small girls and the Brownlows had decided that it would be better for Luke's mum to stay at home with the twins. Luke kissed and hugged them all before turning dejectedly to the car.
The journey was not a comfortable one. His dad attempted to make conversation every so often but Luke was not in the mood to humour him. A large lump of homesickness and trepidation seemed to have settled in the back of his throat, making it difficult to talk in any case. At least when he'd started at his last school he'd been one of a whole group of new students, some of whom he'd been with at primary school. This time he would probably be the only new kid in the whole of year nine and it would be that much harder to make friends.
Dad made one last effort to talk to him. "You know Luke, I don't care what you do once you've completed your education. If you want to go and pick grapes in France, build skyscrapers or collect rubbish for the council, that's all fine by me. What I really don't want is for you to come to me in ten years' time and ask why I didn't give you the chance to choose your future life by making sure you got the most out of your education."
Luke said nothing but his father continued, undeterred. "You were born while your mother and I were still at university but we both continued studying because we knew it was going to be the best way of ensuring we could give you a good life once we left. If you mess your education up now, then your choices in life are going to be severely limited."
"I don't care!" Luke said.
"You don't care right now because you don't know how important it is," Dad said, managing to keep his tone civil. "While we've got care of you, it's our responsibility to do the best we can. The university career your mother and I continued with, despite having a baby to look after and hardly any money, means that now we can pay for better educational opportunities for you. Once you get to school leaving age, then it's up to you what you do."
The rest of the journey passed in silence. They carried the heavy trunk between them into the grand front entrance of the school. It had once been a stately home, Dad had informed Luke on the way there. Luke felt small, grubby, and insignificant as they walked up the steps. In the entrance hall they joined a short queue of other new pupils and parents who were being told where to go and what to do. They all seemed to be younger than Luke: year sevens, he presumed. When Luke and his dad got to the front of the line they were greeted by the woman who seemed to be in charge.
"Hello, I'm Mrs Lloyd and I'm the administrator here. Welcome to Hawley Lodge." She smiled warmly down at Luke. "What is your name, dear?"
Luke swallowed down the lump that was threatening to stop him talking altogether and told her his name. Mrs Lloyd checked it against her list.
"Brownlow, Brownlow, Brownlow. Yes, here you are. You're going to be in the Romans house. Oh, and the headmaster wanted to have a word with you after you've dropped off your stuff and said your goodbyes."
Luke looked at her, then at Dad, in surprise, but his father seemed as bemused as he was and Mrs Lloyd was busy getting out a photocopied floor plan of the school to show them where to go. The building was shaped like a capital H, with the dormitories on the top floor, arranged so that one school house was in each of the four wings. Mrs Lloyd explained that there were staircases on either side of the building which would be the usual way for Luke to get around the floors but that they could use the goods lift to get his trunk upstairs today.
His dad helped Luke get his trunk up to the room he would be sharing with the other year nine students of the Romans house. There were trunks at the ends of three of the four beds, so they stowed his at the end of the other one and made their way back down the staircases to the hall for further instructions from Mrs Lloyd, who had now dispatched all the other boys who had been standing in line. She briskly shook Luke's father by the hand and wished him a good journey home, leaving him no option but to say good-bye to Luke. Much as he resented his father's recent actions, Luke felt slightly abandoned as Dad patted his shoulder and assured him that half-term would be here in no time and they would see him soon.
Once his dad had gone, Mrs Lloyd gave Luke directions to the headmaster's office which was on the first floor, in the central corridor which connected the two wings of the school.
"Does he see all the new students?" Luke managed to ask her.
"No, dear, I don't believe he does – but I'm sure it's nothing to worry about. Off you go."
Not at all reassured, Luke climbed the ornately-carved wooden staircase that led upwards from the main entrance hall to the first floor, wondering why on earth he'd been singled out. A sick feeling settled in his stomach as he remembered the abysmal school report that had sparked off this chain of events. Maybe his parents had sent a copy of it here and he was already in trouble. As he neared the top of the stairs it occurred to him that this was his first chance of making a bad impression on the man who would have the power to send him home permanently. He resolved not to waste the opportunity, although the thought of intentionally doing so made him feel sicker still.
The door to the office was open and Luke was glad of that, because he was so nervous now that he didn't think he would have had the courage to knock on it if it had been closed. He walked through the doorway and found himself in an ante-room, where a friendly-looking young woman was sitting behind a desk. A brass plaque at the front of the desk was engraved with the words ‘Headmaster's secretary'.
"Hello, you must be Luke. I'm Miss Croft. Go on through." She gestured towards a door to her right which was also open and Luke walked through it into a large and imposing room. It had four tall windows which looked out over the sunny courtyard enclosed by the two wings on the south side of the building. The walls were lined with books, in the style of an old-fashioned library, and a wooden desk covered in papers stood at the far end of the room. In the centre was a large table, surrounded with green leather chairs. As he entered, the black-robed figure of his new headmaster rose from behind the desk and moved forwards to greet him.
"Hello, Luke," said a very familiar voice and Luke was hugely shocked to recognise his new headmaster as the next-door-neighbour he had spent the summer getting to know.
"Ned!" said Luke in amazement, before becoming utterly perplexed. "But, how-?" His powers of speech deserted him.
Ned was grinning in a most unheadmasterly manner. "I only found out last week it was our school you were joining. I'm really pleased, Luke. I'm sure you're going to get on splendidly here." He was sensitive to Luke's confusion and tried to reassure him. "I'll phone your parents and let them know what's happened."
Luke nodded, still unable to speak. Part of him was glad to see a familiar face in these unfamiliar surroundings but another part was beginning to wonder whether he'd ever be comfortable in Ned's company again. Ned had had more time to consider the circumstances and tried to alleviate his fears. "It's alright, you'll really only see me at a distance here, at assemblies and mealtimes and so on. In the holidays I'll be Ned your neighbour and here I'll be Mr Kelly your headmaster. Two different people, really. I wanted to talk to you today to explain the situation but I doubt very much we'll have any reason to speak to each other again until we're back at home, Luke."
Luke finally felt happy enough to be able to form complete sentences again. He smiled back at his neighbour. "OK, I think I can handle that."
"Good. You're going to find it very different here from your old school, Luke. I think this place might be just what you need. Oh, and I really don't want to interfere in your life here at all but it occurred to me today that if you want to keep practising your map-reading, you might like to think about joining the orienteering club. It'll give you a chance to explore this area too."
"OK," said Luke again, having no idea what orienteering might be and beginning to feel bewildered again.
"Now you'd better go off and meet the rest of the Romans. Work hard, Luke and make your parents proud of you."
Somehow, Luke found his way back to the top floor, still rather stunned by this turn of events but a little comforted that he knew at least one person in this new world. His original plan of getting himself expelled as soon as possible was already forgotten; there was no way he was going to deliberately make Ned think badly of him.
The common room was at the end of the top floor. It was a noisy place with many of the boys of the Romans house already there, catching up with each other after the long summer break. There were about twenty of them, ranging in age from around twelve to eighteen. A very old-fashioned looking television was blaring out a music channel in one corner of the room, while at the tables to Luke's right an arm-wrestling championship seemed to be in progress.
An immensely tall black boy dressed in what appeared to be a calf-length striped skirt and sandals levered himself out of a saggy-looking armchair and approached Luke.
"You're the new year nine, right?" His voice was deep and seemed to vibrate the floor.
Luke thought this boy looked as though he'd stepped out of a documentary about Africa. He found himself unable to speak again and just nodded.
"I'm Toranda. Mrs Lloyd asked me to look out for you." Toranda turned and shouted to the room at large. "Hey, year nines!"
Three boys who had been watching the arm-wrestling contest turned around. Toranda beckoned them over and they came, looking curiously at Luke.
"This is your new room-mate. Show him the ropes will you?" Toranda seemed to consider that making this perfunctory introduction had fulfilled his obligation to Luke and he turned back to his seat, leaving the four younger boys staring at each other. Luke thought he had better tell them his name.
"I'm Luke Brownlow," he stated.
"Hi Luke. I'm Jay Trenton," said the tallest boy of the three, who was slim, with longish blond hair and brown eyes. He gestured to the short boy next to him, who had a thickly freckled face, dark hair and grey eyes. "This is Fred Wright and this-" here he pointed at the tall, dark-skinned and dark-eyed boy next to Fred, "is Taj Verma. D'you want a guided tour?"
"Yeah, sure," said Luke.
"OK – we'll start here. This room is called the Forum," said Jay. "It's the Romans' common room, you see."
Luke didn't see and this must have shown on his face.
"There are four houses, right?" explained Fred. "The Normans' common room is called the Keep, the Vikings' is the Longhouse and the Saxons' is the Stockade. They're all at the far ends of the top floors. You can see the Stockade over there." Fred pointed at the equivalent room to theirs on the opposite of the school. "The Longhouse and the Keep are right at the front of the school".
"Oh, I see."
Jay, Taj and Fred took Luke all over the school, passing on invaluable information about the way things were done and where Luke would be expected to be at particular times. The classrooms were in the wings of the lower two floors, with the top two floors reserved for accommodation. The youngest students lived in the top floor dormitories, kept in check by the housemasters who lived in four apartments on the same floor during term time (either side of the corridor which formed the cross-bar of the H). The older boys had their own study-bedrooms on the floor below.
The Romans explained to Luke that the central corridor on the first floor of the school was out of bounds for students. This meant that getting from the first-floor classrooms in the west wing to those in the east involved going first down the stairs to the ground floor, then across the entrance hall and up the stairs on the other side.
"We call that corridor Death Alley," Fred explained. "The headmaster and the deputy head's offices are along there and so is the sick bay. Basically you only end up there if you're in deep schtuck, one way or another."
Luke thought of his recent visit to the corridor but said nothing about it. He didn't think it was going to be wise to talk about his unusual relationship with Ned Kelly to his new acquaintances, somehow.
There was a sign-up sheet for school clubs in the entrance hall and Luke put his name down for the Orienteering club, even though he still had no idea what he was volunteering himself for. Taj, Jay and Fred showed him all the classrooms, described their teachers and took him down for their evening meal in the main hall at six o'clock.
"What's the food like?" asked Luke, who had been scarred by his previous experiences of school dinners. The idea of eating stuff like that for every meal of every day for the next six weeks was quite distressing.
"Pretty good, actually," said Fred, whose figure suggested that he was quite fond of his food. Luke was reassured and Fred proved to be quite right. Maybe this place won't be as bad I thought, Luke decided.
Chapter Four
Hawley Lodge School was small, with just over one hundred pupils: barely a tenth the number of Luke's previous school. It was possible to know every student and impossible to be an anonymous face in the crowd. This took some getting used to for Luke, who found he could not coast along without doing much work as he had done in his old school. Expectations of the students were made plain and Luke got the feeling that the staff here had more time to make sure all the members of their classes were engaged and keeping up with their work.
In some ways the school seemed old-fashioned. Rules about uniform were stricter than Luke was used to and he found it odd that Ned wore a black gown around the place. The boys were expected to stand when a member of staff entered a classroom and to call their male teachers 'sir'. The students themselves were usually addressed by their surnames. All of these traditions struck Luke as relics of a bygone time; teachers at his old school had never insisted on such things. Most of the boys were boarders, although there were a few that lived close enough to attend as day pupils.
He found he missed having girls around, although he'd never spent much time talking to them in his old school. There were a few girls in the sixth form who attended as day pupils but they seemed terribly grown up to Luke. There were some female teachers and there were other women on the staff: Mrs Lloyd the administrator; Miss Croft, the headmaster's secretary; the school's Matron and the terrifying Mrs Mould, who cleaned the boys' dormitories and who was justly feared by all who crossed her path. Mrs Mould took her duties seriously and Luke got into trouble with her almost immediately by leaving a half-finished can of coke in his bedside cabinet. Instead of simply reminding him that no food or drink was allowed in the dormitory, Mrs Mould informed the Romans' housemaster, Mr Wilmot, of her discovery. Mr Wilmot was also the tutor for the year nines and he held Luke back one break-time to repeat the rules and to warn him that there would be consequences if any other contraband items were found in his room.
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