The Red Road (37 page)

“
Watchmen
’s considered literally
fiction by some,” Wayland said.

“That’s a
comic
,
Hutchings!” one of the sixth formers spat. The others laughed.

Wayland looked rather abashed by the attack, but said nothing. I
could see some determination in his eyes to push on to succeed. I
only wondered if he would have the ability to do so.

“The best way to become a writer
is simply to write,” Adrian summarised. “And if that doesn’t
work, keep doing it. No, it doesn’t make sense, but that’s just
the way it happens.”

There was bafflement in the room at
the statement, but I could understand where he was coming from. No
one is good at anything when they first start, but with enough
practice, perseverance and due diligence, they will become better,
and hopefully at some point, great. I raised my hand.

“Yes,” Adrian said.

“You said that in the first few
years of doing it, freelancing won’t be your only source of income.
What did you do?” I asked partly out of curiosity of the career
itself, but also to know what Adrian had done with his life after his
expulsion from the school (a fact that I would still keep to myself).

“I applied for work at local
newspapers and publications, and was fortunate enough to get a job
offer quite quickly. I stayed for a number of years, improving my
skills and making contacts, before then applying for higher-paying
work with more substantial newspapers. After a few more years, I then
decided to become a freelancer.”

“And you didn’t go to
university?”

“No.”

“Did that affect your applications
at all?”

“Not that I was aware,” Adrian
said. “But this was over twenty years ago, and competition for jobs
wasn’t quite what it is today,” he added with a sideways glance
at Wayland. “I also didn’t apply for major publications to begin
with. Start small, and you’ll get where you want to go.”

“Twenty years?” one of the sixth
formers asked.

“Eight in various newspapers and
publications, the rest as a freelancer,” Adrian clarified. “Sorry
if that got a little confusing. I didn’t become a freelancer
immediately.”

“Any more questions?” Mr Rod
asked as silence descended on the classroom.

A few more followed,
Wayland attempting to find out more and ignoring the slings and
arrows of his peers. Eventually, the questions stopped coming, and Mr
Rod wrapped things up, thanking Adrian and giving him a short round
of applause for his time.

~ ~ ~

“What do you normally do in the
evenings here?” Adrian wanted to know, as Baz and I walked him to
his car. It was a good deal more modest than I had been expecting. I
didn’t know why, but I thought it would be a lot flashier than it
was. Maybe it was because I was so used to seeing what most parents
turned up in when they came to collect their sons and was now seeing
what real people drove.

“In the evenings? Not a lot,”
I said. “Usually just hangout.”

“Yeah,” Baz nodded. “We’ll
probably just sit around in the mezzanine or go to the TV room or
something. Or just play video games or sit about our dorms or
something.”

“Ah, not to worry,” Adrian said.
“Next term, you’ll be able to make use of the Sixth Form Common
Room.”

“Not us,” I said. “We’re
both leaving at the end of this term.”

“Really? Why?”

“A number of reasons,” I said
dismissively. “It would take a long time to explain.”

“Hmm,” Adrian said, taking a
glance about. “Why don’t you tell me over a pint of beer?”

“Pardon?” I said, thinking that
my ears had just deceived me.

“Tell me over a drink,” Adrian
repeated.

“Um ... we’re sixteen,” I
said, looking at Baz. “We can’t drink.”

“Not unless I buy it and no one
finds out,” Adrian said. “Want to come to the White Horse with me
for one? I’m not quite ready to go home yet, and I fancy a drink
before I do. Besides, I’m only going to end up sitting in front of
the TV, watching a repeat of
Eldorado
.”

I felt for him in that. “We
probably won’t be allowed in,” I said.

“They still serve the sixth
formers, don’t they?”

“They do, yes. By special
agreement.”

“Then you’re now both in the
lower sixth. They won’t ask too many questions if I’m with you,
as they’ll just think I’m a teacher or something. Agreed?”

“Sure,” I said, and made to open
the passenger door of his car.

“Not here!” Adrian said. “I’ll
meet you outside the school, a little down the road from the main
gates.”

“We can’t get out,” Baz said.
“The gates are always locked up after six every night.”

I detected something in Baz’s
voice. He was making excuses not to go and was sounding a little
uncertain about all of this. I wasn’t sure there was anything to
worry about. I held my composure.

“When I was here, there was a side
gate in one of those stumpy little lookout towers, a little way each
side of the main gate. Is it still there?” Adrian asked.

“Yes. Yes, it is,” I said, after
pausing to think for a moment. “It’s a bit overgrown there now,
so I don’t think it’s ever locked. We can go out through there.”

“Good, you do that and I’ll see
you in ten minutes,” Adrian said.

“Got it,” I said.

“Um ... are you sure this is a
good idea?” Baz asked as we started towards the gates.

“We’ll only get in a little
trouble if we’re caught,” I said. “The worst that will happen
is that we’ll be gated. We won’t get rusticated or anything. They
won’t put us on the
Murga List
either, not this close to
doing our GCSEs. Grades first, remember?”

“No, I mean going with
him
!”
Baz said.

“What do you mean?”

“He’s invited us to get in his
car!” Baz said, his pace slowing. “This is a really stupid idea.”

“Why? He used to come here, he’s
just given a speech on what he does for a living, and now he’s
invited us to go to the pub with him. He also still comes to church.
I’ve seen him about a couple of times. Don’t panic.” Though
despite my words, I could understand where Baz was coming from. It
would probably be wise to let someone know where we were going, but
that could mean we would be denied a drink of beer.

“I don’t think we should go,”
Baz stopped.

“Oh, come on, Baz,” I said.
“Live a little. It’s only five minutes down the road in a car,
twenty minutes walking. If anything bad happens, we’ll just run
back, and that’ll take us about ten minutes.”

Baz considered it for a moment. I
wondered as to the images in his head. Was he imagining us getting
into Adrian’s car, being driven to some obscure woodland, strangled
and then chopped up? Adrian wouldn’t harm us; he had absolutely no
reason to. The idea was absolutely preposterous.

“Okay,” Baz eventually agreed.
“But if he decides to attack us, I’m letting you get stabbed
first, so I can get away.”

“Sure,” I said, rolling my eyes.

~ ~ ~

We slipped through the lookout tower
gate, finding it even more overgrown than I had expected. Though it
was still light, not yet nine p.m., we were sure that the security
patrol guarding the main gates hadn’t seen us.

We met Adrian a little way down the
road and he drove us to the White Horse, stating that it would be a
good idea for us to sit in the beer garden, out the back, where we
would be a little less conspicuous. He also suggested that we remove
our ties, to make us look less like the under-aged schoolboys we
were. Adrian ordered three pints of beer, two pints of lemonade, and
a packet of peanuts. The bartender looked suspiciously at Baz and I
for a moment, before Adrian began to wax about career paths after our
A-Levels the next year and the need to knuckle down in the upper
sixth. He did a good job of pretending to actually be a tutor, and so
the barman assumed everything was normal. He didn’t even ask for
any proof of age. I would have to remember that one. Everything paid
for, we settled down to make general conversation about the school,
our plans for leaving, our reasons for it, and what we wanted to do
in the future.

“You’re not overly fond of the
school, are you?” I asked Adrian. It was something that I had
picked up on as he had spoken to us. He never seemed to be able to
speak of something at St Christopher’s without adding something
negative.

“Not since my expulsion, no,”
Adrian said. “Excuse me,” he then said, getting up. “I need the
toilet.”

“I feel sorry for him,” I said
after Adrian had disappeared inside.

“Why? It was his own fault,” Baz
said. “He was dealing drugs, after all.”

“They never actually proved that,
though. They only found it in his room. I think he was set up by
someone.”

“Who, though?”

I shrugged. I couldn’t say for
certain. “Someone who was jealous of him, maybe?”

“But didn’t he say he smoked it
himself?”

“Yeah, but not at the school. They
only found out he did when they gave him a urine test. I think
someone found out the school was going to do it and so planted it on
him. Maybe the actual dealer decided to just use him as a scapegoat.”

I took another gulp of beer. I had consumed a little under half of
it. Adrian was close to finishing his first. I wondered whether I was
drinking slow or he was drinking fast.

“Hmm,” Baz said, remaining
sceptical.

I was, too, if I was being honest.
Though I felt sorry for him, I was struggling to be totally
sympathetic. Adrian Willis smoked cannabis, which was illegal.
Whether he was doing it during term time or not made little
difference to school policy. Immediate expulsion was the punishment
for doing such a thing.

“OI!”

I jumped as the voice bellowed
across the beer garden. I turned in its direction, the other patrons
swivelling on their benches to see what was going on. My heart sank.
It was Michael Lawrence, the prefect that had initially been
supervising my
Murga
before Father Thomas had intervened, the
same day we had discovered Craig Priest’s body in the snow.
Lawrence was glaring at Baz and I with utter hatred, our presence at
the White Horse clearly offending him. Lawrence was best friends with
Zackery Goodman, the head boy. I knew that he wouldn’t be far
behind.

“Oh, bollocks,” Baz said under
his breath.

I agreed.

“What the fuck are you two doing
here?” Lawrence called from across the garden, still standing where
he had been when he spotted us.

I felt the colour drain from my face
as people turned towards us. We were in deep trouble now. The sixth
formers didn’t often come down to the White Horse – it was a long
way to go for a drink, and it was apparently more expensive than
drinking in the Common Room. Just our luck they would choose tonight
to do so. I moved to speak, to concoct some explanation for what we
were doing.

“Hey, what’s going on, Mike? Why
are you shouting?” a voice came from behind Lawrence.

Too late. The head boy had just put
in his appearance.

“Oi, what the hell are you two
doing?” Goodman said, marching immediately over to us. “You’re
not allowed to be in here!”

Our pints of beer were in front of
us, but so were our pints of lemonade. Unfortunately, where the beers
were half full, the lemonades were still quite fresh, Baz and I only
having sipped lightly at them. That we weren’t drinking alcohol and
were in here for a soft drink was never going to fly with Goodman.

“We ... we ...” I started. The
excuses and explanations escaped me.

“Right, come on, you can’t be
here,” Goodman said, grabbing hold of my arm and pulling me up.
“You’re going back to your house immediately, and I’m going to
report this to Father Benedict and your housemasters.”

“We’re in the same house,” Baz
quipped.

“Shut up, you arrogant fuck!”
Lawrence said, coming over to assist with our humiliation of being
frogmarched out the pub. “You’re in shit loads of trouble! And
which twat bought you those?” he asked, indicating the beers.

“This twat did,” Adrian said
from behind him. He had returned with a glass of what was either Coke
or Pepsi.

The two sixth formers whirled
around, for a moment releasing their grips on Baz and I. They then
tightened again.

“Who the fuck are you?” Lawrence
demanded.

“I beg your pardon?” Adrian
said.

The head boy then released me and
instead grabbed Lawrence, quickly taking him aside, wrestling
Lawrence’s grip from Baz as he did so.

“What are you doing?” I heard
Goodman ask when they thought he and Lawrence were out of earshot.

“Well, those little shits
shouldn’t be here,” Lawrence said, not speaking quite as softly
as Goodman had, the rage caused by our presence clearly elevating the
level of his voice.

“Yes, but you can’t speak to
someone like that! He could complain to the school. Let me handle this.” Goodman
returned to our table. “I’m very sorry,” he said to
Adrian. “Mike has just had a very stressful day with his
schoolwork.”

“Is that the excuses you use these
days?” Adrian said, taking his seat once more and returning to his
pint. “If this is what you call stress, wait until you start your
first job.”

“Sorry, but how do you know these
two?” Goodman wanted to know.

“My name is Adrian Willis,”
Adrian said. “I’ve just done the career talk on freelance
journalism, that Joe and Barry attended. As they were so polite to
me, helping me out with getting dinner, escorting me to and from the
classrooms, and walking me back to my car, I asked them if they would
like to join me for a drink in the pub and talk about their plans for
the future. They said yes, so I drove them down here.”

I grinned along with Baz. That
would show them.