The Roman and the Runaway Read online

  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 a
nd 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.

  "Why couldn't she just tell me herself?" Luke complained to his room-mates later.

  "It's not the way she works," Taj told him. "She loves running to the housemasters with the sordid details of our crimes. Don't try to use your boyish charm on her, either. She's immune to it."

  Taj said this in the tone of someone who had already tried to get round Mrs Mould and failed.

  "And why was she poking around in my bedside cabinet anyway?" Luke wondered.

  "Get used to it," advised Fred. "There is no privacy in this place."

  There were no classes on Wednesday afternoons, although several of the school clubs met then, including the orienteering one. Luke discovered that the sport involved running around the countryside while navigating between checkpoints marked on a map. After the way he'd spent his summer with Ned, Luke enjoyed it immensely and was pleased to discover that he was a lot fitter than he had been at the end of his last school year. When it came to school work, however, Luke found, as he'd feared, that he was a long way behind his colleagues and was having to work hard to catch up.

  Ned had clearly spoken to Luke's mother, as he received a letter from her towards the end of his first full week of term.

  Dear Luke,

  I'm sure you were as surprised as we were
to find out your new headmaster was none other than Ned Kelly! I had no idea – I hadn't linked up Graham Kelly MSc with our Ned at all! I'm really happy you have him there to keep an eye on you, although I'm sure you won't need it (please!).

  The girls and Dad are all fine and send their love. Elsie and Molly have been asking ‘Where's Lulu?' every single morning. Missing you so much and looking forward to your half-term break,

  Speak soon,

  Lots of love,

  Mum

  As Ned had predicted, Luke rarely saw him except during assemblies and mealtimes. But Luke was keenly aware that however distant Ned might appear to be, it was highly likely that he would be keeping an occasional eye on his progress. He still didn't care what his father thought of him but he didn't feel the same way about his neighbour. Luke wanted to make a good impression. He was interested to see what his classmates thought of Ned and was quietly pleased to discover that his neighbour was treated with a good deal of respect by them, having a reputation for being fair and consistent. Amongst the students, just as at home, the headmaster was referred to as 'Ned' (although not to his face).

  The letter from his mother reminded Luke of the day he had met Ned and the way his neighbour had suggested he should look up the name Ned Kelly. The year nines had an IT lesson that morning, so as the class settled themselves at the computers he searched for it on the Internet. The first result took him to an online encyclopaedia, where he read the story of Ned Kelly, the Australian outlaw. The photograph of that Ned Kelly, taken on the day before his execution, portrayed a man with a huge bushy beard and a mass of thick, dark, wavy hair. It would be hard to imagine anyone less like the headmaster of Hawley Lodge. The contrast with the headmaster's clean-shaven face, balding head and short fair hair was so extreme that Luke found it funny.

  He nudged Jay, who was sitting next to him, and showed him the picture.