Usually, at these more formal meals, Ned made a short speech before anyone was allowed to start eating, in which he mentioned any significant events that had taken place in the preceding week, or perhaps made observations on current events in the world outside the school. Although it rarely had any religious content, this brief address had come to be known as the Headmaster's Sermon.
On the Sunday after Luke had been gated, the boarders gathered for their evening meal. It was the Norman year eights' turn to serve dinner and they had begun by delivering bread rolls and bowls of tomato soup to the assembled diners.
"I hope the sermon's quick today," muttered Fred, who was sitting opposite Luke, halfway down the Romans' table, which was on the easternmost side of the hall. He lowered his head towards the steaming bowl, apparently quite ready to suck its contents up through his nose, elephant-style. "I'm starving." It did smell good, although Luke was still fairly full of Julia's excellent Sunday lunch and wasn't as hungry as Fred clearly was.
Once the servers had taken their seats, Ned rose from the staff table and walked towards the lectern, which was at the head of the four House tables. The background noise of conversation began to quieten into a respectful hush and Luke's eyes, like everyone else's eyes, were on the headmaster. This meant that he was completely taken by surprise when he was hit on the collar bone by a flying bread roll. He caught it instinctively, as it dropped into his lap, and let out a surprised shout of "Hey!"
All around the room, heads turned in Luke's direction, but further down the Romans' table, Oliver Samuels had seen one of the Viking year sevens throw the edible missile from the next table over. He jumped up with an enthusiastic shout of "Food fight!" and pitched his own roll towards the Viking instigator. In an instant, nearly all the younger Romans and Vikings were pelting each other with the poppy-seed-coated projectiles. The older students, inhibited by their proximity to the staff table, did not join in, instead treating the battle as a form of pre-dinner entertainment. Under cover of the bread storm, Fred (who was not one to waste an opportunity to eat when it presented itself) made quick work of his own roll, swallowing it down to meet the urgent demands of his stomach, while Luke and the others watched the fun.
Order was quickly restored by the outraged Roman and Viking housemasters, who sped down the hall to the front line of the war-zone. Luke was delighted to see Mr Wilmot get hit on the ear by a Viking-thrown roll as he entered the fray. Once the year sevens and eights were back in their seats, the Norman servers were set to work gathering up the spent ammunition from the floor. In the meantime, the headmaster replaced his planned words with some pointed observations on the behaviour of the combatants.
"To make things simple," he concluded, "I suggest that the housemasters take note of the names of those boys who are currently lacking a bread roll and enrol them in detention tomorrow evening."
Fred looked stricken as he regarded his own now-empty side plate. Luke saw his problem and became aware that he still had hold of the Viking roll that had started it all. He nudged Fred's foot with his own and passed the roll to him, under the table. Fred grabbed it and stealthily slid it onto his plate, as Mr Wilmot made his way down from the year seven's end of the table, identifying the breadless offenders.
Fred mouthed "Thanks!" at Luke, who responded with a conspiratorial smile. Getting a sudden feeling that someone else was watching him, Luke glanced beyond Fred to find Ned staring straight back at him from the lectern with a frown forming on his face. Luke's smile faltered then faded as a sinking feeling took hold of his stomach. He realised that Ned was interpreting his smile to Fred as a sign that Luke was pleased with the way the food fight had gone. Uh-oh, he's thinking that I masterminded the whole thing, Luke thought.
With no way of explaining the truth of the matter, Luke dropped his gaze to his soup, which looked a lot less appetising than it had done mere minutes before. Ned returned to his place at the staff table and the meal proceeded without further incident. The only thing that made it different from usual was the distribution of noise: the inhabitants of lower end of the Viking and Roman tables were much quieter than normal.
*
After the meal, when the students had been dismissed from the hall, the teachers lingered over their coffee, as they usually did on Sunday evenings.
"Well, I think that's the first food fight we've ever had here," commented Charlie Garnet, the Saxons' housemaster.
"I was too busy looking at my notes to see what happened, exactly," said Ned. "Did any of you see how it started?"
"Brownlow had something to do with it," John Wilmot put in, "I'm sure I heard him shout just before it all kicked off."
There was a look of satisfaction on Wilmot's face which Ned regarded with unease. He knew that the relationship between Luke and his housemaster had never been good, but this time it seemed to him that Wilmot had a point. He had heard Luke's shout, too, after all.
"Could you make some enquiries within your house, John?" he asked. "Maybe see what young Samuels has to say for himself."
Wilmot, meanwhile, had caught the eye of Rhys Thomas. "I wonder if Brownlow was behind that year seven raid on your Vikings the other week," he speculated. "It seemed odd for new students to come up with an idea like that."
Thomas shrugged. "I don't know, John. Perhaps it's something else you can ask Samuels about."
Much to Mr Wilmot's disappointment, Oliver Samuels refused to incriminate Luke when he was interrogated by the housemaster the following day. He would only admit that he had seen a bread roll being thrown at the Romans from the Viking table and had simply retaliated. He would not say who had thrown the first roll and also maintained that the raid on the Viking wing had been entirely the year sevens' own idea and that no-one else had suggested it to them. Mr Wilmot was forced to leave the matter there, but was far from satisfied. He understood the strange code of honour that operated in the school (he had once been a pupil there himself, after all) and he was sure that the younger boy was merely protecting his mentor.
*
News that the headmaster and Mrs Randall were dating had made its way around the school, through the usual mysterious channels. Luke's friends found the situation hilarious.
"If you're not careful, Luke, you're going to end up with Kelly as Pagan's step dad," Jay informed him. "Or even worse, your father-in-law!"
Luke forced out a laugh, hoping that it sounded more natural to Jay's ears than it did to his own. "Yeah, wouldn't that be weird?"
Having to play-act to Jay was bad enough, but Wharton's reaction to the news soon became unbearable.
"Of course he's only dating Mrs Randall because he really fancies her daughter," he said.
This was so horribly close to what had happened to Pagan with Julia's former partner, Brian, that Luke couldn't hide his shock at the suggestion. He flinched, but said nothing. He was trapped in the school mini-bus, on the way to an orienteering competition, so couldn't follow his usual policy of walking away from Wharton's provocation.
Wharton noticed Luke's reaction and was delighted. From this point on, he brought up the subject at every opportunity, coming up with increasingly revolting scenarios involving Ned and Pagan. Luke tried to close his ears and mind against them. He'd promised Ned that he wouldn't maintain the feud with Wharton, but the fact that he refused to retaliate didn't seem to be any sort of discouragement to Wharton. Avoidance of the Viking was the only strategy available to him, which was at least easier now that the evenings were dark and the Hawley Lodge year tens had given up walking into the village after school. They spent the evenings in their respective common rooms, giving Wharton fewer opportunities to needle Luke.
Having Sunday lunch at the Randalls' house became a regular event for Luke in the winter. On one windy and wet Sunday in early December, Luke entered the cottage to find Ned there too, sitting in the armchair by the window with the cat comfortably coiled in his lap. He was wearing what Luke thought of as his holiday clothes: jeans and a crew-neck
ed sweater. Pagan was on the sofa, her legs curled up beneath her. The small coal fire was alight and the room was warm and welcoming, after Luke's walk through the cold, driving rain outside.
Julia came through from the kitchen. She was wearing a dark red apron with 'Domestic Goddess' written across the front. She took Luke's coat from him.
"I'll hang this up on the back door to dry," she said. "Sit down by the fire and get warm: your hands are freezing!"
Luke obeyed, rubbing his hands together to restore some sensation back into them. He discovered that he was feeling slightly shy of Ned, and being in the room with Julia, Ned and Pagan was bringing back uncomfortable memories of the night when Luke had fallen asleep in Pagan's bed, nearly two months earlier. That was the last time he had talked to Ned, although he'd spent a lot of time with both of the Randalls since then. Luke hoped that sharing a meal with them and Ned wasn't going to be as uncomfortable as it had been when Ned had joined him and his parents for supper back in August.
"Horrible day, isn't it?" observed Ned, breaking the ice with the safest topic of conversation in history.
"Horrible," agreed Luke. "Did you see the tree that's fallen down across the country club's drive?"
"Yes," replied Ned. "I'm surprised Mr Pritchard hasn't paid me a visit already, insisting that you were to blame."
Mr Pritchard was the owner of the country club, an unlikeable man who had visited Hawley Lodge the previous year, with a complaint about Luke.
"Well, about that…" Luke said, adopting a confidential manner, as though he was planning to confess. Pagan and Ned laughed.
Julia brought in a tray of drinks, handing a cup of coffee to Ned and cans of Coke to the two teenagers.
"Dinner's about ready," she said. "Why don't you all come through, if you've warmed up enough, Luke?"
Luke nodded and they all followed Julia into the kitchen. With the Randalls' folding dining table fully extended, there wasn't much room for the four of them to squeeze around it.
"Lucky we're all fairly slim," said Julia. She opened up the oven and brought out a mashed-potato-topped pie.
"What's that on top of it?" asked Pagan, looking at the shape etched into the top of the potato.
"It's a snowman," said Ned, decisively.
"A rabbit?" suggested Luke.
"Well, it's a fish pie, so it's supposed to be a fish…" confessed Julia."But I think I'm going to have to accept that I am never going to be a master of mashed-potato-art."
They helped themselves to Julia's pie and the accompanying vegetables and made quick work of them. Luke enthusiastically accepted Julia's offer of a second helping of pie, but Ned shook his head.
"It's delicious, but I've got to eat a three-course meal tonight," he explained. "I won't fit around your table if I have seconds."
"You won't be invited back if you don't," Pagan told him, with a serious expression on her face. "Luke's only allowed to come for lunch because he'll eat anything Mum makes and always comes back for more."
"Luke runs off his big meals with all the orienteering," said Ned. "I don't get as much exercise as he does during term time."
"But you make up for it in the holidays," said Luke. "You nearly killed me last year, the first time we went hiking."
"You've got a lot fitter since then. How's the orienteering going this term?"
"It's been good," Luke replied. Apart from Wharton going on about you fancying Pagan every five minutes, he thought. But there's no way I'm going to tell any of you about that.
"I know this is going to sound really ignorant of me," Julia said, but I've never really understood what orienteering is."
Luke happily explained the sport to Julia, telling her about the way that Ned had prepared him for it by teaching him how to read a map and then suggesting that he join the club when he first started at Hawley Lodge the previous year.
Julia dished up a bread-and-butter pudding for dessert and Luke's stomach began to protest at the quantity of food it was dealing with. Ned was teasing Pagan about her taste for reality-TV shows and Julia was joining in. It was almost as comfortable and familiar as being at home with his own family. What was I worrying about? Luke wondered.
It was still raining when Luke and Ned had to leave to get back to Hawley Lodge.
"I've got the car here," said Ned. "I'll give you a lift back."
"Thanks," said Luke. A couple of months ago he would have declined the offer, but now that it was common knowledge at school that he was seeing Pagan and Ned was dating her mother, it didn't seem to matter so much if people found out that he and Ned sometimes saw each other socially in term time. Life was getting easier, all round, Luke thought, with satisfaction, as he settled into the front passenger seat of Ned's car and stretched the seat belt around his overloaded abdomen.
Chapter Eight
The staff car park was on the eastern side of the school. As Ned drove past the end of the circular driveway that went up to the front entrance on the north side of the school they saw that the usually-empty grassy area in the centre was filled with people: the students were all lined up according to year, as they did during fire drills. Most were standing miserably hunched against the wind and rain, while others fought with wayward umbrellas in an attempt to gain some shelter from the weather.
"That's not good," commented Ned, frowning. Not a planned drill, then, thought Luke. Ned parked the car and the two of them walked around the outside of the east wing to join the throng of people at the front of the school.
Mr Wilmot immediately headed over to them, carrying a huge golfing umbrella over his head and a general air of self-importance. "There's been a fire in one of the rooms," he told the headmaster. "It's out now, but the fire brigade are on their way."
"Was anyone hurt?" asked Ned.
"No, it was in a waste paper bin and Mr Thomas extinguished it. It was in the Viking year tens' dormitory."
Luke's head jerked upwards as he heard this and his eyes were irresistibly drawn to the year seven Romans in their line. Mr Wilmot noticed.
"Where were you when this happened, Brownlow?"
"At the Randalls' house, with me," supplied Ned.
"But you know something about this, don't you?" Mr Wilmot demanded of Luke.
The correct response at this point would have been for Luke to come back with a prompt and hearty denial. But at the back of his mind was his awareness of the younger Romans' determination to avenge the Viking raid on his dormitory. A few milliseconds passed while this knowledge interfered with Luke's ability to form the words of his reply. "No, sir," he managed to say, eventually.
The momentary hesitation was enough to gain him a sharp look from both men.
"Convenient that you were out of the building when it happened though," observed Mr Wilmot.
Luke's mouth dropped open, ready to protest his innocence, but Ned tilted his head towards the lines of students and said "Join your class". His expression was grim and Luke hoped that this was because the school had been close to burning down, rather than a sign that Ned thought he was somehow involved with starting the fire.
Luke turned away and joined the rest of the year ten boys, ignoring the curious looks he was getting from the other students as a result of his brief interview with the headmaster and Mr Wilmot. Great, thought Luke irritably, now they're all thinking that the fire had something to do with me, too. The warm glow of contentment he had been feeling on the way home from Pagan's house had vanished, as though the wind and rain had driven it away.
Jay moved his umbrella so that it covered both of them. "Did you hear what happened?"
"Yeah," said Luke, watching as a fire engine turned into the curved driveway and pulled up with a hiss of air brakes outside the school's big oak front door. Ned greeted the firefighters and then went into the building with them. "Wilmot thinks I've got something to do with it."
"But you weren't even here!" Guy Beeston said.
"Since when has a cast-iron alibi ever stopped Wilmot from susp
ecting me?" said Luke, bitterly. "He's got Kelly doubting me as well. Bastard." He glared at Mr Wilmot, who was now talking to Mr Thomas, probably spreading his suspicions to the deputy head, too. A crunching of gravel turned all heads back to the driveway, where another vehicle had drawn up next to the fire engine.
It was a police car. Even in the gloom of the late winter afternoon, the green fluorescent markings along the sides of the vehicle were dazzling. The low-level buzz of conversation among the waiting boys faded away as they watched two police officers emerge. They were pulling on waterproof jackets of the same day-glo green colour. Underneath them, the men were wearing black stab vests over their shirts, which made them look broader and more muscle-bound than they probably were. The steady patter of the rain on the canopy of umbrellas was the only sound to be heard.
Mr Thomas took the policemen into the building and the awed silence they had created began to dissolve.
Guy held out his hand to Luke, a serious expression on his face. "It's been nice knowing you," he said. "I hear that juvenile detention facilities aren't so bad these days."
Luke slapped his hand away. "Piss off," he said, forcing a laugh.
It was another twenty minutes before the fire brigade gave the all clear for re-entry to the building. Once they had shed their dripping outer layers, the students were directed into the hall where their headmaster was waiting for them on the raised platform at the front. He had somehow found time to change into his own school uniform of suit and tie, with the black academic gown over the top of it. Luke thought that it would be difficult for a casual observer to find any similarities between this forbidding authority figure and the relaxed, easy-going man he'd shared lunch with. The other teachers stood at regularly-spaced intervals along the sides of the hall, as they usually did during school assemblies. But their faces were not usually this sternly disappointed. Most of the students looked miserable: they had wet feet and pinched, cold faces. They were uncharacteristically quiet as they filled the hall; too well aware that one unpleasant experience was about to be followed by another.