2 RSVP
On the day before Liam’s return home, it had looked like being an unusual weekend for altogether different reasons. He had been going to join the Elites.
When Liam was not living his perfectly normal and comfortable lie of an existence with his parents in Norwich, he boarded at the National Academy for the Talented and Special, out on the Suffolk coast near Wolsey.
Despite its rather grand name, NATS was a fairly ordinary boarding school much like many other such schools scattered around the country. Its main function was to provide schooling for the children of men and women in the armed forces and diplomatic services: while the parents moved around the world with their work, their children stayed at NATS, giving them some form of continuity. NATS wasn’t only for Forces children, though, and there were pupils from all kinds of backgrounds, many of them on coaching scholarships because of their special abilities and talents.
The NATS joke was that it was a school for Talents and Grunts – the scholarship kids and the Forces kids. Liam was a Grunt, there because his father must have pulled strings to get him in. He spent most of his time with the Talents, though, because apart from anything else, they just seemed more fun.
~
“Hey, Grunt, pour the tea would you? There’s a good chap.”
“Pour it yourself, you lazy arse,” said Liam, balling up an old sock and throwing it across the room at Anders, who was lying back on his bed, an open book resting across his face, just a sweep of black hair visible above the cover. Anders was tall and rake-like. Stretched out, he was almost too long for his bed. It was Thursday afternoon, in the hour between end of lessons and dinner.
Liam yawned. He had work to do, but he couldn’t be bothered. He swung his legs off his bed and sat up. He shared this narrow room with Anders Linley in Sherbourne House, which was really not a house at all, but the east wing of the main NATS hall of residence. Anders was a pain, but a good-natured pain. Liam poured his room-mate a cup of herbal tea from the pot, and put it on his bedside cabinet.
“One lump of arsenic or two?” he asked.
“Oh, whatever.”
Liam sat at his desk and peered into his hamster cage. Skiver was fast asleep in a nest of shredded paper.
There was a knock and the door swung open. The acne-pocked face of Wallace, the corridor prefect, loomed around the door. “Hey, Connor. You’re wanted. Principal Willoughby.”
Principal Willoughby was an elderly and genial man who had once been Somebody in the Diplomatic Service before taking charge of NATS. Liam headed down to the ground floor, and a short time later he knocked on the Principal’s door.
“Ah, Connor,” said Willoughby as Liam entered the room. “Come in, come in.” Principal Willoughby was seated behind a deep desk with a leather surface. He was a thin man, with white hair and a long, hooked nose. Behind him, tall leaded windows gave a view over the sports fields to a band of pines and evergreen oaks stretched along the horizon.
“Sir?” Liam stood politely, his hands behind his back.
The Principal indicated a flat computer screen with a raised index finger. “I’ve been looking at your results,” he said. “A very interesting set.”
“Results, sir?”
“Your tests. You know we monitor our students’ progress very closely. We need to thin out those who aren’t suited to the NATS regime and direct them elsewhere. And also, we need to identify and nurture those with talents. We are here for the talented and special, after all.”
“Sir.” Liam wondered what he was leading up to. As far as he knew, he excelled at nothing in particular. That was the down side of studying at a school like NATS: surrounded by geniuses of one form or another, it made people like Liam feel very ordinary indeed.
“And you wonder what your talent is, don’t you?”
Liam nodded. For a moment it was as if the Principal had read his thoughts.
“Sometimes the more interesting talents can be late to emerge,” said Willoughby. “But here at NATS we are very good at finding them. Your talent? Who knows. Maybe you’re merely a clever but fairly ordinary young man, which would be no bad thing at all. But I think we need to encourage any talents to emerge if they are there. Who knows? You might have what it takes to be fast-tracked into Senior House. I’ve spoken to your mother about this. She was very positive. Have you ever considered the Elite Forces Cadets?”
Liam was thrown by the question. He was still startled at the suggestion that he might be fast-tracked and more, that they’d taken the possibility seriously enough to tell his parents. Senior House was a wing of the school which stood slightly apart from the rest of NATS. It was a separate building, for a start, unlike the other Houses which were really just divisions of the main building. Most students didn’t get to Senior House: while the main school was for the Talents and the Grunts, Senior House was for the Special.
“Cadets, sir?”
Most schools like NATS had a Combined Cadets Force: a military club for teenagers who might go on to join the real Forces. Given NATS’ nature as a school at least partly for those from military families, the Cadet Forces here were a popular activity. The so-called Elites, though... Where the Combined Force went on weekend exercises and learnt survival skills, signalling and sailing, about the most active thing the Elites did was conservation work over on Wolsey Point. It was another Grunts and Talents division.
“You should join in with things like the Elites, Connor. The activities help refine your talents. You may see it as a frivolous pastime, but believe me: there is nothing at this school that is not carefully thought through. Everything works towards the assessment and maximisation of each individual’s abilities. Even this conversation. You are being offered an opportunity. Your response will be noted, added to your record. Everything informs our judgement of the person you are, Connor.”
“Sir.” All this seemed to make sense to Liam. It was good that NATS paid them such close attention.
“This weekend there is an Elite Cadet Force meeting – Saturday morning at nine in the Junior Common Room. I hope to see you there.”
“Thank you, sir.”
~
“You should come along.”
Hayley was in the Elites, so she would say that. Short and stocky, with blonde hair to her shoulders, she sat back on her elbows, face tipped up to catch the evening sun. “It’s an interesting crowd: people like us, a few Grunts. I don’t know, there’s a different buzz. You know?”
“She’s right, you know, in her sweet but clumsy way.”
Hayley glowered up at Anders, who sat on a horizontal bough of Three Trunker, his long legs dangling idly. This place had become something of an institution for the three of them: out beyond the sports fields, where the ground became sandy, and the pine trees grew up from the gorse. Three Trunker was an ancient Scots pine whose trunk split three ways at ground level. You could climb Three Trunker and see right across the creek to Wolsey Point and the ruins of the old military base there. Three Trunker was their place.
Liam should have known the two of them would gang up on him if he mentioned his chat with old Willoughby. Now, his room-mate was looking quite intently at him from his perch up the tree.
“Haven’t you noticed?” asked Anders. “Some of us – there’s a spark. A glint of something different. Something exciting. And some are just ... flat.”
“You mean Talents and Grunts,” said Liam.
“Sort of,” said Anders. “But more so. There are people who will go on and make a difference in the world, and then there are all the rest. Which group do you see yourself in, Liam? Old boy Willoughby thinks he sees something in you. They test us thoroughly enough, so they should be able to see, I suppose.”
“Why the Elites?”
“It’s just one of the things they do with us. One of the ways they filter us out. They identified me as soon as I came here, of course. But I always thought you might be one of the ones with a spark, Connor. Just a slow developer.”
“I think that’s Anders’ sweet way of paying you a compliment,” said Hayley.
“What sort of things do you do in the Elites?”
Hayley looked away.
“Top secret,” said Anders lightly. “Not allowed to tell.”
“So when have you ever done what you’re told?”
“We do lots of stuff,” said Hayley. “A lot of the time it’s just like a club, a good crowd. There are computer games, which I think are a kind of way of developing your mental powers. Conservation work on the Point, and teamwork games. Sometimes ... it’s all just a blur and you forget half of what’s gone on.”
“Are you going to come along, then?” asked Anders.
It all sounded a bit creepy to Liam, but he trusted Anders and Hayley. He felt a warm wave of encouragement and support from them, as he had from Willoughby. He could try it, at least, he supposed. “Okay,” he said. “You’ve convinced me. I’ll come along. Saturday, yes?”
~
Walking back on the sandy trail towards the school, Liam suddenly felt uplifted. It was a glorious May evening, the sun still warm, bees buzzing over the blazing gold gorse, crickets cheeping from the long grass. He felt as if he was making progress. There was nothing at all bad in his life, but now this was something extra, something good. It was easy to forget how closely life at NATS was monitored and controlled, but to know that those doing so thought he was worth special treatment and encouragement was very exciting, even if it did only mean that he was going to have to spend his Saturdays stuck in the Junior Common Room with the Elites when he could be out playing cricket or tennis instead.
His phone bleeped from his pocket to tell him he had a message.
He took it out – the text message was from Dad. “Home 4 the wknd? Surprise 4 mum. CU fri. Rsvp.”
“Oh well, maybe next time,” Liam told his two friends. “Looks like I’ve got a ticket out of here for the weekend. Dad’s home.”
“Jammy swine,” said Anders. “How did you swing that?” Anders’ parents were in the Middle East. No term-time breaks at home for him.
“You should come next time, though,” said Hayley. “You’d like it.”
~
Principal Willoughby was fine about it when Liam asked for permission to go home for the weekend. “I spoke to Linley and Warren about Elites,” Liam said. “I was going to go along.”
Willoughby nodded. “Of course you were,” he said. “It was the correct choice. You’ll come next time instead.”
When Liam left Willoughby’s office, he called up his father’s message again and thumbed a reply: “I’ll be there. Usual train fri. CU.”
Liam spent most of Friday’s lessons distracted. Realisation that he had been singled out – even as a late-developer, to use Anders’ term – was more of a shock to him than he had first realised. He kept catching himself having completely lost track of what the teacher was saying, staring about at his fellow pupils instead. Who was special and who was not? Who were the ones with the spark?
He emerged from the grand front door of the main building at four, his weekend bag slung over his shoulder. NATS had once been some kind of stately home. It was built from red brick with stone lintels and a wide sweep of stairs leading down from the pillared entrance. In the Second World War it had been a military hospital, and then some time after that the first of the extra wings had been added at the back and it had become a school. From the front, it still looked like somewhere the National Trust should be running, more cream teas than baked beans.
The long drive stretched out ahead of Liam, a half-mile walk to the small road where the number 84 bus passed by every two hours. Tall poplars lined the drive. The grounds on either side, once landscaped and maintained by a team of gardeners, had long since been rented out to local farmers, and now were thick with rows of sugar beet.
Partway along, Liam heard the sputtering of a motorbike, and he turned to see Jake approaching. Jake worked in the kitchen. He had the kind of wild good looks and confident manner that meant half the boys wanted to be just like him and half the girls fancied him. He was probably only about nineteen, but that and the fact that he worked here put him on the other side of the adulthood divide. It was a shock to think that Jake was far closer in age to Liam than to the teachers.
Rather than roaring past, as Liam had expected, Jake slowed, then stopped, a long leg stretched out to steady him. He flipped up his helmet’s visor, and said, “Hi. Liam, innit?”
Liam nodded. Jake liked to mix with the older kids, but had hardly ever spoken to Liam.
Jake nodded at Liam’s bag. “Going for the bus? Where you heading? I’m off to Wolsey if you fancy a ride.”
“Thanks,” said Liam, “but I don’t have a helmet...”
Jake shrugged. “Only matters if you crash or if the cops see you, dunnit? We’ll go along the bridleway if you’re worried.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Liam saw the bus winding its way along the lane. He could still make it if he hurried. “Thanks,” he said again.
He glanced back towards the school. No-one appeared to be looking. He swung a leg over and put his feet on the rests that Jake pointed out. “Hang on,” called Jake, and they were off.
At first Liam was terrified at the speed, and at the mad way they seemed to bounce about with each imperfection in the drive’s surface. He fumbled, and couldn’t find anything to hang onto – no convenient handles on Jake’s leather jacket. “Behind you,” Jake called, and cautiously, Liam reached behind and found a metal grab rail.
They roared down the drive and then swung out onto the road. Jake seemed to have forgotten about the bridleway, much to Liam’s relief. The ride was rough enough even on a normal road.
And then... he realised that he was enjoying it. The air blasted across his face, taking his short hair by the roots and tugging it back. The roar of air across his ears drowned everything out, and he realised with relief that he wouldn’t have to make small talk with Jake, the so-cool kitchen porter who wowed the girls and played bass in a punk band and smoked hand-rolled cigarettes in the yard behind the refectory.
They rushed through the narrow Suffolk lanes and across the bridge at the top of the creek. Then they were heading back down again on the other side of the water, or rather, the mud, as the tide was well out now.
“Where to?”
They were in Wolsey now – only a few minutes on the bike, when it was twenty on the convoluted route used by the bus.
“The train,” called Liam, turning away from the disapproving looks of an old couple on the pavement. He was still in NATS uniform ... what if he was reported?
It was a small station, the end of a tiny rural line that forked off the main London to Norwich line. Jake pulled up at the space marked out for taxis, and put his feet down for balance. “Okay?” he said.
Liam scrambled off the back of the bike and nodded. “Thanks,” he said, struggling for words once again. “Thanks.”
With a roar, Jake was off. Liam turned toward the little station building, reaching for his wallet. A whole weekend at home with Mum and Dad. It was going to be good. He just knew it. He felt it in his bones.