6 Unexploded
Schools, these days, are high security places. Pupils carry ID cards and all visitors have to be filtered through a central reception area. It’s only sensible, in times like these.
A school like the National Academy for the Talented and Special has even more reason to be careful. The parents of many of its pupils work for the Ministry of Defence, the Armed Forces or the Diplomatic Service, and they need to know that their offspring will be working and studying in a safe environment. So, relaxed as NATS may appear on the surface, it is, in fact, a closely monitored, highly secure institution.
Nothing goes unseen, or unheard.
~
Liam turned away from the four girls on the grass. He remembered thinking he must be playing a part in someone else’s story, but ... first home and now NATS ... This was his world being wrecked. It was his story. But what was the connection between what had happened at home and now at NATS? What was being done to him?
He retreated around the corner of the building and that was where he met Mr Willoughby. The Principal was standing there with two men Liam did not know. If this hadn’t been a school he would have taken them for some kind of security guard. They were taller than the Principal, with broad, muscular shoulders and a way of standing that reminded Liam of a big cat, poised for action.
Willoughby smiled. “Liam Connor,” he said. “Welcome back to the Academy.”
So the Principal still knew him. Somehow, Liam didn’t find that a comfort right now, as the two guards moved slightly to either side of Willoughby, blocking the path.
Liam’s mind raced, and he didn’t like where it was heading.
“Principal Willoughby,” said Liam. “What’s going on? What’s happening?”
Willoughby spread his hands, as if to show that he had nothing to hide. “Nothing’s happening,” he said. “It’s all over. You’re back. We want to welcome you. We want to resume our work with you.”
They weren’t working “with” Liam. They were working on him...
Liam suddenly saw himself as a laboratory animal, with Willoughby the scientist in charge. Was Willoughby responsible for it all? Was he the one pulling all the strings?
“Come along, Connor,” said Willoughby. “My two friends here will help you in with your bag. We have new accommodation for you.”
The two guards approached Liam. The path narrowed here and so they came in single file.
Liam let his bag drop from his shoulder and caught it by the handhold. All the time from Wolsey, those six long miles, he had cursed its bulk and weight. Such a big bag, just for a weekend at home! Now he raised it to his chest. They were going to help him with his bag. Okay then...
He hurled it at the lead guard, with all the strength he could muster.
The man was taken by surprise. He saw what had happened late, saw the bag flying through the air at his head.
He cursed, raised his hands, swung his head back.
The bag struck him in the face, knocking him back into the arms of the second guard, and the two of them fell in a heap.
Liam turned and ran.
His tired and aching body howled in protest, but he ignored it, and sprinted as fast as he could. Along the path at the side of the building and out onto the grass again. Right through the middle of the startled group of girls, feeling a sudden sense of angry betrayal that Hayley still did not know who he was.
Out on the playing field, the cricket match was still going on. Liam swung right, into the stand of pines and evergreen oaks. He heard voices behind him, shouting, arguing.
He looked back and saw one of the guards, far closer than he had expected.
Every breath tore at the lining of his throat, and his lungs ached with the effort.
Gorse blazed yellow all around him in a sudden burst of sunlight breaking through the clouds. He twisted and darted a sudden left. It would look like he had plunged into the heart of the gorse, but there was a narrow track here, a path through the thicket.
He ran, and the dry green spines of the gorse scraped and snagged at his trousers, but he didn’t slow.
The scrub opened out again, and he ran on, taking another narrow path through a stand of blackthorn. This was a completely different world now, the ground beneath his feet sandy, held together by a tight, rabbit-cropped mat of grass. The school was out of sight, and the playing fields. He could neither see nor hear his pursuers now, but he knew that he had to keep going.
The blackthorn cleared, and he was in an open, sandy area at the foot of a stand of pines. There were black patches here, encircled by big stones, where someone had broken the rules and lit fires. Like any other pupil at NATS, Liam knew all the places you could hide out on the school grounds. Places to smoke, and hang out with friends away from the staff, places to come with a girlfriend, or just to be on your own.
He cut across between the tall, bare pine trunks and followed another trail through the gorse, slowing to an exhausted jog now.
Eventually, he came to another stand of pine trees, on an old dune overlooking the creek.
He stopped for a rest. This was where Greasey Davies told them he’d spied on Miss Carver last summer. He’d seen her skinny-dipping in the creek and then sun-bathing on a towel on the wet sand as the tide went out. It had become a popular meeting place for the boys for the rest of Summer Term, but no-one had ever seen Miss Carver here again.
The tide was halfway now. It was coming in, Liam guessed, although it was hard to tell. Across the creek he could see the towering banks of shingle of Wolsey Point. Farther along to the right, he could see the broken shell of the watchtower, one of the ruins of the old Army camp. The place had been important during the Second World War, one of a string of bases along this coast that had been used in developing the first radar systems. It had been abandoned for twenty years or so now, and the place had become a wildlife haven, managed by the Point Preservation Trust.
The sun lit the Point a vivid gold, against the retreating dark clouds. It really had turned into a beautiful evening.
Liam headed down to the strip of hard sand at the water’s edge. He was heading north, up-creek. If he carried on, he would come to an area where the creek opened out into the Mere, flanked on this side by a wide area of salt-marsh. He would come to the road to Wolsey, eventually, and he would have to hope they weren’t watching it, waiting for him to re-appear.
~
The boat gave him another option.
It was there ahead of him, dragged up onto the sand. It was a flat-bottomed punt, turned upside down so that it wouldn’t catch rain-water. He tipped it up and saw that there were oars underneath.
He looked at the creek. It was about thirty metres wide here, and the current didn’t seem too strong. He looked all around, but there was no sign of anyone.
He turned the boat the right way up, put the oars inside, went to the prow and dragged it, slowly, down to the water. When he reached the creek, he went to the back and pushed.
He got it most of the way in, gave it a final shove and then jumped aboard. With his extra weight, it grounded at the rear. He climbed out and pushed again, going into the water up to his knees before scrambling back into the punt.
The boat sat there, turning idly in the current so that the prow pointed south. The tide was coming in, but the surface current still flowed southwards, out to sea. The two seemed to balance right now, allowing the boat to stay pretty much where it was while Liam worked out how to get the oars into the rowlocks.
He started to row. At first he scooped the water too shallowly and went nowhere. Then he started to get the hang of it and the boat headed out into the channel.
As he rowed, he faced the mainland, and so he could see the school flags, a Union Flag and a European Union Flag. His slow progress across the water seemed to be rubbing it in that he was leaving that all behind: what he had understood to be his world.
The boat grounded on the far bank, and, looking back, he saw that the surface current had dragged him south along the creek so that he had crossed at a sharp diagonal.
He scrambled to the prow of the punt and jumped up onto the shingle. He was tempted just to leave the boat to float away into the North Sea, but he couldn’t. He had to protect his options, and it was possible that he might need to use the boat again.
Exhausted, he forced himself to haul the punt up onto the shingle: no easy task, as the stones kept giving under his feet and the bank here was steeper than on the other side.
Eventually, he had managed to pull the boat up above where he judged the high water mark to be. He turned, on his hands and knees, and crawled up the shingle bank, sliding back with each move upwards, but eventually reaching the top. There was a flat area here, covered with brittle, dried moss.
Liam crawled across it until he was out of sight of the far bank, and then he slumped, face down, the moss prickling his cheek.
~
He woke, his throat dry, his face itching, his head pounding.
It was mid-evening now, and the sun was low in the western sky.
He rolled onto his side, then sat up, hugging his knees to his chest.
He was alone, in the middle of nowhere, and that part of the world which had not tried to forget him had turned against him.
Of more immediate concern, he was hungry and thirsty and soon it would be night. He was just as powerless about the first two of these as he was about the bigger picture: there was no food or drink out here.
But there was shelter, after a fashion.
The boat crossing had brought him further down the Point, so that the ruined buildings of the old camp were much closer than he had expected.
He walked for a few minutes across the shingle. The stones were more tightly-packed here, but still difficult to walk on. Every so often, gulls hauled themselves into the air, screeching at him until he was past. He came to an area where the shingle was covered with a tight mat of creeping silvery-green vegetation with white, bell-like flowers, and smaller, pin-head blue flowers with white centres. The going was easier here, as he trod the flowers underfoot.
He came to a concrete road and followed it.
A line of posts with a single strand of barbed wire cut across the road, and the surrounding shingle. A battered yellow sign warned: DANGER.
Liam ducked under the wire.
The watchtower loomed up into the evening sky to his right. It was only a shell, a supporting metal post in each corner and a framework marking the level of the platform where the guards had once sat. The steps up to it had long since collapsed, and the floors, too.
Clustered around the watchtower were some ruined buildings. To one side there was some kind of hangar, collapsed at one end and open to the elements, and around it a small group of concrete huts and garages. Farther along was a big block-like building with gravel heaped up against its walls. To the other side, there was a row of single-storey brick buildings with doors and windows boarded over. These might once have been living quarters, Liam guessed. Or maybe offices. They looked more inviting than the hangar and garages, at least.
Farther out on the Point there were more buildings, but Liam didn’t feel up to trekking any further. He had sought out shelter and found it. He wanted to stop now. He wanted to sit down and try to get things straight in his head.
He tried the first one, and the board over the door came away easily.
It was gloomy inside but, as his eyes adjusted, the bare, stripped out, interior, empty and abandoned as it was, reminded him painfully of the last time he had seen his home.
The floor was concrete, covered in drifts of sand and shingle which must have blasted in through the gaps between boards and door- and window-frames.
Exhausted, Liam sat, leaning his back against the cold brick wall.
He took out his mobile to check for messages, wondering whether to call Kath or not. He flipped it open and its small screen lit up. No signal.
He really was on his own.
~
The night was bitterly cold, but Liam was delirious. He slept fitfully, uncomfortably, waking from vivid dreams, one moment feverish, the next chilled to the marrow. His head ached, a relentless, pounding pain behind his eyes. And his empty stomach burned.
He woke with a violent screeching cry filling his head.
He jerked upright, and bolts of pain stabbed through his stiff body.
The cry came again, and he realised it was a gull, welcoming the new day from the low roof of this building. He looked up and saw that there were wide holes in the roof, and blue sky high above. A white head appeared in one of these gaps, a heavy yellow beak. The head drew back and the gull gave its cry once more.
Liam went outside.
He propped the board up over the doorway again, and then set out on the concrete road, heading north towards Wolsey.
Soon, he came to the barbed wire fence again and ducked under it. Further along, he came to another sign. “DANGER,” it read. “UNEXPLODED ORDNANCE.”
He had been lucky, he supposed. If so, that was the first time in days.