From his study at the top of the south-western turret, Major Fortescue watched.
The room was a long way up, especially for a man who walked with a stick, and it was impractical, being completely round and unsuited to almost all furniture, but it was worth it for the view. Up here, with the help of his old service binoculars, the major’s one good eye could see everything.
This is what he saw, on that April morning.
He saw a rowdy group of Year Eights at the end of the loch, trying to push each other out of boats. He saw Agnes Bartleby, she of sign-painting fame, spray-paint a giant flower mural on top of the Exploding Butterfly. Around eleven o’clock, he saw Tatiana manoeuvre the bus with unconvincing caution into its hangar, and some little time later he saw Alice and Jesse, running, and Fergus sticking out his foot.
‘Hmm,’ said the major, thoughtfully stroking his beard.
Patience Mistlethwaite had been to visit during the holidays, in secret, to meet him and to assess the school for Alice.
‘My niece is stuck in the past,’ she had told him, before adding, ‘She needs a new story – not to write, to live.’
There were plenty of stories to be had, here in the valley in the mountains by the loch. The question was, mused the major, which one was right for Alice?
From a crate by the fire came a feeble mew. He stumped over to it, and struggled to his knees. Six very young kittens were nestled in an old fleece blanket, rescued by the major during the holidays from Morag, who ran the school farm and had been going to drown them. He held out his hand, and the smallest kitten crawled into his palm. Too many waifs and strays, his grandmother always used to say when he brought home broken animals – a cat hit by a car, a fox caught in a trap, most thrillingly a shrew dropped from the sky by an eagle. He had been collecting lost souls ever since.
The kitten purred, kneading the major’s hand with tiny claws. The major chuckled. Then, casting his eye to the courtyard below, he saw that a revolution was taking place badly contained by the new geography teacher, Madoc Jones. He put the kitten in the pocket of his alarmingly green jacket, made for him by a long-departed boy with a Talent for Fashion, and instantly forgot about it.
Fergus, Jesse and Alice, he mused as he limped heavily down the ancient spiral staircase. An unlikely story, but why not?
Why ever not, indeed.
*
Madoc Jones had never intended to become a geography teacher. Until a few months before our story, he had worked for an international wildlife charity, and had also been engaged to be married. But then his fiancée had run away to Costa Rica, and shortly after that he had lost his job, and gone fishing in Scotland to think about love and life and the future, and met the major, who had offered him a job.
‘I can’t guarantee it will mend your heart,’ the major had said. ‘But my school is in a beautiful place, and that will make you feel better.’
Madoc knew only a little more about geography than the children, but he had turned out to be a fine teacher. He liked his subject and his pupils. He loved living in the valley. He just felt, sometimes, a little challenged by the school’s rules.
‘The person who loses the First Day Challenge is on wake-up duty for the rest of term,’ he tried to explain to a mud-sopped Alice, shouting to make himself heard over the clamour of students offering their views on the race. ‘He or she does this by beating the giant gong in the Entrance Hall three times, just as the clock strikes seven. It’s called reveille, which is a military term referring to a bugle or trumpet call to wake up troops …’
Alice glared, silently. She knew what reveille meant.
‘You don’t have to do it on Saturdays and Sundays,’ faltered Madoc.
‘There wasn’t meant to be a race.’ Tatiana bustled forward, pushing everyone else aside. ‘I abolished it.’
The idea of students abolishing rules was completely new to Madoc. ‘Can you do that?’ he asked.
Tatiana shrugged, like she didn’t really care.
‘The girl would have won if it hadn’t been for Fergus,’ someone shouted. ‘He tripped her.’
‘No, I didn’t!’ Fergus lied.
Someone else produced a phone with a video of the race, and passed it through the crowd to Madoc. The video was mainly of people’s heads.
‘Make Fergus do reveille!’ someone shouted.
‘No, make Jesse do it!’ someone else shouted back. ‘It wasn’t a proper win!’
‘The whole system is barbaric!’ Attention was momentarily diverted by the spectacular appearance of Frau Kirschner, the art teacher, wearing nothing but a black bathing suit and generous dabs of bright blue clay. ‘I do not believe in these Challenges. They are anti-democratic. Every child should be free, like a beautiful bird. Also, the school should buy alarm clocks.’
‘I agree with you in principle,’ mused Professor Voroyev, the philosophy teacher. ‘But can you replace an entire belief system with alarm clocks?’
‘What do you say, Jesse?’ Madoc asked.
Jesse, who was not enjoying his victory, mumbled that he didn’t know.
‘But did you agree not to run?’
‘There are rules,’ he argued, and instantly regretted it when half his year group groaned.
‘Shame!’ someone shouted.
‘BARBARIC!’ thundered Frau Kirschner.
‘Fergus should do it!’ shouted the crowd.
‘No, Jesse!’
‘Fergus! Jesse! Fergus! Jesse!’
‘QUIET!’
The crowd fell silent. The major had arrived.
Even in his bright green jacket with a kitten wriggling in his pocket, the major could not fail to impress. There were the active reminders of his years in the Forces – the patch over his left eye blinded in the Balkans, the limp from a bad break in Afghanistan. But there was also the hard glitter of his good eye, the massive shoulders, the wild beard he never quite had the patience to trim. He regarded Alice in silence. She raised her chin and tried to return his gaze, but found it just wasn’t possible.
‘Miss Mistlethwaite.’ It was a gentle foghorn of a voice, low and booming. Alice’s eyes widened.
‘Someone must sound reveille, Miss Mistlethwaite,’ he said. ‘Just as someone must sound the gong for breakfast and lunch and tea and dinner, and the end of lessons and the beginning of prep. The race is simply a way of determining who. It is not a punishment. We do not have punishments at Stormy Loch, we have Consequences. All actions have Consequences, and we must accept them. It is how we make our rules, and are able to live as a well-ordered community. Do you understand?’
Alice did not understand, but nodded anyway. The major turned his attention to Fergus.
‘And Mr Mackenzie. Since you seem so entertained by muddy puddles, you will help clean the pigs for the rest of term.’
There were pigs? Faced with a whole new source of bewilderment, Alice felt exhausted.
‘Do you agree the pigs are a suitable Consequence for your actions, Mr Mackenzie?’
‘Then our work here is finished.’ The major beamed. ‘Welcome to Stormy Loch, Miss Mistlethwaite! Mr Okuyo, Mr Mackenzie, I am putting you in charge of our new student. Look after her well, show her around the school. Good grief, what on Earth is that?’
The kitten, bored of the major’s pocket, was climbing up his sleeve. Half a dozen Year Seven girls instantly surged around the headmaster. Alice, Fergus and Jesse were forgotten.
Alice stared at the kitten.
‘He rescues things,’ Jesse murmured. ‘Last term it was the rook. Look, Alice, I’m really sorry, truly I am. I just couldn’t stop …’
He trailed off as Alice narrowed her eyes.
Fergus ran his hands through his hair and said, ‘Pigs!’ Both the others eyed him with dislike.
‘It serves you right,’ Jesse said. ‘What were you thinking, tripping her up?’
‘Oh, shut up, Fussypants.’ Fergus, who was already feeling an idiot for what he’d done – pigs! – felt that he did not need a lecture. ‘I helped you win.’
‘I don’t need anybody’s help!’ Jesse snarled.
Alice sighed loudly, and marched towards the front door. The boys stared, then ran after her.