Red Spikes by Margo Lanagan Page B

cream cakes ornamented the top tray. Bully Raglan’s bad-tempered face was all the uglier for peering at Anderson around such beauties.
    The other prefects winced and goggled at the sight of the burnt boy. Teasdale looked to Raglan to see how he ought to behave.
    ‘What is it, Anderson?’ Raglan was rattled, but did not want to show it.
    ‘I’ve come to vouch for Rickets.’
    Raglan’s gaze touched Rickets for the merest fragment of a second. ‘Jolly good. But I’m having my tea, boy. Can’t this wait?’ His voice was smooth as cream after Anderson’s croaking.
    ‘I’ve come to vouch for any other Prep boy who needs protection from you, Bully Raglan.’
    A high giggle broke from Teasdale. The other prefects froze.
    Raglan slowly, smoothly adjusted his head the way Rickets imagined a snake would, lining itself up ready to strike. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said almost soundlessly. ‘What did you call me, Anderson?’
    ‘Bully, sir.’
    Only the faces changed. The prefects’ slackened in disbelief; Bully’s assembled like a fist. Even the cakes sat stiller on their stand.
    Raglan was fast; he leaped around the table. But Anderson ran two steps and launched himself straight across it. Boy, vessels and cloth disappeared on the far side. A cake flew out of the crashing to the underside of the marble mantel, stuck there and then fell, leaving a smear of cream.
    The prefects exploded from their chairs, shouting.
    ‘Collar him!’ said Raglan. ‘Burns or not, I shall beat him senseless!’
    Anderson had landed in the fire. Now he rose, the back of his dressing-gown alight, the flames sheeting up behind his gruesome head. He dived again, between the prefects’ odd-angled bodies and upflung hands, fetching up against the wall, the bulwark, the immovable might that was Bully Raglan.
    And the wall buckled.
    ‘Get him off me!’ The bully tried to step back, but Anderson had a death-grip around his knees. ‘Do something! Help me, you wasters!’ Batting at the boy’s flaming back, the blond floss of his own hair catching fire, Raglan fell.

    ‘It was wonderful !’
    The circle of faces glowed back at Rickets in the faint light from around the dormitory window-blind. Soft laughter warmed the air at his face.
    ‘It sounds wonderful!’
    ‘Oh, I wish I’d seen it. Raglan on fire and screaming!’
    ‘Go on, Rickets. Don’t stop there.’
    ‘Well, then they threw Raglan’s smoking-jacket on Anderson to smother the flames, so that was ruined. And they rolled him on the carpet, so there were these scorch marks . . .’ Rickets sighed with pleasure. ‘And then they called Matron because Raglan was making such a racket, and she made him look like a goose with that bandage, and the pre’s had to carry Anderson back to the San on a blanket and, I tell you—’
    ‘He was unconscious, wasn’t he?’
    ‘Yes! And he stank of burning, and he was filthy , covered in ash and he was bleeding – his face, you know, where he had knocked the scabs – and all the – he must have fallen right on the cakes – he was all over jam and cream, and this big splash of tea down his nightshirt. He was soaked; he was a mess! And they carried him off in the blanket, and even with the mess and the cream and such, he was – I don’t know – like a prince being carried on a litter, or maybe a soldier with his comrades bringing him off the battlefield, with the gun-smoke hanging in the air still. The noble dead, you know? The glorious dead.’ Rickets’ whisper was breaking up with glee. ‘Lying there with his robe around him, and all these prefects his servants. It was – perfect . I can’t tell you!’
    ‘He didn’t have permission to leave the San,’ said Lowthal.
    ‘Really?’ said Tregowan.
    ‘He was supposed to be in bed, ordered by the doctor. O’Callaghan said he heard Matron say. She couldn’t believe he walked that far, let alone got in a fight.’
    ‘Let alone won !’
    Hands clapped softly or covered laughing