Relatively Strange (9 page)

My mother and father were not happy, not happy at all. As far as they were concerned, the less surveying anybody did of me, the better. On the other hand, they didn’t have a worthy excuse for my non-participation. With misgivings they reluctantly signed the consent form, reassuring me and each other that of the several thousand children involved, chances of my being picked as one of the ongoing group, were extremely remote and all the more so if I kept a low profile!

*

Several weeks later, packed lunch bag in hand and last minute exhortations hissed in my ear, I climbed the steps of the coach for the trip to the test centre in Oxford. There were, in addition to Elizabeth and myself, only five others from our school and whilst she and I stuck together, we soon lost sight of the others as children scrambled for seats in each of the three coaches assembled for the journey. I imagine there must have been around a couple of hundred of us all told, from schools all over London and on that blue-skied, cloud-studded day tagged on the end of a squally April, an outing atmosphere prevailed even amongst the half dozen or so accompanying teaching staff – after all a day off school is a day off school.

The journey from the terminal in Swiss Cottage took about an hour and a half, enlivened by a sing-song and some regrettably early investigation of lunch boxes. Just around the time we were starting to get bored, our coaches which had managed to travel in convoy the whole way turned through some open, impressively high, wrought iron gates. They trundled and bounced down a longish, winding drive bordered by high hedges through which we glimpsed lawns and flowerbeds and then jerked to a stop like well-trained circus elephants, one behind the other where the drive widened into a circular, gravelled area with a fountain in the centre that disappointingly wasn’t working. We’d stopped in front of an imposing, red-brick, multi-windowed building which even to my untrained eye had a pleasing symmetry only marred by a large, contemporary, glass and concrete extension which seemed to have attached itself to the left hand side and back of the building with no rhyme or reason. To the other side of the front doors and also looking as if they so didn’t belong, was a row of three, extremely large, grey-walled portakabins, each with half a dozen steps leading up to a closed door.

We descended with relief, from the now stuffy coaches in a rowdy crowd and there was a fair bit of disorganised milling while abandoned blazers, coats or lunchboxes were reunited with careless owners. Then we were chivvied into a two by two crocodile and led through the high, oak double-fronted doors. Whilst the building had that unmistakeable institutional smell, rubber shoes, floor wax and elderly cooked cabbage, it still trailed traces of former glory. To our right an impressively sweeping, elaborately-bannistered staircase soared to a balconied landing whilst to the left, off the entrance hall area was a series of highly polished wooden doors gleaming in brightness shed from a stained-glass sky-light high above us. At the back of the hall there was a counter-style reception desk manned by two women. It all seemed to be very well organised, each teacher being issued with safety pins and paper labels to distribute to their charges. These, bearing our names and schools, were to be pinned to our uniforms and not, repeat not, removed until we were back on our coaches at the end of the day.

As we waited for tardy badge-pinners, my eye was caught by a movement on the landing above. Looking down on the controlled chaos was a slim young woman with milk-chocolate coloured skin. She looked startlingly exotic in those surroundings in a flame-coloured, full-length silky dress, shiftingly spotlighted by the coloured shards of light from the skylight. Her black hair was braided thick and high on her head and a hoop of gold earring swung against an elegantly defined cheekbone in an oval face.

She stood motionless, face impassive, leaning gently against the waist high balustrade, eyes moving slowly over us. In our regulation uniforms of greys, blacks and browns we must have looked a pretty dull bunch. For a moment I thought her gaze fastened on me as I gazed up and I smiled awkwardly, embarrassed to have been caught staring, but there was no acknowledgement so perhaps I was mistaken. My attention was momentarily distracted as the chattering died down and we were shepherded towards one of the doors off the entrance hall. Filing in, I glanced back, she was making her way gracefully down the stairs, hand lightly on the banister, back very straight. As she reached the bottom I saw the slim white stick extended in her other hand, tapping the ground before her.

Chapter Eleven

It’s always illuminating to look back on any experience with hindsight. The Survey, even viewed retrospectively was comprehensive, clever, well devised and should have been extremely successful and ultimately productive. That it wasn’t was directly due to some unscheduled interference, the existence and extent of which was never fully appreciated by the powers that be, nor by the gentleman responsible for creating and implementing the whole shebang. Given his somewhat alarming propensities, this was probably all to the good.

Dr Karl W. Dreck had a curtly clipped South African accent, flat oily black hair and a smile which aimed but failed to project an easy charm, probably because it never reached grey-washed, sandy-lashed eyes. His face in repose lacked expression making the smile all the more disconcerting when it appeared, as if an unseen hand was working an on/off button. His larger than life image, whirringly projected on a screen at the front of the large room with blind-shrouded windows where we’d been seated in cross-legged rows, didn’t do a great deal to put anyone at their ease.

In a short jerky film, his voice booming from a loudspeaker, he welcomed us to what we learned was called Newcombe Hall and told us how fortunate we were to have this opportunity of participating in one of the most ambitious social studies ever undertaken in Britain. However, he went on, whilst some of us would be picked to continue, many would be eliminated for one reason or another although, (pause, smile,) this was in no way a personal rejection, merely an endeavour to obtain as complete a cross section of the population as possible. He said that he and his staff – shot of a group of people in white coats, also smiling – wanted us to truly enjoy all the various tests and games they had lined up for us today.

Accomplished though he undoubtedly was in his field, Dreck was never what you might call a people person and his appearance, albeit onscreen, was more than enough to put a dampener on our previously rather noisy high spirits – a bit like finding Boris Karloff was going to be your party entertainer. Quieter now and with the promise of a refreshment break to follow, we were divided into alphabetically defined groups, mixing pupils from different schools so before I realised what was happening I was separated from Elizabeth and lost sight of her completely. The degree of efficiency with which this was achieved by staff members who had taken over from our accompanying teachers, spoke of long practice. I wondered how many children had already passed through the high oak front doors to earn a place in or be eliminated from The Survey.

*

Individual groups, each headed by a white-coated member of staff were being led at a swift pace from the entrance hall towards the back of the building, and mine was taken up a flight of stairs to a corridor of numbered rooms, amongst which we were distributed. The room I entered with about six other children was itself sub-divided by blue curtained screens to form a couple of semi-private cubicles. On the opposite wall was a row of chairs on which it was indicated we should sit although, even as we settled ourselves, a couple of names were called and those summoned were shepherded to each of the cubicles from whence soon came a rising and falling hum of questions and answers.

I didn’t have long to wait before my name came up, a relief, because I was next to a boy whose personal habits left something to be desired in the flatulence department. Seated inside one of the curtained cubicles was a plump, cheerfully brisk, white-coated, frizzily blond lady,

“Call me Mo, dear,” pen poised over clipboard. She ran through a list of illnesses I might or might not have had, questioned me about vaccinations, weighed me on T bar scales and took my blood pressure. An unpleasant thought suddenly occurred as she enthusiastically pumped the little black bulb.

“We don’t have to have a blood test do we?”

“No dear,” said Mo, moving her fingers to my wrist and timing my pulse, “Probably not.”

That rattled me, needles and I didn’t mix. Never did, never will – I’m not even any good at sewing. The reason for this was of course pretty straightforward with a mother who hit the ground running at the mere mention of an injection. She’d always put on a brave face when it came to my childhood jabs, but as I could hear her frantically reciting the twelve times table in her head, I remained uncomforted. It was an ordeal for both of us, not to mention for the unfortunate clinic nurse who simply couldn’t understand why every time she came near me, all feeling in her right hand disappeared. She dropped four hypos and her Florence Nightingale manner before my mother insisted on taking me outside for a little talk.

And so, nerve-wracked as I was by the possibility of a blood test it was with attention at half-mast that I started answering Call Me Mo’s questions and it was only a change in her tone that pulled me back to the matter in hand. She was looking even more cheerful than when we’d started, like someone who’s lost sixpence and found half-a-crown,

“Jolly good,” she said. “Well done you. How about another few sections?” We’d been doing what she called a word association test. She, giving me a category and me supplying the first word that came into my head. Mo was now looking down at her clipboard and then expectantly up at me,

“Flower,” she repeated, pen quivering. She was looking at a small sketched rose next to the word and it dawned, belatedly that it might not be the brightest move in the world for me to get these all correct, which is what I’d obviously, absent-mindedly been doing. This actually might not come under the low profile my parents had advocated.

“Daisy.”

“Nursery rhyme.” She was looking at a black sheep.

“Jack and Jill.”

“Item of clothing.”

“Trousers.” I said, rising above the socks.

She had my full attention now as I was uncomfortably aware I had hers. We ran through some twenty or so more items and I made sure that not one of them did I get right. There was silence for a moment or two while she looked back over the form, before downing her pen and giving me a puzzled look. Could I, she asked, sit tight for a tick or two, she’d be right back. Within a few moments she popped her head back round the blue curtain, beckoning me to follow. We exchanged our cubicle and classroom for another, further down the corridor where with a little nod of her head she handed me and my forms over to another white-coated, altogether more intimidating individual called Iris.

Iris, beetle-browed and unsmiling had obviously been issued with instructions to be friendly and not frighten the children but was having a struggle. More questions, this time on circles, squares and triangles – if this was an example of the fun time promised by Dr. Dreck, we’d been short-changed I reflected. I think Iris was getting paid by the question because she moved at a pretty nifty pace. I found the easiest way to answer was to opt each time for the symbol to the left of the one she was looking at on the page and once I’d established this rather cunning m.o. we bounded through the questions like things possessed, stopping breathlessly at the end of some thirty or so.

Iris looked up at me and I belatedly realised maybe I hadn’t been quite so clever after all. In that same instant someone spoke inside my head,

“Idiot!” they said and it suddenly felt as if my head had been swaddled in a thick, black, blanket. I suppose I’d never realised quite how much my extra senses supplied until suddenly they weren’t supplying any more. Sound instantly became flatter with no resonance of thought beyond, sight was only surface, where normally there was depth. I searched Iris’s frowning, increasingly confused face, her expression probably mirroring mine, and could sense – nothing. She was talking, but in the grip of a rising tide of panic, she might as well have been speaking in tongues. My hands and feet were freezing, my heart was thumping and something strange had happened to my breathing, I hoped I wasn’t going to have another of Nigel’s asmatacks. I broke out in chilly sweat. I didn’t think it could get any worse. I was wrong. The voice in my head was back.

“Idiot,” it repeated irritably, “Calm down.” Calm down,
calm down?
I was as far from calm as it was possible to be. My surroundings were acquiring a deeply unpleasant black outline and I could feel blood draining from my head in a sickly rush. Iris jumped up from her chair, grabbed the back of my neck in a firm hand and forced my head down on to my lap. This wasn’t, I felt, an improvement. I struggled weakly and from a million miles away Iris asked someone to fetch a glass of water quickly.