Saville (17 page)

‘They’ll have all that there,’ she said. ‘I should just leave him to get on.’

‘Aye, he’ll be all right,’ his father said, standing by the table, rubbing his hand along the back of the chair, gazing down at him, then at his mother, then staring helplessly about the room.
‘Remember what I’ve told you,’ he said. ‘Before you write ought down think. They’ll not go much by somebody who’s always crossing out.’

When Steven came down his father lifted him up and said, ‘Now, then. Are we going to have another scholar in the house?’ Steven struggling to get down to the table where his bowl of porridge was waiting. ‘If he does his sums as well as he eats we’ll be all right,’ his father added. ‘We’ll none of us have to worry.’

When his grandfather came down still in his pyjamas he said, ‘Where’s my tea? Nobody brought me up my tea this morning, missis,’ and when his mother said, ‘Oh, we’ve got more important things to think about,’ he looked down at the table and said, ‘Porridge, now that’s going to fill out his brains.’

‘Aren’t you going to eat it, Colin?’ his mother asked him.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t feel hungry.’

‘You want something. You’ll do nothing with an empty stomach,’ she said.

‘It’s nerves,’ his father said. ‘I get the same feeling when I’m going down at night.’

‘He can take an apple,’ his mother said, gazing down at him, her hands clasped together. ‘He’ll soon fill up when it’s over.’

When he was ready he picked up the ruler and the pen and pencil and put the piece of paper in his pocket with the apple his mother gave him in the other. He pulled on his black gabardine raincoat and his cap, and his mother said, ‘Nay, not out of the back. You can go out of the front today.’

She’d already gone to fetch her coat, saying, ‘I’ll come down to the bus stop with you,’ and he’d said, ‘No, I’d better go on my own.’

‘Well, if you’re sure,’ she said.

She held the door open, holding Steven in her arms and saying, ‘Are you going to kiss him for luck, then, Steve?’

Steven shook his head, kicking his legs against her and turning away, and his father said, ‘Well, good luck, lad. And remember what I’ve told you.’

‘Yes,’ Colin said and shook his father’s hand as he held it out, shyly, half-flushing.

It was still quite dark. The rain fell in a fine drizzle. Farther down the street Mrs Bletchley and Mrs Reagan were walking
towards the bus stop with Bletchley and Michael Reagan, the bright orange pens and pencils sticking from their satchels.

‘Have you got everything, then?’ his mother said. ‘Your money for your dinner?’

‘Yes.’ He didn’t look up.

‘Remember last night,’ his grandfather said. ‘There’s more where that came from.’

When he reached the corner and looked back his mother was still standing in the door. When she waved he waved back, then turned the corner and walked quickly to the stop.

There was a crowd of children and mothers already there, clustered together in the half-darkness, and one or two men with pit dirt still on their faces. Everywhere there were the bright orange rulers and pens and pencils.

‘Have you got a rubber?’ Bletchley said.

‘No,’ he said.

‘You have to have a rubber.’ Bletchley took one out of his pocket. ‘That’s for rubbing out pencil and that’s for rubbing out ink,’ he said, indicating either end. ‘Got any blotting-paper?’

‘No.’ He shook his head.

Bletchley opened his satchel and took out a sheet folded in two. Reagan had a similar piece in his satchel and an identical rubber. Inside too were a bag of sweets, a bar of chocolate, an orange and an apple, and a bottle of ink.

‘Haven’t you got any ink?’ Bletchley said. ‘You won’t be able to write anything, will you?’

When the bus came, with its shaded lights glowing in the damp road, Bletchley was the first to get on. He kissed his mother, who then stood in the doorway until he had got up the steps. There were twelve children and when they were all on the mothers and the two or three miners stood at the windows, the women on tiptoe, waving. A teacher sat down at the front. The bus started.

The fine drizzle fell against the panes as the day lightened, and the lights with their blue-painted bulbs were switched off. The hedges on either side were drooped down with damp, the cattle herded together in the corners of the fields. The windows soon steamed up, and after a while, except by rubbing against them, little of the countryside could be seen. Bletchley sat near the
front with his satchel on his knees, the inside of his legs still covered in the white cream that hadn’t yet been rubbed off. Reagan, who had sat farther back in the bus, had begun to cry, his thin face screwed up, his forehead a peculiar white, his cheeks crimson.

The teacher got up finally and came up the gangway to stoop over him, and when they stopped at the next village and another group of children climbed on, their coats wet with rain, the teacher got off and went to fetch Reagan a cup of water from a house. When they set off again he sat sobbing in his seat, his chest shuddering with strange, sudden spasms, the air rattling in his throat, his satchel still strapped around his body.

‘His dad says he has to pass or he’ll get a good hiding,’ Bletchley said coming up the bus to sit with Colin. ‘If they sec you crying they knock ten marks off. They watch you all the time. Did you know that?’ leaning across to say to Reagan, ‘They’ve probably failed you already, Mic.’

The school they arrived at was a brick building with tall, green-painted windows and a tarmac yard: it stood beside a row of arches carrying a railway across a shallow cutting, and at the other side of the yard ran a stream full of oil drums, pieces of bedding and mounds of rusted metal.

Several groups of children were already waiting in the lee of the building, out of the drizzle, each of them clutching the familiar orange pens and rulers. The doors of the school were still closed: numerous muddy footprints marked the lower panels.

Another bus stopped at the gate and several more children came into the yard, looking vaguely about them, at the school, at the arches across which occasionally an engine hauled a line of trucks, sending clouds of white steam and black smoke billowing into the yard.

‘Why did they pick this place?’ Bletchley said and Reagan shook his head.

‘Every school’, someone said, ‘takes its turn. Next year it might be yours, then you don’t get an advantage.’

‘I wouldn’t call this an advantage,’ Bletchley said. ‘Not even to anyone who lived here.’

The boy who had spoken had fair hair, cut short and brushed into a neat parting at one side. He wore, too, a clean white shirt
and a woollen tie with red and blue stripes. He had a fountain-pen clipped in the top pocket of his blazer and beneath it was the badge of his school, a red rose on a white background with ‘En Dieu Es Tout’ written underneath on a scroll.

Bletchley, who had stared at the silver clip of the fountain-pen for some time, said, ‘You’ve been here before, then, have you?’ scarcely troubling to look at the boy’s face.

‘Not here,’ he said. ‘I’ve taken the exam before. This is my last chance.’ He laughed and put his hands in his pockets..

‘What’s it like?’ Bletchley said, Reagan too looking up, his chest still shaken intermittently by sobs.

‘It’s not the exams,’ he said. ‘It’s just there are so many taking it. It’s just a question of luck.’

‘Luck?’ Bletchley said, nodding his head as if, in this respect, he possessed an undeniable advantage. His face began to swell and his eyes expanded.

Behind them one of the green doors had opened and a woman appeared carrying a bell. She looked up at the sky, at the viaduct then began to ring the bell just as another teacher began to do the same at a second door. ‘Boys in this door, girls in the other,’ she said. ‘Go to the classroom with your initials on.’

The school was set out in a square with classrooms along each side. He entered the classroom with ‘Surnames S-Y’ inscribed on the door. Several boys were already there, one from his own school whom he scarcely knew, standing in the space between the blackboard and the desks. A small, grey-haired woman said, ‘You’ll find your names and your examination number pinned to your desk. Find it, sit down, fold your arms and don’t talk.’ A notice which said ‘No talking’ was chalked on the blackboard behind her.

His own name and number were pinned to a desk at the front by the door. A piece of pink blotting-paper was already laid there and the ink-well, set inside a metal disc, had recently been filled. He lifted the lid, looked inside the desk, then set out his ruler, the pen and the pencil on the top and folded his arms.

Across the room the boy with fair hair had sat down, unscrewed the top of his fountain-pen, examined the nib, screwed the top back on and placed it in the rack on the desk. Beyond him three large windows looked out on to the yard and, beyond that, the
line of arches. Thin lines of moisture had begun to run down the panes.

The teacher called a register, ticking off each name, then came round the room collecting the letters which stated they could sit for the examination and which in his case had been signed by his father.

Returning to her desk she read out the rules of the examination from a printed paper. A boy came in carrying a pile of ruled paper; when a piece was placed on his desk he saw that it was folded like a book with a notice printed on the front which said, ‘Do not write your name. Fill in your examination number and leave the rest of this page blank.’

The room grew quiet. Later, the only sounds that came in were the movement of milk bottles in the corridor outside, and the noise of lorries passing in the road. Occasionally an engine and trucks passed across the viaduct.

Some boys wrote quickly, scarcely looking up, their heads bowed to the desk, almost touching the paper, others gazing up at the ceiling then at the figures around them, dipping their pens repeatedly in the ink-wells, tapping the nib dry, then beginning to write slowly only, a moment later, to look up again and stare at the window.

Across the room the boy with fair hair wrote with his chair pushed well back from his desk, his arm stretched out casually before him as if at any moment he might push the desk away, get up and walk out. He wrote with his left hand, his head slightly inclined to his right, glancing at the question paper without moving his head then writing out the answer with his fountain-pen, its cap fastened on the top, its bright clip glinting in the light from the window. He pursed his lips slightly as he wrote as if he were chewing the inside of his cheek.

The boy next to him was writing his name on his blotting-paper, stooped over the desk, his cheek laid against the desk top, dipping the nib in the ink-well then printing the letters in rows of little blots. Occasionally he half-raised his head to glance at the effect, then laid his cheek down on the desk top again and began to surround his name with an elaborate scroll.

After a while the teacher said, ‘There is now half an hour left. By this time you should have reached question eight or nine.’

Question nine comprised an entire sheet of the examination paper. He had to copy out the description of a shipwreck and put in the correct punctuation and the correct spelling. The very last question on the paper simply said, ‘How many words can you make from “Conversation”?’

Several of the boys had put down their pens and were sitting with their arms folded, gazing at the teacher.

‘If you have finished already,’ the teacher said, ‘don’t waste the time. Read through your paper again and see if you have made any mistakes. I’m sure some of you have.’

Finally she said, ‘In two minutes I shall ask you to put your pens down. Finish off the sentence you are writing and make sure that your ink is dry.’

When they had put their pens down she said, ‘I want no one to speak until I have collected the papers. You will remain in your places until I tell you to leave.’

When he went out in the playground the boy with fair hair came across and said, ‘How many did you do?’

‘Nearly all of them,’ he said.

‘I just about finished,’ the boy said. ‘I thought it was harder than last year. It doesn’t matter, I suppose.’

Across the playground Reagan was eating an orange and Bletchley an apple, Reagan with his satchel still fastened across his back.

‘What’s your name?’ the boy said.

‘Saville,’ he said.

‘Mine’s Stafford,’ he said. ‘Both S’s!’

When Bletchley came across he said, ‘How many words did you get for “conversation”?’ and when he said, ‘Nineteen,’ Bletchley said, ‘Is that all? I got twenty-seven. Did you get onion?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘I got thirty-four,’ Stafford said.

‘Thirty-four,’ Bletchley said, his face reddening round his cheeks and nose. ‘Did you get notes?’

‘Yes,’ Stafford said, his hands in his pockets. ‘And nation.’

‘Nation,’ Bletchley said, flushing more deeply. ‘I got that one too.’

When they went back a mathematics paper had been given out.

Whenever Colin looked up he saw Stafford sitting in exactly the same position as before, his arm stretched out casually to the desk as if it were something he touched with only the greatest reluctance, his head resting just as casually to one side, occasionally glancing up at some point immediately in front of him, above the blackboard, and frowning slightly before returning to his figures, which he wrote out very quickly. Whenever he crossed anything out he did so with a slick flick of his wrist, as though he were pushing something aside, his head stooped forward very briefly before returning to its position.

The time passed more quickly than before. Several of the questions involved the conversion of decimals to fractions, and fractions to decimals, of the kind that he had practised at home, and when he had finished he had time to go over the paper once again before the teacher said, ‘Pens down – Sit up. Arms folded. Leave your papers in front of you for me to collect.’

When the papers had been collected she added, ‘Those of you who are staying to dinner form a queue at the end of the corridor, those who are going home for lunch must leave by the main entrance.’