Nine Till Three and Summers Free

by Mike Kent

  The service was certainly inexpensive, but due to the volume of washing being handled by the firm it was quite possible to receive pieces of another student’s clothing by mistake when the boxes were returned. On one occasion, Gerry had ended up with buttons missing from a shirt and three odd socks, none of which were his. Nevertheless, most students did take a chance and use the outside service until the last few weeks of a term. Funds were at a premium then, and if it was a choice between worrying whether the college machinery would ruin your shirts or going to the theatre, the arts usually won.

  A session using the facilities provided in the college laundry room could be just as fraught as consigning clothes to the outside agency. After several frustrating mornings in here, David Barton had once likened the experience to buying a veteran car and trying to get to Land’s End in it without knowing the slightest thing about mechanics. Even Gerry, a capable handyman, hesitated at coping with the idiosyncrasies of the laundry room equipment.

  The room was situated in the basement, reached by a short flight of steep, stone stairs. Even negotiating these with a full bag of washing had deterred many students. Nevertheless, demand born of absolute necessity had made many persevere, and after a number of sessions it was almost possible to get a kind of bizarre enjoyment from battling with the laundry room machinery and winning.

  The room was large, though badly lit and usually filled with condensation, which had caused the damp to attack the ancient plaster and peel the paint from the walls. It also caused some of the light bulbs to fail with monotonous regularity, so that even if a washing session had been completed successfully, it wasn’t always possible to see if the clothes were any cleaner or not.

  Four large Butler stone sinks were fixed to the shortest wall, relics of the original laundry provision, and eight industrial strength machines on the other side of the room represented the enlightened age of mechanised washing. Their doors often jammed, the thermostats frequently failed, the water sometimes wouldn’t drain away, but on a good day about four of them usually worked for long enough to cope with at least one load. I’d been more fortunate than most, although on one occasion the machine I was using had pulled itself free from the wall and tried to walk across the floor. On another occasion the drum had mangled one of my shirt sleeves when it had caught on a button, but by and large I’d come to terms with the fortnightly battle in the basement and had chalked up a success rate of about seventy per cent.

  A row of iron hooks lined the wall opposite the machines. Most of them had rusted so badly they wouldn’t support anything much heavier than a string vest, but two were still strong enough to string a line between and hang a few sets of underwear on. A huge gas stove hulked in a corner, almost redundant now but too large to be removed from the room. It seemed to be defying anyone to approach it with a lighted match, though at a pinch it could be used for heating clothes in one of the galvanised tubs originally provided for that purpose. An enormous drying cabinet jutted out from the darkest corner at a disconcerting angle after two fitters had tried to coax it into the alcove and given up. It had not worked properly since Dudley had turned the heat control fully up to dry out the boots he had worn on the field course and then completely forgotten about them for two days.

  Just after nine on the last Monday in May, I went as usual to the nearest sink and turned the tap on, intending to soak my shirt collars and scrub them before tracking down a working washing machine. Though the tap turned fully on and fully off, it refused to supply any water in between, and I moved to a second sink. The tap came off in my hand. I went to the third sink, checked the tap carefully and inspected the waste pipe to make sure the water would run away. Then I found the sink didn’t have a plug. Since this was all part of a familiar pattern, I was by no means discouraged. I simply moved to the next sink and began the sequence again.

  It was at this moment that I heard footsteps hurrying down the stone steps, and Duggan came into the room.

  ‘I thought I’d find you in here,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some bad news.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. They’ve sent you the wrong shirts in the laundry again.’

  ‘No. Worse than that.’

  ‘I can’t think of much worse than that. Milly’s died in the bath?’

  ‘No. It’s the exams.’

  I shrugged. ‘Oh, we’ve talked about that. They’re weeks away yet.’

  ‘Three, actually.’

  ‘Three? But we worked it out that…’

  ‘I know. We were wrong.’

  ‘But that’s impossible…’

  ‘The notice is up on the board. The written papers are five weeks away, but they’ve brought the orals forward.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘Unfortunately, no. I don’t joke about things like that.’

  My mind raced. It seemed unbelievable. Three year’s work to be revised in as many weeks. For one rash moment, I considered leaving my washing and rushing upstairs to start work immediately. Duggan watched the colour drain from my face.

  ‘You’ll get over the shock,’ he said. ‘Others before us have revised in half the time and passed, so there’s no reason why we shouldn’t.’

  ‘But we aren’t the others…’

  My mind filled with images of Milly, uttering dire warnings about past students electrocuting themselves because they couldn’t cope with the thought of their impending finals. For a moment, I couldn’t understand where all the months had gone. A tap in the first basin I’d tried suddenly made a gurgle like a death rattle and cold rusty water began to pour into the end sink. I stared at it dismally. Duggan waited for a moment and then looked up sympathetically.

  ‘Fancy a nice cup of tea?’

  ‘What help is that going to be?’

  ‘None. I’m just tendering sympathy, that’s all. I think the best plan is to gather your smalls and prepare to do some work. I’m going to the library.’

  I finished my washing as quickly as the ancient equipment would allow and went upstairs to check with the notice board. Duggan was right. There were just under three weeks to the science oral examinations, and the notice explained that this was the only way they could be fitted into the crowded examination schedule. The only person on corridor three with an optimistic outlook was Milly, who greeted me happily as I hurried into my room.

  ‘Worried about yer exams, love?’ she grinned, slopping a wet mop along the corridor. ‘I told yer they’d come round quick. They all worry round this time o’ year. You should be all right though. You’ve done enough, ain’t yer?’

  ‘Milly, I wish you were right, but I don’t feel as if I’ve done anything at all,’ I said quickly, anxious not to be drawn into a prolonged conversation.

  ‘Oh go on love, you’ll be okay. Anyway, there’s no use in worryin’ about it now. If you fail, you fail. ‘Alf of ‘em fail anyway, and some of ‘em work really ‘ard from the first moment they get ‘ere and still fail. You won’t be the first one, love. Not by a long chalk.’

  She picked the mop up and sloshed it about in the suds bucket. Specks of foam flicked onto my shoes.

  ‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘you can always take ‘em again next year. I tell you what, though. My Violet ‘ad a teacher what ‘ad loads of degrees and stuff and ‘e never taught ‘er a bleedin’ thing. Seems ter me, it ain’t what yer got it’s the way yer use it. Least, that’s what my old man’s always tellin’ me, dirty bugger.’

  ‘Well if I don’t pass I’ll have wasted a lot of time and money,’ I said testily. ‘I don’t intend failing if I can help it.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you do, love. And I don’t suppose you will. Anyway, if you’re makin’ a cup o’ tea in a minute I wouldn’t say no.’ She pushed the mop slowly down the corridor, humming tunelessly to herself.

  The following evening after dinner, Duggan presented me with a plan of action. He seemed enthusiastic and organised
.

  ‘Look, this is what we’ll do. Since we both take science we might as well revise that together over the next week or so, while Gerry does his geography. The chemistry is probably our strongest line so we’ll give part of the mornings to that. The rest of the day can be used for physics, biology and the field course stuff.’

  ‘You think we’re likely to be asked questions on that?’

  ‘If we don’t revise it we will. I mean, the life history of a mealy bug could be a relevant topic if somebody like Miss Fosdyke is testing us. Anyway, when we know that lot back to front we’ll get Gerry in here and do the education stuff together.’

  ‘What about the notes we haven’t got?’

  ‘Somebody’ll have ‘em. Gerry will have all the education lectures. I think he’s recorded half of them on tape. And even if he hasn’t got all the stuff we need, somebody else will be bound to have it.’

  ‘Providing they’re not using it at the same time.’

  Duggan shrugged. ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. It’s all in the text books, anyway. It just takes a bit longer to revise that way. Now, I suggest we start at eight o’clock in the morning and break for tea approximately every hour, with an hour and a half for lunch. The same with the afternoons with a quick game of table tennis sandwiched in between.’

  ‘Just to keep us from getting stale?’

  ‘Just to keep us from getting stale. Then there’s the afternoon tea break of course, after which we could slip down to St James’s Park for a breath of fresh air.’

  ‘This is ridiculous. We’ll never do it in time.’

  ‘Of course we will. Provided we cram hard in the working sessions. You can do a lot in an hour. Believe me, I passed my GCEs like this. We might even get a couple of days over.’

  The more we discussed the idea of revising, the more determined we became to actually make a start, especially as most lectures had now been cancelled to provide extra revision time. As Duggan still hadn’t fully recovered from the thought that the final reckoning was imminent, it seemed a good idea to retire to the Barley Mow and forget about it for a few final hours.

  The next morning dawned bleak and cheerless, doing nothing to raise any enthusiasm for changing our normal daily schedule and starting work earlier than usual. Duggan crawled out of bed with a hangover and missed breakfast altogether, and it wasn’t until nine o’clock that he emerged from his room looking acceptably alert. We took all our notes into his room, and then spent half an hour drinking black coffee while we tried to decide which of the sciences needed the most urgent revision. The fact that half our notes seemed to be out of chronological order didn’t help matters.

  Nevertheless, once we had started, we made encouragingly steady progress, and I was surprised to find I could remember all the work on compounds, molecular structure and the properties of alkyl halides with relative ease. At half past ten, Duggan threw his folder on his bed and yawned loudly.

  ‘Well, that’s an hour gone,’ he sighed. ‘Drags, doesn’t it. Put the kettle on and we’ll celebrate our learning with a hot cup of tea. I think I’ll pop out for a couple of doughnuts as well. Haven’t got any cash on you, have you?’

  I fished in my pocket and handed Duggan a small pile of change. Then I settled down to read the notes in my physics folder. This was much easier, because Dr Frost had insisted on seeing our folders at regular intervals throughout the course and my notes were immaculately filed. Dr Frost might not win a prize for his charm, I thought, but at least his aggressive attitude paid dividends when it came to revision. It didn’t seem fair that his department had such a low pass rate, and I still couldn’t understand why. When Duggan returned, we drank a cup of tea in thoughtful silence and then settled down again.

  ‘This is when I really envy people like Simon Daines,’ Duggan said unhappily. ‘I mean, the bloke probably doesn’t have to do any revision at all. He just soaks up knowledge like a bloody sponge. Why can’t I do that? There was a bloke at school who passed nine GCEs at Grade A. Nine! He worked hard, but I don’t remember him exactly flogging himself to death over it. Used to get really glowing reports. All I got was a report saying if I didn’t stop thinking life was a bowl of cherries I’d end up grinding my teeth on the stones.’

  ‘I know what you mean. Some people have a natural aptitude for passing exams. We don’t.’

  Duggan settled himself into a comfortable position on his bed. ‘You know, the trouble is, Mike, they’ve spoiled us. This’ll probably be the toughest few days we’ve had since we’ve been at college. We’ve been fed, laundered, entertained, given money to spend and we’re up with everything that’s going on in the West End. We’ve leapt about on a trampoline, run a fantastically successful college society at a vast profit, torn up the Doc’s daffodils and counted millipedes marching up and down inside a metal square. And what’s more, we’ve even had considerable success with teaching London children. Now all we have to do is work extremely hard for a fortnight and we’ll be handed a license to teach children and a career for life. You’d think it would be easy, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘We’ll pass. I’m determined. And anyway, I want to teach.’

  ‘So do I, and I’m sure they wouldn’t dare waste our talents. Anyway, the country needs more teachers. It’s always needing more teachers.’

  ‘That’s because they’re not paid very well.’

  Duggan pulled the paper bag towards him and pulled out another doughnut. ‘True, but teachers don’t need much money, you see. They’re dedicated, like nurses. And it’s such an easy job. Look at all those long holidays they get.’

  ‘Nine till three. And all Summer free.’

  ‘Exactly. Tell the kids to turn to page thirty five and get on with it. And to earn a place in this remarkable profession, all we’ve got to do is work hard for the next fortnight. Then off to Utopia.’

  ‘I hope you’re right.’

  ‘Of course I’m right. How many blokes do you know that have done much studying at college? Not just keeping up with the work. I mean real study?’

  ‘Quite a lot,’ I said. ‘Half our corridor, for a start.’

  Duggan considered this for a moment.

  ‘Okay then,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll give you that. For argument’s sake, let’s say half our corridor. But they’ll all get the same certificate in the end. Perhaps a couple of distinctions. But that doesn’t mean they’ll be any better in the classroom. Just remember what Milly said about her daughter. Anyway, enough of this mind-bending philosophy. How do you prepare butyl chloride? I’ve forgotten.’

  He sighed, pummelled his pillow into shape, and settled back on the bed with his folder propped up on his knees in front of him. I picked up my chemistry file to check.

  ‘Concentrated hydrochloric acid and alcohol. I think.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Yes, I’m not certain.’

  ‘Sod it.’

  He scratched his chin thoughtfully and then screwed up two sheets of notes, tossing them into the bucket. ‘I seem to have notes on everything I don’t need. I’ve forgotten half of it and the other half seems to be missing. What’s the test for ether? Potassium something or other, but God knows what.’

  I flipped through the pages of the chemistry text book, anxious to reassure him. I’d seldom seen Duggan so depressed. ‘Potassium thiocyanate.’

  ‘Never heard of it. Any more tea in the pot?’

  ‘No. I’ll make some more.’

  I boiled the kettle again and refilled the teapot. When I went back into the room, Duggan was staring morbidly out of the window, watching a hearse move slowly along the road.

  ‘Look at that, Mike,’ he said, sipping the tea slowly. ‘He’s failed his as well.’

  ‘Oh come on, we haven’t exactly been overdoing it. One morning’s work and you’re admitting defeat already.’

  ‘Well, i
t’s not as easy as I thought. How long till lunch?’

  ‘Another hour.’

  ‘A whole hour? Oh well, let’s try again.’

  We settled down to the books once more, trying to concentrate on equations, formulae and experimentation that had been written up months before. Eventually, Duggan abandoned his file of notes and studied the text book instead, making notes on the areas he still had to revise on a sheet of exercise paper. The harder I concentrated, the more daunting I realised the task actually was. I had a sneaking suspicion that I simply hadn’t done enough work to pass the chemistry strand. And I hadn’t even started on the education subjects yet. After another hour, I still felt I hadn’t accomplished very much.

  ‘Hey look, that’s interesting,’ said Duggan, breaking the silence suddenly. ‘There’s a droopy little line on this page where I fell asleep in a lecture. Must have been an fascinating afternoon.’

  There was a bang on the door and Gerry came in, rubbing his hands together in a manner that suggested he had learned all his notes off by heart.

  ‘How goes it then?’ he asked cheerfully. ‘Coming down for an early lunch? It’ll give us longer this afternoon.’

  Duggan looked at him in disbelief. ‘You sound as if you’ve almost finished. Know it all then, do you?’

  ‘About half of it. I can’t find the stuff on Argentina, though. I think I’ve stuck it in a film catalogue somewhere. I’m taking a punt here, but I suppose you don’t have anything on fazendas in South America, do you?’

  ‘No, but I’ve got something here on Fehlings solution if you want it.’

  ‘That’s the stuff made from copper sulphate, isn’t it?’

  ‘How d’you know that?’ Duggan exploded. ‘I’ve just spent the last hour trying to find out what it’s used for.’

  ‘Something to do with amino-acids, isn’t it?’

  Duggan’s mouth dropped open. ‘I thought your bloody subject was geography?’