by Mike Kent
‘He probably got out of bed at six for a quick run round the park,’ Duggan said. ‘Either that or he’s thrown himself out of the window. Oh look, before you go. This is for you.’
He pulled out a large white envelope from between the books on his top shelf. Inside was a beautifully hand-drawn good luck card from Samantha, with a message telling me to come round to the library as soon as the first oral examination was over.
‘Look at that,’ said Duggan admiringly, ‘she must have been working on that for days. What a lovely girl. You don’t deserve her.’
‘I know.’
‘Don’t fancy doing me a couple of slices of toast, do you?’
‘I’ve just made you a mug of tea. What more do you want?’
‘A couple of slices of toast?’
‘There isn’t any bread. I’ll ask Gerry if he’s got any biscuits.’
Gerry was already dressed and working at his desk, scribbling notes from his geography folder onto a pad.
‘Hello,’ he said brightly. ‘All ready for this morning, then?’
‘That’s difficult to say. I mean, if I’m asked about magnets or Boyle’s Law, I’m ready. If I’m going to be asked about the life cycle of an evening primrose, I’m not ready. Do you fancy a mug of tea?’
‘Lovely. Put it on that beer mat. Oh well, you’ve got a couple of hours yet. Do you want me to go through anything with you?’
‘What, like lists of alternative employment?’
‘Everybody suffers from pre-exam nerves. Once you get in there, you’ll be fine. Put a bit of litmus paper in your pocket as a lucky charm and smile sweetly.’
‘I’ll try. You haven’t got any biscuits, have you? Duggan wants one.’
‘Sorry. I don’t dare buy them. I just end up eating them.’
At five minutes to ten, I gathered my science files together and walked slowly down to the tutorial room, where the oral examinations were being held. Four chairs had been placed outside the room. A folder rested on one of them, open at a page on halogens. A notice had been pinned on the door stating that examinations were in progress and under no circumstances were the occupants to be disturbed. A low murmur of conversation came from within the room. As I was about to sit on the end chair, the door opened and Simon Daines walked out. He smiled cheerfully at me and seemed very relaxed.
‘Hello. Well, that went very quickly. Quicker than I expected, anyway. Are you next?’
‘Yes, I think so. What’s it like?’
‘Very straightforward, but she went through the course pretty thoroughly. Asked questions on just about everything we’ve done. Especially the field study. Have you got your files with you? She looked through my folder very carefully. Glad I had everything in the right order. Anyway, best of luck.’
He held the door open and I tried to look positive as I walked into the room. A small, smartly dressed woman in a grey suit sat behind Miss Bottle’s desk, scribbling notes on a piece of paper. She looked up as I entered, and pointed to the chair in front of the desk.
‘What dreadful weather we’re having this morning, aren’t we?’ she said pleasantly. ‘Do sit down, please. Now, I am Mrs Smythe and you are Mr… um… Hornpipe, I believe?’
My eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘No, I’m not, actually.’
‘Really? Well, that’s very odd. I suppose a Mr Hornpipe does actually exist?’
‘Yes. He’s in our group.’
‘Well he’s also supposed to have had his oral this morning. He was first on my list.’
‘He’s in the room next to mine. Do you want me to…’
Mrs Smythe waved her hand. ‘No, not at all. Now, let’s try again. You are Mr… um…’
‘Kent. Michael Kent.’
She ran her pencil down the list of names in front of her. ‘Ah yes, Mr Kent. Now then, I believe you have studied the combined science course? Chemistry, physics, plus some biology… and some field work. Is that correct?’
‘That’s correct,’ I said softly.
Mrs Smythe leaned forward in her seat. ‘You’ll have to speak up, Mr Kent. Come now, it’s not that much of an ordeal, is it?’
‘I suppose not. It’s just that this is my first oral exam and I seem to have been hibernating with education books for the past month.’
‘Well, please don’t worry. I have absolutely no intention of trying to catch you out. I just want to find out how valuable your course of study has been to you. I imagine the time here has gone very quickly for you?’
I cleared my throat and spoke in a louder voice. ‘Very quickly indeed. I’ve really enjoyed it. Especially the teaching practices. I’m looking forward to actually starting.’
‘You’re not staying on for the degree year, then?’
‘No. I’m going to do a degree later on. At the moment I just want to get into the classroom.’
‘I admire your enthusiasm, but I hope you don’t regret your decision. It’s easier staying on to do your degree while you’re in a receptive frame of mind. Would you hand me your files, please?’
I stood up, passed across the three folders of work and sat down again. Mrs Smythe took the physics folder from the top of the pile and looked through it for what seemed an eternity.
‘And what about your science course, Mr Kent? Have you enjoyed that too?’ she asked, without looking up.
‘On the whole, yes.’
‘On the whole?’
‘Well, some of the work has been quite difficult. I tended to specialise in chemistry at school rather than the other sciences.’
‘I see. Well, we’ll start with chemistry, then, shall we?’ She picked up the chemistry folder and opened it at random. ‘I see you have some experiments here on steam distillation. We’ll begin with those. Tell me about the experiments, with any observations of your own and what sort of limitations your methods might present.’
She removed her spectacles and looked at me with interest. I answered slowly and carefully, feeling that if I could prolong the chemistry answers there wouldn’t be much time for her to ask about anything else. When I’d finished, she looked up and smiled for the first time.
‘Yes, thank you. Very good. Of course, as steam distillation takes place below the boiling point of water we can purify many substances of high boiling point by low temperature distilling. But I see you have made a note about that anyway.’
She flicked through the pages of the file and ran her finger down some of the notes before looking up again.
‘How would you standardise caric sulphate solution, Mr Kent?’ I remembered this immediately, but held the answer in my mind for as long as I dared, not wanting Mrs Smythe to rumble my delaying tactics.
‘Sodium oxalate, I think,’ I answered carefully.
‘Correct. Go on.’
‘But I don’t see…’
‘Well, assuming you were going to do it by direct titration, you would use a catalyst, surely?’
‘Oh, yes,’ I agreed, ‘you’d certainly need a catalyst.’
‘Well?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Well, what would you use?’
‘Oh, you mean you want me to tell you a suitable catalyst?’
‘I should have thought that was obvious, Mr Kent.’
‘Yes, of course,’ I said slowly, trying to give the impression of weighing up and selecting from a hundred suitable possibilities. Mrs Smythe leaned forward in her chair.
‘What would you use, then?’
‘Iodine monochloride, probably. Yes, I think I’d probably go for iodine monochloride.’
Mrs Smythe sat back in her chair and drummed her fingers on the desktop.
‘Yes, I think you’d be well advised to choose that, Mr Kent. Can I suggest that you try to answer the rest of the questions a little more promptly, or we’ll run out of time.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I apologised. ‘It’s just that I seem to have been up all night for weeks on end going over my notes.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you have. Still, so has everyone else, and so did I thirty years ago,’ she said briskly. ‘Now then, you have several pages here on diatoms. Would you like to tell me something about them?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Then… er… please do, Mr Kent.’
I concentrated on the page Mrs Smythe had obviously turned to, and I formed a mental picture of the information. Then I outlined the composition of diatoms, their characteristics, their reproduction techniques, and their place in the order of things. Mrs Smythe nodded vigorously as I spoke.
‘Very good, Mr Kent. I think we’ll talk about valency next, and then we’ll have a look at your field study work. Oh, now what do you think of…um.. Guernsey, Mr Kent?’
For a moment I stared at her in disbelief. Had I imagined the question, or was she approaching a topic in my folder from an unexpected direction simply to throw me off guard.
‘I think it’s a very nice place,’ I answered cautiously, wondering if I was dreaming. ‘A very nice place indeed.’
Mrs Smythe smiled, took three colourful pamphlets out of my folder, and passed them across to me.
‘I see you were revising Guernsey as well as your chemistry,’ she said brightly. ‘You left the brochures in your book. I assume they are there by mistake?’
I suddenly realised what she was talking about and laughed with embarrassment.
‘Oh, yes. I… er… wrote off and booked a site there for a couple of weeks this summer. Some friends and I camped there last year and we were thinking of going again.’
‘How very nice,’ Mrs Smythe interrupted me. ‘It’s a delightful island and mercifully still unspoiled. I grew up there, you see. My brother and his family still live on the island. He’s a teacher, too. His subject is history.’
‘Really?’ I asked, not quite believing my luck and anxious to exploit this opportunity as fully as I could. ‘Which part does he live in?’
‘In Torteval. Near Pleinmonth Point. Do you know it?’
‘Not very well. It’s at the tip of the island, isn’t it?’
She settled back more comfortably in her chair, crossed her legs and nodded enthusiastically. ‘That’s right. The ‘Land’s End’ of Guernsey. It’s a very pretty part of the island. Fascinating history, too. Lots of stories of haunted shipwrecks. The children in Alan’s classes love hearing about them, specially as he usually embroiders his stories somewhat. Where are you going to be camping?’
‘On a farm near Saint’s Bay.’
‘Oh lovely, I know it very well. Close to Icart Point. There’s a footpath from Saint’s that leads all the way up to it. Icart is the highest point on the island. An absolutely splendid view from the top of it. And the flora is delightful. Especially if you teach botany, of course.’
‘Because of the mild climate, I suppose?’ I was wary of getting too heavily into the area of science I was least sure about. Nevertheless, with a little luck and some judicious manoeuvring, I was certain Mrs Smythe’s enthusiasm could be used to carry the conversation forward to my advantage.
‘Oh yes, absolutely,’ she said, biting her bottom lip and thinking for a moment. ‘There are probably a thousand species of plants just growing wild. Some of them are very rare even in this country. I see you’ve made some notes about the varieties of buttercup in your field study, Mr Kent. Well, it may surprise you to learn there are even more unusual varieties of it in Guernsey. And there’s a variety of sea-lavender you won’t find anywhere in the world except the Channel Islands. Which month are you going in?’
‘August.’
‘Oh, ideal. And you’ll be going to the Battle of Flowers, I imagine?’
She saw the puzzled expression on my face and laughed warmly.
‘It’s a flower pageant held in Saumarez Park. An annual competition between Guernsey and Jersey. Both islands make the most amazing floats from flowers and some of them are huge. A quite extraordinary experience. You really must try to go. There’s a lovely horticultural exhibition, too. You seem to be very interested in botany, Mr Kent, judging from your file. Your drawings are very impressive.’
‘We’ll definitely make a point of going,’ I said. ‘We want to see as much of the island as we can.’
‘Of course. There’s so much of interest. Especially for history students. I don’t know if you knew, but the island was once invaded by the Vikings. Mind you, they seem to have invaded everywhere, don’t they?’
I glanced at my watch. If we continued in this manner, I thought, the oral would be finished in no time. Mrs Smythe leaned forward in her seat, warming to her theme.
‘Oh yes, the island really has quite a history. The French invaded it, of course, and Victor Hugo was exiled there. And there’s the German underground hospital, built near the end of the last war.’
‘Yes, we visited that last year. Amazing that it was all built by slave labour.’ I still had vivid memories of the visit, and the contrast between the boiling hot sunshine and the coldness of the concrete caverns excavated beneath the ground.
‘That’s right,’ said Mrs Smythe. ‘It took three and a half years to build and was actually used for about four weeks. Apparently half the workforce died and were just mixed in with the concrete. Dreadful thought, isn’t it? Anyway, let’s not be morbid. Have you visited the Little Chapel?’
There was a sudden, very loud knock on the door, the handle turned, and Dudley’s face appeared.
‘Ah, hello. I’m looking for the… um… would this be the oral examination for science?’
‘It would,’ Mrs Smythe nodded. ‘And would you happen to be Mr Barton? Or are you the elusive Mr Hornpipe?’
‘Hornpipe, actually.’
‘I see. Then if I am not mistaken, you were supposed to be here some time ago, Mr Hornpipe.’
‘I know,’ said Dudley, scratching his beard miserably. ‘Wretched alarm clock didn’t work, I’m afraid. At least, it does work, but not when I want it to.’
‘Perhaps you just slept through it, Mr Hornpipe.’
Dudley considered this explanation carefully. ‘That’s possible, of course. Yes, that’s a distinct possibility. Still, I’m here now.’
‘So you may be, Mr Hornpipe,’ said Mrs Smythe bluntly. ‘But as you may have noticed, I happen to be interviewing someone else at this particular moment.’
Dudley peered further round the door, recognised me, and smiled pleasantly.
‘Hello, old boy,’ he said. ‘Didn’t see you there. I hope it’s going well?’
‘Would you kindly sit and wait outside?’ said Mrs Smythe curtly as Dudley showed no sign of moving away from the door. ‘I will examine your work as soon as I have a spare half hour. That’s the best I can offer.’
Dudley thought for a moment. ‘Ah, unfortunately that does leave us with a slight dilemma,’ he said. ‘You see, I’ve got some trouble with my Claude Butler and I…’
Mrs Smythe clicked her tongue in exasperation. ‘Mr Hornpipe, what exactly are you talking about?’
‘My Claude Butler. My bicycle. I’ve got to go and collect the front wheel by eleven thirty. I rode the damn thing into a lamp post. I need it for this afternoon. The wheel, that is. Not the lamp post.’ He laughed politely, noticed that Mrs Smythe hadn’t found his joke even slightly amusing, and abruptly changed his laugh into an embarrassed cough.
‘As far as I can see, you have two choices, Mr Hornpipe,’ Mrs Smythe said, her voice rising impatiently. ‘You can either sit outside and wait for me, in which case there is a chance that you could possibly pass the oral section of your science examination. Or, on the other hand, you can go away and mend your Claude whatever it is. In which case, I can assure you without the slightest fear of contradiction, you’ll fail your oral. Hopefu
lly, that clarifies the matter?’
Dudley squinted at her, pursed his lips, and then nodded. ‘Perfectly, dear lady,’ he said. ‘I’ll sit outside.’
The door closed softly and Mrs Smythe turned back to me. She smiled and raised her eyebrows.
‘I just hope he can get himself into a classroom on time,’ she said. ‘He’ll probably turn up at the wrong school. I’m so sorry that you’ve had to put up with this in the middle of your oral, Mr Kent.’
‘That’s all right,’ I said graciously, aware that another five minutes of my examination time had been taken care of. ‘He’s actually quite a talented person. He just can’t get it all together at times.’
‘Really?’ Mrs Smythe seemed distinctly unimpressed. ‘Well, I’m not sure I’d want him teaching my own children. Anyway, your own files are most pleasing, Mr Kent, and well up to the required standard. I shall definitely be recommending you for a pass. I wish you every good fortune with your written papers. And indeed, your career.’
She stood up and held out her hand, indicating that the examination had come to an end. I stood too, and shook the outstretched hand warmly.
‘Perhaps you’d send the next candidate in. I believe it should be a Mr Barton.’
Outside the room, Dudley was sitting on the last chair in the row with his left leg propped across two others. His trousers were partly rolled up and he was inspecting some bruises on his legs. His work, a haphazard pile of handwritten papers, was untidily stacked under the chair he was sitting on. Next to him, David Barton sat poring over his physics folder. He looked as though he hadn’t slept all night.
‘Hello,’ he said unhappily. ‘What’s it like, then?’
‘Not too bad, actually. Just a few questions on amino-acids and the sex life of the tsetse fly.’
‘Yeah? I don’t know much about the tsetse fly. Do you think he’d be willing to ask me questions about my own sex life instead?’
‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘He’s a woman.’
‘Really?’ Barton smiled. ‘Brilliant. I’ll just have to put on my natural charm then, won’t I?’ He licked his forefinger, smoothed back his eyebrows, and strode into the room confidently. I hurried off in the direction of Duggan’s room, to suggest he spent the remaining ten minutes learning something about the Channel Islands.