Saville

by David Storey

  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.’

  ‘Are you any good at sums?’ Stafford said as they waited in the queue.

  ‘Not really,’ he said.

  ‘Decimals,’ Stafford said. ‘We’ve only just started them at school. Last year they weren’t as difficult as this.’

  Bletchley was already sitting at one of the tables in the hall when they went in, writing something on a piece of paper for the benefit of the boy sitting beside him, then slowly shaking his head and pointing at the paper with his fork. Reagan, with his satchel round his shoulders, stood at the back of the queue searching in his pockets for money, then came to the woman at the door and shook his head. Finally his name was taken and he was allowed in.<
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  ‘Intelligence after dinner,’ Stafford said. ‘Last year one was, “What has a face, a pair of hands, a figure but not often any legs?” Can you guess?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘A clock.’ Stafford laughed, leaning back on the bench where they were eating. He ate in much the same way that he wrote, sitting well back from the table.

  ‘Did you finish all the sums?’ Bletchley said as he went past.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘I finished half an hour early. But they wouldn’t let me out. Did you get eighty-four for number nine?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve got it wrong, then,’ he said and glancing at Stafford went on to the door.

  After lunch, when he returned from a walk, the yard was full of children. Reagan was sitting in the porch eating an apple. Bletchley was standing, leaning against the wall beside him, eating an orange.

  When they went in the teacher, who was already standing by her desk, had said, ‘Some boys have been writing on their blotting-paper. This is not allowed. All the blotting-paper that has been written on has been changed and anyone caught writing on it, or printing anything on it whatsoever, will find themselves in serious trouble.’

  The examination paper was given out. It was a small book with a space left for an answer beside each question.

  The woman teacher put her handbag on the desk and took her watch from her wrist and laid it on the lid before her. After a certain shuffling of chairs and the occasional groan or gasp which greeted the first reading of the paper, the room fell silent. A dog began barking in the yard outside, and on the viaduct another engine passed. A cloud of steam, caught by a gust of wind, condensed against the windows.

  The first question was, ‘Complete the following sequence of figures: 7 11 19 35 –.’ The second was: ‘If a man in the desert walks north north east for five miles, south south east for five miles, east south east for five miles, west south west for five miles, south south west for five miles, north north west for five miles, west north west for five miles, east north east for five miles; (i) at what point will he have arrived? (ii) Describe but do not draw the shape his footprints will have left in the sand.’

  Perhaps it was this question he saw Stafford answering, for he was drawing with his pen on the back of his wrist, occasionally looking up at the teacher behind the desk then licking his finger and rubbing it out. Another question was, ‘Which is the odd one out and why: a rectangle, a parallelogram, a circle, a rhomboid, a triangle, a square?’

  The boy sitting next to him had laid his cheek again on the desk and with his pen was inking in a shape on the desk top, his tongue sticking out between his teeth, his eyes distorted. Beyond him, in the next row, a boy had screwed up his face, bringing his eyebrows down over the bridge of his nose, and from beneath this was gazing fixedly at the teacher.

  Finally, when the teacher said, ‘There are twenty minutes left. You should now be on question eighteen or nineteen if you are doing them in order,’ a heavy groan came up from the back of the room and a moment later someone else had laughed.

  When the papers had been collected they were allowed outside.

  ‘Do you know what the boy next to me wrote?’, Stafford said. ‘For that question about the man in the desert who walks all the way round the compass?’ He walked beside Colin, his hands in his pockets, kicking his feet against the ground. ‘Where it said “at what point will he have arrived?” he wrote “potty”. I saw it as they collected them up.’

  A wind had sprung up since lunch-time and clouds of paper were blown across the yard, drifting up against the wall of the building then swirling round.

  ‘I’ve run out of ink,’ Stafford said. ‘I’ll have to fill up with this school ink. It rots the rubber.’ He unscrewed the pen to show him. ‘Do you want a sweet?’ he added. ‘They’re to give you energy. I’ve forgotten them until now.’ He ran off across the playground, taking out a piece of paper and standing with a group of boys in the door, comparing answers.

  Reagan was standing against the school wall with his satchel still strung round him, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched up against the wind. When Bletchley came across he said, ‘Did you get number seven? Half of them have written rhomboid because they didn’t know what it was.’

  ‘What was it, then?’ he said.

  ‘A circle,’ Bletchley said. ‘It’s the only one that hasn’t got a straight line.’ His face was flushed, his eyes watering slightly from the wind. From his satchel, which he carried under his arm, he took out a piece of chocolate. ‘One boy in our room got disqualified,’ he said. ‘He’d written down the answers on a piece of paper to pass to somebody else. Did you hear the shouting?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘That’s him over there.’

  Bletchley pointed him out but he couldn’t see him. When they went back in fresh sheets of paper had been given out and the woman behind the desk was smoking a cigarette which, the moment they came in, she put out.

  Later, when they came out, Stafford said, ‘Which subject did you write about?’

  ‘The war,’ he said.

  ‘I wrote about the pit hooter “blaring out the emergency signal”. I’ve never seen a disaster. Have you?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘What else did you write about?’

  ‘My favourite hobby.’

  ‘I wrote about an historical character. King Canute.’

  ‘Do you know anything about him?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not much.’ When they reached the buses standing in the street outside he said, ‘Which one are you on?’ and when he pointed it out he added, ‘I’m on the one behind. I’ll see you. Good luck,’ standing outside however with several boys until Colin had climbed on.

  As he sat down Bletchley, who was in the seat behind, leaned over and said, ‘You know what Reagan’s done? In the essay he wrote about the nurse, writing home to her parents,’ continuing to lean forward slightly while he laughed in his ear.

  Reagan, who was sitting beside him, his satchel on his knee, smiled slightly, gazing across at him then out at the school and the yard where, in the faint light, several boys were playing football.

  ‘There are male nurses,’ a boy said who was standing up in his seat behind Bletchley.

  ‘Male nurses,’ Bletchley said, glancing at Reagan then, falling back in his seat, slapping his knee. He winced then, slightly, drawing down his brows, frowning. His knees were reddened from the wind and he held them apart.

  The bus moved out of the village. Gusts of wind swept under the door, swirling the tickets between the seats. It was growing dark and the sky had begun to fade against the mass of fields and trees outside. Inside the bus itself the dull blue lights came on.

  Low grey clouds scudded across the sky. Someone at the back of the bus had begun to sing.

  When they reached the village Mrs Bletchley was waiting at the bus stop with Mrs Reagan. ‘You’ve been a long time, mister,’ she said to the driver.

  ‘Nay, missis,’ he said, ‘you can’t drive fast down these lanes,’ lighting a cigarette then and laying his hands on the radiator cap to warm them, stamping his feet in the road.

  ‘How did you get on, Ian?’ she asked Bletchley, pulling his scarf more tightly round his neck and fastening the top button of his coat. ‘You’ll catch your death of cold. How was it?’

  ‘Easy,’ he said. ‘Michael wrote a composition about nurses.’

  ‘About a nurse,’ Reagan said to his mother in case she might complain.

  ‘Oh, well. That’s very good,’ Mrs Bletchley said. ‘We better get home for a hot meal.’

  They walked down the street together, Bletchley getting out one of his examination papers from his satchel and showing the questions to his mother in the dark. She flashed a torch on to the paper, not troubling to read it, but saying, ‘Ian you’ve done very well, I can see.’

  Mrs Reagan had taken Reagan’s satchel, holding it in
one hand and holding Reagan with the other.

  ‘You’d think they’d have an easier way than this for sitting the scholarship,’ she said.

  ‘You would,’ Mrs Bletchley said, clapping Bletchley’s gloved hand between her own to keep it warm.

  When they reached their respective front doors they called good night and went in. Colin went round the back assuming that now the day was over the privilege of using the front door had probably expired.

  When he went in his father’s bike was standing upside down on a sheet of newspaper in the kitchen, his father kneeling beside it, the chain hanging down from the rear wheel. His grandfather was sitting by the fire asleep.

  ‘How did you get on?’ his father said, looking up. ‘We were just thinking of coming down to the bus stop to find you.’

  ‘All right,’ he said.

  ‘What were the papers like?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘All right,’ and shrugged.

  His father watched him intently for a moment then glanced away. ‘My chain’s broken,’ he said.’ ‘And I’m off to work in an hour. You haven’t seen a spare link, have you, lying on the floor?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘I meant this morning.’

  ‘No,’ he said, and shook his head.

  His father looked around a little longer on the floor, under the cupboards and the table, then stood up. ‘Well, then,’ he said. ‘Let’s see what they’re like.’

  He took the papers out of his pocket and put them on the table. Then he took off his coat.

  ‘Is there any tea?’ he said.

  ‘There is. There is,’ his father said, stooping over the table and trying to examine the papers without actually touching them with his blackened hands. ‘See,’ he said. ‘Just turn this one over. Thirty-four. That looks right to me.’

  His mother came down, calling behind her to Steven, whom she had just put to bed, then closing the door and saying, ‘Well, then, I thought I heard you. How did it go?’ going to the kettle, filling it and putting it on the fire.

  ‘He’s one or two right here,’ his father said, nodding his head now, almost laughing. By the fire his grandfather opened his eyes, which were red and watery, gazing blankly at the ceiling a moment. Then, groaning, he leaned forward and ran his hand across his face.