Saville (18 page)

‘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.

‘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.

‘By,’ he said. ‘You need some coal on that fire, Ellen. It’s freezing,’ looking up to add, ‘Well, then, did you get any of the answers?’

‘What did you get here, then, for number twelve?’ his father said. He brought a piece of paper and his red pencil to the table and, still keeping his greasy hands off the cloth, began to work it out.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, looking over his shoulder.

‘One pound, three and sixpence,’ his father said, staring at the paper, then crossing the sum out and starting again. ‘There’s a catch in that somewhere. I hope you were watching out.’

‘Now, let’s have the table and get him some tea,’ his mother said.

When the time came for his father to set off for work he hadn’t mended the chain. He went next door to borrow Mr Shaw’s bike and when he came back he said, ‘Don’t move any of those papers. I’ll work it out in the morning.’ The table was covered in calculations, some screwed up. ‘If it’s not thirty yards for number eleven,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure what it can be. I’ll ask Turner. He’ll know.’

When he went up to bed and drew his curtains he saw that it had begun to snow. It drifted down from the darkness in large flakes, driven up against the window. Already a thin layer covered the garden, outlining the declivities of the soil and leaving a dark space by the railings at the far end.

When his father came back in the morning the snow was plastered to his coat and his cap. It fell off in frozen crusts, sizzling in the hearth and melting in little pools on the floor. ‘Now, then,’ he said. ‘Where have you put the sums?’ slapping his hands together in his khaki gloves and rubbing his stockinged feet in the rug. The snow had frozen on his eyebrows and lay in a thin crust around his mouth.

The snow lasted for several days. Only the tips of the fences and the mounds of the air-raid shelters were visible in the yards.

Colin’s father came home the second morning an hour late. Across his back were roped several pieces of timber and two metal rails. ‘See here, I took these off a wagon,’ he said, unfastening the wood in the open door.

The snow was plastered to his boots, which he knocked against the outside wall, and to his trousers as far as his knees. It had been driven up and frozen on to the back of his coat. ‘I’ve pushed that’, he said, ‘through some stuff,’ banging the bike against the wall so that the snow, matted together between the spokes, fell off. The wood had been sawn into even lengths. Holes too had been drilled through the rusty rails. ‘I had Harris
joiner it at work,’ he said. ‘It won’t take more than a minute to put together.’

When Colin came home from school at lunch-time a sledge was standing half-completed against the kitchen wall. It was long and flat. In the hearth were the two metal rails and a hammer. One of the rails was bent at one end. ‘He’s been trying to curve those to fît underneath it,’ his mother said, indicating the thin rib of wood where the runner would have to be screwed.

‘I’ve never heard so much swearing,’ his grandfather said. ‘Not in one house, by one man, in one morning. It’s a wonder this place hasn’t turned bright red.’

When he came home at tea-time the sledge was finished. Pieces of wood still lay about the floor, the sledge itself turned upside down, his father polishing the runners. ‘This’ll go,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to keep your eyes skinned I think to catch it.’

Two holes had been burned through the wood at the front. A piece of rope had been knotted through. ‘Have your tea,’ he said, ‘then we’re off.’