David Storey - Saville

‘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.