David Storey - Saville

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.

‘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.