Nine Till Three and Summers Free

by Mike Kent

  Dai halted abruptly and wagged a loaded shaving brush at him.

  ‘You see, boyo, that’s your problem. You’ve got no culture. No culture at all. I give you the benefit of my singin’ voice, and what sort of thanks do I get? None at all.’

  ‘What do you expect at this time in the morning, you Welsh leek! What are you trying to do? Make me cut myself shaving?’ He turned on a tap, and the pipes emitted a loud gurgling whine. ‘Jesus, Dai, even the plumbing sings better than you,’ he said sarcastically.

  Dai took hold of Frank’s arm, looked him gently in the eyes, and began to croon ‘There’ll be a Welcome in the Hillside’ at him. Frank looked faintly nauseated, and I concentrated on removing the morning shadow from my face as quickly as possible, making a mental note to get my electric shaver repaired. Duggan entered the washroom looking as if he hadn’t slept for a fortnight.

  ‘Would you mind if I purloined your soap?’ he asked, taking the sink next to me before realising there wasn’t a plug in it. ‘I feel like I’ve eaten mine.’

  ‘Here, boyo, have mine,’ offered Dai. ‘Smells like the Welsh valleys.’

  ‘Christ!’ Frank muttered.

  Duggan accepted the soap gratefully and wandered around looking for a sink with a tap that worked.

  ‘There’s no hot water,’ I said. You’ll have to wash in cold.’

  ‘Wonderful. I really need that. Still, I suppose it’ll wake me up.’

  The group gradually lapsed into silence. It seemed that in order to make the most of the washroom’s inadequate facilities, it was best to arrive as early as possible. I later discovered that Gerry had risen at five thirty, washed before anybody else, and gone off for a twenty minute run.

  Duggan and I were among the first few down to breakfast, a substantial meal with a good choice of food, and this at least made us feel more confident about tackling our brief for the morning, which was to meet our main subject lecturers. Gerry set off to put his name down for the geography course, while Duggan and I decided to track down the science department.

  A map of the college had been pinned to a blackboard in the main corridor, and we studied it carefully. An hour later, after repeatedly meeting other first year students either in the boiler room or the basement lavatories instead of our intended destinations, we realised that the map had been craftily doctored. The third year students responsible for this were also getting a great deal of enjoyment from offering inaccurate directions to every lecture room in the college and then standing back to enjoy the confusion. It felt rather like an unsuccessful hour wandering around Hampton Court maze.

  Eventually, we discovered one of the laboratories almost by accident. A note had been fastened to the door stating that new students should sit and wait on the chairs outside, and it had been signed by the head of the science department, Dr Frost. Nobody else was waiting, and I knocked gingerly on the door. There was no answer.

  ‘He’s gone home,’ said Duggan.

  ‘Perhaps he hasn’t arrived yet’.

  ‘Knock again. Perhaps he’s deaf. Perhaps he’s in the middle of an exciting experiment. Perhaps he’s asleep.’

  I knocked again. There was still no answer.

  ‘Let’s go and have a coffee,’ Duggan suggested. ‘We’ll come back in half an hour.’

  ‘We’d better wait for a minute at least.’

  Three other students joined us, one dressed in a grey suit and immaculately knotted tie. They nodded briefly, and sat down on the row of chairs.

  ‘Are you waiting to see Dr Frost?’ the student in the suit asked.

  ‘I don’t think he’s here,’ said Duggan.

  ‘Have you knocked?’

  ‘Twice,’ I said.

  ‘Knock again,’ urged Duggan. ‘Loudly.’

  I rapped my knuckles on the door and leapt away from it as a voice thundered from inside. ‘Bloody well come in!’

  ‘I think he might be in after all,’ said Duggan, smiling encouragement. ‘Your turn first.’

  I stepped tentatively into the small laboratory and stood waiting for a further instruction from the man and woman confronting me.

  ‘Well shut the door and sit down, lad,’ said the man. ‘There’s a force nine gale whipping through this place every time the door opens and if we carry on this way we’ll all be in bed with double pneumonia. Didn’t you hear me calling you?’

  ‘No. I knocked…’

  ‘I know you knocked, lad. Half of London heard you. I even heard you the first time. God knows why you couldn’t just knock and come in.’

  I perched gingerly on the edge of the chair that had been placed strategically in front of a long, formica-topped table. Dr Frost was, I estimated, about forty years old, though his bushy grey eyebrows and furrowed forehead made him seem older. There was a meticulous neatness about his white-coated appearance that reflected a scientist’s concern for detail.

  Sitting next to him was a slightly built woman of similar age, dressed a little dowdily in a white blouse and grey skirt, who sat with her hands folded in her lap. She wore small tortoise shell spectacles and her hair was tied neatly in a bun. Though cautiously friendly, she seemed a little ill at ease in Dr Frost’s presence. Despite its modest size, the laboratory was lined with shelves containing science books and apparatus, some of it damaged and labelled for urgent repair, and the window sill was filled with a variety of pot plants in various stages of flower.

  ‘Right,’ Dr Frost muttered irritably. ‘Name?’

  ‘Kent, Sir,’ I offered, rather disorientated. ‘Michael Kent, that is.’

  ‘Make your mind up, lad. And which of the sciences did you wish to attempt?’ His thick eyebrows raised questioningly as he glowered impatiently at me.

  ‘All three,’ I replied brightly. ‘After my interview with Dr Bradley I decided I’d rather like to have a go at the combined course.’

  He seemed acutely disappointed, and stared hard at me. ‘Would you indeed, lad? Well, Miss Bottle does most of that.’

  I turned briefly to Miss Bottle, who smiled encouragingly but said nothing. It was obvious that she disliked Dr Frost’s manner but had grown accustomed to it, hoping that offering an occasional smile to a bewildered newcomer might ease things along a little.

  ‘Well,’ resumed Dr Frost bluntly, ‘The course is a full one and there’s a great deal of work to be done. That means you’ll have to work like the devil to achieve anything at all, lad. Especially if you intend to produce reasonable results in three year’s time. Three years might seem like an eternity to you, but some of the idiots who’ve left here without a smattering of physics in their addled brains have proved that it isn’t. I lecture in physics, so you’ll be seeing quite a lot of me.’

  He smiled, a little desperately.

  ‘Miss Bottle lectures in the other sciences, and you’ll attend her classes twice a week. For the moment, anyway, until we’ve had a chance to find out whether you’re any good or not. There are plenty of opportunities for extra study and you’ll be expected to make full use of them. Three lectures a week are hardly enough and you’ll have to do a lot on your own, lad. You’ve studied mathematics and physics to the advanced level of course?’

  ‘I have chemistry,’ I replied. ‘And maths, but not at ‘A’ level.’

  Dr Frost stared at me in disbelief.

  ‘You haven’t? What the devil is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Well, basically, it means I haven’t passed maths at ‘A’ level.’

  ‘But you do have ordinary level at maths?’ whispered Miss Bottle. I nodded eagerly.

  ‘You won’t get far on ordinary level maths, lad!’ Dr Frost exclaimed, his eyebrows pumping up and down in harmony. ‘How on earth do you intend teaching in a school if you can’t tell a square root from a bulbous one?’ He turned and glowered at Miss Bottle, who sat bolt upright with fright.

&nbs
p; ‘After all,’ he continued, staring at the point of his pencil as if daring it to break, ‘If you can’t pass a simple ‘A’ level in maths, how do you expect to pass combined science? Mind you, ninety per cent of last year’s lot probably had difficulty passing water.’

  He stood up, rummaged through a cardboard box and pulled out a pencil sharpener. With meticulous precision, he proceeded to put a needle-sharp point on his pencil before he spoke again.

  ‘And what have you been doing in the sixth form, lad? Anything?’

  ‘Mr Kent has English and chemistry at the advanced level,’ said Miss Bottle, helpfully. I gave her a mental gold star for at least doing a little research on her prospective students.

  ‘Really?’ grunted Dr Frost, unimpressed. ‘Well it seems a damn funny combination to me. Have you thought of doing something else for your main, lad?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, a little testily. ‘But I would prefer to do science.’

  ‘Would you indeed? Well, I’d prefer to play golf all day, but I can’t. This point is, are you actually any good at science? I can’t have people deciding they want to pack it in halfway through the course. Damn sight better to find out now if you’re going to keep up with me or collapse from exhaustion before we get to the laws of refraction.’

  He got out of his seat and walked to the window. For a few moments he stared moodily out at the rain, and then seemed to relax a little.

  ‘Oh, well, I suppose it doesn’t matter provided you catch up in your spare time. Which course are you doing?’

  ‘He’s doing the course for teaching primary children,’ smiled Miss Bottle.

  ‘Hmm. Well, you won’t have much opportunity for doing science with them, lad. All you’ll do with seven year olds is potter about outside in a patch of dirt growing carrots, or try to make a broad bean grow in a test tube full of wet blotting paper. And there’s a few who’ve passed out from here who’d even make a muck of that!’ He snorted miserably, and Miss Bottle sprang to the attack.

  ‘I really don’t think that’s quite true,’ she interrupted severely. ‘A great deal of scientific investigation is done in the best primary classrooms. It’s becoming an important part of the primary curriculum. Why, I..’

  ‘I rather doubt that,’ interrupted Dr Frost, dismissing her view immediately. ‘I can’t say I’ve seen much worthwhile activity from some of the idiots I’ve visited on teaching practice. Not that you need a great deal of mental agility to grow a bloody broad bean.’

  He turned from the window and took the lid from the teapot on the table, peering inside as if he half expected a chemical reaction to be taking place. The interview seemed to be growing into a private, and, I suspected, regularly aired argument.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Miss Bottle objected. ‘It’s quite amazing what some of the younger children are doing. I’ve even seen Nursery children experimenting most interestingly with sinking and flotation, and…’

  ‘I really can’t see the point, Doris. Good God, you might at least wait until they’re old enough to understand what they’re doing.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but they do understand what they’re doing,’ Miss Bottle insisted, clinging grimly to her end of the argument. ‘That is the point, surely? They gather materials, experiment scientifically without knowing exactly why, and then question their results with the guidance of the teacher. Why, I..’

  ‘I’m sorry Doris, I still don’t see it. You’ve got to get a few basic facts into ‘em before they can get anywhere…

  ‘Not at all. There’s no reason…’

  ‘Oh come now, Doris. Don’t give Kent this ‘learning by discovery’ stuff. We want him to start off with a reasonable chance of success. I mean, would he learn anything about electromagnetic waves if I stuck a transistor radio in front of him? You wouldn’t learn a thing, would you Kent?’ My head began to dodge to and fro between the two lecturers like a spectator at a Wimbledon final.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ I said cautiously, realising a careful response was required. ‘I think..’

  ‘There you are!’ retorted Dr Frost triumphantly, slapping the table with a meaty hand. ‘He wouldn’t learn a bloody thing!’

  ‘But educational ideas and values change so rapidly’ argued Miss Bottle, revealing a staying power I was rapidly coming to admire. ‘I think you’d be quite amazed..’

  ‘I am amazed,’ he said. ‘Each year I am amazed. I stood in a student’s classroom last year and watched him take a lesson about heat with nine year olds. He’d hardly had time to tell ‘em what heat was before they found out for themselves and set the bloody table alight.’

  Miss Bottle, who had held her ground respectably up to now, sighed and declined from further argument, and Dr Frost suddenly seemed to remember there were others waiting outside to see him.

  ‘Anyway, Kent,’ he said, closing the folder in front of him, ‘That will be all for now. There is a general lecture in the chemistry laboratory tomorrow morning at nine o’clock. It would be appreciated if you could actually manage to get here at nine, as well.’

  I stood up to go. ‘Have you got any text books?’ he asked in a softer voice.

  ‘I’ve bought the ones listed on the sheet I was sent before coming here.’

  ‘Well, they’re not much good. Years out of date, most of ‘em. I make a new list every year and they still send the old one out. Waste of my time as usual. Here, you’d better have this. Make sure you get the first two before you come to any of my lectures, will you?’ He passed me a typewritten sheet of paper, listing a completely different set of books.

  ‘I suggest you try the Charing Cross Road if the college bookshop hasn’t got ‘em. Half the students never seem to buy the bloody things anyway, or if they do they use ‘em for standing mugs of coffee on. And do a bit of reading before next week, will you? I don’t want to spend my first lecture going over the scientific principles behind the workings of a wheelbarrow.’

  Miss Bottle smiled apologetically at me. ‘We’ll see you bright and early tomorrow morning then, Mr Kent,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget a note book, will you.’

  ‘And don’t slam the door,’ said Dr Frost.

  I closed the door as quietly as I could and motioned to Duggan, who was talking earnestly to the student in the grey suit.

  ‘What’s he like?’ asked Duggan cautiously.

  ‘Dreadful. He’s like a wild bull. You’d better say you’ve got ‘A’ levels in everything. In fact, you’d better speak to him from a kneeling position.’

  Duggan looked alarmed. ‘Oh God, he won’t exactly be carried away by my little lot, then. The bloke I’ve just been talking to over there knows more than Einstein. Honestly. Daines, I think his name was. Another bloke mentioned an LP he’s just bought and Daines started talking about second harmonic peaks in loudspeakers. We’d better make sure he gets in our group. We can copy his work.’

  ‘It’s not going to be easy’ I said miserably. ‘Dr Frost seems to think this subject has the highest failure rate in the college.’

  Duggan shrugged unhappily. ‘Well I don’t suppose I’ll be doing much to alter that,’ he said. ‘I should have stuck to plasticine modelling. I was always good for the odd coil pot.’

  ‘I’ll go and put the kettle on. You’ll need a strong coffee after the next fifteen minutes.’

  ‘God, you make it sound like a dental extraction. I…’

  The door of the laboratory burst open and Dr Frost glared at the row of chairs.

  ‘Who’s next?’ he said sharply.

  ‘I think I am,’ Duggan replied.

  ‘Well, are you coming in or not? I’ve got plenty to do without sitting in here all day. And I shouldn’t stand around if I were you, Kent. You could have bought half the booklist by now. Go to it, lad!’

  I took a deep breath, glanced in sympathy at Duggan, and then hurried out of the laborator
y and back to corridor three. It seemed strangely quiet and I felt vaguely guilty, as if I was truanting from lessons and shouldn’t have been there. I assumed the other inhabitants of the corridor were still making arrangements for the coming lectures which began in two days time. There was an hour and a half left until lunchtime, and I went to my room to fetch a towel, some soap and a flannel. After my experiences in the washroom earlier that morning, I decided I might be able to have a warm bath in reasonable comfort while nobody else was about.

  The bathroom was opposite the washroom, and showed a family resemblance to it. There were two large cast iron baths with decorative feet, and the baths were separated by a thin dividing wall that had been patched with pieces of hardboard. I stepped into the small room and attempted to lock the door, but part of the lock had been broken off and I wedged it shut with a piece of paper. There was a sudden rustling behind me.

  ‘‘Ello, love’ said a husky, disembodied voice from the direction of the bath. I turned to find Milly propped up on a pillow and lying fully clothed in the empty bath.

  ‘Just ‘ad one of me funny turns,’ she said, obviously feeling I deserved an explanation, ‘It ‘elps if I lay down in ‘ere. I’d lay on one of your beds but I couldn’t trust some of you saucy buggers!’ She lurched into a sitting position, took some tobacco, papers and a rolling machine out of her apron pocket, and began to make a cigarette. ‘I always roll ‘em meself. They don’t cost so much that way,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to roll you one?’

  ‘It’s very bad for you, Milly,’ I said. ‘Filling your lungs with that stuff.’

  ‘Well they’re my lungs, ain’t they love? Got to ‘ave a bit of enjoyment, ‘aven’t yer?’

  Hunting in her overall pockets for some matches, she struck one and held the flame to the cigarette. Two thirds of the tiny tube disappeared immediately. She took a long draw from the remaining third, coughed earnestly and turned to me again.

  ‘‘Ow are you findin’ the work?’

  ‘We haven’t really got going yet. I don’t suppose we’ll do very much before Thursday.’

  ‘Nobody does anythin’ very much anyway, love. Not ‘ere. Want to teach in London, do yer?’