by Kim Newman
Your parents seem to think it their right that you to go to Marling’s and wear a silly cap, do a hundred hours of homework a week and be keelhauled by prefects. They elaborately do not blame you for your failure. They take you to the school for your interview and keep on at you in the car. ‘If they ask you why you want to go to Marling’s, say you want to work in the bank,’ Dad says. ‘Just don’t get nervous,’ Mum puts in. Mum thinks you panicked under pressure and says it’s ridiculous to decide a person’s entire life based on how they feel on a random day in early spring when they are eleven. Dad just huffs and insists you say (pretend) you want to work in a bank. That would be a lie. You now think the Exam People can tell when you are lying. When you grow up, you want to walk on the moon like Neil Armstrong.
Your parents sit outside Mr Brunt’s office, as if waiting to be punished, and you’re sent in. The Exam Person is called Mrs Vreeland, and has glasses that look like plastic bird’s-wings with windows in them. Mr Brunt smokes cigarettes throughout the interview, which makes the room stinky. It is Mrs Vreeland who talks to you.
First, she takes out your test paper — you recognise your name neatly printed at the top — and looks over it. You see red ticks and crosses by your answers.
‘Cow, goat, lion, chicken, pig,’ she says. ‘Why is chicken the odd one out?’
You didn’t expect to have to explain why you gave an answer.
‘Because it’s a bird,’ you say.
Mrs Vreeland looks at Mr Brunt.
‘And what are the others?’
You can’t say ‘farm animals’, because no one would believe you thought lions were kept for meat or milk.
‘Animals,’ you say, mumbling.
‘Mammals?’
You nod. Mrs Vreeland looks at Mr Blunt again and writes something down.
‘You don’t like mathematics much, Keith? Sums?’
You shake your head, no.
‘What’s six away from twelve?’
That’s easy. ‘Six.’
‘Not five?’
You remember that’s what you put in the exam. Mrs Vreeland makes another note and puts your exam paper in a folder.
‘Are you afraid of anything, Keith?’
Almost everything, you think. Prefects.
‘No.’
‘We want to help you. You haven’t done anything wrong. You aren’t being punished.’
You don’t say anything.
‘Draw me a picture,’ she says, giving you paper and a pencil. ‘What do you like to draw?’
‘Outer space.’
‘Draw me an outer space picture. Draw me a grown-up in space.’
As you work on the picture, Mrs Vreeland talks to you, asking who your friends are (Shane and Paul), what you would like for Christmas (a bigger bicycle), if you have brothers and sisters (yes), what you like on television (Doctor Who, Captain Scarlet).
‘Keith, what do you want to be when you grow up?’
If you say you want to work in a bank, read 20 and go to 66. If you say you want to be an astronaut, read 20 and go to 21.
16
At Dr Marling’s, you excel in Latin and French. You get bashed about a bit on the rugby pitch but develop a lifelong passion for cricket. You find most schoolwork stimulating and engaging. You make new friends: Mark Amphlett, Roger Cunningham, Gully Eastment. You realise the kids you knew at primary school were put off by the way your mind skips ahead; at Marling’s, others can keep up with or outpace you. Everybody hates the uniform and writhes under the tyrannical rule of prefects. You bond for life, as if you’d been through a war together rather than suffered double geography on Thursday afternoon.
‘That school’s certainly bucked him up,’ you overhear Dad saying.
You resent that. The school hasn’t changed you. You’d have changed anyway. You’re growing up.
You take part in school activities: trips to France, plays, junior cricket fixtures. In your year, you are a star. It makes you a bit uncomfortable, but flamboyant eccentrics like Michael Dixon and Gully draw most of the fire. You’re just a regular bloke.
The school puts on Henry IV, Part 1. Michael buries himself under cushions and a false beard as Falstaff, but you get all the reviews as Hotspur. You enjoy your death scene and re-enact it whenever you’re asked.
Some people think you’re a prig. When Stephen Adlard offers you a cigarette in Denbeigh Gardens, you instinctively quote ‘Bobby Moore says “smoking is a mugs’ game”‘. You cringe at your self-righteousness but have no desire to suck nicotine death. There’s a little pressure on you to be less perfect but you don’t feel like anybody’s ideal so there’s not much you can do.
Maths and physics are as hard for you as for anybody. Your languages skills are a fluke, the way your brain is arranged. You are top in Latin and French, and third or fourth in English, history and art.
At thirteen, it occurs to you that single-sex eduction is a bad thing. By then, Marling’s is on a countdown to extinction.
Read 18, go to 24.
17
Blit blurt …
Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing the first time they saw a spider.
You were quite young, in town, on your own, a little out of sorts.
It was nothing you could put your finger on, but you were dissatisfied. It might have been your health. You were coming down with flu. Or it could just have been life, playing its usual tricks. You were frankly in a rut.
You were wishing. Not for what you got — good God, no, never that — but for something. A change, of course. A shake-up.
You had always thought of yourself as ordinary. At that moment, as the shade was spreading, you were no longer content with that.
Then, on the Corn Exchange steps, for no reason, you looked up. And saw huge, red compound eyes. A wide face floating in a cloud of black shadow. Extending telegraph-pole legs, thickly bristled with black spines. And nothing was ever the same again.
… blit blurt.
18
Here’s what happens in 1974. The tripartite educational system that has obtained in Britain since the war is transforming into a comprehensive system. What this means in Sedgwater is that the three main schools are combined. Dr Marling’s Grammar School for Boys, the Girls’ Grammar and Hemphill Secondary Modern become Ash Grove Comprehensive. The new school, which is named after your old primary school, is split between the sites that used to house Dr Marling’s and Hemphill. The Girls’ Grammar buildings become part of Sedgwater College, where you might go if you don’t leave school at sixteen, and where Laraine is studying for her A Levels.
As a fourth year, you are taught on the site that used to be Dr Marling’s, though mostly in new, prefab buildings swiftly erected on what used to be the tennis courts, rather than in the old classrooms arranged around the central quadrangle. The most unbelievable thing that happens in the change-over is that the tie you’re all forced to wear is designed by overlaying the colours of all three schools to produce a hideous combination of lemon yellow, blood crimson, lime green, violent pink, eggshell blue and dayglo orange. Jason King wouldn’t wear one but a whole generation is compelled to hang these psychedelic eyesores round their necks.
You find yourself back with children you haven’t seen since infants’ school, and are mixed with several lots of kids — notably, the mysterious beauties of the Girls’ Grammar — who are entirely new to you. On the first day, Mrs Barringer, the youngish woman freshly appointed as head of the new school, gets up at Assembly and gives a speech. All bets are off, she says, and we’re starting anew. You are all capable of leaving behind the dead past and making new lives for yourselves. You don’t believe her. You have already found your course, and you are set on it. Nothing can change that.
Go on to 23
18
Here’s what happens in 1974. The tripartite educational system that has obtained in Britain since the war is transforming into a comprehensive system. What this means in Sedgwater is th
at the three main schools are combined. Dr Marling’s Grammar School for Boys, the Girls’ Grammar and Hemphill Secondary Modern become Ash Grove Comprehensive. The new school, which is named after your old primary school, is split between the sites that used to house Dr Marling’s and Hemphill. The Girls’ Grammar buildings become part of Sedgwater College, where you might go if you don’t leave school at sixteen, and where Laraine is studying for her A Levels.
As a fourth year, you are taught on the site that used to be Dr Marling’s, though mostly in new, prefab buildings swiftly erected on what used to be the tennis courts, rather than in the old classrooms arranged around the central quadrangle. The most unbelievable thing that happens in the change-over is that the tie you’re all forced to wear is designed by overlaying the colours of all three schools to produce a hideous combination of lemon yellow, blood crimson, lime green, violent pink, eggshell blue and dayglo orange. Jason King wouldn’t wear one but a whole generation is compelled to hang these psychedelic eyesores round their necks.
You find yourself back with children you haven’t seen since infants’ school, and are mixed with several lots of kids — notably, the mysterious beauties of the Girls’ Grammar — who are entirely new to you. On the first day, Mrs Barringer, the youngish woman freshly appointed as head of the new school, gets up at Assembly and gives a speech. All bets are off, she says, and we’re starting anew. You are all capable of leaving behind the dead past and making new lives for yourselves. You don’t believe her. You have already found your course, and you are set on it. Nothing can change that.
Go on to 19
18
Here’s what happens in 1974. The tripartite educational system that has obtained in Britain since the war is transforming into a comprehensive system. What this means in Sedgwater is that the three main schools are combined. Dr Marling’s Grammar School for Boys, the Girls’ Grammar and Hemphill Secondary Modern become Ash Grove Comprehensive. The new school, which is named after your old primary school, is split between the sites that used to house Dr Marling’s and Hemphill. The Girls’ Grammar buildings become part of Sedgwater College, where you might go if you don’t leave school at sixteen, and where Laraine is studying for her A Levels.
As a fourth year, you are taught on the site that used to be Dr Marling’s, though mostly in new, prefab buildings swiftly erected on what used to be the tennis courts, rather than in the old classrooms arranged around the central quadrangle. The most unbelievable thing that happens in the change-over is that the tie you’re all forced to wear is designed by overlaying the colours of all three schools to produce a hideous combination of lemon yellow, blood crimson, lime green, violent pink, eggshell blue and dayglo orange. Jason King wouldn’t wear one but a whole generation is compelled to hang these psychedelic eyesores round their necks.
You find yourself back with children you haven’t seen since infants’ school, and are mixed with several lots of kids — notably, the mysterious beauties of the Girls’ Grammar — who are entirely new to you. On the first day, Mrs Barringer, the youngish woman freshly appointed as head of the new school, gets up at Assembly and gives a speech. All bets are off, she says, and we’re starting anew. You are all capable of leaving behind the dead past and making new lives for yourselves. You don’t believe her. You have already found your course, and you are set on it. Nothing can change that.
Go on to 24
19
In September 1974, you start going to Ash Grove. You really draw ahead of the pack. At first, it’s odd. You’d got used to the other runners. Now there are new contestants, from the Girls’ Grammar. One or two smart kids from Hemphill, even, nip at the heels of the pack, almost catching up. You don’t have to worry about them: they’ve been hobbled. The girls are more worrying. Mary Yatman, whom you’ve not seen since infants’ school, has subdued her monster and become a blonde calculating-machine. If it ever came down to a race between champions, she’d be put up against you. But you can’t ignore Victoria Conyer, who has a bell-like singing voice and a trick memory, or Rowena Douglass, a tiny mouse who threatens to equal your fluency in French and German and is taking Spanish as well.
As you expect, Shane is the first to fall by the side of the track. Without the rigidly enforced discipline of Marling’s, he loses his way. His marks decline drastically and no amount of cramming or extra tuition helps. Almost overnight, he slips from the fast stream and finds himself in with a remedial wedge of Hemphill kids, looking to leave school at sixteen. He joins the Trouble-Causers and disrupts many of his lessons. You don’t see him much at break, since he’s usually off somewhere smoking or hanging around the younger girls he tries to impress with his hardness. The one time you took a serious drag on a cigarette, you coughed your lungs out and swore never to touch one again.
Roger Cunningham soon follows, not quite as disastrously. He is the first of your group to find a steady girlfriend, Rowena. This takes out two runners at the same time: Roger and Rowena slacken and can’t prop each other up. Neither will fail, but they aren’t threats to you any more. Though still under five feet tall, Rowena sprouts enormous breasts, which become objects of much discussion. Roger sprouts a permanent grin but sometimes it is fixed and humourless. Despite what he says, you think Rowena hasn’t let him handle the goods.
You run through your two-year O level course and score nine passes, none at lower than grade B. Even Mary gets a C in English lit. Shane leaves school and goes to work at the jam factory, assisting the driver of a delivery van. For a while, he is the richest kid you know, with an unimaginable wage packet of £25 a week and the use of the van once he learns to drive. You overcome envy, realising Shane has been sidetracked by the short term. You can put off the gratification of financial independence from your parents for several more years. What is important is to keep running.
After the long, hot summer of 1976, you go on to Sedgwater College, where you don’t have to wear a uniform and are required to take only three subjects: French, German, history. You are asked to think harder but this keeps you fresh. It is tougher on your competition than on you. Laraine is at university in East Anglia, reading geography. You know you can do better, and start thinking about Oxford colleges.
Unexpectedly, Victoria Conyer stumbles in the first year at college. Her parents have been training her from infancy, and she revolts. Tired of being clever all her life (she hasn’t had many friends at school, suffering the catty envy of all), she decides to be stupid. Graham, who broke up with Laraine when she left for university, starts going out with Victoria and has her sing in his band. Overnight, she exchanges sensible blouses and skirts for greasy leather and ragged jeans. She dyes her hair white and chops it randomly, becoming by default the town’s first punk. You knew Graham was a trap, waiting for someone. Now, Victoria is lost. She stays at college but risks expulsion by openly smoking dope in the common room. That seems a hippie thing to do, but she is openly scornful of all things hair-headed, which you see irritates Graham. She keeps pushing the group, currently called Vicky’s Vomiteers, to be more ‘radical’.
Stephen Adlard, you realise, was never really in the race. You were misled by his neatness, his skill at presentation. Incapable of independent thought, he recycles expected answers in his perfect handwriting, with soullessly ideal diagrams. He will survive, prosper even, but never catch you. A sexless, faceless nobody, he is doomed. If you think about it, you picture him becoming an estate agent or council inspector. Living death in an office, making regular mortgage payments.
You are out in front.
If you ever look around, you’re surprised to find your only real competition comes from mad people, Mary Yatman and Gully Eastment. Mary hasn’t hurt anyone badly in years but you remember what she was like when her monster was around and leave her alone to get on with it. Gully straggles all over the place — he plays drums in Graham’s band and has a fifteen-year-old girlfriend, Bronagh Carey — but keeps revealing unexpected resources. If he lags behind, he puts on a
spurt and catches up. He is in trouble with Bronagh’s parents for sleeping with her and giving her drugs, but even this doesn’t really hold him back. If it weren’t for his crazy side, Gully would get ahead of you. But maybe it is only his crazy side that gives him the juice to stay in the race.
In your second year at college — 1977-8 — you decide you haven’t been competing in the whole event. Your academic scores are unmatched and you have a shelfload of track trophies, but there are other events in the decathlon. To take home the gold, you need to be a social success.
People don’t dislike you, actually; but you make them uncomfortable. At college, the stars are not outstanding academics or athletes but people like Gully or Michael Dixon or even Victoria, the unconventionally clever, setters of fashions, organisers of events. Michael takes over the Students Union and masterminds parties, revues, discos, concerts. This arena, unfamiliar to you, becomes important.
You know you can catch up.
First, you need a girlfriend. James, two years younger, has been seeing Candy Dixon, Michael’s sister. Experimentally, you have got off with two girls: Jacqui Edwardes, who introduced you to tongue-kissing, and Gina, a girl from Wells you haven’t seen since. Neither is a serious candidate. You need someone who will complement your strengths, augment your prestige. You consider the question as if you were Prime Minister of a Balkan state seeking an alliance with a neighbouring principality.
