Story Nine - Taking The Scholarship

1952

Taking the scholarship

It was particularly cold, windy and wet when my class took the scholarship examination. We took off our sopping wet wellies and left them outside the classroom door on the thick brown mat. The smell of Mr. Hitchen’s pipe gave way to the smell of sweaty, dirty feet.

Mr. Hitchens told us to move our desks so we couldn’t see each other’s work and cheat. “I’ll rip up your paper if I see you as much look at anyone else’s test. I have to. Those are the rules.”

As we shuffled our desks, our nerves added a tension inside the cold room. I wished I could put my desk near the open coal fire.

Mr. Hitchens, holding out a wooden tray, gave us our instructions:

“It’s your big day. This is important. No cheating. No copying. Turn out your pockets. Empty everything into this tray. NO PENS.  Sharpen your pencils.” I deliberately disobeyed the instructions. I was not going to put my precious Lariggan amber onto the tray. Oh, no.

“Good. Done that, everyone?” said Mr. Hitchens.
“OK. Take the paper, put your names at the top, read the questions.

Read them carefully. OK. Start. Oh, writing first. Then do the sums, ok?”

John Martin, with a pained look on his face, put up his hand and raised two fingers.

“ NO, you can’t go to the lav, Martin, you should have gone before. You’ll have to wait.” “Can’t, sir,” said Martin. “It’s a number two. Gotta go bad. Can’t wait. It’s coming out. ‘Onest.”

“OK, quick, quick.” replied Mr. Hitchens.  “Take the lav paper, quick. Here. Two sheets. Take ‘em both. Don’t forget to put your wellies on. It’s still wet outside.”

When Martin came back from the outside lavatories, Mr. Hitchens checked his watch, looked at the clock, and said to the class: “OK, Martin’s back. NO more questions. START.”

As Mr. Hitchens handed out the papers, everything went deathly quiet. You could hear the pens dipping into the inkwells. Occasionally touching my amber and a small wishing rock treasure tin in my pocket, knowing for sure they were going to help me on this very important day, I disobeyed instructions again and did the maths first.

The sums were easy. I wanted to get them out the way so I could really concentrate on the writing part of the exam. I had to write a story and then underline the nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs.

I chewed my pen for a bit, and then I knew just what I wanted to write about. I wrote the title, Feeling Happy and Feeling Sad.

The first part of the story focused on my special 5^th birthday walk on the beach with my dad, the day I found my precious amber.

I drew a picture of my face, smiling, like my dad, from ear to ear, and then described how happy I felt when I showed my Mum what I’d found lying on the beach. Then, dipping my pen into the clay inkwell, I then wrote about the day we couldn’t pay our bread bill and how that made me feel unhappy.

I drew another picture of my face, dripping with tears. Then I underlined all of the nouns the adjectives, the verbs and the adverbs.

An hour later, we were told to hand in our papers.

Playtime was filled with boys shouting loudly, getting rid of their pent-up emotions.

The weeks went by painfully slowly as we waited for the scholarship results. Mr. Hitchens let us draw every afternoon, saying, “Too late now to teach you anything new. Scholarship’s done and dusted. Here, use the crayons, draw what you like.”

I SO wanted to go to the grammar school because Dad said, again and again, that going to the grammar school was the first step on becoming a teacher. If I passed the scholarship, I’d be the first one ever in my family. That, said Dad, would make him very, very proud.

I kept urging my amber and my very best wishing rocks to bring me luck.

“C’mon, amber, c’mon wishing rock – you can do it.”

One cold and cloudy day in February, the school’s new headmaster, Mr. Paltridge, who had recently replaced Mr. Curnow when he retired, came into Mr. Hitchens’ classroom just before playtime, asked for quiet, and called out “Martin, Redinnick, Caless, Newton, Rowe, Otto. Paull. You,” he said, with a very flat voice, “You lot passed. You passed the scholarship. You can go and tell your mothers. NOW! The rest of you didn’t.”

Dudley gasped with surprise. “Me? Not me. Never. I don’t want to go to the grammar.” The other kids looked at the four of us. Some of them cheered. Stephen, sitting near the front, started to cry, and then clasped his hands over his head. Stephen had wanted so much to pass the scholarship. It was all he talked about for weeks in the yard. When Mum and Dad papered and painted the front room, they went to Stephen’s Dad’s shop in Causewayhead. He’d talked about when Stephen and I would go to the Grammar School. Poor Stephen.

We cleared away our books, fetched our coats from the coat-pegs in the corridor outside the classroom, and ran home to tell our mothers. Racing through the front door, I heard Mum upstairs, making the beds.

“Mum!” I shouted. “I passed. I PASSED! And Dudley, Dudley passed.

And he doesn’t want to go to the grammar.”

Mum knew right away what I meant and came downstairs, her face beaming. “You passed, Johnny? You passed? Your Dad’ll be pleased. Now you WILL be a teacher. Who else passed? Dudley passed? He’ll be fine. Did Stephen pass? Roger, Roger Roach, did he pass?” ”Dunno, don’t think so, Mum,” I replied.

“Quick,” said Mum, “get your coat. We’re going to see Noonie and DanDan.” We went across Alma Terrace, into Bread Street, down the Arcade steps, and into Grandfather’s pub at the top of Queen Street. Granddad was really pleased. “Here,” he said, “this is for you. Knew you’d pass.” and gave me one of his Parker pens and a ten-shilling note. “Go spend it in Woolworth’s.” he said.

Within the hour, Grandmother marched me up to Simpson’s the Tailors, proudly told Mr. Simpson that I had passed the scholarship, bought me a new school uniform, and then had my photograph taken in Richard’s the Photographers.

After all that, I bought two 1 shilling balsa wood model planes in Woolworth’s, something I had wanted ever since a boy at school brought one and played with it at playtime. One plane was for me and the other for Charles.

As we left the shop, a huge black thundercloud moved across the sky, revealing the big yellow sun. Life was so great, I thought, and in one hour’s time, I was going to be flying my new balsa wood plane.

Dad was beside himself. “You passed, Johnny, you passed. You’re the first, the first in the family.”

In seven months time, Dad said, I was going to be attending Penzance Grammar School. In seven months time, I was going to be taking my first step on the long, long path to become a teacher.

In June, about a month before we broke up for the school summer holiday, the four of us who passed the scholarship were separated from the rest of the class and taken by Mr. Hitchens into the small staff room.

There was a small gas ring on the table that the teachers used for boiling the kettle when making tea. Mr. Hitchens told us to sit on the floor as he lit the gas, carefully placed a pan half full of water on the top, and told us to watch. We watched in silence as the water soon bubbled and noisily boiled. “That,” said, Mr. Hitchens, “is science. You’ll do science in the grammar school. Science is about watching things happen and then writing notes about what you see. Here, use these sheets of paper. Draw this experiment. Draw the science experiment.”

So, I thought, this was science. In awed silence, we drew and recorded everything we saw. Because it was such a change from writing stories, putting in capital letters, underlining nouns and verbs, writing and drawing like a scientist was exciting, even though I couldn’t quite understand why boiling a pan of water was science.

When we finished, Mr. Hitchens turned off the gas. We trooped smugly back to our classroom, ready to face the barrage of questions from the rest of the class during the morning break.

I couldn’t wait to get home and, over tea, tell my mum and dad about the science lesson. “It’s great. We did science. Boiled water until it bubbled. It’s dead good. Really, really special. I’m going to do science in the grammar school.”

Mum and Dad looked quizzically at each other. “Mmmm,” said Dad. “Boiled water. That sounds great. Doesn’t it, Mum? Here, Johnny,” he said, “by the way, this is for you.”

 I unwrapped the small parcel that he handed me. I stared at something I had wanted so much, a Hopalong Cassidy watch.

That night I wore my new watch at the school concert.