Unexpected Twist Read online

  “I’ve got a maths test, with Mr Dur.” Shona finally felt she had to say something.

  “Well,” said the man, so distracted by the way Shona kept looking at his shaving cut that he now brought his hand up to his face and cautiously touched the moist scab, “you can’t do your maths test if you haven’t got your lanyard.”

  Now, Shona didn’t mean to be rude, but sometimes she said things in a direct way that others took to be rude. Perhaps it was the way she looked when she said it. She knew that anyone could do a maths test, and having a lanyard – or not having a lanyard – didn’t really come into it. You really could do a test without a lanyard, Shona thought, so she said, “I can do the test without a lanyard.”

  The moment she said it, she knew it had come out wrong, but she didn’t have the words to say how or that she hadn’t meant it in a rude way. But it was too late.

  “I’m giving you a D8,” he said, his eyes fixed on her.

  The only problem with this was that Shona hadn’t been in the school long enough to know what a D8 was. She guessed it wasn’t a present, but beyond that, what? An extra maths lesson? A spell in the lanyard factory making lanyards?

  Just then, down the corridor came Mr Dur, a small, quick-moving man who always wore a suit that announced it was a suit because it had huge lapels. It felt as if things were going to get a whole lot worse. Mr Dur had made it clear that everyone was supposed to be in class before he arrived to hand out the test papers, yet here she was in the corridor. Not in class.

  “Is this student supposed to be with you now?” asked the man who had been so bothered about Shona’s lack of lanyard.

  Mr Dur looked closely at Shona and then said, “No.”

  Shona felt everything slipping away. Nothing was going right.

  Shona could see that Lanyard Man was making himself a little bit taller, allowing himself a smile – and she knew that he had, after all, caught out someone who was trying to get round school without a lanyard and who was now obviously a liar. She could see from his look that he thought she was up to something sinister, and – look at him puffing himself up – he was on to it!

  “Well, well, well,” he said, “so, no maths test with Mr Dur. Your little story is falling apart.”

  Hearing “maths test with Mr Dur” seemed to flip a switch in Mr Dur’s mind, and he looked back at Shona. In the great ocean of students’ faces that ebbed and flowed through his brain, Shona’s face had at first floated by; but now, triggered by “maths test with Mr Dur”, it bobbed past on the top of the Set 2P wave. Set 2P, the maths group that Shona had been put in because someone (who? why?) deep in the heart of the maths department had decided that she was at Set 2P level.

  Shona now watched Mr Dur as he thought it through: the new student – Shona, yes! – the one that Yolanda Cavani had been talking about in the staff room.

  But Lanyard Man was already pointing down the corridor towards some distant place where Shona figured she might be dumped and left for dead.

  Mr Dur stepped forwards. “I’m sorry, it’s not a ‘no’. It’s a ‘yes’.”

  Lanyard Man put his head to one side. He liked things to go smoothly. It had been going smoothly. Now it wasn’t going smoothly. “Mm?” he said in as aggressive a way as he could.

  “She’s with me,” Mr Dur said.

  This immediately posed a huge problem for Lanyard Man. He had stated quite clearly that it wasn’t possible to do a maths test without a lanyard, and he had rumbled that Shona had lied about needing to be at some kind of maths test. Now the whole construction that he had built around this awful student was crumbling to dust.

  Shona could see that Lanyard Man wanted to drag her down the corridor, while Mr Dur wanted to drag her towards the maths test. She was the rope in a tug of war. The two men glared at each other.

  Mr Dur flicked his wrist and looked at his watch. “This is the Interim Level 7 Assessment,” he said.

  Whatever “Interim Level 7 Assessment” was, it acted like a magic spell. Lanyard Man took a step backwards, bent slightly towards Mr Dur, held out his arm as if he was a traffic cop letting the cars go through, said, “As you were,” turned and headed off down the corridor.

  Without saying anything further, but simply gesturing with his thumb, Mr Dur indicated to Shona that she should head towards the room that she had planned on going to sometime earlier. As she scampered along beside Mr Dur, she felt her bag slip out of her hand, and as it fell, her books, pencil case and Miss Cavani’s homework fell on the floor. On the top was…

  CLASS X10 READING COMPREHENSION

  Oliver had not been within the walls of the workhouse a quarter of an hour, and had scarcely completed the demolition of a second slice of bread, when Mr Bumble told him it was a board night, informing him that the board had said Oliver was to appear before it forthwith.

  Not having a very clearly defined notion of what a board was, Oliver was rather astounded by this intelligence, and was not quite certain whether he ought to laugh or cry. He had no time to think about the matter, however, for Mr Bumble gave him a tap on the head with his cane, to wake him up; and another on the back to make him lively; and bidding him to follow, conducted him into a large whitewashed room, where eight or ten fat gentlemen were sitting round a table. At the top of the table, seated in an armchair rather higher than the rest, was a particularly fat gentleman with a very round, red face.

  “Bow to the board,” said Bumble. Oliver brushed away two or three tears that were lingering in his eyes; and seeing no board but the table, fortunately bowed to that.

  “What’s your name, boy?” said the gentleman in the high chair.

  Oliver was frightened at the sight of so many gentlemen, which made him tremble, and the beadle gave him another tap behind, which made him cry. These two causes made him answer in a very low and hesitating voice, whereupon a gentleman in a white waistcoat said he was a fool. Which was a capital way of raising his spirits, and putting him quite at his ease.

  “Boy,” said the gentleman in the high chair, “listen to me. You know you’re an orphan, I suppose?”

  “What’s that, sir?” inquired poor Oliver.

  “The boy is a fool – I thought he was,” said the gentleman in the white waistcoat.

  “Hush!” said the gentleman who had spoken first. “You know you’ve got no father or mother, and that you were brought up by the parish, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Oliver, weeping bitterly.

  “What are you crying for?” inquired the gentleman in the white waistcoat. And to be sure it was very extraordinary. What could the boy be crying for?

  “I hope you say your prayers every night,” said another gentleman in a gruff voice; “and pray for the people who feed you, and take care of you – like a Christian.”

  “Yes, sir,” stammered the boy.

  “Well! You have come here to be educated, and taught a useful trade,” said the red-faced gentleman in the high chair.

  “So you’ll begin to pick oakum – that’s pulling old ship’s rope apart so that it can be re-used - tomorrow morning at six o’clock,” added the surly one in the white waistcoat.

  Oliver bowed low by the direction of the beadle, and was then hurried away to a large ward; where, on a rough, hard bed, he sobbed himself to sleep. What a novel illustration of the tender laws of England: they let the paupers go to sleep!

  Poor Oliver! The board had that very day arrived at a decision which would exercise the most material influence over all his future fortunes. And this was it:

  The members of this board were very wise, deep, philosophical men; and when they came to turn their attention to the workhouse, they found out at once what ordinary folks would never have discovered – the poor people liked it! It was a regular place of public entertainment for the poorer classes; a tavern where there was nothing to pay; a public breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper all the year round; a brick-and-mortar paradise, where it was all play and no work.

 
; “Oho!” said the board, looking very knowing; “we are the fellows to set this to rights; we’ll stop it all, in no time.”

  So, they established the rule that all poor people should have the alternative (for they would compel nobody, not they), of being starved by a gradual process in the workhouse, or by a quick one out of it. With this view, they contracted with the waterworks to lay on an unlimited supply of water; and with a corn factor to supply periodically small quantities of oatmeal; and issued three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week, and half a roll on Sundays.

  Chapter 4

  Brackets. Shona remembered something to do with brackets. If you multiply something, the brackets disappear. In her mind’s eye she saw her maths teacher at her previous school making brackets disappear. It seemed so simple when she did it, but here on the page in front of her, the brackets wouldn’t disappear. They stayed right there, no matter what she did. She tried swapping one side over to another. And back again. Then dividing before multiplying.

  She raised her head. Other people seemed to be speeding on.

  Her mind wandered back to the corridor. Had she done something wrong? Yes, because Lanyard Man was angry with her. But what was it that she had done wrong? She couldn’t answer that one, and her mind drifted towards the cut on his face. Cuts, eurch, knives, she shuddered in her mind. Once, when she was with Nan in the market she had seen someone whip a knife out. There was going to be bother. Shona felt cold thinking about it, and her mind wandered to what Nan had done at that moment. Strange, Nan seemed both to know what was going on and not know. Both at the same time. There were definitely things she couldn’t figure out about Nan. Like how she’d talk of relatives that Shona had never seen. Who was that Lorraine in New York, who Nan always said “wasn’t short of a penny or two” but Shona had never seen? And now her being ill. What was it she said? “This time it’s serious”, was it?

  Into this stream of thought came that thing that Mr Dur had said, “Interim Level 7 Assessment”. It was such a big deal that it had made Lanyard Man disappear. And here she was, trying to do Interim Level 7 Assessment. She thought back to the lesson when Mr Dur had said that they were going to do this test and how it would, as he said, “pretty well settle your fate for the rest of your time in this school”. And there was something else Mr Dur had said about “your goose” being “cooked”. What goose? And who was cooking it?

  She looked back at the page. Was her life really going to be decided by how she was doing in this test? The brackets that wouldn’t disappear – were they going to cook her goose?

  She looked at the next question. Darren, Maria and Aysha have got some money and they’re sharing it out. Shona wondered why Darren, Maria and Aysha have got some money. Why has Lorraine in New York got money? Darren had twice as much money as Maria, who’s got half as much as Aysha. That wasn’t fair. Shona started drawing coins. This wasn’t because she couldn’t do the sum but because her old teacher had said that if you can’t do it in your head, draw it.

  Halfway through the right number of coins, Mr Dur walked past. He stopped next to Shona. He looked at the page filling up with little circles. All the way down to the bottom of the page. Mr Dur had explained that on this day of the Interim Level 7 Assessment he would not be a teacher, he would be an invigilator. It sounded cruel. I will invigilate you! Then you’ll be sorry!

  Mr Dur stood watching Shona.

  Shona stopped. By now she was down at the bottom right-hand corner of the page. Shona moved the sheet of paper as if to make the paper tell her the answer.

  “I think you need more,” he said.

  “I’ve got more paper here,” Shona said, and she pointed at the next clean sheet of paper that was lying underneath the money page.

  “No,” said Mr Dur, “I meant money.”

  And he laughed.

  Shona froze. Of course she needed more money. Dad’s benefit had been stopped. That’s why they were being moved from the flat to the room near the market. She felt her face flush red, and she imagined everyone looking at her. They would see that she was blushing and they would know that she and Dad had no money and that Mr Dur would know that and that all the teachers would know as well and they would think it was funny. All of them. Ha ha ha. Shona, the “poor” girl.

  Her eyes couldn’t see the page because they had filled with tears, but she wasn’t going to let Mr Dur see that, so she kept her head down. She tried not to move.

  Mr Dur went on standing right by her. “You need more money,” he repeated, as if he wanted to shame her even more.

  Now everyone had lifted their heads to see what was going on. They could see that some kind of stand-off was happening.

  Shona did nothing.

  Mr Dur said, “Four more. You need to draw four more coins.” And he walked on.

  The students nearby knew that he had helped her. Even in the midst of her rage that he had shamed her, Shona also had a vague sense that Mr Dur had helped her. And yet, she remembered he had said he wasn’t teaching, he was invigilating. So had he broken the rules to be kind to her? She didn’t ask for help. Did she look like someone who wanted help? Hey you, Mr Dur, she felt like saying, I don’t want you singling me out in front of everyone else. I don’t want to be the one that you’re kind to.

  She felt angry, confused, annoyed with herself that at first she had got Mr Dur wrong. She was fed up with the test, and still mad at Lanyard Man who had got her in a state before this whole Interim Assess-test thing had happened.

  She couldn’t do any more of the test. She just stared at the page, gripping her pen till her knuckles stood out like chicken bones.

  The class flowed out of the room with Shona being washed along in the current, and then, just as the stream washed past Mr Dur, she heard him say that thing about the goose being cooked again. He seemed to think it was funny.

  Though most of Miss Cavani’s English group weren’t in this maths set, Désol’é was there, and as she was the only person Shona knew, she said to Désol’é, “What’s a D8?”

  “It’s a detention,” she said. “You have to go to 3.01 at the end of school and you sit there for an hour working out what’s wrong with you.”

  “When?”

  “Thursdays. You got one?”

  “Yes.”

  “What for?”

  “It was to do with my lanyard.”

  “You weren’t wearing yours, right?” Désol’é glanced at Shona’s neck, where the lanyard ribbon should have been.

  “I said to a teacher that you don’t need a lanyard to do a maths test.”

  “What?” Désol’é shrieked, “You said that? Are you crazy? You did OK just to get a D8, then! You could have got a D2 for that.”

  “D2?” Shona was lost in the jungle of school words.

  “Right.”

  Shona wanted to know what a D2 was and how much worse than a D8 it was, because she was pretty sure that before long she’d be doing one of them too, but Désol’é had been swept up in the flow and was now ahead too.

  At least, between now and the D8 there’d be Miss Cavani’s lesson and that weird book they were reading. That was a bright spot up ahead.

  CLASS X10 READING COMPREHENSION

  For the first six months after Oliver Twist was removed, the system was in full operation. It was rather expensive at first, in consequence of the increase in the undertaker’s bill, and the necessity of taking in the clothes of all the paupers, which fluttered loosely on their wasted, shrunken forms, after a week or two’s gruel. But the number of workhouse inmates got thin as well as the paupers; and the board were in ecstasies.

  The room in which the boys were fed was a large stone hall, with a pot at one end, out of which the master, dressed in an apron for the purpose, and assisted by one or two women, ladled the gruel at mealtimes. Each boy received one small bowl, and no more - except on occasions of great public rejoicing, when he had two ounces and a quarter of bread besides.

  The bowls never w
anted washing. The boys polished them with their spoons till they shone again; and when they had performed this operation which never took very long, the spoons being nearly as large as the bowls, they would sit staring at the pot, with such eager eyes, as if they could have devoured the very bricks of which it was composed; employing themselves, meanwhile, in sucking their fingers most assiduously, with the view of catching up any stray splashes of gruel that might have been cast thereon. Boys have generally excellent appetites. Oliver Twist and his companions suffered the tortures of slow starvation for three months: at last they got so voracious and wild with hunger that one boy, who was tall for his age, and hadn’t been used to that sort of thing for his father had kept a small cookshop, hinted darkly to his companions that unless he had another bowl of gruel per day, he was afraid he might some night happen to eat the boy who slept next him, who happened to be a weakly youth of tender age. He had a wild, hungry eye; and they believed him. A council was held; lots were cast who should walk up to the master after supper that evening, and ask for more; and it fell to Oliver Twist.

  The evening arrived; the boys took their places. The master, in his cook’s uniform, stationed himself at the pot; his pauper assistants arranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out; and a long grace was said over the short commons. The gruel disappeared; the boys whispered to each other, and winked at Oliver; while his neighbours nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, bowl and spoon in hand, said, somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:

  “Please, sir, I want some more.”

  The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper pot. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear.