9. STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

Now that Isabel's 11 it;s time for the eleven--plus exam.

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

9. The Eleven-Plus

Daisy was feeling less than well. The main problem with the medicines prescribed by Doctor Horne was the way they didn’t last as long as they were supposed to, especially the yellow ones that were meant to keep her awake if the effects of the sleeping tablets persisted beyond the time she should be awake and alert.

So sometimes she ran out of them probably because occasionally an extra pill was needed for her to feel on top of the world.

And at the same time Isabel announced that it was time for her eleven plus examination.

“This is important for you, darling,” Daisy told her daughter, trying to mask the agitation that withdrawal from her medication was causing her. She really must get back to the doctor and tell him what she needed!

“Why, mum, it’s just a test,” Isabel said in that superior voice that eleven year-olds whio are certain of their facts can use.

“But it’s fail it and you’ve sacrificed the rest of your life, darling” Is the agitation that I feel showing? I so want her to show the world just how clever she is!

“Teacher told us it’s just to sort out the best school for us to go on to,” explained Isabel, “and that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

Daisy sniffed. “Put like that it sounds okay, but what about putting it like this? Pass and you go to Saint Albans Grammar and Fail and you go to Eastside Secondary modern?” suggested a frustrated Daisy, “and you know what that means?”

“I’m not a snob, mum. If I go to Eastside there’ll still be teachers there and I’ll still have lessons.”

“Yes, and have you seen some of the kids you’ll be sharing your education with? Gangs of boys that look as if they ought to be in jail rather than at school!”

“But they’re at the boys’ school, mum. I’d be going to the girls’.”

“Yes, dear. Right next door and I did hear they’re thinking of opening a nursery with a qualified midwife for the babies that some of the girls have produced this past year! It’s a disgrace that those girls get up to some of the things they do get up to, and look at the result!”

“But I’m not like that, mum. You know that I’m not. For start, I don’t know what they’ve done to get into that sort of trouble. I won’t have a baby until I’m married, and that’s a promise.”

A promise I know that I’ll keep because I know more than she thinks I do and I’m not going to get involved with any disgusting boys. Ricky was bad enough last year and now he’s out of my hair and married to that b***h on the corner!

That b***h on the corner was Donna Braveheart and she now insisted on being called by her married name, Donna Shepherd, as she proudly heaved a rapidly developing bump around town, with a maternity top only half covering it.

“At least it shows that Ricky’s equipment works, and I used to think it never would,” spat out Daisy, “I need to get to the doctor’s Isabel. So you think hard when you’re sitting that examonation and do as well as you can. Or you’ll end up in the same class as the Braveheart girl.”

“Don’t be daft, mum! I’m eleven and she’s seventeen and left school ages ago! She works in the chemist’s on the corner of High street!”

“Then maybe she should have got Ricky to buy the odd product from where she worked,” grated Daisy, “now come on you two! You’re for school and I need a prescription!”

The two children went off while she set off for the doctor’s surgery in the hope that he wasn’t fully booked.

And Isabel, with Brian at her side, went towards their school.

“What’s this eleven summat they you’re going to be doing then?” asked Brian, “mum was quite sure that if you don’t do well then you might as well die.”

“That’s daft. She doesn’t understand and anyway, couldn’t you tell? She’s run out of pills and that makes her bad tempered.”

“What are this pills actually for, Issy?” asked her brother.

“They stop her being bad tempered,” replied his sister.

Once in Bingley primary school and after registration, those due to take the eleven plus examination were herded into the school hall, which had been set out with desks that had only one chair for each of them, and spaced so far apart there was no chance of one child seeing what another child was writing even if they had 20/20 eyeslght.

There was a guest to invigilate. It was the headmaster from Saint Albans Grammar School, and he was wearing a flowing black gown and, as he passed where Isabel was sitting, smelled strongly of the sort of tobacco that men who went to the pub on the corner smoked, if the fragrance was anything to go by.

“Right, boys and girls,” he boomed, or at least try to boom, but his voice had a squeak attached to it, “you have three papers to answer today. The first one, this one…” he help one up for them all to see, “is already on your desk in front of you… don’t touch it yet or there’ll be punishment… and it’s mathematics. What in your school may be called sums, but as you become older you;ll learn it’s mathematics, especially if you come to my school… and you will have one hour to finish it and then you can have a short break in the playground. Then, when you come back in, there’s an Intelligence paper and that will take another hour, and after lunch you will have in English paper. And guess what? That will take another hour. Soon after you’ve finished that it will be time for you to go home. Is that clear?”

Nobody suggested it was anything but clear, and they were told to turn over the first paper.

For the last few weeks in the sums lessons they’d done hundreds of questions like these, and Isabel rattled through it, finishing long before the hour was up.

During the short break (which coincided with the normal school playtime) Brian sought his sister out.

“What was it like?” he asked her.

“Easy peasy,” she replied, “if everything’s like that was it’ll be a doddle.”

But everything was not as easy as the mathematics paper had been. To start with, and this was probably unforgivable, there was actually a sppelling mistake on the paper in front of her and it wasn’t until she’d written a short story that the invigilator, no longer the tobacco-smelling head of Saint Albans but the dainty and much sweeter smelling lady head of their own school, Miss Collinger, frowned and made an announcement.

“Children,” she said, “there seems to have been a mistake made when they printed the papers off. It’s realy too bad, but I’m sure you must have noticed... The third of the titles for you to write an essay about should read My Best Friend and not, as you will have seen on the paper, By Best Friend. I’m sure they’ll take that into account if you inadvertently wrote about the wrong title!”

Isabel looked around her in horror, and when she arrived back home she ran up to Daisy and flung her arms around her. Daisy, by then, had been to an appointment with her doctor and was consequently feeling a great deal better than she had first thing that morning.

“I’ve failed!” she wept, “they printed the paper wrong, and I did the wrong story!”

© Peter Rogerson 04.03. 23