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For Alejandra and Paula
Two blank
pieces of paper lay flat on top of the brown wooden table. She knew the place
was hers; it had her name typed on a card in clean, sensible, emotionless black
letters. Although rows and rows of identical tables stretched out as far as the
eye could see, perhaps to infinity, in the high-roofed hall, this one was hers.
So she pulled the chair back, and sat down.
“Ah…good
morning, ladies and gentlemen. Er…are we all in the right place ? Good, good.
My name’s Mr. Peters, and I’ll be invigilating this morning.” The speaker was
an apologetic, middle-aged looking man with the air of a teacher who couldn’t
find his way back to the staff room. Only a faint yellow light hanging around
his greying hair suggested anything different. “Well, you have forty-five
minutes to complete the exam. Your time starts…NOW !”
She turned
over the exam paper. There was only one question, in the same clean, sensible,
emotionless black print as the namecard :
Why do you
think you deserve to enter the Kingdom
of Heaven ? Justify your
answer.
Crap. She’d
been hoping for something easier.
Oh well.
Here goes. She scratched her nose, and started to write : I’m
really clever. And good at Drama. And I was really good with the younger kids
in the Drama Club at my last school. Maybe they won’t have a Drama
Club here, she thought. And everyone will be really clever. Maybe
I’ll be the youngest kid. That won’t do. So she crossed it
out.
I’ve always been kind . And helpful, , she wrote. And
I’ve got lots of positive energy. I’ve always got a smile for everybody. Big deal, she thought. Anyone
can be kind and helpful. And I bet all these kids are smiling all the time.
She
scratched her head, and looked around her. Everyone else had their heads down,
writing furiously, filling the paper with line after line after line.
She didn’t
recognise anybody. Nobody from her other school. Suddenly, she felt very alone.
She looked
again at the blank page, and scratched out what she’d just written.Then she
wrote, slowly and deliberately : But Idon’t want to go. I want to go
back to my old school. I want to stay there. And then, ashamed, crossed it out.
She started
doodling in the margin. Suddenly, she couldn’t think of a single thing to
write. All these other children, all the ones she didn’t know, worked furiously
away. They must be cleverer, more interesting, know so much more than her if
they had so much to write. Everything she’d ever done, everything she’d ever
been, seemed so small when she looked across at these industrious strangers.
This wasn’t
looking good. She looked over to the next table. The girl there had just
crossed the last perfect T, put the last perfect full stop, placed her pen
carefully down on the table, and was beaming with satisfaction. The page was
immaculate.
Her own
page, needless to say, was a messy scribble, crossed out again and again. She
chewed on her pen, trying to find a single decent thing to write. Ink dribbled
down her chin.
And then a
clock somewhere was striking 12… and St. Peter was raising his hand…and saying
“TIME UP ! Please be finishing off the sentence you are writing, and put your
pens down.”
With a
last, desperate surge of energy she leaned over, grabbed the bottle of Tipp-ex
from the girl on the next table, wrenched off the lid, and poured every single
last drop onto her page, obliterating in an instant the wretched mess on the
paper.
Then she
handed the exam in.
* * * *
The
Director gestured to her, with a wave of his hand, to sit in the empty chair in
front of the desk in the gloomy office. He was a small man, much smaller than she’d
imagined, in a dark grey suit, dark hair, neat, clipped moustache, keen brown
eyes looking out through small, neat glasses. When he spoke, his voice was so
quiet that you had to lean forward to hear what he was saying – and even then
you couldn’t be sure. “Original mumble mumble unusual mumble mumble mumble
precedents mumble normal procedures…”
“I’m sorry,
could you say that again, please ?”
“I’m
sorry.” This time the Director spoke up. “ Your exam was very unusual. It’s a
long time since I’ve seen one like that. It’s against our normal procedures, of
course, and I should warn you that not all the staff agree with the decision.
But a decision has been taken. And the decision is to admit you.”
“I’m sorry
?”
“You’ve
passed. Don’t look so surprised. I have to read all sorts of rubbish from
people trying to get in here. Half of them are self-satisfied idiots, and the
other half are liars. But they don’t understand. We’re only a little interested
in what our clients have been in the past, or in what they’ve done. We’re really interested in their future. We’re
interested in who they might become. We look at them as you might look at a
blank page…”
Was there a
hint of a smile underneath the moustache ?
“So…”
“Congratulations
!” And the Director reached across the desk, and awkwardly, uncomfortably,
shook her by the hand, like a man who’d seen the gesture on TV and was just
trying it out, practising it for the first time. “Er…you can go now !”
As she
turned back to the plain wooden door, she heard the Director say, “Sorry,no…not
that way. This way, please.”
And she
realised there was a door in the office she hadn’t seen before, in the opposite
wall, with two transparent plastic gates, which opened with a SWISH as she
walked towards them, like the doors in an airport.
The path
led gently up in front of her. Away in the distance…it was kind of blurred,
kind of fuzzy…but she thought she could make out the shapes of people. One of
them was wearing a big top hat, and funny sunglasses. Some were doing sports,
some were reading books with great interest.
Some of them seemed to be setting off on some kind of journey. Yes, lots
of them were smiling. And there was a Drama Club.
She
squinted in disbelief. One of the blurred figures was very familiar.
She turned
back to the Director, at his desk behind her. “But that’s…”
“ You. Of
course it is. From wherever you’re standing, there’s always a part of you
that’s there in the past. But there are many, many parts of you that are there
in the future, waiting for you further up the road. So you look back; but you
also look forward. To the life you’re going to have, and the things you’re
going to do, and the people you’re going to meet. You’d…um…be surprised to know
what may be in store for you, young Paula…or is it Alejandra ?” And he shuffled
the papers on his table around.
For the
first time, she noticed his nametag, and smiled : Of course.
She looked wistfully
back to the plain wooden door, and sighed. Mr. Janus smiled. “Now you wouldn’t
want to stay in Year 9 for the rest of your life, would you ?”
And she
smiled back. “No. I wouldn’t want that.”
“On you
go.”
She stepped
through the door…onwards. And upwards.
