seemed to glide over the pale polished floor. She wore a white veil, and an expression of uncomprehending serenity. ‘I leave you with Sister Gabriel to invigilate,’ the first nun said. ‘The time allowed is one hour and a half. Turn over your papers and begin.’
Holy Mother of God, I prayed, take pity on me. Make me pass my entrance exam. I directed my prayer to the statue outside the window, its mossy plinth and stone drapery. I undid the pin of my kilt, and stabbed its thick point into the cushion of the little finger of my left hand. A worry doubled is a worry halved, and now I had the pain to think about, as well as the terror: I turned over my paper and began.
I hardly remember the rest of that day. I don’t know what I said when I came out of the beautiful room, or how I was escorted by a nun back to our starting point at the studded door; or what Karina said, or whether our mothers wanted to know how it had been, or whether I was slapped for having got blood on my handkerchief. I do recall that the journey home took many hours, owing to a blunder at the Victoria bus station, and that Mary said once again, ‘Oh, if only it were to get a cup of tea.’ She seemed small and beaten and baffled as she trailed in my mother’s wake, and she nodded sadly when Karina said to her, ‘If you’re that bothered, you could have brought a flask, couldn’t you?’
I turned my head and looked out of the corner of my eye to see if my mother was taking in the way Karina spoke to her mother, but she wasn’t taking in anything at all. ‘Did you see Carmel’s new pen?’ she cried, in a high, strung-up, scraping voice. Her handbag’s clasp continued to snap, open and shut, open and shut.
‘No. What new pen?’ Karina said.
‘Carmel, didn’t you show Karina your new pen?’
‘No, I did not,’ I said, from the seat in front.
‘Well then, take it out and show it to her at once.’
Reluctant, I reached into my bag. I drew forth, slowly, my new fountain-pen. ‘Pass it to me so I can show Karina’s mother.’ A hand swarmed over the seat back. It fastened on my pen and swiped it out of my sight. ‘What do you think, Mary?’ my mother said. ‘I got it for her specially to sit the entrance exam. It cost five shillings.’
Mary made a noise of appreciation. It was not enough.
‘Just look at this mechanism – ’ my mother began.
‘Don’t start unscrewing it,’ I said in alarm. ‘You’ll get ink spattering.’
‘Indeed ink will not spatter,’ my mother said. ‘This is a first-rate pen. The very top quality. Here. Show it to Karina.’
This was what I had been trying to avoid. I did like my pen and I was proud of it, but I knew that now my pride would be humbled. I slid the smooth burgundy cylinder into Karina’s fingers. ‘Here,’ I said, toneless. Karina scrutinized it, pulling the cap off and squinting at the nib. ‘It’s gorgeous, Mrs McBain,’ she said, her face hidden. ‘I think you must be very wealthy to afford a pen like that.’
Behind us, my mother gave a surprised laugh; I suppose it was a laugh, I can’t think what else it could have been. ‘Well, I’d not say that exactly. We’re just doing our best for Carmel, that’s all.’
‘Gorgeous,’ Karina repeated. ‘Simply top quality.’ Very low, so that the mothers had no chance of hearing, she murmured to me: ‘I could get better pens for one and ninepence.’
When we arrived home my father was waiting by the door. ‘Come in, come in,’ he said. ‘Come and look at this.’ His face was aglow. His new jigsaw lay complete on the table. ‘The
My mother said, ‘Put the kettle on and don’t be such a fool.’
Next day in school, our classmates looked at us fearfully, as if we were survivors of an ordeal or disaster. ‘Let us hope those two girls gave a good account of themselves,’ Sister Monica said, tapping the blackboard and staring into space: as if those two girls were only notional, and out there somewhere in the great beyond. ‘Let us hope those two girls gave a good account of themselves and did not disgrace the name of this school.’
I put up my hand. ‘Sister, I need to know what fornication means.’
Sister Monica swept her eyes around to my face. ‘Why do you need to know, Carmel?’ Her voice was steady and cool.
‘It’s General Knowledge,’ I said.
‘Fornication is any type of bad behaviour with the other sex. Outside of marriage. Those two boys at the back may stop sniggering. Perhaps they would care to stand up and give us their definition of the term, or otherwise they may come out here and have the cane.’
The sniggering stopped.
‘Is it to do with wearing lipstick?’ I said.
‘That could be contributory, in certain circumstances,’ Sister Monica said.
It was that night, on our way home, that Karina and I began to talk about the entrance exam. All day we had preserved a silence, a no man’s land between us; partly tact, partly squeamishness. ‘What did you pick for the home of a badger?’ Karina said.
‘Set.’
‘Oh, right. What did you pick for the female type of sheep?’
‘Ewe.’
Karina jumped violently. ‘What?’
‘You,’ I said. ‘Ewe.’ I realized we didn’t speak the same language, after all. Karina didn’t read books, and perhaps that was her trouble. She called for me after school on a Thursday, and we would troop off to the library together, me with my own two books on my orange junior tickets and my mother’s six Jean Plaidys on buff tickets. I would go swarming in and see what I could get, but we had only one bookcase called ‘Junior’, and I had read everything in it by now. Karina didn’t come into the library at all, but stood outside by the bus-stop, as if she were going somewhere. She had handed me her own orange tickets, and wanted me to be grateful; attempted to turn it into more money I owed her. ‘Ewe,’ I said. ‘You-oo-oo-oo.’
‘Oh yes.’ Karina trudged on, her jaw set. ‘What composition did you pick?’
