Unit 1

TEXT I

My First Job

Text

While I was waiting to enter university, I saw in a local newspaper a teaching post advertised at a school in a suburb of London about ten miles from where I lived. Being very short of money and wanting to do something useful, I applied, fearing as I did so, that without a degree and with no experience of teaching my chances of landing the job were slim.
However, three days later a letter arrived, summoning me to Croydon for an interview. It proved an awkward journey: a train to Croydon station; a ten-minute bus ride and then a walk of at least a quarter of a mile. As a result I arrived on a hot June morning too depressed to feel nervous.
The school was a dreary, gabled Victorian house of red brick and with big staring sash-windows. The front garden was a gravel square; four evergreen shrubs stood at each corner, where they struggled to survive the dust and fumes from a busy main road.
It was clearly the headmaster himself that opened the door. He was short and rotund. He had a sandy-coloured moustache, a freckled forehead and hardly any hair. He was wearing a tweed suit — one felt somehow he had always worn it — and across his ample stomach was looped a silver watch-chain.
He looked at me with an air of surprised disapproval, as a colonel might look at a private whose bootlaces were undone. "Ah yes," he grunted. "You'd better come inside." The narrow, sunless hall smelled unpleasantly of stale cabbage; the cream-printed walls had gone a dingy margarine colour, except where they were scarred with ink marks; it was all silent. His study, judging by the crumbs on the carpet, was also his dining room. On the mantelpiece there was a salt cellar and pepper-pot. "You'd better sit down," he said, and proceeded to ask me a number of questions: what subjects had I taken in my General School Certificate; how old was I; what games did I play; then fixing me suddenly with his bloodshot eyes, he asked me whether I thought games were a vital part of a boy's education. I mumbled something about not attaching too much importance to them. He grunted. I had said the wrong thing. The headmaster and I obviously had singularly little in common.
The school, he said, consisted of one class of twenty-four boys, ranging in age from seven to thirteen. I should have to teach all subjects except art, which he taught himself. Football and cricket were played in the Park, a mile away on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons.
The teaching set-up appalled me. I should have to split the class up into three groups and teach them in turn at three different levels; and I was dismayed at the thought of teaching algebra and geometry — two subjects at which I had been completely incompetent at school. Worse perhaps was the idea of Saturday afternoon cricket. It was not so much having to tramp a mile along the dusty streets of Croydon, followed by a crocodile of small boys that I minded, but the fact that most of my friends would be enjoying leisure at that time.
I said diffidently, "What would my salary be?" "Twelve pounds a week plus lunch." Before I could protest he got to his feel. "Now," he said, "you'd better meet my wife. She's the one who really runs this school."
This was the last straw. I was very young: the prospect of working under a woman constituted the ultimate indignity.

TEXT II

The Interview

The man who looked like a terrier said: "You're Blakey, are you? Take a seat."
Blakey took a seat.
"I see you took your 'A' levels in English, French and History, and continued with the Arts at university." The terrier man looked up from Blakey's application form. "What," he asked mildly, "has prompted you to want to change to medicine?"
"Well," Blakey said — feeling anything but well — "I've always, even at school, been interested, but it was a big decision to take, and I wasn't sure at the time I had the right temperament." The panel of three made no comment, and their silence reminded him he'd not yet answered their question. "I really wanted to write."
The man next to the terrier cleared his throat. "So the fact is you'd rather be a writer than a doctor?"
"Not necessarily," Blakey said. "It might have been true once, but for some time now my mind's been set on becoming a doctor."
"But you are capable of a change of heart." There was a long pause.
"I'm sorry," Blakey said, startled, "did you mean that as a question?"
"Well?" the man said, raising an eyebrow.
"No, I don't think I am at all."
"And you left University without taking a degree. Is that right?"
"Yes."
"Why was this?"
"Looking back," Blakey said, "I reckon I took on too much, too many activities."
"Could you explain to us what these activities were?"
"I produced several plays for the college dramatic society," (which was true) "I spoke at Union debates" (also true) "and did a bit of social work" (which wasn't).
The third member of the panel frowned. "Social work?" he said, as if it were some incurable disease. "Tell us about that." For a thickset heavy-jowled man, his voice was oddly querulous.
"Yes," Blakey said, and described the only two student organizations of the sort he knew the names of, but which for one reason or another he'd never got round to joining.
"And if your application were successful," the terrier man said on a note of sombre improbability, "could you support yourself?" Blakey hesitated. He had a sudden premonition that his answer could be crucial.
"You have no grant?" the man prompted.
"No."
"Have you any private means?"
"I think I could manage all right."
For the first time his principal tormentor revealed his teeth in a tight, impatient smile. "How could you manage?"
Blakey shifted in his chair. He had begun to resent these cold, unforthcoming men who instilled in him a sense of guilt. It was more a cross-examination than an interview. His desire to take up medicine seemed almost like a crime. "I had a part-time job during vacations, which enabled me to save —"
"Could you tell us," his persecutor persisted, "the weekly income."
He told them.
"Are you thinking of getting married in the near future?"
"No."
"What are your interests? How do you spend your spare time?"
What had he said on the form? Why did they ask him when it was all on the form? He told them he liked music, the theatre, and that he often went walking. "Once," he said, "I even took part in a fishing match."
The panel appeared not to regard this with much enthusiasm. "What games do you play?" The heavy-jowled man leaned forward hopefully. "Do you play rugger?
"No, I was at a soccer school."
"Did you ever win any prizes at anything?"
"No."
"Have any members of your family been in the medical profession?"
Blakey shook his head. "Most of my relations," he said, stung by a sense of inadequacy, "work in the pits."
"Hm," The terrier man scribbled something on the form. " I think that covers pretty well everything," he said. He gave Blakey a wintry smile. "In due course you will hear from us."
It sounded to Blakey like a threat.