The Morning Gift

To this dire place, Ruth and her friends had crawled, day after day, their stomachs churning . . . had waited outside, pale with fear and sleeplessness, trying to crack jokes till the bell rang and they were admitted, numbered like convicts, to shuffle to the forbidding desks with their blue folders, the white rectangles of blotting paper which they would see in their dreams for years to come.

But today was the last exam, if the most important. In three hours they would be free! It was the Palaeontology paper, the one in which Ruth would have hoped to excel, but she hoped for nothing now except to survive.

‘It’ll be all right, Pilly.’ Wretched as she was, Ruth managed to smile at her friend, glad that whatever else had gone wrong with her life she had not neglected to help Pilly. ‘Don’t forget to do the “Short Notes” question if there is one; you can always pick up some marks on those.’

The bell rang. The door opened. Even on this bright June morning, the room struck chill. The two invigilators on the platform were unfamiliar: lecturers from another college whose students also had exams this morning. A woman with a tight bun of hair and a purple cardigan; a grey-haired man. Not Quin, who was sailing in a week, and Ruth was glad. If things went wrong, as they had before, she wouldn’t want him watching her.

‘You may turn over your papers and begin,’ said the lady with the bun in a high, clear voice.

A flutter of white throughout the hall . . . ‘Read the paper through at least twice,’ Dr Felton had said. ‘Don’t rush. Select. Think.’

But it would be better not to select or think too long. Not this morning . . .

What do you understand by the Theory of Allometric Growth? She could do that; it was a question she’d have enjoyed tackling under different circumstances – the kind of question that enabled one to show off a little. Discuss Osborn’s concept of ‘aristogenesis’ in the evolution of fossil vertebrates. That was interesting too, but perhaps she’d better do the dunce’s question first – Question Number 4. Write short notes on a) Piltdown Man b) Archaeopteryx c) The Great Animal of Maastricht . . .

Clever candidates were usually warned against the ‘short notes’ questions; they didn’t give you a chance to excel – but she wasn’t a clever candidate now, she was Candidate Number 209 and fighting for her life.

Verena had started writing already; she could hear her scratching with her famous gold-nibbed pen. Verena frightened her these days. Verena was solicitous, her eyes bored into Ruth.

But Verena didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except to get through the next three hours of which seven minutes had already passed.

The Theory of Allometric Growth, which quantifies the relationship of small animals to large ones, wrote Ruth, deciding to take a chance.

Pilly scratching out her views on Piltdown Man, whose reconstructed skull mercifully hung above her father’s shaving mirror, looked up, saw Ruth’s bright head bent over her paper, and exchanged a relieved look with Janet. The clock jerked forward to the first half-hour. One question done, thought Ruth; four more . . . The short notes, then, because it was beginning; it was getting quite bad, actually, but she would fight it off; she would take deep breaths and it would pass. Oh God, I’ve worked so hard, she thought, suddenly swamped by self-pity. It can’t all be wasted!

The Great Animal of Maastricht was discovered in 1780 in the underground quarries of St Peter’s Mountain, wrote Ruth, her pen moving very fast because nothing mattered except to get something down for which someone could give her a mark. If she failed this paper, she would fail her degree . . . there could be no resits in December; not for her.

But there was no way of writing fast enough. She could feel the sweat breaking out on her skin, the dizziness . . . Another deep breath.

Ruth put up her hand.

On the dais the lady with the bun looked up, said something to the man beside her, and made her way slowly, agonizingly slowly, between the desks.

‘Yes?’

‘I need to go to the toilet.’

‘So soon?’ The lady was displeased. ‘Are you sure?’ She looked again at Ruth, at the beads of sweat on her forehead. ‘Very well. Come with me.’

Everyone watched as Ruth was led out. It was a complicated procedure, taking out a candidate – no one could go unwatched. It was like escorting a prisoner, making sure there was nothing secreted behind the lavatory seat – no file to saw through the bars, no crib giving the geological layers of the earth’s crust.