An elderly porter accompanied him across the court and up a flight of centuries-worn stone steps. When they reached the top floor he said, ‘This was Mr Quilter’s room, Mr Karpenko. Perhaps you’ll be its next occupant.’ Sasha smiled to himself. The first person ever to call him Mr Karpenko. ‘Dinner will be served at seven in the dining room on the far side of the court,’ the porter said, before leaving Sasha in a little study that wasn’t much bigger than his room above the restaurant. But when he looked out of the mullioned window, he saw a world that appeared to have ignored the passing of almost four hundred years. Could a boy from the backstreets of Leningrad really end up in a place like this?
He sat at the desk and once again went over one of the questions Mr Sutton had thought might come up in the exam. He was just starting another when the clock in the court chimed seven times. He left his books, ran down the stone staircase and into the court to join a stream of young men chatting and laughing as they made their way around the outside of a manicured grass square, on which not one of them stepped.
When Sasha reached the entrance to the dining room he peeped inside, to see rows of long wooden tables laden with food, and benches occupied by undergraduates who obviously felt very much at home. Suddenly fearful of joining such an elite gathering, he turned around, and made his way out through the college gates and onto King’s Parade. He didn’t stop walking until he saw a queue outside a fish and chip shop.
He ate his supper out of a newspaper, aware that his mother wouldn’t have approved, which only caused him to smile. When the street lights flickered on, he returned to his little room to revise two or three more possible exam questions, and didn’t climb into bed until just after midnight. He only slept intermittently, and was horrified when he woke to hear the clock in the court chime eight times. He was just thankful it wasn’t nine. He jumped out of bed, washed and dressed, and ran all the way to the dining hall.
He was back in his room twenty minutes later. He went to the lavatory at the end of the corridor four times during the next hour, but was still standing outside the examination hall thirty minutes early. As the minutes ticked by, a trickle of candidates joined the queue, some talking too much, others not at all, each displaying their own particular level of nervousness. At 9.45, two masters dressed in long black gowns appeared. Sasha later learnt they were not masters, but dons, and that the title of Master was reserved for the head of house. So many new words to learn — he wondered if the college had its own dictionary.
One of the dons unlocked the door and the well-disciplined flock followed the shepherd into the examination hall. ‘You’ll find your names on the desks,’ he said. ‘They are in alphabetical order.’ He then took his seat behind a table on the dais at the end of the hall. Sasha found KARPENKO in the middle of the fifth row.
‘My colleague and I will now hand out the examination papers,’ said the invigilator. ‘There are twelve questions, of which you must answer three. You will have ninety minutes. If you can’t work out how much time you need to allocate for each question, you shouldn’t be here.’ A ripple of nervous laughter spread around the room. ‘You will not begin until I blow my whistle.’ Sasha immediately recalled Mr Sutton’s first law of exams: the person who finishes first won’t necessarily be the winner.
Once an examination paper had been placed face down in front of each candidate, Sasha waited impatiently for the whistle to blow. The shrill, piercing blast sent a shiver down his spine as he turned the paper over. He read slowly through the twelve questions, immediately placing a tick by five of them. After considering them a second time, he was down to three. One was similar to a question that had come up seven years ago, while another was on his favourite topic. But the real triumph was question 11, which now had two ticks by it, because it was one he’d tackled the night before. Time for Mr Sutton’s second law of exams: concentrate.
Sasha began to write. Twenty-four minutes later he put his pen down and read through his answer slowly. He could hear Mr Quilter’s voice: remember to leave enough time to check your answers so you can correct any mistakes. He made a couple of minor emendations, then moved on to question 6. This time, twenty-five minutes, followed by another read-through of his submission, before he moved on to question 11, the double tick. He was writing the final paragraph when the whistle blew, and he only just managed to finish before the papers were gathered up. He was painfully aware that he hadn’t left any time to double-check that answer. He cursed.
Once the candidates had been dismissed, Sasha returned to his room, packed his small suitcase, headed downstairs and walked straight to the station. He didn’t look back, fearing he would never enter the college again.
On the journey to London, he tried to convince himself that he couldn’t have done any better, but by the time the train pulled in to King’s Cross, he was certain he couldn’t have done any worse.
‘How do you think it went?’ Elena asked even before he’d closed the front door.
‘It couldn’t have gone better,’ he said, wanting to reassure her. He handed his mother eleven shillings and sixpence, which she put in her purse.
When Sasha returned to school the next morning, Mr Sutton was more interested in studying the examination paper than in finding out how his pupil felt he’d done, and although he smiled when he saw the ticks, he didn’t point out to Sasha that he’d missed a question on a theorem they had gone over in great detail only a few days before.
‘How long will I have to wait for the results?’ asked Sasha.
‘No more than a couple of weeks,’ replied Sutton. ‘But don’t forget, you still have to take your A-levels, and how you do in them could be just as important.’
Sasha didn’t like the words ‘could be just as important’, but he returned to his slavish routine. It worried him that he found the A-level papers a little too easy, like a marathon runner on a six-mile jog. He didn’t admit as much to Ben, who felt it had been far tougher than any marathon, and no longer expected to be the proud owner of a TR6.
‘You could always be a bus driver,’ said Sasha. ‘After all, the pay’s pretty good and so are the holidays.’
‘You’d get longer holidays if you go up to Cambridge,’ said Ben, revealing his true feelings. ‘By the way, I’m holding an end of exams party at my place on Saturday night. Mum and Dad are away for the weekend, so make sure you don’t miss it.’
Sasha put on a freshly ironed white shirt, school tie and his new suit. As soon as he arrived at Ben’s home he realized that he’d made a dreadful mistake. But then, he had assumed the party would be just a few of his classmates, who would down pints of beer until they fell over, fell asleep, or both.
He discovered his next mistake as he walked into a hallway that was larger than his flat. There were just as many girls as boys at the party, and none of them were wearing school uniform, so he’d removed his tie and unbuttoned his shirt long before he reached the drawing room. He looked around and smiled, quite unaware that everyone seemed to know who he was. But he didn’t talk to a girl until more than an hour had passed, and she evaporated almost as quickly as she’d appeared.
‘He’s from another planet,’ he heard her tell Ben.
‘Only wish I occupied it,’ his friend replied.
Sasha wished he had Ben’s ability to casually chat to a girl, and make her feel she was the only woman in the room. He settled down in a comfortable chair from which he could observe the scene as if he were a spectator watching a game where he didn’t know the rules.