‘I wouldn’t let you reprint it, if you offered me...’
‘If we offered you how much?’
The week before Keith was due to sit his exams for Oxford, he returned to Toorak for some last-minute cramming with Miss Steadman. They went over possible questions together and read model answers she had prepared. She failed on only one thing — getting him to relax. But he couldn’t tell her that it wasn’t the exams he was nervous about.
‘I’m sure you’ll pass,’ his mother said confidently over breakfast on the Sunday morning.
‘I do hope so,’ said Keith, only too aware that the following day the Sydney Morning Herald was going to publish his ‘Dawn of a New Republic.’ But that would also be the morning he began his exams, so Keith just hoped that his father and mother would keep their counsel for at least the next ten days, and by then perhaps...
‘Well, if it’s a close-run thing,’ said his father, interrupting his thoughts, ‘I’m sure you’ll be helped by the headmaster’s strong endorsement after your amazing success with the pavilion appeal. By the way, I forgot to mention that your grandmother was so impressed by your efforts that she donated another £100 to the appeal, in your name.’
It was the first time Keith’s mother had ever heard him swear.
By the Monday morning Keith felt as ready to face the examiners as he believed he would ever be, and by the time he had completed the final paper ten days later, he was impressed by how many of the questions Miss Steadman had anticipated. He knew he’d done well in History and Geography, and only hoped that the Oxford board didn’t place too much weight on the Classics.
He phoned his mother to assure her that he thought he had performed as well as he could have hoped, and that if he wasn’t offered a place at Oxford he wouldn’t be able to complain that he’d been unlucky with the questions.
‘Neither will I complain,’ came back his mother’s immediate reply. ‘But I do have one piece of advice for you, Keith. Keep out of your father’s way for a few more days.’
The anticlimax that followed the ending of the exams was inevitable. While Keith waited to learn the results, he spent some of his time trying to raise the final few hundred pounds for the pavilion appeal, some of it at the racecourse placing small bets with his own money, and a night with the wife of a banker who ended up donating £50.
On the last Monday of term, Mr. Jessop informed his staff at their weekly meeting that St. Andrew’s would be continuing the great tradition of sending its finest students to Oxford and Cambridge, thus maintaining the link with those two great universities. He read out the names of those who had won places:
Alexander, D.T.L.
Tomkins, C.
Townsend, K.R.
‘A shit, a swot, and a star, but not necessarily in that order,’ said the headmaster under his breath.
Second Edition
To the Victor the Spoils
9
Daily Mirror
7 June 1944
Normandy Landings Are Successful
When Lubji Hoch had finished telling the tribunal his story, they just looked at him with incredulous stares. He was either some sort of superman, or a pathological liar — they couldn’t decide which.
The Czech translator shrugged his shoulders. ‘Some of it adds up,’ he told the investigating officer. ‘But a lot of it sounds a little far-fetched to me.’
The chairman of the tribunal considered the case of Lubji Hoch for a few moments, and then decided on the easy way out. ‘Send him back to the internment camp — and we’ll see him again in six months’ time. He can then tell us his story again, and we’ll just have to see how much of it has changed.’
Lubji had sat through the tribunal unable to understand a word the chairman was saying, but at least this time they had supplied him with an interpreter so he was able to follow the proceedings. On the journey back to the internment camp he made one decision. When they reviewed his case in six months’ time, he wouldn’t need his words translated.
That didn’t turn out to be quite as easy as Lubji had anticipated, because once he was back in the camp among his countrymen they showed little interest in speaking anything but Czech. In fact the only thing they ever taught him was how to play poker, and it wasn’t long before he was beating every one of them at their own game. Most of them assumed they would be returning home as soon as the war was over.
Lubji was the first internee to rise every morning, and he persistently annoyed his fellow inmates by always wanting to outrun, outwork and outstrip every one of them. Most of the Czechs looked upon him as nothing more than a Ruthenian ruffian, but as he was now over six feet in height and still growing, none of them voiced this opinion to his face.
Lubji had been back at the camp for about a week when he first noticed her. He was returning to his hut after breakfast when he saw an old woman pushing a bicycle laden with newspapers up the hill. As she passed through the camp gates he couldn’t make out her face clearly, because she wore a scarf over her head as a token defense against the bitter wind. She began to deliver papers, first to the officers’ mess and then, one by one, to the little houses occupied by the non-commissioned officers. Lubji walked around the side of the parade ground and began to follow her, hoping she might turn out to be the person to help him. When the bag on the front of her bicycle was empty, she turned back toward the camp gates. As she passed Lubji, he shouted, ‘Hello.’
‘Good morning,’ she replied, mounted her bicycle and rode through the gates and off down the hill without another word.
The following morning Lubji didn’t bother with breakfast but stood by the camp gates, staring down the hill. When he saw her pushing her laden bicycle up the slope, he ran out to join her before the guard could stop him. ‘Good morning,’ he said, taking the bicycle from her.
‘Good morning,’ she replied. ‘I’m Mrs. Sweetman. And how are you today?’ Lubji would have told her, if he’d had the slightest idea what she had said.
As she did her rounds he eagerly carried each bundle for her. One of the first words he learned in English was ‘newspaper.’ After that he set himself the task of learning ten new words every day.
By the end of the month, the guard on the camp gate didn’t even blink when Lubji slipped past him each morning to join the old lady at the bottom of the hill.
By the second month, he was sitting on the doorstep of Mrs. Sweetman’s shop at six o’clock every morning so that he could stack all the papers in the right order, before pushing the laden bicycle up the hill. When she requested a meeting with the camp commander at the beginning of the third month, the major told her that he could see no objection to Hoch’s working a few hours each day in the village shop, as long as he was always back before roll-call.
Mrs. Sweetman quickly discovered that this was not the first news-agent’s shop the young man had worked in, and she made no attempt to stop him when he rearranged the shelves, reorganized the delivery schedule, and a month later took over the accounts. She was not surprised to discover, after a few weeks of Lubji’s suggestions, that her turnover was up for the first time since 1939.
Whenever the shop was empty Mrs. Sweetman would help Lubji with his English by reading out loud one of the stories from the front page of the Citizen. Lubji would then try to read it back to her. She often burst out laughing with what she called his ‘howlers.’ Just another word Lubji added to his vocabulary.
By the time winter had turned into spring there was only the occasional howler, and it was not much longer before Lubji was able to sit down quietly in the corner and read to himself, stopping to consult Mrs. Sweetman only when he came to a word he hadn’t come across. Long before he was due to reappear in front of the tribunal, he had moved on to studying the leader column in the Manchester Guardian, and one morning, when Mrs. Sweetman stared at the word ‘insouciant’ without attempting to offer an explanation, Lubji decided to save her embarrassment by referring in future to the unthumbed Oxford Pocket Dictionary which had been left to gather dust under the counter.