Ostrich: A Novel (29 page)
Authors: Matt Greene
Grove End Middle School
Whippendale Road
Watford
Herts
WD17 1BB
August 30, 2004
Mr. M. Duberry
Secretary of the Appeals Committee
OCEB
Cambridge Office
14 Mowbray Road
Cambridge
CB1 2EP
Dear Mr. Duberry,
Ref: EngCom/16411/5165
Thank you for your letter of August 24, 2004, enclosing the findings of your Stage I Report and another copy of Part 9 of the OCEB handbook, of which you can never have too many.
I note your conclusion that “there was no inappropriate application of the marking scheme.”
I therefore intend to exercise my handbook-given right to take the matter to Stage II with respect to candidate 5165—or, as we all know him, Alex.
In the meantime, I make the following points arising from your letter:
a) Our appeal was not founded on the assumption that there was “inappropriate application of the marking scheme.” This was never “alleged.”
b) We appealed on wider grounds, namely, that “the internal procedures, as relating either to mark schemes, standardization
or the arbitration of grade boundaries could not have been accurately followed.”
c) In order to convince us that your internal procedures have been accurately followed, you must, surely, provide us with the following evidence:
i. the written verdict of the original marker and the remarker about the extent to which Alex’s answer does, or does not, meet OCEB’s assessment objectives.
ii. a statement of how Alex’s mark was, or was not, transformed into a weighted raw mark. Please show your working.
iii. a copy of the script in question.
Finally, if you will permit a personal observation: Our specific concern for Alex and the accurate assessment of his work could well lead this center to consider more general issues regarding the board and its competence.
Awaiting your reply.
Yours sincerely,
Tony Clifford
Headmaster
OCEB*
RECOGNIZING EXCELLENCE
Head Office
1 King Street
Cambridge
CB2 1EG
Telephone: 1223 302302
Facsimile: 01223 302303
www.oceb.org.uk
Mr. T. Clifford
Headmaster
Grove End Middle School
Whippendale Road
Watford
WD17 1BB
September 3, 2004
Ref: EngCom/16411/5165
Dear Mr. Clifford
CE Examinations June 2004: Specification 2869 EngCom Appeal Against the Outcome of a Stage I Report Candidate: 5165
Thank you for your letter dated August 30, 2004, in which you detailed your wish to make a further appeal in the above specification.
As part of the review process, you are, of course, entitled to a copy of the candidate’s script(s), as requested in section c(iii) of your letter. It is suggested that you use this evidence to inform your decision whether to pursue a Stage II Appeal. If you require access to script(s), please reply to this letter quoting reference EngCom/16411/5165 enclosing a check for the value of £8.50 made payable to OCEB. You will note that 14 days should be allowed for delivery of script(s).
It is recommended that you await arrival of the candidate’s script(s) before formalizing any further appeal. Having myself read Alex’s script, I would personally advise that this is a highly sensible recommendation.
Yours sincerely
Michael Duberry
Secretary: OCEB Appeals Committee
The Dark Room
September 20, 2004
Day 116 W.T.
The letter arrived this morning. It’s here right now, in front of me on the kitchen table in an A4 manila envelope. That’s probably why I’m writing again after all this time, and in full sentences, too. Because I can’t bear to open it yet. Ha. Or should I say Haha. I suppose it is funny, actually, or at the very least absurd, which I used to think was the same thing, at any rate, but I can’t stop thinking about what might be inside. Obviously, it’s either good news or bad news, but it’s almost like once I’ve opened it it’ll be one or the other, so until I do it’s both. I know that probably sounds ridiculous—but even so, I need a few more minutes still.
So what can I tell you in the meantime? Well, last week was your first back at work. People
are
funny. “How
are
you?” they ask now, instead of just “How are you?”—and how proud
they are to have done so! I can see it in their eyes. “Isn’t it terrible, but at least I’m part of the solution.” It’s exhausting. Like watching someone recycle, or buy line-caught tuna. The worst part is how quietly everyone talks. It’s as if they’ve all read the same bit of research: that grief improves your hearing. Aside from that, not much has changed. There’s another new group of trainees. I can tell they don’t know yet by the way they leave dictation: like they’re not embarrassed to find it important. One of them signed off a recording with a message for me, asking me to deliver him a proof “Ace.” At first I assumed it was a nickname he was keen to self-apply—he looks the type—but it later transpired it was short for “asap.” I wish someone had told me when I was young and busy saving all that time that one day I’d have to spend it.
Some days every hour has a thousand minutes and every minute a thousand seconds. Another good reason to take things slow. Because once you open the letter that’s it, you know. Good news or bad, it’s over either way. There’ll be nothing more you can do. It’ll just be you and the rest of your life.
Last night I played his computer again. It was the first time since I went back to work. D was at group, but still I needed an excuse. “I’m just going to feed the hamster,” I told myself. And then, once I was in his room I went straight for it. The first time I know why I turned it on. It’s the same reason I have to make sure all the curtains are shut the second I walk through the door: because after dark guilt makes mirrors everywhere. But that never explained why I connected to the Internet and opened a Web browser It must’ve been an hour last night. Sitting there in the dark and tracing the echoes of his Google
searches. Chasing him around the keyboard, suggesting prefixes and watching as he whispered back whole words and phrases. don
key oaty
. dou
ble penetration
. dow
jones index
. It was almost like a duet. As though the two of us were sat beside each other on a piano stool, playing chopsticks. Ha. Like you could play chopsticks. It must’ve been at least an hour because by the time I was done D was back from group.
He asked me to come with again this morning. What exactly is it he said I would benefit from? A Vocabulary for Grieving. That’s it. “To help you put your feelings into words.” And then what? “And then into sentences, and eventually at some point down the line into …” What, exactly? Perspective? No, he hadn’t been about to say that. “Context.” It’s the one thing we’ve argued about. The rest of the time we’re perfectly delightful, which is no good to anyone, because what’s charm but yet another reflective surface? It must be a funny thing to see the two of us, two charming people facing off, to watch as small talk recedes into infinitesimal talk. It’s ironic, I suppose, considering everything that’s happened, that these days our conversations should be governed by the laws of infinite regression.
This morning, though, was the exception. I could sense it was coming. Here, in a nutshell, is his argument:
A wife who loses a husband is called a widow.
A husband who loses a wife is called a widower.
A child who loses his parents is called an orphan.
A mother who loses a child doesn’t have a name.
This is because a) it’s not supposed to happen.
And b) it’s a taboo, which means THEY don’t want you to talk about it.
But guess what? It DOES happen. It happens all the time. And there ARE people you can—nay, MUST—talk to. People who understand exactly what you’re going through.
And here, in a nutshell, is mine:
This isn’t something we’re going THROUGH. It’s something we’re IN. And come to that how do you expect to put something into words when it’s so big you can’t see its edges?
There IS a name for a mother who loses a child. She is called a mother.
At which he sighed and told me something I can’t stop thinking about. It’s something someone else told him, a father whose son chased a football onto an icy pond:
“Take a look in the mirror. The person looking back, that’s your best friend. Do you know how I know that? Because it has to be.”
So, for the first time, I asked him. Do you think we did the right thing or the wrong thing?
He sighed again. “I think past a certain point it stops being an important distinction. I think punishing yourself isn’t the same as mourning him. And I think in time you’ll come to see that.”
But that’s just it, I told him. We’re not on the same timetable.
We didn’t all start missing him before he was even gone.
“Yes we did,” he said.
That’s why I never came home tonight. At work it was someone’s birthday, one of the trainees, I think, because the cake still had the right amount of candles in it, and there’s a statute of limitation on that kind of thing. At the end of the day they must’ve noticed how long I was taking to gather my things because they asked me along for a drink. It’s now 4:43 a.m. and I’m completely sober again. When I got home the letter was on the table and D was asleep on the sofa with the TV on. It was a world sports catalogue program, some ex-cricketer competing in the marlin fishing World Championships. On top of the screen was the picture of Alex from his first day of school, the one with his fly open, and in the bottom right-hand corner, as though she were standing on the water, a pretty young sign language interpreter. You never know what’s going to set you off. “Are deaf people nocturnal?” he asked once. “Why would you think that?” I asked him. But he didn’t answer. It was D who caught him in the end. He’d been sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night to watch TV.
On the dance floor I told “Ace” everything. What had happened, what I’d done, and, finally, how I would never forgive
myself. It was too loud for me to hear the words I was saying, but the contortions of my mouth were enough to make it so. The whole time he danced at me. He couldn’t hear a word I was saying. When I was through contorting myself, he asked what perfume I was wearing.
The time is now 5:38. Before long the sun will rise again, which these days is my biggest fear. Do you remember Chicken Licken? It took you a whole week of story times to make it even halfway through. He always was an inquisitive child. “But why DID the acorn fall on his head?” he kept asking every time you paused for breath—until eventually you abandoned the book and instead explained, as best you could, the properties of gravity. The next night, when you were tucking him in, he asked how come the sun didn’t collapse under the force of its own gravitational pull.
One day, you told him, it will.
“And then what?”
And then nothing. That will be that.
“Because we’ll be dead?”
You nodded.
“Even you and Daddy?”
Yes, you said. But that’s all right, because you’ll be dead, too, remember.
For a minute or two he chewed this over. Then nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Night, night.”
Grove End Middle School
Whippendale Road
Watford
Herts
WD17 1BB
September 19, 2004
Ms. L. Graham
14 Pegmire Close
Bushey
Hertfordshire
WD23 8PA
Dear Louise,
See attached. I’m sorry. There’s nothing more we can do. I have withdrawn the appeal. Please forgive me for raising your hopes.
Yours,
Tony
OCEB*
RECOGNIZING EXCELLENCE
Head Office
1 King Street
Cambridge
CB2 1EG
Telephone: 1223 302302
Facsimile: 01223 302303
www.oceb.org.uk
Mr. T. Clifford
Headmaster
Grove End Middle School
Whippendale Road
Watford
WD17 1BB
September 17, 2004
Ref: EngCom/16411/5165
Dear Mr. Clifford
CE Examinations June 2004: Specification 2869 EngCom
Return of Script(s) for Formalization of
Stage II Appeal
Candidate: 5165
You will please find enclosed a reproduction of the candidate 5165’s script(s) in specification 2869 EngCom.
I hope this goes some way to assuaging your fears regarding the board’s competence.
Yours sincerely
Michael Duberry
Secretary: OCEB Appeals Committee
Enc: Script(s) for Candidate 5165 in
Specification 2869 EngCom
OCEB Examining Group
Specification 2689
ENGLISH COMPOSITION
June 2004
Time allowed: 60 mins
Instructions:
Ensure you have the correct question paper.
Write in black or blue ink.
15 marks will be awarded for accurate spelling, punctuation, and grammar.
QUESTION 1 of 1:
Describe in no less than 500 words your
Life in a Day
.
(100 marks)
