The Test

And I remember it resembled some sort of examination. I was there to get some government training; late in life I know, but I had no work for the moment. Nobody had said anything about a test. A Mrs Lauper came into the room - it was a windowless cubicle - and straightaway I told her: 'I'm really over-qualified for this sort of test; I used to be a Cambridge student; can't you issue a waver to some of us?'

'It's quite impossible' she replied in the kind manner she had 'to get involved with waivers. No matter how advanced you are.' She fielded a question back to me: 'After all - might you not have lost your touch after all this time, some of it no doubt in idleness? How am I to know?'

Quite right. I slammed my mouth shut. Talk was first: I talked my curriculum vitae, answered some questions. She listened attentively, cocked her head to one side with curiosity I thought. Then she left the room.

It was a good half-hour, and eventually I had to tentatively slide open a little glass hatch in the wall, and I peered into an office. When she saw me she put a written test-paper on the little counter before me.

After a long time, it must have been hours because the lights outside in the street had come on - I had finished the test-paper long since - I tentatively opened the door to this little office I had discovered through the hatch. The woman was talking to two other women in the office, all of them putting their coats on. I began to tell her about how the test had gone - indeed I had been guessing some of the basic mathematics questions, it had been so long you see - and I began asking for the third part of the examination which I imagined to be some sort of essay like at school. I was still talking and had even bared my chest when they switched out the lights and closed the door.