Clement and Evelina Race to Raise Twenty Pounds — Colfe’s School 11+

Source passage

Below is a passage about a schoolboy, Clement Lawrence, who has been humiliated in assembly because he has failed to bring in twenty pounds to put towards a retiring teacher’s leaving fund. The headmaster has threatened him with multiple detentions if he does not bring in the money the next day. The passage starts when he has returned home after school, and is about to ask his parents for the money so that he does not get in any more trouble…

It was dusk and the Lawrences were eating their one substantial meal of the day.

No one could think, looking at their home, that twenty pound notes, or even five pound notes, were to be had there for the asking.

The house was a poor, wretched coop of a room, through the black, water-stained tiles of which you could count a dozen blue glimpses of encroaching sky. The nosy clouds peered in and the Lawrences’ poverty meant that they could not afford to stop their gaze. The walls of the shack were papered with old newspapers and magazines, discoloured with age and stained and spotted from roof to floor, torn in many places, to reveal the rotting, worm-eaten boards beneath. Beetles scurried in the crumbling wood. Damp lent the miserable dwelling an earthy smell like mouldering autumn leaves. The small room was divided by a threadbare cotton screen depicting seagulls soaring up from a sea of wave-splashed blue. In the midst of this drab poverty the free, soaring seagulls, and the energetic waves were an unkind comment. One cracked table leg was propped up by a broken-spined book.

The Lawrences were a family of four: Dave and his wife Maud, Clement and his older sister Evelina.

Clement sat on the sanded floor of the poor room, his plate of rice between his legs (the tottering table was kept for pots, pans and other utensils). Evelina lolled over the one battered sofa, picking with teenage discontent at the coarse fare. Horsehair stuffing from burst corners of the sofa floated in the air and settled in the food. Dave Lawrence, a grizzled, gangling labourer, held his plate in his left hand, while with his right he filled his gaping mouth. At the propped-open window of the room sat Mrs Lawrence, a long thread of a woman whose bones poverty, like a hawk, had picked clean. Her plate was resting on her lap, and she scraped and pecked and foraged for food like a scratching hen, while her free hand snapped out to crush any beetles that dared to come too close to her meagre grains of rice.

When Clement had finished, he took up his empty plate and, getting to his feet, went and stowed it away in the dark box of a kitchen. Returning, he slumped down beside his mother’s chair and rested his head against her tiny teensy twig of a thigh.

After a time he said: ‘Ma, could I have the twenty pounds I’ve been asking for? The money for Mr Meggarty who’s retiring?’

‘Hmm? What twenty pounds, boy? Why in the name of the Lord must poor, starving people find twenty pound notes for Jim Meggarty who’s got his belly sitting so pretty with fat?’ shot back Mrs Lawrence.

‘I’ve told you and told you, ma. He’s leaving his job at my school and all of us kids have got to take in twenty pounds to give towards a fund for him,’ explained Clement patiently to his mother. He had been telling her for a month. Every day now, he seemed to be doing an impression of a parrot.

‘Hmm. Twenty pounds is a lot of money for poor folks like us. Hmm. You’d better go ask your father. See what he says.’

Clement got to his feet reluctantly and moved slowly - as slowly as a cat among cacti – over to where his father was sitting, for he knew from experience that, in parting with money, his father was a far harder nut to crack than his mother.

Dave Lawrence extended an empty plate to his son. Clement took the plate to the kitchen. Then he turned once more to tackle his father.

‘Can I have twenty pound, Papa?’ he shouted in his father’s ear, for the man was almost stone deaf.

‘Eh-eh! What’s that about a newspaper round, Clement?’

This time Clement put his mouth completely into his father’s ear and shouted until his face turned beetroot with the effort.

‘Don’t shout at me,’ was all Clement got for his pains. ‘Don’t you deafen me. What’s that the young varmint says, Maud?’

Mrs Lawrence came over and got him to understand after two or three attempts.

‘Twenty pounds, Maudie,’ he cackled, ‘Twenty pounds! Did you ever hear the like, Maud? Did you ever? I’ll bet you never did. Twenty pounds! The lad wants money that I have got to sweat blood for, just to give to that old Meggarty who’s got his bread so well buttered upon both sides, not to mention the middle. Twenty pounds! Ha ha!... oh Maudie…’ And he broke down once more in helpless laughter. Clement saw that he would not get a penny from his father. He went out and sat under the cherry tree that grew before the door, resting his back against the trunk.

Evelina came out when the dusk was thick as cobwebs and sat beside him. There was a close bond of understanding and companionship between these two. Clement leaned against her so that he could feel the cheering warmth of her arms. Biting his nails, he told her of his morning’s shame in assembly – told her how the headmaster of his school had threatened him, and half a dozen other boys, with endless detentions if they did not bring in their twenty pounds each to pay towards Mr Meggarty’s retirement fund...

coop - a cage or pen in which chickens are kept (small space)

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Writing task

Section C: Creative Writing (30 marks)

This section is testing your writing skills. Answer on the lined paper. Continue the story from the point at which Clement and Evelina are talking to one another outside their home. They obviously cannot get the money from their parents, so how do they try to raise twenty pounds? They have only until the next morning’s school day starts. Will they be successful in their efforts to acquire the money? Will they get exactly twenty pounds? Less? More? No money at all? You choose. Make sure you include description in your story.

Marks will be awarded for:

• DEVELOPING THE STORY
• ORIGINAL IDEAS
• VIVID DESCRIPTION
• VOCABULARY
• SENTENCE VARIETY
• ACCURACY (SPELLING, PUNCTUATION, GRAMMAR, PARAGRAPHING)