legends · 4 min read ·
Exercise Book
An evening-class writing assignment about a room reveals that the student was killed in 1962 and has always been enrolled.
**Creative Writing for Beginners — Evening Class, Tues 7–9 p.m., Room 4, Hawkley Institute.**
**Assignment 3: "Write about a room you know well." (500 words max.) Student: Bernard Ostle.**
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*The Back Bedroom*
*The room I know best is the back bedroom of my late mother's house. It is at the end of the landing, over the kitchen. It has a single bed with a candlewick spread, a wardrobe with a mirror door, and a dressing table. A window with a lace curtain looks out on the garden. In the garden is a washing line, a coal bunker, and a plum tree my father planted.*
*In the room there is always the smell of a closed drawer, of camphor and old paper. When the sun comes in it makes a square on the floor. As a young man I used to lie in it. The room was kept for visitors, though none ever came. It was cold in winter. In summer it was dusty and warm and made a sound like a held breath.*
*I know every inch of it. The crack in the ceiling like a river. The brown stain in the corner. The wardrobe mirror, whose silvering has gone at the edges. The picture of a ship over the bed.*
*After my mother died I went back to clear the house. The back bedroom was as I'd left it. Except for one thing. The bed was slept in.*
*I want to be careful here. Not a mess. Only a mark. A faint depression in the candlewick, the size of a person lying on their side, facing the wall. I put my hand on it. It was warm.*
*I stripped the bed. I washed the cover. I remade it.*
*Next day, the same hollow.*
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**Tutor's comment (in green ink):** *Bernard, this is excellent. A really controlled voice and some lovely detail. The ending is strong. I think there's a story here. Do you want to continue? B+*
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**Assignment 4: "Continue last week's piece." Student: Bernard Ostle.**
*I stayed the night. I told myself it would settle things. I had a sleeping bag and I lay on the floor of the back bedroom, beside the bed, in the dark, with my back to the wardrobe.*
*At two in the morning I heard the bed creak. Slowly, as a body turns. A long sigh. Someone getting comfortable.*
*I did not look. I lay with my eyes closed. After a time I felt a hand on my shoulder. A light touch. A thin cold hand, the hand of someone very old. It patted me twice, and a voice, a whisper, said: "Is it you, Bernard?"*
*It was not my mother's voice. It was a man's. Older than I knew.*
*I said yes.*
*"Good," it said. "I've been so tired. I've kept the bed warm for you."*
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**Tutor's comment:** *Bernard, the pacing here is superb. Though I wonder whether the supernatural element is slightly forced. Let the room do more of the work. Also, a note: would your mother really have a man in the back bedroom? B+*
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**Assignment 5: "Describe someone you have lost." Student: Bernard Ostle.**
*I will not be handing in an assignment this week. I'm sorry. I have been writing in this exercise book for some time now. I only wanted you to know that I have not been entirely truthful.*
*My mother is not dead. She is in a care home at Kelling. She has been there four years. The house has been empty since. I go there on Saturdays. Nobody else does.*
*The back bedroom is not my mother's. I have no memory of it. I have never slept in it. I wrote the first two assignments from a place I did not know, in handwriting I did not recognise, in a voice that sounded like mine.*
*I found the exercise book in the back bedroom. Under the mattress. It's old, cardboard-covered, with a label on the front. The label reads: Bernard Ostle, Evening School. It's an exercise book from 1961.*
*It's full, in a young man's neat hand. It's full of the pieces I've been handing in. They're all there. Assignment after assignment, with a tutor's comment in green ink. B+. B+. A-.*
*The earliest is dated 1962.*
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**Tutor's comment:** *Bernard, I have to tell you that I was looking for your folder in the office and could not find one. The register for the class shows no one of your name. I asked Mrs. Fenn at reception. She said no one of that name had enrolled in the class since the Institute opened in 1958, but that there was a Bernard Ostle on the old roll of honour, in the entrance hall, a student of the Institute's evening school, who was killed in 1962.*
*I'll expect your next piece on Tuesday. Please come in the usual way.*
*B+.*