Witness account · 3 min read · Set in Lindenstrasse ·
The Rota of the Quiet Examinations on Lindenstrasse
An invigilator describes arriving at an examination annex already set to the board's pattern, at an hour when no name on the rota held the keys.
- reliability: disputed
- witness: "Norman Beake, invigilator"
My name is Norman Beake and I invigilate the quiet sittings, the small papers taken out at the annex on Lindenstrasse: the tradesmen's certificates, the resits, the candidates who sit apart from a main hall. I have carried the rota for eleven years.
The quiet papers run Tuesdays and Thursdays. The rota brings the first staff in at half past eight, behind Mr. Emil Brandt the caretaker, who unlocks and goes about his round. That is the arrangement as written, and the key book keeps it.
On the Tuesday before last I came up from the tram at twenty past eight, which is my habit, to read the notices before the room fills. The annex door stood on the latch. The main room was set.
I will set out what I found, in the order I found it. Forty desks in their taped squares, blotting squared on every one. Forty pencils, two to a desk, every pencil sharpened to the board pattern and all to one length, which I put a rule across, three of them, because a common length is the sort of claim that can be argued with. The two wall clocks wound and agreeing, and agreeing with my watch to the minute, which they had not done on the Thursday I set them myself in October. Water stood on the side bench in the board's jugs. The notice board's clips squared to the board. The roster card fresh in its window on the door, showing the first entry at half past eight. No staff in the room, none in the cloakroom, and not a tap running anywhere, and the room was warm, which the pipes by eight do not manage.
I sat at the dais and read the notices, because the room was correct and my initials were wanted on the day sheet at the door, and I put them there. At half past eight the others came in, and we ran the sitting the ordinary way: forty candidates, forty papers, two pencils to a candidate. Nobody counted the pencils. Nobody counts pencils that are all one length.
Afterwards I asked Mr. Brandt about the latch, and he showed me the key book, the annex signed out locked on the Monday night and signed in by him at eight, the same as every week. I asked Miss Dora Cundy, the roster clerk, and the card is out on her counter to this day: nothing rostered to that room before half past eight, and my name first on it. She says, kindly, that I must have come in early and set the room and lost the hour of my own doing it. I did not set it. I have set that room for eleven years, and I know the ache in the arms that forty desks cost, and the smell the sharpenings leave, and my arms were easy that morning, and the bins were empty and dry.
The office has minuted the sitting as set by the morning staff, and I am the morning staff, and the paper is correct as filed, and I have signed it. Nobody else has confirmed what I found, because nobody else was in the room before me, and no one has contradicted it either, only arranged it differently. What I leave standing for the January rota, since the rota writes down who comes in after and never who goes in before, is the question I cannot put a rule to: who it was that set the room.