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Dusk was falling as Rachel made her way to Sir Gilbert’s tent fifteen minutes later. A
slow, magnificent sunset was in progress with a shimmering ochre sun casting
valedictory rays through the canopy of trees, while the cicadas sang and the night
birds began their early chorus. Sir Gilbert was drinking a gin and tonic at his table
and seemed to be enjoying the sunset, although, as Rachel was to learn over the
next few months, he was not much given to revealing his emotions.
‘Not a bad spot,’ was all he said to her.
‘It’s amazing,’ said Rachel.
‘Been here before?’
‘No. This is very much a first, for me.’
‘Wouldn’t have been my first choice,’ he said. ‘But the kids wanted to see some
animals and, you know… They take priority.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘So,’ he said, after summoning the butler and ordering a glass of white wine for
Rachel, ‘about my son. When he’s not at school he mostly lives with his mother, so I
don’t take much responsibility for how he’s turned out.’
‘Which school does he go to?’ Rachel asked.
‘Eton. Just starting his last year there, which means he’s got a university interview
coming up in a few months. He’s aiming for maths at Oxford. You were at Oxford, is
that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you didn’t go to public school?’
‘No.’
Good. That’s what they told me. Well, the crux of the matter is this. Because of
the cock-eyed ideology which permeates education in Britain at the moment, Oxford
colleges are under a lot of pressure to favour state-educated pupils like yourself. I
believe it’s called “inclusivity”. Or “anti-elitism”. Whatever you call it, the upshot is
that boys like Lucas, who’s never seen the inside of a state school in his life, have to
try extra hard to make the right impression. His mother’s spoiled him, but I’ve
certainly spent a lot of money on him over the last seventeen years, which I think is
only natural when it comes to your own offspring. Not surprisingly, he’s turned out
cocky, arrogant and with a sense of entitlement you can spot from ten miles away.
None of which would have been a problem in the past, but nowadays, as I said, this
sort of thing apparently puts people’s backs up at our great centres of learning. So
what we’ve got to try to do is to knock some of it out of him. Do you follow?’
‘Sort of…’ Rachel said, although there was no mistaking the note of uncertainty in
her voice.
‘Well, I’ll put it as simply as I can,’ said Sir Gilbert. ‘I want you to turn my son into
a normal person.’
Rachel would have considered this a bizarre request at the best of times. Here,
disorientated after her long journey, she thought it stranger than ever, and for a
moment she found herself wondering if she had somehow passed through a looking
glass in the last twenty-four hours, and emerged into a parallel world where the
everyday rules and assumptions had been inverted.
‘A normal person?’ she repeated.

 
 
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‘Yes. I want him to be able to open his mouth without it sounding as though he
thinks he owns the world and everything in it.”
Rachel took a deep breath. ‘OK then. I’ll… see what I can do about that.’
‘You have a very strong accent,’ said Sir Gilbert. ‘What is it, Lancashire?’
‘Yorkshire. You really don’t want me to give him a Yorkshire accent, do you?’
‘No. I don’t really care what you do to him. Talk to him, read to him, whatever it
takes. You can start tomorrow at nine. Spend the day with him and see what you can
manage.’
With that, he picked up his iPad and began reading a magazine article. Rachel
realised that this was his way of telling her the conversation was at an end.

Jonathan Coe, Number 11, 2015

Extract from a novel

 
 
  © David McIntyre, InThinking
  http://www.thinkib.net/englishalanglit 2