Cambridge Lower Secondary Progression Test

English question paper 2 insert

Stage 7
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Section A: Reading

Read this passage from Escape from Shangri-La by Michael Morpurgo and then answer the questions
in the question paper.

A girl playing her violin notices an old man standing across the road from her house in the
pouring rain.

***

I was ambivalent about my violin. I loved playing my violin, but I had always hated practising,
and in particular I hated being told to practise. Once I could forget that I was practising, once I
could lose myself in the music, then I could play quite happily for hours on end.

I was just beginning to enjoy it, just beginning to feel at one with my violin. I was playing so well
I could feel the skin prickling with pleasure all down my arms. But then the doorbell rang. The 5
magic was broken. I was immediately back to hateful practising. The bell rang again.

I put the violin down on my bed and went to the top of the stairs to see who it was. I heard the
front door opening. There was a shadow down in the hallway, and my mother was standing
beside it, motionless.

‘Who is it?’ I said, as I came down the stairs. 10

The shadow moved suddenly into the light of the hallway and became the old man from across
the road. He was standing there, dripping. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I know this is going to sound a
bit odd, but I’m your grandad. I’m your dad’s dad, so that makes me your grandad, doesn’t it?’

I felt my mother take my hand and hold on to it tightly, so tightly it was hurting me.

‘You can’t be,’ my mother whispered, pulling me close to her. ‘You can’t be him. Arthur hasn’t 15
got a father.’ The old man seemed suddenly unsteady on his feet. He swayed and staggered
forward. Instinctively we both backed away from him. He was dripping from his ears, from his
chin, from his fingers too. It was as if his whole body was weeping tears.

The old man was unbuttoning his jacket now, and fumbling deep inside. My mother still held
me by the hand in a grip of steel. The wallet he took out was stuffed full, like some battered 20
leather sandwich. He opened it up with great care, almost reverently. With shaky fingers he
pulled out an old photograph, faded to sepia, torn at the edges and criss-crossed with creases.
He gave it to us. A young man looked at me out of the photograph. Astride his shoulders sat a
small boy clutching his hair with both fists.

‘There’s me with little Arthur, your dad, that is, pulling my hair by the roots. He was always 25
doing that, little rascal. Summer 1950. That was the last summer we were all together.’

I felt a warm shiver creeping up the back of my neck. I looked up into his face. The eyes were
deep-set and gentle. They were blue. He had blue eyes. My father had blue eyes. I had blue
eyes. That was the moment the last doubts vanished. This man had to be my father’s father,
my grandfather. 30

‘You’d better come in,’ I said.

I broke free of my mother’s grasp, took my grandfather gently by the arm and led him into the
warmth of the kitchen.

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We sat watching him as he sipped and slurped, both hands holding the mug. He was savouring
it. In between sips he set about the plate of chocolate digestive biscuits, dunking every one till 35
it was soggy all through, and devouring one after another with scarcely a pause for breath. He
must have been really famished. His face was weathered brown and crinkled and craggy, like
the bark of an old oak tree. I’d never seen a face like it. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

I did all the talking. Someone had to. I can’t stand silences – they make me uncomfortable. He
was obviously too intent on his tea and biscuits to say anything at all, and my mother just sat 40
there staring across the kitchen table at him. How many times had she told me not to stare at
people? And here she was gawping at him shamelessly.

I had to think of something sensible to talk about, and I reasoned that he might want to know
something about me, about his new-found granddaughter. After all, he had my whole life to
catch up on. 45

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BLANK PAGE

Copyright Acknowledgements:

Section A © Adapted extract taken from Escape from Shangri-La by Michael Morpurgo. Text copyright © 1998 Michael Morpurgo. Published by
Egmont UK Limited and used with permission; adapted by permission of the author.

Permission to reproduce items where third-party owned material protected by copyright is included has been sought and cleared where possible. Every
reasonable effort has been made by the publisher (UCLES) to trace copyright holders, but if any items requiring clearance have unwittingly been included, the
publisher will be pleased to make amends at the earliest possible opportunity.

Cambridge Assessment International Education is part of the Cambridge Assessment Group. Cambridge Assessment is the brand name of University of
Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES), which is itself a department of the University of Cambridge.

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