Paper 1 Question 3

Re-read Text C, The Gift, and then answer Question 3 in your book.

TEXT C: Bethany on Jura

This text is taken from a longer narrative. At this point in the story, Bethany finds a copy of a
book (‘1984’) by George Orwell which leads her on a journey back to the island where the book
was written.

Bethany Mellmoth hasn’t really registered the nature of the person sitting beside her as she
makes the long tube journey homewards from her place of work, from Dalston, in the very east
of London, to Fulham in the fairly far west. Male, tall, possibly a smoker – she can smell the
cigarette smoke on him – would be the best description she could muster, if asked. She’s
reading, not paying attention. But, as they pull into Fulham Broadway station, this
indeterminate male stands up and makes his way through the crowd to the doors. Bethany
follows. The train is full and some schoolkids are larking about, bumping into people. Bethany
sees a book drop from the man’s bag as they brush clumsily by him and she stoops to pick it up.
She grabs it and is swept out by the crowd on to the platform.

“Hey! You’ve dropped – ”

But he’s gone, lost in the surging stream of impassive commuters heading home. He probably
never even noticed it had fallen, she thinks, such was the scrum at the door. She stands there
and looks at the book in her hand – a hardback, wrapped in brown paper, as if to protect the
jacket. What should she do? She goes to a bench and sits down. It’s just a book, maybe it wasn’t
very important to him. She opens it and reads on the title page: Nineteen Eighty-Four by George
Orwell. She closes her eyes. Opens them. Fulham Broadway tube station seems to bend and
swirl around her, hallucogenically. She feels the skin across her shoulders tighten and she
shivers. Is this a joke? Her gaze searches the people on the platform but nobody is looking at
her. But it must be some kind of sign, she thinks. George Orwell is her favourite writer; she
reveres George Orwell. In fact, she reveres him so much that she’s contemplating writing a
novel herself – a homage to Nineteen Eighty-Four – that she’s going to call 2084. But nobody
knows this except her. Nobody in the entire world. What’s going on?

Bethany is “between boyfriends” as she likes to put it. She has unilaterally abandoned her latest
boyfriend, Aldous, the standup comic, as he was clearly insane, but as to who her next boyfriend
will be she has no idea, currently. She’s moved back home, symbolically, into the granny flat in
her mother’s house in Hollywood Road, Fulham, SW6.

She lets herself into the basement – she can tell her mother’s in, she can hear music: there’s
always music playing in her mother’s bit of the house. She dumps her rucksack, sits at her desk
and carefully unpeels the sticky tape that secures the book’s brown-paper wrapper to reveal the
dust jacket beneath. Green background, white cursive script, the words “nineteen eighty-four”
(no capitals) overlaying the paler white numbers: 1984. She opens the book delicately as the
pages are stiff, yellowing somewhat. On the title page is an inscription in black ink: “To Ailsa
McTurk, with thanks, Geo. Orwell”. Bethany closes her eyes again, hearing the rushing of blood
in her ears, her cheeks hot. This is getting out of control. Further investigation reveals that the
book is a first edition, Secker and Warburg, 1949, and, on the endboard at the back there is a
new small sticky label: “www.Orwelliana.com, Isle of Jura, Scotland”.

A moment at her laptop, finding the website, uncovers more details. Orwelliana is an
antiquarian bookseller on the Isle of Jura, off the west coast of Scotland. Bethany needs no
reminding – Jura was where Orwell actually wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four. And there’s a
telephone number. She makes the call and a woman answers. Bethany tells her what happened,
how she came to have this precious book in her possession. Her love of Orwell. The
extraordinary coincidence. Hello? The woman on the end of the phone has gone silent for a
moment. Then she says: “Yes, yes. That’s, ah, wonderful. Wonderful, wonderful. It’s ours. Our
courier lost it.”

“Would you like me to bring it back personally?” Bethany hears herself saying. “I’d be more than
happy to.”

Question 3

Re-read Text C, The Gift, and then answer Question 3 in your book.

Question 3

You are Bethany. Some years later you are interviewed about the experience of finding the book
for a TV programme about George Orwell. The interviewer asks you the following three
questions only:

- What was your journey like the day that you found the book?
- How would you describe your life immediately before finding the book?
- How did you feel about finding the book and then taking it back?

Write the words of the interview.

Base your interview on what you have read in Text C, but be careful to use your own words.
Address each of the three bullet points.

Begin your interview with the first question.

Write about 250 to 350 words.

Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality
of your writing.

[25]
Interviewer: What was your journey like the day that you found the book?
Bethany: Before I found the book, my day was going smoothly, I was on the way home. I was
actually reading one myself. I got off the metro and had to almost push through the crowd
there, when I saw a book drop from the bag of a man I recall from when I was on the tube. At
that point, I didn’t think so much of it. I wanted to go and give the book back but when I looked
up, he was far gone. It was only later in the day when I unpacked it realized what I was holding,
and as a massive fan of George Orwell myself, I struggled to contain my excitement. Finding a
first print of a bestseller from my favorite author is something I wouldn’t be able to put into
words if I wanted to, for the most part I was excited, but I did feel a tiny bit guilty because it was
not mine, after all.
Interviewer: How would you describe your life immediately before finding the book?
Bethany: I would describe my life before I found the book to be quite normal. I worked in
Dalston, on the east of the city and I was on the way home, reading a book on the tube like I
usually would. There was the guy sitting next to me, he stank of cigarette smoke. I didn’t
think much of it but it turns out that was what led me to the book.
Interviewer: How did you feel about finding the book and then taking it back?
Bethany: Well, as I have said, finding a first print of 1984 was something beyond my wildest
hopes and dreams, doubleplusgood I might say, but I did feel slightly guilty, of course. Because it
wasn’t actually mine it almost felt like I stole it, because when the owner found out he had
dropped it, he must’ve been devastated. I figured that in order to be relieved of this guilt, I
would only do the right thing, which was to try and return it. So I did a bit of research and
despite my excitement, I decided that I would put some effort into returning it. Anyway, I called
the number on a website and offered to return it personally as it would also be an opportunity
to visit the island where Orwell wrote the book himself.