26: Exam
Dawn on Sunday morning found George in a tent, in a muddy sleeping bag because they hadn't had time the previous night to sort out the groundsheet properly, snoring. The tent was on a slope and Dougie McRae had rolled from his side onto George's side and was squashed up against him, a string of drool connecting his mouth to his own sleeping bag.
"Good morning gentlemen," a voice suddenly shouted from outside the tent. "Both of you up and out in ten, nine, eight…"
Dougie was groggy and took a few seconds to register what was going on, but George reacted on instinct, sitting bolt upright and shedding his sleeping bag. Yeboah had got to 'one' in his countdown before George stumbled out of the tent, and was on 'zero point one' when Dougie appeared.
"Welcome to day two," Yeboah said, dressed in spotless combat trousers and white CHERUB staff t-shirt. "I assume Instructor Capstick was gentle with you on day one? Left time for afternoon tea and a nice early night?"
In reality, Capstick had mercilessly tortured them all day with karate drills and exercise routines until George could barely stand, then made them dig muddy ditches and fill them in again before finally flinging a rolled-up tent and sleeping bags at them at midnight. George reckoned he'd probably got about five hours' sleep in all and his entire body ached, even his fingers and toes.
Neither Cherub answered Yeboah, but they both stood to attention in front of the tent.
"I think we'll start with a lap of the cross-country course to get you warmed up for the day," Yeboah said, sounding thoughtful. "And then, of course, I asked Capstick to get you to dig me some trenches yesterday but all I can see are two big muddy messes. We'll have to get those dug up again."
George resisted the urge to groan.
"Off you go, chop chop," Yeboah grinned. "Anyone not back here in twenty minutes will be eating mud pie for breakfast."
The cross-country course was muddy at this time of year and both boys had to be careful not to skid and turn over on an ankle. Dougie had been caught inking a penis onto the GCSE Art coursework of a girl he didn't like, which made George roar with laughter when Dougie told him and earnt him ten additional press-ups from Capstick for having too much fun. They'd been too exhausted the previous day to say much else to each other, but now they were on the cross-country course without any oversight from Yeboah and relatively fresh from sleep.
"What do you say to a shower and some proper breakfast?" Dougie said when they were on the furthest part of the course.
"Eh?" George asked. "What do you mean?"
"Yeboah is hanging around, thinking up new tortures for us, and Capstick will be supervising the blue shirts in basic training," Dougie said. "This time of day is always laps of the assault course. We could be in and out of the training compound in five minutes: three minutes for a quick shower, two minutes to nab some food which we eat on the way back."
"If we get caught, we're dead," George said, cautiously. "Cheating on heavy drill is like the worst of the worst."
Dougie shrugged. "Who's going to know?"
George considered it. A shower would make the rest of the day much more bearable. "Alright, let's do it," he said. "If we sprint the rest of the course we might even be back inside twenty minutes."
The gates of the basic training compound were never locked, in case a trainee decided to quit, and after a quick check to make sure Capstick was definitely over by the assault course, Dougie and George jogged up to the low building where the trainees slept. George got a rush of nostalgia as he looked through the glassless windows, looking at the row of neatly-made beds in exactly the same places they'd always been, remembering his own time at the hands of Kazakov.
"Hurry up," Dougie said, already under the shower. The water was freezing cold, of course, and George's teeth chattered as he drenched himself and did his best to wash off itchy mud. Dougie was done first and instead of heading to the store cupboard where the training instructors kept the food, he doubled around the side of the building, with George coming up behind.
"Why out here?" George asked.
"I bet the instructors threw away some food," Dougie said, pulling the lid off a bin. "Bingo," he said, tossing George two mini packets of cereal. "They always do this."
George grinned. He well remembered losing his breakfast or dinner over any petty reason but hadn't realised they just threw it away. They set off back to the main gate, chomping dry cereal, trying to warm up again.
"You're an evil genius," George pointed out to Dougie when they were back on the cross-country course.
"Thank you," Dougie smirked. "Not my first time outsmarting the training instructors."
Yeboah had them ditch-digging again and George was standing in the bottom of a muddy hole, the spade sliding through his frozen fingers, cold water oozing into his socks when he caught sight of Capstick's grinning face looking down at him.
"Good morning Instructor," George said, trying to keep a straight face and look innocent.
"Did someone forget about the cameras in the basic training compound?" Capstick asked, grinning more widely. "Fancied a hot shower and a crumpet this morning?"
George realised they were busted. "It was Dougie's idea," he protested, weakly.
"What's worse: thinking up an utterly stupid idea, or going along with someone else's stupidity?" Capstick cackled, kicking lumps of mud at George and splattering his face and neck. George opened his mouth to reply, but Capstick kicked mud into it and George spluttered, spitting and wiping his mouth to get rid of the soil taste.
"Instructor Yeboah, I'm struggling to believe that these two worms ever passed the intelligence test to get into CHERUB," Capstick said. "Do you think they need a re-sit?"
"Great idea, Instructor Capstick," Yeboah replied. "Worms, get out of your holes."
George tossed his spade out of the hole and grabbed the top to climb out. Instantly, Capstick stepped forward and pushed him back in.
"Get out, George," he taunted, but every time George tried to climb out Capstick effortlessly pushed him back in.
"Can't even climb out of the hole he dug," Yeboah tutted. Dougie was lying on the ground next to him, breathless. "Dougie, help him."
Dougie crawled over to George's hole and reached out to grab George, but Capstick just shoved him in and they both sprawled in the muddy water at the bottom of the hole. Yeboah was practically howling with laughter.
"Worms in the mud," Yeboah wheezed happily, wiping tears from his eyes.
Whilst everyone else on campus was enjoying Sunday lunch and an afternoon of free time, George and Dougie were shivering in muddy clothes in one of the unheated classrooms the trainees used. Yeboah had given each of them an exam paper and a stubby pencil almost too short to write with.
"Two hours," Yeboah announced. "Minimum pass mark is fifty percent. Time starts now."
George had no idea what the consequence would be if he failed. Most likely it just meant extra physical punishment later, but his brain was running on a mixture of fear, adrenaline and too little sleep and he wasn't entirely sure which threats were real and which were made up. He glanced through the exam paper, which was a mixture of maths, comprehension and general knowledge, but based on the style of the diagrams and the tone of the writing it looked like it had come out decades ago. When he dug into the maths section, all of the money questions were in pounds, shillings and pence and all the measures were in feet and inches or pounds and ounces.
"Struggling, boys?" Yeboah asked after fifteen minutes or so. "I thought you might. Teenagers these days are coddled, soft, pudgy losers who need their hands held by mummy. We were made of sterner stuff back then."
George didn't rise to it. He tried to focus on answering anything that looked accessible before flipping to the comprehension section, which was much more straightforward.
"This test came out in the nineteen seventies," Yeboah went on. "We found it in a box of old papers when they were going through the old education block. Fun, hmm?"
Doubling his effort of concentration, George read on. The Soviet Union controls territory in excess of…
"To help you really get into the right mindset," Yeboah said, gleefully, "I've got some relaxing music." He produced a crusty-looking boombox and put in a cassette tape, fiddling with the controls for a minute. It hissed and crackled, then burst into a cheesy old-fashioned pop song, which Yeboah turned up to maximum volume. It was so loud that George could feel his desk shaking, and the high volume distorted the already poor-quality cassette into squeals and hisses that were deafening.
"Enjoying it, boys? Remember, fifty percent to pass," Yeboah screamed at them over the din.
The question of whether they would pass was rendered irrelevant when, with five minutes to go until their two hours were up, Yeboah just blasted them with the fire hose and their answer papers disintegrated into pulpy messes. George just sat at the desk dumbly, not sure how to react, when Yeboah walked up to him.
"It's three in the afternoon," he said, unusually solemnly. "George, what you did was honourable, even if it broke the rules. You've been punished enough." He held out a giant paw and George reached out to shake it. He yanked George to his feet, brushed some mud off his shirt and pointed to the door.
"Enjoy the rest of your weekend," Yeboah smiled.
Unsure if this was a trick, George took a few uncertain steps towards the door, but Yeboah did nothing to stop him and George gained confidence.
"You, on the other hand, what you did was dishonourable and your ordeal is only just beginning," Yeboah barked at Dougie. George looked back at him and shrugged sympathetically. Dougie looked miserable as Yeboah pointed to the pulpy paper on the floor and demanded Dougie not only pick it up, but smooth and dry it out too. George didn't hang around to find out what happened next, forcing his tired legs to jog out of the classroom block and out of the basic training compound, watching six miserable trainees drilling karate with Capstick bellowing instructions at them as he went.
"Heavy drill is so brutal," Bianca commiserated in his room after dinner. He was sitting on a chair in his bath, stripped down to a pair of black swimming shorts, as his girlfriend rubbed shampoo into his short hair. "Running laps is okay because you know you can just space it out and get through it, but Capstick and Yeboah are devious."
"You never know what to expect," George agreed, as Bianca used the shower head to rinse his hair again, the shampoo brown from the mud as it ran into the drain. "Yeboah especially is just a mental case, he loves it. He was crying from laughter earlier."
When he was fully rinsed, Bianca handed George a clean towel. "Don't get up," she warned him. "I've got some antiseptic to put on your cuts first, when you're dry."
George winced as she dabbed at him with cotton wool antiseptic, then stuck plasters on a couple of cuts on his legs which were still dribbling blood. She finished with one on the back of his neck, which stung especially, then she traced her fingers down to the mass of scar tissue on the left side of his back where he'd been shot on a mission three years ago.
"This looks so bad," she said, touching it gently. "It must have been really painful."
"You could say that," George smiled.
"Makes you look hot, though," Bianca giggled, still sliding her fingers over it. "How many girls my age get to say they've got a boyfriend with a gunshot scar?"
"Can't be many," George agreed.
Bianca let go of him and stepped back, and George stared at the tiled wall for a few seconds, wondering what she was doing.
"Can I get up, now?" he asked, but when he turned to look at her, Bianca smirked and threw her navy CHERUB t-shirt onto the floor.
"Stay where you are," she said, George's eyes popping out as he ogled her bra. "I'm not finished with you yet."