Time to Be in Earnest by P. D. James

and the manager of the cinema announced that, in contrast to the inferior sound systems in the picture palaces of Shrewsbury or London, Ludlow was to have “the talkies not the squawkies.” As we had no baby-sitter the whole family went together to participate in this modern miracle. The auditorium darkened, the screen glowed, music swelled outin glorious bursts of melody and—almost unbelievably—the gods and goddesses spoke.
    On Sunday afternoons there was usually the family walk. It can’t have been much pleasure for my parents since I remember that we trailed after them, bored, tired and oblivious to everything but the need for this compulsory exercise to end. But paradoxically it left me with a love of walking which has remained all my life, and childhood walks through the Shropshire meadows return every time I smell clover or the pungent scent of Queen Anne’s lace or feel wet grass against my ankles.
    And then came the day of the scholarship examination, the equivalent of the later Eleven Plus. I can’t recall that we were given any particular coaching for this, but we did all realize its supreme importance. If I passed I would go to the high school, an almost unimaginable privilege. I would learn French and Latin, the school would have a library, there would be all the less academic excitement of the stories in the
Schoolgirls’ Own
which were my weekly reading. Those of us who passed the first written part of the examination then went to the high school for the oral, and I can remember waiting to be called into the interview room, sitting on a very low chair in the kindergarten classroom. I had no problem with the first part of the interview but mental arithmetic, as always, was sheer horror as the metal grille of incomprehension clanged down. And then some four weeks later came the letter to say that I had been successful and was to take the enclosed form with me to the medical centre for my physical examination. I can remember walking round the castle to the familiar office where we used to go to have cuts bound up, chests listened to and minor injuries treated by the school nurse. I was dizzy with happiness, an iridescence of joy which embraced not only me, but all the world around me. The stones on the path gleamed with a supernatural light, the grasses shivered and silvered, the Teme ran sparkling under a clear sky, even the ramparts of the castle reared over me like some celestial city. Alas, the triumph and the joy were both premature. Apparently the money didn’t run to the number of pupils offered places and the last on the list fell off. I was undone by that dreaded mental arithmetic.
    So I went instead to the National School, previously one of the charitable institutions established by the National School Society between 1808 and 1811, dedicated to the propagation of the doctrine of the Church of England. Here every week a local parish priest would arrive to teach us the Collect for the week and to instruct us in the faith. So thosememorable prayers, so short and yet so pregnant with meaning, entered early into my consciousness at school as well as in church and became part of my literary inheritance.
    But I wasn’t long at the National School. My father, who worked in the local Income Tax office, had applied again for a transfer and, at the age of eleven, I moved with my family to Cambridge and began the last and happiest stage of my formal education at the Cambridge County High School for Girls. There was no scholarship entitlement to be transferred but my father found the £4 which was the termly fee. For this I shall always be grateful.

TUESDAY, 12TH AUGUST
    Last night was the hottest yet, and I again awoke to find myself lying damply in a layer of sweat between skin and nightdress.
    My secretary Joyce McLennan arrived very hot after her journey. When her number 94 bus (which was following close behind another number 94 which she had just missed) reached Holland Park and she tried to get off,