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english stage 9 2022 paper

English A: Language and Literature HL (上海协和双语学校)

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English
Stage 9

Paper 2 Fiction 2022

Cambridge Lower Secondary Progression Test
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Text for Section A, an extract from Holiday Memory by Dylan Thomas

August Bank Holiday. A tune on an ice-cream cornet. A slap of sea and a tickle of sand. A
fanfare of sunshades opening. A wince and whinny of bathers dancing into deceptive water. A
tuck of dresses. A rolling of trousers. A compromise of paddlers. A sunburn of girls and a lark of
boys. A silent hullabaloo of balloons.

I remember the sea telling lies in a shell held to my ear for a whole harmonious, hollow minute 5
by a small, wet girl in an enormous bathing suit.

I remember sharing the last of my moist buns with a boy and a lion. Tawny and savage, with
cruel nails and rapacious mouth, the little boy tore and devoured. Wild as seedcake, ferocious
as a hearthrug, the depressed and verminous lion nibbled like a mouse at his half a bun and
hiccupped in the sad dusk of his cage. 10

I remember a man with a bag of monkey-nuts in his hand, crying ‘Ride ’em, cowboy!’ time and
again he whirled in his chair-o-plane* giddily above the upturned laughing faces of the town girls
bold as brass and the boys with padded shoulders and shoes sharp as knives; and the monkey-
nuts flew through the air like salty hail.

Children all day capered or squealed by the glazed or bashing sea, and the steam-organ 15
wheezed its waltzes in the threadbare playground and the waste lot, where the dodgems
dodged, behind the pickle factory.

And mothers loudly warned their proud pink daughters or sons to put that jellyfish down; and
fathers spread newspapers over their faces; and sandfleas hopped on the picnic lettuce; and
someone had forgotten the salt. 20

In those always radiant, rainless, lazily rowdy and skyblue summers departed, I remember
August Monday from the rising of the sun over the stained and royal town to the husky hushing
of the roundabout music in the seaside fair: from bubble-and-squeak* to the last of the sandy
sandwiches.

There was no need, that holiday morning, for the sluggardly boys to be shouted down to 25
breakfast; out of their jumbled beds they tumbled, and scrambled into their rumpled clothes;
quickly at the bathroom basin they catlicked their hands and faces, but never forgot to run the
water loud and long as though they washed like colliers*; in front of the cracked looking-glass, in
their treasure-trove bedrooms, they whisked a gaptooth comb through their surly hair; and with
shining cheeks and noses and tidemarked necks, they took the stairs three at a time. 30

But for all their scramble and scamper, clamour on the landing, catlick and toothbrush flick, hair-
whisk and stair-jump, their sisters were always there before them. Up with the lady lark, they
had prinked and frizzed and hot-ironed; and smug in their blossoming dresses, ribboned for the
sun, in gymshoes white as the blanco’d snow, neat and silly, with tomatoes they helped in the
higgedly kitchen. They were calm; they were virtuous; they had washed their necks; they did not 35
romp, or fidget; and only the smallest sister put out her tongue at the boys.

And the woman who lived next door came into the kitchen and said that her mother, an ancient
uncertain body who wore a hat with cherries, was having one of her days and had insisted, that
very holiday morning, in carrying, all the way to the tram stop, a photograph album and the cut-
glass fruit bowl from the front room. 40

This was the morning when father, mending one hole in the thermos-flask, made three; when
the sun declared war on the butter, and the butter ran; when dogs, with all the sweet-binned
backyards to wag and sniff and bicker in, chased their tails, worried sandshoes, snapped at

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flies, writhed between legs, scratched among towels, sat smiling.

And if you could have listened at some of the open doors of some of the houses in the street 45
you might have heard:

“Uncle Owen says he can’t find the bottle-opener…”

“Has he looked under the hallstand?”
“Willy’s cut his finger …”
“Got your spade?” 50
“Uncle Owen says why should the bottle-opener be under the hallstand?”
“Never again, never again …”
“I know I put the pepper somewhere…”
“Willy's bleeding …”
“Look, there’s a bootlace in my bucket…” 55
“Oh come on, come on …”
“Let’s have a look at the bootlace in your bucket.”
“If I lay my hands on that dog …”
“Uncle Owen’s found the bottle-opener …”
“Willy's bleeding over the cheese …” 60

And the trams that hissed like ganders* took us all to the beautiful beach.

There was cricket on the sand, and sand in the spongecake, sandflies in the watercress […]
In the distance a cross man on an orange-box shouted that holidays were wrong.

*Glossary
bubble-and-squeak: food made from cabbage and potato most often eaten at breakfast time
chair-o-plane: ride at an amusement park
collier: coal miner
gander: male goose

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