When Elocution and Physics Collide

The room was silent, except for the distant sound of children singing.  All the tables and chairs had been removed, leaving only bookshelves and a stout, wooden desk on an oak platform. Behind it sat a thin white-haired woman with her hair swept artistically into a bun and half-moon glasses on the end of her nose. In front of it, standing on the x in the middle of the floor, was eleven-year-old me, shaking. It was my elocution exam and I had already recited two poems, an excerpt from ‘The Selfish Giant’ by Oscar Wilde and answered my theory questions. Looking over her spectacles, the examiner from the Royal Academy,  Ursula White, addressed me with a tired smile. 

‘It’s time for your mime now. What have you decided to do?’

‘I’m going to do a boat trip with a picnic,’ I whispered.

‘Very good. Start whenever you’re ready.’

Closing my eyes for a moment, I conjured up the river scene and quietly sat on the floor in my imaginary boat. I positioned my arms and hands around the oars and rotated them sliding my knees and moving slowly backwards across the polished floor. With a little bit of swaying for good measure, I grimaced as I pulled hard on the oars. To my horror, on the second stroke I realised that my arms were circling in the wrong direction. In a real boat, I’d be rowing forwards, not backwards and my attempted mime was an anomaly of quantum physics! 

I took one glance at the elderly lady behind the desk and decided that she was probably too old to know anything about rowing so I kept going. Arms one way, arms going forward, me going backwards. Standing out of the boat with a convincing wobble, I moved into the picnic section of my mime with much pouring, pretend eating and swatting flies. I carefully put everything away again in my imaginary basket, folded up my picnic blanket and got back into my boat. Then, for consistency, I rowed back across the floor again with my arms at loggerheads with my legs, finally stepping onto dry land and taking a well-earned bow.

Standing back onto the x, I looked at Miss White and waited for some response. Her head was lowered for quite a while and she was writing furiously.

‘Have you ever rowed a boat?’ she eventually asked me with a raised eyebrow and what looked like the trace of a smile.

Fearing the anger of Sr. Dolore, who would see it as a personal affront if anyone got less than First Class Honours, I said ‘Oh yes. I’m in the rowing club.’

The silence before she spoke again was endless. I could feel a hot, crimson flush rising from the base of my neck to my ears. Distant sounds of children chanting tables in another room made me feel very alone. I looked at the floor and then back again at the desk.

Finally, Miss White, whom we had been reliably informed by Sr. Dolores, was the mother of Maggie in the Riordans, said ‘Really?’ in a tone that definitely meant ‘I don’t believe you,’ making me stutter that I hadn’t been at the club for quite a while. 

‘Evidently,’ she smiled. ‘Thank you. That will be all. You may go now, your examination is over.’

Bowing again, for no apparent reason, I made for the door. What would I tell Sr. Agnes? Would Miss White spill the beans? Either way I left that room vowing that I had just partaken of my last elocution exam ever and that the world of mime was definitely not for me.