Week 52 · English Practice Paper

Reading Passage

The story is set in the Whitmore Aquarium, in a English seaside town, in the 1890s.

The Narwhal's Tusk

Two girls stood in the Coral Gallery, and looked down at a third figure below. They could not see him clearly, for he was on the far side of the case, and appeared to be sketching its contents.

Constance Hartley was quite at home in the Whitmore Aquarium. Her father, Mr. Hartley, was Keeper of Fishes and Curiosities. Constance was thirteen, and a boarder at Aldermoor School, but was home for a week with a chill. Rose Fenwick was a year younger, and looked younger still than that, with round spectacles and an anxious, eager face. The two girls had not met before that morning. Rose's mother was visiting Constance's father, to consult him about a book she was writing on the sea creatures of old sailors' tales. Constance had been deputed to show Rose the aquarium. She seemed rather more interested in showing her the boy below.

"I told you I'd show you something curious." "I thought you meant one of the fish." "No, I meant him. There's something odd about him. I've been watching him. He's up to something."

Rose was not sure whether this was the sort of game her own family enjoyed, following strangers and inventing stories about them. She was not sure if Constance was, so to speak, playing at being a detective. "What does he do?" "He vanishes. One moment he's here, the next he's gone. He comes every single day. Nobody's ever seen him arrive, and nobody's ever seen him leave."

They moved along the gallery, which ran above a row of dim, glass-fronted tanks. The boy below did not look up. He shifted his position once, to see the case from another angle. He was thin and sharp-faced, with a mop of red hair, and wore a jacket several sizes too large for him, patched at both elbows.

"We could go down and watch him properly. There are odd things about him. He never seems to buy a ticket. I've asked at the desk, and they don't know his name. He never speaks to anyone. He just stares at that tusk and draws it, over and over." The boy looked up, briefly, his thin face creased in concentration, then bent again to his sketchbook. Rose said, "Perhaps he simply likes drawing it." "He never draws anything else. Not the sharks, not the octopus, not even the seals. Only the tusk. It's peculiar." "What is it, exactly?" "The narwhal tusk. Sailors once believed it came from a unicorn. It's ancient, and there isn't another like it in the whole country. I'll show you properly. We could go down."

Rose was doubtful about this. There was something restless about the strange boy, an intensity she hadn't quite noticed until Constance pointed it out. However, she agreed, as she generally did agree to things. They crept down the twisting iron stair, darting stealthily from the cover of one great tank to the next, past the vast display of eels, until they reached the case that held the tusk. By the time they arrived, the boy had already gone.

"He wasn't on the stairs," said Constance, frowning. Rose stopped to look properly at the tusk. It was long, spiralled the whole of its length like a barley-sugar twist, and pale as old ivory, tapering to a fine point. It lay on a bed of dark velvet, lit from above so that it seemed almost to glow. Rose thought at once that her mother would want to see it for a new chapter. She tried, and failed, to memorise the exact pattern of its spiral. Constance explained what she knew of it: that no one was entirely sure which sea it had come from, and that the ridges along its length were said, by old sailors, to hold the songs of the whales that made them. There was nothing else remotely like it in the whole collection.

Rose did not know what a narwhal was, not properly, and had never heard of ridges holding songs. But she understood, looking at the strange spiralled thing under its glass, that it was the kind of object stories were made of. She would have liked to touch it.

Constance was glancing restlessly about her. There was a low door, half-hidden behind a mounted skeleton of a great fish, which led down to the storerooms and workshops below. It stood very slightly open.

Option 1: What do you think happens next? Write the next scene of the story.

• Decide whether the boy, Constance, or something else entirely is behind the open door.
• Keep the pace and mystery of the original passage going in your own writing.

Option 2: 'Aquariums and museums are boring and old-fashioned.' Do you agree with this statement? Give your personal opinion, backing up your points with examples.

• Consider more than one point of view before giving your own opinion.
• Use specific examples to support each point you make, rather than only general statements.