Jill by Philip Larkin

son’s shoulders. “But ta would like a bang at it, eh?”
    The boy kept glancing from one to the other, painfully shy. Mr. Crouch kept his eyes on his face, smiling encouragingly, shifting his hat in his hands.
    “If you think I’m—good enough?”
    “No danger—eh, Mr. Crouch? No danger!”
    From this night onwards, Mr. Crouch regarded himself as John Kemp’s particular guardian, but of course he was far too wise to make any move in this role until the School Certificate was over and done with. John Kemp won seven credits in this examination and informed the Headmaster of his intention to stay on into the sixth form.
    Just before the end of the summer holidays, Mr. Crouch invited John to have tea with him at his lodgings, and chatted amicably to him about things in general, what he had doneduring the holidays, what he had read and so forth. He was conscious that the boy watched him warily without relaxation, and this charmed him, as if he had the task of taming some elusive animal. By casual questions he discovered the extent and directions of the boy’s reading, and made some suggestions for what he should read in the future. Soon he had put aside four of his own books for John to take home.
    “And when you read anything, make notes on it.” He had taken off his spectacles to polish them, and his face looked blind and simple. “Look, in this manner.” Crossing to his desk, he replaced his spectacles and pulled a sheaf of notes out of a drawer: he held them out, and the boy stirred to take them. “It’s an invaluable habit. You’ll see the qualities and points to look for; they form the headings of your sections.…”
    A deep sense of pride filled him as he saw the boy begin turning over the notes, his head bent; the feeling that he was delegating his knowledge caught at his heart, and made the action seem noble and queerly unselfish. He began to walk about the room. “You must remember that what you are reading from now onwards will not be useful for a week or a year even, but for all time, until your last examination is over. And naturally you can’t expect to remember every single thing you read, so you must make notes. You must aim at reproducing the book you are reading in miniature. When I made those notes,” he continued, halting in front of the window and looking out over the park, “I couldn’t afford to buy a quarter of the books I read. And even if I had been able to own a copy of every one, I couldn’t have read them all before an examination—so the obvious thing to do was to make careful notes, gutting each book so that when the time came I could turn up my notes on it and there have all the essential facts under my hand on one page.”
    The boy looked at the notes with admiration.
    “Perhaps you’d like to borrow some, to get the idea of what to look for?”
    “Oh, yes, thank you, sir.”
    “But don’t copy them. Second-hand notes never did anyone any good.”
    Despite the fact that when school restarted John had other subjects to attend to, Mr. Crouch was more than satisfied with the progress he made. He had not known the full measure of ability the boy had. His brain was tireless. He could read swiftly, remember what he read and was quick to point out analogies between dissimilar things and to take suggestions that Mr. Crouch made. At first the master had made a habit of saying carelessly: “You should have a look at so-and-so” or “It’s a pity we’ve no time to read such-and-such,” but at their next meeting Kemp would invariably say, shyly, “Oh—er—I had a look at the things you mentioned, sir——” so that he quickly realized he had to be very careful what he said. It was like manipulating a powerful but delicate machine. By the end of John’s first year in the sixth form, he had scampered through all the important English writers, and was beginning to explore critical theory, philosophical and social backgrounds, and elementary philology. His knowledge became