Lessons

by Ian McEwan

In the first instance, the shock was not separation from his parents 2,000 miles away. The immediate assault was on the nature of time. It would have happened anyway. It had to happen, the transition into adult time and obligation. Before, he had flourished in a barely visible mist of events, careless of their sequence, drifting, at worst stumbling, through the hours, days and weeks. Birthdays and Christmas were the only true markers. Time was what you received. His parents supervised its flow at home, at school everything happened in one classroom and occasional shifts in routine were orchestrated by teachers who escorted you and even held your hand. Here, the transition was brutal. The new little boys had to learn quickly to live by the clock, be its servants, anticipate its demands and pay the toll for failure: a telling-off from an irritable teacher, or a detention or, in the final resort, the threat of ‘the slipper’.