The audition

“Outside rehearsal room four, Ben held a violin case with a broken handle. The audition began at nine, and he had arrived twenty minutes early. Across the corridor, another player was practising scales without looking at the strings. Ben opened his case to check the spare bow. It was there. So was the folded bus timetable his mother had insisted he take. He put the timetable under the instrument, ashamed of nothing in particular and somehow of everything.

From the other room came a stream of notes so clean that Ben imagined glass beads dropping onto polished stone. His own fingers felt blunt and borrowed. The corridor lights hummed above him; a radiator knocked inside the wall. Every small sound seemed certain of its place, while he could not decide where to rest his hands. He wiped his palms on his trousers, then worried that someone had seen him do it.

At home, he practised in the kitchen after dinner. His brother usually complained, but last night he had stayed at the table until the final note, pretending to finish a drawing. Ben had wanted to ask whether it sounded all right. Instead he had washed the plates. Remembering that silence now, he could not decide whether it had been kindness or approval. The door to room four opened. His name was called.

The panel sat behind a long table. Ben set the case down too quickly and the loose handle struck the floor. One of the judges looked up. He began before he had properly settled the violin beneath his chin. In the third bar, the bow caught; a rough note scraped across the room. Ben stopped. The silence was larger than the table. 'You may begin again,' said the judge nearest the window, without either smiling or frowning.

This time Ben thought of the kitchen: the cooling plates, his brother's pencil still between two fingers, the ordinary light above the sink. He drew the bow slowly. The opening phrase held. He did not look towards the panel, and he did not forget that it was there. When he finished, the judge made a note on a sheet of paper. Ben could not read it. He picked up the case by its body and walked out, holding it carefully against his chest.”

Refer only to the first paragraph. Choose one answer for each item in the table. Write the four letters in order, labelling them 1 to 4. Each correct answer earns one mark.