Rivals and likeness
Text 1: The Second Chair, by Anthony Gethin
An original short story extract.
On the last Saturday before their father retired, Frank and Joe Mallory worked side by side at the two chairs nearest the window, and neither of them spoke to the other from opening until lunch. The old man sat on the bench by the coat stand, where the customers usually waited, with his hands folded over his stomach and the racing pages open on his knee. He was not reading them.
Whoever he chose would get the shop. Everyone in Pontyberem knew it, which was why the bench had been full since nine and why Mrs Price from the bakery had brought in Welsh cakes on a plate and left them, pointedly, exactly halfway between the two chairs.
Frank was fast. He could take a boy from shaggy to short back and sides in eleven minutes and talk about rugby the whole time. Joe was slow and silent and finished every neck with a hot towel, whether the customer wanted it or not. When a man came in, both brothers looked up at the same moment, and both looked away again, and the man stood in the doorway not knowing which way to walk, like a dog called by two people.
At half past twelve Frank nicked a customer’s ear. It was nothing, a bead of blood, but his hand stopped. Without looking, Joe reached across, took the styptic pencil from his own shelf and put it in his brother’s palm. Their fingers did not touch. Frank dabbed the cut and went on cutting.
On the bench, their father turned a page he had not read. In the long mirror the two brothers stood in identical white jackets, with identical frowns, combing in the same direction.
Text 2: Best Kept, by Hilda Marchbanks
An original short story extract.
The judges were due on the fourteenth, and by the first of the month Mrs Iris Penhallow at number nine had begun to trim her privet with nail scissors.
She did it at dawn, so that Mr Desmond Arkwright at number eleven would not see. Mr Arkwright, for his part, watered his begonias by torchlight at ten o’clock at night, so that Mrs Penhallow would not see. For six summers the plaque for Best Kept Front Garden on Albert Terrace had gone to one of them or the other, and for six summers they had not exchanged a word beyond “Morning” across the dividing wall, and sometimes not that.
This year Iris had a secret. She had sent away to a nursery in Devon for a climbing rose called Moonlight Serenade, pale yellow, which was said to flower all summer and smell of lemons. It had arrived in a cardboard tube and she had planted it by the porch, and she sat in the front window in the evenings watching it grow, as other women her age watched the television.
On the twelfth, she went out to deadhead the geraniums and saw it. Over the wall, beside Mr Arkwright’s porch, exactly where it would catch the morning light, pale yellow and smelling faintly of lemons, a climbing rose.
They both stood there. He had his watering can; she had her scissors. Neither of them said anything for some time.
“Devon?” he said at last.
“Devon,” said Iris.
He looked at her rose and she looked at his, and somewhere between them a bee went from one to the other without making any distinction at all.
‘In both texts, the rivals have more in common than they realise.’
How far do you agree with this statement?
In your answer you should:
Support your response with quotations from Text 1 and Text 2.
120 exam-style questions on OCR GCSE English Language 3.3 Section A: Reading meaning and effects – skills, covering 3.3.2 Analyse and compare use of language, 3.3.3 Draw inferences and justify with evidence, 3.3.4 Interpret meanings and effects across texts, and 3.3.7 Evaluate form and structure. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.