Rivalry at its worst
Text 1: Solo Cornet, by Wilfred Garside
An original short story extract.
For eleven years Arthur Rhodes had played the solo cornet for Grimethorpe Road Colliery Band, and for eleven years the big solo in the slow movement had been his: sixteen bars, alone, with the whole of the band holding its breath underneath him. Then, in the spring, a lad called Billy Hirst had come up from the junior band with a tone like warm milk.
At the last rehearsal before the area contest, Mr Ledger had tapped his stand and said, without looking at anybody, “Billy will take the solo. Arthur, you’ll cover from second.”
Arthur had said nothing. He had wiped his mouthpiece on his handkerchief, very slowly, and folded the handkerchief into four, and put it away.
Now they were sitting side by side on the stage of the Civic Hall in their maroon jackets, under hot lights, in front of nine hundred people and three adjudicators in a box. Arthur could see, out of the corner of his eye, that Billy’s right knee was going up and down like a sewing machine.
The slow movement began. Arthur counted the bars. He had thought, for six weeks, about this moment: about Billy cracking the top note, about the adjudicators’ pens, about Mr Ledger’s face. He was not proud of the thought. He had had it anyway.
Four bars before the solo, Billy looked at him. The lad’s face was white as paper and his lips were trembling against the mouthpiece.
Arthur did not know he was going to do it until he did. He gave the boy one small, firm nod, the nod his own teacher had given him in 1952, and then he looked straight ahead and counted Billy in under his breath. And Billy played the solo better than Arthur had ever played it, and Arthur sat with his cornet on his knee and listened to every note.
Text 2: Checkmate, by Sunil Varma
An original short story extract.
Arjun beat his grandfather at chess for the first time on a wet Sunday in February, at twenty past four, with a knight he had been hiding behind his own pawns for eleven moves.
They had played every Sunday since he was six. Nana had taught him on the same board, a folding wooden one with a burn mark on the white side where someone, long ago, had put down a cigarette, and for eight years Nana had won every game, briskly, explaining as he went. He had never once let him win. Arjun had been grateful for that, and had hated it.
“Check,” Arjun said. And then, two moves later, his voice going up despite himself: “Checkmate.”
Nana looked at the board for a long time. He leaned forward and studied it from both sides, as if there might be a mistake, as if the pieces might rearrange themselves if he looked hard enough. His hand hovered over his king.
Arjun could not help it. He punched the air. He said, “Yes!” loudly enough that his mother called from the kitchen to ask what had happened, and he shouted back, “I beat him! I finally beat him!” and did a stupid little dance round the table.
When he turned back, his grandfather had tipped his king over with one finger, very gently, and was sitting back in his chair with his hands folded. He looked older than he had at lunch. He looked, Arjun thought, the way he had looked at the hospital, the day they told him about his eyes.
“Well played,” Nana said. “Very well played.” He began to put the pieces back in the box, one by one.
Arjun stood there by the table, and the dance went out of him all at once.
‘Both texts suggest that rivalry brings out the worst in people.’
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.