The night train in daylight
Text C: an original fiction extract.
Cal had wanted a night-train journey ever since he saw a photograph of a lit window passing through dark mountains. He booked the cheapest berth for a summer visit to his aunt and packed a notebook. His mother suggested a sandwich. Cal said there would be a dining car. She put the sandwich beside the notebook, where it looked less romantic than the ticket.
At the station, the train stood beneath a bright evening sky. The carriage corridor was narrow enough for Cal's bag to catch a door handle twice before he found his compartment. Two of the four berths were already occupied. A woman was arranging work papers on her lower bed. Above her, a boy about Cal's age wore headphones and held a small model aeroplane with a wing missing. Cal put his notebook on his own bunk and waited for a view which resembled the photograph.
The attendant checked tickets and explained that the dining car was not available on this service. Cal took out the sandwich. The woman asked where he was going, then returned to her papers. He had prepared to meet people with stories, but it appeared that people might have stories and still prefer to finish something else. The boy lifted one earphone and asked whether Cal had any tape. Cal had none. The damaged wing remained on the blanket like a separate destination.
They left the city while the sky was still pale. For an hour, the window showed storage yards, backs of buildings and fields interrupted by power lines. Cal tried writing that the train was carrying them beyond ordinary life. A man entered the corridor carrying an ordinary toothbrush. Cal crossed out the sentence. When he went to find water, he discovered how much planning could be involved in returning to a bunk without waking someone who had finally settled.
At a small station after midnight, the train waited longer than expected. The attendant explained that another service had to pass. The boy climbed down and looked through the open compartment door. His aeroplane was for a cousin who had asked him to bring it from home. He had tried packing it between clothes, but the wing had broken anyway. Cal offered a stiff card from his notebook as temporary support inside the box. The boy accepted, then returned to his headphones. Their brief conversation did not become a friendship, though the model looked less precarious.
Cal slept badly and woke before dawn. The woman was already awake, looking outside without her papers. The train had reached open country. A line of low mist lay above a field, and one distant kitchen window was lit. She said she travelled this route every month but usually slept through that part. Cal stopped searching for mountains which were not on his journey and watched the field pass.
His aunt met him at the destination. She asked whether it had been an adventure. Cal wanted to say yes, but also wanted breakfast and a proper wash. In his notebook, the missing strip of card left a gap beside the crossed-out sentence. He wrote down the kitchen window, the model and the sandwich. None looked like the advertisement. They seemed more worth keeping than the sentence he had prepared before leaving.
You are Cal. Write an article for the school magazine about your first night-train journey and what another first-time traveller might learn from it.
In your response:
Base your response on Text C, developing its ideas in your own words. Write about 250 to 300 words. Up to 10 marks are available for reading and up to 10 marks for writing.
60 exam-style questions on CIE IGCSE English Language 4.5.1 Extended response to Text C. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.