STUDENTEREKSAMEN ENGELSK A-NIVEAU

Berto did not seem to register his disquiet, and started detailing the exercises they
35 would go through in the training pool.
"One of the first things we'll do is clear the mask. To do this you tilt your head up
and blow out through your nose."
[...]
Jon dragged air in, pushed the bottom of the mask out, and rammed it back as water
flooded in. He held on to the top of the mask and tilted his bead back, blowing out. His
40 nose filled. Water was spurting down into his lungs and it was unendurable, he was
drowning. He shot up and erupted from the surface, gasping. Berto made him go
through it a second time, with the same result. Eventually Jon got the hang of it: it
seemed that each time his head was right back he'd breathed in slightly through his nose.
Back on the surface Berto addressed him.
45 "You are nervous under the water?"
"And above the water."
"Yip yip, yip, yip."
Jon slunk off back to the hotel, avoiding Berto's and Brian's gaze, sliding into the
duty-free shop for another bottle of gin before locking himself in his room. The editor
50 had forced him to come out here on this freebie learn-to-scuba-dive trip. The travel and
sports editors had instantly refused and no one else would do it (it meant no lunching in
Soho for almost a week), but the tour operator was a big advertiser with the magazine.
Jon hated anything active or sporty, yet here he was. They hadn't paid for his girlfriend
to come, either. Mind you, the way things were going that was probably a plus. The
55 silences between them had multiplied, then lengthened into an empty continuum.
He poured more gin, but no matter how much he swallowed it was never enough.
Next morning he retched down the lavatory, skipped the buffet in the hotel restaurant.
He spoke aloud to himself.
"The condemned man didn't eat a hearty breakfast."
6o He forced himself to set off for the diving school and tried to ignore an inner voice.
"You're yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow."
He walked as slowly as he dared, but arrived almost immediately. They'd completed
all the training-pool exercises, so today it was time to take the boat out into the bay for a
practice dive in the sea. [...] Berto briefed them before the dive.
65 "We're only going down ten metres the first time."
Full fathom five.
"Just before ascending I want you, Brian, to give Jon your spare mouthpiece to
breathe from. Jon, be ready to take out your mouth-piece, insert Brian's spare and come
up to the surface with him."
TO Take out the air supply that far down and fuck about with another one? He couldn't
do it, but he would have to. [...]
Jon was not all right. He'd heard that drowning was a quick death: your lungs filled
and that was more or less it, bit of thrashing about, not a bad way to go. But he sucked
and sucked on the mouthpiece, trying to get as much air as possible into his lungs. The