Evans Tries an O-Level Summary & Analysis

In March, the Secretary of the Examinations Board receives a call from the Governor at Oxford Prison, asking if one of his prisoners can take the final exam in O-level German. The prisoner, James Roderick Evans, has been taking night classes since September and claims to be “dead keen to get some sort of academic qualification.” The Governor isn’t sure if Evans is especially talented at German, but he was the only student in the German teacher’s class, so he’s basically had a private tutor for the past six months.

The Secretary bends to the Governor’s request to let Evans take the exam, agreeing that they should “give him a chance.” He asks if Evans is violent, but the Governor hurriedly assures him that Evans is “Quite a pleasant sort of chap,” though he is a “Bit of a card.” He’s “just a congenital kleptomaniac” with a penchant for “Imitations […] Mike Yarwood stuff.” The Governor is about to add something else but quickly decides against it—“He’d look after that particular side of things himself,” he thinks. The Governor explains that Evans has his own cell, so he can sit for the exam there. He suggests they ask a parson from St. Mary Mags to be the proctor, and the Secretary agrees.

Known as “Evans the Break” by prison officers, James Evans has escaped three times from various prisons. He was going to be sent to a maximum-security prison in the north, but due to the “wave of unrest” up there, he was sent to Oxford Prison instead. The Governor is determined to keep Evans secure and avoid being “disgrace[d].” He doesn’t consider Evans a significant threat—more of a “persistent, nagging presence.” Thinking about Evans’s upcoming exam, the Governor decides there’s a “possibility” that Evans is truly passionate about German—“Just a slight possibility. Just a very slight possibility.”

In early June, Evans attends his final night class in German before his big exam. His German teacher wishes him good luck in a thick German accent, and Evans awkwardly asks him to repeat himself. The German teacher repeats his well wishes in English and reminds Evans that he doesn’t have “a cat in hell’s chance of getting through.” Evans interrupts, breezily claiming that he “may surprise everybody.”

The next morning, two prison officers visit Evans, who is wearing his signature “filthy-looking red-and-white bobble hat.” Jackson, the senior prisoner officer, has “already become warm enemies” with Evans. The other man, Stephens, is a “burly, surly-looking man” who is new to Oxford prison and to the prison-officer profession in general. Jackson gruffly greets Evans by calling him “Einstein” and reminds Stephens to confiscate Evans’s razor before the proctor arrives; Jackson has already taken away Evans’s nail scissors, much to Evans’s dismay (Evans claims that he’s always been “worried about his hands”).

Jackson barks at Evans to clean himself up for his exam and to remove his filthy hat. Evans’s hand immediately flies up to his hat; “smil[ing] sadly,” he explains that it’s “the only thing that’s ever brought [him] any sort o’ luck in life,” and that he especially needs it for his exam today. Evans thinks to himself that there must be “a tiny core of compassion” somewhere inside of Jackson. Jackson gruffly lets him keep it, but “just this once, then, Shirley Temple.” Jackson thinks to himself that the only thing he genuinely hates about Evans is his “long, wavy hair.”

At 8:45 A.M., Reverend Stuart McLeery leaves his bachelor flat and makes his way across town to Oxford Prison, where the two-hour exam is scheduled to begin at 9:15 A.M. In his briefcase is the proctor form, the exam in a sealed envelope, a “special ‘authentication’ card from the Examinations Board,” a Bible (for McLeery’s talk later that day at the Women’s Guild on the Book of Ruth), a paperknife, and an issue of The Church Times.

After Evans washes up, Jackson pays him another visit. He orders Evans to take down his posters of pin-up girls on the wall, and Evans nods—he was already planning on taking those down, given that his proctor is a minister. Jackson quietly asks Evans how he knows his proctor is a minister, and Evans says that it was listed on the forms he signed earlier.

Gesturing to the ceiling, Evans asks Jackson why he had to be bugged. Jackson reminds him that the prison officers have to be extra cautious with Evans, and that the Governor himself will be listening in on the exam. Evans thinks to himself that he already accounted for that—"Number Two Handkerchief was lying ready on the bunk.” Jackson brusquely tells Evans, “Good luck, old son,” and leaves.

Once at the prison, Reverend Stuart McLeery signs in and follows a silent prison officer, who then hands him off to Jackson, who hands him off to Stephens. Meanwhile, the Governor switches on the receiver to listen in to Evans’s cell, wondering if all the extra safety precautions are a bit over the top. Suddenly, the Governor realizes something he’s overlooked—it’s not enough to confiscate potential weapons Evans might have and make sure he’s securely locked in. McLeery could have unknowingly brought something that Evans could use against him as a weapon. The Governor quickly orders Jackson to search McLeery.

Jackson retrieves McLeery and searches him. The minister is patient and understanding as Jackson riffles through his belongings—until Jackson questions him about a “semi-inflated rubber ring” buried in the briefcase, asking in jest if the minister is going swimming later. McLeery stiffens, replying to “this tasteless little pleasantry” that it’s a special cushion for his hemorrhoid problem. Jackson flushes pink and stammers an apology.

The exam begins a few minutes behind schedule, made even later by Evans’s insistence that he can’t concentrate with Stephens hovering in the cell. Having overheard this through the receiver, the Governor orders Stephens to leave, admitting that they might be “overdoing it.” After a few administrative tasks (McLeery instructs Evans to write his “index number” and “centre number” in the corner of the exam), the test begins at 9:25 A.M.

At 9:40 A.M., the Governor receives a call from the Examinations Board. The “Assistant Secretary with a special responsibility for modern languages” asks what time the exam began and explains that there’s been an error on their end: “there was a correction slip which some fool had forgotten to place in the examination package.” The Governor wonders if the phone call is fake—a signal or distraction of some kind—but transfers the call to Jackson so that he can take care of it. To check if the call really did come from the Examinations Board, the Governor dials their number, but all he hears are the “staccato bleeps of a line engaged.” The Governor assures himself that this is to be expected, given that the Assistant Secretary is probably still speaking with Jackson.

Moments later, the Governor hears McLeery reading off the corrections to the exam to Evans: “the fourth word should read goldenen, not goldene; and the whole phrase will therefore read zum goldenen Löwen, not zum goldene Löwen.” Having studied German in his youth, the Governor smiles as he hears familiar words and adjectives. The Governor’s phone rings again—the Magistrates’ Court needs a prison van and a couple of prison officers due to a remand case. After hanging up, the Governor thinks to himself that perhaps that phone call was fake, but he quickly reassures himself that he’s being paranoid.

No longer stationed inside the cell, Stephens now peers through the peephole into Evans’s cell for five seconds every minute (eventually transitioning to every two minutes)—a task he finds entirely pointless, given that Evans has barely moved. At the small table across from Evans is McLeery, silently reading his issue of The Church Times with one finger hooked under his clerical collar. He strokes his beard with his other hand, his fingers “meticulously manicured.”

Sometime later, the Governor is startled to hear noise coming from Evans’s cell—the prisoner is asking for permission to drape his blanket over his shoulders. McLeery tersely gives him permission. One minute later, when Stephens peers into the peephole, he’s surprised to see that Evans has donned a blanket. He wonders if this “slight irregularity” ought to be reported (Jackson did say to report “Anything at all fishy”) but decides he’s overreacting. The prison is cold, after all. Still, Stephens decides to return to one-minute intervals at the peephole.

At 11:20 A.M., The Governor listens as McLeery informs Evans that there are only five minutes remaining in the exam. With “something still gnaw[ing] away quietly in the Governor’s mind,” he picks up the phone. At 11:22 A.M., Jackson shouts for Stephens to come to the phone—the Governor is on the line. The Governor instructs Stephens to escort McLeery off the premises after the exam and to ensure that Evans is properly locked in his cell.

At 11:25 A.M., Stephens escorts McLeery to the prison’s main gates, bursting with pride that the Governor had chosen “him, and not Jackson” for the task. As the two men walk, Stephens privately observes that the proctor’s Scottish accent sounds thicker than before, and that the proctor’s long, knee-length coat “fostered the illusion that he had suddenly grown slimmer.” After McLeery has gone, Stephens returns to Evans’s cell to check on him. He feels slightly paranoid—like a TV show he’d seen “about a woman who could never really convince herself that she’d locked the front door when she’d gone to bed.”

Stephens peers into Evans’s cell and is met with a horrifying sight: McLeery is slumped in Evans’s chair and is drenched in blood. The blood is seeping through his beard, short hair, and clerical collar. As Stephens shouts for Jackson, McLeery weakly presses a white linen handkerchief to his bleeding head. Clutching the German exam in one hand, McLeery murmurs that he knows where Evans went.

The prison explodes with noise and activity—sirens wail, officers shout, and heavy metal doors clang into place. When the Governor arrives, McLeery shows him the German exam: “A photocopied sheet had been carefully and cleverly superimposed over the last (originally blank) page of the question paper.” Clunkily translating the German, the Governor reads, “You must follow the plan already somethinged. The vital point in time is three minutes before the end of the examination but something something—something something… Don’t hit him too hard—remember, he’s a minister! And don’t overdo the Scots accent when…” A police car whizzes up to the prison gates, and Detective Superintendent Carter jumps out, demanding an explanation.

Wincing in pain, McLeery tells the men to go to Elsfield Way. The Governor quickly realizes that the Examinations Board is headquartered there—one of their employees must have been involved in Evans’s escape. He tells Carter to take McLeery with him, since McLeery knows the most about the situation.

Turning sharply to Stephens and Jackson, the Governor demands to know who led Evans off the premises; Stephens stutters that it was him, but that the Governor was the one who gave him the orders over the phone. The Governor screams that it wasn’t him who gave those orders—the call was a fake. The Governor thinks to himself that he had been using the phone at that time, trying (unsuccessfully) to get in touch with the Examinations Board.

The Governor screams at Jackson for his stupidity. Jackson had searched Evans’s cell for two hours the previous night—and yet, the prisoner had managed to hide a clerical collar and shirt, reading glasses, a fake beard, a coat, and whatever weapon he attacked McLeery with. The Governor turns his attention back to the instructions on the last page of the German exam, trying to make sense of what “Neugraben” means. He decides it must mean the town of Newbury. He barks at a prison-van driver to get Jackson and Stephens to the police station and to ask for Chief Inspector Bell when they get there.

The Governor quickly gets Chief Inspector Bell on the phone to bring him up to speed. After this, Detective Superintendent Carter calls, explaining that McLeery is now at Radcliffe Hospital—once they got to the Examinations offices, McLeery started feeling particularly poorly, so they called an ambulance for him and left him to wait for it while they continued their search. Carter also mentions that McLeery spotted Evans near Elsfield Way, and he looked to be heading back to the city. The Governor explains his theory about Evans heading for Newbury and then hangs up, telling himself that finding Evans is “a police job now.” The Governor “was just another good-for-a-giggle, gullible governor, that was all.”

The Governor calls the hospital and asks after McLeery. The hospital clerk says they don’t have a patient with that name, and the Governor explains that McLeery was picked up from Elsfield Way. The clerk interrupts, saying that the ambulance did go to pick up a patient from Elsfield Way earlier, but no one was there: “the fellow had gone. No one seemed to know where he was. Just vanished!” Suddenly, the Governor realizes his horrible mistake.

Fifteen minutes later, the prison officers discover the real Reverend Stuart McLeery, bound and gagged at his flat, as he had been since 8:15 A.M. By that afternoon, everyone at Oxford Prison had heard the story: “It had not been Evans, impersonating McLeery, who had walked out; it had been Evans, impersonating McLeery, who had stayed in.”

After a pleasant evening, Evans returns to the Golden Lion Hotel. His new hat hides “the wreckage of his closely cropped hair.” It was a shame that Jackson had confiscated his nail scissors—Evans had to cut his hair with his razor blade instead, which was arduous. He’s glad that Jackson at least let him keep his hat on for the exam—“old Jackson wasn’t such a bad fellow,” he thinks.

As he climbs the stairs to his room, Evans thinks about how it was such “a jolly good idea” for the fake McLeery to wear two clerical shirts and two clerical collars. It was tricky, though, especially since one of the collars kept slipping off—“there’d been that one panicky moment when ‘McLeery’ had only just got his hand up to his neck in time to stop the collars springing apart before Stephens…” He trails off. It was also challenging to do “all that fiddling about under the blanket” to get the clerical shirt on.

Luckily, Evans’s friends had left him all the necessary supplies in the getaway car: clothes, soap and water, and the Ordnance Survey Map of Oxfordshire. He’s grateful to have such “good” and “very clever friends.” Evans opens the door to his room and suddenly freezes “like a man who has just caught a glimpse of the Gorgon.” There, sitting on the bed, “was the very last man in the world that Evans had expected—or wanted—to see,” the Governor.

The Governor quietly tells Evans it’s no use trying to escape—he has the place surrounded (he only has two officers outside, but chooses not to reveal this detail). “Visibly shaken,” Evans sinks into a chair. After a few minutes of silence, he asks if the correction slip gave him away. Unable to conceal “the deep satisfaction in his voice,” the Governor says, “there are a few people who know a little German.”

Evans relaxes, knowing he’s been caught and there’s no use fighting it. Evans excitedly tells the Governor that the most important thing in his plot was the phone call that distracted Stephens and Jackson a few moments before the end of the exam. The correction slip was important, too, though, because it gave Evans the name of his hotel, and it ensured that Evans’s outside help—whoever called pretending to be the Examinations Board with a correction to the exam—know exactly when the exam started, so that they could know exactly when to make the distracting phone call three minutes before the end of the exam.

Evans also explains how he knew which Golden Lion Hotel to go to: McLeery had instructed Evans to write “index number 313” in one box and “centre number 271” in another box, as if it were some administrative task in filling out his exam sheet properly. Then, in the getaway car, Evans looked up “the six-figure reference 313/271,” which led to the city of Chipping Norton. The Governor says he figured this out too, which is how he knew to track Evans down in Chipping Norton, though he admits to initially thinking Evans was headed for Newbury; Evans says that he left that clue on purpose as a red herring.

The Governor asks Evans if he really did understand German all this time, and Evans says he just knew the gist. The Governor also asks how Evans managed to cover himself in blood. Evans excitedly recounts his clever idea to have the fake McLeery bring the inflatable rubber ring under the pretense of needing it for a hemorrhoid problem—Evans knew that such a thing wouldn’t be confiscated. Filling it with blood was easy (they got pig’s blood from a slaughterhouse), but the issue was keeping it from clotting. To do so, “you’ve got to mix yer actual blood […] with one tenth of its own volume of 3.8 cent trisodium citrate!” The Governor shakes his head with “reluctant admiration,” saying, “come on, m’lad.”

The two men walk alongside one another down the stairs. The Governor asks how Evans managed to communicate with the outside world—he’s had no visitors or letters. Evans breezily replies that he has “a lot of friends,” including his German teacher. The Governor is incredulous, declaring that the German teacher was from the Technical College. Playfully, Evans asks, “Was ‘e? […] Ever check up on ‘im, sir?”

In the lobby, a blonde receptionist informs the Governor that the prison van is waiting out front. Evans gives her a wink, and she winks back, which “almost ma[kes] his day.” Outside, a silent prison officer handcuffs Evans and loads him into the van.

The Governor says goodbye to Evans as if he were “saying farewell to an old friend after a cocktail party.” Evans brightly answers, “Cheerio, sir,” and asks the Governor if he knows any other modern languages besides German. The Governor says no and asks why; Evans smiles and says that he noticed that the prison would be offering O-level Italian classes in September, “that’s all.” The Governor tells Evans that he might not still be at Oxford Prison in September. “Ponder[ing] the Governor’s words deeply,” Evans answers that the Governor may be right.

As the prison van merges onto the road, the silent prison officer who had loaded Evans into the van sharply tells the driver to speed up—“It won’t take ‘em long to find out.” In a thick Scottish accent, the driver asks where they should go; Evans suggests Newbury.