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    Text 6a Igcse Fle

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    Aradhna Lourdes
    The children are desperate to go outside on a hot summer evening but their mother will not let them out of the stifling house until dusk. When she finally opens the front door, the children burst outside like seeds exploding from an overripe pod. It is too hot and bright for play, with the garden resembling beaten brass. The children begin tumbling and shoving, eager to start playing. They decide to play hide-and-seek, but arguing over who will be "It" breaks out among them.

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    Text 6a Igcse Fle

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    Aradhna Lourdes
    69 views2 pages
    The children are desperate to go outside on a hot summer evening but their mother will not let them out of the stifling house until dusk. When she finally opens the front door, the children burst outside like seeds exploding from an overripe pod. It is too hot and bright for play, with the garden resembling beaten brass. The children begin tumbling and shoving, eager to start playing. They decide to play hide-and-seek, but arguing over who will be "It" breaks out among them.

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    The children are desperate to go outside on a hot summer evening but their mother will not let them out of the stifling house until dusk. When she finally opens the front door, the children burst outside like seeds exploding from an overripe pod. It is too hot and bright for play, with the garden resembling beaten brass. The children begin tumbling and shoving, eager to start playing. They decide to play hide-and-seek, but arguing over who will be "It" breaks out among them.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    69 views2 pages

    Text 6a Igcse Fle

    Uploaded by

    Aradhna Lourdes
    The children are desperate to go outside on a hot summer evening but their mother will not let them out of the stifling house until dusk. When she finally opens the front door, the children burst outside like seeds exploding from an overripe pod. It is too hot and bright for play, with the garden resembling beaten brass. The children begin tumbling and shoving, eager to start playing. They decide to play hide-and-seek, but arguing over who will be "It" breaks out among them.

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    of 2

    Cambridge IGCSE First Language English Comprehension and Writers’ Effects

    Text 6A

    Games at Twilight (opening)


    It was still too hot to play outdoors. They had had their You be—’ ‘You’re the eldest—’
    tea. They had been washed and had their hair brushed, ‘That doesn’t mean—’
    and after the long day of confinement in the house that The shoves became harder. Some kicked out. The
    was not cool but at least a protection from the sun, the motherly Mira intervened. She pulled the boys roughly
    children strained to get out. Their faces were red and apart. There was a tearing sound of cloth but it was lost
    bloated with the effort, but their mother would not open in the heavy panting and angry grumbling and no one
    the door, everything was still curtained and, shuttered in paid attention to the small sleeve hanging loosely off a
    a way that stifled the children, made them feel that their shoulder.
    lungs were stuffed with cotton wool and their noses ‘Make a circle, make a circle!’ she shouted, firmly
    with dust and if they didn’t burst out into the light and see pulling and pushing till a kind of vague circle was formed.
    the sun and feel the air, they would choke. ‘Now clap!’ she roared and, clapping, they all chanted
    ‘Please, ma, please,’ they begged. ‘We’ll play in the in melancholy unison: ‘Dip, dip, dip - my blue ship-’ and
    veranda and porch — we won’t go a step out of the porch.’ every now and then one or the other saw he was safe by
    ‘You will, I know you will, and then—’ the way his hands fell at the crucial moment - palm on
    ‘No — we won’t, we won’t,’ they wailed so palm, or back of hand on palm - and dropped out of the
    horrendously that she actually let down the bolt of the circle with a yell and a jump of relief and jubilation.
    front door so that they burst out like seeds from a Raghu was It. He started to protest, to cry ‘You
    crackling, over-ripe pod into the veranda, with such cheated - Mira cheated - Anu cheated—’ but it was too
    wild, maniacal yells that she retreated to her bath and the late, the others had all already streaked away. There was
    shower of talcum powder and the fresh sari that were to no one to hear when he called out, ‘Only-in the veranda
    help her face the summer evening. - the porch - Ma said - Ma said to stay in the porch!’ No
    They faced the afternoon. It was too hot. Too bright. one had stopped to listen, all he saw were their brown
    The white walls of the veranda glared stridently in the legs flashing through the dusty shrubs, scrambling up
    sun. The bougainvillea hung about it, purple and magenta, brick walls, leaping over compost heaps and hedges,
    in livid balloons. The garden outside was like a tray and then the porch stood empty in the purple shade
    made of beaten brass, flattened out on the red gravel of the bougainvillea and the garden was as empty as
    and the stony soil in all shades of metal - aluminium, tin, before; even the limp squirrels had whisked away, leaving
    copper and brass. No life stirred at this arid time of day everything gleaming, brassy and bare.
    - the birds still drooped, like dead fruit, in the papery Only small Manu suddenly reappeared, as if he
    tents of the trees; some squirrels lay limp on the wet earth had dropped out of an invisible cloud or from a
    under the garden tap. The outdoor dog lay stretched as bird’s claws, and stood for a moment in the centre of
    if dead on the veranda mat, his paws and ears and tail all the yellow lawn chewing his finger and near to tears as
    reaching out like dying travellers in search of water. he heard Raghu shouting, with his head pressed against
    He rolled his eyes at the children - two white marbles the veranda wall, ‘Eighty-three, eighty-five, eighty-nine,
    rolling in the purple sockets, begging for sympathy - ninety. . .’ and then made off in a panic, half of him wanting
    and attempted to lift his tail in a wag but could not. It only to fly north, the other half counselling south. Raghu turned
    twitched and lay still. just in time to see the flash of his white shorts and the
    Then, perhaps roused by the shrieks of the children, a uncertain skittering of his red sandals, and charged after
    band of parrots suddenly fell out of the eucalyptus tree, him with such a blood­curdling yell that Manu stumbled
    tumbled frantically in the still, sizzling air, then sorted over the hosepipe, fell into its rubber coils and lay there
    themselves out into battle formation and streaked away weeping, ‘I won’t be It - you have to find them all - all - All!’
    across the white sky. “I know I have to, idiot,’ Raghu said, superciliously kicking
    The children, too, felt released. They too began him with his toe. ‘You’re dead,’ he said with satisfaction,
    tumbling, shoving, pushing against each other, frantic to licking the beads of perspiration off his upper lip, and
    start. Start what? Start their business. The business of then stalked off in search of worthier prey, whistling
    the children’s day which is — play. spiritedly so that the hiders should hear and tremble.
    ‘Let’s play hide-and-seek.’ From Games at Twilight and Other Stories, by
    ‘Who’ll be It?’ ‘You be It.’ Anita Desai, Heinemann.
    ‘Why should I?

    © Cambridge University Press 2018 Unit 6 Hide-and-seek


    Cambridge IGCSE First Language English Comprehension and Writers’ Effects

    Phrase Meaning Device Effect


    their lungs were they could barely metaphor sustains the meaning of the previous
    stuffed with cotton breathe metaphorical verb ‘stifled’ to stress how
    wool desperate they were to get outdoors

    Unit 6 Hide-and-seek © Cambridge University Press 2018

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