That was easy. ‘Composition.’ Did he know about composition? After all, it had been a long time since Farmer Barry went to school.
‘Composition, eh? Anything else?’ He was pressurizing me and I began to panic. Now I had to think of something else I liked. I didn’t like anything else. ‘Sports?’ asked Farmer Barry. ‘All boys like sports.’
‘I hate sports.’
‘Not sports, then.’
‘Reading,’ I said because I thought of Alf Lord who was always writing, but I’d already said composition, so I said reading, which I liked best and should have said before I said composition, in which case I could have done it without thinking of Alf.
‘Reading, eh? Reading books never done nobody no harm. Great one for reading his bible is your father. You read the bible?’ He was turning up the heat. I thought I should say yes, but that would have been a lie. ‘Suppose your reading’s a bit more modern than the bible.’
An idea came and rescued me. ‘I read stories, mostly. Reading gives me ideas to write stories about in composition.’
‘Stories, eh? You like stories, do you? There’s nothing like a good story to put you over to sleep at night.’ A bend in the road later, he asked, ‘What sorts of stories do you like, then?’
I’d never thought of what sort I liked; stories were stories, the way cows were cows. But there were different sorts of cows: fat ones, skinny ones, standing-up ones, lying-down ones, black and white ones, and brown ones. Having no reply, I got out of it by asking him his own question. ‘What kinds of stories do
you
like?’
‘Oh, now, let me see …’ I think he panicked. That made two of us. ‘Cowboy stories, I think. Or stories about the war … Aye, a good cowboy yarn where they have a gunfight in the middle of town.’ He took one hand off the wheel and shot me with a finger: ‘Boom!’ His six-shooter sounded more like a cannon than a gun, but I laughed and said I liked cowboy stories too, which wasn’t strictly true because I’d never read any, but I was sure I’d like them when I did.
With a better idea now of what he meant by sorts of stories, I offered, ‘I like scary stories too, with ghosts back from the dead.’
When Farmer Barry looked at me sideways as the road rolled under the lorry, I thought we might veer into the roadside ditch. ‘Back from the dead, eh?’ he said, at last. A corner and a swerve round a badly minced fox later, he added, ‘The world’s your oyster if you’ve mastered reading and writing.’
I knew what the world being my oyster meant, and I felt warm
inside
because Farmer Barry had said it. He said nothing else until Bruagh Halt, where he handed over my suitcase, saw me on to the train, and said goodbye.
This, my first day at senior school, would also be my first day for travelling alone by train. The near certainty that it had something to do with boats, not trains, allayed my fear of being press ganged. Gregory – still in bed when I left the Manse – had finished with school for ever in June gone by. Ostensibly, Blinky Mulholland had let him stay an extra year to resit his leaving exams. More accurately, Blinky let him stay on because he didn’t have a job to go to, and the idea of Gregory under the roof of Whitehead House presented a more welcome circumstance to his teachers than the idea of Gregory roaming the countryside bored and terrorizing shopkeepers.
Rocking along the track, it occurred to me that Farmer Barry had done something my own father had never taken the time to do. Farmer Barry had taken an interest in me – only a little interest, but a little interest is miles better than none. Suddenly, senior school excited me. I would have different classes there teaching things like history and geography and science. If I worked hard and did well I could conquer my oyster.
With the handle of a suitcase as big as my torso in my right hand, leaning acutely to my left, I bruised an ankle while staggering from the train to the vestibule where desks were arranged to navigate the confused. An old-timer, I knew the ropes. I knew most of the teachers’ faces too, although there were a few new ones. In those days, I thought our teachers, unlike us pupils, liked school. Now I know they hated it more than we did; that’s why all their faces looked like their mouths had had spoonfuls of castor oil poured in.
The deputy head greeted me in the vestibule.
‘Wipe your feet, boy!’
‘On your own this year?’ asked a male teacher from the senior side whose name I didn’t know. I said I was, because Gregory left in June.
He
smiled knowingly and said, in a sleeked way, he would see me around.
The housekeeper loaded me up with sheets, blankets and a pillow. Unable to see over the top, I tottered from the laundry to room seventeen on the senior side sideways. Somebody called, ‘You, Pike!’ Zat you under there?’ but I don’t know who.
The junior school still had a nurse, although not the one who once thought so highly of my private parts. I saw her en route, and thought the other one prettier by far. Senior pupils had a nurse by a different name than Nurse. He was Mr Barmby, the HCA (Health Care Assistant), who I hoped, having genitals of his own, would take no interest in mine.
When I arrived at my room, my suitcase had beaten me to it.
Room seventeen boasted all the living space of a converted broom cupboard. All the other rooms had four or six beds. The secretary, bless her, had put me in a room of my own. Why? Single rooms – each floor had one – were usually assigned to prefects. Whether or not my solitude was due to an administrative error, I wasn’t going to complain. In a room of my own, I couldn’t have been happier. Long may their error go unnoticed.
A single room was better than a dorm by a mile or six. I grinned broadly and at length to prove it. I was still grinning, and digging paint out of a window-gap with a pen, when the caretaker who brought my suitcase returned with a note from Blinky Mulholland summoning me to his office. The caretaker had gone, and I was just about to obey, when Alf Lord appeared in the doorway. Since he said nothing, but stared, first at me, then around the room, I helped him out. ‘Hello, Alf. Do anything good during the summer?’ Whether he did anything good or not was of no interest to me, and I’m sure he knew that.
Which was why he said, ‘You’ve your own room.’
He strayed inside as if he’d never seen a single room before. I watched him as he looked around, apparently seeing things worthy of
noting
that I could not see. Walls, ceiling, floor and a small space between them: that was about it, for me, but I got the impression, there, then, in that room, that where I saw a dust mote Alf saw a whole galaxy.
He made me feel odd inside. I’d never been so physically close to him. It was as though he emitted a kind of electricity that made the fine hairs on my arms stand up. Maybe because I was a touch nervous, I answered my own question as if it had been Alf’s question to me.
‘We didn’t do much. Sophia wouldn’t go out, so we just messed around the Manse.’ Alf looked at me questioningly. ‘It’s not really a manse. That’s just what it’s called.’
‘Who’s Sophia?’ asked Alf. ‘And why won’t she go out?’
‘She’s my twin sister. She won’t go out because … because she just won’t. It’s a long story. Don’t ask.’
He had a quick nibble at a fingernail. ‘Long, fine blond hair?’
‘Good guess.’
My own hair was blond, fine, and not exactly short.
‘Tiny, waifishly thin, fine features?’
‘Now you’re getting creepy. How do you know?’
Because he knew what I looked like, idiot! Still …
‘I remember seeing someone like that once … Off you go, Edward, or you’ll be late for your date with Blinky.’
‘You’ve never seen Sophia. I’m sure lots of girls look like her.’
‘And I’m sure you’re wrong about that.’ He turned to my window, rocked on to his toe-tips and rubbed his hands together.
‘You’re weird,’ I said.
Alf detained me as I left. ‘Can I come here sometimes?’
‘Where?’
‘Here. To your room.’
‘Why?’
‘Just because.’
I thought he was jealous because it was my room and not his. I
thought
that, maybe, he saw my room as a refuge from the smelly, untidy dorms and their boisterous madness.
‘Of course you can, Alf,’ I said.
He turned from the window wearing a huge grin.
I left Alf and his grin, and my case unpacked, and crossed to the junior side where Blinky had his lair.
I no longer feared Blinky. Previous encounters had been benign bordering on amiable. I had what my teachers called ‘a good record’, which I didn’t understand because I couldn’t even sing. The summer break had energized the headmaster; he had more bounce.
‘You! Edward,’ he said. ‘Sit.’
My legs no longer dangled numerous inches from the floor. Perhaps Blinky had replaced the old chair for a lower one for short chaps like me.
‘You, Edward, are going to be my project.’
‘Project, Sir?’
‘Yes. Project. As in object of especial engagement. You will be my Trilby and I will be your Svengali.’
I’d heard of Svengali. Wasn’t he a violinist? Or was I thinking of Stradivarius? Regardless of whoever Svengali might have been, I couldn’t fathom what symbolism might be at play if I were his hat.
‘What do you think of that?’ asked Blinky.
‘It depends,’ I said.
‘On?’
‘Whether my being your project is to my advantage.’
‘What a brain! And you’re only twelve years old!’
‘Eleven, Sir.’ Had Blinky been at the sherry?
Being eleven, having lived through two to nine – and zero – my numbers needed recycling. My assumption was that numbers couldn’t be recycled
ad infinitum
; with each recycle they would wear thinner, like repeated washings of a pullover. I couldn’t imagine being as old as thirty-four. Not ever. Was there a way, like alchemy, to mix the existing single numbers – even though, strictly
speaking
, zero is not a number – and create new single numbers?
I experienced a long-lasting déjà vu when I was eleven. On some days the sense of recycled time was strong; on other days, I hardly noticed it.
‘What’s the biggest number possible?’ asked Blinky, having done something very like reading my brain.
A billion? A trillion? A squizillion? I didn’t know.
‘Think about it,’ he said. ‘No matter what the biggest number may be, you can always add one to it. Thus, there is no biggest number. If you spend all your time inventing a different symbol for each number, you’ll need more than one lifetime. In fact, you’ll need an infinite number of lifetimes.’
Infinity, I thought … and flew through a window, back into myself, the way Sophia and I had done when we were little.
‘Have you any idea who in your year gained the highest overall marks in May?’ I shook my head. ‘You did, Edward. Don’t get excited. Stick a pin in it and a balloon will come down faster than it went up. Your task’ – he pointed a straight finger at me on the end of a straight arm – ‘your solemn task is to keep your balloon in the air. And not only that … fly higher! Fly higher, boy. Why? Because you can. Ah! Here we are.’ His secretary entered the office with a pot of tea and two cups, one for me.
Since he was staring, beaming like an idiot, I thought I should say something.
‘I thought Alf would get higher overall marks than me.’
‘Alf?’
‘Lord.’
‘Bless us and save us! Quite. Now. How’s that sister of yours? Cynthia? Last I heard she was late for school by several years.’
I didn’t know he knew I had a sister. ‘She’s …’ I said – skinny? forgetful? not very clever? worked half to death? sneezing all the time? confined to the Manse because of a stupid promise? ‘all right,’ I said.
‘Does she miss you, her at home and you here?’
‘Yes, she does.’
‘And you miss her, don’t you?’
Wipple, I thought. Blinky wanted me to talk about Sophia and why she had never gone to school. Wipple must have told him. I didn’t want to discuss Sophia with Blinky – or anyone else.
‘Imagine how proud she will be of you in the not too distant future, Edward. And your mother and father too. You are the great potential in your family. You’re the one they have pinned their hopes on. And I know, I just know you’re not going to let them down. You’re going to work hard in senior school and make them very proud. Aren’t you, Edward?’
‘I don’t want to leave Sophia behind. If I know stuff and she doesn’t she feels foolish, and I don’t want that.’
He wagged his head slowly. ‘That’s looking at one side of the coin. But look at the other. If you didn’t know stuff who would teach her? How will she know the same stuff as you? Because you do know stuff, and can learn so much more about all manner of things, you can … not leave her behind, but raise her up.’ He lifted his arms, and that was a very good thing for him to do because it made me understand. He had a point. I could raise Sophia up. I could learn so much stuff I would one day be smart enough to find a way to break the curse.
‘Did I hear a penny drop?’ asked Blinky. I said I didn’t think so. For some reason he chuckled. ‘I have something for you.’ When he reached into his drawer I feared a Butter Ball. He handed me a cardboard folder. ‘This is some information I have put together in simplified form from a variety of universities. You’re a big fan of books, aren’t you?’ I nodded enthusiastically. ‘Well, you can study books at university until you have pages of text coming out of your ears. You can study the best literature ever written, from when writing began to the present. What do you think of that?’
It sounded good. I told him so. And, just out of interest, since he brought it up, I asked, ‘When did writing begin?’
‘When do you think?’
With a shrug, I offered, ‘The bible was written a long time ago.’
‘Very good. And not too far out. The first writing was called cuneiform, and they used it in Iraq about five and a half thousand years ago. That’s the kind of thing you could learn about at university. Not many boys from Whitehead House get to university, Edward. Not any, actually. But I have the highest hopes for you. Off you go, then. For me, for yourself, for your parents and your sister: conquer the world!’