Читать книгу Anna and the Black Knight: Incorporating Anna’s Book - Fynn - Страница 14

Growing up in our little street meant only one thing – getting to the top of the railway wall. A red brick wall nearly ten feet high. Getting to the top of that wall was one thing all the boys wanted to do. It was then that you were grown up. Grown up enough to get a job and earn some money. Grown up enough to stay out late and have a girl friend of your own. It was almost like some sort of ceremony, attempting that wall. Everybody watched you and groaned in sympathy when you failed, which was most likely, and cheered on those very few occasions when somebody managed to get to the top and sit astride the wall. There were a number of ways to get to the top, like swinging from the lamp post to the top. It was not more than four or five feet away.

You could also climb out of Norman’s top window. Anybody could do that. Of course, you could always ‘borrow’ a ladder from the builder’s yard but that wasn’t growing up, that was just plain cheating. Our kind of growing up was something entirely different. It was simple really. Run as fast as you could for about sixty yards or so, jump as high as you could and hope that your speed and that last mad scramble would take you to the top. As there was nothing to hold on to until you reached the top the inevitable happened – you crashed to the ground! It was easy to see who had tried the wall that day – a bloody nose, a fresh bandage, a torn trouser. Such little things were reminders for all to see.

Getting to the top of that wall was one thing I was determined to do. I don’t know how many times I had failed. I never kept count, but it was on such an occasion when I had landed with a crash from that wall that it happened. I know that my nose was bleeding a bit, so I sniffed. Bleeding noses didn’t matter at all, as Mum so often said, it lets out the mad blood. Lying on my back I was aware of two people looking down at me. I had no idea who the lady was, but there was no mistake about the man. It was Old John D. Hodge himself.

I had heard a lot about Old John D. He was one of the Senior Masters at the posh school, but I had never seen him. Many people had described him to me and I didn’t like him. Not one bit. He was slightly hunchbacked with a club-foot and a hare-lip which he kept covered with a large bushy beard. That sounded bad enough to me, but I was told that he also carried around with him a length of bunsen burner tubing, which he used instead of a cane and which he had no hesitation in using when things didn’t go to his liking, which from the sounds of things was often. The tubing was called the ‘persuader’ by everybody. He was the stuff that nightmares were made of.

Looking down at me looking up at the sky, he laughed at me. He didn’t realize how important this wall was. Nobody laughed at that. It was much too important to laugh at … I was going to have another try at it, and so I did, but the result was just the same. I failed and, as usual, ended up a heap on the floor.

‘Only heroes never say “No”. Neither do fools.’ He was still there and smiling down at me. No, I didn’t like him. Not one little bit. I bet he couldn’t climb that wall either. I was a bit fed up with that silent and quizzical look he gave me when I failed with the wall, and that slow shake of his head annoyed me. ‘Only heroes never say “No”. Neither do fools.’ I just wished he would go away and leave me alone.

I was very surprised when the postman handed me that letter one morning. The one that said I had passed my examinations with good marks. I had got that scholarship and a small grant of money which was so important to me, and I could go to one of the posh schools. I didn’t think that was going to happen. It was the Maths paper that was the problem. The first nineteen questions were so easy that I never bothered with them, but the last question was the one that interested me most of all, so I tried it. I didn’t get very far with it. An hour’s work left me a few pages of notes and lots of scribble, but no answer to the problem. I was a little comforted to be told some months later that nobody had ever attempted to answer that question before.

So there I was. All polished and dressed up in my nice new school uniform just off to catch the bus.

‘Mum,’ I said, ‘what is the point of going to school to learn some more?’

‘You’ve got to learn more,’ she replied, ‘to protect your self from what you already know,’ which is one of those sayings that takes you months to understand, but Mum always did have a way of turning things upside down. She had this odd way of putting things that left me standing on my head.

So it was that we all sat waiting for something to happen. I had managed to get the corner seat at the back of the classroom and soon we heard someone limping along the passage. We all held our breath as the door opened. There he stood, exactly as I had been told: Old John D. Hodge – our form-master!

‘I will talk,’ he began, ‘and you will listen. Is that understood ?’

We nodded.

‘I will teach and you will learn. Right?’

Again we nodded.

‘If any of you don’t want to learn there is always another way of going about it,’ and he hit the desk with the ‘persuader’.

‘Who arranged the order for you to sit in?’

For the next few minutes we were all changing places until he was satisfied. I suddenly found myself at the front of the class. Somebody was detailed to hand out exercise books and we were told to write our name, form and address of the school on the cover of the exercise books and, like so many other pupils must have done, mine ended up with:

London

England

Europe

World

Solar system

Universe

I was sorry that I had done that when he began to walk around the room looking at our efforts. I did try to cover it up with my hand. And then his hand was under my chin as he tilted my head back.

‘Well, well, young man, you certainly know where you are. I wonder, are you as certain where you are going. Are you?’

‘No, sir,’ I replied. Perhaps it was at that moment that something happened. Suddenly I was looking into the bluest eyes I had ever seen. I tried to turn away but he held my head tight.

‘You’re the one that likes to climb things, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Ah, I think I can give you plenty of things to climb. Plenty! I can promise you that!’

The little street where I lived was a real rag-tag and bobtail of a place. Most of my friends lived here. The triplets were amongst our best friends and whenever the kids were playing in the street, it was pretty certain that if Bombom the black goddess wasn’t looking after them, then I was.

The triplets were Millie’s younger sisters. Their real names were Billie, Leslie and Josephine, but nobody ever called them that. We all called them Ready, Willing and Able. Something had happened to them. They were strange. I suppose modern medicine would be able to give whatever had happened to them a name. In those days some people simply called them daft or soft in the head. Perhaps now we might be more kindly and call them mentally handicapped. But if three kids could be truly called angels, it was Ready, Willing and Able. Without a husband their mother struggled hard to bring up five kids. The little street was always very protective, and it was no rare sight to see one or other of the women bearing down on number 12 with some steaming left-overs from their own meals. None of the other kids were beyond snitching the odd cabbage, potatoes or, if they were lucky, an apple or two from the Market. PC Laithwaite was quite aware of these acts of pilfering and, under May’s leadership, many of the stall holders in the market place were always studiously looking somewhere else when the raiders were about. So all in all they didn’t do too badly. After all, the alternative was the Workhouse and nobody in their right mind would wish that on anybody, not even their worst enemy. Things like money for the rentman, the coalman and the gas meter made things more difficult to deal with. Money was in very short supply down our street. On very rare occasions somebody had a few bob to spare and we all knew where that had to go.

So far as Millie was concerned there was only one thing to do and she did it. She joined the big house at the top of the street with the other girls. We all knew why Millie was ‘on the game’ as it was called, but to begin with we had no idea why the rest of them were at it and certainly nobody was going to condemn them.

Danny and I had more fights over those girls than we ever did for our own pleasure. We were like a couple of knights even though our armour was fairly rusty, but woe betide anybody who said anything about the girls.

One of us would say, ‘it’s my turn, you thumped the last one’. Wallop. ‘That’s another one who won’t say that again.’ When PC Laithwaite called on us with some complaint made at the local by some man who didn’t understand what the situation was, all he asked was, ‘How many times did you hit him?’

‘Once, of course, why? With this, of course,’ said Danny, holding up his fist. ‘What else?’

‘Nothing, I suppose. Just wondered. Well, don’t do it again then.’

‘Won’t,’ said Danny, ‘it’s Fynn’s turn next.’

Both of us had spent a night in the lock-up. Not that we were really locked up, because Danny had spent his time playing Twenty One with the sergeant. I spent mine reading The Police Manual and drinking tea. We were both home in time for breakfast. This fact about Millie and the girls up at the top was something that neither John nor Arabella – the spinster sister who lived with him – knew about and none of us was going to tell them. Eventually it was PC Laithwaite who told them. I’m sorry to say that they understood much better than the Rev. Castle did. Maybe he was just too concentrated on souls, but he needn’t have worried because Danny and I had fixed them up with a place to pray in, and even though the Vicar had said an altar was out of the question. Well, the flowers were ‘by courtesy’ of the local park.

I don’t know when, or how, I came to like John D. I never thought I would, but it wasn’t all that long before I found it a real pleasure to be with him. It could have been – possibly – that as my father had died so long ago Old John was coming to be important to me. Whatever the reason might be, it always gave me great pleasure being with him, even though he always seemed to be having a dig at me in one way or another. I know that I had never met anyone like him before. He could hardly utter a sentence without being sarcastic, but his dry manner of giving a lesson was something that excited me. I just liked listening to him. Even the dreaded ‘persuader’ didn’t bother me. It didn’t hurt all that much, and after a minute or two it was as if nothing had happened at all.

I was just about to make my way home from school when he called me over to his car and first introduced me to his sister Arabella.

‘One of your friends has just changed the tyre for my sister,’ he said.

‘I wonder who that was,’ I began to say.

‘His name was Danny Sullivan.’

‘Good old Danny! He’s my fighting mate.’

‘So,’ he continued, ‘you are the one they call Fynn, are you? I’ve heard about you. I understand you have other things you like doing. Other than fighting and climbing impossible walls.’

I nodded.

‘And may one ask what else young Fynn likes doing?’

‘Mathematics mostly. I guess I like that most of all.’

‘The art of the mind.’

‘What?’ I asked. ‘I don’t understand that.’

‘The art of the mind,’ he said once again. ‘Mathematics.’

That idea was a new one on me.

‘Have you many books on the subject?’ he asked me.

‘Not many,’ I said, ‘they are all falling to bits and I reckon they are a bit out of date now.’

‘Maybe. If you would care to come to my study after school is over, I’ll see if I can find anything for you. We mustn’t let our finest brains suffer from lack of books, must we?’ The sarcastic old so and so!

‘Who knows,’ he went on, ‘we may even manage to kindle some spark in that head of yours, but please keep it away from walls until I am able to see if there is anything inside! I doubt it. I doubt it very much, but it is just possible!’

The next day after school had ended I went to his study. Away from the classroom he was a different person altogether. He was still dry, sarcastic as ever and never missed any opportunity to trip me up, but he asked me many questions. He handed me a bundle of books.

‘Here you are, young Fynn, see what you make of these. I don’t suppose you’ll make much of them, but you never know. What will you do, young Fynn, if you don’t understand them?’

‘Try to work it out, I suppose. I don’t know yet.’

‘You could always come and ask me if you get stuck. Come after school. I’m always ready to help you out. We really can’t afford to let the spark go out now, can we? That’s if we ever manage to kindle it.’

I smiled and he turned his back on me.

John had had a very bad time of it in the 1914–1918 War and would rarely speak of it. What with that experience and the deformities that he had been born with, he had become slightly sour. The very mention of the word ‘God’ or ‘religion’ often provoked an outburst of scorn and anger. He was that strangest of mixtures of outspoken bitterness and almost total generosity. I really had to be so careful with him and choose my words with great care.

It was one of his great pleasures to be called a rationalist and, after World War I, Arabella and he had joined a new group called The New Liberation Society. From the little that I knew of it, I knew it was not for me. Even though in those days I did like a tight argument it appeared to me that the rationalists were carrying things a bit too far.

The whole of John’s personal life was so strictly regimented and his possessions so carefully ordered that no room was left for any kind of spontaneous gesture. If a thing could not be calculated it more or less did not exist for him, so much of a rationalist was he.

On the other hand, he could be very kind. He was more than willing to help those of his students who found it hard to grasp the point, and his willingness to help old comrades who had suffered in the war knew no bounds. On those occasions he was all gentleness and concern. He was an odd mixture, and the mix made it difficult for some people to understand him.

It must have been late summer or so when I had gone to see Old John to ask him for help. I was completely stuck with a problem. Although I had tried all the various ways that looked possible, I was just unable to resolve it. He looked at the problem for a moment or two, pointed out my mistake and left me to it. Of course, it was such a silly mistake to have made. The resolution of it was so simple that I could have kicked myself. He edged his way through the door from the kitchen, bearing a tray of coffee and some buns.

‘Solved it, young Fynn?’

I nodded. ‘I feel a right fool. How did I ever come to make that mistake?’

‘It’s one of the hazards of mathematics, Fynn!’ He laughed. ‘It so often turns out to be the simple thing. I’ve done it often myself.’

It gave me a lot of comfort to hear that. He handed me a cup of coffee and asked, ‘Well, young Fynn, your sentence is almost up. Any idea what you are going to do with yourself?’

It was true. I was of an age when earning a living was necessary. I had one or two ideas, but I hadn’t made up my mind.

‘Well, what might my young genius do?’

‘Not really sure yet, John,’ I replied. ‘Just don’t know. All I am certain of is that I can’t give up mathematics or physics.’

‘Glad to hear you say that, young Fynn. You’re always welcome here, you know that. But what about earning your keep, eh? An accountant? A teacher? There’s plenty of room in this world for anyone able to add two and two together.’

‘I know that, John, but I don’t think that I want to do that sort of thing.’

‘Why is that?’ he asked.

‘I know it sounds a bit daft, John, but I enjoy it too much! I suppose I just don’t want to lose the fun and magic of it.’

His laughter at that filled the room. ‘Oh, Fynn, oh Fynn, I’ve always known that to be a fact. You are reasonably good at it, you know, even if occasionally you do some silly things. That makes you doubly welcome here. Have you no idea what you might do then?’

This was the question I dreaded most of all, but the time had come to answer it.

‘John … well … I … I, er … think I would like to go into the Church.’

I waited for the explosion, but it never came. He merely said ‘Oh,’ and his voice dropped a couple of octaves. Still there was no explosion, no tirade against religion. Just a simple, ‘Why, Fynn? Why? Can you tell me?’

‘It’s just important, John, that’s all, I can’t give you any more reason than that.’

‘Important, certainly,’ he replied. ‘Important to know where we are, and why too, if that’s a proper question. I’m really not certain of that.’

His calmness had left me totally puzzled. ‘John, I thought that you would …’

‘I would blow my top …’

I nodded.

‘You know, Fynn,’ he said with a smile, ‘I wasn’t born without faith. I had to work very hard for my lack of it. I wouldn’t want to stop you becoming a priest, if that is what you really want. All I must ask of you is that you think hard and long before you make up your mind.’

Perhaps I had made some movement, some indication that I was about to ask a question. He laid his hand on mine.

‘No questions, young Fynn, not now. Perhaps one day when you visit me, and I am sure that there will be many days, many, many visits, I might even tell you all, but not now. There is one thing, however, that bothers me most of all, which you might like to ponder over before you take the plunge. Will you please fetch my Bible from my study? It’s on the small table by the lamp. Don’t look so surprised, Fynn. I really do have a Bible, and what is more I have even read it. In fact, more than once, mainly in the hope that I might have missed something, but I fear I haven’t.’

I fetched the Bible and put it on the chair beside him and waited. His next words were such a surprise that I had to laugh.

‘Do you drink beer, Fynn?’

‘Well, I have once or twice, not much though.’

‘Perhaps a small glass won’t hurt a young man who is soon to go into the world. It’s my own brew and I’m really rather proud of it.’ He handed me a glass of beer.

‘Before you drink perhaps you will read me verses 19 and 20 of the second chapter of Genesis.’

‘And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them and whatsoever Adam called every living thing that was the name thereof. And Adam …’

‘Enough, enough,’ John broke in. ‘Now you may drink.’

I took a swig.

‘Well, what do you think of that?’

‘Think of what?’

‘The beer first, of course, and if you have any comments, the verses next.’

‘The beer is good, John.’

‘Good, Fynn? Good? Why, the only word to describe that beer is sublime. Take another draught and then tell me what you think about those verses.’

‘I can’t see anything wrong with them, John. They look all right to me. If they are true, it’s wonderful. What are you on about?’

‘I’m not on about anything. If, as we are told, God is all powerful, omnipotent, et cetera, et cetera, then why, oh why am I required to be amazed, pleased or full of wonder at the things he is supposed to have made? I’m not. What does puzzle me, however, is why then did he do such a stupid thing as to ask Adam to name them? Damn it, Fynn. I mean Babel and all that nonsense. What with that and the supposed flood, he does seem to me to spend a lot of time undoing his own creations. If only Adam had had the good sense to give everything a number rather than a name, it would have saved us all a lot of heartache. Ah well, my young friend, after too many years of trying to teach mathematics, I have come to the conclusion that it’s the “numb” in numbers that causes the blockage. That is partly the reason why I am always so happy to have taught you and will always be so glad to see you. You are just a tiny bit different from my other pupils. Not much, mind you, but enough!’

I wanted to say something that would justify my difference, but nothing came.

‘For goodness sake, Fynn, don’t look so dumbfounded. Finish off your drink and indulge me occasionally in my hobby-horses. My problem is really quite simple. I cannot believe. It’s as simple as that. If I could, I would, but even now I have not said what I wanted to say. Anno Domini, I suppose. What I am trying to say to you is, whatever else mathematics might be, it is certainly a language and that’s important. Now, my young friend, it’s about time you were off. Let me know what you decide to do and please come again and often.’

I was really quite confused by all this. He had never been as open with me before and I felt that I would like to stay with him, except that it wouldn’t have been much use because I was perhaps even more uncertain about things myself. The idea that mathematics was a language was new to me and it gave me much to think about, for if it was true that you could talk about God in any language and if mathematics was a language, then … except that I couldn’t see how that might work.