by Johnny Mains
‘What happened, Adam?’
‘Mr Smart gave him a calendar as well, but now Jimmy has to give it back.’
‘I knew he couldn’t change. He’s the shit he always was.’
Summers had done his best to lower his voice, but Adam giggled with delight. ‘What did you say, Grandad?’
‘You didn’t hear it, and don’t tell your parents, all right? There’s no need for language like that.’
‘I don’t mind. Some of the boys in my class say worse, and the girls.’
‘Then they shouldn’t, even about –’ Although Summers had already said too much, his nerves were prompting him. ‘Just so long as your teacher never tries anything like that with you,’ he said. ‘He’ll have me to deal with. I’ve got the calendar.’
‘He won’t, Grandad. He says he wishes all the summers were like me.’
Summers recalled Smart’s jokes about his name, but they’d been vicious. ‘So long as you are, Adam,’ he said, and nothing more until they reached the house. ‘I’ll see you all tomorrow,’ he said, which meant once a week.
He brought dinner home from the Doner Burger Pizzeria, and ate nearly half of the fish and some of the chips before thoughts of Smart stole his appetite. He’d prove he deserved to have the prize. He cleared the kitchen table and laid the calendar face up on it. The open doors stood more or less erect, and he totted up their numbers while he looked for the fourth. There it eventually was, and he rewarded himself with the contents as he added to the total in his head and carried on the search. Ten became fifteen, and he swallowed to make room for the five in his mouth. He needn’t eat any more chocolates; he certainly shouldn’t see off however many led to today’s, even if it would feel like saving Adam from any reason to be grateful to the teacher. Twenty-what, twenty-one, twenty-more . . . At the eighth he lost count and had to start again. The relentless glare of the fluorescent tube overhead intensified his sense of sitting an examination, but it was only a mock one. One, three, six, ten . . . This time he progressed as far as the eleventh, and then searching through the numerical maze drove the total out of his head. He did his best to add up the numbers without looking for them, but he’d tallied fewer than many when he found he had to see them. He tried saying them aloud as he found them and repeating the latest total over and over while he searched for the next number, though he had to keep raising his voice to hold the count in his head. At last he arrived at the date and shouted the total, not loud enough to bother the neighbours, he hoped. He was about to feed himself one more sweet when he wondered if he’d arrived at the right answer.
He added all the numbers up again, and the total was even louder than the process. It was a shout of frustration, because the amount was twenty-two less than his previous answer, which couldn’t even mean he’d missed a number out. He tried another count, though his throat was raw with shouting before he came to the end. Figuring out the difference aggravated the headache that was already making his vision throb. The total was nineteen more than the last one, which meant it was three less than he’d added up in the first place, but why did he need to know any of this? His head felt as if it was hatching numbers, a sensation that exacerbated a greasy sweetish sickness in his mouth. He stumbled to the bathroom to gulp water and splash some on his face. When none of this seemed to help he groped his way into the bedroom, but his thoughts came to bed with him. The year Smart had taken him for mathematics had been one of the worst of his life.
‘I’m here to make you smart like me,’ the teacher had informed the class. ‘If I don’t do it one way I’ll do it another.’ With his plump petulant constantly flushed face he’d resembled an overgrown schoolboy, and he’d revealed a schoolboy’s ingenuity at inventing tortures, tweaking a tuft of hair at the nape of the neck to lift his victim on tiptoe and hold them there until he’d delivered a lecture to them or about them. He’d called his favourite victim Summer because, he’d said in anything but praise, the boy was so singular. Before long Summers had spent every school night lying awake in terror of the next day, but he’d been too ashamed to tell his parents and afraid that any intervention would only make the situation worse. He’d lost count of how often he’d been singled out before the first of December, when Smart asked him to add up the days of the month.
Everyone had found his bewilderment hilarious. He’d had to risk answering at last, and Smart had given him a round of dry applause. When he’d produced an Advent calendar from his briefcase Summers had felt encouraged until he was called to the front of the class to find the date. Long before he did, the teacher was declaring, ‘Summer means to keep us all here till next summer.’ After that every mathematics lesson began with Summers on his feet to announce the total to date. He’d succeeded for over a week, having lost even more sleep to be sure of the answers, but he’d gone wrong on the ninth and on every school day for the rest of December. He’d still had to find the day’s sweet as he stood on tiptoe, raised ever higher by the agonising drag at his neck, and then he’d had to drop the chocolate into the bin.
His anger at the memory kept him awake. Counting Father Christmases no longer helped, and he tried adding up punches to Smart’s cruel smug face. That was satisfying enough to let Summers doze, only to waken in a rage, having realised that he didn’t need to find the numbers on the calendar to count them. He turned it on its face and listed all the dates in a column on a pad – if he hadn’t felt that mobile phones involved too many numbers he would have had a calculator to use now. He tapped each date with the pen as he picked his way down the column. A smell of paint threatened to revive his headache, but eventually he had a number to write at the foot of the last row and another to add at the top of the next one. At last he had the full amount, and muttered something like a prayer before adding up the dates again. He did the sum a third time to be certain, and then he rewarded himself with a bath. Three times in a row he’d arrived at the same answer.
He oughtn’t to have tried to prove he could repeat the calculation in his head. By the time he succeeded, the water was too cold to stay in. He meant only to glance at the bedside clock to see how soon he ought to leave for Paul’s and Tina’s, but he was already late. He almost snagged the padding of his jacket with the zip as he hurried out, to be hindered by tins of paint on the balcony. His left-hand neighbour’s door had turned green. ‘Just brightening the place up for you,’ the overalled workman said, sounding rather too much like a nurse in a sickroom.
Summers had scarcely rung the bell in the wrought-iron porch when Adam ran to open the door. ‘I said Grandad said he was coming.’
Paul emerged in a chef’s apron from the kitchen as Tina appeared from the dining room with an electric corkscrew. ‘I didn’t mean to keep you waiting,’ Summers said.
‘Don’t give it a thought.’ To his wife, Paul said, ‘I told you he’d never mistake the date.’
‘He’s just being silly, Teddy,’ Tina assured Summers, which only made him wonder what else she’d said about him. ‘Take your grandfather’s coat, Adam,’ she said and blinked at Summers. ‘Haven’t you been well?’
‘Perfectly,’ Summers said, feeling too defensive to be truthful. ‘What makes you ask?’
‘You look as if you could do with feeding,’ Paul said.
‘You can have one of my chocolates if you like,’ said Adam.
‘I hope you thanked Grandpa for the calendar,’ Paul said. ‘I never had one at your age.’
‘I gave Grandad one as well.’
‘Poor mite,’ Tina said to Paul, and less satirically, ‘That was kind of you, Adam.’
‘He gave me mine so he could have the one the teacher gave me.’
‘I don’t think I understand.’
She was gazing at Paul, but Summers felt interrogated. ‘Perhaps we could discuss it later,’ he said.
‘Adam, you can set the table,’ Tina said as if it were a treat, and gestured the adults into th
e lounge. Once the door was shut she said, ‘What’s the situation?’
‘I shouldn’t really think there is one,’ Summers tried saying.
‘It sounds like one to us,’ Tina said without glancing at Paul. ‘Why did you want Adam’s present?’
‘I just took it off him because it looked a bit ancient. Exactly like his grandfather, you could say.’
‘You mean you binned it.’
Summers might have said so, but suppose Adam learned of it? ‘I didn’t do that, no. I’ve still got most of it.’
‘Most,’ Paul said like some kind of rebuke.
‘I ate a few chocolates.’ Summers felt driven to come up with the number. ‘Five of them,’ he said with an effort. ‘I’m sure they’re nowhere near as good as the ones I gave Adam.’
‘They can’t be so bad,’ Tina said, ‘if you saw five of them off.’
‘All right, it wasn’t only that. I just didn’t want Adam taking anything from that man.’
‘Which man?’ Tina demanded as Paul said even more sharply, ‘Why?’
‘The maths man. I hope he won’t be there much longer. Smart,’ Summers made himself add and wiped his lips. ‘I wouldn’t trust him with a dog, never mind children.’
‘What are you saying?’ Tina cried as Paul opened his mouth.
‘I had him for a year at Adam’s age. It felt like the rest of my life.’ Summers saw he had to be specific so that they wouldn’t imagine worse. ‘He loved hurting people,’ he said.
‘He’d never get away with that these days at school,’ Paul protested.
‘There are more ways than physical. Let’s just hope Adam stays his favourite.’
Tina gave Summers a long look before enquiring, ‘Have you said any of this to Adam?’
‘I wouldn’t put him under any pressure, but I do think you should keep a close eye on the situation.’
‘I thought you said there wasn’t one,’ Tina said and opened the door to the hall. ‘We’ll be discussing it further.’
Summers gathered that he wouldn’t be involved, and couldn’t argue while Adam might hear. He offered to help but was sent into the dining room, where Tina served him a glass of wine while his son and grandson brought in dinner. He saw they meant to make him feel at home, but every Saturday he felt as if he’d returned to find the house almost wholly unfamiliar, scattered with a few token items to remind him he’d once lived there – mostly photographs with Elaine in them. At least he could enthuse about Paul’s casserole, but this gave Adam an excuse to ask, ‘Do you know what it’s called, Grandad?’
‘Adam,’ his mother warned him.
‘It’s not called Adam.’ Perhaps the boy was misbehaving because he’d been excluded from the conversation in the lounge. ‘It’s cock off, Ann,’ he said.
‘That’s very rude,’ Tina said, ‘and not at all clever.’
‘Maybe it’s cocker fan.’
‘That’s rude too.’ Apparently in case it wasn’t, Tina insisted, ‘And silly as well.’
‘Then I expect it’s cock – ’
‘Now, Adam, you’ve already impressed us with your schoolwork,’ Summers said as he thought a grandparent should. ‘You’re an example to us all. You’re even one to me.’
‘How am I, grandad?’
‘I’ve been doing some sums of my own. I can tell you what the month adds up to so far.’ When nobody asked for the answer Summers felt not much better than distrusted, but he’d repeated the amount to himself all the way to the house. ‘One hundred and eighty-one,’ he said with some defiance.
Adam squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. ‘No it isn’t, Grandad.’
‘I’m sure it is, you know.’ On the way to growing desperate Summers said, ‘Hang on, I’ve left today out, haven’t I?’
‘That’s not it, Grandad. One hundred and ninety, you should have said.’
‘I don’t think that can be right,’ Summers said to the boy’s parents as well. ‘That’s ten times whatever it’s ten times, nineteen, isn’t it, of course.’
‘I should have thought the last thing you’d want to do,’ Tina said, ‘is undermine his confidence.’
‘He’s undermining mine,’ Summers complained, but not aloud. He was silent while he tried to make the days add up to Adam’s total. They either fell short or overshot it, and the need to carry on some sort of conversation didn’t help, any more than the drinks during and after the meal did.
The streets were full of numbers – on the doors of houses and the gates, on the front and back of every car and, if they were for sale, in their windows too. There were just three digits to each registration plate, and he tried to add up each group as it came in sight. He was absurdly grateful to reach home, although the orange lights on the balcony had turned his door and its neighbours identically black. ‘Nine,’ he repeated, ‘nine, nine,’ and felt as if he were calling for aid by the time he managed to identify the door.
The Advent calendar was still lying on its numbers, and he hoped that would keep them out of his head – but they were only waiting for him to try to sleep, and started awake whenever he did. They got out of bed with him in the morning and followed him into the bath. Couldn’t he just add today to Adam’s total? That seemed too much like copying an answer in an examination, and in any case he wanted to learn how Adam had arrived at the result. When it continued to elude him he floundered out of the bath.
He did his best to linger over dressing, then listed all the numbers on a new sheet of the pad, pronouncing them aloud to make certain he missed none. Today’s date could be added once he’d written down the total. He poked each number with the ballpoint as the amount swelled in his head, only for the pen to hover above the space beneath the line he’d drawn at the foot of the column. He went down the list of figures again and again, jabbing at them until they looked as though they’d contracted a disease. He announced every amount on the way to the total – he might almost have been uttering some kind of Sunday prayer – but none of this was much use. One hundred and seventy-nine, one hundred and ninety-three, one hundred and eighty-seven . . . He hadn’t hit upon the same amount twice, let alone the one Adam had told him, when somebody rang the raucous doorbell.
He thought they might have come to complain about his noise, especially once he noticed it was dark. He couldn’t leave the table until the sum was done. ‘One hundred and ninety,’ he said, but that wasn’t the whole of the total. ‘Seven,’ he yelled in a rage, ‘one hundred and ninety-seven,’ and shoved back his chair to tramp along the hall.
He was preparing to apologise, if hardly to explain, but Tina was outside. ‘Well, this is a surprise,’ he said. ‘Come in.’
‘I won’t, thanks, Teddy. I just came to tell you –’ With a frown that Summers felt was aimed to some extent at him, she turned to say, ‘Adam, I told you to wait in the car.’
‘I wanted to say goodbye to Grandad.’
‘Why,’ Summers said in bewilderment, ‘where’s anybody going?’
‘Adam will be going home with a friend next week.’ Apparently in recompense, Tina added, ‘You’ll still be coming to us for Christmas.’
‘You mean, I’m not wanted for picking up Adam from school.’
‘I’ve explained the situation.’
As Summers managed not to retort that he suspected the opposite, Adam said, ‘Grandad, did you go to school when you were a baby?’
‘I wasn’t quite that young. Why do you ask?’
‘Grandma said you were a baby when Mr Smart had you at school.’
Elaine had been in the same class – Summers used to thank their schooldays for bringing them together. Now he was almost too enraged to ask, ‘What else did she say about me?’
‘We won’t talk about it now, if you don’t mind,’ Tina said, ‘and I hope it won’t spoil Christmas either. Just say goodbye to your grandfather till the
n, Adam.’
‘Bye, Grandad,’ the boy said. ‘You got something nice from Mr Smart, didn’t you? All the chocolates.’
‘I won’t argue,’ Summers said and watched Tina shoo Adam back to the car. When he returned to the kitchen the clamour of numbers and emotions in his head robbed him of the ability to think. Turning the calendar over didn’t help, especially since every open door had been flattened shut. He stared at however many identical idiotically grinning faces there were, and the pad swarming with diseased amounts, and all at once his mind seemed to clear. Had Tina freed him? Now that he wouldn’t be associated with Adam, surely he could deal with the teacher.
He didn’t feel beset by numbers once he went to bed. He slept, and in the morning he was able to ignore the calculations on the pad. He listened to symphonies on the radio until it was time to head for Park Junior, and was in a shelter with a view of the school several minutes before the last bell. When the children streamed out under the grey sky, the explosion of colours and chatter felt like a promise of spring. He was cut off from it, skulking in a corner so that Adam wouldn’t notice him. Soon he saw his grandson with another boy, and they set about kicking a ball as they followed a young woman into the park.
As Summers turned his face to the wall to make sure he wasn’t recognised, he felt like a schoolboy sent to stand in the corner. Surely Adam hadn’t looked happier than he did when his grandfather met him. As soon as the thumps of the football passed the shelter Summers peered towards the school. Suppose the teacher had sneaked away unobserved? Summers hurried to the railings opposite the school but could see nobody he knew. The doors let out some teachers and then even more he didn’t recognise, and he was clenching his shaky fists in frustration by the time a man emerged into the deserted schoolyard.
He was thin and bent, and as grey as the sky – his suit, his thinning hair, the smoke of the cigarette he lit before stalking to the gates. For a moment Summers wondered if the teacher was too old to bother with – even old enough to be given some grudging respect – and then he saw that Smart had become the vicious old man he’d resembled forty years ago. Any hesitation felt too much like fear, and he barely managed to unclench his fists as he strode out of the park. ‘Mr Smart,’ he said in triumph. ‘Can I ask you a question?’
