by Clare Clark
Oskar’s mother liked words more than numbers, which meant that she knew lots of stories about them. She told Oskar about the shepherds in Lincolnshire in the Middle Ages who had their own numbers that started yan, tan, tethera, pethera, but only went up to figgit, which was twenty, because if a shepherd had more than twenty sheep he would scrape a line in his crook and start at yan all over again. She said that the word calculate came from the Roman word for pebble because the Romans counted with stones, and that digit, which was a grown-up word for finger, was also a grown-up word for number and that was why numbers were counted in groups of ten, because people counted on their fingers and ten was how many fingers you had for counting on.
‘Unless you were Anne Boleyn, of course,’ she said. Anne Boleyn was the Queen who married King Henry VIII when his other wife was still alive so that he could not be a Catholic any more. Oskar did not care for Anne Boleyn any more than he cared for the broken bits of pot at the British Museum, but he quite liked the shudder that came from eleven fingers, and he really, really liked the idea of a number system that went up to eleven before starting again. For a while when he was littler, he had invented his own number system that went up to dat, which was eleven, and then afterwards, when he saw that it would work better to have a base that divided by lots of other numbers, to tog, which was twelve. His mother said that there had been several clever men in the nineteenth century who had tried to change the number system so that everyone counted in twelves, especially in Britain where there were already twelve pennies in a shilling, but that no one had wanted to listen. She said that it was one of the things that she would never understand, that even when it was quite plain that things would be better if they changed, most people still wanted them to stay exactly the same.
Volume 6, pages 3727–4463. Both 3727 and 4463 were prime numbers. Oscar liked odd numbers better than even ones and primes most of all because each one had its own special shape. He slid the book from the shelf. It was new, the spine stiff and the gold very gold. At home the books were all battered and when you opened them the pages fell out or letters or scraps of paper covered in his mother’s handwriting. She was always putting letters and lists in books to mark her place and forgetting all about them. Once Oskar had found a telegram announcing the birth of JESSICA MARGARET CROMPTON MELVILLE STOP; another time a French train ticket from before he was born. The books in the Melvilles’ huge library did not look like anyone had ever read them at all.
Carefully he opened the book. When he was small he had asked his mother if Sir Aubrey had read all the books in his library and his mother had laughed and said that not even Sir Aubrey could love Ellinghurst as much as that. She said that according to the estate records most of the books had been purchased by the yard, like silk for curtains, boxes and boxes just to cover the shelves, but that some had been chosen specially by Sir Jeremiah who was Sir Aubrey’s great-great-grandfather.
‘What else explains so much Scott?’ she said and she smiled so that Oskar knew it was a joke even though he did not understand it. He often did not understand the things his mother said but he knew better than to ask her to explain because mostly the explanations were not very interesting. He was interested in Sir Jeremiah, though. It was Sir Jeremiah who had turned Ellinghurst from an ordinary manor house into a medieval castle and built castellations and turrets and a moat with a bridge and a huge arched gatehouse with machicolations and a portcullis and a lookout tower with a hole for boiling oil. Oskar’s mother had told Oskar that Sir Jeremiah had been an admirer of Richard the Lionheart and, like the great Crusader king, believed in gallantry and chivalry and the unrelenting plunder of the people for profit. She said that if your concern for the tenants on your land extended only as far as their potential capital yield, it was probably prudent to have a portcullis, just in case.
‘No little lily-handed Baronet he,’ Oskar’s mother said, and Oskar knew from the way that she said it that the words came from a poem. Oskar’s mother loved poems. She said that poems could be just as beautiful as mathematical equations but Oskar knew that she only thought that because she did not really understand mathematics.
The first thing in Volume 6 was a shiny colour plate of the Solar System, the planets suspended in their orbits like swirly glass marbles. Oskar knew about the Solar System. He knew that the rings of Saturn were made up of small particles of ice and rock and that Jupiter was two and a half times the mass of all the other planets put together, with its largest satellite, Ganymede, bigger even than Mercury. He knew that, from where he was on Earth, the Sun was ninety-three million miles away. It puzzled him when other people remarked to his mother on how clever he was to remember so many things. Facts were like books or socks. If you put them back in the same place you always knew where they were when you needed them.
Opposite the picture of the Solar System was a list of all the things in Volume 6. Oskar ran his finger down the list until it came to THE BOOK OF WONDER. Oskar wondered what THE BOOK OF WONDER was and if that was why it was called that, because it made you wonder. His mother said that words were like chemistry because each one reacted with the one next to it to make something new, but Oskar just found them confusing. He nearly put the book back on the shelf. Then he saw that beneath THE BOOK OF WONDER was written in smaller letters, BY THE WISE MAN. Then he wanted to know who the Wise Man was too.
He took the book to his window seat. There were eight windows all the same down the length of the library, or actually twenty-four because each one was made up of three arranged in a bay, but Oskar’s was the one furthest from the door. It was guarded by a marble bust on a pillar, a man with a curly beard and blank blind eyes. Oskar supposed he was a Roman because he wore a sheet tied on one shoulder so he called him Mr Albus because he was white and albus was white in Latin. He always said hello to Mr Albus as he climbed into the window seat, just to let him know he was there. The window had a seat underneath it with a long silk cushion and panelled shutters that, when you closed them, made a little room inside just big enough to sit in or even to lie down in if you were ten and not very tall for your age.
It was peaceful in the window. Oskar wanted to live in a castle more than anything but, though he looked forward to going to Ellinghurst for weeks, when he was there he often wanted to go home. He liked it in the early mornings when the only other people who were up were the servants busy with their work, and he could walk around and look at things properly without someone asking him what he thought he was doing. But a lot of the time he wished he was sitting with his mother in front of the fire at home, Oskar with a book or a scrap of paper and a pencil, his mother with her spectacles on the end of her nose, writing or reading or folding stacks of letters and putting them into envelopes, not talking but looking up at one another from time to time just to make sure. At Ellinghurst he only saw his mother after tea when Nanny took the children down to the drawing room. The castle was perhaps the most interesting place Oskar knew but it was tiring always being with people who were waiting for you to go away again.
Resting the book on his chest Oskar turned the pages. It turned out that the Wise Man did not just tell people things. He answered their questions, like WHAT IS THE AETHER? The Wise Man said that the aether was everywhere, that everything travelled through it, even the planets and their moons. He said it was because of the aether that X-rays could look into people’s bodies and telegraphs could be sent through the air without any wires for the messages to travel along. Oskar knew about telegraphs. Mr Kingsley at his school had told them all about Mr Marconi from Italy, who had invented wireless telegraphy and who was presently inventing a machine that would pick up voice rays from the Next World, which meant dead people. Mr Kingsley said that perhaps in their lifetimes a wireless would be invented that could pick up the voice rays from God.
The Wise Man did not say anything about God. He just said that aether was in everything, even in the electrons in atoms, which were the fundamental building blocks of matter. Oskar had never h
eard of atoms but the Wise Man said that everything that existed in the world was made of atoms, particles so small that millions of them would fit on the head of a pin. And yet, tiny as they were, they were packed with much, much smaller things called electrons. These electrons were so tiny that the best way to imagine them, the Wise Man suggested, was to picture tennis balls bouncing in violent random motion inside the dome of a cathedral.
At the bottom of the page the Wise Man warned that scientists did not yet know for certain if this was how atoms worked, that it remained a hypothesis, but by then it was already too late. Oskar’s head felt hot and bright, lit up from the inside like a lantern. He touched the wall beside him, the stone flowers and the fishbone ridge in the plaster where the hair from a paintbrush had stuck, and the thought of it, that the plaster and the paint and the paintbrush hair and his own hair and the tips of his fingers were all made up of atoms, that everything in the world, whatever it was and however it looked, was made of the same specks of matter, each one a tiny universe with its own wildly ricocheting solar system, the astonishing thrill of it, made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.
The slam of the library door made him jump. Instinctively Oskar slid down inside his window-seat house. He knew that he was allowed to be here, that Sir Aubrey had said he could come whenever he wanted as long as he did not touch the special books in the shelves like cages, but that did not mean that he wanted to be found. Very slowly, to keep himself from breathing, he counted the cubes in his head: 1, 8, 27, 64, 125, 216 . . .
It was only one person. You could tell that from the footsteps. Whoever it was was talking to themself or maybe singing. He wondered hopefully if it might be his mother. His mother was always singing. Sometimes she and Oskar went to the Clapham Grand, which was a music hall with lots of singing and magic tricks and people telling jokes. His mother sang along with all the songs.
There was a scraping noise as though something was being dragged across the floor, then a crash and another and another. Whoever the someone was they were throwing books on the floor. The crashes made him wince, as though a bit of him was inside the pages. There was another bigger bang, several books at once, and a high shriek of fury.
‘Damn you all to bloody hell! I hope all the ghosts of all the dead people ever in the whole world come back in one big cloud and scare you all to death.’
The voice was Jessica’s. Oskar screwed up his face and prayed on the encyclopaedia for her to turn around and go away. If Jessica discovered his window then she would be sure to tell Theo and Theo would find a way to spoil it. Theo only liked people liking things if he had thought of them first. He closed his eyes and counted faster, 4913, 5832, 6859. Then suddenly there was a loud clatter of boots and the shutters banged open. He turned his head away, keeping his eyes squeezed shut.
‘For God’s sake,’ Jessica said, disgusted. ‘I can still see you.’
Unhappily Oskar opened his eyes. He hugged the encyclopaedia to his chest.
‘I knew you were here,’ she said. ‘You think it’s such a big secret but we all know. Eleanor thinks you must be soft in the head. She says it’s like wanting to sit in a coffin.’
Oskar looked past Jessica at the books sprawled on the library floor. He had once overheard a lady telling his mother that the reason Eleanor Melville refused to let her children call her Mama was because she deplored the institutional inequality of the mother-child relationship, and his mother had laughed so hard he thought she might choke. He wanted to ask her what was so funny but he knew she would only want to know what he was doing hiding behind the sofa in the first place.
‘Why did you throw the books?’ he asked.
Jessica frowned. Oskar always asked the most idiotic questions. ‘Because I felt like it. Why do you hide yourself in here like a corpse?’
‘Because I felt like it. I like the books.’
‘Only freaks like books more than people. When you’re grown up you’ll probably marry a book.’ Shoving his legs out of the way, she clambered onto the window seat. She could see the garden and, above the woods, the top of Grandfather’s Tower like a cut-out bit of paper against the sky. Grandfather Melville had wanted to be buried with his wife in the tower but she had said it was ungodly so instead he had made them burn up his body like they did in India and scatter the ashes from the top. Sometimes, when she saw dust on the skirting boards, Jessica wondered if there were still bits of Grandfather Melville in it, blown inside by the wind. ‘Marjorie Maxwell Brooke wants to marry Theo,’ she said. ‘When she talks to him her voice goes funny.’
Oskar did not know what to say to that. ‘Is it tea time?’ he asked instead.
‘Mama and Mr Connolly aren’t back yet. I expect they’ve had a smash.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘Why not? Cars smash all the time, especially when they’re driven by someone as stupid as Mr Connolly.’
‘I didn’t know Mr Connolly was stupid.’
‘Of course he’s stupid. He thinks Mama likes him because he’s charming when really she only likes him because he has a brand-new motor car and he hasn’t done anything to annoy her yet.’
Oskar thought of Godmother Eleanor and Mr Connolly laughing together beside the fire after tea the day before, Godmother Eleanor’s fingertips touching her lips as though even the laughing was a secret. Once, when Oskar was little, he had asked his mother why the people who came to stay at Ellinghurst were never the same and his mother had said that Godmother Eleanor changed her friends as often as most people changed their vests.
‘She hasn’t changed you,’ Oskar had pointed out.
‘No,’ she had said, smiling. ‘I think she’s stuck with me.’
‘Stuck in your vest.’
‘Completely jammed.’
It had made them laugh to think of Godmother Eleanor flailing blindly about with her arms over her head, tangled up in her Mother vest. If Jessica had been his friend he could have told her and made her laugh too. It was a funny story.
The suddenness with which Jessica leaned over and snatched the book from his arms startled him. She stared at it, wrinkling up her nose in disgust. ‘Truly? The bloody encyclopaedia?’
Oskar blinked. He had never heard a girl swear before.
‘What’s the matter?’ she demanded. ‘Never heard a girl swear before?’
He reddened. ‘Give that back,’ he said, but Jessica twisted away, sliding the book under her bottom.
‘Why should I?’
‘Because I was reading it.’
‘Is it yours?’
‘Your father said I could read whatever I wanted.’
‘So? It’s my book just as much as Father’s. If I don’t want you to look at it, you can’t look at it.’
She tucked her legs underneath her, sitting back on Volume 6 as if it were a cushion. Oskar bit his lip. He did not understand what she wanted, but he knew enough to know that the more he asked the less likely she would be to give it back. Jessica had always bewildered him. When they were little she had made him play games where he had to pretend he was someone else and when he got it wrong she flew into a temper. Her rages had frightened him. Of course that was long ago, before he went to school and met Sayle and McAvoy and the other boys that trailed after the two of them like the Pied Piper’s rats.
‘For the love of peace, Grunewald, have some backbone,’ his form master chided. ‘You bring it on yourself, don’t you see? Boys are wolves. They smell weakness.’
He told Oskar that when someone hit you you had to hit them back. Oskar could not hit Jessica. She was a girl and good at getting other people into trouble. But he could pretend he did not care. Without saying anything he climbed out of the window seat and started picking up the books that were scattered on the floor. Several of them had landed open, crushing the pages. He smoothed them out as he closed them. Behind him Jessica sighed noisily.
‘Fine. Here. Have your stupid book.’ She held it out to him. Oskar hesitated. ‘Come on.’
Oskar put out his hand. Immediately Jessica snatched the book back, clasping it against her chest. ‘Just one thing. What do I get in return?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You can’t expect to get something for nothing,’ she said. ‘If you want something you have to pay for it.’
‘But I don’t have any money.’
‘Who said it had to be money?’
‘What then?’
Jessica put her head on one side. Then she put the encyclopaedia down on the window seat and crossed her arms. ‘Show me your thing,’ she said.
Oskar stared at her.
‘Go on. Pull down your trousers and show me your thing.’
‘No!’
Jessica’s mouth twisted. ‘Why not? Or don’t you have one?’
‘No. I—I mean, I’m not going to. I won’t.’
‘Theo was right. You’re pathetic. Completely and utterly pathetic.’ She stroked the encyclopaedia. ‘Well, I’m going to take this upstairs. Not that I want to read it or anything, but the pages might do for paper chains. I’ll see what I feel like. After all, it is mine.’ She slipped off the window seat, the book cradled in her arms, but she did not leave. She came and stood right in front of him. She smelled of warm hay and calamine lotion. ‘You’re so stupid. If you’d shown me yours I’d most probably have shown you mine. And I bet you’d like to see what it looks like, wouldn’t you? For a girl?’
Oskar could not speak. He could not think. He stared at the floor as the heat rushed through his chest and up into his face.
‘Well, wouldn’t you?’
‘Go away,’ he muttered. His ears burned. He thought maybe if he wished hard enough the energy of his wanting her to go away might shrivel her up. Jessica looked at him. Then, putting the encyclopaedia on the floor, she lifted her skirt and pulled down her drawers. Oskar saw smooth pale thighs and between them, a curve of flesh like a white fruit, divided in two. Then, like a theatre curtain, the skirt came down.
