How to Write Really Badly (5 page)

And he was terrible at maths, as well. Whatever page of problems Miss Tate gave out to him, he’d sit there, fidgeting and sighing till my nerves were in tatters.

‘So what’s the matter
now
?’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘
What
don’t you get?’

(I don’t know why I bothered. I might as well have asked someone who was stone deaf, ‘
What
can’t you hear?’)

‘I just don’t get it.’

Why should I work myself into a frazzle for free? Miss Tate gets paid for it.

‘Miss Tate. Miss Tate! Joe’s stuck again!’

You have to hand it to the lady. She did her best. Day after day, she’d haul the coloured rods and blocks over to his desk, and set them out, and go through the problems again.

‘So, Joe. Let’s take it step by step. This block here is worth –’

‘A hundred?’

She’d shake her head.

‘A thousand?’

‘No. Think, Joe. We went through this only yesterday.’

‘Ten, then.’

Third guess lucky. Not that there was that much left to choose. But still Miss Tate managed to crank the enthusiasm up into overdrive.

‘That’s right, Joe! So if we don’t have enough of the red blocks to . . . drone . . . drone . . . drone . . . drone . . .’

Joe tried. He’d nod. And carry on answering her step-by-tiny-step questions, one by one. But there was no point in it. None of it
took
. The moment she walked away, he couldn’t remember the right questions to ask himself, to get to the
answer. He couldn’t
understand
. And all the blocks and rods cluttering his desk were baffling him as much as the numbers that confused him in the first place.

‘I reckon only the people who can do it in the book can do it with the rods and blocks,’ he grumbled to me once.

‘Spotted it right away, Joe!’

‘So what’s the point?’

I shrugged. ‘Search me.’

Sometimes, just for a rest, she’d give
him something he knew how to do. And
still
he’d get it wrong. I’d lean across to sort him out, and find he’d copied out the question wrong. This writing backwards business had crept into his numbers.

‘You’re supposed to be multiplying by thirteen, not thirty-one.’

‘Am I?’

He’d spend ten minutes finding his place on the worksheet.

‘So I am!’

Not that he’d even get the answer after that. His next mistake was usually to copy the right number into the wrong place.

He’d go through it four times over, to be sure. Then:

‘Have I made any mistakes at all in the adding?’

I’d check for him.

‘No. No mistakes in the adding.’

‘So it’s
right
?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

And I’d call Miss Tate over yet again, with all her rods and blocks, to try and explain.

One day, I asked her:

‘Why are you torturing him like this?’

Miss Tate looked hurt and horrified.

‘Torturing him? Howard, what on earth do you mean? I was just asking Joe if he
understands
.’

‘But Joe doesn’t
know
if he understands.’

‘Maybe he’ll get it suddenly. Some people do.’

She turned her back on me.

‘So, Joe,’ she said patiently. ‘Let’s try this one again. We start in this column, don’t we? So what’s seven times eight?’

We wait
forever
. And then, at last
(because Joe can lip-read Beth) the answer comes.

‘Fifty-six?’

Miss Tate was thrilled.

‘Excellent, Joe!’

One mini-micro-second later, she’s asking him:

‘And what’s eight times seven?’

And he’s back to picking miserably at his fingertips.

‘Come on, Joe. You just did it.’

‘Did I?’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘Just now. You told me: “Seven times eight is fifty-six”.’

‘But I thought you wanted eight times seven now.’

‘Joe, they’re the
same
!’

He fakes it well enough. Slaps on his bright ‘I-think-I’ve-got-it-now’ face. And she pretends she’s fooled (because that’s her job). But I don’t have to act the idiot.

‘
See?
You’re just torturing him. If he hasn’t even grasped that seven eights is the same as eight sevens, how can you start him on
fractions
? It’s not
fair
.’

‘They’re very
easy
fractions.’

‘Thumbscrews are gentle compared with the iron maiden, I expect.’

‘Howard!’

She’s getting cross with me, I can tell. But I am cross with her. How can she
carry on week after week, acting as if, deep down inside (if she could only reach it), Joe’s brain is just like mine or hers? Why can’t she see his clockwork doesn’t tick like ours?

‘He’s getting a lot more right these days, aren’t you, Joe?’

‘That’s just because Howard’s helping me.’

‘I’m sure it isn’t.’

‘Yes, it is,’ I said.

‘Howard!’

‘It’s true,’ I insist. ‘Joe gets along all right. But only by bluffing and guessing and mind-reading you, and lip-reading Beth, and getting answers from me.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

‘Ask him – if you feel lucky!’

She doesn’t dare. She simply turns on her heel. And I know what I said hit home because, when she gets to her desk,
she wheels round on me, and says, her face scarlet:

‘I think perhaps I ought to move you, Howard.’

Joe’s wail is pitiful.

‘Oh no, Miss Tate! Don’t separate us, please! I
like
sitting next to Howard! He’s a great help to me!’

She doesn’t push it. But later, when the bell rings, she takes my arm and draws me aside.

‘I think maybe you’d do a whole lot better, Howard Chester, if you took less interest in other people’s work, and more in your own.’

She had a point. For when I opened my How-to book to prove her wrong, it was still blank.

‘Today,’ I told him, ‘I am getting on with my own work.’

‘Just start me off first,’ he pleaded.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I have to get on myself. Once I start with you, there’s never any stopping.’

So, sadly, he set off in his brutish handwriting across the page.

It was no good. I couldn’t concentrate. I laid down my pen and slid the photographs he’d brought in to show me out of their envelope.

‘I’ve said this before,’ I told him. ‘And I shall probably say it again. I don’t
understand how someone who can stuff eighteen jumbo-sized models into one tiny bedroom without breaking any of them can’t copy one word without losing his place half a billion times.’

I glanced at his work again.

‘Or six words in a row without falling off the edge of the paper.’

Look how he’d finished this time.

I touched his hand.

‘Are these the fingers that built that three-metre Eiffel Tower out of spaghetti?’

‘Macaroni.’

‘Whatever.’ I tapped his head. ‘Is this the brain that worked out how to make his sister’s Hallowe’en mask flash orange and green? Is this the same boy who stuffed all the speaker wires back in the right holes when Ben Bergonzi put his great hoof through them?’

‘That’s different,’ he said sadly. ‘I don’t have to
learn
wires and glue and stuff.’

I shook my head.

‘You’re in the wrong place,’ I told him. ‘You shouldn’t be here. It’s sapping your confidence. You ought to be trailing behind someone who builds bridges, or invents light displays for famous bands on tour, or bugs other people’s telephones.’

‘I’d like that.’

‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘Only –’ I did a rapid calculation in my head. ‘Only about one thousand, six hundred and forty-six days to go.’