King of the World (5 page)

“I can’t understand, dear,” Bridget remembered her mother pleading rather pathetically, “I can’t understand what it is that has turned you against marriage like this. It’s not as if Daddy and I had quarrelled a lot or got
divorced or anything. You had a
happy
marriage to look up to.”

Hard to explain that it had been her parents’ very
contentment
with their lot that had set their young daughter on so determinedly different a path. The prospect of dwindling into a person who could actually be
happy
in so narrow and restricted a life was appalling.

It had been impossible to explain this to her mother at the time: it was even more impossible now. Bridget racked her brain for some innocuous subject to which she could deflect the conversation, uneasily aware that her mother’s brain, across the tea-table from her, was engaged on a precisely similar quest. Two brains whirring in unison, scouring the ever-diminishing range of topics that were neither hurtful nor controversial nor intolerably boring.

It was her mother who spoke first.

“I thought perhaps this evening we might …” she was beginning warily: but before the uninviting project (whatever it might be) had been fully enunciated, there was a merciful interruption.

The telephone. It was the older woman, perhaps
powered
by more intense anxieties, who got there first.

“
Who
?” she said in bemused tones; and then “Yes … Oh, yes, of course …”; and then turning back into the room, rather wide-eyed:

“It’s for you, dear,” she said anxiously. “It’s Diana. She seemed … Oh dear, I do hope nothing’s
hap
pened
!”

You mean nothing that will make me curtail my visit, Bridget commented silently, and picked up the receiver.

“Oh, Bridget! Thank goodness I’ve caught you! I was
afraid you mightn’t have arrived yet, and I couldn’t possibly have left a message, it’s just too awful. It’s Norah, you see, she’s had some sort of a brain-storm, it’s absolutely terrifying. I just don’t know what to do. I hate to ask you to cut short your visit, but I’m really scared, and Alistair says …”

Lying in bed some hours later in her old room, where the Famous Five books and her collection of glass animals still adorned the shelves over the desk, Bridget wondered uncomfortably whether she should have responded more promptly to Diana’s urgent summons; should have snatched up her suitcase and dashed off to catch the next – and probably last – train to Liverpool Street. It would have been easier in a way, as well as kinder, because her suitcase hadn’t even been unpacked yet. And maybe it would have been no more distressing to her parents than the present arrangement; that she should go back first thing in the morning instead of staying for the whole weekend as planned.

“Of course, dear, if it’s an emergency,” her mother had said with a lack of reproach which made Bridget feel even more guilty than she had in the first place. “The only thing is, dear, I don’t like to ask your father to get the car out again, at this time of night. He’s just getting over this cold, you see, and …”

And our whole evening will be disrupted, she could have added, and the special meal I’d planned will be spoiled. The chicken is in the oven already – it’s a free-range chicken, I got it specially …

It was this latter, unspoken, part of the protest that
had decided Bridget. Her mother was a wonderful cook, the bread-sauce would be out of this world. It would indeed be a shame to miss one of the delicious meals which were the sole bright spots of these visits home. And Diana
did
tend to exaggerate things, didn’t she? Surely the morning would be time enough to sort out whatever had been happening?

Bridget turned her head on the pillow to peer at the old-fashioned tin alarm-clock, with its phosphorescent hands, which had been a birthday present when she was eleven. Her mother always set it going for these visits, quite superfluously, because Bridget’s digital watch was always on her wrist, guaranteed to keep perfect time for just about as long as it would take the world’s population to double. But of course her mother could not be expected to realise this – or, rather, to take any notice of it – and thus deprive herself of the silly little ritual.

The insistently ticking little anachronism
could
be useful on occasions like this, when insomnia had taken its hold, and you wanted to watch time passing without having to raise your wrist to the level of your eyes.

Quarter past one. By now, presumably, the crisis at the flat would have been resolved, in one way or another. It couldn’t have been that much of a crisis actually, not when you thought about it rationally.

Fixing her eyes on the dim square of her bedroom window – through which she had once imagined herself climbing, like the girls in the school-stories, to take part in some midnight feast – Bridget went over, in as much detail as she could recall, exactly what it was that Diana had told her about this brain-storm of Norah’s – if that’s what it could be called. What it had all amounted to, as
far as Bridget could make out, was that Diana, from the hallway, had been eavesdropping on a phone call of Norah’s which had sounded “completely mad”.

“No, Bridget, I don’t know who she was talking to, but that’s not the point. For all I know, she wasn’t talking to anybody. The point is, she was hallucinating, talking about centipedes crawling out of the telephone into her ear. They were giving her messages for the King of the World – tapping out Morse code with their hundreds of legs – that sort of thing. She’s mad, Bridget, she’s absolutely mad. I’m terrified of being alone with her for the whole weekend.”

Alone? What about beastly old Alistair? Couldn’t he make himself useful just for once? Come around when he’s actually wanted, instead of endlessly coming when he isn’t?

“Oh, but Bridget, you don’t understand! He’s got all sorts of things to do this weekend, he told me. I can’t ask him to come round specially … not after last Sunday. You see …”

Bridget did see. She saw all too well that Alistair’s convenience must ever have absolute priority over
anyone
else’s. It all added up to just one more illustration of the speciousness of that damaging proverb: “To understand all is to forgive all.” On the contrary, the more clearly you understood your friend’s silly reasons for doing the silly thing she is doing, the more impatient you felt with her; not in the least more forgiving.

“Well,
I’ll
phone him, then,” Bridget had retorted. “The whole thing is entirely his fault in the first place, and I’ll damn well make him see that …”

“Oh, Bridget. Oh no! Don’t do that! He knows about it already, you see, he was here when it happened –
we’d both just come in. But he thinks it’s
funny
! ‘My dear girl, we’re
all
mad,’ he said. ‘The whole world’s mad, why should you expect Norah to be different?’ And off he went, laughing. I heard him laughing all the way down the stairs. No, Bridget,
please
don’t phone him. It’ll only make things worse.”

It would, too. Alistair specialised in making things worse. Within this rather unpromising area of
agreement
, the discussion ground to a halt, with Bridget promising to return as early as possible the next
morning
. She’d made a few consoling remarks, of course, before ringing off. Such as that Norah might have been using the phone to tell a bedtime story to her absent child … Oh, all right, she hasn’t
got
a child: her small nephew, then –
anything
.

“One thing you can be sure of, Diana, if you go around eavesdropping on other people’s telephone conversations you’re bound to get hold of the wrong end of the stick most of the time. Especially if you’ve only eavesdropped on one end of the conversation, the way you did. You say yourself that the woman’s behaving quite normally now. Well,
you
behave normally too, and stop panicking. We’ll sort it all out tomorrow – O.K.?”

Not entirely O.K.; but nevertheless on this unsatisfactory note the phone call petered out, and Bridget was after all able to enjoy the roast chicken, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, brussels sprouts and the famous
bread-sauce
with a clear conscience.

Well, fairly clear. Setting off next day into the mild, misty November morning, Bridget braced herself to face her parents’ reproachful sadness at her precipitate departure; and it was only at the very last moment,
when she turned at the garden gate to wave to them, that she realised, with something very like shock, how happy they both looked. You could almost imagine them closing the front door and executing a little dance in the hallway, from sheer relief.

Could it be – could it possibly be – that these duty visits were every bit as much of a burden to them as they were to her?

Lovely to see you, darling, Come again as soon as you can. All that sort of thing. Was it just a pack of lies? Or was it, more mysteriously, a fixed and unstoppable ritual that was becoming
more
important, not less, as it deviated further and further from anyone’s real feelings?

Suppose they all decided to be honest with each other? Suppose her parents were to say to her one day: “Look, Bridget, let’s face it: we all hate these visits of yours. You are bored to death by our humdrum ways, and we are terrified of this severe, high-powered person you’ve turned into. So let’s pack it in, shall we? Let’s decide not to see each other any more, ever.”

How would she feel, if this were to come about?

Shocked. Shocked to the very core, as by an
earthquake
or by the declaration of nuclear war.

What price honesty, then?

Norah had had no idea, of course, that her phone call had been overheard. Bridget, she knew, was away for the weekend visiting her parents, and she’d supposed that Diana and Alistair were still out, not having heard them come in. Indeed, if she hadn’t thought herself to be safely alone in the flat, she would never have dared to make the phone call at all. It was a risky thing to do in any case, she’d known that all along, and had hovered for some time by the telephone table, wondering which was the most frightening – to phone or not to phone? She dreaded what she might hear; but, on the other hand, she
must
find out, somehow, what was going on in her absence. How were they managing? What, so far, had happened?

Trying to control the trembling of her fingers, she finally dialled the dreaded number, and waited.

What would she hear? Was she to be dragged back into that macabre and distorted world which was beyond her comprehension, but in which she would be forced to play her allotted part, as she had been forced to play it for so long?

Forced? Yes, it felt like being forced, though Mervyn continued to insist, with all the weight of his psychiatric qualifications behind him, that she had in fact chosen
this awful distorted world herself, in preference to the real world; that she created it as an area within which she could deploy her neurotic symptoms with impunity. Her fear of the dark, for instance; her increasing agoraphobia, her phobia about inviting people to the house. It was this last which, Mervyn claimed, was the most damaging – to herself, to their young son, and, of course, to himself.

“What sort of effect do you think it’s having on my career?” he’d demanded “Never feeling free to invite anyone home – never giving dinner-parties for my colleagues – never having people in for drinks? People are beginning to wonder what’s the matter with us, and I must say I can’t blame them. I’m wondering myself.”

How long ago had this particular tirade taken place? Hard to remember, for it was one among so many
during
these last few years. What
was
easy to remember, though, all too easy, was that evening, nearly five years ago now, when it had all started.

It had been April, she remembered, early April; a cold, bright spring evening, and still light, for the clocks had only just been changed, and they were into Summer Time. For the first time in months they would be having their evening meal by daylight, and Norah, bustling around the kitchen, had noted this prospect with mild surprise.

Summer on its way: how nice; and Norah still
remembered
the feelings of contentment with which she had peeled the potatoes, set the table, preparing for a pleasant, ordinary family evening. A typical family evening, you’d have said, in this prosperous suburb with its tree-lined streets and its well-appointed houses, each with its own garage. Father coming home from work;
mother busy in the kitchen, and the thirteen-year-old son upstairs doing his homework. Maths homework, as it happened. Christopher was exceptionally good at maths – was expected, indeed, to be taking his Maths A-Levels the very next summer, as his father proudly boasted to other, less fortunate fathers of merely average sons.

“Only thirteen, and they’re putting him in for it!” he would exult. They’re expecting him to do brilliantly, his headmaster tells me. His results in the Mocks were phenomenal. Just about 100% on every paper …”

Norah was pleased too, of course, by their son’s exceptional talent: though in her heart she’d have been happier if he’d gone out and about more, had spent more time with friends. If only he’d ever made any real friends; but somehow this had not seemed to happen. He was not unpopular exactly, just uninterested in the company of other boys in his age-group. However, Mervyn had hastened to assure her that this was perfectly natural in a boy of such enormously high intelligence. “It’s impossible for him to find any
intellectual
equals among his peers,” Mervyn explained, “And so of course friendship is difficult for him. With an I.Q. of 150 or so he inevitably finds the companionship of ordinary boys boring and unsatisfying. Real friendship is only possible when there is a degree of intellectual parity between the individuals concerned. Without it, the more intelligent individual will inevitably find the other one boring.”

Was this true? It must be, since Mervyn was a consultant psychiatrist and had studied these things in depth; but all the same, it didn’t accord with Norah’s own experience. She herself had friends who were
unquestionably cleverer than her, and others who were less clever, but she found herself able to have fun with any of them, and enjoy rewarding relationships on all sorts of levels.

Once or twice in those early days she had confided to her neighbour, Louise, her concern about Christopher’s lack of social life: but Louise, like Mervyn (though from a somewhat different standpoint) was inclined to pooh-pooh the problem.

“You don’t know how lucky you are, Norah!” she’d laughed. “While the rest of us are worrying ourselves sick about our sons getting into gangs, up to goodness knows what kinds of mischief, there are you with a son who actually
likes
doing his homework, and who is actually
there
for meals at the proper time! Enjoy it while it lasts, my dear! Because, believe me, it won’t last for long. In a year’s time I predict, or at most two, you’ll be as frantic as the rest of us about where your boy is and what he’s getting up to with his scrofulous friends. You know – vandalism – drugs – trouble with the police. You name it, the rest of us lie awake worrying about it, and that’s what you’ll be doing too, Norah, believe you me! The time will come when you look back on this innocent phase of his as a golden age!”

And indeed such a time did come about for Norah; a time which fulfilled Louise’s light-hearted prophecy in a manner more grim, more terrible, than either could ever have imagined.

But all this was still far ahead. On that April evening, with the long summer daylight already in the offing, Norah was not experiencing any serious qualms about her son. He’ll grow out of it, she was telling
herself
, as one still can when a child is only thirteen.
He’ll grow out of it, I’m sure he will, just as Louise says …

Half past six.

She heard her husband come in, as usual at this hour, and, as was his wont, he immediately made his way upstairs to his son’s bedroom to gloat over the advanced nature of the work on which the boy was engaged.

Yes, to gloat. It always seemed to Norah that this was the only word appropriate to her husband’s air of triumphalism as he came down the stairs from these sorties, glorying in the complexity of whatever problem was in the process of being solved. Mervyn’s very soul seemed to be revelling in the child’s mathematical
precocity
, basking in it to a degree that Norah sometimes found almost unnerving. Sometimes even
embarrassing
, though there seemed no point in saying so.

On this particular evening she had listened, as usual, to Mervyn’s encomiums on their son’s progress, and had duly said, “Yes, I see, how nice. Tell him supper’s ready, will you?” She had gone ahead with dishing up whatever it was that she’d cooked. She couldn’t remember, after all this time, what the meal was, though all the other details of the evening were burned into her mind indelibly.

For Christopher wouldn’t come down. Twice he was called, first by one parent and then by the other, until finally Norah went upstairs herself to hurry him up.

It wasn’t homework he was doing, she could see that at a glance. He was sitting, head bent, at the sturdy oak table which had been placed under the window specially for his studies, and he was so absorbed in his task that he seemed not to notice his mother’s arrival, even when she came close up behind him. His back was
towards her, and his fair hair, touched to pale gold by the last of the sunshine, hung over a forehead furrowed with indescribable urgency as he wrote and wrote, as if under threat of some approaching deadline. So small and cramped was the handwriting that at first she could make nothing of it, except that it consisted not of words but of lists of figures.

“What
are
you doing, Chris?” she asked, and this time he did seem to have heard her. He responded by hastily covering the page with his left arm and peering sideways up at her. She had never seen that furtive sideways slewing of his eyes before, and it was frightening. Someone else, someone she didn’t know, was looking out of her child’s eyes.

“Chris,” she said again, and this time there was a note of fear in her voice. “What are you
doing
?” She added, as if to reassure herself that everything was normal, “It’s suppertime, you know. You must come on down. You can finish that afterwards.”

“What do you mean,
finish
it?” he demanded. “Can’t you see it’s the seventeen-times table? ‘two seventeens are thirty-four, three seventeens are fifty-one, four seventeens are sixty-eight …”’ Abruptly the sing-song recitation came to a halt, and once more he turned upon her that strange, sideways look. “Everyone will tell you that the seventeen times table can’t be finished, that it will go on to infinity. But it won’t. It
will
stop somewhere, and I have discovered a way to find out where. I am about to discover where numbers stop. I am the only mathematician in the world who can do this.”

Completely baffled, and with a sickening kind of fear rising in her throat, Norah tried to bring the child down to earth.

“Come along,” she urged him, and laying her hands on his thin, childish shoulders, she yanked him out of his chair and marched him to the door. “Everything’ll be getting cold, so come on down and stop talking nonsense.”

He came downstairs meekly enough, and he also stopped talking nonsense. In fact he didn’t talk at all throughout the meal or for some time afterwards.

At that time – nearly five years ago now – Norah had still been in the habit of consulting her husband about any problems concerning Christopher. Well, why not? Mervyn was not only a concerned and caring father, but a psychiatrist into the bargain. And so, that evening, after Christopher had gone to bed, she told Mervyn of her anxieties, describing to him what she had seen.

“The seventeen-times table – on and on right up into the hundreds of thousands – I mean, what can be the
point
of it? It worries me. It looks, – I mean, don’t you think? – it looks a a bit – well – obsessional? Oughtn’t we to take him to see someone?”

It seemed to Norah that her husband’s face had grown pale as he turned to face her from his desk, but his expression did not change. The light from his angle-poise lamp lit to full advantage his
handsome
, strong features; they shone out bland and
unruffled
as they always did when he was dealing with patients. This was his professional look, his
stock-in-trade
for dealing with other people’s problems. A necessary one – so one was given to understand – in order to avoid
involvement
. Never, according to established psychiatric wisdom, should the
therapist
allow himself to become emotionally involved with his patient’s problems, no matter how urgent
or traumatic these might be. He must dispense
succour
from outside like an international aid
organisation
, getting supplies through to a beleaguered
population
neutrally, without taking sides or making
judgements
.

Well, fair enough; professionalism was no doubt essential; but this was his
son
who was under discussion. Couldn’t he allow even a flicker of concern to cross his face?

Yes? No? For some seconds he remained silent, watching Norah closely. Then, still without any change of expression, he spoke:

“My dear Norah, you really must try to control these maternal anxieties. The boy is growing up, he’s not a baby any more. This mothering instinct of yours is beginning to get out of hand. It’s going to do him real harm if you aren’t careful. He’s thirteen years old – and an exceptionally brilliant
thirteen-year
-old at that. He doesn’t need your guidance any more – and particularly he doesn’t need it about mathematics.”

Norah cringed and hung her head at the jibe, but did not answer; and Mervyn continued:

“For God’s sake, Norah, what do you think
you
can teach him about mathematics? He’s already at university level – the headmaster told me so himself. He’s going to be the most brilliant mathematician since Isaac Newton. How can you imagine that
you
are in a position to criticise whatever mathematical theory he may be working on – something far, far beyond your intellectual scope – and mine too, of course, but at least I have the sense to recognise my limitations.”

At this Norah – braver in those early days than she could possibly dare to be now – stood her ground.

“It isn’t a mathematical theory he’s working on,” she insisted. “I told you – it’s the seventeen-times table, going on and on and on. There
can’t
be any sense in it – especially since he’s got that super-expensive calculator you bought him. If he wants to know what seventeen-times-something is, all he has to do is …

Expression had come over Mervyn’s features at last. She was aware of a mounting tension in him, overlaid with a veneer of withering scorn.

“A typical Norah-ism!” he sneered – and she could tell that he was struggling to convince himself as well as her. “You haven’t the faintest idea of what a calculator can and can’t do, and yet you have the nerve to make these judgements! Calculators don’t extend to infinity, you know; Christopher’s onto something important there, because actually there’s no such thing as infinity, it’s just a mathematical abstraction.”

She realised clearly enough that, deep down, he was as scared as she was by Christopher’s aberration; but now, suddenly, his face cleared. He had thought of something.

“Hasn’t it occurred to you,” he exclaimed, “That seventeen is a prime number? Research into the nature of prime numbers is something that has engaged the minds of top mathematicians for centuries. Obviously, that’s what Christopher is working on. It may be – I’m sure it
will
be – that our son is destined to be the genius who will finally solve the problem.”