The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (16 page)

And then I realized that there was nothing I could do which felt safe. And I made a picture of it in my head like this

And then I imagined crossing out all the possibilities which were impossible, which is like in a maths exam when you look at all the questions and you decide which ones you are going to do and which ones you are not going to do and you cross out all the ones which you are not going to do because then your decision is final and you can't change your mind. And it was like this

Which meant that I had to go to London to live with Mother. And I could do it by going on a train because I knew all about trains from the train set, how you looked at the timetable and went to the station and bought a ticket and looked at the departure board to see if your train was on time and then you went to the right platform and got on board. And I would go from Swindon station, where Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson stop for lunch when they are on their way to Ross from Paddington in
The Boscombe Valley Mystery.

And then I looked at the wall on the opposite side of the little passage down the side of Mrs. Shears's house where I was sitting and there was the circular lid of a very old metal pan leaning against the wall. And it was covered in rust. And it looked like the surface of a planet because the rust was shaped like countries and continents and islands.

And then I thought how I could never be an astronaut because being an astronaut meant being hundreds of thousands of miles away from home, and my home was in London now and that was about 100 miles away, which was more than 1,000 times nearer than my home would be if I was in space, and thinking about this made me hurt. Like when I fell over in the grass at the edge of a playground once and I cut my knee on a piece of broken bottle that someone had thrown over the wall and I sliced a flap of skin off and Mr. Davis had to clean the flesh under the flap with disinfectant to get the germs and the dirt out and it hurt so much I cried. But this hurt was inside my head. And it made me sad to think that I could never become an astronaut.

And then I thought that I had to be like Sherlock Holmes and I had to
detach my mind at will to a remarkable degree
so that I did not notice how much it was hurting inside my head.

And then I thought I would need money if I was going to go to London. And I would need food to eat because it was a long journey and I wouldn't know where to get food from. And then I thought I would need someone to look after Toby when I went to London because I couldn't take him with me.

And then I
Formulated a Plan.
And that made me feel better because there was something in my head that had an order and a pattern and I just had to follow the instructions one after the other.

I stood up and I made sure there was no one in the street. Then I went to Mrs. Alexander's house, which is next door to Mrs. Shears's house, and I knocked on the door.

Then Mrs. Alexander opened the door, and she said, “Christopher, what on earth has happened to you?”

And I said, “Can you look after Toby for me?”

And she said, “Who's Toby?”

And I said, “Toby's my pet rat.”

Then Mrs. Alexander said, “Oh . . . Oh yes. I remember now. You told me.”

Then I held Toby's cage up and said, “This is him.”

Mrs. Alexander took a step backward into her hallway.

And I said, “He eats special pellets and you can buy them from a pet shop. But he can also eat biscuits and carrots and bread and chicken bones. But you mustn't give him chocolate because it's got caffeine and theobromine in it, which are methylxanthines, and it's poisonous for rats in large quantities. And he needs new water in his bottle every day, too. And he won't mind being in someone else's house because he's an animal. And he likes to come out of his cage, but it doesn't matter if you don't take him out.”

Then Mrs. Alexander said, “Why do you need someone to look after Toby, Christopher?”

And I said, “I'm going to London.”

And she said, “How long are you going for?”

And I said, “Until I go to university.”

And she said, “Can't you take Toby with you?”

And I said, “London's a long way away and I don't want to take him on the train because I might lose him.”

And Mrs. Alexander said, “Right.” And then she said, “Are you and your father moving house?”

And I said, “No.”

And she said, “So, why are you going to London?”

And I said, “I'm going to live with Mother.”

And she said, “I thought you told me your mother was dead.”

And I said, “I thought she was dead, but she was still alive. And Father lied to me. And also he said he killed Wellington.”

And Mrs. Alexander said, “Oh, my goodness.”

And I said, “I'm going to live with my mother because Father killed Wellington and he lied and I'm frightened of being in the house with him.”

And Mrs. Alexander said, “Is your mother here?”

And I said, “No. Mother is in London.”

And she said, “So you're going to London on your own?”

And I said, “Yes.”

And she said, “Look, Christopher, why don't you come inside and sit down and we can talk about this and work out what is the best thing to do.”

And I said, “No. I can't come inside. Will you look after Toby for me?”

And she said, “I really don't think that would be a good idea, Christopher.”

And I didn't say anything.

And she said, “Where's your father at the moment, Christopher?”

And I said, “I don't know.”

And she said, “Well, perhaps we should try and give him a ring and see if we can get in touch with him. I'm sure he's worried about you. And I'm sure that there's been some dreadful misunderstanding.”

So I turned round and I ran across the road back to our house. And I didn't look before I crossed the road and a yellow Mini had to stop and the tires squealed on the road. And I ran down the side of the house and back through the garden gate and I bolted it behind me.

I tried to open the kitchen door but it was locked. So I picked up a brick that was lying on the ground and I smashed it through the window and the glass shattered everywhere. Then I put my arm through the broken glass and I opened the door from the inside.

I went into the house and I put Toby down on the kitchen table. Then I ran upstairs and I grabbed my schoolbag and I put some food for Toby in it and some of my maths books and some clean pants and a vest and a clean shirt. Then I came downstairs and I opened the fridge and I put a carton of orange juice into my bag, and a bottle of milk that hadn't been opened. And I took two more clementines and two tins of baked beans and a packet of custard creams from the cupboard and I put them in my bag as well, because I could open them with the can opener or my Swiss Army knife.

Then I looked on the surface next to the sink and I saw Father's mobile phone and his wallet and his address book and I felt
my skin . . . cold under my clothes
like Doctor Watson in
The Sign of Four
when he sees the tiny footsteps of Tonga, the Andaman Islander, on the roof of Bartholomew Sholto's house in Norwood, because I thought Father had come back and he was in the house, and the pain in my head got much worse. But then I rewound the pictures in my memory and I saw that his van wasn't parked outside the house, so he must have left his mobile phone and his wallet and his address book when he left the house. And I picked up his wallet and I took his bank card out because that was how I could get money because the card has a PIN which is the secret code which you put into the machine at the bank to get money out and Father hadn't written it down in a safe place, which is what you're meant to do, but he had told me because he said I'd never forget it. And it was 3558. And I put the card into my pocket.

Then I took Toby out of his cage and put him into the pocket of one of my coats because the cage was very heavy to carry all the way to London. And then I went out of the kitchen door into the garden again.

I went out through the garden gate and made sure there wasn't anyone watching, and then I started walking toward the school because that was a direction I knew, and when I got to school I could ask Siobhan where the train station was.

Normally I would have got more and more frightened if I was walking to school, because I had never done it before. But I was frightened in two different ways. And one way was being frightened of being far away from a place I was used to, and the other was being frightened of being near where Father lived, and they were
in inverse proportion to one another,
so that the total fear remained a constant as I got further away from home and further away from Father like this

Fear
_total
≈
Fear
_{new place}
×
Fear
_{near Father}
≈
constant

It takes 19 minutes for the bus to get to school from our house, but it took me 47 minutes to walk the same distance, so I was very tired when I got there and I hoped that I could stay at school for a little while and have some biscuits and some orange juice before I went to the train station. But I couldn't, because when I got to the school I saw that Father's van was parked outside in the car park. And I knew it was his van because it said
Ed Boone Heating Maintenance & Boiler Repair
on the side with a crossed spanners sign like this

And when I saw the van I was sick again. But I knew I was going to be sick this time so I didn't sick all over myself and I was just sick onto the wall and the pavement, and there wasn't very much sick because I hadn't eaten much. And when I had been sick I wanted to curl up on the ground and do groaning. But I knew that if I curled up on the ground and did groaning, then Father would come out of the school and he would see me and he would catch me and take me home. So I took lots of deep breaths like Siobhan says I have to do if someone hits me at school, and I counted 50 breaths and I concentrated very hard on the numbers and did their cubes as I said them. And that made the hurt less painful.

And then I cleaned the sick away from my mouth and I made a decision that I would have to find out how to get to the train station and I would do this by asking someone, and it would be a lady because when they talked to us about Stranger Danger at school they say that if a man comes up to you and talks to you and you feel frightened you should call out and find a lady to run to because ladies are safer.

So I got out my Swiss Army knife and I flicked out the saw blade and I held it tightly in the pocket that Toby wasn't in so that I could stab someone if they grabbed hold of me, and then I saw a lady on the other side of the street with a baby in a pushchair and a little boy with a toy elephant, so I decided to ask her. And this time I looked left and right and left again so that I wouldn't be run over by a car, and I crossed the road.

And I said to the lady, “Where can I buy a map?”

And she said, “Pardon?”

And I said, “Where can I buy a map?” And I could feel the hand that was holding the knife shaking even though I wasn't shaking it.

And she said, “Patrick, put that down, it's dirty. A map of where?”

And I said, “A map of here.”

And she said, “I don't know.” And then she said, “Where do you want to get to?”

And I said, “I'm going to the train station.”

And she laughed and she said, “You don't need a map to get to the train station.”

And I said, “I do, because I don't know where the train station is.”

And she said, “You can see it from here.”

And I said, “No I can't. And also I need to know where there is a cash machine.”

And she pointed and said, “There. That building. Says
Signal Point
on the top. There's a British Rail sign on the other end. The station's at the bottom of that. Patrick, if I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times. Don't pick things off the pavement and stick them in your mouth.”

And I looked and I could see a building with writing at the top, but it was a long way away so it was hard to read, and I said, “Do you mean the stripy building with the horizontal windows?”

And she said, “That's the one.”

And I said, “How do I get to that building?”

And she said, “Gordon Bennett.” And then she said, “Follow that bus,” and she pointed to a bus that was going past.

So I started to run. But buses go really fast and I had to make sure that Toby didn't fall out of my pocket. But I managed to keep running after the bus for a long way and I crossed 6 side roads before it turned down another street and I couldn't see it anymore.

And then I stopped running because I was breathing really hard and my legs hurt. And I was in a street with lots of shops. And I remembered being in this street when I went shopping with Mother. And there were lots of people in the street doing their shopping, but I didn't want them to touch me, so I walked at the edge of the road. And I didn't like all the people being near me and all the noise because it was too much information in my head and it made it hard to think, like there was shouting in my head. So I put my hands over my ears and I groaned very quietly.

And then I noticed that I could still see the          
         sign that the lady had pointed at, so I kept on walking toward it.

And then I couldn't see the          
         sign anymore. And I had forgotten to remember where it was, and this was frightening because I was lost and because I do not forget things. And normally I would make a map in my head and I would follow the map and I would be a little cross on the map that showed where I was, but there was too much interference in my head and this had made me confused. So I stood under the green and white canvas roof outside a greengrocer's shop where there were carrots and onions and parsnips and broccoli in boxes that had a plastic furry green carpet in them, and I made a plan.

I knew that the train station was somewhere near. And if something is nearby you can find it by moving in a spiral, walking clockwise and taking every right turn until you come back to a road you've already walked on, then taking the next left, then taking every right turn and so on, like this (but this is a hypothetical diagram, too, and not a map of Swindon)

And that was how I found the train station, and I concentrated really hard on following the rules and making a map of the center of the town in my head as I walked, and that way it was easier to ignore all the people and all the noise around me.

And then I went into the train station.

181.
I see everything.

That is why I don't like new places. If I am in a place I know, like home, or school, or the bus, or the shop, or the street, I have seen almost everything in it beforehand and all I have to do is to look at the things that have changed or moved. For example, one week the
Shakespeare's Globe
poster had fallen down in the classroom at school and you could tell because it had been put back slightly to the right and there were three little circles of Blu-Tack stain on the wall down the left-hand side of the poster. And the next day someone had graffitied
CROW APTOK
to lamppost 437 in our street, which is the one outside number 35.

But most people are lazy. They never look at everything. They do what is called
glancing,
which is the same word for bumping off something and carrying on in almost the same direction, e.g., when a snooker ball glances off another snooker ball. And the information in their head is really simple. For example, if they are in the countryside, it might be

1.
I am standing in a field that is full of grass.

2.
There are some cows in the fields.

3.
It is sunny with a few clouds.

4.
There are some flowers in the grass.

5.
There is a village in the distance.

6.
There is a fence at the edge of the field and it has a gate in it.

And then they would stop noticing anything because they would be thinking something else like, “Oh, it is very beautiful here,” or “I'm worried that I might have left the gas cooker on,” or “I wonder if Julie has given birth yet.”
¹²

But if I am standing in a field in the countryside I notice everything. For example, I remember standing in a field on Wednesday, 15 June 1994, because Father and Mother and I were driving to Dover to get a ferry to France and we did what Father called
Taking the Scenic Route,
which means going by little roads and stopping for lunch in a pub garden, and I had to stop to go for a wee, and I went into a field with cows in it and after I'd had a wee I stopped and looked at the field and I noticed these things

1.
There are 19 cows in the field, 15 of which are black and white and 4 of which are brown and white.

2.
There is a village in the distance which has 31 visible houses and a church with a square tower and not a spire.

3.
There are ridges in the field, which means that in medieval times it was what is called a
ridge and furrow
field and people who lived in the village would have a ridge each to do farming on.

4.
There is an old plastic bag from Asda in the hedge, and a squashed Coca-Cola can with a snail on it, and a long piece of orange string.

5.
The northeast corner of the field is highest and the southwest corner is lowest (I had a compass because we were going on holiday and I wanted to know where Swindon was when we were in France) and the field is folded downward slightly along the line between these two corners so that the northwest and southeast corners are slightly lower than they would be if the field was an inclined plane.

6.
I can see three different types of grass and two colors of flowers in the grass.

7.
The cows are mostly facing uphill.

And there were 31 more things in this list of things I noticed but Siobhan said I didn't need to write them all down. And it means that it is very tiring if I am in a new place because I see all these things, and if someone asked me afterward what the cows looked like, I could ask which one, and I could do a drawing of them at home and say that a particular cow had patterns on it like this