“Why is it only approximate, sir?” Hamish asked. “Why can’t we get it right?”
“Because we can’t.” Minto seemed irritated. “That’s the nature of primes.”
On his own Hamish tried to improve the accuracy of the calculation, but with no success.
“I can’t get any more accurate. Just can’t,” he said to me one day as we watched a rugby match.
“Never mind.”
“It bothers me.… There must be something significant about primes — the way they exist in the way they do. It must be telling us something.”
“Do you think so?”
“Numbers are infinite, so there must be an infinite number of primes.”
I had no idea what he was talking about.
“But there’s no pattern. They don’t crop up in any order. That calculation we did — it’s never exact. Why? Why can’t we pin them down? What are they trying to tell us?”
“Are you feeling all right?”
“Why is there no pattern? There should be.”
“Did prime numbers exist before we thought about them?” I was surprised at my own question, unsure of its implications. But Hamish seemed to know.
“Exactly, Todd, exactly. Think of the first man who started counting, started adding up.… Look where it’s got to now.”
It made no sense to me. Now I understand more of what Hamish saw as a fourteen-year-old. For him the world of abstract mathematical explanation was like an entrancing, enchanted forest to an avid explorer. He was already far down a jungle path, beckoning me to follow.
I soon settled into the routine at Minto Academy, but because of my friendship with Hamish it was a little difficult to establish any closer aquaintance with the other boys. It did not perturb me. There was little bullying. The dormitories were segregated by age, with one senior boy appointed dormitory leader and responsible for discipline. These were, in fact, the only ranks in the school, off the sports field. There were eighteen in our dormitory. We slept on iron beds separated by thin wooden wardrobes. Hamish’s bed was four away from mine (yes, I had eaten his wax bogey). Apart from vigorous masturbation there was little vice. A few boys chose to creep into each other’s beds, but no one objected or thought it unduly strange. Food was plentiful but unimaginative. Porridge, milk and bread in the morning. A joint of meat — mutton, nine times out of ten — at lunch, and the same joint cold in the evening with vegetables, and cocoa to drink.
At weekends, the Saturday was spent watching the rugby team win at home or away. And on Sunday the entire school was taken on an immensely long walk by a drab Mr. Fry or a sad Mr. Handasyde. Time passed, and not so slowly. I found that my homesickness had left me after a week. My only regret was that I received few letters. Oonagh could not write, my father was too busy and Thompson could not be bothered. I thought about taking up my aunt Faye’s offer but could not summon up the courage. I received the occasional postcard from my father. I still possess one. I reproduce it in full.
3 Kelpie’s Court
Edinburgh
October 21, 1913
Dear John James,
Thank you for your letter. Yes, your friend Malahide may consult me if you wish, but it sounds as if a dermatologist might be more efficacious. I regret to say that the rice diet had no significant effect on my patients. Thank you for asking.
Thompson is well; Oonagh sends her cordial greetings.
Your affect, father
I. M. Todd
I wrote once to Donald Verulam, on the pretext of some photographic business, and he replied promptly and fully asking me to write again. I meant to, but never got round to it. The school was not what I had feared; and in it, to my vague surprise, I felt I had discovered a kind of freedom. As my friendship with Hamish cemented I found I had all the companionship and stimulation I required. I was not a gregarious child and tolerance by my fellows was all that I asked.
At the end of my first term something peculiar occurred. One night, long after lights-out, Hamish woke me. Everyone was asleep, the house absolutely still.
“Come with me,” he whispered.
I got out of bed and followed him out of the dormitory.
“What is it?”
“Ssh.”
He led me down the corridor to the locker room. I went through the door after him. Suddenly he turned and clamped a damp rag over my mouth. My head filled with a rank chemical smell. Before I blacked out the room went bright yellow, then scarlet, then purple. I thought I saw my father’s face.
I came round, so Hamish told me later, after half an hour. I opened my eyes. I was nauseous and cold. He was squatting beside me. My head boomed with a headache. Feebly, I punched him in the ribs.
“Steady!” he said.
“Shagging Job!” It was the first time I had used his nickname. “Shagging maniac!” I sat on the floor, head hanging. My brain seemed to steep in some alchemical brew. I suddenly felt uneasy.
“What did you do to me?”
“Chloroform. I chloroformed you.”
“Great. You didn’t do anything while—”
“No, no. I just watched. Checked your pulse from time to time.”
“For heaven’s sake, Malahide, you can’t just chloroform someone when you feel like it!”
“I had to test it. I knew you’d never volunteer. It has to be a secret.”
“Test it? What for?”
“Something we’re going to do next year. I’ll tell you after the holidays.”
There was a science lab at the school where elementary chemistry and physics were taught. Hamish had lately been spending a lot of time there. He told me he had made up the chloroform himself. An unsuspecting Minto had ordered the chemicals himself. The ambush of me was to test the strength of the potion.
I sulked for a couple of days, but Hamish’s insouciance confirmed that my role as guinea pig had been solely in the interests of science. Besides, I was by now intensely curious to know what plan he had in mind. But he would not tell me, said merely that all would be revealed next term.
We had a quiet Christmas that year. Thompson was away, for some reason, and my father seemed even more preoccupied with his patients. I went with Oonagh to a tedious pantomime at the King’s Theatre and, with more enthusiasm, to a noisy variety show at the Pavilion in Leith. The dark winter nights and the low gray days seemed to hold Edinburgh in a hunched frozen posture, as though pinioned by the cloud blanket. A scowthering east wind lashed the streets at all hours of the day and night, numbing your face in seconds. Now that I had been away from it for a few months I discovered a strange affection for my home and was content to stay indoors. Oonagh disguised her pleasure at seeing me again and said she was sure I had grown. My Christmas present (was my father guilty?) was developing equipment and an enlarger and I converted one of the spare bedrooms into a temporary darkroom. From time to time I ventured out in search of pictures.
Hamish wrote to me from Perth, where his family lived. We had made plans about a visit, but in the end nothing materialized.
The New Year—1913—arrived and our first visitor was Donald Verulam. We had quite a jolly party that night when various of my father’s colleagues and their wives appeared. My father drank more than I had ever seen him do before. At the bells he sought me out. I was the only member of his family present (Thompson was still away — in Birmingham, I think — on church business).
“Happy New Year, Father.”
He shook my hand and would not let it go. I remember vividly the texture of his grasp: his palm cool, dry, oddly farinaceous. He looked at me, his eyes a little glazed, maudlin. Did he see his wife in my face?
“How are you, boy?”
“Fine.”
“How’s school? It’s not so bad, is it?”