Free Clever Girl by Tessa Hadley Page B

the table, pasty-faced with worry. The teacher’s scorn made no distinction between those who tried and failed and those who didn’t try. I had no pride where my school work was concerned – it occurred to me that Gerry might be able to help me. He worked with numbers all day in the office; I took it for granted he would understand the problem.
    — So long as it isn’t French, he said cheerfully enough, and pulled up a chair beside me, striped shirtsleeves rolled businesslike up to the elbow. He always radiated a clean heat, from those strenuous sessions in the bathroom which left the walls dripping and the mirrors cloudy. I explained that the hare was sleeping at a location twelve hundred metres from the finish line; the tortoise passed him at a steady speed of five centimetres per second. Six and a half hours later, the hare woke up. All of these elements by now had attained a hallucinatory meaninglessness in my head.
    Gerry read the problem over to himself, biting my pen, frowning down at the worn-soft, scrambled page of my homework book. What minimum acceleration (assumed constant) must the hare have in order to cross the finish line first? He worked out easily in his head how long it would take for the tortoise to get there; then went over and over the other elements, sketching a little diagram for himself, the hare’s trajectory cutting across the tortoise’s just before the finish line. I saw that he wanted it to be like one of the Dick and Harry problems, giving way to common sense or to a trick of thought.
    — How do we calculate acceleration? he asked. — Haven’t they taught you how? Have you done other problems like this one?
    I found in the back of my book a formula that the teacher had given us, expressing D in terms of O, V, T and A, but I didn’t even know what those letters stood for. Gerry thought that perhaps D was distance, but we already knew the distance. His hand began to leave sweat marks on the page as mine had. He wondered just when the hare needed to pass the tortoise in order to get to the finish line ahead of it; how tiny might the difference between them be? His efforts snagged on this doubt, building up behind it. — You have to concentrate better in class, he said. — She must have shown you how to do this. Can’t you remember?
    I shrugged, recoiling. I should have known that I would be to blame.
    — Physics is boring.
    He tried again, stating the elements of the problem over in a reasonable, steadying voice. All the time, he must have been consumed with his real worries about my mother’s condition and what lay ahead for them; about his responsibility for me.
    — Write me a note, I said. — Tell the teacher I was ill.
    — Don’t be silly. All you need to do is to ask her to explain it to you.
    — You don’t understand what she’s like! I wailed.
    And then somehow we upset my coffee cup. It really wasn’t clear to me which one of us did it: I may have thrown out my hand rhetorically; he may have reached for a pencil without looking. Hot, milky, sugary coffee flooded everywhere, soaking instantly through the layers of newspaper, slewing into our laps, pooling on the precious polished surface of the table. We both threw ourselves backwards. I snatched up my homework book – though not before a few splashes dashed across the page, elegant illustrations of the physics of liquid form. (The teacher, the following week, would ring these splashes in red biro, writing ‘Disgusting & slovenly presentation’ – but by then I didn’t care.) Gerry grabbed at a heap of bills, and Mum’s sewing – she was making things for the new baby. Too late; coffee stains had seeped already into the cut-out pieces of the little gingham romper suit.
    — Stella! You idiot! he yelled, shoving me roughly out of the way of the coffee dripping on to the carpet, and on to my fawn socks.
    I stumbled backwards, genuinely confused. — Was it my fault?
    Gerry ran to fetch tea towels from the kitchen