The Colors of Madeleine 01: Corner of White (5 page)

However, do not be alarmed! Major attacks are rare, and you simply need to be equipped with the appropriate protective clothing. You should probably also get to know the system of warning bells.

By no means should you let the remote possibility of a Color attack deter you from a visit to Cello.

Elliot closed the book. He felt a gathering inside him. He was going to throw the book across the room. It would hit the wall, its pages would fan out, it would crumple to the floor with a thud. He felt the throw inside him, his shoulders tensed, ready.

Then he curled it back down.

He put the book back on the mantelpiece. He straightened its edges.

He sat down next to Corrie-Lynn, gathered her onto his lap, and held her tight.

1.

I
t was Monday again.

In Federico’s office, Belle stood to tell them who Charles Babbage was.

She began by unfolding the name from the hat and holding it out for them to see.

“Charles Babbage,” she said. “His name rhymes with
cabbage
.”

Federico nodded firmly. “It does.”

“And it sounds a lot like
baggage
,” she offered next.

There was a long pause. Belle leaned the backs of her thighs against a chair and turned to gaze through the window. The silence continued.

“Got any more than that?” wondered Jack.

“I’m not really fond of cabbage,” said Madeleine.

Belle turned abruptly, her eyes astonished. “Aren’t you?” she said. “But what’s not to like?” Then she burst out laughing.

Jack and Madeleine laughed too.

There was a sound like someone trying to start a pull-string lawn mower. It cut into their laughter.

It was Federico sighing. Sometimes he sighed in a deliberately noisy, guttural way, repeating the sigh, escalating the sigh, until they noticed.

“All right,” said Belle easily. “Well, as far as I can see, Charles Babbage was the guy that invented the computer. Only this was in the days before computers, so he didn’t really invent it after all.”

She sat down.

Federico’s face furrowed. “I see what you are saying,” he said — then in a mildly thunderous voice: “Say more!”

“Ah.” Belle stood up again. “Charles Babbage was all right,” she said. “He invented a couple of machines cause he was sick of adding things up in his head. But he couldn’t build them, see? What with no money and no technology in those days. So, like I said, he didn’t actually invent the computer. But the half-arse machines he
did
build, those kind of, like,
were
early computers.”

She stretched her arms into the air, as if pointing out the mouldings on the ceiling. Her phone made the squeaking noise that meant she had a text message (Jack said it sounded like a dying rat), and she raised her eyebrows thoughtfully and took the phone from her pocket.

Then she remembered where she was and put it back.

“All right,” she continued irritably. “What I actually liked in the story of Charles Babbage was — see, there was this girl who was his friend, and she was wicked. So, I want to do her instead. Can I?”

“You want to do a different person?” Federico demanded. “A
wicked
person?”

Belle nodded.

“This wicked person, she was at Cambridge?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

Federico sighed flamboyantly. A gasp of a sigh this time, with a suspenseful break before exhaling.

Belle raised her eyebrows at the others.

“He means cause this is supposed to be about people who were here at Cambridge,” Jack explained.

“That’s daft, then,” said Belle, “cause this was, like, in the olden days, when they didn’t let women in. They only let them in, like, yesterday. So that makes no sense, Federico. This is history, right? Well, my woman is from history. So. Therefore, and that.”

Federico lifted his eyes and his hands. Voices sounded from the corridor, and he dropped his hands and scratched his nose rapidly, until the voices passed.

“All right,” he said. “All right, switch your project. I am intrigued by your woman out of history who is wicked.”

“Wicked doesn’t mean
wicked
—” Jack began, but Belle was talking.

“Okay, yeah, so her name was Ada Lovelace and she got to be friends with Charles Babbage. She
really
liked his computer machines. So she invented programming.”

“Seriously?” said Jack.

Belle nodded, then shrugged. “I think so.”

Federico was gazing at Belle. “Tell me now,” he said, “this, what you have said, this is
all
that you know about Charles Babbage?”

“That’s all there is
to
know,” said Belle, sounding hostile. “And Ada’s the wicked one, cause this was in the old days when women, kind of, like, didn’t know stuff. But she knew programming. So …” She was trying to look at her phone surreptitiously.

Here, Federico seemed ready to engage in another theatrical exhalation, but a toilet flushed somewhere down the corridor and he blew the sigh away and moved to a new topic.

2.

W
ednesday night, they were sharing chips from the chip wagon in Market Square. Madeleine had just had a bleeding nose — she’d been getting them a lot since she came to Cambridge, something to do with allergies — and, as usual, Jack and Belle had argued about the solution. Belle wanted Madeleine to tip her head back, but Jack said she had to tip it forward. They batted her head back and forth between them until the bleeding stopped.

Now they were sitting on steps. It was late, and the vinegar was sharp, but the streetlights and moonlight were soft.

Jack said to Madeleine: “Does he ever call you? Your dad, I mean. Or write or, like, email or send you stuff?”

Madeleine shrugged.

“It’s one thing,” persisted Jack, “for your mother to split up with him. But that doesn’t mean he has to split with you. You should Skype. And he could be your Facebook friend. Open the lines of communication and that. He could LOL at your status updates.”

“If they were funny,” Belle put in.

Quiet circled the three of them.

Belle’s fingers scrabbled for the crunchier chips. “It’s lucky you’ve got Jack and me for friends now,” she said to Madeleine. “Friends with regular names is what I mean. No disrespect to Tinsels and Warlock and whatever, but they’re not even names.”

“They’re good names,” said Jack with an edge. Belle raised her eyebrows.

“Besides which,” Jack continued, his words lining up along the edge, “besides which, it’s not that Madeleine’s lucky to have
us
, it’s the other way around. Belle and Jack. We’re just single syllables. Like a couple of cow turds. Her name’s a whole bubbling brook sort of a name. Three syllables. That’s a lot.”

Belle’s eyes began a rapid blinking, then stopped.

“My name,” she said, “is actually Annabelle.”

Jack swivelled and looked at Belle. His mood transformed, the edges sliding right off him.

“It
is
,” he said, proud of her. “You’ve got all those syllables too! You’re not a cow turd at all.”

“And yours,” she continued, “is Giacomo.”

That made the three of them laugh loudly.

3.

O
n Friday morning, Madeleine’s mother took them for English and Art.

Sometimes they met at the café in Waterstones, which is a book-shop, since every half hour spent in the mere physical presence of books (claimed Holly Tully — she had heard this on the radio, she said) enabled your subconscious to absorb up to 1.5 percent of the contents of those books. Belle and Jack were keen on this idea, but Madeleine laughed about it all the time.

Today, however, they were at the flat. Madeleine and her mother were side by side on the couch, and Jack and Belle were on kitchen chairs facing them.

Holly Tully leaned forward, joining her hands finger by finger. Now her hands were steepled and she gazed over the spires at her three students in turn.

“You’re trying to look like a teacher,” said Madeleine.

“Before we begin,” said Holly, ignoring her daughter, “Jack, can you get that book on the sewing table? That big blue one there — no, that’s a pattern book and not in any way big or blue — yes, that’s the one. No, don’t give it to me, just hold it a moment.”

Jack read the title aloud: “
One Thousand Random Facts
.”

Belle leaned over. “
One Thousand Random Facts
,” she repeated, placing the emphasis on the word
facts
whereas Jack had emphasised
random
. Jack turned to her with an insulted expression, at which she shrugged.

“That’s why you’re trying to look like a teacher,” Madeleine said. “Cause you’re planning not to be one today.”

Holly continued to ignore her. “If you could just open the book at any page, Jack, and ask a question.”

“All right.” He flicked through the pages, whistling to himself, then said, “Here’s a good one. What is philematology?”

Now Holly turned to her daughter. “The only way this home-
schooling thing is going to work,” she said sternly, “is if you forget that I’m your mother and respect me as a teacher.”

“You’re funny,” said Madeleine. “It’s like you keep surprising me that way.”

Belle took the book from Jack’s hands and flipped it to a different page.

“Who is Samuel Langhorne Clemens?” she said. “I mean, who’s he better known as? Not, like, who
is
he? Cause you could just say Samuel Langhorne Clemens.”

“You see.” Holly turned again to Madeleine. “It’s true that this brief interlude of question-asking — it’s true that it might
incidentally
help me prepare for my quiz show, but its
primary
purpose is to enliven your young minds.”

Jack took the book back.

“Should I run out and get coffees?” he said as he flicked pages. “On account of, the moon is in Aries, which means I have a greater need for cappuccino than usual. All right, this is a good one. Where does gold come from, Holly? Originally, I mean.”

“And then we’ll move straight on to poetry or art,” said Holly, “with freshly enlivened minds.”

“A win-win,” Jack agreed, and then, “Hang about,” because Belle had taken the book from him again. She was concentrating, shaking her head, turning a page, shaking her head again.

“Just ask anything,” Jack instructed her.

“She’s not answered the first ones yet,” Belle argued, and Jack said, “You’re taking too long, I could be back with the coffees by now,” reaching for the book, and somehow it slipped from their hands and hit the floor with a slap.

At that point, Holly Tully changed.

The light on her face shifted.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said, speaking through the new shade of light. “How about you three go and do some sketches of King’s College Chapel. For Art, I mean. As an Art lesson.”

The others gathered their things, chatting, but Madeleine was looking sideways. Her mother was weaving her hands together, but this time the weave wouldn’t work. The hands would not intertwine.

Something startled in Holly Tully’s eyes, and she pressed her fingers hard against her forehead.

4.

L
ater that day, Madeleine was riding home alone.

There was a sketch, half a sketch anyway, in her backpack: a faint outline of the King’s College Chapel with a detailed foreground study of the wrapping from a Twix bar.

Her mother would like that.

She was riding the dusk-grey spring-cold streets of Cambridge.

She turned in to a quiet street. One or two parked cars and a roller door spray-painted with words — those strange crushed words that graffiti artists use.

Her foot hit the pavement and she used it to scoot herself along a moment. Something odd caught at her and she stopped.

A thin white line, the very edge of a folded piece of paper, was stuck in a crack in a parking meter.

She stood astride her bike.

The meter itself was out of service.

It was tilted too, like a tree almost uprooted, the concrete at its base slightly split.

Madeleine looked away again and, as she did, everything she knew began to settle on her shoulders.

She knew this.

That philematology is the science of kissing.

That Samuel Langhorne Clemens is better known as Mark Twain.

That, originally, gold comes from the stars.

And that her mother knew none of these facts.

Madeleine gripped the handles of her bike: A big, bold statement was unfurling itself across her mind, and she didn’t want to see it. She turned away from it, reaching for more facts. She told herself:
I also know this.

That Charles Babbage was born in 1791; that he was bad-tempered and brilliant; that he wrote letters to the editor complaining of the noises of the night: organ-grinders, hoop-rollers, and street musicians just outside his window. That he closed his eyes and dreamed machines that could solve mathematical puzzles without making mistakes. That he filled every room of his house with
almost
-computers. Each time he got halfway through a machine, he’d think of a better way, then move to the next room and start again.

She knew that Charles Babbage clambered through life, leaping from foothold to handhold. But he couldn’t help noticing that everybody else was climbing wrong. They were missing the obvious routes, they were slipping and grazing their knees. He had to keep pausing to tug at his ear and call:
Can you not see that you are doing that wrong? Ah, let me try to explain.

He wrote a letter to the poet Tennyson once, to complain about a line in a poem.