CHAPTER 4
By the time he was eight years old, Eldred had mastered basic calculus, designed a computer program for cross-checking the claims of different scientific research establishments, and was reading everything he could find on the application of psychology in town planning.
He had also discovered that his father considered it normal for him to spend hours at the computer, as other kids did. Edgar somehow managed to turn a blind eye to the fact that while other kids used their desktop VDUs to zap aliens and rescue treasure from secret dungeons, Eldred was currently using his to plot graphics for an organic waste recycling system.
Mildred was not so happy for Eldred to sit in front of a computer screen for so long, but she considered it normal for him to go out on his bike with his friends or to play football with them in the park. She might have been less happy if she had heard the conversations that Eldred had with those friends. Eldred was information-gathering. He had realized that spending his first five years in hospital, surrounded by adults anxious about his health, had deprived him of valuable early experience of normal life. So he gently but persistently pumped his friends for anecdotes about their young lives and asked penetrating questions about their impressions of their families.
He was popular. Edgar and Mildred were relieved about this.
They assumed it happened naturally because Eldred was learning to become more normal, and making friends was a sign of normality. But Eldred was not normal. He was simply getting cleverer at appearing normal, as he was getting cleverer at everything else.
Eldred learned that you do not make friends by gaining high marks in every school subject and coming first in every test. So he made a few deliberate mistakes. He also discovered that children didn't mind another child excelling at some things, as long as he was useless at something else.
So although he made studious efforts to discover what seemed to make one child good at sport and another hopeless, he did not exert himself to overcome his own deficiencies in physical coordination and willingly let himself be classed among the ‘two-left-feet’ footballers.
Unlike the other two-left-footers, however, Eldred didn't refuse to play football out of school. He played, and let the other kids in the park gloat over his stumbling attempts and call him a wimp. It made them feel superior.
Eldred's teacher was not fooled.
‘You're capable of far better work than this,’ Mrs Garcia told Eldred severely, when he handed in a higher than average spelling test or an only moderately accurate rainfall chart. ‘You're just being lazy. I won't have any child in my class doing less than their best.’
But it was the same Mrs Garcia who looked at Eldred with unveiled dislike when he put his hand up to answer too many questions. ‘Give somebody else a chance, Eldred Jones,’ she said. ‘You're getting too big for your boots.’
It was Mrs Garcia who, in the school quiz, asked eight-year old Eldred's ten-year old classmates questions from the seven-year olds’ sheet and set Eldred questions from the eleven to twelve-year olds’ category.
It was Mrs Garcia who, when Eldred was still winning every round of the quiz, refused three of Eldred's correct answers and deliberately misunderstood a fourth one, so that he only tied in first place with one of the top-formers.
And it was Mrs Garcia who doctored the class averages so that, at the end of term, another child collected the form prize. The other children, who hadn't detected Mrs Garcia giving wrong answers in the quiz, noticed this.
‘Eldred always comes first,’ they told Mrs Garcia. ‘He's cleverer than Samantha. Why didn't Eldred get the prize?’
‘It may look as though Eldred always comes first,’ said Mrs Garcia firmly, ‘but we teachers give marks for every separate piece of work and then we calculate the averages. You haven't learnt about averages yet. Don't judge what you don't know about, children.’ But the children knew about truth and about adults lying, and they continued to mutter.
‘Perhaps,’ said Eldred, trying to be conciliatory, ‘there are other factors taken into consideration, apart from just marks.’ He had, without being conscious of doing it, memorized all his marks as the term went on and recalculated the average each time. And last week, when he had caught sight of the book of class marks lying open on Mrs Garcia's desk, he had, just as an exercise against boredom, memorized the averages of every child in the class, in alphabetical order. At this stage of his school life, Eldred had not yet learned that a teacher's judgment might not be impartial.
‘What factors exactly did you have in mind, Eldred?’ Mrs Garcia asked, narrowing her eyes.
Eldred considered. ‘Social factors, perhaps?’ he hazarded. ‘Samantha's always well-behaved. She helps you carry your books and she's the first to offer to stay behind after class to clean the board. And her mother is a divorced parent who is anxious about Samantha doing well at school, to show she isn't disturbed by the breakup of the marriage.’ (Samantha nodded at this.) ‘And I have come first every other term,’ Eldred continued meditatively, ‘which has meant that some of the others, who are bright for their age, have unfairly got into trouble with their parents for not winning the prize.’ (Several small heads nodded here.)
‘And you think,’ said Mrs Garcia with dangerous reasonableness, ‘that I might have compensated Samantha and placated the other parents by giving her higher marks, even though the standard of your work was of course far better than anyone else's, Eldred Jones? Are you saying that the teacher - the teacher - cheated?’
The children began shifting in their chairs, becoming nervous.
Eldred registered this. He had noticed that other children's instincts were often more reliable than his own in detecting what would annoy adults.
In fact some children, it seemed to Eldred, modelled their whole life around avoiding causing annoyance. In the presence of adults they acted a role all the time, playing at being children of the kind that adults liked: naive, dependent, unperceptive and easily pleased. Only when they were alone or with other children, unobserved, did they behave with their natural shrewd intelligence.
When the children all held their breath, as with Mrs Garcia now, Eldred respected their instincts and knew he had to tread carefully in answering Mrs Garcia.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I'm not saying it.’
The look she gave him made it clear that she knew he was thinking it. ‘Open your reading books,’ she said. ‘Page eleven.’
Eldred learned two new lessons that day. The first, which saddened him, was that a teacher could be unjust. The second, which encouraged him, was that his classmates did not only like him when he pretended to be less intelligent than he was.
Darren gave him some bubble gum. Leroy whispered, ‘She's an old bitch!’ And the prize-winner Samantha herself said audibly as Mrs Garcia left the class, ‘I know you got higher marks than me all term, Eldred, but my mum's going to be ever so pleased with me. You don't mind too much, do you?’
Eldred found that he didn't. That evening, instead of going home to work on his latest computer program, he stayed in the park until late, playing football with some of the children.
When he got home late, muddy and tired, Edgar spanked him for worrying his mother by missing tea and staying out after dark but Eldred didn't mind that either. He had scored a goal at football, for the first time ever. And the other children had cheered.
As he went to bed hungry, Eldred knew he had never felt so happy in his life.