The Discovery Of Slowness Read Online Free PDF

blade. The knife had been swiped from the kitchen. The table suffered noticeably. And now and then he hit one of his fingers. Well, it was only his left hand.
    He also wrote letters to Mother and to Matthew. Nobody liked watching him when he wrote, and he loved writing, especially in fine script. Dipping his goose-quill into the ink, wiping it off, then inscribing his letters, folding the sheet to seal it – nobody could bear to watch all that.
    Turning into somebody else at school, that was hard. Here it was just as it had been in Spilsby: they knew his weakness; nobody believed in his exercises. They were all convinced that he would always stay the same.
    Â Â Â Â 
    Learning how to get on with the other pupils. Aboard ship he’d be involved with many people, and if too many of them didn’t like him it might be troublesome.
    The other boys were done quickly with everything, and they noticed at once when one of them lagged behind. Names were said only once. If he asked, they spelled them. He followed their fast spelling even less well than their slow enunciation. Put up with the others’ impatience. Charles Tennyson, Robert Cracroft,Atkinson and Hopkinson – they all sharpened their claws on John whenever possible. It seemed to him as though they always looked at him through only one eye, and with the other communicated among themselves. If he said something they tilted their heads, and that meant, ‘You’re boring; get it done quickly.’ The most difficult was Tom Barker, now as before. If John gave him what he asked for, he acted as though he had asked for something entirely different. If he spoke to him, he was interrupted at once; if he looked at him, he found a mere grimace. In the dormitory, John and Tom had to sleep next to each other because they were both from Spilsby. They shared a chest between their beds. Each of them knew what the other owned. Perhaps this was good preparation for sea voyages: space was tight there, too, and some people couldn’t abide each other.
    Nothing could make John miserable; his hope was the size of a giant. Obstacles he couldn’t overcome he simply ignored. Most of the time, however, he knew how to manage. He had memorised a hundred expressions. They lay in readiness and proved most useful, for John’s fluency with them encouraged many listeners to wait a little until he got to the point of his answer. ‘If you wish.’ ‘Much obliged.’ Or ‘That stands to reason.’ ‘Many thanks for your efforts.’ One could say all that quickly. He also knew the names of admirals well. Everybody talked a lot about victories, and so he wanted to know and to be ready to supply the admirals’ names at once.
    He also wanted to learn how to make conversation. He loved to listen, anyway, and was pleased when bits and pieces he caught fitted together to make sense. He was careful about tricks. Simply saying yes and acting as if he had understood didn’t work. Too often something was expected if he said yes. But if he said no, they pounced on him even more. Why no? Reasons! No without a reason was even more quickly exposed than an unfounded yes.
    I don’t want to make anyone believe anything, he thought. If only others don’t try it on me. They must ask me and hold on to wait for my answer. I must get that worked out, that’s all.
    Â Â Â Â 
    The tree. The way to it led through Evangelist Alley and thenthrough a street called Breakneck Lane. Climbing didn’t make him faster; he knew that by now. But that didn’t make the tree useless. As he moved from branch to branch he found that coherent thought was better there than on firm ground. When he had to breathe heavily he perceived the order of things.
    From this lookout-point he could survey the town of Louth: red brick, white window-sills, and ten times more chimney pots than in Spilsby. All the houses looked like the school, only shrunken. They