subjects at school I ever liked were maths and science. I liked them because they came easy to me - even though I hated our teacher and the way he, in turn, hated the students and his mediocre job. One day we were given a long and protracted formula for calculating the surface area of complex shapes - I think the idea was to put us off the subject forever. I spent the class reinterpreting the given formula, simplifying it to something streamlined and beautiful - even if it only worked for particular types of shapes. That little misdemeanour cost me four enthusiastic lashes across the palm with Carter’s yard of hardened leather. And so I learned an important lesson: what is deemed correct by authority should not be tampered with.
But it never dulled my interest in calculation. When we lived at the Daco I worked out there were 5210 bricks in the end wall, allowing for the double brick, the windows and the taper to the ceiling, and that the total weight was something near 24 tons - each brick approximately 7 pounds multiplied by the total and including the mortar which has a calculable length and thickness but is slightly less dense than the bricks themselves.
Why do I do it, you might ask? Well, a wall is just a wall, a starry sky is just a starry sky - until you start to investigate its essence, and then it becomes nothing short of a miracle. I found my miracles by calculation, Milo found his by pondering the big questions. But Milo didn’t want answers, he just wanted to dwell on the mysteries and meaning of life rather than the mundane, rather than the hack of ambition which he said had ambushed all those people rushing about outside.
We never talked about the people who might have worked in the Daco - beyond speculating on what the letters in that name stood for: Daft Accountants Company; Dead Animal Collection Office. And sometimes we sat for hours in the silence of that big old Daco building just thinking about things and watching fine dust float in the light. There was no forgotten past lingering in that massive old factory. Some people think that the spirit of all that’s happened is still somehow embedded in the brickwork or emanating off the old dusty desks pushed against the wall. But we lived there for a year and I can tell you it’s no more than a big hollow chamber. You occupy that chamber like a crab inside a seashell until one day it starts to feel like a part of you.
Just had a visit from the doctor. I never called for him and I don’t have any more ailments than usual but there he was just the same. I think he was visiting the old geriatric next door and just looked in on me in passing. Of course right behind him I had a very large nurse looking on - as if it’s got the slightest to do with her!
‘Could you stand up for me?’ the doc says.
‘No,’ I reply, ‘I don’t think I’m quite up to that yet.’
‘Come on, up you get,’ he says as if I hadn’t spoken.
‘I’d rather not,’ I say.
‘Come on Mr Smythe, just put some weight on and let’s see what happens.’
Meanwhile that great big nurse stands there, arms folded, smart and smarmy. She’s loving it. She’s tried this before, tried to get me to walk, but what they fail to recognise is that I’m on the inside, I know what’s going on in my own body and I know when I’m ready and when I’m not. The upshot is I finally stood silently in my slippers just to please them and I also chose to grin and bear the discomfort of it all. I figured that as soon as I satisfied them the sooner they’d leave me alone. I was right.
One night Kitty went upstairs early. She’d been sniffing and sneezing all day and just wanted to curl up in a ball until it all passed. That left me and Milo and as always we went to the Office. Even before we sat down on the floorboards Milo said, ‘I’m working on a big theory’.
‘How big?’ I said, casually.
‘Very big.’
‘About the universe?’
‘Bigger than that. Like why it’s all there in the first place.’
‘The Big Bang.’
‘ The Big Bang?’ Milo rocked backwards and I caught a whiff of him. We could all do with a bath.
‘The big pop and fizzle more like it! No more balls than a cork coming out of a bottle of Porphyry Pearl. Think about it. What’s more intellectually rigorous, a sudden explosion that brought time, space, people and bananas into being or a God that conceived and created the Heavens and Earth over a solid bloody week?’
‘You … you believe in God?’
Milo’s burst of laughter bounced off the brickwork and stirred the dust.
‘God, schmod, but it’s just as ballsy a theory as the Big Bang - or Big Bloody Wang some might say.’
Then we sat a long time in silence. Anyone would say it was completely dark and cold, but we didn’t see it that way. We were used to it and our eyes were accustomed to the dimness; we could pick out the pigeons roosting on a far ledge and, below them, the streaks of grey that ran down the wall. Through our eyes we saw the detail: the cobwebs and the wires hanging down, all the light fittings gone, the iron rods that once held ceiling fans.
I had almost forgotten what we were talking about when Milo suddenly said, ‘Let’s put the Big Bang through the wringer - the wringer of known facts. If such a thing were to take place it would have to do it within some pre-existing context, wouldn’t you say? And if it’s going to happen, then it’s a bloody event, and an event has to be incubated in or with something else. Newton says, “no action ever happens of or by itself ” - it’s a simple law of physics. That means the so-called Big Bang has to have been caused by something. You stare at the sky as long as I have and it becomes obvious.’
Milo scratched his beard, a sound as familiar as the creak of leather.
‘Now I don’t say our cosmos doesn’t have some natural origin - just as a mountain or a river does. Just that the dawn of the universe wasn’t the first bloody thing.’
Milo shifted position, stretched his legs out and tucked his blanket around him. I heard him scratch his whiskers again. I too was starting to get quite a bit of strong stubble and found myself mimicking his action.
‘A New Theory of Everything; that’s what’s needed,’ he said at last.
I thought of the planets and my old poster of the Solar System. Milo’s idea excited me. My head fairly buzzed with ideas and in the darkness I could feel my face redden with the thought of it all. Milo had sparked something and a wave of energy passed through me like nothing I’d ever felt.
‘What do you think it is then?’ I said, almost breathlessly.
‘Well now, that’s the bloody question isn’t it? You want my opinion? I think the Big Bang is like the paintings they made of Australia long before the new land was even discovered - a nice idea to exercise the mind while we wait for a better picture of things.’
Suddenly I heard Kitty’s footfalls on the stairs and she came to sit on the floor with us. She was shivering and she said she’d been having the bad dreams again. I pulled her in under my blanket and put my arms around her. It must have been about three in the morning. Milo shifted position and I felt a wave of disappointment. Our moment had passed and even before he spoke I
