The Sweetness At the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

Author:Alan Bradley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 2008-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Sixteen

A flash of lightning bleached every trace of color from the room, and with it came a deafening crack of thunder. We both of us flinched.

“The storm is directly overhead,” Father said.

Nodding to reassure him that we were in it together, I looked about at my surroundings. The brightly lighted little cubicle – its naked bulb overhead, its steel door, and its cot – the rain pouring down outside, was oddly like the control room of the submarine in We Dive at Dawn. I imagined the rolling thunder of the storm to be the sound of depth charges exploding immediately above our heads, and suddenly I was not quite so fearful for Father. We two, at least, were allies. I would pretend that as long as we kept still and I remained silent, nothing on earth could harm us.

Father went on as if there had been no interruption.

“We became rather strangers, Bony and I,” he said. “Al though we continued as members of Mr. Twining’s Magic Circle, each of us pursued his own particular interests. I developed a passion for the great stage tricks: sawing a lady in half, vanishing a cage of singing canaries, that sort of thing. Of course, most of these effects were beyond my schoolboy budget, but as time went on, it seemed enough simply to read about them and learn how each one was executed.

“Bony, however, progressed to tricks which required an ever-greater degree of manual dexterity: simple effects which could be done under the spectator’s nose with a minimal amount of gadgetry. He could make a nickel-plated alarm clock disappear from one hand and appear in the other before your very eyes. He never would show me how it was done.

“It was about that time that Mr. Twining had the idea of organizing a Philatelic Society, another of his great enthusiasms. He felt that in learning to collect, catalogue, and mount postage stamps from round the world, we would learn a great deal about history, geography, and neatness, to say nothing of the fact that regular discussions would promote confidence among the more shy members of the club. And since he was himself a devoted collector, he saw no reason why every one of his boys should be any less enthusiastic.

“His own collection was the eighth wonder of the world, or so it seemed to me. He specialized in British stamps, with particular attention to color variations in the printing inks. He had the uncanny ability of being able to deduce the day – sometimes the very hour – a given specimen was printed. By comparing the ever-changing microscopic cracks and variations produced by wear and stress upon the engraved printing plates, he was able to deduce an astonishing amount of detail.

“The leaves of his albums were masterpieces. The colors! And the way in which they ranged across the page, each one a dab from the palette of a Turner.

“They began, of course, with the black issues of 1840. But soon the black warms

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