The Shadow Guests by Joan Aiken

Author:Joan Aiken [Aiken, Joan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK
Published: 2018-07-29T16:00:00+00:00

5. Bun and Meredith

It seemed hardly possible to Cosmo that he was beginning on his fourth week of school. Only one more to go and then it would be the Easter holidays – wonderful thought! Four whole weeks of days spent doing what he chose at the mill, or working with Mr Marvell, who had all kinds of activities planned – helping to break the young horses, Punch and Juno, and accustom them to harness, learning to plough, going to fetch some black-spotted lambs from Witney who would be about ready to leave their mothers by then, building a new pigpen … And Eunice had some plans too; she had suggested badger-watching in the wood one night – fishing – mending the two leaky boats that were drawn up in a boathouse on the island, turning the cart shed into an indoor tennis court and playing Henry V’s kind of tennis there. And he still had not explored the mill buildings …

With all that to look forward to, and Con to think back over, it did seem as if the week at school should be bearable enough. But where was Con now?

Did Con cease to exist when he slid back into his own dimension – as far as Cosmo was concerned? Or do I cease to exist for him? Cosmo wondered, getting out of the Rolls and waving goodbye to Eunice. Mr Falaise, who taught maths to the upper forms, and Latin to Remove, happened to be on the front steps at that moment. It seemed that he and Eunice had been to college together, and he said to her a little wistfully,

‘I don’t suppose you’d have time to come and talk to the Seniors one day, about relativity or something, would you? It would be such a nice change for them from all that dull stuff they have to do with me!’

‘I’ll see, Benny,’ Eunice said laughing. ‘I’m awfully busy at the moment – writing my book you know – but I’ll come along sometime, I promise.’

She had told Cosmo a little about her book. ‘It’s a kind of mathematical judo. Wriggling about, coming out in unexpected places. Trying to get the best result with the least effort.’

‘What are you going to call it?’

‘Not quite sure yet. Man and Measurement, perhaps. After all, when you think about it, man is the only animal who has taken to measuring. In fact, that seems to be one of the things we were mainly designed for – legs, arms and feet for measuring, toes and fingers for counting, minds for calculating – if we’d been whales, how differently we’d have turned out!’

Cosmo went in to school thinking about this.

If man was so good at measuring, why did he have to fight, too? Con had said he was here to fight. Measuring and fighting seemed highly contradictory pursuits. Or were there, perhaps, two sorts of people, the measuring kind, and the fighting kind?

‘And how’s our dear Wonder Boy today?’ said Tansy.

Cosmo ignored her;

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