The boys didn’t understand it all, but Dr Peacock said that it was something to do with the way the sensory parts of the brain worked: that something in there was cross-wired, somehow, sending mixed signals from those complex bundles of nerves.
‘You mean, like a s-super-sense?’ interrupted blueeyedboy, thinking vaguely of Spider-Man, or Magneto, or even Hannibal Lecter (you see that he was already moving away from the vanilla end of the spectrum into bad-guy territory).
‘Precisely,’ said Dr Peacock. ‘And when we find out how it works, then maybe our knowledge will be able to help people — stroke victims, for instance, or people who have suffered head trauma. The brain is a complex instrument. And in spite of all the achievements of science and modern medicine, we still know so little about it: how it stores and accesses information, how that information is translated—’
Synaesthesia can manifest in so many ways, Dr Peacock explained to them. Words can have colours; sounds can have shapes, numbers can be illuminated. Some people were born with it; others acquired it by association. Most synaesthetes were visual. But there are other kinds of synaesthesia, where words can translate as tastes or smells; or colours be triggered by migraine pain. In short, said Dr Peacock, a synaesthete might see music; taste sound; experience numbers as textures or shapes. There was even mirror-touch synaesthesia, in which, by some extreme of empathy, the subject could actually experience physical sensations felt by someone else —
‘You mean, if I saw someone getting hit, then I’d be able to feel it too?’
‘Fascinating, isn’t it?’
‘But — how could they watch gangster films, where people get killed and beaten up?’
‘I don’t think they’d want to, Benjamin. They’d find it too upsetting. It’s all about suggestion, you see. This type of synaesthesia would make one very sensitive.’
‘Ma says I’m sensitive.’
‘I’m sure you are, Benjamin.’
By then Benjamin had become increasingly sensitive, not just to words and names, but to voices, too; to their accents and tones. Of course, he’d been aware before of the fact that people had accents. He’d always preferred Mrs White’s voice to Ma’s, or to the voice of Mrs Catholic Blue, who spoke with a caustic Belfast twang that grated at his sinuses.
His brothers spoke like the boys at school. They said ta instead of thank you, and sithee instead of goodbye. They swore at each other in ugly words that stank of the monkey-house at the zoo. His mother made an effort, but failed; her accent came and went depending on the company. It was particularly bad with Dr Peacock — aitches inserted all over the place like needles into a ball of wool.
Blueeyedboy sensed how very hard she worked at trying to impress, and it made him gag with embarrassment. He didn’t want to sound like that. He copied Dr Peacock instead. He liked his vocabulary. The way Dr Peacock said: If you please; or Kindly turn your attention to this; or To whom am I speaking? on the phone. Dr Peacock could speak Latin and French and Greek and Italian and German and even Japanese; and when he spoke English he made it sound like a different language, a better one, one that distinguished between watt and what; witch (a green-grey, sour word) and which (a sweet and silvery word), like an actor reading Shakespeare. He even spoke like that to the dog, saying: Kindly desist from chewing the rug, or Would my learned colleague like to take a stroll round the garden? The strangest thing, thought blueeyedboy, was that the dog seemed to respond; which made him wonder whether he, too, could be trained to lose his uncouth habits.
From his point of view, Dr Peacock was so impressed with Ben’s gift that he promised to tutor the boy himself — as long as he behaved at school — to prepare him for the St Oswald’s scholarship exam, in exchange for what he called a few tests, and the understanding that anything that transpired from their sessions could be used in the book he was writing, the culmination of a lifetime’s study, for which he had interviewed many subjects, though none as young or as promising as little Benjamin Winter.
Ma was overjoyed, of course. St Oswald’s was the culmination of all her hopes, of her unvoiced ambitions, of all the dreams she’d ever had. The entrance exam was in three years’ time, but she spoke as if it were imminent; promised to save every penny she earned; fussed over Ben more than ever before, and made it very clear that he was being given an incredible chance; a chance that he owed it to her to take —
He was less enthusiastic. He still didn’t like St Oswald’s. In spite of its navy-blue blazer and tie (just perfect for him, she said), he had already seen enough to be conscious of being unsuitable: unsuitable face, unsuitable hair, unsuitable house, unsuitable name —
St Oswald’s boys were not called Ben. St Oswald’s boys were called Leon, or Jasper, or Rufus or Sebastian. A St Oswald’s boy can pass off a name like Orlando, can make it sound like peppermint. Even Rupert sounds somehow cool when attached to a navy-blue St Oswald’s blazer. Ben, he knew, would be the wrong blue, smelling of his mother’s house, of too much disinfectant and too little space and too much fried food and not enough books and the harsh, inescapable stink of his brothers.
But Dr Peacock said not to worry. Three years was a long time. Time for him to prepare Ben; to make him into a St Oswald’s boy. Ben had potential, so he said — a red word, like a stretched rubber band, ready to fly into someone’s face —
And so, he accepted. What choice did he have? He was, after all, Ma’s greatest hope. Besides, he wanted to please them both — to please Dr Peacock, most of all — and if that meant St Oswald’s, then he was prepared to take up the challenge.
Nigel went to Sunnybank Park, the big comprehensive at the edge of White City. A series of concrete building blocks, with razor wire along the roof, it looked like a prison. It stank like a zoo. Nigel didn’t seem to mind. Brendan, nine and also destined for Sunnybank Park, showed no sign of unusual ability. Both boys had been tested by Dr Peacock; neither seemed to interest him much. Nigel he discarded at once; Brendan, after three or four weeks, finding him uncooperative.
Nigel was twelve, aggressive and moody. He liked heavy rock music and films where things exploded. No one bullied him at school. Brendan was his shadow, spineless and soft; surviving only through Nigel’s protection, like those symbiotic creatures that live around sharks and crocodiles, safe from predators by virtue of their usefulness to the host. Whereas Nigel was quite intelligent (though he never bothered to do any work), Bren was useless at everything: hopeless at sports, clueless in lessons, lazy and inarticulate, a prime candidate for the dole queue, said Ma, or, at best, a job flipping burgers —
But Ben was destined for better things. Every other Saturday, while Nigel and Brendan rode their bikes or played with their friends out on the estate, he went to Dr Peacock’s house — the house that he called the Mansion — and in the mornings sat at a big desk upholstered in bottle-green leather and read from books with hardback covers, and learnt geography from a painted globe with the names written on it in tiny scrolled lettering — Iroquois, Rangoon, Azerbaijan — arcane, obsolete, magical names just like Mrs White’s paints, that smelt vaguely of gin and the sea, of peppery dust and acrid spices, like an early taste of some mysterious freedom that he had yet to experience. And if you spun the globe fast enough, the oceans and the continents would chase each other so fast that at last all the colours merged into one, into one perfect shade of blue: ocean blue, heavenly blue, Benjamin blue —