The Weight of Numbers by Simon Ings Page A

accompanying her home. ‘There’s time for me to get back. The trains run until eleven,’ he said, shrugging off her protests. ‘It’s you or the fleshpots of Darlington, and I’ve made my choice.’
    On the train he told her, ‘This war isn’t going to be a won by bombs or bullets. You’ve seen that yourself, haven’t you? An explosion’snothing unless it’s shaped. You know what I’m talking about, Kathleen. You don’t think you know. You don’t know how to know – not yet. But you know. I understand what you see. How easy it is for you. The numbers…’ He struggled for a way to explain this to her. ‘For most of the rest of them, figures are a language they have to learn. It’s not like that for you. Is it?’
    She said, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
    He knew she was lying. ‘Listen, this war isn’t going to be won by soldiers, or airmen, or heroes, or generals, or any of them. This war is going to be won by numbers. Numbers, and people who know what to do with numbers. Do you understand?’
    She shook her head.
    As they came out of her local station and left the lights behind, he said to her, ‘I can’t offer much. There’s not very much that’s in my gift. Not directly. A job in Senate House to start with. Admiralty tables, that sort of thing.’ In the dusk, he caught her expression. ‘Don’t look so shocked, it’s not a secret! Look, I can teach you. Once you have the basics under your belt, it doesn’t matter a damn that you’re just a slip of a girl. With a head like yours, you can write your own ticket.’
    She was shocked at his language. She wondered if she ought to say something. Her mother would have said something. What should she say?
    She said, ‘The colours—’ and stopped.
    â€˜Yes,’ he said.
    â€˜They mean I’m simple.’
    He stared at her. ‘
Of course not
,’ he said. ‘What blithering idiot gave you that idea?’
    In a small voice: ‘Aren’t I?’
    He tucked her arm firmly under his own. ‘If you are, then I am. If you are, then Senate House is a sea of simpletons.’
    Kathleen trembled all over. It was like discovering you had a brother. A family.
    Outside her house, Sage kissed her. ‘Kathleen. Promise me. We need people like you. Working people.’
    Her mother must have been watching because as soon as they were alone together in the kitchen she struck her daughter in the face so hard – a shaped charge, every particle of force meeting its target – that Kathleen lost her footing and banged her head on the corner of the kitchen table.
    Kathleen lay on the floor. Dimly, she could hear her mother’s breathing. Her eyes focused. There was a crust of bread on the floor. Her mother bent down to help her up, but she must have spotted the bread crust then because her hand, which was reaching to cradle her daughter’s head, changed course suddenly and snatched up the crust instead. She picked it up and carried it off to the rubbish pail.
    She returned to her daughter, helped her up, made her tea, ran bluish milk in after it, and made her daughter sit down. She apologized, after her fashion. ‘Look what you made me do!’ she sobbed.
    Kathleen, dazed, sipped her tea.
    â€˜Look what you made me do!’
    Kathleen watched as her mother, still weeping, picked up the pail and carried it past her to the back door. She passed close enough that Kathleen could see into the pail. The pail shone. There was nothing in it but the crust of bread. Kathleen sipped her tea and listened to her mother’s footsteps receding, up the garden path, to where the compost pile lay. Her mother returned and rinsed out the rubbish pail. She set it down. She drew water into a pan and set it on the stove to boil. She sat at the table. She pressed her hand to the side of the teapot. She got up