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By Root 2075 0

Dr. Joachim Susskind, in a threadbare suit, and wearing a red tie. Dr. Susskind had flowing, hay-coloured, dry hair, and a fine, waving moustache to go with it. His eyes were blue and mournful, not clear, glassy sky-blue like Dr. Skinner’s but a clouded, faded blue, the diluted blue of an almost-white Small Blue butterfly, Tom thought. He looked mild and harmless. Leslie Skinner presented him by saying that he was not only a first-class mathematician, but also a first-class teacher, which many mathematicians were not. Dr. Susskind smiled mildly. He said he should like to know whether Tom and Charles enjoyed mathematics? Yes, said Tom. No, said Charles. Dr. Susskind asked both of them, why? Tom said it wasn’t arithmetic he liked, he often got that wrong, it was the way things fitted together in geometry, the sense of finding it out. Charles said he didn’t like feeling a fool, which was the effect maths had on him. Leslie Skinner asked which subjects Charles did like, and Charles said, none, really, they didn’t tell him what he wanted to know.

“And what do you want to know?” asked Skinner, Socratic.

“Things about life. Why are the poor poor? What is wrong with us?”

Humphry laughed, and said he was afraid Charles would not get much information about poverty at Eton. Charles said he didn’t want to go there, but nobody cared what he thought. Skinner said it was always useful to be taught how to think, and Dr. Susskind said, almost inaudibly, looking at no one, that that was a good question to ask, a good question.

The two girls sat side by side, one dark, one pale gold, their long hair brushed out over their shoulders. Etta Skinner turned to them briskly and asked in a principled and slightly combative tone where they were to get their education. Leslie Skinner turned his blue look on Dorothy and gave her his complete attention.

“You are the young lady who is to be a doctor.”

Dorothy said she was.

“Then it is high time you were seriously studying science.”

“I know,” said Dorothy, incurring a sharp look of reproach from her father.

“Well, I do know,” she said, answering the look. It turned out that Etta had an answer to propose. She herself did some teaching at Queen’s College, in Harley Street, which gave classes to females of any age over twelve years, either to prepare them for a teaching career, or to improve their skills and knowledge if they were already teaching. Dorothy and Griselda might attend—part-time even—together. Griselda said she would go to science classes with Dorothy if Dorothy would go with her to classes in German and French. And Latin, said Leslie. They would need Latin if they were to think of university, as he hoped they would. UCL made provision for women to study science. Skinner told Humphry that a good Fabian should consider his daughters’ education as seriously as his sons’. Humphry said that Dorothy—and Griselda—were still only little girls. Hardly, said Skinner, smiling at the two serious young faces. Hardly. They would be young women any moment, he could see. His look made Dorothy feel unexpectedly heated, on her skin, and also inside her. She wriggled a little and sat straighter. Griselda said she didn’t think her parents saw any need for her to be educated. Skinner said, it should be enough that she wanted to be educated. Etta took Humphry’s arm, and said surely he could explain to his family how much it might mean, how much it should be a right… Griselda said Dorothy could stay with her, and they could go to the lessons together, if only the families agreed. Humphry said he would miss his girl, and Dorothy said he might not notice, he was so much away, now, himself.

Tom and Charles began immediately to go to University College to do maths with Dr. Susskind, who shared a poky little office in a mews behind the main building, with another statistician, who was collecting data on human heights, weights and ages. They went on Monday and Tuesday afternoons, and were given work to take home. They were measured themselves, as a statistic. Then, some weekends, they travelled to Todefright