There but for The_ A Novel - Ali Smith [28]
I’m standing on time! a girl said and toed the line. How cool is that?
I’m standing on not-time! her friend said jumping backwards away from the meridian.
Someone was talking, a youngish man in a T-shirt and fleece. He was a teacher, presumably, from the words he was using: last warning, confiscate, crisps.
If you take them off her, are you going to eat them yourself, do you know what I’m trying to say sir? a girl said.
No, Melanie, because crisps are sprayed with chemicals then fried in huge vats of fat, and I like to eat healthily, the man said.
These are healthy, sir, the girl with her hand in the crisp packet said. It says on the packet less fat and natural ingredients in it sir innit.
The three girls standing with the crisp packet girl all burst out laughing. In it innit! they said. Innit in it!
Because we learned on Tuesday, didn’t we, the teacher said, that it’s random. And about longitude and latitude and fixed points, he said. To know where you are when you’re at sea and there are no landmarks. But who can tell me why it was decided to put it here? Jacintha, mobile off. Off. Off or confiscated. You choose. Thank you. Someone tell me why the experts at the time chose Greenwich. Rhiannon? Why Greenwich?
Because they had to put it somewhere so they could get on with the other important calculations about time and, and things like time and the sea and that, cause they needed something better than the thing called reckoning with that throwing logs tied to rope off moving ships, and on land too because like, that, Yarmouth being ten minutes ahead of Greenwich and in other places it could be noon in London and half past eleven in the place you’d just travelled to on a train, a girl said.
Thank you, Rhiannon, the teacher said. Very good. Except it’s dead reckoning.
Ow! Rhiannon said when the girl standing behind her poked her hard in the back and said the word dead. Please sir, one of the bad girls said. The earth’s wobble is what happens when Rhiannon Stoddart walks to the shops.
And Greenwich, the teacher said, was where the experts who met decided to put it because of the important work they’d already done here. Now, the meridian runs north to south and if you stand on one side of it, you’re officially in the west, and if you stand on the other it’s the what? Matthew, if you make a racially unpleasant comment like that again there’ll be serious trouble. I mean it. I’m talking exclusion, Matthew. Now apologize. Not to me, to Bijan. Okay, Bijan? Right. Where were we? On one side the west, and on the other? Come on.
The kids stood bored and hangdog, yawning and squirming, their sweatshirts knotted round their waists. Above them, the domes of the Observatory: they all looked up when they were told to. The original domes, the teacher told them, were made of papier-mâché. A murmur went round the boys about the domes resembling big and small breasts. The teacher admonished. Two girls made outraged-sounding noises. They pointed at the notice which apologized that the time ball wasn’t functioning today. One of the girls called out. Sir, when exactly did your time balls drop?
Nought degrees, the teacher was saying. Who can tell me about nought degrees?
If it’s not degrees you want to know about, sir—, one boy said.
Yes, Nick—? the teacher said.
Then what is it, sir? the boy said.
This made Mark laugh. The group of girls saw him laugh and stared at him, then laughed nastily themselves, but at Mark.
I don’t follow you, Nick, the teacher said.
If you follow Nick, sir, we’ll report you to the authorities, another boy who was standing far out enough on the edge of the group not to be heard by the teacher said.
His friends sniggered.
Then this same boy, while the teacher talked on about what universal day was, and how many degrees made a day, an hour, half an hour, a minute, cast an unmistakable