There but for The_ A Novel - Ali Smith [87]
not recognize the word truculent and was therefore put off the rest of what Brooke was saying. Truculent: Brooke can’t remember exactly what it means. She draws an imaginary pencil circle round it in her head to remind herself to check later. The Talking Telescope’s German voice is male. Its French voice is female. Its English voice is male. Is France more female than Germany and England, or was there only a lady French speaker there and no men who could speak French the day they were doing the voice recordings? It is much more worth it putting money in the machine which gives you a printed-out certificate that proves you stood on the Prime Meridian and says the date and the time to several digits for example, if it was 14.29 when you stood on it, it would say 14.29.1234 on 12 April 2010, so that you know the fraction of a second pretty exactly, and also you have something you can take home with you and you can even write your name on in the space left for the name above where the certificate tells you about the crosshairs of the Great Transit Circle Telescope and Longitude 0°. That is what Brooke calls worth it. Whereas even though it talks in all those languages, all the Talking Telescope tells you about in its languages is stuff you can see really obviously with your eyes without needing a telescope to. Then it even tells you to go and listen to the other Talking Telescope round by the statue of General Wolfe. It is a waste of money just to be told to go and listen to another Talking Telescope which also tells you to go and listen to this one in the Observatory yard tell you to go and listen to it! Brooke puts her eye to the dark little circle which only lights up if you put in the money, and then only sometimes. I SEE NO SHIPS. That was what Admiral Nelson apparently is reputed to have said historically when he put the telescope to his blind eye and because he did the English won the battle. That was shortly before Nelson died on the deck of the ship and said Kiss Me Hardy to Thomas Hardy the famous author. When they brought Admiral Nelson’s body back from the battle in a barrel of brandy or another drink like brandy, there was a queue of people to see him lying in a state and the queue was probably about the same size as the one outside the Lees’ house watching Mr. Garth’s window. The Milo Multitude, her mother calls them. The Milo Masses. Newspapers call it Milo Madness, Milo Mania, Milo Mayhem. Brooke doesn’t think she is in any of the photos the newspapers have printed, though there are some people in some of them that she recognizes, also on the Milo footage on YouTube of when the blind in the window moves a bit and of visitors’ Milo Days Out there are loads of people she knows. Roll up! Roll up! Come And See Invisible Man In Room!
The fact is, ha ha! all those people outside the house and watching YouTube and reading the papers or looking on the net don’t know what the fact about Mr. Garth really is.
(They’re back again, then, her mother said on Friday afternoon when you could smell the smell of people all crushed together again and hear the noise as you came towards that part of the town. Her mother sighed. Why did you sigh? Brooke said. I feel for them, her mother said. For all of them together or for each and every one of them singly? Brooke said. Sort of both, I think, her mother said. Then she said, you’re feeling a bit better yourself, aren’t you? What I am feeling is irrelevant, Brooke said, but if you are feeling for all those people, that is an astronomical amount of feeling. It is an Alps of feeling, her mother said, and what you are feeling is never irrelevant, and I feel an Alps of feeling about that too. There was a bit of shouting from the Milo Masses: Milo, Milo, Never Come Out! Milo, Milo, Never Come Out! and Milo, Milo, Come Out Now! You Are Needed Here—And How! The two shouts mixed into one single noise, like the noise of a small football match. Her father was in a bad mood that day because he had looked up the news online and had read the word Entertainment, and then underneath there had been