named after a boy who was historically murdered. If something is in the past, can it still be in the present or not? It is a philosophical question. If you travelled to the past to make the future better, would you actually be able to? She runs past the library, which has the plaques built into the wall inside where all the people paid money to buy “beds” for old retired sailors, because a lot of the university was once where the old sailors who had served their country well at sea came to live when they were old and had no homes, if they had not actually died in wars. The plaques are not really beds, they are nothing like beds, they are just plaques, dedications, like for dead people. They says things like: Hamilton Canada bed. Lloyds Bank bed. Lloyds bank rupt! ha ha! Joke. One of them is from a man’s mother, in memory of him. It says he died in HMS Pathfinder in 1914, which was historically the first year of one of the World Wars. One plaque says this thing: “They were lovely in their lives.” It means the dead people. The dead people were lovely in their lives. She runs past the building her mother’s office is in. Her mother’s office is a room where a sailor once slept! More than one sailor, to be precise. Outside above the doors to the corridors it says, painted on the stone in the arch, things like Britannia 46 Men or Union 46 Men, which means 46 men could fit into the number of rooms there. Outside in the corridor of the philosophy department there is a little table, and someone has put some good things for playing with on it, like a plastic rabbit standing on top of a drawing of a spiral and a game called Fuzzy Philosophers where you can use a magnet pen to drag iron filings and put hair and a beard on a bare face. She passes the path you take if you’re going to the Painted Hall. In the Painted Hall there is a painting on the ceiling of a lady who is meant to stand for Africa and she is very pretty and on her head she is wearing a hat shaped like the top of an elephant’s head. Joke: a man is standing in the middle of the road. He is spreading elephant powder around. A policeman comes up to him. The policeman says: Excuse me, what do you think you are doing? The man says: I’m spreading elephant powder all over this street. The policeman says: There aren’t any elephants around here. The man says: See? You can’t beat elephant powder. She runs past the huge globes on the top of the main gate of the university. They look like they are wrapped in string, like huge balls of string. But actually the string is meant to be longitudes or latitudes, or trade routes maybe, or maybe it is trade roots, Brooke will ask.
(Mum? Brooke said. I’m really really busy, Brooksie, I’m really having to concentrate, her mother said. Her mother had her worst face on. She was doing an application about funding. What is the application you are doing about? Brooke said. Um, her mother said. It’s for a project we’re calling Tecmessa. Teck mess a, Brooke said. Uh huh, her mother said, she’s a character from tragedy. Tragic application, her father said. It’s about which you would choose, her mother said, if you had the choice of these: you can enjoy a really lovely treat yourself, but because you do someone else somewhere will have to suffer. Or: you can choose to suffer with somebody who’s also having a really difficult time, but because you do, the suffering will be easier for that other person. Okay, Brooke said, can I have some time to think about it before I have to decide? Definitely, her mother said, much better to think about it than not. How long have I got? Brooke said. Ha ha! her father laughed from the sofa, that is the question! And, mum? Brooke said. Mm hmm? her mother said with the leg of her spectacles in her mouth. Did you hear about the optician’s son? Brooke said. Which optician? her mother said. He made a spectacle of himself, Brooke said. Ha ha! her father said. Oh for God sake, her mother said. Terence, I need to work, take this child out. Brooke, I need to work, take that father out. But mum, but can I just ask this one thing?