The Ability (Ability, The) (6 page)

Chris shrugged.

“Okay. I’ll do it. When?” he asked.

“We could do it now,” said Miss Sonata, “it’ll only take ten minutes but, if you’re busy, we could arrange for you to come to us instead. We’re in Central London.”

“I can do it now. I’m not doing anything.” said Chris flatly.

“Okay, well, good.” Miss Sonata looked around for a surface to work from, but the only one she could see, a small round coffee table by the armchair, was cluttered with a pile of old television guides.

“If you need a bigger table, we can go into the kitchen,” said Chris, picking up the two mugs his mother had left on the floor.

Miss Sonata smiled and stood up. He led her down the hallway, through an archway, and into the kitchen at the end, which, although old and in poor repair, was immaculately clean.
At least his mother cleans the place
, she thought, then looked over and saw Chris turning on the taps to carefully wash up the mugs. At that moment she felt a great sadness for this young boy with too many adult responsibilities. She walked over to the small sunroom, which was dominated by an imposing oak dining room
table surrounded by a collection of worn, mismatched chairs. She pulled one back and took a seat.

Opening up her briefcase, Miss Sonata took out a dark red folder and pen and waited as Chris prepared them each a cup of tea. She shivered and then noticed a bucket in the corner, full of water. Looking up, she saw that there was a panel missing from the glass roof. She decided not to say anything about it.

Chris sat down opposite her and placed the mugs on the table.

“Thank you,” said Miss Sonata, placing her hands around the mug for a moment to warm them. “Right. Let’s get going.” She smiled. “As I said, we’re not really interested in how you’re doing in school. We value certain skills far more than academic results. As such, the set of questions I’m going to put to you is a little unusual.”

“What kind of skills?” asked Chris.

“Imagination, observational skills, empathy, for example. That doesn’t mean that you won’t be learning mathematics and English and the other school subjects at Myers Holt, but we think that you’ll make the most progress if we work on the way you think, rather than on the facts that you know. Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” said Chris, although he didn’t have a clue what Miss Sonata was talking about.

“Good,” she said, opening up her folder. Miss Sonata took out a photograph and handed it to Chris.

“Have a good look at this, please, and in one minute I’m going to take it from you and ask you some questions
about it,” said Miss Sonata. She picked up a stopwatch he hadn’t noticed before and pushed a button.

Chris quickly looked down at the photograph and saw that it was of a young boy, maybe four years old, with a large present in his lap. He was sitting on a carpeted floor beside a brightly lit Christmas tree, and on the left of the picture Chris could see the corner of a television set on a wooden cabinet. He tried desperately to take in as many details as possible, his eyes flitting across the picture until Miss Sonata asked him to stop and hand the picture back to her. She carefully opened the folder and placed it back inside. She pushed the closed folder into the center of the table.

“Now, please keep your eyes on the folder while I ask you some questions. Don’t worry too much about getting the correct answer. Instead, try to let your mind go blank, and respond with the first answer that comes to your mind. If you don’t know the answer, just say, ‘pass.’ Is that clear?”

Chris nodded, and Miss Sonata picked up her clipboard and pen.

“Number one. What color were the boy’s pajamas?”

“Green-and-blue striped.”

Miss Sonata wrote something on her paper. Chris looked at her for a reaction to indicate if he was correct, but saw nothing.

“Please keep your eyes on the red folder here,” she said instead, tapping the table. “Question number two: What color slippers was the boy wearing?”

“He wasn’t wearing any slippers,” said Chris with confidence. “He had bare feet.”

“Good. Question number three: How many presents were under the tree?”

“Six,” said Chris, relieved that he had already anticipated that question.

Miss Sonata scribbled something quickly and continued:

“Question four: What was the boy’s name?”

Chris hesitated for a moment.

“I’ll have to rush you. Just say the first thing that comes into your head.”

“Matthew,” said Chris, suddenly remembering the name in white lettering on the stocking that hung from the mantelpiece in the corner of the photograph.

“Finally,” said Miss Sonata, “what was inside the present the boy was holding?”

Chris looked up, confused.

“There are no right answers to some of these questions, Christopher. You just say whatever comes to your mind,” said Miss Sonata, reassuring him.

“Umm . . . a penguin?” As soon as he said it, he regretted it. It was a terrible answer.

Miss Sonata didn’t show any reaction and calmly wrote it down.

“Is that all right?” he asked.

She looked up, saw his worried face, and laughed.

“You’re doing just fine. Now, let’s get back to your penguin. Tell me about it in a little more detail.”

“Ummm,” said Chris, looking back down. He put the picture of the penguin back in his mind and tried to give it some detail.

“It was wearing a yellow bow tie. With red dots on it. And a black top hat on its head.”

Miss Sonata wrote his answer down and looked up again.

“Good, good,” she said, putting her clipboard down. “That’s part one finished. Are you ready for the next set of questions?”

Chris nodded.

Miss Sonata pulled out a folded map and opened it out across the table.

“Do you know what this map is of?”

Chris immediately recognized the river cutting across the page.

“Yes, it’s London.”

“Good, good. See this cross here?” She pointed at a small red
X
just north of the river in the middle of the map. Chris nodded.

“Now, I want you to look at it until your eyes go fuzzy and just let your mind wander,” said Miss Sonata.

Chris focused on the center of the map and squinted until the details started to blur.

“Now imagine that you’re dropping down from the sky, onto the red
X
. You break through the clouds and see the street below you. Tell me when you’re standing on the ground and we’ll begin.”

As he watched the map blur in front of him, the thought briefly crossed Chris’s mind that this was the strangest test he had ever had to take. Nevertheless, he followed Miss Sonata’s instructions and imagined a blanket of gray cloud below him, rapidly looming larger as he fell toward it; then,
for a brief moment, he saw nothing in his mind but a gray fog before suddenly emerging above the unmistakable London cityscape. He imagined himself slowly falling down toward the ground directly below him; he looked around and saw that the streets were alive with the traffic of people and cars, colorful dots moving in all directions. As he became accustomed to the bird’s-eye view, he began to recognize familiar landmarks: the Thames, like a dark ribbon dropped on the landscape; Piccadilly Circus, with its lights in the distance; and the two fountains of Trafalgar Square below him. He imagined the statue of Nelson, high atop its column, not far in the distance. He concentrated on the scene below and watched as his feet gently landed on the gray sidewalk of the busy street. He looked about at people rushing past him, seemingly oblivious to his presence. He waited.

“Um, okay, now what?” he asked, after a long silence.

“What do you see?”

“People. A street. Cars.”

“Can you be more specific? Can you tell me exactly what you see?”

Chris lifted his head, eyes closed, but the image seemed to be fading in his mind.

“I can’t really see much. Everything is going gray, like a fog.”

“Look down again, Christopher. I think you’ll find the image will come back to you.”

Sure enough, Chris looked back down at the table, and the image of the busy street started coming back to him.

“I see a family walking past me, and a row of cars waiting at the traffic lights.”

“What buildings can you see?”

“There’s a bookshop and a cafe next to it. And there’s a theater on the other side of the road.”

“Hmmm,” interrupted Miss Sonata. “Okay. Can you walk to your right a bit and tell me what you see?”

There was a pause as Chris imagined walking quickly along the street.

“Yeah, Trafalgar Square’s in front of me. There’s a church on my left, and there are people sitting on the steps outside.”

“Walk over to the church and look for a number on the pavement in front of the church.”

“A number?”

“Yes, just have a look and see if you can see anything.”

Chris approached the church steps, wondering if he needed to be avoiding walking into the crowds of people if this was all in his imagination. He walked along the pavement, looking down.

“Oh! I see it. There’s a number spray-painted in red on the ground.”

“Can you tell me what that number is?”

“It starts one-two-nine, but I can’t see the rest—There’s a group of tourists standing in the way.”

“Okay, let’s wait until they move away.”

The room was silent as Chris watched the group of men and women arguing over which way up their map should be held. Eventually a woman stormed off in anger past him, and the group she was with quickly ran off to catch up with her. Chris walked up to the pavement slab and looked down.

“One-two-nine . . . one-two-nine . . . two-zero-two-five,” he said slowly.

“Interesting, Christopher. Very interesting indeed,” said Miss Sonata, writing something down. “Okay, we’re done with that section. Well done. You can open your eyes.”

Chris had forgotten his eyes were closed. He opened them, and the image he had seen vanished.

Miss Sonata folded up the map and put it away.

“One last question. What animal am I thinking of?”

He barely looked at her before the image of an animal popped into his mind.

“A fox.”

Miss Sonata pursed her lips together in an effort to conceal a smile. “That’s right! Lucky guess?”

“Yeah. Lucky guess,” he said, smiling. He knew she would have said that no matter what animal he had picked.

“Well, we’re all done. Good job,” said Miss Sonata, packing away her folder.

“That’s it?” asked Chris, confused.

“Well, we’re all done with the interview. We’ll let you know how you did as soon as possible. But there is one more thing. I hope you don’t mind, but I had a chat with the school secretary earlier, and she explained that you might not be doing anything today. Anyway, I couldn’t come by without anything, so I hope you don’t mind if I invite myself to join you for a few minutes longer. . . .”

She opened her bag and carefully pulled out a white cardboard box. Chris watched curiously as she lifted the top flap, and he saw that inside was a perfect chocolate cake. She reached back into her bag and pulled out some
paper plates and a blue-and-white-striped candle, which she pushed firmly down into the center of the thick brown icing.

“Happy birthday, Christopher,” said Miss Sonata, looking up at him.

Chris smiled awkwardly, not knowing what to say.

“I—how—I don’t know . . .”

Miss Sonata laughed.

“You can’t celebrate your twelfth birthday without a cake!”

“Thank you . . . I—”

“No need for thank-yous,” interrupted Miss Sonata cheerfully. “Help me carry this lot into the living room so we can celebrate.”

Chris picked up the plates and followed Miss Sonata out of the kitchen, a wide smile on his face—finally, today was feeling special for all the right reasons.

Ernest Genever had been looking for his twin brother for over an hour and had checked almost every one of the fifty or so rooms in the house, to no avail. All he wanted was some company, somebody to play with, but Mortimer was nowhere to be found. Frustrated, he made his way along the polished wooden floor of the west wing as quietly as possible, avoiding the gaze of the dour-faced subjects of the oil paintings that lined the walls, and stopped at the final room on the corridor. There was a gold plaque mounted on the heavy wooden door with the words
WHITEHALL GUEST SUITE
engraved on it. He turned the handle slowly and opened the door, wincing at the loud creak of the unoiled hinges—an automatic reaction he had to any loud noise that might disturb his mother. He paused nervously
for a moment until he was certain that he had not been heard; then, with a quiet sigh of relief, he entered.

The curtains were open, and outside the sun was still shining brightly, yet the room felt dark and oppressive, like a rarely entered exhibit hall in a museum. Dark antique furniture crowded the room, each piece chosen for its grandeur and value rather than for its look. Ernest barely registered this, however; it looked exactly the same as every other one of the unused guest rooms of Darkwhisper Manor, the only home he had ever known.