Part 40 (1/2)

The other team are taking their seats when we arrive at the studio, and we can hear the applause and shouts of their supporters as we stand in the wings. Then Julian gives us a nod, and it's time to make our entrance into the gladiatorial arena. I follow Alice as we cross to take our places, and hear a collective intake of breath from the audience, stage-crew and cameramen stopping and staring, whispering into their mouthpieces, and an audible hum of admiration beneath the applause and whoops and cheers. She hitches up her dress slightly as she slides behind our desk, as if sliding into a limousine, and someone in the audience actually wolf-whistles, which from a s.e.xual-political point-of-view I don't really approve of, but which causes a roll of laughter through the studio. Alice laughs and holds our mascot, Eddie the Teddy, in front of her face, and it's just like Mum always says - 'beautiful and knows it. . .'

We settle in our seats, and smile at each other as the excitement dies down.

'Peace?' she says.

'Peace,' I say, and then we peer out into the audience. Rose and Michael Harbinson are there, and Rose gives a proud little wave.

'Nice to see them with their clothes on!' I say, and Alice gives me a reprimanding slap on the wrist. Mum, who's in the second row just behind Rebecca, gives me a little fingers-only wave, and two thumbs up, and I wave back.

358.

'Is that your mum?' asks Alice.

'Uh-huh.'

'She looks nice. I'd like to meet her.'

'I'm sure you will. One day.'

'Who's the man with the Tom Selleck moustache?'

'Uncle Des. Not a real uncle, we just call him that. As a matter of fact, he's marrying Mum.'

'Your mum's getting married again?'

'Uh-huh.'

'That's brilliant news! You didn't tell me that!'

'Well, I was going to, yesterday night, but . . .'

'Yes. Oh. Yes, of course. Listen, Brian, that thing with Neil, it isn't really going anywhere . . .'

'Alice 'It was just a fling, it doesn't mean that you and me . . .' but she doesn't get to finish, because Bamber's making his entrance now. The crowd's applauding and cheering, and Alice takes my hand, and squeezes it tight, and my heart starts to beat faster, and it's time to finish this thing, once and for all.

And of course eighteen minutes later we've lost.

Or as good as, anyway. It's 45 points to 90, but Partridge, the peach-fluff-faced balding child, is clearly some incredible genetically enhanced mutant freak who's been created in a secret laboratory somewhere, because he just keeps firing out correct answers, on every conceivable subject, one after another '. . . Pope Pius XIII, The San Andreas Fault, Herodotus, 2n-l(2n-l) where both n and 2n-l are prime numbers, pota.s.sium nitrate, pota.s.sium chromate, pota.s.sium sulphate . . .' and all this from someone who's meant to be doing Modern History and who looks about six years old. It isn't even fair to call it general knowledge, it's just knowledge, pure concentrated knowledge, and I decide that, at the back of Partridge's head somewhere, there's a small concealed b.u.t.ton, and if you press it his face pops open 359.

revealing banks of diodes and microchips and flas.h.i.+ng l.e.d.s. Meanwhile their captain, Norton, from Canterbury reading Cla.s.sics, barely needs to do a thing, just pa.s.s on the correct answers to Bamber in his lovely, low, well-modulated voice, then lean back and stretch and play with his lovely, l.u.s.trous hair and shoot meaningful, see-you-afterwards looks at Alice.

Patrick is starting to panic. There's a damp rim of sweat forming round the neck of his burgundy sweats.h.i.+rt, and he's starting to get trigger-happy and make mistakes, terrible mistakes, his trembling finger jabbing at the buzzer in a desperate attempt to pull something back.

Buzz.

'George Stephenson?' says Patrick.

'No, I'm sorry, that's minus five points.'

'Brunei?' says Partridge.

'Correct! That's ten points . . .'

Buzz.

'Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man?' pleads Patrick.

'No, sorry, that's minus five points . . .'

'Paine's The Age of Reason,' says Partridge.

'Correct! That's another ten points . . .'

And so it goes on. Alice and I meanwhile are worse than useless. She gets one question wrong, saying Dame Margot Fonteyn when it should be Dame Alicia Markova, and I'm barely opening my mouth at all, just nodding madly at whatever Lucy says during team consultations. In fact, if it wasn't for the amazing Doctor Lucy Chang we'd actually be in minus figures by now, because for everything Patrick gets wrong, she gets one right, just quietly, modestly. 'The study of bees?' Correct - 'I think therefore I am?' - Correct - 'Zadok The Priest by Handel?' - Correct - and at one point, I find myself leaning past Alice and watching Lucy, pus.h.i.+ng her glossy black hair behind her ear, modestly looking at the floor as the crowd applauds her, and I think about what Rebecca said; maybe I 36O.

should have asked her out? Why didn't I think of that? Maybe that's the answer. Maybe, if this thing with Alice doesn't work out . . .

But what am I thinking about? We're losing 65 points to 100 now, and the freaky boy Partridge is answering three in a row about the mathematical theories of Evariste Galois or something completely incomprehensible, and I'm just sat here dumbly staring at the back of our mascot's head, and we're losing, losing, losing, and I realise that even with Oregon, Nevada, Arizona and Baja California up my sleeve, the only way we can possibly win is if someone in the audience, Rebecca Epstein say, takes Partridge out with a high-powered sniper's rifle.

And then something amazing happens; a question that I know the answer to.

'Porphyria's Lover, in which the protagonist strangles his beloved with a braid of her hair, is a narrative poem by which Victorian poet?'

And no one buzzes. No one except me. I buzz, then try to open my mouth, which seems to be stuck together with flour-and-water paste, and manage to get the words out.

'Robert Browning?'

'Correct!'

And there's applause, actual applause, led by my Mum I have to say, but it's applause none the less, and we've got a crack at the bonus questions . . .

'. . . which are on plant-cell structure!'

Alice and I groan audibly and slump back in our chairs, redundant. But it doesn't matter, because Doctor Lucy Chang's there, and what Doctor Lucy Chang doesn't know about plant-cell structure isn't worth knowing. She polishes them off without breaking a sweat.

'. . . parenchyma . . . collenchyma. ... is it sclerenchyma?'

Oh yes, it is sclerenchyma, and the crowd are cheering again, because we're back in the game, 90 plays 115 now, and I'm 361.

awake again, because I now know that 1 - no, not I, but we, the team - can win this after all.

'Another starter question, the d.i.c.kensian character Philip Pirrip is . . . ?'

Know it.

Buzz.

'Pip in Great Expectations,' I say, clearly and confidently.

'Very well antic.i.p.ated,' says Bamber, and there's a round of applause from the audience, and a wolf-whistle even, I think from Rebecca, who I can see in the front row beaming away, and I imagine that this is what it might feel like to score a goal. I try not to smile though. I just look serious and confident and my mind is racing because I know what's coming up soon. 'Oregon, um, Arizona, eh, Nevada and Baja - or is it Baya? - California? But keep calm, keep calm, bonus questions first, a potential fifteen points, plus the ten I've just won for us, enough to put us in neck and neck, 115 all, but it all depends on what the bonus questions are about . . .