I was never going to be a scientist – being naturally inclined towards the arts, languages, the humanities (History being my favorite) – and Mathematics gave me, and my various teachers throughout my school years, many headaches. At Tonbridge, as a result of our Common Entrance Exam that our school and others of its kind had used as a filter, as of our first year we were streamed into four parallel sets that sought to separate us – top to bottom – into our apparent levels of  intellectual ability (based largely on how well we had done in maths and the sciences) and I was placed in IIID1. IIID2 was the other class on our same level. We were the bottom feeders of the institution in our year. “O” levels, baring a few exceptions, were being fazed out and we were all slated to become part of the first of our generation to take GCSE’s.

Those of us that weren’t particularly inclined towards the sciences and maths – under the new scheme – could opt to sit the standard exams, minus a paper or two perhaps, with the understanding that the highest grade we might aspire to would be and acceptable “C” and nothing above, the examiners taking a slightly more lenient approach to us. For most of us in the lowest stream the offer was a no-brainer –  I certainly had no objection. – and the school thus taught us for the following three years with that objective in mind. I was ok in some aspects of physics and maths, but mostly I sweated and strained under the demands of the course. Hugh Tebay – a stern but kind and very humane person – taught me maths in my third year leading on to my exams in the summer of 1988. Being the school Master in Charge of Discipline – effectively second in line to the Headmaster – he was gruff and demanding of us, but I always felt a certain paternal warmth in his manner towards our set. He did what he could with us, us non scientists, and we went on to take our five part GCSE exams in maths with his blessing in June of ‘88. I had no ambitions beyond scraping through the exams with a pass and I suppose my manner was quite self-deprecating as I wasn’t all that confident that I would get my “C” grade. In our year we were about 150,and we all sat those same five papers, covering the various areas of the standard maths syllabus. I did get my “C” grade and was most grateful for it. Following the results, however, in the “post-mortem” meeting I had with Hugh Tebay, he pointed out a surprisingly high mark I had got for my Mental Arithmetic paper that placed me somewhere in the middle top twenties of the whole year. “How do you feel about that” he asked me with his penetrating gaze. “Well, sir, I suppose you must be rather surprised” I remember saying almost apologetically.  He looked at me for a moment before replying “In fact, Huntrods, I’m not surprised.” He gave me a grave look before breaking into a smile…and then for a moment or so he let me enjoy feeling rather good about myself.

I’ve had a strange relationship with numbers all my life. I retain more than a few random phone numbers – many going back to my childhood in the late seventies – and I’m very good with dates of all kinds so long as they matter to me or they are of historical or contextual interest. My love of History must have much to do with this. When I can be bothered I’ll do my sums, in my head, with relative ease and without needing or wanting the calculator app on my phone. But numbers, yes, seem too much like hard work to me. Being very much a generalist and an intuitive sort of character, the unequivocal absoluteness of numbers I suppose must repel me and go against my nature.

I think Maria’s paternal grandmother died in the first few days of August 1991. For some reason the 5th comes to mind, but I may well be wrong. In the year or so that I had come to know Maria’s family I think I had met the lady only once or twice but I remember a kind and soft spoken woman; quite slight and frail. I haven’t been back to rummage through these memories in a very long time and so the chronology of the events surrounding her death is confused and no longer clear to me, even as I run through it all again in my mind. In Portugal, the deceased are generally buried within a day or so.

Maria called me to give me the bad news. It was early in the morning I remember her being terribly upset. The funeral would be at the Basilica de Estrela that afternoon. I got myself into what it was I had at that time that passed for a sober, dark suit – a double-breasted charcoal affair of thick woolen weave I had inherited from my father and that was more suited to Northern European winters than to Iberian summers –  and got myself down to Lisbon as soon as I could. My motorbike had long since been stolen, then recovered to then be stolen again – this time for good – so I must have got myself down on the train. By the time I arrived there were scores and scores of people in appropriately sombre attire milling about outside on the steps of the church, below its magnificent baroque facade, spilling over on to the terrace that extends right of the entrance. The few that I knew by name I greeted quietly. Others whom I only knew by sight I acknowledged with a polite nod. The vast majority  whom I didn’t know, and who had no idea who I was, I discretely observed as I moved amongst them looking for a suitable place to park myself. I was new to funerals of any kind and not quite sure what I should do with myself other than to remain present and in the background. Maria’s large family and their significant inner circles were all inside, in the nave, but I made no attempts to join them for fear of invading their privacy at such a tender moment. I stood around outside on the steps, for what seemed like ages, talking quietly with the handful of people I felt most at ease with whilst I waited for my cue of what it was I should be doing next.  At some point the vigil came to an end and everyone in the basilica began to come out.  Maria and her parents, visibly emotional but composed, took me aside after a while and suggested I went with them for a coffee and something to eat. We got in the car, headed up the hill and stopped at a café on the corner where Ferreira Borges meets Rua Saraiva de Carvalho. In all these years I have never returned to that place, but the scene is etched in my mind as a fading photograph that someone might have taken of us from behind and slightly above where I was sitting. Maria sits to my left. Her father sits across the table from her, her mother opposite me. On the table, three coffees and four bottles of water and four glasses. In my mind’s eye we are frozen in this composition and nothing and no-one moves…except for the smoke drifting above our heads. That is all I retain. Whilst we were there, the three of them must have exchanged quiet words. I’m quite certain I said little.

Perhaps an hour or so later, at the entrance to the Cemitério dos Prazeres, I followed the tail end of mourners through the gates, following the flow left and down and then right and on towards the family tomb. At a certain point the mass of people contracted and stopped moving forward and I stayed put where I was as, I understand, the burial was taking place out of our sight behind other structures that blocked our view. There must have been silence as all this went on and I must assume that it was only once the many mourners, who’s backs I’d been looking at, began to turn towards me and  drift in my direction that I understood that it was all over.

I was standing outside the cemetery gates, feeling hot and crumpled and a little rung out, smoking a cigarette and thinking about how best to head back home to Sintra when Maria’s father came up to me and insisted I come home with them for a drink with other members of their family. Once back at theirs and in the living room I remember his gesture of breathing in as he straitened his back, I assume to shake off – if only for a moment – some of the weight and darkness of the day, before turning to me with kind but tired eyes to ask me if I might like a drink.  He mixed me a vodka and tonic and as he handed it to me he explained that the essence of the drink was all in the zest within the lemon rind. I still serve them as he taught me that day.