Harmon had called the Maths teacher down from his own school to Hartlepool in order to talk to him about Harry Keogh. It was the Monday following Keogh’s ‘examination’ and they had met at the Tech. Harmon lived close by and had taken the younger man home with him for a lunch of cold meats and pickles. His wife, knowing it was business, served the food then went shopping while the two men ate and talked. Harmon opened with an apology:
‘I hope it isn’t inconvenient for you, George, to be called away like this? I know Howard keeps you pretty busy up there.’
Hannant nodded. ‘No problem at all. “Himself is standing in for me this afternoon. He likes to take a crack at it now and then. Says he “misses” the classroom. I’m sure he’d swap that study of his – and the admin that goes with it – for a classroom full of boys any time!’
‘Oh, he would, he would! Wouldn’t we all?’ Harmon grinned. ‘But it’s the money, George, it’s the money!
And I suppose the prestige has a little to do with it, too. You’ll know what I mean when you’re a “head” in your ‘own right. Now then, tell me about Keogh. You’re the one who discovered him, aren’t you?’
‘I think it’s truer to say he discovered himself,’ Hannant answered. ‘It’s as if he’s only recently woken up to his town potential. A late starter, so to speak.’ ‘But one who’s all set to overtake the rest of the runners in a flash, eh?’
‘Ah!’ said Hannant. Since Harmon hadn’t yet said : anything about the results of Keogh’s tests, he had half-feared that the boy had failed. Being called down here had reassured him a little, and now Harmon’s remark about Keogh ‘overtaking the rest’ had clinched it. ‘He passed then?
‘Hannant smiled.
‘No,’ Harmon shook his head. ‘He failed – miserably! ‘ The English paper let him down. He tried hard, I believe, but-‘
Hannant’s smile faded. His shoulders slumped a little. ‘ – but I’m taking him anyway,’ Harmon finished, grinning again as Hannant’s wide eyes came up once more to meet his. ‘On the strength of what he did with the other papers.’ ‘What he did with them?’
Harmon nodded. ‘I admit that I gave him the most difficult questions I could find – and he made mincemeat of them! If he has any fault at all, I’d say it was his unorthodox approach – if that in itself is a fault. It’s just that he seems to dispense with all the customary ‘ formulae.’
Hannant nodded, made no comment, thought: / know exactly what you mean! And when he saw that Harmon was waiting, he said out loud, ‘Oh, yes – he does that.’
‘I thought it might just be Maths,’ said the other, ‘but it was just the same with the other paper. Call it “IQ” or “spatial” or whatever, it’s mainly designed to test the potential of the intellect. I found his answer to one of the questions especially interesting; not the answer itself, you understand, which was absolutely correct anyway, but the way he arrived at it. It concerned a triangle.’
‘Oh, yes?’ Ah! Trig, Hannant thought, forking a piece of chicken into his mouth. / wondered how he’d do with that.
‘Of course, it could have been solved with simple trigonometry,’ (Harmon had almost read his mind,) ‘or even visually – it was that simple. Indeed it was the only simple question in the batch. Here, let me show you:’
He pushed his plate aside, took out a pen and sketched on a paper napkin:
‘Where AD is half AC, and AE is half AB, how much greater is the larger triangle than the smaller?’ Hannant dotted the diagram so:
and said: four times greater. Visual, as you said.’
‘Right. But Keogh simply wrote down the answer. No dotted lines, just the answer. I stopped him and asked: “How did you do that?” He shrugged and said: “A half times a half is a quarter – the smaller triangle is one quarter as great as the big one.'”
Hannant smiled, shrugged. ‘That’s typical of Keogh,’ he said. ‘It’s what first attracted me to him. He ignores formulae, jumps gaps in the normal reasoning process, leaps from terminal to terminal.’