The first drops hit the windscreen as we pass the sign that says “Welcome to Cornwall”. It’s been more than a year since we were all last here, but I like to think it’s the same rain.
This particular retreat to my father-in-law’s cottage has been billed as a study break: the oldest one has final exams approaching; the middle one, his A-levels; the youngest, AS levels. It seemed like a good idea to remove them to a place with no TV, mobile signal, central heating or nightlife. There remains the remote risk they could get distracted by the outdoors, but I am assured we will not be troubled by good weather.
Nothing in the cottage appears to have changed, except for the arrival instructions: you have to jam a toothpick (provided) into the pump switch to make it stay on, and the fridge must be turned off at night to stop its contents freezing solid. I light the fire, and wait for my breath to stop being visible. The middle walks by staring at his iPad, which is emitting an incongruous sound.
“What’s that?” I say.
“Cricket highlights,” he says. “There’s Wi-Fi.”
“Ah,” I say. “Wait, what?”
“In there,” he says, pointing. “The password’s on the box.”
If the addition of wireless broadband has compromised the atmosphere of exile, the weather is trying hard to make up for it. It rains all night and through the morning. It rains steadily, intermittently, heavily, vertically and at a slant. In the late afternoon the clouds part to reveal a broad expanse of blue sky, and still it rains.
“Has anyone done any work today?” my wife says.
“Yes,” says the youngest one. He is hunched over his laptop, watching a YouTube video.
“I have,” I say, checking my email on my phone. She looks at the oldest one, who is staring into space and frowning. His phone is broken.
“What’s wrong with you?” she says.
“I don’t know what time is,” he says.
“It’s 5:30,” my wife says, pointing at the wall. “Although I wouldn’t necessarily trust that clock.”
“No,” he says. “I’m trying to figure out what time actually is.” My wife stares at him.
“Do your work,” she says.
“This is my work,” he says. My wife quickly turns to me.
“He’s trying to talk to me about time,” she says. “Do something.”
I sit up. The oldest one shows me a diagram he’s drawn on a sheet of paper – a rectangular box with a rod running through its centre, along the X-axis.
“So that’s distance,” he says, drawing an arrow. “And the past is that way.”
“OK,” I say. “Is this metaphysics?” I don’t trust the word in my mouth.
“Basically,” he says.
“And the rod is time?”
“No,” he says. “I’m the rod.”
“OK,” I say.
“The question is, why do we perceive the present as now? Why don’t we perceive the future as now?”
“Because it hasn’t fucking happened yet,” says the middle one, without looking up from his iPad.
“What he said,” I say.
“But that’s the thing – in some way, the future is already happening.”
“Should we watch a film?” I say.
The nature of time occupies us for the rest of the evening. After supper we huddle round the wood stove, staring into the flames.
“Time is space,” I say. “Space is time.”
“Sort of,” says the oldest one, beginning another diagram.
“Shut up about time,” my wife says.
“There are, like, an infinite number of universes,” says the youngest one, “where every possible outcome has happened.”
“So somewhere,” I say, “there’s a universe where it isn’t raining?”
“Yes,” says the oldest one. “We just can’t travel there.”
