There before him was a pristine, plum-coloured Watson’s blazer, complete with tie and, tucked neatly into the top pocket of the blazer, his now somewhat depleted junior saver bank card.
Since it was going to be very important to ensure that Irene did not see the blazer, Bertie had to be careful in smuggling it 134 Irene’s Plan for Bertie
back into the flat. This proved to be easier than he had expected; Irene was on the telephone when he let himself in and he was able to slip along the corridor, into his room, and bundle the blazer under the bed. It was easy, but it was dangerous nonetheless, and he felt his heart beating loud within him as he stood at his door and listened for a few moments to his mother’s conversation. No, she had not heard; she suspected nothing.
Irene’s voice drifted down from the other end of the flat. “Of course there’s no question but that he can manage,” she said.
“He’s very advanced, you know.”
Bertie winced. She was talking about him – again. And what was this that he was advanced enough to do? Certainly not rugby.
There was a silence as the voice on the other end of the telephone said something. Then Irene spoke again. “His age? What’s his age got to do with it?”
Again a silence. Then Irene’s response: “Well, that’s a completely absurd rule. Bertie happens to be not quite six yet, but he has the intellectual ability of a boy way, way beyond that.
There are many eighteen-year-olds who are quite a bit behind him, you know. Bertie could go to university if he wanted to.”
Bertie felt a cold knot of fear grow within him, an emptiness in his stomach. She was going to send him off to university now before he even had the chance to go to primary school! It was so unfair. He would have to leave home and live in a hall of residence and make his own meals. And there would be no boys of his own age at university; everybody would be eighteen, or even older. And the other students would laugh at his dungarees – he knew they would. He would be the only person at university made to wear dungarees.
“Yes,” said Irene. “I really mean that. He could easily manage a degree. His Italian, for example, is already fluent. No, I am not hot-housing him, as you put it – and that’s a ridiculous term anyway. There is such a thing as natural intellectual curiosity, you know.”
The voice at the other end must have spoken at some length, as Irene was silent for several minutes. Then, somewhat abruptly, she said goodbye and rang off.
Irene’s Plan for Bertie
135
Bertie withdrew into his room and closed the door. He lay down on his bed and stared at the ceiling. It was the one white surface in his otherwise pink room, as his mother had been unwilling to stand on a ladder to paint it when she had painted the rest of the room. He stared at his walls. He was sure that Paddy did not have a pink room, nor Jock, the friend he had almost made and who would have been his blood brother had his mother not intervened. They lived in normal rooms, with model cars and footballs and objects of that sort. They did not have mothers like his, who called his room his space.
Suddenly, the door opened, and Irene stood in the doorway.
Bertie wished that she would knock before she came into his room, and had once asked her to do this, but she had just laughed. “Now, now Bertie! Do you seriously want me to knock before I come into your space? Why would you want that?”
“Because it’s polite,” said Bertie. “That’s what you should do before you go into another person’s space. You should knock.”
“But remember: I’m Mummy,” said Irene. “And you’re Bertissimo. You have no secrets from Mummy, do you, Bertie?”
Bertie had looked down at the floor and thought about his secrets. Yes, he did have secrets, and he would like to have more.
His mother did not know about his secret thoughts, his thoughts of freedom. She did not know about his plan, which was now getting so close to fruition. And it was good that she did not know any of this. She thought that she knew everything about him, but she did not know as much as she imagined. That gave him great satisfaction. Ignorant Mummy, he thought, with relish.
Mummy in the Dark!
Now, standing in the doorway, Irene looked down at Bertie and smiled. “It’s time for yoga,” she said brightly. “If we hurry, we might be able to have a latte on the way down there.”
Bertie took a deep breath. He did not want to go to yoga.
He did not like to lie with his stomach on the ground and his back arched and pretend to greet the morning sun. Nor did he want to take a deep breath and hold it while the yoga 136 Bertie Escapes!
teacher counted up to twenty-five. He did not see the point of that at all.
“I don’t really like yoga,” he said quietly. “Couldn’t I give it up and stay at home?”
Irene looked at him sharply. “Of course you like yoga, Bertie.
Of course you like it.”
“I don’t,” he said. “I hate it.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “You can’t hate yoga. One doesn’t hate yoga. And you had better hurry up. At this rate we’re never going to get there.”
Bertie sighed, and pulled himself up off his bed.
“Are you sending me somewhere, Mummy?” he asked.
Irene raised an eyebrow. “Why do you ask, Bertie?”
“Because I want to know,” said Bertie. “I want to know what’s going to happen to me.”
“Well, I do have a little plan for you, Bertie,” said Irene. “But this is not the time to discuss it.”
Bertie looked at her. And I have my own little plan, he said to himself. You don’t know about it, you horrible old . . .
He stopped. He did not want to think that way about his mother. He wanted to love her; he really wanted to. But it was proving difficult.
42. Bertie Escapes!
Bertie carried the Watson’s blazer to school folded up and stuffed into the bottom of his rucksack. He was ready with an explanation for his mother, if she asked him why his bag looked so bulky, but Irene seemed preoccupied with something else that morning and paid little attention to Bertie as they boarded the bus together.
“Is something making you feel sad, Mummy?” he asked, as the bus toiled up the Mound.
Irene, who had been looking out of the window, turned to Bertie and smiled. “No, Bertie, Mummy’s not sad. Mummy’s thinking.”
Bertie Escapes!
137
“Thinking of what?” asked Bertie. “Of Dr Fairbairn?”
Irene caught her breath. “Why on earth should I be thinking of Dr Fairbairn?” she snapped. She had been thinking of him, of course, of his blue linen jacket to be exact, but she had not expected Bertie to guess this. Perhaps this was that extraordinary familial telepathy that she had read about somewhere. Could Bertie be psychic? she wondered. Not that such matters were anything more than a lot of weak-minded mumbo-jumbo. He had just guessed – that was all. He had been thinking of Dr Fairbairn himself – by sheer coincidence – and that had led him to attribute the thought to her – it was a common phenomenon, she reminded herself, the transfer of our states of mind to others.
Bertie said nothing. He wanted his mother to be happy, but it seemed to him that she herself was the obstacle to that. If only she would stop worrying about him; if only she would stop thinking about why people do things; if only she would accept people and things as they were. But he knew that it was hopeless to expect her to do this. If Irene stopped forcing him to do things, then what life would she have? She had very few friends, as far as Bertie could work out. There were some other women at the floatarium whom she liked to talk to, but she never saw them anywhere else and they never came to their flat in Scotland Street. In fact, nobody came to the flat in Scotland Street, apart from one of his father’s friends from the office, who came to play chess once a month. It was possible that his father had other friends at the office, but Bertie was not sure. He had asked him once, and had received a rather strange reply. “Friends, Bertie?