“You’re in denial,” Olive whispered to him. “You know what happens to people in denial?”
Bertie turned round. “What?” he said. “What happens to people in denial?”
Olive looked at him in a superior way. She had clearly worried him and she was enjoying the power that this gave her. “They get lockjaw,” she said. “It’s well-known. They get lockjaw and they can’t open their mouth. The doctors have to knock their teeth out with a hammer to pour some soup in. That’s what happens.”
Bertie looked at Olive contemptuously. “You’re the one who 210 Bertie’s Invitation Is Considered should get lockjaw,” he whispered. “That would stop you saying all these horrid things.”
Olive stared at him. Her nostrils were flared and her eyes were wide with fury. Then she started to cry.
Miss Harmony looked up from the story. “What is the trouble, Olive?” she said. “What’s wrong, dear?”
“It’s this boy,” Olive sobbed, pointing at Bertie. “He says that he hopes that I get lockjaw.”
“Bertie?” said Miss Harmony. “Did you say that you hope that Olive got lockjaw?”
Bertie looked down at the floor. It was all so unfair. He had not started the conversation about lockjaw – it was all Olive’s fault, and now he was getting the blame.
“I take it from your silence that it’s true,” said Miss Harmony, rising to her feet. “Now, Bertie, I’m very, very disappointed in you. It’s a terrible thing to say to somebody that you hope they get lockjaw. You know that, don’t you?”
“What if you got lockjaw while you were kissing somebody?”
interjected Tofu. “Would you get stuck to their lips?”
Everybody laughed at this, and Tofu smirked with pleasure.
“That’s not at all funny, Tofu, Liebling,” said Miss Harmony.
“Then why did everybody laugh?” asked Tofu.
64. Bertie’s Invitation Is Considered Irene Pollock was late in collecting Bertie from school that afternoon. She had been preparing for her Melanie Klein Reading Group, which would be meeting that evening, and she had become absorbed in a particularly fascinating account of the Kleinian attitude to the survival of the primitive. Irene was clear where she stood on this point: there was no doubt in her mind but that our primitive impulses remain with us throughout our life and that their influence cannot be overestimated. This view of human nature, as being envious and tormented, was in Irene’s view obviously borne out by the inner psychic drama which we Bertie’s Invitation Is Considered
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all experience if only we stop to think about it. Irene thought that it was quite clear that we are all confronted by primitive urges – even in Edinburgh – and these primitive urges and fears make for a turbulent inner life, marked by all sorts of destructive phantasies).
The topic for discussion at the reading group that evening was a problematic choice, suggested by one of the more reticent members of the group. Indeed, this member was probably a borderline-Kleinian, given her sympathy for the approach of Anna Freud, and Irene wondered whether this person might not be happier out of the reading group altogether. Her ambiva-lence, she felt, was eloquently demonstrated by the topic she had suggested for discussion: Was Melanie Klein a nice person?
When Irene had first seen this topic she had expressed immediate doubt. What a naive question! Did she expect a genius of Melanie Klein’s stamp to be a simpering optimist? Did she expect benignity rather than creative turbulence?
Of course she knew what sort of things would be said. She knew that somebody was bound to point to the facts of Melanie Klein’s life, which were hardly edifying (to the bourgeois optimist). Somebody would point out that Melanie Klein started out life in a dysfunctional family and that from this inauspicious start everything went in a fairly negative direction. Indeed, she suffered that most serious of setbacks for those who took their inspira-tion from Vienna: her own analyst died. And then, when it came time for Melanie herself to die, her daughter, Melitta, unreconciled to her mother because of differences of psychoanalytical interpretation between them, gave a lecture on the day of her mother’s funeral and chose to wear a flamboyant pair of red boots for the occasion!
All of this would come out, of course, but Irene thought this was not the point. The real point was this: Melanie Klein was not a nice person because nobody’s nice. That was the very essence of the Kleinian view. Whatever exterior was presented to the world, underneath that we are all profoundly unpleasant, precisely because we are tormented by Kleinian urges.
It was these complex thoughts that were in the forefront of 212 Bertie’s Invitation Is Considered Irene’s mind when she collected Bertie that afternoon and brought him back to Scotland Street. Bertie seemed silent on the 23 bus as they made their way home, and this silence continued as they walked back along Cumberland Street and round the corner into Drummond Place. Irene, however, still busy thinking about Kleinian matters, did not notice this and only became aware of the fact that something was on Bertie’s mind when he came to her in her study and presented her with the crumpled piece of card that he had extracted from the pocket of his dungarees.
“What’s this, Bertie?” said Irene, as she took the invitation from him.
“I’ve been invited to a party,” Bertie said. “My friend, Tofu, has asked me.”
Irene looked at the invitation. There was an expression of faint distaste on her face.
“Tofu?”
“Yes,” said Bertie. “He’s a boy in my class. You spoke to his daddy once. He’s the one who wrote that strange book. Do you remember him?”
“Vaguely,” said Irene. “But what’s this about Fountainbridge and bowling? What’s that got to do with a birthday party?”
“Tofu’s daddy will take us bowling,” said Bertie, a note of anxiety creeping into his voice. “It’ll be Merlin, Hiawatha, Tofu and me. He’s taking us bowling to celebrate Tofu’s birthday.”
He paused, and then added: “It’s a treat, you see. Bowling’s fun.”
“It may be considered fun by some,” said Irene sharply. “But I’m not sure whether hanging about bowling places is the sort of thing that six-year-old boys should be doing. We have no idea what sort of people will be there. Not very salubrious people, if you ask me. And people will be smoking, no doubt, and drinking too.”
Bertie’s voice was small. “I won’t be drinking and smoking, Mummy. I promise. Nor will the other boys.”
Irene thought for a moment. Then she shook her head. “Sorry, Bertie, but no. It’s for Saturday, I see, and that means that you Stuart Intervenes
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would miss both Saturday yoga and your saxophone lesson with Lewis Morrison. You know that Mr Morrison is very impressed with your progress. You mustn’t miss your lessons.”
“But Mr Morrison’s a kind man,” said Bertie. “He won’t mind if I have my lesson some other time.”
“That’s not the point,” said Irene. “It’s a question of commitment – and priorities. If you start going off to these things every Saturday then you’ll end up missing far too much of the enriching things we’ve arranged for you. Surely you understand that, Bertie? Mummy’s not being unkind here. She’s thinking of you.”
Bertie swallowed. Unknown to his mother, he was experiencing a Kleinian moment. He was imagining a bowling alley
– probably the Fountainbridge one – with a set of skittles at the far end. And every skittle was painted to represent his mother!
And Bertie, a large bowling ball in his small hand, was taking a run and letting go of the ball, and the ball rolled forward and was heading straight for the set of Irenes at the end of the alley and – BANG! – the ball knocked all the skittles over, every one of them, right out, into the Kleinian darkness.