“Oh yes? So the fish survives?”
Stuart hesitated. “All right, it’s killing. But . . .”
“And that’s what you want to teach him to do! To kill fish!”
Stuart looked out of the window. The evening sky was clear, bisected on high by the thin white line of a vapour trail. And at the end of the trail, a tiny speck of silver, was a plane heading west; a metaphor for freedom, he thought, even if the freedom at the end of a vapour trail was a brief and illusory one.
“I want him to have some freedom to be a little boy,” he said.
“I want him to be able to play with other boys of his age, doing the sort of thing they like to do. They like to ride their bikes.
They like to hang about. They like to play games, throw balls about, climb trees. They don’t like yoga.”
The roll-call of boyish pursuits was a provocation to Irene.
“What a perfect summary of the sexist concept of a boy,” she exclaimed. “And what about ungendered boys, may I ask? What about them? Do they like to climb trees and ride bikes, do you think?”
“I have no idea what ungendered boys wish to do,” answered Stuart. “In fact, I’m not sure what an ungendered boy is. But the whole point is that Bertie is not one of them. He wants to get on with being what he is, which is a fairly typical little boy.
He’s clever, yes, and he knows a lot. But the thing that you don’t seem able to understand is that he is also a little boy.
And he needs to go through that stage. He needs to have a boyhood.”
Irene was about to answer, but Stuart, in his stride now, cut her off. “For the last few years I think I’ve been very patient. I was never fully happy with the whole Bertie project, as you called it. I expressed doubts, but you never let me say much about them. You see, Irene, you’re not the most tolerant woman I’ve known. Yes, I’m sorry to have to say that, but I mean it. You’re intolerant.”
He paused for a moment, gauging the effect of his words on his wife. She had become silent, her face slightly crumpled. Her confidence seemed diminished, and for a moment Stuart thought The Gettysburg Address
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that he saw a flicker of doubt. He decided to press on with his address.
“Then you were surprised,” he went on, “when Bertie rebelled. Do you remember how shocked you were when he set fire to my copy of the Guardian while I was reading it? You do?
And here’s another thing, by the way: has it ever occurred to you that I was secretly pleased that he had done that? No? Well, let me tell you, I was. And the reason for that is that I was never consulted about what newspaper we should take in this house.
You never asked me. Not once. You never asked me if I would like to read the Herald or the Scotsman, or anything else. You just ordered the Guardian. And that’s because you can’t tolerate another viewpoint. Or . . . or is it because you’re trying so hard to be right-on, to have all the correct views about everything?
And in reality, deep underneath . . .”
Irene, who had been looking at the floor, now looked up, and Stuart, to his horror, saw that there were tears in her eyes.
“Now look,” he said, reaching out to touch her, “I’m sorry . . .”
“No,” she said. “You don’t have to be sorry. I’m the one who should be sorry.”
“I don’t know,” said Stuart. “I’m sure you were doing your best.”
Irene disregarded this. “I had so many ambitions for Bertie.
I wanted him to be everything that I’m not. What have I done with my life? What have I ever achieved? You have a job – you have a career. I haven’t got that. I’m just a woman who stays at home. Nothing I do ever changes the world. So I thought that with Bertie I could achieve something, at least have something that I could point to and call my creation. And now all that I’ve achieved is to get Bertie to hate me, and you too, it seems.”
“I don’t hate you,” said Stuart. “I admire you. I’m proud of you. I love you very much . . .”
“Do you? Do you really?”
“I do.” But he added: “I want you to loosen up. I want you to be yourself. I want you to let Bertie be himself. I want you to stop trying.”
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“And what if the self I should be is something quite different?”
asked Irene, dabbing at her cheek with a corner of tissue. “What then?”
“That doesn’t matter.” But he was intrigued by the possibilities. Was there a side to Irene that he had never guessed at? “Are you different?”
Irene nodded. “I’m quite conservative,” she said. “In my heart of hearts, I’m conservative. You see, Stuart, there’s something I’ve never told you before. You don’t know where I come from, do you?”
“Moray,” he said. “You come from Moray.”
“No,” said Irene. “Moray Place.” She paused, studying Stuart’s reaction. He seemed to be taking it fairly well, she thought; well there was more news for him.
“And there’s something else,” she said. “I’m pregnant.”
94. Bertie’s Dream
That night, Bertie was reluctant to switch off his bedside lamp, so happy was he just to gaze at his newly-painted walls. He was still convinced that the transformation of his room had been achieved through some form of supernatural intervention, although he was not sure what precise form this had taken. One possibility was that the room had been painted by angels, as Bertie had recently read an account of the activity of angels which stressed that the heavenly beings frequently undertook good deeds by stealth. But ultimately it did not matter in the least who, or what agency, had effected the change in his colour scheme; the important thing was that he no longer lived in a pink room, but in a white one.
After he had been lying on his bed for half an hour or so, gazing dreamily at the walls, his parents came through to say goodnight to him, as they always did. His father was first to appear, looking shocked and dazed, and then, after he had gone, his mother, whose eyes and cheeks struck Bertie as being puffy and red.
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“Are you all right, Mummy?” asked Bertie. “You haven’t been crying, have you?”
Irene bent down and kissed Bertie on his brow. “No, Bertie, carissimo. Not crying. Just re-evaluating.”
“Good-night, then,” said Bertie, snuggling down into his bed.
“Buona notte, Bertie,” said Irene. She reached out to turn off his light and stood at his bedside for a few moments, wistfully, looking down at her young son. Then she turned away and left the room, leaving the door very slightly ajar to allow in the small chink of light that Bertie liked to have at night, against the greater darkness.
Bertie closed his eyes and thought of what he might do now that he had a white room. He might invite Tofu round some afternoon and give him bacon sandwiches to eat in the room. There was always plenty of bacon in their fridge and Tofu wouldn’t mind too much if it were to be uncooked. And then he might even invite Olive. He wondered about her. He had felt very wounded when she had accused him of wishing lockjaw upon her, but he thought that it was now time for both of them to move on. He would forgive her for spreading rumours that she was his girlfriend (he had even heard that she had told people that they were actually engaged and that there would be a notice to that effect in the school magazine quite soon). And if he forgave her for that, then she should surely forgive him for the misunderstanding over lockjaw.
Lockjaw, of course, was not the only threat. Bertie had also heard about the dangers of cutting the skin between one’s thumb and forefinger. That, he was told, induced immediate blood-poisoning, unless, of course, one had ready access to a frog, in which case the rubbing of the frog on the wound was a quick and effective treatment. Merlin, the boy in his class who was consulted on all physical matters, had reliably informed them that there was a special tank at the New Royal Infirmary where frogs were bred for this precise purpose, along with leeches, which, he explained, doctors used to treat patients whom they particularly disliked. Olive, Tofu said, would definitely have a leech attached to her if she were for any reason to be admitted to the Royal Infirmary.