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that. There was even now a whole world of childish belief – lore and language – that survived the most determined rationalistic attempts to tame it. And those belief structures still seemed able to lay a claim to the juvenile mind, sending it off down ridiculous avenues of fantasy.
She called out to Bertie, who had skipped ahead and was just about to turn the corner. Hearing his mother’s voice, Bertie stopped, turned round, and then began to run back to her.
“I want to talk to you, Bertie,” said Irene. “We can talk as we walk along.”
Bertie looked crestfallen. He had planned to keep some distance between himself and his mother, in case anybody should think that he belonged to her. Now this would be impossible.
He sighed. What did she want to talk about? She would ask him questions, he was sure of that, and she would give him a lecture about bears. He would listen, of course, but if she was going to try to get him to tread on any lines, then the answer would be no. Bertie knew what happened if you trod on lines. Of course he understood that there was no question of bears; bears were just a metaphor for disaster, that’s all they were. But try to explain that to an adult – just try.
19. Leerie, Leerie, Licht the Lamps Irene looked down at Bertie as they walked slowly round the north-eastern sweep of Drummond Place.
“I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind, Bertie,”
she said. “You know how Mummy is, don’t you, with her intellectual curiosity? Silly Mummy! But Mummy does like to know what’s going on in her little boy’s head, that’s all.”
“I don’t mind,” Bertie muttered, crossing his fingers as he spoke. It was well known that if you crossed your fingers, you could lie with impunity. Would his mother cross her fingers in the police station? he wondered. Perhaps he would suggest it to her closer to the time.
58
Leerie, Leerie, Licht the Lamps
“I’ve been wondering where you get your ideas from,” Irene began. “I know that you get a lot of things from Daddy or from me.” (Mostly me, she thought. Thank heavens.) “And you learn a lot from your teacher at the Steiner School, of course. But you must also pick up some things from the other children. You do, don’t you?”
Bertie shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe,” he said. He thought of the other children he knew: Tofu, Hiawatha, Olive.
He was not sure if he learned much from any of them. Tofu knew virtually nothing, as far as Bertie could ascertain.
Hiawatha hardly ever said anything, and anyway he spoke with a curious accent that very few people could understand. And as for Olive, she was always imparting information to others, but it was almost always quite wrong. Bertie had been shocked to discover that Olive thought Glasgow was in Ireland. And she held this view although she had actually been there –
“Well, it seemed like it was in Ireland,” she had said in her own defence. And then she had said that a tiger was a cross between a lion and a zebra and had stuck to this position even after Bertie had pointed out that lions ate zebras and would therefore never get to know one another well enough to have Leerie, Leerie, Licht the Lamps
59
offspring. Olive had simply stared at him and said: “What’s that got to do with it?” And so they had left the subject where it stood.
“Perhaps you’ll tell me some of the things you pick up from other children,” coaxed Irene. “Do you know any counting rhymes, for example?”
“Counting rhymes?” asked Bertie.
“Yes,” said Irene. “Here’s one that I remember. Shall I tell it to you?”
“If you must,” muttered Bertie.
“Very well,” said Irene. “Here we go: Bake a pudding, bake a pie,
Send it up to Lord Mackay,
Lord Mackay’s not at home,
Send it to the man o’ the moon.
The man o’ the moon’s making shoes,
Tippence a pair,
Eery, ary, biscuit, Mary,
Pim, pam, pot.”
Bertie looked at his mother. Then he looked away again. In his astonishment, he had almost trodden on a line. He would have to be more careful in future.
“So,” said Irene jauntily. “Do you know anything like that?”
Bertie stopped and looked up at his mother. “I know some rhymes, Mummy. Is that what you want to know?”
“Yes,” said Irene. “You tell them to me, Bertie, and I’ll tell you if I knew them when I was a little girl. A lot of these things are very old, you know.”
“Postie, postie, number nine,” said Bertie suddenly. “Tore his breeks on a railway line!”
“Well!” exclaimed Irene. “Poor postie! I don’t believe I know that one, Bertie. How interesting!”
“Leerie, leerie, licht the lamps,” continued Bertie. “Lang legs and crookit shanks.”
“My goodness!” said Irene. “That’s remarkable. I suspect that’s a very old one. The leerie was the lamplighter, Bertie. We don’t have lamplighters any more, and yet there you are still 60
Leerie, Leerie, Licht the Lamps
using that rhyme in the playground. Isn’t that interesting, Bertie?
It shows the persistence of these things.”
Bertie nodded. “Here’s another one, Mummy,” he said.
“There was an old man called Michael Finigin He grew whiskers on his chinigin
The wind came up and blew them inigin Poor old Michael Finigin, begin igin.”
Irene clapped her hands in delight. “Oh yes, Bertie! I remember that. And there’s more!
There was an old man called Michael Finigin Climbed a tree and hurt his shin igin Tore off several yards of skin igin
Poor old Michael Finigin, begin igin.”
Bertie frowned. “Poor Michael Finigin,” he said. “Nothing went right for him, did it, Mummy?”
“No,” said Irene. “A lot of these things are very cruel, Bertie?
People laugh at cruelty, don’t they? We think that we don’t, but we do. Just listen to the jokes that people tell one another.
They’re all about misfortune of one sort or another. And people seem to find misfortune funny.”
“And it wasn’t funny for Michael Finigin,” observed Bertie.
“No,” said Irene. “There are lots of people for whom it’s not funny. Not funny at all.”
They had now reached the end of London Street and were not far from the East New Town Nursery School, where Bertie had once been enrolled. Irene had said nothing about the nursery school on this trip, hoping that Bertie had forgotten all about the trauma of his earlier suspension. But she noticed now that he was looking nervously in the direction of the school, and she feared that painful memories were rising in his mind.
“You used to go to nursery school there, Bertie,” she said. “A long time ago. But we don’t have to think about that any more.
We’ve moved on.”
Bertie looked down the road that led to the nursery school.
He had been happy there, and he could never understand why they had suspended him. That woman, Miss MacFadzean, had encouraged them to express themselves, and that was all he had Truth and Truth-Telling in Gayfield Square 61
been doing. It was really rather unfair. He looked at his mother, and reached for her hand. Poor Mummy! he thought. She has such strange ideas in her head, but she really means well, in a funny sort of way. And here she was getting excited about a few peculiar old rhymes that he had seen in Iona and Peter Opie’s book The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren. Bertie had found a copy in the house and had read it from cover to cover.