Irene frowned. “Do you use a vacuum cleaner here? Have the children seen you vacuuming? Could that be it?”
“No,” said Christabel Macfadzean. “I never vacuum.”
“Perhaps you should. Perhaps the children should see you doing these ordinary tasks, dignifying them . . .”
“Well, may I suggest that we return to the subject of this . . .
this incident. We cannot tolerate this sort of thing, even if the insult is a piece of childish nonsense. What will the other children think?”
Irene sighed. “I’m sorry that you’re taking this so seriously,”
she said. “I thought that all that would be required would be for Bertie to be told not to do this sort of thing. There’s no need to over-react.”
Christabel Macfadzean turned to Irene. “Over-reaction, did you say? Is it over-reaction to nip juvenile vandalism in the bud?
Is it over-reaction to object to being called a vacuum cleaner? Is that an over-reaction?”
“But nobody will have understood it,” said Irene. “If the other children can’t read – nobody yet having taught them – then they won’t have understood. None of the children will know the first thing about it. They’ll assume that the writing is just another notice. No real harm’s been done.”
Christabel Macfadzean led the way back to the small office that she had at the front of the building. Gesturing for Irene to take the uncomfortable straight-backed chair before her desk, she herself sat down and rested her folded arms on a large white blotter.
“I very much regret this,” she said evenly, “but I’m going to have to suspend Bertie for a few days. It seems to me that the only way in which we can bring home to him the seriousness of what he has done is to suspend him. It’s the only way.”
Irene’s eyes opened wide. “Suspension? Bertie? Suspend Bertie?”
“Yes,” said Christabel Macfadzean. “If he’s as advanced as you 94
claim he is, then he will need to be punished in an advanced way.
It’s for his own good.”
Irene swayed slightly. The idea that Bertie – who was effectively doing the nursery a favour by attending it – the idea that he should be suspended was quite inconceivable. And that this pedestrian woman, with her clearly limited understanding of developmental psychology, should be sitting in judgment on Bertie – why, that was quite intolerable. It would be better to withdraw Bertie, thought Irene, than to leave him here. On the other hand, this nursery was convenient . . .
Irene closed her eyes and mentally counted from one to ten. Then she opened her eyes again and stared at Christabel Macfadzean. “I was proposing to take him out of nursery for a few days anyway,” she said. “He needs a bit of stimulation, you know, and I thought that I might take him to the museum and the zoo. He doesn’t appear to get much stimulation here, and that, incidentally, may be why he called you a vacuum cleaner.
It’s his way of signalling his boredom and frustration.”
“You can call it taking him out of school,” said Christabel Macfadzean. “I’ll call it a suspension.”
Irene did not wish to continue with the exchange. Fetching Bertie from the corner where he was playing with the train set, she retrieved his jacket and half-marched him out of the room.
“Bertie,” she said, as they walked back along London Street,
“Mummy is very, very cross with you for writing that Miss Macfadzean is a cow. You should not have said it. It’s not nice to call somebody a
“You do,” said Bertie.
The curious thought occurred to Irene, as she lay in her supporting Epsom salts solution, that they were both suspended.
Bertie was suspended from nursery over that ridiculous graffiti
95
incident, and she was suspended, almost weightless, in her flotation chamber. Her suspension was for no more than an hour, though, whereas Bertie was to be suspended for three days.
They had walked directly to the Floatarium from the nursery school. Little had been said, but Bertie had been left in no doubt that he was in disgrace. By the time they reached their destination, though, Bertie had been half- forgiven. Indeed, Irene had begun to smile – discreetly – over what had happened. It must have been an act of great self-liberation for him to climb onto one of the little chairs and write that message across the wall. And of course what he had written was accurate; indeed, it showed a real understanding of what was what to write an observation like that.
He had to learn, though, that some things are best kept to oneself. This was a difficult thing for children to master, she thought, as they were naturally frank. Duplicity and hypocrisy came later, instilled by adults; thus we learn to hide, to say one thing and mean another, to clad ourselves with false colours.
Irene reflected on these things as she lay in the darkness of the tank. Bertie had been left in the tank room with her, but not in a tank. He was seated on a chair with a colouring book which the proprietor of the Floatarium had thoughtfully provided for him. Of course, this would not be capable of diverting him, and he had rapidly abandoned it in favour of a magazine. Bertie had never seen the sense of colouring things in. Why bother?
