Stuart was defeated. It had become perfectly obvious to him that Lard O’Connor had ordered the stealing of a car for him and its fitting up with false number-plates. And once he had discovered that, he should have gone straight to the police and told them what had happened. But he had not done that because he had been frightened. He had been frightened of what Lard O’Connor would do to him when he discovered that Stuart had reported him. So he had taken the easy way out and done nothing, denying the problem, hoping that it would go away.
Irene sat down. “Now look,” she said. “We must settle this like sensible adults. We have several problems here, haven’t we?
We’ve got this problem of our car. And then we’ve got a problem
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of your interfering with Bertie’s upbringing. Those are our two problems, aren’t they?”
Stuart nodded. He felt miserable. He would have to abandon this wretched attempt to do things for himself.
“So,” said Irene, her voice low and forgiving. “So, what you need to do, Stuart, is to let me sort everything out. You don’t have to worry. I’ll handle everything. But, as a quid pro quo, you just behave yourself. All right?”
Stuart nodded. He was about to say: yes, it was all right, but then he remembered the trip on the train with Bertie and what he had said to him. So now he looked Irene in the eye. “No,”
he said. “It’s not all right.”
“Six years ago,” said Stuart, “we conceived a child, a son . . .”
Irene interrupted him. “Actually, I conceived a son,” she said.
“Your role, if you recall the event, was relatively minor.”
Stuart stared at her. “Fathers count for nothing then?”
When she replied, Irene’s tone was gentle, as if humouring one who narrowly fails to understand. “Of course I wouldn’t say that. You’re putting words into my mouth. However, the maternal role is undoubtedly much more significant. And when it comes down to it, women do most of the work of child-rearing.
They just do. Who takes Bertie to Italian? Who takes him to yoga, to school? Everywhere in fact? I do.” She paused. “And whom do I see there, at these various places? Not other fathers.
Mothers, like me.”
Stuart took a deep breath. “That’s part of the problem. Bertie doesn’t want to go to Italian lessons. He hates yoga. He told me that himself. He said that it makes him feel . . .”
She did not let him finish. “Oh yes? Oh yes? And where would you take him then? Fishing?”
Stuart smiled. “Yes, I would. I would take him fishing.”
“Teach him to kill, in other words,” said Irene.
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“Fishing is not killing.”
“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
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