“And very well suited to early music,” said Bertie brightly.
There was a silence, and the teacher spun round. “What was that, Bertie? Did you say something,
54
“I said that the recorder is very well suited to playing Renaissance music,” he said. “Italian music, for example.
“She said it goes
“Or does it go
All the children thought this was extremely funny, and laughed loudly. Tofu smiled modestly.
The teacher sighed. “We don’t laugh at things like that,” she said softly. “We must learn that such things just aren’t funny.
Tofu, darling, remember that we’re quite grown-up now. And you, Bertie, what an interesting thing to say. Can you play the recorder already?”
“A bit,” said Bertie. “The fingering isn’t all that hard. It’s easier than playing the saxophone.”
“Sexophone?” said Tofu, smiling at the resultant giggles.
The teacher glared at him. “Bertie said ‘saxophone’, Tofu.
Perhaps you did not hear him correctly.” She turned to Bertie.
“And do you play the saxophone, Bertie?”
“Yes,” said Bertie. “But I don’t have it with me.”
“No,” said the teacher. “So I see. Well, I’m sure that we shall all have the chance to hear you playing the saxophone some time soon. The saxophone, boys and girls, was invented by a man called Arthur Sax, a Frenchman. He made many beautiful brass instruments.”
“Adolf Sax,” corrected Bertie politely. “And he was Belgian.”
The teacher looked at Bertie, and then at Tofu, who had started to tickle the girl sitting next to him.
“Tofu, dear,” she said firmly. “Girls don’t like being tickled.”
“Oh don’t they?” said Tofu. “I know lots of girls who like being tickled. They like it a lot.”
The teacher was silent. It was time for some diversion, she felt. She crossed the room to the cupboard and opened the door.
The children watched closely as she took out a pile of old copies of the
“Now you’ll know what this is,” she said.
A forest of hands shot up. “It’s the
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“Well done,” she said. “And can anybody name another newspaper for me?”
There was complete silence. The children looked at one another in puzzlement. Then Bertie spoke. There were plenty of other newspapers, and he had read a number of them. There was the
“The
The teacher looked at him. “Perhaps,” she said. Then, turning to the class in general she gave them their instructions. They were to fold the
Picking up a copy herself, she demonstrated the folding and the cutting. “There,” she said, holding up the result. “Look at that long line of little men, all holding hands.”
“Gays,” said Tofu.
The teacher put down her paper cut-out. “Tofu, dear, if you wouldn’t mind just going and standing outside the door for five minutes. And while you’re there, you can think about the things that you say.”
“Shall I hit him for you?” asked Larch, a burly boy with a very short hair-cut.
“No,” said the teacher quickly, and then, under her breath so that nobody might hear, she muttered: “Not just yet.”
When the time came for the morning interval, Bertie went out into the playground by himself. He was aware of the fact that he alone was wearing dungarees and he smarted with embarrassment. Tofu, for example, had electric sneakers that sent out small pulses of light each time he took a step, and even Merlin, who was wearing obviously home-made sandals and a rainbow-coloured jacket, at least had normal trousers.
Bertie felt miserable: everybody else seemed to have made a friend already, or even more than one friend. Tofu had a knot of four or five others around him, even including somebody from one of the classes above. Bertie had nobody, so when 56
Tofu came up to him a few minutes later, he had nobody to defend him.
