“How about twenty?” said Paddy.
Bertie thought for a moment. Twenty pounds was a great deal of money, but he was sure that Paddy would do everything he said he would, and this was an important plan after all. “All right,” Bertie said. “You can keep twenty pounds.”
“Good,” said Paddy. “Give me the card then, and tell me your number.”
Bertie reached into his pocket and took out his bank card.
“You’ll be able to remember the number easily,” Bertie said. “It’s the date of Mozart’s birth.”
Paddy stared at Bertie. “Who?”
“Mozart.”
Paddy continued to stare. “Who did he play for?” he asked.
Bertie laughed. That was very funny. Then he stopped.
Perhaps Paddy did not get the joke.
Paddy was as good as his word. The day after the fortuitous encounter of the two boys in their newly- established meeting place in Drummond Place Gardens, Bertie found a neatly-wrapped parcel in Aitken and Niven livery waiting for him under the appointed bush. He had obtained leave from Irene to go out and play in the gardens for fifteen minutes or so prior to his yoga class in Stockbridge, and had used the time to locate the parcel. Fumbling with the string which Paddy had tied about the package, he tore it open and gazed in wonder at the contents.
There before him was a pristine, plum-coloured Watson’s blazer, complete with tie and, tucked neatly into the top pocket of the blazer, his now somewhat depleted junior saver bank card.
Since it was going to be very important to ensure that Irene did not see the blazer, Bertie had to be careful in smuggling it 134
back into the flat. This proved to be easier than he had expected; Irene was on the telephone when he let himself in and he was able to slip along the corridor, into his room, and bundle the blazer under the bed. It was easy, but it was dangerous nonetheless, and he felt his heart beating loud within him as he stood at his door and listened for a few moments to his mother’s conversation. No, she had not heard; she suspected nothing.
Irene’s voice drifted down from the other end of the flat. “Of course there’s no question but that he can manage,” she said.
“He’s very advanced, you know.”
Bertie winced. She was talking about him – again. And what was this that he was advanced enough to do? Certainly not rugby.
There was a silence as the voice on the other end of the telephone said something. Then Irene spoke again. “His age? What’s his age got to do with it?”
Again a silence. Then Irene’s response: “Well, that’s a completely absurd rule. Bertie happens to be not quite six yet, but he has the intellectual ability of a boy way, way beyond that.
There are many eighteen-year-olds who are quite a bit behind him, you know. Bertie could go to university if he wanted to.”
Bertie felt a cold knot of fear grow within him, an emptiness in his stomach. She was going to send him off to university now before he even had the chance to go to primary school! It was so unfair. He would have to leave home and live in a hall of residence and make his own meals. And there would be no boys of his own age at university; everybody would be eighteen, or even older. And the other students would laugh at his dungarees – he knew they would. He would be the only person at university made to wear dungarees.
“Yes,” said Irene. “I really mean that. He could easily manage a degree. His Italian, for example, is already fluent. No, I am not hot-housing him, as you put it – and that’s a ridiculous term anyway. There is such a thing as natural intellectual curiosity, you know.”
The voice at the other end must have spoken at some length, as Irene was silent for several minutes. Then, somewhat abruptly, she said goodbye and rang off.
135
Bertie withdrew into his room and closed the door. He lay down on his bed and stared at the ceiling. It was the one white surface in his otherwise pink room, as his mother had been unwilling to stand on a ladder to paint it when she had painted the rest of the room. He stared at his walls. He was sure that Paddy did not have a pink room, nor Jock, the friend he had almost made and who would have been his blood brother had his mother not intervened. They lived in normal rooms, with model cars and footballs and objects of that sort. They did not have mothers like his, who called his room his space.
Suddenly, the door opened, and Irene stood in the doorway.
Bertie wished that she would knock before she came into his room, and had once asked her to do this, but she had just laughed. “Now, now Bertie! Do you seriously want me to knock before I come into your space? Why would you want that?”
“Because it’s polite,” said Bertie. “That’s what you should do before you go into another person’s space. You should knock.”
“But remember: I’m Mummy,” said Irene. “And you’re Bertissimo. You have no secrets from Mummy, do you, Bertie?”
Bertie had looked down at the floor and thought about his secrets. Yes, he did have secrets, and he would like to have more.
His mother did not know about his secret thoughts, his thoughts of freedom. She did not know about his plan, which was now getting so close to fruition. And it was good that she did not know any of this. She thought that she
