knew everything about him, but she did not know as much as she imagined. That gave him great satisfaction. Ignorant Mummy, he thought, with relish.
Mummy in the Dark!
Now, standing in the doorway, Irene looked down at Bertie and smiled. “It’s time for yoga,” she said brightly. “If we hurry, we might be able to have a latte on the way down there.”
Bertie took a deep breath. He did not want to go to yoga.
He did not like to lie with his stomach on the ground and his back arched and pretend to greet the morning sun. Nor did he want to take a deep breath and hold it while the yoga 136
teacher counted up to twenty-five. He did not see the point of that at all.
“I don’t really like yoga,” he said quietly. “Couldn’t I give it up and stay at home?”
Irene looked at him sharply. “Of course you like yoga, Bertie.
Of course you like it.”
“I don’t,” he said. “I hate it.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “You can’t hate yoga. One doesn’t hate yoga. And you had better hurry up. At this rate we’re never going to get there.”
Bertie sighed, and pulled himself up off his bed.
“Are you sending me somewhere, Mummy?” he asked.
Irene raised an eyebrow. “Why do you ask, Bertie?”
“Because I want to know,” said Bertie. “I want to know what’s going to happen to me.”
“Well, I do have a little plan for you, Bertie,” said Irene. “But this is not the time to discuss it.”
Bertie looked at her. And I have my own little plan, he said to himself. You don’t know about it, you horrible old . . .
He stopped. He did not want to think that way about his mother. He wanted to love her; he really wanted to. But it was proving difficult.
Bertie carried the Watson’s blazer to school folded up and stuffed into the bottom of his rucksack. He was ready with an explanation for his mother, if she asked him why his bag looked so bulky, but Irene seemed preoccupied with something else that morning and paid little attention to Bertie as they boarded the bus together.
“Is something making you feel sad, Mummy?” he asked, as the bus toiled up the Mound.
Irene, who had been looking out of the window, turned to Bertie and smiled. “No, Bertie, Mummy’s not sad. Mummy’s thinking.”
137
“Thinking of what?” asked Bertie. “Of Dr Fairbairn?”
Irene caught her breath. “Why on earth should I be thinking of Dr Fairbairn?” she snapped. She had been thinking of him, of course, of his blue linen jacket to be exact, but she had not expected Bertie to guess this. Perhaps this was that extraordinary familial telepathy that she had read about somewhere. Could Bertie be psychic? she wondered. Not that such matters were anything more than a lot of weak-minded mumbo-jumbo. He had just guessed – that was all. He had been thinking of Dr Fairbairn himself – by sheer coincidence – and that had led him to attribute the thought to her – it was a common phenomenon, she reminded herself, the transfer of our states of mind to others.
Bertie said nothing. He wanted his mother to be happy, but it seemed to him that she herself was the obstacle to that. If only she would stop worrying about him; if only she would stop thinking about why people do things; if only she would accept people and things as they were. But he knew that it was hopeless to expect her to do this. If Irene stopped forcing him to do things, then what life would she have? She had very few friends, as far as Bertie could work out. There were some other women at the floatarium whom she liked to talk to, but she never saw them anywhere else and they never came to their flat in Scotland Street. In fact, nobody came to the flat in Scotland Street, apart from one of his father’s friends from the office, who came to play chess once a month. It was possible that his father had other friends at the office, but Bertie was not sure. He had asked him once, and had received a rather strange reply. “Friends, Bertie?
Friends? Mummy and I are friends, aren’t we? Do I need more friends than that?”
Bertie thought he did, but did not say so. One thing he was certain of was that he was not going to grow up to be like his parents. Once he was eighteen he would not go to a psychotherapist; he would not go floating; his room would have white walls, or even black perhaps, but certainly not pink; and he would never talk Italian. There were a great deal of changes in store, he thought.
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Irene walked Bertie from Bruntsfield to the school gate. Then she kissed him goodbye and Bertie watched for a few moments while she walked back up the street. Now it was time for action.
Glancing about to see that he was not being watched, Bertie darted down the first part of the school drive and then suddenly turned and ran into the school garden, making straight for a small shed which was propped up against the high stone wall that enclosed the school grounds. This was a shed which the gardener used for the storage of rakes and forks and other bits and pieces of equipment. Bertie had done his reconnaissance well, and knew that it was not kept locked. Now he opened it and slipped inside.
It took no more than a few minutes for Bertie to be transformed. In place of the crushed-strawberry dungarees and check shirt he was now regaled in a neat white shirt and tie, shorts that were just about the right colour, and the splendid new Watson’s blazer. His old clothes were bundled into his bag and tucked away underneath a rusty bucket which was sitting, inverted, on the ground. Then, glancing out of the cobweb-covered window to check that
