it was safe to go out, Bertie opened the door of the shed and ran the short distance to the school gate.
139
It was now time to bring the first stage of the plan to comple-tion. From the pocket of his new blazer, Bertie extracted a neatly written note which he had forged the previous evening. Looking around for a familiar face, he found Merlin, one of the boys in his class.
“Please give this note to Miss Harmony,” Bertie said, thrusting the envelope into Merlin’s hands. “Don’t say it was me who gave it to you. Just leave it on her desk.”
Merlin looked at the envelope and then at Bertie. “Why are you wearing that funny outfit?” he asked.
“I just am,” said Bertie.
Merlin shrugged, brushing a speck of dust off the shoulder of his rainbow-coloured jacket. “I suppose you’ve got the right to be weird,” he said.
Bertie thanked him and then quickly went out of the gate and began to make his way round the corner to George Watson’s College. As he walked, he thought of the contents of the letter which he had just entrusted to Merlin. He was good at imitating his mother’s writing, and he thought that he had made a good job of it. “Dear Miss Harmony,” he had written. “Unfortunately my son, Bertie, has contracted an infectious disease and will have to be away from school for some time. I would have come to speak to you about this personally, but I was concerned about passing the disease on to you, in case I have it myself. Please do not worry about Bertie, as he is perfectly happy and will surely be returned to good health in due course. He is being treated with steroids, as are my husband and I, as a precaution.
Yours sincerely, Irene Pollock.”
Bertie had been very pleased with this wording and thought that it might work, particularly in view of the medical detail at the end. The mention of an infectious disease, he reasoned, would surely keep the school from contacting his mother, as schools have to be very careful about infections. So if all went according to plan he could simply keep his Watson’s uniform in the shed and change every morning. There were so many children milling about that nobody would notice anything, and Watson’s, he understood, was a very large school. In a large school like that none of the 140
teachers would notice one extra boy, he felt, and there was no reason why he could not get his entire education there.
He arrived at the Watson’s gate. Now, he thought, I must just act as if I belong. I must not act suspiciously. I must be confident.
Bertie swaggered up the drive to the school.
Once he had entered the portals of George Watson’s College, it was simple matter to find a suitable class. Prominently displayed on the walls were signs indicating which class was which, and Bertie merely followed one that pointed in the direction of Primary One. Once there, he slipped into the classroom with a couple of other boys.
“Is there a spare desk?” he whispered to one of them. “I’m new here.”
The other boy pointed towards the back of the classroom.
“That’s one’s empty,” he said. “Somebody was sitting there, but he went away after only one day. I think he got lost in the corridor.”
Bertie glanced at the desk. It was ideal for his purposes, as he did not want to draw undue attention to himself. Thanking his new classmate, he made his way to the back of the room and sat himself down at the desk. After a short while the teacher arrived and the class settled down to the task of copying out letters along a straight line. While the pupils were engaged in this, the teacher moved between the rows of desks, stopping to comment on the work of each child. Bertie sat quite still, staring down at the piece of paper on his desk and hoping that the teacher would stop before she reached him. But she did not, and he looked up to see her staring down at him, a surprised expression on her face.
“Are you in the right room, dear?” she asked kindly. “Have you got a little bit mixed up?”
Bertie looked up at her and swallowed. “I’ve been transferred,”
he said. “I was over there, and now I’m here.” He pointed vaguely in the direction of the corridor.
141
“Surely not,” said the teacher. “Tell me: what’s your name?”
“Bertie,” he whispered. “Bertie Pollock.”
“Well, I think that there must be a bit of a mix-up,” said the teacher. “I’ll check with the office later on. Perhaps they’ve just forgotten to tell me.”
“Yes,” said Bertie quickly. “That’s probably what’s happened.
This is such a big school. It must be difficult to keep track.”
The teacher looked at Bertie with curiosity. “Well, yes, I suppose it is a big school. But people usually end up in the right place. I’m sure that we’ll sort it all out. Don’t you worry about it!”
When playtime came, Bertie made his way out of the room as quickly as he could. He was not sure whether he would go back into that particular class, as the teacher would presumably discover quite soon that he was not meant to be there. It might be better, he thought, to try another class, perhaps one with a less nosy teacher, if there was one.
He went out and stood at the side, watching the games that were developing around him. Children were dashing about, shouting at one another, enjoying themselves, but nobody asked Bertie to join in. Bertie looked down at the ground; there did not seem to be much difference between Watson’s and Steiner’s so far; perhaps the whole plan was not such a good idea after all. But then he saw him, and his heart gave a leap. Yes, there was Jock;
