no idea of what it was like to be a boy. Irene thought that boys and girls were the
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same, or could be made to be the same. But that was wrong. If you were a boy, you just felt differently. It was as simple as that.
For his part, Bertie was prepared to accept that girls felt differently about many things. He understood, for example, what it was like to be Olive. He understood why Olive hated Tofu, and why Tofu hated Olive. He understood why Olive hated to have her pigtails pulled by boys and why she thought that Hiawatha’s socks smelled. Bertie could empathise with all this. Why, then, could his mother not see things from his point of view?
For a few moments after getting into the car after the party, Bertie had held his breath. But his mother, for come reason, did not seem to notice the jeans he was wearing and made no mention of them. When they arrived home, though, as they were walking up the stair at 44 Scotland Street, Irene suddenly let out a cry.
“Bertie!” she exclaimed. “What on earth are you wearing?”
Bertie’s heart gave a lurch. “Jeans, Mummy,” he said. “Do you like them?”
“Jeans!” shouted Irene. “Where are your dungarees? What have you done with your dungarees?”
Bertie swallowed hard. He had wondered whether he could tell her that they had been stolen and that he had been given the jeans by a kind passer-by, but he was a truthful boy and did not like the idea of lying, even to his mother. So he had decided that he would tell her exactly what happened and throw himself on her mercy. After all, she could hardly get the dungarees back now that property in them had legally passed to Tofu.
“I exchanged them with Tofu,” he said. “He liked my dungarees and so I gave them to him in exchange for his jeans. I’m sure that the jeans cost more than the dungarees did. So it was a pretty good bargain.”
Irene shook her finger at him. “You naughty, naughty boy, Bertie! Mummy is very, very displeased. Those were your best dungarees and you have no business letting some horrible rough boy, this Toffee person . . .”
“Tofu,” corrected Bertie.
“This Tofu person take them off you,” concluded Irene.
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“I’m sorry, Mummy,” said Bertie, looking down at the stairs below his feet. “I won’t do it again. I promise.”
“You certainly will not!” said Irene, as they resumed their climb up the stairs. “And the first thing we’ll do is telephone them when we get in and arrange to go round and collect your dungarees.”
“But we can’t do that,” wailed Bertie. “Everybody knows you can’t take things back. That’s the law, Mummy. You can’t take things back once you’ve given them away.”
“Nonsense,” snapped Irene. “Those dungarees cost a great deal of money and they still belong to you. Toffee had no business getting round you like that.”
Bertie hardly dared imagine the scene that was being prepared.
It would be the ultimate humiliation to be dragged round to Tofu’s house, to have to surrender his newly- acquired jeans, and to have to don, once more, his crushed-strawberry dungarees.
“Do I have to go?” he asked, his voice small and discouraged.
“Can’t we ask them just to drop them round?”
“No,” said Irene, firmly. “We have to face up to the consequences of our acts, Bertie. You have created this situation and now you are going to have to get out of it again – like a man.”
Bertie looked up at his mother. He wanted to act like a man
– oh, how he wanted to act like a man. But men did not have to wear crushed-strawberry dungarees. Men did not have to go to yoga and psychotherapy. Men did not have mothers like Irene.
And in the result, it was every bit as humiliating as he had feared.
His mother referred to Tofu as Toffee throughout the encounter, and she even shook a finger at him. Bertie wanted to die. He wanted to close his eyes and go to sleep and never have to open them and see crushed- strawberry dungarees again.
Dr Fairbairn sat at his desk, a small bottle of ink in his hands.
“Now, Bertie,” he said. “I thought that today we would do something different. This is a bottle of ink.”
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He held up the small black bottle and shook it in front of Bertie. Bertie, wide-eyed, stared at Dr Fairbairn. It must only be a matter of days, thought Bertie, before Dr Fairbairn was taken to Carstairs, and he wondered how they would do it.
Perhaps they could have men with a net drive into Edinburgh and they could throw the net over Dr Fairbairn while he was walking down Dundas Street in that blue jacket of his. Then they could bundle him into a van and take him off. Bertie had located Carstairs on a map and had seen that it was not far away.
It would not take them long to get him there, and they would probably arrive in time for tea, which would be nice.
Bertie swallowed. “Ink,” he said quietly. It was best not to say anything that would cause Dr Fairbairn to become more excited. Short words, uttered very softly, were probably safest.
“Yes,” said Dr Fairbairn. “Good boy. Black ink.”
