to get as far as Dundas Street. He did not wish to run away, having decided that he would sit his childhood out until that magical date when he turned eighteen, but the humiliation he had just suffered at the hands of his mother seemed to him now to justify a strong response. But he was not sure whether hiding with Harry would solve anything. What if Irene panicked when she found him missing and started to scream? Or what if she saw him going into the toilets and came in after him to drag him out? She was quite capable of doing that, he thought, and he imagined the scene if Irene went into the men’s room. He closed his eyes. He could not bear to think about it. “Too late,” muttered Harry rising to his feet. “Look out, here she comes. I’m taking off. See you!”
Irene, reaching the table, put down her cup of coffee and lowered herself into the chair beside her son. “It’s going to be very easy for you, Bertie,” she said. “I was talking to one of the other mummies at the bar, and she said that the conductor is a good friend of Lewis Morrison. So I’m sure that he’ll be kind to Mr Morrison’s pupils.”
“He may not know,” muttered Bertie.
“Of course he’ll know,” said Irene. “Naturally, I’m going to have a word with him beforehand. I’ll make sure that he knows just who you are.”
Bertie looked at the ground in despair. “Mummy,” he said.
“Please take me home. That’s all I’m asking you. Please just take me home.”
Irene leaned forwards. “Later, Bertie, carissimo,” she said.
“I’ll take you home after the audition. And that’s a promise.”
There were at least one hundred hopeful young musicians assembled in the hall for the orchestral audition. The young people ranged between the age of thirteen and eighteen, although there were one or two nineteen-year-olds and Bertie, of course, who was six. The teenagers had been instructed to sit in the first five rows of seats at the front and, in the case of those with large instruments, the cellists, bass players and bassoonists, in a cluster of seats to the side of the stage. The auditions were by section, and the aspirants were free to wander out of the hall until their section was called, as long as they kept their voices down and did not allow the door to bang shut when they left or came in.
To his horror, Bertie found that his mother insisted on sitting next to him in the fourth row. Nobody else’s parents sat anywhere near them, he noted. Most of the parents sat at the back with their friends, or had remained in the bar. But Irene insisted, and Bertie sank down in his seat, trying to persuade himself that not only was she not there, but that neither was he. He had remembered reading somewhere that the best way of dealing with unpleasant moments was to try to imagine that one was somewhere else altogether. So he closed his eyes and conjured up a picture of himself in Waverley Station, watching the trains coming in, his friend Tofu at his side. Tofu had a large bar of 126
chocolate and was breaking off a piece and handing it to him.
And he felt happy, curiously happy, to be there with his friend, just by themselves.
He felt a nudge in his ribs. “We’ll be next,” whispered Irene.
“It’s woodwind next.”
“Shouldn’t I go on with the brass?” asked Bertie. “Maybe just after the trombones?”
“But you’re woodwind, Bertie,” said Irene reproachfully. “You know that the saxophone is technically woodwind.”
Bertie bit his lip. His mother’s insistence that he should audition even when there was no call for saxophones was perhaps the most embarrassing aspect of the entire experience. It was bad enough being six and trying to get into a teenage orchestra, but being six and a saxophonist, was even worse. Nobody else had brought a saxophone with them; everybody else, everyone, had a conventional orchestral instrument with them.
At a signal from a woman who was helping the conductor, a small knot of oboists made their way to the front of the hall.
“You get up now, Bertie,” said Irene. “Woodwind now.”
Bertie did nothing. His mother was giving him no alternative. He did not want to put his plan into effect, but she really left him with no choice.
“Come on,” said Irene, rising to her feet and pulling Bertie up by the straps of his pink dungarees. “I’ll come with you.”
“Please, Mummy,” pleaded Bertie. “Please . . .”
It was to no avail. Virtually frogmarched to the front, Bertie approached the conductor at his table.
“Tenor saxophone,” said Irene, pushing Bertie forward.
“Bertie Pollock.”
The conductor looked up. “Saxophone?” he said. “Well, I’m afraid . . .”
“His sight-reading is excellent,” said Irene. “And he can trans-pose very well, too. He can easily go from B flat to E flat, so you can let him play the tenor horn part. I don’t see any tenor horns around. Bertie can fill that gap for you.”
“Well,” said the conductor. “It’s a different timbre, you know.
I’m not sure that . . .”
“Or the euphonium part,” went on Irene. “I take it that you want a bit of slightly richer bass. I don’t see any tuba players.
You don’t want to sound thin, do you?”
The conductor exchanged a glance with the woman beside him, who was smiling, lips pursed. Irene shot the woman a warning glance.
