It’s his way of signalling his boredom and frustration.”
“You can call it taking him out of school,” said Christabel Macfadzean. “I’ll call it a suspension.”
Irene did not wish to continue with the exchange. Fetching Bertie from the corner where he was playing with the train set, she retrieved his jacket and half-marched him out of the room.
“Bertie,” she said, as they walked back along London Street,
“Mummy is very, very cross with you for writing that Miss Macfadzean is a cow. You should not have said it. It’s not nice to call somebody a vacca.”
“You do,” said Bertie.
37. At the Floatarium
The curious thought occurred to Irene, as she lay in her supporting Epsom salts solution, that they were both suspended.
Bertie was suspended from nursery over that ridiculous graffiti At the Floatarium
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incident, and she was suspended, almost weightless, in her flotation chamber. Her suspension was for no more than an hour, though, whereas Bertie was to be suspended for three days.
They had walked directly to the Floatarium from the nursery school. Little had been said, but Bertie had been left in no doubt that he was in disgrace. By the time they reached their destination, though, Bertie had been half-forgiven. Indeed, Irene had begun to smile – discreetly – over what had happened. It must have been an act of great self-liberation for him to climb onto one of the little chairs and write that message across the wall. And of course what he had written was accurate; indeed, it showed a real understanding of what was what to write an observation like that.
He had to learn, though, that some things are best kept to oneself. This was a difficult thing for children to master, she thought, as they were naturally frank. Duplicity and hypocrisy came later, instilled by adults; thus we learn to hide, to say one thing and mean another, to clad ourselves with false colours.
Irene reflected on these things as she lay in the darkness of the tank. Bertie had been left in the tank room with her, but not in a tank. He was seated on a chair with a colouring book which the proprietor of the Floatarium had thoughtfully provided for him. Of course, this would not be capable of diverting him, and he had rapidly abandoned it in favour of a magazine. Bertie had never seen the sense of colouring things in. Why bother?
Irene’s mind wandered. It was completely quiet within the tank, and the absence of sensory distraction induced a profound sense of calm. One did not feel confined by the walls of the tank; rather, one felt weightless and without boundary, independent of any physical constraint, freed of the attachment that came with gravity. I could lie here forever, thought Irene, and forget about the world and its trials.
Her sense of detachment was suddenly interrupted by a knocking on the side of the tank.
“Bertie?”
A muffled voice came from outwith. “Irene?”
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At the Floatarium
“Yes, I’m here, Bertie. In the tank, as you know. I’m relaxing.
You can have a little go at the end.”
“I don’t want to float. I’ll drown.”
“Nonsense, darling. The specific gravity of the water is such that you can’t sink. You’ll like it.”
“I hate floating.”
Irene moved her hands gently in the water, making a slight splashing sound. This was rather irritating. Bertie was ruining the floating experience.
“Let Mummy float in peace a little longer, Bertie,” she called out. “Then we’ll go and have a latte. You can float some other time, if you want to. Nobody’s forced to float.”
There was silence for a moment and then a sudden shout that made Irene start.
“Non mi piace parlare Italiano! ”
“Bertie?” called out Irene. “What was that you said?”
“Non mi piace parlare Italiano! Non mi piace il sasofono! No! No!”
Irene sat up, banging her head on the top of the chamber.
Pushing open the lid, she looked out, to see Bertie standing defi-antly in the middle of the room, a ripped-up magazine on the floor before him.
“Bertie!” she exclaimed. “What is this? You’re behaving like a little boy! What on earth is wrong with you?”
“Non mi piace parlare Italiano!” shouted Bertie again. “I don’t like speaking Italian!”
Irene climbed out of the chamber and reached for her towel.
“This is complete nonsense,” she said. “You’re upset – quite understandably – about what happened. That’s all. You’ll feel better once we’ve had a nice latte. Italian’s got nothing to do with it. And I can’t understand why you should say you don’t like the saxophone. You love your saxophone.”
“No! No! ” shouted Bertie, stamping his feet on the ground.
His face was red with rage now, and his fists were clenching and unclenching.
“Bertie, just calm down,” said Irene. “If you want to talk, we can do so over latte. You mustn’t make a noise here in the Floatarium. There are other people floating.”
At the Floatarium
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“I hope they sink!” shouted Bertie.
Irene took a deep breath. “That’s a very, very nasty thing to say. What if somebody did sink? How would you feel then? You’d feel very bad, wouldn’t you?”
Bertie did not reply. He was looking down at the ground now, and Irene noticed that his shoulders were heaving. Bertie was sobbing, but in silence.
She reached forward and embraced him, hugging the little boy to her.
“You’ll feel better soon, Bertie,” she said. “That smelly nursery must be very boring for you. We’ll send you somewhere better. Perhaps St Mary’s Music School. You like their Saturday mornings, don’t you? There are some nice boys and girls there.
And you might even get into the choir and dress up, like the rest of the Episcopalians. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”
“No,” sobbed Bertie. “No.”
38. Mother/Daughter Issues
Barely a mile from the Floatarium, where Bertie was protesting, Sasha Todd, wife of Raeburn Todd ,was sitting down for morning coffee with her daughter, Lizzie. Sasha had chosen Jenners’
tea-room for this meeting, because Jenners made her feel secure, and had always done so. Other shops might come and go, and one or two parvenus had indeed recently set up in the city, but she, quite rightly, remained loyal to Jenners. There was nothing unsettling about Jenners, as she had cause to reflect when-ever she approached Edinburgh on a train from the west and saw the satisfying sign Jenners Depository. This signalled to the world that whatever one might find on the shelves of Jenners itself, there was more in the depository, round the back. This was reassuring in the most fundamental way.
There was nothing reassuring about Lizzie. She was twenty-three now, and had done very little with her life. At school she had been unexceptional; she had never attracted negative attention, but nor had she attracted any praise or distinction.
Her reports had been solid – “might get a B at Higher level, provided she puts in more work”; “almost made it to the second team this year – a solid effort” and so on. And then there had been three years at a college which gave her a vague, unspecified qualification. This qualification had so far produced no proper job, and she had moved from temporary post to temporary post, none of which seemed to suit her.
Both Sasha and Todd thought that marriage was the only solution.
“We can’t support her indefinitely,” said Todd to his wife.
“Somebody else is going to have to take on the burden.”