socks and their somewhat unpleasant odour. Would a letter to his mother be in order? she wondered. It was difficult to imagine how one might put the matter tactfully; parents were so sensitive about such things.
“Yes,” said Miss Harmony. “A lot has happened! First of all, you will notice that Merlin is no longer with us. We have said farewell to him, as he is going to be studying at home this year.”
This announcement was greeted with silence, as the children looked at one another. Then Olive put up her hand.
“He won’t be studying, Miss Harmony,” she said. “He told me. He said that his mother wanted him to help her with her weaving. He said that he was going to be getting paid for it.”
“Now, Olive,” said Miss Harmony. “We mustn’t always believe what others tell us, must we? Especially when they are having a little joke, as I am sure Merlin was. We all know that Merlin will be working very hard in his little home classroom and that his head will soon be bursting with knowledge.” She stared hard at Olive. “Yes, Olive, bursting with knowledge.”
Tofu now joined in. “I saw something about this on television,” he said. “It was about carpet factories in India. The children all worked in the factories and made rugs.”
Miss Harmony laughed. “That’s child labour, Tofu, dear. And it is no longer allowed in this country. Certainly it used to be – chimney sweeps would make little boys – like you – go up the chimney for them. Charles Dickens wrote about that sort of thing. But now we do not allow that anymore.” She paused.
“Merlin will not be a child labourer, I assure you.”
She gave Tofu a discouraging look. “Now then,” she said.
“The news that Merlin has left us is very sad news for us, of course. But there has also been some happy news. And I’m going to ask Bertie to tell us himself.”
All eyes swung round to Bertie, who blushed.
“Come on, Bertie,” said Miss Harmony. “You tell us about the little event which happened in your house over the holidays.”
66
Miss Harmony Has News for the Children Bertie bit his lip. He had not been sure at first what Miss Harmony was alluding to, but now he knew.
“My mother had a baby,” he muttered.
“Now, now, Bertie,” encouraged Miss Harmony. “Good news must be given loud and clear.”
“A baby,” said Bertie. “My mother had a baby.”
“See!” said Miss Harmony. “That’s good news, isn’t it everybody? Bertie now has a little brother. And what’s his name, Bertie?”
Bertie looked down at the top of his desk. There was no escape, or at least one that he could identify. “Ulysses,” he said.
Tofu, who had been staring at Bertie, now looked away and sniggered.
“Tofu,” said Miss Harmony. “Ulysses is a very fine name.”
Tofu said nothing.
“Yes,” said Miss Harmony. “And we don’t laugh at the names of others, do we, Tofu? Especially . . .” She hesitated. It was so tempting, impossible to resist, in fact. “Especially if we are called Tofu ourselves.”
“Tofu’s a stupid name,” volunteered Olive. “It’s that horrid white stuff that cranky people eat. It’s a stupid name. I’d far rather be called Ulysses than Tofu, any day of the week. And anyway, Tofu, it’s nice to hear that Miss Harmony thinks your name is stupid too.”
“That is not what I said, Olive,” said Miss Harmony quickly.
“And let’s move on, boys and girls. We are all very pleased, I’m sure, to hear about Bertie’s new baby brother and we look forward to meeting him some day soon. I’m sure that Bertie is very proud of him and will bring him to the school to introduce us all. But in the meantime, boys and girls, we are going to start today with sums, just to see whether we’ve remembered what we learned last term!”
Much had been forgotten, and the rest of the morning was devoted to the reinstallation of vanished knowledge. Bertie worked quietly, but he noticed Olive looking at him from time to time and the observation made him feel uneasy. Bertie was
Pat Experiences a Moment of Brutal Honesty 67
wary of Olive on several counts, but principally because she laboured under the delusion that she was his girlfriend. And at the end of the day, his doubts proved to be well-founded.
“I’m really looking forward to seeing your new baby brother,”
said Olive, as they left the classroom. “I’m coming to see him soon.”
Bertie frowned. “Who said?” he asked.
“My mother has spoken to your mother,” Olive answered.
“And your mother says that I can come to play at your house once a week if I like. So I will.”
“But I didn’t ask you,” said Bertie.
“No,” said Olive. “But that makes no difference. Your mummy did – and that’s what counts.” She paused. “And we’re going to play house.”
21. Pat Experiences a Moment of Brutal Honesty Bruce had been gone a good hour, but Pat was still smarting from her encounter with her newly returned former flatmate.
Much of her anger focused on the fact that she had not responded adequately to his unpleasant story of his London experiences; didn’t-kiss-and-still-told was in her mind every bit as bad as kiss-and-tell. There was so much she could have said which would have indicated her disgust over his insensitive behaviour, so much, but, as was so often the case, the really pithy comments, 68
Pat Experiences a Moment of Brutal Honesty those brilliant mots justes that might have deflated him, only occurred to her after he had left.
And then she wondered whether anything could ever deflate Bruce, such was the sheer Zeppelin-scale volume of his self-satisfaction. At least their brief meeting had convinced her – if conviction were needed – that she disliked him intensely, and yet, and yet . . . when he had perched on her desk, uninvited, she found herself unable to ignore the brute fact of his extreme attractiveness. Bruce was, quite simply, devastatingly good-looking, an Adonis sent down to live among us. And the fact that she even noticed this worried her. She had already had a narrow escape with Wolf, who had similarly dazzled her, and here she was looking at Bruce again in that way. Am I, she wondered, one of those people who fall for the physically desir-able, irrespective of what they are like as people? In a moment of brutal honesty, she realised that the answer was probably: yes, I am. It was a bleak conclusion.
She thought of Matthew, solid, dependable, predictable Matthew. These three epithets said it all, but they were words which had no excitement in them, no thrill. And yet when one compared Matthew with Bruce, Matthew’s merits were over-whelming. But then again, there was the distressed-oatmeal, the crushed-strawberry factor . . .
The door of the gallery opened and Pat turned round. A man had entered the gallery, a largish man of rather elegant bearing, wearing grey slacks and a blazer, no tie, but a red silk bandanna tied around his neck. He sported a jaunty mustache. He smiled at Pat and gestured in the direction of the paintings. “Do you mind? May I ?”
“Of course. Please.”
He nodded to her in a friendly way and made his way across the gallery to stand in front of one of Matthew’s recently acquired MacTaggart seascapes. Pat watched him from her desk. Some people who came into the gallery were merely passing the time, with no intention of buying anything; this man, though, with his urbane manner, had a different air about him.
Pat Experiences a Moment of Brutal Honesty 69
He moved closer to one of the MacTaggarts and peered at a section of the large canvas. Two children were sitting on the edge of a wide, windswept beach. The children were windswept too, their hair ruffled. They were playing with the sand, which streamed away from their hands, caught in the breeze, in thin lines of gold.