The Importance of Being Seven (12 page)

When Bertie returned to the kitchen in response to his mother’s call that supper was ready, he was holding the newly re-sealed envelope in trembling hands. Noticing, with relief, that his father was in the room, already seated at the table, he approached him shyly and handed over the letter.

‘It says this is for my parent or guardian,’ he muttered. ‘I think that’s you, isn’t it, Daddy?’

Irene looked up sharply. ‘And me, Bertie,’ she said. ‘In fact, when a letter is addressed to the parent or guardian, it usually means that it’s for the mummy. Just for future reference.’

Stuart threw her a glance. ‘Not always,’ he said, mildly. ‘Sometimes, perhaps, but not always.’

Irene, who had been stirring a pot of soup, put down her spoon and crossed the room to her husband’s side. Reaching out, she took the still-unopened letter from his hands. Stuart raised an eyebrow, but did nothing.

Bertie watched, his heart sinking. ‘I don’t think it’s important,’ he said quickly. ‘Maybe Daddy can read it later.’ It was all he could say; he knew that there was little point, though, in trying to forfend what now seemed inevitable.

Irene picked up a table knife and slit open the envelope. ‘Now let’s see what this is all about,’ she said.

Bertie sat down at the table. He put his hands about his head, but watched his mother between his fingers. Her expression, he noted, was changing, from one of mild irritation to one of puzzlement. He closed his eyes; he could not bear to see his efforts at forgery so publicly uncovered.

Bertie had changed the terms of the letter. Using the treasured fountain pen that had been sent to him by a distant relative on his last birthday (his sixth), he had carefully changed the text of Akela’s letter by the insertion of a certain number of negatives and by making a number of other subtle changes.

The effect was not perfect – he would have been the first to admit that – but he had hoped that in the dim conditions of the kitchen he might get away with it. The letter, therefore, now read:

As you can imagine, with so many children at the camp we shall not require adult helpers. It is for this reason that I am writing to ask you (1) whether you wish your child to attend the camp, and (2) whether you are prepared to come along yourself as a helper stay at home for the weekend. If you can see your way to doing that, I am sure that you will have a good time, and I hasten to point out that adult helpers will not be required to sleep under canvas but will not be accommodated in the very unpleasant bunkhouse rooms which the Association maintains at the Bonaly site.

Irene read the letter, and then re-read it. She smiled. ‘A charming letter from that Akela woman,’ she said. ‘Do read it, Stuart.’

Stuart took the piece of paper from his wife and perused it quickly. He looked at Bertie, who was still hiding his head in his hands, and then he gave Irene an imploring look.

‘Bertie,’ said Irene. ‘This is a very interesting letter from Akela. Why did you change it, darling? Don’t you want to go to cub scout camp?’

Bertie did not move. From behind his clasped hands came a little voice. ‘I do want to go.’

‘Well that’s perfectly all right,’ said Irene. ‘Mummy may not be wildly keen on the cub scouts but I understand that you want to go off with your friends. With Olive and the others.’

‘Not her,’ said Bertie. But he spoke too quietly and neither parent heard him.

‘Of course it will be fun for you,’ Irene went on. ‘But all this business about not wanting the mummies and daddies to be helpers – that’s not what Akela really said, is it?’

Bertie said nothing.

‘And it would be fun for the mummies too, wouldn’t it?’ she continued. ‘I can’t remember when I last went camping. Can you, Stuart?’

Stuart shook hs head. He had given Irene a warning glance, but she appeared not to have noticed.

‘We’ll have such fun,’ said Irene brightly. ‘I think I’ve got a sleeping bag somewhere in that cupboard in the spare room. And we’ll probably find one for you too.’

Bertie took his hands away from his face. Rising to his feet, he rushed out of the room and down the corridor, back to his room.

‘Funny little thing,’ said Irene to Stuart. ‘What can possibly have got into his mind?’

Stuart looked up at the ceiling. ‘He doesn’t want you to go,’ he said evenly. ‘Bertie doesn’t want you to go as a helper. I think he wants to get away from … from us for a day or two.’

Irene looked surprised. ‘Surely not.’

‘No, I think he does.’

‘Well, I disagree. All boys sometimes feel the occasional tinge of embarrassment over their parents, but they get over it. And Melanie Klein …’

‘I don’t see what she’s got to do with this,’ said Stuart.

‘But, Stuart, can’t you see? What we’re witnessing here is a token rejection of parental involvement by a child who really needs his parents to support him but fears that they will not answer his call. He therefore feels anxiety and needs to test the depth of parental commitment by appearing not to want parental involvement. Can’t you see that?’

Stuart shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Well, I assure you – that’s what’s going on. And as far as I’m concerned, I would see myself as failing little Bertie if I did not go to Bonaly as a helper.’

Stuart bit his lip. ‘Irene, sometimes I wonder …’

Irene glared at him, and Stuart got up from the table. ‘Where are you going?’

He pointed to Bertie’s door at the end of the corridor. ‘To have a word with my son.’

He knocked on the door but did not wait for a reply. Going in, he found the little boy stretched out on his bed, his head buried in the pillow.

‘Cheer up, old chap,’ Stuart whispered. ‘And don’t be too cross with Mummy. She’s just trying to help – she really is. And she loves you very much, you know. You do know that, don’t you?’

Bertie sniffed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know.’

‘Let me tell you something,’ said Stuart, sitting down next to Bertie on the bed. ‘I’m going to take you fishing in the Pentlands. Just you and me. Would you like that?’

‘When?’ asked Bertie.

‘Next weekend,’ said Stuart. ‘We’ll go on Saturday. But one little word of advice. Don’t tell Mummy we’re going to catch fish. I think we’ll tell her we’re going to look at them. Understand?’

Bertie understood perfectly.

Bruce Anderson enjoyed going to the gym. For years he had belonged to a health club in Fountainbridge; now he had ‘traded up’, as he put it, to a gym in the Sheraton Hotel in Lothian Road where, in addition to working out on the various exercise machines, he could swim in the pool and use the various saunas and Turkish baths on offer.

Bruce liked Turkish baths; he liked sitting on the tiled benches, unclad apart from a pair of swimming trunks and a towel wrapped around his waist. He liked to flex the muscles that he had just put through their paces in the gym below, feeling the satisfactory ripple of tendon and muscle under his gently perspiring skin. He liked it when others in the Turkish bath, although mostly strangers, watched this display from the corner of their eye; the women in frank admiration, the men in barely concealed envy. He felt like saying to some of the men, ‘You could have a body like mine, you know, if you only spent more time on the rowing machine.’ But one could not say that; in fact, there was a strict etiquette about not talking in such circumstances; one sweated away in silence.

Bruce preferred to go to the gym by himself, and would usually call in for an hour or so each evening after he had finished work in the offices of Macaulay Holmes Richardson Black or, as Bruce called the firm, Mac and Co. After that, he would go to pick up Lizzie from her parents’ home in the Braids and take her out for a meal somewhere, or they would go to a restaurant or bar. Then they would go back to Bruce’s shared flat for coffee and to listen to music. That was what they did.

Recently, however, the routine had been disturbed by a new feature of their lives that Lizzie had insisted on introducing. She had joined a bridge class attended by her friend Diane, and had suggested that Bruce should join her. He had viewed the invitation with suspicion.

‘Where is it?’ he asked.

‘It’s in a room in the university,’ she said. ‘Buccleuch Place. They rent it out cheaply as a sort of community service.’

Bruce was silent. Community service? Cheap university rooms? This was not, as he put it, ‘part of the plan’.

‘Bridge,’ he said doubtfully.

‘Yes, bridge. Have you ever played it?’

Bruce shook his head. ‘My parents used to play,’ he said. ‘In Crieff.’ There was a lot of bridge played in Crieff, he thought. He drew some air in through his teeth – a habit that Lizzie had begun to notice in him; she would have to say something, she thought; but not just yet.

Bruce looked at her quizzically. ‘Excuse my saying this,’ he said, ‘but isn’t bridge a bit old?’

Lizzie knew exactly what he meant, but would not show it. ‘It was invented in the nineteenth century,’ she said. ‘Lots of the rules are twentieth century, though. So, no, I wouldn’t call it old. Chess is an old game. Did you mean chess?’

Bruce laughed politely. ‘No, I don’t think you get my meaning. I meant that the people who play the game tend to be … well, they tend to be pretty old, don’t they?’

Again Lizzie answered brightly. ‘Old? Not in our class. Everyone’s under thirty-five, as far as I can make out. One or two are eighteen or nineteen. Students. You don’t think eighteen’s old, do you?’

Bruce shrugged. ‘When you see it on television, they’ve all got one foot in the grave,’ he said. ‘Seriously old. But it doesn’t matter. Old people need to do something, I suppose. Keeps them off the streets.’

Bruce laughed, but Lizzie did not join him. ‘Would you like to learn?’ she said. ‘I’d like you to, you know. You need a bridge partner, you see, and since we’re going to get married and everything, I thought it might be nice if we could go to bridge together.’

Bruce looked thoughtful. ‘What’s the big attraction?’ he asked at last.

‘Intellectual,’ said Lizzie. ‘It involves memory and strategy and so on. And there is so much to learn – you could spend a lifetime learning bridge.’

Bruce shrugged. ‘If you’re so keen, I could give it a try.’

They had gone to their first class together that week. The instructor, a Dundonian with a central parting and horn-rimmed spectacles, had welcomed Bruce warmly and had pressed Ron Klinger’s
Bridge Guide
into his hand. ‘This is the Bible,’ he said.
‘Think of Mr Klinger as Moses and this guide as the Ten Commandments.’ He put on a deep, stentorian voice. ‘Thou shalt not open with less than twelve points,’ he intoned. ‘Thou shalt not communicate with thy partner other than by bidding.’

Bruce stared at him blankly, and the instructor laughed nervously. ‘It’s a useful book,’ he said lamely.

Lizzie dug Bruce in the ribs. ‘Bruce is really looking forward to learning, Arthur,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you, Bruce?’

They went to their table, where Lizzie introduced the other players. ‘This is Carol and this …’ she hesitated very slightly, ‘this is Diane.’

Bruce greeted the two young women. He had never seen Carol, as far as he knew; Diane, for some reason, seemed slightly familiar. Edinburgh was not a large place, of course, and one ran into people here and there.

Diane looked at Bruce and smiled warmly. ‘Lizzie says that she thinks you’ll be really good,’ she said. ‘She said you were good at figures.’

‘Yes,’ said Bruce. ‘I appreciate figures.’

He raised an eyebrow suggestively, and Diane looked away. Carol did not notice. Lizzie was busy shuffling the cards.

‘Right,’ said Diane. ‘This is the way it works. We play four hands to begin with. Then Arthur gives us a talk on some convention or some tactic. That takes about half an hour. Then we play a whole rubber. Then we go to the pub.’

‘Fine,’ said Bruce. ‘Lizzie has explained the basic rules of bidding. I’ll pick up the rest as we go along.’

The cards were dealt and the bidding began. Bruce opened with an impossibly high bid, which led to a sharp telling-off from Carol. The bidding resumed and eventually Carol played to Diane’s dummy. Bruce watched the cards go out and tried to remember them. For her part, Lizzie played carefully and confidently and Carol and Diane were two tricks down.

‘So,’ said Bruce. ‘My first game, and we’ve won!’

‘It’s not that simple, Bruce,’ said Diane. She was watching him closely, and now and then exchanged a glance with Lizzie. Bruce
was unaware of this. He could think of many better ways to spend an evening. Yet he had noticed that Diane’s gaze was upon him rather more than necessary. Fancies me, he thought. It was what he would always have thought in such circumstances, even if, since he had turned over a new leaf, he had thought it less often. But now it was coming back, as an ancient habit will return, persistently, perversely, as a weed with a long root will come up from below no matter what is done on the surface.