Espresso Tales - Alexander Hanchett Smith [145]
Stuart took a deep breath. “That’s part of the problem. Bertie doesn’t want to go to Italian lessons. He hates yoga. He told me that himself. He said that it makes him feel . . .”
She did not let him finish. “Oh yes? Oh yes? And where would you take him then? Fishing?”
Stuart smiled. “Yes, I would. I would take him fishing.”
“Teach him to kill, in other words,” said Irene. 306 The Gettysburg Address
“Fishing is not killing.”
“Oh yes? So the fish survives?”
Stuart hesitated. “All right, it’s killing. But . . .”
“And that’s what you want to teach him to do! To kill fish!”
Stuart looked out of the window. The evening sky was clear, bisected on high by the thin white line of a vapour trail. And at the end of the trail, a tiny speck of silver, was a plane heading west; a metaphor for freedom, he thought, even if the freedom at the end of a vapour trail was a brief and illusory one.
“I want him to have some freedom to be a little boy,” he said.
“I want him to be able to play with other boys of his age, doing the sort of thing they like to do. They like to ride their bikes. They like to hang about. They like to play games, throw balls about, climb trees. They don’t like yoga.”
The roll-call of boyish pursuits was a provocation to Irene.
“What a perfect summary of the sexist concept of a boy,” she exclaimed. “And what about ungendered boys, may I ask? What about them? Do they like to climb trees and ride bikes, do you think?”
“I have no idea what ungendered boys wish to do,” answered Stuart. “In fact, I’m not sure what an ungendered boy is. But the whole point is that Bertie is not one of them. He wants to get on with being what he is, which is a fairly typical little boy. He’s clever, yes, and he knows a lot. But the thing that you don’t seem able to understand is that he is also a little boy. And he needs to go through that stage. He needs to have a boyhood.”
Irene was about to answer, but Stuart, in his stride now, cut her off. “For the last few years I think I’ve been very patient. I was never fully happy with the whole Bertie project, as you called it. I expressed doubts, but you never let me say much about them. You see, Irene, you’re not the most tolerant woman I’ve known. Yes, I’m sorry to have to say that, but I mean it. You’re intolerant.”
He paused for a moment, gauging the effect of his words on his wife. She had become silent, her face slightly crumpled. Her confidence seemed diminished, and for a moment Stuart thought The Gettysburg Address
307
that he saw a flicker of doubt. He decided to press on with his address.
“Then you were surprised,” he went on, “when Bertie rebelled. Do you remember how shocked you were when he set fire to my copy of the Guardian while I was reading it? You do?
And here’s another thing, by the way: has it ever occurred to you that I was secretly pleased that he had done that? No? Well, let me tell you, I was. And the reason for that is that I was never consulted about what newspaper we should take in this house. You never asked me. Not once. You never asked me if I would like to read the Herald or the Scotsman, or anything else. You just ordered the Guardian. And that’s because you can’t tolerate another viewpoint. Or . . . or is it because you’re trying so hard to be right-on, to have all the correct views about everything?
And in reality, deep underneath . . .”
Irene, who had been looking at the floor, now looked up, and Stuart, to his horror, saw that there were tears in her eyes.
“Now look,” he said, reaching out to touch her, “I’m sorry . . .”
“No,” she said. “You don’t have to be sorry. I’m the one who should be sorry.”
“I don’t know,” said Stuart. “I’m sure you were doing your best.”
Irene disregarded this. “I had so many ambitions for Bertie. I wanted him to be everything that I’m not. What have I done with my life? What