Espresso Tales - Alexander Hanchett Smith [28]
“Adolf Sax,” corrected Bertie politely. “And he was Belgian.”
The teacher looked at Bertie, and then at Tofu, who had started to tickle the girl sitting next to him.
“Tofu, dear,” she said firmly. “Girls don’t like being tickled.”
“Oh don’t they?” said Tofu. “I know lots of girls who like being tickled. They like it a lot.”
The teacher was silent. It was time for some diversion, she felt. She crossed the room to the cupboard and opened the door. The children watched closely as she took out a pile of old copies of the Guardian and handed a folded copy to each child.
“Now you’ll know what this is,” she said.
A forest of hands shot up. “It’s the Guardian, ” the innocents cried out.
Down Among the Innocents
55
“Well done,” she said. “And can anybody name another newspaper for me?”
There was complete silence. The children looked at one another in puzzlement. Then Bertie spoke. There were plenty of other newspapers, and he had read a number of them. There was the Scotsman and the Herald and a newspaper called the Daily Telegraph.
“The Daily Telegraph,” he said.
The teacher looked at him. “Perhaps,” she said. Then, turning to the class in general she gave them their instructions. They were to fold the Guardian up, she said, and then they were to try to cut out the shape of a man. Then, when they unfolded it, they would have lots of little men, all joined together in a chain.
Picking up a copy herself, she demonstrated the folding and the cutting. “There,” she said, holding up the result. “Look at that long line of little men, all holding hands.”
“Gays,” said Tofu.
The teacher put down her paper cut-out. “Tofu, dear, if you wouldn’t mind just going and standing outside the door for five minutes. And while you’re there, you can think about the things that you say.”
“Shall I hit him for you?” asked Larch, a burly boy with a very short hair-cut.
“No,” said the teacher quickly, and then, under her breath so that nobody might hear, she muttered: “Not just yet.”
When the time came for the morning interval, Bertie went out into the playground by himself. He was aware of the fact that he alone was wearing dungarees and he smarted with embarrassment. Tofu, for example, had electric sneakers that sent out small pulses of light each time he took a step, and even Merlin, who was wearing obviously home-made sandals and a rainbow-coloured jacket, at least had normal trousers. Bertie felt miserable: everybody else seemed to have made a friend already, or even more than one friend. Tofu had a knot of four or five others around him, even including somebody from one of the classes above. Bertie had nobody, so when 56
On the Way Home
Tofu came up to him a few minutes later, he had nobody to defend him.
“Dungarees!” the other boy said contemptuously. “Or are they pyjamas?”
“It’s not my fault,” said Bertie. “It’s my mother.”
Tofu looked at him and sneered. “Dungarees are good for falling over in,” he said suddenly. “Like this.” And with that he gave Bertie a push, causing him to fall to the ground. There was laughter, and Tofu walked off.
Bertie picked himself up off the ground and dusted his dungarees. There was a large brown patch on one of the knees. As he attended to this, he became aware of the fact that a girl was standing beside him. It was Olive.
“Poor Bertie,” she said. “It’s not your fault that you look so silly. It really isn’t. And that Tofu is a horrid boy. Everybody knows he’s horrid.” She paused. “But I suppose we should feel sorry for him.”
“Why?” asked Bertie. “Why should we feel sorry for him?”
“Because he doesn’t have a mummy,” explained Olive. “She was a vegan and she starved to death. My dad told me all about it.”
Bertie was horrified. “And what about his daddy?” he asked.
“Has he got a daddy?”
“Yes,” said Olive. “But he’s a vegan too, so he won’t last long either.