Espresso Tales - Alexander Hanchett Smith [67]
Bertie said nothing. He wanted his mother to be happy, but it seemed to him that she herself was the obstacle to that. If only she would stop worrying about him; if only she would stop thinking about why people do things; if only she would accept people and things as they were. But he knew that it was hopeless to expect her to do this. If Irene stopped forcing him to do things, then what life would she have? She had very few friends, as far as Bertie could work out. There were some other women at the floatarium whom she liked to talk to, but she never saw them anywhere else and they never came to their flat in Scotland Street. In fact, nobody came to the flat in Scotland Street, apart from one of his father’s friends from the office, who came to play chess once a month. It was possible that his father had other friends at the office, but Bertie was not sure. He had asked him once, and had received a rather strange reply. “Friends, Bertie?
Friends? Mummy and I are friends, aren’t we? Do I need more friends than that?”
Bertie thought he did, but did not say so. One thing he was certain of was that he was not going to grow up to be like his parents. Once he was eighteen he would not go to a psychotherapist; he would not go floating; his room would have white walls, or even black perhaps, but certainly not pink; and he would never talk Italian. There were a great deal of changes in store, he thought.
138 Bertie Escapes!
Irene walked Bertie from Bruntsfield to the school gate. Then she kissed him goodbye and Bertie watched for a few moments while she walked back up the street. Now it was time for action. Glancing about to see that he was not being watched, Bertie darted down the first part of the school drive and then suddenly turned and ran into the school garden, making straight for a small shed which was propped up against the high stone wall that enclosed the school grounds. This was a shed which the gardener used for the storage of rakes and forks and other bits and pieces of equipment. Bertie had done his reconnaissance well, and knew that it was not kept locked. Now he opened it and slipped inside. It took no more than a few minutes for Bertie to be transformed. In place of the crushed-strawberry dungarees and check shirt he was now regaled in a neat white shirt and tie, shorts that were just about the right colour, and the splendid new Watson’s blazer. His old clothes were bundled into his bag and tucked away underneath a rusty bucket which was sitting, inverted, on the ground. Then, glancing out of the cobweb-covered window to check that it was safe to go out, Bertie opened the door of the shed and ran the short distance to the school gate. Bertie Escapes!
139
It was now time to bring the first stage of the plan to completion. From the pocket of his new blazer, Bertie extracted a neatly written note which he had forged the previous evening. Looking around for a familiar face, he found Merlin, one of the boys in his class.
“Please give this note to Miss Harmony,” Bertie said, thrusting the envelope into Merlin’s hands. “Don’t say it was me who gave it to you. Just leave it on her desk.”
Merlin looked at the envelope and then at Bertie. “Why are you wearing that funny outfit?” he asked.
“I just am,” said Bertie.
Merlin shrugged, brushing a speck of dust off the shoulder of his rainbow-coloured jacket. “I suppose you’ve got the right to be weird,” he said.
Bertie thanked him and then quickly went out of the gate and began to make his way round the corner to George Watson’s College. As he walked, he thought of the contents of the letter which he had just entrusted to Merlin. He was good at imitating his mother’s writing, and he thought that he had made a good job of it. “Dear Miss Harmony,” he had written. “Unfortunately my son, Bertie, has contracted an infectious disease and will have to be away from school for some time. I would have come to speak to you about this personally, but I was concerned