Espresso Tales (33 page)

91. Stuart Paints Bertie's Room

Stuart finished his self-assertiveness workshop at four in the afternoon. He decided to leave the office immediately, rather than wait until five. This was assertive, but not unduly so. He had arrived at work early that day and in terms of hours he was well in credit. So he left the office and made his way to a hardware store that he had walked past on numerous occasions but of which he had never taken much notice. It sold paints and paint brushes, he knew, and it was bound to have what he wanted–a large paint-roller and two tins of matt-finish white paint.

He bought the supplies, thanked the shopkeeper, and began the journey home. He felt excited and anxious–in the same way as a schoolboy would be filled with a mixture of thrill and dread when planning some transgression. This, he thought, is how criminals must feel as they travel to the scene of the crime: hearts racing, mouths dry, every sense at a high pitch. And what he was proposing to do was, for him, almost criminal. He was planning to paint Bertie's room, unilaterally, without consultation, in complete defiance of Irene's wishes. It was she who had chosen the existing colour-scheme, opting for pink because of its alleged calming properties and its refutation of the culturally-conditioned assumptions about the preferences of boys. Boys don't like pink, was the conventional wisdom. Well, we would soon see about that! There was no reason why a sensitive boy, a boy brought up to eschew the straitjacket of narrow gender roles, should not approve of pink.

Stuart knew that Bertie did not like his room–or “space” as Irene called it–to be pink. He had told him as much and had also said that as long as his room remained pink he could not possibly invite any friends to the flat, not that he had any friends, of course.

Stuart had listened sympathetically to his son. “But you must have some friends, Bertie,” he said. “What about that boy, Tofu? Isn't he your friend?”

Bertie looked doubtful. “I'm not sure about him,” he said. “He may be my friend, but I'm not too sure. He keeps asking me for money and food–he's a vegan, you know. I think that he may like me just because I can give him the things he wants.”

“Some friends are a bit like that to begin with,” said Stuart. “But then they change after a while and become real friends–friends who like you quite apart from anything you can do for them.” He paused. “And what about that girl, Olive?”

Bertie shook his head. “She thinks I want her to get lockjaw,” he said. “And I don't. I don't want anyone to get lockjaw, Daddy. I really don't.”

Stuart smiled. “Of course you don't, Bertie!” And then he had thought: but do I want anybody to get lockjaw?–and he had decided that the answer was that he did. There were public figures, and one or two so-called singers, he thought he would like to get lockjaw, which he imagined was the only way, even if somewhat drastic, of getting them to keep quiet. But such thoughts were uncharitable.

Now, climbing up the stairs to the flat in 44 Scotland Street, Stuart looked at his watch. Irene would be out, he thought, as she was taking Bertie to his saxophone lesson and they were both going to an extra yoga session after that. They would not be back until well after seven, which would give him a good two hours in which to paint Bertie's room. It was not a big room, and paint-rollers covered a lot of wall in a very short time. By the time Irene and Bertie returned, then, they would be faced with a fait accompli.

He let himself into the flat. To verify that the coast was clear, he called out to Irene. There was silence; just the ticking of a clock and the humming, somewhere in the background, of a fridge. Stuart deposited the tins of paint and the paint-roller in Bertie's room and then went to change out of his office clothes. He knew that Irene did not like him to leave his clothes lying on the floor, and so he tossed his shirt down onto the bedside rug and threw his dirty socks into a corner. As he did so, he thought of Terry, and of how proud he would have been of him to see this. He was sure that Terry left his clothes on the floor of his flat; mind you, being a relationship-free man, Terry would not have had anybody to object to the practice.

Once changed, Stuart went back to Bertie's room. He moved around the pink walls, taking down the pictures which Irene had pinned up. A poster proclaiming the merits of Florence, the periodic table, a picture of Mahler. He sighed as he took them down and, on sudden impulse, rather than fold the periodic table away for putting back up once the new paint had dried, he tore it up and tossed it into the wastepaper bin. Then, with the walls bare, he opened the first can of paint, poured it into a tray, and dipped in the paint-roller. Then he set to work.

It did not take long to cover the walls with the easily-applied white paint. Stuart worked feverishly, oblivious to the spots of paint which were appearing on Bertie's carpet. From time to time he looked at his watch, and listened for any sound from the hall. But no sound came, and he continued with his work until the entire room had been transformed. No pink was to be seen. It was gone. Now Bertie could bring any friend home and he would never suspect that anything was amiss.

When he had finished, Stuart tucked the empty tins and the painting equipment into a cupboard. Then, having made a not altogether successful attempt to clean the paint off the carpet, he returned to the main bedroom and changed. The paint-spattered clothes he tossed to the floor in a heap. Then he went to the kitchen and poured himself a large whisky.

There was the sound of a key in the front door and voices.

“And remember, Bertie,” said Irene, her voice drifting in from the hall to the kitchen where Stuart sat. “Remember that you've got extra Italian this week. That nice story about a little Italian boy who…”

There was a sudden silence. Stuart looked into his empty whisky glass. It would have been reassuring to have Terry with him at the moment, he thought.

92. Discussions Take Place Between Irene and Stuart

The silence was broken by Bertie. “My room!” he shouted. “Look, Mummy! My room's turned white!”

The joy in Bertie's voice was unmistakable and indeed became even more apparent with his next exclamation. He did not use Italian spontaneously now, but this was an occasion, he thought, when Italian seemed more eloquent than English.
“Miracolo!”
he shouted.
“Miracolo!”

Irene, standing at the door to Bertie's room, surveying the transformation, was momentarily lost for words. But then she found her voice.

“What on earth has happened here?” she said. “Somebody has painted…”

She stepped into the room and noticed the periodic table, torn up and tossed into the bin. She picked it up gingerly, as a detective might pick up a piece of evidence at the scene of the crime.

“Isn't it nice?” asked Bertie, nervously. He realised that his mother was far from pleased and he dreaded the possibility that she would immediately repaint it in pink. “I think white is such a good colour for…” He was going to say “for boys” but he knew that would merely provoke his mother. So he finished by saying “for rooms”.

“We can talk about that later on,” said Irene grimly. “In the meantime, don't touch anything. We don't want you getting paint on your dungarees.”

She turned on her heel and went through to the kitchen.

“Well!” she said, glaring at Stuart. “Somebody's been busy!”

Stuart looked at her coolly. “I thought it was about time that we redecorated Bertie's room,” he said. “I did it quite quickly, actually. You got a problem with that?”

“What?” hissed Irene. “What do you mean have I got a problem?”

Stuart shrugged. “You seem a bit taken aback. I thought you would be pleased to discover that your husband's a skilled painter.”

Irene turned and slammed the kitchen door behind her. She did not want Bertie to hear what was to come.

“Have you gone mad?” she asked. “Have you gone out of your mind?”

“No,” said Stuart, adding: “Have you?”

Irene took several steps forward. “Listen to me, Stuart, I don't know what's come over you, but you've got a bit of explaining to do. What are you thinking of, for heaven's sake?”

Stuart held her gaze. “I decided that it was about time we let Bertie have one or two things his way. It's been perfectly apparent for some time that he did not like his pink room. Nor, for that matter, does he like those pink dungarees of his.”

“Crushed strawberry,” corrected Irene. She shook her head, as if to adjust a confused picture of reality. “I just don't know what you think you're doing. There's a reason why Bertie is being brought up to like pink. It's all to do with gender stereotypes. Can't you even grasp that?”

Stuart smiled. “There's something which I grasp very well,” he said. “And that is this: it's about time we let that little boy just be a little boy.”

“Oh!” said Irene. “So that's it, is it? You think that you know what it is to be a little boy? You, the inheritor of the patriarchal mantle, passing it on to your son! Get him interested in things like cars…”

Stuart frowned. “By the way,” he interrupted. “Where's our car?”

Irene, derailed by the question, stared at her husband. “Outside in the street,” she said. “Where you parked it the other day.”

“No it isn't,” said Stuart. “You parked it.”

“Nonsense!” said Irene. “You had it last. And you parked it in the street.”

“I did,” he said. “I parked it there the other day and then you used it to go somewhere or other. You're the one who parked it last.”

Irene opened her mouth to say something and then thought better of it. He was right, she feared. She had driven the car recently and had parked it somewhere, but she had no recollection of where that was. But then, something else occurred to her; something which was more serious than the temporary mislaying of the car.

“Be that as it may,” she said. “There's something that I've been meaning to raise with you for some time now. That car of ours. How many gears does it have?”

Stuart swallowed. He could see where this was leading, and suddenly the whole business of painting Bertie's room seemed to fade into insignificance.

Irene stared at him. “How many?” she repeated.

“Five,” said Stuart, his voice now deprived of all the assertiveness which he had injected into it earlier. So much for courage, he thought.

“Oh yes?” said Irene. “Then why does it now have only four?” She waited a moment before continuing. Then: “So could it be that the car you brought back from Glasgow is not actually our car? Could that be so? And if it isn't, then whose car, may I ask, is it?”

Stuart was defeated. It had become perfectly obvious to him that Lard O'Connor had ordered the stealing of a car for him and its fitting up with false number-plates. And once he had discovered that, he should have gone straight to the police and told them what had happened. But he had not done that because he had been frightened. He had been frightened of what Lard O'Connor would do to him when he discovered that Stuart had reported him. So he had taken the easy way out and done nothing, denying the problem, hoping that it would go away.

Irene sat down. “Now look,” she said. “We must settle this like sensible adults. We have several problems here, haven't we? We've got this problem of our car. And then we've got a problem of your interfering with Bertie's upbringing. Those are our two problems, aren't they?”

Stuart nodded. He felt miserable. He would have to abandon this wretched attempt to do things for himself.

“So,” said Irene, her voice low and forgiving. “So, what you need to do, Stuart, is to let me sort everything out. You don't have to worry. I'll handle everything. But, as a quid pro quo, you just behave yourself. All right?”

Stuart nodded. He was about to say: yes, it was all right, but then he remembered the trip on the train with Bertie and what he had said to him. So now he looked Irene in the eye. “No,” he said. “It's not all right.”

93. The Gettysburg Address

“Six years ago,” said Stuart, “we conceived a child, a son…”

Irene interrupted him. “Actually, I conceived a son,” she said. “Your role, if you recall the event, was relatively minor.”

Stuart stared at her. “Fathers count for nothing then?”

When she replied, Irene's tone was gentle, as if humouring one who narrowly fails to understand. “Of course I wouldn't say that. You're putting words into my mouth. However, the maternal role is undoubtedly much more significant. And when it comes down to it, women do most of the work of child-rearing. They just do. Who takes Bertie to Italian? Who takes him to yoga, to school? Everywhere in fact? I do.” She paused. “And whom do I see there, at these various places? Not other fathers. Mothers, like me.”

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.

“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 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 have I ever achieved? You have a job–you have a career. I haven't got that. I'm just a woman who stays at home. Nothing I do ever changes the world. So I thought that with Bertie I could achieve something, at least have something that I could point to and call my creation. And now all that I've achieved is to get Bertie to hate me, and you too, it seems.”

“I don't hate you,” said Stuart. “I admire you. I'm proud of you. I love you very much…”

“Do you? Do you really?”

“I do.” But he added: “I want you to loosen up. I want you to be yourself. I want you to let Bertie be himself. I want you to stop trying.”

“And what if the self I should be is something quite different?” asked Irene, dabbing at her cheek with a corner of tissue. “What then?”

“That doesn't matter.” But he was intrigued by the possibilities. Was there a side to Irene that he had never guessed at? “Are you different?”

Irene nodded. “I'm quite conservative,” she said. “In my heart of hearts, I'm conservative. You see, Stuart, there's something I've never told you before. You don't know where I come from, do you?”

“Moray,” he said. “You come from Moray.”

“No,” said Irene. “Moray Place.” She paused, studying Stuart's reaction. He seemed to be taking it fairly well, she thought; well there was more news for him.

“And there's something else,” she said. “I'm pregnant.”