The Importance of Being Seven (11 page)

Bertie was collected at the end of the cub scout meeting by his father and together they travelled back to Dundas Street on the top deck of the bus.

‘Another exciting evening, Bertie?’ asked Stuart.

Bertie nodded.

Stuart smiled encouragingly at his son. ‘And did anything happen?’

This was the question that Bertie had been dreading. The usual answer of most children to such a question from a parent is that nothing happened – the lives of children, by self-report, are barren and empty, quite devoid of incident. Nothing happens, nobody says anything, and indeed nobody is present at any function they attend. By the same rule of infantile
omertà
, nothing is learned at school, where the resolute silence of the classroom is never punctuated by any observation on anything. By contrast, the telephone conversations of children – among themselves – reveal lives crowded with incident, with high drama and intrigue, with passions and plots.

Bertie was not like this. He usually gave a reasonably full account of what happened, censoring only those lurid details that he thought would be an undue shock to parental ears, particularly those of his mother. Thus he had never told his mother about Tofu’s habit of spitting at others, nor of the small-scale numbers racket that his friend ran in the playground at school. Bertie felt outrage over that, because he knew that it was essentially criminal: Tofu more or less bullied everybody to put part of their pocket money into a pool, the winner taking the entire proceeds. All the participants had to pick a number between one and fifteen – there were fifteen members of Bertie’s class – and then Tofu would announce which number won that week. The problem, though, was that it was Tofu who picked the winning number, and he only revealed it after everybody had chosen their number.

‘You should write the winning number on a piece of paper before we choose,’ Pansy had suggested. ‘That would be much fairer.’

Tofu smiled. ‘Not possible,’ he said.

‘And you’ve won three out of the last six times,’ pointed out Hiawatha.

‘I’m really lucky,’ said Tofu.

Bertie had said nothing about this to his parents, who would not have understood it, nor possibly even believed it. But now,
faced with this direct question from his father as to what happened, he vacillated as to whether to mention the letter at this stage. He had decided that he would read it first, and, if necessary, lose it if its contents were in any way likely to threaten his continued membership of the cub scouts. It could be a letter about some new activity of which his mother disapproved, and that might mean the end of his cub scout career; one could never tell with her.

He decided that the best thing to do in relation to his father’s question was to pretend not to have heard it. But Stuart persisted. ‘I said, did anything happen, Bertie? Anything interesting?’

Bertie told his father about the compass game, but resolutely omitted to say anything about the letter. He felt it in his pocket, as bulky and as obvious as any incriminating object tends to be, and when they got back to Scotland Street he rushed into his room. Taking the letter from his pocket, he held it up against the light of his reading lamp. Through the thin paper of the envelope he saw a folded piece of paper, but that was all; he could make out that there was something printed or written on the paper, but he could not decipher what it was.

Bertie put the envelope down and closed the door of his room. If he had had a lock, he would have locked it, but his requests for a lock had been turned down by his mother.

‘A lock, Bertie?’ she said. ‘Whatever would you want a lock for?’

Bertie thought quickly. It was no use telling her that it was to lock her out; that would not have gone down well. ‘Security,’ he said quickly. ‘If a burglar climbed down the chimney, then he wouldn’t be able to steal my things.’

Irene raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, I see. But it would be all right for him to steal my things, would it? Or Daddy’s? Or even little Ulysses’s things?’ She paused. ‘But not yours. What sort of attitude is that, Bertie?’

Bertie could see that he was being misconstrued – again. ‘But I didn’t mean that, Mummy!’ he protested. ‘You and Daddy have a lock on your door, so you could stop him taking your things.’

Irene gave Bertie a hug. He felt himself being enveloped; it was like drowning, he thought. ‘You shouldn’t want to lock Mummy
out,’ she said. ‘Boys should have no secrets from their mummies, Bertie! A boy’s best friend is his mummy – not only when he’s a boy, like you, but for the rest of his life too.’

Bertie looked dismayed. Could this possibly be true? If it were, the future certainly looked bleak.

‘Of course, you can have other friends,’ conceded Irene. ‘Olive, for example. She’s a nice little girl, isn’t she? And you appear to be very friendly with her, don’t you?’

‘No,’ said Bertie. ‘I hate her, Mummy.’

‘No, you don’t,’ said Irene quickly. ‘Don’t talk such nonsense, Bertie, even as a joke. How can you hate Olive? She’s lively and engaging. She’s fun. No, you don’t hate her, Bertie.’

Bertie wanted to say: how do you know, Mummy? But he could not say that. In fact, he could say nothing, because anything he said would be immediately refuted by his mother, and it was no good arguing with her. She was like the weather – always there; and to resist her was like trying to resist the weather itself. There was just no point.

Now, trying to make out what was in this letter from Akela, he remembered something that he had read in that book he had borrowed from the library,
100 Things for a Boy to Do: Part 1
. There had been a feature in that book called ‘Tips for Spies’, and it purported to be written by somebody called the Grand Spymaster, First Class.

‘If you need to read an intercepted letter,’ the article ran, ‘don’t slit the envelope open – the recipient will be very suspicious. Rather, wait until the letter is passed on to you to forward to another person. Then, making sure that you are not seen by the first person, you should gently steam open the flap. The contents photographed, the letter can then be re-sealed, and the information passed on to headquarters.’

Gently steam open the flap. Well, Bertie had no steam in the room, but he did have his breath, which was, he believed, warm and moist.

Bertie drew in his breath, held it for as long as he could – to warm it up – and then exhaled across the flap of the envelope. He was surprised at how much air his lungs contained and at how long it took him to expel it. His surprise, though, was matched by his disappointment when he discovered that the flap seemed as obstinately stuck down at the end of this exercise as it had been at the beginning. He drew in another breath, held it, and then breathed out again, this time placing his lips so close to the paper that they were virtually touching it. Once again, although the envelope felt slightly moist at the end of the exercise, it still remained firmly sealed.

Bertie tried to remember the pages from
100
Things for a Boy to Do: Part 1
. The ‘Tips for Spies’ section had featured a line drawing of a spy opening a letter, and he now tried to remember exactly what the illustration had shown. There had been a kettle – he remembered that clearly enough – and there had been a cloud of steam. But he could not remember where the letter had been placed and exactly how the flap had been opened. Was it necessary to use a knife? Bertie ached for a Swiss Army penknife, but his mother had forbidden him
to have one, and so he would have to find a knife in the kitchen. Well, there were plenty of knives there, even if none of them was as useful, or as exciting, as a Swiss Army knife.

Bertie had noticed that there seemed to be some sort of campaign about boys not being allowed to have pocket knives. Mr Baden-Powell had suggested that every boy should be equipped with a pocket knife, and had said as much in the old copy of
Scouting for Boys
that Bertie had managed to obtain and had hidden under his mattress. But now he had read in the newspaper that the government itself was saying that scouts should not be allowed to carry knives. This was upsetting for a number of reasons. Not only did it mean that scouts would be unable to do the sorts of things that they needed to do – whittle sticks, take stones out of horses’ hooves, or cut pieces of string to the desired length – but it also was a sign that the government was beginning to side with his mother.

Bertie had always believed that the government, if it were to hear of his difficulties, would side with him – after all, he had read that there was something called the Human Rights Act which he had always hoped might refer, even if only indirectly, to the position of boys whose mothers were … well, whose mothers had never heard of the European Convention on Human Rights. But now it seemed that the government had come round to his mother’s position, which made the world rather less comfortable from his perspective. Freedom – that tiny square of blue sky – could only be glimpsed with difficulty in Bertie’s world; now it seemed at once smaller, more clouded, and more distant.

Bertie decided that he would have no alternative but to use the kettle to steam open the letter. Poking his head out of the door to check that there was no sign of his parents, he crept along the corridor that led to the kitchen. When he saw that his mother was not there, he quickly put on the kettle and waited for the water to boil. This happened quickly, and there was soon an obliging cloud of steam issuing from the spout. It was into this that Bertie inserted the letter, and he watched with pleasure as the flap wilted and opened – exactly as had been predicted in
100
Things for a Boy to Do: Part 1
.

Back in his room, Bertie extracted Akela’s letter from the damp envelope and sat down on his bed to read it.

Dear Parent or Guardian,

It is at this stage in the summer term that we begin to think of plans for the holidays. Here at the First Morningside Cub Scout Pack we have been putting our heads together to think of what we can do for the boys and girls during the summer break. I had planned to see whether we could manage a three-day camp at Bonaly some time in August, but unfortunately that just does not look possible for one reason or another. However, I am happy to report that a cancellation has opened up a weekend slot in three weeks’ time and I have taken the plunge and booked the facilities for that weekend. We shall therefore be offering everybody in the pack a two-night camp (Friday evening to Sunday afternoon) at Bonaly. We shall spend the night under canvas, and all catering will be done on open fires. (Weather permitting!)

Bertie read this with a growing sense of excitement. He had never been camping before and the prospect of spending the night under canvas was profoundly thrilling. And their food would be cooked over fires, which they might be allowed to make themselves by
rubbing sticks together, as Mr Baden-Powell had demonstrated in
Scouting for Boys
. He could almost smell the sausages already – and the marshmallows that they could put on sticks and toast on those same open fires. With racing pulse he read on.

As you can imagine, with so many children at the camp we shall 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 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 be accommodated in the very pleasant bunkhouse rooms which the Association maintains at the Bonaly site.