Ling, who had been looking out of the window, transferred his gaze to Domenica.
“He is still there,” he said.
Domenica gasped. There was no situation more tense, more fraught with difficulty, than the unexpected encounter by one anthropologist of another – in the field.
If this Belgian were still in residence, then she would have to ask Edward Hong to instruct his driver to turn the car round without delay. There would be no point in proceeding, and they might as well return to Malacca and listen to Edward Hong’s daughter playing Chopin.
Then Ling spoke again. “Yes,” he repeated. “He’s still there.
At the Queen’s Hall 119
Down by the place where the fishing nets are hung out to dry.”
Then he added: “Still there. In his grave.”
38. At the Queen’s Hall
“Hurry up now, Bertie,” said Irene. “It’s almost ten o’clock, and if we don’t get there in time you may not get your audition.
Now, you wouldn’t want that, would you?”
Bertie sighed. To miss the audition was exactly what he would want, but he realised that it was fruitless to protest. Once his mother had seen a notice about the Edinburgh Teenage Orchestra, she had immediately put his name down for an audition.
“Do you realise how exciting this is?” she said to Bertie. “This orchestra is planning to do a concert in Paris in a couple of weeks. Not much rehearsal time, but Paris, Bertie! Wouldn’t you just love that?”
Bertie frowned. The name of the orchestra suggested that it was for teenagers, and he was barely six. “Couldn’t I audition in seven years’ time?” he asked his mother. “I’ll be a teenager then.”
“If you’re worried about being the youngest one there,” said Irene reassuringly, “then you shouldn’t! The fact that it’s called the Edinburgh Teenage Orchestra is neither here nor there. The word “teenage” is there just to indicate what standard is required.
That’s all it is!”
“But I’m not a teenager,” protested Bertie, helplessly. “They’ll all be teenagers, Mummy. I promise you. I’ll be the only one in dungarees.”
“There may well be others in dungarees,” said Irene. “And anyway, once you’re sitting down behind your music stand, nobody will notice what you’re wearing.”
Bertie was silent. It was no use; he would be forced to go, just as she had forced him to go to yoga and to Italian lessons and to all the rest of it. There was no use protesting. But he thought he would try one final argument.
120 At the Queen’s Hall
“Actually, I wouldn’t mind being in it, Mummy,” he said. “But the saxophone, you know, isn’t an orchestral instrument. They won’t want anybody to play the tenor sax.”
“Nonsense,” snapped Irene. “The tenor sax is in B flat. That’s exactly the same as the clarinet or the euphonium. You see euphonia in orchestras, don’t you? And other B flat instruments.
You can just play one of those parts, or Lewis Morrison can arrange a part specially for you.”
Bertie was silent. If he was unable to persuade his mother not to subject him to the humiliation of being the youngest member, by far, of an orchestra, then he would have to find some other means to ensure that he did not get in. He thought for a moment and then realised that there was a very obvious solution.
Irene saw Bertie’s face break into a broad grin. He must have realised, she thought, what fun it would be to go to Paris. These little bursts of resistance were curious things; they could be quite intense and then suddenly evaporate and he would come round.
Such a funny little boy, but so appealing!
“Why are you smiling, Bertissimo?” she asked. “Thinking of Paris? The Eiffel Tower – you know you can climb that right up to the top? And then there’s the Louvre with the Mona Lisa.
We’ll have such fun in Paris, Bertie!”
Bertie, who had been smiling to himself over the prospects of escape which had just presented themselves, now became grave. We? Had his mother said we’d have such fun in Paris?
His voice was tiny when he asked the question. “Are you coming, too, Mummy? Are you coming to Paris, too?”
Irene laughed. “But of course, Bertie. Remember that you’re only six. Mummy will come to look after you.”
“But the teenagers won’t have their mothers with them,”
pleaded Bertie. “I’ll be the only one.”
And it would be worse, he thought; the humiliation would be doubled and redoubled by the fact that Irene was now visibly pregnant. This would mean that the other boys would know what she had been doing. It was just too embarrassing. Tofu had already passed a comment on Irene’s pregnancy when he had raised the subject in the playground.
At the Queen’s Hall 121
“Your mum makes me sick,” he said. “Do you know what she’s been doing? It’s gross! Yuk! Disgusting!”
Bertie had said nothing; one cannot defend the indefensible, but he had smarted with shame. And now he was to be subjected to yet further humiliation, unless, unless . . .
“I haven’t been to Paris for years,” said Irene. “There is really no other city like it.”
Bertie nodded grimly. “Should I go and put my saxophone in its case?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Irene, looking at her watch. “We will probably need to take a taxi now, as we’ll never get up to the Queen’s Hall in time if we have to wait for a bus.”
They were soon in a taxi, rattling their way up Dundas Street and the Mound. Princes Street was en fête, with its lines of flut-tering flags and its flowers. Bertie liked Princes Street Gardens, and had gone there once with his father, when they had climbed the hill beneath the Castle and watched the Glasgow train emerging from its tunnel beneath the gallery. He had also gone to the Gardens several times with his mother, but they had not climbed the hill. On the last occasion, she had insisted that they watch a display of Scottish country dancing at the Ross Bandstand.
“Why do people dance?” he had asked his mother.
“It’s a form of deflection of the sexual impulse,” explained Irene.
“Even at the Ross Bandstand?” asked Bertie.
Irene laughed. “Oh my goodness no, Bertie! Scottish country dancing is not like that at all. It’s an expression of bourgeois obsession with time and order. That’s what’s going on there.
Look at it! Absurd!”
Bertie looked at the dancers, who appeared to be enjoying themselves greatly. He did not understand why they should be absurd. “But aren’t we bourgeois, Mummy?” asked Bertie.
Irene laughed. “Most certainly not,” she said.
The journey to the Queen’s Hall passed largely in silence, or at least on Bertie’s part. Irene had various bits of advice for him, though, including tips on how to present himself at the audition.
122 Bertie’s Agony
“Don’t feel nervous,” she said.
“Remind yourself that there are not only strangers there –
I’ll be sitting there, too! Keep that in mind, Bertie.”
Bertie reeled under the fresh blow. He had been hoping that his mother would wait outside. Now she was coming in! And that, he realised, would make his plan much more difficult to put into effect.
39. Bertie’s Agony
The Queen’s Hall was thronged that morning with a large crowd of ambitious parents and children. Bertie followed his mother down the corridor that led to the coffee room and bar at the end. He was aware of the fact that there were many people about, but he hardly dared look up to see who they were. His eyes were fixed on the floor, hoping to locate the geological flaw which would swallow him up and save him from his current embarrassment. But of course there was none; at no time is the earth more firm than when we wish that it were not.
Irene cast her eye about the room like a combatant assessing the field before joining the fray. Such gatherings held no terrors for her; this was the opposition of course, the other parents, but she knew
that she had little to fear from any of them. In fact, she felt slightly sorry for them as she surveyed their offspring; that bespectacled teenage boy in the corner of the room, for example, standing with his mother – what an unhealthy speci-men, with his sallow complexion and his jeans with holes in the knees. Irene knew how expensive such jeans could be. That boy, she thought, is a fashion victim and that mother of his does nothing to prevent it. Sad.
Her gaze moved on to the rather prim young girl seated at one of the tables, her oboe case balanced on her knee and her mother proudly sitting opposite her. Such a consummately middle-class pair, thought Irene: the daughter at St Margaret’s, perhaps; the father – at the office, probably – a lawyer of some Bertie’s Agony 123
sort; their Volvo parked somewhere on the edge of the Meadows.
Irene stopped. She had a Volvo, too, of course, or used to have one. Let those without Volvos make the first social judgment, she told herself, and smiled at her wit.
“You can sit down here, Bertie,” she said, pointing to a chair beside one of the tables. “I shall go and get some coffee. But I won’t get you a cup, Bertie, as we don’t want you wanting to rush off to the little boys’ room for a tinkle in the middle of the audition, do we?” Bertie felt his heart stop with embarrassment. It was bad enough for his mother to say such things in any circumstances, but for her to say it here, in the middle of the Queen’s Hall, with the eyes of the world upon him, was horror itself. His face burning red, he looked about him quickly.
A girl at a neighbouring table had clearly heard, and was giggling and whispering to her friend. And there, on the other side of their very table, was a boy who had also heard and was now staring at him.
The boy, who looked barely thirteen, glanced at Irene as she made towards the bar, and then turned to face Bertie. “Is that your mother?” he asked.
Bertie shook his head. “No,” he said. And then added, for emphasis: “No, she’s nothing to do with me.”
“Who is she then?” asked the boy.
“She’s just somebody I met on the bus,” he said. “I talked to her and then she followed me in.”
The boy looked surprised. “You have to be careful about talking to strangers,” he said. “Haven’t you been told that?”
Bertie nodded. “I know,” he said. “It’s just that I felt sorry for her.” He racked his brains for a credible story, and then continued: “She’s just been let out of a lunatic asylum, you see.
They let them out every Saturday, and she had nobody to talk to her. So I did.”
“Oh,” said the boy. “Do you think she’s dangerous?”
“Not really,” said Bertie. “Or maybe just a little bit. But she’s very strange, you know. She’s pretending to be my mother, I think.”
“Some grown-ups are really sad,” said the boy.
124 Bertie’s Agony
“Yes,” agreed Bertie. “It’s really sad.”
He looked at the boy. If he could make a friend here, then the ordeal of being the youngest person present, by far, would be lessened. And this boy, who had what looked like a trombone case with him, seemed to be friendly enough. “What’s your name?” Bertie asked.
The boy smiled. “I’m called Harry,” he said. “And you?”
Bertie swallowed. “I’m called Tom,” he said.
“But she called you Bertie,” said Harry. “That woman called you Bertie. I heard her.”
Bertie shook his head. “Yes,” he said. “It’s sad, isn’t it? I think she calls everybody Bertie. It’s her illness talking.”
Harry nodded. “Look,” he said. “If you need to get away from her, I can help you. We can go and hide in the toilet while she’s getting her coffee. I suppose she’ll go away after a while. How about it?”
Bertie looked towards the bar. He had never run away from his mother before, although he had once managed to get as far as Dundas Street. He did not wish to run away, having decided that he would sit his childhood out until that magical date when he turned eighteen, but the humiliation he had just suffered at the hands of his mother seemed to him now to justify a strong response. But he was not sure whether hiding with Harry would solve anything. What if Irene panicked when she found him missing and started to scream? Or what if she saw him going into the toilets and came in after him to drag him out? She was quite capable of doing that, he thought, and he imagined the scene if Irene went into the men’s room. He closed his eyes. He could not bear to think about it. “Too late,” muttered Harry rising to his feet. “Look out, here she comes. I’m taking off. See you!”
Irene, reaching the table, put down her cup of coffee and lowered herself into the chair beside her son. “It’s going to be very easy for you, Bertie,” she said. “I was talking to one of the other mummies at the bar, and she said that the conductor is a good friend of Lewis Morrison. So I’m sure that he’ll be kind to Mr Morrison’s pupils.”
Bertie Plays the Blues 125
“He may not know,” muttered Bertie.
“Of course he’ll know,” said Irene. “Naturally, I’m going to have a word with him beforehand. I’ll make sure that he knows just who you are.”
Bertie looked at the ground in despair. “Mummy,” he said.
“Please take me home. That’s all I’m asking you. Please just take me home.”
Irene leaned forwards. “Later, Bertie, carissimo,” she said.
“I’ll take you home after the audition. And that’s a promise.”
40. Bertie Plays the Blues
There were at least one hundred hopeful young musicians assembled in the hall for the orchestral audition. The young people ranged between the age of thirteen and eighteen, although there were one or two nineteen-year-olds and Bertie, of course, who was six. The teenagers had been instructed to sit in the first five rows of seats at the front and, in the case of those with large instruments, the cellists, bass players and bassoonists, in a cluster of seats to the side of the stage. The auditions were by section, and the aspirants were free to wander out of the hall until their section was called, as long as they kept their voices down and did not allow the door to bang shut when they left or came in.
To his horror, Bertie found that his mother insisted on sitting next to him in the fourth row. Nobody else’s parents sat anywhere near them, he noted. Most of the parents sat at the back with their friends, or had remained in the bar. But Irene insisted, and Bertie sank down in his seat, trying to persuade himself that not only was she not there, but that neither was he. He had remembered reading somewhere that the best way of dealing with unpleasant moments was to try to imagine that one was somewhere else altogether. So he closed his eyes and conjured up a picture of himself in Waverley Station, watching the trains coming in, his friend Tofu at his side. Tofu had a large bar of 126 Bertie Plays the Blues
chocolate and was breaking off a piece and handing it to him.
And he felt happy, curiously happy, to be there with his friend, just by themselves.
He felt a nudge in his ribs. “We’ll be next,” whispered Irene.
“It’s woodwind next.”
“Shouldn’t I go on with the brass?” asked Bertie. “Maybe just after the trombones?”
“But you’re woodwind, Bertie,” said Irene reproachfully. “You know that the saxophone is technically woodwind.”
Bertie bit his lip. His mother’s insistence that he should audition even when there was no call for saxophones was perhaps the most embarrassing aspect of the entire experience. It was bad enough being six and trying to get into a teenage orchestra, but being six and a saxophonist, was even worse. Nobody else had brought a saxophone with them; everybody else, everyone, had a conventional orchestral instrument with them.
At a signal from a woman who was helping the conductor, a small knot of oboists made their way to the front of the hall.
“You get up now, Bertie,” said Irene. “Woodwind now.”
Bertie did nothing. His mother was giving him no alternative. He did not w
ant to put his plan into effect, but she really left him with no choice.
“Come on,” said Irene, rising to her feet and pulling Bertie up by the straps of his pink dungarees. “I’ll come with you.”
“Please, Mummy,” pleaded Bertie. “Please . . .”
It was to no avail. Virtually frogmarched to the front, Bertie approached the conductor at his table.
“Tenor saxophone,” said Irene, pushing Bertie forward.
“Bertie Pollock.”
The conductor looked up. “Saxophone?” he said. “Well, I’m afraid . . .”
“His sight-reading is excellent,” said Irene. “And he can trans-pose very well, too. He can easily go from B flat to E flat, so you can let him play the tenor horn part. I don’t see any tenor horns around. Bertie can fill that gap for you.”
“Well,” said the conductor. “It’s a different timbre, you know.
I’m not sure that . . .”
Bertie Plays the Blues 127
“Or the euphonium part,” went on Irene. “I take it that you want a bit of slightly richer bass. I don’t see any tuba players.
You don’t want to sound thin, do you?”
The conductor exchanged a glance with the woman beside him, who was smiling, lips pursed. Irene shot the woman a warning glance.
“He’s a bit young, isn’t he?” ventured the woman. “This is the Edinburgh Teenage Orchestra, after all. We’ve never had anybody that young . . .”
Irene’s eyes flashed. “That, if I may say so, is a somewhat unhelpful remark,” she said coldly. “Do you really want to stifle talent by discriminating against younger musicians?”
She waited for an answer, but none came. The conductor looked at the woman, as if seeking moral support. She shrugged.
“Oh, very well then,” said the conductor wearily. “Go up on stage, Bertie. And just play us this piece, the first fifteen bars, that’s all. Do you think you can manage?”
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