Cyril had no idea where he was going; all he wanted to do was to escape from the young man who had taken him away and put him in the bus. The young man was danger, was death, he thought, although Cyril had no idea what death was. All that he knew was that there was pain and something greater than pain–great cold and hunger, perhaps–which was death. Now, his heart thumping within him, the stones on the path cutting hard on his paws, he sought only to put as much distance as he could between himself and that death that was behind him, shouting. And it was easy to do so, because that death was slow and could not run as a dog could run.
Somewhere ahead of him–he could smell it–was water. His nose led him and soon it was before him, a thin body of water that snaked off to left and right, and beside it a path. He hesitated briefly and raised his nose into the air. Off to the right there was a confusion of smells, of other animals, of emptiness. And to the left there was a similar confusion, but somewhere, deep in the palette of odours, something familiar. He had no name for it, of course, no association–just familiarity. Sun-dried tomatoes. Somewhere in that direction there were sun-dried tomatoes.
Cyril chose the familiar. Aware now that there was nobody chasing him, he set off at a comfortable trot along the canal tow-path. There were many indications of the presence of other dogs, a tantalising array of territorial claims, of warnings left behind on bushes and trees, but he ignored these. He was going home, he thought, although he had no idea of where home might be, other than in this general direction. The hunger pains in his stomach were still present, but Cyril ignored these too. He felt calmer now, quite as calm as he would feel if he were going for a walk with Angus by his side. Angus. Cyril loved Angus with all his heart, and this sudden remembering of Angus, this knowledge that Angus was not with him, made the world as dark and cold as if the sun had dropped out of the sky.
52. Casting Issues
Bertie had told nobody at school about his unwelcome recruitment to the Edinburgh Teenage Orchestra. He had entertained hopes that the proposed orchestral tour to Paris would be cancelled; that war might break out between Britain and France, thereby curtailing all cultural exchange. But none of this happened. He scoured the columns of the newspapers in search of references to conflict, but none was to be found. Cultural relations, it seemed, were thriving and there was nothing on the horizon which would make it impossible for the Edinburgh Teenage Orchestra to venture to Paris.
It was not just the humiliation of being the youngest member of the orchestra which worried Bertie; it was the knowledge that his mother planned to come to Paris with him. He would be the only member to have his mother with him, and he could imagine how that would amuse the other players, the real teenagers. They might even make cruel jokes about it, asking him if his mother had brought his baby food with her. Bertie was under no illusions as to how unkind children could be to one another. Look at Tofu. Look at Olive. Look at the sorts of things they said about other people. Being down there, down among the children, was like living in a jungle teeming with predators.
But there was something else that worried Bertie. At the audition at the Queen’s Hall, he had explained to Harry, the boy to whom he had chatted, that Irene was not really his mother at all but was a deluded madwoman who had followed him in off the bus. Harry had accepted this explanation, but what would he think if Irene came on the trip and was officially revealed as Bertie’s mother? He would no doubt spread the story about, and Bertie would be exposed as a liar. So he would be doubly ostracised: both as the youngest member–not a real teenager–and as a liar, too.
These thoughts had preyed on Bertie’s mind ever since the audition and now, a good week later, they were still there in the background, mixed up with all the other fears that can blight a six-year-old life. Bertie was conscious that not all was well in his world. He wanted so much to be like other boys, to play the games they played. He wanted to have a friend to share secrets with, a friend who would be an ally in the world and who would stand by him. Tofu was all very well–he was a sort of friend–but he left a great deal to be desired. Bertie did not think that Tofu would support him in a tight corner; in fact, quite the opposite. Tofu was your friend if you gave him presents, preferably money, but beyond that he really had little interest in anybody else. And as for Olive, she was completely unreliable in every respect. She had gone round the school telling everybody that Bertie was her boyfriend, and this had led to Bertie’s being mercilessly teased, especially by Tofu, who found the idea particularly amusing. Olive had sent him a Valentine card, which she had tucked into his desk and which Bertie had rashly opened in the belief that it was a party invitation. He had been appalled to see the large red heart on the face of the card and, inside, the message ‘My heart beats just for you’. It was unsigned, of course, but she had given a clue by drawing a large picture of an olive beneath the message. Bertie had quickly tried to tear it up, but had been seen doing this by Olive, who had snatched it back from him in a rage.
“If that’s what you think of me,” she spat out, “then…then you’ll find out!”
She had left the threat vague, and this was another thing that Bertie had hanging over him. It was bad enough having his mother to worry about, but now here he was with Olive to think about, too. It was really hard being a boy, he thought, with all these women and girls making life difficult for one.
Such were Bertie’s thoughts that morning at school when Miss Harmony, smiling broadly, announced that the class had been chosen to put on a play at the forthcoming concert in aid of the new school hall.
“This is, of course, a great responsibility, boys and girls,” she said. “But it is also a challenge. I know that we are a very creative class, and that we have some very accomplished actors amongst us.”
“Such as me,” said Tofu.
Miss Harmony smiled tolerantly. “You can certainly act, Tofu, dear,” she said. “But all of us can act, I think. Hiawatha, for example. You can act, can’t you, Hiawatha?”
“He can act a stinky part,” said Tofu. “He’d do that well.”
“Tofu, dear,” said Miss Harmony. “That is not very kind, is it? How would you like it if somebody said that about you.”
“But my socks don’t stink,” said Tofu. “So they wouldn’t say it.”
Miss Harmony sighed. This was not an avenue of discussion down which she cared to go. It was certainly true that Hiawatha appeared to wear his socks for rather longer than might be desirable, but that was no excuse for the awful Tofu to say things like that. Tofu was a problem; she had to admit. But he would not be helped to develop by disparaging him, tempting though that might be. Love and attention would do its work eventually.
“Now then,” she said brightly. “I have been thinking about what play we should do. And do you know, I think I’ve found just the thing. I’ve decided that we shall do The Sound of Music. What do you think of that, boys and girls? Don’t you think that will be fun?”
The children looked at one another. They knew The Sound of Music and they knew that it would be fun. But the real issue, as they also knew, was this: who would be Maria? There were seven girls in the class and only one of them wanted Olive to be Maria. That one was Olive herself. And as for the boys, and the roles available to them, every girl in the class, but especially Olive, hoped that Tofu would not be Captain von Trapp. And yet that was the role that Tofu now set his heart on. He would do anything to get it, he decided. Anything.
53. The Sybils of Edinburgh
The effect of Miss Harmony’s announcement that Bertie’s class was to perform The Sound of Music was, in the first place, the descent of silence on the room. If the teacher had expected a buzz of excitement, then she must have been surprised, for no such reaction occurred. Nobody, in fact, spoke until a good two minutes had elapsed, but during that time a number of glances were exchanged.
Bertie, whose desk was next to Tofu’s, looked sideways at his neighbour, trying to gauge his reaction. He knew that Tofu wished to dominate every
thing, and that the class play would be no exception. In the last play that they had performed, a truncated version of Amahl and the Night-Visitors, for which the music had been provided by the school orchestra, Tofu had resented being cast as a mere extra and had made several unscripted interventions in an attempt to raise the profile of the character whom he was playing (a sheep). This had caused even Miss Harmony, normally so mild, to raise her voice and threaten to write to Mr Menotti himself and inform him that the performance had been ruined by the misplaced ambition of one of the sheep.
When Bertie glanced at him, he saw that Tofu’s expression gave everything away. He was smiling, his lips pressed tight together in what could only be pleasure at the thought of the dramatic triumphs that lay ahead. Bertie looked down at his desk. There was something else for him to think about now. Whereas all the other children had seen the film of The Sound of Music, he had not been allowed to do so by his mother, who disapproved of it on principle.
“Pure schmalz,” she had explained to Bertie, when he had asked if they might borrow a tape of it and watch it one Saturday afternoon, after yoga. “Singing nuns and all the rest. I ask you, Bertie! Have you ever encountered a singing nun? And all those ghastly songs about lonely goatherds and raindrops on roses and the rest of it! No, Bertie, we don’t want any of that, do we?”
It occurred to Bertie that it might be rather fun to listen to songs about goatherds, and that anyway his mother appeared to know rather a lot about the film. Had she seen it herself? In which case, was it fair that she should prevent him from seeing it? That, to his mind, sounded rather like hypocrisy, the definition of which he had recently looked up in Chambers Dictionary.
“But you must have seen it yourself, Mummy,” he said. “If you know all that much about it, you must have seen it yourself.”
Irene hesitated. “Yes,” she said eventually. “I did see it. I saw it at the Dominion Cinema.”
Bertie thought for a moment. “So you must have walked out,” he said.
“Walked out? Why do you ask me whether I walked out, Bertie?”
“Because you disapproved of it so much,” said Bertie. “If you hated it, then why did you stay to the end?”
Irene looked out of the window. Now that she came to think about it, she had seen The Sound of Music twice, but she could not possibly tell Bertie that, as he would hardly understand that one might see such a film in a spirit of irony. So the subject was dropped, and The Sound of Music was not mentioned again. Irene had, of course, attended the production of Amahl and had been very critical, both of the choice of the opera and the production itself. “I don’t know why schools insist on choosing the same old thing time after time,” she observed to Stuart as they drove back along Bruntsfield Place.
“I thought it was rather touching,” said Stuart, but then added: “Or maybe not.”
“Definitely not,” said Irene. “Young children are perfectly capable of doing more taxing drama.”
“Such as?” asked Stuart.
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” said Irene lightly. “I’ve always liked Albee.”
In the back seat, Bertie listened intently. He had heard his mother talk about Virginia Woolf before and he had looked her up in a book he had found on her shelves. Mrs Woolf, he read, had been married to Mr Woolf, and had written a number of books. Then she had filled her pockets with stones and had jumped into a river, which Bertie thought was very sad. He was not sure if he would enjoy a play about a person like that, and he was worried that his mother would suggest it to Miss Harmony. But then he had gone on to think what one should do if one saw a person with stones in his pockets jump into a river. Bertie was sure that he would try to rescue such a person, and that would raise the question of whether one should take the stones out of the pockets before trying to drag him or her to the shore. Perhaps it would depend on the depth of the river. If somebody filled his pockets with stones and jumped into the Water of Leith, it would be easy to save him, as the Water of Leith was a very shallow river and one would probably not sink very far, even with stones in one’s pockets. One would just sit in the mud until help arrived.
Bertie knew about the Water of Leith because Irene had taken him for a walk along the river one day, after yoga, and they had stopped to look at the Temple of St Bernard’s Well.
“That, Bertie,” said Irene, “is a Doric temple. Nasmyth designed it after the Temple of the Sybil in Tivoli.”
Bertie had looked at the stone columns and the statue of the woman within. “Who were the Sybils, Mummy?” he asked.
Irene smiled. “We’d call them pundits today,” she said. “They were prophetesses who were associated with particular shrines. There was the Sybil of Delphi. She sat on a tripod over a sacred rock. Rather uncomfortable, I would have thought. And the Romans wanted their own Sybil–they were very envious of the Greeks, Bertie–so they appointed one at Tivoli. The Sybil of Tibur. They made pronouncements. On everything.”
Bertie listened carefully. So a Sybil was a woman who made pronouncements on everything. A disturbing thought occurred. His mother was a Sybil!
It was yet another blow.
54. Political Truths
It was Olive who broke the silence in the classroom. Like Bertie, she had been staring at Tofu and had discerned, almost immediately, the look of determination that meant that he intended to play Captain von Trapp.
This conclusion required some quick thinking on her part. It would be intolerable for Tofu to be Captain von Trapp if, as she planned, she was going to play the part of Maria. She was confident about her acting ability, but it would surely test her talent to its absolute limit–and indeed beyond–if she had to pretend to be enchanted by Tofu. She could always close her eyes, of course, as actresses did in the films when they had to kiss somebody, but it would be difficult to act the entire play with her eyes closed. No, it would be impossible for her to be Maria and for Tofu to be Captain von Trapp in the same production.
It would be better, even, to have Hiawatha in the role; by a supreme effort of will she could probably ignore the problem of his socks. Yet it was unlikely that Hiawatha would be chosen, given the strange accent with which he spoke and which rendered him almost unintelligible, even to Miss Harmony. Nobody knew why Hiawatha spoke as he did–he was not foreign; he was not even from London, where they spoke in a very strange way. One of the other girls, Pansy, had suggested that it was something physical, and had put her fingers into his mouth to investigate it one morning while Miss Harmony was out of the room, but with inconclusive results.
Olive decided that the only possible strategy would be to claim the role of Maria before anybody else might ask for it. This pre-emptive move might then deter Tofu from suggesting himself as Captain von Trapp, on the grounds that he would not wish to play opposite her. This result could not be guaranteed, of course, but she felt that it was worth trying.
“I’ll be Maria,” she burst out. “Miss Harmony, is that all right, then? I know all the songs–you can test me.”
Every eye in the room turned to Olive. While Olive had been thinking about the means of obtaining the role, every other girl in the class had been thinking similar thoughts, but each was consumed by her own version of despair when Olive volunteered herself. It was typical of Olive, thought Pansy: push, push, push. And Skye, who believed with utter conviction that she alone was qualified to play the role, felt a great surge of despair at the realisation that it might go to somebody else. For her part, Lakshmi, who was a quiet girl and rather given to defeatism, merely thought: Olive Oil, a soubriquet which she never openly uttered but which gave her great inner satisfaction and comfort.
Tofu, taken by surprise, was able only to glare at Olive, who returned his look with interest. She was now sure that her tactic had succeeded. Tofu would not dare to volunteer as Captain von Trapp while she was looking at him like this.
Miss Harmony, who believed in the innocence of children, pointedly ignored the undercurrents of ambition and hostilit
y that flowed and eddied around the room. In her mind, Olive was not a suitable candidate for Maria because she had played a prominent role in the informal play they had performed in the classroom the previous week. She had also played a solo part in the class recorder consort’s benchmark performance of ‘Pease Pudding Hot’, and it was a principle of Steiner educational theory that every child should be given a chance. No, it was definitely not Olive’s turn.
“That’s very kind of you, Olive,” she said. “But we mustn’t allow you to do all the work, must we? Your poor shoulders would buckle under the strain, wouldn’t they? No, don’t shake your head like that, Olive–they really would!” She looked around the class. “Now then, Skye. You haven’t had a big part in any of the plays yet. Would you like to be Maria?”
Skye looked down at her desk. She had hardly dared hope, and yet it had happened. She began to cry.
Tofu turned to Bertie and smirked. “What a girlie!” he whispered.
Miss Harmony, who was comforting Skye, looked up sharply. “Did we say something, Tofu?”
Tofu looked sullen.
“I said: did we say something, Tofu?” repeated Miss Harmony.
“I said ‘What a girl’, Miss Harmony.”
Miss Harmony smiled. “That’s kind of you, Tofu. And yes, it is good of Skye to accept the part of Maria. These big parts are a lot of work, as I’m sure you know.” She paused. “Now then, as you are all aware, boys and girls, the main part for a boy is Captain von Trapp. The Captain is a brave man, an Austrian patriot…”
“Me,” said Tofu, raising his hand in the air.
Miss Harmony drew a deep breath. She had expected this, of course, and was ready with her response.
“Now then, Tofu,” she began, “we’re old enough to understand that we can’t have all the things that we want in this life. If that happened, then what would we have to look forward to? So it’s best to accept that we can’t all be Captain von Trapp, much as we would like to be. And I’m sure that Captain von Trapp himself was very good at sharing. Yes, I’m sure he was. That’s why they made him a captain. He knew when it was his turn and when it wasn’t. And it’s not your turn now, Tofu. So Captain von Trapp will be played by…”