Alexander Smith - Unbearable Lightness of Scones

“Heaven, Bertie,” she explained, “is not a place like… like Edinburgh or even Glasgow. Non c’e nessun paradiso esterno . Heaven is potentially within each of us. Don’t look for heaven anywhere else, Bertissimo.”

Bertie had been puzzled by this answer to what he had thought was a simple question. He rather liked the idea of heaven being a physical place that one was let into if one deserved it. He thought that Miss Harmony would certainly get there, and Matthew, her new husband, as God would surely not want Miss Harmony to be lonely. And that nice lady who ran the coffee bar, Big Lou; she would go there, and maybe Mr. Lordie too, if you were allowed to take dogs. Perhaps you could if the dog had been good too, which would mean that Cyril would definitely get in. Olive, of course, would have to be turned away. It would be awful, he thought, to get to heaven and find her there, bossing everybody about – including God – for the rest of time.

No, his mother’s transformation would never be achieved by any religious experience; for her there would be no blinding light on the road to Damascus, no sudden espousal of the Eightfold Way, nothing of that sort. There were other ways, of course, of changing, and Bertie had heard about these too. People sometimes changed, he had read, if they had some sort of shocking experience – if they saw something frightening, if they were kidnapped, if their hearts stopped, or something of that sort. Such people realised that they had wasted their time, or been wrong about things, and resolved that in future they would lead a better life. Not that it always happened that way: Tofu was a case in point. He had told Bertie that he had once received a strong electric shock when he put a knife into an electric toaster, and that his hair had stood up straight for half an hour after the experience. But there had been no other changes, unfortunately, and he had remained very much the same.

Irene, Bertie reluctantly concluded, led far too sheltered a life to encounter a transforming traumatic event. The daily round of taking Bertie to school on the 23 bus, of going to psychotherapy, of spending hours in the Floatarium – all of these were unlikely to lead to the sort of experience that would make his mother a different person. And so he was stuck with her as she was, and had decided that the only thing to do was to endure the twelve years that lay between him and his eighteenth birthday.

When eventually he left home, on the morning of that birthday, he would be free and it would not matter any more what his mother was like. He would write to her, of course, every six months or so, but he would not have to see her, except when he wanted to. And there was no law, Bertie reminded himself, which stipulated that you had to invite your mother to your flat once you had moved out of the family home; Bertie, in fact, was not planning to give her his address once he had moved out.

But twelve years seemed an impossibly long time for a boy of six; indeed it was twice the length of his life so far, an unimaginable desert of time. In the meantime, he realised that he would have to negotiate such excitement for himself as he could, finding a place for it in the interstices of the psychotherapy and yoga and Italian lessons that his mother arranged for him.

Tofu, for all his manifold faults, was a potential source of diversion for Bertie. His friend’s life was subject to constraints of its own – his father, the author of several books on the energy fields of nuts, followed a strictly vegan diet and insisted that his son do the same. This made Tofu extremely hungry, and explained his penchant for stealing other children’s sandwiches. But apart from that, Tofu was left to his own devices, and boasted of having gone through to Glasgow on the train several times with neither an accompanying adult nor a ticket. He had also attended a football match when he was meant to be at a Saturday morning art club favoured by his father and had spent the art class money on a pepperoni pizza. This was a heady example to Bertie of just what freedom might mean, as was Tofu’s suggestion to Bertie that together they should join a cub scout pack which had recently been established in the Episcopal Church Hall at the head of Colinton Road.

“They need people like us,” Tofu said.

“I can’t, Tofu,” said Bertie. “I can’t join the cubs.”

Tofu was dismissive of Bertie’s protestation. “You can’t? Why? Is it because you think you’ll fail the medical examination? There isn’t one. That’s the army you’re thinking of. The cubs will take anyone – even somebody like you.”

“It’s not that,” Bertie said miserably. “It’s just that…”

“Well,” Tofu pressed, “what is it? Are you scared or something? You can be a real wimp, you know, Bertie.”

Bertie glowered at Tofu. It was typical of the other boy that he should jump to conclusions – and, as was always the case with Tofu, he was wrong. “No, it’s my mother,” he said. “She found me reading a book about Mr. Baden-Powell and she said that I could never join the cubs or scouts. She doesn’t like them.”

Tofu frowned. “What a cow your mother is, Bertie,” he said sympathetically. “But I suppose it’s not your fault.”

Bertie said nothing. He did not like Tofu referring to his mother in those terms, but it was difficult to contradict him. The barricades in this life, his father had once observed, are often in the wrong place. Bertie had not been sure what this meant, but he felt that it might have some bearing on his dilemma in the face of anti-Irene comments from people such as Tofu.

Tofu thought for a moment. “Of course, it’s a bit awkward that your mother thinks like that, but it shouldn’t stop you.”

Bertie was puzzled. “But how could I go to cubs if she won’t let me?” he asked. “How could I? Don’t they wear a uniform?”

He was not sure whether cubs still wore a uniform or not, but he very much hoped that they did. Bertie had always liked the thought of wearing a uniform, particularly since his mother had such strong views on them.

“Yes, there is a uniform,” said Tofu. “But I could get hold of one for you. Your mother wouldn’t have to buy it.”

“But she’d see it,” said Bertie. “I’d have to change into it and then she’d see it. She’d say: ‘What’s that you’re wearing…?’”

Tofu was shaking his head in disagreement. “She needn’t see it,” he said patiently, as if explaining a rudimentary matter to somebody who was rather slow. “There’s a place nearby, a place where they sell coffee. It’s called Starbucks. We can go in there and change into our uniforms in the toilet. See?”

Bertie was still not convinced. He was a truthful boy, and he would not lie to his mother; he would not mislead her as to where he was going, and it was inconceivable that he could just slip out of the house, as Tofu appeared able to do. He looked at Tofu with admiration and a certain amount of envy – what it must be like to have such freedom.

“I’m sorry, Tofu,” he said. “I don’t like telling fibs.”

“But I do,” said Tofu. “I’ll tell her that we’re going to a special club. I’ll get her to say yes.”

Bertie felt quite torn. One part of him wanted no part of Tofu’s machinations; another was desperate to join the cubs, indeed was desperate to have any sort of life of his own. “But what will you say?” He asked. “What sort of club?”

Tofu shrugged his shoulders. He saw no particular challenge in this deception; the name of the club was a minor detail. “I’ll tell her that it’s…” He paused. Bertie was listening carefully. “I’ll tell your mummy that it’s the Young Liberal Democrats Club.”