Bobby’s Room by Douglas Dunn. Part 2.
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Two years later, there was a week in early June when Henry’s father was more thoughtful than usual. After dinner he did a lot of meditative gardening. Tired of that, he sat in the lounge with an open book on his lap. Henry’s mother brought him tea or coffee, asked him if he wanted something stronger, or something to eat, and in her busy efforts to leave him alone made a nuisance of herself. It was obvious to Henry that his father was making his mind up about something important. From time to time he saw his parents talk quietly and seriously to each other. They cuddled in the kitchen even more often than usual.
‘Why don’t I phone her? I kept a note of the number, you know, he heard his mother say one evening.
‘Do you think she would?’ Pollock asked her. ‘It’s not really what she does.’
‘Almost three months at her usual rates is probably very good business for her, especially if we add something on for her trouble. I imagine she’ll be only too pleased!’
‘It’d be ideal. But what do we do about the weeks of school he’ll have to miss?’
‘Darling, I’ve no intention of being left behind. It’s an opportunity to travel I won’t let pass by, especially since the offer specifically includes me as well.
It’s not as if you’ll have to fork out for my fare and hotel bills. Some of us were prevented from travelling by the war, you know, not to mention marriage and motherhood’
‘If this trip’s successful, there will have to be others, as a matter of course.
It’s a big project. It’s not one bridge, it’s a network. I don’t look forward to going away without you, and I want you to come with me. But the best thing might be to start thinking about boarding school’
‘Were Henry younger, I’d say no, naturally. But at his age boarding school is probably a very adventurous proposition. I know it was for Alice Wylie’s brother’
Later that evening, Henry heard the telephone being used. He looked down into the hall from the top of the stairs and saw his mother leaning against the opposite wall while his father spoke into the phone. She was smoking, which she did only in company to be polite, or when she was agitated. Then she, too, went over to the phone and began to speak into it. Later, his mother called him to come down to the sitting room.
‘Your mother and I have to go to Singapore, his father said. ‘We’ll be gone for most of July and all of August and September. And I’m afraid it just isn’t practical to take you with us’
‘You remember Mrs Bawden, and Netherbank?’ His wife spoke sooner than Pollock would have liked. ‘We’ve arranged for you to stay with her.’
‘What about school?’ Henry’s tone of voice was meant to suggest that weeks of missed classes could be disastrous.
‘Henry, you’re the last person I can imagine slipping behind. A few weeks won’t be a setback to you!
His mother’s way of speaking to him, her confidence in his maturity and academic excellence, made Henry want to fight back. He felt inclined to be stubborn and obstructive. ‘There isn’t a lot to do at Mrs Bawden’s,’ he said.
‘We both think it’s ideal’
‘We’ve no choice but to leave you behind!’ his father said. ‘We’ll be happier, much happier, knowing you’re somewhere we can feel easy in our minds about.’
Henry looked at his mother, hoping she would understand that he expected her to stay behind with him. She said, TIl talk to the headmaster on Monday.
You can arrange for your teachers to give you a programme of study. You can do it on your own – I’m sure you can. And if you think you can’t you’re underrating yourself!’
He knew enough about her to know that if at his age she had been given a ‘programme of study’ she’d have collapsed in tears.
Instead of making it difficult for them, he accepted it, and resigned himself.
He knew why they had chosen Mrs Bawden and Netherbank. They had been happy there, and assumed that he had liked it, too. It was a place and a few days in their lives that meant something in their happiness. He wondered why they could continue to be so ignorant of his feelings. Mrs Bawden was not a complete stranger, but she was the next thing to it – the landlady of a guesthouse, a species his mother usually loathed.
‘Don’t feel unwanted, his mother said. ‘It would suit us better, much better, if you could come with us. But it isn’t possible, so we have to make the best of it’ When the time came, they drove him to Mrs Bawden’s with suitcases, books, tennis racquet, binoculars, and field guides to the birds and wildflowers of the British Isles. Nature study was his mother’s idea. ‘When I get back, I want to find you thoroughly up to the mark in country life, she said. ‘It’s a wonderful opportunity for you. I’ve always been opposed to townies’ He tried to think of what it was she craved so determinedly that it made a trip to Singapore necessary to her.
She wept as she said goodbye. Henry felt like weeping on his own account.
‘Iknow you won’t give Mrs Bawden any trouble, she said. It was the wrong thing to have said. Obedient to the point of filial perfection, he had never given anyone the least bit of trouble in his life.
‘How long does post take from Singapore?’ Mrs Pollock asked her husband.
‘Airmail,’ he said. ‘Pretty fast.’
“Then I’ll write at least once a week, and I’ll expect you to do the same,’ she told Henry. With that, she left for the car, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief.
‘You haven’t left me your address in Singapore,’ Henry said. Pollock had to call for Mrs Bawden to bring a piece of paper for him to write it down on. He was embarrassed, talking about rush, last-minute details, oversights.