The Importance of Being Seven Read Online Free Page B

of Ulysses
     
    It was Bertie who first noticed that Ulysses bore a striking resemblance to Dr Hugo Fairbairn, the noted child psychotherapist andauthor of
Shattered to Pieces: Ego Dissolution in a Three-Year-Old Tyrant
. Initially he had not been able to make much of Ulysses’s face, and could detect no similarities to anybody, such was the formlessness – fluidity, even – of his brother’s physiognomy. This impression was shared by Tofu. A few days after he had paid a visit to the Pollock flat in Scotland Street and seen Ulysses for the first time, Bertie’s friend had passed him a note in the classroom, saying:
Your little brother is really ugly, Bertie, don’t you think? You know what his face reminds me of? A bottom!
Bertie had torn the note up and pointedly ignored Tofu for the rest of the lesson. But at the end of the class, Tofu had approached him and asked, ‘Did you read my note, Bertie? Did you?’
    ‘It was very rude,’ said Bertie. ‘You should never say that anybody else looks like a bottom. It’s rude.’
    ‘Even if he does?’ asked Tofu.
    Bertie thought about this. He was an extremely truthful boy – indeed, the only truthful boy in his class, as all the rest of the children (as Bertie could not help but notice) appeared to lie whenever it suited them to do so. Tofu, of course, lied about most things, more or less as a matter of course, and Olive, although more circumspect, always twisted the facts to suit her, while vigorously claiming to be an occupant of the moral high ground. The occupation of that high ground was useful in disputes – as Olive well knew – as it enabled her to invoke threats of divine intervention should anybody thwart her.

     
    Olive was always warning others of the consequences of dis agreeing with her version of events. Bertie, for example, who was said by Olive to have promised to marry her once they both turned twenty, was warned severely as to the fate that lay ahead of him should he renege on this alleged promise.
    ‘It’s not just that you won’t be able to look at yourself in the mirror,’ said Olive. ‘It’s not just that, Bertie. You’ll also be struck by lightning.’
    Bertie was silent for a moment. ‘I’m not calling you a liar,’ he said mildly. ‘Sometimes people misunderstand what they hear. Sometimes they hear things that nobody actually said. That doesn’t make them liars.’
    Olive fixed him with an intense stare. ‘Oh yes? And sometimes they hear things exactly as the other person said them. So when somebody says, I promise to marry you when I’m twenty, they hear that and they remember it. What about that, Bertie?’
    ‘I really don’t think I ever said that, Olive,’ protested Bertie.
    ‘Well, you did,’ said Olive. ‘You said it and I wrote it down on a piece of paper. Then you signed it.’
    Bertie was shocked at this claim, which was outrageous even by Olive’s standards. ‘I didn’t, Olive! And, anyway, where’s the paper? Show it to me.’
    Olive was ready for this. ‘You’re not going to trick me that easily, Bertie Pollock. If I gave you the paper, you’d tear it up. I’ve seen that sort of thing happen before.’ She paused, and then uttered a final warning. ‘And if you carry on lying like this, you know, your pants are going to go on fire. I’m warning you, Bertie!’
    It seemed to Bertie that truth for people such as Tofu and Olive was an entirely flexible concept, and that what determined truth for such people was the vigour with which a proposition was asserted, even in the face of all the evidence. He, of course, knew differently, but he was still unsure as to whether there were circumstances in which one should refrain from revealing a truth because of the effect that this might have on others. Some observations, itappeared, were just too hurtful or troublesome to make, even if they were completely true. It was hurtful of Tofu to be so rude about Ulysses, and it was evidently very troublesome that Ulysses