Miss Carson woke me up in the middle of the night like she normally does.
‘Okay, Teasdale. Out you pop…’
‘What time is it, Miss Carson?’
‘Shush, shush—try not to wake the others. Nearly eleven o’clock. Hurry up now, there’s a good boy.’
I always ask her what time it is when she wakes me, and I think that’s what makes her smile because every night it’s the same old question. I probably have a surprised look on my face because I’ve been asleep. It’s very dark when she comes in and she has a torch so that she doesn’t have to turn on the light.
Then I get out of bed and wee in the pot that she brings in with her.
Quite often, I don’t really need to, and I have to do a tiny whistle to make myself go and that makes her smile again, and then I do a little giggle. Sometimes, when I’m finished, she rubs the back of my head for a second just before I get back into my bed.
I don’t know why I wet the bed. I don’t do it on purpose. It just happens.
That’s my third big secret.
Sometimes I think it’s an even bigger secret than the one about Mummy not being very well. I just have to make sure it doesn’t get around the whole school. It would be dreadful if everybody knew, and it would be a major thing to bully me about. But it’s very hard to keep such a big secret. Nicholas and Stuart Goodwin, who are brothers, both wet the bed, and everyone calls them the Pisspot Twins, though actually they’re not twins at all. Nobody likes them because of it. Absolutely every single person in the school knows, and even Mrs. Marston said something about it to Goodwin Senior last term when he hadn’t learnt all his dates. ‘Too lazy to finish your work, Goodwin, and too lazy to get out of bed to go to the bathroom.’ He’s in my class and when she said that to him, it made me so frightened that she would do the same if she knew about me. It’s the most shameful thing. Nicholas Goodwin doesn’t seem to care very much about the bullying though. I would hate it more than anything in the entire world.
Actually, Miss Carson’s really nice to me when she wakes me up. She looks a bit different in the night because she doesn’t have her white coat on, and it’s a bit like she’s forgetting to be a matron. Probably she’s been watching the telly and having a glass of sherry and a relax. I feel as though we’re sharing a bit of a secret. The other boys don’t usually wake up, but if they do they just look very puzzled with screwed up faces that I can’t see in the dark, and they never remember a thing about it the next morning. I don’t feel so bad about it now, but when I first had to tell her about it, and she said she was going to come in every night, it made me want to cry, especially when she told me there would have to be a rubber sheet under the sheet. I was very, very ashamed. At first she kept the pot under the bed. Then one morning after breakfast when we went up to make our beds, Theo started mucking around with it and put it on his head as though it was a helmet from the war; Fisheye was saying ‘yuk’ and ‘disgusting.’ I knew that was going to happen over and over again, so I plucked up the courage and went into Matron’s surgery to ask her whether we could keep it somewhere else where the other boys wouldn’t see it.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Teasdale—I’m not carting a pot around with me on my eleven o’clock rounds…’
‘Please, Matron. Please, please. I don’t want the other boys to see it. They make fun of me because of it…’
She didn’t say anything more then, because she was busy sorting out the socks that had come back from the school laundry, but when I went up to the dorm—I was in Somerset then—that same evening, the pot wasn’t under my bed anymore. When she came round that night she had the pot with her, and when I saw the whiteness of it clinking against the torch in her hand, I was so grateful to her. After I had finished and I was getting back into bed, I took her hand just for a little moment and said ‘Thank you so, so much.’
Mummy used to get upset about me wetting the bed because it meant there was more work to do like washing sheets and things. I hated it when she told my dad, and he would look at me with a cross, disappointed expression. I remember one day when Mummy was taking wet sheets off my bed. We were staying in England; if we’d been in Beirut, it would have been Miriam, my old nanny, who would have done it, and she never used to say anything about it apart from making a clucking sound with her mouth. But Mummy was very worried about what the people who owned the guesthouse where we were staying would think about the stain I’d made on the mattress. She was saying over and over again to me, ‘What will they say—what on earth will they say?’ I was sitting on a chair trying to learn how to do up my shoelaces to make up for it, and suddenly I was able to tie them. She looked up at me from the other side of my bed with all the sheets bunched up in her hands and said, ‘Well at least that’s something, I suppose.’
Quite soon after that, when I was about six, I must have stopped doing it because I don’t remember Mummy being disappointed about it any longer.
But it started again right in the middle of my first term, which means that I must have been about to be nine. I woke up one morning just as the warm feeling was turning to cold. I didn’t know what to do at first, and I lay there shaking and shaking. It was still dark and everyone else was fast asleep. I got out of bed and went to get my towel from the washstand, and I put it over the wet patch and then I got back into bed and took off my pajama bottoms under the covers and put them under the pillow. Then I put my head right under the blankets and prayed and prayed that my breath would make the bed as warm as possible so the dampness would dry by the morning. I cried too, because I couldn’t believe that it had happened. Then I fell asleep for a bit although I was hoping that the morning would never ever come.
My bed did get dry. Nobody noticed when we got up although there was a stain on the sheet that got worse as it got drier. We all have to strip our beds back before we go down to breakfast, and we’re supposed to leave them very tidy with the under sheet all straight and the top sheet and blankets perfectly folded back at the end of the bed to allow it all to air. We go back upstairs to the dorm after breakfast to make the beds properly before classes start.
That first time, after I’d folded the sheets back, I put my dressing gown over the stain and Langford, who was our dorm prefect and luckily not very bothered about tidiness, didn’t seem to notice, although dressing gowns are meant to be left folded neatly over the bar at the end of the bed. It’s quite a strict rule, actually.
After a few days, I thought that it might have just been that I had too much to drink at high tea. And so it was like a little bit of a warning not to drink too much near to bedtime.
But then it happened again, and this time it was even worse because I knew that it was going to happen over and over again, and that I would have to learn to hide it and even then people would probably find out. I had to start pretending that I wasn’t a tidy person, which I am really. I was always the last one to go down to breakfast in the morning because I wanted to make sure that the patch on the bed was covered by my dressing gown or my towel. If I wet the bed quite soon after the sheets were changed or we had clean pajamas which happens every two weeks, I would be very worried about the smell which would be horribly bad if I wet the bed once or twice with the same sheets. I didn’t want to be known as a smelly person, like everyone says the Goodwins are. I tried to be wearing my dressing gown as much as I possibly could whenever I was in my pajamas upstairs so no one would be able to smell them.
I knew that one day I would be found out, though. It was getting worse and worse and even when I went home for the Christmas holidays, it didn’t stop. I didn’t tell Mummy about it, though, and I’ve never ever told her, even now. I wanted nobody in the whole world to know about it. It was the deadliest, deepest secret.
On Boxing Day, when it was my first holiday at home and I was already dreading going back to school, my dad came into my bedroom before I had time to make my bed. I was sitting at my desk lookin
g up in my old Gibbons catalogue some new stamps that Granny had sent me for Christmas. He opened the door and looked straight down at my bed. I just don’t know why I had been so stupid and forgotten to cover it up, because I’m usually so careful.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Ben…’ he said very slowly and closed the door. He’s never said anything more about it, though. I don’t think he was so sure what to say.
I was in Somerset dorm when I came back from that Christmas holiday for my second term. It’s just the same size as Dorset, which I’m in now, because it’s directly underneath, but it doesn’t have the sloping roof and the ceiling is much higher. Halford was the dorm prefect, and he’s dead keen on tidiness, so it was much more difficult trying to arrange things to cover the stains before going down to breakfast. One day I was on table clearing duty and went back up to the dormitory after the other boys. When I got to just outside the door, I saw that everyone was leaning over my bed and Halford was holding my dressing gown. Then they all shot away as though they didn’t want me to know that they had been looking, and Halford put my dressing gown back on the bed. I pretended that I hadn’t seen anything, though I was shivering inside. I prayed and prayed that no one was going to say anything about it, and while I was making my bed no one did, though everyone kept looking at me in a funny way. But just as we were leaving to go downstairs, Halford said—in front of everybody—‘got a slight problem here, have we, eh, Teasdale?’ He sort of half pointed at my bed and I tried to look as though I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I was blushing and my hands were shaking.
He didn’t say anything more about it, and nobody else did either. I was so relieved, but then I was just waiting for the exact same thing to happen again another time.
It was just a few days later, and I wet the bed again very badly. I think it was just before we were going to get up and not the middle of the night so there was no time for the sheets to dry. When the morning bell went, I got out of bed and put my dressing gown over the wet patch and went to the washstand. There was snow on the ground outside, and it was icy cold in the dorm with the radiators only slightly lukewarm as usual. I was shivering. My pajama bottoms were completely wet and sticking to my legs, and I could see that Halford had noticed. He told me to put my dressing gown on like everyone else. I walked back to my bed ever so slowly and put it on. Then he looked at the damp patch where the dressing gown had been and told me to go and see Matron and tell her that I’d wet the bed.
Someone—I think it was Fisheye actually—said ‘Oh, blimey, we’ve got a blooming bed wetter in the dorm,’ and Theodorakis said ‘l-l-lazy rat—can’t you p-pee in the bog like e-everyone else?’ and someone else—I think it might have been Reynolds—called me a cretin. I knew I’d been found out good and proper, and things would never be the same again.
I sat down on the edge of my bed and covered my face with my hands really tight, as though if I pressed hard enough it might all go away and I might be somewhere else or a different person.
‘Please, please don’t tell anyone else,’ I said and I looked at everyone to see if there might be a possibility that they’d keep it a secret.
‘It’s alright, Teasdale,’ said Halford, ‘It’s not such a big deal. Just go and tell Matron, and she’ll sort something out.’
‘But she’ll be so cross with me…’
‘No she won’t. Just tell her the truth. It’ll be okay.’ And then he said, ‘Listen everyone. Dorm secret. This doesn’t go any further than here, okay?’
I didn’t know why he’d done that. I thought perhaps it was because it’s a bit shameful to have someone in the dorm who wets the bed. The best kept dorm on each floor is awarded school points once a week from Matron, and Halford was always pleased when Somerset won, which was very often, on account of him being such a tidy person. But actually, he left to go to Brecon School last summer, and then I heard someone saying that when he first came to Courtlands, he’d been a bed wetter too. I don’t know if that’s true, though. He didn’t seem at all like a bed wetter to me.
I was ever so grateful to him. It meant that no one was talking about it, and I don’t think even now most people in the school really know. Nick Gower doesn’t know. I’ve never been in a dorm with him. Tom Whickham didn’t know before, but he must now after two terms in the same dorm as me, though he’s never said a word about it. I really wish he didn’t have to know, though.
Every time I’m in a new dorm I get terribly worried about what people will say about Miss Carson waking me up in the middle of the night. That’s why it’s so important to me who’s in the dorm and whether they’re good at secrets, but I hardly wet the bed at all now that I’m weeing in the pot, so nobody’s actually very bothered about it. Sometimes there’s a tiny bit of an outbreak of teasing, though. At the beginning of this term I had an argument with Theo about a desk in our classroom. I’d bagged one of the new shiny light brown ones that everyone wants, and when he didn’t manage to get one for himself, he started singing ever so softly, and without any bit of his stutter—‘Make an umbrella, make an umbrella - out - of - Teasdale’s - rubber - sheet!’ No one in the form asked him what he meant, because, luckily, just then, Mr. England came in, and we all sat down for the beginning of term. I’ve still got that desk.
But I’m always worried about being properly found out, and everyone, including the teachers, going on at me like they do at the Goodwin Pisspot Twins.
Q
The Headmaster’s bell on Centre Table has just rung for silence. Lunch is finished, and I’m still here. Now they’ve all gone quiet, and Mr. Burston is going to say grace before everyone comes out and goes along the corridor again. He’s got a very deep voice, so wherever he is in the school, you can hear him.
‘For what we have just received, may the Lord make us truly grateful. Amen.’
What am I going to do? Mummy’s not coming or she’s had an accident, and absolutely nobody knows that I’m still waiting in this hall.
The thing is—anything could have happened to her. She might be asleep on the train and gone to Swansea, or she might have had a bad accident. She could have fallen over when she was getting off and banged her head like she did when she went to the Prestons’ at the top of the road for dinner. That was the night that my dad had to carry her back. There was snow on the ground, and he slipped and fell all the way down the front steps with her. It was very late in the night, but I was worried and watching from my bedroom window. I didn’t do anything about it, though. I pretended that it wasn’t happening. In the end, my dad put her on the bed in the spare room and started shouting at her to pull herself together. I could hear from his voice that he might even start crying, and I pulled my pillow over my head to cover my ears.
They’re coming out of the dining room now. I can hear all the feet on the wooden floor going past. When they get to the end of the corridor, Miss Newman will open the big door at the back. Then the chattering will start, and everyone will go outside for twenty minutes before the bell goes for afternoon classes.
I’m going to get a telling off when it’s discovered that I’m still here. They’ll think that I’ve just been sitting here enjoying not being in class. They don’t know how I really feel about it.
Everyone’s outside now; I can hear them in the distance. There’s shouting about a game of football that’s started.
I’m going to have to find someone in a minute and tell them that I’m still here. They’ll be really shocked, and the matrons will talk more about Mummy and perhaps call a staff meeting to discuss it all.
When Mr. Burston told me she was coming, I pretended to look very pleased about it, but actually inside I felt horrid. Really horrid, because more and more Mummy can’t cope by herself, and I don’t know what to do about it. And if she does still come today and she’s had too much sherry, where will we go, and what will people say if she’s not walking properly? And what if she’s in one
of her really silly moods and doing stupid mad things like when the van from Harrods arrived at the house to deliver a cage with a huge red parrot inside it. I said ‘I think there’s been some mistake here’—just like my dad does—and the delivery man said it wasn’t a mistake and showed us her funny scrawly signature to prove it.
‘Heavens, Ben—you still here?’
It’s Mr. England. I never heard him coming along the corridor. He wears very quiet Hush Puppy shoes. He’s carrying a big tape recorder in his hands with a pile of books and tape reels on top of it.
‘Hello, Mr. England.’
‘You still waiting for your mother?’
‘Yes, she’s coming to take me out for lunch.’
‘I know. We thought you’d gone ages ago.’
‘She’s just a bit late. She’s probably been delayed or something.’ I’m trying to make it sound like I really don’t mind. Mr. England stops in the middle of the hall, and his floppy yellow hair moves because he’s very slowly nodding his head. He looks away as though he’s thinking about something and then he walks over to the big table on the other side and puts down the tape recorder.
‘What time were you expecting her?’ he says after quite a long time.
The House Martin Page 8
