44 Scotland Street

“No,” said Christabel Macfadzean. “This incident did not involve the breaking of anything. It involved the writing of graffiti. In the toilet – all over one wall – in large letters.”

“And what makes you assume that it was Bertie?” Irene asked belligerently. “Are you not rather jumping to conclusions?”

Christabel Macfadzean put down the towel and looked at Irene in triumph. This was a sweet moment for her, and she prolonged it for a few seconds before she answered.

“Two things compel that conclusion,” she said solemnly.

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“Firstly, he’s the only one who can write.” She paused, allowing just the right interval to heighten the dramatic effect of her revelation. “And then it happens to be in Italian.”

36. Bertie in Disgrace

Irene, somewhat deflated, followed Christabel Macfadzean down the corridor, with its colourful examples of juvenile art pinned on the walls. An open doorway led to a room with a row of tiny washbasins and small stalls, and there, across the facing wall, was the graffiti, in foot-high letters.

Irene gasped as she saw what Bertie had written. LA MACFADZEAN È UNA VACCA!

“You see!” said Christabel Macfadzean. “That is what your son has done.”

Irene nodded. “A very silly thing to do,” she said quickly.

“But I’m sure that it will wash off easily enough. It’s probably washable marker pen.”

Christabel Macfadzean bristled. “That’s not the point,” she said. “The real offence lies in the fact that he has written it at all. And, may I ask – since presumably you know Italian – may I ask what it means?”

Irene blinked. It was going to be extremely difficult to explain.

The word vacca had two meanings, of course: cow (the common meaning) and woman of ill repute (the rude meaning). She assumed that Bertie had intended the more innocuous of these, but even that one could hardly be admitted. Then an idea came to her, and at a stroke she was rescued.

“It means La Macfadzean – that’s you, of course – is a . . .

vacuum cleaner. What a silly, childish thing for him to write, but not insulting, of course.”

Christabel Macfadzean looked puzzled. “A vacuum cleaner?”

“Yes,” said Irene. “Isn’t that ridiculous? It’s just a piece of childish nonsense. A vacuum cleaner, indeed! Innocent nonsense.

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Almost a term of endearment. In fact, in Italy it probably is. I shall look it up in the Grande Sansoni.”

“But why would he call me a vacuum cleaner?”

Irene frowned. “Do you use a vacuum cleaner here? Have the children seen you vacuuming? Could that be it?”

“No,” said Christabel Macfadzean. “I never vacuum.”

“Perhaps you should. Perhaps the children should see you doing these ordinary tasks, dignifying them . . .”

“Well, may I suggest that we return to the subject of this . . .

this incident. We cannot tolerate this sort of thing, even if the insult is a piece of childish nonsense. What will the other children think?”

Irene sighed. “I’m sorry that you’re taking this so seriously,”

she said. “I thought that all that would be required would be for Bertie to be told not to do this sort of thing. There’s no need to over-react.”

Christabel Macfadzean turned to Irene. “Over-reaction, did you say? Is it over-reaction to nip juvenile vandalism in the bud?

Is it over-reaction to object to being called a vacuum cleaner? Is that an over-reaction?”

“But nobody will have understood it,” said Irene. “If the other children can’t read – nobody yet having taught them – then they won’t have understood. None of the children will know the first thing about it. They’ll assume that the writing is just another notice. No real harm’s been done.”

Christabel Macfadzean led the way back to the small office that she had at the front of the building. Gesturing for Irene to take the uncomfortable straight-backed chair before her desk, she herself sat down and rested her folded arms on a large white blotter.

“I very much regret this,” she said evenly, “but I’m going to have to suspend Bertie for a few days. It seems to me that the only way in which we can bring home to him the seriousness of what he has done is to suspend him. It’s the only way.”

Irene’s eyes opened wide. “Suspension? Bertie? Suspend Bertie?”

“Yes,” said Christabel Macfadzean. “If he’s as advanced as you 94

At the Floatarium

claim he is, then he will need to be punished in an advanced way.

It’s for his own good.”

Irene swayed slightly. The idea that Bertie – who was effectively doing the nursery a favour by attending it – the idea that he should be suspended was quite inconceivable. And that this pedestrian woman, with her clearly limited understanding of developmental psychology, should be sitting in judgment on Bertie – why, that was quite intolerable. It would be better to withdraw Bertie, thought Irene, than to leave him here. On the other hand, this nursery was convenient . . .

Irene closed her eyes and mentally counted from one to ten. Then she opened her eyes again and stared at Christabel Macfadzean. “I was proposing to take him out of nursery for a few days anyway,” she said. “He needs a bit of stimulation, you know, and I thought that I might take him to the museum and the zoo. He doesn’t appear to get much stimulation here, and that, incidentally, may be why he called you a vacuum cleaner.

It’s his way of signalling his boredom and frustration.”

“You can call it taking him out of school,” said Christabel Macfadzean. “I’ll call it a suspension.”

Irene did not wish to continue with the exchange. Fetching Bertie from the corner where he was playing with the train set, she retrieved his jacket and half-marched him out of the room.

“Bertie,” she said, as they walked back along London Street,

“Mummy is very, very cross with you for writing that Miss Macfadzean is a cow. You should not have said it. It’s not nice to call somebody a vacca.”

“You do,” said Bertie.

37. At the Floatarium

The curious thought occurred to Irene, as she lay in her supporting Epsom salts solution, that they were both suspended.

Bertie was suspended from nursery over that ridiculous graffiti At the Floatarium

95

incident, and she was suspended, almost weightless, in her flotation chamber. Her suspension was for no more than an hour, though, whereas Bertie was to be suspended for three days.

They had walked directly to the Floatarium from the nursery school. Little had been said, but Bertie had been left in no doubt that he was in disgrace. By the time they reached their destination, though, Bertie had been half-forgiven. Indeed, Irene had begun to smile – discreetly – over what had happened. It must have been an act of great self-liberation for him to climb onto one of the little chairs and write that message across the wall. And of course what he had written was accurate; indeed, it showed a real understanding of what was what to write an observation like that.

He had to learn, though, that some things are best kept to oneself. This was a difficult thing for children to master, she thought, as they were naturally frank. Duplicity and hypocrisy came later, instilled by adults; thus we learn to hide, to say one thing and mean another, to clad ourselves with false colours.

Irene reflected on these things as she lay in the darkness of the tank. Bertie had been left in the tank room with her, but not in a tank. He was seated on a chair with a colouring book which the proprietor of the Floatarium had thoughtfully provided for him. Of course, this would not be capable of diverting him, and he had rapidly abandoned it in favour of a magazine. Bertie had never seen the sense of colouring things in. Why bother?

Irene’s mind wandered. It was completely quiet within the tank, and the absence of sensory distraction induced a profound sense of calm. One did not feel confined by the walls of the tank; rather, one felt weightless and without boundary, independent of any physical constraint, freed of the attachment that came with gravity. I could lie here forever, thought Irene, and forget about the world and its trials.

Her sense of detachment was suddenly interrupted by a knocking on the side of the tank.

“Bertie?”

A muffled voice came from outwith. “Irene?”

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“Yes, I’m here, Bertie. In the tank, as you know. I’m relaxing.

You can have a little go at the end.”

“I don’t want to float. I’ll drown.”

“Nonsense, darling. The specific gravity of the water is such that you can’t sink. You’ll like it.”

“I hate floating.”

Irene moved her hands gently in the water, making a slight splashing sound. This was rather irritating. Bertie was ruining the floating experience.

“Let Mummy float in peace a little longer, Bertie,” she called out. “Then we’ll go and have a latte. You can float some other time, if you want to. Nobody’s forced to float.”

There was silence for a moment and then a sudden shout that made Irene start.

“Non mi piace parlare Italiano! ”

“Bertie?” called out Irene. “What was that you said?”

“Non mi piace parlare Italiano! Non mi piace il sasofono! No! No!”

Irene sat up, banging her head on the top of the chamber.

Pushing open the lid, she looked out, to see Bertie standing defi-antly in the middle of the room, a ripped-up magazine on the floor before him.

“Bertie!” she exclaimed. “What is this? You’re behaving like a little boy! What on earth is wrong with you?”

“Non mi piace parlare Italiano!” shouted Bertie again. “I don’t like speaking Italian!”

Irene climbed out of the chamber and reached for her towel.

“This is complete nonsense,” she said. “You’re upset – quite understandably – about what happened. That’s all. You’ll feel better once we’ve had a nice latte. Italian’s got nothing to do with it. And I can’t understand why you should say you don’t like the saxophone. You love your saxophone.”

“No! No! ” shouted Bertie, stamping his feet on the ground.

His face was red with rage now, and his fists were clenching and unclenching.

“Bertie, just calm down,” said Irene. “If you want to talk, we can do so over latte. You mustn’t make a noise here in the Floatarium. There are other people floating.”

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“I hope they sink!” shouted Bertie.

Irene took a deep breath. “That’s a very, very nasty thing to say. What if somebody did sink? How would you feel then? You’d feel very bad, wouldn’t you?”

Bertie did not reply. He was looking down at the ground now, and Irene noticed that his shoulders were heaving. Bertie was sobbing, but in silence.

She reached forward and embraced him, hugging the little boy to her.

“You’ll feel better soon, Bertie,” she said. “That smelly nursery must be very boring for you. We’ll send you somewhere better. Perhaps St Mary’s Music School. You like their Saturday mornings, don’t you? There are some nice boys and girls there.

And you might even get into the choir and dress up, like the rest of the Episcopalians. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

“No,” sobbed Bertie. “No.”

38. Mother/Daughter Issues

Barely a mile from the Floatarium, where Bertie was protesting, Sasha Todd, wife of Raeburn Todd ,was sitting down for morning coffee with her daughter, Lizzie. Sasha had chosen Jenners’

tea-room for this meeting, because Jenners made her feel secure, and had always done so. Other shops might come and go, and one or two parvenus had indeed recently set up in the city, but she, quite rightly, remained loyal to Jenners. There was nothing unsettling about Jenners, as she had cause to reflect when-ever she approached Edinburgh on a train from the west and saw the satisfying sign Jenners Depository. This signalled to the world that whatever one might find on the shelves of Jenners itself, there was more in the depository, round the back. This was reassuring in the most fundamental way.

There was nothing reassuring about Lizzie. She was twenty-three now, and had done very little with her life. At school she had been unexceptional; she had never attracted negative attention, but nor had she attracted any praise or distinction.

Her reports had been solid – “might get a B at Higher level, provided she puts in more work”; “almost made it to the second team this year – a solid effort” and so on. And then there had been three years at a college which gave her a vague, unspecified qualification. This qualification had so far produced no proper job, and she had moved from temporary post to temporary post, none of which seemed to suit her.

Both Sasha and Todd thought that marriage was the only solution.

“We can’t support her indefinitely,” said Todd to his wife.

“Somebody else is going to have to take on the burden.”

“She’s not a burden,” said Sasha. “All she’s doing is looking for herself.”

“She should be looking for a husband,” retorted Todd.

“Possibly,” said Sasha. “But then, it’s not easy these days. These young men one meets don’t seem to be thinking of marriage.”

Todd shook his head. “Yet marriages take place. Look at the back of Scottish Field. What do you see? Wedding photographs.

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Nice fellows in their kilts getting married in places like Stirling and Balfron.”

Sasha sighed. What her husband said was true. Such a world existed – it had certainly existed in their time – but their own daughter seemed not to be part of it. Was there anything wrong with her, she wondered. There had been no signs of anything like that – no unsuitable friends with short-cropped hair and a tendency to wear rather inelegant jackets – so at least that was not the problem. Thank heavens they did not have to face the problem faced by friends in the Braids whose daughter, an otherwise reasonable girl, had brought home a female welder. What did one talk to a female welder about, Sasha wondered. Presumably there was something one could say, but she had no idea what it might be.

Now, in the tea-room at Jenners, scene, over so many years, of such rich exchanges of gossip, Sasha fixed Lizzie with the maternal gaze to which her daughter was so accustomed.

“You’re looking thin,” Sasha said. “You’re not on one of those faddish diets, are you? Really, the damage those people do! Doctor what’s-his-name, and people like that. I’m not suggesting that one should over-eat, but one wants to have something to cover one’s poor skeleton.”

She pushed the plate of iced cakes over the table towards her daughter.

Lizzie pushed them away. “No thanks. And I don’t think I’m looking particularly thin. In fact, I’d say I’m about the right weight for my height.”

Sasha raised an eyebrow. Lizzie was flat-chested in her view, and a judicious coating of plumpness might help in that respect.

But of course she could never raise the issue with her daughter, just as she could say nothing about the dowdy clothes and the lack of make-up.

Taking a cake, Sasha cut it in half. Marzipan: her favourite.

Battenberg cakes were hard to beat, particularly when dissected along the squares; she had little time for chocolate cake – sticky, amorphous, and over-sweet substance that it was.

“You know,” she said, discreetly licking at her fingers, “you could do rather more with yourself than you do. I’m not being 100

The Facts of Life

critical, of course. Not at all. I just think that if you paid a little bit more attention to your clothes . . .”

“And my face,” interjected Lizzie. “Maybe I should do something about my face.”

“There’s nothing wrong with your face,” said Sasha. “I said nothing about your face. You have a very nice face. I’ve got nothing against your face.”

“In fact,” said Lizzie, “people say that I look quite like you.

In the face, that is.”

Sasha picked up the second half of her cake and examined it closely. “Do they?” she said. “Well, isn’t that nice? Not that I see it myself, but perhaps others do. Surprising, though.”

“You don’t sound very enthusiastic,” said Lizzie.

Sasha laughed lightly. “Now,” she said, “that’s enough about faces. I’ve got something much more important to talk to you about.”

39. The Facts of Life

“Something important?” asked Lizzie. There was doubt in her voice: what was important to her mother was usually rather unimportant to her.

“Very,” said Sasha, glancing about her, as if those at neighbouring tables might eavesdrop on some great disclosure. “You will have heard that the ball is coming up. Soon.”

“The ball?”

“You know,” said Sasha. “The Conservative ball. The South Edinburgh Conservative Ball.”

Lizzie looked bored. “Oh, that one. That’s nice. You’ll be going, I take it. I hope that you enjoy yourselves.”

“We shall,” said Sasha, firmly. “And we’d very much appreciate it if you would come in our party. Both Daddy and I. We’d both appreciate it. Very much.” She fixed her daughter with a stare as she spoke. A message was being communicated.

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Lizzie looked at her mother. She was so sad, she thought. Imagine living a life in which the highlight of one’s existence was a political ball. How sad. “Depends,” she said. “Depends when it is.”

“Next week,” said Sasha. “I know I haven’t given you much notice, but it’s next Friday, at the Braid Hills Hotel. It’s such a nice place for it.”

Lizzie pursed her lips. She was in a difficult situation. She did not want to go to the ball, but she was realistic enough to understand her position. Her parents paid her rent and gave her an allowance. She accepted this, in spite of her pride, and she understood that in return there were a few duties that she had to discharge. Attendance at the Conservative Ball had always been one of these. This was what her mother’s look meant.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll come.”

Sasha looked relieved. “That will be very nice.” She picked up her table napkin – paper! – and removed a crumb of marzipan from the edge of her lower lip. She would have liked to have licked her lips, and would have done so at home, but she couldn’t in town. “We’ll make up a small party. Daddy’s arranged that.”

Lizzie, who had been looking out of the window, turned to face her mother. “A party?”

Sasha smiled. “Yes, of course. A small party. Just the three of us and . . .”

“That’s fine. The three of us. That’s fine.”

“And a fourth.”

Lizzie said nothing. She tried to meet her mother’s gaze, but Sasha looked away.

“A young man,” said Sasha. “A very charming young man from the office. He’s called Bruce. We thought it would be a good idea to ask him to join us.”

Lizzie sighed. “Why? Why can’t we just go by ourselves?”

Sasha leaned forward conspiratorially. “Because there’s hardly anybody going,” she whispered. “Nobody has bought a ticket –

or virtually nobody.”

Lizzie looked at her mother in frank astonishment. “Nobody?”

“Yes,” said Sasha. “Even the people on the committee have found some excuse or other. It’s appalling.”

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“Well, then, why don’t you cancel it? Surely that would be simplest?”

Sasha shook her head. “No, it’s not going to be cancelled.

Imagine if people heard about that. We’d be the laughing stock.

The ball is going ahead. Your father has made up his mind.”

Lizzie thought for a moment. “And Bruce? What about him?”

Sasha answered quickly. “Very charming. A good-looking young man too. He lives down in the New Town somewhere.”

She paused, and then added: “Unattached.”

For a moment there was a silence. Then Lizzie laughed. “So,”

she said. “So.”

“Yes,” said Sasha. “So. And it’s about time, if I may say so, that you started to think of finding a suitable man. It’s all very well enjoying yourself, but you can’t leave it too late.”

Lizzie closed her eyes. “I’m on the shelf, am I?”

Sasha picked up her coffee and took a sip. She would remain calm in this conversation; she was determined about that. “You know very well what I’m talking about. There are some people who just miss the bus. You may think that you’ve got plenty of time, but you haven’t. The years go by. Then you suddenly realise that you’re thirty-something and the men who are interested in getting married aren’t interested in you any more – they’re interested in girls in their mid-twenties. Oh yes, you may laugh, but that’s the truth of the matter. If you want a husband, don’t drag your feet – just don’t drag your feet.”

Lizzie waited until her mother had finished. Then: “But you’re assuming that I want a husband.”

Sasha stared at her daughter. “Of course you want a husband.”

Lizzie shook her head. “Actually, I don’t have much of a view on that. I’m quite happy as I am. There’s nothing wrong with being single.”

Sasha put down her coffee cup. She would have to choose her words carefully. “All right. You’re single. Where does the money come from? You tell me that. Where does the money come from?”

Lizzie did not respond, and after a few moments Sasha provided the answer herself.

“Money comes from men,” she said.

40. In Nets of Golden Wires

Carried down on the Jenners escalator, mother and daughter, one I

step apart, but separated by a continent of difference.

must be patient with her, thought Sasha; and Lizzie, for her part, thought exactly the same. She’ll come round to our way of thinking –

it’s just a question of time, thought Sasha; and Lizzie said to herself: God help me from ever, ever becoming like her. She actually said it. She said: money comes from men! She felt herself blush at the thought, a warm feeling of shame, mixed with embarrassment, for Sasha. If her mother thought this, then what did her parents’ marriage amount to? An agreement as to property? That would make her the by-product of an arrangement of convenience; no more than that.

They descended from the first floor in silence. Then, halfway down, Lizzie turned to the left and saw, standing on the ascending escalator, a young man, perhaps her age, perhaps a year or two older; a young man who was wearing a dark-olive shirt and a grey windcheater, and whose face reminded her, more than anything else, of one of those youths who stood as models for Renaissance painters. Had he been naked, and pierced by arrows, then he was Saint Sebastian in full martyrdom; but his expression was not one of agony, or even of anxiety; he had something to do in Jenners, and was going about his business calmly. Look at me! willed Lizzie. Look!

But he did not seem to notice her, and his gaze remained fixed ahead.

They passed one another in seconds, and Lizzie, transfixed, turned round to watch him disappear behind her. She noticed the shape of the shoulders, and the neck, so vulnerable, so perfect, and the colour of his hair, and she was filled at that moment with a sudden sense of longing. The vision of male beauty which had been vouchsafed her struck her with sudden and great force, and she knew that she had to see this young man again; she had to speak to him.

She had been standing in front of her mother, and so she got off the escalator first when they reached the bottom and turned to face Sasha.

“We might try some perfumes,” said Sasha. “My bottle of Estée Lauder is almost empty and I thought I might try something else. You could help me choose.”

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Lizzie thought quickly. “You go,” she said. “There’s something I want to look for upstairs. Sorry, I forgot.”

“What is it?” asked Sasha.

Lizzie thought for a moment. She was tempted to reply: a man, but did not, saying instead: “Oh, I just wanted to look around. But don’t you worry about it, you go ahead.”

She moved forward to give Sasha a quick peck on the cheek, and then, without waiting for her mother to protest, she stepped back onto the ascending escalator. Looking up, she saw that the young man had disappeared, but presumably he had taken the next escalator up; there was nothing for men on the mezzanine floor. So she strode up the steps, turning quickly to wave to Sasha, who was still standing, in puzzlement, staring up at her.

She knew that what she was doing was ridiculous. It was ridiculous to see somebody – on an escalator, too – and fall in love with him. People did not do that sort of thing. And yet she had. She had seen this man and she ached to see him again.

Why? Because of the beauty of his expression? Because she knew, just to look at him, that he would be kind to her? How absurd, utterly absurd. And yet that is exactly how she felt. I am caught by love in nets of golden wires.

When she reached the first floor, she looked about her quickly.

There was no sign of the young man, and she decided, again, that he must have gone further up. The food hall; that was it; that was where a young man would be going. He would be planning a dinner party for some friends and needed something special. He was used to Jenners, having been taken there with his mother – one of those matrons in the tea-room – and now he was coming back to do his own shopping.

Lizzie rushed to change escalators and arrived, slightly breathless, on the second floor. She made her way to the food hall and looked down the aisles. There were rows of shortbread tins and traditional oatcakes; lines of marmalade jars; nests of pickles and spices. A be-aproned woman came up to her with a tray and offered her a small piece of cheese on a stick. Lizzie took it, almost automatically, and thanked her.

“I’m looking for a man,” she said.

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105

“Aren’t we all?” said the woman, offering her another piece of cheese.

Lizzie smiled. “He came up the escalator, and he seems to have disappeared. A young man in a grey windcheater. Tall.

Good-looking.”

The woman sighed. “Sounds ideal. He’d suit me fine.”

“Did you see him?”

“No.”

Lizzie wandered off. The store was too big. The world was empty. She had lost him.

41. Your Cupboard or Mine?

“I’m not sure,” said Pat. “I’m not sure if that’s a very good idea.”

Matthew looked surprised. It seemed obvious to him, but then sometimes he discovered that others found it hard to grasp the self-evident. This had given rise to difficulties during his business career, such as it was. He had assumed that staff would understand the reasons for doing things in a particular way, only to discover that they had no idea. This meant that he had to spell things out to them, and this, in turn, seemed to irritate them. He had wondered whether he was going about it in the right way, and had discussed the issue with his father, but even his father had not seemed to grasp the point that he was trying to make.

“It really is the best thing to do,” he assured her. “We talked about it over coffee. Everybody agreed that it would be better for the Peploe? to be looked after somewhere else. It was Pete’s idea, actually, but Ronnie and Lou liked the idea too.”

“But why? Why can’t you take it back to your place and put it in a cupboard? Why put it in my cupboard?”

They were sitting at Matthew’s desk in the gallery, and Matthew had his feet up on the surface of the desk while he leaned back in his leather captain’s chair. Pat noticed his shoes, which were an elegant pair of brogues, leather-soled. Matthew noticed her 106

Your Cupboard or Mine?

looking at his shoes and smiled. “Church’s,” he said. “They make very good shoes for men. They last. But they’re pricey.”

Pat nodded. “They’re very smart. I don’t like big clumping shoes, like some of the shoes that you see men wearing. I like thin shoes, like those. I always look at men’s shoes.”

“But do you know how much these shoes cost?” Matthew asked. “Do you want to know?”

“Yes.”

“Two hundred and fifty pounds,” he said, adding: “That’s for two.”

He waited for Pat to laugh, but she did not. She was looking at his shoes again. “What sort of shoes do you think the First Minister wears?” she asked.

Matthew shrugged. It was a curious question to ask. He had no interest in politicians, and he would have had some difficulty in remembering the name of the First Minister. Come to think of it, who was he? Or was that the previous one? “We never see his feet, do we? Are they keeping them from us?”

“Maybe.”

Matthew, slightly self-consciously, now lifted his feet off the desk.

“I expect he buys his shoes in Glasgow,” he said. “Not Edinburgh.”

They sat in silence for a moment, while this remark was digested. Then Pat returned to the issue of the cupboard. “But why can’t you keep the Peploe? in your cupboard . . . along with your Church’s shoes?”

Matthew sighed. “Because it will be obvious to whoever is trying to steal it that it could be at my place. I’m in the phone book. They could look me up and then do my place over.

Whereas you . . . well, you’re not exactly in the phone book, I take it. They won’t know who you are.”

I’m anonymous, thought Pat. I’m not even in the phone book.

I’m just the girl who works in the gallery. A girl with a room in a flat in Scotland Street. A girl on her second gap year . . .

“All right,” she said. “I’ll take it back to Scotland Street and put it in a cupboard down there. If that’s what you want.”

Matthew stood up and rubbed his hands together. “Good,” he said. “I’ll wrap it up and you can take it back with you this evening.”

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He walked across to the place where the Peploe? was hanging and lifted it off its hook. Then, bringing it back to the desk, he turned it over and they both examined the back of the painting. The stretcher, across which the canvas had been placed, had cracked in several places and was covered with dust. A label had been stuck on the top wooden strut, and Matthew now extracted a clean white handkerchief and rubbed the dust off this.

“You can tell a lot from labels,” he said knowingly. “These things tell you a great deal about a painting.”

Pat glanced at him. His pronouncement sounded confident, and for a moment she thought that he perhaps knew something about art after all. But it was all very well knowing that labels told you something, the real skill would lie in knowing what it was that they told you.

“There’s something written on it,” said Matthew, dabbing at the dust again. “Look.”

Pat peered at the faded surface of the label. Something had been written on it in pencil. As Matthew removed more grime, the writing became more legible, and he read it out.

“It says: Three pounds two and sixpence.”

They looked at one another.

“That was a long time ago, of course,” said Matthew.

42. Gallery Matters

Matthew’s problem, thought Pat, was that he very quickly became bored with what he was doing. That day was an example. After they had finished their discussion about what to do with the Peploe?, he had turned to a number of tasks, but had completed none. He had started a crossword, but failed to fill in more than a few clues and had abandoned it. He had then written a letter, but had stopped halfway through and announced that he would finish it the following day. Then he had begun to tidy his desk, but had suddenly decided that it was time for lunch and had disappeared to the Café St Honoré for a couple of hours. Pat wondered whether he had finished his meal, or only eaten half of it. Had he finished his coffee at Big Lou’s, or had he left his cup half-drained? She would have to watch next time.

Of course, part of the reason for Matthew’s behaviour, she thought, was that he was bored. The gallery did virtually no business and what else was there to do but sit and wait for customers?

“Perhaps we should hold an exhibition,” she said to him when he returned from lunch.

Matthew looked at her quizzically. “Haven’t we got one on at the moment?” he said, gesturing to the walls.

“This is just a random collection of paintings,” Pat explained.

“An exhibition involves a particular sort of painting. Or work by a particular artist. It gives people something to think about. It would draw them in.”

Matthew looked thoughtful. “But where would we get all these paintings from?” he asked.

“You’d contact an artist and ask him to give you a whole lot of paintings,” she said. “Artists like that. It’s called a show.”

“But I don’t know any artists,” said Matthew.

Pat looked at him. She wanted to ask him why he was running a gallery, but she did not. Bruce had been right, she told herself.

He is useless. He hasn’t got a clue.

“I know some artists,” she said. “We had an artist in residence at school. He’s very good. He’s called Tim Cockburn, and he Gallery Matters

109

lives in Fife. There are a lot of artists in Pittenweem. There’s Tim Cockburn, and then there’s somebody called Reinhard Behrens, who puts a little submarine into all his paintings. He’s good too. We could ask them to do a show.”

Matthew was interested, but then he looked at his watch. “My God! Look at the time. And I’m meant to be playing golf with the old man. I’m going to have to shoot.”

Left by herself for the rest of the afternoon, Pat dealt with the few customers who came in. She sold a D.Y. Cameron print and dealt with an enquiry from a woman who wanted to buy a Vettriano for her husband.

“I went into another gallery and asked them the same question,” she said to Pat. “And they told me that they had no Vettrianos but that I could paint one myself if I wanted. What do you think they meant by that?”

Pat thought for a moment. There was an endemic snobbery in the art world, and here was an example.

“Some people are sniffy about him,” she said. “Some people don’t like his work at all.”

“But my husband does,” protested the woman. “And he knows all about art. He even went to a lecture by Timothy Clifford once.”

“About Vettriano?” asked Pat.

“Perhaps,” said the woman, vaguely. “It was about the Renaissance. That sort of thing.”

Pat looked at the floor. “Vettriano is not a Renaissance painter.

In fact, he’s still alive, you know.”

“Oh,” said the woman. “Well, there you are.”

“And I’m sorry, but we do not have any Vettriani in stock. But how about a D.Y. Cameron print? We have one over there of Ben Lawers.”

Pat almost sold a second D.Y. Cameron print, but eventually did not. She was pleased, though, with the other sale, and when she left the gallery at five that evening, the Peploe? wrapped in brown paper and tucked under her arm, she was in a cheerful mood. She had agreed to meet Chris that evening, of course, and she had her misgivings about that, but at least she was going out 110

The Sort of People You See in Edinburgh Wine Bars and would not have to endure Bruce’s company in the flat. And it would do him no harm, she thought, to know that she had been asked out by a man. He condescended to her, and probably thought that his own invitation to the pub was the only social invitation she was likely to receive. Well, he could reflect on the fact that she was going out that evening to a wine bar, and at the invitation of a man.

Back in the flat, Pat opened the hall cupboard and inspected its contents. There were a couple of battered suitcases, some empty cardboard boxes, and a bicycle saddle. Everything looked abandoned, which it probably was. This was a perfect place to hide a painting, and Pat tucked it away, leaning against a wall, hidden by one of the cardboard boxes. It would be safe there, as safe, perhaps, as one of those missing masterpieces secreted in the hidden collections of South American drug barons. Except that this was Edinburgh, not Ascuncion or Bogota. That was the difference.

43. The Sort of People You See in

Edinburgh Wine Bars

She was due to meet Chris at seven, in the Hot Cool Wine Bar halfway along Thistle Street. She arrived at ten-past, which was just when she happened to arrive, but which was also exactly the right time to arrive in the circumstances. Quarter past the hour would have made her late, and any closer to seven would have made her seem too keen. And she was not keen – definitely not

– although he was presentable enough and had been polite to her. The problem was the way he had said hah, hah; that had been a bad sign. So now she was there out of duty; having agreed to meet him she would do so, but would leave early.

She looked around the bar. It was a long, narrow room, decorated in the obligatory Danish minimalist style, which meant that there was no furniture. She had always thought that Danish The Sort of People You See in Edinburgh Wine Bars 111

minimalism should have been the cheapest style available, because it involved nothing, but in fact it was the most expensive. The empty spaces in Danish minimalism were what cost the money.

In true minimalist style, everybody was obliged to stand, and they were doing so around a long, stainless-steel covered bar.

Above the bar, suspended on almost invisible wires, minimalist lights cast descending cones of brightness onto those standing below. This made everybody look somewhat stark, an impression that was furthered by the fact that so many of them were wearing black.

There were about twenty people in the bar and Pat quickly saw that Chris was not among them. She looked at her watch and checked the time. Had he said seven? She was sure that he had. And had it been the Hot Cool? She was sure of that too.

It was not a name one would mix up with anything unless, of course – and this caused a momentary feeling of panic – he had meant the Cool Hot, which was in George Street, and was a very different sort of bar (non-minimalist). But the Cool Hot was ambivalent – was it not? – and this place was . . . She looked at the group of people closest to her. There were two men and two women: the men were standing next to one another and the women were . . . No, they were definitely not ambivalent.

She moved over to the bar, and signalled to the bartender.

“I was meeting somebody called Chris,” she said.

The barman smiled at her. “Lots of Chrises here. Just about everybody’s a Chris this year. What sort of Chris is yours?

Architect Chris? Advocate Chris? Media Chris? The Chris whose novel is just about to be published by Canongate? Actually there are lots of those. So which Chris is it?”

She was about to say Police Chris, but stopped herself. This was, after all, the Hot Cool and it sounded inappropriate. So she said: “I’ll wait for him. And I’ll have a glass of white wine.”

The barman went off to fetch a glass, and Pat, her hands resting nonchalantly on the counter, glanced at the other drinkers.

They were mostly in their mid- to late-twenties, she thought; clearly affluent, and dressed with an expensive casualness. One or two older people, some even approaching forty, or beyond, were 112

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occupying the few available bar-stools, and were talking quietly among themselves; to the other drinkers in the bar these people were largely invisible, being of no sexual or social interest.

The barman returned with her drink, which was served in a smoked-green glass, inexplicably, but generously, filled with ice. Pat sipped at the chilled wine and then glanced over her shoulder. A young man, wearing a cord jacket and open-neck black shirt, who was standing at the other end of the bar, caught her eye and smiled at her. Uncertain as to whether or not she knew him, she returned the smile. Having been at school in Edinburgh, she found that there were numerous people who remembered her vaguely, and she them; people she had played hockey with or danced with in an eightsome at the school dance.

This young man seemed slightly familiar, but she could not think of a name, or a context. Heriot’s? Watson’s? It was difficult to tribe him. Was he one of these Chrises referred to by the barman?

The barman walked past on the other side of the bar, drying a glass with a large, pristine white cloth.

“I hope he’s not going to stand you up,” he said. “The number of people who are stood up, you wouldn’t believe. It happens all the time.”

“I don’t mind,” said Pat. “I don’t particularly want to see him.

I’m only here because I agreed to a drink. I wasn’t thinking.”

The barman chuckled. “Don’t you like him, then?”

“Not particularly,” said Pat. “It’s the way he says hah, hah.

That’s the big turn-off. Hah, hah.”

“Hah, hah!” said a voice behind her. “So there you are! Hah, hah!”

44. Tales of Tulliallan

Had he heard her? Pat felt herself blushing with embarrassment.

It was that most common of social fears – to be overheard by another when passing a remark about that very person – but Tales of Tulliallan

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Chris gave no appearance of having heard. This, she concluded, was either because he had not heard, or because he wished to save her feelings. The barman, who had realised what was happening, gave Pat a sympathetic look and shook his head discreetly. This meant that in his view at least, Chris had not realised that he was being discussed. Pat felt the warm flush of embarrassment subside.

“I’m very sorry I’m late,” said Chris. “I was late getting off duty. Something cropped up in the afternoon and it went on and on. Sorry about that.”

“I don’t mind,” Pat said. “I was a bit late myself.”

“Well, here we are,” said Chris breezily. “The Hot Cool.”

He ordered a beer from the barman, who exchanged a knowing look with Pat.

“What’s with him?” asked Chris, nodding his head in the direction of the barman as he went off to fetch the drink. “A private joke? Something I should be laughing at? Hah, Hah!”

“It’s nothing,” said Pat quickly. “Nothing much.” She lifted her glass to take a sip of her drink and looked at Chris. In the descending minimalist light he was certainly attractive – more attractive than he had been in the uniform of the Lothian and Borders Police – but she was sure that she would not revise the opinion that she had formed earlier. There was something unsubtle about him, something obvious, perhaps, which frankly bored her. He’s of no interest to me, she found herself thinking.

There could never be anything between us.

Chris’s drink arrived, and he raised his glass to toast her.

“Cheerio,” he said, and Pat winced. This was another point against him. Now there was nothing he could say or do that would rescue the situation.

They spent the next fifteen minutes talking about that morning’s break-in. There was a counselling service for people who have been broken into, Chris explained. The council provided it free, and one could go for as many sessions as one felt one needed. “Some people go for months,” he said. “Some of them even look forward to being broken into again so that they can get counselling.”

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“And you?” said Pat. “Do the police get counselling after investigating break-ins?”

“We do if we need it,” answered Chris. He had taken the question literally and frowned as he answered. “We were taught some counselling skills at Tulliallan.”

“Tulliallan?”

“The Scottish Police College,” explained Chris. “We all go there to be trained. Right at the beginning. But then we have courses from time to time. That’s where we had our Art Squad course.”

Pat was interested in this, and asked him to explain.

“It was quite a big course,” said Chris. “There were twenty people from other forces, and ten of us from Edinburgh, although not all of us were assigned to art afterwards. Some got traffic and one, who was really useless at art, was moved to the dog squad.

But I did quite well, I think, and I got in, along with two others.

“The course lasted a week. To begin with, they tested us for colour-blindness, and if you were too red–green blind they sent you back. We were all fine. Then they started on the lectures.

We had five a day, and they were pretty tough, some of them.

“We learned about forgery techniques and how to spot a fake.

We learned about what they can do in the labs – paint analysis and all the rest. And then we had art appreciation, which was really great. I liked that. We had two hours of that every day and we all wished that we had been given more. We used Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation as our text book, but there were quite a few lectures on Scottish art. McTaggart. Crosbie. Blackadder.

Howson. All those people. And a whole hour on Vettriano. That was the most popular session of the course.”

“Vettriano?” asked Pat. “A whole hour?”

“Yes,” said Chris. “And then, right at the end, we had a test.

They dimmed the lights in the lecture room and flashed up slides on the screen. There were slides of Vettriano paintings and slides of Hopper paintings. You must know his stuff – Edward Hopper, the American artist who painted people sitting at the counters of soda bars or whatever they call them. You’d know them if you saw them.

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“So they flashed up these slides in any order and we had to call out Vettriano! or Hopper! Depending on which it was. It was great training. Good bonding too. I’d recommend it to anyone. I really would.” He was silent for a moment. Then he added: “I’ll never forget the difference – never. I can still tell, just with one look. Show me a picture by either of them – doesn’t matter what – and I’ll call out straightaway. Hopper! Vettriano!

And I’ll always get it right. Every time.”

Pat looked at him mutely. They had not bonded.

45. More Tulliallan Tales

Chris was enjoying himself, talking about Tulliallan and his experiences there on the Art Squad training week. But there was more to come about that particular week.

“On the final day,” he continued, “we had a visit from a really important person from the art world in Edinburgh. Really important. He came to speak to us on the Saturday afternoon, and we were told all about it the day before. The inspector who was in charge of the course said that we were very lucky to get him, as he was often away in places like Venice and New York. That’s where these people go, he explained. They feel comfortable in places like that. And that’s fair enough, I suppose. Imagine if they had to go to places like Motherwell or Airdrie. Just imagine.

“He arrived in the afternoon, an hour or so before he was due to give his lecture, which was at three. It was a fine day – broad sunshine – and most of us were sitting out at the front after lunch, as we were off-duty until the lecture. The college had sent a car to fetch him from Edinburgh, and we saw it coming up the drive, with two police motorcycle outriders escorting it. They came to a halt outside the front of the main building and the driver got out to open the door. Then he stepped out and acknowledged the driver’s salute with a nod of his head.

“When he came into the lecture room we all stood up. The 116

More Tulliallan Tales

inspector, who was introducing him, indicated for us to sit down and then he began to lecture. He started off by saying how agreeable the building was, but that it was a pity that it had not been decorated more sympathetically. He suggested ways in which this could be improved by restoring the original features of the house. He even suggested colours for the carpets and the wallpaper.

“Then he said something about how the Scottish psyche had suffered from the iconoclastic doings in the Reformation. He said that there was a wound in the Scottish soul which came about from the denial of beauty. He said that the Scottish soul would only come to terms with itself if beauty were acknowledged.

Then he said something about how Scottish police uniforms were dull, and that we could take a leaf out of the Italians’ book.

“He said: ‘Look at the carabinieri, with their gorgeous, really gorgeous, cap badges. Those great burning flames. And all you people have is your black and white squares. How sad! How unutterably sad!’

“We didn’t quite know how to take this, but we sat there entranced. He went on like this for an hour or so before he looked at his watch and nodded to the inspector. The inspector stood up and thanked him for his talk. He said that he had given us a great deal to think about and that Tulliallan would never be the same again. Then they went out and the police car which had been waiting for him took him back to Edinburgh. We talked in hushed voices for the rest of the afternoon. We felt that we had somehow been touched by greatness, and we were very grateful. It was almost as if Lord Clark himself had been there.

Almost, but not quite.”

Chris had now stopped, and Pat was silent. She looked at him, at the shadow on his face from the curious overhead lighting.

She felt strangely moved by the story of this visit, and she wanted to say something to him, but she could not decide what it was that she had in mind. How strange the visit must have been; rather like the visit she had read about in an Italian short story that her father had drawn to her attention. An immensely aris-tocratic count visits an archaeological side with his aides and Humiliation and Embarrassment

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speaks in a voice so distinguished that nobody can understand a word of what he was saying. Beh andiatah reh ec brar . . . and so on. But in spite of the fact that nobody could understand, they were all impressed with the visitor and felt honoured that he had condescended to be there. This is how they must have felt on that day at Tulliallan.

She stared at Chris, who looked back at her in silence. For a moment a smile played about his lips, and then he looked down at his glass of beer.

“I heard what you said about me,” he said quietly. “This isn’t going to work, is it?”

Pat said nothing. She was mortified that he had heard her unkind comments, and now she began to stutter an apology.

“I didn’t mean it to sound like that,” she said. “You know how sometimes people say things that get on your nerves, for no real reason at all. It happens to all of us.”

“Except that in this case there is a reason,” said Chris, his voice level and controlled. “I’m a bit of a joke to you, aren’t I, because I don’t fit in with your world. I just can’t. Every single person I’ve met in this art job – every single one – has condescended to me. Oh they’re nice enough, particularly if they need me to do something, but that’s about it. This is a city of snobs, that’s what it is. A city of utter snobs. And this place here is full of them. Wall to wall.”

46. Humiliation and Embarrassment

Pat did not stay long at the Hot Cool after Chris had made his self-pitying declaration. It had not surprised her that he had been offended by her dismissal of him – any dismissal was offensive to the one on the receiving end – but there was something uncomfortable about the way in which he had included her in his blanket condemnation of the Edinburgh art world. She realised that he must have imagined her to be part of that world 118

Humiliation and Embarrassment

– and she was part of that world, in a very attenuated sense –

but he had no right to make such sweeping statements about the attitudes of other people. How did he know anything about her views, other than that she did not think that there was much chance of developing a relationship with him, and this on the grounds of her objection to the use of the expression hah, hah?

Anybody might object to that, just as they might object to any overused phrase, and it seemed quite unreasonable for him to accuse her – and so many others – of being snobbish. It was not snobbish, she thought, to object to those who said hah, hah. That was an entirely personal reaction, and we were entitled, surely, to personal reactions to a mannerism. We did not have to like the way other people walked, or talked, or the way they drank their coffee or combed their hair. Or did we have to like everything?

Was it inclusive to like everything?

They had parted in a civil fashion. After a small amount of rather stiff conversation, Chris had looked at his watch and remembered another commitment, just seconds before Pat had been planning to recover from a similar lapse of memory.

“Maybe we’ll meet again,” he had said, looking dubiously around at the décor of the wine bar and at the other customers.

“You never know.”

“Maybe,” said Pat. “And I’m really sorry if I offended you. I really am . . .”

He raised a hand. “Water under the bridge. Don’t worry. It’s just that this place gets me down from time to time. It’s not your fault. Maybe I should go back to Falkirk.”

“You can’t go back to Falkirk,” said Pat. She said this and then stopped: it sounded as if she was expressing a major truth about life, and about Falkirk, which was not the case.

Chris looked at her quizzically. “Why not?”

“Well, maybe you can. Maybe Falkirk’s all right to go back to, if you come from there to begin with, if you see what I mean. What I wanted to say was that in general, in life, you can’t go back.”

He looked at his watch. “I actually do have to see somebody,”

he said. “I really must go.”

After Chris had gone, Pat stood by herself at the bar for a

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short while. The barman, who had observed the scene, came over towards her, casually wiping the bar with a cloth.

“Chris gone?” he asked.

Pat looked down into her glass. “He did hear,” she said quietly.

“He heard what I said about his laugh. I feel terrible.”

The barman reached over and touched her lightly on the wrist.

“You shouldn’t. That was nothing. You should hear some of the things that are said in this place. Horrible things. Cruel things.

What you said was nothing.”

Pat looked at him. “But he was upset. He said that’s how people are in this city.”

“He’s a bit marginal if you ask me,” said the barman. “I see all types in this job, and I know. He’s a cop, by the way. Did you know that?”

“Yes, I did. But how did you know? Had you met him before?”

The barman winked at her. “I can tell a mile off. And it’s not a good idea to get too involved with cops. They can be difficult.”

He paused. “Anyway, you see that guy at the end there, the one in the cord jacket? He’s been wanting to talk to you all evening.

But take my advice, don’t.”

Pat glanced at the young man, who had remained at his place further down the bar throughout her ill-fated encounter with Chris.

120

Irene and Stuart: A Breakfast Conversazione He was picking at a small dish of olives before him, looking ahead, although now he glanced at her quickly, and then looked away again.

“Why?” asked Pat.

“Just don’t,” said the barman. “I know. Just don’t.”

The barman turned away. He had customers to deal with and Pat, left by herself, finished the last of her drink, and walked out of the wine bar. She noticed that the young man in the cord jacket watched her as she left, but she kept her eyes on the door and did not glance in his direction. It was fine outside, and night was just beginning to fall. She looked up at the sky, which was clear. It was still blue, but only just, and in minutes would shade into darkness.

47. Irene and Stuart: A Breakfast Conversazione It was a Saturday, and there was no need for Stuart to rush to catch the bus to work, yet he was an early riser and by the time that Irene got up he had already chopped the nuts and sliced the bananas for the Bircher muesli. He had also gone out to the newsagent for the papers, and was reading a review when Irene came into the kitchen.

“Anything?” asked Irene, making for the pot of coffee on the edge of the Aga.

“Practically nothing. A new biography of James the Sixth,”

said Stuart. “It’s getting a good review here from somebody or other.”

Irene opened the kitchen blind and looked out onto Scotland Street.

JAMIE SEXT: James VI of Scotland, James I of England (1566-1625), son of Mary Queen of Scots. Became the infant King of Scotland on the forced abdication of his mother in 1567. When Elizabeth of England died in 1603, he became King of England, being the great-grandson of James IV’s English wife, Margaret Tudor.

Irene and Stuart: A Breakfast Conversazione 121

“I have no idea,” she said, “no idea at all why people continue to write royal biographies. They go on and on. Even about the Duke of Windsor, about whom there was nothing to be said at all, other than to make a diagnosis.”

Stuart lowered the paper. “Some of these kings were influential,” he said. “They ran things then.”

“That’s not what history is about,” snapped Irene. “History is about ordinary people. How they lived. What they ate. That sort of thing.”

Stuart looked down at the review. “And ideas,” he said, mildly.

“History is about ideas. And monarchs tended to have some influence in that direction. Take Jamie Sext, for example. He had ideas on language. He was quite enlightened. He would have enjoyed the newspapers, if they had been around.”

Irene stared at him. “Which newspaper?” she asked. But he did not answer, and she continued: “What a peculiar thing to say!”

“No,” said Stuart. “Not really. In fact, it’s quite interesting to speculate what people would have read if these papers had existed.

Queen Victoria, for example, read The Times, but what would Prince Albert have read?”

“The Frankfurter Allgemeine?” ventured Irene.

They both laughed. This was undoubtedly very funny.

“And was she amused by The Times?” asked Stuart.

“No,” said Irene. “She was not.”

Irene joined him at the table.

“Enough levity,” she said. “We must talk about Bertie. We have to do something. I can’t face going back to that awful Macfadzean woman. So Bertie’s going to have to go elsewhere.”

“Couldn’t he wait?” asked Stuart. “He knows a great deal as it is. Couldn’t we give him a gap year?”

“A gap year?”

Stuart seemed pleased with his suggestion. “Yes, a gap year between nursery and primary school. So what if he’s only five?

Why not? Gap years are all the rage.”

Irene looked pensive. “You know, you might have something there. It could be a year in which he did his Grade seven theory and one or two other things. It would take him out of the 122

Irene and Stuart: A Breakfast Conversazione system for a while and allow him to flourish. We could make a programme.”

“Send him abroad? Perhaps he could work in a village in South America, or Africa even.”

Irene thought for a moment, as if weighing up the suggestion.

“Hardly. But it would be a rather good way of letting him develop without having to look over his shoulder at other children. I’m sure he’d benefit. And perhaps I could take him to Italy – to perfect his spoken Italian.”

Stuart laid aside his newspaper. “I was thinking of taking the pressure off a bit, rather than adding to it. I thought of a year out, so to speak. Perhaps we should leave Italian for the time being.”

This suggestion did not go down well with Irene. “It would be a criminal waste of everything we’ve done so far if we let his Italian get rusty,” she said coldly. “And the same goes for the saxophone and theory of music. For everything in fact.”

“But perhaps at this age we should concentrate on his langue maternelle,” said Stuart. “Italian is a very beautiful language, admittedly, but it isn’t his langue maternelle. ”

“Neither here nor there,” said Irene dismissively. “There is evidence – ample evidence – that the development of linguistic skills in the early years leads to much greater facility with language when one’s older. Every minute is precious at this age. The mind is very plastic.”

Stuart opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it and was silent. He knew that he could not win an argument with Irene, and nine years of marriage to her had convinced him that he should no longer try.

“I’ll think about it further,” said Irene. “The only decision we have to make now is not to take him back to that woman and her so-called nursery school. And I don’t think we should.”

“D’accordo,” said Stuart.

Irene looked satisfied. “In that case, I shall have a look around and see what’s possible. I’ll do this after we’ve started his therapy.”

Stuart gave a start. This was new information. Had therapy been discussed before? He could not recall anything being said Plans for the Conservative Ball

123

about it, but then sometimes he stopped paying attention when Irene was talking. He might have missed the discussion.

Irene, noticing his puzzlement, explained. “The Scottish Institute of Human Relations,” she said. “We have an appointment there on Monday. A Dr Fairbairn. He’s been highly recommended and he’ll be able to advise us on why Bertie has suddenly started playing up.”

“Do we really need all this?” asked Stuart.

Irene stared at him. No response was necessary, or at least no verbal response.

48. Plans for the Conservative Ball On the other side of the city, in their house in the higher reaches of the Braids, Raeburn Todd and his wife, Sasha, had finished their breakfast and were now drinking a cup of coffee in the conservatory. This was where they liked to sit after breakfast at weekends, particularly on a fine day, such as this was. The Braids could be cold, with their extra three hundred feet or so, but that morning the weather was warmer than normal and they had even opened a window of the conservatory. It was the day of the South Edinburgh Conservative Ball, and Todd, who was the chairman of the ball committee, was reviewing the prospects for that evening’s entertainment. He had made a list of things to do and was going through this with Sasha.

“First thing,” he said in a businesslike fashion. “First thing is hotel bits and pieces. Meal and ballroom.”

“All fine,” said Sasha, who composed the rest of the committee, the other members having sent their apologies. “The menu’s approved and the hotel said they would look after the flower.”

Todd smiled. “Flower? Only one?”

Sasha nudged him playfully. “You know what I meant. Flowers.

The fact that we have very few people coming doesn’t mean we’re only going to have one flower.”

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his head. “On which subject,” he said, “this is really very disappointing. Nothing’s come in this morning, I take it? Nobody else signing up?”

Sasha shook her head. “When the phone went before breakfast I hoped that it would be somebody. But it was the dress shop about my dress. So it looks like that’s it.” She paused. “Are you still sure that we should go ahead? Couldn’t we come up with some other explanation for a late cancellation?”

Todd’s reply was firm. “No. Absolutely not. We’ve been through this before. And, anyway, other parties have their problems with parties, so to speak. Have you ever been to a Labour Party do?

Awful. Dreadfully dull events. Like a primary school parents’

evening, but not quite so much fun. And the Liberal Democrats have these terrible dinners where everybody wears woolly pullovers and rather shabby dresses. And as for the SNP, well, everybody’s usually tight at their events, rolling all over the floor.

Ghastly. No, we don’t do too badly, I’m telling you!”

“Even with . . . how many is it?”

Todd consulted his list. “I make it six,” he said. “You, me, Lizzie, that young man from the office, and Ramsey and Betty Dunbarton. They’ve confirmed, so that’s six.”

Sasha picked up her coffee and took a sip. “We could have just one table, then,” she said. “We could all sit together.”

This idea did not appeal to Todd. “No,” he said. “I think we should have two tables. Table One and Table Two. This is because it would look rather odd just to have one table, and then I’m not sure if we want to spend the whole evening with the Dunbartons, charming company though they undoubtedly are. It’s just that he’s such a bore. And I’m sorry, but I can’t stand her. So, no.

Let’s have two tables. We’ll be at Table One, and they can be at Table Two.”

Sasha accepted the reasoning behind this, and moved on to raise the issue of the band and the dances. “I’ve spoken to the man who runs it,” she said. “They come from Penicuik, I think, or somewhere out that way. I’ve told him that we want middle-of-the-road dance music to begin with and then something suitable for reels. He said that’s fine. He said they could do anything.”

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Todd nodded his agreement and was about to go on to another matter, but stopped. “Reels?” he asked. “Eightsomes and the like?”

“Yes,” said Sasha. “People love that.”

“But there are only going to be six of us,” Todd pointed out.

“How will we be able to do an eightsome if there are only six people there? And Ramsey Dunbarton is pretty frail these days.

I can’t imagine him doing an eightsome. The old boy would probably drop down stone dead. Then there’d only be five of us.”

“There are other dances,” said Sasha quickly. “A Gay Tories, for example, I mean a Gay Gordons! You only need two for that.

And there’s the Dashing White Sergeant. That needs three for each set, so there could be two sets.”

Todd thought for a moment. “But don’t you go in opposite directions with the Dashing White Sergeant, and then meet up? If three of us went off in one direction and three in another

– always assuming that Ramsey Dunbarton is up to it – then we would only meet once we’ve danced round the whole room. The band would have to adapt. They’d have to play on and on until we got all the way round the room and met up on the other side.

Wouldn’t that be a bit odd?”

“Some of these bands are rather good,” said Sasha.

49. Tombola Gifts

Todd left Sasha in the house while he went off to play golf. His golf partner had declined to buy a ticket for the ball, and Todd intended to reproach him for this, although he knew that there was no possibility of his relenting. He was reconciled now to the idea of a ball of six, which was, in his view, quorate. Even two would have been enough; had he and Sasha been the only people there, they would have persisted and danced in the face of adversity. That was the only way in politics. A ball with six people one year could be a ball with sixty the next year, and then six hundred the year after that. Political fortunes shifted, and 126

Tombola Gifts

it was no good throwing in the towel because of temporary set-backs. The Scottish Conservative Party would rise again and be the great force that it once had been in the affairs of the nation; it was only a question of time. And then people would be clamouring for tickets to the South Edinburgh Conservative Ball and he, Todd, would take great pleasure in turning them away.

After her husband had left for the Luffness Golf Club (Gullane, but not Muirfield), Sasha made her way into the dining room, where the prizes for the tombola were laid out on and around the large, four-leaf table. The members of the local party association had been generous, even if they had declined to attend the ball, and there were at least forty prizes waiting to be listed.

Sasha sat down at the head of the table and began to compile a catalogue and assign a number to each prize. These numbers would then be put into a hat, and those at the ball – and those alone – would then be permitted to buy the tickets.

She dealt first with the items on the table. There was a Thomas Pink shirt, in candy stripes, with a collar size of nineteen and a half.

Now this was a fine shirt, well-made and with double cuffs, but the collar size was rather large. Todd took size seventeen, and even that was sometimes a bit large for him; he was a big man and presumably this shirt would fit an extremely well-built man. Was there anybody in the Conservative Party quite that large? There was Mr Soames, of course, but he was probably the sort of man who had enough shirts already. So this might not be the most useful of prizes.

She assigned the shirt a number and turned to the next prize.

This was a set of six fish knives and forks, made by Hamilton and Inches, and a very handsome prize for somebody. This would be popular at a Conservative function, but would be useless at a Labour Party event. They had no idea, she believed, of the use MALCOLM RIFKIND & LORD JAMES: Sir Malcolm Rifkind (born 1946) is a prominent Conservative politician, living in Edinburgh, who served as Foreign Secretary in the government of Margaret Thatcher, later to become Secretary of State for Scotland. Lord James Douglas-Hamilton, after serving in the same government as a Member of Parliament at Westminster, is now a member of the devolved Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh.

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of fish knives and forks and used the same cutlery for everything.

That was part of the problem. The Liberal Democrats, of course, knew what fish knives and forks were all about, but pretended they didn’t care! Liberal Hypocrites, thought Sasha.

There were many other fine prizes. A digital radio, still in its box; a round of golf at the Merchants Golf Course; a large caddy of Old Edinburgh Tea from Jenners; and, now, what was this? –

yes, the finest prize of all: lunch with Malcolm Rifkind and Lord James at the Balmoral Hotel! That was a splendid prize and it occurred to Sasha that she would dearly love to win that herself.

This thought made her abandon her task of cataloguing for a few minutes and ponder the implications of this tombola. If there were forty prizes and there were only going to be six people at the ball, then that meant that each person would get at least six prizes. That assumed, of course, that each person bought an equal number of tickets (which would be limited to forty in all). If that happened, then everybody present at the ball would do rather well, and would certainly win prizes which very much exceeded in value the cost of the ticket.

In these circumstances, Sasha reasoned, it would be per-missible, perhaps, for the organiser – herself – to ensure that sensitive prizes were won by the right people. Now that would mean that the round of golf should not go to Ramsey Dunbarton, 128

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who was pretty unsteady on his legs and who could hardly be expected to play. So that, perhaps, could be directed towards Bruce, as a reward for agreeing to accompany Lizzie. Or perhaps, even more appropriately, he could win the dinner for two at Prestonfield House and take Lizzie with him, to give them a chance to get to know one another a bit better. That would be very satisfactory, and indeed the fairest outcome. The Ramsey Dunbartons could win the tea, which would suit them far better.

That left the lunch with Malcolm Rifkind and Lord James. In Sasha’s view, the best possible person to win that would be herself.

This was not because she was selfish, and wanted the glamorous prize, but because she wanted to protect the two generous donors from having to put up with Ramsey Dunbarton. It would be too much for them; they simply shouldn’t have to face it. And for this reason – the best of all possible reasons – Sasha decided that she would have to ensure that she won this prize herself.

50. Bruce Prepares for the Ball

When Bruce received Sasha’s call that morning – to invite him to pre-ball drinks at the house – he was about to leave 44 Scotland Street to buy himself a new dress shirt. His previous one, which had been a bargain, had washed badly, and looked grey, even under artificial light.

“There isn’t going to be a big crowd there,” said Sasha, “but the Braid Hills Hotel does a very good dinner, and I hear that the band is excellent.”

“How many are coming?” asked Bruce.

There was a short silence at the other end of the line. “Not many. Probably fewer than fifty.”

Bruce was polite. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. And I don’t like those really big affairs. You can’t hear what you’re saying to anybody.”

“We’ll have a lot of fun,” said Sasha.

He doubted that – at least for himself – but did not say Bruce Prepares for the Ball

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anything. With any luck, he thought, he might be able to get away shortly after twelve – Conservatives probably went to bed early – or at least Bruce’s parents, both members of the Crieff Conservative Association, tended to retire by ten. So if it all came to an end in reasonable time, he would be able to get to a club and see what was going on there.

“One thing,” said Sasha, before she rang off. “We’re having a tombola. We’ve been given a lot of good prizes, but if you can bring a little something along to add to it, please do.”

“I’ll try,” said Bruce.

He left the flat, feeling slightly restless. He found his life rather unsatisfactory at the moment. He had finished all the institute examinations, and so he was free of that particular burden, but it seemed as if nothing much else was happening.

Part of the trouble was the absence of a girlfriend. I need somebody to hang about with, he thought. I need company.

There was that girl in the flat, of course – Pat – but he found her a bit irritating. She seemed cool, indifferent even, although he suspected that this was a bit of an act. She’s probably pretty interested in me, he thought. She probably wants me to take notice of her, but the poor girl’s got a long wait ahead of her.

Far too young, too unsophisticated. Pretty green. As he walked up to George Street, he glanced at his reflection in the occasional shop window. What a waste, he muttered. There I am looking like that, and no girlfriend. What a waste.

The shirt purchased, he returned to Scotland Street and spent the afternoon on his bed, watching videos of classic rugby matches. There was Scotland against Ireland at Murrayfield of a few years previously – a great Scottish victory, with a fine try from a player whom Bruce had known at Morrison’s Academy.

Then there was the Springboks playing Fiji, a terrific game in which four players were taken off to hospital in the first half!

And Scotland meeting France in Paris, when France scored seventy points and Scotland scored three. That was not such a good game, Bruce thought, and he turned it off at half-time.

At five o’clock he went into the bathroom, ran a hot bath, and after a few moments in front of the full-length mirror, 130

Velvety Shoes

immersed himself in the deep, soapy water. He felt more cheerful now. That Todd girl would cramp his style, no doubt, but there might be other girls to dance with there; he wouldn’t be stuck with her all night. And one of these other girls might be just right for him. There were stranger places to meet women than at a Conservative Ball. Such as . . . He wondered about that. Where was the most unlikely place to meet somebody? A dentist’s surgery? Warriston Crematorium?

Bruce dressed himself with care. Gel was applied to the hair and cologne to exposed flesh. Then there was a quick inspection.

Perfect. Great.

He left his room and went out into the hall. It was at that point that he remembered Sasha’s request for a contribution to the tombola. This was irritating, but perhaps there would be some bric-à-brac in the cupboard. So he opened the door and looked inside. There were things which had been left there over the years by a succession of tenants. There might be something.

He found the parcel, and opened it. He held the painting up to examine it under the light. He did not like it. The colours were too bright and there was not enough detail. This was the problem with amateurs – they couldn’t draw properly. You had to scratch your head to find out what they were trying to portray.

Bruce liked Vettriano. He knew how to draw. Still, this would do for the tombola. It was obviously the work of somebody’s aunt, long forgotten and abandoned in this cupboard. But at least he would not arrive empty-handed. So he slipped it back into its wrapping, picked up his coat, and left for the Todd house in the Braids, the painting under his arm.

51. Velvety Shoes

Groaning inwardly, Lizzie Todd walked up the short path that led to the front door of her parents’ house in the Braids. She Velvety Shoes

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had grown up in this house, but she felt little of the affection that one was supposed to feel for the place in which one spends one’s early years. Indeed, when she had left home to go to Glasgow Caledonian University to take her degree in Indeterminate Studies, she had done so with such a measure of relief that it was visible.

“Do you think she’ll miss us?” Todd had said to his wife shortly after her departure. “She looked so happy. It was almost as if she was pleased to go.”

Sasha sighed. “She’s a strange girl. I’m not sure if I understand her, but I’m sure she’ll miss us.”

Todd had been silent. He had wanted a son, who would play rugby for Watson’s and who would in due course join the firm.

But life rarely worked out as one planned it and when no further children had arrived he had accepted his lot, to be the father of a daughter who seemed each year to become more distant from him, and increasingly uninterested in his world. He looked to his wife for an explanation, and a solution, but it seemed that she was as incapable as he was of communicating with their daughter. It crossed his mind that it was dislike – as simple as that – a failure of the intricate, inexplicable chemistry that makes one person like or love another. But that was a bleak conclusion, and was only once, very briefly, articulated when Todd had said to the then sixteen-year-old Lizzie: “I suppose you’d like me more, wouldn’t you, if I were Sean Connery?”

And she had looked at him blankly, perplexed, and had said: “But you aren’t,” before she added: “And I suppose you’d like me more if I were Gavin Hastings.” It had not been a profitable exchange.

Years on now, Lizzie slipped her key into the lock and opened the parental door. She sniffed at the air. This was the familiar smell of home, but not a smell that she particularly liked. Her mother’s cleaner used a lavender-scented furniture polish and the smell of this pervaded the house. It had always been there, from the earliest days of Lizzie’s childhood, and it had ruined lavender for her, forever.

From within the house there came the sound of a bath being

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run. Todd was late back from the golf course and needed a bath before changing into his kilt. Sasha, by contrast, was always ready well in advance, and was making her way down the corridor, fully dressed, when she heard Lizzie come in. When the two of them met in the hall, Sasha glanced quickly at Lizzie’s dress.

Had she made an effort? That was the issue. It would be typical of her to agree to come to the ball and then do nothing about looking her best for the occasion.

The verdict was positive. “That’s a very pretty dress, dear,”

said Sasha. “And those shoes . . .”

They were standing at the entrance to the drawing room and Lizzie now turned away and walked towards the window that looked out over the distant rooftops of Morningside.

“They hurt my feet,” she said. “I’m going to have to take something else with me.”

“I can lend you a pair,” Sasha said brightly. “I bought them just a few weeks ago. They’d go very nicely with that dress.”

She went off to fetch the shoes, while Lizzie stared moodily out of the window.

“Here,” said Sasha, holding out the shoes. “Slip into these.

They’ll be much more comfortable.”

Lizzie looked at the pair of velvety, bejewelled shoes which Velvety Shoes

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Sasha was holding out to her. There was a slight movement of her nose, almost undetectable, but insofar as it could be detected, upward.

“Where did you buy those?” she asked. And then, before Sasha could reply, Lizzie continued, “I saw a pair just like that in Marks and Spencers the other day. Did you get them at Marks?”

Sasha froze. “Marks? Marks?” Her voice wavered, but then became steely. “Certainly not. I got these from a shoe boutique in William Street. If you care to look at the label, you’ll see exactly where they’re from.”

Lizzie reached out and took the shoes from her mother.

She looked inside and shrugged when she saw the boutique’s label.

“Not really the sort of shoe I like to wear,” she said. “Of course, they might suit you. In fact, I’m sure they do. Don’t get me wrong.”

“I’d never force you to wear my shoes,” Sasha retorted.

Lizzie smiled. “Just as well,” she said. “I’m a six and you’re, what are you – size eight?”

Sasha did not reply. In one sense she was an eight, but she could fit perfectly well into a six-and-a-half, provided she did not have to walk. But she was not going to be drawn into a discussion with Lizzie about shoe sizes. It was typical of her daughter, she thought, just typical, that she should walk into the house on a day like this, a special day when they should all be getting ready to enjoy themselves, and start an argument about shoe sizes. It was all so undermining of her, and so unfair. She had never criticised her daughter’s dress sense, in spite of obvious temptations, and yet all she could do was reject every attempt that she made to help and advise her. Lizzie was beyond pleasing, she concluded, and this meant, she thought grimly, that she would never find a man, as no man was perfect; far from it, in fact –

just look at Raeburn.

52. Silk Organza

Todd glanced at his watch. Bruce might arrive at any moment, but there was time for a whisky before that. He had picked up some of Sasha’s anxiety over the evening, which was inevitable, he supposed, in view of the fact that they were the organisers; a whisky would reassure him. He poured himself a small glass of Macallan and wandered into the drawing room where Lizzie was standing by the window.

“I’m very grateful to you,” he said quietly. “I know that you don’t always enjoy these things. But it means a lot to your mother that you’re coming tonight. So thank you.”

Lizzie continued to look out of the window. “I don’t mind,”

she muttered. “I didn’t have anything else on.”

“Even so,” said Todd. “It’s good of you.”

He heard a door close behind him and he turned round to see Sasha coming into the room, holding a plate of sliced brown bread and smoked salmon. She put the plate down on a table and came to his side.

“You look so good in your kilt,” she said, turning to Lizzie.

“Your father does look good in it, doesn’t he?”

“Yes,” said Lizzie, without any great enthusiasm.

Todd shot her a glance. He did not mind if she was lukewarm about what he was wearing, but it would be nice, would it not, if for once she complimented her mother.

“And your mother looks good too, doesn’t she?” he said. “With that magnificent dress. And the shoes.”

Lizzie looked Sasha up and down. “Silk organza. Fish-tail hem, I see,” she said.

“Fish what?” asked Todd.

“Fish-tail hem,” repeated Lizzie, pointing at Sasha’s dress.

“You’ll see that it’s higher in the front – shows her knees – and then goes down at the back like a fish tail. Very popular among the twenty-somethings.”

Todd looked at Sasha, who was staring at her daughter. “Well, I like it very much,” he said. “Twenty-something, forty-something

– what’s the difference?”

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135

“Twenty years,” said Lizzie.

Sasha bent down and picked up a piece of buttered brown bread with its small covering of smoked salmon. For a moment Todd wondered whether she was going to use it as a weapon, but she popped it into her mouth and quickly licked the tips of her fingers.

“Actually,” Sasha said, “I had this dress made up for me from a photograph I saw in Harpers. And, if I remember correctly, the person wearing it in the magazine was not in her twenties.”

“Teens?” asked Lizzie.

Sasha looked at Todd. He saw that she had coloured, and that her lower lip was quivering. He turned to his daughter.

“Do you have to be like this?” he asked. “Do you have to say cruel things? Do you have to upset your mother?”

Lizzie’s expression was one of injured innocence. “But I didn’t say anything,” she protested. “I merely said that that sort of dress was very popular among younger people. What’s wrong with that? It’s just an observation.”

“Except that you think that I’m too old to be wearing it,”

Sasha blurted out. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re never happy unless you make me feel small. You’ll be forty-four one day, you know.”

“Forty-five,” said Lizzie.

At this remark, Sasha turned sharply away and walked out of the room, leaving her husband and daughter staring mutely at one another. Todd lifted his glass of whisky and drained it.

“I think you should say you’re sorry,” he said. “It’s a big night for your mother, and I really don’t think that you should ruin it for her. Couldn’t you just go through there and say that you’re sorry? Would it cost you that much effort?”

Lizzie shrugged. “She could say sorry to me,” she said. “She could say sorry for making me feel so bad all those years. For nagging me. For making me do things that I never wanted to do. For ruining my life.”

He spoke quietly. “For ruining your life?”

“Yes,” she said.

He looked down at his sporran and at his patent-leather Highland dancing pumps. This is what it has come to, he thought.

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Bruce Fantasises

This is what all their effort had brought forth: the accusation that they had ruined her life.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I really am very sorry if you think that.

And I take it that you think the same of me – that I’ve done the same.”

Lizzie shook her head. “Not really. I don’t blame you for it.

You can’t help the way you are.”

“And what, may I ask, is that? What way am I?”

Lizzie looked up at the ceiling, as if bored by the task of explaining the obvious.

“All of this,” she said. “All this respectability. This whole Edinburgh bit. All of that.”

Todd tried to look her in the eye as she spoke, but she avoided his gaze. “All right,” he said. “You’ve made your speech. Now please just try for the rest of the evening. That young man is walking up the path out there and I would prefer it if he didn’t witness a family row. I’m going to fetch your mother. Please try.

Please just try. I’m not asking you to approve of us, but please just try to be civil. Is that too much to ask? Is it?”

53. Bruce Fantasises

“You’ll remember my wife,” said Todd. “And my daughter Lizzie, of course.”

Sasha, smiling and holding out her hand, advanced upon Bruce, who shook hands with her formally. Lizzie, who had been standing at the window, half turned to their guest and nodded. She made no move to shake hands.

“Well,” said Todd, rubbing his hands together. “I must confess that I’ve jumped the gun. I’ve had a dram already. What about you, Bruce? Whisky? Gin? A glass of wine?”

Bruce asked for a glass of wine and while Todd went off to fetch it, Sasha took Bruce by the arm and led him to a sofa at the far end of the room. She sat down, and patted the sofa beside Bruce Fantasises

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her. And it was at this point that Bruce suddenly realised that in his haste to leave the flat he had dressed inadequately. He had donned his full, formal Highland outfit, his Prince Charlie jacket with its silver buttons, his Anderson kilt, the dress sporran that his uncle had given him for his twenty-first birthday, his white hose from Aitken and Niven in George Street, and, of course, his new dress shirt. But he had forgotten to put on any underpants.

Bruce knew that there were those who refused to wear anything under the kilt as a matter of principle. He knew, as everybody did, that there were traditions to this effect, but they were old ones, and he had never met anybody who followed them. It was not just a question of comfort, and warmth, perhaps in the winter; it was a question of security. And now he felt that security issue very acutely as he prepared to sit down on the sofa beside Sasha.

He lowered himself carefully, keeping his knees close together and making sure that the folds of the kilt fell snugly along the side of each leg. Then he looked at Sasha, who was watching him with what he thought was a slightly bemused expression. Had she guessed, by the way that he had sat down? He remembered, blushing, the last time this had happened when, as a thirteen-year-old boy he had similarly rushed off to a school function and had been laughed at by schoolgirls, who had pointed to him and giggled. One might have thought that such painful episodes were well and truly in the past, but now here he was reliving the burning awkwardness of adolescence.

Sasha raised her glass, although her husband had not yet come back with a drink for Bruce. “We haven’t seen one another for a long time, have we?” she asked. “Was it last year, at the office dinner at Prestonfield House?”

“I think so,” said Bruce vaguely. He had worn his kilt on that occasion too, but had wisely donned underpants then. How on earth had he managed to forget to put them on tonight? What could he possibly have been thinking about?

Sasha looked across at Lizzie – a glance which was intercepted by Bruce. There was a feeling between these two, he thought; mothers and daughters were often at one another’s throats, he had found; something to do with jealousy, he thought. Bruce’s 138

Bruce Fantasises

theories of female psychology were simple: women competed with one another for men and there was great distrust between them. Women did not like one another, he had decided – unlike men, who had easy friendships, with none of the ups and downs and moodiness of women’s relationships.

Bruce was used to being fought over, and relished the experience. If he was in a room with two women, then he would imagine that both of them would be vying for his attention, and he liked to look for the signs of this subtle, under-the-surface competition. It was easy to miss, but if you kept your eyes open you could see it. In these particular circumstances, Lizzie would be glowering at her mother because the older woman had invited Bruce to sit beside her and now she was talking to him in this familiar way. This would be annoying Lizzie, because she, quite naturally, would be wanting Bruce to notice her, not her mother.

Bruce smiled. How delicious! Mother and daughter are both interested in me, and she, the older one, is the boss’s wife.

He looked at Sasha. She’s crammed herself into that dress, he thought, but she’s not all that bad-looking in the right light.

And there was a certain brassiness to her which he rather liked, a suggestion that she understood what it was to have fun.

Interesting. Now for the daughter. Well, what a frump, with that frown and that way of slumping her shoulders. He knew the sort well enough; she would have given up, that’s what she would have done – she would just have given up on the prospect of finding a man. So she would have decided to behave as if she did not care, which of course she did. How sad. If she made an effort then she could probably be reasonable-looking, and might appeal to some man or other.

Bruce wondered. He was free at the moment, and he would be doing a service for this rather unhappy-looking girl if he paid her a bit of attention. She might do for a few weeks, to bridge the gap, so to speak, before somebody a bit more suitable turned up. He could even look on it as a form of community service of the sort that was handed out at the sheriff court. You are sentenced to one hundred and forty hours with Todd’s daughter.

You are warned that if you don’t comply with the terms of this Supporting Walls

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order then you will be brought back to the court to explain yourself to the sheriff.

And he would say to the sheriff: “My lord, have you seen her?”

And the sheriff would look down from the bench and shake his head and say: “Young man, that’s what community service is all about. But I see what you mean. You are free to go.”

That’s what Bruce thought. He found the fantasy rather amusing, and smiled again; a smile which was misinterpreted by Sasha, who thought: this dishy young man is smiling at me! It’s not too late, obviously. It’s not too late to have some fun in this life.

54. Supporting Walls

“This is a nice place you’ve got, Todd,” said Bruce to Todd as he was handed his glass of wine.

Todd smiled warmly. “It’s a very good corner of town,” he said. “We’ve been here for – what – sixteen years now and I don’t think we’re planning to move, are we Sasha?”

Sasha shook her head. “I couldn’t move,” she said. “I’ve put so much effort into the garden and if you go further into town these days it’s so noisy. Students and the like. All sorts of people.”

Bruce nodded in sympathy. He knew all about students and the noise they made, although it was only a few years since he had been a student, and had made a lot of noise himself, if one were to be strictly honest. Mind you, he reflected, the noise he made was not from music being played at full throttle, it was rather from parties, particularly after rugby internationals. Those parties had produced a sort of roar which was far more acceptable than the sort of noise that came from student flats these days.

“Marchmont’s impossible,” he said. “I was pleased when I moved down to Scotland Street. It’s much better.”

Todd, who had taken a few paces back from the sofa and was standing with his back to the fireplace, gestured to the room around them. “Of course, we had to do a lot to this place when 140

Supporting Walls

we moved in,” he explained. “It was typical of those houses they built in the Twenties – the rooms were just far smaller than they needed to be. This room, for example, was two rooms. We took a wall out over there – right down the middle, and made it into a decent-sized drawing room.”

Bruce looked about him. He could see where the earlier wall had been, as there was still a detectable line across the ceiling and one of the light fittings had clearly been moved. For a few moments he stared up at the ceiling, his surveyor’s instinct asserting itself. Was that a bulge running where the wall must have been? And did the ceiling not seem to sag slightly in the middle? He looked over at the far wall, where the now-disappeared wall would have met the room’s perimeter. It seemed to him that there was clear evidence of buckling.

He looked at Todd, who was running a finger around the rim of his whisky glass. “It’s a very comfortable room,” he began.

“But that wall . . . would it not have been a supporting wall? I suppose that you had an engineer look at it?”

Todd snorted. “Engineer? Just for a partition wall in a bungalow? Good heavens, no. I looked at it myself. It was absolutely fine. I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t load-bearing.”

Bruce looked back at the ceiling and at the bulge. “Are you sure?” he said. “Hasn’t there been a bit of movement?”

Todd frowned. “What exactly are you saying? Are you suggesting that the house is going to fall down about our ears?”

Sasha picked up the tension which had arisen between the two men, and made an attempt to defuse it. It was bad enough, in her view, to have Lizzie behaving like a sulky child without having an atmosphere develop between her husband and Bruce.

“I’m sure he doesn’t mean that,” she interjected. “Heavens no!”

Lizzie now spoke. “If your ceiling did come down,” she said,

“you would have lost a room, but you would have gained a courtyard. Think of that.”

Sasha turned her head to stare at her daughter and Bruce, who now regretted raising the issue of the possible collapse of the Todd house, started to cross his legs, but stopped in embarrassment, and brought his knees together sharply. Lizzie, however, had been Discovered

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looking at him – or so he feared – and he saw her surprised expression. This made him blush, and Sasha, thinking him embarrassed by Lizzie’s general attitude, reached over and touched him lightly on the sleeve.

“Everything will be fine,” she whispered.

The conversation resumed, avoiding surveying issues, and focusing instead on Scotland’s prospects in the forthcoming rugby season. Todd revealed that he had debenture seats at Murrayfield and spent some time extolling the virtue of their position in the West Stand. There then followed some disparaging remarks about dirty play by the French and the Italians.

Bruce agreed with Todd’s analysis of this, which seemed to relieve the tension considerably, and earlier remarks about structural unsoundness seemed now to be forgotten, or at least shelved.

When Todd looked at his watch and declared that it was time for them to start off for the Braid Hills Hotel, Bruce rose to his feet, carefully. Could he visit the bathroom quickly before they left? Of course, of course; down the corridor. Last door on the left.

He made his way down the corridor. The bathroom, which he noted had hunting prints on the wall, was more or less what he had expected, and he took the opportunity of looking at himself quickly in the mirror. This restored his confidence. One might have no underpants on, but what did it matter if one had the looks? Not at all. You don’t really need underpants if you have the looks, Bruce thought to himself, and almost laughed out loud at the very idea.

He walked back down the corridor. The door next to the bathroom was open, with the light switched on. It was a drying room, with washing machine and tumble dryer, and a clothes-horse. On which there were several pairs of underpants.

55. Discovered

As he peered into the Todds’ drying room, Bruce felt more than the normal curiosity (mild in the case of most) which we feel 142

Discovered

when we look into the drying rooms of others. After all, a drying room is hardly Chapman’s Homer . . . nor is it a peak in Darien.

This drying room, in fact, was of little interest, apart from the fact that there were at least four pairs of underpants on the clothes-horse and Bruce was conscious of the fact that social embarrassment might await him at the ball in his current state of incomplete dress. A simple solution would be to borrow – and it would just be borrowing – a pair of these underpants, obviously Todd’s, slip into them when some suitable opportunity presented itself at the ball, and then return them, laundered, a few days later. This would not be theft; it would be borrowing of an entirely understandable and justifiable sort.

Of course the means of return would have to be considered.

Borrowed items could normally be returned openly, but those that were borrowed informally, or borrowed with implicit consent, might have to be returned in a more discreet way. The clothing could be put into the post, perhaps, with an anonymous thank-you note – or with one signed in an illegible hand – or it might just be slipped into Todd’s in-tray in the office when nobody was looking.

Bruce looked over his shoulder. The corridor was quite empty and he could hear the murmur of conversation coming from the drawing room. It was highly unlikely, he thought, that anybody would come this way: they were waiting for him to return before setting off for the Braid Hills Hotel. He could take as long as he liked, and be quite safe.

He stepped forward into the drying room and reached for a pair of underpants from the clothes-horse. As he did so, he saw that the pair which he had chosen had a large hole in the seat; how mean of Todd! It was typical of him – he was mean with stationery supplies in the office and he was always going on about keeping costs down.

So he applied that philosophy to his clothing as well!

Bruce replaced the rejected pair of underpants on the clothes-horse and reached for another pair. This was better. Although the garment was certainly too large, the elastic would hold it in place. So he quickly folded the pants, stuffed them into his sporran and turned to go back out into the corridor.

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He stopped. There, standing in the doorway, was Todd, an empty whisky glass in his hand.

Bruce swallowed. “Todd,” he said, in strangled tones.

“Todd.”

Todd was staring at him, and Bruce noticed, for the first time, how the whites of his eyes were unnaturally large.

“Yes,” he said.

Bruce swallowed again. “Well, I’m more or less ready to go,”

he said. “We don’t want to keep people.”

Todd blinked. “The bathroom is further along,” he said. “This is the drying room.”

Bruce laughed. “Oh, I found the bathroom all right,” he said airily. “I took a wrong turning on the way back and ended up . . .” He paused, and then gestured around the drying room,

“here. I ended up in here.”

Todd moved back from the doorway in order to allow Bruce to come out into the corridor. “A rather odd mistake to make,”

he said. “After all, this is not a particularly confusing house. The corridor runs fairly straight, wouldn’t you say? It goes up there, and then comes back. Frankly, I don’t see how one can get lost in this house.”

Bruce smiled. “I have a very bad sense of direction,” he said quickly. “Terrible, in fact.”

Todd said nothing, and so Bruce, forcing the best smile he could manage, began to walk back down the corridor towards the drawing room. His insouciance was misleading; the encounter had been deeply embarrassing. It was bad enough to be found in the drying room, but he wondered whether Todd had seen him pocket, or sporran, the underpants. Would he have said anything, had he seen him? The answer to that was far from obvious. If he had seen him, then one could only speculate as to what he would have thought. Presumably he would have thought of him as being one of those unfortunate people who steal the clothing of others for reasons too dark, too impenetrable, to discuss. That would be so unjust: the thought that he might harbour a trait of that sort was inconceivable. After all, he was a rugby enthusiast, a recently-admitted member of the Royal Institution of Chartered

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Surveyors, and . . . It was difficult to put one’s finger on other badges of respectability, but they were certainly there.

Well, there was nothing that he could do about it. What did it matter if Todd thought that of him? He reached the drawing room before he managed to provide himself with an answer to that question.

“Bruce got lost,” said Todd in a loud voice, behind him. “He ended up in the drying room.”

Sasha, who had been talking to Lizzie, looked up in surprise.

“Lost in our house?” she exclaimed. “How did you manage that?”

“I took a wrong turning,” said Bruce. He turned to look reproachfully at Todd. A host had no excuse to embarrass a guest like this, even if the host was the guest’s boss.

“Very strange,” said Lizzie, looking coolly at Bruce. “So you ended up among all the family underwear?”

Sasha’s head swung round sharply, and Lizzie found herself fixed with a hostile stare from her mother. Bruce, who was now blushing noticeably, turned to look out of the window.

“I hope it doesn’t rain,” he said.

56. At the Braid Hills Hotel

“The nice thing about this job,” observed the functions manager of the Braid Hills Hotel, “is that it has its surprises.”

His assistant, surveying the room in which the South Edinburgh Conservative Association Ball was to be held, nodded his agreement. The room, although well-decorated with several sprays of flowers, had only two tables, one with four chairs around it and one with two. And even if the hotel had fielded its best napery – starched and folded to perfection – and chosen bright red glassware – there was a distinctly desolate feel to the almost-empty room.

“You’d think that they would have sold just a few more tickets,” said the assistant, adding, “in an area like this.”

The manager shrugged. “I’m sure that they did their best.

Still, I cannot understand why they’ve insisted on keeping the tables apart. Surely it would have been much better for all six of them to sit together – somehow less embarrassing.”

When Sasha had called round earlier that day to review arrangements, he had suggested to her that the tables be put together, but she had firmly refused.

“I wouldn’t mind in the least,” she said. “But my husband has views on the matter.”

So the tables had remained apart, and they were still apart when the first guests, Ramsey and Betty Dunbarton, arrived in the hotel bar, several minutes before the arrival of the Todd party.

Ramsey Dunbarton was a tall, rather distinguished-looking man who was only now beginning to stoop slightly. He thought of himself as being slightly on the Bohemian side, and had been a stalwart of amateur dramatic circles and the Savoy Opera Group.

On more than one occasion he had appeared on the stage of the Churchhill Theatre, most notably – and this was the height of his stage career – as the Duke of Plaza-Toro in The Gondoliers.

Betty Dunbarton was the daughter of a Dundee marmalade manufacturer. She had met Ramsey at a bridge class at the Royal Overseas League, and they had ended up marrying a year or so later. Their marriage had been childless, but their life was a full 146

At the Braid Hills Hotel

one, and the Conservative Ball was just another event in a busy social round. The following day they were due to go to lunch at the Peebles Hydro; the day after that there was a meeting of the Friends of the Zoo (with lunch in the Members’ Pavilion); and so it went on.

Ramsey and Betty were standing near the bar when the Todd family, accompanied by Bruce, came in. Ramsey noticed that Todd did not smile at him, which was hurtful, he thought. That man doesn’t like me, he said to himself. I’ve done nothing to deserve it, but he doesn’t like me. And as for that daughter, that Lizzie, she was such a fright, wasn’t she? What could one say about her? – one could really only sigh.

Introductions were made and drinks were bought before they went through to the function room.

“It’s a pity there are not more of us,” said Ramsey Dunbarton, looking at Todd. “Perhaps we should have made more of an effort with the tickets.”

Todd glared at him. “Actually, we did our best,” he said. “Not that we had much help from the rest of the committee, or from any members, for that matter.”

“There are some things you just can’t sell,” muttered Lizzie.

They all looked at her, apart from Bruce, who was staring at the line of whiskies behind the bar. One way through the evening would be to get drunk, he thought, but then again . . .

“It doesn’t matter that there are so few of us,” said Sasha breezily. “The important thing is that we have a good time. And there’ll be lots of room to do some dancing.”

“A sixsome reel?” asked Lizzie.

This time, Bruce looked away from the bar and caught her eye.

She doesn’t want to be here either, he thought. And who can blame her? He smiled at her, encouragingly, but she did not respond.

They moved through to the room itself.

“Oh look!” exclaimed Betty Dunbarton. “Look at that pretty glassware. Just like the cranberry-ware which my cousin used to collect. Remember those glasses, Ramsey? Remember the jug she had in the display cabinet in Carnoustie – the one which was shaped like a swan? Remember that?”

The Duke of Plaza-Toro

147

“I always thought it was a duck,” said Ramsey Dunbarton. “In fact I could have sworn it was a duck.”

“No,” said Betty, turning to Sasha, as if for support. “Its neck was too long for it to be a duck. It was a swan. And when you poured, the liquid would go all the way down the swan’s neck and out of its beak.”

“Wonderful,” said Todd. “But look, we’d better get to our tables. I think that’s yours over there.”

Betty Dunbarton shook her head. “No,” she said. “They’ve arranged it in a very silly way. Let’s put the tables together so that we can talk. Ramsey, you go and ask that waiter over there to put the tables together.”

Ramsey complied. He was sure that it had been a duck; he was sure of it. But now was not the time.

57. The Duke of Plaza-Toro

Once seated, Ramsey Dunbarton leaned across the table to address Bruce. They were separated by one place, occupied by Lizzie, and by a plate of cock-a-leekie soup which the Braid Hills Hotel had decreed should be the first course.

“I always think that soup’s a good start to an evening,” he said.

Bruce looked at his bowl of cock-a-leekie. They had started every evening meal with soup at home, and when they went out, to the Hydro or to the Royal Hotel in Comrie, they had soup too. Soup reminded him of Crieff.

“There are some people,” Ramsey Dunbarton continued, “who don’t like starting a meal with soup. They say that you shouldn’t build on a swamp.” He paused. “They think, you see, that having soup first makes the swamp – only a figure of speech, of course.

Not a real swamp.”

Bruce glanced at Lizzie, who was staring fixedly across the table at the arrangement of flowers. Had she noticed that he had no underpants? It was difficult to tell. And what did it matter, 148

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anyway? A certain level of recklessness sets in when one is not wearing underpants, and Bruce was now experiencing this. It was an unusual feeling to experience – in Edinburgh, at least.

“I had an aunt who was a wonderful cook,” said Ramsey Dunbarton. “I used to go and stay with her down in North Berwick, when I was a boy. We used to go down there in the summer. I was sent with my brother. Do you know North Berwick?”

Bruce shook his head. “I know where it is. But I don’t really know it as a place. You remember it, I suppose?”

“Oh yes,” said Ramsey Dunbarton. “I remember North Berwick very well. I don’t think one would forget North Berwick very readily. I wouldn’t, anyway. North Berwick and Gullane too.

We used to go to Gullane a great deal – from North Berwick, that is. We used to go and have lunch at the Golf Hotel and then we would go for a walk along the beach. There are sand dunes there, you know. And a wonderful view over the Forth to Fife. You can see places like Pittenweem and Elie. That’s if the weather is clear enough. But it’s often a bit misty. You get a bit of a haar sometimes. Do you know Elie?”

“I know where Elie is,” Bruce replied. “But I don’t really know Elie as a place.” He turned to Lizzie in an attempt to involve her in the conversation. “Have you been to Elie?”

Lizzie looked down at her soup, which she had yet to touch.

“Where?” she snapped. Her tone was that of one whose train of thought had been wantonly interrupted.

“Elie,” said Bruce.

“Where?” Lizzie asked again.

“Elie.”

“Elie?”

“Yes, Elie.”

“What about it?”

Bruce persisted. She was being deliberately unpleasant, he thought. She’s a real . . . What was she? A man-hater? Was that the problem? “Do you know it?” he asked. “Have you ever been to Elie?”

“No.”

Ramsey Dunbarton had been following the exchange with The Duke of Plaza-Toro

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polite interest and now resumed with further observations on Elie. “When I was a bit younger than you,” he said, nodding in Bruce’s direction, “I used to have a friend whose parents had a place over there. They went there for the summer. His mother was quite a well-known figure in Edinburgh society. And I remember I used to go over there with my friend and we’d stay there for a few days and then come back to Edinburgh. Well, I always remember that they had a very large fridge in the basement of their Elie house and my friend opened it one day and showed me what it contained. And what do you think it was?”

Bruce looked at Lizzie to see if she was willing to provide an answer, but she was looking up at the ceiling. This was unnecessarily rude, he thought. All right, so this old boy was boring them stiff but it was meant to be a ball and it was probably the highlight of his year and it would cost her nothing to be civil, at least.

“I really can’t imagine.” He paused. “Explosives?”

Ramsey Dunbarton laughed. “Explosives? No, goodness me.

Furs. Fur coats. If you keep them in the fridge the fur is less likely to drop out. The fridge was full of fur coats. People used to buy them from the Dominion Fur Company in Churchill.

This lady had about ten of them. Beautiful fur coats. Mink and the like.”

“Well, well,” said Bruce.

“Yes,” said Ramsey Dunbarton. “The Dominion Fur Company was just over the road from the Churchhill Theatre. We used to do Gilbert and Sullivan there. First in the University Savoy Opera Group and then in the Morningside Light Opera. I played the Duke of Plaza-Toro, you know. A wonderful role. I was jolly lucky to get it because there was a very good baritone that year who was after the part and I thought he would get it. I really did. And then the casting director came up to me in George Street one day, just outside the Edinburgh Bookshop, and said that I was to get the part. It was a wonderful bit of news.”

Sasha, who was seated beside Bruce, and who had been talking to Betty Dunbarton, had now disengaged and switched her attention to the conversation between Bruce and Ramsey.

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But in the course of this change, she had heard only the mention of the Duke of Plaza-Toro.

“The Duke of Plaza-Toro – do you know him?” she asked.

Ramsey Dunbarton laughed politely. “Heavens no! He’s in The Gondoliers. Not a real duke.”

Sasha blushed. “I thought . . .” she began.

“There aren’t all that many dukes in Scotland,” Ramsey Dunbarton observed, laying down his soup spoon. “There’s the Duke of Roxburghe, our southernmost duke, so to speak. No, hold on, hold on, is the Duke of Buccleuch more to the south?

I think he may be, you know, come to think of it. Is Bowhill to the south of Kelso? I think it may be. If it is, then it would be, starting from the south, Buccleuch, Roxburghe. . . let me think . . . Hamilton, then Montrose (because he sits on the edge of Loch Lomond, doesn’t he, nowhere near Montrose itself), Atholl, Argyll, and then Sutherland. Hold your horses! Doesn’t the Duke of Sutherland live in the Borders? I think he does. So, he would have to go in that list between . . .”

Bruce looked around the table. All eyes had been fixed on Ramsey Dunbarton, but now they had shifted. Todd, who was still smarting over the moving together of the tables – against his explicit instructions – was glowering at Sasha, who was looking at Bruce, but in a way that he had not noticed; for he was looking at Betty Dunbarton, whose eyes, he saw, went in slightly different directions, and so could have been looking at anything; while Lizzie looked at the waiter who was watching the bowls of soup, ready to whisk them away and allow the service of the next course, and the course after that, so that the dancing could begin.

58. Catch 22

“Tories,” muttered Jim Smellie, leader of Jim Smellie’s Ceilidh Band. “And gey few of them too! Look, one two . . . six altogether. See that, Mungo? Six!”

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151

Mungo Brown, accordionist and occasional percussionist, drew on a cigarette as he looked across the dance floor to the table where the guests were sitting, waiting for the arrival of their coffee. “Don’t complain,” he said, smiling. “This bunch won’t stay up late. We’ll be out of here by eleven-thirty.”

“Aye,” said Jim, gazing across the empty dance floor. They were still deep in conversation, it seemed, and he wondered what they were talking about. In his experience there were two topics of conversation that dominated bourgeois Edinburgh: schools and house prices.

At the table, Betty Dunbarton turned to Todd, who was looking about anxiously, waiting for the coffee to be served. The service had been very good – one could not fault the Braid Hills Hotel, which was an excellent hotel, and it was certainly nothing to do with them that the two tables had been placed together – but it was now time for coffee, distinctly so, and then they could get out on the dance floor and he could get away from this woman at last.

“I do hope that we get a piece of shortbread with our coffee,” Betty remarked. “Although, you know, I had a very bad experience with a bit of shortbread only last week. Ramsey was down at Muirfield . . .”

Todd turned round sharply. “Muirfield?”

“Yes,” said Betty brightly. “He plays down there at least once a week these days. He’s a little bit slow now, with his leg playing up, but he always gets in nine holes. He has the same four-some, you know. David Forth, you know, Lord Playfair . . .”

“Yes, yes,” said Todd irritably. The mention of Muirfield had annoyed him. How long had Ramsey Dunbarton been on the waiting list, he wondered. Probably no time at all. And what was the use of his being a member? He would surely get as much enjoyment from playing somewhere closer to town.

“You know him?” asked Betty. “You know David?”

“No, I don’t,” said Todd. “I know who he is. I don’t know him.”

“I thought that you might have met him out at Muirfield,”

she said. “Do you get out there a great deal?”

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Todd looked over his shoulder in an attempt to catch the waiter’s eye. “No,” he said. “I don’t. My brother plays there, but I don’t. I play elsewhere.”

“Wouldn’t it be nice to be in the same club as your brother?”

asked Betty.

Todd shrugged. “I’m perfectly happy,” he said. “And I really don’t get the chance to play much golf these days. You know how it is. Not everyone wants to be a member of Muirfield, you know.”

Betty laughed – a high-pitched sound which irritated Todd even more. It would be impossible to be married to a woman like this, he thought, and for a moment he felt sympathy for Ramsey, but no, that was going too far.

“I was going to tell you about this shortbread,” said Betty. “I was sitting down for a cup of tea while Ramsey was out at Muirfield, with David and the others, and I decided to have a piece of shortbread. Now the shortbread itself was interesting because it had been baked by no less a person than Judith McClure, who’s headmistress of St George’s. You know her?”

Todd stared at her glassily. “No,” he said. “But I know who she is.”

“Well,” continued Betty, “I had gone to a coffee morning at St George’s, in the art centre, with a friend, who’s got a daughter there – a very talented girl – and I’m friendly with her mother, who lives over in Gordon Terrace, and she very kindly invited me to come to the coffee morning. Anyway, we went off and there was a stand with all sorts of things which had been baked by the girls and by the staff too. They were selling scones and the like to raise money for a school art trip to Florence. So I decided to buy something to add my little contribution to the cause. I love Florence, although Ramsey and I haven’t been there for at least twenty years.

“Mind you,” she went on, “there are lots of people who say that Florence is ruined. They say that there are now so many visitors that you have to queue more or less all morning to get into the Uffizi in the afternoon. Can you believe that? Standing there with all those Germans and what-not with their backpacks?

All morning. No thank you! Ramsey and I just wouldn’t do that.

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153

“But I suppose if you’re an Edinburgh schoolgirl and you’re young and fit, then it’s fine to stand about and wait for the Uffizi to open. So anyway I dutifully went over to the stall and bought a packet of shortbread which said: Made by Dr McClure. I was quite tickled by this because I had heard that he’s the cook, you know. Roger. He’s a fearfully good cook and he’s writing a long book on the lives of the popes at the moment. So maybe that means there’s less time for cooking. Or perhaps one can do both

– one can write a history of the papacy during the day and then cook at night. Something like that.

“The shortbread was delicious. I had several pieces over the next few days and then, without any warning, while I was eating the very last piece, a bit of tooth broke off. It had nothing to do with the shortbread, of course. I wouldn’t want her to think that her shortbread broke my tooth – it didn’t. It was just that this tooth was ready to break, apparently. There must have been a tiny crack in it and this was the time that it chose to break.

One can’t plan these things in life. They just happen, don’t they?”

She did not wait for an answer. “I felt it immediately. If I touched the bit that had broken off, I felt a very sharp pain, like an electric shock. And so I telephoned the dental surgery, but it was a Sunday, and I got a recorded message telling me to phone some number or other. But the problem was that the person who left the message on that tape spoke indistinctly – so many people do these days – and I just couldn’t make out the number! So what could I do? Well, I’ll tell you. I had heard that there was an emergency dental service down at the Western General hospital, and so I phoned them up and asked whether I could come down and have the tooth looked at. And do you know what they said? They said that if I was registered with a dentist then I wouldn’t be allowed in the door! That’s what they said. So I said to them that I couldn’t make out the emergency number and therefore couldn’t get in touch with my own dentist, and they just repeated what they’d said about my not being able to go to their emergency clinic if I was registered elsewhere. Can you believe it! I’d fallen into some sort of void, it seemed. It’s, what do they call it? A catch 23.”

154

The Dashing White Sergeant

“Catch 22,” said Todd quietly.

“No, I’m sure it’s 23,” said Betty. “Same as the bus that goes down Morningside Road. The 23 bus.”

Todd looked at his watch. It was only 10.22. No, 10.23.

59. The Dashing White Sergeant

“Let’s have some fun,” whispered Jim Smellie to Mungo Brown.

Taking the microphone in his hand, he held it up and called the ball to order. “Ladies and Gentlemen! Ladies and Gentlemen!

I’m Jim Smellie and this is Jim Smellie’s Ceilidh Band! Would you kindly arise and take your partners for an eightsome reel!”

Mungo drew out the bellows of his piano accordion and played an inviting major chord. At the table, Todd rose quickly to his feet and gestured, almost in desperation, to Sasha. She stood up too, cutting Ramsey Dunbarton off in the middle of a sentence.

Bruce then rose, turning to Lizzie as he did so.

“Shall we?” he said.

She turned down her mouth. “I don’t see how we can do an eightsome. Has anybody told the band that there aren’t enough people for an eightsome?”

Bruce looked over at the band, the three members of which The Dashing White Sergeant

155

now seemed poised to play. This was ridiculous, he thought, but if nobody was going to do it, then he would have to go across and have a word with them.

He strode across the floor and approached Jim Smellie, who was smiling at him, his fiddle tucked under his chin.

“Look, we can’t do an eightsome,” said Bruce. “There are only six of us.”

“Six?” asked Smellie, affecting surprise. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, of course I am,” said Bruce, the irritation showing in his voice. “So we’ll have to start with something else. What about a Gay Gordons?”

Smellie looked at Mungo. “Anything gay?” he asked. “This young man wants something gay.”

Mungo raised an eyebrow. “Yes, I suppose so. Gay Gordons then?”

Bruce cast an angry glance at Smellie. “That’ll do,” he said.

The band struck up and the dancers went out onto the floor.

There were only three couples, of course, and the floor seemed wide and empty. Bruce stood beside Lizzie, his arm over her shoulder, as the dance required. Had she shuddered when he had touched her? He had the distinct impression that she had, which was very rude of her, he thought. If it weren’t for the fact that she was Todd’s daughter, and Todd was, after all, his boss, then he would have given her a piece of his mind well before this.

Who did she think she was?

“What do you put on your hair?” she asked suddenly. “It smells very funny. Like cloves, or pepper, or something like that.”

Bruce winked at her. “Men’s business,” he said. “But I’m glad that you like it.”

His response went home. “I didn’t say . . .” She was unable to finish. The band had started and the small line of couples began to move round the perimeter of the floor. There was no more time for conversation, although Todd seemed to be trying to whisper something to Sasha, who looked over her shoulder and then whispered something back.

The Gay Gordons went on for longer than usual, or so it seemed to the dancers. Then, when the music finally came to 156

The Dashing White Sergeant

an end, Smellie seized the microphone and announced a Dashing White Sergeant. Sasha looked anxiously at Ramsey Dunbarton

– the Gay Gordons had been energetic, and he seemed to have coloured. Was he up to another dance, she wondered.

She leaned over to Todd and whispered in his ear. “Do you think it wise . . .?” she began. “He looks exhausted.”

Todd shrugged. “He should know his limits. He seems to be all right.”

In spite of their doubts, Ramsey Dunbarton was busy organising everybody for the next dance. Todd and Bruce were to join Betty in one set, and he would be flanked by Lizzie and Sasha.

Smellie watched, bemused, while the two sets prepared themselves, and then, with a nod to Mungo, he started the music.

Off they went, dancing in opposite directions, all the way round the hall, to seemingly interminable bars before they encountered one another, bowed, and went through the motions of the dance. Mungo Brown smiled and looked away; he had never seen anything quite as amusing in thirty years of playing at ceilidhs.

“This is cruel,” he mouthed to Smellie, and Smellie nodded and smirked as the two groups of dancers went off again in their wide, lonely circling of the dance floor.

At the end of the Dashing White Sergeant the dancers returned to their table while the band embarked on The Northern Lights of Old Aberdeen. Nobody wanted to dance to this, in spite of an exhortation from Jim Smellie that a waltz should be attempted.

Todd looked at his watch. They might do a few more dances

– two at the most – and then they could bring the whole thing to an end. Honour would have been satisfied; they would have had their ball and nobody would be able to say that they could not muster support for one. Did the South Edinburgh Labour Party have a ball? They did not. Of course, they didn’t know how to dance, thought Todd, with satisfaction. That’s what came of having two left feet. He paused. That was really amusing, and he would have to tell Sasha about it. He might even tell it to Bruce, who liked a joke, even if his sense of humour was rather The Tombola

157

strange. Anything, of course, was better than those awful Dunbartons, with her wittering away about dentists and breaking her tooth and about Dr McClure’s shortbread. What nonsense.

He looked at Bruce, noticing how the exertion of the dance had made his hair subside; it was still en brosse, but at a reduced angle of inclination. Todd stared at Bruce’s head. Was it something to do with the melting of whatever it was that he put on his hair? Perhaps that stuff – whatever it was – stopped supporting hair when it became warmer. Brylcreem – good old-fashioned Brylcreem, of the sort that Todd had used when he was in his last year at Watson’s, and which you could use to grease your bicycle chain if needs be – was a much simpler, and more masculine product. And it had used that very effective advertising jingle, which he could still remember, come to think of it.

Brylcreem – a little drop will do you!/ Brylcreem – you’ll look so debonair!/ Brylcreem – the girls will all pursue you/ They’ll love to run their fingers through your hair!

That young man is a bit of a mystery, thought Todd. He was up to something when I saw him in the drying room. And whatever it was, he had no business to be there. It was all very suspicious.

60. The Tombola

It was now time for the tombola at the Annual Ball of the South Edinburgh Conservative Association. Jim Smellie’s Ceilidh Band had made valiant efforts to provoke more dancing, but the guests, exhausted by the Gay Gordons and the Dashing White Sergeant had decided that they would dance no more. Jim Smellie and the band played a few more tunes and then, after a maudlin rendtion of Good-night Irene, sung by Mungo Brown in a curious nasal drone, the band had packed up and gone home.

At their combined table on the other side of the room, the 158

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six guests sat, still feeling rather lost in the vastness of the empty function room, but enjoying nonetheless the drinks which Todd had generously purchased everyone after the last dance.

“We’ve had a wonderful evening,” announced Sasha, looking around the table lest anybody venture to disagree.

Lizzie gave a snort, but not so loud that it could be heard by anyone other than Bruce, who was seated immediately beside her. “Speak for yourself,” she muttered.

Bruce turned to her. “She is, actually,” he said. “She is speaking for herself.”

Lizzie said nothing for a moment, digesting the barely-disguised rebuke. She had tolerated Bruce thus far – and it had been an effort – but she was not sure if she could continue to do so. There was something insufferable about him, an irritating self-confidence that begged for a put-down. The problem, though, was that it was far from easy to put down somebody who was quite so pleased with himself. And what could one say? Could anything penetrate the mantle of self-satisfaction that surrounded him, like a cloak of . . . like a cloak of . . . There was no simile, she decided, and then she thought cream.

She turned to him. “You’re like the cat who’s got the cream,”

she said.

Bruce met her gaze. “Thank you,” he said. And then he gave quite a passable imitation of a purr and rubbed his left leg against her, as might an affectionate cat. “Like that?” he asked.

Any response that Lizzie might have given was prevented by Sasha’s standing up and announcing that the time had come for the tombola.

“We have marvellous prizes,” she said. “And since it’s only a modest crowd here tonight, there’ll be plenty for everybody.”

“Hear, hear,” said Ramsey Dunbarton, raising his glass of whisky. “Plenty for everybody – the Party philosophy.”

“Quite,” agreed Sasha. “Now, to save the bother of a draw, I simply divided the tickets – on a totally random basis, of course

– into six groups. I then put each group in a separate envelope and wrote a name on the outside. On payment of six pounds –

one pound per ticket – you will each get your envelope. And The Tombola

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then you can open it up and when you tell me the numbers, I will tell you what you’ve won.”

“Sounds fair,” said Bruce, but he noticed that Ramsey Dunbarton looked doubtful. Did he suspect Sasha of cheating, Bruce wondered? Surely that would be inconceivable. And yet she would have had every opportunity to dictate which tickets went into which envelope, and thus effectively determine who won what.

The Ramsey Dunbartons, slightly reluctantly, handed over twelve pounds and were given two white envelopes with Ramsey and Betty written on the outside. Then Lizzie completed the same transaction, in her case with an ostentatious show of boredom. Bruce, by contrast, handed over six pounds with good grace and smiled as he took the envelope from Sasha.

“Right,” said Sasha. “Betty, if you would like to start by calling out the numbers on your tickets, I’ll tell you what you’ve won.”

While she was organising the tickets, Todd had gone out of the room and now he wheeled in a large trolley. This was covered with a sheet, which he took off with a theatrical gesture. There, stacked high in munificence, were the prizes – the silver fish knives and forks from Hamilton and Inches; the decanter from Jenners; the envelopes containing the vouchers for golf and dinner and other treats. All was laid out before them, and the guests immediately realised that this tombola represented remarkable value for the six pounds that each of them had been asked to pay.

The fish knives and forks went to Betty Dunbarton, who received them with exclamations of delight.

“Hamilton and Inches,” said Sasha knowingly.

“Wonderful,” said Betty. “Ramsey loves Hamilton and Inches.”

The other prizes she won were less exciting, but still represented a good haul. And when it came to Ramsey’s turn, although he was unmoved by the prize of the round of golf at Craiglockhart, he was extremely pleased with the two free tickets to the Lyceum Theatre to be followed by dinner (up 160

The Tombola

to the value of twenty-five pounds) in the Lyceum Restaurant.

His final prize was the picture which Bruce had brought as his contribution.

“A view of somewhere over in the west,” announced Sasha as she handed the Peploe? over to him. “A very nice prize indeed, thanks to Bruce.”

Ramsey and Betty nodded in Bruce’s direction in acknowledgment of his generosity. Then they placed the Peploe? with the fish knives and forks and waited for the next stage of the draw.

This saw Lizzie win the dinner at Prestonfield (“too fattening,”

she said), a jar of pickled red peppers from Valvona and Crolla (“can’t stand red peppers,” she remarked) and a copy of the latest novel by a well known crime-writer (“Ian who?” she asked). When it came to Sasha’s turn, she won, of course, the lunch with Malcolm Rifkind and Lord James at the Balmoral Hotel. This brought some envious muttering from Ramsey Dunbarton, who clearly would have liked to have won that, but this merely confirmed Sasha’s conviction that she had done the right thing.

“I couldn’t have imposed him on them,” she said to Todd later.

“Imagine them having to sit there and listen to stories about North Berwick and broken teeth.”

Laden with prizes, the party began to break up. The Ramsey Dunbartons’ taxi arrived to take them the short distance back to Morningside Drive and Bruce telephoned for a cab back to Scotland Street. Then he remembered the underpants. He had intended to slip into them earlier on, but had almost forgotten his state of undress. Now, as he remembered that the pants were in his sporran, it occurred to him that the simplest way of returning them to their owner would be to put them in the pocket of Todd’s coat, which he knew had been hung in the cloakroom on the ground floor.

Making his excuses, Bruce left the small knot of guests around the table and made his way to the cloakroom. There, as he had expected, was Todd’s black Crombie coat with its velvet collar.

Bruce crossed the room quickly, extracting the underpants from his sporran as he did so. Then, fumbling in the folds of the coat, he slipped the pants into the right-hand pocket.

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“Did you enjoy yourself?”

It was Todd, standing at the door.

“That’s my coat,” said Todd. “Yours is over there, isn’t it?”

Bruce laughed nervously. “I must have had too much to drink,”

he said. “So it is!”

He moved over towards his coat and took it off the hook.

Then he turned and looked at Todd, who was watching him suspiciously. As he put on his coat, he felt Todd’s eyes remain on him. It was very disconcerting. Bruce was used to being looked at – in an admiring way – but this was different.

61. Bertie Begins Therapy

For Irene Pollock, the mother of that most talented five-year-old, Bertie, the decision to seek advice from the Scottish Institute of Human Relations was an entirely appropriate response to a trying set of circumstances. Bertie’s sudden outburst at the Floatarium – when he had so unexpectedly declared his opposition to speaking Italian and learning the saxophone – had been only the first sign of a worryingly rebellious attitude. Although it was difficult to put a finger on any particular incident or comment (other than his extraordinary behaviour at the Floatarium, which followed hard on the heels of the graffiti incident) there was no doubt that he was less co-operative than he used to be. An indication of this attitude was his subtle abandonment of the first names which he had been encouraged to use when addressing his parents; Irene and Stuart had come so naturally to him, and seemed so right; now it was Mummy and Daddy – terms which were acceptable when used by Irene or Stuart themselves, but which seemed disturbingly hierarchical – even reactionary – when uttered by Bertie.

And then there had been a shift in attitude towards his room.

One afternoon she had gone into his room – which she called 162

Bertie Begins Therapy

his space – to discover Bertie standing in the middle of his rug, staring disconsolately at the walls. He had not said anything at first, but she had formed the distinct impression that he was thinking about the colour – a reassuring pink – and might even have been imagining the walls in another colour.

“You’re very lucky to have a space like this,” said Irene, pre-emptively. “You really are.”

Bertie looked at her briefly, almost in reproach, and had then turned away. “Other boys have different spaces,” he said. “They have trains and things.”

“Other boys are not as lucky as you are,” Irene countered.

“Other boys are forced into moulds, you know. Forced to play football, for example. Horrid things like that. Do you understand what I mean? We’re giving you something very different, Bertie.

We’re giving you the gift of freedom from gender roles.”

“Trains are free,” muttered Bertie.

Irene struggled to contain her frustration. It was not easy, but she succeeded. “Are they?” she asked gently. “Why are trains free, Bertie? Why do you say that?”

Bertie sighed. “Trains go out into the night. Remember Mr Auden’s poem, Mummy, the one you read to me once. This is the night mail crossing the border/ Bringing the cheque and the postal order.”

Irene nodded. She had given him W.H. Auden rather than A.A. Milne in the belief that the insights of Auden would be infinitely better for him than middle-class juvenile nonsense about being halfway up the stairs or changing the guard at Buckingham Palace and all the rest.

“I could read you more Auden, if you like,” she said. “There’s that lovely poem about . . .”

“Streams,” interrupted Bertie. “I’d like the poem about streams because he talks about two baby locomotives, remember it? He says the god of mortal doting is pulled over the lawn by two baby locomotives.”

Irene stared at Bertie. Where on earth did this obsession with trains come from? Neither she nor Stuart talked about trains very much, if ever, and yet he seemed to think of nothing else. She Bertie Begins Therapy

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closed her eyes for a moment and imagined herself arriving at Waverley Station at some time in the future, say ten years from now. And there, standing on the platform, notebook in hand, wearing a blue anorak, would be Bertie, trainspotting, in the company of several other Aspergeresque youths.

She left the room, the space, quietly. If there was nothing that could be done about it, then this retreat of Bertie into a rejection of everything she and Stuart stood for would be a bitter pill to swallow. But there was something they could do –

there was a great deal she could do. Therapy – solid, Kleinian therapy – would move Bertie through this dangerous period; therapy would deal with the envy and the other ego issues which were causing this flowering of hate and negativity. And then all would be well. Even if the therapy were to take a year – and she well understood how slow analysis could be – there would still be plenty of time to have Bertie’s ego development sorted out by the time he was due to begin at the Rudolf Steiner School. All that was required was love and patience; the love of a parent who knew that it was only too easy to become a harsh figure, and the patience of one who understood that bad behaviour was merely the product of frustrated longing for that which one wanted to love. Bertie wanted to love the Italian language and the saxophone; in his heart of hearts he associated those with that fundamental object of affection, the good breast, and he would return to a more fulfilling relationship with these things, the things of the mind and the soul, once he had resolved his Oedipal issues.

And so it was that Irene dressed Bertie in his best OshKosh dungarees and set off for an appointment with Dr Hugo Fairbairn at the Institute. They had time on their hands, and they took a circuitous route, walking along Abercromby Place so that they might look down into the gardens.

“Look, Bertie,” said Irene, pointing to a shrub that was displaying a riot of blossom. “Look at the little flowers on that bush.”

Bertie looked down, and then turned away sharply. “Mahonia,”

he said. “I hate mahonia. I hate flowers.”

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The Rucksack of Guilt

Irene caught her breath. There was no doubt but that this visit to the therapist was coming not a moment too soon.

62. The Rucksack of Guilt

Dr Hugo Fairbairn was unrelated to the distinguished psychoanalyst Ronald Fairbairn, whose colourful son, the late Nicholas Fairbairn, had so enlivened the Scottish firmament with his surprising remarks and invigorating attitudes. Not many people now knew about Fairbairn père, but his name still counted for something in the history of the psychoanalytical movement, along with names such as Winnicott, Ferenczi, and, of course, Klein. For Hugo Fairbairn, the name was something of a professional asset, as others would make the false assumption of relationship and assume that he was too modest to mention it.

This gave him authority in the psychoanalytical movement –

with its dynastic tendencies – and had undoubtedly helped him in establishing his practice. Aided by his name, his rise to eminence had been rapid; he had appeared on conference platforms at the Tavistock, and had been referred to in several articles in The Analytical Review. In due course, his elegantly-written case-history, Shattered to Pieces: Ego Dissolution in a Three-year-old Tyrant, had become something of a classic. Indeed, one reviewer had gone so far as to suggest that Fairbairn’s three-year-old tyrant, Wee Fraser, might be heading for the same sort of immortality as that famous patient whose analysis was written up by Freud – Little Hans, who had feared that the Viennese dray horses might bite him. This, of course, was a grossly inflated claim – no case, ever, anywhere, could be as important as those upon which Freud himself had pronounced – but it was still true that there were some very interesting aspects of Wee Fraser’s troubled psyche. This boy had none of Hans’s neurotic dreads

– and that was what made him so interesting. Rather than fear that he might be bitten, Wee Fraser had himself bitten a number The Rucksack of Guilt

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of others, including a Liberal Democratic councillor who had called at the door and Dr Fairbairn himself, thus eliciting that famous line in the case history: “The young patient then attempted the oral incorporation of the analyst.”

Irene, of course, had heard of Dr Fairbairn, and had attended a lecture which he had given on Wee Fraser at the Royal Scottish Museum. She had every confidence in him and in his ability to get to the heart of Bertie’s malaise, and she secretly entertained thoughts of Bertie in due course appearing in the psychoanalytical literature.

A Remarkably Talented Boy and his Problems in Adjusting to a Mediocre Society. That would be a possible title; and the text itself would be extremely interesting. There would have to be, of course, a complete exposure of Christabel Macfadzean and her lack of understanding of Bertie (and children in general). She, poor woman, would stand for the essential poverty of the bourgeois imagination, a cipher for everything that was wrong with Edinburgh itself.

She allowed herself the luxury of these thoughts as they completed their journey, Bertie trailing slightly behind her, hands in his pockets, still, she noticed, trying to avoid standing on the cracks.

“Where are we going anyway?” muttered Bertie.

“We’re going for therapy,” said Irene. She had never concealed anything from Bertie and this, of all occasions, was one on which a frank explanation was required.

“What happens at therapy?” asked Bertie, a note of anxiety now entering his voice. “Do other boys have therapy? Will there be other boys there?”

“Of course other boys have therapy,” said Irene, reassuringly.

“You may not see other boys, but they do go there. Lots of boys have therapy.”

Bertie thought for a moment. “Am I having therapy because I’m suspended?” he asked.

Irene frowned. “Your suspension from nursery was a nonsense,”

she said. “You mustn’t feel that you have been suspended at all.

Just ignore it.”

“But am I suspended?” asked Bertie. “Like a cancelled train?

Am I cancelled?”

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The Rucksack of Guilt

“No,” said Irene, gritting her teeth at the persistent, worrying train references. “That woman tried to suspend you, but I withdrew you before she could do so. You can’t be suspended if you’re withdrawn.” She paused. They were now standing outside the entrance to the Institute, and it was time to go in.

“We can talk about all that later on,” she said. “Now we must go in and meet Dr Fairbairn. I’m sure that you’ll like him.” And there was certainly nothing forbidding in Dr Fairbairn’s manner when the two of them were shown into his consulting room. He was dressed in a loose-fitting cord jacket and a pair of slightly rumpled charcoal slacks. He greeted them warmly, bending down to shake hands with Bertie and addressing Irene formally as Mrs Pollock.

Irene knew that she would like him. She usually made snap judgments of people – it had taken her no more than a few minutes to get the measure of Christabel Macfadzean, for example – and she seldom revised her opinions after she had formed them. People were, in her experience, either possible or impossible. Hugo Fairbairn was clearly possible, and she would have judged him so even had she been unaware of his background and his writings.

Dr Fairbairn gestured to a small circle of easy chairs at one side of the room. “Let’s sit down,” he said, smiling at Bertie as he spoke. “Then we can have a little chat.”

They took their places and Irene glanced at Dr Fairbairn. In spite of her interest in these matters, she had never actually consulted a psychotherapist before (analysis was ruinously expensive, Stuart had pointed out; the cost of a mortgage, more or less). If she had been able to afford it, Irene would have shown no hesitation in undergoing analysis, not that she had any issues to resolve – there was nothing wrong with her, in her view – but the whole process of discovery of that which drives one would be fascinating, would it not? A whole range of new resentments might surface; new understandings of what one’s parents were doing to one; renewed access to those little secrets of childhood; light upon the dark furniture of the mind.

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But that was not what Bertie needed. His conflicts were fresh and current, not buried deep in the experience of the past.

But how would Dr Fairbairn elucidate these things? Through Kleinian play therapy?

“What’s the trouble then?” asked Dr Fairbairn, rubbing his hands together as he spoke. “Been a naughty boy?”

Irene could not prevent herself from gasping. This was a very direct approach, almost naïve in its directness, and yet he must know what he was doing. This was, after all, the author of Shattered to Pieces.

Bertie stared at Dr Fairbairn. For a moment he did nothing, and then he winced, as if bracing himself for a slap.

Dr Fairbairn’s eyes narrowed. He threw a glance at Irene, who was looking at Bertie and frowning.

“You aren’t here to be punished,” said Dr Fairbairn. “Did you think I was going to smack you?”

“Yes,” said Bertie. “I thought that you were going to smack me for thinking bad thoughts.”

Dr Fairbairn smiled. “No, Bertie, I’d never do that. Analysts don’t smack people.”

“Not even if they deserve it?” asked Bertie.

“Not even then,” replied Dr Fairbairn. He was about to continue, when he stopped, and appeared to think of something.

168

Irene Converses with Dr Hugo Fairbairn When he had been bitten by Wee Fraser, he had in fact smacked him sharply on the hand. Nobody had seen it and of course it was not mentioned in the case report. But he had done it, and now he felt guilt, like a great burden upon his back. The Rucksack of Guilt, he thought.

63. Irene Converses with Dr Hugo Fairbairn

“There’s something troubling you,” said Irene when she saw the pained expression cross Dr Fairbairn’s face. “You looked almost tormented just then.”

Dr Fairbairn turned away from Bertie to face Irene.

“You’re very observant,” he said. “And indeed you’re right. I felt a great pang of regret. It’s passed now, but yes, it was very strong.”

“The emotions always register so clearly,” said Irene. “Our bodies are not very good at concealing things. The body is far too truthful.”

Dr Fairbairn smiled. “Absolutely. That’s the great insight which Wilhelm Reich shared with us, isn’t it? Reich was a bit odd in some of his views, I’m afraid, but he was right about character armour. Are you familiar with what he says about that?”

Irene nodded. “The idea we create a carapace of posture and gesture to protect the real us. Like Japanese Noh actors and their masks.”

“Precisely,” said Dr Fairbairn.

For a short while nothing was said. During the exchange between his mother and Dr Fairbairn, Bertie had been watching the adults, but now he turned away and looked out of the window, up at the sky, which was deep and empty. A tiny vapour trail cut across the blue, drawn by an almost invisible plane. How cold it must be up there in that jet, thought Bertie, but they would have jerseys and gloves and would be kept warm that way. Planes were good, but not as good as trains. He had travelled on a plane the previous year, to Portugal for their holidays, and he still cherished Irene Converses with Dr Hugo Fairbairn 169

the memory of looking out of the window and seeing the ground fall away below him. He had seen roads, and cars, as small as toys, and a train on a railway line . . .

“You looked anguished,” said Irene. “It must have been a very painful memory.”

“Not for me,” said Dr Fairbairn quickly. “Well, the smack was painful for him, I suppose.”

“For whom?”

Dr Fairbairn shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it,”

he said.

Irene laughed. “But surely that’s exactly what you get other people to do – you get them to talk about things.”

Dr Fairbairn spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I have talked about it in the past,” he said. “I certainly told my own analyst.”

“And did that not draw the pain?” asked Irene gently.

“For a short time,” said Dr Fairbairn. “But then the pain returned. Pain comes back, doesn’t it? We think that we have it under control, and then it comes back to us.”

“I understand what you mean,” said Irene. “Something happened to me a long time ago which is still painful. I feel an actual physical pain when I think of it, even today. It’s like a constriction of the chest.”

“We can lay these ghosts to rest if we go about it in the right way,” said Dr Fairbairn. “The important thing is to understand the thing itself. To see it for what it really is.”

“Which is just what Auden says in that wonderful poem of his,” said Irene. “You know the one? The one he wrote in memory of Freud shortly after Freud’s death in London. Able to approach the future as a friend, without a wardrobe of excuses – what a marvellous insight.”

“I know the poem,” said Dr Fairbairn.

“And so do I,” interjected Bertie.

Dr Fairbairn, whose back had been turned to Bertie, now swung round and looked at him with interest.

“Do you read Auden, Bertie?”

Irene answered for him. “Yes, he does. I started him off 170

Irene Converses with Dr Hugo Fairbairn when he was four. He responded very well to Auden. It’s the respect for metre that makes him so accessible to young people.”

Dr Fairbairn looked doubtful, but if he had been going to contest Irene’s assertion he appeared to think better of it.

“Of course, Auden had some very strange ideas,” he mused.

“Apropos of our conversation of a few moments ago – about psychosomatic illness – Auden went quite far in his views on that.

He believed that some illnesses were punishments, and that very particular parts of the body would go wrong if one did the wrong thing. So when he heard that Freud had cancer of the jaw, he said: He must have been a liar. Isn’t that bizarre?”

“Utterly,” said Irene. “But then people believe all sorts of things, don’t they? The Emperor Justinian, for example, believed that homosexuality caused earthquakes. Can you credit that?”

Dr Fairbairn then made an extremely witty remark (an Emperor Justinian joke of the sort which was very popular in Byzantium not all that long ago) and Irene laughed. “Frightfully funny,” she said.

Dr Fairbairn inclined his head modestly. “I believe that a modicum of wit helps the spirits. Humour is cathartic, don’t you find?”

“I know a good joke,” interjected Bertie.

“Later,” said Dr Fairbairn.

Irene now resumed her conversation with the analyst. “I’ve often thought of undergoing a training in analysis,” she said. “I’m very interested in Melanie Klein.”

Dr Fairbairn nodded encouragingly. “You shouldn’t rule it out,” he said. “There’s a crying need for psychoanalysts in this city. And virtually nobody knows anything about Klein.” He paused for a moment. “It’s a totally arbitrary matter – the supply of analysts. There’s Buenos Aires, for example, where there is an abundance – a positive abundance – and here in Scotland we are so few.”

Irene looked thoughtful. “It must be very hard for analysts in Argentina, with their economic crisis and everything. I gather that some analysts have seen their savings wiped out entirely.”

Irene Converses with Dr Hugo Fairbairn 171

“Yes,” said Dr Fairbairn. “It’s been tough for analysts there.

Firstly the generals, Videla and that bunch. They banned the teaching of psychoanalysis, you know. For years people had to be discreet. Freud unsettles people like generals. Military types don’t like him.”

“Not surprising,” said Irene. “People in uniform don’t like to be reminded of the fact that we’re all vulnerable underneath.

Uniforms are a protection for fragile egos.

“I would never, ever, send Bertie to a school that required a uniform,” said Irene firmly. “There are no uniforms at the Steiner School.”

They both looked at Bertie, who looked back at them.

“But I want a uniform,” he said. “Other boys have uniforms.

Why can’t I have a uniform too?”

The question was addressed to Irene, who said nothing in reply. She would normally have refused a request for a uniform out of hand, but now she looked to Dr Fairbairn for a lead.

The analyst smiled at Bertie. “Why would you want a uniform, Bertie? Would it make you feel different?”

“No,” said Bertie. “It would make me feel the same, which is what I want.”

64. Post-analysis Analysis

Bertie’s hour with Dr Fairbairn passed extremely quickly – or so it seemed to Irene. She was very impressed with the psychotherapist, who quite lived up to her expectations of what the author of Shattered to Pieces would be like. They had discovered that they had a great deal in common: an appreciation of Stockhausen (not a taste shared by everyone; indeed, Irene had admitted that one had to work at Stockhausen), an enthusiasm for Auden, and a thorough knowledge of the works of Melanie Klein. All of this had taken some time to establish, of course, and this had left little time for Dr Fairbairn to say anything to Bertie, after their brief – and somewhat disturbing – exchange over Bertie’s fears that Dr Fairbairn would smack him.

That had been a potentially embarrassing moment and Irene had been concerned that the psychoanalyst might conclude that Bertie was used to being smacked by his parents. That, of course, would have been a terrible misunderstanding. Irene and Stuart had never once raised their hands to Bertie, not even when, shortly after the incident in the Floatarium, he had deliberately set fire to Stuart’s copy of The Guardian while he was reading it in his chair. That had been a dreadful moment, but they had kept very cool about it, which was undoubtedly the right thing to do. Rather than let Bertie think that they were upset by this, they had pretended to be completely unconcerned.

“Daddy doesn’t care,” Irene had said insouciantly. “It makes no difference to him.”

Bertie had looked at his father, as if for confirmation.

“No,” said Stuart. “I don’t need to read the newspaper. I know what it would have said anyway.”

Irene had been momentarily concerned about this, but had let the remark pass. She hoped, though, that Bertie would not interpret it as suggesting that The Guardian was predictable. That would never do. And he should certainly not develop ideas like that before he went to the Steiner School, where The Guardian was read out each day at school assembly.

Now, before going back to Scotland Street with Bertie, she Post-analysis Analysis

173

decided that they would make the short detour to Valvona and Crolla, to stock up on porcini mushrooms. Bertie liked this shop, with its rich smells and its intriguing shelves, and she would be able to talk to him over a latte in the café. And it was always possible that one might meet somebody interesting in the café, and have a conversation about something important. She had recently met a well-known food-writer there and she had learned a great deal about olive oil – things she had never known before.

Edinburgh was full of interesting people, Irene thought, provided one knew where to go to meet them. Valvona and Crolla was a good start, because interesting people liked to eat interesting food. Then there was Ottakars Bookshop in George Street, and Glass and Thompson in Dundas Street, where interesting people went for a latte.

She found herself thinking about Dr Fairbairn, who was unquestionably interesting. She had never seen him in Valvona and Crolla, which was surprising, but perhaps he bought his olive oil in a delicatessen in Bruntsfield – that was always possible –

or even in a supermarket, although that was unlikely. One would not expect to turn a corner in one of those ghastly supermarkets and see the author of Shattered to Pieces peering into the refrigerated fish section.

Where did Dr Fairbairn live, she wondered? This was a crucial, and very difficult question. The best place for a person like him to live was the New Town, although the better part of Sciennes was certainly a suitable place for psychoanalysts. He could not live in Morningside (too bourgeois) nor the Grange (too haut-bourgeois). This left very few locales in which Dr Fairbairn could be imagined, unless, of course, he lived in Portobello. That, Irene had to concede, was just possible. The most surprising people lived in Portobello, including at least some creative people.

And was Dr Fairbairn married, with children perhaps? This was even more difficult to determine than the question of where he might live. She had glanced at his left hand and had seen no ring, but that meant nothing these days. There were even some people who put rings on the relevant finger in order to flout convention or to throw others off the scent, whatever the scent 174

Post-analysis Analysis

was. And Dr Fairbairn might not be married at all but might have a partner, and children by that partner. Or he might not be interested at all.

That, of course, was the most difficult issue to determine.

Irene knew that there were people who were just not interested at all, just as there were people who were not in the slightest bit interested in tennis. This did not mean that they were resentful of people who played tennis, or of people who liked to watch tennis; it’s just that tennis meant nothing to them.

They made their way slowly towards Valvona and Crolla. Bertie was still cautiously avoiding stepping on the lines in the pavement, frowning with concentration on the task, but this was unnoticed by Irene, who was still lost in speculation over the private life of Dr Fairbairn. There was something about him which suggested that he did not have a wife or partner. It was difficult to put one’s finger on this, but it was a rather lost look, a look of being uncared for. One sometimes saw this in men who had no women to look after them. Gay men were different, Irene thought. They looked after themselves very well, but straight men tended to look dishevelled and slightly neglected if they had nobody.

Mind you, she thought, that young man at the top of the stair, Bruce, looked far from neglected. He put that substance on his hair – what was it, lubricant? – and he was always rather smartly dressed. She had talked to him on several occasions and he had been perfectly civil. He had once even let Bertie touch his en brosse hair after Bertie had made a remark about how good it looked. Bruce had bent down and said to Bertie as the little boy had gingerly reached out to touch his head: “You could look like this one day too – if you’re lucky!”

It had been an odd remark, but they had all laughed. Afterwards Bertie had asked several questions about Bruce, but Irene had answered them vaguely. Little boys liked to have heroes, as Melanie Klein pointed out, and she was not sure whether that young man was a suitable choice. Nor did she encourage Bertie’s open admiration for that Macdonald woman’s Mercedes-Benz. Bertie had enquired whether they might ask if he could have a ride in it one day, and she had given an unequivocal no to that request.

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175

“We have our own car,” said Irene. “A much more sensible car than that, I might add.”

“But we never go in our car,” complained Bertie. “Where is it?”

“It’s parked,” said Irene curtly.

“Where?” asked Bertie. “Where is our car parked?”

Irene did not know. Stuart had parked it somewhere or other a few weeks ago and she had no idea where this was. So she gave a simple reply. “Outside,” she said, as they arrived at their destination.

65. A Meeting in Valvona and Crolla They walked past the shelves in Valvona and Crolla, each looking at the items at his and her particular eye-level. Irene gazed at packets of pasta; not ordinary, hard pasta of the sort that one might see in a supermarket, vulgar spaghetti and the like, but obscure, complicated egg-rich pastas – tagliatelle and other rare varieties. These cost twice as much as vulgar pasta, but tasted infinitely better. Vulgar pasta tasted like cardboard, Irene thought, and she could never understand how people could actually eat it. Probably because they knew no better, she decided.

Ordinary people – as Irene called them – were remarkably in the dark, and often simply did not realise how in the dark they were. Fortunately, ordinary people were beginning to develop more sophisticated habits, brought about, in part, by overseas travel, not that Spain helped very much, thought Irene.

Down at his eye-level, Bertie saw tinned fish and sea-food, Portuguese sardines and Sicilian octopus. The pictures on these tins were intriguing. The Portuguese sardines were portrayed as swimming contentedly in a small shoal near the surface of the sea, while in the background there was a wild coast with high cliffs and mountains behind. Bertie had been to Portugal, and some of it, he recalled, had looked just like that. They had eaten sardines there, too, every night, though the sardines had looked less happy than those portrayed on the tin.

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After they had completed their shopping, they had gone through to the café and latte had been ordered.

“Well, Bertie,” said Irene cheerfully. “What did you think of Dr Fairbairn?”

Bertie appeared to think for a moment. “He was very kind,”

he said. “He didn’t smack me when he called me a naughty boy.”

Irene’s eyes widened. “He did not call you a naughty boy,” she protested. “He asked you whether you had been a naughty boy, that’s all. And I didn’t think that he meant it.”

“Why did he say it then?” asked Bertie. “Why did he call me a naughty boy?”

Irene drew in her breath. This would require very careful handling. It had been unwise of Dr Fairbairn to use the term

“naughty boy” in the first place, but then he probably had not realised just how bright Bertie was. Other boys would have seen this remark as a bit of harmless banter – a joke really – but Bertie was far too sensitive for that. Bertie had cried when he had seen a picture of the unfinished parliament building in the newspapers. That showed real sensitivity. “It’s so sad,” he had said. “All that building and building and it’s never finished. Can we not help them, Mummy?”

She would have to mention to Dr Fairbairn – very tactfully, of course – that he was sensitive to suggestion, unlike Wee Fraser perhaps. Wee Fraser had not been a sensitive boy, by all accounts, and even when his ego had been re-assembled at the end of the analysis, he had not seemed to have developed any particularly sensitive traits. He had stopped biting people, of course, which amounted to a slightly more sensitive approach to life, but in other respects one could probably not hope for much change.

“Bertie,” she began, “when Dr Fairbairn asked you – asked you, mind – whether you had been a naughty boy, he was referring to how other people might have reacted to your behaviour. This is different from saying that you had been a naughty boy. His tone was ironic. If he really thought that you had been naughty, then he wouldn’t have used those words. You do understand that, don’t you?”

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written on the nursery walls. Surely that was quintessentially naughty. And he wanted to be naughty. That was the whole point.

If they kept making him learn Italian and play the saxophone and all the other things, he would show them. He would punish them, and they would stop. That was how grown-ups, people like Mrs Klein, whose book he had read, thought. And this Doctor Fairbairn person, who had hardly talked to him at all and who hadn’t even been interested in his joke – the only way to make him take any notice would be to do something really naughty.

Perhaps I should bite him, thought Bertie. Then he will really take notice and tell them to drop the Italian and the saxophone.

They might even be persuaded not to send me to the Steiner School and send me to Watson’s instead, where there are uniforms and rugby and things like that. And secret societies too, Bertie thought, although those might only be for after you’ve left.

Irene looked at her son. There was so much promise there –

such an extraordinary level of ability – and she would not let her project for him be derailed. She stopped herself; train metaphors were not what she wanted here.

“Bertie,” she said gently, “I want you to know that Stuart loves you very much. It’s quite natural for boys to feel confused about their fathers and, well, I suppose one might say that it’s natural for boys to feel threatened by their fathers. Dr Fairbairn will help you to get over this. That’s what Dr Fairbairn is for.”

Bertie looked at her. What was all this? He liked his father very much, and when he had set fire to his copy of The Guardian it had nothing to do with his feelings for his father. Why would they just not leave him alone? Why did they force him to do all these things? Those were the questions which worried Bertie.

Irene reached for her latte and took a sip. She glanced around her. The café was uncrowded, and she let her gaze run slowly over the few people who were there. There was a woman in her mid-thirties, a blonde, with hair held back with an Alice band.

Irene noticed that she had that look about her which goes with bored affluence. Her husband, no doubt, was a fund manager or something similar. There would be a couple of children, and she was whiling away the hours before it was time to collect them 178

Mr Dalyell’s Question

from school. The children would be exactly like her, thought Irene, right down to the Alice band (if they were girls). She smiled. People were so predictable.

Her gaze moved to the next table. There was a young couple poring over The Scotsman property section. Irene looked at their faces. Yes, they were anxious, she thought. How difficult for them, struggling to find a place to live in that competitive, overpriced market. And what would they find at the end of the day? A two-bedroomed flat for the price of a small farm in Australia.

Mind you, she had no idea what small farms cost in Australia, but she imagined that it was not very much. She had read somewhere that people sometimes gave such farms away, just to get off them.

I would never, ever farm in Australia, she said to herself, and shuddered at the thought. Heat. Dust. Drought.

Then she stopped. A man was sitting by himself at the table beyond that. He was reading a newspaper, and nursing a small cup of espresso. There was a file with some papers sticking out of it on the table in front of him, but his attention was fixed on the newspaper.

“Bertie,” she whispered. “That man over there. The one reading the paper. Do you recognise him? He looks very familiar.”

Bertie followed his mother’s gaze.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ve seen his picture in the paper. I know who that is.”

“Who is it then?” asked Irene. She had thought that Bertie would know. He was a very attentive boy.

“That’s Mr Dalyell,” said Bertie.

66. Mr Dalyell’s Question

Although Bertie was Irene’s creation, in both the biological and the metaphorical sense, she was constantly astonished by the things that he knew and that he occasionally revealed so casually. His Mr Dalyell’s Question

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recognition of Tam Dalyell, purely from newspaper photographs, was a case in point. How many five-year-olds were there in Edinburgh, or anywhere else for that matter, who would recognise the redoubtable politician? None, she imagined. It was even possible that there were many adults who would not know the name, given the contemporary obsession with an entirely superficial celebrity. People had no difficulty in recognising rock musicians and actresses, people for whom Irene had the most profound distaste, but they had great difficulty in recognising those who actually did things of value. So while they would know who all the current actors and footballers were (or at least the good looking ones like Mr Grant and Mr Beckham), they could not be expected to know about people who did something to change the world for the better. Except Bertie, it would seem: Bertie knew.

Irene gazed at her son with pride. There had been moments in the last few days when she had even begun to doubt the whole Bertie project. Her thoughts had been dangerously seditious; perhaps it would have been better not to teach him Italian, nor the saxophone. She actively thought that, but quickly corrected herself: what a waste that would have been, what a criminal waste!

And so she had overcome those temptations – temptations of mediocrity, or ordinariness – and persisted. And now, quite unexpectedly, had come the reward: the recognition of Mr Dalyell in Valvona and Crolla.

“Did you read about him, Bertie?” she asked, her voice lowered lest Tam Dalyell hear them talking about him.

Bertie, who had been served a latte with a generous portion of chocolate sprinkled across the surface, took a sip of the creamy liquid, sucking in the chocolate froth with puckered lips.

“Don’t make that noise,” began Irene automatically, but stopped. Private noises were inevitable with children and she had read they should not be unduly inhibited. Those who were TAM DALYELL: Labour Party politician (born 1932) who was MP for West Lothian for more than 20 years before becoming MP for Linlithgow.

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stopped from making these ordinary human noises took it out on the world later on – Irene had read that somewhere and had been impressed by the insight. It was so true, she thought.

Oppression was the preserve of the oppressed. The child who is scolded into silence makes others silent later on. It was so true, and yet it was so difficult to rid oneself of the censorious urge when it came to children. They made such a noise. They smelled.

And little boys were so brutal in their approach to the world, kicking and shoving and breaking things, just as men did; it was so tempting to subdue these little boys with rules and reproach.

“I know all about Mr Dalyell,” said Bertie, wiping the chocolate residue from his lips. “He asked a famous question.”

Irene listened to this without any great interest. Scottish politics were of no consequence to her – even Scottish politics in the Westminster context. Although she had been born in Scotland and had been educated there, her outlook transcended that background. She belonged to that sector of society which somehow did not regard itself as located anywhere in particular.

To be located, thought Irene, was to be provincial and narrow.

She was above location.

Bertie looked again in the direction of the man at the table.

Then he took another sip of his latte and turned to Irene.

“Or it’s Mr Harper,” he said.

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Irene looked puzzled. “Or?”

“Yes,” said Bertie, as if explaining something very simple to one who could not be expected to grasp the self-evident. “Mr Harper is the leader of the Greens. Mr Dalyell is one of the Reds. That man over there is either Mr Dalyell or Mr Harper.

It’s difficult to say, Mummy.”

Irene cast a glance over in the direction of the mysterious politician. Bertie was right: there might well be a strong resemblance between Tam Dalyell and Robin Harper, and certainly if one asked the average five-year-old to say which was which one would not expect a clear answer. But there was nothing average about Bertie, of course.

Now she was uncertain herself. It was very unsettling, really, not being sure whether one was confronted with Mr Dalyell or Mr Harper, and, really, should one find oneself in this position?

Robin Harper was younger than Mr Dalyell, who was a very senior politician, and one might be expected to distinguish on those grounds. But Mr Dalyell did not really show the years at all, and both had a rather, how should one put it, enigmatic look to them, as if they knew the answer to some important question, and we did not. And both, of course, were good men, of whom there was a very short supply.

She smiled. How was the matter to be resolved, short of asking him directly? But what would one say? “Are you, or are you not, Tam Dalyell?” sounded a bit accusing, as if there was something wrong in being Tam Dalyell. And if one were to be given a negative answer, would one proceed to say: “In that case, are you Robin Harper?” That sounded as if it was somehow second best thing to be Robin Harper, which of course it would certainly not be, at least if one were Robin Harper in the first place.

Presumably Robin Harper was quite happy about being Robin Harper. He certainly looked contented with his lot.

WEST LOTHIAN QUESTION: Raised by Tam Dalyell, an opponent of devolution for Scotland, over the issue of whether Scottish members of the Westminster parliament, after devolution, would vote on matters solely affecting England.

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It was Bertie who proposed a solution. “May I ask him, Mummy? May I ask him the answer to his question? If it’s Mr Dalyell, then he could give us the answer.”

Irene smiled. “Of course you may ask him, Bertie. Go and ask him what’s the answer to his famous question.”

Bertie immediately rose to his feet and approached the other table, where he stood on his toes and whispered something into the ear of the slightly surprised politician. There then ensued a brief conversation, during which Bertie nodded his head in understanding.

“Well?” pressed Irene when Bertie returned. “Who was it?”

“It was Mr Dalyell after all,” said Bertie. “And he told me the answer.”

“And?” said Irene.

Bertie looked at his mother. She was always forcing him to do things. She made him learn Italian. She made him play the saxophone. Now she was forcing him to give her the answer to the West Lothian Question. He would have to punish her again.

“I’m not going to tell you,” he said simply. “Mind your own business.”

67. Playing with Electricity

Pat returned to the flat that evening slightly later than usual. The gallery had been unusually busy and she and Matthew had been obliged to deal with a series of demanding customers.

When they had eventually closed the gallery, Matthew had suggested that they go for a drink in the Cumberland Bar. Pat had hesitated; she was beginning to like Matthew, but she thought that on balance she would keep her relationship with him on a strictly business level; there was nothing else there, and she would not want to give him any encouragement. If she went for a drink with him, he might misread the situation and it would then become embarrassing to extricate herself. But had Matthew given any sign Playing with Electricity

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of interest in her? She thought perhaps he had, although it was difficult to put one’s finger on precisely why she should think this.

But what was more significant was her desire to get back to the flat. She had found that as the afternoon drew on, she had thought increasingly frequently of the prospect of returning that evening and seeing Bruce. A few days ago, this would have brought on a sense of irritation; now it was something different.

She wanted to see him. She was looking forward to going back to Scotland Street and finding him there. Even the smell of cloves, the scent of his hair gel which signalled his presence, was attractive to her.

She did not reflect on this to any extent; indeed she hardly dared admit it to herself. I do not like him, she told herself; I cannot like him. I have disliked him right from the beginning.

He’s self-satisfied; he thinks that every woman fancies him; in reality he’s just . . . What was he, now that she came to search for an adjective that would sum Bruce up? And why, in the midst of this deprecation should the word gorgeous come to mind?

Matthew did not seem to be too disappointed when she declined his invitation. “I’m going to the Cumberland anyway,”

he said. “Walk that far with me. It’s on your way.”

They made their way down Dundas Street in companionable silence. A few of the shops were still open; others were closed and shuttered. The fact that Matthew said nothing did not make Pat feel awkward. He was easy company, and it did not seem necessary to say anything. It would have been different with Bruce, she thought; she could not imagine being silent with him.

And that surely was a bad sign. There is no point in cultivating the friendship of those with whom we feel we have to talk. And yet, and yet . . . friendship was one thing; was she thinking of something altogether different? I am playing with electricity, she thought. And what happens to those who play with electricity?

Zap!

When they reached the end of Cumberland Street, Matthew said goodnight and disappeared into the bar. Pat continued her way through Drummond Place and turned down into Scotland Street. She glanced up at their windows, hoping to see a 184

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light, but the flat was in darkness. Bruce was not back yet. This knowledge brought with it a pang of disappointment.

She walked up the stairs, past Irene and Stuart’s door, with its anti-nuclear sticker. From within the flat there drifted the sound of a saxophone, and she stood for a moment and listened. She had not heard Bertie for the last few days, but now he had resumed, even if the playing seemed quieter and more subdued.

She strained to hear the tune: it was not As Time Goes By, but it was still familiar. Play Misty for Me, she thought. The playing suddenly stopped and she heard the sound of voices, a scream, she thought; a small voice crying No! No! and then silence. Then there came an adult’s voice – Irene’s, she imagined – and then No! No! again.

Pat smiled. She remembered how she herself had resisted piano lessons as a child and had been forced to practise for half an hour a day. That had paid off, as her parents knew it would, and she had become a competent pianist. But she had often wished to cry No! No! in protest against the playing of scales and arpeggios. In Bertie’s case it must be so much worse. She had heard from Domenica just how pushy his mother was, and she felt a pang of sympathy for the small boy, burdened with that heavy tenor saxophone that must have been almost the same size as himself.

She continued up the stairs and let herself into the flat; as she had expected, there was no sign of Bruce. She turned on a light in the hall. A few letters lay on the floor. She picked these up and glanced at them. One was for her – a letter from a friend who had gone to live in London and who was always having boyfriend trouble. The others were for Bruce, and she put these down on the hall table.

Bruce’s door was open. This was not unusual; he usually left the flat before her, in a rush, as he tended to get out of bed late and lingered in the bathroom – in front of the mirror, she had always assumed. So he often did leave his door open in his rush to get out of the flat, and Pat, who had never gone into his room, had been given glimpses of what it contained. Now she decided she would have a closer look.

It was a strange feeling going into Bruce’s room uninvited.

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She paused at the door and almost turned back, but she now felt a delicious feeling of daring, of sweet risk, and she reached for the light switch near the door and flicked it on.

The room before her was relatively Spartan, and tidier than she imagined it would be. In her experience, young men let their rooms deteriorate into near-squalor. Clothes would be tossed down as they were removed, and left to fester. Books would be strewn around tables. There would be unwashed coffee cups, and tapes, and ancient running shoes with their characteristic acrid smell. In Bruce’s room there was none of this. In one corner there was a bed, neatly-made, with an oatmeal-coloured bedspread.

Opposite, against the wall, was a desk with a laptop computer, a neat row of books, and a container of paper clips. Then there was a chair across which a coat had been draped and a wardrobe.

A jar of hair gel, half used; the slightest smell of cloves.

Pat stood still for a moment, looking around her. The broad picture of the room now taken in, she began to notice the finer details. She saw the picture of the Scottish rugby team; she saw the green kit-bag that contained his gym things; she saw the disc of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers tour. All this was very ordinary, but to her surprise she found herself excited by the sight.

Everything here belonged to him, and had that strange extra significance in which we vest the possessions of those to whom we are attracted. Items which belong to them become potent simply because they are theirs. They are talismans. They are reminders.

She felt an emptiness in the pit of her stomach. It was familiar to her. She had felt it when she had become infatuated as a sixteen-year-old with a boy at school. It had been a painful, heart-breaking experience. And now she felt it again, like a powerful drug; taking hold of her, dulling her defences. She wanted to be with him. She wanted Bruce. Electricity. Electricity.

She lay down on his bed and looked up at the ceiling. The bed was comfortable; just right, whereas hers was slightly on the soft side. She closed her eyes. There was that faint smell of cloves again, no doubt from the hair gel which had rubbed off on his pillow. She took a deep breath. Cloves. Zanzibar. And electricity.

68. Boucle d’Or

Goldilocks, or Boucle d’Or, as Bruce might have called her, lay asleep on the bed in the cottage when suddenly she opened her eyes and saw the bears. “Who’s been sleeping in my bed?” said a gruff voice.

“And who’s this sleeping in my bed?” asked Bruce, standing above her, looking down, bemused.

Pat opened her eyes and saw not the ceiling, to the sight of which she had closed them, but Bruce’s face, and she shut them again. But it was, of course, true; she was on his bed, uninvited, and now he had found her there. He looked mildly quizzical, she noticed, if not completely surprised; he was the sort of person, she thought, who imagined that people would gladly lie down on his bed, as a privilege, perhaps – a treat.

She sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I came in here and lay down on your bed. I dropped off to sleep.”

He laughed. He did not mind. “But what were you doing?”

Pat stared at the floor. She could hardly tell him that she came in because she wanted to see his things, to get a sense of him.

And so she mumbled something else altogether. “I wanted to see what your room was like – whether it was different from my own.”

Bruce raised an eyebrow. “Well . . .?”

“I know it sounds odd,” said Pat. “And I’m sorry. I’m not really nosy, I’m really not.”