44 Scotland Street

And then there was another, quite fascinating article: Marian Apparitions in Immediate Post War Italy: Popular Hysteria and the Virgin as Christian Democrat. That looked very interesting indeed; perhaps she could ask Dr Fairbairn whether she could borrow that once he had read it. The Virgin tended to appear in all sorts of places and at all sorts of times, but there was sometimes a question mark over those who saw her. Rome urged caution in such cases, as did Vienna . . .

Bertie sat down next to Dr Fairbairn’s desk while Irene sat on a chair against the wall, where Bertie could not see her while he was talking to the psychotherapist.

“How do you feel today, Bertie?” asked Dr Fairbairn. “Are you feeling happy? Are you feeling angry?”

Bertie stared at Dr Fairbairn. He noticed that the tie he was wearing had a small teddy-bear motif woven into it. Why, he wondered, would Dr Fairbairn wear a teddy-bear tie? Did he still play with teddy-bears? Bertie had noticed that some adults were strange that way; they hung on to their teddy bears. He had a teddy bear, but he was no longer playing with him. It was not that he was punishing him, nor that his teddy bear, curiously, had no additional part; it was just that he no longer liked his bear, who smelled slightly of sick after an unfortunate incident some months previously. That was all there was to it – nothing more.

“Do you like teddy bears, Dr Fairbairn?” asked Bertie. “You have teddy bears on your tie.”

Dr Fairbairn smiled. “You’re very observant, Bertie. Yes, this is a rather amusing tie, isn’t it? And do I like teddy bears? Well, 282

More about Bertie

I suppose I do. Most people think of teddy bears as being rather attractive, cuddly creatures.” He paused. “Do you know that song about teddy bears, Bertie?”

“The Teddy Bears’ Picnic?”

“Exactly. Do you know the words for it, Bertie?”

Bertie thought for a moment. “If you go down to the woods today . . .”

“You’re sure of a big surprise! ” continued Dr Fairbairn. “If you go down to the woods today/ You’d better go in disguise. And so on.

It’s a nice song, isn’t it Bertie?”

“Yes,” said Bertie. “But it’s a bit sad, too, isn’t it?”

Dr Fairbairn leaned forward. This was interesting. “Sad, Bertie? Why is The Teddy Bears’ Picnic sad?”

“Because some of the teddy bears will not get a treat,” said Bertie. “Only those who have been good. That’s what the song says. Every bear who’s ever been good/ Is sure of a treat today. What about the other bears?”

Dr Fairbairn’s eyes widened and he scribbled a note on a pad of paper before him. “They get nothing, I’m afraid. Do you think that you would get something if you went on a picnic, Bertie?”

“No,” said Bertie. “I would not. The teddy bears who set fire to their Daddies’ copies of The Guardian will get nothing at that picnic. Nothing at all.”

There was a silence. Then Dr Fairbairn asked another question.

“Why did you set fire to Daddy’s copy of The Guardian, Bertie? Did you do that because guardian is another word for parent? Was The Guardian your Daddy because Daddy is your guardian?”

Bertie thought for a moment. Dr Fairbairn was clearly mad, but he would have to keep talking to him; otherwise the psychotherapist might suddenly kill both him and his mother.

“No,” he said. “I like Daddy. I don’t want to set fire to Daddy.”

“And do you like The Guardian?” pressed Dr Fairbairn.

“No,” said Bertie. “I don’t like The Guardian.”

“Why?” asked Dr Fairbairn.

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“Because it’s always telling you what you should think,” said Bertie. “Just like Mummy.”

98. Irene and Dr Fairbairn Converse With Bertie sent off to the waiting room where he might occupy himself with an old copy of Scottish Field, Irene and Dr Fairbairn shared a cup of strong coffee in the consulting room, mulling over the outcome of Bertie’s forty minutes of intense conversation with his therapist.

“That bit about teddy bears was most interesting,” said Dr Fairbairn, thoughtfully. “He had constructed all sorts of anxieties around that perfectly simple account of a bears’ picnic.

Quite remarkable.”

“Very strange,” said Irene.

“And as for that exchange over The Guardian,” went on Dr Fairbairn. “I was astonished that he should see you as overly directional. Quite astonished.”

“Absolutely,” said Irene. “I’ve never pushed him to do anything. All his little enthusiasms, his Italian, his saxophone, are of his own choosing. I’ve merely facilitated.”

“Of course,” said Dr Fairbairn hurriedly. “I knew as much.

But then children misread things so badly. But it’s certainly nothing for you to worry yourself about.”

He paused, placing his coffee cup down on its saucer. “But then that dream he spoke about was rather fascinating, wasn’t it?

The one in which he saw a train going into a tunnel. That was interesting, wasn’t it?”

“Indeed,” said Irene. “But then, Bertie has always had this thing about trains. He goes on and on about them. I don’t think there’s any particular symbolism in his case – he really is dreaming about trains qua trains. Other boys may be dreaming about . . . well about other things when they dream about trains.

But not Bertie.”

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“But what about tunnels?” asked Dr Fairbairn.

“We have one in Scotland Street,” said Irene. “There’s a tunnel under the road. But nobody’s allowed to go into it.”

“Ah,” said Dr Fairbairn. “A forbidden tunnel! That’s very significant!”

“It’s closed,” said Irene.

“A forbidden tunnel would be,” mused Dr Fairbairn.

They both thought about this for a moment, and then Dr Fairbairn, reaching out for his cup of coffee, returned to the subject of dreams. “I have never underestimated the revelatory power of the dream,” he said. “It is the most perfect documentary of the unconscious. The film script of both the id and the ego – dancing their terrible dance, orchestrated by the sleeping mind. Don’t you think?”

“Oh, I do,” said Irene. “And do you analyse your own dreams, Dr Fairbairn?”

“Most certainly,” he replied. “May I reveal one to you?”

“But, of course.” Irene loved this. It must be so lonely being Dr Fairbairn and having so few patients – perhaps none, apart from herself – with whom he could communicate on a basis of intellectual and psychoanalytical equality.

“My dream,” said Dr Fairbairn, “occurred some years ago –

many years in fact, and yet my memory of it is utterly vivid. In this dream I was somewhere in the West – Argyll possibly – and staying in a large house by the edge of a sea loch. The house was a couple of hundred yards from the edge of the loch, and it was set about with grass of the most extraordinary verdant colour.

And this grass was touched with the golden light, as of the morning sun.

“The woman who lived in this house had a name, unlike so many people who come to us in our dreams. She was called Mrs Macgregor – I remember that very distinctly – and she was kind to the guests. There were other people there too, but I did not know them. Mrs Macgregor was gentle and welcoming

– she made a tray of tea and then took me gently by the hand and led me across the lawn to a shed beside the loch. And I can remember the smell of the air, which had that tangle of seaweed Irene and Dr Fairbairn Converse

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that you get in the West and that softness too. And I did not want her to let go of my hand.

“We came to the shed and she opened it for me, and do you know, there inside was a lovingly preserved art-nouveau typesetting machine. And I marvelled at this and turned round, and Mrs Macgregor was walking away from me, back towards the house, and I felt a great sense of loss. And that is when I awoke, and the house and the grass and the sea loch faded, but left me with the most extraordinary sense of peace – as if I had been vouchsafed a vision.

“Many years later, I was in a restaurant in Edinburgh, with a largish group of people after a meeting. We were sitting there waiting for our dinner to be served and the subject of dreams arose. I decided to narrate my dream, and there was a sudden hush in the restaurant. Everybody had started to listen to it – the other diners, the waiters, the Italian proprietor of the restaurant, Pasquale, as he was called – everybody.

“And there was a complete silence when I finished. Then, one of the other members of the party – a most distinguished Edinburgh psychiatrist, broke the silence. He said: Mrs Macgregor is your mother!

“And of course Henry was right, and everybody in the restaurant started to talk again, loudly, with relief, perhaps, because they were reassured that their mothers were with them too – their mothers had not gone away.”

Irene was touched by this story, and she was silent too, as had been the diners in that restaurant. She wondered whether she dared tell Dr Fairbairn about her own dream, that had come to her only a few nights previously, in which she had been in the Floatarium, in the flotation tank, and there had been a knocking on the door, and she had opened the lid and seen a blonde child standing outside, like that figure of Cupid in the painting, Love Locked Out. And now she realised that BLONDE

CHILD could be translated, in Scots, or half in Scots, to make FAIR BAIRN.

She could not tell him this, because this was dangerous, dangerous ground. So she closed her eyes instead, and thought

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of her life. She was married to Stuart, and she was the mother of Bertie. And yet she was lonely, hopelessly lonely, because there was nobody with whom she could talk about these things that mattered so much to her. Perhaps things would change when Bertie went to the Steiner School, as he was due to do shortly.

Then there would be other Steiner mothers, and she could talk to them. There would be coffee mornings and bring-and-buy sales in aid of the new personal development equipment for the school. And she would not have to go to the Floatarium and float in isolation but would be part of something bigger, and more vibrant, and accepting, as communities used to be, before our fall from grace, the shattering of our Eden.

99. Bruce Takes a Bath, and Thinks In the bathroom of his flat at 44 Scotland Street, Bruce Anderson stood before the mirror, wearing only the white boxer shorts which his mother had given him for his last birthday. The light in the bathroom was perfect for such posing – light from a north-facing skylight which, although clear, was not too harsh.

This light allowed for the development of interesting shadows –

shadows which brought out the contours of the pectorals, which Bruce Takes a Bath, and Thinks

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provided for shades and nuances in the shoulders and the sweep of the forearms.

Bruce was not unaware of his good looks. As a small boy he had become accustomed to the admiring glances which he attracted from adults. Elderly women would reach out and pat him on the head, ruffling his hair, and muttering little angel or wee stun-ner, and Bruce would reward them with a smile, an act of beneficence on his part which usually brought forth more exclamations from his admirers. As he became older, the women who patted his head began to desist (although they still felt the urge), as one does not pat every teenage boy on the head, no matter how strong the temptation to do so. The looks of adults were now supplemented with the wistful glances of coevals, particularly the teenage girls of Crieff, for whom Bruce seemed some sort of messenger of beauty

– a sign that even in Crieff might one find a boy so transcenden-tally exciting that all limitations of place, all frustrations at the fact that one lived in Crieff and not in Edinburgh, or Newport Beach, or somewhere like that, might be overcome.

Beauty, of course, has its moment, which may sometimes be very brief, but in Bruce’s case the looks which had driven so many of those girls in Crieff and surrounds to an anguish of longing, survived; indeed they mellowed, and here he was, he told himself, more attractive than ever before; a picture, he thought, of the young man at the height of his powers.

He moved closer to the mirror, and standing sideways, he pressed his right arm and side against its cold surface. This brought him closer to himself, like a conjoined twin. He moved his arm up, and his handsome twin’s arm moved up too. He smiled, and his brother smiled too, in immediate recognition. Then he turned round and faced himself in the mirror – so close now that his breath clouded the glass, a white mist that came and went quickly, and was strangely erotic. He moved his lips closer to the lips in the mirror, and for a moment they stayed there, almost, but not quite touching, united, for there was something that was beginning to worry Bruce. With whom, exactly, was he in love?

Sally, he said to himself as he turned away from the mirror –

a wrench, of course, but he did turn away – with Sally, the girl 288

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he had even thought of asking to marry him. She would be keen on that, he imagined, and would naturally accept, but then he had thought that perhaps it was premature. Certainly he liked her –

he liked her a great deal – but marriage was perhaps taking it a bit far.

He slipped out of the boxer shorts and then lowered himself into the water. Lying there, he could look up through the skylight and watch the clouds scudding across the evening sky. He liked to do this, and to think; and now he was thinking about his job and how the time had come to move on. He had decided that he had had enough of being a surveyor for Macaulay Holmes Richardson Black. He had had enough of working for Todd, with his pedantic insistence on set office procedures and his tendency to lecture. What a narrow universe that man inhabited! The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors! The world of clients and their selfish demands and complaints! Was this what lay ahead of him?

Bruce found himself thoroughly depressed by the thought. He would not allow it. He was cut out for a wider, more interesting world than that, and he now had a clear idea of how he would achieve it.

He would have lingered longer in the bath, but the thought of that evening’s engagement stirred him. Hardly bothering with the mirror, he dressed quickly, gelled his hair, and went into the kitchen. He had eaten very little for lunch and made a sandwich for himself before going out: a piece of French bread sliced down the middle, into which he inserted a piece of the cheese which he had purchased the day before from one of Ian Mellis’s cheese shops. Bruce liked that particular shop; he liked the way one of the girls behind the counter smiled at him and offered him samples of cheese. Bruce leaned forward over the counter and allowed her to slip the slivers of cheese into his mouth, which she obviously enjoyed; and it was a small thing, really, giving her that thrill – no trouble to him and it clearly meant a lot to her.

There was no sign of Pat as he left the flat. Poor girl, he thought. He had seen her in the Cumberland Bar the other evening with that man who had the strange dog, but he had pretended not to see her, as he did not want her to feel any

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worse than she must already feel. It could not be easy for her –

seeing him with Sally while all the time she fancied him terribly, even going to the extent, as she had, of lying on his bed when he was not there. That was amazing, but that’s how women behaved, in Bruce’s experience. He would never forget that girlfriend of his when he was eighteen – the one who had gone to India for three months and who had taken a pair of his boxer shorts with her so that she could sleep with them each night under her pillow. That was disconcerting, and Bruce had been embarrassed that she had written and told him about this on a postcard which anybody, including that nosy postman in Crieff, could have read. The postman had looked at him sideways, and smiled, but when Bruce had accused him of reading his postcards he had become belligerent and had said: “Watch your lip, Jimmy.” That was not the way the postal authorities were meant to behave when faced with a complaint, but the postman was considerably bulkier than Bruce and he had been obliged to say nothing more about it.

He left the flat and went downstairs. A friend at work had arranged the meeting for him, and now he was bound for the wine bar, where Will Lyons would be waiting. Will was the man to give him advice, he had been told, about the new career that Bruce had mapped out for himself. The wine trade. Smart.

Sophisticated. Very much more to his taste – and waiting at his feet.

100. Bruce Expounds

Will Lyons had agreed to meet Bruce at the request of his friend, Ed Black. Ed knew a colleague of Bruce’s through Roddy Martine, who knew everybody of course, even if he was not absolutely sure whether he knew Bruce. There was a Crieff connection to all this. Roddy Martine had attended a party at the Crieff Hydro, which was run by the cousin of Ross Leckie, a friend of Charlie Maclean, who had been at the party and who had introduced him to Bruce, who knew Jamie Maclean, who lived not far from Crieff. It was that close.

Will knew about wine, as he had spent some years in the wine trade. Bruce had been told this, and wanted to get some advice on how to get a job. He was confident that this could be arranged, but he knew that contacts were useful. Will could come up with introductions, although he did not want to ask him for these straightaway. So this meeting was more of a general conversation about wine. Will would see that Bruce knew what he was talking about and the rest would follow, but all in good time.

Will was waiting for him in the wine bar. Although they had not met before, Bruce had been told to look out for the most dapper person in the room. “That’ll be Will,” Ed had said.

They shook hands.

“You must let me do this,” said Bruce, reaching for his wallet.

“Glass of wine?”

“Thank you,” said Will, reaching for the wine menu.

Bruce picked up a copy of the menu and looked down it.

“Not too bad.” He paused, and frowned. “But look at all these Chardonnays! Useless grape! Flabby, tired. Did you see that article in The Decanter a few weeks ago? Did you see it? It was all about those ABC clubs in New York – Anything But Chardonnay. I can see what they mean – revolting against Chardonnay.”

“Well,” said Will quietly, “there are some . . .”

“I never touch it myself,” said Bruce. “It’s fine for people who get their wine in supermarkets. Fine for women. Hen parties.

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That sort of thing. Fine for them. But I won’t touch it. May as well drink Blue Nun.”

“Do you like champagne?” Will asked politely.

“Do I like champagne?” replied Bruce. “Is the Pope a Catholic?

Of course I do. I adore the stuff.”

“And Chablis?”

“Boy, do I love Chablis! I had the most marvellous bottle the other day. Fantastic. Flinty, really flinty. Like biscuits, you know.

Just great.”

Will was about to point out that the Chardonnay grape was used to make both champagne and Chablis, but decided not to.

It was fashionable, amongst those who knew very little, to decry Chardonnay, but it was still a great variety, even if its reputation had been damaged by the flooding of the market with vast quantities of inferior wine.

“Of course I’m much more New World than Old World,”

Bruce went on, scanning further down the list. “France is finished in my view. Finished.”

Will looked surprised. “France? Finished?”

Bruce nodded. “Washed out. They just can’t compete with the New World boys – they just can’t. If you sit down with a bottle of good California – even a modestly-priced bottle – and then you sit down with a bottle of Bordeaux, let’s say, the California wins every time – every time. And a lot of people think like me, you know.”

Will looked doubtful. “But don’t you think that these New World wines wane after two or three mouthfuls?”

“No,” said Bruce. “Not at all.”

Will smiled. “But, you know, these New World wines give you a sudden burst of delight, but don’t you think that they rather drown the flavour? French wines usually are much more complex.

They’re meant to go with food, after all.”

“You can eat while you’re drinking New World wines, too,”

said Bruce. “I often do that. I have a bottle of California and I find it goes well with pasta.”

“Red or white?” asked Will.

“White with pasta,” said Bruce. “All the time.”

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They both looked at the menu.

“Here’s one for me,” said Bruce. “I’m going to get a half bottle of Muddy Wonga South Australian. That’s a big wine – really big.”

Will looked at the Muddy Wonga listing. “Interesting,” he said. “I’ve never heard of that. Have you had it before?”

“Lots of times,” said Bruce. “It’s got a sort of purple colour to it and a great deal of nose.”

“Could be the mud,” suggested Will quietly, but Bruce did not hear.

“And you?” asked Bruce. “What are you going to have?”

“Well,” said Will. “I rather like the look of this Bordeaux.

Pomerol.”

“A left bank man,” said Bruce.

“Actually, it’s on the right bank,” said Will quietly.

“Same river,” said Bruce.

Will agreed. “Of course.”

“Of course at least you’ll get it with a cork in it,” said Bruce.

“None of those ghastly screw caps. Do you know I was at a restaurant the other day – with this rather nice American girl I’ve met – and they served the wine in a screw cap bottle. Can you believe it?’

“Screw caps are very effective,” Will began. “There are a lot of estates . . .”

Bruce ignored this. “But can you believe it? A screw cap in a decent restaurant? I almost sent it back.”

“Corked?” ventured Will.

“No, it had a screw cap,” said Bruce.

They ordered their wine, which was served to them in a few minutes. Bruce poured himself a glass and held it up to his nose.

“Superb,” he said. “The winemaker at Muddy Wonga is called Lofty Shaw. He had some training at Napa and then went back to Australia. Here, smell this.”

He passed his glass under Will’s nose.

“Blackcurrants,” said Bruce. “Heaps of fruit. Bang.”

Will nodded. “It’s a big wine,” he said.

“Huge,” said Bruce. “Muscular. A wine with pecs!”

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Will said nothing for a moment. Then he asked Bruce about his plans.

“I’m fed up to here with surveying,” said Bruce. “So I thought I might try something in the wine trade. Something that will allow me to use my knowledge.”

Will looked thoughtful. “You have to work your way up,” he said. “It’s like any business.”

“Yes, yes,” said Bruce. “But I know the subject. I would have thought I could start somewhere in the middle and then get my MW in a year or so.”

“It’s not that simple,” said Will.

“Oh, I know,” said Bruce. “But I’m prepared to wait. A year, eighteen months, max.”

Will stared at Bruce. He was uncertain what to say.

101. Pat and Bruce: An Exchange

Bruce was quite pleased with the way in which the meeting with Will Lyons had gone. He had been able to set him right on one or two matters – including the primacy of New World wines –

and he had also been able to change his mind, he was sure, about Chardonnay. It was strange, thought Bruce, that somebody like that should be prepared to drink Chardonnay when everybody else was getting thoroughly sick of it.

And the end result of all this was that Will had offered to speak to somebody and find out if there were any openings coming up in the wine trade. Bruce was confident that there would be such an opportunity, and had decided that he might as well hand in his resignation at Macaulay Holmes Richardson Black. He would probably have to work out a month or two of notice, but that would mean that he could take a holiday for a month or so before starting in the wine trade.

Todd would probably try to persuade him to stay, but he would refuse. He could just imagine the scene: Todd would talk about 294

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the training the firm had given him – “Does that mean nothing to you, Bruce? – and he would try to appeal to his better nature.

But all that would be in vain.

“I’m very sorry,” he would say. “I’m very sorry, Mr Todd, but my mind is made up. I’ve got nothing against Macaulay Holmes and so on but I really feel that I need something more stimulating. Less dull.”

That would floor Todd – to hear his world described as dull.

Bruce relished the thought. He might go on a bit, although he would not really want to rub it in. “Being a surveyor is all right for some,” he would say. “I’m sure that you’re happy enough doing it, but some of us need something which requires, how shall I put it, a little bit more flair.”

Poor Todd! He would have no answer to that. It would almost be cruel, but it needed to be said and it would make up for all the humiliation that Bruce had endured in having to listen to those penny-lectures from his employer. All that going on about professional ethics and obligation and good business practice and all the rest; no more of that for Bruce. And in its place would come wine-tastings and buying trips to California, and the opportunity to mix with those glamorous, leggy, upper-crust girls who tended to frequent the edges of the wine trade. What an invigorating thought! – and it was all so close. All that he needed to do was find the job.

It occurred to Bruce that it would be nice if he were to be interviewed for the job by a woman. Bruce knew that he could get women to do anything he wanted them to do, and if he could somehow engineer things that the job decision was to be made by a woman, then he was confident that he would walk into it.

He had returned to the flat and was sitting in the kitchen, thinking of this delicious future, when he heard the door open.

That would be Pat, poor girl, coming home from a dull evening somewhere. He would be nice to her, he decided; he could afford to be generous, now that things were going so well for him.

When Pat came into the kitchen, Bruce gave her a smile.

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“Cup of coffee?” he said. “I was going to make myself one.”

Pat blushed. She tried to stop herself, but she blushed, and he noticed, for he smiled again. Poor girl: she can’t look at me without blushing.

Bruce rose to his feet and went to the coffee grinder.

“I’ll make you something really nice,” he said. “Irish coffee. I learned how to do it in Dublin. We went over for a rugby tour once and one of the Irish guys taught me how to make Irish coffee. I’ll make you a cup.”

“I’m not sure,” said Pat, faltering. “I’m a bit tired.”

“Nonsense,” said Bruce. “Sit down. I won’t make it too strong.”

Pat sat down at the kitchen table and watched him going about the business of making the coffee. She could not help but stare at the shape of his back and the casual way he stood; at his arms, half-exposed by the rolled-up sleeves of his dark-blue rugby jersey; and she thought: I can’t help myself – I just can’t. I have to look at him.

He turned round suddenly and saw her staring at him. He lowered his eyes, as if in embarrassment, and then looked up again.

“It’s hard for you, isn’t it?” he said.

She bit her lip. She could not speak.

“Yes, it must be hard for you to deal with,” he went on. “Me and Sally. And there’s you. Hard.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pat muttered, her face burning with shame.

Bruce took several steps forward and stood next to her. He touched her on the shoulder, and then moved his hand across to lay it gently against her cheek.

“You’re burning up,” he said. “Poor Pat. You’re burning up.

Poor wee girl. You’re on fire.”

She moved a hand to brush him away from her cheek, but Bruce simply closed his hand about hers.

“Look,” he said. “Let’s be adult about this. I’m involved with this American girl, but not as involved as you might think. I’m not going to marry her after all. I’ll still go out with her, but it’s nothing permanent. So I can make you happy too. Why not?

Share me.”

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For a moment Pat said nothing. Then, as the meaning of his words became clear to her, she gasped, involuntarily, and pulled her hand away from his grasp. Then she pushed her chair back, knocking it over, and stumbled to her feet. She looked at him, and saw him quite clearly, more clearly than she would have believed possible. And she was filled with revulsion.

“I don’t believe it,” she whispered. “I don’t believe it.”

Bruce smiled, and then shrugged. “Offer’s on the table, Patsy girl. Think about it. My door is always open, as they say.”

102. Paternal Diagnosis

In her misery, she hardly remembered the journey across town by bus, or the walk from Churchhill to the family house in the Grange.

Her father was alone in the house – her mother was in Perth for several days, visiting her sister – and he was waiting for her solicitously in the hall. She fumbled with her key and he opened the door to let her in, immediately putting his arm about her.

“My dear,” he said. “My dear.”

She looked up at him. He had realised from her telephone call that there was something wrong, and he was there, waiting for her, as he had always been. It had never been her mother who had comforted her over the bruises of childhood – she had seemed so distant, not intentionally, but because that was her way, the result of an inhibited, unhappy youth. Her father, though, had always been at hand to explain, to comfort, to sympathise.

They went through to the family living room. He had been reading, and there were several books and journals scattered across the coffee table. And there, near the chair, were his slippers – the leather slippers that she had bought him from Jenners for a birthday some years ago.

“I don’t think I even have to ask you,” he said. “It’s that young man, is it not? That young man in the flat.”

It did not surprise her that he should have guessed. He had Paternal Diagnosis

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always had an intuitive ability to work out what was happening, the ability to see what it was that was troubling people. She imagined that this came from years of experience with his patients, listening to them, understanding their distress.

She nodded. “Yes.”

“And?”

“I thought I liked him. Now I don’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. But I’m . . . I’m a bit upset.”

Her father took his arm from her shoulder. “Of course you’re upset. Falling out of love is every bit as painful as falling out of a tree – and the pain lasts far longer. Most of us have shed pints of tears about that.

“From what you told me about that young man, I would say that he has a narcissistic personality disorder. Such people are very interesting. They’re not necessarily malevolent people – not at all

– but they can be very destructive in the way they treat others.”

Pat had discussed Bruce with her father, briefly, shortly after she had moved into the flat in Scotland Street. He had listened with apparent interest, but had said nothing.

“He’s just so pleased with himself,” she said. “He thinks that everyone, everyone, fancies him. He really does.”

Her father laughed. “Of course he does. And the reason for that is that he sees himself as being just perfect. There’s nothing wrong with him, in his mind. And he thinks that everybody else sees things the same way.”

Pat thought about this. By falling for Bruce – that embarrassing aberration on her part – she had behaved exactly as he had thought she would behave. It had been no surprise to him that she had done this; this was exactly what women did, what he expected them to do.

She turned to her father. “Is it his fault?”

Her father raised an eyebrow. “Fault? That’s interesting.

What’s fault got to do with it?”

“Can he help himself?” Pat said. “Could he be anything other than what he is? Could he behave any differently?”

“I’m not sure if your personality is under your control,” said 298

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Pat’s father. “It’s the way you are, in a sense, rather like hair colour or stature. You can’t be blamed in any way for being short rather than tall, or having red hair.”

“So Bruce can’t be blamed for being a narcissist?”

Pat’s father thought for a moment. “Well, we have some control over defects in our characters. For example, if you know that you have a tendency to do something bad, then you might be able to do something about that. You could develop your faculty of self-control. You could avoid situations of temptation.

You could try to make sure that you didn’t do what your desires prompted you to do. And of course we expect that of people, don’t we?”

“Do we?”

“Yes, we do. We expect people to control their greed, their avarice. We expect people who have a short temper at least to try to keep it under control.”

“So Bruce could behave less narcissistically if he tried?”

Her father walked to the window and looked out into the darkness of the garden. “He could improve a bit perhaps. If he were given some insight into his personality, then he might be able to act in a way which others found less offensive. That’s what we expect of psychopaths, isn’t it?”

Pat joined him at the window. She knew each shadow in the garden; the bench where her mother liked to sit and drink tea; the rockery which in recent years had grown wild; the place where she had dug a hole as a child which had never been filled in.

“Is it?” she asked.

He turned to her. She liked these talks with him. Human nature, sometimes frightening; evil, always frightening, seemed tamed under his gaze; like a stinging insect under glass – the object of scientific interest, understood.

“Yes,” he said. “Most people don’t understand psychopathy very well. They think of the psychopath as the Hitchcockian villain – staring eyes and all the rest – whereas they’re really rather mundane people, and there are rather more of them than we would imagine. Do you know anybody who’s consistently selfish? Do you know anybody who doesn’t seem to be troubled if And Then

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he upsets somebody else – who’ll use other people? Cold inside?

Do you know anybody like that?”

Pat thought. Bruce? But she did not say it.

“If you do,” her father went on. “Then it’s possible that that person is a psychopath. One shouldn’t simplify it, of course.

Some people resort to a check list, Professor Hare’s test. It stresses anti-social behaviour that occurs in the teenage years and then continues into the late twenties. There are other criteria too.”

Pat’s father paused. “Tell me something, my dear. This young man – could you imagine him being cruel to an animal?”

Pat was hesitant at first, but then decided. No, he would not.

One could not describe Bruce as cruel. Nor cold, for that matter.

“No,” she said. “I can’t see him being unkind in that way.”

“Not a psychopath,” said her father simply.

103. And Then

Pat went back to Scotland Street that night. Her father had asked her whether she wanted to stay at home, but she had already decided that she would go back. She could not go home every time something went wrong, and then, if she did not return, Bruce would have effectively driven her out. She could imagine what he would think

– and say – about her: Far too immature – couldn’t cope. Fell head over heels for me and then disappeared. Typical! No, Bruce would not be allowed that victory; she would go back to the flat and face him.

There would be no row; she would just be cool, and collected. And if he alluded in any way to what had happened she would simply say that she was no longer interested, which was the truth anyway.

She would be strong. More than that; she would be indifferent.

She walked up the stair at 44 Scotland Street, up the cold, echoing stair. She walked past the Pollock door, with its anti-nuclear power sticker and she thought for a moment of Bertie, whom she had not seen for some time and whose saxophone seemed to have fallen silent. It was a week or more since she 300

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had heard him playing, and on that occasion the music had seemed remote and dispirited, almost sad. It was, she recalled, a version of Eric Satie’s Gymnopédie, a piece written for piano but playable on the saxophone by a dexterous player. It was haunting music, but in Bertie’s hands had seemed merely haunted. It was not surprising, of course, if that little boy was unhappy; anybody would be unhappy with Irene for a mother, or so she had been told by Domenica, who felt that Bertie was being prevented from being a little boy. How different had Pat’s own childhood been. She had been allowed to be whoever she wanted to be, and had taken full advantage of this, pretending for three weeks at the age of thirteen to be Austrian (trying for her parents) and then Californian (extremely trying). Mothers like Irene were bad enough for daughters, Pat thought, but were frequently lethal for boys. Daughters could survive a powerful mother, but boys found it almost impossible. Such boys were often severely damaged and spent the rest of their lives running away from their mothers, or from anybody who remotely reminded them of their mothers; either that, or they became their mothers, in a desperate, misguided act of psychological self-defence.

In spite of her determination to face up to Bruce, she found that her hand was trembling as she inserted her key into the front door of the flat. As she turned the key and began to push the door open, she felt that she was being watched, and spun round and looked behind her, at Domenica’s flat across the landing.

That door was closed, but the tiny glass spy-hole positioned at eye-level above Domenica’s brass name plate suddenly changed from dark to light, as if somebody within, looking out onto the landing, had moved away from the door. Had Domenica been watching her? Pat turned away and then quickly looked over her shoulder again. The spy-hole was darkened again.

Pat closed the door behind her and switched on the light in the hall. It was eleven o’clock, and Bruce’s door was shut.

There was no light coming from beneath the door and she was emboldened to move forward slowly and silently. She thought that she could hear music coming from his room, but it was very faint and she did not wish to go right up to the door; or did And Then

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she? Treading softly, she returned to the light switch and turned off the hall light, and stood there in the darkness, her heart beating violently within her. She closed her eyes. He was there, in that room, and he had said to her that his door was always open. But what did she feel about him? She had been overcome with revulsion by what he had said to her earlier that evening and she had gone away despising him, hating him. But she could not really hate him, not really. She could not be cross with him, however arrogant and annoying he was. She simply could not.

She slipped out of her shoes and crossed the hall again and stood directly outside his door. There was no music – that had been imagined or had drifted in from somewhere else. Now there was just silence, and the beating of her heart, and her breath that came in short bursts. Never before had she felt like this; never, and this in spite of everything that had been said to her by her father, all that clarity of mind and vision overcome by nothing more than mere concupiscence.

Very slowly, she reached for the handle of his door and began to turn it. The handle was silent, fortunately, and the door moved slightly ajar as she pushed at it. Hardly daring to breathe, astonished at what she was doing, at her brazen act, she moved slowly through the open door and stood there, just over the threshold, in Bruce’s room.

The room was not in complete darkness, as the curtains did not quite meet in the middle and some light came in from outside; light that fell, slanted, upon the bed near the window. Bruce lay there, half covered by a sheet, his dark hair a deep shadow on the pillow, one arm crooked under his head, and one foot and ankle protruding from the sheet at the foot of the bed.

Pat looked and saw the rise and fall of his chest and the flat of his midriff and she felt as if she would sway and stumble. She could reach out easily, so very easily, and touch him, touch this vision of beauty; she could lay her hand upon his shoulder, or upon his chest, but did not do so, and just stood there quietly, struggling with the temptation which was before her. And as she did so, she thought of something that Angus Lordie had said when he had quoted from Sydney Goodsir Smith, who talked 302

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of the earth spinning around in the emptiness. Yes, the earth spun in a great void in which our tiny issues and concerns were really nothing, and what small pleasure or meaning we could extract from this life we should surely clutch before our instant was over.

She took a step forward, and was closer to him now, but stopped, and quickly turned away and walked out of the room.

Bruce had been awake, and she had seen his eyes open at the last moment as she approached and the smile that flickered, just visible, about his lips.

104. The Place We Are Going To

Sitting on the top deck of a number 23 bus, bound for an interview at the Rudolf Steiner School, Irene and Bertie looked down on the passing traffic and on the pedestrians going about their daily business.

“It would have been easier to go by car,” Bertie observed. “We could have parked in Spylaw Road. The booklet said there was plenty of parking in Spylaw Road.”

“Travelling by bus is more responsible,” said Irene. “We must respect the planet.”

“Which planet?” asked Bertie. He had a map of the planets in his room – or his space as it was called – and he had learned the names of many of them. Which planet did his mother mean?

“Planet Earth,” said Irene. “The one we are currently occupying, as you may have noticed, Bertie.”

Bertie considered this for a moment. He had great respect for the planet, but he also respected cars. And it was still a mystery to him as to what had happened to their own car. He had last seen it five weeks earlier; now it had disappeared.

“Where is our car, Mummy?” he asked quietly.

“Our car is parked,” Irene replied.

“Where?”

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Irene’s tone was short when she replied. “I don’t know. Daddy parked it. Ask him.”

“I did,” said Bertie. “He said that you parked it somewhere.”

Irene frowned. Had she parked the car? She tried to remember when she had last driven it, but it seemed so long ago. Deciding to leave the conversation where it stood, she looked out of the bus window, over Princes Street Gardens and towards the distant, confident shape of the Caledonian Hotel.

This trip to the Steiner School for an interview had been Dr Fairbairn’s idea, although she had accepted it, eventually.

“Bertie must be able to move on,” said the psychotherapist.

“We all need to move on, even when we’re five.”

Irene looked pained. If Bertie moved on, then where, in the most general sense, would he go? And where would that leave her, his mother? Bertie was hers, her creation.

Dr Fairbairn picked up her concern, and sought to reassure her. “Moving on means that you may have to let go a bit,” he said gently. “Letting go is very important.”

This did not help Irene, and her expression made her disquiet clear. Melanie Klein would never have approved of the term moving on, which had a distinctly post-modern ring to it. Nor did she speak of closure, which was another word that in her opinion was overworked and clichéd. She had imagined Dr Fairbairn to be above such terms, but here he was using the words as easily as he might talk about the weightier concepts of transference and repression. She decided to sound him out about closure.

“And closure?” she said hesitantly, as one might propose something slightly risqué.

“Oh, he certainly needs closure,” said Dr Fairbairn. “He needs closure over that Guardian incident. And then we need closure on trains. Bertie’s trains need to reach their terminus.”

Irene looked at Dr Fairbairn. This was a most puzzling remark to make, and perhaps he would explain. But he did not.

“First we should think of how he can move on,” said Dr Fairbairn. “Bertie needs a sense of where he’s going. He needs to have a horizon.”

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of not offering him a sense of his future. When I take him to saxophone lessons I point out to him how pleased he will be in the future that he worked at the instrument. Later, much later, it will be a useful social accomplishment.”

Dr Fairbairn nodded vaguely. “Saxophone?” he said. “Is an ability to play the saxophone a social accomplishment or is it an anti-social accomplishment? No reason to ask that, of course; just wondering.”

Irene was quick to answer. “Saxophones provide a lot of pleasure for a lot of people,” she said. “Bertie loves his saxophone.”

(She was ignoring, or had forgotten perhaps, that awful scene in the Floatarium where Bertie had shouted, quite unambiguously, Non mi piace il sassofono.)

“Oral behaviour,” muttered Dr Fairbairn. “One puts the saxophone mouthpiece in the mouth. That’s oral.”

“But you have to do that with a wind instrument,” began Irene.

“And even if you have no oral fixation might you not still want to play the saxophone? Just for the music?”

“One might think that,” said Dr Fairbairn, “if one were being naïve. But you and I know, don’t we, that explanations at that level, attractive though they may be, simply obscure the symbolic nature of the conduct in question. Let us never forget that the apparent reason for doing something is almost always not the real reason for doing it.

“Take the building of the Scottish Parliament,” went on Dr Fairbairn, warming to the theme. “People think that the fact that it is taking so long is because of all sorts of problems with designs and plans and so on. But have we stopped to ask ourselves whether the people of Scotland actually want to finish it? Could it not be that we are taking so much time to finish it because we know that once we finish it we’ll have to take responsibility for Scotland’s affairs? Westminster, in other words, is Mother – and indeed doesn’t it call itself the Mother of Parliaments? It does – the language itself gives it all away.

So Mother has asked us to build a parliament and that is exactly what we are doing. But when we finish, we fear that Mother will ask us to go away – or, worse, still, Mother will go away Bertie’s Friend

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herself. Many people don’t really want that. They want Mother still to be there. So they’re doing everything they can to drag out the process of construction.

“And here’s another thing. Why does the parliament building look as if it’s been made out of children’s wooden building blocks?

Isn’t that obvious? It’s because we want to please Mother by doing something juvenile, because we know that Mother herself doesn’t want us to grow up. That’s why it looks so juvenile. We’ll win Mother’s approval by doing something which confirms our child-like dependence.”

Irene listened to all this with growing enthusiasm. What a brilliant analysis of modern Scotland! And he was right, too, about saxophones; of course they were oral things and she was no doubt running a risk of fixing Bertie in the oral stage by encouraging him to play one. But at least she knew now, and the fact that she knew would mean that she could overcome the sub-text of her actions. So she could continue to encourage Bertie to play the saxophone, while at the same time helping him to progress through the oral stage to a more mature identity.

She looked at Dr Fairbairn. “What you say is obviously true,”

she said. “But I wonder: what shall I do to move Bertie on?”

“Give him a clear sense of where he’s going next,” replied Dr Fairbairn. “Take him to the place he’s going to. That is what we all need – to see the place we’re going to.”

105. Bertie’s Friend

Bertie sat in a small waiting room while Irene talked to the director of admissions at the Steiner School. He was not alone; on the other side of the simply-furnished room was a boy of about his own age, or perhaps slightly older, a boy with tousled fair hair, freckles around the cheek bones, and a missing front tooth. Bertie, who was wearing corduroy dungarees and his red 306

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lace-up shoes, noticed that this boy was wearing jeans and a checked shirt. It was a splendid outfit, thought Bertie – the sort of outfit which he would have seen cowboys wearing in cowboy films, had he ever been allowed to watch any.

For a time they avoided eye contact, staring instead at the brightly-coloured pictures on the wall and the pattern of the tiles on the floor.

Every so often, though, one of the boys would sneak a glance at the other, and then quickly look away before he was noticed.

Eventually, though, they glanced at the same time, and their eyes locked together. Bertie opened his mouth to speak, but the other boy spoke first.

“My name’s Jock,” said the boy. “What’s your name?”

Bertie caught his breath. Jock was a wonderful name to have

– it was so strong, so friendly. Life must be easy if one were lucky enough to be called Jock. But instead they had called him Bertie, and of course he could hardly tell this boy that.

“I don’t usually give my name,” Bertie said. “Sorry.”

Jock frowned. ‘You can tell me. I won’t tell anybody.”

Bertie looked Jock squarely in the eye. “You can’t break promises, you know.”

“I know that,” said Jock. “And I never would.”

“Bertie,” said Bertie.

“Hah!” said Jock.

A short silence followed. Then Bertie said: “Are you going to Steiner’s?”

Jock shook his head. “I’ve come here for them to look at me,”

he said. “But I don’t think my parents will send me here. I’m going to go to Watson’s.”

Bertie’s eyes narrowed. Watson’s! That was where he wanted to go – that was where they played rugby and had secret societies. That was where real boys went; sensitive boys came to the Steiner School. The thought caused him a pang of anguish. He would have liked Jock to be his friend, but now it seemed as if they would be going to different schools. All Bertie wanted was a friend – another boy who would like the same sort of things that he liked – trains and things of that sort. And he had no such person.

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“I envy you going to Watson’s,” said Bertie. “You’re lucky.

Will you play rugby?”

“Yes,” said Jock. “I’ve already started going to rugby for the under-sixes.”

The words stabbed at Bertie. Rugby was the game he wanted to play – like that nice man, Bruce, who lived on the stair. But he had never had the chance, and it was clear, too, that his mother disapproved of Bruce, and of Mrs Macdonald, and of everyone, really, except for Dr Fairbairn, who was mad, as far as Bertie could work out. Would Irene disapprove of his new friend, Jock?

He thought she probably would.

“Do you like trains?” Bertie asked suddenly.

Jock took the sudden change of subject in his stride. “I love them,” he said.

Bertie looked wistful. “Have you . . . have you ever been on a train?” he asked.

Jock nodded. “Of course,” he said. “I went to London on a train, and back again. And I’ve been to Dundee. I went over the Forth Bridge and the Tay Bridge. Then we came back and went over the bridges again. That’s four times over a bridge altogether.

Or does that make five?”

“Four,” said Bertie. What did it matter if Jock was no good at mathematics? – he played rugby and was just the sort of friend for whom Bertie had longed all his life.

“And I’ve got a model train set in my room,” Jock went on.

“I’ve got a Flying Scotsman. It goes under my bed and round the chair. I’ve got bridges too, and a station.”

Bertie was silent for a moment. Then he spoke. “You’re lucky,”

he said. And then repeated: “You’re lucky.”

Jock looked at him. Then he stood up and crossed the room to sit next to Bertie.

“You’re sad about something,” he said quietly. “What’s wrong?”

Bertie looked into the face of his new friend, gazing at the freckles and the space where the tooth had been. “I don’t have much fun,” he said. “And I’ve got no friends.”

“You’ve got me,” said Jock. “We could become blood brothers. One of my babysitters read me a story about some 308

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boys who became blood brothers. They cut their hands just there and they mixed their blood together. And that makes you a blood brother.”

“Doesn’t it hurt?” asked Bertie.

“No,” said Jock. “We could become blood brothers right now.

I’ve got my penknife.”

Bertie was astonished: he had never been allowed a knife, but now Jock took a bulky Swiss Army penknife out of his pocket and showed it in the palm of his hand. “See,” said Jock. “See that.”

Bertie gazed at the knife. There were numerous blades and devices on the knife; one could do anything with an implement like that.

“Here,” said Jock, prising out a blade. “I’ll cut myself first, if you like. You have to do it here, in this bit of skin between the thumb and this finger. Then you squeeze the blood out into the palm of your hand and you shake hands with your friend. That’s how it works.”

Bertie watched in fascination as Jock held the gleaming blade above the taut skin, and drew in his breath sharply as his new friend made a small incision. Small droplets of blood welled up, and were quickly smeared by Jock across his palm.

“Now your turn,” said Jock, wiping the blade on the leg of his jeans.

Bertie held out his right hand, the forefinger pulled back from the thumb, revealing the waiting stretch of skin. Jock steadied the blade and looked at Bertie.

“Are you ready?” he asked. “Do you want to close your eyes?”

“No,” said Bertie. “I don’t mind. It won’t hurt, will it?”

“No,” said Jock. “It won’t hurt.”

And at that moment the door opened and Irene came out. For a moment she stood quite still, slow to absorb the extraordinary sight before her. Then she screamed, and rushed forward to snatch the knife from Jock’s hand.

“What on earth are you doing?” she shouted.

Bertie looked down at the floor. He struggled against the tears, but in vain; he did not want Jock – brave Jock – to see him cry.

He had longed for a friend like Jock, and now he was being taken Lunch at the Café St Honoré

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away from him, snatched away by his mother. It had been so close, that ceremony of blood brotherhood, and it would have made all the difference to have had a blood brother. But it was not to be.

Bertie felt a great sense of loss.

106. Lunch at the Café St Honoré

Sasha had been shopping in George Street. She had spent more than she intended – over two hundred pounds, when one totted it up – but she reminded herself that money was no longer an object. A few days earlier, she had received a letter from a firm of solicitors to the effect that the residue of her aunt’s estate, which had been left to her, amounted to over four hundred and eighty thousand pounds. When she had been first told that she was the residuary beneficiary, Todd had explained that the residue was what was left after everybody else had taken their share.

“It’s unlikely to be more than a couple of hundred pounds,”

he had said. “The legacies are bound to swallow most of it up, not that the old trout had very much, I suspect.”

The old trout, however, had been as astute an investor as her legacies had been mean. Five hundred pounds had been left to the Church of Scotland. Twenty-five pounds had been left to the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; a further twenty-five pounds to the Ghurka Trust, and ten pounds to St George’s School for Girls. The residue was to go to Sasha, and now that the estate had been ingathered by Messrs Turcan Connell it amounted to almost half a million pounds after the payment of duty.

It had taken some time for Sasha to accustom herself to the fact that she now had a considerable amount of money at her disposal.

They had been comfortable enough before on Todd’s drawings on the partnership of Macaulay Holmes Richardson Black, but having these uncommitted hundreds of thousands of pounds was material wealth on a scale which Sasha had previously not experienced. She 310

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was not a spendthrift, though, and this minor shopping spree in George Street had made her feel vaguely uncomfortable. If she spent two hundred pounds a day, every day, she wondered, how long would it take her to get through her fortune? About eight years, she calculated, allowing for the accumulation of interest.

She thought for a moment of what eight years of profligacy might be like. She could buy a new pair of shoes every day, and have at the end of that eight-year period more than two thousand pairs of shoes. But what could one do with such a mountain of shoes? This was the problem; there was a limit to what one could do with money. And yet here I am, she thought, feeling guilty about spending two hundred pounds.

She was thinking of this when she wandered into Ottakars Bookshop. Sasha was not a particularly keen reader, but she belonged to a book group that met every other month and she needed to buy the choice for their next meeting: Ronald Frame.

At their last meeting they had discussed a novel by Ian Rankin, and one or two of the members had been slightly frightened.

Sasha had been able to reassure them, though: nothing to worry about, she had said. Very well written, but nothing like that ever happens in Edinburgh. Or at least not in the Braids.

She moved to the Frame section in Ottakars. There was The Lantern Bearers, and there was Time in Carnbeg, the book group’s choice. She picked it up and looked for a picture of the author. Sasha liked to know what the author looked like when she read a book. She did not like the look of Somerset Maugham, and had not read him for that reason. And she did not like the look of some of the younger woman novelists, who did nothing, it would seem, with their hair. If they do nothing with their hair, then will they do much more with their prose? she asked herself. And answered the question by avoiding these writers altogether. Such frumps. And always going on about how awful things were. Well, they weren’t awful – and certainly not if one had four hundred and eighty thousand pounds (minus two hundred).

It was while she was examining the Carnbeg book for a picture of Ronald Frame that she became aware of another customer Lunch at the Café St Honoré

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standing on her right, examining a shelf of wine books. And a further glance revealed that it was Bruce, the young man from the firm who had come to the Edinburgh South Conservative Association Ball at the Braid Hills Hotel. She had liked him even before the ball and his courteous behaviour on that evening – he had been extremely polite to Ramsey Dunbarton when he was going on about having been the Duke of Plaza-Toro in some dreadful operetta back in the year dot – had endeared him further to her. And he was terribly good-looking too, bearing in mind that he came from somewhere like Dunfermline, or was it Crieff?

She moved towards him and he looked up from the wine atlas he had been studying.

“Mrs Todd!”

“Please, not Mrs Todd,” she said. “Please – Sasha.”

Bruce smiled. “Sasha.”

“You’re looking at wine books,” she said, peering at the atlas.

“I wish I knew more about wine. Raeburn is quite informed, but I’m not.”

Bruce smirked. Raeburn Todd would know nothing about wine, in his view. He would drink – what would he drink? Chardonnay!

“I find the subject very interesting,” said Bruce. “And this atlas looks really useful. Look at this map. All the estates are listed in this tiny section of river bank. Amazing. Pity about the price, though. It’s really expensive.”

Sasha took the wine atlas from him and glanced at the back cover. Eighty-five pounds did seem like a lot of money for a book, but then the thought crossed her mind. Eighty-five pounds was not a great deal of money if you had over four hundred thousand pounds.

“Let me get it for you as a present,” she said suddenly. And then she added: “And then let me take you for lunch at the Café St Honoré. Do you know it? It’s just round the corner.”

“But I couldn’t,” protested Bruce. “I couldn’t let you.”

“Please,’ she said. “Let me do this. I’ve just had wonderful good fortune and I want to share it. Please let me do this – just this once.”

Bruce hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment. Women 312

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were always doing this sort of thing for him. They couldn’t help themselves.

“All right,” he said. “But at least let me buy us a bottle of wine at the restaurant. What do you like?”

“Chardonnay,” said Sasha.

107. Confidences

They sat at a table for two, near the window. Bruce, who had completed a survey earlier than he had expected, was pleased to spend the few hours that he had in hand having lunch, and if this was in the company of an attractive woman (even if slightly blowsy) and at her expense, then all the better. The survey in question had been a singularly unpleasant chore – looking around a poky flat off Easter Road. The flat had been modernised by a developer in shim-sham style, with chip-board cupboards and glossy wallpaper. Bruce had shuddered, and had written in a low valuation, which would limit the price which the developer got for the property. Now, in the considerably more pleasing surroundings of the Café St Honoré one might almost be in Paris, and he sat back and perused the menu with interest.

“I’m rather glad I bumped into you,” said Sasha, fingering the gold bracelet on her wrist. “I had been wanting to talk to you.”

Bruce raised an eyebrow. “I enjoyed the ball,” he said. “Even if there were very few people there. More like a private party.

Good fun.”

Sasha smiled. “You were very good to poor old Ramsey Dunbarton,” she said. “It can’t have been much fun for you, listening to him going on about being the Duke of Plaza-Toro.”

Bruce smiled. One could afford to be generous about the boring when people found one so fascinating. “It meant a lot to him, I suppose,” he said. “Who was the Duke of Plaza-Toro anyway? Was he in the Tory Party?”

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Sasha laughed. “Very droll,” she said. “Now listen, did you talk to my daughter at all?”

“I did,” said Bruce. “We got on rather well.”

Sasha frowned. “That surprises me,” she said. “She’s been so contrary recently.”

“I didn’t notice that,” said Bruce.

“Well, quite frankly, she worries me,” Sasha went on. “And I wondered if you had any suggestions. You’re in her age group.

You might see something I’m missing.”

Bruce scrutinised the menu. He was not sure whether he liked this line of conversation.

“Let me give you an example,” Sasha went on. “At the ball, Lizzie won dinner for two at the Prestonfield Hotel. Now any normal girl would ask a friend along to join her. Lizzie didn’t do that. No, she telephoned the hotel and asked them whether instead of a dinner for two she could have two separate dinners for one. Can you believe that?”

Bruce thought for a moment. “Perhaps she wasn’t in the mood for company,” he said. “We all feel like that sometimes.”

“But that’s how she seems to feel all the time,” said Sasha, showing some exasperation. “She seems to make no effort to get friends. Or a decent job, for that matter.”

“People are different,” said Bruce. “She’s not into drugs, I take it? She’s not running around with a Hell’s Angel, is she?

Well then, what have you got to complain about? What do you want her to do anyway?”

“I want her to find a circle of friends,” said Sasha. “Nice young people. I want her to have a good time. Maybe get a boyfriend. An outgoing type, who’d take her places. Give her some fun.”

Bruce looked down at the table and moved his fork slightly, to make it parallel with his knife, as an obsessive-compulsive might do. She means somebody like me, he thought. Well, if the point about all this is to see whether I’m available, the answer will have to be no. There are limits to what one should do in the line of duty.

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“She’ll meet somebody,” he said airily. “Give her the space.

Let her get on with it.”

“But she does nothing,” said Sasha. “How can she meet somebody suitable if she won’t go out with people? She needs to get into a group. You wouldn’t be able to introduce her . . .”

Bruce did not allow her to finish her sentence. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m very much involved with an American girl at the moment.

I’m not really socialising in a crowd. I used to. But not now.”

For a few moments the disappointment registered on Sasha’s face, but she quickly recovered her composure. “Of course,” she said. “I hadn’t intended to ask you. I just wondered if you knew of anybody she might get to know. Parties, perhaps. That sort of thing.”

“Sorry,” said Bruce.

“Well, let’s not think about it any more. I’m sure you’re right.

She’ll sort herself out. Now, what are you going to have?

Remember this is on me!”

They ordered their lunch, and a bottle of Chardonnay. They talked, easily, and in a friendly way. Sasha told a most amusing story about a scandal at her tennis club, and Bruce passed on a piece of office gossip which Todd had not mentioned to her –

something about one of the secretaries. Then they talked about plans for the summer.

“Raeburn was thinking of going to Portugal,” said Sasha. “We have friends with a villa there. It has a tennis court too.”

“I like tennis,” said Bruce. “I used to play a lot.”

“I bet you were a strong player,” said Sasha. She pictured him for a moment in tennis whites. His arms would be strong; his service hard to return.

“Moderately,” said Bruce. “I need to work on my backhand.”

“Don’t we all!” said Sasha. “But look at your wrists. They’re ideal for tennis. Look.”

She reached out and took hold of his wrist playfully. “Yes,”

she said. “A real tennis player’s wrist. You should keep up your game.”

It was at that point that Todd came in. He had arranged to meet a colleague from another firm for lunch, to discuss,

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315

very tentatively, a possible merger. He did not see this colleague, who was late, but he did see his wife, sitting at a table in the window, holding hands with that young man from the office.

For a moment he did not move. Bruce looked up, and saw him, and pulled his wrist away from Sasha’s grasp. She looked round in astonishment and saw Todd, who was beckoning to Bruce.

Bruce stood up, shocked. ‘I’ll explain to him,” he mumbled.

Todd stared at Bruce as he came towards him. Very slowly, he lifted a hand and pointed directly at Bruce.

“You’re history,” he said quietly. “You’re history.”

“It’s not what you think,” said Bruce. “We were talking about tennis.”

Todd did not seem to hear this. “You have an hour to clear your desk,” hissed Todd. “You hear me? An hour.”

“You can’t dismiss people like that,” said Bruce, his voice faltering. “Not these days.”

“You listen to me,” said Todd. “Some time ago you did a survey of a flat and said that you had looked into the roof space.

Well, I went and checked – and you hadn’t. You lied. I’ve been keeping that up my sleeve. You’re history.”

Bruce stood quite still. It was a strange feeling, being history.

108. Action Is Taken

One of Matthew’s problems, thought Pat, was that he seemed unwilling to make decisions. The way he had behaved over the Peploe? – now the non-Peploe – was an example of his chronic lack of decisiveness. Had it not been for the fact that Big Lou had met Guy Peploe, with the result that Matthew had been pushed into action, it was doubtful whether they would have identified the painting as being by somebody other than Peploe.

Nor would they have discovered that it was probably an overpainting. That had been established by Guy Peploe himself, who had spotted the shape of an umbrella above a mountain.

Now that some progress had been made with the painting, the matter should be taken further. If it was indeed an overpainting, then what lay underneath could be of some interest

– although still probably no more than the work of some gauche amateur. Pat had asked Matthew whether he was planning to do anything about it, but he had simply shrugged.

“Maybe,” he said. “But I can’t think of who would paint an umbrella.”

“A French impressionist?” suggested Pat. “They were always painting people with umbrellas. There’s that famous one in the Art Institute of Chicago. I saw it when we went there with the Academy Art Department. They were very good, you know, the art people at the Academy. Mrs Hope. Mr Ellis. Remember them?

They took us to all sorts of places. They were inspirational. That’s where I learned to love art.”

She saw Matthew shift in his seat as she spoke. There was something funny about Matthew. He had got up to something at school – she was sure of it. But what? So many people had their secrets – secrets that we are destined never to find out.

People had a past – she had Australia, but the least said about that the better. It was not her fault – she had never thought that

– except for one or two people who had said that she should not have spoken to that person in the café and that she should have realised that the man with the eye-patch was not what he claimed to be. She reflected for a moment – now that she was home, it Action Is Taken

317

did not seem quite so bad. Indeed, it had been something of an adventure. Perhaps she should tell Domenica about it one of these days. She liked stories like that.

Matthew had changed the subject and nothing more was said about the non-Peploe until that afternoon, when the doorbell rang and Angus Lordie came into the gallery, followed by Cyril.

When he saw Pat, Cyril wagged his tail with pleasure and winked.

“Passing by,” said Angus Lordie. “I was taking Cyril for a stroll and I thought I might pop in and see what you have on the walls. Interesting stuff. That over there is a worth a quid or two, you know. You didn’t? Well, I think it’s a James Paterson.”

Matthew stood up and joined Angus Lordie in front of a large painting of a girl in a field. “Are you sure?” he said.

Angus Lordie smiled. “Absolutely. If I had the wall space I’d buy it myself.”

Matthew turned and glanced at Pat. “I thought it might be,”

he said.

“Well, it is,” said Angus Lordie. “He lived in Moniaive, I think. Or somewhere down . . .” He paused. He had seen the non-Peploe, which was stacked casually against the side of Matthew’s desk. “Well! Well! Look at that. Very intriguing!”

“Not a Peploe,” said Matthew, smiling. He was warming to Angus Lordie now, having disliked him when he first met him in the Cumberland Bar with Pat. The identification of the Paterson had cheered Matthew. He had no idea who James Paterson was, but he would soon find out. And Matthew was not sure where Moniaive was either, but he could look that up too.

“Oh, I can tell it’s not a Peploe,” said Angus Lordie, walking across the room to pick up the painting. “What interests me is the shape I can make out – very vaguely – underneath.”

“An umbrella,” Matthew said quickly. “Rather like the umbrellas that the French impressionists painted. You’ll know that one in Chicago, of course. The Art Institute. Wonderful place.”

Pat said nothing. It was good to see Matthew’s confidence growing. She looked at Cyril who was sitting near the door, his 318

Action Is Taken

mouth half-open, the sun glinting off his gold tooth. Cyril was perfectly confident – quite at ease in the space he occupied, as every animal is, except us.

Angus Lordie held the painting at an angle to the light.

“Fascinating,” he said. “The painting on the top is rubbish, of course, but a deft application of paint-stripper might show something rather interesting. Would you like me to do it for you? We could do it in my studio.”

Matthew hesitated. “Well . . .”

“What a good idea!” exclaimed Pat. “Don’t you agree, Matthew?”

Matthew turned and looked at Pat, reproach in his eyes.

He did not like people making decisions for him, but this is what they inevitably did. One day I’m going to say no, he thought. I’m going to become myself. But then he said: “I suppose so. Yes, I suppose it would be good to see what’s underneath.”

“What about this evening?” said Angus Lordie. “You two come round to the studio. And bring Domenica. We’ll make a party of it.”

The time was agreed, and Angus Lordie, with Cyril at his side, set off up the road. As he walked, he thought of the painting. It was really very exciting. He had his ideas, of course, as to what lay underneath, and if he were proved right, then that would have major implications for Matthew. And it would be nice, too, to be credited with the discovery, just as Sir Timothy Clifford had got a lot of credit when he discovered a da Vinci drawing under a sofa in the New Club. (That had made the papers!) There would be mention of his own discovery in the newspapers and perhaps a photograph of himself and Cyril. He would be modest, of course, and would downplay the significance of what he had done. Anybody could have seen it, he might say. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

“But it required your expert hand to reveal the secret!” the reporter would say. And he would smile, and say, self-effacingly:

“Yes, perhaps it did. Perhaps it did.”

109. A Most Remarkable and Important Discovery

“Angus is an extremely good host,” Domenica had said, and she was right. He welcomed his guests with a tray of devils on horseback and small oat-cakes on which thick-cut slices of smoked salmon had been balanced. Then there were crackers with boiled egg, ersatz caviar, and small circles of mayonnaise.

All of this was provided in generous quantities.

His flat, which occupied the top two floors of a Drummond Place stair, was built with a generosity which escapes modern builders; the ceilings soared up to fifteen feet, the dark pine wainscoting reached waist-level, and the floor boards were a good twelve inches wide. And everywhere on the walls there were paintings and hangings – portraits, landscapes, figurative studies. A Cadell picture of a man in a top hat, raffish as the proprietor, smiled down above the fireplace in the drawing room. A large Philipson, crowded with cathedrals and ladies, occupied the expanse of wall to its side, and a magnificent Cowie, schoolgirls in a painter’s loft, hung beside that.

And then there were the bookshelves, which filled the hall and the dining room; towering constructions with books stacked two and three deep. Domenica, drink in hand, stopped beside one of these and exclaimed with delight as she drew out a volume.

“Ruthven Todd!” she said. “Nobody reads him these days, and they should. Look at this. Acreage of the Heart, published by William McLellan. The Poetry Scotland series.”

Angus Lordie came to her side, licking mayonnaise off his fingers.

“That contains a very fine poem, Domenica,” he said. “Personal History. Do you know it?”

Domenica turned a page. “I was born in this city,” Domenica began to read aloud. “Where dry minds . . . ”

“Grow crusts of hate/ Like rocks grow lichen”, Angus Lordie took it up. “Such powerful, powerful lines.”

Pat looked puzzled. “Why did he write that?”

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“Because it’s true,” said Angus Lordie. “Or, at least it used to be true. Todd was born into haut-bourgeois Edinburgh, which used to be just like that. Brittle. Exclusive. Turned in on itself.

And immensely snobbish.”

“And still is a bit like that,” said Domenica quietly. “In its worst moments.”

“But much better than it used to be,” Angus Lordie countered.

“You very rarely see those real, cold Edinburgh attitudes these days. The arrogance of those people is broken. They just can’t get away with it. That horrid disapproval of anything that moves

– that’s gone.”

Domenica did not appear to be completely convinced. “I’m not sure,” she said. “What makes Edinburgh different from other cities in these islands? It is different, you know. I think that there is still a certain hauteur, a certain intellectual crustiness. It’s not nearly as marked as it was in Todd’s day, but . . .”

Angus Lordie smiled. “But Domenica rather likes all that,”

he suggested mischievously. “She’s a bit of a Jean Brodie, you see.”

Pat looked at Domenica, wondering whether she would take offence. Hadn’t Jean Brodie been a fascist? Wasn’t that the whole point about Spain and the betrayal and all the rest? Matthew simply looked confused. What was this man talking about? And where was that peculiar dog of his?

They were all standing in the drawing room overlooking the Drummond Place Gardens. It was about nine o’clock, and the sky was still light. The branches of the trees moved gently against the sky and the stone of the buildings opposite, for there was a slight breeze. Pat sipped at the drink that Angus Lordie had given her – a gin and tonic flavoured with lime; she was happy to be here, with these people, with Matthew, whom she liked more and more for his gentleness; with Angus Lordie, who amused her and seemed so grateful for her company, and who was not a threat to anyone; and with Domenica, whom she admired. What a difference, she thought, between this company, interesting and sympathetic, and the company of Bruce and his friends in the Cumberland Bar. What a profound mistake to fall in love with A Most Remarkable and Important Discovery 321

that man – she realised that now. She had no feeling for him, not even revulsion; she felt nothing. At that crucial moment, when she had seen him awake and smiling at her, she had realised that she was free.

Angus Lordie interrupted her thoughts. “We should do something about the picture now,” he said. “Let’s go into my studio and get to work.”

They followed him from the drawing room, down a book-lined corridor, and into a large room, two floors high, with large skylights set into the ceiling. Matthew, who had been clutching the painting, now handed it over to Angus Lordie and watched anxiously as their host laid it down on a table and reached for a large, opaque bottle. He placed the bottle beside him and then raised his glass of whisky to Matthew.

“Paint-stripper,” he said. “In the bottle that is – not the glass!

Hah!”

Matthew said nothing, but narrowed his eyes as Angus Lordie took the top off the bottle and sprinkled a viscous liquid across the painting. Then he rubbed this gently with a cloth.

“Draw near and see,” said Angus Lordie. “We’ll give this a moment to act, and then I’ll give it a wipe. All should be revealed.”

Slowly the surface of the painting began to blister and bubble.

The shore of Iona disappeared, and then the coast of Mull. Next went the sea; those blue waves which had rather impressed Matthew became grey and then brown.

“Now a gentle wipe,” said Angus Lordie. “That’ll get rid of all this superfluous paint. Here we go.”

They were all huddled over the painting now. Pat noticed that Matthew looked pale, and that his breathing was shallow.

Domenica, catching Pat’s eye, gave her a conspiratorial nod. And Angus Lordie, absorbed in his task, looked only at the surface of the painting, which was now changing colour markedly.

“Now then,” Angus Lordie said, dabbing at a section of the painting. “Gently does it. Gently.”

“An umbrella,” whispered Domenica. “Look. An umbrella.”

“Yes!” said Angus Lordie, triumphantly. “Yes! And look what we have here. A beach. Yes! And do we have people in evening

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suits dancing under that umbrella, which is being held up, is it not, by a butler? Yes we do! We do!”

Angus Lordie straightened up. “Yes!” he shouted. “Exactly as I had suspected! A Vettriano!”

110. Gain, Loss, Friendship, Love

Matthew was quietly pleased. He had lost a Peploe (which he had never really had, anyway) but he had gained a Vettriano (which he had never known he had). After the initial shock of the discovery, he turned to Angus Lordie and embraced him warmly. “I’m so glad that you offered to do this,” he said. “I would never have imagined it. A Vettriano!”

Angus Lordie smiled, wiping his hands on a piece of cloth.

“I was alerted by the shape of the umbrella,” he said. “I just had a feeling that it was our friend Mr Vettriano underneath. I don’t know why, but I had this feeling.”

“Never underestimate the power of intuitions,” said Domenica. “They are a very useful guide. They can show us the way to all sorts of things – including the way to being good.”

Angus Lordie raised an eyebrow. “How so?” he asked. “What have intuitions to do with goodness?”

“Intuitions help us to know what is right and wrong,” said Gain, Loss, Friendship, Love

323

Domenica. “If your intuitions tell you that something is wrong, then it probably is. And once you start to use your moral faculties to work out why it’s wrong, you’ll see that the intuition was right in the first place.”

“Interesting,” said Angus Lordie. “But I suspect that the intuition is merely a form of existing knowledge. You know something already, and the intuition merely tells you that the knowledge is buried away in your mind.”

“But that’s exactly what an intuition is,” said Domenica. “That’s exactly why they’re so useful.”

Angus Lordie replaced the cap on the bottle of paint-stripper.

“Enough of all this,” he said. “I propose that we go through to the drawing room and open a bottle of champagne. Leave the painting here, Matthew. It needs to dry a little. I’ll come back in a moment and fetch it.”

They followed their host back down the corridor and into the large, formally furnished drawing room. Angus Lordie busied himself with the opening of a bottle of champagne, which he took from a concealed fridge in a walnut cabinet. Then he poured a glass for each of them and they stood in the middle of the room, under the Murano chandelier, and raised their glasses to each other.

“To the successful sale of the Vettriano,” said Angus Lordie, chinking his glass against Matthew’s. “That is assuming that you will be selling it. Vettriano, of course, is not to everybody’s taste.

But the point is there’s a strong market for them and it seems to be getting stronger.”

Matthew looked into his glass. He did not like to talk about financial matters, but he was very curious to know what value Angus Lordie might put on his painting. “You wouldn’t have any idea,” he began.

“Of what it’s worth?” said Angus Lordie.

“Yes.”

“Well,” said Angus Lordie. “Let’s think. I think that this is a very early Vettriano, but it’s an important one in terms of his development as a popular painter. It’s his beach period, I would have thought – with touches of his umbrella period. So that 324

Gain, Loss, Friendship, Love

makes it very interesting. And the value would be . . . Let’s think.

Perhaps, a hundred thousand. Something like that?”

Pat glanced at Matthew and noticed that his hands were shaking. She reached across and touched him gently on the shoulder. “Well done!” she whispered. “Well done!”

Matthew smiled back at her. He liked this girl, and he wondered if there was still a chance that she might like him too.

Perhaps she had overcome her ridiculous attachment to that ghastly Bruce. Perhaps she would want somebody more settled, like me. That is what he thought, but he knew, even as he thought it, that he was hoping for too much. Nobody liked him in that way; they just didn’t.

Angus Lordie put down his glass. “I’ll go and fetch it,” he said. “The light is slightly better through here at this time of the evening. We can take a close look at it.”

He left them, and a short time later he returned, holding the painting out before him. He cleared his throat and started to say something, but no words came and they knew immediately that something was wrong.

Angus Lordie held the painting out to Matthew. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “The paint-stripper appears to have continued to act. The Vettriano seems to have gone.”

Matthew looked at the painting in dismay. The beach, the umbrella, the butler, the dancing couple – all had merged into a set of curiously-coloured streaks and puddles of paint. Matthew looked at Angus Lordie, and then he laughed. It was a laugh that surprised them all – except Pat. “I was never really too keen on Vettriano,” he said. “Don’t feel too bad about it.” With that comment, that simple forgiving comment, Pat realised the depth of Matthew’s goodness. She would not forget that.

Angus Lordie let out a sigh of relief. “That’s very good of you,”

he said. “But I was thinking – you could still try to sell this as an abstract Vettriano. That’s what it’s become, you see. Vettriano put this paint on this canvas, and it certainly looks pretty abstract now.”

Matthew smiled. “Perhaps.”

Angus Lordie placed the abstract Vettriano down on a table and fetched another bottle of champagne from the fridge. Domenica,

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325

who had been silent since Angus Lordie had returned to the room with the news of the restoration mishap, now said: “Angus, you’ve been a rotten restorer, but you remain, in my view, a rather more competent poet. Cheer us all up with one of your impromptu pieces.”

“Something Chinese?” asked Angus Lordie. “Late Scottish-Tang?”

“No,” said Domenica. “Not that. Something else.”

“Why not?” he said. “How about this?”

He moved to the window and then turned to face his guests.

Together again he began.

Here in this place,

Of angled streets and northern light, Under this particular moon, with Scotland Quiet and sleeping behind and around us; Of what may I speak but friendship, And of our human wish for love – not just for me But for friends too, and those who are not my friends; So if you ask me, now, at this moment, What is my wish: it is for love over Scotland, Like tears of rain – that is enough.

Scotland Street

Document Outline

Preface

1. Stuff Happens

2. A Room with a Smell

3. We See a Bit More of Bruce

4. Fathers and Sons

5. Attributions and Provenances

6. Bruce Takes a Look at a Place

7. A Full Survey

8. Hypocrisy, Lies, Golf Clubs

9. SP

10. The Road from Arbroath

11. The Origins of Love and Hate

12. Chanterelles Trouv�es

13. You Must Remember This / A Kiss Is Just a Kiss

14. The Smell of Cloves

15. 560 SEC

16. Irrational Beliefs and the Mind of the Child

17. An Educational Exchange

18. The Works of Melanie Klein

19. A Modest Gift

20. The Boys Discuss Art

21. A Daughter�s Dance Card

22. Bruce Comes Under Consideration

23. Goings-on in London

24. Unwelcome Thoughts

25. Dinner with Domenica

26. A Room, a Photograph, Love and Memory

27. The Electricity Factory

28. Thomas Is Electrocuted

29. Friendship

30. Things Happen at the Gallery

31. The Lothian and Borders Police Art Squad

32. Akrasia: The Essential Problem

33. Peploe?

34. On the Way to the Floatarium

35. Latte Interrupta

36. Bertie in Disgrace

37. At the Floatarium

38. Mother/Daughter Issues

39. The Facts of Life

40. In Nets of Golden Wires

41. Your Cupboard or Mine?

42. Gallery Matters

43. The Sort of People You See in Edinburgh Wine Bars

44. Tales of Tulliallan

45. More Tulliallan Tales

46. Humiliation and Embarrassment

47. Irene and Stuart: A Breakfast Conversazione

48. Plans for the Conservative Ball

49. Tombola Gifts

50. Bruce Prepares for the Ball

51. Velvety Shoes

52. Silk Organza

53. Bruce Fantasises

54. Supporting Walls

55. Discovered

56. At the Braid Hills Hotel

57. The Duke of Plaza-Toro

58. Catch 22

59. The Dashing White Sergeant

60. The Tombola

61. Bertie Begins Therapy

62. The Rucksack of Guilt

63. Irene Converses with Dr Hugo Fairbairn

64. Post-analysis Analysis

65. A Meeting in Valvona and Crolla

66. Mr Dalyell�s Question

67. Playing with Electricity

68. Boucle d�Or

69. The Turning to Dust of Human Beauty

70. An Evening with Bruce

71. At the Scottish National Portrait Gallery

72. Angus Lordie�s Difficult Task

73. A Dissident Free Presbyterian Fatwa

74. A Man�s Dressing-gown

75. News of a Loss

76. Remembrance of Things Past

77. Into Deep Morningside

78. Steps with Soul

79. A Meeting on the Stair

80. Male Uncertainty, Existential Doubts, New Men etc

81. Morningside Ladies

82. On the Way to Mr Rankin�s

83. But of Course

84. An Invitation

85. In the Cumberland Bar

86. On the Subject of Dogs

87. The Onion Memory

88. Big Lou Receives a Phone Call

89. Big Lou Goes to Dinner

90. Poetry of the Tang Dynasty

91. God Looks Down on Belgium

92. In Scotland Street Tunnel

93. A Further Tunnel � and a Brief Conversation About Aesthetics

94. An Interesting Discovery

95. Mr Guy Peploe Makes an Appearance

96. Mr Peploe Sees Something Interesting

97. More about Bertie

98. Irene and Dr Fairbairn Converse

99. Bruce Takes a Bath, and Thinks

100. Bruce Expounds

101. Pat and Bruce: An Exchange

102. Paternal Diagnosis

103. And Then

104. The Place We Are Going To

105. Bertie�s Friend

106. Lunch at the Caf� St Honor�

107. Confidences

108. Action Is Taken

109. A Most Remarkable and Important Discovery

110. Gain, Loss, Friendship, Love