Espresso Tales

Pat did not, and said as much as she accompanied Domenica down the street.

The Natural Approach

187

“The problem,” said Domenica, “is that the cost-cutters are in control. They are the ones who are setting the tone of our age. They are the ones who are insisting that everything be cheap and built to the barest specifications. Nobody can do anything which is large and generous-spirited any more, because a cost-cutter will come along and say: Stop. Make everything smaller.”

Pat said nothing. She had been thinking about Peter. Perhaps it would be an idea to discuss him with Domenica. “I’m thinking about a boy,” she said suddenly.

“How interesting,” said Domenica. “Interesting, but often a terrible waste of time. Still, come up with me, my dear, and we shall talk about boys in the comfort of my study. How delicious!”

57. The Natural Approach

“Well,” said Domenica, perching on the edge of her chair. “Tell me, then. You went to see him? That rather handsome young man whom we jointly encountered? You went to see him?”

Pat thought the question rather pointed. She had forgiven Domenica her tactless attempt to introduce the two of them, through the transparent device of offering to lend Peter a book of Rupert Brooke’s verse. She had even laughed, in retrospect, over the obviousness of the ploy. But in view of her neighbour’s somewhat heavy-handed, not to say socially clumsy, behaviour, she did not think that she was in a position to criticise her going to Peter’s flat. “He did ask me,” she said, defensively, and went on to explain to Domenica about the meeting at the Film Theatre and the invitation which Peter had extended to her. He had meant it, she said, even if by the time she went to see him he had forgotten that he had invited her.

“And did it go as planned?” asked Domenica.

“I had no plan,” said Pat. She frowned. What did Domenica imagine she had intended to do once she got to Peter’s flat?

Sometimes people of Domenica’s generation, in an attempt to 188 The Natural Approach

be modern, missed the point. Young people no longer bothered about engineering seduction. It happened if they wanted it. And if they did not, it did not. People were less coy about all that now.

Domenica provided the answer. “But you must have gone hoping to find something out – to learn a bit more about him?

Did you?”

Pat nodded. “I learned a bit,” she said. “But I’m not sure about him. I’m just not . . .”

Domenica waved a hand. “The most important thing these days is whether he . . . whether he’s interested. There are so many young men who just aren’t interested these days. It never ceases to surprise me.”

Pat studied her neighbour. It embarrassed her slightly to have this conversation with a woman so many years her elder

– even if circumlocution was employed. Interested was such an old-fashioned way of putting it; laughably so, she thought.

And yet Domenica was a woman of the world; she had lived abroad, lost a husband, done anthropological fieldwork in South America. She was no innocent. Why did she need circumlocutions?

“Of course, the terminology has changed,” Domenica went on, waving a hand airily. “In my day we used to refer to men as being musical. That was a code word. The other words came in, and now, of course, everybody spells it out. Is he, do you think?”

“Is he what?”

“You know. Cheerful?”

“You mean gay?”

Domenica blushed. “Yes.”

“I don’t know,” said Pat. “I really don’t.”

Domenica laughed. “But you must. Any woman can tell. We can just tell.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Pat. “Do you think men can tell when a woman isn’t interested in men?”

Domenica did not hesitate. “Of course they can’t,” she said.

“But that’s because men aren’t as perceptive as women. Men The Natural Approach

189

don’t pick these things up. They just don’t notice the obvious.”

“And the obvious is?”

Domenica picked her glass up off the table beside her chair.

“Trousers,” she said. “Big, baggy trousers, and boots. Certain tattoos. Subtle clues like that.” She paused. “But tell me – is he available, so to speak?”

“I think so,” said Pat. “I get the impression that he is, but . . .”

Domenica’s eyes widened. “There was something?”

Pat looked down at the floor. She would not emerge very well from this story, but she wanted to tell it to Domenica, and so she continued. “There was a photograph,” she said. “It had something written on the back – skinny-dipping in Greece with T.

And I had a quick look at it when he was out of the room. I couldn’t help myself.”

“Entirely understandable,” said Domenica. “Anybody would have done the same. Anybody.”

“Well, I did. And it was a picture of him, of Peter, standing in the sea. It looked as if it had been taken on a Greek island somewhere. He was a little bit off the shore and so the water came up almost to his chest. It was a perfectly respectable photograph.”

Domenica sighed. “How disappointing.”

Pat was not sure what to make of that. There was something racy about Domenica, something liberated. And yet at the same time, she was in no sense coarse. There was no scatological language of the sort that is so casually pumped out by the foul-mouthed, for whom the obscene, predictable expletive is an obsessive utterance. And yet there was a complete lack of prudery. It was contradictory – and puzzling.

“T must have taken it,” said Pat. “But I didn’t know who T

is.”

Domenica shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“Well, I think it may,” said Pat. “If T is Tom, for example, then perhaps Peter wants me just to be a friend. But if T is Theresa or Tessa, then, well, it could be different.”

“You should have asked him,” said Domenica.

190 Moray Place

“I tried to. I made the photograph fall on to the floor and when he came back in I picked it up and said: “Oh! Who’s T?”

“And?”

“And he said, ‘Oh, that! That was on Mykonos.’ And then he said – and this is the bit that really surprised me – he said:

‘I’m a nudist, you know.’”

For a moment there was complete silence. Pat watched Domenica’s reaction. In all the time she had known her, she had not seen her at a loss for words. Now she was. She looked beyond Domenica, to the bookshelf behind her. Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa; that was all about nakedness and the innocently carnal, was it not?

And then there were the books on feral children that rubbed spines with Mead and Pitt-Rivers. Feral children wore no clothes. More nakedness. Why should her neighbour be surprised by nakedness in Edinburgh?

Domenica herself supplied the answer to the unspoken question. “A nudist? In Edinburgh? Does he realise what parallel we’re on?”

Pat smiled at that. This was vintage Domenica. Then she told her what Peter had said.

“And then he invited me to something,” she said, dropping her voice as if others might somehow hear.

“To?”

“To a nudist picnic in Moray Place Gardens,” she said. “Next Saturday night.” And then added: “Subject to confirmation.”

58. Moray Place

Domenica had just opened her mouth to speak when the door-bell sounded. She looked towards the door with evident irritation. She had been on the point of responding to the extraordinary disclosure that Pat had made of her invitation to a nudist picnic in Moray Place Gardens, and now, with a visitor, her comments on that would have to be delayed.

Moray Place 191

“Nobody is expected,” she muttered, as she rose to go to the door. “Please stay. We must discuss that invitation.”

As she approached the door a loud bark could be heard outside. “Angus,” Domenica said. “Announced by Cyril.”

She opened the door. Angus Lordie, wearing a white linen jacket and with a red bandana tied round his neck, was standing on the doorstep, his dog Cyril sitting at his feet. Cyril looked up at Domenica and smiled, exposing the single gold tooth in his lower jaw.

“Well,” said Domenica. “This is a rare pleasure. Is this a visit from Cyril, with you in attendance, Angus, or a visit by you, with Cyril in attendance?”

“The latter,” said Angus. “At least from my point of view. It’s possible, of course, that the canine point of view on the matter is different.”

He came in and was led through to Domenica’s study, where he greeted Pat warmly. Cyril licked Pat’s hand and then lay down at her feet, watching her through half-closed eyes. She thought that he winked at her, but she could not be sure. There was something deeply disconcerting about Cyril, but it was difficult to say exactly what it was. While Domenica fetched Angus a drink, Angus engaged Pat in conversation.

“The reason why I’m here,” he said, “is artistic frustration.

I’ve just been working on a portrait of an Edinburgh financier. I mustn’t give you his name, but suffice it to say that his expression speaks of one thing, and one thing alone – money.

But that, oddly enough, is a difficult thing for me to get across on canvas. You see it in the flesh, but how to capture it in oils?” He paused. “Can you tell when somebody is rich, Pat?

Can you tell it just by looking at them?”

“I can,” said Domenica, as she came back into the room. “I find it easy enough. The signals are usually there.”

“Such as?” asked Angus.

“Self-assurance,” said Domenica, handing him a glass of wine.

“People with money carry themselves in a different way from the rest of us. They have a certain confidence that comes with having money in the bank. A certain languor, perhaps.”

192 Moray Place

“And their clothes?” suggested Pat.

“Look at their shoes,” said Domenica. “The expression well-heeled says it all. Expensive shoes have that look about them.”

She turned to Angus and smiled. “Speaking of clothing, Angus,”

she said. “Pat has had a very interesting invitation. Do tell our visitor about it, Pat.”

Pat was not sure whether she wanted to discuss Peter’s invitation with Angus, but could hardly refuse now. “I’ve been invited to a nudist picnic,” she said quietly.

Angus stared at her. “And are you going to go?” he asked.

Pat shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. I’m not sure whether . . .”

Domenica interrupted. “It’s not just any nudist picnic, Angus,” she said. “It’s to be held in Moray Place Gardens.

Would you believe that, Angus? Isn’t that rich? Can you believe it?”

Angus did not appear to be surprised. “Of course I can,” he said. “Moray Place has quite a few of them.”

“Who?” Domenica demanded.

“Nudists,” said Angus. “Moray Place may think itself very grand. It may be a frightfully smart address. But there are more nudists living there than any other part of the New Town! It’s always been like that. They meet in Lord Moray’s Pleasure Grounds.”

Domenica gave a snort of disbelief. “I find that very difficult to swallow, Angus. Nudists in Moray Place? All those Georgian drawing rooms and grand dinner parties. Nudists? Certainly not!”

Angus raised an eyebrow. “Of course I’m not saying that everybody in Moray Place goes in for naturism, but there are some of them who do. I believe they have some sort of association, the Moray Place Nudists’ Association. It doesn’t advertise, of course, but that’s because it’s Moray Place and advertising would be a bit, well, a bit beneath them.”

For a moment there was silence. Then Domenica turned to Pat. “You do know, don’t you, to take whatever Angus says cum grano salis? ”

Moray Place 193

Pat said nothing. It seemed unlikely that there would be any nudists at all in Edinburgh, given the temperature for most of the year, but perhaps there might be in summer, when it could get reasonably warm, sometimes. Perhaps that brought them out. And, of course, Peter had declared himself to be one, and he had seemed to be serious when he issued the invitation.

Angus frowned. “You may not believe me, my dear Pat, but this old trout here,” and at this he gestured towards Domenica, “is somewhat out of touch, if I may say so. No offence, of course, Domenica, carissima, but I’m not sure whether you understand just how deep is the Deacon Brodie streak in this dear city of ours.”

Pat glanced at Domenica. She wondered whether she would take offence at being referred to as an old trout, but her neighbour simply smiled. “You may call me an old trout,” Domenica said. “But if there’s anybody fishy around here, Angus, it surely is you. And let me tell you that I do understand the whole issue of social concealment and its place in the Scottish psyche. But let’s not waste our time in idle banter. My question to you, Angus, is this: how do you know that there are nudists in Moray Place? Have you seen them? Or is it just gossip that you’ve picked up in the Cumberland Bar?”

194 Robert Garioch

Angus took a sip of his wine. His expression, thought Pat, was that of one who was about to produce the clinching argument.

“I’d like it to be true,” he said. “Moray Place and nudists.

Can’t you just see it?”

“No,” said Domenica. “I can’t.”

“Bob Sutherland would have loved it,” mused Angus. “My goodness, he would have loved it.”

Domenica looked puzzled. “Bob Sutherland?” she asked.

“Robert Garioch,” said Angus. “A great makar. And one of our neighbours, you know. He lived in Nelson Street. Lived.

Dead now, alas.”

“Garioch,” mused Domenica. “At Robert Fergusson’s Grave?”

“You’ll make me weep,” said Angus quietly.

59. Robert Garioch

“Yes,” said Angus. “At Robert Fergusson’s Grave. Such a wonderful poem. I could recite it to you, you know, all fourteen, heart-breaking lines. But I won’t do that.” He paused. “Tell me, Pat

. . . and Domenica, for that matter, how important is poetry to you?”

Pat thought for a moment. She had read some poets, but now that she came to think of it, who had they been? Chaucer had been forced on her at school – the respectable parts, of course

– and there had been Tennyson too, and MacDiarmid, although she could not remember which bits. And then Yeats: something about an Irish airman, and towers, and wild swans. But how important had that been to her? She had stopped reading it after she had left school, and had not gone back to it. “Not very important,” she said. “Although . . .”

Angus nodded. “I’m afraid I expected that answer,” he said.

He looked at Domenica.

“I find comfort in it,” she said. “But why bring up Garioch?

And why would he have been so amused by nudists in Moray Place?”

Robert Garioch

195

Angus laughed. “Because he had a fine sense of the contrast between grandeur on the one hand (not that I’m suggesting for a moment that Moray Place is overly grand) and the ordinary man in the street on the other. He’s the heir to Fergusson, you know. Just as Burns was. An awful lot of Burns is pure Fergusson, you know.”

“What a tragedy,” said Domenica. “Do you know how old Robert Fergusson was when he died, Pat? No, of course you don’t. Well, he was just a little bit older than you. Just a few years. Twenty-four.”

“And he died alone in his cell in the Bedlam,” said Angus.

“That bonny youth.”

“That seems to be the lot of so many poets,” said Domenica.

“To die young, that is. Rupert Brooke.” She glanced at Pat. The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke had been the ploy to bring Pat and Peter together – and where had that led? To an invitation to a nudist picnic in Moray Place.

“Don’t talk to me about Brooke,” said Angus dismissively.

“Or at least don’t talk to me about Brooke in the same breath as Fergusson. What a pain that young man was. Have you read his letters to Strachey? Ghastly egotistic diatribes. Full of upper-middle-class swooning and posturing. The Cambridge Apostles!

What a bunch of twerps – and so pleased with themselves. All deeply damaged by the English boarding school system, of course, but still . . .”

Domenica was more tolerant. “They were gilded youth,” she said. “One must allow gilded youth a certain leeway . . . And, anyway, they were all doomed, weren’t they? They knew that once they were sent to France they didn’t stand much of a chance.”

“Fergusson was the real thing,” Angus interrupted. “He had a real feeling for what was going on in the streets and taverns of Edinburgh. And he suffered. Brooke and his like are all too douce. That’s why their poetry is so bland.”

Domenica rose to her feet to refresh the glass which Angus was holding out to her. “I’m not sure where this is going,” she said mildly. “But then I never am with you, Angus. Your thoughts

. . . well, they do seem to drift a bit.”

196 Robert Garioch

“Along a very clear path,” said Angus. “I was speaking about Garioch and how he would have appreciated the contrast between the outward respectability of Moray Place and the desire of at least some of the inhabitants to practise nudism. That’s just the sort of thing that he liked to write about.

“He wrote a wonderful poem, you know, called ‘Glisk of the Great ’. The narrator sees a group of people coming out of the North British Grill, ‘lauchan fit to kill’. Then the party climbs into a ‘muckle big municipal Rolls Royce’ and disappears off towards the Calton Hill. The narrator thinks how grand this is, although the rest of us can’t join in. It gives the town some tone, you see.”

He paused. Pat and Domenica were looking at him expectantly. Cyril, who had raised his head, appeared to be listening too, one ear cocked towards his master. Cyril had no idea what was going on – which is the lot of dogs for most of the time.

But he did know that he had been enjoying a pleasant dream before his master’s voice disturbed him. In this dream he had been biting Matthew’s ankle, something he had wanted to do for a long time. And he was getting away with it too.

“Well,” said Domenica, after a few moments, “be that as it may. Robert Garioch is not here to write about this invitation of Pat’s. We have to decide – or, rather, Pat has to decide –

whether to go. And I would say certainly not.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Angus. “They’ll all be perfectly respectable. These nudists are a very tame lot, you know. They don’t practise nudism for any lascivious reasons. It’s all very pure and aboveboard.”

“That may be so,” said Domenica. “But doesn’t it strike you as a bit strange that this young man should have invited Pat, who is not currently a practising nudist, to join them?”

“They have to recruit somehow,” said Angus. “It’s like people inviting you to come along to a church service or an amateur orchestra. They’re hoping that you’ll join. People are recruiters at heart, you know. It makes them feel more comfortable to see the ranks of their particular enthusiasm swelling.”

Pat listened to this with interest. She had been intrigued by The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part IV – Legal Matters 197

what Angus had to say, but felt at heart that any advice he gave was bound to be wrong. Angus was harmless enough, she thought, but his view of things was such a strange one – almost a poetical turning upside-down of the world. Domenica, by contrast, seemed to understand things as they were, and if she were to listen to anybody, she should listen to her. Of course, there were other people she could ask. There was Matthew, but she sensed that he would be jealous and resentful if she even told him about Peter’s existence, let alone his bizarre invitation.

Then there was her father. He had a profound understanding of the world, but it would embarrass her to talk to him about something like this. Finally, she could make her mind up for herself; she could follow her instincts. But what were her instincts? She thought for a moment. She closed her eyes, trying to imagine the scene in the Moray Place Gardens. Then she opened them again. She wanted to go.

60. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story:

Part IV – Legal Matters

High above the city, in their house in the Braids, Ramsey Dunbarton was embarking on a second reading of excerpts from his memoirs to his wife Betty. They had finished with his account of their courtship and early years in Craiglea Drive before they moved to the Braids. Betty had enjoyed the reading, although she had detected a number of inaccuracies in her husband’s recollection of events. He had confused the place of their first meeting and had got his age at the time quite wrong. He had also mixed up the name of the late Duke of Atholl, whom he had described as Angus, but who had actually been called Iain. These were little things, of course, although the cumulative effect of a number of errors of that nature could make for a narrative which was perhaps less than reliable, but she had refrained from correcting him. Ramsey had many virtues, but he also had a slight tendency to become 198 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part IV – Legal Matters peevish when it was pointed out to him that he was wrong about something. So Betty had remained silent in the face of these mistakes and had confined her reaction to nods of agreement and small exclamations of appreciation. And she reflected on the fact that nobody was ever likely to read Ramsey’s memoirs, even if he found somebody prepared to publish them. That was not because they were intrinsically irrelevant, but because these days people seemed to be interested only in reading about vulgar matters and violence. And there was no vulgarity or violence in Ramsey’s memoirs . . . at least so far. Betty sighed.

“I shall now move on to some legal reminiscences,” said Ramsey, looking down at his wife in her comfortable chair. He preferred to read while standing, as this gave freedom to the diaphragm and allowed the voice to be projected.

“Legal things,” muttered Betty. “That’s nice, dear.”

“I have been a lawyer for my entire working life,” Ramsey began. “And I have never regretted, not for one single moment, my choice of the law. Had I decided differently at that fateful lunch with my prospective father-in-law in Broughty Ferry, I might have ended up in the marmalade business, but I did not.

I stuck to the law.

“Now that should not be taken to mean that I have anything but the highest regard for those in the marmalade business. I know that there are some who think it in some sense undignified to be involved in that sort of trade, but I have never understood that view. In my view, it is neither the bed you are born in, nor the trade you follow, that determines your value. It is what you are as a man. That’s what counts. And I believe that Robert Burns, our national poet, expressed that philosophy perfectly when he wrote A Man’s a Man for A’ That. It does not matter who you are or what you do; the ultimate question is this: have you led a good life, a decent life? And I believe, although I do not wish to be immodest, that I can answer these questions in the affirmative.

“I have, as it happens, had a strong interest in Burns since the age of ten. That was when I started to learn his works off The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part IV – Legal Matters 199

by heart, starting with To a Mouse. I always recommend that poem to parents who want their children to learn to love poetry.

Start with that and then move on to Tam O’Shanter when the child is slightly older and will not get too nervous over all those references to bogles and the like.

“But I digress. I knew from my very first day as a law student that the law was the mistress for me. I remember very clearly my first lecture in Roman Law when the professor told us all about the Corpus Iuris Civilis of Justinian and of how it had been trans-mitted, through the agency of Italian and Dutch scholars, to Scotland. That was romance for you! And it got better and better as we went on to topics such as the Scots law of succession and the principles of the law of delict. Succession was full of human interest, and I still remember the roar of appreciative laughter that rose up in the lecture theatre when Dr George Campbell Paton told us about the case of Mr Aitken of Musselburgh who instructed his executors to erect in his memory a bronze equestrian statue in Musselburgh High Street. And then there was the man in Dundee who left his money to his dog. That was very funny indeed, and it was only through the firmness of the House of Lords that the instruction was held to be contra bonos mores. I shudder to think, incidentally, what would have happened had the courts decided otherwise. It’s not that I have anything against dogs

– anything but – it’s just that all sort of ridiculous misuse of money would have to be sanctioned in the name of testamentary freedom.

I have very strong views on that.

“One never forgets cases like that. And there were many of them, including the famous case of Donoghue v. Stevenson, which was concerned with the unfortunate experience of a Mrs May Donoghue who went into the Wellmeadow Café in Paisley and was served a bottle of ginger beer in which there was a decaying snail. Mrs Donoghue was quite ill as a result, and so we should not laugh at the facts of the case. But it must certainly be very disconcerting indeed to find a snail in one’s ginger beer!

And there were other very good Scots cases, such as the case of Bourhill v. Young, which dealt with the claim of Mrs Euphemia Bourhill, a fishwife, who saw a motorcyclist suffer

200 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part V – Johnny Auchtermuchty an unfortunate accident very close to the bus in which she was travelling. There is a remarkable, but little known fact about that case. The former professor of jurisprudence at the University of Edinburgh, the late Professor Archie Campbell, employed a housekeeper whose nephew was involved in the accident! I happen to know that, but not many others do. And there is a further coincidence. Archie Campbell used to live in one of those streets behind the Braid Hills Hotel, which is not far from the house occupied by me and my wife, Betty. Edinburgh is a bit like that.”

Ramsey Dunbarton paused after these disclosures, and looked at his wife. She had gone to sleep.

61. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story:

Part V – Johnny Auchtermuchty

“I do think it’s a bit rude of you to nod off like that,” said Ramsey Dunbarton. “Here I am going to the trouble of reading you my memoirs and I look up and see you fast asleep. Really, Betty, I expect a bit more of you!”

The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part V – Johnny Auchtermuchty 201

Betty rubbed at her eyes. “I’m terribly sorry, dear. I was only away for a moment or two. I think that you had got to the point where somebody was building a statue of a dog in Dundee.”

“Oh really!” Ramsey said peevishly. “You’ve got it all mixed up. It was Musselburgh that the bronze equestrian statue . . .”

“Of a dog?” interrupted Betty. “Surely not. Surely one couldn’t have an equestrian statue of a dog? Wouldn’t that look a bit odd, even in Musselburgh?”

Ramsey sighed. “My dear, if you had been listening, instead of sleeping, you would have understood that the dog was in Dundee, and there was never any question of erecting a statue to it, equestrian or otherwise. But, look, do you want me to go on reading or do you want me to stop?”

“Oh, you must carry on reading, Ramsey,” said Betty enthusiastically. “Why don’t we do this: you read and then, every so often, take a look in my direction and see if my eyes are closed.

If they are, give me a gentle nudge.”

Ramsey agreed, reluctantly, and took up his manuscript again.

“Well, after all that legal training and whatnot I was duly admitted as a solicitor and found myself as an assistant in the Edinburgh firm of Ptarmigan Monboddo. It was a very good firm, with eight partners, headed by Mr Hamish Ptarmigan. I liked him, and he was always very good to me. If ever I needed advice, I would go straight to him and he would tell me exactly what to do. And he was never wrong.

“ ‘Always remember,’ he said, ‘that although you have a duty to do what your client wishes, you need never do anything that offends your conscience. If a client asks you to do that, you can simply decline to accept his instructions. And if you do this, you will never get into any trouble with either the Law Society of Scotland, or God.’

“And I remembered this advice when a client came to me and said that he wished to transfer all his assets into immoveable property – or land, as laymen call it – and in this way to defeat the right of his son, whom he did not like, to claim his legal rights to a share of the property on his father’s death. I was 202 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part V – Johnny Auchtermuchty appalled by this, because I knew the son, and knew him to be a perfectly decent man. So I said to the client that I did not think that this was the right thing to do, especially as the person who stood to benefit from the arrangement was his mistress, a sleazy woman who drank a lot and had a real roving eye.

“The client became very agitated by this and said: ‘If that’s the way you feel, then I can always go to another firm.’ So I said to him, ‘You do just that! I would remind you that I am a professional man and not some paid lackey you can order to do this, that and the next thing.’

“He took his business away from the firm and I had to report this to Mr Ptarmigan. I shall never forget his reaction. He said:

‘Dunbarton, you have done the right thing, even if this is going to cost the firm a lot of money, for which I must express a slight regret. But well done, nonetheless.’

“Later, I am happy to say, the son, whose interests I had sought to protect, and who had heard of my stand, became very successful and brought his business to us. Mr Ptarmigan noted that fact and pointed out that virtue was not always its own reward, in the sense that it sometimes brought additional benefits of a material nature. We both had a good laugh over that!

“Of course that particular client was an important one, but I never got to know him particularly well. I knew other clients rather better, and one or two of them even became friends.

Johnny Auchtermuchty was one of these.

“Johnny had an estate up near Comrie. His father, Ginger Auchtermuchty, had been a well-known golfer, but had not been particularly good at keeping the estate in good order. In fact, he was rather bad at that, and by the time that Johnny had left the South East Scotland Agricultural College everybody thought that it would probably be too late to do much with the farms that they had in hand. The fencing was in a pretty awful state and a lot of work needed to be done on the steadings. In fact, when Ginger handed over to Johnny and went to live in Gullane, we were very much expecting to have to sell off a large parcel of land just to keep the place from folding up altogether.

The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VI – a Perthshire Weekend 203

“I first met Johnny when he came in to discuss the possibility of raising some money to do essential repairs. I prepared a deed which gave security for the loan and I remember thinking that he would never be able to repay even part of what he had to borrow. How wrong I was! Johnny proved to have a real nose for the managing of shooting and fishing and within a few years the estate was one of the most successful in Perthshire. And Johnny was also one of the most socially successful people of his day. Everybody liked him and invited him to stay with them.

He used to make people laugh and told the most wonderful stories.

“I had heard about his house parties, which were legendary, but I had never received an invitation to one of them. This slightly distressed me, and I began to wonder whether Johnny thought of me as just his lawyer and not worth having anything to do with socially. That would have been very unjust. I enjoyed a party in exactly the same way as the rest of them did and even if I was not a particularly experienced shot I saw no reason why I shouldn’t be invited to join in now and then.

“And then at last the invitation came. Would I care to come up to Mucklemeikle to shoot? Friday to Sunday? I replied that I would be delighted to do this. I did not ask what it was that we were going to shoot. Betty, who did not treat the invitation with the same enthusiasm as I did, suggested that it might be fish in a barrel. That was meant to be a joke, but I must admit that I did not find it very funny at the time. Indeed, I don’t find it funny now. In fact, it has remained as unfunny as it was when she first uttered it – it really has.”

62. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story:

Part VI – a Perthshire Weekend

“Now,” said Ramsey Dunbarton to his wife, Betty, as he read his memoirs to her. “Now things get really interesting.”

“Johnny Auchtermuchty!” mused Betty. “What a card he was, 204 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VI – a Perthshire Weekend Ramsey! And such a good-looking man with that moustache of his.”

“A great man,” agreed Ramsey.

They were both silent for a moment. Then Betty asked: “And they found no trace of him?” she said. “Not even a few scraps?”

“Not a trace,” said Ramsey sadly. “But let’s not slip into melan-choly. I’ll resume with my memoirs, Betty.” He looked at his watch. “This will have to be the last reading for the time being, my dear. People will just have to wait for the rest.”

“And we haven’t even got to the part where you played the Duke of Plaza-Toro at the Church Hill Theatre,” said Betty.

“Time enough for that in the future,” said Ramsey. “Now back to Johnny Auchtermuchty and the invitation up to Comrie.

“I was delighted, of course, to receive this invitation to shoot, even though, quite frankly, I had not done a great deal of shooting before. In fact, if the truth be told, I had hardly ever handled a shotgun, although I had done a bit of clay-pigeon shooting when I was much younger. I don’t hold with shooting really: I’m rather fond of birds and I think that the whole idea of blasting them out of the sky is a bit cruel. But it was not really for me to criticise my clients and certainly Johnny Auchtermuchty would have been very surprised if I had taken a stand on the matter. There are plenty of Edinburgh solicitors who would have jumped at the chance of a day’s shooting with Johnny and some of them would not have been above a bit of subtle persuasion that he should perhaps take his legal business to them rather than to Ptarmigan Monboddo. Now I am not going to mention any names, but I’m sure that if any of them are reading this they will know that I mean them.

“Betty decided that she would not come after all, and so I motored up to Comrie by myself on the Friday afternoon. I had borrowed a friend’s Rolls-Royce for the occasion and I enjoyed the drive very much, taking the road past Stirling and then up across the hills behind Glenartney. Johnny was standing outside the Big Hoose, as we called it, when I arrived and he said to The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VI – a Perthshire Weekend 205

me: ‘Nice Rolls there, Dunbarton! You chaps must be charging us pretty handsomely to afford a car like that!’ I was a bit embarrassed by this and started to explain to him that it really belonged to a solicitor from another firm but he paid no attention. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Blame the other chaps! Old trick that, Dunbarton!’

“We all had dinner that night and had a very good time too.

There were a couple of people from Ayrshire and somebody from Fife. Johnny’s wife was a splendid cook and had prepared a very fine set of dishes for us. I asked her if she could give me the recipes to take home to Betty, but she said no. I thought that this was rather rude of her, but I fear that she had long been nursing a grudge against me, at least since she unfortunately had overheard me, some years before, telling somebody that I thought that Johnny had married beneath him. That was most unfortunate, but I was absolutely right. He had, and I think she knew it. I also noted that I was given the smallest bedroom in the house – one at the end of the corridor and that the sheets on the bed did not quite reach the end. And the water in the flask beside my bed did not taste very nice at all, and so I decided not to drink it.

“In the morning we went out to shoot. Johnny had a keeper who I think was hostile to me from the start, although he was polite to the others. He looked at my shoes and asked me whether I thought they were sufficiently robust for the occasion – I thought that was a cheek and I decided there and then that he could expect no tip from me, and told him as much. He was a Highlander, of course, and these people can be quite resentful when they get some sort of notion.

“We took our places alongside several pegs which the keeper had inserted in the ground. I was right at the end, which I suspected was the worst place to be, as there was a clump of whin bush immediately to my right which kept scratching me. Then they started to drive the birds out of their cover and suddenly people started to point their shotguns up in the air and blast away. I did my best, but unfortunately I did not seem to get any birds going in my direction and so I got nothing. Then quite

206 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VI – a Perthshire Weekend suddenly a bird flew up immediately in front of me and I jerked up my shotgun and pulled the trigger.

“I only heard the keeper shout when it was too late, and by then the bird, which I noticed was quite black, had gone down into the heather. I realised then that I had shot a blackbird and I felt very apologetic about it.

“ ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ I shouted. ‘I seem to have shot a blackbird.’

“The keeper came storming over. ‘That’s no blackbird, sir,’

he hissed. ‘That was a black grouse.’ Then he added: ‘And you gentlemen were very specifically told that you were not to shoot any black game. Perhaps you forgot yourself, sir.’

“In the meantime, Johnny Auchtermuchty had wandered over. He had a word with the keeper and I overheard what he said. He told him to bite his tongue as he wouldn’t have him being rude to any of his guests. Then he said something about how Mr Dunbarton was from Edinburgh and one shouldn’t expect something or other. I didn’t really hear the rest of it.

“I must say that I was very embarrassed about all this, although I very much enjoyed Johnny Auchtermuchty’s company and the Bertie Receives an Invitation

207

rest of the shoot were very decent to me and said nothing about what had happened. I left the next morning after breakfast, although my departure didn’t go all that well. The Rolls would not start for some reason and they had to push me down the drive to start it that way.

“Poor Johnny Auchtermuchty – I miss him very much. He was the life and soul of the party and the most exciting friend I am ever likely to have in this life. I think that it’s an awful pity what happened and I wish they had found at least some bit of him that we could have given a decent send-off to. But they didn’t. Not even his moustache.”

63. Bertie Receives an Invitation

The invitation from Tofu was solemnly handed to Bertie in the grounds of the Steiner School. “Don’t flash it around,” said Tofu, glancing over his shoulder. “I can’t invite everybody. So I’ve just invited you, Merlin and Hiawatha. And don’t show it to Olive.

I really hate her.”

Bertie looked briefly at the invitation before tucking it into the pocket of his dungarees. It was the first invitation that he had ever received – from anybody – and he was understandably excited. Tofu, the card announced, was about to turn seven and would be celebrating this event with a trip to the bowling alley in Fountainbridge. Bertie was invited.

“Can you come?” asked Tofu, as they went back into the classroom.

“Of course,” said Bertie. “And thanks, Tofu.”

Tofu shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t forget to bring a present,” he said.

“Of course I won’t,” said Bertie. “What would you like, Tofu?”

“Money,” said Tofu. “Ten quid, if you can manage it.”

“I’ll do my best,” said Bertie.

“Better had,” Tofu muttered.

Back in the classroom, while Miss Harmony read the class 208 Bertie Receives an Invitation

a story, Bertie fingered the invitation concealed in his pocket.

He felt warm with pleasure: he, Bertie, had been invited to a party, and in his own right too! He was not being taken there by his mother; it was not a party of her choosing; this was something to which he had been invited in friendship! And bowling too – Bertie had never been near a bowling alley, but had seen pictures of people bowling and thought that it looked tremendous fun. It would certainly be more fun than his yoga class in Stockbridge.

Seated beside him, Olive watched Bertie’s fingers go to the shape in his pocket and move delicately over the folded card.

“What’s that you’ve got?” she whispered.

“What?” asked Bertie, guiltily moving his hand away.

“That thing in there?” insisted Olive. “It’s something important, isn’t it?”

“No,” said Bertie quickly. “It’s nothing.”

“Yes it is,” said Olive. “You should tell me, you know. You shouldn’t keep secrets from your girlfriend.”

Bertie turned to look at her in horror. “Girlfriend? Who says you’re my girlfriend?”

“I do, for one,” said Olive, with the air of explaining something obvious to one who has been slow to realise it. “And ask any of the other girls. Ask Pansy. Ask Skye. They’ll tell you. All the girls know it. I’ve told them.”

Bertie opened his mouth to speak, but no words came.

“So,” said Olive. “Tell me. What’s that in your pocket?”

“I’m not your boyfriend,” Bertie muttered. “I like you, but I never asked you to be my girlfriend.”

“It’s an invitation, isn’t it?” Olive whispered. “It’s an invitation to Tofu’s party. I bet that’s what it is.”

Bertie decided that he might as well admit it. It was no business of Olive’s that he was going to Tofu’s party. In fact, it was no business of hers how he spent his time. Why did girls – and mothers – think that they could order boys around all the time?

“So what if it’s an invitation?” Bertie said. “Tofu told me not to talk about it.”

“Ha!” crowed Olive. “I knew that’s what it was. He invited Bertie Receives an Invitation

209

me to his sixth birthday party last year. I refused. So did all the other girls he invited. He tried to get us to pay ten pounds to come. Did you know that? He tried to sell tickets to his own party.”

Bertie said nothing, and Olive continued. “I heard that the party was pretty awful anyway,” she said. “Vegan parties are always very dull. You get sweetened bean sprouts and water.

That’s all. Certainly not worth ten pounds.”

Bertie felt that he had to defend his friend in the face of this onslaught. “We’re going bowling,” he said. “Merlin and Hiawatha are coming too.”

“Merlin and Hiawatha!” exclaimed Olive. “What wimps! I’m glad I’m not going to that party. I suppose Merlin will wear that stupid rainbow-coloured coat of his and Hiawatha will wear those horrid jungle boots he keeps going on about. They’ll make him take those boots off, you know. They won’t allow boots like that in the bowling alley. And then people will smell his socks, which always stink the place out. Pansy says that she was ill –

actually threw up – the first time Hiawatha removed his boots for gym. Boy, is it going to be a stinky party that one!”

It was clear to Bertie that Olive was jealous. It was a pity that Tofu had not invited her, as if he had then she would have been less keen to run the party down. But Bertie was not going to let her destroy his pleasure in the invitation and so he deliberately turned his back on her and concentrated on the story that was being read out.

“You’re in denial,” Olive whispered to him. “You know what happens to people in denial?”

Bertie turned round. “What?” he said. “What happens to people in denial?”

Olive looked at him in a superior way. She had clearly worried him and she was enjoying the power that this gave her. “They get lockjaw,” she said. “It’s well-known. They get lockjaw and they can’t open their mouth. The doctors have to knock their teeth out with a hammer to pour some soup in. That’s what happens.”

Bertie looked at Olive contemptuously. “You’re the one who 210 Bertie’s Invitation Is Considered should get lockjaw,” he whispered. “That would stop you saying all these horrid things.”

Olive stared at him. Her nostrils were flared and her eyes were wide with fury. Then she started to cry.

Miss Harmony looked up from the story. “What is the trouble, Olive?” she said. “What’s wrong, dear?”

“It’s this boy,” Olive sobbed, pointing at Bertie. “He says that he hopes that I get lockjaw.”

“Bertie?” said Miss Harmony. “Did you say that you hope that Olive got lockjaw?”

Bertie looked down at the floor. It was all so unfair. He had not started the conversation about lockjaw – it was all Olive’s fault, and now he was getting the blame.

“I take it from your silence that it’s true,” said Miss Harmony, rising to her feet. “Now, Bertie, I’m very, very disappointed in you. It’s a terrible thing to say to somebody that you hope they get lockjaw. You know that, don’t you?”

“What if you got lockjaw while you were kissing somebody?”

interjected Tofu. “Would you get stuck to their lips?”

Everybody laughed at this, and Tofu smirked with pleasure.

“That’s not at all funny, Tofu, Liebling,” said Miss Harmony.

“Then why did everybody laugh?” asked Tofu.

64. Bertie’s Invitation Is Considered Irene Pollock was late in collecting Bertie from school that afternoon. She had been preparing for her Melanie Klein Reading Group, which would be meeting that evening, and she had become absorbed in a particularly fascinating account of the Kleinian attitude to the survival of the primitive. Irene was clear where she stood on this point: there was no doubt in her mind but that our primitive impulses remain with us throughout our life and that their influence cannot be overestimated. This view of human nature, as being envious and tormented, was in Irene’s view obviously borne out by the inner psychic drama which we Bertie’s Invitation Is Considered

211

all experience if only we stop to think about it. Irene thought that it was quite clear that we are all confronted by primitive urges – even in Edinburgh – and these primitive urges and fears make for a turbulent inner life, marked by all sorts of destructive phantasies).

The topic for discussion at the reading group that evening was a problematic choice, suggested by one of the more reticent members of the group. Indeed, this member was probably a borderline-Kleinian, given her sympathy for the approach of Anna Freud, and Irene wondered whether this person might not be happier out of the reading group altogether. Her ambiva-lence, she felt, was eloquently demonstrated by the topic she had suggested for discussion: Was Melanie Klein a nice person?

When Irene had first seen this topic she had expressed immediate doubt. What a naive question! Did she expect a genius of Melanie Klein’s stamp to be a simpering optimist? Did she expect benignity rather than creative turbulence?

Of course she knew what sort of things would be said. She knew that somebody was bound to point to the facts of Melanie Klein’s life, which were hardly edifying (to the bourgeois optimist). Somebody would point out that Melanie Klein started out life in a dysfunctional family and that from this inauspicious start everything went in a fairly negative direction. Indeed, she suffered that most serious of setbacks for those who took their inspira-tion from Vienna: her own analyst died. And then, when it came time for Melanie herself to die, her daughter, Melitta, unreconciled to her mother because of differences of psychoanalytical interpretation between them, gave a lecture on the day of her mother’s funeral and chose to wear a flamboyant pair of red boots for the occasion!

All of this would come out, of course, but Irene thought this was not the point. The real point was this: Melanie Klein was not a nice person because nobody’s nice. That was the very essence of the Kleinian view. Whatever exterior was presented to the world, underneath that we are all profoundly unpleasant, precisely because we are tormented by Kleinian urges.

It was these complex thoughts that were in the forefront of 212 Bertie’s Invitation Is Considered Irene’s mind when she collected Bertie that afternoon and brought him back to Scotland Street. Bertie seemed silent on the 23 bus as they made their way home, and this silence continued as they walked back along Cumberland Street and round the corner into Drummond Place. Irene, however, still busy thinking about Kleinian matters, did not notice this and only became aware of the fact that something was on Bertie’s mind when he came to her in her study and presented her with the crumpled piece of card that he had extracted from the pocket of his dungarees.

“What’s this, Bertie?” said Irene, as she took the invitation from him.

“I’ve been invited to a party,” Bertie said. “My friend, Tofu, has asked me.”

Irene looked at the invitation. There was an expression of faint distaste on her face.

“Tofu?”

“Yes,” said Bertie. “He’s a boy in my class. You spoke to his daddy once. He’s the one who wrote that strange book. Do you remember him?”

“Vaguely,” said Irene. “But what’s this about Fountainbridge and bowling? What’s that got to do with a birthday party?”

“Tofu’s daddy will take us bowling,” said Bertie, a note of anxiety creeping into his voice. “It’ll be Merlin, Hiawatha, Tofu and me. He’s taking us bowling to celebrate Tofu’s birthday.”

He paused, and then added: “It’s a treat, you see. Bowling’s fun.”

“It may be considered fun by some,” said Irene sharply. “But I’m not sure whether hanging about bowling places is the sort of thing that six-year-old boys should be doing. We have no idea what sort of people will be there. Not very salubrious people, if you ask me. And people will be smoking, no doubt, and drinking too.”

Bertie’s voice was small. “I won’t be drinking and smoking, Mummy. I promise. Nor will the other boys.”

Irene thought for a moment. Then she shook her head. “Sorry, Bertie, but no. It’s for Saturday, I see, and that means that you Stuart Intervenes

213

would miss both Saturday yoga and your saxophone lesson with Lewis Morrison. You know that Mr Morrison is very impressed with your progress. You mustn’t miss your lessons.”

“But Mr Morrison’s a kind man,” said Bertie. “He won’t mind if I have my lesson some other time.”

“That’s not the point,” said Irene. “It’s a question of commitment – and priorities. If you start going off to these things every Saturday then you’ll end up missing far too much of the enriching things we’ve arranged for you. Surely you understand that, Bertie? Mummy’s not being unkind here. She’s thinking of you.”

Bertie swallowed. Unknown to his mother, he was experiencing a Kleinian moment. He was imagining a bowling alley

– probably the Fountainbridge one – with a set of skittles at the far end. And every skittle was painted to represent his mother!

And Bertie, a large bowling ball in his small hand, was taking a run and letting go of the ball, and the ball rolled forward and was heading straight for the set of Irenes at the end of the alley and – BANG! – the ball knocked all the skittles over, every one of them, right out, into the Kleinian darkness.

65. Stuart Intervenes

When Stuart returned that evening from his office in the Scottish Executive (which Irene, provocatively, referred to as

“the wee government”), he found Bertie in his bedroom, sitting at the end of his bed, greeting copiously. Dropping his brief-case, he rushed forward to his son and put an arm around the boy’s shoulder.

An inquiry soon revealed the reason for Bertie’s state of distress.

“I’ve been invited to a party,” Bertie sobbed. “It’s my friend Tofu’s party.”

Stuart was puzzled. “But why cry over that?” he asked. “Surely that’s a nice thing – to be invited to a party?”

214 Stuart Intervenes

“Mummy says I can’t go,” said Bertie. “She says that there’ll be smoking and drinking.”

Stuart’s eyes widened. “At Tofu’s party? What age is this Tofu?

Twenty-four?”

Bertie shook his head. “He’s six at the moment,” he said. “But he’ll be seven soon.”

“Then surely there won’t be any drinking and smoking,” he said. “Do you think that Mummy has got things mixed up?”

Bertie thought for a moment. His mother certainly did have everything mixed up, in his view, but not necessarily in relation to the party. It was more a case of her Weltanschauung being mixed up (in Bertie’s view).

“It’s going to be a bowling party, Daddy,” Bertie explained, his voice still thick with tears. “At a place called Fountainbridge.

She says that there will be people there who will be drinking and smoking.”

Stuart hugged his son. “And you want to go to it, Bertie?”

Bertie nodded miserably. “Olive says that it won’t be any fun, but that’s just because she hasn’t been invited. She wants to spoil it for me.”

Stuart reflected on this. He did not know Olive, but he thought the type sounded familiar. Some girls took pleasure in spoiling it for boys. He could remember that. And it continued . . .

“I’ll speak to Mummy,” he said. “We’ll fix it up for you. I’m sure that Mummy’s just trying to be helpful, Bertie. Mummy loves you, you know, Bertie.” And he thought: she loves you too much, but he did not say that.

He gave Bertie a final pat on the shoulder, rose to his feet and went through to the kitchen, where Irene was chopping vegetables.

“Bertie’s in a state,” he said. “I’ve just been talking to him through there. Poor wee boy. He was crying his eyes out.”

Irene looked up from her vegetables. “I had to put my foot down, I’m afraid,” she said. “I tried explaining things to him, but he wouldn’t listen. He’ll get over it.”

“I don’t think so,” said Stuart quietly.

Stuart Intervenes

215

“You don’t think what?” asked Irene.

“I don’t think he’ll get over this sort of thing all that easily,”

he said. “He had his heart set on going to that party, you know.”

Irene put down her knife and looked Stuart in the eye. “You know what this so-called party consists of ? Let me tell you. It’s not a sit down round the table and have cake party. Oh no. It’s a bowling alley, for God’s sake! Some tawdry, smoke-filled den down in Gorgie or wherever! That’s what it is.”

“It’s a perfectly clean and respectable bowling place,” said Stuart. “I know it. I went to the opening of the whole complex, as it happens. The Minister was invited and a number of us went along.”

“These places start off like that and then go downhill,” said Irene quickly. “But that’s not really the point. The point is that he would miss yoga and a saxophone lesson. He already missed yoga when you took him off on that jaunt to Glasgow.”

Stuart struggled to control his anger. “That jaunt, as you call it, was the highlight of his little life. He loved it! He loved the train. He loved Glasgow. He loved the Burrell.”

“And those dubious characters you bumped into?” asked Irene. “Oh yes, I heard all about that, you know. Bertie told me about Fatty O’Something, or whatever he was called.”

“Lard O’Connor,” Stuart said. “What about him? He was very helpful. Just because he’s not middle-class . . .”

Irene, eyes bright with anger, interrupted him. “Middle-class!” she screamed. “Who are you calling middle-class? Me?

Is that it? Middle-class? Me?”

“Calm down,” said Stuart. “Nobody would call you middle-class to your face.”

He had not meant to add the words “to your face”, but they somehow came out.

“Oh,” shouted Irene. “So that’s it. So you think I’m middle-class, do you? Well, that’s very nice, isn’t it? I spend all my time, all my energy, on raising Bertie to be an integrated citizen, to make sure that he understands all about inclusiveness, and has the right attitudes, and then you come along and describe the whole enterprise as middle-class. Thanks for your support, Stuart!”

216 Stuart Intervenes

Stuart sighed. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “Let’s not have a blazing row over this. The whole point is this: you have to give Bertie a bit more space, a bit more room to be himself, to be a little boy. And one way of doing that is to allow him to have his own social life. So let’s allow him to go to this party. Let’s allow him to go bowling. He’ll have a whale of a time.”

“No,” said Irene. “We must be consistent parents. We can’t say one thing one moment and another thing the next. Melanie Klein . . .”

She did not finish. “He’s going,” said Stuart. “That’s it. He’s going. And I’m going to go and tell him that.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” said Irene, turning back to her vegetables.

She reached for a carrot and chopped it with her knife. Stuart could not help but think how symbolic this was. But the time had come to act, and he did. He remembered that conversation he had had with Bertie on the train, that moment when they had been so close and where he had vowed to be a better father.

He would be that father, and he would be that father now. Not at some time in the future. Now.

He moved to the kitchen door. Irene reached for another Tofu’s Party

217

carrot and chopped it smartly with her knife.

“Bertie,” shouted Stuart through the open door. “You can stop crying now. You’re going bowling, my boy. The party’s on!”

66. Tofu’s Party

Stuart dropped Bertie off at the bowling alley, delivering him into the care and control of Tofu’s father, Barnabas Miller.

“Well, well!” said Barnabas. “This is going to be fun, isn’t it, Bertie? Have you ever bowled before? I’m sure you’ll be good at it.”

“I hope so,” said Bertie. “Thank you for inviting me, Mr Miller.”

“Tofu’s suggestion,” said Barnabas. “And my goodness, we’re going to have fun, aren’t we, Tofu?”

“Yes, Daddy,” said Tofu.

“And I’ve brought some nice things for you to eat,” said Barnabas, patting a bag slung over his shoulder.

A few minutes later, Hiawatha and Merlin arrived and then the four boys, together with Barnabas, made their way through the large glass-fronted building towards the bowling alley.

“Have you brought my presents?” Tofu asked his guests as they walked along.

Bertie’s hand shot to his mouth. “Oh, Tofu, I’m very sorry. I meant to, but I forgot. I’ll try and give it to you at school next week.”

“Me too,” said Hiawatha.

“And me as well,” said Merlin. “And I’ll only be able to give you three pounds, Tofu. I haven’t got any more than that.”

“You’d better not forget,” said Tofu crossly. “Or else . . .”

He left the threat unfinished. They were now at the bowling alley and Barnabas led them to the lane which had been booked for them.

“I’ll show you boys how it’s done,” he said, picking up one of the heavy balls. “You take a few paces to build up some impetus and then you let go.”

218 Tofu’s Party

The ball careered down the lane and collided with the skittles with a very creditable crash. The boys danced in their excitement. For Bertie, in particular, this was the most thrilling of moments. To send a ball off down a wooden lane like that to knock things over was the most splendid fulfilment of everything that a boy would wish to do. Noise. Action. Excitement.

Destruction. As Melanie Klein would have pointed out . . .

After a half hour or so of bowling, they took a short break.

The boys sat down and Tofu’s father opened the bag that he had brought with him.

“Carrots,” he said. “And delicious bean sprouts! Here we are.”

The boys reluctantly took the proffered snacks and nibbled on them disconsolately.

“Have you got any money on you?” Tofu whispered to Bertie.

“Two pounds,” said Bertie. “I keep it in my pocket for emergencies.”

“This is an emergency,” said Tofu. “Look over there. See that? That’s where they sell hot-dogs. Can you smell them?”

“Yes,” said Bertie, sniffing the air.

“Well,” said Tofu, “if you buy me a hot-dog, I’ll give you something in return.”

“Such as?” asked Bertie.

Tofu looked at his friend. “You see those pink dungarees of yours . . .”

“Crushed strawberry,” corrected Bertie.

“Whatever,” said Tofu. “I know you don’t like them. I’ll swap you my jeans for your stupid dungarees if you buy me a hot-dog. I’ve got plenty of other jeans at home.”

“Would you?” asked Bertie.

“Yes,” said Tofu. He glanced at his father and lowered his voice still further. “Here’s the plan. We say that we need to go to the bathroom. You go and get the hot-dog. Then you bring it to me in the bathroom and I give you my jeans in exchange for your stupid dungarees. How about that?”

Bertie thought for a moment. It seemed to him to be an unfair bargain – weighted in his favour – but it was irresistible. He had always wanted a pair of jeans and now here was an opportunity Tofu’s Party

219

to acquire such a garment, at virtually no cost, and all within the next few minutes. It seemed to him to be a stroke of quite extraordinary good fortune.

“All right,” he said.

“Good,” said Tofu. “Now have you got everything straight?

Good. Then let’s synchronise our watches.” He looked down at his wristwatch. “The big hand’s on . . .”

Bertie interrupted him. “I haven’t got a watch,” he said. It was a further humiliation, but he was accustomed to humilia-tions and generally took them in his stride.

“Oh,” said Tofu. “Well, let’s set off anyway.”

Tofu informed his father that they needed to go to the bathroom, and off the two of them went. After a few paces, Bertie deviated, and ran across to the counter where hot-dogs were being sold. Ordering a large one, he paid for it and squeezed a lavish helping of tomato sauce onto the top of the frankfurter.

Then, his precious warm cargo wrapped up, he ran off to make contact with Tofu.

They completed the transaction beside a washbasin. Tofu quickly removed his jeans and slipped into the crushed-strawberry dungarees vacated by Bertie. And Bertie, his breath coming in short bursts from the sheer excitement of it, donned the jeans handed to him by Tofu. Both garments were a perfect fit on their new owners. Then, the exchange completed, Tofu wolfed down the hot-dog, licking every last drop of tomato sauce off his fingers.

Then he belched with satisfaction.

“Thanks, Bertie,” he said. “That was really good. Now let’s get back to my dad.”

“Won’t he notice that I’m wearing your jeans?” asked Bertie.

“Never,” said Tofu. “He doesn’t care what I wear. He never notices. He’s too busy thinking about nuts and carrots.”

They rejoined the bowling group and enjoyed a further half hour of intensive bowling. Bertie did not do badly for one who had never bowled before, coming second to Tofu. Merlin came last, but said that this was because he had a sore wrist and he would probably have come first had he been uninjured. Hiawatha said nothing about the result.

220 Bruce’s Enterprise

Bertie was fetched and taken home by Irene, who remained tight-lipped about the outing and did not ask her son how it had gone. Bertie, realising that his presence at the party was a defeat for her and a victory for his father, tactfully made no mention of how much fun he had had, and talked instead of a saxophone piece he was preparing for his next music examination. Then, when they were driving back down Lothian Road, Irene suddenly said to Bertie: “This is very strange. I thought we had five gears on our car. This gear-lever seems to have only four.”

Bertie felt a cold knot of fear within him. “Does it matter?”

he asked. “Isn’t four enough? Isn’t it a bit selfish to want five?”

67. Bruce’s Enterprise

Bruce took occupation of his newly-rented shop at nine o’clock on a Monday morning. His excitement over the move made him wake up at six, considerably earlier than he had been accustomed to waking up since the beginning of his enforced idleness.

He arose from his bed, opened the shutters, and looked out at the day. The sun was almost up, but not quite; autumn was round the corner and the days were starting to shorten. It was a good time of year to start a business, especially a wine dealership. He could expect a high volume of sales in November and December, as people stocked up for the frantic round of entertaining that marked the end of the year. Those were the months when people felt that they had to see their friends or somehow risk losing them. Nobody saw anybody in January and February, although Bruce thought by that time he would have built up a group of discerning customers who would appreciate his know-how and return for their normal requirements. So that would carry him through the dark months of the new year and then it would be spring, and time for large orders of New Zealand sparkling and light California whites!

He went through to the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. Is this the face of a surveyor, he asked himself, or is Bruce’s Enterprise

221

it the face of a wine merchant? Wine merchants were urbane, elegant, poised; all of which . . . well, false modesty aside, Bruce recognised all of those qualities in himself. He would fit the part admirably.

He showered, glanced in the full-length mirror, lingering a little perhaps, and then applied copious quantities of after-shower body-cooler skin-reviver, and, of course, a slick of clove gel to his hair. Ready, he thought. No: I must remember the clothes. So he got dressed.

He left Scotland Street at ten to nine and set off jauntily in the direction of St Stephen Street, in a basement of which his new business premises awaited him. Scotland Street was coming to life. There was the man who ran the historic motorcycle garage in the lane; Bruce nodded to him and received a wave in return; there was Mr Stephen Horrobin looking out of his window; there was Iseabail Macleod setting off to her work on the Scottish dictionary; such an interesting street, thought Bruce, and now a wine merchant to add to the mix!

He walked down Cumberland Street and crossed St Vincent Street. His shop was at the Stockbridge end of St Stephen Street, near the Bailie Bar, tucked under an antique dealer’s and a shop that sold paste jewellery. It was not quite as large as he would have liked it to be, but it was big enough, and there was always the possibility of opening up an old under-street cellar that might do for the storage of wine. The rent, though, was bearable, and flush with the agreed injection of funds from his friend George, Bruce was confident that he would have no difficulty in acquiring an impressive stock list. And he was confident that in time the shop would become a place of pilgrimage for the discerning Edinburgh wine-buyer. After all, he asked himself: is there much competition? There were certainly a few fuddy-duddy people here and there, but they were so middle-aged, and nowadays people want youth, vigour and good looks. All of which I have, thought Bruce; that, together with a knowledge of wine and a good palate.

The agent from the letting solicitors was waiting for him at the door. He was a serious-looking young man with horn-rimmed 222 Bruce’s Enterprise

glasses and a slightly-worried expression. “Oh no,” Bruce said to himself. “Yawn, yawn.” They shook hands, the young man wrinkling his nose slightly at the cloves.

“Essence of cloves,” said Bruce. “Like it?”

They moved inside.

“You should find everything in order,” said the agent. “We had a slight leak in the sink in the back room, but the plumber came in and fixed that. Everything seems in good order. Lights.

Look.” He moved to the switch and turned it on.

“Lumière!” said Bruce.

The agent stared at him. “And I gather that you don’t need to do much to the fittings.”

Bruce looked at the shelves. They were exactly the right size for the display of wine bottles.

“Perfect for bottles,” said Bruce, taking the keys from the young man. “And will I have the pleasure of selling you wine in the near future? I’ll have an excellent range.”

“Thank you,” said the young man. “But I don’t drink.”

“You could start,” said Bruce cheerfully. “Cut your teeth on something fairly light – a German white maybe. The sort of thing women go for.”

The young man pursed his lips. “No, thank you,” he said.

“You sure?” asked Bruce. “It’ll loosen you up a bit. You know what I mean?”

“Have you everything you need?” asked the young man. “If you do, I’ll be getting back to the office.”

He left, and Bruce shook his head. What a wimp! But even with such unpromising material he thought that he had made a fairly good impression with his sales pitch and he looked forward to being able to try his salesman skills on other customers.

He looked about the shop. All he had to do now was to give the place a bit of a dusting, order the stock, and arrange for the various bits and pieces to be installed. Then he would be in business! He looked at his watch. He could work until just before noon, when he was due to meet the wholesaler whom he had contacted. They were to meet in the Bailie, and they could go over the list there. The wholesaler, who was somebody Bruce

A Petrus Opportunity

223

had met once or twice at the rugby club, had promised to give him substantial discounts.

“I cut my margins to the bone when I deal with chaps from the club,” he had said. “You’ll get the stuff virtually at cost.”

Then he had lowered his voice.

“And I’ve got some cases of Petrus, would you believe? Don’t spread it around, whatever you do, because everyone will want some and I can’t satisfy everybody. But I can get you a few cases at an unbelievably good price. Honestly, you’ll pass out when you hear the discount.”

Bruce had immediately gone to find out what Petrus was.

Then he had looked at the price. For a moment he thought he had misread the figures. But then he realised he had not: those noughts were meant to be there.

68. A Petrus Opportunity

Shortly before twelve, Bruce shut up the shop and made his way to the Bailie Bar at the end of the road. He was pleased with what 224 A Petrus Opportunity

he had achieved in the two hours or so that he had been working.

He had dusted down all the shelves, swept the floor, and washed the front display window. That afternoon he would take delivery of furniture, including supplies of stationery and a filing cabinet.

Then all he would need before he started selling would be the stock, which he was now about to arrange with Harry, his acquaintance from the rugby club and wholesaler of fine wines.

“Walked past your place,” said Harry as he came and joined Bruce at the circular bar. “Nice position. You’re going to clean up there, Bruce. No doubt about it.”

“You think so?” asked Bruce. He was pleased to receive this verdict from somebody in the trade. Of course he never really doubted it, but it was good to have it confirmed.

“Yes, but you’ve got to have the right stock,” said Harry. “You know what they say about retail? Position, position, position.

Yes, that’s right, but you could also say: stock, stock, stock.”

Bruce listened carefully. “Could you?” he asked.

Harry reached out and punched him playfully on the arm.

“That’s where I come in, Bruce, my friend! I’ll fix you up with deals that you just won’t believe. I’m telling you.” He paused.

“But let me buy you a drink? What will you have?”

Bruce smiled. “A glass of Chateau Petrus 1982,” said Bruce.

“Ha, ha,” said Harry. “Very funny. But you obviously know what you’re talking about. That 1982 vintage was amazing.

Really amazing.”

They were served their drinks and went to sit down at one of the tables. Harry had with him an attaché case, out of which he took a red folder. “Here’s the list,” he said. “It’s arranged geographically. Shall we start with France?”

“I’m more of a New World man,” said Bruce. “California.

Oz. New Zealand.”

“Very discerning of you,” said Harry. “And I couldn’t agree more.

But you mustn’t forget the Old World, you know. People still like French wine, and you’ll have to sell it. That’s where I come in. I can get you the stuff that sells. I know what people want.”

Bruce liked Harry. He liked his directness and his confidence.

He was the sort of man who let you know exactly where you A Petrus Opportunity

225

stood. There would be no shadow-boxing with him over price

– Harry would come right out with it, man to man, and you would know that the price he was asking was a fair one.

Harry began to page through his list. “France,” he said. “Main choices: Bordeaux and Burgundy. I can do both for you at very good prices – including, since you mention it, Chateau Petrus.

I did tell you about a Petrus opportunity, didn’t I?”

Bruce nodded. “I must confess I’ve never had a bottle of that,”

he said.

“Bottle!” said Harry. “Most people would count themselves lucky to get a glass! But . . .” He lowered his voice, although the bar was quite empty. “But I have my sources, and I can get you three cases, yes, three cases of the 1990! It’ll drink well in a few years, but it will keep for at least thirty. Not that it’ll be keeping on your shelves, Bruce! You put that stuff on your shelf, word gets round, and in no time at all you’ll have half of Scotland beating a path to your door.”

“What makes it so great?” asked Bruce.

“Oh, please Louise! – as our non-rugby-playing friends would say. That stuff is perfection. Balanced just right. Subtle aromas.

Deep purple. Bags of complexity. Everything, all in one bottle.

You taste it, Bruce, and you’ll think that you’ve died and gone to heaven. It’s the stuff the Pope drinks. Fantastic!”

“So that’s why it’s expensive?”

Harry nodded. “Look at the wine auction records. That wine goes through the roof. Two thousand pounds a bottle – easy! –

if it’s the right vintage. The 1990 goes for eight hundred a bottle.

That’s not per case, Bruce, that’s per bottle. So nine thousand quid a case, for starters. Unless . . .”

Bruce, who had been looking at the floor, now looked up.

“Unless . . .”

Harry lowered his voice again. “Unless you have contacts.

And I do. I have friends out there in Pomerol. Old friends. They see me right.”

“You’re very lucky,” said Bruce. “Contacts are important.”

“Well, you have contacts yourself, Bruce,” said Harry. “You’ve got me. I’m a contact of yours. I’ve got contacts of my own. My 226 The Best Laid Plans o’ Mice and Men contacts are your contacts. And that’s how I can get you your three cases of Petrus. Simple.”

Bruce looked doubtful. “I’m just starting,” he said. “I’m not sure if I’ve got the money.”

“Money’s not a problem,” said Harry quickly. “I’m going to sell you this at a price you won’t believe. It’ll be my gesture of support for your new business.”

Bruce caught a glimpse of himself in a brewer’s mirror on the other side of the room. The sight encouraged him.

“How much?” he asked.

“All right,” said Harry. “Three cases of the 1990 at eight hundred quid a case. Three times eight hundred makes two thousand. No, it doesn’t, ha, ha! Deliberate error! Two thousand four hundred. But . . . but there’s an additional discount of four hundred since you’re starting up. And then you take off the three hundred that I always take off when it’s somebody from the rugby club on the other side. That makes seventeen hundred! Can you believe that? Seventeen hundred for three cases of 1900 Petrus!”

Bruce thought about it for a moment. He had hoped to keep his initial stock purchases as cheap as possible and then to branch out into more expensive wines later on, but this seemed to be too good an offer to turn down.

“When can I get them?” he asked.

“They’re in the car,” said Bruce. “Round the corner in Royal Circus.”

Bruce hesitated. Harry looked at him.

“You’re never going to get an offer like this again, Bruce,”

said Harry gravely. “You know that, don’t you?”

“You’re on,” said Bruce.

69. The Best Laid Plans o’ Mice and Men Pleased beyond measure by the purchase of three cases of Chateau Petrus 1990 Pomerol at a price which could only be The Best Laid Plans o’ Mice and Men 227

considered a steal, Bruce returned to the flat in Scotland Street that evening in high spirits. He saw that Pat’s door was closed and knocked on it to offer to make her a cup of coffee. She was a strange girl, in his view, but she had proved to be a reasonably congenial flatmate and a reliable tenant.

She opened the door in her stockinged feet.

“I’ll make you coffee if you like,” said Bruce generously.

“Unless you’ve got any better plans.”

Pat accepted his invitation and followed him into the kitchen.

She asked him if he had started his new business.

“Today,” said Bruce. “I collected the keys of the shop. And I bought some wine.” He paused. The thought had suddenly occurred to him that he might need some help from time to time. Pat might well be interested. He would not have to pay her too much and she was at least a known quantity. “You wouldn’t by any chance like a part-time job, Patty-girl?”

Pat was taken by surprise. She could imagine nothing worse than working for Bruce. “That’s kind of you,” she said. “But I think that I’m all right where I am. Matthew needs me.”

Bruce’s face took on a sneering expression. “He can’t cope, can he? What a disaster area that guy is. If it weren’t for his old man he’d go to the wall. Believe me.”

Pat remained calm. “Actually, he made a profit in the first part of the year. Eleven thousand pounds.”

Bruce raised an eyebrow. “Eleven grand? How did he do that?”

“Buying and selling,” said Pat. “That’s what galleries do, you know.”

Bruce shrugged. “Running a gallery must be child’s play – if Matthew can make a profit. Mind you, eleven grand is not all that much these days.”

“You’ll make much more?” asked Pat.

“Sure,” said Bruce, spooning coffee into the cafetière.

“Much more.” He turned to Pat. “You want to hear what I bought today? Well, I’ll tell you. Three cases of Chateau Petrus at just over fifty quid a bottle. Can you believe that?”

“Fifty?” exclaimed Pat.

“Yes,” said Bruce, smirking. “Remember that this is not the 228 The Best Laid Plans o’ Mice and Men sort of stuff you take to parties. This is wine for the serious connoisseur. This will go down well in Charlotte Square and Moray Place.”

The mention of Moray Place reminded Pat of her invitation.

Should she tell Bruce about it? Would he merely laugh at her, or would he be able to give her advice?

“Moray Place?” said Pat.

“Yes,” said Bruce. “That’s what I said. Moray Place. It’s a posh part of the New Town. Posh people live there. Toffs, you know.

They like Chateau Petrus in Moray Place.”

Pat decided to tell him about the invitation. “I’ve been invited to a nudist picnic in Moray Place Gardens,” she said. “I’m not sure whether I should go.”

Bruce stared at her in astonishment. “A nudist picnic in Moray Place Gardens? Oh, Patsy girl, that’s really rich! Classic!”

Pat looked down at the floor. She might have known that he would not take it seriously. Now he started to let out strange whoops and began to take his shirt off, as if engaged in a strip-tease. “Moray Place!” he crooned. “Nickety, nackety, naked!

Moray Place!” Dropping his shirt, he began to gyrate around the room, pausing to admire the reflection of his bare chest in the glass screen of the microwave.

Pat looked at him in disgust. “You’re ridiculous,” she said.

“You’re . . . very immature, you know.”

“Moi? Immature?” crooned Bruce. “Who’s the nudist, Patsy-Patsy? Who’s the little blushing nudist? Hoop, hooop!”

Pat left the kitchen and stormed back into her room, slamming the door behind her. Bruce completed a few more steps of his dance and then completed his coffee preparations.

Cradling his cup in his left hand, he sat down by the telephone and dialled his friend George.

“I’ve got the shop,” he said. “And it’s great. You must come and see it.”

At the other end of the line, George sounded cautious. “And the rent?” Bruce told him the figure.

“That sounds a bit steep,” said George. “For that size of place.”

“Steep, George?” exclaimed Bruce. “Do you know what The Best Laid Plans o’ Mice and Men 229

Edinburgh commercial rents are like? Because I do, and I’m telling you that’s nothing – nothing, compared with what some people have to pay. We’re quids-in with that rent, I’m telling you.”

George listened.

“And here’s another thing, George,” Bruce went on. “I’ve already got a very good deal on some stock. Have you heard of Chateau Petrus?”

“As it happens, I have,” said George. “It’s a very good French wine, isn’t it? It sells for fancy prices.”

“It certainly does,” Bruce replied. “You can pay several thousand pounds for a bottle, if the vintage is right.”

“And you’ve found some?” asked George.

Bruce laughed. “It was more a case of the Chateau Petrus finding me. Three cases at an amazingly low price.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line. Then George spoke again. “There’s usually a reason for low prices. You get what you paid for.”

Bruce stiffened. George was an accountant, he thought, and they could be such pedants. “What do you mean by that, George?”

George sounded unusually assertive. “I meant just what I said, Bruce. I meant that if you get something at a knock-down price it’s either stolen or it’s not what it claims to be.”

“I know that this stuff’s not hot,” said Bruce quickly. “The person I bought it from is in the rugby club. He doesn’t go in for dealing in stolen property. And how could it not be what it claims to be? I’ve looked at it. The labels say Chateau Petrus –

complete with a picture of the man himself, Saint Peter.”

George let him finish. Then he said: “Have you heard of wine frauds, Bruce?”

For a moment, Bruce said nothing. He swallowed. Then, when he spoke again, his voice was quieter. “Wine frauds? Forgery?”

“Yes,” said George. “Everybody knows about those fake watches and designer jeans. But not everybody knows that there are gallons of fake wine out there. There’s been a big problem with it in the Far East. I’ve read all about it. There are gangs that make replica bottles and labels and slap them on bottles of 230 Cyril Howls

French plonk. Then they sell it to the victim. The patsy, they call him.”

Bruce looked at his reflection in the microwave again. Do I look like a patsy? he asked himself. And then it occurred to him that he had just called Pat “patsy”. And he was the real patsy all along.

70. Cyril Howls

Matthew was the first to arrive at Big Lou’s that morning. Big Lou, standing at her coffee bar, wiping the surface with a cloth, nodded a greeting to him.

“You know, Big Lou,” said Matthew, “you’re a bit like Sisyphus with that cloth of yours. Wiping, wiping, wiping.” He paused, and smiled at her. “Do you know who Sisyphus was?”

Big Lou bristled. “As it happens, I ken fine well who he was.

He had to push a rock up a hill until it rolled down again and then he pushed it up. And so on.” She gave the counter a furious wipe. “Do you know who Albert Camus was?”

Matthew shook his head. “Some Frenchman, I suppose.”

“Well, before you start condescending to me, Matthew, my friend, you might go and look him up. He wrote a book called The Myth of Sisyphus. Have you read it?”

Matthew held up his hands in surrender. “Nope. Never read it. But you have, Lou? You must have.”

“Aye,” said Big Lou. “I’ve read it. And it’s all about finding meaning in life and getting through this world without committing suicide. Camus says that we can find meaning in a limited context and that is enough. He says we shall never be able to answer the really big questions.”

“I never thought we could,” said Matthew, taking his accustomed seat. “I’ve never even been able to find out what the really big questions are.”

Big Lou tossed her cloth aside and began to prepare Matthew’s cup of coffee. As she did so, the door opened and Cyril Howls

231

Angus Lordie walked in, accompanied by his dog, Cyril.

“Lou, my love, make one for me too,” said Angus. “Very strong. I have to paint a tricky sitter today, and I need my strength.”

“And what’s wrong with him?” asked Lou.

“Actually, it’s a woman,” said Angus. “And that’s the problem.

She’s got three chins too many and I don’t know what to do about them.”

“Leave them out,” said Lou. “No woman would object to that.”

“I could do that,” said Angus. “But then will it look like her at all? People expect one to get a fair likeness.”

“You’ll think of something,” said Lou. “Here’s your coffee.

And don’t let that dug of yours drink out of my saucer. I don’t want any of his germs to end up on the crockery.”

“There’s nothing so healthy as a dog’s mouth,” said Angus Lordie defensively. “Cats’ mouths are full of all sorts of dreadful beasties, but a dog’s lick is positively antiseptic. That’s well-known.”

Angus moved over to the table where Matthew was sitting and took the seat opposite him. Cyril, released from his leash, lay down at his master’s feet, his tail curled about him, his nose tucked into the hair of his stomach, but one eye half-open, looking at Matthew’s right ankle, which was just a few inches away.

“You went for that dinner with your father?” asked Angus.

“Weren’t you rather dreading it?”

“I was dreading it,” said Matthew. “But I went along.”

“And?”

“And it wasn’t a roaring success. He brought his new . . .” it was an effort for him to say the word, but he said it nonetheless, “. . . mistress.”

“How interesting!” said Angus.

Big Lou raised an eyebrow. “Mistress? What do you mean by that, Matthew?”

“Well, that’s what she is,” he said. “She’s his mistress.”

“But he’s a widower, isn’t he?” Big Lou persisted. “You shouldn’t call her that! That’s downright insulting.”

232 Cyril Howls

Angus Lordie shook a finger at him. “Yes, Matthew! You should be ashamed of yourself ! She’s his partner, that’s what she is. That’s the approved term these days. Tut, tut!”

Matthew shrugged. “Whatever you say. But I think of her as his mistress.”

“Well, you need to think again,” said Big Lou. “What’s she like, anyway?”

“A gold-digger,” said Matthew.

Big Lou stared at him. “How do you know she’s a gold-digger? Did she say or do anything that made you think that?”

“It’s pretty obvious,” said Matthew. “There she is, at least ten, maybe fifteen years younger than him, probably more, and she’s all over him. She must know that he’s not short of the readies.”

“Maybe she likes him,” said Big Lou. “Ten years isn’t all that big a gap.”

While this discussion was raging back and forth, Cyril had edged slightly closer to Matthew’s ankles. He was now no longer curled up, but was lying flat on the ground, his front paws extended before him, his chin resting on the ground between his legs, his eyes fixed on the exposed flesh above the top of Matthew’s socks.

Crushed Strawberry

233

Cyril was a good dog. Although he liked to drink beer in the Cumberland Bar and to wink at girls, he had few other vices, and in particular he was not aggressive. He liked people, in general, and was always happy to lick any hand which was extended to him in friendship. If people insisted on throwing sticks, Cyril would always fetch them, although he found this tedious and pointless. But he liked to oblige, and he knew that it was obliging to do the things that people expected dogs to do.

But there was something about Matthew’s ankles that was just absurdly tempting. They were not fat ankles, they were average ankles. Nor were they any different in colour from most of the other ankles that dogs usually saw. In smell, they were neutral, and so there was no olfactory clue to their attractiveness. It’s just that they were immensely attractive to a dog, and at that moment Cyril could think of nothing else that he would prefer to do than to bite them.

But he could not. He knew the consequences of succumbing to the temptation. There would be the most awful row and he would be beaten by his father, as he thought of Angus. There would be raised voices and words that frightened him. And worst of all there would be disgrace, and a feeling that the human world did not want him to be part of it. There would be rejection and exclusion in the most unambiguous sense.

Suddenly, Cyril stood up. He turned away from Matthew’s ankles – put them beyond temptation – and began to howl. He lifted his head in the air and howled, pouring into the sound all the sadness of his world and of the canine condition. It was a howl of such regret and sorrow as to melt ilka heart, ilka heart.

And none of those present knew why he cried.

71. Crushed Strawberry

Trudging up Dundas Street with his mother, deep in thought, Bertie reflected on the dire course of events over the past few days. He had enjoyed Tofu’s party immensely – and had decided 234 Crushed Strawberry

that when he turned eighteen, and became free of his mother, he would go to as many parties as possible. He understood that when one was a student one did not even need to be invited to parties – one just went anyway. That prospect appealed to him greatly, as he doubted whether he would get many invitations.

Indeed, the invitation to Tofu’s party had been the only invitation he had ever received.

But if the party had been a conspicuous success, the same could not be said of its immediate aftermath. When Irene had picked him up in the car, Bertie had been worried that she would immediately notice the fact that he was wearing the pair of jeans which he had obtained from Tofu in exchange for his crushed-strawberry dungarees and a hot-dog. The jeans fitted him perfectly and they were just right in every respect.

There were faded patches at the knees and the hems at the bottom of the leg were ragged. There were several pockets on each side, which were undoubtedly useful, although Bertie had nothing to put in them. He had always wanted a penknife, and had been consistently refused one by Irene; if he were ever to get one, then there was a place for that in the right pocket.

“What do you want a penknife for?” Irene had asked when Bertie had raised the subject some months earlier.

“They’re useful for cutting things,” said Bertie. “They have lots of blades, Mummy, and some of them have those things for taking stones out of horses’ hooves.”

“Don’t be so ridiculous, Bertie,” said Irene. “You’ve never even been near a horse, and you don’t need to cut anything. If you do, then just ask Mummy to cut it for you with her nice scissors.”

Bertie had said nothing more, knowing that there was no possibility of getting Irene to change her mind once she had made a ruling. She just did not understand, he concluded, and he thought she never would. Boys need to do certain things –

to have penknives, and secret clubs, and bikes – but Irene would never accept this. That was because she had no idea of what it was like to be a boy. Irene thought that boys and girls were the Crushed Strawberry

235

same, or could be made to be the same. But that was wrong. If you were a boy, you just felt differently. It was as simple as that.

For his part, Bertie was prepared to accept that girls felt differently about many things. He understood, for example, what it was like to be Olive. He understood why Olive hated Tofu, and why Tofu hated Olive. He understood why Olive hated to have her pigtails pulled by boys and why she thought that Hiawatha’s socks smelled. Bertie could empathise with all this. Why, then, could his mother not see things from his point of view?

For a few moments after getting into the car after the party, Bertie had held his breath. But his mother, for come reason, did not seem to notice the jeans he was wearing and made no mention of them. When they arrived home, though, as they were walking up the stair at 44 Scotland Street, Irene suddenly let out a cry.

“Bertie!” she exclaimed. “What on earth are you wearing?”

Bertie’s heart gave a lurch. “Jeans, Mummy,” he said. “Do you like them?”

“Jeans!” shouted Irene. “Where are your dungarees? What have you done with your dungarees?”

Bertie swallowed hard. He had wondered whether he could tell her that they had been stolen and that he had been given the jeans by a kind passer-by, but he was a truthful boy and did not like the idea of lying, even to his mother. So he had decided that he would tell her exactly what happened and throw himself on her mercy. After all, she could hardly get the dungarees back now that property in them had legally passed to Tofu.

“I exchanged them with Tofu,” he said. “He liked my dungarees and so I gave them to him in exchange for his jeans. I’m sure that the jeans cost more than the dungarees did. So it was a pretty good bargain.”

Irene shook her finger at him. “You naughty, naughty boy, Bertie! Mummy is very, very displeased. Those were your best dungarees and you have no business letting some horrible rough boy, this Toffee person . . .”

“Tofu,” corrected Bertie.

“This Tofu person take them off you,” concluded Irene.

236 Ink and the Imagination

“I’m sorry, Mummy,” said Bertie, looking down at the stairs below his feet. “I won’t do it again. I promise.”

“You certainly will not!” said Irene, as they resumed their climb up the stairs. “And the first thing we’ll do is telephone them when we get in and arrange to go round and collect your dungarees.”

“But we can’t do that,” wailed Bertie. “Everybody knows you can’t take things back. That’s the law, Mummy. You can’t take things back once you’ve given them away.”

“Nonsense,” snapped Irene. “Those dungarees cost a great deal of money and they still belong to you. Toffee had no business getting round you like that.”

Bertie hardly dared imagine the scene that was being prepared.

It would be the ultimate humiliation to be dragged round to Tofu’s house, to have to surrender his newly-acquired jeans, and to have to don, once more, his crushed-strawberry dungarees.

“Do I have to go?” he asked, his voice small and discouraged.

“Can’t we ask them just to drop them round?”

“No,” said Irene, firmly. “We have to face up to the consequences of our acts, Bertie. You have created this situation and now you are going to have to get out of it again – like a man.”

Bertie looked up at his mother. He wanted to act like a man

– oh, how he wanted to act like a man. But men did not have to wear crushed-strawberry dungarees. Men did not have to go to yoga and psychotherapy. Men did not have mothers like Irene.

And in the result, it was every bit as humiliating as he had feared.

His mother referred to Tofu as Toffee throughout the encounter, and she even shook a finger at him. Bertie wanted to die. He wanted to close his eyes and go to sleep and never have to open them and see crushed-strawberry dungarees again.

72. Ink and the Imagination

Dr Fairbairn sat at his desk, a small bottle of ink in his hands.

“Now, Bertie,” he said. “I thought that today we would do something different. This is a bottle of ink.”

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237

He held up the small black bottle and shook it in front of Bertie. Bertie, wide-eyed, stared at Dr Fairbairn. It must only be a matter of days, thought Bertie, before Dr Fairbairn was taken to Carstairs, and he wondered how they would do it.

Perhaps they could have men with a net drive into Edinburgh and they could throw the net over Dr Fairbairn while he was walking down Dundas Street in that blue jacket of his. Then they could bundle him into a van and take him off. Bertie had located Carstairs on a map and had seen that it was not far away.

It would not take them long to get him there, and they would probably arrive in time for tea, which would be nice.

Bertie swallowed. “Ink,” he said quietly. It was best not to say anything that would cause Dr Fairbairn to become more excited. Short words, uttered very softly, were probably safest.

“Yes,” said Dr Fairbairn. “Good boy. Black ink.”

Bertie nodded. “Ink,” he said again. And then added: “Ink.”

Dr Fairbairn smiled. “You may be wondering, Bertie, why I’m holding a bottle of ink.”

Bertie shook his head. “No,” he said, even more quietly.

“Well,” said Dr Fairbairn. “There’s a very interesting little game we therapists have invented. It’s called the Rorschach Inkblot Test. Would you like to play it, Bertie?”

Bertie felt he had no alternative but to agree, and he did.

This must have been the right answer, as Dr Fairbairn appeared pleased with it.

“Very well,” said the psychotherapist. “I shall open this little bottle of ink . . . so. There we are. And now I shall pour just a little bit of it onto the middle of this piece of paper. So! Look.

Now I shall fold the paper over, in half, like that. There!”

Bertie stared at the piece of folded paper. “Is it my turn?” he asked.

Dr Fairbairn smiled. “Hah! No, there are no turns in this game. You, Bertie, have to look at the ink blot that comes out and tell me what you see! That’s what you do.”

Bertie took the piece of paper and unfolded it with trembling hands. Then he examined the still wet ink blot.

“I see Scotland,” he said quietly. “Look, there it is.”

238 Ink and the Imagination

Dr Fairbairn took the piece of paper and stared at it. Then he turned it round.

“Funny,” he said. “I’ll do it again.”

Once more he poured a small amount of ink onto the paper and folded it over. Again, he handed it to Bertie. “Now, we shall see,” he said. “You tell me what you see. And don’t hesitate to tell me, even if it’s something very strange. Don’t hesitate to speak your mind.”

“I won’t,” said Bertie obligingly.

He took the piece of paper and unfolded it.

“I see the Queen,” said Bertie. “Look, there she is, Dr Fairbairn. I see the Queen’s head.”

Dr Fairbairn took the paper from him and peered at it. He seemed put-out.

“I shall do it again,” he said.

More ink was spilled, and the paper was folded. Bertie, now quite confident, although he found this game somewhat tedious, exposed the blot to view.

This time he stared at the blot for some time before he spoke.

Then, handing the paper back to Dr Fairbairn, he said: “That’s Dr Freud, isn’t it? Look, Dr Fairbairn, you’ve made two Dr Freuds!”

Rather to Bertie’s surprise, Dr Fairbairn now put away his bottle of ink and threw the pieces of paper in the wastepaper bin. “Perhaps we shall do that again, Bertie,” he said, “when you are feeling a bit more imaginative. For the moment I think we can leave it at that. I need to have a quick chat with your Mummy before you go. You go off and read Scottish Field in the waiting room. Good boy.”

Bertie sat in the waiting room while his mother went in to speak to Dr Fairbairn. Although he knew that he was meant to have an hour of therapy, he never really had more than ten minutes, as his mother would go in and talk to Dr Fairbairn for at least fifty minutes before she came out. What could they be talking about? he wondered. Surely one could not go on about Melanie Klein for fifty minutes twice a week? But that’s what they seemed to be doing.

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Inside the consulting room, Irene sat in the chair recently vacated by Bertie and listened to Dr Fairbairn.

“I did a bit of Rorschach work with him this morning,” Dr Fairbairn said. “We didn’t get very good results. He came up with very literal interpretations. I saw nothing of the subcon-scious processes. No light on the object relations issue.”

“Oh well,” said Irene. “We must persist. There’s still a lot of aggression there, I’m afraid. He wanted to go bowling the other day. That’s very aggressive.”

“Maybe,” said Dr Fairbairn, noting something down on a pad. “Maybe not.”

“And then there’s some sign of knife fantasies,” went on Irene.

“He keeps asking for a penknife.”

“Worrying, that,” said Dr Fairbairn. “Of course, boys do like that sort of thing, you know.”

Irene looked at him. “Some boys may,” she said. “Some males need knives. Some don’t.”

Dr Fairbairn thought for a while. “You know,” he said, “I’ve been thinking a bit about Bertie, and I’m beginning to have a sense of what’s going on. The dynamics. The splitting process.

The good mother/bad mother schizoid bifurcation.”

Irene leant forward eagerly. “Oh yes?” she said. “And what do you think is the problem?”

Dr Fairbairn rose to his feet. He looked down at the crumpled pieces of paper in his wastepaper basket and, on a sudden impulse, picked one out, uncrumpled it and showed it to Irene.

“What do you see there?” he asked.

Irene took the inkblot of Scotland and frowned. “A cloud of guilt?” she suggested. “Yes, a cloud of guilt.”

“Hah!” exclaimed Dr Fairbairn. “That is Scotland!”

“Nonsense!” cried Irene. “That’s a cloud of guilt.”

Dr Fairbairn bent down and retrieved the inkblot of the Queen. “And this?” he asked, thrusting it into Irene’s hands.

“What’s this?”

“Mother,” said Irene, without hesitation.

Dr Fairbairn snatched the paper back from her. Then he turned to face her and spoke very quietly but firmly.

240 Wee Fraser Again

“You know something?” he said. “You know something? I’ve decided what the problem is. It’s you! ”

73. Wee Fraser Again

Bertie knew that something was wrong the moment that he heard shouting issuing from Dr Fairbairn’s consulting room. He had been engrossed in a copy of Scottish Field and the time had passed rather quickly. But now the normal sedate silence of the waiting room was disturbed by voices raised in discord. Dr Fairbairn and his mother were having a row! Indeed, it might be even worse. Perhaps Dr Fairbairn had finally got out of control and might even now be assaulting his mother, possibly even throwing ink at her! Bertie dropped the magazine and sprang to his feet. He was not sure what to do; if he burst into the consulting room, then that might just make matters worse; if he stayed where he was then his mother could meet some terrible fate at the hands of the psychotherapist, all the while unaided by her son.

Bertie moved over and put an ear to the door of the consulting room. The sound of shouting had dropped, and now there seemed to be silence within the room. That was a very bad sign, he thought. Perhaps Dr Fairbairn was even now lowering his mother’s body from the window, on a rope, with a view to hiding it in the Queen Street Gardens. But then, there was a voice, and another – voices which were no longer raised and seemed to be making casual conversation. Bertie heaved a sigh of relief.

The row was over. They had got back to talking about Melanie Klein.

Inside the consulting room, Dr Fairbairn sat at his desk, his head in his hands.

“I don’t know what came over me,” he said remorsefully. “It was all so sudden. I don’t know why I said it.”

Irene looked at him. She understood how stress could affect people. Dr Fairbairn’s job was undoubtedly stressful, dealing Wee Fraser Again

241

with all sorts of harrowing personal problems. It would be easy in such circumstances to say something rash and, as in this case, completely unjustified.

“I understand,” she said gently. “I really do. You mustn’t reproach yourself unduly.”

She looked at him as he continued to stare down at the surface of his desk. Of course this might be an opportunity to probe a bit; there was a great deal she would like to know about Dr Fairbairn and now might be the time to do that probing.

“Of course, it might be better if you talked to me about it,”

she said.

Dr Fairbairn looked up. “About what?” he asked.

“About all the things that you’re so obviously repressing,”

Irene said quietly. “About the guilt.”

Dr Fairbairn was silent for a few moments. “Is my guilt that obvious?” he asked.

“I’m afraid so,” said Irene, trying to sound as sympathetic as she could. “It’s written very clearly. I’ve always sensed it.”

“Oh,” said Dr Fairbairn. It was like being told that one’s deodorant was less than effective. It was very deflating.

“Guilt has such a characteristic signature,” went on Irene. “I find that I can always tell.”

She watched Dr Fairbairn from the corner of her eye. She was not sure what his guilt was based on, but it was bound to be something interesting.

“You can tell me, you know,” she urged. “You’d feel much relieved.”

“Do you think so?” asked Dr Fairbairn.

Irene nodded. It was a time for non-verbal signs.

“I feel so awful,” said Dr Fairbairn. “I’ve been carrying this burden of guilt for so long. And I’ve tried to convince myself that it’s not there, but my denial has only made things worse.”

“Denial always does,” said Irene. “Denial is a sticking tape with very little sticking power.” She paused and reflected on the adage that she had just coined. It was really rather apt, she thought.

242 Wee Fraser Again

“And yet it’s so difficult to confront one’s sense of shame,”

said Dr Fairbairn. “That’s not easy.”

Irene was beginning to feel impatient. She glanced at her watch. What if the next patient arrived now? She might be prevented from hearing Dr Fairbairn’s revelations, and by the time that they next met he might be more composed and less inclined to confess his guilt. “So?” she said. “What lies at the heart of your guilt?” She paused. “What did you actually do?”

Dr Fairbairn looked away from her, as if embarrassed by what he was about to say.

“I suppose at the heart of my guilt lies my professional failure,”

he said. “I’ve tried to tell myself that it was no failure, but it was. It really was.”

Irene leaned forward. “How did you fail?” she asked. “Tell me. Let me be your catharsis.”

“You’ve heard of my famous case?” asked Dr Fairbairn. “The study of Wee Fraser?”

“Of course I have,” said Irene. “It’s almost as famous as Freud’s case of Little Hans or Melanie Klein’s Richard.”

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243

Dr Fairbairn smiled, a smile that surrendered shortly to pain.

“I’m flattered, of course,” he said, “but in a curious way that makes what I did even worse.”

Irene looked at him in astonishment. Had he falsified the case? Did Wee Fraser actually exist, or was he a fraudulent creation upon which Dr Fairbairn’s entire scientific reputation had been built? If the latter were the case, then it would amount to a major scandal. It was easy to understand why the author of such an act of deception would feel a crushing burden of guilt.

“What exactly did you do?” Irene asked. “Did you invent Wee Fraser?”

Dr Fairbairn looked at her blankly. “Invent him? Why on earth would I have invented him?” He paused. “No. I didn’t invent him. I hit him.”

Irene gasped. “You hit Wee Fraser? Actually hit him?”

Dr Fairbairn closed his eyes. “I hit him,” he said. “He bit me and I hit him. And do you know what? You know what? After I hit him, I actually felt a lot better.” He looked out of the window, shaking his head. “And then the guilt came,” he said.

Then the guilt came, like a thief in the night.

And took from me my peace of mind.

74. The Wolf Man, Neds, Motherwell Irene was rarely at a loss for words, but on this occasion, faced with the extraordinary confession by Dr Fairbairn that he had actually raised a hand to Wee Fraser, the famous three-year-old tyrant, she was unable to speak for at least two minutes. During this time, Dr Fairbairn sat quite still, privately appalled at what he had done. He had spoken about that thing which he had for almost eleven years completely repressed. He had articulated the moment of aggression when, his hand stinging from the painful bite which Wee Fraser had inflicted upon him, he had briefly, and gently, smacked the boy on the hand and told him that he was not to bite his therapist. Wee Fraser had looked at 244 The Wolf Man, Neds, Motherwell him in astonishment and had behaved extremely and uncharacteristically well for the rest of the session. Indeed, had Dr Fairbairn not been as well versed in the dynamics of child behaviour, he might have concluded that this was what Wee Fraser had needed all along, but such a conclusion, of course, would have been quite false.

Eventually, Irene spoke. “I can understand how you feel,” she said. “That’s a serious burden of guilt to carry around. But at least you’ve spoken to me about it.” She looked at him quizzically. “And, tell me, how do you feel now?”

Dr Fairbairn took a deep breath. “Actually, I feel quite a bit better. It’s the cathartic effect of telling the truth. Like a purging.”

Irene agreed. Dr Fairbairn actually looked lighter now; it was almost as if the metaphysical weight of guilt had been pressing down upon his shoulders; now these seemed to have been raised, lifted, filling his blue linen jacket with movement and strength.

“Of course you won’t be able to leave it at that,” she said, gently lifting a finger, not so much in admonition as in caution.

Dr Fairbairn looked momentarily crestfallen. “No?” he said.

“No,” answered Irene. “The striking of Wee Fraser is unfinished business, isn’t it? You need to make a reparative move.”

Dr Fairbairn looked thoughtful. “Maybe . . .”

Irene interrupted him. “Tell me,” she said, “what happened to Wee Fraser. Did you do any follow-up?”

Dr Fairbairn shook his head. “Wee Fraser had been referred to me by a general practitioner. She managed to get the Health Board to pay for his therapy after he had been involved in an unfortunate piece of exhibitionist behaviour in a ladies’ hair-dressing salon out at Burdiehouse. He had been taken there by his mother when she went to have her hair done. Some of the other ladies were a bit put-out and so she took Wee Fraser to the doctor to discuss his behaviour. Fortunately, the GP in question had the foresight to believe that psychotherapeutic intervention might be of some help, and that’s how our paths came together.”

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245

“And the parents?” asked Irene. “Functional?”

“Oh, I think that they functioned quite well,” said Dr Fairbairn. “Or they seemed to. They were a respectable couple.

The father was a fireman and the mother was a receptionist at the Roxburghe Hotel. They were at their wits’ end with Wee Fraser, I fear.”

“And what happened to him?” asked Irene. “Did you not hear anything?”

“Nothing,” said Dr Fairbairn. “But I should imagine that they’re still there. Fraser will be fourteen now, I should imagine.”

He stopped. “You know, I saw him the other day?”

Irene’s eyes widened. “Wee Fraser? You saw him?” She had read about how Freud’s famous patient, the Wolf Man, had been found not all that long ago, living in Vienna, as a retired Wolf Man. The discovery had been written up by an American journalist who had gone in search of him. Perhaps it was time for Wee Fraser to be discovered in much the same way.

“I saw him at the East End of Princes Street,” said Dr Fairbairn. “You see a lot of neds . . . I mean young men hanging about, I mean congregating, down there. I think they go shopping in that ghastly shopping centre at the top of Leith Street. You know the one that Nicky Fairbairn was so scathing about.”

Irene sat up at the mention of the name. Nicholas Fairbairn.

Why did Dr Fairbairn mention Nicholas Fairbairn? Was it because he was his brother, perhaps? Which meant that he must be the son of Ronald Fairbairn, no less – Ronald Fairbairn who had written Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality, in which volume there appeared the seminal paper, “Endoscopic Structure Considered in Terms of Object-Relationships .”

“Are you, by any chance . . . ?” she began.

Dr Fairbairn hesitated. More guilt was coming to the surface, inexorably, bubbling up like the magma of a volcano. “No,” he said. “I’m not. I am nothing to do with Ronald Fairbairn, or his colourful son. I am an ordinary Fairbairn.” He hesitated again.

“We actually come from Motherwell originally.”

“Motherwell!” exclaimed Irene, and then checked herself.

246 Cyril’s Moment of Glory

There was nothing wrong with Motherwell, nor with Airdrie for that matter. We all had to come from somewhere, even Motherwell. She herself came from Moray . . . Well, there was no need for anybody to go into that. (Moray Place, actually.)

“Yes,” said Dr Fairbairn. The confessions had given him confidence and now he looked directly at Irene. “Where do you come from, Mrs Pollock?”

“Moray,” said Irene, prepared to continue to add Place (one should not lie, directly), but taking her time, and not having the opportunity to complete her sentence (no fault of her own).

“Moray!” said Dr Fairbairn. “What a pleasant part of the country. I love Moray, and Nairn too.”

Irene said nothing. It was not her guilt that they were meant to be talking about; it was his.

“You have to seek out Wee Fraser,” she said. “You know that, don’t you? You have to find him and apologise for what you did to him.”

Dr Fairbairn sat quite still. He had no doubt but that what Irene said was true. Reparation was of the essence; Melanie Klein herself had said that. He would have to go out to Burdiehouse, find Wee Fraser, and ask his forgiveness. It was a simple thing to do, but a very important one, not only for himself, but perhaps for Wee Fraser too.

75. Cyril’s Moment of Glory

Irene had much to think about as she walked home with Bertie.

The session with Dr Fairbairn had been a traumatic one and she needed to order her thoughts. She had been astonished when the psychotherapist had turned on her in that unexpected and vindictive way, suggesting that she, of all people, might be responsible for Bertie’s troubles. Of course it was easy to blame mother; anybody with a smattering of knowledge of psycho-analysis thought that they could point the finger at mother; but to hear that coming from somebody like Dr Fairbairn, who had Cyril’s Moment of Glory

247

even held psychoanalytical office, was most surprising. And it was so dangerous too; she could cope with an allegation of that sort because she could stand up to him intellectually, and she was versed in Kleinian theory; but what if he had said something to an ordinary person? Such a mother could be extremely upset.

Of course the comment was an aberration, and Dr Fairbairn had been brought to his senses sharply enough by Irene’s reaction, but their relationship had very clearly changed as a result of the incident. Seeing him sitting so miserably at his desk, his distinguished head sunk in his hands, had brought out the maternal in Irene. And then the penny dropped. Indeed, it dropped so sharply that Irene stopped in her tracks, some way down Dundas Street, and gave a half-suppressed cry. Of course!

Of course! Dr Fairbairn had no mother. By coming up with the absurd suggestion that she was smothering Bertie, he was trying to divert her natural mothering instincts away from her son to himself. Do not be a mother to Bertie, he was saying, so that you can become a mother to me. It was quite clear. In fact, it was glaringly obvious.

Hearing his mother gasp, Bertie stopped and looked up at her.

“Are you all right, Mummy?” he asked.

Irene looked down at her son. She had been so immersed in her thoughts that she had forgotten Bertie was with her. But there he was, in his dungarees, smiling with that appealing smile of his. What an odd little boy he was! So talented, what with his Italian and his saxophone, but still encountering such difficulties in the object relations context.

“Yes, thank you, Bertie,” she replied. “I just had a very important thought. You know how some thoughts are so important they make you go ‘oh!’? I had that sort of thought.”

“A moment of insight, you mean?” Bertie said.

Irene looked at him. She was occasionally surprised by Bertie’s vocabulary, but it made her proud, too. All of this he got from me, she said to herself. All of it. Bertie is my creation.

“Yes,” she said. “You could call it a moment of insight. I just 248 Cyril’s Moment of Glory

had an insight there into what happened a little while ago in Dr Fairbairn’s room. You won’t know, but Dr Fairbairn and I had a tiny argument. Nothing serious, of course.”

Bertie pretended to be surprised. “A wee stooshie?” he asked.

Irene frowned. “I’m not sure if I’d call it a stooshie, and I’m not sure if I want you using words like that, Bertie.”

“Is it a rude word, Mummy?” asked Bertie. “Is it like . . .”

“It’s not rude,” said Irene. “It’s more, how shall I put it, it’s more vernacular, shall we say? It’s Scots.”

“Is Scots rude?” persisted Bertie.

“No,” said Irene. “Scots isn’t exactly rude. It’s just that we don’t use a lot of it in Edinburgh.”

Bertie said nothing. An idea had come to him. He would start talking Scots! That would annoy his mother. That would show her that although she could force him to wear pink dungarees she could not control his tongue! Ha! That would show her.

“Anyway,” said Irene, “we must get home. You have a saxophone lesson in half an hour, I believe, and you must do your homework before then.”

“Aye,” said Bertie quietly. “Nae time for onything else.”

“What was that, Bertie?” asked Irene. “Did you say something?”

“I didnae,” said Bertie.

“What?”

“No spikkin,” muttered Bertie.

“Really, you are a very strange little boy sometimes,” said Irene, a note of irritation creeping into her voice. “Muttering to yourself like that.”

Continuing down the street, they were now directly outside Big Lou’s coffee bar. They reached it just as Matthew and Angus Lordie came up the steps to the pavement, their coffee conversation having been brought to an end by the sudden prolonged howling of Cyril. The canine angst which had produced this outburst had presumably resolved itself as quickly as it had come into existence, as Cyril now seemed quite cheerful and wagged his tail enthusiastically at the sight of Bertie. Cyril liked boys; he liked the way they smelled – just a little bit off; and he liked Bruce Has Uncharitable Thoughts about Crieff 249

the way they jumped around. Boys and dogs are natural allies, thought Cyril.

When he saw Bertie, Cyril rushed forward and sat down on the pavement in front of him, offering him a paw to shake.

“Bonnie dug,” Bertie said, taking the paw, and crouching down to Cyril’s level. “Guid dug.”

Cyril moved forward to lick Bertie’s face enthusiastically, making Bertie squeal with delight.

“Bertie!” shouted Irene. “Get away from that smelly creature!

Don’t let him lick you!” And then, turning to Cyril, she leant forward and shouted at him: “Bad, smelly dog! Shoo! Shoo!”

As a dog, Cyril did not have a large vocabulary. But there are some words all dogs understand. They know what “walk” means.

They know what “good dog” means, and “fetch”. And Cyril knew, too, what “smelly” meant, and he bitterly resented it. He had seen this tall woman before, walking in Drummond Place, and he did not like her. And now she was calling him both bad and smelly. It was just too much!

Irene’s ankles came into focus. They were close, and exposed.

He hadn’t started this, she had. No dog, not even the most heroic, could resist. He lunged forward, opened his jaws, his gold tooth catching the light, glinting wickedly, and then he bit Irene’s right ankle. It was glorious. It was satisfying. It was so richly deserved.

76. Bruce Has Uncharitable Thoughts about Crieff Bruce had been deeply disturbed by what George had said to him over the telephone. He had been buoyed by his purchase of the Petrus at such a favourable price, but had been completely deflated by George’s suggestion that the wine might be something quite different – an ordinary wine put into bogus Petrus bottles by calculating forgers.

At first, he had denied the possibility that George might be right. He had not even seen the wine in question; how 250 Bruce Has Uncharitable Thoughts about Crieff could he pontificate on it? The problem with George, of course, was that he was so unadventurous. The idea of making an unconventional purchase, of buying something other than through the regular channels, was obviously alien to his cautious, accountant’s personality. Poor George! He had always been the timid one, even at Morrison’s Academy, where he would never do anything that was remotely likely to get him into trouble. What a mouse he was! But then mice sometimes had their uses, thought Bruce – especially if they had money.

But then, but then . . . perhaps George was right, to an extent at least, in saying that one had to be suspicious of bargains. If the Petrus was worth what it appeared to be worth, then why should Harry sell it to him at such a marked-down price? If it was worth more, and if, as Harry claimed, people were clamboring to get it, then why should he sell it to him at such a reduced price? It was not as if he had given him an extra few per cent discount – the sort of discount one feels that one has to give to a friend – he had cut savagely into the market price. He had effectively given away the three cases of wine.

The thought that George might be right made Bruce very uncomfortable. He had paid a lot of money for the wine and he had done so out of his own bank account. He had also paid the first month’s rental on the shop, again from his own account, and the debit side of the business would be mounting up rather sharply. And yet he had not obtained a single penny from George, even although George had assured him that the money would be available once he had sold the bonds. But how long did it take to sell bonds? Surely a call to one’s broker was all that was required ?

He spent his second day in the shop taking delivery of stock he had ordered from a wholesaler in Leith. It was good, knock-about wine, in Bruce’s view – the sort of wine that Stockbridge people would buy to drink with their dinner or take to their parties – large Australian reds, various Chardonnays and even a range of sweetish German wines which he planned to place in Bruce Has Uncharitable Thoughts about Crieff 251

a special section called Wines for Her. That last idea he considered rather good, and he thought it not unlikely that other wine shops would follow suit when they saw how appealing it was to women.

The shelves in his shop were now filling up. The New World was in the front, in accordance with Bruce’s personal tastes, and France and Italy were at the back. Spain was only represented in a very small way – again based on Bruce’s belief that Rioja was virtually undrinkable (“I wouldn’t even gargle with the stuff,” he was fond of saying; a rather witty remark, he felt) and there was a similarly small South African section. This was based on Bruce’s dislike of the tactics of South African rugby, he being of the view that South African supporters had poisoned the All Blacks on more than one occasion when they were due to play the Springboks. “Entire rugby teams don’t all get diarrhoea on the eve of a match by accident,” he observed. And had the Scottish team been similarly poisoned?

Bruce laughed at the question. “Who would bother?” he asked, bitterly.

The Petrus was not displayed. It was in the back room, under a table, three unopened cases with the keys of St Peter sten-cilled on the side. Bruce looked at them and felt a pang of doubt and regret. If the wine was not what it purported to be, then he would not be able to try to sell it. The last thing he could afford to do at the beginning of his new career was to get mixed up in that sort of scandal; that would obviously be the kiss of death. But how could he confirm these uneasy suspicions? That was far from clear.

Towards mid-afternoon, when he had almost finished stacking the shelves, Bruce decided to telephone George. He would have to arrange a meeting to sort out the financial arrangements so that he could pay the invoice of the Leith wholesaler – slightly over eight thousand pounds – which had to be settled within fourteen days.

George initially did not answer his telephone, but eventually he did, and agreed to come to the shop after work and meet Bruce there.

252 Bruce Gets What He Deserves

“I’d like to bring somebody,” he said. “Somebody I’d like you to meet.”

“Who?” asked Bruce.

“A friend,” George replied opaquely. “A girlfriend, actually.”

Bruce chuckled. “George! Got yourself fixed up at last? A real stunner, no doubt!” Which is exactly what he thought she would not be. He could just imagine the sort of girl George would end up with. She would be the absolute bottom of the heap; bargain-basement material. Sensible shoes. Markedly over-weight. Dull as ditchwater. And probably from Crieff into the bargain! That girl he used to see – what was her name? – Sharon somebody or other, who lived with her parents in one of those little bungalows off the Comrie Road; that sort of girl. Poor George! Bruce was uncharitable about his home town. There was nothing wrong with Crieff, of course, but that was not the way he saw it. He had escaped to Edinburgh and he entertained the idea that one day he might even escape from Edinburgh to a wider world beyond that. New York? Sydney? Perhaps even Paris? Any of these was possible, he thought, if one has talent, which, he told himself, he had. But poor old George! It was back to Crieff for him.

77. Bruce Gets What He Deserves

George and Sharon arrived at Bruce’s new shop in St Stephen Street shortly before six. They were slightly late, which irritated Bruce, and indeed caused him more than passing concern. But at last there they were, standing outside the door, peering in through the glass panel. And it was that girl with him, Bruce observed. He had been right. That girl from Crieff, Sharon McClung, had finally got her talons into George. He smiled to himself as he went to open the door to his friend. We all get what we deserve in this life, he thought.

Now that was tempting the intervention of Nemesis! For Bruce, of all people, to invoke the principle of desert was asking Bruce Gets What He Deserves

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for any lurking Greek goddess, underemployed, perhaps, because of the caution of others, to strike in a demonstrable and convincing way. And indeed it was Bruce’s bad luck that Nemesis had been stalking around that part of Edinburgh at precisely that time, hoping to detect members of the Scottish Parliament managing their expense accounts in a way which might be expected to attract her attention. She had failed to find anything but good behaviour, though, and so she was receptive to any reckless talk by the unworthy. And there it came in the form of Bruce’s thoughts from St Stephen Street. Swiftly she turned the corner and poked her comely head into the basement premises into which a slightly fleshy couple had been admitted by the occupant. Nemesis took one look at Bruce and knew in an instant that here was one who had been in the long tutelage of her fellow myth, Narcissus. She rubbed her incorporeal hands with glee.

“George!” enthused Bruce. “Welcome to the shop!” He turned to Sharon. “And you, Sharon! It’s amazing to see you after how long? Yonks and yonks! And you’re looking great, too!”

And he thought: look at her hair! Poor girl. And that haggis-shaped figure. Imagine being married to her. Mind you, he thought, poor George looks like a mealie-pudding himself, so perhaps it’s a good match.

He moved forward and gave Sharon a peck on the cheek.

Poor girl. How she had longed for him to do that all those years ago when she had sat there in the chemistry class at Morrison’s Academy and stared at him in utter longing (along with nine other girls – all the girls, in fact, except one, and Bruce knew the reason why she was cool towards him. Oh yes, he did. With her short hair and her lack of interest in him. It stuck out a mile).

He shook hands with George. “So you and Sharon are an item! You kept that pretty secret!”

George smiled proudly. “Actually, Bruce, you’re going to be one of the first to know. Sharon and I are getting engaged.”

He looked fondly in Sharon’s direction and gave her hand an 254 Bruce Gets What He Deserves

affectionate squeeze. “We decided yesterday, didn’t we, Shaz?”

Shaz! thought Bruce. Shaz! And what would she call him?

You couldn’t do much with George’s name.

“But that’s really great!” Bruce said. “Engaged. And . . .”

“And we’re going to get married in March,” George went on. “In Crieff.”

“In Crieff !” said Bruce. “That’s great. You’ll be able to have all the old crowd there.”

“With a reception at the Hydro,” said George.

“A good choice,” said Bruce, and thought: I suppose I’ll have to go. He is my business partner, after all, and I’ll be expected to be there.

He turned to Sharon. “Where are you living these days, Sharon?”

Sharon, who had been looking at George, now turned to Bruce. She looked him up and down in a way which he thought was a bit forward on her part. Who was she to look at him in that way, as if passing silent comment on his appearance?

“Crieff,” she said. “I’ve been working in Perth, but I’ve been staying with my folks. They’re getting on a bit these days.”

There was something in her tone which discomforted Bruce.

It was as if she was challenging him in some way – challenging him to say that there was something wrong with continuing to live in Crieff.

“And what do you do in Perth?” he asked. “I’m a bit out of touch. You went off to uni in Dundee, didn’t you?”

Sharon nodded, fixing Bruce with a stare which suggested that again she was challenging him to say something disparaging about Dundee.

“I did law,” she said. “Now I’m a lawyer. I’m working for one of the Perth firms. I do a lot of court work.”

“Sharon goes to court virtually every day,” George said proudly. “The sheriff said the other day that she had argued a case very well. He said that in court.”

“He’s a very nice man,” said Sharon. “He always listens very carefully to what you have to say.”

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“Great,” said Bruce. He looked at George. “Now, I must show you the ropes round here. I’ve spent the day putting in stock.

See. It took me hours. And see that section over there, Sharon, Wine for Her. See it?”

Sharon glanced at the four shelves pointed out by Bruce.

Then she turned round and glared at him. “Why have you put Wine for Her?” she asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that these are wines that women are more likely to enjoy,” said Bruce.

Sharon glanced quickly at George, who shifted slightly on his feet. Then she turned back to face Bruce. “And why do you think women would want different wines from men? Have they got different taste buds?”

Bruce met her stare. He was not going to have this haggis talking to him like that. And he knew what sort of wine she would like: Blue Nun! Perhaps he would give her a bottle of it as an engagement present.

“Yes,” he said. “Women like sweeter wine. And they like wine bottles with more feminine labels. Everybody knows that.” He paused. This was a waste of time talking to Sharon.

He needed to talk to George about business. “Anyway, George, 256 Old Business

we have to talk about this place. I’ve spent a bit of money on the stock, so that if we could talk about that side of things for a mo . . .”

Sharon said: “George has changed his mind, Bruce. Sorry.

Now that we’re getting married. We’re going to buy a house in Stirling. We’ll need the money for that. Sorry, Bruce.”

Bruce said nothing for a moment. At the door, the faintest stirring of air, a slight shift of light, was all there was to indicate a triumphant Nemesis returning in satisfaction to the street outside.

78. Old Business

“You gave me your word,” said Bruce, chiselling out the sentence. “You gave me your word, George. You told me that you would come in on this business with me. It was in the Cumberland Bar.”

The words the Cumberland Bar were uttered with all the solemnity with which one might invoke the name of a place in which commercial promises are scrupulously observed – the words the floor at Lloyds, for example, might be spoken in the same tone. But on this occasion, even the mention of the locus of the conversation failed to have the desired effect.

“Actually, Bruce,” said George, “actually, I didn’t promise. I said that I was interested, but we didn’t make any firm arrangements, did we? We agreed that we would draw up a partnership agreement, but you never showed that to me and I never signed it. We were talking about the prospect of going into business, not the actual mechanics. We didn’t do a proper deal, you know.”

“There’s no proper deal,” chipped in Sharon. “No contract.

No deal.”

Bruce turned round and glared at her. “Do you mind keeping out of things that don’t concern you? This is between me and my friend, George. So please don’t interfere.”

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“Oh!” exclaimed Sharon. “So what my fiancé does is no business of mine? Is that what you’re saying? Well, I’ve got news for you: it’s very much my business!”

Bruce bit his lip. He looked at George, but George was looking down at the floor, staring at his shoes. It was typical. A woman came in and tried to take over. And now this ghastly girl had taken control of this useless man and was twisting him around her pudgy little finger.

Bruce looked at her. “So you’re calling the shots now,” he said. “Little Sharon McClung has at last got hold of a man and is calling the shots big time! Pleased with yourself, Sharon? Pity you couldn’t do any better.”

George looked up from his shoes. “What do you mean by that, Bruce?” he asked. His voice was strained and his eyes were misty, as if he was about to cry.

Bruce sighed. “No criticism of you, George,” he said. “It’s just that you’re letting Sharon push you around a bit, aren’t you?”

“But you said: ‘It’s a pity you couldn’t do any better,’” George insisted. “What did you mean by that, Bruce? What did you mean?”

“Yes,” said Sharon. “What exactly did you mean by that, Bruce? Did you mean that George isn’t much of a catch? Well, if you did, I can tell you what I think of that. I think that he’s ten times, twenty times nicer than you. Nobody – nobody in her right mind – would look at you, you know. You do know that, don’t you?”

Bruce sneered. “Don’t make me laugh,” he said. “Just don’t make me laugh. You were happy enough to look at me back then in Crieff. Oh yes, don’t think that I didn’t notice you sitting there staring at me, along with all the other girls, mentally undressing me. I noticed those things, you know.”

Sharon shrieked with indignation. “What? What did you say?

Mentally undressing you? Are you mad?”

“Listen,” said George mildly. “I don’t think there’s much point in talking like this . . .”

“Yes, there is,” snapped Sharon. “I’m not going to stand here 258 Old Business

and listen to this self-satisfied creep saying things like that. I’ve got some more news for you, Bruce. The girls back in Crieff hated you, you know. They hated you. They really did. You should have heard the sort of things they said about you! You would have died of embarrassment if you had heard half of them.

Did you know that there was something about you written on the wall of the girls’ toilets for two years? Two years. And every time the cleaners rubbed it out, somebody wrote it back, and in the end they just left it there. And do you know what it was?

You would hate what it said, I promise you. You’d just hate it.

But I can’t tell you – I’m too embarrassed.”

“Was it written with one of those marker pens?” asked George. “Those can be quite difficult to rub off.”

Both Bruce and Sharon looked at him. Sharon did not answer.

“You’re a liar,” said Bruce. “I would have heard about it. I never heard anything.”

Sharon arched an eyebrow in amazement. “Do you think that anybody would actually tell you something like that?”

“It depends what it was,” cut in George. “And anyway, I don’t think that it’s very fair not to tell him, Shaz. You’ve got him all upset now. You should tell him.”

“No, Georgie,” said Sharon. “I’m not going to tell him.”

“Would you tell me then?” asked George.

Sharon thought for a moment. Then she leant over and cupped a hand around George’s left ear and whispered to him.

George’s eyes widened. Then he let out a laugh. “Really?” he asked. “Did it really?”

Sharon nodded with satisfaction. “Yes, it did. Funny, isn’t it?”

“Do you think it’s true?” asked George.

Sharon shrugged. “Who knows?” She paused. “So that’s it, Bruce. That’s what we thought of you.”

Bruce looked at George. “You’re marrying this person?” he asked quietly. “You’re actually going to go ahead and marry this person? This . . . this haggis? ”

It was as if George had been given an electric shock. Pulling himself up to his full height – and he was considerably shorter than Bruce, and Sharon – he poked a finger in the direction At the Gallery

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of his erstwhile friend. “You are not to call my fiancée a haggis,” he said. “Don’t ever let me hear you call her a haggis.”

And with that, he turned to Sharon, took her arm, and nodded in the direction of the door.

“Goodbye, Bruce,” he said. “I’m sorry that this has happened.

But you’ve only got yourself to blame. Come, Shaz. We must go.”

Sharon gave Bruce a look of triumph. “Would you really like to know what was written on the wall? Would you?” She paused.

She had spotted a piece of paper and a pencil on the counter and she went over to this and scribbled a few words. Then she folded the paper, passed it to him, and quickly rejoined George at the door.

After they had gone, Bruce sat down. He held the piece of paper in his hands, fingering it for a moment before he opened it and read what she had written. He crumpled up the paper and threw it across the room.

79. At the Gallery

Matthew came back from Big Lou’s eager to tell Pat about what had happened. “Cyril bit somebody,” he said, grinning. “There’s a woman who lives in Scotland Street. One of your neighbours, I believe. She’s got a little boy who looks as if he’s seen a ghost most of the time. He was patting Cyril and Cyril was lapping it up and then this hatchet-faced woman said something to Cyril that he didn’t like, and he bit her in the ankle! Not a serious bite. A nip really. I don’t think he even broke the skin. But she howled and tried to kick him but Cyril backed off. It was the funniest sight. And we had to keep a straight face through all this. And Angus Lordie had to say how sorry he was and gave Cyril a wallop with a rolled-up copy of the Scotsman. Poor Cyril.”

“I know her,” said Pat. “Domenica can’t stand her. She says that she pushes that little boy an awful lot. She makes him learn 260 At the Gallery

the saxophone and Italian. Domenica says that he’s going to rebel the first chance he gets.”

“Mothers can be like that,” said Matthew. “They create a lot of problems for their sons. Anyway, it was a very amusing incident.”

They returned to the business of the gallery. An auction catalogue had arrived with the morning’s post and Pat had already perused it, noting down the lots in which she thought Matthew might have an interest. There were early twentieth-century studies of Kirkcudbright Harbour which she thought he might go for, and Matthew was busy looking at photographs of these, wondering about the price at which he would be able to sell them if he were to bid for them, when the door opened and a woman came into the gallery. For a moment he did not recognise her, but then he realised who she was. This was Janis, his father’s new girlfriend, the florist with whom he and his father had enjoyed a somewhat less than satisfactory evening in the New Club. He rose to his feet and greeted her. He tried to sound warm, but it was difficult.

“So this is your gallery,” said Janis, looking around her.

Matthew nodded. He wondered about her tone. Had she sounded a little bit dismissive? He was determined that he would not be condescended to by this woman, whatever her relationship with his misguided father was.

“Yes,” he said, his tone becoming noticeably colder. “This is where I work.”

“I hope you don’t mind my dropping in like this,” said Janis.

Matthew shrugged. “You’re very welcome,” he said, adding:

“I might drop into your flower shop some time.”

“Oh, please do,” said Janis. “Any time at all.” She cast an eye around her. “Not that we have much to interest you up there.

Unless you’re particularly keen on flowers.”

“I don’t mind flowers,” he said. “In their place.” It was an enigmatic remark, capable of interpretation at many different levels. In one reading, it suggested that one should not concern oneself too much with flowers; that there were better things to think and talk about. In another sense, it could be taken to mean At the Gallery

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that flowers should remain where they grew, and should not be picked. And in another sense altogether, it could be taken as implying that people who dealt in flowers should not take up with the fathers of those who dealt in pictures, especially when the father was considerably older than the florist.

“Well, I’m not sure,” said Janis evenly. “Flowers bring a lot of pleasure to people – ordinary people.”

This was itself an enigmatic observation. At one level, it might have been self-deprecatory: working with flowers made no claims to being anything special, unlike dealing in art, which gave pleasure to a slightly grander set of people. That was one interpretation. Another was this: at least people who sell flowers to people who buy flowers have no pretensions; they get pleasure from flowers and that is justification enough.

Whichever meaning Janis had in mind, she did not pursue it.

Smiling politely at Pat, whom Matthew had not bothered to introduce to her, she made her way over to the far side of the room and began to peer closely at a painting of a girl picking flowers in a field.

“My father’s girlfriend,” whispered Matthew to Pat. “The florist. Note how she goes straight for the picture of flowers.

Typical.”

“I don’t know,” said Pat. “She seems nice enough to me. And that’s a nice enough painting.”

“You don’t understand,” hissed Matthew. “Can’t you see the pound signs in her eyes? Can’t you see them?”

“No,” said Pat.

Matthew cast his eyes upwards in an expression of frustration, but said nothing, and returned to his catalogue. After a few minutes, Janis came over to his desk.

“You’ve got some nice paintings,” she said. “That Crosbie over there is very pretty.”

Matthew glanced at the painting in question. “Somebody may like it,” he said grudgingly. “You never know.”

“I thought that I might buy it,” said Janis. “That is, if you’ll sell it to me.”

“You’re welcome to it,” said Matthew. “It’s for sale.”

262 Dogs and Cuban History

“Then I’ll take it,” said Janis, adding: “It’s a present for your father. I’m sure that he’ll appreciate it.”

Matthew hesitated. The purchase of the painting as a gift for his father was a sign of intimacy between the two of them. One did not purchase paintings for those with whom one had a casual relationship.

“He’s not a great one for paintings,” muttered Matthew. “Are you sure?”

Janis nodded. “I’m very sure, Matthew. I’ve got to know him quite well, you know.”

Matthew said nothing. He rose from his desk and walked over to the place where the painting was hanging. Lifting it off its hook, he brought it back to Janis. He looked at the scene which Crosbie had captured so swiftly – a harbour-side scene with several fishermen sitting on upturned fish-boxes. It was a deft painting, a confident painting, of a subject that could so easily have appeared posed and trite. But that had been avoided.

Janis looked at the painting and smiled. “He’ll like that, you know.”

“I hope so,” said Matthew.

Janis hesitated. “Would you mind if I did something?” she asked. “Would you mind if I told him that you chose it for him?”

It was Pat who answered the question. “You’d be very pleased with that, Matthew? Wouldn’t you? Yes, he would.”

80. Dogs and Cuban History

Two days later, Pat knocked on Domenica’s door. Domenica had never appeared to be anything but pleased to see her younger neighbour, and today was no exception. Of course it was convenient; of course Pat must come in and have coffee.

Pat realised, of course, that Domenica liked conversation, but she had always felt that their encounters had been somewhat one-sided, with Domenica doing most of the talking. And that was because Domenica had just done so much more than she had; Dogs and Cuban History

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more happened in sixty years than in twenty, as a general rule, although naturally there were exceptions. Some people did very little in their lives, and such habits of inaction could last for generations. She had read in a newspaper somewhere of the work of Professor Sykes, who had used the techniques of modern genetics to look at the roots of people who bore the surname Sykes. People called Sykes, he discovered, tended to come from a small village in England, and there were still people of that name there – families that in eight hundred years had moved no more than a few hundred yards. That was stability on a thoroughly heroic scale.

On this visit, Pat had rather more to say than usual, as the previous two days had been full of incident. There had been the reported incident of Cyril’s biting of Irene; there had been the visit of Janis to the gallery and the resulting row with Matthew. And finally there had been the outing with Peter to the nudist picnic in the Moray Place Gardens, an occasion which she needed to talk about.

They sat in Domenica’s study, Domenica in the chair that she liked to occupy at the side of her desk, flanked by a pile of books, Pat in the chair normally reserved for visitors underneath Domenica’s framed photograph of her father.

Domenica had not heard from Angus Lordie of Cyril’s disgrace, and was delighted with the tale.

“I wouldn’t normally wish a dog-bite on anybody,” she said.

“However, in this case there is an element of poetic justice. I myself have wished to bite that woman for some time, and I can thoroughly sympathise with Cyril. I wonder whether she’s learned anything from the experience. I doubt it.”

“Matthew says that she provoked him,” said Pat. “She insulted him in some way.”

“Dogs are sensitive to insult,” said Domenica. “And, you know, it’s an interesting thing – dogs from highly sensitive cultures are more prickly about how they’re treated. There’s been a very interesting piece of research on that. Somebody from Stanford got it into his head that the behaviour of dogs reflected the national characteristics of the human culture in

264 Dogs and Cuban History

which the dogs lived. I think that the idea came to him when he visited New York and found that the dogs he saw were all highly-strung and neurotic – just like their owners. So that set him off thinking that these differences might be manifested at a national level too. A very interesting bit of research, but highly contentious, of course; almost eccentric.”

Pat was intrigued. “And what did he find out?”

Domenica smiled. “He found out what he had set out to find out,” she said. “Which always makes research a bit suspect. You have to keep an open mind, although you can have a hypothesis, of course. He looked at dogs in Spanish-speaking cultures

– Colombian dogs, I think – and then he looked at Swedish, Australian and Japanese dogs.”

“And?”

“Well,” continued Domenica, “Swedish dogs showed themselves to be quieter and more cautious. Their behaviour, in fact, showed signs of depression. They sat around rather mournfully and did not bark to the same extent as other dogs. The Colombian dogs were very excitable. If you subjected them to stress, they made a terrible fuss. They were always dancing about and chasing things.”

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“And the Australian dogs?”

“They behaved in a fairly boisterous way, too,” said Domenica,

“although not as markedly as the Colombian dogs. They seemed less concerned about their appearance – they were much scruffier

– and they were very outgoing. They were also very good at chasing balls.

“The Japanese dogs” she continued, “were very interesting –

from the animal behaviour point of view. They were very sensitive. Very concerned with face.”

Pat laughed. “All rather like their owners?”

“You could say so. And I suppose it shouldn’t surprise us.

Animals with whom we live in close proximity are bound to throw our behaviour back at us, aren’t they? I’m not sure if we should be surprised by such findings.”

“No,” said Pat. “But it seems a little bit far-fetched.”

Domenica looked thoughtful. “I had occasion to reflect on this myself,” she said. “Last year, when I was in Havana. I recalled that bit of Stanford research while I was there. And I must say I thought that he had a point. But I’m not sure if you want to sit there and hear all this from me. You have that picnic to tell me about.”

Pat wanted to hear about Havana. There would be time enough for Moray Place later on.

Encouraged to continue, Domenica picked up one of the books from the pile, glanced at it thoughtfully, and replaced it. “I wanted to go to Havana,” she said, “before two things happened. The first of these is before the place fell down altogether. Do you know that over one hundred of their lovely old buildings collapse every year? And the second is before the Americans got their hands on it. I am not one of those people who are uncharitable about the Americans, but the truth of the matter is that the United States has been breathing down Cuba’s neck since the early nineteenth century and continues to do so. I cannot believe – I just cannot believe – that if the average person in the United States knew how that lovely island has been treated over the years they would feel anything but shame. Pure shame. Indeed, everybody has bullied Cuba. The Spanish were simply murderous. Then they looted the place. We had a go at it. Then the Americans tried to buy it. They 266 Havana

occupied it. They treated it as a private playground. Organised crime ran the place. They built big hotels. They had their meet-ings there. And then Castro and his crew appeared and we all know what happened then. Thousands and thousands imprisoned and held under the thumb. Poor Cubans. It’s ever thus.”

Pat wondered what this had to do with dogs, and Domenica sensed her puzzlement.

“You’re obviously wondering where dogs come into this,” she said.

“A bit,” said Pat.

“Dogs have everything to do with this,” said Domenica.

“Cuban dogs are rather special, you see.”

81. Havana

“I arrived in Havana at night,” said Domenica. “That’s a good time to arrive anywhere, because you don’t see very much and then you wake up in the morning and open your shutters to an entirely new world. That’s how I felt. There was a balcony to my room and this looked out over the rooftops to the most gorgeous tower I have ever seen. A tower on top of an ornate palace of some sort, with small arches and windows painted in that light blue they go in for in Cuba – almost a turquoise. And when I looked down and along the street to the front of my building, I saw nothing but three- or four-storey buildings with decorated stucco facades, all in faded white or yellow or pink.

Ironwork balconies. I have never seen such beauty in a city.

Never. Not even in Italy. Not even in places like Siena or Vienna.

It’s a wonderful, very feminine architecture.

“But the problem with the beauty of Havana is that it’s so decrepit. So many of those wonderful buildings are on their last legs. The people can’t afford to fix them. They have no money.

When you don’t even have enough money for food or soap or any of those things, then you won’t have enough money for your buildings, will you?

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“And so you walk past these buildings in which whole floors, or rooms within floors, have collapsed. And yet people who lead their lives in the rooms next to those that have simply fallen to the ground continue to live where they are. So you will see gaps in buildings, like missing teeth, and right beyond the gap will be a lighted window which shows that others are hanging on in the midst of the falling masonry.

“I had a friend who lived in one of those buildings. I had met her at an anthropological meeting in Jamaica a few years earlier, and we had kept in touch. They are desperate for friends, the Cubans. They are loveable, charming people and they want to belong to the world like the rest of us. And so they write when they can afford the stamp.

“She asked me to her flat, which was on the edge of the old city. The staircase which took you up to the top floor, where she lived, was distinctly suspect and there were large holes in it. You had to watch where you put your feet. And her flat had three rooms. A kitchen, and two other rooms. She lived in one with her young son, and her husband, from whom she was divorced, lived in the other. Yes, she was divorced from him on the grounds of his adultery and cruelty, and yet they were trapped 268 Havana

together because you just can’t move in that society unless you go through a very complicated and expensive system of exchanging flats. They couldn’t afford this. So they still had to live under the same roof and share the kitchen and the bathroom, such as it was. And in order to get to his room, he had to go through hers, at any time of the night and day. Can you imagine it?

“And yet, like so many other Cubans, she had a dog, a little dog called Basilio. She wanted her little boy to have a dog, and so they had one. Every Cuban gets a ration of food, and you can’t get anything else unless you have a lot of money to spend, which she didn’t. So Basilio had to be fed out of the wretched, barely adequate food ration that she had. In other words, she gave him her own food.

“And when you went out in the streets or the plaza, you saw these bands of little dogs walking around with such good spirit.

They were not really strays – they all had owners – and all of them were loved by somebody. In other cities, you would expect to see collarless dogs persecuted. Rounded up. Taken to pounds.

And then executed by lethal injection. These dogs just wandered about perfectly happily.

“And in a way I thought of it as a metaphor for the society.

These cheerful small dogs, these perritos, all getting by in the face of terrible material privation. And putting up with it in such good spirit, just as the people about them seem to do. All of them, dogs and people, smiling in the face of constant, grinding poverty.

“Which may be part of the problem, of course. Communism has failed miserably in Cuba, just as it seems to have failed elsewhere. It just does not seem to have been able to provide for the material needs of people. It has only survived through the denial of freedom – there are many charges one can levy against it. And if the people weren’t so nice about it, then they would have risen in anger and demanded their freedom, demanded some more effective response to material needs, just as they did in Eastern Europe. But they haven’t. They’ve continued to dance and play music and keep their sense of humour. It’s quite A Great Sense of Purity

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remarkable, and really rather sad – sad to think that there must have been many people who genuinely wanted to create a decent society, people who believed they were doing the right thing, and then they found that everything went so wrong, the whole thing involved lies and distortion and repression, and had become so utterly shabby. And that happened. Even the signs that claim victory are falling down. And if people are given half a chance, they flee, out of sheer desperation, braving no matter what dangers.

“And waiting in the wings are those who are rubbing their hands and saying that it’s only a question of time before the whole place is covered in fast-food restaurants, the ports crowded with the cruise ships full of spoiled tourists, the prostitutes and the pimps triumphant, and that charming, beautiful culture crushed in the deluge.

“Globalisation, my dear. And in this way, is our wide and entrancing world, our vivid world of songs and music and cultural difference, brought to an end by the crude, the false, the mindless, the imposed.”

Domenica became silent. She was looking down at the floor now. Pat had not even begun to tell her what she wanted to tell her, but could not now, after a story of such sadness. So she finished her coffee in silence and asked Domenica to excuse her until another moment, another day. Domenica understood.

82. A Great Sense of Purity

Pat reflected, in private, over what had happened. Peter had left a note that afternoon, pushed through the letter-box at the flat, with her name written on the outside of the folded paper. That picnic – remember? – it’s on! I’ll come and collect you at five. If you can’t make it, give me a call at this number.

She had retired to her room – there was no sign of Bruce –

and re-read the note. When he had issued the invitation she had certainly not accepted it there and then. After she had overcome 270 A Great Sense of Purity

her initial surprise – it was not every day that one was invited to a nudist picnic, and in Moray Place Gardens too – she had said that she would think about it. That was all. And she had thought about it, and although she might have decided to go, she had not yet told him that.

She looked out of the window. It was a warm enough day –

much warmer than one would expect for early September – and this must have encouraged the nudists to go ahead with their picnic. But the weather in Edinburgh was notoriously change-able and sunlight could within minutes become deep gloom, empty skies become heavy with rain, snow give way to warm breezes. There was simply no telling.

By five that afternoon, when the bell rang, she was in a state of renewed indecision, although, if anything, she was now marginally more inclined to decline the invitation. She would tell Peter that she did not feel ready to go to a nudist picnic just yet. Though when would one be ready for such an event?

How did one prepare oneself ? Perhaps nudists had a coming-out process in which they gradually came to terms with the fact that they felt more comfortable without any clothes. Or it could be a road to Damascus conversion, when the restric-tiveness of clothes suddenly came home to one with blinding clarity.

She went to the door and was just about to open it when the thought occurred to her: would Peter be clad or unclad on the doorstep? It was an absurd thought, and she dismissed it immediately. And when she opened the door, there he was, dressed quite normally in a tee-shirt and jeans. But he was carrying a small bag with him, and that, she assumed, would be for the abandoned clothes.

He greeted her quite normally, as if he had come to collect her for the cinema or a restaurant rather than a nudist picnic.

“We should be getting along there soon,” he said, looking at his watch. “Things begin quite promptly.”

And what, she wondered, were these things?

“I’m not quite . . .” she began. But he did not seem to have heard her. He asked her instead whether she had a bag which A Great Sense of Purity

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she could bring. “Or you can share mine,” he said, pointing to his bag. “There’s enough room in there for both of us.”

“But . . .”

“No, that’s fine. This bag is big enough. You don’t have to bring anything else. That’s fine.”

“But I was . . .”

He tapped his watch. “Really, we must hurry. It’ll take us fifteen minutes to get there and I really don’t want to be late.”

She took the path of least resistance and left with him. After all, it was only a nudist picnic and everybody knew that nudists were harmless enough. So they walked back along Cumberland Street, Peter swinging the bag as he went, and Pat largely silent beside him.

“You’re quiet,” he said as they crossed Dundas Street. “You aren’t nervous, are you?”

She hesitated. “A bit, I suppose. I’ve never . . .”

He smiled and playfully put his arm about her shoulder. It was only there for a moment, and then he withdrew it. “There’s nothing to it. It’s very easy, you know. You won’t even notice it after a couple of minutes.”

“Did it take you long to get used to it?” she asked.

“I was born to it,” he said. “My parents were prominent nudists. Over in Helensburgh. We used to go on naturist holidays in Denmark each year. We had lots of Danish friends. I was brought up to accept it. I don’t even think about it now.”

“And how did you get involved with these people in Moray Place?” Pat asked.

“Through my parents,” Peter explained. “When I came to university in Edinburgh, friends of my parents got in touch and asked whether I would like to come to a dinner party. The dinner party was in Moray Place and I discovered that it was a nudist affair. These people had a very nice drawing-room flat with views over the Dean Valley. It was a pretty stylish affair – a typical Edinburgh dinner party, except for the fact that nobody had any clothes on.”

Pat tried to imagine it, but found it difficult. “But what did you talk about?” she asked.

272 In Moray Place Gardens

“The same things that they talk about at any Edinburgh dinner party,” said Peter. “House prices. Schools. So it was pretty boring for me, apart from one or two people of my own age who had been invited as well. They put us all together at one end of the table. The other end was full of lawyers and people like that.”

Pat was silent. “And then?”

Peter shrugged. “After dinner we went through to the drawing room for coffee,” he said. “We played charades for a while, and then we put on our clothes and went home. Pretty dull stuff.”

Pat thought for a moment. Charades: did they act out the story of Adam and Eve, or was that done so often at nudist dinner parties that nobody did it any more? Three words. From a book. First word . . . The whole idea seemed so completely absurd, and yet there must be a reason why people did it. She looked at Peter. What went on in his head when he went to these things? Did he feel any different without his clothes on?

“Why do you do it?” she asked. “Does it do something for you?”

Peter laughed. “It means nothing in that sense, if that’s what you’re asking. No, it gives you a feeling of complete natural-ness. All falseness, all pretence stripped away. You feel as if a great burden of restriction and secrecy is taken off your shoulders. It’s . . . Well, it’s completely liberating. And pure. You feel utterly pure.” He paused. “You do believe me, don’t you, Pat?

I really mean it. You’ll find out for yourself when you try it. I promise you.”

83. In Moray Place Gardens

When they arrived in Moray Place there was no sign, absolutely no sign, that a nudist picnic was about to take place. The great sweep of architecture, with its handsome facade and its high windows, was as dignified and discreet as ever. Those who were going about their business, walking on the pavement, parking In Moray Place Gardens

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their cars, or going in and out of their houses, were entirely clad.

“It’s not those gardens,” said Peter, pointing at the rather dull gardens in the middle of the circle. “We go round the back. The gate is at the very top of Doune Terrace.”

They walked round until they came to the point where Doune Terrace sloped off to the north. At the top of this road, a small gate, discreetly set in the iron railings, gave access to the gardens that stretched down the steep side of the hill to the Water of Leith below. It was a magnificent set of private gardens, reserved for those who held a key. But now no key was necessary, as the gate had been propped open and there was a bearded man standing just behind it.

Peter led the way, shaking hands with the man at the gate.

The man laughed and pointed up at the sky. There, rolling in from the north, were the rain clouds which had been nowhere in sight when they had left Scotland Street.

“The weather looks bad,” said Peter as he and Pat went into the gardens.

“Will they cancel it if there’s rain?” asked Pat. There was a note of hope in her voice, but this was soon dashed by Peter’s response.

“It’ll go ahead,” he said. “It’s just that it will be a bit different, that’s all.”

At that moment the rain started, not pelting down, but falling with insistence, blotting out the view of the town to the north, running in rivulets down the sharply dipping paths of the gardens. Peter looked at Pat and smiled. “Here’s your mac,” he said, taking two black plastic raincoats out of his bag and handing one to her.

Pat thanked him and began to put it on.

“Not yet,” he said, wagging an admonitory finger. “You have to take your clothes off first. There’ll be a couple of changing tents down there on the grass. Wait till then.”

Two small white tents now came into view behind a hedge.

And there, on the other side of the hedge, shielded from view until the barrier of the hedge was actually negotiated, was a 274 In Moray Place Gardens

group of about twenty people, all clad in voluminous mackintoshes. The mackintoshes were opaque, with the result that the only evidence that they were unclad underneath were the bare ankles sticking out below the lower skirts of the raincoats. The heads of the nudists were bare, though, and their hair was plas-tered to their skulls. They looked very wet and very uncomfortable.

“Welcome to the picnic,” said a tall man. “The ladies’

changing tent is over there. The men are in that one.”

Pat made her way to the tent and drew aside the flap. Inside, a middle-aged woman was in the process of buttoning up the front of her mackintosh.

“This rain is such a pest,” said the woman. “But we shall have our picnic come hell or high water.”

Pat nodded. She slipped out of her clothes and donned her mackintosh. She did not feel at all exposed in this new garb; and indeed she was not.

“You’ll need a bag for those clothes of yours,” said the woman helpfully. “Here’s a Jenners bag for you.”

The sight of the plastic bag, stamped with the familiar Jenners sign, was a reassurance to Pat in these unfamiliar and challenging circumstances. There was something about the name Jenners that provided the comfort one needed in dubious situations. An occasion on which you were asked to take off your clothes and put them in a Jenners bag was inherently less threatening than an occasion in which one was asked to put them in any other bag.

Pat thanked the woman and stuffed her clothing into the bag.

Then, leaving the bag in the tent, alongside a number of other bags (mostly from Jenners), she went out into the rain. On the grass ahead of her, in a cluster around a small portable table, a group of respectably-covered, mackintosh-clad picnickers were sipping on glasses of fruit punch. Pat was offered a glass and joined the group.

“Your first time at one of our little gatherings?” asked a man on Pat’s left.

She looked at him. He was wearing a large brown raincoat, In Moray Place Gardens

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the collar of which was turned up around his neck. He had a small moustache which was now wet through. Little streams of water ran off the edges of the moustache and onto his cheeks.

“Yes,” she replied. “I came here with a friend. I’m not really . . .”

The man cut her short. “We have such tremendous fun,” he said. “Last month we went to Tantallon and had a picnic in the dunes. Unfortunately, there was a terrible biting wind and we all ended up wearing sou’westers, but we did our best. On most occasions we at least manage to go about bare-footed, even if that’s about it. That’s the way nudism is in Scotland, I suppose.

We can’t actually remove our clothes. But everybody is very understanding about that.”

Pat was about to ask what the point was, but the man continued. “Are you interested in stamps?” he asked.

Pat shook her head. “Not really,” she said.

“Pity,” he said. “I find stamps absolutely fascinating. I have a very fine collection. Do you not collect anything?”

“Not really,” said Pat.

“I used to collect birds’ eggs when I was a boy,” he went on.

“But then that became rather a bad thing to do and I gave up.

So many people were raiding nests that some species were becoming a bit threatened. So I moved on to playing-cards and then to share certificates. That’s my current enthusiasm.

Scriptology. I go for South American railway bonds – that sort of thing. They have beautiful designs. Quite beautiful.”

Pat looked into her fruit punch. Drops of rain were falling into it, creating tiny circles. Underfoot, the grass was becoming sodden; and now, from the east, a wind had started to blow. She looked about her. Peter was nowhere to be seen. But that did not matter, because she did not want to see him any more. She felt nothing for him, no interest, no antipathy, nothing.

She turned to the man beside her. “I have to go home,” she said impulsively. “Goodbye.”

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84. The Memory of Pigs

Dr Fairbairn was grateful to Irene for making him face up to the guilt that had been plaguing him for so many years. He had suppressed the memory of his professional breach, and had done so effectively. Or so he told himself. The problem was that he knew full well that repression of that sort merely allowed the uncomfortable memory to do its work at another level. And it was inevitable that this would become apparent at a later stage, creating tension between the external Dr Fairbairn, the one the world saw, and the internal Dr Fairbairn, the one hidden from the world by that blue linen jacket with its special crumple-resistant qualities.

On the day that Irene had forced him to admit to himself, and to her, that he had actually struck his celebrated patient, Wee Fraser, Dr Fairbairn returned to his flat in Sciennes in the late afternoon and prepared himself a round of tomato sandwiches and a pot of tea. The flat was empty when he went in as his wife worked long hours and tended not to come home until well after seven. For this reason, they usually dined late –

sometimes not until after nine – and Dr Fairbairn found it necessary to have a snack to keep hunger at bay.

Dr Fairbairn did the cooking. He had done this throughout their marriage, not only to show that he was a “new man”, but also because he found cooking a relaxing and creative activity.

Indeed, as he stood above his saucepan, adding cream to scallops or delicately re-inflating porcini mushrooms with a judicious measure of boiling water, all sorts of thoughts would go through his mind. This, he felt, was the time in which his unconscious could order the experiences of the day, before dreams took over that function slightly later on. This theory, that one should think through things before the dreaming mind began to function, was one which he hoped to develop in a book. It would be called, he had decided, Pre-Dream Dreaming, and he anticipated that it would be every bit as successful as his well-known book on Wee Fraser. Of course there were other books to write, and these were jockeying for position in his already busy schedule. One The Memory of Pigs

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of these was Eat Your Way to Mental Health, a title which had come to him during one of his sessions at the stove. He remembered exactly how it had happened. He had been lightly sautéing garlic in olive oil when it occurred to him that our attitudes towards food were often affected by our view of what other people would think about our eating the food in question. He stopped, and stared at the garlic. He liked the taste of garlic, as did his wife. And yet people, even garlic enthusiasts, were so cautious, almost apologetic about its use. Who – other than the French, of course – would even contemplate putting a clove of garlic in the oven, its head neatly chopped off and a drop of oil dribbled very gently onto the top, and then a few minutes later taking it out and eating it? With nothing to accompany it?

And yet why should one not do that? The answer, of course, lay not in any culinary realm, but in a social one. Garlic smelled.

People who ate garlic smelled. And nobody wants to smell.

Now, most people would leave it at that. Dr Fairbairn, however, felt that social inhibitions of that sort – the desire not to smell – were probably much more harmful and limiting than people generally thought they were. A person who did not worry about how he appeared to others, or what others thought of him, would enjoy far more resolution, more inner tranquillity, than one who did. And one way of encouraging this resolution would be to get people to eat what they wanted to eat. If self-expression could be encouraged at the table, then self-expression would follow in other parts of a person’s life.

On this particular insight, Dr Fairbairn had sketched out an entire theory of how inhibitions and anxieties could be addressed both in the kitchen and at the table. It would be called food therapy and it would become immensely popular.

Other books would be written on the subject. There would be courses. There would be lecture tours. And he and Estelle, his wife, could leave Sciennes – charming though it undoubtedly was – and go and live somewhere like Palm Beach. That was a very pleasant prospect, and indeed gave rise to a new idea, 278 Encounter, Catharsis, Flight

an autobiography, which perhaps could be called From Motherwell to Palm Beach.

But now, sitting in an armchair in his flat in Sciennes, his tomato sandwiches on a plate before him, Dr Fairbairn thought of what lay ahead. Irene was right; he would have to seek out Wee Fraser and apologise to him for what he had done all those years ago. But first he would have to relive, in as vivid a way as possible, the precise sequence of events that had led him to raise his arm.

He had been in his room with Wee Fraser. He had given the boy a small wooden farm set, consisting of a couple of pigs, a tiny tractor, a stylised farmer and his wife, and some blocks out of which to make walls and pens. There was enough there to allow the child to portray a wide range of internal dynamics. But Wee Fraser had insisted on laying the pigs on the ground upside down, with their tiny porcine legs pointing upwards.

“No, Fraser,” Dr Fairbairn had said. “Piggies go like this.”

And he had placed the pigs the right way up.

“Dinnae,” said Wee Fraser, turning the pigs upside down again.

Dr Fairbairn righted the pigs, and at that Wee Fraser turned his head and bit him hard. Dr Fairbairn then smacked Wee Fraser.

That is what had to be redressed. He stood up. He would do it now. Right now. He would go to Burdiehouse and find Wee Fraser. He reached for his blue linen jacket.

85. Encounter, Catharsis, Flight

Dr Fairbairn left the flat in Sciennes and made his way to the nearby bus-stop on Causewayside. His mood was buoyant; now that he had made the decision to go, he was keen to be there as soon as possible. He was sure that he would find Wee Fraser.

He had extracted the address from his original records and a Encounter, Catharsis, Flight

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quick search of the telephone directory had revealed that there was still a family living there by the name of Maclean – Wee Fraser’s surname. If the bus did not take its time in coming, then he thought that he could be knocking on the front door of Wee Fraser’s house just before six, which would be a good time to catch them in, as that was when ordinary people (as both he and Irene called them) ate their tea.

A bus arrived and Dr Fairbairn boarded it. Because of the time of day it was fairly full, and Dr Fairbairn had to move down to the back in order to find a seat. And even then it was a small seat, as he was obliged to perch beside a large woman in a floral dress. The woman looked at him with distaste, as if he had no right to sit down on space which she could so easily have flowed into. Dr Fairbairn caught her hostile glance and returned it.

Schizoid, he thought.

He looked at the other passengers. He did not travel by bus very often – in fact he never went anywhere by bus – and it was interesting for him to look at the faces of the people and speculate on their psychological problems. On the bench on the other side of the narrow aisle were a young man and young woman, dressed in nondescript clothes. The man wore jeans, the knees of which had become distressed and ripped. Then he had a tee-shirt on which was written the word NO. The young woman had very similar garb, although her tee-shirt had a more complicated message. It said: I’M NOT DRUNK, IT’S JUST

THE WAY I’M STANDING.

Dr Fairbairn stared at the tee-shirts and then at the faces of the couple. They were, he imagined, about nineteen or twenty, and reasonably composed in their appearance and manner. Why then did they wear tee-shirts with messages? Was it a question of fashion – others broadcast messages on their clothing and therefore they felt they had to do it too? That was a simple, but powerful explanation. The desire to conform in clothing was almost universal. Jeans were a statement that one was just like everybody else. They were the modern uniform, achieving a flat monotony of look that would have warmed the heart of Mao at his height of enthusiasm for the destruction of sartorial salience.

280 Encounter, Catharsis, Flight

But messages, he thought, were different. In having something written on one’s clothing – written on the outside, be it noted – one was effectively making oneself into a walking bill-board. This meant that one’s clothing could make both a passive and an active ideological statement. The red shirt with the head of Che Guevera said: I sympathise with the struggle. And if this message was not clear enough, one could add the words la Lucha underneath. If one was really radical, then an exclamation mark could be added to that. Thus people whose shirt said la Lucha!

were likely to be seen as far more credible activists than those timid souls whose shirts merely said la Lucha. And of course Spanish was mandatory for such messages. It didn’t sound quite the same to have on one’s shirt the word küzdelem, which is Hungarian for “struggle”.

The whole point, though, of having writing on one’s shirt was an exhibitionist one. To draw attention to oneself through clothing is exhibitionist, and of course, as Dr Fairbairn knew very well, exhibitionism was a substitute for real giving, real intimacy. The exhibitionist appears to be giving, but is actually not giving at all. He trumpets out the message Look at me, but he does that only to avoid having to engage in a real encounter, a Encounter, Catharsis, Flight

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real human exchange, with the other. The external is all that is on offer with the exhibitionist; the internal is hoarded, protected, Freudice: retained. The last person you see when you are confronted with an exhibitionist is the real person inside. That person is not on display.

Dr Fairbairn glanced at the young man’s shirt with its negative message. NO was perhaps not too bad a message to be proclaiming. At least it was modest. At least it was not like the obscene messages that some people wore on their clothing. Such people were shameless exhibitionists, but they were also polluters of our common space.

He shifted in his seat, which gave him a better view of the seats at the back of the bus. It was an average group of people: a young man in a suit (a bank-teller, perhaps, thought Dr Fairbairn), a person with a full shopping bag and a look of resignation about her (a woman, perhaps, he thought), an elderly man who had fallen asleep. And then, very near the back, sitting alongside his mother, whom Dr Fairbairn recognised after all these years . . . Wee Fraser himself.

Dr Fairbairn caught his breath. He had prepared himself for a meeting with Wee Fraser, but had not prepared himself for a meeting on the bus. And now, faced with the reality of this 14-year-old boy, with his short hair and his aggressive lower lip, Dr Fairbairn was not at all sure what to do. Should he wait until they got off the bus, at which point he could himself alight, or should he go and speak to them now? Would it be awkward to say what he had to in the bus, or would he need privacy?

He thought about this, indifferent to his surroundings, but when he looked out of the bus window he realised that they were almost at Burdiehouse. In fact, now they were there, and Wee Fraser and his mother were rising to their feet.

Dr Fairbairn waited for them to pass, before he got up. As they made their way past, Wee Fraser looked at Dr Fairbairn, and his eyes narrowed. Somewhere, in the very recesses of his mind, a memory was at work.

Dr Fairbairn stood up, and in so doing he inadvertently jostled Wee Fraser, who spun round, muttered aggressively and then, 282 In the Café St Honoré

with extraordinary speed, launched his head forward and head-butted the psychotherapist.

Almost instinctively, but moved, too, by sheer rage, Dr Fairbairn raised his fist and hit Wee Fraser soundly across the side of his chin. There was a crack as the jaw broke.

“Maw! Maw!” wailed Wee Fraser, the words strangely slurred by the loosened jaw.

Dr Fairbairn pushed his way up to the front of the bus and burst out of the door. We repeat our mistakes, he reflected, as he made his way hurriedly down the road. Endlessly. In ways that speak so eloquently of our deepest inner urges.

86. In the Café St Honoré

Janis and Gordon met that night at eight o’clock at the Café St Honoré. Gordon had suggested dinner, and Janis had readily accepted, as she had been hoping for an opportunity to give him the Crosbie which she had bought from Matthew. The painting had appealed to her when she first saw it, and when she took it home, to her house in the Stockbridge colonies, she had become even more taken with it. She had wrapped it carefully in the red gift paper which she used in her florist shop, and had written a short message on an accompanying card. For Gordon, who has made these last few months so happy for me – Janis.

Gordon had suggested that he call for her in a taxi, but she had decided to walk up the hill to the dinner engagement, as it was a fine evening. The first signs of autumn could be detected by those on the look-out for them, a slight sharpening of the air, an attenuation of the light. But for now, on that still evening, there was still every reason to be out under the pale sky, every reason to be walking through the streets of Edinburgh with the prospect of conversation and companionship at one’s destina-tion. Which is what we are all looking for, thought Janis – in our various ways.

She thought about her day as she walked up Howe Street.

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They had been busy at the shop, and she and her two assistants had been exhausted when they closed the door at six. There had been a large delivery for two weddings they were doing the following day and there had also been a steady stream of customers. In the mid-afternoon, a man had come in and chosen a large spray of roses. She had prepared the flowers and had handed them to him.

“They are for my wife,” he had said. “They are for her.”

Janis had smiled. “I’m sure she will like them,” she had said.

The man had looked down at the flowers, staring at them for several moments, and then she had realised . . . and he had raised his head again and she had seen the tears. She reached out and placed a hand on his forearm, to comfort him, and thought: We buy flowers for the dead. That is the one thing we buy for them.

Such moments as those were part of the florist’s day, and were handled as professionally as she could manage. But it was impossible not to be reminded in her work of the transience of human life and of how we can transform it by moments of kindness and consideration.

Gordon was already there when she arrived, seated in a table by the window. He rose to his feet, knocking over a glass as he did so. The glass rolled briefly on the table and then fell to the ground, splintering into fragments.

“I’m so clumsy,” he said to the waiter who appeared to deal with the situation.

“It’s nothing, sir,” said the waiter. “People do far worse than this. Whole tables of things end up on the floor.”

She smiled in appreciation at the waiter’s kindness and then turned her attention to the menu which had been put in front of her. For a few minutes they discussed what they would have and then, in the brief silence that followed, she reached for the small parcel which she had placed at her feet.