The World According to Bertie

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p r a i s e f o r t h e 4 4 s c o t l a n d s t r e e t s e r i e s

“Irresistible. . . . Packed with the charming characters, piercing perceptions and shrewd yet generous humor that have become McCall Smith’s cachet.”

— Chicago Sun-Times

“Will make you feel as though you live in Edinburgh, if only for a short while, and it’s a fine place to visit indeed. . . . Long live the folks on Scotland Street.”

— The Times-Picayune (New Orleans)

“McCall Smith’s generous writing and dry humor, his gentleness and humanity, and his ability to evoke a place and a set of characters without caricature or condescen-sion have endeared his books . . . to readers.”

— The New York Times

“Entertaining and witty. . . . A sly send-up of society in Edinburgh.”

— The Orlando Sentinel

“Just about perfect. . . . Contains a healthy helping of McCall Smith’s patented charm.”

— St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Mr. McCall Smith, a fine writer, paints his hometown of Edinburgh as indelibly as he captures the sunniness of Africa. We can almost feel the mists as we tread the cobblestones.”

— The Dallas Morning News

Alexander McCall Smith

THE WORLD

ACCORDING

TO BERTIE

Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the international phenomenon The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, the Isabel Dalhousie series, the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series, and the 44 Scotland Street series. He is professor emeritus of medical law at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and has served on many national and international bodies concerned with bioethics. He was born in what is now known as Zimbabwe and he was a law professor at the University of Botswana. Visit his Web site at www.alexandermccallsmith.com.

b o o k s b y

a l e x a n d e r m c c a l l s m i t h i n t h e i s a b e l d a l h o u s i e s e r i e s The Sunday Philosophy Club

Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

The Right Attitude to Rain

The Careful Use of Compliments

The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday

i n t h e n o . 1 l a d i e s ’ d e t e c t i v e a g e n c y s e r i e s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

Tears of the Giraffe

Morality for Beautiful Girls

The Kalahari Typing School for Men

The Full Cupboard of Life

In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

Blue Shoes and Happiness

The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

The Miracle at Speedy Motors

i n t h e p o r t u g u e s e i r r e g u l a r v e r b s s e r i e s Portuguese Irregular Verbs

The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs

At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances i n t h e 4 4 s c o t l a n d s t r e e t s e r i e s 44 Scotland Street

Espresso Tales

Love Over Scotland

The World According to Bertie

The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa THE WORLD

ACCORDING

TO BERTIE

THE WORLD

ACCORDING

TO BERTIE

ANCHOR BOOKS

A Division of Random House, Inc.

New York

FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, NOVEMBER 2008

Copyright © 2007 by Alexander McCall Smith Illustrations copyright © 2007 by Iain McIntosh All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Originally published in Great Britain by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd., Edinburgh, in 2007.

Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book is excerpted from a series that originally appeared in the Scotsman newspaper.

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948–

The world according to Bertie by / Alexander McCall Smith.

—1st Anchor Books ed.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-307-45522-2

1. Apartment houses—Fiction. 2. Edinburgh (Scotland)—Social life and customs—Fiction. i. Title.

PR6063.C326W67 2008

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This book is for

Derek and Dilly Emslie

Preface

The 44 Scotland Street books, of which The World According to Bertie is the fourth, started as a single serial novel in The Scotsman newspaper. When I began to write this story, I had no idea that the story would continue for as long as it has; nor had I any idea that Bertie, that engaging boy of six, burdened, as he is with his extremely demanding mother, would become so important a character. I certainly did not imagine that he would acquire so many supporters – or sympathisers, perhaps.

Bertie’s problem is his mother, one of those ambitious parents who sees her son as a project rather than a little boy. Such mothers are legion, and many sons spend the rest of their lives trying to cut invisible but powerful apron strings. Bertie wants only to be a typical boy; he wants to have fun, to play with other boys, to do all the things that Irene’s programme for him prevents him from doing. Instead he is forced to learn Italian, play the saxophone, and attend yoga classes for children.

Bertie seems to strike a chord with many readers. Recently I was in New York and attended a lunch where the first thing I was asked was how Bertie was doing. This happens to me throughout the world: people are more anxious about Bertie than they are about any of my other fictional characters. They want him to find freedom. They want him to escape.

This book continues the story of Bertie – who has, quite astonishingly, remained six for the past four volumes, even while other characters have aged and progressed. But it does not deal only with Bertie – I have carried on my conversation with Big Lou, Domenica, Angus Lordie, and all the others who have walked into Scotland Street and found their place in the saga. All of these people are, in their own way, looking for some sort of resolution in their lives, some happiness, which is what, I suppose, xi

i

Preface

all of us are doing. Some of them find it in this volume – or appear to find it – others will have to wait. The whole point of a serial novel is that the future is open. If freedom eludes Bertie in this book, and if Big Lou does not just yet find romantic fulfilment, then all is not lost – there is always another chapter.

Alexander McCall Smith

THE WORLD

ACCORDING

TO BERTIE

1. In Hanover Street. Watch Out, Pat, Bruce Is Back

. . . Or Is He?

Pat saw Bruce at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning, or at least that is when she thought she saw him. An element of doubt there certainly was. This centred not on the time of the sighting, but on the identity of the person sighted; for this was one of those occasions when one wonders whether the eye, or even the memory, has played a trick. And such tricks can be extraordinary, as when one is convinced that one has seen the late General de Gaulle coming out of a cinema, or when, against all reasonable probability, one thinks one has spotted Luciano Pavarotti on a train between Glasgow and Paisley; risible events, of course, but ones which underline the proposition that one’s eyes are not always to be believed.

She saw Bruce while she was travelling on a bus from one side of Edinburgh – the South Side, where she now lived –

to the New Town, on the north side of the city, where she worked three days a week in the gallery owned by her boyfriend, Matthew. The bus had descended with lumbering stateliness down the Mound, past the National Gallery of Scotland, and had turned into Hanover Street, narrowly missing an insouciant pedestrian at the corner. Pat had seen the near-miss – it was by the merest whisker, she thought – and had winced, but it was just at that moment, as the bus laboured up Hanover Street towards the statue of George IV, that she saw a young man walking in the opposite direction, a tall figure with Bruce’s characteristic en brosse hairstyle and wearing precisely the sort of clothes that Bruce liked to wear on a Saturday: a rugby jersey celebrating Scotland’s increasingly ancient Triple Crown victory and a pair of stone-coloured trousers.

Her eye being caught by the rugby jersey and the stone-coloured trousers, she turned her head sharply. Bruce! But now she could see only the back of his head, and after a moment she could not see even that; Bruce, or his double, had merged into a knot of people standing on the corner of Princes Street and

2

In Hanover Street. Watch Out, Pat, Bruce Is Back . . . Or Is He?

Pat lost sight of him. She looked ahead. The bus would stop in a few yards; she could disembark and make her way down to Princes Street to see if it really was him. But then she reminded herself that if she did that she would arrive late at the gallery, and Matthew needed her to be there on time; he had stressed that. He had an appointment, he said, with a client who was proposing to place several important Colourist pictures on the market. She did not want to hold him up, and quite apart from that there was the question of whether she would want to see Bruce, even if it proved to be him. She thought on balance that she did not.

Bruce had been her flatmate when she had first moved into 44 Scotland Street. At first, she had been rather in awe of him – after all, he was so confident in his manner, so self-assured –

and she at the time had been so much more diffident. Then things had changed. Bruce was undoubtedly good-looking – a fact of which he was fully aware and of which he was very willing to take advantage; he knew very well that women found him attractive, and he assumed that Pat would prove no exception.

Unfortunately, it transpired that he was right, and Pat found herself drawn to Bruce in a way which she did not altogether like. All this could have become very messy, but at the last In Hanover Street. Watch Out, Pat, Bruce Is Back . . . Or Is He?

3

moment, before her longing had been translated into anything beyond mere looking, she had come to her senses and decided that Bruce was an impossible narcissist. She fought to free herself of his spell, and she did. And then, having lost his job at the firm of surveyors (after being seen enjoying an intimate lunch in the Café St Honoré with the wife of the firm’s senior partner), Bruce decided that Edinburgh was too small for him and had moved to London. People who do that often then discover that London is too big for them, much to the amusement of those who stayed behind in Edinburgh in the belief that it was just the right size. This sometimes leads to the comment that the only sensible reason for leaving Scotland for London was to take up the job of prime minister, a remark that might have been made by Samuel Johnson, had he not been so prejudiced on this particular matter and thought quite the opposite.

Pat had been relieved that Bruce had gone to London, and it had not occurred to her that he might return. It did not matter much to her, of course, as she moved in different circles from those frequented by Bruce, and she would not have to mix with him even if he did return. But at the same time she felt slightly unsettled by the possible sighting, especially as the experience made her feel an indefinable excitement, an increase in heart rate, that was not altogether welcome. Was it just the feeling one gets on meeting with an old lover, years afterwards? Try as one might to treat such occasions as ordinary events, there is a thrill which marks them out from the quotidian. And that is what Pat felt now.

She completed the rest of the bus journey down to Dundas Street in a thoughtful state. She imagined what she might say if she were to meet him and what he in turn might say to her.

Would he have been improved by living in London, or would he have become even worse? It was difficult to tell. There must be those for whom living in London is an enriching experience, and there must be those who are quite unchanged by it. Pat had a feeling that Bruce would not have learned anything, as he had 4

A Conversation with Matthew: Matthew Is Troubled by His Trousers never shown any signs of learning anything when he was in Edinburgh. He would just be Bruce.

She got off her bus a few steps from Matthew’s gallery.

Through the window, she saw Matthew at his desk, immersed in paperwork. She looked at him fondly from a distance: dear Matthew, she thought; dear Matthew, in your distressed-oatmeal sweater, so ordinary, so safe; fond thoughts, certainly, but unac-companied by any quickening of the pulse.

2. A Conversation with Matthew: Matthew Is Troubled by His Trousers

Matthew glanced at his wristwatch. Pat was a few minutes late, but only a few minutes; not enough for him to express irritation. Besides, he himself was rarely on time, and he knew that he could hardly complain about the punctuality of others.

“I have to go,” he said, scooping up some papers from his desk. “Somebody wants my advice.”

“Yes,” said Pat. “You told me.” It had been surprising to her that anybody should seek Matthew’s advice on the Scottish Colourists, or on any painters for that matter, as it seemed only a very short time ago that she had found it necessary to impart to Matthew some of her own very recently acquired knowledge of basic art history. Only a year ago, there had been a rather embarrassing moment when a customer had mentioned Hornel, to be greeted by a blank look from Matthew. Yet in spite of the fact that he was hazy on the details, Matthew had a good aesthetic sense, and this, Pat thought, would get him quite far in the auction rooms. A good painting was a good painting, even if one did not know the hand that had painted it, and Matthew had considerable ability in distinguishing the good from the mediocre, and even the frankly bad. It was a pity though, she thought, that this ability did not run to clothes; the distressed-oatmeal sweater which he was wearing was not A Conversation with Matthew: Matthew Is Troubled by His Trousers 5

actually in bad taste, but was certainly a bad choice if one wanted, as Matthew did, to cut a dash. And as for his trousers, which were in that increasingly popular shade, crushed strawberry, Pat found herself compelled to avert her eyes. Now, if Matthew would only wear stone-coloured chinos, as Bruce did, then . . .

“Chinos,” she said suddenly.

Matthew looked up, clearly puzzled. “Chinos?”

“Yes,” said Pat. “Those trousers they call chinos. They’re made of some sort of thick, twill material. You know the sort?”

Matthew thought for a moment. He glanced down at his crushed-strawberry corduroy trousers; he knew his trousers were controversial – he had always had controversial trousers, but he rather liked this pair and he had seen a lot of people recently wearing trousers like them in Dundas Street. Should he have been wearing chinos? Was this Pat’s way of telling him that she would prefer it if he had different trousers?

“I know what chinos are,” he said. “I saw a pair of chinos in a shop once. They were . . .” He trailed off. He had rather liked the chinos, he remembered, but he was not sure whether he should say so to Pat: there might be something deeply unfashionable about chinos which he did not yet know.

“Why are they called chinos?” Pat asked.

Matthew shrugged. “I have no idea,” he said. “I just haven’t really thought about it . . . until now.” He paused. “But why were you thinking of chinos?”

Pat hesitated. “I just saw a pair,” she said. “And . . . and of course Bruce used to wear them. Remember?”

Matthew had not liked Bruce, although he had tolerated his company on occasion in the Cumberland Bar. Matthew was a modest person, and Bruce’s constant bragging had annoyed him.

But he had also felt jealous of the way in which Bruce could capture Pat’s attention, even if it had become clear that she had eventually seen through him.

“Yes. He did wear them, didn’t he? Along with that stupid rugby jersey. He was such a . . .” He did not complete the 6

A Conversation with Matthew: Matthew Is Troubled by His Trousers sentence. There was really no word which was capable of capturing just the right mixture of egoism, hair gel, and preening self-satisfaction that made up Bruce’s personality.

Pat moved away from Matthew’s desk and gazed out of the window. “I think that I just saw Bruce,” she said. “I think he might be back.”

Matthew rose from his desk and joined her at the window.

“Now?” he said. “Out there?”

Pat shook her head. “No,” she said. “Farther up. I was on the bus and I saw him – I’m pretty sure I did.”

Matthew sniffed. “What was he doing?”

“Walking,” said Pat. “Wearing chinos and a rugby jersey. Just walking.”

“Well, I don’t care,” said Matthew. “He can come back if he likes. Makes no difference to me. He’s such a . . .” Again Matthew failed to find a word. He looked at Pat. There was something odd about her manner; it was as if she was thinking about something, and this raised a sudden presentiment in Matthew. What if Pat were to fall for Bruce again? Such things happened; people encountered one another after a long absence and fell right back in love. It was precisely the sort of thing that novelists liked to write about; there was something heroic, something of the epic, in doing a thing like that. And if she fell back in love with Bruce, then she would fall out of love with me, thought Matthew, if she ever loved me, that is.

He stuffed his papers into his briefcase and moved across to Pat’s side. She half-turned her cheek to him, and he planted a kiss on it, leaving a small speck of spittle, which Pat wiped off.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered.

“It’s nothing,” said Pat, adding, “Just spit.”

Matthew looked at her. He felt flushed, awkward. “I’ll be back later,” he said. “But if you need to go, then just shut up the shop. We probably won’t be very busy.”

Pat nodded.

Matthew tried to smile. “And then maybe . . . maybe we can go and see a film tonight. There’s something at the Famous Sons and Gothic Seasoning 7

Cameo, something Czech, I think. Something about a woman who . . .”

“Do you mind if we don’t?” said Pat. “I’ve got an essay to write and if I don’t do it soon, then Dr Fantouse will go on and on at me, and . . .”

“Of course,” said Matthew. “Dr Fantouse. All right. I’ll see you on . . .”

“Wednesday.”

“Yes. All right.” Matthew walked towards the door. Nobody writes essays on Saturday night – he was convinced of that, and this meant that she was planning to do something else; she would go to the Cumberland Bar in the hope of meeting Bruce – that was it.

Leaving the gallery, Matthew began to walk up Dundas Street.

Glancing to his side, he looked through the gallery window. Pat was still standing there, and he gave her a little wave with his left hand, but she did not respond. She didn’t see me, he thought.

She’s preoccupied.

3. Famous Sons and Gothic Seasoning Matthew was wrong about Pat. He had imagined that her claim to be writing an essay that Saturday night was probably false and that in reality she would be doing something quite different – something in which she did not want him to be involved. But although it is true that students very rarely do any work on Saturday evenings – except in extremis – in this case, Pat was telling the truth, as she always did. There really was an essay to be completed and it really did have to be handed in to Dr Fantouse the following Monday. And this indeed was the reason why she declined Matthew’s invitation to the Czech film at the Cameo cinema.

Pat closed the gallery shortly after three that afternoon.

Matthew had not returned and business was slack – nonexistent, 8

Famous Sons and Gothic Seasoning in fact, with not a single person coming in to look at the paintings. This is what, in the retail trade, is called light footfall, there being no commercial term – other than death – to describe the situation where absolutely nobody came in and nothing was sold. So Pat, having locked the cash-box in the safe and set the alarm, left the gallery and waited on the other side of the road for the 23 bus that would take her back to within a short walk of the parental home – once more her home too –

in the Grange, that well-set suburb on the south side of the Meadows.

Pat’s parents lived in Dick Place, a street which had prompted even the sombre prose of the great architectural historian John Gifford and his collaborators into striking adjectival saliences.

Dick Place, they write in their guide to the buildings of Edinburgh, is a street of “polite villas” – a description which may fairly be applied to vast swathes of Edinburgh suburbia.

But then they warn us of “Gothic seasoning,” mild in some cases and wild in others, and go on to observe how, in the case of one singled-out house, “tottering crowstepped porches and skeleton chimneys contrast with massive bald outshoots.” But Dick Place is not distinguished only by architectural exuberance; like so many streets in Edinburgh, it has its famous sons. At its junction with Findhorn Place is the house in which the inventor of the digestive biscuit once lived; not the only house in Edinburgh to be associated with baking distinction – in West Castle Road, in neighbouring Merchiston, there once lived the father of the modern Jaffa Cake, a confection which owes its name to the viscous orange jelly lurking under the upper coating of chocolate. No plaque reminds the passer-by of these glories, although there should be one; for those who invent biscuits bring great pleasure to many.

Pat’s father, a psychiatrist, found the location very convenient.

In the mornings, he could walk from his front door to the front gate of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital within fifteen minutes, and if he was consulting privately in Moray Place he could walk there in twenty-five minutes. The walk to Moray Place was Famous Sons and Gothic Seasoning 9

something of a paysage moralisé – easier on the way down than on the way back, when the cares of patients would have been deposited on his shoulders, making Frederick Street and the Mound seem so much steeper and Queen Street so much longer.

But apart from this undoubted convenience, what suited him about Dick Place was the leafy quiet of the garden that surrounded the house on all four sides. If they were to pass any comment on Dr Macgregor’s garden, John Gifford and his friends might be sniffy about the small stone conservatory and potting shed, with its fluted and rusticated mullions; they might even describe the whole thing as “an oddity,” but for Dr Macgregor it was his sanctuary, the place where he might in perfect and undisturbed peace sit and read the Journal of the Royal College of Psychiatry or the Journal of Neurology, Neuro-surgery, and Psychiatry.

When Pat came home that Saturday, Dr Macgregor was ensconced in the conservatory, a small pile of such journals beside him. He became aware of his daughter’s presence as she opened the French windows across the lawn, but he was so thoroughly immersed in his reading that he looked up only when Pat pushed open the conservatory door and stood before him.

“That must be interesting,” she said.

He smiled, taking off his glasses and placing them down on the table beside him. “Very,” he said. “Some of these articles are intriguing, to say the least. Do you know what Ganser’s Syndrome is? That’s what I was reading about.”

Pat shook her head. “No idea,” she said.

Dr Macgregor gestured to the journal lying open on his lap.

“I was just reading this case report about it. A classic case of Ganser’s walked through the author’s door. He was asked what the capital of France was and he replied Marseilles. And how many legs does a centipede have? Ninety-nine. When did the Second World War begin? Nineteen thirty-eight. And so on.

Do you see the pattern?”

“Just marginally out on everything?”

“Yes. People who have Ganser’s talk just round the edge. Dr 10

Some Words of Warning from Pat’s Father Ganser identified it and he called that aspect of it the Vorbeireden.

They may not know that they’re doing it, but their answers to your questions will always be just a little bit off-beam.”

Pat looked at her father in astonishment. “How odd! Why?”

Dr Macgregor spread his hands in a gesture of acceptance.

“It’s probably a response to intolerable stress. Reality is so awful that they veer off in this peculiar direction; they enter a state of dissociation. This poor man in the report had lost his job, lost his wife, lost everything, in fact, and was being pursued by the police for something or other. You can imagine that one might start to dissociate in such circumstances.” He paused.

“Anyway, you’re home.”

He smiled at Pat and was about to ask her what sort of morning she had had, but then Pat said: “Remember Bruce? I saw him this morning. Or at least I thought I saw him.”

“You thought you saw him?”

“It may not have been him. Maybe I just thought that it was him. Maybe it was somebody who was just dressed like Bruce.”

“How interesting,” said Dr Macgregor. He looked thoughtful.

“Fregoli’s Syndrome.” He added quickly, “I’m not being serious, of course.”

But Pat was interested. “Who was Fregoli?”

“An Italian clown,” said Dr Macgregor. “An Italian clown who never had the condition bearing his name.”

4. Some Words of Warning from Pat’s Father

“Yes,” said Dr Macgregor. “Fregoli came from Naples, or somewhere in those parts. He found himself in the forces of an Italian general sent to Abyssinia back in the late nineteenth century.

The Italians, as you know, bullied Abyssinia . . .” He trailed off.

“You did know that, didn’t you?” Pat shook her head. Her father knew so much, it seemed to her, and she knew so little. The Some Words of Warning from Pat’s Father 11

Italians bullied Abyssinia, did they? But where exactly was Abyssinia?

Dr Macgregor looked away, tactfully, as any sensitive person must do when he realises that the person to whom he is speaking has no idea where Abyssinia is. “Ethiopia,” he said quietly. “Haile Selassie?” He looked up, in hope; but Pat shook her head again, in answer to this second query. Then she said: “But I do know where Ethiopia is.”

That, at least, is something, he thought. And he realised, of course, that it was not her fault. His daughter belonged to a generation that had been taught no geography, and very little history. And no Latin. Nor had they been made to learn poetry by heart, with the result that nobody now could recite any poems by Burns, or Wordsworth, or Longfellow. Everything had been taken away by people who knew very little themselves, but did not know it.

“Ethiopia used to be called Abyssinia,” he said. “And the Italians had skirmishes with it from Somaliland. In due course, Mussolini used this as the casus belli for later bullying, and he invaded them. The world stood by. The Ethiopians went to the League of Nations and begged for help. Begged. But they were little men with beards, and it took some time before anyone would listen. Little dark men with beards.”

They were both silent for a moment. Pat thought: he makes it all sound so personal. He thought: we have all been such bullies; all of us. The Italians. The British. The Americans.

Bullies.

Pat looked at her father. “Mussolini was the one they hung upside down, wasn’t he?”

He sighed. “They did.”

“Maybe he deserved it.”

“No. Nobody deserves it. Nobody deserves even to be hung the right way up. Whatever somebody does, however bad he is, you must always forgive him. Right at the end, you must forgive him.”

For a moment, they were silent. He felt like saying to her 12

Some Words of Warning from Pat’s Father that there were people, right at that moment, somewhere, even in advanced countries, who were awaiting capital punishment; people whose days and hours were ticking away under such sentences; such was the hardness of the human heart, or of some human hearts. But he did not say it; instead, he looked up at her and smiled.

“Yes,” he said. “Our friend Fregoli impressed this Italian general – and can’t you just imagine the splendid uniform that general would have had? Such stylish people. He impressed him so much with his quick-change act that he was taken off military duties and became a performer. He would appear on stage wearing one thing, nip off, and then appear within seconds wearing a completely different outfit. People loved it.”

“And why . . .” Pat began to ask.

“The human mind,” said Dr Macgregor, “is capable of infinite deception – both of others and of itself. If you began to think that somebody in your life was really another person in disguise, then you would have, I’m afraid, Fregoli’s Syndrome.

You might begin to think that I was not really myself, but was a very accomplished actor.”

“How strange.”

“Yes, how strange,” said Dr Macgregor. “But it gets even stranger. There’s another condition, one called Capgras Syndrome, where you believe that people you know have been replaced by imposters. The whole thing is a carefully orchestrated act put on by a team of imposters. That may be your best friend talking to you, but you’re not fooled!

You know that it’s really an actor pretending to be your best friend.”

Pat laughed. “But it was Bruce,” she said. “Or at least I thought it was.”

“Then I’m sure it was,” said Dr Macgregor. “You’re a very reliable witness of things. You always have been.”

But now it was Pat’s turn to doubt. “Isn’t it true, though, that the mind can fill in the details if it sees just one thing that it Some Words of Warning from Pat’s Father 13

recognises? One of our lecturers said something about that. He was talking about how we look at paintings.”

“It’s certainly true,” said Dr Macgregor. “We want to reorganise the world, and that makes our brains jump the gun –

sometimes. You look at a newspaper headline, take in one word, and before you know it your brain says: yes, that’s what it says.

But it may not.”

Pat looked thoughtful. What had she seen? A rugby shirt.

And a pair of trousers. Perhaps her mind had filled in the rest, filled in the hair with the gel, filled in the look of Bruce.

Dr Macgregor decided to get up from his chair. He stood, and then walked over to the window and looked out over the garden. The lawn was dry.

“Don’t get mixed up with that young man again,” he said quietly.

Pat looked up sharply. “I wasn’t planning to,” she protested.

“I really disliked him.”

Dr Macgregor nodded. “Maybe you did. But that type of person can be very destructive. They know how powerful their charm is. And they use it.” He paused. “I don’t want you to be hurt. You know that, don’t you? That’s all that a father wants for his daughter. Or most of them. Fathers don’t want their daughters to get hurt. And yet they know that there are plenty of men only too ready to treat them badly. They know that.”

Pat thought that her father was being melodramatic. Bruce was no danger to her. He may have been in the past, but not now. She was like somebody who had been given an inocula-tion against an illness. She was immune to Bruce and his charms.

And yet she had felt unsettled when she saw him; it had been exciting. Would one feel that excitement if one was immune to somebody? She thought not.

Her father was looking at her now. “Are you going to seek him out?” he asked.

14

An Unexpected Conflict and News of Cyril Pat looked down at the ground. It was so easy to fob other people off with a denial, with a half-truth, but she could not do this to her father, not to this gentle psychiatrist who had seen her through all the little doubts and battles of childhood and adolescence. She could not hide the truth from him.

“I think I’d like to see him,” she said.

5. An Unexpected Conflict and News of Cyril Domenica Macdonald, freelance anthropologist, native of Scotland Street, friend of Angus Lordie and Antonia Collie, owner of a custard-coloured Mercedes-Benz, citizen of Edinburgh; all of these were facets of the identity of the woman now striding up Scotland Street, a battered canvas shopping bag hanging loosely from her left arm. But there was more: in addition to all of that, Domenica was now the author of a learned paper that had recently been accepted for publication in the prestigious journal Mankind Quarterly. This paper, “Past Definite; Future Uncertain: Time and Social Dynamics of a Mangrove Community in Southern Malaysia,” was the fruit of her recent field trip to the Malacca Straits. There, she had joined what she imagined was a community of contemporary pirates, with a view to conducting anthropological research into their domestic economy. The pirates, it was later revealed, were not real pirates after all – or not pirates in the sense in which the term is understood by the International Maritime Safety authorities in Kuala Lumpur. Although they disappeared each morning in high-powered boats, Domenica had discovered that their destination was not the high seas at all, but a town down the coast, where they worked in a pirate CD factory, infringing the intellectual property rights of various crooners and inexplicably popular rock bands. That had been a setback for Domenica, but it had not prevented her from completing a useful piece of research on the way in which the community’s sense of time affected social relationships.

An Unexpected Conflict and News of Cyril 15

The paper had been well-received. One of the referees for the journal had written: “The author demonstrates convincingly that a sense of being on the wrong side of history changes everything.

The social devices by which people protect themselves from confronting the truth that there is a terminus to their existence as a community are laid bare by the author. A triumph.” And now here it was, that triumph, in off-print form, with an attractive cover of chalk blue, the physical result of all that heat and discomfort.

When the box containing the sixty off-prints had been delivered by the postman, Domenica had immediately left the house and walked round to Angus Lordie’s flat in Drummond Place, clutching one of the copies.

“My paper,” she said, as Angus invited her in. “You will see that I have inscribed it to you. Look. There.”

Angus opened the cover and saw, on the inside, the sentence which Domenica had inscribed in black ink. To Angus Lordie, the inscription read, who stayed behind. From your friend, Domenica Macdonald. He reread the sentence and then looked up. “Why have you written who stayed behind?” he asked. His tone was peevish.

Domenica shrugged. “Well, you did, didn’t you? I went to the Malacca Straits, and you stayed behind in Edinburgh. I’m simply stating what happened.”

Angus frowned. “But anybody reading this would think that I was some . . . some sort of coward. It’s almost as if you’re giving me a white feather.”

Domenica drew in her breath. She had not intended that, and it was quite ridiculous of Angus to suggest it. “I meant no such thing,” she said. “There are absolutely no aspersions being cast on . . .”

“Yes, there are,” said Angus petulantly. “And you never asked me whether I’d like to go. Saying that somebody stayed behind suggests that they were at least given the chance to go along.

But I wasn’t. You never gave me the chance to go.”

“Well, really!” said Domenica. “You made it very clear that you didn’t like the idea of my going to the Malacca Straits in the first 16

An Unexpected Conflict and News of Cyril place. You said that in the little speech you gave at my dinner party before I left. You did. I heard you, Angus. Remember I was there!”

“It would be a very strange dinner party where the hostess was not there,” said Angus quickly. “If one wrote a note to such a hostess one would have to say: ‘To one who stayed away.’ Yes!

That’s what one would have to write.”

Domenica bit her lip. She knew that Angus had his moody moments, but this was quite ridiculous. She was now sorry that she had come to see him at all, and was certainly regretting having brought him the off-print. “You’re behaving in a very childish way, Angus,” she said. “In fact, I’ve got a good mind to take my paper away from you. There are plenty of people who would appreciate it, you know.”

“I doubt that very much,” said Angus. “I can’t see why anybody would want to read it. I certainly won’t.”

Domenica bristled with anger. “In that case,” she said. “I’m taking it back. The gift is cancelled.”

She reached across to snatch the off-print from Angus. She felt the cover in her fingers and she tugged; but he resisted, and with a ripping sound “Past Definite; Future Uncertain” was torn into two roughly equal parts. Domenica let go of her part, and it fluttered slowly to the ground.

“Oh,” said Angus, looking down. “I’m very sorry. I know you started it by writing that cruel thing about me, but I didn’t mean to do that. I’m so sorry . . .”

What upset him was the destruction of another artist’s work.

An anthropologist was not really an artist, but this was creative work – even if a rather dull sort of creative work – and he had destroyed it. Angus felt very guilty. “I’m so sorry,” he said again.

“I would never have torn up your work intentionally. You do know that, don’t you? It’s just that I feel very out of sorts today.”

He hesitated, as if wondering whether to entrust Domenica with a confidence. Had he forgiven her? Yes, he thought, I have. He lowered his voice. “Something really awful has happened. It’s made me very tetchy.”

An Unexpected Conflict and News of Cyril 17

Domenica’s expression of irritation was replaced with one of concern. “Awful? One of your paintings . . .”

Angus shook his head. “No, it’s nothing to do with my work.

It’s Cyril.”

Domenica looked past Angus into the flat. There had been no sign of the dog, who usually greeted any visitor with a courteous wagging of the tail and a pressing of the nose against whatever hand was extended to him. This had not happened.

“He’s ill?” she asked. As she spoke, she realised it could be worse: Cyril could be dead. Dogs were run over in cities.

There were other dangers too.

“No,” said Angus. “Not ill. He’s been removed.”

Domenica looked puzzled.

“Accused of biting,” said Angus morosely. “Removed by the police.”

Domenica gasped. “But whom did he bite?”

“He bit nobody,” said Angus firmly. “Cyril is innocent.

Completely innocent.”

6. Angus Tells the Story of Cyril’s Misfortune

“I think you should invite me in,” said Domenica, from the hallway of Angus Lordie’s flat. “Let me make us a pot of coffee.

Then you can tell me about it.”

Angus Lordie’s earlier – and most uncharacteristic – churlish-ness evaporated. “Of course,” he said. “How rude of me. It’s just that . . . well, it’s just that this business over Cyril has left me feeling so raw.”

Domenica understood. She had not had a dog since childhood, but she remembered the sense of utter desolation she had experienced after the loss of the scruffy Cairn terrier, which her mother had taken in from a cousin. The terrier had disappeared down a rabbit hole in the Pentlands when they had been taking it for a walk, and had never reappeared. A farmer had helped with the search and had dug away the top part of the burrow, but all that this had revealed was a complex set of tunnels leading in every direction. They had called and called, but to no avail, and as dusk descended they had gone home, feeling every bit as bad as mountaineers leaving behind an injured fellow climber.

They had returned the next day, but there had been no sign of the terrier, and it was presumed lost. The dog had not been replaced.

“I know how you must feel,” said Domenica, as she went into Angus Lordie’s kitchen. “I lost a dog as a child. I felt bereft, quite bereft.”

Angus stared at her. “Cyril is still with us,” he said.

“Of course,” said Domenica quickly. “And I’m sure that it will all work out perfectly well in the end.”

Angus sighed. “I wish I thought the same,” he said. “The problem is that once a dog is deemed to be dangerous, then they have the power to order . . .” He did not complete his sentence, but left it hanging there. He had been told by the police that there was a possibility that Cyril would be destroyed if it were established that he was responsible for the rash of bitings that had been reported in the area.

Angus Tells the Story of Cyril’s Misfortune 19

“But it won’t come to that,” said Domenica briskly. “They need evidence before they can order a dog to be put down. They can’t do that unless they’re certain that Cyril is dangerous.

He’s your property, for heaven’s sake! They can’t destroy your property on the basis of rumour, or wild allegations.” She paused, ladling spoons of coffee into the cafetière. “You’d better start at the beginning, Angus. How did this all start?”

Angus sat down at the scrubbed pine table which dominated his kitchen. “Maybe you hadn’t heard about it,” he said, “but there have been a number of incidents in this part of town over the last few weeks. A child was bitten by a dog on the way to school about ten days ago – nothing serious, just a nip, but enough to break the skin. The child gave a rather vague account of what happened, apparently. You know how children are – they don’t make very good witnesses. But he did say that the dog came bounding out of a lower basement in Dundonald Street, gave him a nip on the ankles, and then ran off into the Drummond Square Gardens.”

Domenica switched on the kettle. She glanced at the kitchen surfaces around her and sniffed. Angus Lordie’s kitchen was cleaner than many bachelor kitchens, but only just. It could do with a good scrub, she thought, but this was not the time.

“And then?” she said.

“Then,” Angus went on, “then there was another incident. A few days later, a man reported that he had been getting out of his car in Northumberland Street and he was given quite a nip on his ankle by a dog that then ran away in the direction of Nelson Street.

The dog ripped the leg of his suit, apparently, and he reported the matter to the police so that he could claim insurance.”

“The culture of complaint,” muttered Domenica.

“I beg your pardon?”

She turned to Angus. “I said: the culture of complaint. We live in a culture of complaint because everyone is always looking for things to complain about. It’s all tied in with the desire to blame others for misfortunes and to get some form of compensation into the bargain. I speak as an anthropologist, of course – just an observation.”

20

Angus Tells the Story of Cyril’s Misfortune

“But I would have thought that it’s entirely reasonable to complain about being bitten,” said Angus. “As long as you complained about the right dog.”

“Oh, it’s reasonable enough,” said Domenica. “It’s just that these things have to be kept in proportion. One can complain about things without looking for compensation. That’s the difference. In what we fondly call the old days, if one was nipped by a dog then one accepted that this was the sort of thing that happened from time to time. You might try to give the dog a walloping, to even things up a bit, and you might expect the owner to be contrite and apologise, but you didn’t necessarily think of getting any money out of it.”

Angus thought about this, but only for a very short time. He was not interested in Domenica’s observations on social trends, and he felt irritated that she should move so quickly from the point of the discussion. “That may be so,” he said. “All of that may be so, but the point is that Cyril is not that dog. Cyril would never do anything like that.”

Domenica was silent. This was simply not true. Cyril had bitten Bertie’s mother in broad daylight in Dundas Street not all that long ago. Domenica had heard about the incident, and although she was pleased that on that occasion Cyril had been so discerning in his choice of victim, he could hardly claim to have an unblemished record. It was, she thought, entirely possible that Cyril was not innocent, but she did not think it politic to raise that possibility now.

“But how did they identify Cyril?” she asked.

“They had an identity parade,” said Angus. “They lined up a group of dogs in Gayfield Square police station and they asked the Northumberland Street man to identify the dog which had bitten him. He picked out Cyril.”

Domenica listened in astonishment. “But that’s absurd,” she exclaimed. “Were the dogs in the line-up all the same breed?

Because if they weren’t, it would be quite ridiculous.”

For a few moments, Angus was silent. Then he said, “I never thought of that.”

7. Irene’s Doubts Over Bertie’s Friendships While Domenica listened to Angus recount the traumatic experiences endured by his dog, Cyril, Bertie Pollock stared out of his bedroom window. Bertie’s view was of Scotland Street itself, sloping sharply to the old marshalling yards down below, now a playground, which Bertie had been forbidden by his mother to enter.

“It’s not so much the devices themselves,” Irene had said to her husband, Stuart. “It’s not the so-called swings, it’s the attitudes to which Bertie will be exposed down there.”

Stuart looked at her blankly. He had no idea why she should call the swings “so-called”; surely swings were either swings or they were not. There was nothing complicated about swings, as far as he could make out; they went backwards and forwards –

that was all they did. And what attitudes would Bertie be exposed to in the playground?

Irene saw Stuart’s look of puzzlement and sighed. “It’s the roughness, Stuart,” she said. “Surely you’ve seen it yourself. All that aggressive play that goes on. And there’s another thing: have you noticed the rigid segregation which the children down there impose on themselves? Have you noticed how the boys play with the boys and the girls play with the girls? Have you seen it?”

Stuart thought for a moment. Now that Irene mentioned it, it certainly seemed to be true. There were always little knots of boys and girls all playing within the group; one did not see boys 22

Irene’s Doubts Over Bertie’s Friendships and girls playing together. Irene was right. But, he thought, surely this was natural.

“When I was a boy,” he began, “we used to have a gang. It was boys only. But the girls had their own gang. I think everybody was happy enough with the arrangement. My gang was called . . .”

Irene silenced him with her stare. “I think the less said about your boyhood, Stuart, the better. Things have moved on, you know.”

“But have boys moved on?” It was a bold question, and Stuart’s voice faltered as he asked it.

“Yes,” said Irene firmly. “Boys have moved on. The problem is that certain men have failed to move on.” She fixed him with a piercing stare as she made this remark, and Stuart shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“I don’t think we should argue,” he said. “You know that I’m fundamentally in sympathy with the idea of bringing up boys to be more sensitive.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Irene.

“But there’s no reason why Bertie shouldn’t play with other boys from time to time,” Stuart said. “And I don’t mean that he should play in an exclusive sense. I think that boys can be encouraged to play inclusively, but with other boys, if you see what I . . .” He trailed off. Irene was staring at him again.

Irene was thinking of Bertie’s friends. She had met several of the boys in his class, and she had to confess that she was not impressed. Tofu, for instance, was a thoroughly unpleasant little boy, as far as she could make out. There had been that unfortunate incident when Bertie had exchanged his dungarees for Tofu’s jeans, which was bad enough, but when one added to it the fact that this transaction had taken place at a bowling alley in Fountainbridge – of all places – Tofu’s influence hardly appeared benign.

Then there was Hiawatha whom Irene had come across at several school functions. There was something off about that boy, Irene thought. She had asked Bertie about it, and he had Irene’s Doubts Over Bertie’s Friendships 23

replied that Hiawatha was known for never changing his socks and that this explained the smell.

“We get used to it, Mummy,” he said. “Sometimes Miss Harmony opens the window, which helps. But we don’t really mind too much.”

And there were other boys in the class who seemed equally questionable as suitable companions for Bertie. Merlin was decid-edly unusual, even by the standards of Stockbridge, where he lived. Irene had met his mother at a parents’ evening and had found it very difficult to sustain a conversation with somebody who insisted on bringing the discussion back at every opportunity to crystals and their curative properties. If Bertie were to spend too much time with Merlin, then there would be a danger that he would start thinking in an irrational way, and that would be disastrous. No, Merlin was to be discouraged.

That left that very unpleasant boy whom she had seen hanging about the school gates waiting for his father to collect him.

What was his name? Larch. That was it. Irene had heard from Bertie that Larch liked arm wrestling and that nobody dared win because he was known to hit anybody who beat him at anything.

“I’m surprised that Miss Harmony lets him behave like that,”

said Irene. “It’s a very well-run school, and I know they don’t tolerate that sort of behaviour.”

“I don’t think that Miss Harmony knows,” said Bertie.

“You see, Mummy, there are two different worlds. There’s the grown-up world, and then there’s the world down below, where boys and girls live. I don’t think grown-ups really know what’s happening down in our world.”

“Nonsense, Bertie,” said Irene. “We know perfectly well what’s going on. And I’m sure that Miss Harmony knows exactly what Larch gets up to.”

Bertie said nothing, but he was sure that Irene had no idea of anything that happened at school. And he was equally sure that Miss Harmony knew nothing of Larch’s violent tendencies and all his lies too. That was the trouble with Miss Harmony, 24

A Whole New Vista of Dread for Bertie and with most grown-ups, Bertie thought. Grown-ups simply did not understand how children lied. Bertie did not lie – he told the truth – but all the others lied. Tofu lied all the time, about just about everything. Merlin made up stories about some of the things he had at home – a crystal that was capable of killing cats if you pointed it at their eyes; that was one of the lies he had told Bertie. Then, when it came to Hiawatha, he was probably lying too, if only they could make out what he was saying. There were just so many lies.

“I think you should spend more time with Olive,” said Irene.

“She’s a very nice girl, and I know that you like her.”

Bertie shook his head. “I don’t like Olive, Mummy. I hate her.”

“Now, Bertie!” scolded Irene. “That’s simply not true.”

Bertie sighed. When he told the truth, as he had just done, he was accused of lying. But if he lied, and said that he liked Olive, his mother would nod her approval. The world, he thought, was a very confusing place.

8. A Whole New Vista of Dread for Bertie Bertie mused on this as he looked out over Scotland Street.

Life was very dull, he thought, but would undoubtedly improve when he turned eighteen and could leave home to go and live somewhere far away and exotic – Glasgow, perhaps; his friend Lard O’Connor had more or less promised him a job over there, and it would be fun to live in Glasgow and go with Lard to the Burrell Collection and places like that. But that was daydreaming, and Bertie knew that he had another twelve years of his mother before he could get away. Twelve years!

Twelve achingly slow years – a whole lifetime, it seemed to Bertie.

Yes, life was difficult, and it was becoming all the more difficult now that Irene had had her new baby. Bertie had suggested A Whole New Vista of Dread for Bertie 25

that they could perhaps have it adopted, but this suggestion had not been taken seriously.

“But, Bertie, what a funny thing to say!” Irene had said, looking anxiously about the maternity ward in which Bertie, visiting his mother, had made the suggestion.

“But they need babies for adoption, Mummy,” Bertie had said.

“I was reading about it in the newspaper. They said that there weren’t enough babies to go round. I thought that maybe we could share our baby with somebody else. You always said it was good to share.”

Irene smiled weakly. “And of course it is. But there are some things you don’t share, Bertie, and a baby is one of them.”

It was not that Bertie disliked Ulysses, as his mother had insisted on naming his new baby brother. When Irene had first announced her pregnancy to Bertie, he had been pleased at the thought of having a brother or sister. This was not because he wanted the company, but mainly because he thought that the presence of a baby would distract his mother’s attention. Bertie did not dislike his mother; he merely wished that she would leave him alone and not make him do all the things that he was forced to do. If she was busy looking after a baby, then perhaps she would not have the time to take him to psychotherapy, or to yoga. Perhaps the baby would need psychotherapy and could go to Dr Fairbairn instead of Bertie. It was an entertaining thought; Bertie imagined the baby lying in his pram while Dr Fairbairn leaned over him and asked him questions. It would not matter at all if the baby could say nothing in reply; Bertie doubted very much if Dr Fairbairn paid any attention to anything said to him by anybody. Yoga would be more difficult, at least until the baby was a few months old. There were some very young children at Bertie’s yoga class in Stockbridge – one of them just one year old. Perhaps they could try putting the baby into yoga positions by propping it up with cushions; he could suggest this to his mother and see what she thought.

Bertie’s hopes, though, that he would be left more to his own devices were soon to be dashed on the immovable, rock-like 26

A Whole New Vista of Dread for Bertie determination of Irene to ensure that her two sons – Bertie and baby Ulysses – should undergo a process of what she called

“mutuality bonding.” This programme had two objectives. One was that the arrival of the baby should be part of Bertie’s education in understanding the whole process of child-nurture, something which girls and women understood but which, in Irene’s view, often escaped boys and men. The other objective was that the relationship which grew up between the two boys would be one in which there was a full measure of reciprocity. Bertie would come to know the baby’s needs, just as the baby, in the fullness of time, would come to know Bertie’s needs.

The first of these objectives – that Bertie should be brought up to understand what it was to look after a baby – meant that right from the beginning he would have to shoulder many of the tasks which went with having a baby. Bertie would be fully instructed in the whole business of feeding the baby, and had already been shown how to operate a breast pump so that he could help his mother to express milk for the baby should breast feeding become uncomfortable, which Irene thought likely.

“The trouble is this, carissimo,” said Irene. “When you were a little baby yourself – and remember, that’s just six short years ago – yes, six! – you tended to be a little – how shall we put it? – guzzly, and you bit Mummy a little hard, making Mummy feel a bit tender. You don’t remember that, do you?”

Bertie looked away in horror; the sheer embarrassment of the situation was more than he could bear.

“Well, you did,” went on Irene. “So now Mummy has bought this special pump, and you can help to put it on Mummy and get the milk out for baby when he comes along. That will be such fun. It will be just like milking a cow.”

Bertie looked at his mother in horror. “Do I have to, Mummy?”

“Now then, Bertie,” said Irene. “It’s all part of looking after your new little brother. You don’t want to let him down, do you?”

“I’ll play with him,” promised Bertie. “I really will. I’ll show So Who Exactly Are Big Lou’s Big Friends?

27

him my construction set. I’ll play the saxophone for him and let him touch the keys. I can do all of that, Mummy.”

Irene smiled. “All in good time, Bertie. Tiny babies can’t do that sort of thing to begin with. Most of the things you’ll be doing will be very ordinary baby things, such as changing him.”

Bertie was very quiet. He looked at his mother, and then looked away. “Changing him?” he said in a very small voice.

“Yes,” said Irene. “Babies need a lot of changing. They can’t ask to go to the bathroom!”

Bertie cringed. He hated it when his mother talked about such things, and now a whole new vista of dread opened up before him. The thought was just too terrible.

“Will I have to, Mummy . . . ?” He left the sentence unfinished; this was even worse, he thought, than the breast pump.

“Of course you will, Bertie,” said Irene. “These things are very natural! When you were a baby, Bertie, I remember . . .”

But Bertie was not there to listen. He had run out of the kitchen and into his room; his room, which had been painted pink by his mother, then white by his father, and then pink again by his mother.

9. So Who Exactly Are Big Lou’s Big Friends?

Big Lou always opened her coffee bar at nine o’clock in the morning. There was no real reason for her to do this, as it was only very rarely that a customer wandered in before ten, or sometimes even later. But for Big Lou, the habit of starting early, ingrained in her from her childhood in Arbroath, resisted any change. It seemed to her the height of slothfulness to start the morning at ten o’clock – a good five hours after most cows had been milked – and it was decadence itself to start at eleven, the hour when Matthew occasionally opened the gallery.

“Half the day’s gone by the time you unlock your door,” she 28

So Who Exactly Are Big Lou’s Big Friends?

had reproached Matthew. “Eleven o’clock! What if the whole country started at eleven o’clock? What then? Would folk lie in their beds until ten? Would they?”

“No,” said Matthew. “Most people will start much earlier than that. Nine o’clock seems reasonable to me.”

Big Lou snorted in disbelief. “It would be an awfie odd day that we saw you about the place at nine,” she said.

Matthew smiled tolerantly. “Reasonable for other people,” he said. “What’s the point of opening a gallery at nine when it’s well-known that nobody buys pictures before noon, or at least before eleven? I’d just sit there doing nothing if I opened up at nine.”

Big Lou rolled her eyes. “That’s what you do anyway, isn’t it?” she said. “And I doubt that you spend more than a few hours a day at your desk, what with your coffee drinking and those lunches you have. Two hours a day, something like that?”

Matthew shrugged. “Well, Lou, it wouldn’t do you much good if I stopped drinking your coffee. You should be encouraging me, not making me feel guilty.”

Big Lou said nothing. She liked Matthew, and he liked her, and these exchanges were good-natured, even if Big Lou meant every word of her criticism. But now it was time for her to prepare Matthew’s coffee, and besides, there was an important piece of information for her to impart to Matthew.

While she clamped the grounds container in place, Big Lou asked Matthew over her shoulder whether he had heard of Cyril’s misfortune. Matthew had not, and while the espresso machine steamed and hissed, Big Lou related the melancholy story of Cyril’s detention by the Lothian and Borders Police.

“Angus will be very upset,” Matthew ventured.

“Aye,” Lou said. “Cyril is his only real friend.”

Matthew thought this a bit extreme. “Oh, he’s got other friends, I think. Domenica, for example.”

“She tolerates him,” said Big Lou. “But only just. Have you heard the way she talks about him when he’s not there?”

“There are people down at the Cumberland Bar,” said Matthew. “He’s got friends there.”

So Who Exactly Are Big Lou’s Big Friends?

29

“Not much use having friends in a bar,” said Big Lou enigmatically. “Anyway, Cyril meant a lot to Angus. And now I expect they’ll put him down. That’s the way it is for dogs. Step out of line, and that’s it. We had a dog in Arbroath that worried sheep and a farmer shot it. No questions. That’s how it is for dogs.”

Matthew half-listened to this dire prediction. He was thinking of friendship: even if Angus had few friends – which he did not think was true – then how many close friends was it possible to have? Big Lou herself was hardly one to imply friendlessness on the part of Angus; Matthew had not heard her mention any friends, and he had always suspected that her life outside the coffee bar was a solitary one, immured, as she was, in her flat with all those books.

“What about you, Lou?” he asked. “You say that Angus doesn’t have many friends, but how many do you have? I’m not trying to be rude, asking this question – I was just wondering.”

Big Lou reached for the polishing cloth. There was never any dirt on the bar, but that did not prevent her polishing it assid-uously, staring into the reflective surface in the hope of finding a speck of something that she could rub away at.

“Friends?” she said. “Friends? I’ve got plenty, thank you very much, Matthew. Plenty of friends.”

Matthew, leaning against the bar, took a sip of coffee. “Here in Edinburgh?” he asked. “Or up in Arbroath?”

Big Lou polished energetically, moving her cloth in large circles that threatened to collide with Matthew’s elbow. “Both places,” she said. “Arbroath and Edinburgh. And some in Glasgow and Dundee. Everywhere, in fact.”

“Who are your Edinburgh friends, Lou?” pressed Matthew.

“Not counting us, of course.”

Big Lou glanced at him. “You’re very inquisitive today,” she said. “But since you ask, there’s Mags and Neil and Humphrey and Jill Holmes and . . . well, quite a few others. I’ve got my friends, you know. Probably more than you have, Matthew, come to think of it.”

Matthew smiled. “Maybe, Lou. Maybe.” He paused. “But, I 30

Matthew Is a Sexist (but a Polite One) hope you don’t mind my asking, Lou: who are these people?

We never see them in here, do we? Who are they? Mags, for instance, who’s she?”

Big Lou finished her polishing with a final flourish and tucked her cloth away beneath the bar. “Mags,” she said, “since you ask, is a very good friend of mine. I met her on the corner of Eyre Crescent, on the way down to Canonmills. She was standing there when I walked past.”

Matthew stared at Big Lou. “You met her on the street? She was just standing there? And you went up to her and said . . . ?”

“It wasn’t like that,” said Big Lou. “Mags was working in the street when I went past. I stopped to have a word with her.”

Matthew rubbed his hands together. “This gets better and better, Lou,” he said. “Working in the street, Lou? What exactly was she doing in the street?”

“Working in the street,” said Big Lou in a matter-of-fact tone.

“You see, Mags drives one of these small steamrollers that road crews use. She was sitting on her steamroller with a cigarette in her mouth and she bent down and asked me if I had a light. I didn’t, but I said something about her steamroller and we started to chat.”

“Just like that?” said Matthew. “You started to chat? Two complete strangers?”

“Not complete,” said Big Lou. “Mags, you see, came from Arbroath. Unlike you, Matthew, she came from somewhere.”

Matthew looked crestfallen. She was right, though, he thought.

My trouble is that I come from nowhere. Money, education –

these give you freedom, but they can take you away from your roots, your place.

10. Matthew Is a Sexist (but a Polite One) But Matthew wanted to know more about this Mags, the Madonna of the Steamroller, as he had now decided to call her.

Matthew Is a Sexist (but a Polite One) 31

“Something interests me, Lou,” he began. “What sort of woman thinks of getting a job on a road crew? How did Mags end up doing that?”

Big Lou turned from her task – emptying the grounds container – and fixed Matthew with a stare. He looked back at her, unrepentant.

“Well?” said Matthew. “It’s a fair enough question to ask, isn’t it? One doesn’t see all that many women working on the roads.”

“I thought that women could do anything these days,” said Big Lou coldly. “Or have I got it wrong? Can men still tell us what we can and cannot do?”

Matthew made a placatory gesture. “Don’t get me wrong, Lou,” he said hurriedly. “I’m not suggesting that . . .”

“Well, what are you suggesting then?”

“All I was saying, Lou,” said Matthew, “was that there are some jobs in which it’s still usual – that’s all, just usual – to see men rather than women.”

Big Lou continued to stare at him. “Such as?”

Matthew had to think quickly. He was about to mention airline pilots, but then he remembered that on the last two flights that he had taken, a female voice had issued from the cockpit to welcome passengers. And nobody, it seemed, had been in the slightest bit surprised, except, perhaps, Matthew himself. But then the woman beside him, possibly noticing his reaction, had leaned over and whispered to him: “How reassuring to have a woman at the controls, isn’t it? You do know, don’t you, that women pilots are much, much safer than men? Men take risks – it’s in the nature. Women are much more cautious.”

Matthew had nodded. “Of course,” he said. “Of course.”

So now he was having difficulty in thinking of examples.

Firefighters? But then he remembered having seen a fire engine race past him the other day in Moray Place, and when he had looked at the crew he had seen not the usual male mesomorphs but a woman, clad in black firefighting gear, combing her hair.

“I saw a woman fire . . . fireperson, the other day, Lou,” he said brightly, hoping to distract Big Lou from the subject.

32

Matthew Is a Sexist (but a Polite One)

“Plenty of them,” said Lou. “But I’m waiting for you to come up with some for-instances. What jobs do women not do these days?”

“It was in Moray Place,” went on Matthew.

“Good class of fire over there,” said Lou. “None of your chip-pan fires in Moray Place. Flambé out of control maybe.”

“She was combing her hair,” said Matthew. And then, out of wickedness, he added, “and putting on lipstick. On the way to the fire. Putting on lipstick.”

Big Lou frowned. For a few moments she said nothing, then:

“Well, it was Moray Place, wasn’t it? A girl has to look her best . . .” She paused. “Not that I believe you, Matthew, anyway.

She might have been combing her hair – you don’t want your hair to get in the way when you’re working, do you? But she would not have been putting on lipstick.”

Mathew was silent.

“Well, Matthew? I’m waiting.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Lou,” said Matthew at last. “Maybe I’m just old-fashioned.”

“Maybe you need to think before you speak,” muttered Big Lou. She looked at him reproachfully. They liked each other, and she did not wish to make him uncomfortable. So she moved back to Mags. “You asked me why Mags does what she does.

The answer, I think, is that she suffers from claustrophobia. She told me about it. If she’s inside, she feels that she wants to get outside. So she needed work that took her outside all the time.”

“And her steamroller would be open,” mused Matthew. “No windows. No door.”

“Exactly,” said Big Lou. “That’s Mags – an open-air girl.”

“It’s a perfectly good job,” said Matthew. He paused. “But the men who work on the roads can be a little bit . . . how does one put it? A little bit . . .”

“Coarse?” asked Big Lou. “Is that what you were trying to say?”

Matthew nodded.

“Then you should say it,” said Big Lou. “Nae use beating Matthew Is a Sexist (but a Polite One) 33

aboot the bush. Say what you think. But always think first. Aye, they’re coarse all right. They’re always whistling at women and making crude remarks. That’s what Mags says.”

“Very crude,” said Matthew. One did not find that sort of behaviour in art galleries, he reflected. Imagine if one did! A woman might go into a gallery and the art dealer would wolf-whistle. No, it would not happen.

“What are you smiling at?” asked Big Lou.

“Oh, nothing much,” said Matthew airily. “Just thinking about how different sorts of people go for different sorts of jobs.”

Big Lou shrugged. “No surprise there. Anyway, Mags worked on the crew for eight years and everyone treated her like one of the boys. They just accepted her and took no special notice of her. Then, one day, she ran her steamroller over a piece of jewellery that somebody had dropped in the street. One of the men found it flattened and held it up for everybody to laugh at.

But Mags cried instead. She thought that it might have been of great sentimental value to somebody, and there it was completely destroyed. She cried.”

“I can understand that,” said Matthew.

“Well, that made all the difference for Neil,” said Big Lou.

“He operated a pneumatic drill and had been like the rest of them and had treated Mags as one of the boys. Now he started to look at her. A day or two later, he asked her out. That’s how they came to be together. They’re very happy, Mags says.”

Matthew said nothing. He lifted his coffee to his lips and looked down into the detritus of the cup, the scraps of milk-foam. In the interstices of the big things of this world, he thought, were the hidden, small things, the small moments of happiness and fulfilment. People fell in love in all sorts of places; anywhere would do – amidst the noise and fumes of the daily world, in grim factories, in the most unpromising of offices, even, it would seem, amongst the din and dirt of roadworks. It could happen to anybody, at any time; even to me, he reflected, who am not really loved by Pat, not really. And who does not love her back, not really.

11. Bruce Goes Off Flat-Hunting in the New Town Bruce had cut out the advertisement from the newspaper and tucked it in the pocket of his jeans. He was house-hunting, and the earlier part of the morning had been frustrating. He had looked at two flats, both of which had been unsatisfactory. The first, in Union Street, had been promising from the outside but had revealed its unsuitability the moment he had stepped inside the front door and had seen the extent of the subsidence. This was the problem with that part of town, where movement in the ground had resulted in uneven floors and bulging walls. The buildings were safe enough – this movement was historical –

but the impression created from heavy settlement could make one nauseous, as if one were at sea.

“This place is subsiding,” Bruce had said to the employee of the lawyers who was showing the flat.

She looked at him coolly. “There’s a great deal of interest in this flat,” she said evenly. “It won’t be on the market long.”

They moved farther into the hall. The flat had been vacated by its owners and the floor was bare: wide, yellow-stained pine boards, shipped from Canada all those years ago.

Bruce smiled at her. “That so?” he said. “Well, I can tell you that there’s subsidence. Nobody will find it easy to get a mortgage on this place. Bad news.”

The young woman fiddled with the top of her folder. “That may be your view,” she said primly. “Others,” and it was clear that she numbered herself amongst such others, “others obviously think differently.”

Bruce gestured for her to follow him into the kitchen. She did so hesitantly and saw him extract a golf ball from his pocket.

“Know what this is?” he asked.

“Of course I do. A golf ball.”

“Right,” said Bruce. “Clever girl. Now watch.”

He bent down and placed the golf ball on the kitchen floor, giving it a slight nudge as he did so. Then he stood up and smirked.

Bruce Goes Off Flat-Hunting in the New Town 35

The golf ball rolled away from Bruce, gathering momentum as it did so. By the time it hit the wall at the other end of the kitchen, it was travelling quite fast.

“See?” said Bruce. “That ball agrees with me. The floor slopes.”

The young woman bit her lip. “These buildings are very old,”

she said. “The whole town is very old.”

Bruce nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “That’s why one has to be so careful.”

“I take it that you don’t want to see the rest of the flat?”

Bruce caught his reflection in the kitchen window and turned his head slightly. “No,” he said. “I don’t. Thanks anyway for showing me the place. I hope you sell it.”

They went downstairs in silence.

“Coffee?” said Bruce at the bottom of the stairs.

The young woman looked at him. She was, he thought, on the verge of tears. “No,” she said. “No, thank you.”

Bruce shrugged. “Oh well,” he said. “Another flat to look at.

Sorry about that place.”

She had hesitated, he thought. She had hesitated when he had asked her to accompany him for a cup of coffee, which meant that she had been tempted. Of course she was tempted – they all were; they simply could not help themselves.

The next flat was in Abercromby Place, a basement flat that described itself as lower ground-floor. Bruce smiled to himself as he walked along Forth Street. He remembered writing the particulars of flats when he had worked as a surveyor in Edinburgh; he had referred to lower-ground-floor flats before, and had once even described a sub-basement as a pre-lower-ground flat, well-protected from excessive sun exposure. The lighting in that flat, which had to be kept on all day if the occupants were to see anything at all, had been described as imaginative and helpful.

And the atmosphere of damp he had described as cool.

The Abercromby Place flat did not take long.

“You’re not seeing it at its best,” said the owner. “It’s not a very bright day today.”

36

Bruce Goes Off Flat-Hunting in the New Town Bruce raised an eyebrow. “Oh? I thought the sun was shining when I came in.”

The owner looked down at the floor. “All the wiring has been renewed,” he said. “And everything in the kitchen’s new, or next to new.”

“Hard to see that,” said Bruce.

“Well, I assure you it is.”

Bruce pointed to a door leading into gloom. “Is that a dark room?” he asked. “Do you do photography?”

“It’s the dining room.”

The owner now became silent, and he remained silent as Bruce made a cursory inspection of the remaining rooms. Then they moved back to the entrance hall and Bruce thanked him for showing him round.

“You didn’t like it,” said the owner miserably. “You didn’t, did you?”

Bruce reached out and patted him on the arm. “You’ll find somebody,” he said. “Just lower your price far enough and you’ll get a buyer. I’m a surveyor. I shifted dumps like this. It’s just a question of getting a buyer who’s desperate enough.”

“That’s very reassuring,” said the owner.

Outside in the street, in the light, Bruce took out the scrap of paper on which he had noted the address of the third flat he was to look at. This was in Howe Street, a street which went sharply down the hill from the end of Frederick Street and then curved round into Circus Place. It was one of Bruce’s favourite streets in the Georgian New Town, and he had a good feeling about the flat that he was about to see.

It was not only a question of the address, but the name of the owner. It was a woman called Julia Donald, and if Bruce was not mistaken that was the name of somebody he had known when he had first come to Edinburgh. She had, he thought, been rather keen on him, but he had had his hands full at the time with . . . it was difficult to remember who exactly it was, but it was some other girl; there had been so many.

Bruce hummed a tune as he walked towards Howe Street. It

An Old Flame Flickers: as Well It May 37

was grand to be back in Edinburgh, grand to be back on the scene, utterly in control, the world at his feet. And what feet!

he thought. Just look at them!

12. An Old Flame Flickers: as Well It May

“Brucie! So it was you!” exclaimed Julia Donald. “My God, what a surprise! I thought, you know, when the lawyers phoned and said that a Mr Bruce Anderson would be coming to look the place over, I thought: Can it be the one and only? And here you are!”

“And I thought just the same,” said Bruce. “I thought, there’s only one Julia D. in Howe Street that I want to see again, and here you are, it’s you!”

He leaned forward and planted a kiss on her cheek. “Long time no kiss,” he said. “And here’s another one.”

“Brucie! You haven’t changed!”

“Why should I? No point changing when you’ve got things just right, is there?” He paused. “But you’ve changed, Julia.”

A shadow passed over her face. “Oh? Have I?”

Bruce smiled. “You’ve become more beautiful. More ravishing.”

“Brucie!”

“No, I mean it. I really do. Look at you!”

38

An Old Flame Flickers: as Well It May Julia led him into the living room. “I go to the gym, every day. Every single day.”

“And it shows.”

“Thank you. What about you? Do you still play rugby?”

Bruce did not. “Now and then. Not much really. Too busy.”

Julia nodded. “I know what it’s like. I almost got a job the other day, but I found I couldn’t. I was just far too busy.”

He looked about the living room. A large sofa, piled with cushions, dominated one wall. Opposite it was an ornate, gold-framed mirror above a large marble chimney piece. Bruce noticed, too, the expensive glass table piled with fashion magazines.

“You’re quite a reader,” he said, gesturing to the copies of Vogue and Harper’s.

Julia seemed pleased with the compliment. “I like to keep my mind active. I’ve always liked to read.”

Bruce, who had seated himself on the sofa, reached forward and flicked through one of the magazines. “No!” he said. “Would you believe it? I knew these people in London. That girl there, in the black dress, I met her at a party in Chelsea. And that’s her brother there. The tall one. Terribly dim, but a good chap once he’s had a drink or two.”

Julia joined him on the sofa. “I can’t wait to get to London,”

she said. “That’s why I’m selling this place. One of Daddy’s friends has arranged for me to work with a woman who cooks directors’ lunches in the city. You know, they make lunches for the boardroom. And they cater for dinner parties. Party planners, sort of.”

Bruce turned a page of the magazine. There was an advertisement for perfume, with a flap down the side of the page. He ripped open the flap and sniffed at the page. “Great,” he said.

“That’s the stuff. It really is. Sexy, or what?”

Julia took the magazine from him and sniffed. “Mmm. Spicy.

It reminds me of Mauritius.”

“Yes,” said Bruce. “Mauritius.”

An Old Flame Flickers: as Well It May 39

He laid the magazine back on the pile and turned to Julia.

“So. London.”

“Yes,” she said. “London.”

“When?” asked Bruce.

“Oh, I don’t know. After I sell this place. Or before. I don’t know.”

Bruce looked thoughtful. “Great place, London,” he said.

“But I’m pretty glad to be back in Edinburgh, you know. It’s great here too. And not so crowded.”

“No,” said Julia. “I’ve enjoyed myself here.”

“The important thing,” said Bruce, “is not to burn your boats.

Never make a decision in a rush.”

He rose to his feet, rubbing his hands together. “You going to show me around?”

Julia laughed. “Of course. I forgot. Where shall we start?”

“The kitchen,” said Bruce. “You’ve got a kitchen?”

Julia reached out and punched him playfully on the arm.

“Cheeky! It’s a great kitchen, actually. All the stuff. Marble tops.

Built-in wine racks. Everything.”

They moved through to the kitchen. Bruce ran his fingers over the marble surfaces. “Smooth,” he said. He looked at Julia.

“Are you hungry? Seeing the kitchen makes me realise that I haven’t had lunch. You had lunch?”

Julia had not, and Bruce offered to cook it for her, in her kitchen. “You’ve got pasta?” he asked. “And some butter?

Parmesan, yes? Well, we’re in business.”

“This is fun,” said Julia.

Bruce winked at her. “Better than selling a flat?”

Julia giggled. “Much better.”

Bruce found a bottle of white wine in the fridge and opened it. He poured Julia a glass and they toasted one another as Bruce cut a piece of cheese off the block of Parmesan.

“I went to the place where they make this stuff,” he said, breaking off a fragment of the cheese and passing it to Julia.

“Reggio Emilia. Near Parma. That’s where they make it. I knew an Italian girl. They lived in Bologna, but her father had some 40

An Old Flame Flickers: as Well It May sort of farm there. Big place, with white oxen. And this great villa.”

Had Bruce been paying attention to Julia’s expression, he would have noticed the trace of a frown. But she recovered quickly. “An Italian girlfriend? Very exotic.”

Bruce looked at her from the corner of his eye. He appeared to be concentrating on slipping the pasta into the water, but he was watching her.

“No more Italian girlfriends for me,” he said. “I’ve had enough of all that. It’s settle-down time now. Comes to us all.”

He watched her response. She had picked up her glass and was gazing at the rim. But he could tell.

“You? Settle down?” She forced a smile, but there was a real point to her question.

“I’m serious,” he said. “I want a bit of quiet. I want a bit of domesticity. You know . . . going out for dinner, coming back and putting one’s feet up on the sofa with a . . . with a friend.

Lazy weekends.” He paused. “Long lie-ins on a Sunday. Then brunch somewhere. Some jazz. The Sunday papers.”

Julia had closed her eyes, just momentarily, but she had closed them. It’s working, thought Bruce: she’s imagining what it would be like. And there’s no reason for me to feel bad, because it really would be like that. That’s exactly what we could do in this place. It’s ideal. And the other great attrac-tion of it all was that the need to find a job would be less urgent. Julia, as everybody in Edinburgh knew, was not impe-cunious. An indulgent father, the owner of three large hotels and a slice of a peninsula in Argyll, made sure that his daughter wanted for nothing. It was surprising, thought Bruce, that she had not been snapped up by some fortune hunter. If she went to London, there would be a real danger of that happening. And that was why he was doing her a good turn. That’s what it was: an act of pure selflessness – considerate and sympathetic, pure altruism.

13. Matthew Gets Ideas from a Blank Canvas After he had finished his cup of coffee at Big Lou’s, Matthew made his way back across Dundas Street to the gallery. It was always a bit of a wrench leaving Big Lou: he felt she was the most relaxing, easy company, rather like a mother, he thought –

if one had the right sort of mother. Or an aunt perhaps, the sort of person with whom one could just pass time without the need to say anything. Not that Matthew had ever had an aunt like that, although he did have vague childhood memories of an aunt of his father’s who lived with them for a time and who worked all day, and every day, at tapestry. Matthew’s father had told him an amusing story about this aunt’s older brother, a man who suffered from a mild mental handicap and who had been taken in by Matthew’s grandfather. Uncle Jimmy had been a kind man, Matthew’s father said, and although there was little other contribution he could make to the household, he had been adept at fixing clocks.

“During the war, Jimmy had been largely uninterested in what was going on,” Matthew’s father had said. “But he was in great demand as a fixer of clocks, and his war service consisted of repairing the clocks of naval vessels that came into the Clyde.

They brought the clocks round to the house because he couldn’t really be left wandering around the ships unattended.

“After the war, he was disappointed that his supply of ships’

clocks dropped off. He liked the shape of these clocks, and it was not much fun going back to the fixing of mantelpiece clocks for the neighbours. Eventually he asked why there were so few ships coming in and was told that the war had finished three years ago.”

“Oh,” said Uncle Jimmy. “Who won, then?”

Matthew’s father had for some reason found this story vastly amusing, but Matthew thought: poor Uncle Jimmy, and remembered those Japanese soldiers who had come out of the jungle twenty, thirty years after the end of the war. Presumably they knew who won, or did they?

42

Matthew Gets Ideas from a Blank Canvas He unlocked the door of the gallery, removing the notice which said Back in half an hour. Surveying his desk, from which he had earlier cleared the day’s mail, he realised that there was not much to do that morning. In fact, once he thought about it, there was nothing at all. He was up to date with his correspondence, such as it was; he had paged through all the catalogues for the forthcoming auctions and knew exactly which pictures he would bid for. There were no invoices to send out, no bills to be paid. There was simply nothing to do.

For a few moments, he thought of what lay ahead of him.

Would he be doing this for the rest of his life – sitting here, waiting for something to happen? And if that was all there was to it, then what exactly was the point? The artists whose work he sold were at least making things, leaving something behind them, a corpus of work. He, by contrast, would make nothing, leave nothing behind.

But was that not the fate of so many of us? Most people who made their way to work each day, who sat in offices or factories, doing something which probably did not vary a lot –

pushing pieces of paper about or moving things from one place to another – these people might equally well look at their lives and ask what the point was.

Or should one really not ask that question, simply because the question in itself was a pointless one? Perhaps there was no real point to our existence – or none that we could discern –

and that meant that the real question that had to be asked was this: How can I make my life bearable? We are here whether we like it or not, and by and large we seem to have a need to continue. In that case, the real question to be addressed is: How are we going to make the experience of being here as fulfilling, as good as possible? That is what Matthew thought.

He was dwelling on this when he saw Angus Lordie walk past, carrying a parcel. On impulse, Matthew waved and gestured to him to come in.

“I was on my way to Big Lou’s,” Angus said. “And you?”

“Going nowhere,” said Matthew. “Sitting. Thinking.”

Matthew Gets Ideas from a Blank Canvas 43

“About?”

Matthew waved a hand in the air. “About this and that. The big questions.” He paused. “Any news of Cyril?”

Angus shook his head. “In the pound,” he said. “It makes my blood boil just to think of it. Cyril will be sitting there wondering what on earth he did to deserve this. Have people no mercy?”

“They used to try animals for crimes,” said Matthew thoughtfully. “Back in medieval times. I read something about it once.

They had trials for pigs and goats and the like. And then they punished them. Burned them alive.”

Angus said nothing, but Matthew realised that he had touched a raw nerve and changed the subject. He gestured to the parcel that Angus was carrying.

“That’s a painting?”

“It will be,” said Angus. “At the moment it’s just a primed canvas. There’s a man down in Canonmills who does this for me. I can’t be bothered to make stretchers and all the rest.”

“Well, don’t leave it lying about,” said Matthew. “It might be picked up and entered for the Turner Prize. You know the sort of rubbish they like. Piles of bricks and unmade beds and all the rest.”

“But they wouldn’t even consider this,” said Angus. “Although it’s only a primed canvas, it comes too close to painting for them.”

Matthew smiled. An idea was coming to him.

“Antonin Artaud,” he muttered. He looked up at Angus. “You know something, Angus. I would like to try to sell something of yours. I really would.”

“You know that I don’t sell through dealers,” said Angus.

“Even a semi-decent one like you. Why should I? No thank you, Mr Forty Per Cent.”

“Fifty,” corrected Matthew. “No, I’m not asking for any of your figurative studies. Or even those iffy nudes of yours. I’m thinking of something that wouldn’t involve you in much effort, but which would be lucrative. And could make you famous.”

“You’re assuming that I want to be famous,” said Angus. “But 44

Artaud’s Way Proves to Be an Inspiration actually I can’t think of anything worse. People taking an interest in your private life. People looking at you. What’s the attrac-tion in that?”

“It’s attractive to those who want to be loved,” said Matthew.

“Which is a universal desire, is it not?”

“Well, I have no need to be loved,” snorted Angus. “I just want my dog back.”

It was as if Matthew had not heard. “Antonin Artaud,” he said.

“Who?” asked Angus.

14. Artaud’s Way Proves to Be an Inspiration This was something that Matthew knew about. “Antonin Artaud,” he pronounced, “was a French dramaturge.”

Angus Lordie wrinkled his nose. “You mean dramatist?”

Matthew hesitated. He had only recently learned the word dramaturge and had been looking for opportunities to use it.

He had eventually summoned up the courage to try it on Big Lou, but her espresso machine had hissed at a crucial moment and she had not heard him. And here was Angus making it difficult for him by questioning it. Matthew thought that a dramaturge did something in addition to writing plays, but now he was uncertain exactly what that was. Was a dramaturge a producer as well, or a director, or one of those people who helped other people develop their scripts? Or all of these things at one and the same time?

“Perhaps,” said Matthew. “Anyway . . .”

“I don’t call myself an arturge,” Angus interrupted. “I am an artist. So why call a dramatist a dramaturge?”

Matthew said nothing.

“Simple words are usually better,” Angus continued. “I, for one, like to say now rather than at this time, which is what one hears on aeroplanes. They say: ‘At this time we are commencing Artaud’s Way Proves to Be an Inspiration 45

our landing.’ What a pompous waste of breath. Why not say:

‘We are now starting to land’?”

Matthew nodded, joined in the condemnation of aero-speak.

At least this took the heat off his use of dramaturge.

“And here’s another thing,” said Angus Lordie. “Have you noticed how when so many people speak these days they run all their words together – they don’t enunciate properly? Have you noticed that? Try to understand what is said over the public address system at Stansted Airport and see how far you get. Just try.”

“Estuary English,” said Matthew.

“Ghastly English,” said Angus. He mused for a moment, and then: “But who is this Artaud?”

“A dram . . .” Matthew stopped himself, just in time. “A dramatist. He was very popular in the thirties and forties. Anyway, he painted monochrome canvases and gave them remarkable titles.

It was a witty comment on artistic fashion.”

This interested Angus. “Such as?”

Matthew smiled. “He came up with a totally white painting – just white – and he called it Anaemic Virgins on Their Way to Their First Communion in a Snowstorm.”

Angus burst out laughing. There were white canvases in the public collections in Scotland. A suitable title, he thought.

“And then,” Matthew went on, “he painted a completely red canvas which he called Apoplectic Cardinals Picking Tomatoes by the Red Sea.”

Angus clapped his hands together. “Wonderful!” he said.

“Now let me think. What would we call a canvas that was simply blue?”

Matthew thought for a moment. “Depression at Sea?”

“Not bad,” said Angus. “A bit short, perhaps? What about A Depressed Conservative at a Risqué Film Convention?”

“Except that people don’t use the term ‘blue film’ anymore.”

“But we do talk about turning the air blue,” said Angus. “One turns the air blue with bad language. So how about A Sailor at Sea, Swearing?”

46

Artaud’s Way Proves to Be an Inspiration

“Maybe,” said Matthew. “And green? A completely green canvas?”

It did not take Angus long. “An Envious Conservationist Sitting on the Grass,” he said. And then he added: Reading Our Man in Havana.”

Matthew looked blank for a moment, but then he laughed.

“Very clever,” he said. He was about to add something, but then he remembered how the conversation had started. “That canvas of yours,” he said. “I could sell it for you. Just sign it, and I’ll sell it.”

Angus looked puzzled. “But I haven’t begun . . .” he said.

“It’s plain white,” said Matthew. “Just sign it. I’ll put a title on it, and we could see if I could sell it. We could follow our late friend, Monsieur Artaud.”

Angus was scornful. “A waste of a perfectly good primed canvas,” he said. “We don’t have a sufficient body of pretentious people . . .”

Matthew interrupted him. “But we do!” he said forcefully.

“Edinburgh is full of pretentious people. There are bags and bags of them. They walk down Dundas Street. All the time.”

At this, they both looked out onto Dundas Street. There were few people about, but just at that moment they saw a man whom they both recognised. Matthew and Angus exchanged glances, and smiled.

“Perhaps,” said Angus.

“Exactly,” said Matthew, producing a small tube of black acrylic paint from a drawer. “Now, where do you want to sign it?”

Once Angus had inscribed his signature, Matthew raised the issue of the painting’s title. He held the white canvas up and invited Angus to suggest something.

“It looks very restful,” Angus mused. “Something like Resolution might be a good title for it. Or perhaps The Colour of Silence?”

“Is silence white?” asked Matthew. “What about White Noise?”

Artaud’s Way Proves to Be an Inspiration 47

Angus thought that was a possibility, but was just not quite right. Then it occurred to him. “Piece Be With You,” he said.

“Perfect,” said Matthew.

Angus nodded in acknowledgement of the compliment. “The subliminal message of such a title is this,” he said. “Buy this piece. That’s what it says. This piece wants to be with you.” He paused. “Of course, we could increase its appeal simply by putting an NFS tag on it – not for sale. That message would fight subconsciously with the encouraging message of the title. And the result would be a very quick sale.”

Matthew reached for one of the sheets of heavy white paper on which he typed labels for his paintings. Inserting this into his manual typewriter, he began to tap on the keys. “Angus Lordie, RSA,” he said and typed. “Born . . .” He looked at Angus expectantly.

“Oh, nineteen something-or-other,” said Angus airily. “Put: Born, Twentieth Century. That will be sufficient. Or, perhaps, floruit MCMLXXX. I was in particularly good form round about then.” For a few moments he looked wistful; MCMLXXX had been such a good year.

Matthew typed as instructed. “And the price?” he asked.

Angus thought for a moment. It did not really matter, he thought, what he asked for the painting, as he did not think it would sell. But it occurred to him that if he was going to expose artistic pretentiousness – and artistic gullibility – he might as well do it convincingly. “Twenty-eight thousand pounds,” he suggested.

Matthew laughed. “Fifty per cent of which will come to me,”

he said.

“In that case,” said Angus, “make it thirty-two thousand.”

The price agreed, Matthew stood up and prepared to hang the plain white canvas in a prominent place on the wall facing his desk. Then, after sticking the label and details below it, he stood back and admired the effect.

“I’m tempted to keep it,” he said. “It’s so resolved!”

“One of my finest works,” said Angus. “Without a shadow of doubt. One of the best. Flawless.”

15. A Small Sherry and a Hint of Synaesthesia Since her return from the Malacca Straits, Domenica Macdonald had not seen a great deal of her friend Antonia Collie to whom she had lent her flat in Scotland Street during her absence. It had been a satisfactory arrangement from both points of view: Domenica had had somebody to water her plants and forward her mail, while Antonia had been afforded a base from which to pursue her researches into the lives of the early Scottish saints.

These saints, both elusive and somewhat shadowy, were the characters in the novel on which she was working, and even if they had failed to leave many material traces of their presence, there were manuscripts and books in the National Library of Scotland which spoke of their trajectory through those dark years.

Domenica’s return came too early for Antonia. She had become accustomed to her life in Scotland Street and to the comfortable routine she had established there. She had no desire to return to Fife, to the parental house in St Andrews, where she had set up home after the collapse of her marriage to a philandering farmer husband; not that he had been a philanderer on any great scale – unfaithfulness with one other woman was hardly philandering, even if that woman was exactly the sort an echt philanderer would choose.

If she could not return to Fife, then Antonia would have to find somewhere else to live in Edinburgh. She would not have far to go – three yards, in fact – as the flat opposite Domenica’s, and on the same landing, came up for rent at exactly the right time. It was the flat previously occupied by Pat, and the one which had been sold by Bruce when he left for London. Its coming on to the market at just the right time amounted to particularly good fortune, Antonia thought, and indeed there was to be more.

Within six weeks of her signing the lease, the owner asked Antonia if she was interested in buying it. Of course she was able to reply that the difficulty with this was that the flat already had a sitting tenant – herself – and this would require a reduction in A Small Sherry and a Hint of Synaesthesia 49

the price. The owner had been annoyed by this claim, which seemed flawed in some indefinable way, but, wanting to make a quick sale, had agreed to take £10,000 off the price. Antonia agreed, and the flat became hers. Domenica, though, was hesitant. She was half-hearted in the welcome of her old friend: such friends are all very well – in their place – which is not necessarily on one’s doorstep.

In the early stages of their being neighbours, Domenica had decided that she would not encourage Antonia too much. There had been an invitation to a welcoming drink, but this drink had consisted of a carefully measured glass in which the sherry had occupied only two-thirds of the glass, which was a small glass at that. Anything more than this, she decided, might have sent the wrong signal. Antonia had noticed. She had looked at the sherry glass and held it up to the light briefly, as if searching for the liquid, and then had glanced at Domenica to see if the gesture had registered. It had, and both decided that they understood one another perfectly.

“I know that you were about to offer me another sherry,”

Antonia said about fifteen minutes later. “But I really mustn’t stay. I have so much to do, you know. The days seem to fly past now, and I find that I have to struggle to fit everything in.”

Domenica felt slightly embarrassed. After all, Antonia had shown no signs of living in her pocket, and perhaps it was rather unfriendly to make one’s concerns quite so obvious at this stage.

“You don’t have to dash,” she said. “I could rustle something up for dinner . . .”

“Very kind,” said Antonia. “But I’ve made my own arrangements. You must come and have a meal with me some time soon.

Next month perhaps.”

There was an awkward silence. Next week would have been courteous; next month made her meaning crystal clear. And perhaps had added the belt to the braces.

“That would be very nice,” said Domenica. “No doubt we shall see one another before then. On the stairs maybe.”

“Yes,” said Antonia. “On the stairs.”

50

A Small Sherry and a Hint of Synaesthesia Over the next few days, they did not see one another at all.

It had been an awkward way of establishing the rules of good neighbourliness, but it had worked, and after a while Antonia found herself able to knock on Domenica’s door and invite her in for coffee. The invitation had been accepted – after only a moment’s reflection on what the diary for that day might contain. That content was nonexistent, of course, but one should only accept an invitation immediately if one is happy for the person issuing the invitation to conclude that one had nothing better, or indeed nothing at all, to do. And Domenica certainly did not want Antonia to reach that conclusion. She was sensitive to the fact that Antonia was writing a book, and therefore had a major project, while she did not. There was a very significant division, Domenica believed, between those who were writing a book at any time, and those who were not; a division just as significant as that between those actors who were currently on the stage and those, the majority, who were resting. For this reason, there were many people who claimed to be writing a book, even if this was not really the case. Indeed, somewhere at the back of her mind she remembered reading of a literary prize for such unwritten books, and of how the merits of those works on the shortlist for this prize were hotly debated by those who claimed to know what these unwritten books were all about.

“What are you going to do with this flat?” asked Domenica as she watched Antonia pour boiling water into the cafetière. It was the wrong question to ask somebody who had just moved into a new flat, but Domenica realised that only after she had asked it. It implied that the new place needed alteration, which, of course, may not have been the view of the new owner.

But Antonia was not offended. “A great deal,” she said, stirring the coffee grounds into the water. She sniffed at the aroma.

“What a lovely smell. Coffee. Certain new clothes. Lavender tucked under the pillowcase. All those smells.”

Domenica nodded. “Do you see smells as colours?” she asked.

“Or sounds as colours?”

Domenica Is Left to Puzzle a Petty Theft 51

“Synaesthesia,” said Antonia. “My father’s one, actually. A synaesthetic.”

16. Domenica Is Left to Puzzle a Petty Theft Antonia poured coffee into a blue-and-white Spode cup and passed it to Domenica. Her guest thanked her and carefully put it down on the kitchen table. The cup seemed familiar – in fact, she remembered that she had one exactly like it in her own flat, one which unfortunately had acquired a chip to the rim, more or less above the handle, just as this cup . . . She stopped herself.

The cup which Antonia had handed her had a chip to the rim at exactly the same place.

She reached out and lifted the cup to her lips, taking the opportunity to examine the rim more closely as she did so.

Yes, there it was, right above the handle, a small chip in the glazing, penetrating as far as the first layer of china, not enough to retire a well-loved cup, but clearly noticeable. She cradled the cup in her hands, feeling the warmth of the liquid within.

Antonia had stolen her china! And if this cup had been removed, then what else had she pilfered during her occupancy of Domenica’s flat?

She looked up at Antonia. It took a particularly blatant attitude, surely, to serve the dispossessed coffee in their own china.

That was either the carelessness of the casual thief, or shamelessness of a high order. It was more likely, she decided, that 52

Domenica Is Left to Puzzle a Petty Theft Antonia had simply forgotten that she had stolen the cup, and had therefore inadvertently used it for Domenica’s coffee.

Presumably there were many thieves who did just that; who were so used to ill-gotten goods that they became blasé about them.

And even worse criminals – murderers indeed – had been known to talk about their crimes in a casual way, as if nobody would sit up and take notice and report them. In a shameless age, when people readily revealed their most intimate secrets for the world to see, perhaps it was easy to imagine how the need for conceal-ment might be forgotten.

Domenica remembered how, some years previously, she had been invited for a picnic by some people who had quite casually mentioned that the rug upon which they were sitting had been lifted from an airline. It had astonished her to think that these people imagined that she would not be shocked, or at least disapproving. She had wanted to say: “But that’s theft!” but had lacked the courage to do that and had simply said: “Please pass me another sandwich.”

Later, when she had thought about it further, it occurred to her that the reason why they had been so open about their act of thievery was simply this: they did not consider it dishonest to steal from a large organisation. She remembered reading that people were only too willing to make false or exaggerated claims on insurance companies, on the grounds that they were big and would never notice it, nor were they slow to massage the figures of their expenses claims. All of this was simply theft, or its moral equivalent, and yet many of those who did it would probably never dream of stealing a wallet from somebody’s pocket, or slipping their hand into a shopkeeper’s till. What weighed with such people, it seemed to Domenica, was the extent to which the taking was personal.

Well, if that was the case – and it appeared to be so, in spite of the indefensibility of making such a distinction – then one would have thought that stealing one’s friend’s blue-and-white Spode cup was a supremely personal taking, especially when one’s friend had let one stay in her flat for virtually nothing.

Domenica Is Left to Puzzle a Petty Theft 53

That was the act of a true psychopath – one with no conscience whatsoever.

“Yes, synaesthesia,” said Antonia, pouring herself a cup of coffee into a plain white mug. “You know Edvard Munch’s famous picture The Scream? That’s a good example of the condition.

Munch said that he was taking a walk one evening and saw a very intense bloodred sky. He then had an overpowering feeling that all of nature was screaming – one great, big, natural howl of pain.

“Now, as to my father,” Antonia went on. “His case is very simple. He thinks that numbers have colours. When you ask him what colour the number three is, without a moment’s hesitation he says: ‘Why it’s red, of course.’ And ten, he says, is a shade of melancholy blue.”

Domenica thought for a moment. “But blue is often melancholy, isn’t it? Or that’s what I’ve always thought. Does that make me a synaesthetic?”

Antonia hesitated briefly before replying: “No, I don’t think so. I think that is more a question of conditioning. We’re told that blue is melancholy and so we associate that emotion with it. Just as Christmas is red, and white, being the colour of snow and ice, is cold. In my father’s case, I suspect that when he was learning to read as a boy, he had a book which had the letters and numbers in different colours. The figure three was probably painted in red, and that association was made and stuck.

Our minds are like that, aren’t they? Things stick.

“The association between blue and melancholy,” Antonia continued, “is a cultural one. Somebody, a long time ago, a genuine synaesthetic perhaps, said: ‘I’m feeling blue,’ and the expression caught on.”

“The birth of the blues,” said Domenica.

“Precisely,” agreed Antonia. She took a sip of her coffee. “Of course there are so many associations in our minds that it’s not surprising that some get mixed up – wires get crossed. Whenever I hear certain pieces of music, I think of places, people, times.

That’s only natural.

54

A Restoration in Prospect – and a New Suspicion

“People are always doing that with popular music. They remember where they were when they listened to something that made an impression on them.”

“If you’re going to San Francisco,” said Domenica suddenly,

“be sure to wear some flowers in your hair . . .”

Antonia stared at her.

“A song,” explained Domenica. “Round about the late sixties, 1967, maybe. It makes me think not of San Francisco, but Orkney, because that’s where I was when I listened to it. I loved it. And I can see Stromness, with its little streets, and the house I was staying in over the summer while I worked part-time in the hotel there. I was a student, and there was another student working there, a boy, and I suppose I was in love with him, although he never knew.”

Antonia was silent. She looked at Domenica. She had never thought of Domenica having a love life, but she must have, because we all fall in love, and some of us are sentenced to unre-quited love, talking about it over cups of coffee in flats like this, with friends just like this, oddly comforted by the process.

17. A Restoration in Prospect – and a New Suspicion Domenica looked about her. Antonia’s flat was a mirror image of hers in the arrangement of its rooms. But whereas the original features of her flat had been largely preserved, Antonia’s had suffered a bad 1970s experience. The original panelled doors, examples of which survived in Domenica’s flat, had either been taken down in Antonia’s and replaced with unpleasant frosted-glass doors – for what conceivable purpose? Domenica wondered

– or their panels had been tacked over with plywood to produce an unrelieved surface. That, one assumed, was the same aesthetic sense which had produced the St James Centre, a crude cluster of grey blocks at the end of the sadly mutilated Princes Street, or, at a slightly earlier stage, had sought the turning of Princes A Restoration in Prospect – and a New Suspicion 55

Street into an urban motorway and the conversion of the Princes Street Gardens into a car park.

One might not be surprised when some of these things were done by those with neither artistic sense nor training, but both the St James Centre and the plan to slice the city in two with a motorway had been the work of architects and planners. At a domestic level, these were the very same people who put in glass doors and took out old fireplaces.

“Yes,” said Antonia. “I will have to do something about all this.”

Domenica pretended surprise for a moment, but Antonia had intercepted her glances and knew what she was thinking.

“Don’t imagine for a moment that this is my taste,” Antonia warned. “I’m every bit as Georgian as you are.”

It was an amusing way of putting it, and they both laughed.

Not everyone in the New Town lived a Georgian lifestyle, but some did. And of course Antonia and Domenica would find such people amusing with their insistence on period authenticity in their houses, although they themselves were equally inclined to much the same aesthetic.

Domenica waved a hand about her. “What are you going to do?”

“Just about everything,” said Antonia. “Those doors over there.

The plywood will come off. Panels back. I’ll free the shutters.

Free the shutters – that’s a rallying call in these parts, you know.”

Domenica looked at her friend. But her own shutters had indeed been freed, she had to admit.

“And then I’m going to take all the light fittings out,” Antonia went on. “All this . . . this stuff.” She pointed up at the spiky, angular light that was hanging from the ceiling. “And the fireplaces, of course. I shall go to the architectural salvage yard and see what they have.”

“You’ll need a builder,” said Domenica, adding, with a smile,

“We are mere women, you know.”

“Oh, I’m ready for that. You know, people are so worried about builders. They seem to have such bad experiences with them.”

“Perhaps it’s that problem that builders have with their trousers,” Domenica mused. “You know that issue of . . .”

56

A Restoration in Prospect – and a New Suspicion Antonia was dismissive of that. “Low trousers have never been a problem for me,” she said. “Nihil humanum alienum mihi est.*

Although it is interesting – isn’t it? – how trousers are getting lower each year. Or is it our age?”

Domenica thought for a moment. “You mean on young men?

Young men’s trousers?”

“Yes,” said Antonia. “It’s now mandatory for them to show the top of their underpants above the trouser waist. And the trousers get lower and lower.”

As an anthropologist, there was little for Domenica to puzzle about in this. Male adornment occurred in all societies, although it took different forms. It was perfectly natural, she thought, for young men to display; the only question of interest was what limits society would put on it. And could one talk about society anymore when it came to clothing? T-shirts proclaimed the most intimate messages and nobody batted an eyelid. There were, she reflected, simply no arbiters.

Domenica decided that the issue of trousers had been explored enough. “And these builders,” she said. “Where will you get them?”

“My friend Clifford Reed is a builder,” Antonia said. “And a very good one, too. He’ll help me out. He said he will. He has a Pole he’s going to send over to take a look at what needs to be done, and then to do it. There are lots of Poles in Edinburgh now. All these builders and hotel porters and the like. All very hardworking. Staunch Catholics. Very reliable people.”

Domenica thought for a moment. “You’ll have to get a large mug to serve your Pole his tea in,” she said. “None of this Spode for him. He’ll want something more substantial.”

She watched Antonia as she spoke. It was a somewhat obvious thing for her to say, she thought, a bit unsubtle, in fact. But she watched to see its effect on Antonia. Of course the true psychopath would be unmoved; such people were quite capable of telling the coldest of lies, of remaining cool in the face of

*Lit: nothing about humanity is alien to me; a common Edinburgh way of saying: I’ve seen it all.

A Restoration in Prospect – and a New Suspicion 57

the most damning accusations. That was why they were psychopaths – they simply did not care; they were untouched.

“Of course not,” said Antonia flatly. “I keep my Spode for special occasions.”

Domenica was completely taken aback by this remark and was not sure how to take it. I keep my Spode for special occasions. This could mean that she kept her Spode (as opposed to stolen Spode) for such occasions, or that her own visit was such an occasion and merited the bringing out of the Spode. It must be the latter, she told herself. It must be.

Their conversation continued in a desultory fashion for a further half hour. There was some talk of the early Scottish saints – Antonia’s novel on the subject was not progressing well, Domenica was told – and there was a brief exchange of views about the latest special exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Then Domenica looked at her watch and excused herself.

She rose to her feet and began to walk towards the door. As she did so, something lying at the foot of the kitchen dresser caught her eye. It was a slipper, a slipper embroidered in red, and it was remarkably similar to one that she had. She glanced at it quickly and then looked away. What were the odds that two people living on the same stair in Scotland Street would both have identical pairs of red Chinese slippers? Astronomically small, she thought.

18. Bruce Finds a Place to Stay – Just Perfect Since he had returned to Edinburgh, Bruce had been staying with friends in Comely Bank. These people were a couple whom he had known in his earlier days in Edinburgh; Neil had been at school with him at Morrison’s Academy in Crieff, and he had known Caroline slightly before she met Neil. Both Neil and Caroline were keen skiers who had met on a skiing trip to Austria.

Not all romances which start in the chalet or on the ski slopes survive the descent to sea level, but this one did. Now they were married and living in Comely Bank in a Victorian tenement halfway up the hill towards the heights of the west New Town.

“Not quite Eton Terrace,” Bruce had observed. “Nor St Bernard’s Crescent, for that matter. But nice enough. If you like that sort of thing.” Comely Bank was comfortable and was only a fifteen-minute walk from the West End and Neil’s office, but, in Bruce’s words again, it was “hardly the centre of the known universe.”

In fact, even as he passed these somewhat dismissive comments, Bruce was trying to remember a poem he had heard about a man who died and who had “the Lord to thank / For sending him straight to Heaven from Comely Bank.” Or something along those lines. Bruce smirked at the thought. Comely Bank was fine for Neil and Caroline, but not for him. He still wanted some fun, and in his view all the fun was to be found in the New Town in places like . . . well, in places like Julia Donald’s flat, for instance.

Julia had quickly agreed to his suggestion that he might move in with her for a while.

“But of course you’re welcome, Brucie,” she had said. “I was going to suggest it, anyway. In fact, I’ll probably stick around for a while. London can wait. You know what? I think Edinburgh’s where it’s at. I really do.”

Bruce had smiled at her. It’s where I’m at, he thought, which perhaps amounted to the same thing. He looked at her. Nice girl, he thought. Not a feminist, thank God. More interested in

. . . well, not to put too crude a point on it, interested in men.

Bruce Finds a Place to Stay – Just Perfect 59

And why not? Why should girls not be interested in men? You could talk to girls who were interested in men; they liked to listen; they appreciated you. Those others, those feminists, were always trying to prove something, he thought, trying to make up for something that was missing in their lives. Well, he knew what was missing, and he could show them if they liked! What a thought! Thank heavens for girls like Julia and for her offer of a room in her flat.

“That’s really great, Julia,” he said. “Can you show me the room?” He winked.

She led him to a room at the back of the flat. “This is the guest room, Brucie,” she said. “You can keep your stuff in that cupboard over there – it’s empty. And I’m right next door.” She gestured at a door behind them. “When you need me.”

Bruce clicked his tongue appreciatively and gave her a playful pinch. “Good girl,” he said. “This is going to be fun.”

Julia gave a little laugh. “You bet. When do you want to move in?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Suits me fine.”

“And in the meantime,” said Bruce. “Let’s go somewhere this evening. A wine bar? A meal afterwards?”

This suited Julia very well, and they made their arrangements to meet. Bruce then left and went out into the street. He smiled.

This was perfect, just perfect. He had found himself somewhere to stay – somewhere where he would not have Neil and Caroline cooing away in the background. Really, what a pair of lovebirds – gazing into one another’s eyes for hours on end and going to bed early, pretending to be tired. Sickening, really, and if that was what marriage was like, then he counted himself lucky still to be single. Of course, if he wanted to get married, then he could do so – any day. All he would have to do would be to click his fingers – like that – and the girls would be lining up.

But there would be plenty of time for that.

He walked down Northumberland Street and turned into Dundas Street. It was good, he thought, to be back in this familiar 60

Bruce Enjoys Telling His London Story part of town, amongst his old haunts. A few blocks down the hill was the Cumberland Bar, where he had spent so many good evenings, and just beyond that Scotland Street itself. When he went down to London, he imagined that he had put all that behind him; it was almost as if he had wanted to forget it all. But now that he was back in Edinburgh, his memories of that period of his life were flooding back, and it had not been a bad time in his life, not at all. He thought of the girls he had known – that American girl, the one he met in the Cumberland; she was a stunner, but then she had proved rather unreliable in the long run. He frowned.

And of course there was Pat herself, his little flatmate as he called her. She fell for me in a big way, he thought, poor girl. But she would have been inexperienced and emotionally demanding, and she would have clung to me if I had started anything. Nothing worse than that – a girl who clings. That can get difficult.

He continued to walk down Dundas Street. He realised that he was close to the gallery that she worked in, the gallery owned by the rather wet Matthew. He was one person he could do without seeing again, and yet he would probably still be hanging about the Cumberland Bar hoping for something to turn up. Sad.

He glanced towards the gallery window, and at that moment Pat looked out. Bruce stopped. She was staring at him and he could hardly just ignore her. He could wave and continue down the street, which would give her a very clear message, or he could go in and have a word with the poor girl.

He looked at his watch. There was no point in going back to Comely Bank and sitting in Neil and Caroline’s kitchen until it was time to go out to dinner. So why not?

He pushed open the gallery door and went in.

19. Bruce Enjoys Telling His London Story

“London,” said Pat. Bruce winked at her. “Fantastic place. London’s just great. You should go there some time, Pat. Move on.”

Bruce Enjoys Telling His London Story 61

Pat looked at Bruce. He had not changed at all, she decided.

There was the same slightly superior look – a knowing expression, one might call it – and the hair . . . yes, it was the same gel, giving forth the same faint smell of cloves.

“How was the job down there?” she asked. “What did you do?”

Bruce ran a hand through his hair; cloves released. “Two jobs, actually. I left the first one after a week. The second one was more . . . how should I put it? More to my taste.”

She was interested in this. Bruce would never admit to being fired, but if he left the job after a week, then that must have been what happened. “Oh. What went wrong?” she asked.

Bruce began to smile. “You really want to know?”

Pat nodded. She did want to know.

“All right,” said Bruce. “I went for an interview for a job handling the commissioning of a portfolio of service flats. Not just any service flats – these were high-end places, Bayswater and so on. Diplomats – ones from serious countries, not Tonga, you know. Saudi, Brunei, places like that. Big Arabs. Fancy Japs.

Eurotrash. Serious money.

“This firm was doing the decorating, installing the bits and pieces – everything, really. And money was going to be no object.

Persian rugs – large ones – all the stuff you put in these places, you know – busts of Roman emperors, Hockney drawings, and so on. We were going to do the whole thing.”

Pat raised an eyebrow. “But you’re not a decorator, Bruce.

You’re . . .”

He did not let her finish. “Questioning my versatility, Patsy-girl? I’ve got an eye, you know.”

Pat shrugged. Bruce had known nothing about wine, but that seemed not to have stopped him being a success in the wine business. So perhaps it was confidence that counted, and he was definitely not short of that.

Bruce sat down on Pat’s desk. He adjusted the crease in his trousers. Chinos, Pat thought.

“So anyway,” he continued, “I went for the interview with 62

Bruce Enjoys Telling His London Story this guy. You should have seen him. Mr Colour Co-ordination himself. He knew how to match his trousers with his jacket. He was very nice. He asked me how I thought I could contribute, and I told him that I had managed properties in Edinburgh.

Then he showed me a picture of an empty room and asked me what I’d put into it. He fished out this catalogue full of antiques and said I should pick something from there. I did, but I had a feeling there was something else going on. He was looking at me, you see. Like this.”

Bruce turned sideways to Pat, glanced at her with widened eyes, and then looked away.

“Oh,” said Pat.

Bruce smiled. “See what I mean? What do you think a look like that means? Well, you’ll find out. The next thing he says is this: ‘Let me guess, Bruce – you’re Aries, aren’t you?’ Just like that. Coming on hard.”

Pat thought for a moment. She remembered Bruce’s birthday, and it was true. He was an Aries.

“He got it right,” she said.

“Yes. He got it right. But then he said: ‘Do you like cooking?’

Cooking! And that made it even clearer. So you know what I did? I knew that there were three or four people after this job – I’d seen them outside – and so I decided that I’d play along with all this. If that’s what it took to get the job, I was ready.

So I said: ‘Cooking? I adore it!’ Yes, I did! And he brightened up and said: ‘That’s great, just great. I love being in the kitchen.’

Or something like that. Then he looked at his watch and said:

‘If you want the job, Bruce, it’s yours.’ And so we got it all tied up there and then and I started at the beginning of the following week.”

Pat looked down. She did not like this, and she did not want to hear anymore. But Bruce continued.

“It was a great job. I was meant to source the things we needed for the flats and to chase up the painters and plumbers and whatnot. I made up the spreadsheets for the projects with time-lines and completion dates and stuff like that. It was great. But Bruce Enjoys Telling His London Story 63

then Rick – that was his name – invited me to a dinner party at his place. Boy! You should have seen it. Furniture to die for.

Big paintings – none of this Victorian junk you sell here. Big splashes of colour. And there was Rick in a caftan. Yes! I look around and think: where are the other guests? Surprise, surprise!

No other guests.

“‘Unfortunately, the others cancelled,’ said Rick. ‘So inconsiderate of them!’ He turns on the music.”

Pat listened to Bruce with growing horror. I can’t stand him, she thought. I can’t stand him. He led that poor man on just to get the job. I can’t stand him.

Bruce grinned. “So you know what I did? I said: ‘Rick, I’m terribly sorry. I’m just developing this terrible headache. Really bad.’ And I started to leave. So he says: ‘But Bruce, you haven’t had a thing to eat, not a thing! I can’t let you set off with a headache and an empty stomach.’ So I said that I wasn’t really hungry and that maybe another day, and so he says: ‘Tomorrow, Bruce? Same time?’ And that was it, really. I phoned him at the office next day and left a message that I wouldn’t be coming back. So that was the end of the job.”

Pat looked away. There was nothing worse, in her view, than talking about something like that, a private encounter in which one person misunderstands another and is made to look pathetic.

And Bruce was responsible for the whole misunderstanding by pretending to be gay. She turned back to him. “That’s really horrible,” she said. “Really horrible.”

“I know,” said Bruce, smiling broadly. “But I don’t hold it against him. Not really.”

Pat drew in her breath. It seemed impossible to dent his self-satisfaction, his utter self-assuredness. She wanted to hit him, because that, she thought, might be the only way of telling him what she felt. But she would not have had the chance, even if she had summoned up the courage, as Bruce now slid off the desk, patted her on the arm, and moved towards the door.

“À bientôt,” he said. “Which, translated into the patois of these parts, means: see yous!”

20. Miss Harmony Has News for the Children

“Now listen, everybody,” said Miss Harmony, clapping her hands to get attention. “We have some very interesting news.” She looked out over the class, seated in a circle round the room.

They were always somewhat excited at the beginning of a new term and usually took a few days to settle down, especially if there were any new members. As it happened, there were not, and indeed the class was one member down with the departure of Merlin. He had been withdrawn by his parents, who had decided to homeschool him for a trial period. Miss Harmony had not thought that a good idea, as she believed in the social-isation value of the classroom experience, particularly when the parents themselves were so odd. And she had the gravest doubts as to what Merlin’s mother could actually teach her son. There was something very disconcerting about that woman, Miss Harmony thought, her vague, mystical pronouncements, her interest in crystals, and her slightly fey appearance did not inspire confidence. But it was her choice, and it would be respected, although when she thought about it hard enough, she wondered exactly why one should respect the choices of others when those choices were so patently bad ones. That would require further thought, she decided.

Looking around the class, there were various other pupils whom she would quite happily have seen withdrawn for homeschooling. Larch was one, with his aggressive outlook and his

. . . well, she did not like to blame a child for his appearance, but there was no escaping the fact that Larch looked like a pugilist on day-release from Polmont Young Offenders’

Institution. He was rather frightening, actually, and he really did spoil the class photographs.

These thoughts, though, were not really very charitable and Miss Harmony accepted that she should put them firmly from her mind, but not before she had allowed herself a final reflection on how Hiawatha, too, might also benefit from homeschooling, which would remove the constant problem of his Miss Harmony Has News for the Children 65

socks and their somewhat unpleasant odour. Would a letter to his mother be in order? she wondered. It was difficult to imagine how one might put the matter tactfully; parents were so sensitive about such things.

“Yes,” said Miss Harmony. “A lot has happened! First of all, you will notice that Merlin is no longer with us. We have said farewell to him, as he is going to be studying at home this year.”

This announcement was greeted with silence, as the children looked at one another. Then Olive put up her hand.

“He won’t be studying, Miss Harmony,” she said. “He told me. He said that his mother wanted him to help her with her weaving. He said that he was going to be getting paid for it.”

“Now, Olive,” said Miss Harmony. “We mustn’t always believe what others tell us, must we? Especially when they are having a little joke, as I am sure Merlin was. We all know that Merlin will be working very hard in his little home classroom and that his head will soon be bursting with knowledge.” She stared hard at Olive. “Yes, Olive, bursting with knowledge.”

Tofu now joined in. “I saw something about this on television,” he said. “It was about carpet factories in India. The children all worked in the factories and made rugs.”

Miss Harmony laughed. “That’s child labour, Tofu, dear. And it is no longer allowed in this country. Certainly it used to be – chimney sweeps would make little boys – like you – go up the chimney for them. Charles Dickens wrote about that sort of thing. But now we do not allow that anymore.” She paused.

“Merlin will not be a child labourer, I assure you.”

She gave Tofu a discouraging look. “Now then,” she said.

“The news that Merlin has left us is very sad news for us, of course. But there has also been some happy news. And I’m going to ask Bertie to tell us himself.”

All eyes swung round to Bertie, who blushed.

“Come on, Bertie,” said Miss Harmony. “You tell us about the little event which happened in your house over the holidays.”

66

Miss Harmony Has News for the Children Bertie bit his lip. He had not been sure at first what Miss Harmony was alluding to, but now he knew.

“My mother had a baby,” he muttered.

“Now, now, Bertie,” encouraged Miss Harmony. “Good news must be given loud and clear.”

“A baby,” said Bertie. “My mother had a baby.”

“See!” said Miss Harmony. “That’s good news, isn’t it everybody? Bertie now has a little brother. And what’s his name, Bertie?”

Bertie looked down at the top of his desk. There was no escape, or at least one that he could identify. “Ulysses,” he said.

Tofu, who had been staring at Bertie, now looked away and sniggered.

“Tofu,” said Miss Harmony. “Ulysses is a very fine name.”

Tofu said nothing.

“Yes,” said Miss Harmony. “And we don’t laugh at the names of others, do we, Tofu? Especially . . .” She hesitated. It was so tempting, impossible to resist, in fact. “Especially if we are called Tofu ourselves.”

“Tofu’s a stupid name,” volunteered Olive. “It’s that horrid white stuff that cranky people eat. It’s a stupid name. I’d far rather be called Ulysses than Tofu, any day of the week. And anyway, Tofu, it’s nice to hear that Miss Harmony thinks your name is stupid too.”

“That is not what I said, Olive,” said Miss Harmony quickly.

“And let’s move on, boys and girls. We are all very pleased, I’m sure, to hear about Bertie’s new baby brother and we look forward to meeting him some day soon. I’m sure that Bertie is very proud of him and will bring him to the school to introduce us all. But in the meantime, boys and girls, we are going to start today with sums, just to see whether we’ve remembered what we learned last term!”

Much had been forgotten, and the rest of the morning was devoted to the reinstallation of vanished knowledge. Bertie worked quietly, but he noticed Olive looking at him from time to time and the observation made him feel uneasy. Bertie was

Pat Experiences a Moment of Brutal Honesty 67

wary of Olive on several counts, but principally because she laboured under the delusion that she was his girlfriend. And at the end of the day, his doubts proved to be well-founded.

“I’m really looking forward to seeing your new baby brother,”

said Olive, as they left the classroom. “I’m coming to see him soon.”

Bertie frowned. “Who said?” he asked.

“My mother has spoken to your mother,” Olive answered.

“And your mother says that I can come to play at your house once a week if I like. So I will.”

“But I didn’t ask you,” said Bertie.

“No,” said Olive. “But that makes no difference. Your mummy did – and that’s what counts.” She paused. “And we’re going to play house.”

21. Pat Experiences a Moment of Brutal Honesty Bruce had been gone a good hour, but Pat was still smarting from her encounter with her newly returned former flatmate.

Much of her anger focused on the fact that she had not responded adequately to his unpleasant story of his London experiences; didn’t-kiss-and-still-told was in her mind every bit as bad as kiss-and-tell. There was so much she could have said which would have indicated her disgust over his insensitive behaviour, so much, but, as was so often the case, the really pithy comments, 68

Pat Experiences a Moment of Brutal Honesty those brilliant mots justes that might have deflated him, only occurred to her after he had left.

And then she wondered whether anything could ever deflate Bruce, such was the sheer Zeppelin-scale volume of his self-satisfaction. At least their brief meeting had convinced her – if conviction were needed – that she disliked him intensely, and yet, and yet . . . when he had perched on her desk, uninvited, she found herself unable to ignore the brute fact of his extreme attractiveness. Bruce was, quite simply, devastatingly good-looking, an Adonis sent down to live among us. And the fact that she even noticed this worried her. She had already had a narrow escape with Wolf, who had similarly dazzled her, and here she was looking at Bruce again in that way. Am I, she wondered, one of those people who fall for the physically desir-able, irrespective of what they are like as people? In a moment of brutal honesty, she realised that the answer was probably: yes, I am. It was a bleak conclusion.

She thought of Matthew, solid, dependable, predictable Matthew. These three epithets said it all, but they were words which had no excitement in them, no thrill. And yet when one compared Matthew with Bruce, Matthew’s merits were over-whelming. But then again, there was the distressed-oatmeal, the crushed-strawberry factor . . .

The door of the gallery opened and Pat turned round. A man had entered the gallery, a largish man of rather elegant bearing, wearing grey slacks and a blazer, no tie, but a red silk bandanna tied around his neck. He sported a jaunty mustache. He smiled at Pat and gestured in the direction of the paintings. “Do you mind? May I ?”

“Of course. Please.”

He nodded to her in a friendly way and made his way across the gallery to stand in front of one of Matthew’s recently acquired MacTaggart seascapes. Pat watched him from her desk. Some people who came into the gallery were merely passing the time, with no intention of buying anything; this man, though, with his urbane manner, had a different air about him.

Pat Experiences a Moment of Brutal Honesty 69

He moved closer to one of the MacTaggarts and peered at a section of the large canvas. Two children were sitting on the edge of a wide, windswept beach. The children were windswept too, their hair ruffled. They were playing with the sand, which streamed away from their hands, caught in the breeze, in thin lines of gold.

The man turned round and addressed Pat across the floor.

“Can you tell me anything about this?”

Pat rose from her desk and walked across to join him. “It’s a MacTaggart,” she said. “Do you know about him?”

“Not much,” said the man. “But I do know a little. I like his work. There’s a strange air about it. Something rather wind-blown, don’t you think?”

Pat agreed. “It reminds me of places like Tantallon,” she said.

“Or Gullane beach, perhaps. That could be Fife on the other side of the water. Just there. There’s some land, you see.”

The man turned and smiled at her. “It probably doesn’t matter much,” he said. “Just Scotland. Quite some time ago now.”

“Yes.” She waited for him to say something else, but his gaze had shifted. Now he was looking at Angus Lordie’s painting. He moved forward and stared at the label beneath it; then he stood back and stared at it, his head slightly to one side.

Pat watched him. She was about to say something, to tell him that this was not entirely serious, but he had now turned to face her.

“Do you know ‘Four minutes thirty-three seconds’?” he asked.

“That piece by what’s his name? John Cage? Complete silence.

That’s all it is – complete silence.”

“Nothing?”

“Yes, nothing at all. Often done on the piano, but an orchestra can play it too. The conductor stands there, turning pages of the score, but nobody plays a note. And that’s it.”

“You’ve heard it?”

The man nodded. “I suppose you might say that we’ve all heard it. I heard it in New York. But if any of us has ever listened to four minutes of silence, anywhere, then I suppose you could 70

Pat Experiences a Moment of Brutal Honesty say that we’ve heard what the composer wanted us to hear.

But then, we don’t listen to silence, do we? We’re too preoccupied.”

Pat looked at Angus Lordie’s painting. “Well . . .” she began.

It was as if the man had not heard her. “That performance in New York was extraordinary. The moment the orchestra had stopped, there was confusion in the audience. Some of them knew the piece, of course, and applauded. They understood.

Some laughed. Others were silent, not really knowing what to do.”

“This painting is a bit like that,” he said. “I like it, you know.”

Pat stood quite still. One part of her wanted to tell him that it was absurd, that Matthew’s joke had gone far enough; the other imagined Matthew’s pleasure if she actually sold it. It was the sort of thing that would amuse him greatly, and, of course, there was Angus to think about. He was miserable over Cyril’s plight and he would appreciate some good news.

“I don’t suppose you want to buy it,” Pat said. She was hesitant. I’m not trying to persuade him, she thought. I’m really not. And the painting was so absurdly pricey – for what it was – that only somebody who did not have to worry about money would buy it. Such people, surely, could look after themselves.

The man turned his head sideways to look at the painting from a slightly different angle. “Why not? My walls are a bit cluttered, you know. The usual stuff. I could do with a bit of minimalism. So, why not?”

Pat waited. “Yes?”

“Yes,” he said. “Bung a red sticker under it. My name’s Johannesburg. Here’s my card.”

He handed her his card. The Duke of Johannesburg, it read. Single-Malt House. And under that: Clubs: Scottish Arts (Edinburgh); Savile (London); Gitchigumi (Duluth).

A Little Argument Develops Over . . . Guess What?

71

22. A Little Argument Develops Over . . .

Guess What?

Matthew did not like it when people said “guess what?” to him, which is the very expression with which Pat greeted him when he returned to the gallery. Being asked to guess what had happened struck him as pointless – one could never guess accurately in such circumstances, which was precisely why one was asked to do so.

“I don’t see why I should try to guess,” he said peevishly. “If I did, I would be completely wrong and you would just revel in your advantage over me. So I’m not going to guess.”

Pat looked at him with surprise. He had been in a good mood when he left for his appointment; something must have gone wrong with that meeting to produce this irritable response. “I was only asking,” she said.

Matthew tossed the file that he was carrying down on the desk. “You weren’t asking,” he said. “Asking me to guess isn’t really asking anything. You just want to show me that I don’t know what’s happened. That’s all.”

Pat was not sure how to react to this. It seemed to her a completely unimportant matter – an argument over nothing.

She had said “guess what?” but she was not really expecting him to try to guess. In fact, she had intended merely to point to the 72

A Little Argument Develops Over . . . Guess What?

red sticker which now adorned Angus Lordie’s painting. It was good news, after all, not bad. Aggrieved, she decided that she would defend herself. “I don’t know why you’re so ratty,” she said. “Lots of people say ‘guess what?’ when they have some news to give somebody else. It’s just a thing they say. They don’t really expect you to guess.”

“Well, I’m not guessing,” said Matthew.

Pat looked away. “Then I’m not going to tell you,” she said.

She would not tell him; she would not.

For a moment there was silence. Then Matthew spoke. “You have to,” he said. “You can’t say something like that and then not tell me.”

“Not if you’re going to be so rude,” said Pat.

Matthew raised his voice. “You’re the one who was being rude. Not me. You’re the one who wanted to expose my ignor-ance of whatever it is you know and I don’t. That’s hardly very friendly, is it?”

Pat was still seated at the desk and now she looked up at Matthew. “You’re the one who’s not being friendly,” she said.

“All I was trying to do was to give you some good news and you bit my head off. Just like that.”

Matthew’s expression remained impassive. “You sold a painting.”

Pat had not expected this. “Maybe,” she muttered.

“There!” crowed Matthew. “I guessed! Now, don’t say anything. No, let me guess.”

“You said you didn’t want to guess,” snapped Pat. “Now you’re saying you do. You should make up your mind, you know.”

“I’m guessing because I’ve decided I want to guess,” said Matthew. “That’s very different from being made to guess when you don’t want to. You should have said: ‘Would you like me to tell you something or would you prefer to guess?’ That would have been much more polite.” He paused. “Now, let me think.

You’ve sold a painting. Right. So which painting would it be?

One of the MacTaggarts? No, I don’t think so. It’s not the sort of day on which one sells a MacTaggart. No. So, let’s see.”

A Little Argument Develops Over . . . Guess What?

73

Pat decided to put an end to this. If Matthew had been unprepared to guess when she had very politely offered him the chance, then she did not see why he should now have the privilege of guessing. “I’m going to tell you. It’s . . .”

“No!” interjected Matthew. “Don’t spoil it. You can’t get somebody guessing and then stop them. Come on, Pat – I’m going to guess. Let’s think. All right – you sold Angus Lordie’s painting. Yes! You sold the totally white one.”

“You saw the sticker,” said Pat. “That wasn’t a proper guess.”

Matthew was injured innocence itself. “I did not see the sticker! I did not!”

“You must have. You saw it when you came in and then you pretended not to. Well, I think that’s just pathetic, I really do.”

“I did not see the sticker,” shouted Matthew. “Who knows better what I saw or didn’t see? You or me? No, don’t look like that, just tell me? Who knows what I saw? You or me?”

Pat recalled what her father had said about the mind and its tricks of perception. It was likely that Matthew had in fact seen the sticker when he came in, even if he did not know that he had seen it.

“You don’t always know what you’ve seen,” she said. “The mind registers things at a subconscious level. You may not know that you’ve seen something, but you have. The mind knows it subconsciously.”

Matthew stared at her. “Look,” he said, “let’s not fight. I’m sorry if I went on about guessing. I suppose I’m just a bit . . .

Well, I don’t know, I’m just a bit.”

She held out her hand and touched him briefly. “All right.

Sorry too.”

“I can hardly believe that you sold that painting,” he said, adding, “If you can call it a painting. How did they pay?”

Pat reached for the card she had been given. “Well, he hasn’t paid yet. But he did ask for a red sticker to be put up.”

She handed him the card. He examined it and frowned. “The Duke of where?”

74

An Embarrassing Trip on the Bus for Bertie

“Johannesburg,” said Pat. “He was a man with a mustache.

About your height. He was wearing a red bandanna.”

Matthew stared at the card. “I’ve never heard of him,” he said. “Are you sure he exists? Are you sure this isn’t some sort of joke?”

Pat felt defensive. She had begun to doubt herself now, and she wondered whether she should simply have taken the man’s card and put up a sticker. It did seem a bit trusting, but if one couldn’t trust dukes, then whom could one trust?

“He seemed . . .” She trailed off.

Matthew looked doubtful. “It seems a bit unlikely,” he said.

“Why would Johannesburg have a duke? And what’s all this about these clubs? Where’s the Gitchigumi Club for heaven’s sake?”

“Duluth,” said Pat. “That’s what it says there. Duluth.”

“And where exactly is that?” asked Matthew.

“Duluth?”

“Yes. Where’s Duluth?”

Pat thought for a moment. “Guess,” she said. She had no idea, and could only guess herself. Minnesota?

23. An Embarrassing Trip on the Bus for Bertie When classes were over for the day and the children spilled out, Irene met Bertie at the school gate. This was not an ideal situation from Bertie’s point of view as it gave his mother the opportunity to make the sort of arrangement which had caused him such concern – of which the proposed visit, or series of visits, by Olive was a prime example. He had suggested that they meet further up the road, at the junction of Spylaw Road and Ettrick Road, well away from the eyes of his classmates, but this proposal had been greeted by Irene with an understanding smile.

“Now, Bertie,” she said, “Mummy knows that you’re ashamed An Embarrassing Trip on the Bus for Bertie 75

of her! And you mustn’t feel ashamed of feeling ashamed. All children are embarrassed by their parents – it’s a perfectly normal stage through which you go. Melanie Klein . . .” She paused.

She could not recall precisely what Melanie Klein had written on the subject, but she was sure that there was something. It had to do with idealisation of the female parental figure, or mother, to use the vernacular. Or it was related to the need of the child to establish a socially visible persona which was defined in isolation from the mother’s personality. By distancing himself from her, Bertie thought that he might grow in stature in relation to those boys who were still under maternal skirts. Well, that was understandable enough, but the development of the young ego could still be assisted by saying it does not matter.

In that way, the child would transcend the awkward stage of parental/infant uncoupling and develop a more integrated, self-sufficient ego.

“It doesn’t matter, Bertie,” Irene said. “It really doesn’t.”

Bertie looked at his mother. It was difficult sometimes to make out what she was trying to say, and this was one of those occasions. “What doesn’t matter?” he asked.

Irene reached out and took his hand. They were travelling home on the 23 bus, with Bertie’s baby brother, Ulysses, fitted snugly round Irene’s front in a sling. Bertie liked to travel on the upper deck, but they were not there now as the concentra-tion of germs there was greater, Irene said, than below, and Ulysses’s immune system was not yet as strong as it might be.

Bertie tried to slip his hand out of his mother’s, but her grip was tight. He looked around him furtively to see if anybody from school might see him holding hands with his mother on the bus; fortunately, there was nobody.

“It doesn’t matter that you feel embarrassed about being seen with me at the school gate,” she said. “Those feelings are natural.

But it also doesn’t matter what other people think of you, Bertie.

It really doesn’t.”

Bertie’s face flushed. He looked down at the floor. “I’m not embarrassed, Mummy,” he said.

76

An Embarrassing Trip on the Bus for Bertie

“Oh yes, you are!” said Irene, her voice rising playfully.

“Mummy can tell! Roberto è un poco imbarazzato!”

“Non è vero,” mumbled Bertie. He glanced out of the window; they were barely at Tollcross, which meant it was at least another ten minutes before they reached Dundas Street, ten minutes of agony. Ulysses, at least, was asleep, which meant that he was doing little to draw anybody’s attention, but then he suddenly made a loud, embarrassing noise. On the other side of the bus, a boy only a few years older than Bertie, a boy travelling by himself, glanced at Bertie and smirked. Bertie looked away.

“You see, Bertie,” Irene went on, “Mummy understands. And all I want is that you should be able to rise above the terrors of being your age. I know what it’s like. You think I don’t, because all children think that grown-ups know nothing. Well we know a lot – we really do. I know what it’s like to be small and to be worried about what other children are thinking. All I want is for you to be free of that, to be able to be yourself. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Bertie thought quickly. He found that one of the best strategies with his mother was to distract her in some way, to change the subject, and this is what he now did.

“Olive said that she was going to come to my house,” he said.

“Our house,” corrected Irene. “Bertie lives there with Mummy and Daddy and, of course, dear little Ulysses. And yes, è vero, I have invited Olive. I spoke to her mummy at the school gate and suggested that Olive should come down to Scotland Street one afternoon a week. This will suit her mummy, who is doing a degree course at the university, you see. And it will be nice to have somebody for you to play with. You’ll have a lot of fun.”

Bertie stared at his mother. “I don’t want to play with Olive, Mummy. She’s very bossy.”

Irene laughed. “Bossy? Olive? Come now, Bertie, she’s a charming little girl. You two will get on like a house on fire.”

“I want to play with other boys,” said Bertie.

Irene patted him on the shoulder. “There’ll be time for that

An Embarrassing Trip on the Bus for Bertie 77

later on, Bertie. You’ll find that Olive is plenty of fun to play with – more fun, in fact, than boys. And, anyway, we have agreed and we can hardly uninvite Olive, can we?”

Bertie said nothing. Long experience of his mother – all six years of it – had taught him that there was no point in arguing.

He looked at Ulysses, who had now woken up and had opened his eyes. The baby was staring at Bertie with that steady, intense stare that only babies can manage. Bertie looked back at his little brother. Poor little boy, he thought. Just you wait. Just you wait until she starts on you. Mozart. Yoga. Melanie Klein . . .

Ulysses’s gaze drifted away from Bertie and up towards Irene.

Immediately, he began to cry.

“He’s hungry,” said Irene. And with that she loosened the sling and began to unbutton her blouse.

“Can’t he wait, Mummy?” whispered Bertie. “Please let him wait.”

“Babies can’t,” said Irene, now exposing her breast. “Here, darling. Mummy’s ready.”

Bertie froze. He dared not look across the aisle to where that boy was sitting, but then he snatched a quick glance and saw the boy staring at the scene, his face full of disgust. Bertie looked away quickly. I want to die, he thought suddenly. I just don’t want to be here.

Ulysses was making guzzling sounds, and then burped.

24. Angus Meets the Expert on Mistake-Making Angus Lordie, of course, did not yet know of his apparent good fortune. Had he known, his mood might have lifted, but then again it might not: Cyril was still detained, and life without Cyril was proving hard.

Cyril had been a constant presence in his life for the last six years. When he was working in his studio, Cyril would be there, lying in the basket provided for him in a corner, watching Angus with half an eye, ready to respond to the slightest sign that it was time for a walk. And when he went down to the Cumberland Bar to sit at his usual table and pass the time in conversation, Cyril would accompany him, lying under the table, guarding the small dish of beer which was his ration for the night. Cyril did not disagree with anything that Angus said or did; Cyril would wait for hours for the slightest acknowledgement of his presence by his master, wagging his tail with undisguised enthusiasm whenever his name was uttered. Cyril never complained, never indicated that he wanted things to be otherwise than they were as disposed by Angus. And now that Cyril was gone, there was a great yawning void in Angus Lordie’s life.

Ever since Cyril’s arrest, on suspicion of biting, Angus had done his utmost for him. He had immediately contacted his lawyer, who had been extremely supportive.

“We’ll get him out,” the lawyer had said. “They need proof that he’s the one who did the biting. And I don’t see what proof they have.”

“Find an advocate,” said Angus. “Get the best. I don’t care what it costs.”

The lawyer nodded. “If that’s what you want.”

It was, and now Angus was preparing for a consultation with the advocate who had been engaged to represent Cyril. They were to meet that morning, in the premises of the Faculty of Advocates, to discuss the case and the strategy that would be adopted. As Angus trudged up the Mound to attend this meeting, his mind was full of foreboding. He had seen an item in The Angus Meets the Expert on Mistake-Making 79

Scotsman that morning about a sheepdog that had been ordered to be destroyed after it had herded a group of Japanese tourists into the waters of Loch Lomond. Would a similar order be made in respect of Cyril? Could dogs effectively be executed these days? Surely that was too cruel a punishment, even if a dog had bitten somebody. And that sheepdog was just doing what it thought was its duty.

He walked across Parliament Square, past the front of St Giles’, the High Kirk, that scene of so many of Edinburgh’s dramas. The streets here were steeped in history: here traitors, criminals, simple heretics had been dragged on their last journey; here the Edinburgh mob had howled its protests against its masters; here Charles Edward Stuart himself had ridden past in his vain attempt at the regaining of a kingdom; here Hume had walked with his friends. And now here was he in his private misery, going to the seat of justice to plead for the life of a dog whom he loved, who was his friend.

He walked into Parliament Hall and watched as lawyers strolled up and down the hall, deep in conversation with one another, going over their pleadings, strategies, possible settle-ments. He was early for the consultation – he had at least half an hour in hand – and he decided to sit down on a bench at the side. He looked up at the high hammer-beam roof with its great arches of Scandinavian oak and at the portraits which surrounded the hall; such dignity, such grandeur, and yet behind it all were the ordinary, stubborn facts of human existence – grinding labour, power, vanity. We dressed our affairs in splendour, but they remained at root grubby little mixtures of hope and tragedy and failure; while round about the foundations of this human world ran the dogs, enthusiasts all, pursuing their own doggy lives in the shadow of their masters, free, but only until they collided with human aims. And then the dogs were smacked or locked up, or, if they overstepped a mark they knew nothing about, given a sharp little injection that put an end to it all for them.

He was still looking up at the ceiling when he became aware of the fact that somebody had sat down on the bench beside 80

Angus Meets the Expert on Mistake-Making him. Angus glanced at his neighbour – a man a bit younger than himself, wearing a suit and tie, and looking at that moment at his wristwatch.

Angus decided to strike up a conversation; anything was better than thinking about Cyril and durance vile. “You’re giving evidence?” he asked.

“Yes. I’m a so-called expert.” The other man laughed.

“Actually, I suppose I am an expert – it’s just that I never call myself that. I’m a psychologist, you see. I specialise in how people do things, in particular how they make mistakes.”

Angus was interested. “So what’s going on today?”

“Oh, it’s the usual thing,” said the psychologist. “Somebody made a mistake over something. They’ve called me to give evidence on how the mistake was made. They want to find out who’s responsible. That’s what they do up here.”

“Whose fault?”

The psychologist smiled. “Well, yes. But what these people,”

he indicated the lawyers, “what they don’t understand is that mistakes, human error, may have nothing to do with fault. We all make mistakes – however careful we are.”

“Yes,” mused Angus. “This morning I put tea in the coffee pot . . .”

“But of course you would!” said the psychologist. “That’s exactly the sort of mistake that people make. We call it a slip/lapse error. We do that sort of thing mostly when we’re doing things that we are very used to doing. We’re wearing our glasses and we look for them. Or we dial one familiar number when we mean to dial another. I know somebody who thought he had dialled his lover and had dialled his wife. He launched straight into the conversation and said: ‘I can’t see you tonight – she’s invited people to dinner.’ And his wife said: ‘Good. So you’ve remembered.’”

Angus laughed, although the story, he thought, was a sad one.

“And you?” asked the psychologist. “Why are you here?”

“Because of my god,” Angus replied.

The psychologist frowned. Then his expression lightened.

The Advocate Takes a Look at the Case of Cyril 81

“You mean dog! Another slip/lapse error! The transposing of g and d.” He paused. “Mind you,” he said, “if one were a theist, your statement would be correct. Unless, of course, one removed the space between a and theist, in which case it would be incorrect.”

“Oh,” said Angus.

25. The Advocate Takes a Look at the Case of Cyril The advocate instructed by Angus Lordie’s lawyer was in his late thirties, a man with fine, rather aquiline features. As a portrait painter, Angus was sensitive to such matters, and he approved of this man’s face. He liked people, and particularly faces, to suit occupations and often found himself feeling vaguely disappointed when face and profession were not in harmony. He had occasionally attended stock sales with a farming friend and had been struck by the faces of the Border farmers, by the ruddy complex-ions, by the features that gave every impression of having been left out overnight in the rain. One man, he thought, had looked like a haystack, with his hair sticking out in all directions – his skin the colour of well-dried hay, too, he observed; another, with a thick neck and heavy shoulders, looked to all intents and purposes like an Aberdeen Angus bull. These men were gifts to the portrait painter, he told himself, as was the face of the librarian who occasionally came into the Cumberland Bar, a man whose skin was like parchment, whose scholarly eyes looked out at the world from behind the lenses of small unframed spectacles –

perfect.

And now here was this advocate, in his strippit breeks, with his sharp, legal face that would not have been out of place in an eighteenth-century engraving, a John Kay miniature – though Kay preferred his subjects wirlie, and this man would take a good twenty years to become truly wirlie.

“This is a very sad affair,” said the advocate, looking down 82

The Advocate Takes a Look at the Case of Cyril at the file of papers before him. “Your agent here tells me that you’re very fond of your dog, Mr Lordie.”

Angus looked at his lawyer, who smiled at him, a smile of sympathy, of regret.

“Yes, I am,” he said. “I am. And I simply can’t believe that I find myself . . . that my dog finds himself in this position.”

The advocate sighed. “I suppose that even the best-behaved of dogs have their . . . their – how should one put it? – atavistic moments.”

Angus stared at the lawyer, noticing the slight touch of redness that was beginning to colour the side of the aquiline nose. That was the effect of claret, he thought, an occupational hazard for Edinburgh lawyers. The observation distracted him for a moment, but he soon remembered where he was and what the advocate had just said. Cyril was not atavistic; he had not bitten anybody. But the advocate had implied that he was guilty – on what grounds? The mere assumption that any dog was capable of biting?

“That might apply to other dogs,” he said. “But it certainly does not apply to mine. My dog is innocent.”

Silence descended on the room. In the background, a large wall clock could be heard ticking.

“How can you be so sure?” asked the advocate.

“Because I know him well,” said Angus. “One knows one’s dog. He is not a biter.”

The advocate looked down at his papers. “I see here that your dog has a gold tooth,” he said. “May I ask: how did that come about? How did he lose the original tooth?”

“He bit another . . .” Angus stopped. The two lawyers were looking at him.

“Please go on,” said the advocate. “He bit another . . . person?”

“He bit another dog,” said Angus hotly. “And the fight in question was certainly not his fault.”

“Yet he did bite, didn’t he?” pressed the advocate. “You see, Mr Lordie, the situation looks a bit bleak. Your dog has bitten . . .”

The Advocate Takes a Look at the Case of Cyril 83

Angus did not allow him to continue. “Excuse me,” he said.

“Perhaps I misunderstand the situation. I assumed that we had engaged you to help us establish Cyril’s innocence. Aren’t you meant to believe in that? Aren’t you meant to argue that?”

The advocate sighed. “There is a difference between what I believe, Mr Lordie,” he said, “and what I know to be the case.

I can believe a large number of things which have yet to be established, either to my satisfaction or to the satisfaction of others.”

Angus felt his neck getting warm. There was some truth in the expression getting hot under the collar; he was. “What if you know that somebody you’re defending is guilty?” he began.

“Can you defend him?”

The advocate looked unperturbed by the question. “It all depends on how I know that,” he answered. “If I know that he’s guilty because he’s suddenly told me so in a consultation and because he wants me to put him in the box so that he can lie to the court – as sometimes happens – then I must ask him to get somebody else to defend him. I cannot stand up in court and let him lie. But if I just think he’s guilty, then it’s a different matter. He’s entitled to have his story put before the court, whatever my personal suspicions may be.”

Angus frowned. “But Cyril can’t talk,” he said. “He’s a dog.”

Again there was silence. Then the advocate spoke. “That is something that we can all agree we know to be the case.”

“And since he can’t give any story at all – because of his . . .”

“His canine condition,” supplied the advocate.

Angus nodded. “Yes, because of his canine condition, then surely we must give him the benefit of the doubt.”

“Of course we must,” the advocate conceded. He gestured at the papers in front of him. “Except for the fact that there is rather a lot of evidence against him. This is why I believe we might be better to accept that he did it – that he bit these unfortunate people – and concentrate on how we can ensure that the outcome for him is the best one. In other words, we should think about making recommendations as to his supervision that

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Bertie Plucks Up Courage and Asks the Big Question the sheriff will see as reasonable. And it will be a sheriff court matter.”

“Evidence?” Angus asked nervously.

“Yes,” said the advocate. “Your solicitor has obtained various statements, Mr Lordie, and it seems that there are three people who say that they recognised your dog as the biter. They each say that they knew it was your dog because they had seen him with you in . . .” He looked down at a piece of paper. “In the Cumberland Bar. Drinking, I might add.” He paused, and looked searchingly at Angus. “Do you think your dog might have been drunk when he bit these people, Mr Lordie?”

Angus did not reply. He was looking up at the ceiling. Cyril is going to be put down, he thought. This is the end.

26. Bertie Plucks Up Courage and Asks the Big Question

On several occasions, Bertie had asked his mother whether he might stop psychotherapy, but the answer had always been the same – he could not.

“I don’t need to see Dr Fairbairn,” he said to Irene. “You could still see him, though, Mummy. You could go up there and I could sit in the waiting room and read Scottish Field. You know Bertie Plucks Up Courage and Asks the Big Question 85

that magazine. I could even look after Ulysses while you went in to see Dr Fairbairn. Ulysses could look at Scottish Field with me.”

Irene laughed. “Dear Bertie,” she said. “Why should I want to see Dr Fairbairn? It’s you who are his patient, not Mummy.”

“But you like him, don’t you?” said Bertie. “You like him a lot, Mummy. I know you do.”

Irene laughed again – slightly more nervously this time. “Well, it’s true that I don’t mind Dr Fairbairn. I certainly don’t dislike him. Mummy doesn’t dislike many people, Bertie. Mummy is what we call tolerant.”

Bertie thought about this for a moment. It seemed to him that much of what his mother said was simply not true. And yet she was always telling him that it was wrong to tell fibs – which of course he never did. She was the one who was fibbing now, he thought. “But there are lots of people you don’t like, Mummy,”

he protested. “There’s that lady at the advanced kindergarten, Mrs Macfadzean. You didn’t like her.”

“Miss Macfadzean,” Irene corrected. “She was Miss Macfadzean because no man in his right mind would ever have married her, poor woman.”

“But you didn’t like her, did you, Mummy?” Bertie asked again.

“It was not a question of disliking her, Bertie,” said Irene. “It was more a question of feeling sorry for her. Those are two different things, you know. Mummy felt pity for Miss Macfadzean because of her limited vision. That’s all. And her conservative outlook. But that’s quite different from disliking her. Quite different.”

Bertie thought about this. It had seemed very much like dislike to him, but then adults, he noticed, had a way of making subtle distinctions in the meaning of words. But even if his mother claimed not to have disliked Miss Macfadzean, then there were still other people whom he was sure she did not like at all. One of these was Tofu, Bertie’s friend – of sorts – from school.

“What about Tofu?” he asked. “You don’t like him, Mummy.

You hate him, don’t you?”

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Bertie Plucks Up Courage and Asks the Big Question Irene gasped. “But Bertie, you mustn’t ever say things like that! Mummy certainly does not hate Tofu. Mummy just thinks . . .” She trailed off.

“Thinks what, Mummy?” Bertie asked.

“I think that Tofu is just a little bit aggressive,” Irene said. “I don’t want you to grow up being aggressive, Bertie. I want you to grow up to be the sort of person who is aware of the feelings of others. The sort of boy who knows about the pain of other people. I want you to be simpatico, Bertie. That’s what I want.”

Bertie looked thoughtful. “And you don’t like Hiawatha,” he said. “That other boy in my class. You said you didn’t like him.

You told me so yourself, Mummy.”

Irene glanced away. “Bertie,” she said, “you really mustn’t put words into my mouth. I did not say that I disliked Hiawatha.

All I said was that I didn’t like the way Hiawatha . . . well, not to beat about the bush, I didn’t like the way that Hiawatha smelled. He really is a rather unsavoury little boy.”

“But if you don’t like somebody’s smell,” said Bertie, “doesn’t that mean that you don’t like them?”

“Not at all,” countered Irene. “You can dislike the way a person smells without disliking them, in their essence.” She paused. “And anyway, Bertie, I really don’t think that this conversation is getting us anywhere. We were really meant to be talking about Dr Fairbairn. I was giving you an answer to the question that you asked about stopping your psychotherapy. And the answer, Bertie, is that you must keep up with it until Dr Fairbairn tells us that there’s no longer any need for you to see him. He has not done that yet.”

Bertie looked down at his shoes, thinking of how the answer was always no. Well, if his mother wanted to talk about Dr Fairbairn, then there was something that had been preying on his mind.

“Mummy,” he began. “Don’t you think that Ulysses looks a lot like Dr Fairbairn? Haven’t you noticed?”

Irene was quite still. “Oh?” she said. “What do you mean by that, Bertie?”

Bertie Plucks Up Courage and Asks the Big Question 87

“I mean that Ulysses has the same sort of face as Dr Fairbairn.

You know how they both look. This bit here . . .” He gestured to his forehead.

Irene laughed. “But everybody has a forehead, Bertie! And I suspect if you compared Ulysses’s forehead with lots of other people’s, then you would reach the same conclusion.”

“And his ears,” went on Bertie. “Dr Fairbairn’s ears go like that – and so do Ulysses’s.”

“Nonsense,” said Irene abruptly.

“Do you think that Dr Fairbairn could be Ulysses’s daddy?”

asked Bertie.

He waited for his mother to respond. It had just occurred to Bertie that if Ulysses were to be Dr Fairbairn’s son, then that could mean that he would go and live with him, and Bertie would no longer have the inconvenience of having a smaller brother in the house. He was not sure how Ulysses could be the psychotherapist’s son, but it was, he assumed, possible. Bertie had only the haziest idea of how babies came about, but he did know that it was something to do with adults having a conversation with one another. His mother and Dr Fairbairn had certainly talked to one another enough – enough to result in a baby, Bertie thought.

Irene was looking at her fingernails. “Bertie,” she said. “There are some questions we never ask, and that is one of them. You never ask if somebody is a baby’s real daddy! That’s very rude indeed! It’s the person whom the baby calls Daddy who is the daddy. We just have to accept that, even if sometimes we wonder whether it’s not true. And of course it’s not true in this case –

I mean, it’s not true that there’s another daddy. Daddy is Ulysses’s daddy. And that’s that.”

Bertie listened attentively. He wondered if there was a chance that Irene was not his real mother, and he would have loved to have asked about that, but this was not the right time, Bertie sensed.

27. It’s Never Rude to Say Things to a Doctor Now, sitting in Dr Fairbairn’s waiting room, Bertie paged though an old issue of Scottish Field. His mother was closeted in the consulting room with the psychotherapist, and Bertie knew that they were discussing him, as they always did at the beginning of one of his sessions. He did not like this, but he knew that there was nothing he could do about it. It was hard enough to tackle his mother by herself; when she teamed up with Dr Fairbairn, it seemed to Bertie that he was up against impossible odds.

Bertie liked reading Scottish Field, and his regular encounters with the magazine helped to make the visits to Dr Fairbairn at least bearable. He wondered if it would be possible to take the magazine in with him to read during the psychotherapy session itself, as it seemed to him that Dr Fairbairn was quite content to do all the talking and it would make no difference if he was reading at the time. But he decided that this request would have little hope of being met; adults were so difficult over things like that.

He turned to the back of the magazine. After looking at the advertisements for fishing jackets and Aga cookers, which he liked, he turned to the social pages, which were his particular favourite. There were photographs there of people all over Scotland going to parties and events, and in every photograph everybody seemed to be smiling. Bertie had not been to many children’s parties, but at those to which he had been there had always been one or two people who burst into tears over something or other. It seemed that this did not happen at grown-ups’ parties, where there was just all this smiling. Bertie thought that this might have something to do with the fact that many of the people in the photographs were holding glasses of wine and were therefore probably drunk. If you were drunk, he had heard, you smiled and laughed.

He examined the photographs of a party which had been held at a very couthie place called Ramsay Garden. Somebody who It’s Never Rude to Say Things to a Doctor 89

lived there, it said, was giving drinks to his friends, who were all standing around laughing. That’s nice, thought Bertie. One or two of the friends looked a bit drunk, in Bertie’s view, but at least they were still standing, which was also nice. And there was a photograph of a man playing the kind-looking host’s piano.

His hands were raised over the keyboard and he was smiling at the camera, which Bertie thought was very clever, as it was hard to get your fingers on the right notes if you were not looking.

Underneath the photograph there was a line which said: Eric von Ibler accompanies the singing, while David Todd turns the pages.

Bertie wondered what the guests had been singing. He had once walked with his father past a pub where everybody was singing

“Cod Liver Oil and the Orange Juice,” which was a very strange song, thought Bertie. Was that what they were singing at the Ramsay Garden party? he wondered. Perhaps.

Bertie sighed and turned the page. There was a lot of fun being had in Scotland, mostly by grown-ups, and he wondered if he would ever be able to join in. He looked at the new spread of photographs and his eye was caught by some familiar faces.

Yes, there was Mr Roddy Martine whom Bertie had seen in a previous copy of the magazine months ago. Mr Martine was very lucky, thought Bertie. All these invitations! And this was a party to launch his book about Rosslyn Chapel, and there was a photograph of Mr Charlie Maclean, balancing a glass of whisky on his nose. Mr Charlie Maclean entertains the guests, the caption read, while Mr Bryan Johnston and Mr Humphrey Holmes look on.

That was very clever, thought Bertie. They must have had such fun at that party.

“Bertie?”

He looked up from Scottish Field and all the colour, all the warmth of the world of those pages seemed to drain away. Now he was back in monochrome. Dr Fairbairn.

Irene came from behind Dr Fairbairn and took a seat in the waiting room. Ulysses was strapped to her front in his tartan sling. She glanced with disapproval at Scottish Field and picked up, instead, a copy of The Economist.

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It’s Never Rude to Say Things to a Doctor

“Dr Fairbairn’s ready to see you now, Bertie,” she said. “Just half an hour today.”

Bertie went into the consulting room and sat in his usual seat.

Outside, he could see the tops of the trees in Queen Street Gardens. They were moving in the breeze. It would be a good place to fly a kite, he thought, if he had one, which he did not.

“Now, Bertie,” said Dr Fairbairn. “You’ve had a very big change in your life, haven’t you? Your younger brother. Wee Ulysses. That’s a big change.”

“Yes,” said Bertie. Ulysses had brought many changes, especially a lot of mess and noise.

“Having a new brother or sister is a major event in our lives, Bertie,” said Dr Fairbairn. “And we must express our feelings about it.”

Bertie said nothing. He was staring at Dr Fairbairn’s forehead. Just above his eyebrows, on either side, there was a sort of bump, or ridge. And it was just like the bump he had seen on Ulysses’s brow, whatever his mother said. Other people did not have that, Bertie was sure of that – just Dr Fairbairn and Ulysses.

“Yes,” Dr Fairbairn went on. “Perhaps you would like to tell me what you’re thinking about Ulysses. Then we can look at these feelings. We can talk about them. We can get them out in the open.”

Bertie thought for a moment. Was this really what Dr Fairbairn wanted? “Are you sure?” he asked. “You won’t think I’m being rude?”

Dr Fairbairn laughed. “Being rude? My goodness me, no, Bertie. It’s not rude to articulate these feelings to a therapist!”

Bertie took a deep breath. The leaves outside the window were moving more energetically now. A kite would fly so well out there, so high. “Am I allowed to?” he asked. “Mummy said it was rude . . .”

“Of course you’re allowed to, Bertie! Remember that I’m a sort of doctor. It’s never rude to say things to a doctor. Doctors have heard hundreds and hundreds of rude things in their job.

So Who Exactly Is the New Man in Big Lou’s Life?

91

That’s what doctors are for. They’re there to tell rude things to. You can’t shock a doctor, Bertie!”

Bertie looked out of the window again. Very well.

“Are you really Ulysses’s daddy, Dr Fairbairn?” he asked.

28. So Who Exactly Is the New Man in Big Lou’s Life?

Big Lou’s customers could be divided into two groups. During the earlier part of the morning, between eight and ten, there were always the same twenty or so people who came in for a morning coffee on the way to work. These were people whom Big Lou described as her “hard workers,” in contrast to those who came in after ten – Matthew and Angus and the like –

whose day was only just starting when the hard workers had already put in an hour or two at the office.

Coming from Arbroath, as she did, and from an agricultural background, Big Lou knew all about hard work. Indeed, unremitting labour had been Big Lou’s lot from childhood. It had been natural for her to help as a child on the farm, dealing with lambs that needed attention – a pleasant job which she enjoyed – or helping to muck out the byre – not such a pleasant job, but one which she had always performed with good grace.

And then there had been kitchen work, which again she had been raised to, and scrubbing floors, and dusting shelves, and carrying trays of tea to bed-bound elderly relatives. Big Lou had done it all.

“You don’t know you’re born,” she once said to Matthew.

Matthew smiled. “I’m not sure how to interpret that remark, Lou,” he replied. “At one level – the literal – it’s patently absurd.

Of course I know I’m born. I’m aware of my existence. But if you’re suggesting . . .”

“You ken fine what I’m suggesting,” interjected Big Lou. “I’m suggesting you haven’t got a clue.”

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So Who Exactly Is the New Man in Big Lou’s Life?

Matthew smiled again. “About what, Lou? You know, you really shouldn’t be so opaque.”

“I mean that you don’t know what hard work’s all about.” Big Lou spoke slowly, as if explaining something to a particularly slow child.

“Ah,” said Matthew. “Now your meaning becomes clearer, Lou. We’re on to that one again. Well, you’re the one who needs a bit of a reality check. Work patterns have changed, Lou.

Or they’ve changed in countries like this. We don’t make things anymore, you may have noticed. Things are made in China. So we’re doing different sorts of work. It’s all changed. Different work patterns.”

Big Lou looked at him coolly. “China?”

“Yes. Everything – or virtually everything. Take a look at the label – it’ll tell you. Made in China. Clothes. Shoes too now.

All the electronic thingamabobs. Everything. Except for cars, which are made by the Japanese and occasionally by the Germans.

That’s it.”

Big Lou moved her polishing cloth across the bar. “A second industrial revolution. Just like the first. All the plants, all the equipment are set up in one country and that’s where everything’s made.” She paused. “And us? What’s left for us to do?”

“We’ll design things,” said Matthew. “We’ll produce the intellectual property. That’s the theory, anyway.”

Big Lou looked thoughtful. “But can’t they do that just as well in the East? In India, for example?”

Matthew shrugged. “They have to leave something for us to do.”

“Do they?”

Big Lou waited for an answer to her question, but none was forthcoming. So she decided to ask another one. “Matthew, what do you think a fool’s paradise looks like?”

Matthew looked about him. Then he turned to Lou. “Let’s change the subject, Lou. Who’s your new man?”

Lou stopped polishing for a moment. She stared at Matthew.

“New man?”

So Who Exactly Is the New Man in Big Lou’s Life?

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“Come on, Lou,” said Matthew. “You know how news gets around. I’ve heard that you’ve got a new man. Robert? Angus told me. That’s his name, isn’t it?”

Big Lou hesitated for a moment. Then she resumed her polishing. “My affairs are my business, Matthew.”

Matthew smiled. “So you’re not denying that there’s somebody?”

“There might be.”

“In other words, there is.”

Big Lou said nothing. She had been embarrassed by the public way in which her break-up with Eddie had happened; she felt humiliated by that. And if anything similar were to happen with Robert, she did not want people to know about it. Nobody likes to be seen to be rejected, and Big Lou was no exception to that rule.

Matthew lifted his coffee cup and drained it. “I hope it works out this time, Lou,” he said. “You deserve it.”

She raised her eyes and looked at him. He meant it, she decided. “Thank you, Matthew. He’s a nice man. I’ll tell him to come in one morning so that you can meet him.”

“What does he do?” asked Matthew.

“Ceilings,” said Lou. “Robert does ceilings. You know, when 94

So Who Exactly Is the New Man in Big Lou’s Life?

you want to replace cornicing, you need moulds. Robert does that. And he makes new cornices. He’s quite an artist.”