The Bertie Project

by Alexander McCall Smith

  But Nicola was not thinking about Gullane; she was remembering Stuart’s wedding, an occasion at which she had struggled to contain her tears. She recalled Irene’s insistence that it was she who would wait at the altar for Stuart rather than, as was customary, for the bride to make her entrance. She remembered the guests’ confusion, and how this was replaced by titters as they incredulously took in Irene’s version of the Scottish Episcopalian wedding service. She remembered the intake of breath as the congregation heard the revised vows: the older form of service, controversially had the wife promising to “love, honour and obey”; the obedient element had been dropped by even the most ardent traditionalists, but now it appeared again, at Irene’s instance, in the man’s vows: if there was to be obedience, it was to come from him.

  “How completely and utterly embarrassing,” whispered one guest. “Why does she think she has to make a political gesture at her own wedding?”

  The guest to whom this aside was addressed was not so sure that it was a gesture.

  “Perhaps she means it,” he whispered back.

  Nicola had kept her eyes firmly closed throughout the service. Was it for this the clay grew tall? Those desolate words of Wilfred Owen came to her mind; was it for this she had raised her son? Was it for this that she had loved and nurtured him—to see him delivered into the hands of a woman like Irene?

  Now, so many years later, there was a chink of light; the very slightest sign of promise. Now there was a chance that the curse that descended upon him on that fatal day might be lifted and Stuart might be freed of that which had oppressed him for the past ten years.

  Nicola felt guilty thinking this, but thought it nonetheless. That which we think we shouldn’t think may be just the thing we should think. Go for it, Stuart, she muttered, lapsing, just this once, into an over-used colloquial exhortation that normally irritated her, but that was, in these circumstances at least, just right. Go for it. Find a woman who appreciates you. Find happiness before it’s too late…

  Domenica and Nicola Walk to Stockbridge, and Beyond

  Their walk led them along Cumberland Street in the direction of Stockbridge. At the bottom of the brae, where St. Vincent Street completes its short, cobbled journey, Domenica pointed out St. Vincent’s Chapel.

  “A small church,” she said. “But very high. Incense and so on.”

  “If God exists,” said Nicola, “do you think he cares how he’s worshipped?”

  “Or if he’s worshipped at all?”

  Nicola thought about this. She had the vaguest of theologies; a childhood in the embrace of the Church of Scotland meant that she had been imbued with the moral seriousness that the Kirk professes, but she no longer found it in herself to believe the claims of institutional religion. Now, like so many others, she did not know what she believed; there might be some designing power, or there might not be—frankly, how could anybody possibly tell? “It’s ritual, isn’t it? Ritual has nothing to do with God—it’s about ourselves and how we feel about the world.”

  “Interesting,” said Domenica. “I used to be more intolerant of ritual than I am now. I used to think it was meaningless. I used to think it absurd that people forbade certain foods, walked in circles or recited nostrums. But now, well, I suppose I’ve moderated my views. I see it in a very different light.”

  “Which is?”

  “I suppose I see rituals as an expression of value in a world that can be indifferent, or even downright hostile. The performance of rituals makes us members of something, and that can be important, don’t you think?”

  Nicola said that she thought it could—if you needed the consolation of membership.

  “But many people do,” said Domenica. “It’s all very well for us—we’ve been brought up in a dominant identity, but there are plenty of people who haven’t had that privilege. Membership might mean much more to them.” She paused. “But it’s not just about being part of a group. Rituals may have an intrinsic meaning: they affirm things.”

  At that moment, they had reached the corner of North-West Circus Place, and a figure had appeared at a window just above eye-level. A smiling fair-haired woman waved a hand, and Domenica returned the greeting.

  “My friend Suzie,” she said. “They bought that place recently. It’s what we call a pavilion flat—a corner flat looking out onto two streets.”

  Nicola looked up at the handsome Georgian building. “This city is so beautiful,” she said. “Living here is like living in an opera set.”

  Domenica nodded. “I don’t want to go on about ritual,” she said, “but in performing the ritual, you’re saying something about ultimate reality. You’re saying that something—some idea, some association, has real worth.”

  Nicola was not convinced. “But you can express all that in words, can’t you? Why do you need rituals?”

  “Because acts make you pause for thought. The ritualistic act is the act beyond one—it is greater than the individual; it’s significant precisely because it’s nothing to do with our immediate purposes.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes.”

  “I see.”

  They walked on into Stockbridge and then began to make their way along the small river that runs through the city, the Water of Leith. “Over there,” said Domenica, nodding to a street on the other side of the tiny rapids, “is Ann Street. I have friends there. Do you know anybody who lives in Ann Street?”

  “I did,” said Nicola, “but not any more—since I went to live in Portugal I’m so out of touch.”

  “It’s become frightfully expensive,” said Domenica. “It’s very fashionable these days.” She remembered something. “I used to know a man who dressed very formally,” she continued. “He was an elder of the Kirk and a member of the Merchants’ Company—very Edinburgh, as we used to say. Anyway, I remember I once went to a drinks party in their house—they lived on the South Side—in the Grange, I think—and one of the other guests lived in Ann Street. When he heard this, our host just looked at him over the top of his half-moon specs and said, ‘Rather narrow staircases in the houses down there—awful houses to get a coffin out of.’ ”

  “Hah!” said Nicola. “Edinburgh at its finest.”

  “Quite,” said Domenica. “It says a lot about the slight air of disapproval that’s a vital component of the Edinburgh outlook on life. Ann Street may think itself fashionable, but try to get a coffin down those stairs!”

  Under the Dean Bridge, they stopped and looked up at the stone arches, so high above their heads. “Where the iron spikes curiously repel the suicides,” said Domenica. “Ruthven Todd wrote that, you know. He found it strange that tiny iron spikes on the side of the bridge would deter those who wanted to end it all.”

  “I read something by him a long time ago,” said Nicola. “Something about being on Mull.”

  Domenica knew the poem. “That was called ‘In September.’ He remembers stacking peat on Mull as the clouds of war gathered in Europe. And he wishes he’d stayed on Mull. There was something about the Atlantic flowing in sluggishly past Jura, and the hills being like lions crouched against the autumn gales…”

  Nicola closed her eyes. “Oh, I can see it,” she said. “The slow movement of the sea, the sense of being on the edge of a continent…”

  “While all the time it’s September, which is a month that evokes ideas of…ideas of what? Of change, thinning out, the gradual attenuation of warmth and light?”

  “All of that,” agreed Nicola.

  “Or even a time. A time can be made to sound ominous. Remember Lorca’s poem about the death of a bullfighter? There was that insistent refrain A las cinco de la tarde…At five in the afternoon, at five in the afternoon. It’s rather like a drumbeat. Now the gangrene comes…at five in the afternoon.”

  Domenica looked at Nicola and for a few moments they said nothing, sharing, in silence, a sudden glimpse of the sadness of life. Of course life was sad; just below the surface, like the pulse of an artery, life bea
t out a rhythm of impermanence and regret.

  “September,” said Domenica, breaking the silence. “There’s Auden’s ‘September 1, 1939.’ He tells us he’s sitting in what he calls one of the dives on Fifty-Second Street…That poem haunts me, you know.”

  “I wish there were more voices for love,” said Nicola suddenly. “I wish that hate hadn’t seized all the song sheets.”

  “So do I. So do I.”

  They stopped. A man was standing a few hundred yards away from them, looking down into the mill pond in the Dean Village. Nicola gripped Domenica’s arm.

  “Stuart,” she said.

  Domenica saw that she was right.

  “He mentioned he was going for a walk,” said Nicola. “But he implied it would be somewhere different.”

  “People change their minds.”

  “Yes, but…”

  Stuart was now beginning to walk on. Nicola peered after him intently. “I want to see where he goes,” she suddenly declared. “Do you mind if we follow him?”

  “Not at all.” Domenica readily agreed but looked sideways at her friend. Why should any woman want to follow her adult son round Edinburgh—in broad daylight? Was this some fantasy of Nicola’s?

  “I’m sure he’s going to meet his lover,” said Nicola, lowering her voice although there was no danger of being overheard.

  “His lover? How exciting!”

  “And I want to see what this woman looks like,” said Nicola. “I want to embrace her. I want to thank her. I want to say that however clandestine their relationship, it has my blessing.”

  “How very unusual,” remarked Domenica. “How very remarkable for a mother to be quite so enthusiastic about her son’s…how shall I put it? Adventures?”

  “Bid for freedom,” said Nicola. “That’s what I call it.” She paused. “And I wouldn’t describe it as remarkable. I’d say it was progressive.”

  “Quot matres, tot sententiae,” quipped Domenica.

  Nicola glared at her. “Meaning?”

  “As many mothers there are, so too are there maternal opinions,” explained Domenica.

  “Then why didn’t you say that?” asked Nicola accusingly.

  “Clothe a mundane observation in Latin and it sounds so much more impressive,” Domenica dixit.

  Irene as Termagant

  The two women followed Stuart at a sufficient distance that he would not notice them should he turn and glance over his shoulder. But he did not do that, seeming intent on reaching his goal rather than meandering in the way in which one on an innocent afternoon walk might do. As he reached the top of the narrow lane that led up from the Dean Village, Stuart increased his pace, and it was difficult for Domenica and Nicola to keep him in sight. But by breaking into the occasional trot they still had him in view when he eventually reached the gates of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

  “We can take our time now,” said Nicola.

  Domenica nodded, but said nothing. She felt vaguely foolish: there was something ineffably discomfiting about following another person—there was an element of concealment, of subterfuge, that sat ill with an open, honest approach to life. If you wanted to find out what somebody was up to, you should ask him. If he chose not to answer, or to lie, then that was to his discredit rather than yours.

  “He’ll be meeting her there,” went on Nicola. “I’m sure of it.”

  Domenica looked away. She regretted agreeing to accompany her friend on this ridiculous mission, but it was now too late to withdraw. And in spite of these misgivings, there was still a bit of her that shared Nicola’s curiosity. Over the years she had seen Stuart’s sufferings, and now here was a chance to witness his attempt to snatch some happiness in life. Poor man, she thought; to be married to…she tried to think of metaphors for Irene—a shrew? That was a common insult applied to women who were argumentative and difficult, but it had sexist connotations that she did not like. Men were never criticised for shrew-like qualities, even though they often had them. No, shrew was not quite right for Irene. Harridan? That had connotations of age and crustiness that were not quite appropriate; Irene was too contemporary to be a harridan. Termagant? Now there was a word. Irene was definitely a termagant in so far as that term suggested an overbearing nature. But it also was suggestive of harshness, which again did not quite suit Irene. Deities were represented as termagant if they were harsh and punitive, and that was exactly what some deities were conceived to be.

  She thought of some of the Greek gods—they were termagant in their spitefulness, their cruelty, and their willingness to inflict punishment on hapless mortals, only some of whom deserved their fate. How strange it was, she thought, that people had been prepared to attribute to their particular deity a nature that was so unpleasant—and some religions still did conceive of God as cruel and unforgiving, ready to smite those he identified as worthy of his hostile attentions. Whereas in liberal western religions, the Supreme Being was seen as distinctly emollient, as cuddly even, possibly looking a bit like Liberace, and behaving in like manner, a bit given to displays of candelabra and glitz. Though one became too familiar with the Supreme Being at one’s peril, thought Domenica, remembering Auden’s tale of the denizen of Fire Island who, hearing thunder, said “There’s Miss God up to her tricks again” only to be immediately struck by lightning. Supreme beings, perhaps, disapprove of archness, however much they may have liberalised in other respects.

  However one might describe Irene, whatever metaphor captured most accurately her domineering traits, her political and social posturing, her absurd ambitions, the fact remained—at least in Domenica’s mind—that Stuart’s wandering was entirely understandable and now that it was beginning to manifest itself, even the ranks of Tuscany could scarce forbear to cheer…And in one respect, Nicola, as mother-in-law in that marriage, represented the Tuscan ranks who felt so tempted to disloyalty when they saw Horatius survive his plunge into the swollen waters of the Tiber.

  But this was not the time for further thoughts of this nature, as they had entered the hallowed portals of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. They had crossed the threshold over which a piece of installation art, in blue neon tubing, spelled out the message Everything will be alright (sic). Domenica had gasped at the sight. By alright the artist presumably meant all right. She had drawn Nicola’s attention to the solecism but had been given the answer, “Deliberate, I imagine. The National Gallery must know that no less an authority than the late Kingsley Amis described alright as ‘gross, crass, coarse and to be avoided’ and Bill Bryson, hardly a fuddy-duddy, describes its use as ‘illiterate and unacceptable.’ So they must be making a populist, subversive gesture by refusing to use the correct spelling, all right. The tyranny of orthodoxy, the straitjacket of orthographic correctness, are both challenged—at a stroke! How tremendously clever!”

  Domenica nodded. “I feel very old-fashioned,” she admitted, “in taking the view that people should know how to spell. I find myself so out of step with forward-looking, progressive people who have abandoned the accusative case when it comes to the first person singular. It makes you and I look so pedantic.”

  Nicola laughed. “Oh, very good,” she exclaimed. “Indeed, that’s a lesson for we.”

  “On a serious note,” said Domenica. “Does it matter? Think of our petty concerns and then look up at the night sky, at the stars in the firmament, and think: do any of our petty little concerns really make one jot of difference? Do they mean anything in the context of this great spinning universe—if universes spin, which I am not at all sure they do…”

  “They explode,” said Nicola. “Or implode. I can never quite remember which it is.”

  “It must make quite a difference, though,” said Domenica. “But in essence, our smallness, our irrelevance in the cosmic context, should make us less petty, more accepting, less attached to small and ultimately meaningless things.”

  “And make us embrace our fellow human beings more warmly,” said Nicola. �
��Reflections on human smallness have often prompted me to think that. What do divisions between people matter? What does it matter if somebody is English or Scottish or whatever?”

  Domenica thought about this. “Sub specie aeternitatis, it matters not at all,” she said. “But specific human culture does matter. I don’t want Scotland to stop being Scottish. I know it may not mean much when you look up at the night sky, but it means a great deal in the actual living of our lives in the here and now. Small things seem big when you’re right up against them, but you have to distinguish those that mean something, and those that don’t.”

  “So we should worry if people write alright rather than all right? Or if they write Scottish National Galery rather than Scottish National Gallery?”

  “Maybe not. Maybe that’s not quite important enough.”

  Nicola had thought of something else. “Or worry about how they pronounce Gullane?”

  “Oh, that’s different,” said Domenica. “Some things are really important.”

  All About Hipsters

  That morning, Bruce Anderson, now in his late twenties, former pupil of Morrison’s Academy, Crieff, surveyor, exponent of clove-scented hair gel, owner of an attractive north-facing flat in Abercromby Place, golf handicap 14, was gazing into the eyes of Clare Hodding, former pupil of Presbyterian Ladies’ College, Perth, Western Australia, sometime cabin crew member of Qantas, enthusiast of extreme sports, and tenant of a shared flat in Newington, Edinburgh, where the mutual eye-gazing was now taking place, over a breakfast of 25% extra fruit luxury muesli, croissants, and Java-roast coffee.

  Bruce said, “I really like your eyes, you know. I’m not just saying that, I really like them. They look like…” He transferred his gaze to his muesli where, swimming in a small lake of semi-skimmed milk, were two tiny pieces of dried papaya. “Like papaya,” he concluded.