The Bertie Project

by Alexander McCall Smith

  There were differences, too, in the names favoured by the two sets of parents. Watson’s fathers, usually themselves Watsonians, tended to be called Finlay, Iain, or David, while Steiner fathers preferred names such as Edwin, Theodore, or Pax. Watsonian fathers were, virtually without exception, followers of the Scottish rugby team and had debenture seats at Murrayfield, while Steiner fathers tended to view rugby as a barbaric pursuit, explicable only in tribal terms, engaged in by clearly non-cerebral types from the Borders or New Zealand, and best viewed as a prolonged homo-erotic encounter starting with close clinches on the pitch and ending with communal showers behind closed doors. This view was not shared by the Watsonian fathers.

  Bertie had no inkling of these divisions. He would have liked to play rugby himself, and he would have liked to wear a Watson’s blazer. But this was not his lot, and he accepted that. He was happy enough at Steiner’s, which was a good, gentle school, even if it meant that he had to put up with the likes of Olive and Pansy, both of whom were now staring at him as he made his way up the driveway to the main school building.

  “There’s Bertie,” said Olive, in a loud stage whisper as he walked past. “Poor Bertie! His mother’s a cow and his father runs around having affairs with people in museums.”

  “Yes,” said Pansy. “It’s so sad, because Bertie would be such a nice boy if it weren’t for his face and his pink dungarees.”

  Bertie tried to ignore this, but he blushed bright red.

  “Look,” crowed Olive. “Bertie’s bright red. Do you think that’s the male menopause, Pansy?”

  Pansy giggled. “Either that or high blood pressure,” she said.

  The Play’s the Thing

  “Now then, boys and girls,” said Miss Campbell. “Today you’re going to learn what play we’ll be performing this year. I know how excited you all are about this and how much you’ve been looking forward to it.”

  Olive’s hand shot up.

  “I’ll be very happy to have a leading part, Miss Campbell,” she said. “I’m good at learning lines.”

  “Casting will be done in due course,” said Miss Campbell. “And I’m sure there are many in the class who are good at learning lines, Olive. We must remember that the talents we have are often possessed by others—in equal or even in greater measure.” She looked intently at Olive. “We must remember that, boys and girls.”

  Olive shook her head. “Not by everyone, Miss Campbell. Hiawatha is hopeless at remembering things. He just can’t do it, can you, Hiawatha?”

  Hiawatha, a lanky boy with red hair and a slightly puzzled expression, shook his head. “I can remember things, Olive. I don’t remember everything, but I still know quite a bit.”

  “Oh, do you?” taunted Olive. “In that case, tell me your mobile phone number. Go on, tell me.”

  “Olive!” reprimanded Miss Campbell. “That’s no way to talk. Of course Hiawatha knows his mobile phone number.”

  “He doesn’t, Miss Campbell,” said Pansy. “I’ve seen it written on his hand. You don’t have to write your mobile phone number on your hand.”

  “That’s because it’s so long,” said Hiawatha. “Nobody can remember all those numbers.”

  “Au contraire,” said Olive. She had just learned the phrase and had become fond of using it. “Au contraire, Hiawatha. I remember mine. And my parents’ numbers. And Pansy’s too.”

  Miss Campbell tried to remember if she had ever encountered a child as irritating as Olive, and decided she had not. But she was professional, and swallowed her irritation. As breezily as she could, she clapped her hands together. “That’s quite enough of that,” she said. “Let us not forget the play, boys and girls!”

  “The play’s the thing,” quoted Olive. “That’s from Hamlet, Miss Campbell. Hamlet is by Shakespeare, you know.”

  Miss Campbell bit her lip. “I am well aware of that, Olive.”

  “And there’s a lady called Ophelia in it,” Olive continued. “I’d be prepared to be Ophelia if you decide to do Hamlet, Miss Campbell. I already know some of the words.”

  Miss Campbell closed her eyes briefly. “Thank you, Olive, that won’t be necessary—because we are not going to be doing Hamlet, you see.” And she thought, You little madam.

  Olive pouted.

  “So you can’t be Ophelia,” hissed Tofu. “Don’t call us, we’ll call you!”

  Miss Campbell persisted. “So, boys and girls, the play we shall be doing this year is none other than Macbeth. Now can anybody tell me: who wrote Macbeth?”

  Bertie knew, but did not put up his hand.

  “Tofu?” asked Miss Campbell.

  “Some guy,” muttered Tofu.

  “Well, in a sense that’s correct,” said Miss Campbell. “But which guy? That’s the question that’s buzzing around in our heads, isn’t it? So, who wrote Macbeth?”

  Bertie now felt he had no alternative but to put up his hand. “William Shakespeare, Miss Campbell.”

  “There you are,” said Miss Campbell. “That’s absolutely correct, Bertie. William Shakespeare.” She paused, surveying the class before her. “Now then, boys and girls, who can tell me anything about Shakespeare?”

  Larch held up his hand. “He’s dead.”

  “Who killed him?” asked Tofu.

  “Well, I don’t think…” began Miss Campbell, only to be interrupted by Larch.

  “He was shot, I think.”

  “No,” said Miss Campbell. “Shakespeare was definitely not shot.”

  “Pneumonia,” said Pansy. “He died of pneumonia, Miss Campbell.”

  The teacher made an effort to regain control. “Let’s not speculate as to how William Shakespeare met his end.” She hesitated—how did Shakespeare die? “It was, I think, a natural death. He had a full life, you see…”

  “Old age,” said Pansy. “He was probably really old. Forty or something.”

  “We shall move on,” said Miss Campbell. “Now let me tell you a little about Macbeth. Did you know, for example, that there was a real Macbeth? That he really existed? Did you know that, boys and girls?”

  “Was he the leader of the SNP?” asked Larch.

  “No, Larch,” said Miss Campbell. “He had nothing to do with the SNP. Macbeth, boys and girls, was a King of Scotland in the…the…” She tried to remember. The problem with being a teacher was that one was expected to know so much and Moray House was so long ago and…

  “Eleventh century,” said Bertie. He had detected Miss Campbell’s uncertainty and wanted to help, but wished at the same time to be as tactful as possible. “I bet that was what you were going to say, Miss Campbell.”

  The teacher looked at him with gratitude. “You’re absolutely right, Bertie. It was indeed the eleventh century.”

  “You think you know everything, Bertie,” hissed Olive sotto voce. “Well, I’m telling you, Bertie, the days when boys knew everything are over. They’re over, Bertie. Boys know nothing these days.”

  “Nothing,” whispered Pansy. “You hear that, Bertie? Boys know nothing.”

  “I never said I knew everything,” whispered Bertie defensively. “I never said that I knew everything. You say I did, but I didn’t, Olive.”

  “So you’re calling me a liar, Bertie Pollock? Is that what you’re saying? You’re calling me a liar…and you and I are meant to be engaged.”

  It was a familiar charge, brought up by Olive from time to time, especially when in a tight corner. “We aren’t engaged, Olive. I never said I’d marry you. I never said that.”

  “You did,” said Pansy. “I heard you, Bertie.”

  “There you are,” said Olive. “So if you think you can go around promising to marry people and then turning round and calling them liars, you’ve got another think coming, Bertie. Au contraire. The Scottish Government knows about people like you. You’re going to be history, Bertie. History.”

  Miss Campbell, aware that some sort of altercation was taking place at the back of the room, clapped her hands together. It w
as a familiar resort for her, although she remembered being told somewhere in her training that one should do it sparingly. One could not go through the days clapping one’s hands together, tempting though the expedient might be. It was time to think about casting. She had her ideas, but, as she surveyed the class, she realised that it would not be a simple business—or would it? Was there an incipient Lady Macbeth in the class? There certainly was. There was, so to speak, a natural; but should she give the role to Olive simply because she embodied everything that Shakespeare had in mind when he created the character? And what about Macbeth? That depended on whether one had in mind the historical Macbeth, who was very different from the Macbeth of Shakespeare’s imagination, or whether one had to go along with the popular misconception.

  And then there was Duncan. In the play he represents goodness. One choice then for that part. Only one. But that would mean Bertie would have to play against Olive, and should one really so direct a school play that it reflected the dynamics of relationships in the real world?

  Tofu’s hand was up.

  “Yes, Tofu?”

  “I’ll be Macbeth, Miss Campbell.”

  She looked at him. Something within her gave; some ligament of the mind snapped. “No, Tofu, you can be a tree. There’s a forest in this play. You can be one of the trees.”

  It was a delicious feeling, and Miss Campbell allowed herself a smile.

  “And Olive,” she continued. “You can be a witch. The play starts with some very nasty witches. You can be one of them. First witch, in fact.”

  The Isobars of Guilt

  Stuart looked at his watch. He had left the office at twenty past five, and it was now almost six o’clock. He had told Irene that he would be back later than usual, possibly even slightly after eight, as he had a meeting. She had not been paying particular attention and had nodded in a vaguely irritated way, as she usually did when he addressed her. As it happened, she was on the phone when he spoke to her; Stuart found this a good time to address her about anything, as she would wave a hand slightly dismissively on such occasions, as if to imply that her telephone conversation was infinitely more important than anything he might have to say. In this way Stuart could tell her virtually anything without provoking much of a reaction, and could later claim—if challenged—that he had told her about whatever it was he was being accused of not having told her.

  “But I spoke to you,” he would say. “I distinctly remember. I told you.”

  “I have no recollection of it,” Irene would reply.

  “Well I did,” he would claim, and with all the conviction that came from knowing that what he said was true.

  And that counted for something with Stuart, who had been brought up to believe that truth really mattered and that one should not tell lies. If Bertie was scrupulously honest, and if he inherited that from either parent, then it was from Stuart, who had brought it home to his young son that no matter how mendacious the rest of the world might be—and it was mendacious, as Stuart had discovered in the course of his career—you should always try to tell the truth. This had become a slightly old-fashioned view—almost quaint. For many people the truth, it seemed, was what you wanted it to be, and if you asserted a falsehood long enough with sufficient conviction, then it would be believed, not only by those whom it was intended to deceive, but by you yourself. This enabled you to protest with real feeling when the fact was called into question.

  Stuart had never felt comfortable with this, and he had experienced even greater misgivings about the argument that the truth simply did not matter. This was an aspect of living in the post-factual age, an age in which the difference between believing and knowing was being eroded. In a post-factual age, it did not matter if you had no evidence for what you asserted—the important thing was to believe it. So, even if all the evidence pointed in the direction of x, you did not have to say that x was the case—if you preferred y, then you denied x and asserted y.

  He had thought about this once when walking down from the Lawnmarket to the Tron Kirk and had reflected on the fact that the stone on which he was walking was the very stone on which David Hume and Adam Smith had trodden in that special moment of the Scottish Enlightenment, and that now, and not for the first time in the last hundred years, those Enlightenment values were being assailed. And not just from one quarter—not just from proponents of ideological or religious obscurantism—but from all sorts of enthusiasts who had simply stopped listening, who were not interested in the facts as determined by empirical observation. So those who did not like the implications of Darwin had a simple remedy: deny what he said, just deny it. And those who did not think that global warming existed could do the same in relation to the evidence of thermometers. What, after all, are thermometers in the face of belief? And on the coat-tails of those who ignored the facts there travelled all sorts of sinister enthusiasms and social infections: arrogance, intolerance, indifference to need. After all, even the facts of gross injustice could be rejected if one were in full denial mode, as things you did not want to see simply did not need to be seen.

  Stuart looked at his watch again, and for a moment he wavered. He had said to Irene that he had a meeting, and for that reason would be late. That had not been a lie, because it was indeed true that he did have a meeting. He had not told a lie. He had not. And from that fact he drew comfort. He would not have liked to lie to Irene.

  But there was a problem, and this problem, like many of the problems we face, philosophical or otherwise, concerned the meaning of words. What exactly did the word meeting mean?

  Stuart had noticed that meeting covered a multitude of…He paused in the dialogue with himself. A multitude of sins was a common enough expression, but its use in this context was unfortunate, because, well…is what I’m doing a sin? No. Not at all. Sin is something you have to sign up for; you have to accept the whole shooting match of religious belief to start talking about sin. Wrong, yes; you could talk about moral wrong, but not sin. So what I am doing is not a sin because I don’t believe in sin. Or so he said to himself.

  Let’s start again, he thought. People often got others to claim they were in meetings when yet others phoned up and they did not want to talk to them. He’s in a meeting at the moment. That phrase, so beloved of those whose job it was to answer the phone, could cover almost anything, from obeying a call of nature to enjoying an extended lunch to…well, in a few cases perhaps, to being in an actual meeting. In this case, though, the extended meaning of the word meeting was not even an issue. He was going to be having a meeting, in the sense that he was going to be meeting somebody—and that, surely, was a meeting even if it was not a meeting at the office. But did any of this matter? He had said nothing about where the meeting would be, and who would be there. Irene assumed that it was at the office and it would be with the usual people—his colleagues in the Scottish Government Office of Statistics (Creative Section). But if she believed that, that was not because of anything he said, and so it was not his responsibility. We cannot be held responsible for the misinterpretations of others. If they think you’re talking about x when in fact you’re talking about y, then that’s not your fault. Nor do you have any duty to correct them in their assumptions, if those assumptions are incorrect. Or do you?

  He sighed. The problem with being brought up to do the right thing, was that it ruined your fun. Forever. He looked up at the sky. Guilt. That was the problem. It lay across Scotland like a blanket. It was as invisible as an isobar, but it was there, and one corner of that blanket, it seemed, was reserved for him.

  Imagined Interrogations

  He walked along Great King Street, a street that he had always found somewhat intimidating. This was Georgian grandeur, the buildings being higher than those of Northumberland Street (comfortable affluence) to the south or Cumberland Street (aspirational simplicity) to the north. And the street itself was wider, giving a whiff of Paris, with its wide boulevards; yet somehow it was not quite so human as other New Town streets wher
e one just felt so right…

  That was such a vague thing to think, thought Stuart, but it was real. One felt right in certain places; one felt that one was where one should be. He had come across this notion when paging through the first chapter of Karen Blixen’s memoir, Out of Africa, where she had described the feeling of being under that particular sky and feeling that this was exactly where she was intended to be. That passage had stuck in Stuart’s mind; he had not read the rest of the book, but those words had remained with him as a musical worm might stick in the brain and repeat itself time and time again. Great King Street was not where he was intended to be, he thought, but Howe Street, which soon came into view as he made his way westwards, was a different matter, because that was where she lived, and that transformed it, that imbued it with significance, if not exactly with glory.

  At the corner end of Great King Street, he paused. To his left, Howe Street ran sharply uphill; to his right, continuing downhill, it became St. Vincent Street, at the end of which the solid shape of a vast disused church, a sort of compacted, Presbyterian version of Saint Mark’s or even Hagia Sophia, made an architectural full stop. Stuart looked neither up nor down, but behind him, throwing a nervous glance back down Great King Street, over his shoulder. He was not quite sure what he was expecting to see. Irene lurking by some railing, following him, determined to break apart whatever alibi he might provide for the hours between the end of work and his guilty return to Scotland Street at eight o’clock?

  “Good meeting?” she might say; a neutral opening comment of the sort that all skilful interrogators use before they flick open the cigarette case and offer their victim a cigarette. And then the lighter would be produced and the hand of the victim would shake revealingly as he lit his cigarette, although of course neither he nor Irene smoked.