Sunshine on Scotland Street

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Aware of the fact that food shops might not welcome dogs, the secretary tied Cyril’s leash to a lamppost outside the front door, instructed the dog to sit, and then went in with his shopping list. Mary Contini and her husband, Philip, happened to be glancing out onto the street at that very moment and could not help but notice Cyril outside.

  “That looks awfully like Angus Lordie’s dog,” said Mary. “Remember, the one who stole that salami?”

  Philip Contini peered out of the door. “I do believe you’re right,” he said. “I’ll go and take a look.”

  Cyril greeted Philip Contini warmly – he knew this man and licked his hand enthusiastically as his jaws were gently prised open to reveal the tell-tale gold tooth. Returning inside, Philip confirmed his wife’s suspicion. “It’s him all right,” he said. “I thought Angus was away on his honeymoon.”

  Overhearing this conversation, the secretary explained how Cyril happened to be there. This was followed by a brief discussion, and this discussion was followed by a brief telephone call to the Cardinal. Options were considered and a decision was taken: Cyril would be looked after by friends of the Continis who were believed to be well-disposed to dogs. When Angus and Domenica returned from Jamaica, then Cyril could be restored to them; for the time being it was deemed best not to disturb them in Jamaica.

  Cyril sensed that he was being talked about, and followed the conversation closely – in so far as he could – his head turning left and right like a tennis umpire’s. Then, a short time later, he was bundled into the back of the delicatessen’s van and driven off to Ravelston, where he was handed over to Roger Collins and his wife, Judith McClure. Cyril explored his new surroundings quickly, and then settled down to sleep on a rug in the study that Roger and Judith shared. It was a room as comfortable for the writing of books as it was for the settling down of dogs, and the rest of the day followed in pleasant semi-somnolence while Roger worked on his new book and Judith, at her desk, drafted a report on Scottish–Chinese educational co-operation. Cyril watched them both from the corner of an eye. He was tired and replete; there were, of course, smaller creatures he could be chasing outside in the garden, but why bother when one was so comfortable and secure? He saw no reason. Perhaps it was time to become relaxed about the world, even if one was a dog. Why fetch when people shouted Fetch? One grew beyond such things. Fetch! Hah! Pourquoi?

  47. Cold Showers and Other Reactionary Preoccupations

  Word reached Bertie of Cyril’s fate when he and his mother next paid a visit to Valvona & Crolla.

  “A very satisfactory solution,” said Irene. “He’ll be perfectly happy there … and we’ll be perfectly happy here.” For Bertie, who had been looking forward to having a dog, even temporarily, it was far from satisfactory, but his attention was now diverted by the announcement by his teacher that the school would shortly be holding a summer fair. This news led immediately to an excited buzz of conversation, curtailed, though, by the further information that there would not be room for everyone to have a stall.

  “Obviously not everybody can have a table,” said Miss Maclaren Hope. “We can’t all have a table in this life, boys and girls, or there wouldn’t be any room for anything else, would there? No, there would not.”

  Sensing a restriction, the class remained silent.

  “So,” continued the teacher, “we can only have three stalls for each class. Everybody else can have a nice time looking at the things for sale.”

  Olive’s hand shot up. “I’ll have one, Miss Maclaren Hope,” she said. “Pansy and I don’t mind having one of the tables, if you like.”

  Olive stared at the others while she made this offer, daring them to object.

  Tofu raised his hand. “That’s not fair,” he objected. “Why should she have a table, Miss Maclaren Hope? What’s she done to deserve a table?”

  Olive shot a glance of pure hatred in Tofu’s direction. “I asked first,” she said. “If you ask first, you’re entitled, so you just shut up, Tofu.”

  “Now, now,” said Miss Maclaren Hope. “We mustn’t talk to one another like that, boys and girls. We mustn’t tell one another to shut up.”

  “Yes,” said Tofu. “She should stop telling people to shut up just because she doesn’t like what they say.” He paused. “Or if she doesn’t like their singing, either. You know what I heard, Miss Maclaren Hope? You know what I heard when you were singing us your Gaelic songs? Remember that time? I heard Olive say I wish she’d shut up. That’s what she said, Miss Maclaren Hope. I’m not inventing it. Promise.”

  The teacher glanced at Olive, who looked away guiltily. “I don’t think we need to go there, Tofu,” she said. “I’m sure that Olive wouldn’t say a thing like that. And, anyway, as far as tables are concerned, we’re going to have a draw. Everybody should write their name on a bit of paper and then I’ll pick three names out of a hat and those will be the lucky people to have a table. Each will be able to ask a friend to help.”

  The draw took place, with surprising results. Olive’s name was first – which resulted in smirks from both Olive and Pansy; next came Tofu, who punched the air with satisfaction; and finally, Bertie.

  “We shall all have such fun,” said Miss Maclaren Hope. “I’m quite sure of it, boys and girls. Such fun!”

  The announcement of the fair was made on Friday. Bertie had intended to tell his mother of the news that evening, but did not find the opportunity to do so until the following morning. The cub scouts met on Friday evening and he was reluctant to raise a controversial matter with her at a time when her co-operation was required. Bertie lived in dread of Irene’s suddenly changing her mind on the issue of the cub scouts, which she barely tolerated and could so easily suddenly ban. In her view, they were a paramilitary organisation designed to inculcate militaristic, patriarchal values, not to mention the interest they might occasion in compasses and penknives and the like. Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, was beyond the pale, she felt: a militarist, a reactionary, a corrupter of youth in much the same way as Socrates was alleged to have corrupted the youth of Athens by giving them the wrong ideas. “I would have administered the hemlock myself,” she once remarked to Stuart. “I would quite happily have dosed Baden-Powell with a good long draught of hemlock – wretched man!”

  “It was quite some time ago,” said Stuart mildly. “He was a child of his time – as we all are. He thought he was doing the right thing.” So many people, he felt, thought they were doing the right thing; in fact, it was difficult to think of anybody who actually thought otherwise. Did anybody get out of bed in the morning, look in the mirror, and say: I shall be really malevolent today?

  “Nonsense,” snapped Irene. “Baden-Powell was a reactionary.”

  Stuart looked at the floor. “If you say so,” he said.

  “Well, I do. And he was.” She paused. “And John Buchan too.”

  Stuart looked up. He rather liked Sick Heart River and The Thirty-Nine Steps, but he felt that perhaps he should not confess to that – at least not to his wife.

  “What’s wrong with John Buchan?” he asked mildly.

  “Everything,” said Irene. “Absolutely everything.”

  Stuart frowned. “Have you read Buchan? I didn’t think that he was to your taste, really …”

  “Of course I haven’t read him,” said Irene. “That’s not the point. But I’ve certainly read critiques of his work, and that’s quite enough for me. I’m with Gertrude Himmelfarb when it comes to Buchan.”

  “Gertrude Himmelfarb? But she’s …”

  Irene cut him short. “She has some blind spots – I’ll admit that. She believes in Victorian values, but the least said about that the better. Yet she’s quite right when it comes to John Buchan, with all that going on about the clean, sporting life: cold showers, early rising and so on. Shameful stuff.”

  Stuart looked thoughtful. His showers were often cold because Irene, who used the shower before him, tended to spend rather a long time there and used all the
hot water. He usually felt rather invigorated after a cold shower and he was not sure that this was too bad a thing. Perhaps if more people had cold showers then they would be more productive and energetic and less inclined to laze about. But these, he thought, are reactionary thoughts and quite unworthy of the progressive thoughts my wife wants me to have.

  48. Tablet Is Full of Sugar

  Bertie eventually broke the news of the school fair to his mother as they were walking up Dundas Street for his Saturday morning appointment with the psychotherapist. Irene was propelling the pushchair in which Bertie’s younger brother, Ulysses, was slumped, held in position by an elaborate system of straps and buckles and dressed in a tiny blue sailor suit. Bertie was puzzled as to why Ulysses should wear a sailor suit and had raised the matter with his mother, pointing out that she often said that she disapproved of uniforms. “Sailor suits are not military uniforms,” Irene had replied. “They are civilian outfits, Bertie, and there’s an important distinction. Ulysses is in the merchant marine in his little outfit.”

  “Then why does it say HMS Jolly?” asked Bertie. “Look, it says that on his front pocket. HMS stands for Her Majesty’s Ship, which means it’s the Royal Navy. I read that. If Ulysses were in the merchant navy it would say MV, Mummy.”

  “You mustn’t be too literal, Bertie,” muttered Irene. “People have all sorts of things on their shirts these days. They don’t really mean what they say, you know.”

  “Do you mean that people put fibs on their shirts?” asked Bertie.

  Irene laughed. “Well, they’re not really fibs, Bertie. They just say ridiculous things. Nobody pays much attention to what shirts say. Postmodernism, you see, Bertie. Mummy will explain all that a little bit later. Not now.”

  But this was not the time for discussion of sailor suits. “There’s something very exciting going to happen at school, Mummy,” he announced as they prepared to cross Great King Street. Bertie had discovered that it was a good tactic to broach tricky subjects while his mother was trying to negotiate a street-crossing as she was usually distracted at such times and seemed to lack enthusiasm for argument.

  “Oh yes, Bertie,” said Irene, glancing up the road to check for oncoming cars. “Careful now, Bertie, that driver looks as if he’s going to be inconsiderate. A male driver, of course.”

  Bertie persisted. “It’s a fair,” he blurted out. “There’s going to be a school fair, Mummy.”

  Irene frowned. “Come along, Bertie. We can’t stand in the middle of the road like this.”

  “And I’m going to have a table, Mummy,” Bertie continued. “I’m going to ask Ranald to help me. We can sell bags of things.”

  Irene was non-committal. “We’ll see,” she said.

  “I wondered if you’d make me some tablet, Mummy,” Bertie went on. Tablet would go down well at the school fair, he thought. And if they charged ten pence a piece, then they would get a whole pound for a bag of ten pieces, and if they sold ten bags then that would be five pounds for him and five pounds for Ranald. That was a lot of money, Bertie thought, although perhaps not for Ranald, whose father, his friend had explained, had a great deal of money that he kept in a safe in his study. Ranald Braveheart Macpherson had offered to show this money to Bertie, as he had discovered the combination number and was able to open it himself. “There’s heaps of money in it,” he said to Bertie one day. “You should see it, Bertie. Heaps.” They had reached the other side of the road. “Tablet is full of sugar, Bertie,” said Irene. “An occasional piece, yes, but you do know what happens if you have too much sugar?”

  “We wouldn’t eat it ourselves, Mummy,” said Bertie quickly. “We’d sell it to other people. They’d eat it.”

  “And their teeth?” Irene asked. “What about their teeth, Bertie? Do we want other people to get holes in their teeth? Is that what we want?” She waited for an answer, but none came. “So maybe we can make some carrot-men for you to sell. You remember those little figures we made out of carrots – with cloves for eyes and a little bit of red pepper for their mouths. People would love that.”

  Bertie was silent. Nobody would buy a carrot-man – at least nobody in his or her right mind would. And he could imagine the reaction of somebody like Tofu, who had told Bertie that he was planning to sell some stolen property at his table. “I’ll make loads of money, Bertie,” Tofu had said. “I know what sells, you see.”

  They arrived at Dr. St. Clair’s consulting room. Because they could not take Ulysses’ pushchair up the stairs, that was left in the hall at the bottom, and Ulysses was carried up by Irene. This provoked loud screams from the young infant, who struggled with his mother and was copiously sick.

  “He’s always sick when you pick him up, Mummy,” said Bertie. “Are you holding him the right way up?”

  “Of course I am, Bertie,” said Irene. “His little stomach is just a bit sensitive, that’s all.”

  “But he’s never sick when I pick him up,” said Bertie. “It’s just you, Mummy.”

  “Nonsense, Bertie,” said Irene, wiping Ulysses’ face with a small cloth, and producing further howls of rage. “And we mustn’t keep Dr. St. Clair waiting. He has lots of patients to see, Bertie. You’re not the only one.”

  Bertie was not sure about that. He had never seen another patient in the psychotherapist’s waiting room, and he doubted if there were any.

  They began to go upstairs. Bertie reached out to touch Ulysses, who immediately stopped crying and smiled at his brother.

  “There,” said Irene. “His little stomach is obviously settling now.”

  They rang the bell and a few moments later were admitted to the waiting room by Dr. St. Clair himself. “Well, Bertie,” he said. “Here we are. And your little brother too! My, he’s getting big. Going to sea already, I can’t help but observe.” He paused. “He’s a handsome little fellow, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” said Bertie. “And he looks really like Dr. Fairbairn, don’t you think? See his ears there? They’re just like Dr. Fairbairn’s.”

  Dr. Fairbairn, of course, was Bertie’s previous psychotherapist, the one who had suddenly gone to Aberdeen. Irene had been fond of him, Bertie knew, and was upset when he had gone. Very upset.

  49. The Wolf Man Again

  Bertie’s psychotherapy appointment followed a familiar pattern. For the first forty-five minutes of the hour-long session, Irene closeted herself with Dr. St. Clair while Bertie was left to his own devices in the waiting room. Even although he suspected that he was the subject of discussion within, he appreciated the fact that this dramatically curtailed the amount of time he had to spend with the psychotherapist talking about his dreams. In Bertie’s view, Dr. St. Clair was a considerable improvement on Dr. Fairbairn, who had been, he felt, certifiably mad. It was only a matter of time, he thought, before Dr. Fairbairn would be taken off to Carstairs, where all the most dangerous disturbed people in Scotland were kept; for the time being he was on the loose in Aberdeen, but he was sure that that would not last.

  Dr. St. Clair was much milder, although still quite capable of sounding off for long periods on the subject of wolves. Bertie knew, though, that this was a deep-seated obsession of psychotherapists, as he had come across a book in his mother’s library all about a Wolf Man whom Dr. Freud had treated. That was the origin of it all, Bertie decided: one psychotherapist began to talk about wolves and soon they were all talking about them. It was very strange, and the only thing to do was to humour them. That was why Bertie had made up a dream about wolves sitting in a tree, which had thrilled Dr. St. Clair, who had written copious notes during Bertie’s narration.

  Ulysses accompanied Irene into the consulting room, which meant that Bertie was alone in the waiting room. This suited him; he liked his little brother, but he did not like to have to supervise him for too long, and Ulysses had a tendency to eat magazines. The last time he had been under Bertie’s supervision in the waiting room, he had eaten an entire section of Good Housekeeping that he had subsequently regu
rgitated over Irene’s shoulder on the way down the stairs. No, it was much better for Bertie to be left on his own and able to immerse himself without interruption in the latest copy of Scottish Field.

  Bertie liked Scottish Field for several reasons. Principally he liked it because his mother disapproved of it. “It’s all right for people who bury themselves in the countryside, Bertie,” she had said. “Those country types with their dogs and Agas and so on. That’s not really who we are, Bertie.”

  Bertie frowned. “But I like dogs, Mummy. And what’s wrong with the people?”

  Irene smiled. “It’s difficult, Bertie … I suppose they tend to be conservative in their views, Bertie. That’s all.”

  “That means they want things to remain the same?”

  “Precisely, Bertie. They want things to remain the same. That’s what conservatives are like.”

  Bertie thought about this. “And we want everything to change?”

  Irene smiled. “You could put it like that.”

  “So if everything changed, then I wouldn’t have to have psychotherapy, would I? Or do yoga?”

  “No,” said Irene. “That’s not what I meant, Bertie. And anyway, we don’t have time to discuss these things at the moment. Some other time, I think.”

  Now, opening the pristine copy of Scottish Field, Bertie carefully looked through the pages of the magazine. His favourite section was the social section at the back. This was where there were photographs of various events throughout Scotland – of charity balls, of horse shows, of parties at big hotels. Bertie liked these photographs because he recognised some of the faces that seemed to crop up in these settings. There was Mr. Roddy Martine talking to a group of people at a fundraising party for the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. There was Mr. Charlie Maclean conducting a whisky tasting for a group of visitors from the United States of America. The visitors all looked happy, not to say drunk; everybody looked as if they were having a good time, although presumably all of these people were conservatives. They certainly did not look as if they wanted anything changed, Bertie decided.