As for Tofu, who was the son of two well-known Edinburgh vegans, one of whom, the father, had written a tome on nuts and had converted his car to run on olive oil, there was the continuing mystery of his mother. Tofu had said that she had been eaten by a lion in the Serengeti, but Olive had put about the story that she had simply died of starvation. Others, including Bertie, thought that she was still alive, and Olive’s friend, Pansy, had said that she had seen her with Tofu in a shop in Princes Street buying him underwear.
Bertie’s friend Ranald Braveheart Macpherson had come to the fair with both of his parents. Unlike the other children Ranald did not seem to be embarrassed to be seen with his parents, but this might have been explained by the fact that he was adopted. He had spoken very openly about this to Bertie, claiming to have been found in a basket by the side of the Water of Leith just before it goes under the bridge at Stockbridge. “I was jolly lucky the basket didn’t leak,” he had said. “If it had, then I would have been drowned, Bertie. But I didn’t, you see.” The discussion had continued into one of whether Bertie could get himself adopted, preferably in Glasgow, using eBay as a means of advertising himself. That had not worked, and Bertie was still stuck with Irene. “Don’t be too sad about that, Bertie,” said Ranald. “It’s perfectly possible that your parents will die soon, just like mine, and then you can get yourself adopted same as me.”
“But did yours die?” asked Bertie. “I thought they put you in a basket in the Water of Leith.”
Ranald shook his head. “They put me in the basket, and then they went off to Aberdeen and died,” he said. “I think they froze. It’s very cold up there and sometimes it happens that way.”
Now Bertie stood at his table with Ranald Braveheart Macpherson and waited for people to come and buy the carrot-men he had made. A number of customers did present themselves, but they were interested only in Ranald’s tablet, which he sold in small bags of three pieces, neatly tied with a red ribbon at the top. “It’s very important to get the presentation right,” said Ranald. “My dad told me all about that. He knows about these things. My mummy says that he could sell anything. That’s what she said, and I’m not fibbing, Bertie.” He paused. “That’s why my dad’s got loads of money.”
Ranald looked at Bertie’s carrot-men. “I don’t think anybody’s going to want those, Bertie. Perhaps you should have a sale. Perhaps you could make a sign that says seventy-five per cent off. Or you could write ‘Closing Down.’ People like closing down sales, you know. My dad told me that.”
Bertie was tight-lipped. He did not want to close down; he wanted to be as successful as Ranald or Tofu, whose pirated CDs were selling briskly. And yet he knew that what Ranald said was right. The market place was the market place: if you wanted to sell something, then you had to offer something that people would want. And who would possibly want carrot-men?
He stared down at the floor and then looked up again. He tried to smile, but it was very hard.
53. A Tiny Carrot Icarus
And then something quite extraordinary happened – a development that might have been mundane in itself, but was utterly transformative. Roger Collins and Judith McClure, who had stepped in to look after Cyril, arrived with the dog on a lead. Cyril sensed Bertie’s presence the moment he entered the room, and tugged on his leash until he reached the table where Bertie was standing. Then, with a final tug, he leapt up at the boy who had so briefly been his guardian, almost knocking over the tray of carrot-men in the process.
“I believe I know who you are,” said Roger. “Cyril has effectively introduced us, I think.”
Bertie greeted the visitors politely, and then introduced them to Ranald.
“We were taking Cyril for a rather long walk along the canal,” Judith explained. “And then we noticed the sign outside that said there was a school fair. We thought we’d pop in for a moment and perhaps buy something.”
Bertie noticed her glance at Ranald’s tablet and his heart sank. Of course that was what they would buy. But Judith’s gaze had moved on, and was now resting on the tray of carrot-men.
“Carrot-men!” she exclaimed. “That’s interesting, Bertie. And how are sales?”
Bertie looked down at the ground again. “Actually, I haven’t sold any. I don’t think people want carrot-men.”
Roger frowned. “People don’t want carrot-men? Am I hearing correctly? What can they be thinking of?”
Bertie said nothing.
“Do you mind if I try one?” asked Roger, reaching to pick one up. “I’ll pay for it, of course.”
He popped the carrot-man into his mouth. Down went the tiny arms, the hat, the carrot legs; a whole carrot life consumed.
“Delicious,” pronounced Roger. “And you know who would like one, too? Cyril.”
At the mention of his name, Cyril wagged his tail. With that perpetual unsatisfied hunger that is the lot of dogs, he sensed that something was coming his way.
“There you are, Cyril, old chap,” said Roger, throwing a carrot-man in Cyril’s direction. Through the air it fell, a tiny carrot Icarus. Snap! went Cyril’s faithful jaws.
“Well, well,” said Roger Collins. “He likes that. You know what, Bertie, I think we’ll buy your whole stock – the lot of them. Judith and I will have some and Cyril will have the rest. Will twenty pounds do?”
Bertie nodded mutely. He was aware of the wide-eyed surprise that registered on Ranald’s face. He was aware, too, of Olive glowering from the next-door table; she still had many unsold notebooks.
The carrot-men were scooped unceremoniously into a plastic bag and the money changed hands. Then Judith and Roger said goodbye to the two boys and moved off.
“You see,” said Bertie, simply. It was all that he needed to say. You see.
Half an hour later, it was time for the tables to be cleared and unsold stock packed away. Ranald’s tablet had almost sold out, with only two bags remaining. One of these he gave to Bertie and the other he pocketed himself. Money was counted up. Ranald had made twelve pounds and Bertie had the crisp twenty-pound note that Roger Collins had given him.
Tofu had made forty-two pounds, but was to keep none of it. Informed by Olive that Tofu was selling pirated, and possibly stolen, goods, a teacher had come to investigate. After examining the discs and interrogating Tofu for twenty minutes, the teacher confiscated the entire proceeds of the illegal trading and declared they would be given to charity.
Tofu was furious, and complained bitterly to Bertie about the injustice of it all. His position was serious: he had already spent fifteen pounds of his anticipated profit in purchasing a large model aeroplane from a boy in a higher class. He had taken delivery of the plane the previous day and crashed it shortly thereafter. Now the bill had to be paid.
Bertie felt the twenty-pound note in his pocket. He was a generous boy and would have given Tofu the money if there had been no other alternative; but there was one.
“I tell you what, Tofu,” he said quietly. “Why don’t you sell me your jeans? I’ll give you twenty pounds and my crushed-strawberry dungarees.”
Tofu wrinkled up his nose. “They’re pink.”
“No,” said Bertie. “Crushed strawberry. How about it, Tofu?”
Tofu thought for a moment. He had another pair of jeans at home, and Bertie, after all, had none. He would only have to wear Bertie’s dungarees to get home; thereafter he could throw them away.
“All right,” he said. “We can go and swap trousers in the boys’ loo.”
They went off to do this, with Ranald Braveheart Macpherson keeping watch in case authority, in any shape, should approach the scene of the transaction. Once bedecked in the jeans, Bertie walked out with a jaunty step. It did not matter what happened now. His mother could hardly take these jeans from him and make him travel home in the bus without any trousers. And once he was home, he could work on her to allow him to wear them at least now and then. Oh, life was wonderful; it was so rich, so exciting – if you had jeans.
; He stood in the school grounds and looked up at the sky. It was blue and high and empty. And up there, crossing it in a great arc, was a tiny speck of silver, a plane, a thin pencil-line of white trailing behind it. The plane caught the sun, and flashed its message to Bertie. Freedom, it said. Freedom.
54. Svengali, EH3
Bruce stood by the telephone in the kitchen of his new flat in Albany Street, poised to pick up the handset and make the call. Jonathan had left his number, scribbled on a piece of paper produced by Bruce just before he had left after their first meeting. That had been a few days earlier; since then they had not been in touch with one another, although Bruce had seen him, or thought he had seen him, walking down the street when he had happened to look out. He had drawn back from the window, concerned that Jonathan might glance up and see him looking down at him. Then, after a few moments when he had sidled back up to the window and sneaked a glance down the street there had been nobody. Jonathan would have been going into his flat, of course, which was only a few doors away and where, unless Bruce made the call he was about to make, he himself was due to present himself that very evening to effect the exchange of identities – and of lives.
It was ridiculous; it was more than ridiculous – it was absurd. Taking the identity of another, even if that person was one’s complete double, was a pointless and silly thing to do – the sort of thing that a child of ten might think amusing. And yet he had agreed to it – that was what both surprised and slightly unnerved him. He had agreed to make the exchange simply because Jonathan had presented him with the challenge and he had not been strong enough to resist it. He should have laughed it off; he should have scoffed at the whole idea, but he had simply agreed to it, fearing that the other young man would somehow think the less of him for declining. Well, if he had shown weakness then, he would show strength now.
He reached for the telephone – and at that precise moment it rang. Bruce hesitated for a moment, a sixth sense telling him who the caller was.
“Bruce?”
“Yes.”
“Time to do it. You ready?”
Bruce drew in his breath. All he had to do was to say no. He had no need to give an explanation; Jonathan was nothing to him, he was a stranger … and yet, and yet … Jonathan was his double; Jonathan, in an extraordinary sense, was him.
“Fine.” It was not what he had intended to say and yet the word had come unbidden. Suddenly it occurred to Bruce that he was being hypnotised. Could that be possible? Was that possible? Could Jonathan be one of these people who could exert a hypnotic power over another; who could somehow persuade people to enter a state in which they did his bidding – even something as peculiar as exchanging identities? Was he a … Bruce dredged up the term from the recesses of memory … a Svengali?
He might still have abandoned the whole enterprise in the hours that followed, but did not. And now it was time for him to go to Jonathan’s flat, as planned, and step – metaphorically – into the shoes that would be vacated for him there. Locking his door behind him, he thought, You’re doing something really, really stupid. It was an internal reproach to which he had given silent voice on several occasions in the past, but – and this was some consolation – on each occasion that he had said this to himself the outcome had been unexpectedly good. He had said it to himself when, in his early twenties and on a holiday in the United States, he had set out, quite against advice, to hitch-hike – starting at night – from Philadelphia to Oxford, Mississippi, and had succeeded in making the journey with two unbroken lifts, one with an attractive divorcee who fed him chocolates across several states, and the other with a church historian whose conversation focused on two subjects: the intricacies of baseball and Gnostic writings. So much else might have happened to somebody like Bruce, an innocent standing by the roadside at night; but it had not. Whatever divinity hedged him was on duty, and hedged.
He had similarly said it to himself when, egged on by raucous friends, at the age of seventeen he had run onto the pitch at Murrayfield and been rugby tackled by stewards and then bundled off for a brief half hour in a police van. Bruce’s luck had held; but this plan was on a different scale from those earlier escapades. He hesitated, but only briefly, before walking downstairs and making his way purposively to Jonathan’s flat.
Jonathan greeted him warmly. “I’ll show you round,” he said. “I’ve put stuff in the fridge. Milk. Some eggs. Ham. You like ham, Bruce?”
Bruce nodded.
“We seem to have the same tastes,” said Jonathan. “Funny, isn’t it?”
Bruce’s response was non-committal. Jonathan had now opened the bedroom door and gestured for him to follow him in. He pointed towards a large wardrobe that stood against one of the walls.
“We’ll take the same size of everything, won’t we? Being identical, that must be the case.”
Bruce said nothing, but watched as Jonathan opened the door of the wardrobe.
“Shirts here. Socks here.” He paused, and looked at Bruce. “You don’t have athlete’s foot, do you?”
Bruce shook his head.
“Good,” said Jonathan, obviously relieved. “I assume that washing destroys it, but you never know. And since you’re going to be wearing my socks, I thought I’d ask.”
Jonathan now bent down to reach for something from the bottom of the wardrobe. Standing up, he showed Bruce a pair of black brogue shoes. “These are really comfortable,” he said. “I wear them to the office every day, so you should do that too. If you didn’t …”
“Yes?” asked Bruce. “If I didn’t?”
“Then they might notice and think it odd. That’s all.” Jonathan handed Bruce the shoes. “Try them. Go on.”
Bruce tried not to wince. He did not want to wear these shoes; he did not want to be there at all. But there was something about Jonathan that made it impossible to resist his suggestions.
“In fact,” Jonathan continued. “Put on these jeans over here. And this shirt too. Then try the shoes. We’ll see the effect.”
He smiled at Bruce, handing him a pair of neatly folded jeans that he had extracted from a shelf in the wardrobe.
“Go on,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’ll go through to the kitchen.”
Bruce closed his eyes. Perhaps if he didn’t look at Jonathan he would be able to overcome this extraordinary, unsettling sense of being forced to do something that he had no desire to do. But he could not. The closing of one’s eyes does not always make much difference in such circumstances, and it did not then. Acting almost as an automaton, Bruce slipped out of his own trousers and into the jeans provided by Jonathan. As he did so, he was aware of the gaze that had until a few moments before been upon him: cool, calculating, controlling.
55. Young Spartans and a Moleskine Notebook
Bruce woke up the next morning in Jonathan’s bed – and Jonathan woke up in Bruce’s bed – unlike most respectable Edinburgh people, who wake up in their own beds, rather than in the beds of others. Of course, sometimes even respectable people wake up in beds that don’t belong to them, but then these are either (a) hotel beds, or (b) the beds of guest rooms belonging to those who are in their own beds (that is, the beds of the house in which the guest bed is located, but in a different room). Some say that this is because Edinburgh people have less fun than others; but Edinburgh people themselves do not see what fun has got to do with it.
For a moment or two Bruce was confused, and wondered why the morning light was coming into the room from the wrong direction. But then, opening his eyes fully, he saw the unfamiliar ceiling and the wardrobe and the Degas poster of young Spartan athletes exercising (which would not necessarily have been Bruce’s choice of decoration) and he knew immediately where he was. He gazed at the poster: the young Spartans, five of them, were posed to the right of the picture, while on the left a small group of Spartan maidens, bare-topped but modestly wearing brief aprons of bright cloth, taunted them in the way that teenage girls will in groups observe teenage boys and laugh at th
em. The young men seemed indifferent to, or, at the most, only slightly surprised by the attention of the young women, and quite unconcerned by their own nakedness. They had races to run or hurdles to leap, and that for them was more important than any conversation with the maidens. A pleasant picture, thought Bruce, with something in it for everybody.
His contemplation of the picture over, Bruce got up out of bed, showered in Jonathan’s shower, and dressed himself in the clothes that Jonathan had identified as his normal office outfit. It was a very odd feeling putting on the clothes of another, but as he did so, Bruce felt for the first time a sense of anticipation over what lay ahead. This might have been a ridiculous, irresponsible escapade, but it was an extraordinary thing to do, and extraordinary things certainly spiced up life. After a few days they would give up the whole thing – perhaps after a day or two, he suspected, no matter that Jonathan seemed to want a week or longer. Then they could talk about it and entertain their friends with accounts of how they got away with it. “And nobody suspected?” the friends would ask. “You must be pretty good actors.” And Bruce would incline his head modestly and say, “It wasn’t too difficult. Not really.”
Bruce was worried about going to Jonathan’s office, but had had an idea about how the dangers inherent in that might be minimised. He would go for one day, he decided, and then he would report in sick for the rest of the week. He should be able to manage a single day – longer than that could expose him to a real risk of being detected. Yes, one day would satisfy honour, and then, the following week, they would bring the whole thing to an end and Bruce could return to his own office and pick up any pieces that needed to be picked up. There was a limit to the damage that Jonathan could do in a week: there were no major transactions on the horizon and so he would not be able to do very much.
Sunshine on Scotland Street Page 19
