The World According to Bertie

by Alexander McCall Smith

  ‘The feast was quite extraordinary, and it reaffirmed my conviction that the English are half mad when they think nobody’s looking. They’re a charming people – very tolerant and decent at heart – but they have this distinct streak of insanity which comes out in places like Oxford and in some of the London clubs. It’s harmless, of course, but it takes some getting used to, I can tell you.

  ‘We had roast beef and all the trimmings – roast tatties, big crumbling hunks of Stilton and ancient port. They did us proud. There were a couple of speeches in Latin, I think, and of course we kicked off with an interminable grace which, among other things, called down the Lord’s fury on the college’s enemies. That one was in English, just in case the Lord didn’t get the point. This brought lots of enthusiastic amens, and I realised that these people must be feeling the pressure a bit, what with all this talk of relevance and inclusiveness and all those things. And I couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for them, you know, Matthew. Imagine if you had fixed yourself up with a number like that and then suddenly the winds of change start blowing and people want to stop you having feasts and eating Stilton. It can’t be easy.

  ‘Of course, it’s foolishness of a high order to destroy these things. The Americans would sell their soul just to get something vaguely approximating to All Souls – they really would. It’s such a pity, because they would have such fun in places like that. The Canadians, of course, have got something like it. I know somebody who visited it once – a place called Massey College in Toronto. It was presided over by Robertson Davies, you know – that wonderful novelist. He was the Master. Now they’ve got somebody of the same great stripe, an agreeable character called John Fraser, who has a highly developed talent for hospitality, as it happens. Thank God for the Canadians.

  ‘Well, at the feast I ended up sitting next to none other than Professor Sykes, the genetics man, and he told me the most extraordinary story. I know it has nothing to do with anything, Matthew, but I must tell you. You may remember that he was the person who did the DNA tests on the Ice Man, that poor fellow they dug out of a glacier in France. He’d kicked the bucket five thousand years ago, but was in pretty good condition and so they were able to conduct a postmortem and look at the DNA while they were about it. Anyway, Sykes decided to ask for a random volunteer down in England somewhere and see if this person was connected in any way to the Ice Man. Some woman stepped up to the block and he nicked off a bit of her nose, or whatever it is that these people do, and – lo and behold! – she shares a bit of DNA with the old Ice Man. Which just goes to prove what Sykes had been saying for years – that we’re all pretty closely related, even if some of us shrugged off this mortal coil five millennia ago.

  ‘But then, Matthew, it gets even more peculiar. When this woman from Dorset or wherever it was got wind of the fact that she was related to the Ice Man, do you know what she started to do? She began to behave like a relative, and started to ask for a decent burial for the Ice Man!

  ‘Which just goes to show, Matthew, that when expectations are created, people rise to the occasion. They always do. Always.’ Angus paused. ‘What do you think of that, Matthew?’

  ‘I think she did the right thing,’ said Matthew.

  33. Old Injustices have their Resonances

  Angus Lordie stared at Matthew incredulously. ‘Did I understand you correctly?’ he asked. ‘Did you say that this woman did the right thing? That she should have asked for a decent burial for the Ice Man?’

  Matthew thought for a moment. He had answered the question impulsively, and he wondered if he was right. But now, on reflection, even if brief, he decided that he was.

  ‘Yes,’ he said evenly. ‘I think that this was probably the right thing. Look, Angus, would you like to be put on display in a museum or wherever, even if you were not around to object? If you went tomorrow, what would you think if I put you on display in, say, a glass case in Big Lou’s café? You’d not want that, I assume. And nor, I imagine, would the Ice Man have wanted to be displayed. He might have had beliefs about spirits not getting released until burial, or something of that sort. We just don’t know what his beliefs were. But we can imagine that he probably would not like to be stared at.’

  Angus frowned. ‘No, maybe not. But then, even if we presume that he wouldn’t want that, do we really have to respect the wishes of people who lived that long ago – five thousand years? Do we owe them anything at all? And, come to think of it, can you actually harm the dead? Can you do them a wrong?’

  Matthew thought that you could. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Why not? Let’s say I name you executor in my will. I ask you to do something or other, and you don’t do it. Don’t you think that people would say that you’ve done me a wrong, even though I’m not around to protest?’

  Matthew was warming to the theme. The argument, he thought, was a strong one. Yes, it was wrong to ignore the wishes of the dead. ‘And what about this?’ he continued. ‘What if you snuffed it tomorrow, Angus, and I told people things about you that damaged your reputation – that you were a plagiarist, for instance? That your paintings were copies of somebody else’s. Wouldn’t you say that I had harmed you? Wouldn’t people be entitled to say: “He’s done Angus Lordie a great wrong”?’

  Angus looked doubtful. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘There’ll be no more Lordie. I’ll be beyond harm. Nothing can harm me then. That’s the great thing about being dead. You don’t mind the weather at all.’

  ‘But you could say: “He’s harmed his reputation”? You could say that, couldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Angus. ‘You could say that, because I shall still have a reputation – I hope – for a short time after I go. But the Ice Man’s another matter altogether. As is Julius Caesar or Napoleon Bonaparte. You can say whatever you like about them because . . . because they’re no longer part of the human community.’ Angus looked pleased with the phrase. ‘Yes, that’s it – that’s the distinction. Those who have recently left us are still part of the human community – and have some rights, if you will – whereas those who left us a long time ago don’t have those rights.’

  Something was bothering Matthew. ‘What about these post-humous pardons? What about the men who were shot for cowardice in the First World War? Aren’t they being pardoned now? What do you think of that, Angus? With your argument, surely they would be too long-dead to have any claim to this?’

  Angus took a sip of his beer. ‘I’m not sure about that,’ he said. ‘They still have relatives – descendants perhaps, who want to clear their names. They feel strongly enough and they’re still very much with us. So the duty is to the living rather than to people who no longer exist.’

  ‘But what if their descendants knew nothing about it?’ asked Matthew. ‘What if there weren’t any families asking for pardons? Would we have any duty to them then? A simple, human duty to recognise that they were people . . . people just like us?’

  Angus was beginning to look uncomfortable. He had argued himself into a position in which he appeared to be careless of the human bonds which united us one to another, quick and dead. Matthew, he thought, was right. Feeling concerned for the Ice Man was a simple recognition of human hopes, whenever they had been entertained. Ancient feelings were feelings nonetheless; old injustices, like the shooting of those poor, shell-shocked men, had their resonances, even today. And the government, he thought, was probably quite right to pardon the lot of them, on the grounds that you couldn’t distinguish between cases at this distance.

  ‘You’re right,’ Angus said. ‘You win.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Matthew. ‘I didn’t think you’d agree.’

  ‘Well, I do,’ said Angus. ‘But let’s get back to la McDowall. Where were we?’

  ‘You were walking down South College Street. She was telling you about McDowalls in general.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Angus. ‘Well, she suddenly turned to me, la McDowall did, and said: “We go back a very long way, you know, my family.” Of course I refrained from poi
nting out to her that we all went back as far as each other, and so she continued. “Yes,” she said. “I can trace things back quite a way, you know. I happen to be descended from Duegald de Galloway, younger grandson of Prince Fergus de Galloway, and his forebears can be traced back to Rolf the Dane, who died back in 927.”

  ‘That was pretty rich, but I let her go on. It’s best not to interrupt these people once they get going – they can easily blow a valve. So she said: “Oh yes. And if we go back from Rolf we eventually get back to Dowal himself, who lived in Galloway in 232 BC.”

  ‘I ask you, Matthew! What nonsense. And here was this otherwise perfectly rational woman, who went each day into an office somewhere in Edinburgh and made administrative decisions or whatever, claiming that she went back to 232 BC!’ He shook his head. ‘Personally, I blame the Lord Lyon, you know. He has the authority to stamp that sort of thing out, but what does he do? Nothing. He should tell these McDowalls that their claims are outrageous and that they shouldn’t mislead people with all this nonsense.’

  ‘But I’ve heard he’s a very nice man,’ said Matthew. ‘Perhaps he just feels that people like that are harmless. And if he started to engage with the McDowalls, he’d have all those Campbells and MacDonalds and people like that on to him. Scotland’s full of this stuff. It’s what keeps half the population going.’

  The earlier consensus between them disappeared, immediately. ‘That sort of thing is very important,’ said Angus. ‘I happen to believe that clan reunions, clan gatherings and so on – these are important. They remind us who we are.’

  ‘Oh well,’ said Matthew. ‘I know who I am. But let’s not disagree. If you don’t mind, tell me what happened.’

  34. Miss Harmony has a Word in Bertie’s Ear

  On the day that Olive was due to come to visit Scotland Street, Bertie went to school with a heavy heart. He had pleaded with his mother to cancel the invitation, but his entreaties had been rejected, as they always seemed to be.

  ‘But Bertie, carissimo,’ said Irene. ‘One cannot cancel an invitation! Pacta sunt servanda! You can’t uninvite people once you’ve invited them! That’s not the way adults behave.’

  ‘I’m not an adult, Mummy,’ said Bertie. ‘I think that boys are allowed to uninvite people. I promise you, Mummy; they are. Tofu invited me to his house once and cancelled the invitation ten minutes later. He does that all the time.’

  ‘What Tofu does or does not do is of no concern to us, Bertie,’ said Irene. ‘As you well know, I have reservations about Tofu.’

  Bertie thought he might try another tack. ‘But I’ve read about invitations being cancelled by grown-ups,’ he said. ‘The Turks invited the Pope to see them and then some of them said that he shouldn’t come, didn’t they?’

  Irene sighed. ‘I’m sure that the Turks didn’t mean to be rude,’ she said. ‘And I’m sure that the Pope would have understood that. I’m also one hundred per cent sure that if the Pope invites you to the Vatican, the invitation is never cancelled. So we cannot possibly uninvite Olive. And we don’t want to, anyway! It’s going to be tremendous fun.’

  Bertie had abandoned his attempt to persuade his mother. But in a last, desperate throw of the dice, on the morning of the visit, using a red ballpoint pen, he applied several spots to his right forearm and presented this with concern to his mother.

  ‘I don’t think that Olive will be able to come to play, Mummy,’ he said, trying to appear regretful. ‘It looks like I’ve got measles, again.’

  Irene had inspected the spots and then laughed. ‘Dear Bertie,’ she said. ‘Have no fear. Red ballpoint ink is not infectious. Messy, perhaps, but not infectious.’

  At school that morning, it was not long before Olive had an opportunity to make her plans known.

  ‘I’m going to Bertie’s house this afternoon,’ she volunteered, adding: ‘by invitation.’

  ‘How nice!’ said Miss Harmony. ‘It is very encouraging, children, when we see you all getting on together so well. We are one big, happy family here, and it is good to see the girls playing nicely with the boys, and vice versa.’

  Bertie said nothing.

  ‘I don’t think Bertie wants her to go,’ said Tofu. ‘Look at his face, Miss Harmony.’

  Miss Harmony glanced at Bertie. ‘I’m sure that you’re mistaken, Tofu. Bertie is a very polite boy, unlike some boys.’ She tried not to look at Tofu when she said this, but her eyes just seemed to slide inexorably in his direction.

  ‘No, I’m not mistaken,’ said Tofu. ‘Bertie hates Olive. Everybody knows that. It’s because she’s so bossy.’

  Olive spun round and glared at Tofu. ‘Bertie doesn’t hate me,’ she said. ‘Otherwise, why would he invite me to his house? Answer me that, Tofu!’

  Bertie opened his mouth to say something, but Miss Harmony, sensing complications, immediately changed the subject, and the class resumed its reading exercise. But later, when everybody was involved in private work, she bent down and whispered in Bertie’s ear. ‘Is it true, Bertie? Did you invite Olive to play?’

  ‘No,’ whispered Bertie. ‘I didn’t, Miss Harmony. It’s my mother. She invited her. I don’t want to play with Olive, I really don’t. I want to play with other boys. I want to have fun.’

  Miss Harmony slipped her arm over his shoulder. ‘I’m sure that you must have some fun, Bertie. I’m sure you do.’

  ‘Not really, Miss Harmony,’ said Bertie. ‘You see my mother thinks—’ He broke off. He was not sure what his mother thought. It was all too complicated.

  The teacher crouched beside him. Bertie could smell the scent that she used, the scent that he had always liked. It was lavender, he thought, or something like that. In his mind it was the smell of kindness.

  ‘Bertie,’ whispered Miss Harmony. ‘Sometimes mummies make it hard for their boys. They don’t mean to do it, but they do. And the boy feels that the world is all wrong, that nothing works the way he wants it to work. And he looks around and sees other people having fun and he wonders whether he’ll ever have any fun himself. Well, Bertie, the truth of the matter is that things tend to work out all right. Boys in that position eventually get a little bit of freedom and are able to do the things they really want to do. That happens, you know. But the important thing is that you should try to remember that Mummy is doing what she thinks is her best for you. So if you can just grin and bear it for a while, that’s probably best.’

  Bertie listened attentively. This was a teacher speaking; this was the voice of ultimate authority. And what was that voice saying to him? It was hard to decide.

  ‘So just try to be nice to Olive,’ went on Miss Harmony. ‘Try to look at things from her point of view.’

  ‘She wants to play house,’ whispered Bertie. ‘I don’t want to do that.’

  Miss Harmony smiled. ‘Girls love playing house.’ And she thought: genetics – the bane of nonsexist theories of child-rearing. Stubborn, inescapable genetics.

  Bertie was silent. Miss Harmony stayed with him for a moment longer, but she was now beginning to attract curious stares from Tofu and Olive, and so she gave him a final pat on the shoulder and straightened up.

  ‘Do try to pay attention to your own work, Tofu,’ she said. ‘It’s always best that way. And you, Olive, should do so too.’

  Bertie kept his eyes down on his desk. He had been encouraged by what Miss Harmony had said to him – a bit – and he would make the effort to be civil to Olive. And he was cheered, too, by the prospect of liberation that the teacher had held out to him. She must have met people like his mother before, and boys like him too, and if she had seen things go well for them, then perhaps there was a chance for him. But the way ahead seemed so long, so cluttered with yoga and psychotherapy and Italian conversazioni, that it was as much as he could do to believe in any future at all, any prospect of happiness.

  ‘You’ll enjoy playing house,’ said Olive to Bertie as they travelled back on the bus with Irene. ‘I’ll be the mummy and you, Bertie . . .’ she pau
sed for a moment. ‘And you will be the mummy’s boyfriend.’

  35. Playing House

  ‘Now, where would you two like to play?’ asked Irene as she unlocked the door to the Pollock flat in 44 Scotland Street.

  ‘In the bedroom, please,’ said Olive confidently. ‘We’re going to play house, Mrs Pollock, and that’s the best place.’

  Bertie caught his breath. He had been hoping to keep Olive out of his bedroom, because if she saw it she could hardly fail to notice that it was painted pink. And that, he feared, would give her a potent bit of information which she would undoubtedly use as a bargaining chip. All she would have to do would be to threaten to reveal to Tofu and the other boys at school that his room was pink unless he complied with whatever schemes she had in mind. It would be a hopeless situation, thought Bertie; he would be completely in her power and unable to stand up for himself, which, he suspected, was exactly what Olive had in mind.

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ said Bertie, ‘we could play in the sitting room. There are some very comfortable chairs there, and it will be just right for playing house in. Don’t you agree, Mummy?’

  He looked imploringly at his mother, willing her to agree with him.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Irene. ‘House is best played in bedrooms. And I’m planning to write some letters in the sitting room. You won’t want me interfering with your game of house, will you, Olive?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Olive. ‘Although you could always be the granny.’