The World According to Bertie

by Alexander McCall Smith

  ‘I wanted to talk to you,’ he whispered. ‘Just us. Without anybody else around. I wanted to ask you . . . to ask you whether you thought that we could . . . well, whether we could get engaged.’

  He had said it, but he had said it in such a clumsy fashion. Nobody said that any more, he said to himself; nobody asks anybody else if they would like to be engaged. Like everything I do, he thought, it sounds awkward and old-fashioned.

  For a few moments, Pat said nothing, and Matthew wondered if she had heard him. They were seated so close together that she must have been able to sense the agitated beating of his heart, and must have known. At least she knew her presence excited him, made him catch his breath, made his heart go like that; one could not fake those symptoms of affection.

  Then a square of light fell onto the driveway and lighted, too, the byre’s interior. The front door had been opened and somebody came out; footfall upon gravel.

  She said: ‘Somebody’s coming.’

  The steps came nearer and reached the French windows, a figure moving in the darkness, a shadow. Matthew wanted her only to answer his question – gauche though it may have been, it expressed everything that he now felt. Because I’m fed up, he thought, with being lonely, and out of place, and seeing everybody else in the company of somebody they love. That was why he wanted an answer to his question.

  ‘Please tell me,’ he said. ‘Please just think about it.’

  She did not have the time to answer, or if she answered he could not hear. Young East Lothian, his pipes under his arm, was inflating the bag, his drones were beginning to wail; that protest of the pipes before they wrought their magic. He had gone out there to warm up, and now he began to play.

  ‘“Mist-covered Mountains”,’ said Matthew. ‘Do you know it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pat. And then: ‘That question you just asked . . .’

  ‘You don’t have to answer,’ said Matthew. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘But I want to . . .’ she said, and his heart gave a great leap; then descent: ‘I want to think about it. Give me . . . give me a few weeks.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Outside, the ‘Mist-covered Mountains’ continued; such a tune, expressing all the longing, the love, that we feel for country and place, and for people.

  47. Stuart Reflects

  Stuart Pollock, statistician in the Scottish Executive (with special responsibility for the adjustment of forecasts), husband of Irene Pollock, father of Bertie (6) and Ulysses (4 months); co-proprietor of the second flat (right) in 44 Scotland Street, Edinburgh; all of this is what Stuart was, and all of these descriptors he now mulled over as he walked home early, making his way down Waterloo Place after a long and tedious meeting in the neo-Stalinist St Andrew’s House.

  A life might be summed up within such short compass, thought Stuart. He saw actuaries do it in their assessments, in which we were all so reduced, to become, for instance, a single female, aged 32, non-smoker, resident of the Central Belt – so truncated a description of what that person probably was, about her life and its saliences; but useful for the purposes for which they made these abridgements. Such a person had an allotted span, which the actuaries might reel off in much the same way as a fairground fortune-teller might do from the lines of the hand or on the turn of the Tarot card. You have thirty years before the environmental risk of living in the Central Belt becomes significant. The fortune-teller was not so direct, and certainly less clinical, but it amounted to the same advice: beware.

  It had been a long-drawn-out meeting, and a frustrating one, in which Stuart, together with four other colleagues and a couple of parliamentarians, had been looking at health statistics. The news from Scotland was bad, and the Executive was looking for ways of making it sound just a little bit better. Nobody liked to pick on Glasgow, a vigorous and entertaining city, but the inescapable fact was that everybody knew that it had the worst diet in Western Europe, and the highest rate of heart disease. Was there any way in which this information might be presented to the world in a slightly more positive way? ‘Such as?’ Stuart had asked.

  This question had not gone down well. The politicians had looked at one another, and then at Stuart. Did one have to restrict the area in question to Western Europe? Could one not compare the Glaswegian diet with, say, diets in countries where there was a similar penchant for high-fat, high-sodium, high-risk food? Such as parts of the United States, particularly those parts with the highest obesity rates? Yes, but although the United States has a similar fondness for pizza, they don’t actually fry it, as they do in Scotland. There’s a difference there.

  Very well, but what exactly was Western Europe anyway? If one took Turkey into account, and Turkey was almost in Western Europe– particularly if one overlooked the fact that most of it was in Asia and perhaps somewhat far to the east – did it change the picture? Might Glasgow not be compared with Istanbul, and, if one did that, how did the comparison look? Still bad, alas: the Turks did not eat so many fats and sweet things, and they were really rather good about consuming their greens. So were there not other places somewhere, anywhere, where everybody smoked like chimneys, drank to excess and fried everything . . . ? No, not really.

  Stuart smiled as he negotiated the corner at the end of Waterloo Place and began to walk towards Picardy Place. As a statistician, he thought, I’m a messenger; that’s what I do. And, like all messengers, some people would prefer to shoot me.

  He looked down the street at the people walking towards him, young, old, in-between. After that day’s meeting, it was taking some time for him to move back from the professional to the personal. Here, approaching him, was a sixty-year-old woman, with two point four children, twenty-three years to go, with a weekly income of . . . and so on. Now there were carbon footprints to consider, too, and that was fun. This woman was walking, but had probably taken a bus. She did not go on holiday to distant destinations, Spain at the most, and so she used little aviation fuel. Her carbon footprint was probably not too bad, particularly by comparison with . . . with those who went to international conferences on carbon footprints. The thought amused him, and he smiled again.

  ‘You laughing at me, son?’

  The woman had stopped in front of him.

  Stuart was startled. ‘What? Laughing at you? No, not at all.’

  ‘Because I dinnae like being laughed at,’ said the woman, shaking a finger at him.

  ‘Of course not.’

  She gave him a scowl and then moved on. Chastened, Stuart continued his walk. The trouble with allowing one’s thoughts to wander was that people might misunderstand. So he put statistics out of his mind and began to think of what lay ahead of him. Bertie had to be taken to his saxophone lesson, and he would do that, as Irene had her hands full with Ulysses. That suited Stuart rather well, as he found that the late afternoon was a difficult time for Ulysses, who tended to girn until he had his bath and his evening feed. Stuart had rather forgotten Bertie’s infancy, what it was like, and the presence of a young baby in the flat was proving trying. At least going off to the lesson would give him the chance to get out with Bertie, which he wanted to do more often.

  They had once gone through to Glasgow together on the train, and that had been such a success; or at least the journey itself had been. The meeting in Glasgow with that dreadful Lard O’Connor had been a bit of a nightmare, Stuart recalled, but they had emerged unscathed, and Irene and Bertie’s subsequent encounter with Lard, when he had shown up unannounced in Scotland Street, had been mercifully brief. It was important that Bertie should know that such people as Lard O’Connor and his henchmen existed, that he should not think that the whole world was like Edinburgh. There were people who did assume that, and who were rudely surprised when they travelled furth of the city; going to London, for example, could be a terrible shock for people from Edinburgh.

  Stuart wanted to spend more time with Bertie and – the awkward thought came unbidden – less time with Irene. That was a terrible thought, and he
suppressed it immediately. He loved and admired Irene, even if she was sometimes a bit outspoken in her convictions. Then another awkward thought intruded: if he wanted to spend less time with Irene, Bertie probably wanted exactly the same thing. But should I, a father, he asked himself, try to save my son from his mother? Was there a general answer to that, he wondered, an answer for all fathers and all sons, or did it depend on the mother?

  48. Bertie and Stuart go Out

  ‘Ask Lewis Morrison when he thinks Bertie will be ready for his Grade Eight exam,’ said Irene, as Stuart helped Bertie into his coat.

  ‘But he’s just done his Grade Seven,’ Stuart pointed out. ‘Two months ago.’ He looked down at Bertie and patted him on the shoulder. ‘And we got a distinction, didn’t we, my boy?’

  ‘The sight reading was a very easy piece,’ said Bertie modestly. ‘Even Ulysses could have played it. If his fingers were long enough.’

  ‘There you are,’ said Irene. ‘Bertie’s obviously ready for the next hurdle.’

  Bertie listened to this solemnly, but said nothing. He did not mind doing music exams, which for the most part he found very easy, but he wished that he had slightly fewer of them. He had thought that Grade Eight of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music was the highest examination available, and he had been dismayed when Irene had pointed out that it was possible to do examinations beyond that – in particular the Licentiate. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to fail Grade Eight, deliberately, and continue to fail it at every resitting. But he had tried that technique with his audition for the Edinburgh Teenage Orchestra and had only succeeded in getting himself accepted into the orchestra immediately. He looked up at his father. ‘Why all these hurdles, Daddy?’ he whispered.

  ‘What was that, Bertie?’ his father asked.

  Bertie glanced at Irene. She was watching him.

  ‘He said he enjoys hurdles,’ said Irene. ‘So just ask Lewis for the details – set pieces and all the rest. Then Bertie can get cracking.’

  ‘People who do Grade Eight are usually much older,’ said Bertie. ‘Sixteen, at least.’

  Irene reached forward and ruffled his hair fondly. ‘But you’re exceptional, Bertie,’ she said. ‘You’re very lucky. I don’t wish to swell your little head, Bertie, but you are not the average boy.’

  Bertie swallowed hard. He wanted so much to be the average boy, but he knew that this would forever be beyond his reach. The average boy, he knew, had the average mother, and his mother was not that.

  They left the flat with the issue of Grade Eight unresolved. As they went downstairs, Bertie asked his father if they were going to go to the lesson by bus or car. Bertie loved going in their car, and rarely had the chance to do so, as Irene believed in using the bus wherever possible.

  ‘You’d like to go in the car, wouldn’t you?’ said Stuart.

  Bertie nodded his head vigorously.

  ‘Well, in that case,’ said Stuart, ‘let’s go in the car, Bertie! And then afterwards – after your lesson – we could take a spin out into the Pentlands, perhaps, or down to Musselburgh. Would you like that?’

  Bertie squealed with pleasure. ‘Yes, Daddy,’ he said. ‘Or we could drive round Arthur’s Seat, all the way round.’

  ‘That’s another possibility,’ said Stuart. ‘The whole world – or at least that bit of it within twenty miles or so of Edinburgh – is our oyster, Bertie. We can go wherever we like!’

  Bertie, who was holding his father’s hand as they walked downstairs, gave the hand a squeeze of encouragement.

  ‘Thank you, Daddy! Thank you so much!’

  Stuart smiled. Bertie was so easy to please, he found; all that he wanted was a bit of company, a bit of time. Now they stepped out into the street and Bertie looked about him.

  ‘Where’s our car, Daddy? Is it far away?’

  Stuart hesitated. He looked up Scotland Street, up one side, and then down the other. There was no sign of the car.

  ‘Has Mummy used it today?’ he asked.

  Bertie shook his head. ‘No, Daddy. You were the last one to use it. Last week. You came in and said that you had parked the car and you put the keys down on the kitchen table. I saw you, Daddy.’

  Stuart scratched his head. ‘You know, Bertie, I think that you’re right. But I just can’t for the life of me remember where I parked it. Did I say anything about where I’d parked it?’

  Bertie thought for a moment. ‘No, I don’t think so, Daddy. Can’t you just try to remember?’

  Stuart glanced at his watch. ‘I’m sorry, Bertie, I can’t. And time’s getting on a bit. If we don’t leave now we’ll be late for Lewis Morrison, and Mummy will be cross. So we’re just going to have to go and catch a bus on Dundas Street.’

  Bertie knew that what his father said was true. It was a bitter disappointment to him, though; his parents were always forgetting where they parked the car, and it often meant that outings were delayed or cancelled altogether. His mother was always telling him that people who lost or otherwise did not look after their things did not deserve to have them in the first place. Well, if that was the case, he wondered if his parents deserved to have a car, or if it should be taken away from them and given to somebody who deserved it. It was so disappointing. Other boys had cars that were never mislaid; and most of these cars were rather more impressive than the Pollocks’ old red Volvo. Even Tofu, whose father had converted their car to run on vegetable oil, had a better car than Bertie had, and one that collected him every afternoon at the school gate, its motor purring away as contentedly as if it were running on ordinary petrol. That was Tofu. And then there was Hiawatha, whose mother had a small open BMW sports car, in which she would collect him from school each afternoon. Olive had expressed the view that Hiawatha’s family needed to have an open-topped car because of the way that Hiawatha’s socks smelled, but Bertie had ignored this uncharitable suggestion, even if it had the ring of truth about it.

  Bertie walked in silence to the bus-stop with his father. There would be no run out to the Pentlands or Musselburgh. There would be no circumnavigation of Arthur’s Seat. There would just be a saxophone lesson and a return to Scotland Street, to his mother and Ulysses, with all his girning.

  Stuart understood his son’s silence. ‘Bertie,’ he said, ‘I promised you an outing, and you will have one. When we come back, we’ll go to that little café in Dundas Street. We might find something really unhealthy to eat. Would you like that?’

  Bertie said that he would; Scottish genes.

  49. At Big Lou’s

  With Bertie’s saxophone lesson over, he and Stuart made their way back across town by bus. The lesson had gone well; Lewis Morrison had been pleased with Bertie’s performance of Boccherini’s Adagio and Moszkowski’s Spanish Dance. There had been some technical issues with his interpretation of Harvey’s Rue Maurice-Berteau, but these had quickly been sorted out, and had Bertie himself not drawn attention to them they might even have passed unnoticed.

  They got off the bus shortly after the junction of Dundas Street and Heriot Row. It was now just early evening, but Big Lou’s Coffee Bar was still open; Lou did not like to leave before six-thirty, even if there were no customers. She had never stopped work before then when she was in Arbroath or Aberdeen, and the habit had remained.

  Stuart, who was carrying the saxophone case in his right hand, gave Bertie his left as they crossed the road.

  ‘The café’s still open, Daddy,’ said Bertie excitedly, pointing over the road. ‘I can see the lights.’

  ‘Good,’ said Stuart. ‘And I do hope that Big Lou has some really nice cake for us. She often does, you know.’

  ‘One with cream?’ asked Bertie.

  ‘Possibly. Or maybe a piece of millionaire’s shortbread. Have you ever had that?’

  ‘No,’ said Bertie. ‘But Tofu had a piece at school once. He let me look at it, and have just one lick, on approval, and then he tried to sell it to me.’

  ‘Quite the little entrepren
eur, your friend Tofu,’ said Stuart, laughing. ‘You didn’t buy it?’

  ‘No,’ said Bertie. ‘But I might buy the X-ray specs that he says he’ll sell me. I’d like those.’

  Stuart smiled. X-ray specs! What boy has not yearned for a pair of X-ray specs, as advertised in the faded pages of half-forgotten comics, complete with illustrations of the fortunate possessor of a pair of such specs looking through the clothing of passers-by, to the manifest envy of his friends! An irresistible advertisement, at any age.

  They made their way down the steep steps that led to Big Lou’s. As they descended, they caught a glimpse of Big Lou inside, at the counter, polishing cloth in hand, talking to a man in a black overcoat.

  ‘Yes,’ said Stuart, winking at Bertie. ‘We’re in business, Bertie!’

  Bertie pushed open the door and they entered the coffee bar. Big Lou looked up as they went in. She smiled. She knew Stuart slightly as one of her occasional customers, and although she had never met Bertie before, she had seen him once or twice. From conversation with Angus and Matthew, she also knew that Bertie’s life was not an easy one, at least from the maternal point of view. Big Lou remembered the incident in which, under severe provocation, Cyril had sunk his teeth into Irene’s ankles. Although this incident was not talked about during Cyril’s current legal difficulties, it had been remembered in the area and had indeed passed into local legend.

  ‘Well, young man,’ said Big Lou, smiling at Bertie. ‘I see that you’ve brought your father in for a treat. That’s kind of you.’

  Stuart nodded to the other man standing at the counter, the man who had been talking to Big Lou when they had entered. Then he asked Big Lou if she had something large and sweet for Bertie to eat. She replied that, as it happened, there was a Dundee cake which she had baked herself and which tasted rather good with copious quantities of sweetened cream ladled on the top. This went rather well with Irn-Bru, she thought, and what would Bertie’s views be on that?