Bertie Plays the Blues

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “We digress,” said Domenica, returning to the letter. “This is what she goes on to say: And now, my dear Domenica, I must ask a favour of you. I have decided that my vocation is here, and I am to be accepted into the community of sisters here as a lay member with a view to becoming a nun in the fullness of time. This is the work I am called to do. That means I am unlikely to return to Scotland and shall not therefore need a home there any more.”

  Domenica paused again. The last sentence hung in the air, almost visible to the naked eye.

  “I continue,” she said, taking up Antonia’s letter once more. “I have decided therefore to sell the Scotland Street flat and I should be grateful if you would approach McKay Norwell to sell it for me. Lesley Kerr, whom I believe you know, will do that – please ask her to send me a power of attorney to sign so that I can authorise you to act on my behalf in this sale.”

  Domenica put the letter on the table. “So!” she exclaimed. “The deed is to be virtually done, Angus. We are to get new neighbours unless …”

  Angus looked at her expectantly. “Unless?”

  “Unless we buy the flat ourselves, Angus. Unless we buy it and then knock through that wall over there and make a much bigger flat for all of us – you, me, and Cyril. Cyril could even have his own room – if dogs like that sort of thing.”

  Angus looked at the wall, trying to envisage the space that lay beyond. He had been in Antonia’s flat on one or two occasions before – once uninvited, when he had slipped in to retrieve the blue Spode cup that Domenica believed Antonia had stolen from her.

  “But it would cost an awful lot,” he said. “Flats these days …”

  Domenica brushed his objection aside. “We sell yours,” she said. “Then we use the money – or part of it – to buy Antonia’s place. Simple.”

  6. Paysage Moralisé

  For Bertie Pollock, Saturday brought few surprises. The day began, as Saturdays always did, with a walk to Valvona & Crolla with his mother and Ulysses, his younger brother, whose pushchair Bertie was allowed to propel along London Street as far as the Broughton Street roundabout. Then his mother took over for the ascent towards Albany Street.

  “A paysage moralisé, Bertie,” said Irene. “One’s journey is easy at the beginning but becomes more arduous as time goes by. Thus Drummond Place and London Street are not particularly challenging, but then one encounters Broughton Street and it becomes more taxing. It is exactly the same with life: it’s simple at the beginning, Bertie, but it gets steadily more complex.”

  Bertie, who had been gazing into the window of Crombie’s butchery, with its display of famous sausages, was not quite sure what his mother meant. She often made opaque remarks, and this, he thought, was one of them.

  “Do you think we could get some of Mr Crombie’s sausages, Mummy?” he asked. “It says in the window that they’re world-famous.”

  Irene glanced over her shoulder at the butcher’s window. “They’re quite possibly world-famous amongst people who think a great deal about sausages, Bertie. Just like Macsween’s haggises. But we are not amongst those who dwell upon sausages and haggises, you see.”

  Bertie knew that the cause was lost, but persisted nonetheless. “I’ve heard that they’re very good,” he said. “We could fry them, Mummy. In a frying pan. We’ve got a frying pan, haven’t we?”

  Irene hurried him along. “Come along, Bertie. Our diet does not include sausages, I’m afraid. We have a Mediterranean diet, as you know. It’s far healthier.”

  “Don’t they eat sausages in the Mediterranean?” asked Bertie.

  “They do not, Bertie,” said Irene. “They eat a great deal of sun-dried tomatoes and olives. They also eat fish and pasta. They do not eat sausages.”

  “What about salami?” asked Bertie. “I’ve seen salami in Valvona & Crolla. There was a great big salami there last time – it was much bigger than Mr Crombie’s sausages.”

  “Salami is quite another matter,” said Irene. “We must allow the Neapolitans the occasional slice of salami, but my point stands. Now we must hurry, Bertie, or we shall be late for psychotherapy.”

  Bertie sighed. He enjoyed going to Valvona & Crolla, but he was considerably less enthusiastic about what followed their visit to the delicatessen. His weekly appointment with his psychotherapist, Dr St Clair, was something that he had tried to persuade his mother to abandon – to no avail – and he was now resigned to sitting through it, he imagined, until his eighteenth birthday. He was not sure why he had to do it, but all attempts to elicit an explanation from his mother had so far failed, and Dr St Clair’s explanation had been distinctly less than satisfactory when he had taken the matter up with him.

  “We sometimes have to do things we may not see the point of, Bertie,” the psychotherapist had said. “And yet they may be very helpful. Perhaps psychotherapy is one of those things.” He had paused. “It’s all about growing up. Psychotherapy can help you to deal with things that worry you. It’s like taking the sting out of a bee. If you take the sting out of a bee, it can’t hurt you.”

  “It dies,” said Bertie. “My friend Tofu told me. He said he took the sting out of one of those big round bees and it died just like that.”

  Dr St Clair looked out of the window. “Perhaps,” he said. He had heard Bertie speak of Tofu before, and it seemed to him that extracting the stings of bees was very much the sort of thing that Tofu would do.

  But that would come later; for the moment there was the anticipation of the delicatessen and the possibility that they might be serving samples. Bertie enjoyed those, especially if the sample trays contained something sweet such as panforte di Siena, or a tiny amaretto biscuit wrapped in delicate white tissue paper. Bertie had been given a tin of these biscuits once by Mary Contini, who ran the shop, and her husband, Phillip, had demonstrated to him how if one lit these wrappers they would float delicately up to the ceiling.

  “A little airship,” he explained. “Look, there it goes.”

  Bertie had watched the small square of paper, the flame rising from its edges, waft up in a self-created current of hot air. It had seemed to him to be an almost magical sight – a miraculous defiance of gravity. He wanted to fly, too, and wondered whether one might be able to set fire to a much larger square of paper, sit in the middle of it, and gently be lifted up to the ceiling. Would it work with one of his father’s copies of the Guardian? If one sat in the middle of the arts pages, perhaps, and then set fire to the edges, would it behave in the same way as an amaretto wrapper? He saw no reason why not, and yet surely if it were possible then it would be quite a common sight and he had never seen anybody attempting it successfully – not even once.

  Bertie had gone on to psychotherapy clutching his tin of amaretti. He had offered one to Dr St Clair, who had smiled and accepted the biscuit.

  “You can set fire to the paper,” said Bertie. “That’s what I’m going to do.”

  Dr St Clair, who had been on the point of biting into the amaretto, had paused. He stared at Bertie, and then, discreetly putting the biscuit down on his desk, had scribbled something on his notepad. Fire. This had, after all, been the reason for the initial referral for psychotherapy, as noted down by Dr Fairbairn. Bertie had set fire to his father’s copy of the Guardian – while he was reading it. It had been a couple of years ago, when Bertie had barely turned five, but it was significant, he thought, that the ideation had persisted.

  “Bertie,” began Dr St Clair, trying to sound casual. “May I ask you something? You’d like to set fire to these wrappers, would you?”

  “Yes,” said Bertie. “I’ll show you if you like, Dr St Clair.”

  7. An Interest in Fire

  At the end of Bertie’s hour with Dr St Clair he usually went straight home with his mother. During the session itself, she often took Ulysses round the corner to Eteaket, a small tea room in Frederick Street, where she would read the paper or the book her book group was planning to discuss. Irene was not sure about her book group; she ha
d been a member of it for several years now, but she did not enjoy it as much as she had hoped, largely because of the choice of books made by other members. She also disliked the way several of those in the group behaved when she was expressing her opinion on a book. One of them, in particular, had a habit of rolling her eyes up whenever Irene spoke – an unintentional mannerism, perhaps, but very annoying nonetheless.

  On this occasion, when she returned from the tea room to pick up Bertie, Dr St Clair indicated that he wanted to have a private word with her.

  “You read one of the magazines, Bertie,” said Irene. “And keep an eye on Ulysses. Mummy is just going to have a quick word with Dr St Clair.”

  With Bertie’s nose buried in the waiting room’s copy of Scottish Field, Dr St Clair invited Irene into his consulting room and closed the door behind them. Irene, who enjoyed the company of psychotherapists, settled herself in a chair in front of his desk.

  “Everything all right?” she asked.

  Dr St Clair frowned. “Well, yes and no. I was actually going to suggest to you that we give Bertie a bit of a break from therapy at present – in fact, I was fairly sure that this would be appropriate. However …”

  Irene took the opportunity to interject. “I’m not so sure. As you know, I’m concerned about developmental issues, and …”

  Dr St Clair shook his head. “I’m not going to suggest that any more. Rather to the contrary, I was going to recommend a certain degree of vigilance.”

  “Vigilance?”

  “Yes. You see, Bertie revealed today a somewhat alarming set of ideas.”

  Irene’s eyes widened.

  “If I may ask you something,” Dr St Clair continued. “Has Bertie expressed any interest in fire recently – beyond the occasion when I understand he set fire to your husband’s copy of the Guardian while he was reading it?” He paused. “That was some time ago, wasn’t it? He was very young, of course.”

  “It was attention-seeking, I think,” said Irene. “Although I think that there was some latent hostility behind it.”

  Dr St Clair nodded. “There’s a very interesting case in the literature. A young boy set fire to the Guardian and went on to become a Conservative. It was one of the first signs.”

  “Very disturbing,” said Irene.

  “Yes. But returning to Bertie, he mentioned some fantasy about doing it again.”

  Irene was silent for a moment. “He mentioned setting fire to the Guardian?”

  Dr St Clair nodded. “Of course, an interest in fire is perfectly normal in childhood. Between the ages of three and five there occurs what we call fire interest. The child shows an interest in what fire is – how it starts and so on. And that, of course, is quite understandable – after all, fire is quite dramatic. Then there may be actual episodes of setting. Again that’s normal. The vast majority of children start fires in the pre-adolescent years. Boys in particular.”

  Irene nodded. “And men,” she said. “They continue, don’t they? They may do it in an organised context, but they do it nonetheless with their bombs and blasts.”

  Dr St Clair shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  “Not that we must be too hard on men,” Irene continued, allowing herself a smile. “They have their uses.”

  Again Dr St Clair moved in his seat. “Young Bertie is probably going through the normal interest phase,” he said. “But I think that we should watch the situation. Just in case he does anything dangerous.”

  Irene said that she would keep a watchful eye. “I suppose it’s a timely reminder,” she said. “If it is, as I suspect it might be, an appeal for my attention, then I must be ready to respond. Perhaps I’m not spending enough time with Bertie. Perhaps I need to become more involved in his life.”

  “That could be,” said Dr St Clair. “Attention usually solves childhood issues.”

  “And adult issues too,” said Irene. “We all crave attention.”

  Dr St Clair said that this was undoubtedly true. “The desire to be loved,” he said. “That is what lies at the heart of so many of our endeavours and stratagems.”

  She looked at the psychotherapist. What did he do for love, she wondered. “We all need a friend,” she said.

  Dr St Clair glanced out of the window. “Yes, that’s right. And we spend so much of our time searching for that friend. All of us.”

  Irene hesitated. Then she said, “You must find it difficult, what with your family being so far away in Australia.”

  He turned to look at her. “Yes,” he said. “It sometimes is.”

  “Are your parents still alive?” she asked.

  “Yes, they are. My mother is not particularly well, I’m afraid. My father copes. He’s kept going by cricket, I think. He lives for it.”

  “We all need something, don’t we? Religion. Cricket. Football. It’s much the same thing, isn’t it? Things that confer meaning upon our lives.” She paused. “Love too. For most people that’s what gives their lives some meaning.”

  Dr St Clair inclined his head, in a gesture of agreement. “It does,” he said.

  Irene was emboldened. “Do you … do you have somebody?”

  She wondered whether he would be offended; whether her question was too intrusive, but he answered equably. “Not at present,” he said. “But …”

  The but was so eloquent, and his answer was exactly what she wanted. There are few greater pleasures than finding out that the person we are interested in is available.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “Perhaps that’ll change.”

  He smiled. “Perhaps. Who knows?”

  For a few moments there was complete silence. Then, from the waiting room, there came the sound of Ulysses beginning to cry and, unmistakably, the smell of burning paper.

  8. The Holy Grail

  Matthew drove Elspeth and the triplets home in the mudcoloured estate car he had bought when they first became aware of the fact that there would be three babies, rather than one. The vehicle had been acquired through his father’s motor-broker, George Mackay, whom Matthew had approached for something that was cheap, reliable, and capable of carrying three babies and their impedimenta.

  “The Holy Grail,” said George, as Matthew explained his requirements. “Cheapness and reliability don’t always go hand in hand in the motor world. But I’ll see what I can do.”

  A few days later he had telephoned to tell Matthew to come up to Colinton Road to examine a car. “It’s nothing to look at, I’m afraid,” said George. “But it’ll work – I promise you that. And there’s bags of room for all those children. You can put the back seat down for that.”

  The station wagon was perfect, and Matthew had bought it then and there, christening it the Holy Grail, after George’s striking comment. “It’s not very beautiful,” he explained to Elspeth. “It’s a sort of … well, it’s essentially mud-coloured. But it has all the gizmos – satellite navigation and …” he thought of the buttons and switches that George had shown him and to which he had not paid adequate attention, “and temperature control,” he added weakly.

  Elspeth smiled. Dear Matthew! He was not very good when it came to machines and appliances – unlike her father, who had been able to fix virtually anything and who had always been assembling and disassembling pieces of machinery in his garden workshop in Comrie. Enthusiasm for things mechanical had proved his downfall eventually – his failing sight had been incompatible with his continued interest in biking, and his use of his guide dog on the motorcycle had been so unfortunate. But it was easy to be wise after the event … At least Matthew did nothing dangerous – as far as she knew. He was, by contrast, always rather cautious, anticipating problems before they arose and warning her to be careful about this, that and the next thing.

  His enthusiasm for safety had resulted in his purchase of three expensive new infant car seats, complete with padded carrying handles. These he had brought to the hospital, where they were inspected by a somewhat officious social worker.

&n
bsp; “We have to check up that you can transport your babies safely,” she had said. “Let me see these seats of yours.”

  Matthew frowned. He had not expected to be quizzed before being allowed to take his own children home. “They’re my sons,” he said testily, adding, “They don’t belong to the Royal Infirmary.”

  The social worker’s eyes narrowed. “We can’t allow children to be taken home inappropriately,” she said.

  “So what’s the alternative? Some have to stay? Is that what you’re telling me?” He suppressed a smile, thinking of a tribe of children who were born in the Infirmary, but never allowed to leave, because their parents were deemed unsuitable. They would grow up in the hospital, playing in the corridors, perhaps being allowed to fetch and carry things for the nursing staff, eventually graduating to the kitchens, where they could help with the washing up.

  The social worker sighed. “Of course not. We’re simply following good practice guidelines. You see, the problem with your seats – as I can see from here – is that they are the wrong type. Children under twenty-nine pounds need to travel facing backwards. Your babies, we can safely assume, are under twenty-nine pounds. So they need backwards-facing seats, and these seats face the direction of travel.”

  Matthew looked at the car seats in mute desperation. It was already after six o’clock in the evening, and the shop where he had bought the seats would be closed; he could not take them back until the following morning. Yet it would be psychologically impossible for him to leave Elspeth and the babies in the hospital for a further night; he had been looking forward to this moment so much and he had been waiting since ten that morning for his wife to be discharged by the doctors.

  An idea occurred to him. “All right,” he said. “If I put these seats in the car and then reverse, then the babies will be travelling with their backs to the direction of travel. Is that correct?”