Bertie Plays the Blues

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Ranald thought for a moment. “Yes, I don’t see why not. It would have to be a bigger basket, of course. But as long as you didn’t sink, it would be fine. Somebody would find you and take you to a children’s home. Then you’d just have to wait a few days until some people came and said they wanted a boy. Then they’d take you. Are you talking about yourself, Bertie? Would you like to get adopted yourself? It’s really good fun, you know.”

  Bertie hesitated. The story of Ranald’s adoption had planted the idea in his mind that adoption might be the answer to his problems. He did not want to offend his parents, but he thought that they would probably get used to the situation quite quickly, especially if he was able to visit them from time to time.

  “Yes,” he said at last. “I was wondering whether I could be adopted by some nice people … just like your parents, Ranald.”

  Ranald frowned. “You can’t come here, Bertie. There isn’t any room for anybody else here. Sorry.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of your mum and dad,” Bertie reassured him. “I was thinking of somebody like them.”

  Ranald looked relieved. “Yes, I think that will work. Have you got a basket at home?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Bertie.

  Ranald stroked his chin. “How about eBay, Bertie? Have you heard of eBay? You could put yourself on it, you know.”

  Not having a computer, Bertie was unsure what eBay was, and listened attentively as Ranald explained it to him. “You can get anything on eBay, Bertie, I’m telling you. Trucks, model railways, even swords. Everything. If you’ve got something to sell, you put it on eBay and they have a sort of auction. You could choose two weeks maybe. That gives people time to decide how much they want to bid.”

  “Would they pay?” asked Bertie. “Did your mum and dad pay for you?”

  Ranald nodded. “Yes. I think I was quite expensive, and that’s how I got a dad who’s got lots of money. He took some of the money out of the safe and used it to adopt me. He’s still got lots left, though.”

  “I don’t mind if they don’t pay,” said Bertie. “As long as they’re nice.”

  “It would be jolly funny if your mummy was looking at eBay and adopted you without knowing that it was you!” said Ranald. He looked at Bertie. “It is your mummy, isn’t it? She’s the problem, isn’t she?”

  Bertie looked down at the floor. “Maybe,” he said.

  “Tofu says she’s a cow,” said Ranald. “Is that true, Bertie?”

  Bertie kept his eyes fixed to the floor. “No,” he said. “She isn’t.”

  “Maybe she’s almost a cow,” suggested Ranald helpfully. “And do you know something, Bertie? We could put you on eBay right now. We’ve got a computer downstairs and it’s always on. I know how to do it.”

  Bertie’s heart gave a leap. “Do you think we could, Ranald?”

  “Of course we can, Bertie. Let’s go right now.”

  Ranald Braveheart Macpherson led Bertie downstairs. From the kitchen there came the sound of his parent’s voices. “They always drink after dinner,” said Ranald. “They drink loads of wine, Bertie. They won’t trouble us.”

  They went into a room which seemed to be used as a workroom of some sort. In the corner was a computer, the screen glowing with a dancing screen-saver made up of little bursts of light. Ranald sat himself at the keyboard and typed in a few words. Immediately the dancing lights disappeared and a page of text and graphics appeared. “That’s eBay,” said Ranald. “Now all I have to do is to type in my dad’s password and we can put you on, Bertie. What would you like me to say?”

  Bertie thought for a moment. It would be best, he decided, to be modest, as people could surely see through exaggerated claims. “Scottish boy available for adoption,” he dictated. “Will behave well if adopted by nice people. Speaks Italian.”

  “You’d better say something about where you are,” suggested Ranald. “And maybe a bit about where you’d like to live. That would be helpful.”

  “Edinburgh area,” continued Bertie. “Would prefer Glasgow, especially Bearsden if at all possible, but not fussy.”

  “That’s very wise,” said Ranald, as he typed in the details. “They don’t like fussy people trying to get themselves adopted.”

  “I won’t be fussy,” said Bertie.

  “Good,” said Ranald. “But I think I should also add non-smoker. They put that sort of thing in these days.”

  “Good idea,” said Bertie.

  “And now,” said Ranald Braveheart Macpherson, “I push the button! See – that’s you, Bertie!”

  30. Angus Lordie and Cyril Visit Moray Place

  That Saturday morning Angus Lordie, accompanied by his dog, Cyril, went to visit Matthew and Elspeth in their lower ground floor flat in Moray Place. There were several reasons for this visit: Angus had not yet seen the new flat and was eager to see it, and another reason was that on a visit to Big Lou’s he had picked up the feeling that not all was well.

  “Any news of Matthew?” he had asked Big Lou as she steamed the milk for his coffee.

  Big Lou had barely turned round. “Who?”

  “Matthew,” repeated Angus, raising his voice in case the hissing sound of the steam was preventing Big Lou from hearing.

  “Oh him. No.”

  Big Lou’s dismissive tone had warned him that something was not right.

  “It must be hard for him,” Angus persevered. “Having triplets can’t be easy.”

  Big Lou made a snorting sound. “Aye, for women. Makes no difference for men.”

  Angus raised an eyebrow. “Even for men. I remember when Cyril’s puppies arrived – there were six of them, dumped on my doorstep by that ridiculous woman – I could barely cope. And that’s puppies. Babies are so much more difficult, I believe.”

  “Aye, for women,” repeated Big Lou.

  Angus pretended not to have heard. “He’s a very hands-on father, I should imagine. A lot of fathers are hands-on these days.”

  Big Lou passed the cup of coffee across the counter. “Aye, the men are hands-on all right. That’s what leads to bairns in the first place. Then they’re pretty smartly hands-off when the bairns arrive.”

  Angus affected a laugh. “Steady on, Lou! That’s a bit hard. Not all men …”

  He was not allowed to finish. “Ninety-nine per cent of them,” said Big Lou. “And you can tell that dug of yours to stop staring at me.”

  Angus looked down at Cyril, who was seated at his feet. It was true that Cyril was staring at Big Lou, but he was not staring in an aggressive way; it was more of an inquisitive, slightly surprised look. Cyril was very good at picking up human feelings – as many dogs are – and he could tell when there was tension in the air. That was what was happening now, Angus thought: Cyril could sense the hostility. And like children, who will blame themselves for what goes wrong in the adult world, dogs can think that it is something they have done that has led to ill-feeling.

  Without bothering to sit down, Angus drained his coffee cup at the counter. “Well, I must dash, Lou. It’s been very pleasant talking to you.”

  Big Lou said nothing.

  Angus kept up the cheerful tone. “I thought I might just pop over to see how Matthew and Elspeth are doing. I’ll give them your regards, shall I?”

  “Her,” muttered Big Lou.

  Angus took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped a speck of cappuccino foam from his lip. “Well, there we are, Cyril. Time to hit the road.”

  Walking along Great King Street, Angus reflected on his unusual and rather uncomfortable encounter with Big Lou. As a bachelor – and I am still that, he thought, even if my bachelor days are numbered – he knew that women could have their moods, but he had never seen Big Lou in quite such a negative frame of mind. Had there been some dis -agreement between her and Matthew, and if so, what could it possibly be? Of course the two of them had never quite seen eye-to-eye on many subjects – Big Lou tended to the conservative view of things while Matthew was somewhat mo
re liberal in his outlook – but they had always agreed to differ and the discussion between them had been good-natured. Perhaps there had been some particular disagreement – one that had gone beyond the bounds of banter; but it was still unusual, he thought, for Big Lou to nurse a grudge over something like that.

  The situation was no clearer in his mind by the time he reached Moray Place. Finding the right house, he pressed the bell, noting the elegant brass numerals screwed into the door. There was an expensive air to the houses here – something that went beyond the solidity and prosperity of the rest of the New Town.

  Matthew greeted him warmly, bending down to pat Cyril, who licked his hand enthusiastically.

  “Nice place this,” said Angus as they made their way into the entrance hall. “These basement flats can be very comfortable, can’t they?”

  Matthew shook a finger. “Lower ground floor, please!”

  Angus laughed. “Of course. Sorry.”

  From somewhere within the flat there came the sound of a crying baby. “Ah,” said Angus. “That must be Tobermory … or Rognvald … or perhaps Fergus.”

  Angus expected his joke to be appreciated, but Matthew did not seem to find it amusing. “Oh, I wish I knew,” he said. “You see, they had these bracelet things and I took them off and then …” He faltered, his voice breaking up.

  Angus looked at him with alarm. “Are you all right, Matthew?”

  Matthew shook his head. “Not really.”

  Angus laid a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go and sit down. Then tell me what’s going on.”

  They went into the kitchen, where Matthew gestured for Angus to sit on one of the high bar stools.

  “I’m at the end of my tether,” said Matthew. “We’re finding it really hard to cope.”

  “I can imagine,” said Angus. “You must be worked off your feet.”

  “We’ve got somebody coming,” Matthew went on. “There’s this outfit called Domestic Solutions and I’ve been in touch with them. We’re getting an au pair – but she’s got to come from Denmark and won’t be here until next week. In the meantime the boys are staying awake and Elspeth and I are just really shattered … I mean so shattered that we don’t really know what’s going on. I’m not exaggerating …”

  “Of course you’re not,” said Angus.

  “And then there’s been a row with Big Lou. I don’t know how it started, but it was pretty bad, and I said … well, I said something rather unkind, but she’d driven me to it, I’m afraid – you know how she can say things that make you feel you have no choice but to respond in kind. Well, that’s what happened.” He paused. “And now I’m banned.”

  Angus shook his head in disbelief. “Banned? From Big Lou’s? That’s ridiculous.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Then go and apologise. Simple.”

  31. Forgiveness

  How do you forgive somebody who refuses to see you? Angus walked back along Heriot Row, thinking of Matthew’s dilemma. Most Catch-22s, he decided, were not real Catch-22s, except, of course, for the one involved in the obtaining of an actor’s union card. Angus had heard of this famous example from a friend who had a stage-struck son. This young man had graduated from drama school in Glasgow, hoping to work as an actor. For that he needed a union card, but in order to get the card he needed to have worked professionally in the theatre. And he could not do that without the card.

  How did new actors begin? As the rear section of a pantomime horse, perhaps, slipping onto the stage unseen? That was absurd. Sir Laurence Olivier and Sir Ian McKellen must have started somewhere in the theatre, but surely not in pantomime. They started as Hamlet, presumably.

  Of course there was no such difficulty in Matthew’s case. He may be banned from entering Big Lou’s, but that did not mean that he was physically prevented from entering the premises. It would be different if he had been excluded from one of those bars on Lothian Road – those dives at the doors of which stood the tough-looking bouncers, bodybuilders to a man, with short haircuts and faces untroubled by metaphysical doubt. If they banned you from their bars they meant it, and it would be impossible to cross the threshold. But Big Lou’s was hardly a Lothian Road bar, and all that Matthew had to do was to go in and make his apology. And that was what he had eventually persuaded Matthew to do – though not that day.

  “I cannot leave Elspeth with all these babies,” he had said. “Some other time soon. But please, Angus, will you speak to her first and make sure she doesn’t bite my head off? You know what she’s like.”

  Angus had agreed to do this and now turned off down Dundas Street to complete his mission of reconciliation. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” he said to Cyril. “And that means us, I suppose.”

  Cyril looked up at his master and smiled, his single gold tooth flashing in the sunlight. Cyril had an extraordinary ability to convey agreement, and he always seemed to agree with what Angus said. The gold tooth, although highly unusual in a dog, was not an affectation; it had been placed in Cyril’s mouth by one of Angus’s fellow members of the Scottish Arts Club, a sociable dentist, who had been sufficiently proud of his achievement to send a photograph of it to the British Dental Journal. This generous gesture on his part had been rewarded with a letter threatening him with prosecution for illegally practising veterinary medicine.

  “Such pomposity,” he had complained to Angus. “These London types have absolutely no sense of humour. What do they expect people to do if their dog’s got a sore tooth? You pull it out. I just filled in the gap with a bit of gold I had lying around. What a fuss about nothing!”

  “The trouble with this country,” Angus had replied, “is that we are utterly surrounded by busybodies trying to stop us doing things. Or telling us what to do.” He had recently seen a large illuminated sign on the road between Edingurgh and Stirling urging motorists to drive carefully if visibility was bad. Of course people should do that, but did the State really need to tell them that? If you had a driving licence you would have learned this; and if you had a modicum of common sense you would remember it. But Big Brother, with his ubiquitous closed-circuit cameras – which now monitored, it seemed, every square inch of public space – and his condescending imprecations and warnings, was everywhere. And signs telling one to go slowly in the dark or in fog irritated Angus almost as much as the signs that warned people not to approach cliff edges. In his view, it was up to the individual whether or not to approach a cliff edge; it was not the Government’s business.

  Remembering this now, Angus put state paternalism out of his mind. Big Lou, he could see, was in, and she looked up sharply as he entered the café.

  “You again,” she said.

  “Indeed,” said Angus. “And what a warm welcome!”

  Big Lou ignored this. “Coffee?”

  Angus shook his head. “I come as a peacemaker. I come, therefore, in peace.”

  From behind her counter, Big Lou eyed him suspiciously.

  “That’s what they said to those poor North American Indians,” she said. “And look what that led to.”

  Angus smiled. “It led to the United States,” he said. “It led to a fairly comfortable life for their modern descendants. Pickup trucks and antibiotics.”

  Big Lou narrowed her eyes. “And the loss of their culture,” she said.

  “My people were Gaels,” said Angus. “They knew all about that. But I don’t know whether we should really go there, Lou. I’ve come to ask you to accept Matthew’s apology.”

  Big Lou put down her cloth. “Couldn’t he come himself?”

  “He wanted to,” said Angus. “And he will. It’s just that he has his hands a bit tied with the triplets.”

  Big Lou looked down at the surface of her counter. It was always spotless, but she still polished it. “Why should I forgive him?” she asked.

  Angus met her gaze. “Because it’s your duty,” he said.

  “Why?”

  He made an expansive gesture with his ha
nds – one that implied the justification for forgiveness was just too large to be explained.

  “We have to forgive people,” he said, “because it’s cruel not to do so. And you wouldn’t want to be cruel, would you, Lou?”

  She would not; he knew it.

  “He said something very … very hurtful,” said Lou.

  “I know,” said Angus. “People say things. But they don’t always mean them. And even if they do, they can feel sorry. Matthew feels sorry.”

  “All right,” said Lou. “I’ll forgive him.”

  Angus, relieved, reached out across the counter to take Big Lou’s hand. Nobody had done that before – and certainly not Angus – and she was taken aback. Angus was surprised too and held her hand only for a moment or two. Forgiveness, he remembered somebody remarking to him, is like a balm applied to a wound, and stops the pain in much the same way.

  32. Matching Scots

  Pat was late for morning coffee that day. A customer had come into the gallery and had spent an inordinate amount of time admiring – and eventually buying – a Bellany study of East Lothian fishing boats, seagulls, and what appeared to be a puffin. Or possibly buying: the red dot that had been put below the painting was only a half one, indicating serious interest but not actual commitment. It was the same as the dubious practice of houses being described as under offer: a half red dot on a house could be very quickly peeled off if somebody came along with a better offer.

  Pat was pleased with her half-sale which, she suspected, would become firm later that day. She had already informed Matthew, who had congratulated her, and who had revealed that there were another four Bellanys of fishing boats in the storeroom.

  “He’s very productive,” he said. “Which is remarkable, as there are so few fishing boats left. I’ve wondered whether Creative Scotland could buy a few and keep them afloat – not for fishing, of course, but for the sake of art.”

  Pat thought that this was a very helpful suggestion. “I gather that the civic authorities in Naples hang washing out of windows every morning for much the same reason. It’s so important for artists.”