The Unbearable Lightness of Scones: A 44 Scotland Street Novel

by Alexander McCall Smith

  ‘Cyril?’ asked Domenica, putting an arm around Angus’s shoulder.

  Angus nodded miserably.

  ‘Oh, dear Angus,’ said Domenica. ‘He was such a fine dog. One of the great dogs of his generation. An example to . . . to other dogs.’

  The eulogy was premature; Angus was shaking his head. ‘Is, if you don’t mind. Is, not was.’

  Domenica was momentarily taken aback. While she might have described Cyril in those glowing terms once he was safely dead, she was not sure if she would compliment him thus during his lifetime. In fact, she thought rather the opposite; Cyril, in her view, was distinctly malodorous and somewhat odd, with that ridiculous gold tooth of his and his habit of winking at people. No, there was something rum about Cyril; and I have to use the word rum, thought Domenica - there is no other word in the English language with that precise nuance of meaning. Cyril was rum and Angus was . . . well perhaps very slightly rum - sometimes. Perhaps we needed a word, she wondered, not quite as strong as rum, which might be used for people who are just a little bit . . . again the language failed, thereby underlining the need for the elusive word. The lexicon of drinks might be dipped into for this purpose: if not rum then gin? No. Gin already had its metaphorical burden, at least when linked with tonic. Somebody who was a bit G and T was the sort of person who hung about golf club bars, a bit flashy. Port? That was more promising perhaps.

  Angus had politely shrugged her arm off his shoulder and was now sitting at her kitchen table, looking at the kettle.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘You’re very kind. Thank you.’ He paused for a moment before continuing. ‘Cyril had an affair, you see.’

  Domenica looked at Angus wide-eyed. ‘Well, I suppose that these things happen. But what’s wrong with that? Don’t you approve of his choice?’

  ‘A very brief affair,’ said Angus. ‘It lasted about four minutes. With a bitch he met in Drummond Place Gardens. I couldn’t stop it, really. And then she became pregnant.’

  Domenica suppressed the urge to laugh. ‘Well, I suppose that’s what happens. People have affairs and . . . well, biology takes the shine off.’

  ‘Well, the puppies have been delivered to me,’ Angus blurted out. ‘In a box. Six of them.’

  Domenica, who was in the middle of filling the kettle, stopped what she was doing. ‘To you?’ she asked. ‘To the flat?’

  Angus sighed. ‘They’re in my studio at the moment. I’ve put them in there. Cyril was delighted to meet them.’

  Domenica reached for the coffee jar and ladled several spoonfuls into the cafetière. She tried to imagine what it would be like to have seven dogs in one flat, even in a flat the size of Angus’s.

  ‘Well I don’t know what to say,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to get rid of them. Obviously.’

  Angus looked up from the table. ‘How? How can I get rid of six puppies?’

  ‘Put them in The Scotsman. You see dogs for sale there.’

  It was clear to Angus that Domenica knew nothing about the world of dogs. ‘Those are pedigree dogs,’ he explained patiently. ‘Cyril is, of course, a pedigree dog, but the mother . . . Well, she’s multicultural. Half spaniel, I think, with a dash of schnauzer and goodness knows what else. Nobody wants funny-looking dogs any more.’

  ‘Well, take them to the dogs’ home then,’ said Domenica briskly. ‘That’s why we have dogs’ homes.’ She paused. ‘We do have a dogs’ home in Edinburgh, don’t we?’

  ‘We do,’ answered Angus. ‘And I’ve already been in touch. I telephoned them straight away. They’re chock-a-block full at the moment, and they told me that I should try to find homes for them myself. So that’s not on.’

  Domenica resumed her making of the coffee. Then, suddenly she turned to him and said, ‘I don’t want a puppy, Angus.’

  He looked at her, wounded. ‘I wasn’t going to . . .’

  ‘Well, I just thought I’d make that clear from the start,’ she said. ‘I don’t actively dislike dogs, but I would have to draw the line at owning one.’

  Well, that answers that, thought Angus. He had been planning to ask Domenica to take one, but that was not the reason he had come here. He had come here for sympathy and advice, and all he was getting was a warning and a cup of Domenica’s coffee, which never tasted very good anyway and was certainly not as good as the coffee made by . . . He stopped. Big Lou! Big Lou was all heart and what heart would not be melted by a puppy . . . or perhaps even two?

  9. Scout’s Honour

  ‘You just sit there in the waiting room for a few minutes, Bertie,’ said Irene Pollock, adding, ‘like a good boy.’ Bertie said nothing, but sat down on the chair that he normally sat on during their weekly visits to Dr Fairbairn. He was not sure why his mother had asked him to sit like a good boy; how exactly did a good boy sit, he wondered, and, perhaps more puzzlingly, how did a bad boy sit?

  Bertie was not sure if he was a good boy. He tried to do his best, but he was not sure if that was enough. Did good boys go out of their way to do kind things for other people, as cubs and scouts were meant to do? Bertie was always picking up odd books and he had found one in the school library that dealt with the life of somebody called Baden-Powell. There was a picture of this Baden-Powell in the front of the book and Bertie had studied it with interest. Mr Baden-Powell was dressed in extraordinary shorts and a khaki shirt with a loop of thin rope tied round his shoulder and tucked into his top pocket. It was a very nice uniform, in Bertie’s view, and he wondered what one had to do to deserve it. Mr Baden-Powell, the book explained, had written a book called Scouting for Boys and had invented an exciting movement called the boy scout movement. Now there were branches of this movement all over the world, with cubs for small boys and scouts for older boys. Girls had their own branches called brownies and guides, but now, Bertie read, that had all been mixed up. That was a pity, Bertie thought, as it meant that Olive could join as well, which would spoil everything. Why could they not have something that was just for boys?

  He had borrowed this book from the school library and had taken it home to Scotland Street.

  ‘What’s that you’re reading, Bertie?’ his mother had asked when she had come into his room - without knocking, as usual - and had found her son stretched out on his bed, absorbed in a book.

  ‘It’s about Mr Baden-Powell, Mummy,’ said Bertie. ‘I’ve just got to the place where he’s fighting in the Matabele War and he’s thought it would be fun to make a club for boys who wanted to do that sort of thing.’

  Irene walked over to Bertie’s bed and took the book from him. ‘Let me see this,’ she said. ‘Now, Bertie . . .’

  She broke off as she read the offending text. ‘Baden-Powell was a very brave man. While taking part in the action to suppress the uprising in Matabeleland, he developed a series of skills suited to fighting in the bush. He learned a great deal from the trackers that the British Expeditionary Force used to hunt down the last of Mizilikazi’s warriors as they hid in the valleys and caves of the Matopos hills . . .’

  Really! She would have to speak to the school about allowing such literature in the library. Scouting for Boys indeed!

  ‘Now, Bertie,’ Irene began. ‘I’m going to have to take this book away. I’m sorry because, as you know, Mummy doesn’t believe in censorship, but there are limits. This is awful nonsense, Bertie, and I don’t think you should fill your mind with it.’

  ‘But, Mummy,’ protested Bertie. ‘The book says that Mr Baden-Powell was a good man. He was brave and he liked to help boys have fun.’

  Irene closed her eyes, a sign that Bertie knew well meant that her mind was resolutely made up. He had noticed it when she read something in the Guardian that she agreed with - which was the whole newspaper, he thought. She closed her eyes after reading the article.

  ‘Bertie,’ she began, ‘you must realise that this book is very much out of date. Nobody today thinks that this Baden-Powell was a good man. Au contraire. He was an imperialist, Bertie, somebody who went and t
ook other people’s countries. Poor Mizilikazi had every right to rise up against people like Baden-Powell.’ She paused. ‘Of course these things are very complicated when you’re only six, I know that. But an intelligent boy like you should be able to see them, Bertie. Scouting is a thoroughly bad thing. It’s very old-fashioned. ’

  ‘But why, Mummy?’ Bertie protested. ‘All this happened a long time ago. And cubs and scouts have lots of fun - the book says so. Look, let me show you the bit.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ snapped Irene, and then, more gently, ‘You see, Bertie, the problem is that these organisations appeal to a very primitive urge in boys. They make them want to pretend to be little hunters. They make them want to join together and exclude other people. They make them want to get dressed up in ridiculous uniforms, like Fascisti. That’s why Mummy thinks they’re a bad idea.’

  Bertie said nothing. The more his mother denigrated the activities of the boy scouts, the more desirable they seemed to him. Hunters! Uniforms! It would be such fun, he thought, to dress up and make one of those circles that he had seen pictured in the book. And they went camping too, which must be the most wonderful fun. There were photographs of boys standing about their tent while others made a camp fire. And then there was a picture of boys, all in their uniforms, sitting about their fire singing a song. The book gave some of the words of the song, ‘One man and his dog, went to mow a meadow . . .’ That sounded like a very exciting song, thought Bertie, so rich in meaning; and for a moment he imagined the man and his dog setting off to cut the grass in Drummond Place Gardens. And the man was Angus Lordie and the dog was Cyril, whom Bertie had always liked.

  But he knew that he would never be able to be a cub or a scout. There would not be time for it, for one thing, what with his Italian lessons, his yoga and his psychotherapy. Which was why he was now sitting in Dr Fairbairn’s waiting room while his mother went through for her private chat with the therapist before Bertie was called in. He knew that they were discussing him, and he had once tried to listen through the keyhole while his mother and Dr Fairbairn had talked. He had not been able to make out what they were saying, though, although he did hear mention of Melanie Klein’s name once or twice and something about avoidance, whatever that was. Then his mother muttered something about Bertie’s little brother, Ulysses. This was followed by silence.

  10. A Setback for the Bertie Project

  In the consulting room of Dr Hugo Fairbairn, the distinguished psychotherapist and author of Shattered to Pieces: Ego Dissolution in a Three-Year-Old Tyrant, Irene sat on the opposite side of the desk, staring at Dr Fairbairn uncomprehendingly.

  ‘A chair?’ she said, eventually. ‘A chair?’

  Dr Fairbairn beamed back at her. ‘I wanted you to be one of the first to know,’ he said. ‘I shall, of course, be writing to all my patients, and there may even be something in the press about it . . .’ he broke off, smiling in a self-deprecatory way. ‘Not that I’m newsworthy, of course, but the fact of the matter is that Aberdeen has decided to create the first chair of child psychotherapy at a Scottish university and, well, they’ve very kindly chosen me.’

  Irene struggled to pull herself together. ‘But why can’t you do this here in Edinburgh? What’s wrong with Edinburgh University or any of the other universities we’ve got here? Queen Margaret University - they go in for that sort of thing, don’t they? Health sciences and so on. Why don’t you be a professor there? Or Napier University? What about them? They’ve got that film school or whatever - they’re forward-looking.’

  Dr Fairbairn smiled. He appreciated such praise from Irene, but he wondered if she knew much about the mechanisms of getting a university chair. ‘It’s not that simple,’ he explained. ‘There’s nothing available in Edinburgh at the moment. Maybe some time in the future, but now . . . Well, it’s Aberdeen who have taken the step. And I must say I do feel somewhat flattered.’

  Irene decided to change tack. ‘Flattered by being offered a chair? Come now, Hugo, somebody of your eminence . . . A chair is not even a sideways move; you have far bigger fish to fry . . .’

  Dr Fairbairn frowned. Was it possible that Irene did not know what a singular honour it was to be asked to become a chair? What did she think chairs were for? Sitting in?

  ‘There will be a great deal for me to do in Aberdeen,’ he said slowly. ‘They would specifically like to raise their profile in psychotherapeutic studies. They know about . . .’ he paused, as if modesty prevented the mention of his book, but decided to continue, ‘Shattered to Pieces. It has, I believe, been used as a textbook in Aberdeen.’

  Irene snorted. ‘Aberdeen! What do they know in Aberdeen?’

  Dr Fairbairn’s expression now began to show signs of irritation. ‘A great deal, I would have thought,’ he said. ‘It is one of our most distinguished pre-Reformation universities. It is a very prestigious institution.’

  ‘Oh, I know all that,’ said Irene quickly. ‘It’s the place I was thinking of.’

  ‘And the city too,’ said Dr Fairbairn. ‘As a city, Aberdeen has an illustrious history. It’s a very significant place.’

  ‘And very cold too,’ Irene interjected.

  For a few moments nothing was said. Irene reached out and picked up a pencil that was lying on Dr Fairbairn’s desk. ‘Of course there are other considerations,’ she said, almost casually.

  Dr Fairbairn watched her. He said nothing.

  ‘I would have thought that you would have rather too many commitments in Edinburgh to leave,’ she said.

  He waited. Then, in a hesitant voice, ‘Such as?’

  ‘Oh, your practice?’ said Irene airily. ‘Your patients. Wee Fraser . . .’ She was not going to mention Bertie . . . yet.

  ‘Wee Fraser is no longer a patient,’ said Dr Fairbairn defensively. ‘He is a former patient with whom I have not had any dealings for some considerable time.’

  That was not true, of course, and he knew it; but by dealings he meant professional dealings, and the punch to the jaw that he had administered - in a moment of madness, and in response to being head-butted by the now adolescent Wee Fraser - on the Burdiehouse bus did not count as a professional dealing.

  Irene knew about his burden of guilt. She knew full well - because he had, in a moment of weakness, told her all about it - she knew of how he had gently smacked Wee Fraser when the boy, then three, had bitten him in the course of play therapy involving small farm animals. Dr Fairbairn had suggested to Fraser that the miniature pigs with which the small boy was playing (or, more correctly, enacting his inner psychic dramas) were upside down. Wee Fraser had obstinately insisted that the pigs’ legs should point upwards and, when corrected again by Dr Fairbairn, had bitten the psychotherapist. Anybody, even St Nicholas of Myra, the patron saint of children, might be tempted to slap a child in such circumstances - and Irene conceded that; indeed there was an entire school of psychotherapy, Cause-Effect Theory, which held that people needed to know that unpleasant consequences flowed from unpleasant acts. This theory, however, had been widely discredited, and Dr Fairbairn should never have raised a hand to the biting child. That was crystal clear. Psychotherapists did not slap their patients, and the metaphorical rucksack of guilt that Dr Fairbairn carried with him was entirely his own fault.

  ‘Well, Wee Fraser is neither here nor there,’ said Irene, adding, ‘perhaps.’ Irene’s knowledge of Dr Fairbairn’s guilt gave her some leverage over him; she would not want Wee Fraser to be completely forgotten.

  Dr Fairbairn said nothing. He was looking out of the window, in the direction of Aberdeen, which lay several hours to the north. There would be a great deal of psychopathology in Aberdeen, he imagined, but people might be unwilling to talk about it very much. If Californians were at one end of the spectrum of willingness to talk about personal problems, Aberdonians were at the other. It was a form of verbal retention, he thought; one did not want to part with the words unnecessarily. Words needed to be hoarded, at least in the verbal stage. He thought of a possib
le title for a paper, ‘Verbal Retention in a Cold Climate’. That was rather good, even if not as good as Shattered to Pieces, a title of which he was inordinately proud. It was quite in the league of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

  Irene was watching him look out of the window. She had not imagined that Bertie’s psychotherapy would come to a premature end and that she would be deprived of these comfortable conversations with this fascinating man in his wrinkle-resistant blue linen jacket. Suddenly she felt very lonely. Who would there be to talk to now? Her husband?

  Her words came out unbidden. ‘And what about Bertie? What about the Bertie project? Weren’t you going to write him up?’

  Before he could reply, she added, ‘And then there’s Ulysses.’

  11. A Spoiled Secret

  Matthew and Elspeth had left their wedding party in Moray Place Gardens not in a car, but on foot, which gave their going-away not only an intimate, but also a contemporary conservationist feel. Matthew, of course, was modest, and would have eschewed any ostentation; he ridiculed the appearance in the streets of Edinburgh of stretch limousines, and had no car himself, instead preferring to walk or take a bus wherever possible. For her part, Elspeth had a car, but only a small one, which had a permanently flat battery and was therefore little burden on the environment.

  They did not have far to walk. India Street, where Matthew - and now Elspeth - lived was only two blocks away, down Darnaway Street and along a small section of Heriot Row. They were to go there when they left the wedding party, now winding down after the ceilidh band had packed up their instruments and the dancing had stopped. Then, on the following day, they were to leave for their honeymoon, to a destination Matthew had kept steadfastly secret from Elspeth.

  When they reached the front door of his flat on the third floor, he fumbled for the key in the pocket of his kilt-jacket.

  ‘You should keep it in your sporran,’ said Elspeth, ‘along with all the other things that men keep in their sporrans.’