The Unbearable Lightness of Scones: A 44 Scotland Street Novel

by Alexander McCall Smith

  ‘I’m looking forward to seeing your books, Lou,’ he said, as they started to climb the stairs to her flat, which was on the top floor.

  Lou nodded. ‘There are a lot of them,’ she said. She paused. ‘I suppose, though, that the Pretender will be in. He hardly ever gets up until halfway through the afternoon.’

  With all the morning’s excitement, Angus had forgotten about the Pretender, whom Big Lou was sheltering on behalf of her Jacobite boyfriend.

  ‘How long is he staying with you, Lou?’ he asked. ‘Surely they don’t expect you to put him up for much longer?’

  Big Lou sighed. She explained that she was not sure. Robbie had talked of a short time, but the Pretender seemed to have settled in and showed no signs of going off to rally his supporters, which is what she thought had been the original plan.

  ‘He’s awfully difficult, Angus,’ said Lou, as she fished for her keys. ‘He doesn’t really speak any English, and so Robbie communicates with him in French. I have a bit of French too, but he seems to ignore me whenever I say anything to him. It’s as if he doesn’t understand what I’m saying.’

  Big Lou opened her front door and ushered Angus into the flat. A light was on in the hall, and from the kitchen there came the sound of voices. She looked surprised.

  ‘Robbie,’ she whispered. ‘Robbie and the Pretender.’

  They crossed the hall and entered the kitchen. Angus saw Robbie first, sitting with his back to him, at the kitchen table. On the other side, a slighter figure, wearing a purple dressing gown, was gesticulating angrily. When Big Lou and Angus entered the kitchen, Robbie turned round and the Pretender stopped gesticulating.

  ‘I’ve brought Angus back for lunch,’ Big Lou explained. ‘We saw a terrible thing outside the coffee bar. A man died.’

  Robbie looked sympathetic. ‘Oh. What happened?’

  ‘Hah!’ said the Pretender. ‘Un homme est mort. Bof! Alors? Et moi? Ça ne me regarde pas.’ (Hah! A man died. Bof ! And then? And me? That has nothing to do with me.)

  Big Lou glanced at him and whispered to Angus. ‘He’s very self-centred. ’

  Robbie rose to his feet. ‘There is a bit of a crisis here, Lou,’ he said. ‘The Pretender went out this morning.’

  ‘That makes a change,’ said Big Lou. ‘Normally he spends the morning in bed.’

  ‘Well, not this morning,’ said Robbie. ‘He went up to the High Street. And he got involved in an incident in one of those tourist shops that sell tartans. Some row about Royal Stuart tartan. They called the police and the Pretender ran away.’

  Angus had difficulty not smiling. History, it seemed, had a way of repeating itself. ‘So now he’s on the run from the authorities,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Robbie. ‘And he wants to go up to the Outer Islands. He wants to get away and rally his supporters.’

  ‘Well, that must be why he came in the first place,’ said Angus. ‘And it would have been rather disappointing if he had not become a wanted man. Hiding in the heather is all very well, but it must seem a bit pointless if one is not actually being pursued by anybody.’

  Robbie glowered at Angus. ‘It’s not a joke,’ he said reproachfully. ‘This is dead serious. The Hanoverians will stop at nothing.’

  Angus tried to look serious. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t make light of these things.’

  The Pretender now rose to his feet. He glared suspiciously at Angus and then addressed Robbie.

  ‘Aux îles,’ he said. ‘Nous n’avons qu’une seule destination. Les îles.’ (To the Isles! We have a single destination. The Isles.) To the islands, thought Angus. Well, at least there were reliable ferries these days, which is more than could be said for the Scotland of Charles Edward Stuart.

  71. A Threat from Irene

  ‘Now then, Bertie,’ said Irene Pollock, as they walked up the hill towards Queen Street. ‘As you know, Dr Fairbairn has gone to Aberdeen.’

  Bertie nodded gravely. He had been thrilled by the news that Dr Fairbairn was leaving, but his hopes of being released from psychotherapy had very quickly been dashed.

  ‘But don’t worry,’ his mother went on. ‘He has not left you floundering.’

  Bertie thought that there was no danger of his floundering. He had never seen the point of his weekly psychotherapy session; nothing that Dr Fairbairn said had ever changed anything for Bertie, and now that he was going to see Dr Fairbairn’s successor, the same would apply.

  ‘Is Carstairs near Aberdeen, Mummy?’ Bertie asked.

  ‘Goodness me, Bertie,’ said Irene, throwing him a curious glance. ‘Why should you want to know about Carstairs?’

  Bertie did not answer this question. He knew that the State Hospital was at Carstairs, and he knew too that this is where Dr Fairbairn was likely to end up. There was so much proof of his instability that it would not need any testimony of Bertie’s to make the case for the psychotherapist’s detention. You only have to listen to him for five minutes, thought Bertie, and you know that all is not right with Dr Fairbairn.

  ‘They’ve made Dr Fairbairn a professor,’ said Irene. ‘That is a great honour for him, and so he felt that he had to leave Edinburgh to take it up.’

  Bertie thought for a moment. ‘You’ll miss him, Mummy, won’t you?’

  ‘We shall all miss him, Bertie,’ said Irene carefully. ‘Dr Fairbairn’s move is a great loss to the psychotherapeutic community here in Edinburgh.’

  Bertie reflected on this. He would not miss Dr Fairbairn at all. But this was not a time, he thought, to be mean-spirited.

  ‘And it’s a pity that he won’t get to know Ulysses,’ said Bertie. ‘Ulysses looks so like Dr Fairbairn, Mummy. Have you noticed that too?’

  Irene brushed the question aside. ‘Aren’t you looking forward to meeting the therapist who’s taken over from him?’ she asked. ‘I’m sure that you’ll get on very well with him.’

  Bertie looked down at the pavement. It was important to be careful not to step on any of the lines. Vigilance was all. One did not see the bears, but that did not mean that they were not there; the Queen Street Gardens provided an ideal habitat for bears, Bertie felt.

  ‘Do I really need to see him, Mummy?’ he asked. ‘I’ve stopped doing naughty things. Wasn’t that why you sent me to Dr Fairbairn in the first place? Because I’d set fire to Daddy’s Guardian while he was reading it? Wasn’t that the reason?’

  Irene looked down at Bertie with disapproval. ‘What’s past is past, Bertie,’ she said. ‘We don’t need to go over those old things. No, your psychotherapy sessions are designed to help you understand yourself.’

  Bertie thought about this. ‘But I do understand myself, Mummy,’ he said. ‘I don’t see why I need psychotherapy for that.’

  ‘Well, you do,’ said Irene. ‘There are some things that you need that you don’t know you need. And it is Mummy’s business to make sure you get those things. Later on, Bertie, you’ll thank me.’

  Bertie said nothing. In the most profound and hidden corners of his soul, he wished that his mother would just go away. But at the same time, he dreaded the prospect of losing her, and felt that even to entertain such thoughts was dangerous. It was like believing in Santa Claus after the time when such beliefs become untenable: one did not want to relinquish the belief lest the loss of belief had dire consequences, such as no presents. So one believed just that little bit longer.

  But now they were on Queen Street and close to the door that led up to Dr Fairbairn’s consulting rooms.

  ‘Will Ulysses come for psychotherapy too?’ asked Bertie, as they climbed the stairs. ‘I think that he will really need to understand himself.’

  Irene laughed. ‘Why do you say that, Bertie?’

  ‘Because when he gets bigger he might wonder why he looks different from me,’ said Bertie.

  ‘But that’s nothing unusual,’ said Irene. ‘Members of families often look different from one another.’

  Bertie conceded that this was true. Olive had a sister who looked
quite unlike her, and Hiawatha and his brother certainly did not look remotely like one another. But was it not unusual, he pointed out, for a baby to look like the mummy’s friend?

  Irene stopped. She crouched down so that she was at eye-level with Bertie. ‘Bertie, carissimo,’ she whispered. ‘Ulysses’ daddy is Daddy. I’ve told you that before. It’s just a coincidence that he looks like Dr Fairbairn. These things happen - and it doesn’t make it very easy for the mummy if her little boy says things that some people might find a little bit strange. So, never, ever talk about it again, please.’

  Bertie stared at his mother, wide-eyed.

  ‘I mean it, Bertie,’ she said severely. ‘If you mention it once more, just once more, then . . .’ She paused. Bertie was watching her closely. What sanction, he wondered, did his mother have? He had no treats that could be taken away. He received no pocket money that could be cut. There was nothing that his mother could do.

  Irene glanced over her shoulder. ‘If you say one more word about it,’ she whispered, ‘Mummy will smack you really hard. Understand?’

  Bertie reeled under the shock of this threat. His parents had never raised a hand to him, not once, and now this. He was stunned into silence, just as Little Hans must have been when, as reported by Freud, his mother threatened to castrate him.

  ‘So,’ said Irene, standing up again. ‘That puts an end to that.’

  Nothing more was said as they made their way up the last flight of stairs and entered the consulting rooms. Bertie noticed that the brass plate, which had previously announced that these were the premises of Dr Hugo Fairbairn, had been replaced with one on which the name Dr Roger Sinclair PhD had been inscribed.

  Bertie sat down in the waiting room while his mother rang the bell. He was still smarting from his mother’s unexpected threat when Dr Sinclair appeared in the doorway and led Irene inside. Bertie reached for a copy of Scottish Field on the waiting room table. Scottish Field - his consolation, his reminder that there was a world in which psychotherapy, yoga and Italian lessons did not exist; where fishing and climbing hills and freedom thrived; a Scotland quite different from his own. Yes, it was there, but it was tantalisingly out of reach, and nothing seemed to bring it nearer.

  72. The New Psychotherapist

  It was fifteen minutes before Irene looked out of the door of the consulting room and called Bertie in. He set aside Scottish Field, sighed, and went to join his mother.

  ‘Bertie,’ said Irene, ‘this is Dr Sinclair. He wants you to call him Roger.’

  Bertie looked at the man on the other side of the desk. He was younger than Dr Fairbairn and he had a much nicer face, thought Bertie. It was a pity, he said to himself, that Ulysses did not look like him, rather than like Dr Fairbairn. Perhaps the next baby - if his mother had another one - would look like Dr Sinclair. Bertie wondered if he should say this to his mother, but decided that it would perhaps trigger another curious threat; for some reason she seemed very sensitive about these things. Poor Mummy - if only she had more to do with her time; if only she would get herself a hobby . . . he stopped. A depressing thought had occurred to him: I am her hobby.

  Dr Sinclair was smiling - Dr Fairbairn very rarely smiled - and Bertie was pleased to see that his jacket was quite unlike Dr Fairbairn’s blue linen one.

  ‘So, Bertie,’ the therapist began, signalling for Irene and Bertie to sit down. ‘I’m Roger Sinclair and I’m going to be helping you in the same way as Dr Fairbairn did. I know, of course, that you’ll be missing Dr Fairbairn.’

  I’m not, thought Bertie, and was about to say that, as politely as he could, when Irene intervened.

  ‘Yes, he is,’ she said. ‘But Bertie understands. And he’s happy that Dr Fairbairn has got a chair at last.’

  Bertie looked at his mother in astonishment. What was this? Had Dr Fairbairn not always had a chair?

  Dr Sinclair nodded. ‘Dr Fairbairn left some notes, Bertie,’ he went on. ‘So I know all about the little chats that you and he had. Did you find them helpful, Bertie?’

  ‘Yes, he did,’ said Irene. ‘Bertie found them very helpful indeed.’

  Dr Sinclair glanced at Irene. ‘Good. But what do you think, Bertie?’

  ‘He’s very much looking forward to working with you,’ said Irene. ‘Aren’t you, Bertie?’

  Bertie nodded miserably. He looked out of the window. The tops of the trees in Queen Street were moving - there must be a strong wind; strong enough to fly a kite really high, if one had a kite, that is, and Bertie did not. He wanted a kite. And he wanted a balsawood aeroplane with a rubber band that you wound up and then, when you let go, it drove the propeller. Tofu had had one of those and had let Bertie look at it. He was very proud of it and cried when Larch stamped on it and broke it. Even Tofu could cry; Bertie had never seen Tofu cry before. He cried, and when Olive saw him crying she crowed; she jeered. Tofu spat at her. It was always like that, Bertie thought. People did unkind things to one another, and he did not like it.

  Dr Sinclair was looking at Bertie. ‘Your mummy tells me that you’re at the Steiner School,’ he said. ‘I had a friend who was at a Steiner School, you know. He liked it a lot. Are you happy at school, Bertie? Have you got lots of friends there?’

  ‘He’s very happy,’ said Irene. ‘The Steiner School is an excellent school. And there are friends there, aren’t there, Bertie? Olive, for example.’

  Bertie looked at his mother. It was his mother’s idea that Olive was his friend, not his. But he did not think that there was any point in trying to persuade her otherwise, and so he merely nodded, and then looked at the floor.

  ‘Olive?’ said Dr Sinclair, his voice rising in pitch. ‘That’s a nice name. Tell me about Olive, Bertie.’

  ‘She’s a very nice little girl,’ said Irene. ‘Bertie has her to play from time to time. I know her mother quite well. We go to lectures at the Institute of Human Relations together. You’ll no doubt be in touch with them, once you get settled in.’

  Dr Sinclair was silent. He looked at Bertie for a few moments, and while he did so he fiddled with a pen he was holding. Then he turned to Irene. ‘I think that perhaps Bertie and I are ready to have a little chat, just the two of us,’ he said evenly.

  Irene frowned. ‘I’m very happy to stay,’ she said. ‘This first time, you know. It may be better for me to stay. I’m sure that’s what Bertie would like. Bertie . . .’

  Dr Sinclair rose to his feet. ‘That’s very good of you,’ he said. ‘But I do think that it’s important that we have that little chat à deux. So, if you don’t mind, Mrs Pollock, you can sit in the waiting room. I’ll call you if we need you.’

  Irene had shown no sign of rising from her seat, but Dr Sinclair was now standing directly behind her, gently tugging at the back of the chair, as if to dislodge her.

  ‘Very well,’ said Irene, her voice rather strained. ‘I shall wait outside.’

  Once Irene was out of the room, Dr Sinclair returned to his chair and smiled encouragingly at Bertie.

  ‘You know where I come from, Bertie?’ he asked. ‘Australia.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Bertie politely.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dr Sinclair. ‘You’d love Australia, Bertie. Have you ever seen a kangaroo?’

  Bertie had seen one at the zoo, when they had gone there on a school trip. Irene, who did not agree with zoos, had always refused to take him.

  ‘I saw a kangaroo at the zoo,’ he said. ‘I really like them.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dr Sinclair. ‘I like them. But you have to be careful with roos, Bertie. The bigger ones can be quite dangerous.’

  ‘I’ve heard that,’ said Bertie. ‘I’ve heard that they can kick you quite hard.’

  Dr Sinclair looked at him with interest. This, he thought, is an articulate, likeable little boy.

  ‘And this Olive?’ said Dr Sinclair suddenly. ‘I bet you don’t really like her.’

  ‘No,’ said Bertie, and then, relenting, as he was a kind child, he said, ‘Well, I like her a tiny
little bit, but not very much.’

  Dr Sinclair smiled. ‘Some girls can be quite bossy, can’t they?’ he said.

  Bertie relaxed. He was beginning to like Dr Sinclair. ‘Yes, they can,’ he said.

  ‘And some mummies too,’ said Dr Sinclair very quietly, but just loudly enough for Bertie to hear.

  Bertie hesitated. Then he nodded.

  Dr Sinclair looked at Bertie. You poor little boy, he thought. You haven’t got a mother - you’ve got a personal trainer.

  73. Of Men and Make-Up

  The Braid Hills Hotel, the scene some years earlier of that disastrous South Edinburgh Conservative Ball at which numbers had been insufficient to make up an eightsome (but how things had changed), was now to be the setting of one of the strangest dramas to be enacted in Edinburgh for a considerable time. A few days after Angus had called at Big Lou’s flat and had first met the Pretender, Lou announced to him that at long last her unwelcome guest was moving on and that there was to be a farewell ceremony for him that very night.

  ‘It’s a ceremony, not a party,’ she told him when he and Matthew dropped in for mid-morning coffee. ‘Robbie’s quite particular about that. Historical occasions involve ceremonies, not parties.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that, Lou,’ said Matthew. ‘There must have been some parties to mark big events. The millennium celebration down in London was a big one. They had a party in the Dome, didn’t they?’

  ‘That ridiculous tent,’ said Angus. ‘And can you imagine the sort of people they had at the party? Every exhibitionist, superficial crooner in the business. Football players, and worse.’

  Matthew thought for a moment. He would rather have enjoyed being there, he decided, but he was not sure if he should say so. And anyway, Angus had marked views on these things and nothing that Matthew could say would change them.

  ‘I knew somebody who went to it,’ said Big Lou suddenly. ‘A very senior civil servant. He sometimes comes in for coffee in the late afternoon. On his way home. He told me that he went to that party.’