The World According to Bertie 4ss-4

by Alexander McCall Smith

  The World According to Bertie

  ( 44 Scotland Street - 4 )

  Alexander Mccall Smith

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  p r a i s e f o r t h e 4 4 s c o t l a n d s t r e e t s e r i e s

  “Irresistible. . . . Packed with the charming characters, piercing perceptions and shrewd yet generous humor that have become McCall Smith’s cachet.”

  — Chicago Sun-Times

  “Will make you feel as though you live in Edinburgh, if only for a short while, and it’s a fine place to visit indeed. . . . Long live the folks on Scotland Street.”

  — The Times-Picayune (New Orleans)

  “McCall Smith’s generous writing and dry humor, his gentleness and humanity, and his ability to evoke a place and a set of characters without caricature or condescen-sion have endeared his books . . . to readers.”

  — The New York Times

  “Entertaining and witty. . . . A sly send-up of society in Edinburgh.”

  — The Orlando Sentinel

  “Just about perfect. . . . Contains a healthy helping of McCall Smith’s patented charm.”

  — St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “Mr. McCall Smith, a fine writer, paints his hometown of Edinburgh as indelibly as he captures the sunniness of Africa. We can almost feel the mists as we tread the cobblestones.”

  — The Dallas Morning News

  Alexander McCall Smith

  THE WORLD

  ACCORDING

  TO BERTIE

  Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the international phenomenon The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, the Isabel Dalhousie series, the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series, and the 44 Scotland Street series. He is professor emeritus of medical law at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and has served on many national and international bodies concerned with bioethics. He was born in what is now known as Zimbabwe and he was a law professor at the University of Botswana. Visit his Web site at www.alexandermccallsmith.com.

  b o o k s b y

  a l e x a n d e r m c c a l l s m i t h i n t h e i s a b e l d a l h o u s i e s e r i e s The Sunday Philosophy Club

  Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

  The Right Attitude to Rain

  The Careful Use of Compliments

  The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday

  i n t h e n o . 1 l a d i e s ’ d e t e c t i v e a g e n c y s e r i e s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

  Tears of the Giraffe

  Morality for Beautiful Girls

  The Kalahari Typing School for Men

  The Full Cupboard of Life

  In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

  Blue Shoes and Happiness

  The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

  The Miracle at Speedy Motors

  i n t h e p o r t u g u e s e i r r e g u l a r v e r b s s e r i e s Portuguese Irregular Verbs

  The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs

  At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances i n t h e 4 4 s c o t l a n d s t r e e t s e r i e s 44 Scotland Street

  Espresso Tales

  Love Over Scotland

  The World According to Bertie

  The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa THE WORLD

  ACCORDING

  TO BERTIE

  THE WORLD

  ACCORDING

  TO BERTIE

  ANCHOR BOOKS

  A Division of Random House, Inc.

  New York

  FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, NOVEMBER 2008

  Copyright © 2007 by Alexander McCall Smith Illustrations copyright © 2007 by Iain McIntosh All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Originally published in Great Britain by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd., Edinburgh, in 2007.

  Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book is excerpted from a series that originally appeared in the Scotsman newspaper.

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948–

  The world according to Bertie by / Alexander McCall Smith.

  —1st Anchor Books ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-45522-2

  1. Apartment houses—Fiction. 2. Edinburgh (Scotland)—Social life and customs—Fiction. i. Title.

  PR6063.C326W67 2008

  823'.914—dc22

  2008028140

  www.anchorbooks.com

  v1.0

  This book is for

  Derek and Dilly Emslie

  Preface

  The 44 Scotland Street books, of which The World According to Bertie is the fourth, started as a single serial novel in The Scotsman newspaper. When I began to write this story, I had no idea that the story would continue for as long as it has; nor had I any idea that Bertie, that engaging boy of six, burdened, as he is with his extremely demanding mother, would become so important a character. I certainly did not imagine that he would acquire so many supporters – or sympathisers, perhaps.

  Bertie’s problem is his mother, one of those ambitious parents who sees her son as a project rather than a little boy. Such mothers are legion, and many sons spend the rest of their lives trying to cut invisible but powerful apron strings. Bertie wants only to be a typical boy; he wants to have fun, to play with other boys, to do all the things that Irene’s programme for him prevents him from doing. Instead he is forced to learn Italian, play the saxophone, and attend yoga classes for children.

  Bertie seems to strike a chord with many readers. Recently I was in New York and attended a lunch where the first thing I was asked was how Bertie was doing. This happens to me throughout the world: people are more anxious about Bertie than they are about any of my other fictional characters. They want him to find freedom. They want him to escape.

  This book continues the story of Bertie – who has, quite astonishingly, remained six for the past four volumes, even while other characters have aged and progressed. But it does not deal only with Bertie – I have carried on my conversation with Big Lou, Domenica, Angus Lordie, and all the others who have walked into Scotland Street and found their place in the saga. All of these people are, in their own way, looking for some sort of resolution in their lives, some happiness, which is what, I suppose, xi

  i

  Preface

  all of us are doing. Some of them find it in this volume – or appear to find it – others will have to wait. The whole point of a serial novel is that the future is open. If freedom eludes Bertie in this book, and if Big Lou does not just yet find romantic fulfilment, then all is not lost – there is always another chapter.

  Alexander McCall Smith

  THE WORLD

  ACCORDING

  TO BERTIE

  1. In Hanover Street. Watch Out, Pat, Bruce Is Back

  . . . Or Is He?

  Pat saw Bruce at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning, or at least that is when she thought she saw him. An element of doubt there certainly was. This centred not on the time of the sighting, but on the identity of the person sighted; for this was one of those occasions when one wonders whether the eye, or even the memory, has played a trick. And such tricks can be extraordinary, as when one is convinced that one has seen the late General de Gaulle coming out of a cinema, or when, against all reasonable probability, one thinks one has s
potted Luciano Pavarotti on a train between Glasgow and Paisley; risible events, of course, but ones which underline the proposition that one’s eyes are not always to be believed.

  She saw Bruce while she was travelling on a bus from one side of Edinburgh – the South Side, where she now lived –

  to the New Town, on the north side of the city, where she worked three days a week in the gallery owned by her boyfriend, Matthew. The bus had descended with lumbering stateliness down the Mound, past the National Gallery of Scotland, and had turned into Hanover Street, narrowly missing an insouciant pedestrian at the corner. Pat had seen the near-miss – it was by the merest whisker, she thought – and had winced, but it was just at that moment, as the bus laboured up Hanover Street towards the statue of George IV, that she saw a young man walking in the opposite direction, a tall figure with Bruce’s characteristic en brosse hairstyle and wearing precisely the sort of clothes that Bruce liked to wear on a Saturday: a rugby jersey celebrating Scotland’s increasingly ancient Triple Crown victory and a pair of stone-coloured trousers.

  Her eye being caught by the rugby jersey and the stone-coloured trousers, she turned her head sharply. Bruce! But now she could see only the back of his head, and after a moment she could not see even that; Bruce, or his double, had merged into a knot of people standing on the corner of Princes Street and

  2

  In Hanover Street. Watch Out, Pat, Bruce Is Back . . . Or Is He?

  Pat lost sight of him. She looked ahead. The bus would stop in a few yards; she could disembark and make her way down to Princes Street to see if it really was him. But then she reminded herself that if she did that she would arrive late at the gallery, and Matthew needed her to be there on time; he had stressed that. He had an appointment, he said, with a client who was proposing to place several important Colourist pictures on the market. She did not want to hold him up, and quite apart from that there was the question of whether she would want to see Bruce, even if it proved to be him. She thought on balance that she did not.

  Bruce had been her flatmate when she had first moved into 44 Scotland Street. At first, she had been rather in awe of him – after all, he was so confident in his manner, so self-assured –

  and she at the time had been so much more diffident. Then things had changed. Bruce was undoubtedly good-looking – a fact of which he was fully aware and of which he was very willing to take advantage; he knew very well that women found him attractive, and he assumed that Pat would prove no exception.

  Unfortunately, it transpired that he was right, and Pat found herself drawn to Bruce in a way which she did not altogether like. All this could have become very messy, but at the last In Hanover Street. Watch Out, Pat, Bruce Is Back . . . Or Is He?

  3

  moment, before her longing had been translated into anything beyond mere looking, she had come to her senses and decided that Bruce was an impossible narcissist. She fought to free herself of his spell, and she did. And then, having lost his job at the firm of surveyors (after being seen enjoying an intimate lunch in the Café St Honoré with the wife of the firm’s senior partner), Bruce decided that Edinburgh was too small for him and had moved to London. People who do that often then discover that London is too big for them, much to the amusement of those who stayed behind in Edinburgh in the belief that it was just the right size. This sometimes leads to the comment that the only sensible reason for leaving Scotland for London was to take up the job of prime minister, a remark that might have been made by Samuel Johnson, had he not been so prejudiced on this particular matter and thought quite the opposite.

  Pat had been relieved that Bruce had gone to London, and it had not occurred to her that he might return. It did not matter much to her, of course, as she moved in different circles from those frequented by Bruce, and she would not have to mix with him even if he did return. But at the same time she felt slightly unsettled by the possible sighting, especially as the experience made her feel an indefinable excitement, an increase in heart rate, that was not altogether welcome. Was it just the feeling one gets on meeting with an old lover, years afterwards? Try as one might to treat such occasions as ordinary events, there is a thrill which marks them out from the quotidian. And that is what Pat felt now.

  She completed the rest of the bus journey down to Dundas Street in a thoughtful state. She imagined what she might say if she were to meet him and what he in turn might say to her.

  Would he have been improved by living in London, or would he have become even worse? It was difficult to tell. There must be those for whom living in London is an enriching experience, and there must be those who are quite unchanged by it. Pat had a feeling that Bruce would not have learned anything, as he had 4

  A Conversation with Matthew: Matthew Is Troubled by His Trousers never shown any signs of learning anything when he was in Edinburgh. He would just be Bruce.

  She got off her bus a few steps from Matthew’s gallery.

  Through the window, she saw Matthew at his desk, immersed in paperwork. She looked at him fondly from a distance: dear Matthew, she thought; dear Matthew, in your distressed-oatmeal sweater, so ordinary, so safe; fond thoughts, certainly, but unac-companied by any quickening of the pulse.

  2. A Conversation with Matthew: Matthew Is Troubled by His Trousers

  Matthew glanced at his wristwatch. Pat was a few minutes late, but only a few minutes; not enough for him to express irritation. Besides, he himself was rarely on time, and he knew that he could hardly complain about the punctuality of others.

  “I have to go,” he said, scooping up some papers from his desk. “Somebody wants my advice.”

  “Yes,” said Pat. “You told me.” It had been surprising to her that anybody should seek Matthew’s advice on the Scottish Colourists, or on any painters for that matter, as it seemed only a very short time ago that she had found it necessary to impart to Matthew some of her own very recently acquired knowledge of basic art history. Only a year ago, there had been a rather embarrassing moment when a customer had mentioned Hornel, to be greeted by a blank look from Matthew. Yet in spite of the fact that he was hazy on the details, Matthew had a good aesthetic sense, and this, Pat thought, would get him quite far in the auction rooms. A good painting was a good painting, even if one did not know the hand that had painted it, and Matthew had considerable ability in distinguishing the good from the mediocre, and even the frankly bad. It was a pity though, she thought, that this ability did not run to clothes; the distressed-oatmeal sweater which he was wearing was not A Conversation with Matthew: Matthew Is Troubled by His Trousers 5

  actually in bad taste, but was certainly a bad choice if one wanted, as Matthew did, to cut a dash. And as for his trousers, which were in that increasingly popular shade, crushed strawberry, Pat found herself compelled to avert her eyes. Now, if Matthew would only wear stone-coloured chinos, as Bruce did, then . . .

  “Chinos,” she said suddenly.

  Matthew looked up, clearly puzzled. “Chinos?”

  “Yes,” said Pat. “Those trousers they call chinos. They’re made of some sort of thick, twill material. You know the sort?”

  Matthew thought for a moment. He glanced down at his crushed-strawberry corduroy trousers; he knew his trousers were controversial – he had always had controversial trousers, but he rather liked this pair and he had seen a lot of people recently wearing trousers like them in Dundas Street. Should he have been wearing chinos? Was this Pat’s way of telling him that she would prefer it if he had different trousers?

  “I know what chinos are,” he said. “I saw a pair of chinos in a shop once. They were . . .” He trailed off. He had rather liked the chinos, he remembered, but he was not sure whether he should say so to Pat: there might be something deeply unfashionable about chinos which he did not yet know.

  “Why are they called chinos?” Pat asked.

  Matthew shrugged. “I have no idea,” he said. “I just haven’t really thought about it . . . until now.” He paused. “But
why were you thinking of chinos?”

  Pat hesitated. “I just saw a pair,” she said. “And . . . and of course Bruce used to wear them. Remember?”

  Matthew had not liked Bruce, although he had tolerated his company on occasion in the Cumberland Bar. Matthew was a modest person, and Bruce’s constant bragging had annoyed him.

  But he had also felt jealous of the way in which Bruce could capture Pat’s attention, even if it had become clear that she had eventually seen through him.

  “Yes. He did wear them, didn’t he? Along with that stupid rugby jersey. He was such a . . .” He did not complete the 6

  A Conversation with Matthew: Matthew Is Troubled by His Trousers sentence. There was really no word which was capable of capturing just the right mixture of egoism, hair gel, and preening self-satisfaction that made up Bruce’s personality.

  Pat moved away from Matthew’s desk and gazed out of the window. “I think that I just saw Bruce,” she said. “I think he might be back.”

  Matthew rose from his desk and joined her at the window.

  “Now?” he said. “Out there?”

  Pat shook her head. “No,” she said. “Farther up. I was on the bus and I saw him – I’m pretty sure I did.”

  Matthew sniffed. “What was he doing?”

  “Walking,” said Pat. “Wearing chinos and a rugby jersey. Just walking.”

  “Well, I don’t care,” said Matthew. “He can come back if he likes. Makes no difference to me. He’s such a . . .” Again Matthew failed to find a word. He looked at Pat. There was something odd about her manner; it was as if she was thinking about something, and this raised a sudden presentiment in Matthew. What if Pat were to fall for Bruce again? Such things happened; people encountered one another after a long absence and fell right back in love. It was precisely the sort of thing that novelists liked to write about; there was something heroic, something of the epic, in doing a thing like that. And if she fell back in love with Bruce, then she would fall out of love with me, thought Matthew, if she ever loved me, that is.