The World According to Bertie 4ss-4

by Alexander McCall Smith

  He stuffed his papers into his briefcase and moved across to Pat’s side. She half-turned her cheek to him, and he planted a kiss on it, leaving a small speck of spittle, which Pat wiped off.

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered.

  “It’s nothing,” said Pat, adding, “Just spit.”

  Matthew looked at her. He felt flushed, awkward. “I’ll be back later,” he said. “But if you need to go, then just shut up the shop. We probably won’t be very busy.”

  Pat nodded.

  Matthew tried to smile. “And then maybe . . . maybe we can go and see a film tonight. There’s something at the Famous Sons and Gothic Seasoning 7

  Cameo, something Czech, I think. Something about a woman who . . .”

  “Do you mind if we don’t?” said Pat. “I’ve got an essay to write and if I don’t do it soon, then Dr Fantouse will go on and on at me, and . . .”

  “Of course,” said Matthew. “Dr Fantouse. All right. I’ll see you on . . .”

  “Wednesday.”

  “Yes. All right.” Matthew walked towards the door. Nobody writes essays on Saturday night – he was convinced of that, and this meant that she was planning to do something else; she would go to the Cumberland Bar in the hope of meeting Bruce – that was it.

  Leaving the gallery, Matthew began to walk up Dundas Street.

  Glancing to his side, he looked through the gallery window. Pat was still standing there, and he gave her a little wave with his left hand, but she did not respond. She didn’t see me, he thought.

  She’s preoccupied.

  3. Famous Sons and Gothic Seasoning Matthew was wrong about Pat. He had imagined that her claim to be writing an essay that Saturday night was probably false and that in reality she would be doing something quite different – something in which she did not want him to be involved. But although it is true that students very rarely do any work on Saturday evenings – except in extremis – in this case, Pat was telling the truth, as she always did. There really was an essay to be completed and it really did have to be handed in to Dr Fantouse the following Monday. And this indeed was the reason why she declined Matthew’s invitation to the Czech film at the Cameo cinema.

  Pat closed the gallery shortly after three that afternoon.

  Matthew had not returned and business was slack – nonexistent, 8

  Famous Sons and Gothic Seasoning in fact, with not a single person coming in to look at the paintings. This is what, in the retail trade, is called light footfall, there being no commercial term – other than death – to describe the situation where absolutely nobody came in and nothing was sold. So Pat, having locked the cash-box in the safe and set the alarm, left the gallery and waited on the other side of the road for the 23 bus that would take her back to within a short walk of the parental home – once more her home too –

  in the Grange, that well-set suburb on the south side of the Meadows.

  Pat’s parents lived in Dick Place, a street which had prompted even the sombre prose of the great architectural historian John Gifford and his collaborators into striking adjectival saliences.

  Dick Place, they write in their guide to the buildings of Edinburgh, is a street of “polite villas” – a description which may fairly be applied to vast swathes of Edinburgh suburbia.

  But then they warn us of “Gothic seasoning,” mild in some cases and wild in others, and go on to observe how, in the case of one singled-out house, “tottering crowstepped porches and skeleton chimneys contrast with massive bald outshoots.” But Dick Place is not distinguished only by architectural exuberance; like so many streets in Edinburgh, it has its famous sons. At its junction with Findhorn Place is the house in which the inventor of the digestive biscuit once lived; not the only house in Edinburgh to be associated with baking distinction – in West Castle Road, in neighbouring Merchiston, there once lived the father of the modern Jaffa Cake, a confection which owes its name to the viscous orange jelly lurking under the upper coating of chocolate. No plaque reminds the passer-by of these glories, although there should be one; for those who invent biscuits bring great pleasure to many.

  Pat’s father, a psychiatrist, found the location very convenient.

  In the mornings, he could walk from his front door to the front gate of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital within fifteen minutes, and if he was consulting privately in Moray Place he could walk there in twenty-five minutes. The walk to Moray Place was Famous Sons and Gothic Seasoning 9

  something of a paysage moralisé – easier on the way down than on the way back, when the cares of patients would have been deposited on his shoulders, making Frederick Street and the Mound seem so much steeper and Queen Street so much longer.

  But apart from this undoubted convenience, what suited him about Dick Place was the leafy quiet of the garden that surrounded the house on all four sides. If they were to pass any comment on Dr Macgregor’s garden, John Gifford and his friends might be sniffy about the small stone conservatory and potting shed, with its fluted and rusticated mullions; they might even describe the whole thing as “an oddity,” but for Dr Macgregor it was his sanctuary, the place where he might in perfect and undisturbed peace sit and read the Journal of the Royal College of Psychiatry or the Journal of Neurology, Neuro-surgery, and Psychiatry.

  When Pat came home that Saturday, Dr Macgregor was ensconced in the conservatory, a small pile of such journals beside him. He became aware of his daughter’s presence as she opened the French windows across the lawn, but he was so thoroughly immersed in his reading that he looked up only when Pat pushed open the conservatory door and stood before him.

  “That must be interesting,” she said.

  He smiled, taking off his glasses and placing them down on the table beside him. “Very,” he said. “Some of these articles are intriguing, to say the least. Do you know what Ganser’s Syndrome is? That’s what I was reading about.”

  Pat shook her head. “No idea,” she said.

  Dr Macgregor gestured to the journal lying open on his lap.

  “I was just reading this case report about it. A classic case of Ganser’s walked through the author’s door. He was asked what the capital of France was and he replied Marseilles. And how many legs does a centipede have? Ninety-nine. When did the Second World War begin? Nineteen thirty-eight. And so on.

  Do you see the pattern?”

  “Just marginally out on everything?”

  “Yes. People who have Ganser’s talk just round the edge. Dr 10

  Some Words of Warning from Pat’s Father Ganser identified it and he called that aspect of it the Vorbeireden.

  They may not know that they’re doing it, but their answers to your questions will always be just a little bit off-beam.”

  Pat looked at her father in astonishment. “How odd! Why?”

  Dr Macgregor spread his hands in a gesture of acceptance.

  “It’s probably a response to intolerable stress. Reality is so awful that they veer off in this peculiar direction; they enter a state of dissociation. This poor man in the report had lost his job, lost his wife, lost everything, in fact, and was being pursued by the police for something or other. You can imagine that one might start to dissociate in such circumstances.” He paused.

  “Anyway, you’re home.”

  He smiled at Pat and was about to ask her what sort of morning she had had, but then Pat said: “Remember Bruce? I saw him this morning. Or at least I thought I saw him.”

  “You thought you saw him?”

  “It may not have been him. Maybe I just thought that it was him. Maybe it was somebody who was just dressed like Bruce.”

  “How interesting,” said Dr Macgregor. He looked thoughtful.

  “Fregoli’s Syndrome.” He added quickly, “I’m not being serious, of course.”

  But Pat was interested. “Who was Fregoli?”

  “An Italian clown,” said Dr Macgregor. “An Italian clown who never had the condition bearing his name.”

  4. Some Words of Warn
ing from Pat’s Father

  “Yes,” said Dr Macgregor. “Fregoli came from Naples, or somewhere in those parts. He found himself in the forces of an Italian general sent to Abyssinia back in the late nineteenth century.

  The Italians, as you know, bullied Abyssinia . . .” He trailed off.

  “You did know that, didn’t you?” Pat shook her head. Her father knew so much, it seemed to her, and she knew so little. The Some Words of Warning from Pat’s Father 11

  Italians bullied Abyssinia, did they? But where exactly was Abyssinia?

  Dr Macgregor looked away, tactfully, as any sensitive person must do when he realises that the person to whom he is speaking has no idea where Abyssinia is. “Ethiopia,” he said quietly. “Haile Selassie?” He looked up, in hope; but Pat shook her head again, in answer to this second query. Then she said: “But I do know where Ethiopia is.”

  That, at least, is something, he thought. And he realised, of course, that it was not her fault. His daughter belonged to a generation that had been taught no geography, and very little history. And no Latin. Nor had they been made to learn poetry by heart, with the result that nobody now could recite any poems by Burns, or Wordsworth, or Longfellow. Everything had been taken away by people who knew very little themselves, but did not know it.

  “Ethiopia used to be called Abyssinia,” he said. “And the Italians had skirmishes with it from Somaliland. In due course, Mussolini used this as the casus belli for later bullying, and he invaded them. The world stood by. The Ethiopians went to the League of Nations and begged for help. Begged. But they were little men with beards, and it took some time before anyone would listen. Little dark men with beards.”

  They were both silent for a moment. Pat thought: he makes it all sound so personal. He thought: we have all been such bullies; all of us. The Italians. The British. The Americans.

  Bullies.

  Pat looked at her father. “Mussolini was the one they hung upside down, wasn’t he?”

  He sighed. “They did.”

  “Maybe he deserved it.”

  “No. Nobody deserves it. Nobody deserves even to be hung the right way up. Whatever somebody does, however bad he is, you must always forgive him. Right at the end, you must forgive him.”

  For a moment, they were silent. He felt like saying to her 12

  Some Words of Warning from Pat’s Father that there were people, right at that moment, somewhere, even in advanced countries, who were awaiting capital punishment; people whose days and hours were ticking away under such sentences; such was the hardness of the human heart, or of some human hearts. But he did not say it; instead, he looked up at her and smiled.

  “Yes,” he said. “Our friend Fregoli impressed this Italian general – and can’t you just imagine the splendid uniform that general would have had? Such stylish people. He impressed him so much with his quick-change act that he was taken off military duties and became a performer. He would appear on stage wearing one thing, nip off, and then appear within seconds wearing a completely different outfit. People loved it.”

  “And why . . .” Pat began to ask.

  “The human mind,” said Dr Macgregor, “is capable of infinite deception – both of others and of itself. If you began to think that somebody in your life was really another person in disguise, then you would have, I’m afraid, Fregoli’s Syndrome.

  You might begin to think that I was not really myself, but was a very accomplished actor.”

  “How strange.”

  “Yes, how strange,” said Dr Macgregor. “But it gets even stranger. There’s another condition, one called Capgras Syndrome, where you believe that people you know have been replaced by imposters. The whole thing is a carefully orchestrated act put on by a team of imposters. That may be your best friend talking to you, but you’re not fooled!

  You know that it’s really an actor pretending to be your best friend.”

  Pat laughed. “But it was Bruce,” she said. “Or at least I thought it was.”

  “Then I’m sure it was,” said Dr Macgregor. “You’re a very reliable witness of things. You always have been.”

  But now it was Pat’s turn to doubt. “Isn’t it true, though, that the mind can fill in the details if it sees just one thing that it Some Words of Warning from Pat’s Father 13

  recognises? One of our lecturers said something about that. He was talking about how we look at paintings.”

  “It’s certainly true,” said Dr Macgregor. “We want to reorganise the world, and that makes our brains jump the gun –

  sometimes. You look at a newspaper headline, take in one word, and before you know it your brain says: yes, that’s what it says.

  But it may not.”

  Pat looked thoughtful. What had she seen? A rugby shirt.

  And a pair of trousers. Perhaps her mind had filled in the rest, filled in the hair with the gel, filled in the look of Bruce.

  Dr Macgregor decided to get up from his chair. He stood, and then walked over to the window and looked out over the garden. The lawn was dry.

  “Don’t get mixed up with that young man again,” he said quietly.

  Pat looked up sharply. “I wasn’t planning to,” she protested.

  “I really disliked him.”

  Dr Macgregor nodded. “Maybe you did. But that type of person can be very destructive. They know how powerful their charm is. And they use it.” He paused. “I don’t want you to be hurt. You know that, don’t you? That’s all that a father wants for his daughter. Or most of them. Fathers don’t want their daughters to get hurt. And yet they know that there are plenty of men only too ready to treat them badly. They know that.”

  Pat thought that her father was being melodramatic. Bruce was no danger to her. He may have been in the past, but not now. She was like somebody who had been given an inocula-tion against an illness. She was immune to Bruce and his charms.

  And yet she had felt unsettled when she saw him; it had been exciting. Would one feel that excitement if one was immune to somebody? She thought not.

  Her father was looking at her now. “Are you going to seek him out?” he asked.

  14

  An Unexpected Conflict and News of Cyril Pat looked down at the ground. It was so easy to fob other people off with a denial, with a half-truth, but she could not do this to her father, not to this gentle psychiatrist who had seen her through all the little doubts and battles of childhood and adolescence. She could not hide the truth from him.

  “I think I’d like to see him,” she said.

  5. An Unexpected Conflict and News of Cyril Domenica Macdonald, freelance anthropologist, native of Scotland Street, friend of Angus Lordie and Antonia Collie, owner of a custard-coloured Mercedes-Benz, citizen of Edinburgh; all of these were facets of the identity of the woman now striding up Scotland Street, a battered canvas shopping bag hanging loosely from her left arm. But there was more: in addition to all of that, Domenica was now the author of a learned paper that had recently been accepted for publication in the prestigious journal Mankind Quarterly. This paper, “Past Definite; Future Uncertain: Time and Social Dynamics of a Mangrove Community in Southern Malaysia,” was the fruit of her recent field trip to the Malacca Straits. There, she had joined what she imagined was a community of contemporary pirates, with a view to conducting anthropological research into their domestic economy. The pirates, it was later revealed, were not real pirates after all – or not pirates in the sense in which the term is understood by the International Maritime Safety authorities in Kuala Lumpur. Although they disappeared each morning in high-powered boats, Domenica had discovered that their destination was not the high seas at all, but a town down the coast, where they worked in a pirate CD factory, infringing the intellectual property rights of various crooners and inexplicably popular rock bands. That had been a setback for Domenica, but it had not prevented her from completing a useful piece of research on the way in which the community’s sense of time affected social relationships.

 
An Unexpected Conflict and News of Cyril 15

  The paper had been well-received. One of the referees for the journal had written: “The author demonstrates convincingly that a sense of being on the wrong side of history changes everything.

  The social devices by which people protect themselves from confronting the truth that there is a terminus to their existence as a community are laid bare by the author. A triumph.” And now here it was, that triumph, in off-print form, with an attractive cover of chalk blue, the physical result of all that heat and discomfort.

  When the box containing the sixty off-prints had been delivered by the postman, Domenica had immediately left the house and walked round to Angus Lordie’s flat in Drummond Place, clutching one of the copies.

  “My paper,” she said, as Angus invited her in. “You will see that I have inscribed it to you. Look. There.”

  Angus opened the cover and saw, on the inside, the sentence which Domenica had inscribed in black ink. To Angus Lordie, the inscription read, who stayed behind. From your friend, Domenica Macdonald. He reread the sentence and then looked up. “Why have you written who stayed behind?” he asked. His tone was peevish.

  Domenica shrugged. “Well, you did, didn’t you? I went to the Malacca Straits, and you stayed behind in Edinburgh. I’m simply stating what happened.”

  Angus frowned. “But anybody reading this would think that I was some . . . some sort of coward. It’s almost as if you’re giving me a white feather.”

  Domenica drew in her breath. She had not intended that, and it was quite ridiculous of Angus to suggest it. “I meant no such thing,” she said. “There are absolutely no aspersions being cast on . . .”

  “Yes, there are,” said Angus petulantly. “And you never asked me whether I’d like to go. Saying that somebody stayed behind suggests that they were at least given the chance to go along.

  But I wasn’t. You never gave me the chance to go.”

  “Well, really!” said Domenica. “You made it very clear that you didn’t like the idea of my going to the Malacca Straits in the first 16