The World According to Bertie 4ss-4

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Pat thought for a moment. She remembered Bruce’s birthday, and it was true. He was an Aries.

  “He got it right,” she said.

  “Yes. He got it right. But then he said: ‘Do you like cooking?’

  Cooking! And that made it even clearer. So you know what I did? I knew that there were three or four people after this job – I’d seen them outside – and so I decided that I’d play along with all this. If that’s what it took to get the job, I was ready.

  So I said: ‘Cooking? I adore it!’ Yes, I did! And he brightened up and said: ‘That’s great, just great. I love being in the kitchen.’

  Or something like that. Then he looked at his watch and said:

  ‘If you want the job, Bruce, it’s yours.’ And so we got it all tied up there and then and I started at the beginning of the following week.”

  Pat looked down. She did not like this, and she did not want to hear anymore. But Bruce continued.

  “It was a great job. I was meant to source the things we needed for the flats and to chase up the painters and plumbers and whatnot. I made up the spreadsheets for the projects with time-lines and completion dates and stuff like that. It was great. But Bruce Enjoys Telling His London Story 63

  then Rick – that was his name – invited me to a dinner party at his place. Boy! You should have seen it. Furniture to die for.

  Big paintings – none of this Victorian junk you sell here. Big splashes of colour. And there was Rick in a caftan. Yes! I look around and think: where are the other guests? Surprise, surprise!

  No other guests.

  “‘Unfortunately, the others cancelled,’ said Rick. ‘So inconsiderate of them!’ He turns on the music.”

  Pat listened to Bruce with growing horror. I can’t stand him, she thought. I can’t stand him. He led that poor man on just to get the job. I can’t stand him.

  Bruce grinned. “So you know what I did? I said: ‘Rick, I’m terribly sorry. I’m just developing this terrible headache. Really bad.’ And I started to leave. So he says: ‘But Bruce, you haven’t had a thing to eat, not a thing! I can’t let you set off with a headache and an empty stomach.’ So I said that I wasn’t really hungry and that maybe another day, and so he says: ‘Tomorrow, Bruce? Same time?’ And that was it, really. I phoned him at the office next day and left a message that I wouldn’t be coming back. So that was the end of the job.”

  Pat looked away. There was nothing worse, in her view, than talking about something like that, a private encounter in which one person misunderstands another and is made to look pathetic.

  And Bruce was responsible for the whole misunderstanding by pretending to be gay. She turned back to him. “That’s really horrible,” she said. “Really horrible.”

  “I know,” said Bruce, smiling broadly. “But I don’t hold it against him. Not really.”

  Pat drew in her breath. It seemed impossible to dent his self-satisfaction, his utter self-assuredness. She wanted to hit him, because that, she thought, might be the only way of telling him what she felt. But she would not have had the chance, even if she had summoned up the courage, as Bruce now slid off the desk, patted her on the arm, and moved towards the door.

  “À bientôt,” he said. “Which, translated into the patois of these parts, means: see yous!”

  20. Miss Harmony Has News for the Children

  “Now listen, everybody,” said Miss Harmony, clapping her hands to get attention. “We have some very interesting news.” She looked out over the class, seated in a circle round the room.

  They were always somewhat excited at the beginning of a new term and usually took a few days to settle down, especially if there were any new members. As it happened, there were not, and indeed the class was one member down with the departure of Merlin. He had been withdrawn by his parents, who had decided to homeschool him for a trial period. Miss Harmony had not thought that a good idea, as she believed in the social-isation value of the classroom experience, particularly when the parents themselves were so odd. And she had the gravest doubts as to what Merlin’s mother could actually teach her son. There was something very disconcerting about that woman, Miss Harmony thought, her vague, mystical pronouncements, her interest in crystals, and her slightly fey appearance did not inspire confidence. But it was her choice, and it would be respected, although when she thought about it hard enough, she wondered exactly why one should respect the choices of others when those choices were so patently bad ones. That would require further thought, she decided.

  Looking around the class, there were various other pupils whom she would quite happily have seen withdrawn for homeschooling. Larch was one, with his aggressive outlook and his

  . . . well, she did not like to blame a child for his appearance, but there was no escaping the fact that Larch looked like a pugilist on day-release from Polmont Young Offenders’

  Institution. He was rather frightening, actually, and he really did spoil the class photographs.

  These thoughts, though, were not really very charitable and Miss Harmony accepted that she should put them firmly from her mind, but not before she had allowed herself a final reflection on how Hiawatha, too, might also benefit from homeschooling, which would remove the constant problem of his Miss Harmony Has News for the Children 65

  socks and their somewhat unpleasant odour. Would a letter to his mother be in order? she wondered. It was difficult to imagine how one might put the matter tactfully; parents were so sensitive about such things.

  “Yes,” said Miss Harmony. “A lot has happened! First of all, you will notice that Merlin is no longer with us. We have said farewell to him, as he is going to be studying at home this year.”

  This announcement was greeted with silence, as the children looked at one another. Then Olive put up her hand.

  “He won’t be studying, Miss Harmony,” she said. “He told me. He said that his mother wanted him to help her with her weaving. He said that he was going to be getting paid for it.”

  “Now, Olive,” said Miss Harmony. “We mustn’t always believe what others tell us, must we? Especially when they are having a little joke, as I am sure Merlin was. We all know that Merlin will be working very hard in his little home classroom and that his head will soon be bursting with knowledge.” She stared hard at Olive. “Yes, Olive, bursting with knowledge.”

  Tofu now joined in. “I saw something about this on television,” he said. “It was about carpet factories in India. The children all worked in the factories and made rugs.”

  Miss Harmony laughed. “That’s child labour, Tofu, dear. And it is no longer allowed in this country. Certainly it used to be – chimney sweeps would make little boys – like you – go up the chimney for them. Charles Dickens wrote about that sort of thing. But now we do not allow that anymore.” She paused.

  “Merlin will not be a child labourer, I assure you.”

  She gave Tofu a discouraging look. “Now then,” she said.

  “The news that Merlin has left us is very sad news for us, of course. But there has also been some happy news. And I’m going to ask Bertie to tell us himself.”

  All eyes swung round to Bertie, who blushed.

  “Come on, Bertie,” said Miss Harmony. “You tell us about the little event which happened in your house over the holidays.”

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  Miss Harmony Has News for the Children Bertie bit his lip. He had not been sure at first what Miss Harmony was alluding to, but now he knew.

  “My mother had a baby,” he muttered.

  “Now, now, Bertie,” encouraged Miss Harmony. “Good news must be given loud and clear.”

  “A baby,” said Bertie. “My mother had a baby.”

  “See!” said Miss Harmony. “That’s good news, isn’t it everybody? Bertie now has a little brother. And what’s his name, Bertie?”

  Bertie looked down at the top of his desk. There was no escape, or at least one that he could identify. “Ulysses,” he said.

  Tofu, who had been staring
at Bertie, now looked away and sniggered.

  “Tofu,” said Miss Harmony. “Ulysses is a very fine name.”

  Tofu said nothing.

  “Yes,” said Miss Harmony. “And we don’t laugh at the names of others, do we, Tofu? Especially . . .” She hesitated. It was so tempting, impossible to resist, in fact. “Especially if we are called Tofu ourselves.”

  “Tofu’s a stupid name,” volunteered Olive. “It’s that horrid white stuff that cranky people eat. It’s a stupid name. I’d far rather be called Ulysses than Tofu, any day of the week. And anyway, Tofu, it’s nice to hear that Miss Harmony thinks your name is stupid too.”

  “That is not what I said, Olive,” said Miss Harmony quickly.

  “And let’s move on, boys and girls. We are all very pleased, I’m sure, to hear about Bertie’s new baby brother and we look forward to meeting him some day soon. I’m sure that Bertie is very proud of him and will bring him to the school to introduce us all. But in the meantime, boys and girls, we are going to start today with sums, just to see whether we’ve remembered what we learned last term!”

  Much had been forgotten, and the rest of the morning was devoted to the reinstallation of vanished knowledge. Bertie worked quietly, but he noticed Olive looking at him from time to time and the observation made him feel uneasy. Bertie was

  Pat Experiences a Moment of Brutal Honesty 67

  wary of Olive on several counts, but principally because she laboured under the delusion that she was his girlfriend. And at the end of the day, his doubts proved to be well-founded.

  “I’m really looking forward to seeing your new baby brother,”

  said Olive, as they left the classroom. “I’m coming to see him soon.”

  Bertie frowned. “Who said?” he asked.

  “My mother has spoken to your mother,” Olive answered.

  “And your mother says that I can come to play at your house once a week if I like. So I will.”

  “But I didn’t ask you,” said Bertie.

  “No,” said Olive. “But that makes no difference. Your mummy did – and that’s what counts.” She paused. “And we’re going to play house.”

  21. Pat Experiences a Moment of Brutal Honesty Bruce had been gone a good hour, but Pat was still smarting from her encounter with her newly returned former flatmate.

  Much of her anger focused on the fact that she had not responded adequately to his unpleasant story of his London experiences; didn’t-kiss-and-still-told was in her mind every bit as bad as kiss-and-tell. There was so much she could have said which would have indicated her disgust over his insensitive behaviour, so much, but, as was so often the case, the really pithy comments, 68

  Pat Experiences a Moment of Brutal Honesty those brilliant mots justes that might have deflated him, only occurred to her after he had left.

  And then she wondered whether anything could ever deflate Bruce, such was the sheer Zeppelin-scale volume of his self-satisfaction. At least their brief meeting had convinced her – if conviction were needed – that she disliked him intensely, and yet, and yet . . . when he had perched on her desk, uninvited, she found herself unable to ignore the brute fact of his extreme attractiveness. Bruce was, quite simply, devastatingly good-looking, an Adonis sent down to live among us. And the fact that she even noticed this worried her. She had already had a narrow escape with Wolf, who had similarly dazzled her, and here she was looking at Bruce again in that way. Am I, she wondered, one of those people who fall for the physically desir-able, irrespective of what they are like as people? In a moment of brutal honesty, she realised that the answer was probably: yes, I am. It was a bleak conclusion.

  She thought of Matthew, solid, dependable, predictable Matthew. These three epithets said it all, but they were words which had no excitement in them, no thrill. And yet when one compared Matthew with Bruce, Matthew’s merits were over-whelming. But then again, there was the distressed-oatmeal, the crushed-strawberry factor . . .

  The door of the gallery opened and Pat turned round. A man had entered the gallery, a largish man of rather elegant bearing, wearing grey slacks and a blazer, no tie, but a red silk bandanna tied around his neck. He sported a jaunty mustache. He smiled at Pat and gestured in the direction of the paintings. “Do you mind? May I ?”

  “Of course. Please.”

  He nodded to her in a friendly way and made his way across the gallery to stand in front of one of Matthew’s recently acquired MacTaggart seascapes. Pat watched him from her desk. Some people who came into the gallery were merely passing the time, with no intention of buying anything; this man, though, with his urbane manner, had a different air about him.

  Pat Experiences a Moment of Brutal Honesty 69

  He moved closer to one of the MacTaggarts and peered at a section of the large canvas. Two children were sitting on the edge of a wide, windswept beach. The children were windswept too, their hair ruffled. They were playing with the sand, which streamed away from their hands, caught in the breeze, in thin lines of gold.

  The man turned round and addressed Pat across the floor.

  “Can you tell me anything about this?”

  Pat rose from her desk and walked across to join him. “It’s a MacTaggart,” she said. “Do you know about him?”

  “Not much,” said the man. “But I do know a little. I like his work. There’s a strange air about it. Something rather wind-blown, don’t you think?”

  Pat agreed. “It reminds me of places like Tantallon,” she said.

  “Or Gullane beach, perhaps. That could be Fife on the other side of the water. Just there. There’s some land, you see.”

  The man turned and smiled at her. “It probably doesn’t matter much,” he said. “Just Scotland. Quite some time ago now.”

  “Yes.” She waited for him to say something else, but his gaze had shifted. Now he was looking at Angus Lordie’s painting. He moved forward and stared at the label beneath it; then he stood back and stared at it, his head slightly to one side.

  Pat watched him. She was about to say something, to tell him that this was not entirely serious, but he had now turned to face her.

  “Do you know ‘Four minutes thirty-three seconds’?” he asked.

  “That piece by what’s his name? John Cage? Complete silence.

  That’s all it is – complete silence.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Yes, nothing at all. Often done on the piano, but an orchestra can play it too. The conductor stands there, turning pages of the score, but nobody plays a note. And that’s it.”

  “You’ve heard it?”

  The man nodded. “I suppose you might say that we’ve all heard it. I heard it in New York. But if any of us has ever listened to four minutes of silence, anywhere, then I suppose you could 70

  Pat Experiences a Moment of Brutal Honesty say that we’ve heard what the composer wanted us to hear.

  But then, we don’t listen to silence, do we? We’re too preoccupied.”

  Pat looked at Angus Lordie’s painting. “Well . . .” she began.

  It was as if the man had not heard her. “That performance in New York was extraordinary. The moment the orchestra had stopped, there was confusion in the audience. Some of them knew the piece, of course, and applauded. They understood.

  Some laughed. Others were silent, not really knowing what to do.”

  “This painting is a bit like that,” he said. “I like it, you know.”

  Pat stood quite still. One part of her wanted to tell him that it was absurd, that Matthew’s joke had gone far enough; the other imagined Matthew’s pleasure if she actually sold it. It was the sort of thing that would amuse him greatly, and, of course, there was Angus to think about. He was miserable over Cyril’s plight and he would appreciate some good news.

  “I don’t suppose you want to buy it,” Pat said. She was hesitant. I’m not trying to persuade him, she thought. I’m really not. And the painting was so absurdly pricey – for what it was – that only somebody
who did not have to worry about money would buy it. Such people, surely, could look after themselves.

  The man turned his head sideways to look at the painting from a slightly different angle. “Why not? My walls are a bit cluttered, you know. The usual stuff. I could do with a bit of minimalism. So, why not?”

  Pat waited. “Yes?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Bung a red sticker under it. My name’s Johannesburg. Here’s my card.”

  He handed her his card. The Duke of Johannesburg, it read. Single-Malt House. And under that: Clubs: Scottish Arts (Edinburgh); Savile (London); Gitchigumi (Duluth).

  A Little Argument Develops Over . . . Guess What?

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  22. A Little Argument Develops Over . . .

  Guess What?

  Matthew did not like it when people said “guess what?” to him, which is the very expression with which Pat greeted him when he returned to the gallery. Being asked to guess what had happened struck him as pointless – one could never guess accurately in such circumstances, which was precisely why one was asked to do so.

  “I don’t see why I should try to guess,” he said peevishly. “If I did, I would be completely wrong and you would just revel in your advantage over me. So I’m not going to guess.”

  Pat looked at him with surprise. He had been in a good mood when he left for his appointment; something must have gone wrong with that meeting to produce this irritable response. “I was only asking,” she said.

  Matthew tossed the file that he was carrying down on the desk. “You weren’t asking,” he said. “Asking me to guess isn’t really asking anything. You just want to show me that I don’t know what’s happened. That’s all.”

  Pat was not sure how to react to this. It seemed to her a completely unimportant matter – an argument over nothing.

  She had said “guess what?” but she was not really expecting him to try to guess. In fact, she had intended merely to point to the 72

  A Little Argument Develops Over . . . Guess What?

  red sticker which now adorned Angus Lordie’s painting. It was good news, after all, not bad. Aggrieved, she decided that she would defend herself. “I don’t know why you’re so ratty,” she said. “Lots of people say ‘guess what?’ when they have some news to give somebody else. It’s just a thing they say. They don’t really expect you to guess.”