The World According to Bertie 4ss-4

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “Oh,” said Matthew. “Look what I’ve done. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  He bent down to start picking up the pieces, and held two together, as if working out whether the vase could be put together again somehow. But it was far beyond repair; some of the pieces were tiny, little more than fragments.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “These things happen. Please don’t worry.”

  “But it’s broken,” said Matthew. “I don’t know what to say. I feel so stupid. It somehow . . . well, it seemed to jump out of my hands. I . . .”

  A Replacement – and an Extra Little Present 231

  “Please don’t worry,” she said. “I’m always breaking things.

  Everybody does.”

  Matthew stood up, looking at his hands, to which a few tiny fragments of glass had stuck.

  “You must be careful,” she said. “You must get those off without cutting yourself.”

  She reached out for Matthew’s right hand and carefully brushed at it with a handkerchief. Her touch was very light, very gentle.

  69. A Replacement – and an Extra Little Present She tried to stop him, but he would have none of her objections. “I insist,” Matthew said. “I broke it, and I’m going to replace it.”

  “It was an accident,” the woman said. “Anybody can drop things. You mustn’t think twice about it. It’s not the end of the world.”

  Matthew shook his head. “Of course it’s not the end of the world,” he said. “But that’s not the point. The point is that I stupidly dropped your beautiful slag-ware vase. That was my fault and my fault alone. Fortunately, you happened to mention that Peter has others, and so I’m going to go down the road and get you one to replace the one I broke. And that’s that.”

  He moved towards the door. “You stay and look after the gallery for five, ten minutes at the most. Just stay. I’ll be back with the replacement.”

  She sighed. “You’re very insistent,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Matthew, although he thought: nobody’s ever called me insistent before. Nor decisive. But that is what I’m going to be. He looked at her. I’ve decided, he thought. I’ve decided.

  He turned and walked out onto the street, looking back briefly to see the woman standing in the gallery, watching him. He 232 A Replacement – and an Extra Little Present waved to her cheerfully, and she smiled at him. It was, he thought, a smile of concession.

  Down the road, at The Thrie Estaits, Peter Powell welcomed him from behind his desk. In front of him, half on the desk and half resting on an upturned leather suitcase, was a Benin bronze of a leopard, teeth bared in a smile. A stuffed spaniel in a case stood on guard beside the desk, while on the wall behind Peter’s head, a large gilded sconce hung at a slightly drunken angle.

  “Slag-ware, Peter,” said Matthew. “A slag-ware vase, to be precise.”

  Peter smiled. “As it happens, I have three,” he said. “And I’ve just sold another. What is it about slag-ware that makes it suddenly so popular?”

  “I’ve just broken the one you sold,” said Matthew. “And I want to replace it. I’ll take the best of the three.”

  Peter rose to his feet and went to a small cupboard. Matthew saw the three vases within and noticed, with relief, that they looked identical to the one which he had just shattered. Peter examined the price ticket.

  “They’re not too expensive,” he said. “But then they’re not all that cheap. Are you sure that you want the most expensive one?”

  “Yes,” said Matthew. “I’m sure.”

  “And what about a small Indian puppet theatre?” Peter asked.

  “Or a bottle with a sand picture of Naples in it?”

  Matthew laughed. “No thanks.” He paused. “That woman who came in to buy the vase,” he said. “Did she like anything else? Did she express an interest in anything other than the vase?”

  Peter thought for a moment. “Well, yes, she did, as it happens.

  She was very taken with that Meissen figure over there. You see, that one, the figure of the girl. She liked that. But it’s rather too expensive, I’m afraid. It’s very rare, you see, and quite an early example.”

  “How much?” asked Matthew.

  Peter picked up the delicate figure of the girl and looked A Replacement – and an Extra Little Present 233

  underneath it. “Prepare yourself for a shock,” he said. “Sixteen hundred pounds.”

  Matthew did not blink. “That’s fine,” he said. “I’ll take that too.”

  Peter knew about Matthew’s more-than-comfortable finan-cial situation; Big Lou had told him, discreetly of course. “If you’re sure . . .”

  “I am,” said Matthew. “I’ve never been surer in my life.”

  With his purchases cosseted in bubble wrap, Matthew left the Thrie Estaits and walked briskly back up the road. Inside the gallery, she looked at him reproachfully, but he noticed that she was struggling not to smile. “You’re very bad,” she said. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Well, I have,” said Matthew. “And here you are. Here’s your replacement. As good as the last one, I’m told.”

  She took the package and unwrapped it. “Thank you,” she said. “I didn’t expect that. But thank you.”

  Matthew blushed. His heart was racing now, but he felt a curious elation. “And I bought you an extra little present to make up for my clumsiness,” he said. “Here.”

  He thrust the parcelled-up Meissen figure into her hands and waited for her to unwrap it.

  “But you can’t!” she protested. “You really can’t. The vase was one thing, this is . . .”

  “Please,” said Matthew. “Please just unwrap it. Go on.”

  She removed the bubble wrap carefully. When the figure was half-exposed, she stopped, and looked up at Matthew. “I really can’t accept this,” she said. “You’re very kind, but I can’t.”

  Matthew held up his hands. “But why not? Why?”

  She looked down at the figure and removed the last of the wrapping. “Because I know what this cost,” she said quietly.

  “And I can’t accept a present like this from somebody I don’t even know.”

  Matthew looked down at the floor in sheer, bitter frustration.

  It was such a familiar experience for him; every time he tried to get close to somebody, it ended this way – with a rebuff. He 234 She Could Not Help but Hear the Conversation knew that buying this present was an extravagant gesture, an unusual thing to do, but he thought that perhaps this one time it would work. But now he could see her recoiling, embarrassed, eager to end their brief acquaintance.

  He thought quickly. He would be decisive; he had nothing to lose.

  “I understand,” he said. “It’s just that I wanted to get you something.” He paused. He would speak. “You see, the moment I saw you, the very first moment, I . . . well, I fell for you. I know it sounds corny, and I’m sorry if that embarrasses you, but there it is. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.

  Nothing.”

  She cradled the Meissen figure. “I don’t know what to think,”

  she said. “I’m sorry.” But then she looked up at him. “You’ve been very honest,” she said. “You really have. So I should be honest too. When I saw you, I felt I rather liked you. But . . .

  But we don’t even know each other’s names.”

  “I’m Matthew,” Matthew blurted out.

  “And I’m Elspeth,” she said. “Elspeth Harmony.”

  Matthew reached out to take the Meissen figure from her.

  “Let’s put this down somewhere,” he said. Then he asked: “What do you do, Elspeth?”

  “I’m a teacher,” she said. “At the Rudolf Steiner School.”

  Matthew thought of Bertie. “There’s a little boy called Bertie,”

  he began. “He lives near here. In Scotland Street.”

  “One of mine!” said Miss Harmony.

  70. She Could Not Help but Hear the Conversation Do
menica Macdonald was aware that something was happening downstairs. One of the great glories of 44 Scotland Street, she had always felt, was the fact that noise did not travel – with the exception of Bertie’s saxophone practice – and that, as a result, one heard little of the neighbours’ private lives. This was thanks She Could Not Help but Hear the Conversation 235

  to Edinburgh architecture, and the generosity of construction methods which prevailed during the building of the great Georgian and Victorian sweeps of Edinburgh. In Scotland Street, the walls were a good two feet thick, of which solid stone formed the greatest part.

  Used to this as she was, Domenica was always astonished to see the sheer flimsiness of walls in other places, particularly in postwar British construction, with its mean proportions (oppressive, low ceilings) and its weak structures (paper-thin walls).

  She had noticed how different things were on the Continent, where even very modest houses in countries such as France or Germany seemed so much more solid. But that was part of a larger problem – the problem of the meanness and cheapness which had crept into British life. And there was an impermanence too, which reached its height in the building of that great and silly edifice, the Millennium Dome, a “muckle great tent,”

  as Angus Lordie had described it. “That could have been a cathedral or a great museum,” said Angus, “but don’t expect anything as morally serious as that these days. Smoke and mirrors. Big tents.”

  Edinburgh at least could be grateful that it was, to a very large extent, made of stone, and that this gave a degree of privacy to domestic life. But in a tenement, if there was noise on the common stair, that could carry. As in the cave of Dionysius in Syracuse, a whisper at the bottom of the stair might be heard with some clarity at the top. And similarly, each door that gave onto the landing might be an ear as to what was said directly outside, with the result that remarks about neighbours had to be limited to the charitable or the complimentary until one was inside one’s own flat; at that point, true opinions might be voiced – might be shouted even, if that helped – without any danger that the object of the opinion might hear.

  Domenica had heard none of the discussion that preceded the dreadful discovery below that the wrong baby had been picked up at the council emergency nursery. Nor had she heard the cries of alarm that accompanied the actual discovery. But 236 She Could Not Help but Hear the Conversation what she had heard that day was a great banging of doors and hurried footfall on the stairs as the Pollock family headed off to the nursery in search of the missing Ulysses. This had caused her to look out of the window and to see Irene, Stuart, and Bertie piling into a waiting taxi and racing off in the direction of Drummond Place. Where, she wondered, was the baby?

  Then, a couple of hours later, she had heard them talking on the stairs as they returned. She had cautiously opened her door and peered down from the landing to see that all was well. What she saw was Irene holding Ulysses as she waited for Stuart to open the door. Bertie was there too, and he seemed cheerful enough, so she had gone back into the flat, reassured that all was well.

  What she heard next was more slamming of doors. When she looked out of the window this time, she saw the entire Pollock family, including what she thought was Ulysses, again getting into a taxi and again racing off up the road at some speed. This time, it was not much more than an hour before she heard the door at the bottom of the stair close with a bang and the sound of Irene’s voice drifting upwards.

  Domenica could not help but hear, even had she not been standing close to her front door, which was held open very slightly.

  “Humiliation!” said Irene. “Sheer, utter humiliation! How dare she say that we should have checked the baby first to see that it was the right one! Isn’t that her job? Isn’t she meant to make sure that she’s handing over a boy rather than a girl? It’s easy enough, for heaven’s sake!”

  Stuart muttered something which Domenica did not quite catch. But she did catch Irene’s reply.

  “Nonsense! Complete nonsense! Your trouble, Stuart, is that you’re a bureaucrat and you’re too willing to forgive the crass ineptitude of your fellow bureaucrats. What if Ulysses had been given to somebody else . . . ?”

  The door slammed, and the conversation was cut off.

  She Could Not Help but Hear the Conversation 237

  Domenica smiled. It sounded as if there had been some sort of mix-up over babies. But she was not sure how this could have occurred, and it had obviously been sorted out in the end. Her curiosity satisfied, she was about to close her door when she noticed that Antonia’s door on the other side of the landing was open. For a moment, she thought that her neighbour had perhaps been doing exactly what she was doing – listening to the conversation below, and she felt a flush of shame. It was a most ignoble thing to do, to listen in to the conversation of others, but there were occasions when it was, quite frankly, irresistible. And if we can’t be ignoble from time to time, then we are simply failing to be human.

  For a moment or two, Domenica hesitated. There were no sounds coming from Antonia’s flat, so the builders were probably not there. But if they were not there, then who, if anybody, was? Had Antonia perhaps left the door open by mistake when she went out on some errand? If that were the case, then it was Domenica’s duty, she felt, to check up that all was well and then close the door for her.

  Domenica crossed the landing and pushed Antonia’s door wide open. “Antonia?” she called out.

  There was silence, apart from the ticking of a clock somewhere inside the flat. She went in, peering through the hall and into the kitchen beyond. There was no sign of anybody.

  “Antonia?”

  Again there was only silence. Then, quite suddenly – so suddenly, in fact, that Domenica emitted a gasp – a man appeared from a door off the hall. It was Markus, the builder.

  “You gave me a fright,” Domenica said.

  Markus looked at her. He was frowning.

  “Where’s Antonia?” she asked. There was something about his manner which worried her. It was something strange, almost threatening.

  “Where is she?” Domenica repeated.

  Markus said nothing as he moved behind Domenica and closed the front door.

  71. For a Moment, Domenica Felt Real Alarm Anthropologists, of course, are no strangers to danger. Although relations between them and their hosts are usually warm, developing in some cases into lifelong friendships, there are still circumstances in which the distance which the anthropologist must maintain reminds the host of the fact that the anthropologist does not, in fact, belong.

  This may not matter if one is studying a group of people not known for their violent propensities, but it may matter a great deal if one is, for instance, taking an interest in organisation and command structures within the Shining Path in Peru. Or looking at gift-exchange patterns among narcotraficantes in Colombia: here, at any moment, misunderstandings may occur, with awkward consequences for the anthropologist. Indeed, aware-ness of this problem prompted the American Anthropological Association to publish a report entitled “Surviving Fieldwork,”

  which revealed that anthropology is one of the most dangerous professions in the world, with risks ranging from military attack (2 per cent) to suspicion of spying (13 per cent) and being bitten by animals (17 per cent).

  Domenica had experienced her fair share of these dangers in the course of her career and had discovered that physical peril had a curiously calming effect on her. While some of us may panic, or at least feel intense fear, Domenica found that danger For a Moment, Domenica Felt Real Alarm 239

  merely focused her mind on the exigencies of the moment and on the question of how best to deal with them. Now, trapped in Antonia’s flat – or so it appeared, once Markus had closed the front door and was standing, solidly, between the door and her – Domenica quickly began to consider why it was that she should feel threatened.

  The closing of the door may have been a perfectly natural thing for Markus to do; a builder working w
ithin a house would not normally leave the front door open. And, of course, the Poles would not be affected by the paranoia and distrust which have affected those countries where it is considered unwise for a man to be in a room with a woman unless the door is left open. That ghastly custom, insulting to all concerned, would not yet have reached the less politically correct shores of Poland, thank heavens, and long may they be preserved from such inanity, thought Domenica.

  She found her voice. “Now, Markus,” she said. “I know that you don’t speak English, and I, alas, do not speak Polish. But my question is a simple one: Antonia?” As she pronounced her neighbour’s name, Domenica made a gesture which, she thought, would unambiguously convey the sense of what she was trying to say – a sort of tentative pointing gesture, ending in a whirl of a hand to signify its interrogative nature.

  Markus looked at her in puzzlement. “Brick?”

  Domenica sighed. “Brick! Brick! I’m sorry, we’ve really said everything there is to be said about bricks. Antonia?

  Antonia?”

  Markus shook his head sorrowfully and muttered something under his breath. For a moment, Domenica felt real alarm – not for herself, now, but for Antonia. Had something happened?

  She took a few steps forward so that she was standing right before him. She repeated her sign. Surely he could understand that, at least.

  As she gestured, Domenica found herself remembering one of the most curious books in her library, Jean and Thomas Sebeok’s Monastic Sign Languages. She had come across this book years ago 240 For a Moment, Domenica Felt Real Alarm in Atticus Books in Toronto and had been astonished that anybody should have made a detailed study of such a subject. But there it was, complete with page after page of photographs of Cistercian monks, bound by their rule of silence, making expressive signs to one another to convey sometimes quite complex messages. She had toyed with buying it, but had been put off by its price of one hundred and forty Canadian dollars. This had been a bad decision: we always regret impulsive purchases not made, and no sooner had she returned to Scotland than she thought how much pleasure she would have obtained from the book.