Espresso Tales

by Alexander McCall Smith

  That would draw him out, thought Bertie. No boy could resist a message like that. And then Bertie thought: will Paddy know how to read? If he did not–and that was perfectly likely–then there would be no point in writing the message. This conclusion slightly dampened his spirits; it was not easy, he realised, being more advanced than others. And again this was not his fault, he thought with irritation; it all came back to his mother. She’s the one who has ruined my life. She’s the one.

  Royal Crescent, a terrace of high, classical buildings, was quiet as Bertie made his way along it. A cat watched him from the top of a car, its eyes narrowing as it assessed the threat which he presented to its peace of mind and safety. But Bertie was no threat and the cat closed its eyes again. And then a woman came out of a front door and stood for a moment at the top of her steps as Bertie walked past. Bertie looked up, and she smiled.

  “Going somewhere?” she asked in a friendly tone.

  Bertie stopped in his tracks. “Yes,” he said.

  The woman continued to smile. “Don’t get up to any mischief,” she said.

  Bertie stood quite still. How could she tell? Did something give it away, just as Pinocchio’s face gave away his lies? Could adults just tell?

  “I won’t,” he muttered.

  “Good,” she said, and turned away, fumbling with her key. Bertie continued on his way, more slowly, more circumspectly. Now the end of the first section of Fettes Row was in sight and there was Dundas Street, with its traffic. A bus went past on its way up to town, its engine straining against the hill. Behind it, a blue van waited its chance to overtake. The traffic seemed heavy.

  As he came to the corner, the shadows of the buildings gave way to a burst of sunlight. Bertie stopped at the edge of the pavement and looked across the busy thoroughfare of Dundas Street. For a moment, out of ancient habit, he looked up beside him, expecting to find the familiar adult, his mother or his father, at his side. That is how one crossed the street–beside an adult–with one’s hand in the adult hand, safe and guided. But there was no adult now; no mother, no teacher, no psychotherapist. Bertie was alone. He swallowed hard, and closed his eyes for a moment. Nobody had taught him the principles of crossing a busy street. Should he wait until there were no cars in sight and then walk slowly across? The problem with that was that he would stand there forever: there were always cars in sight on this busy road.

  He looked up the hill. The traffic came down more quickly than it went up. This meant that if he could find a break in the traffic coming down, it would not matter so much if there was something coming up the hill–such traffic would always take longer to reach him. But how long would he need? It was difficult to judge the precise speed of the traffic, and although the buses seemed to be moving very slowly, some of the cars were doing anything but that. Indeed, as he stood there, a small red car shot past him so quickly that he would have missed it, he felt, had he blinked. That car would most certainly have run him over if he had been crossing the street when it had roared round the corner of Henderson Row.

  For a few moments, Bertie considered abandoning his mission. It would be simple to turn round and retrace his steps–as yet innocent steps–back to Scotland Street and home. If he did that he would have done nothing wrong at all and could face his mother and tell her exactly what he had done. He had gone to the end of the safe part of Fettes Row–that was all. But to do this was a complete capitulation. If he did not even have the courage to cross Dundas Street, then would he have the courage to do anything at all? And what of Gavin Hastings? he thought. Would he have been afraid to cross Dundas Street at the age of six? He would not. He imagined that Gavin Hastings had run across Dundas Street on many occasions as a boy; run and jumped and kicked his heels so that anyone watching would have nodded their heads wisely and said: Look at that boy! That’s a boy who’s bound to play rugby for Scotland! Bertie took a deep breath. He decided to run.

  35. Halfway Across

  Peter Backhouse, musician and aficionado of old railways, happened to be walking down Dundas Street that afternoon. He had spent a very satisfactory hour practising on the St Giles’ organ and was pleased with the Olivier Messiaen and Herbert Howells which he planned to perform at a “St Giles’ at Six” concert the following Sunday. There was such quiet in the music, such calm; it was the perfect antidote to the frenzied pace of modern life. Now, returning to the Academy for afternoon chamber-choir practice, he thought of what lay ahead of him. No Messiaen or Howells for the choir–at least not today–but a quick run through of Stand by Me and So it Goes, which the chamber choir had sung before and would respond to well; tear-jerkers, both of those pieces, if one were in a sentimental mood–which parents often were at school concerts.

  He had reached the point at which Cumberland Street meets Dundas Street when he realised that something was happening. He had glanced at his watch–a quick check to see that he was still in good time for choir practice–and for some reason, perhaps through an unconscious prompting of things seen but unseen, he looked over to his right and saw a small boy, wearing strawberry-coloured dungarees, suddenly run out into the street. For a moment, Peter Backhouse thought that the boy had kicked a ball into the road and was rushing out to retrieve it–it was that sort of purposeful, darting movement–but then the boy hesitated, took a few more steps, and stopped again.

  Oliver Sacks has pointed out that those who are involved in moments of extreme peril often report a slowing-down of time. They see the danger, they may even see impending annihilation, but they often feel that they have plenty of time to react. The quick seconds of peril are slowed, become minutes in the minds of those involved. This is how it seemed that afternoon. For Peter Backhouse, the boy seemed to be standing still for an inordinately long time, quite enough time to step from the path of the bus that was approaching him as he stood, momentarily frozen, in the middle of the road. The bus lumbered past, some faces at least peering out from the window at the sight of the small boy, statue-like, in the middle of the traffic. Then there were cars, one of which slowed down and swerved, avoiding a small movement that the boy had made.

  Peter Backhouse shouted out to the boy, “Don’t move!” He looked up the road at the approaching traffic; a red light on the corner of Great King Street had changed and a stream of vehicles seemed to be hurtling down towards the boy while at the same time more cars came from the other direction. He looked behind him and decided that he should step out into the traffic and hold it up, hoping that it would heed him and allow the boy to complete his journey. But a car had already reached the point where he was standing and had shot past the stationary boy. Perhaps they could not see him; perhaps they thought that he was waiting to cross and knew exactly what he was doing.

  And then, quite suddenly, a car careered round the corner behind him and launched itself down the road, going far too fast, the driver, distracted perhaps, unaware of the boy in the middle of the road–the boy who now seemed on the verge of overcoming his panicky indecision and launching himself into the rest of his interrupted crossing of the road. Peter Backhouse shouted, and began to leap forward, but he had been anticipated by another, a man on the other side of the road. This man, who had been walking up Dundas Street, had also seen what was happening and had acted. With a quick glance behind him, he darted forward, narrowly avoiding a passing van, and ran into the middle of the road. There, he seized the frightened boy and lifted him up bodily, right out of the path of the oncoming car. Then, still holding him in his arms, he strode back to the edge of the road and to safety. A car squealed to a halt and a motorist shouted something out–a compliment, an expression of relief, an offer to help–but the rescuer indicated that all was well and the car drove off. On the other side of the road, Peter Backhouse shook his head, but breathed a deep sigh of relief. Then he strode off to choir practice. Stand by Me indeed! How very appropriate.

  Bertie, quivering with fright and on the point of tears, stood abjectly on the pavement, his rescuer beside him.
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  “That was rather too close for comfort,” the man said. “You should stick to the crossings, you know. That’s what the green man’s for.”

  His tone was not unkind, and Bertie looked up at him for a moment. His face looked familiar, but Bertie was not quite sure. The man smiled. “Where do you stay?” he asked.

  Bertie pointed in the direction of Scotland Street.

  “Well, I think you should get back home,” said the man. “Will you be all right, do you think?”

  Bertie nodded. He had always been taught to thank people, and now he remembered. “Thank you very much,” he said. “Thank you for saving me.”

  “That’s all right,” said the man, smiling. “I’m sure that you would have done the same for me if that had been me stuck out there!”

  “I don’t know,” said Bertie.

  “I’m sure you would.”

  Bertie returned the smile. Then he began to walk back along Cumberland Street, turning once to wave to the man, who was watching him set off safely on his way. It had been a dreadful, humiliating experience–and a terrifying one, too. And had he not been saved by that kind man, whoever he was, he would be crushed by now; perhaps in a wailing ambulance, being carried off to hospital. Or would they take him to Dr Fairbairn’s office first, where he would be asked at great length why he wanted to cross Dundas Street in the first place? That was possible, thought Bertie. Nothing was ever simple.

  In Dundas Street, things had quickly returned to normal, as they do in cities when something untoward occurs. Few people had seen what had happened; Peter Backhouse had, but he had missed one detail. That detail had been spotted by an elderly woman who happened to be looking out of her window more or less immediately above the point where the incident had taken place. She had seen it all, and she now telephoned her friend in Trinity.

  “Effie,” she said breathlessly, “Effie, you simply won’t believe what I’ve just seen, right outside my window. A wee boy panicked in the middle of Dundas Street and froze. Then he was rescued, snatched from the jaws of death by…Now, you won’t believe who it was, Betty, you really won’t. Jack McConnell, First Minister of Scotland. Yes! Yes! What a to-do! But he slipped away, and so I don’t think he’ll want this to get into the papers. So not a word, Effie. We don’t want it to get into the Scotsman, do we?”

  36. Ramsey Dunbarton

  High above the city, on the bracing slopes of the Braids, Ramsey Dunbarton stood before the window of his study, looking out over the rooftops and to the hills of Fife beyond. It was a view that he had lived with for almost forty years and he knew it in every mood. In winter, when the light was thin, the distant hills became shapes of pale grey, hardly distinguishable from the scudding clouds above them. In summer and in autumn, the hills would stand out, sharply delineated mounds of green and purple, folds of earth that seemed, so misleadingly, to be just a short distance away. And always there was that wide, unpredictable northern sky, with its constantly changing clouds that shifted and parted with the wind.

  Ramsey was a northerner by temperament. He felt ill at ease whenever he travelled south, to England or to France, feeling inside him that things were just too bright, and dusty–almost as if the sun had taken something out of the countryside and blanched it. And the air was stale in such latitudes, he thought; stale and stagnant. Ramsey liked Scottish light, pure and clean, and sharp. He liked long, cool evenings in summer and the comfortable darkness of winter days. He liked Scotland exactly as it was: unfussy, cold, and sometimes only half-visible. “I am not a Mediterranean type,” he had once remarked to his wife, Betty. And she had looked at him, and sighed. He was not. And nor, she reflected, was she.

  Standing before his window, Ramsey thought of the day that lay ahead. It was ten-thirty in the morning and he had already dealt with the newspaper and the morning mail. Since there had been little news of any consequence, he had not taken long to finish the newspaper, and the mail had not been much better. There had been a rose catalogue from Aberdeen–it was his policy always to order roses from Aberdeen, as northern roses would always be the hardiest and would do well in Edinburgh. Buy north, plant south, Ramsey had often said, and the success of his roses spoke to the wisdom of this policy. It could equally apply to people, he had sometimes thought: Aberdonians did well wherever they went in the south.

  Then there had been a newsletter from the secretary of the local Conservative Association in which plans for several social events had been revealed to members. The ball a few months earlier, of course, had been most enjoyable, although the attendance, it was pointed out–six people–had been a little disappointing. The secretary, who had been unable to attend herself, exhorted the members to make next year’s ball an even greater success, and noted that an attempt would be made to secure the services of a different band. “We had some very critical comments about the performance of the band,” she wrote, “and these have been forwarded to the ball committee (convened by Sasha and Raeburn Todd). One member has raised with me the question of whether it is proper for bands to allow their socialist convictions to interfere with the performance of their duties at paid functions. This is a very pertinent point and I believe that we should take action. If anybody knows of a Conservative ceilidh band, please contact us as soon as possible so that we can book them for next year. So far, no suggestions of possible bands have been received.”

  Ramsey Dunbarton read this with interest. He was the member who had raised the question of the band’s performance and he was pleased to see that his complaint had been taken up. There had been a lot wrong with the organisation of the ball, in his view. To begin with, somebody had tried to put him and Betty at a separate table from the other four guests. This was a ridiculous idea, and he had soon dealt with it by the simple expedient of moving the tables together. Then there was the question of the raffle, about which he still felt moderately vexed. There had been some very generous prizes donated by the members, and it was imperative that any raffle for these should have been carried out fairly. He was not convinced that this had happened; in fact, he was sure that Sasha Todd, who had arranged the whole thing, had actually fixed the lottery so that she and her family should get the most desirable prizes. In particular, Ramsey had noted that she had made sure that she would win the lunch with Malcolm Rifkind and Lord James, which was the prize that he would most have liked to win. It can hardly have been much fun for the two politicians to have to sit through a lunch and listen to her going on about the sort of things that she tended to talk about. She was a very superficial woman, in his view, and she would have had no conversation of any interest.

  He, by contrast, could have talked to them about things they understood and appreciated.

  Ramsey’s thoughts on the newsletter were interrupted by the arrival of Betty in his study.

  “Coffee, dear,” she said, handing him his cup with its small piece of shortbread perched on the edge of the saucer.

  “Bless you, Betty,” Ramsey said, taking the cup from his wife.

  “Deep in thought?” Betty asked. “As always.”

  Ramsey smiled. “Politics,” he said. “I was reading the newsletter. That made me think about politics.”

  Betty nodded. “You would have made a wonderful politician, Ramsey,” she said. “I often wonder what would have happened had you entered Parliament. I’m sure that you would have reached the top, or close enough to the top.”

  “I don’t know, Betty,” said Ramsey. “Politics are dirty. I’m not sure whether I would have had the stomach for it. They are very rude to one another, you know. And the moment they get the chance, they stab you in the back.”

  Betty nodded. “Of course, if you had gone into politics, you’d now be sitting down writing your memoirs. That’s what they all seem to do these days.”

  Ramsey spun round and looked at his wife. “Memoirs?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Betty. “Your political memoirs.”

  Ramsey put down his cup. “Betty,” he said. “There’
s something that I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. The question of memoirs.”

  Betty looked at him inquiringly. “Yes?”

  Ramsey lowered his gaze, as if in modesty. “It’s funny you should have mentioned memoirs,” he said quietly. “I’ve actually been writing them. I’ve got quite a bit down on paper already.”

  For a moment, Betty said nothing. Then she clapped her hands together. “That’s wonderful, my dear. Wonderful!”

  Ramsey smiled. “And I thought that you might like to hear a few excerpts. I was plucking up courage to offer to read them to you.”

  “I can’t wait,” said Betty. “Let’s hear something right now. I’ll fetch more coffee and then we can sit down.”

  “It’s not going to set the heather on fire,” said Ramsey modestly. “But I think that my story is every bit as interesting as the next man’s.”

  “Even more so,” said Betty. “Even more so.”

  37. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part 1–Early Days

  Ramsey Dunbarton, having shuffled through a sheaf of papers, looked at his wife over the top of his reading glasses. “I shan’t bore you with the early stuff,” he said. “School and all that. I had a pretty uneventful time at school, and nothing much happened; it’s hardly worth recording. So I’ll start off when I was a young man. Twenty-five. Can you imagine me at twenty-five, Betty?”

  Betty smiled coyly. “How could I forget? The year we met.”

  Ramsey frowned. “No, sorry, my dear. Not the year we met. We met when I was twenty-six, not twenty-five. I remember it very well. I had just finished my apprenticeship with Shepherd and Wedderburn and had been engaged by another office. I remember it very well.”