Espresso Tales

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Bertie was thinking along these lines when he turned the corner into Drummond Place. As he did so, he heard a sound coming from his right, from the gardens in the middle of the square. It was a strange sound, something between a whistle and a hoot, and he wondered for a moment if it was some unusual bird that had lost its way and had settled in one of the trees.

  Bertie stopped, and stared into the bushes. Again the sound came, and this time it was followed by a parting of the undergrowth. Revealed within, half crouching, half standing, was Paddy, the boy whom Bertie had hoped to see in Fettes Row.

  “Bertie!” Paddy called. “Quick! Over here!”

  Barely waiting to see if any cars were coming, but nonetheless being careful not to tread on any lines, Bertie ran across the pavement and over the road. In a moment he was through the half-open gate to the gardens. Paddy called out again, and held back the branches of the large bush under which he was hiding.

  “Hello,” said Paddy, as Bertie joined him under the bush. “This is my special observation post. You can come here any time you like. You can see everything that’s going on. And nobody can see you!”

  “Great,” said Bertie. “Magnifico…” And then, correcting himself very quickly, he said: “Magnificent!”

  “Yes,” said Paddy. “But don’t tell anybody. I don’t want anyone else coming in here.”

  “Of course not,” said Bertie. “Just you and me. Like one of those Masonic lodges.”

  Paddy looked puzzled. “Masonic lodges?”

  “Yes,” explained Bertie. “That’s where men go–grown-up men. They get dressed up and go to these secret club houses.”

  “How strange,” said Paddy. “What do they do there?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Bertie. “They don’t let anybody else have a look. And there are no girls allowed.”

  “Good,” said Paddy. “Girls spoil things.”

  Bertie thought about this for a moment. He did not know many girls–in fact the only girl he knew was that girl called Olive at school. She was rather nice, he thought, and he was not at all sure that she spoiled things. It was Olive who had helped him up after Tofu had pushed him over, and it was she who had comforted him with the thought that Tofu would eventually fade away through enforced veganism.

  “There are some nice girls,” said Bertie. “There’s a girl called Olive…”

  “Never heard of her,” said Paddy. “Anyway, let’s not talk about girls. Let’s talk about something else.”

  Bertie saw his opportunity. “I’ve had a very good idea,” he said quickly. “I need your help for a plan that I’ve made. Are you allowed to go wherever you like?”

  “Yes,” said Paddy. “I’m allowed to go anywhere, as long as I’m back by six. I’m completely free.”

  “And what about your…your mother? Doesn’t she…?” It was so difficult for Bertie to say this, but it seemed so extraordinary to him, so impossible, that a boy could be free of his mother, that he needed to seek confirmation.

  “My mother’s cool,” said Paddy, with a shrug. “She says that boys need to have fun. She likes to have fun herself. Everybody says that she’s full of fun.”

  Bertie’s eyes widened. “And your dad? What about him?”

  “He’s cool too,” said Paddy. “He takes me fishing in the Pentlands. I told you that, didn’t I? And he likes to drink too. He has lots of fun.”

  Bertie looked at Paddy with admiration, and envy. This is what it must be like to be eighteen, he thought. But there was no point wallowing in regret for what was not; there was a plan to be explained to Paddy, and over the next few minutes he told him exactly what he wanted him to do. Paddy listened intently and then nodded enthusiastically. “Piece of cake,” he said. “I’ll get the money for you and I’ll buy the blazer–and the tie. Then I’ll bring it down here and leave it under the bushes–in our place. You can pick it up any time. Easy.”

  “I’ll give you a present for doing all this,” said Bertie. “You can keep ten pounds.”

  “How about twenty?” said Paddy.

  Bertie thought for a moment. Twenty pounds was a great deal of money, but he was sure that Paddy would do everything he said he would, and this was an important plan after all. “All right,” Bertie said. “You can keep twenty pounds.”

  “Good,” said Paddy. “Give me the card then, and tell me your number.”

  Bertie reached into his pocket and took out his bank card. “You’ll be able to remember the number easily,” Bertie said. “It’s the date of Mozart’s birth.”

  Paddy stared at Bertie. “Who?”

  “Mozart.”

  Paddy continued to stare. “Who did he play for?” he asked.

  Bertie laughed. That was very funny. Then he stopped. Perhaps Paddy did not get the joke.

  41. Irene’s Plan for Bertie

  Paddy was as good as his word. The day after the fortuitous encounter of the two boys in their newly-established meeting place in Drummond Place Gardens, Bertie found a neatly-wrapped parcel in Aitken and Niven livery waiting for him under the appointed bush. He had obtained leave from Irene to go out and play in the gardens for fifteen minutes or so prior to his yoga class in Stockbridge, and had used the time to locate the parcel. Fumbling with the string which Paddy had tied about the package, he tore it open and gazed in wonder at the contents. There before him was a pristine, plum-coloured Watson’s blazer, complete with tie and, tucked neatly into the top pocket of the blazer, his now somewhat depleted junior saver bank card.

  Since it was going to be very important to ensure that Irene did not see the blazer, Bertie had to be careful in smuggling it back into the flat. This proved to be easier than he had expected; Irene was on the telephone when he let himself in and he was able to slip along the corridor, into his room, and bundle the blazer under the bed. It was easy, but it was dangerous nonetheless, and he felt his heart beating loud within him as he stood at his door and listened for a few moments to his mother’s conversation. No, she had not heard; she suspected nothing.

  Irene’s voice drifted down from the other end of the flat. “Of course there’s no question but that he can manage,” she said. “He’s very advanced, you know.”

  Bertie winced. She was talking about him–again. And what was this that he was advanced enough to do? Certainly not rugby.

  There was a silence as the voice on the other end of the telephone said something. Then Irene spoke again. “His age? What’s his age got to do with it?”

  Again a silence. Then Irene’s response: “Well, that’s a completely absurd rule. Bertie happens to be not quite six yet, but he has the intellectual ability of a boy way, way beyond that. There are many eighteen-year-olds who are quite a bit behind him, you know. Bertie could go to university if he wanted to.”

  Bertie felt a cold knot of fear grow within him, an emptiness in his stomach. She was going to send him off to university now before he even had the chance to go to primary school! It was so unfair. He would have to leave home and live in a hall of residence and make his own meals. And there would be no boys of his own age at university; everybody would be eighteen, or even older. And the other students would laugh at his dungarees–he knew they would. He would be the only person at university made to wear dungarees.

  “Yes,” said Irene. “I really mean that. He could easily manage a degree. His Italian, for example, is already fluent. No, I am not hot-housing him, as you put it–and that’s a ridiculous term anyway. There is such a thing as natural intellectual curiosity, you know.”

  The voice at the other end must have spoken at some length, as Irene was silent for several minutes. Then, somewhat abruptly, she said goodbye and rang off.

  Bertie withdrew into his room and closed the door. He lay down on his bed and stared at the ceiling. It was the one white surface in his otherwise pink room, as his mother had been unwilling to stand on a ladder to paint it when she had painted the rest of the room. He stared at his walls. He was sure that Paddy did not have a pink r
oom, nor Jock, the friend he had almost made and who would have been his blood brother had his mother not intervened. They lived in normal rooms, with model cars and footballs and objects of that sort. They did not have mothers like his, who called his room his space.

  Suddenly, the door opened, and Irene stood in the doorway. Bertie wished that she would knock before she came into his room, and had once asked her to do this, but she had just laughed. “Now, now Bertie! Do you seriously want me to knock before I come into your space? Why would you want that?”

  “Because it’s polite,” said Bertie. “That’s what you should do before you go into another person’s space. You should knock.”

  “But remember: I’m Mummy,” said Irene. “And you’re Bertissimo. You have no secrets from Mummy, do you, Bertie?”

  Bertie had looked down at the floor and thought about his secrets. Yes, he did have secrets, and he would like to have more. His mother did not know about his secret thoughts, his thoughts of freedom. She did not know about his plan, which was now getting so close to fruition. And it was good that she did not know any of this. She thought that she knew everything about him, but she did not know as much as she imagined. That gave him great satisfaction. Ignorant Mummy, he thought, with relish. Mummy in the Dark!

  Now, standing in the doorway, Irene looked down at Bertie and smiled. “It’s time for yoga,” she said brightly. “If we hurry, we might be able to have a latte on the way down there.”

  Bertie took a deep breath. He did not want to go to yoga. He did not like to lie with his stomach on the ground and his back arched and pretend to greet the morning sun. Nor did he want to take a deep breath and hold it while the yoga teacher counted up to twenty-five. He did not see the point of that at all.

  “I don’t really like yoga,” he said quietly. “Couldn’t I give it up and stay at home?”

  Irene looked at him sharply. “Of course you like yoga, Bertie. Of course you like it.”

  “I don’t,” he said. “I hate it.”

  “Nonsense,” she said. “You can’t hate yoga. One doesn’t hate yoga. And you had better hurry up. At this rate we’re never going to get there.”

  Bertie sighed, and pulled himself up off his bed.

  “Are you sending me somewhere, Mummy?” he asked.

  Irene raised an eyebrow. “Why do you ask, Bertie?”

  “Because I want to know,” said Bertie. “I want to know what’s going to happen to me.”

  “Well, I do have a little plan for you, Bertie,” said Irene. “But this is not the time to discuss it.”

  Bertie looked at her. And I have my own little plan, he said to himself. You don’t know about it, you horrible old…

  He stopped. He did not want to think that way about his mother. He wanted to love her; he really wanted to. But it was proving difficult.

  42. Bertie Escapes!

  Bertie carried the Watson’s blazer to school folded up and stuffed into the bottom of his rucksack. He was ready with an explanation for his mother, if she asked him why his bag looked so bulky, but Irene seemed preoccupied with something else that morning and paid little attention to Bertie as they boarded the bus together.

  “Is something making you feel sad, Mummy?” he asked, as the bus toiled up the Mound.

  Irene, who had been looking out of the window, turned to Bertie and smiled. “No, Bertie, Mummy’s not sad. Mummy’s thinking.”

  “Thinking of what?” asked Bertie. “Of Dr Fairbairn?”

  Irene caught her breath. “Why on earth should I be thinking of Dr Fairbairn?” she snapped. She had been thinking of him, of course, of his blue linen jacket to be exact, but she had not expected Bertie to guess this. Perhaps this was that extraordinary familial telepathy that she had read about somewhere. Could Bertie be psychic? she wondered. Not that such matters were anything more than a lot of weak-minded mumbo-jumbo. He had just guessed–that was all. He had been thinking of Dr Fairbairn himself–by sheer coincidence–and that had led him to attribute the thought to her–it was a common phenomenon, she reminded herself, the transfer of our states of mind to others.

  Bertie said nothing. He wanted his mother to be happy, but it seemed to him that she herself was the obstacle to that. If only she would stop worrying about him; if only she would stop thinking about why people do things; if only she would accept people and things as they were. But he knew that it was hopeless to expect her to do this. If Irene stopped forcing him to do things, then what life would she have? She had very few friends, as far as Bertie could work out. There were some other women at the floatarium whom she liked to talk to, but she never saw them anywhere else and they never came to their flat in Scotland Street. In fact, nobody came to the flat in Scotland Street, apart from one of his father’s friends from the office, who came to play chess once a month. It was possible that his father had other friends at the office, but Bertie was not sure. He had asked him once, and had received a rather strange reply. “Friends, Bertie? Friends? Mummy and I are friends, aren’t we? Do I need more friends than that?”

  Bertie thought he did, but did not say so. One thing he was certain of was that he was not going to grow up to be like his parents. Once he was eighteen he would not go to a psychotherapist; he would not go floating; his room would have white walls, or even black perhaps, but certainly not pink; and he would never talk Italian. There were a great deal of changes in store, he thought.

  Irene walked Bertie from Bruntsfield to the school gate. Then she kissed him goodbye and Bertie watched for a few moments while she walked back up the street. Now it was time for action. Glancing about to see that he was not being watched, Bertie darted down the first part of the school drive and then suddenly turned and ran into the school garden, making straight for a small shed which was propped up against the high stone wall that enclosed the school grounds. This was a shed which the gardener used for the storage of rakes and forks and other bits and pieces of equipment. Bertie had done his reconnaissance well, and knew that it was not kept locked. Now he opened it and slipped inside.

  It took no more than a few minutes for Bertie to be transformed. In place of the crushed-strawberry dungarees and check shirt he was now regaled in a neat white shirt and tie, shorts that were just about the right colour, and the splendid new Watson’s blazer. His old clothes were bundled into his bag and tucked away underneath a rusty bucket which was sitting, inverted, on the ground. Then, glancing out of the cobweb-covered window to check that it was safe to go out, Bertie opened the door of the shed and ran the short distance to the school gate.

  It was now time to bring the first stage of the plan to completion. From the pocket of his new blazer, Bertie extracted a neatly written note which he had forged the previous evening. Looking around for a familiar face, he found Merlin, one of the boys in his class.

  “Please give this note to Miss Harmony,” Bertie said, thrusting the envelope into Merlin’s hands. “Don’t say it was me who gave it to you. Just leave it on her desk.”

  Merlin looked at the envelope and then at Bertie. “Why are you wearing that funny outfit?” he asked.

  “I just am,” said Bertie.

  Merlin shrugged, brushing a speck of dust off the shoulder of his rainbow-coloured jacket. “I suppose you’ve got the right to be weird,” he said.

  Bertie thanked him and then quickly went out of the gate and began to make his way round the corner to George Watson’s College. As he walked, he thought of the contents of the letter which he had just entrusted to Merlin. He was good at imitating his mother’s writing, and he thought that he had made a good job of it. “Dear Miss Harmony,” he had written. “Unfortunately my son, Bertie, has contracted an infectious disease and will have to be away from school for some time. I would have come to speak to you about this personally, but I was concerned about passing the disease on to you, in case I have it myself. Please do not worry about Bertie, as he is perfectly happy and will surely be returned to good health in due course. He is being treated with steroid
s, as are my husband and I, as a precaution. Yours sincerely, Irene Pollock.”

  Bertie had been very pleased with this wording and thought that it might work, particularly in view of the medical detail at the end. The mention of an infectious disease, he reasoned, would surely keep the school from contacting his mother, as schools have to be very careful about infections. So if all went according to plan he could simply keep his Watson’s uniform in the shed and change every morning. There were so many children milling about that nobody would notice anything, and Watson’s, he understood, was a very large school. In a large school like that none of the teachers would notice one extra boy, he felt, and there was no reason why he could not get his entire education there.

  He arrived at the Watson’s gate. Now, he thought, I must just act as if I belong. I must not act suspiciously. I must be confident.

  Bertie swaggered up the drive to the school.

  43. Rugby!

  Once he had entered the portals of George Watson’s College, it was simple matter to find a suitable class. Prominently displayed on the walls were signs indicating which class was which, and Bertie merely followed one that pointed in the direction of Primary One. Once there, he slipped into the classroom with a couple of other boys.