Espresso Tales

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Pat sat down and looked at the walls. There could be clues there, just to confirm. A picture of…who were the appropriate icons? She realised that she was not sure. There was a poster above the bed, a film poster of some sort; but it was for a Japanese film and she had no idea what that signified. And above her head, behind the chair, was a framed print of American Gothic, the Midwest farmer, pitchfork in hand, and his wife, standing grimly in front of a barn. Again, that conveyed nothing, except some sense of irony perhaps.

  Peter rubbed his hands together. “I’ll go and make coffee,” he said. “How do you like it?”

  Pat told him, and he went off to the kitchen, leaving her alone in his room. Once he had gone, she looked at his desk. There was a pile of books–a Jane Austen novel, a book of critical essays, the Notebooks of Robert Lowell, a dictionary. Behind the books was an open file into which what looked like lecture notes had been inserted. She rose to her feet and went over to the desk. Yes, they were his lecture notes. He had written the title of a lecture at the top: Social expectations and artistic freedom in Austen’s England: Tuesday. There was a pile of papers on the edge of the desk–a couple of opened letters and what looked like an electricity bill.

  She moved the letters slightly; of course she would not read them, she was just looking; a foreign stamp: Germany. And underneath the letters, two or three photographs, turned face downwards. She hesitated. She should mind her own business; one did not go into another person’s room and look at his photographs. But at least she could examine the writing on the back of one of them, the photograph on top of the pile. It was not very distinct, as the ink had smudged, but she could just make it out. Skinny-dipping, Greece, with T.

  Pat looked over her shoulder. She should not look at his private papers–they were nothing to do with her. But then, he had invited her into his room and the photographs were lying around and how could anybody resist the temptation to look at a photograph with that inscription written on the back? If you left photographs lying about then you were more or less giving permission for people to look at them. It was the same as sending postcards: the postman was entitled to read them. And Pat was human. So she turned the photograph over and looked.

  49. Australian Memories

  Holding two cups of steaming coffee, Peter came back into his room. “I don’t have anything else to offer you,” he said. “Not even a biscuit. We often run out of food altogether. And I find that when I buy some, Joe and Fergus eat it. I’m not sure if they know what they’re doing. They just eat it.”

  Pat was not hungry, and did not mind. Peter had made real coffee, she noticed, and it smelled good, like strong…strong what? Coffee was complicated now, with all those americanos and mochas and double skinny lattes with vanilla. This was a bitter coffee, which Pat liked, and made for herself in the flat, although Bruce always turned his nose up at it. Shortly after she had moved in, Bruce, uninvited, had taken a cup of coffee from her cafetière and had spat it out after the first mouthful. But Bruce was Peter’s polar opposite–unsubtle, uninterested in literature (he had once asked if Jane Austen was an actress), and quite without that willowy charm that Peter had in such abundance. She reflected briefly on this, and ruefully too, because she was now sure that Peter had nothing more in mind than casual friendship. How naive she had been to imagine otherwise: he was far too handsome to be interested in girls. There was that quality of sensitivity, that look in his eyes that told her, and everybody else who cared to look for it, that he understood, but, at the same time, that he was elsewhere.

  Peter sat on the bed; she sat on the chair from which the pile of clothes had been moved. He sat there, with his bare feet on the counterpane, his cup of coffee cradled in his hands; she sat with both feet on the ground, her cup of coffee sitting on the table beside her. For a few moments they looked at one another. Then Peter smiled, and she noticed his teeth, which were perfectly straight, either by nature, or through the efforts of orthodontists. There was something familiar about these teeth and she struggled to recall what it was; then she remembered–Pedro, the doll whom she had loved so much, had had teeth painted on the fabric of his face, and these teeth were just like Peter’s. Had Pedro, the doll, been interested in girl dolls, or did he prefer the company of other boy dolls? As a girl, she had thought that Pedro had loved only her, but that might have been a mistake. Pedro might have wished for something else altogether but had been obliged all his woolly life to be with her, like the captive he was. Such a ridiculous thought, and she smiled involuntarily at the thinking of it. Peter smiled back.

  They both began to speak at that same time.

  “I…” said Pat.

  And he said, “I…” and then, laughing, “You go ahead.”

  “No, you go,” she said. “Go on.”

  “What do you do? I suppose that’s what I was going to ask you.”

  Pat explained that she was a student, or almost a student. “I’ve had a couple of years off,” she said. “I went to…” She paused, and he watched her expectantly. “To Australia, actually.”

  He nodded. “So did I. Where were you?”

  She could not bring herself to speak about Western Australia, although she knew that she would have to do so sooner or later. So she mentioned Queensland and New South Wales, and Peter replied that he had been in both of those places. “I picked fruit,” he said. “And I worked in a bar in Sydney, down in that old part near the harbour bridge. I did all sorts of things. Then I went travelling with somebody I met there. We had a great time. Two months of travelling.”

  “Where was he from?” asked Pat.

  “She,” said Peter. “She was Canadian. She came from somewhere near Winnipeg.”

  Of course she was probably just a friend, thought Pat. She had travelled in Thailand with a boy who was no more than a friend; it protected one from all sorts of dangers. And of course if she had been with somebody in Western Australia, then she would not have ended up in that plight in the first place.

  “I had some pretty strange jobs in Australia,” Peter went on. “I spent a month on a sheep station, looking after the owner, who was ancient. He couldn’t walk very far and so they had made him a sort of trolley which he put a chair on. It had bike wheels, front and back, and I had to push him around the garden and down to the edge of the river. He was doing a correspondence course in history and I had to help him with that.”

  Pat laughed. She had taken peculiar jobs too, and none more peculiar than that job in Western Australia; but she did not feel like talking about that.

  Peter looked thoughtful. “I miss Australia, you know. I miss the place. Those wide plains. The eucalyptus forests and the noise of the screeching birds. Remember that? The galahs? And the people, too. That friendliness. I miss all that a lot.”

  She felt his gaze upon her, a quizzical, slightly bemused look, and she wondered what it meant. It was as if he was sounding her out, determining whether she could respond to those images of Australia, that evocation of atmosphere. And she could, of course, and was about to say something herself about the Australian countryside and the effect it had wrought upon her when there was a knock at the door. He looked away, the spell broken, and answered.

  The door half-opened and a head appeared. It was a young woman, of about Pat’s age, or a year or two older. The young woman looked briefly at Peter and then at Pat. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said. “The thermostat on the hot water has stuck again. Can you fiddle with it like you did last time?”

  Peter put down his coffee cup and rose from the bed. “Of course,” he said. Then, half-turning to Pat, he said: “By the way, this is Joe.”

  Pat nodded a greeting, which Joe returned with a cheerful wave. Then, while Peter and Joe were out of the room, Pat looked up at the ceiling and smiled. Josephine and Fergus: rather a different picture from the one she had imagined. And this meant that Peter was quite possible now, although there was still the question of T. Who was T and did she (or he) take the photograph of the skinny-dippi
ng in Greece? She could always ask Peter directly, but then that would reveal that she had sneaked a look at the photograph, which was none of her business. Unless, of course, she were to place her coffee cup on the table and inadvertently cause the books and photographs to fall onto the floor…just like this.

  50. A Trip to Glasgow in the Offing

  Sitting at the breakfast table, her single piece of toast on her plate, Irene said to Stuart: “When you go through to Glasgow on Saturday, you may take Bertie with you, but…”

  Stuart interrupted her. “Thank you. I’m sure that he’d like the train ride. You know how he feels about trains. Little boys…”

  Irene nodded impatiently. “Yes, yes,” she said, buttering her toast. She knew how little boys–or some of them–felt about trains, but that was no reason to encourage them. Little boys felt that way about trains because they were socially encouraged to do so–and she was sure that it was Stuart who had brought trains into the picture; she certainly had not. There was nothing inherent in the make-up of boys that attracted them to trains. Boys and girls were genetically indistinguishable, in her view (apart from the odd chromosome), and it was social conditioning that produced interests such as trains, in the case of boys, and, quite appallingly, dolls in the case of girls. Irene had never played with dolls, but had Stuart played with trains as a boy? They had never discussed the matter, but she had a good idea as to what the answer would be.

  “Don’t spend more time in Glasgow than you have to,” she said. “Bertie’s going to miss his yoga class as it is, and I don’t want him to miss his saxophone lesson as well.”

  “It would be nice to take him down to Gourock or somewhere like that,” Stuart ventured. “He would probably like to see the ferries. We could even pick up some fish and chips.”

  Irene laughed ominously. “And a deep-fried Mars Bar while you’re about it?”

  Stuart thought that Bertie would probably rather enjoy that, but had the good sense not to say it. He was looking forward to the outing and he did not want to provoke Irene into offering to accompany them. It was good to be going off alone with his son–as a father should do from time to time. Bertie hardly spoke to him these days; he seemed to have withdrawn into a world from which he, Stuart, was excluded, and this was worrying. Yet Stuart found it difficult to know what to say to Bertie, or to anybody else for that matter. He was a naturally quiet man, and throughout his marriage to Irene, whom he admired for her strength of character and her intellectual vision, he had left it to her to do the talking. She had always been in charge of what she called the Bertie project, and he had left it to her to make the decisions about the little boy. But beneath this acceptance there was a vague unease on his part that he was not much of a father to Bertie, and Bertie’s distance from him had fuelled this unease. And when that dreadful incident had occurred and Bertie had set fire to his copy of the Guardian he had done nothing; a real father would have remonstrated with his son and punished him–for his own good. He had done nothing, and it had been left to Irene to arrange a psychotherapeutic response.

  For his part, Bertie was fond enough of his father, but he wished that he would be somewhat less passive. It seemed to him that his father led a very dull life, with his daily journey to the Scottish Executive and all those statistics. Bertie was good at mathematics, and had absorbed the basic principles of calculus, but did not think that it would be very satisfying to do mathematics all day, as his father did. And what did the Scottish Executive need all those statistics for in the first place? Bertie wondered. Surely there was a limit to the number of statistics one needed.

  When Bertie was told that he was going to Glasgow with his father, and on a train to boot, he let out a yelp of delight.

  “That means we’ll go to Waverley Station?” he asked. He had seen pictures of Waverley Station but he had never been there, as far as he could remember.

  “Yes,” said Stuart. “And we’ll get on the Glasgow train and go all the way to Queen Street Station. You’ll like Queen Street Station, Bertie.”

  Bertie was sure that he would, and gave vent to his pleasure with a further yelp.

  “Now remember to wear your duffel coat over your dungarees,” his mother said. “And wash your hands before you eat anything. Glasgow is not a very salubrious place, and I don’t want you catching anything there.”

  Bertie listened but said nothing. He would not wash his hands in Glasgow, as his mother would not be there to make him. Being in Glasgow, in fact, would be like being eighteen, the age which Bertie yearned for above anything else. After you were eighteen you never had to listen to your mother again, and that, thought Bertie, would be nirvana indeed.

  “Glasgow’s not all that bad,” said Stuart mildly. “They’ve got the Burrell and then there’s…”

  Irene cut him off. “And the mortality statistics?” she snapped. “The smoking? The drinking? The heart disease?”

  Bertie looked at his father. He would defend Glasgow, he hoped, in the face of this attack.

  “They have their problems,” Stuart conceded. “But not everybody’s like that.”

  “Close enough,” said Irene. “But let’s not think too much of Glasgow. It’s time for some Italian, Bertie, especially if tomorrow is going to be so disrupted by your little trip.”

  Bertie complied, and busied himself with a page of his Italian grammar. His heart was not in it, though, and he could think only of what lay ahead of him. The Glasgow train! He would get a window seat, he hoped, and watch the countryside flashing past. He would see the signals and hear the squeal of the brakes as they neared a station. And then there would be Glasgow itself, which he thought sounded very exciting, with all its noise and germs. They would find their car and he would help his father to get it started. And perhaps on the way back, he might be able to do some fishing with his father, if they went anywhere near the Pentlands. There was always a chance of that.

  Bertie reflected on his lot. He felt much happier with his life now. He had settled in to Steiner’s, and he found that he liked it. He had made a tentative friendship with Tofu, and now he was being taken to Glasgow by his father. If this good fortune continued, then he would be able to put up with all the other things that made his life so trying: his psychotherapy with Dr Fairbairn, and, of course, his mother. He had only another twelve years of his mother, he thought, which might be just bearable. Unless, of course, they went over to Glasgow, his father and he, and stayed there…

  51. On the Glasgow Train, a Heart Is Opened

  Bertie sat with his face pressed to the window, his father in the seat beside him, on the ten-o’clock train from Waverley Station. It had been a morning of excitement at a level quite unparalleled in his young life. It had begun with the walk up from Scotland Street with Stuart, during which they had seen two mounted policemen riding their horses down Dundas Street; one of the policemen had waved to Bertie, and he had waved back. And then they had arrived at Waverley Station itself, nestling in its hollow with the buildings of the Old Town towering above it, flags fluttering in the morning breeze; all of this was perfect background for a soaring of spirits. In the booking hall, they had stood together in the ticket queue and Bertie had heard his father utter those potent words: “One and a half tickets to Glasgow,” and had realised that he was the half that was going to Glasgow, and back; oh happy, happy prospect!

  Bertie had thrilled at the sound of the conductor’s whistle, which had set the train off on its journey, and almost immediately they had entered the tunnel under the National Gallery of Scotland, and were out again so soon, with the Castle Rock soaring above the track, before another tunnel enveloped them in its darkness. After a couple of minutes, they emerged from this tunnel into a station.

  “Is this Glasgow?” Bertie asked, rising from his seat.

  Stuart laughed. “Haymarket, Bertie. We’re still in Edinburgh. Glasgow’s forty-five minutes away.”

  Bertie sank back into his seat, delighted at the prolongation of the journey. Fo
rty-five minutes seemed like a wonderfully long time to him–more or less the length of time he spent in a session with Dr Fairbairn, and those sessions lasted forever, he thought. With nose pressed to the window glass he watched the great shape of a stadium draw near, and he tapped his father’s shoulder and pointed.

  “Murrayfield,” said Stuart. “That’s the rugby stadium.”

  Bertie stared in wonder. Although he had decided that rugby was perhaps not for him–a conclusion which he had reached after that unfortunate experience at Watson’s when Jock, his false friend, had kicked him in the ribs–he would still like to watch Scotland play rugby against the All Blacks, or even England. That would be a thrilling thing to do, and perhaps he would find himself sitting next to Mr Gavin Hastings and would be able to listen to his view of the game they were watching. That would be a fine thing to do, Bertie thought.

  “Have you ever been there, Daddy?” he asked. “Did you ever go to Murrayfield?”

  Stuart nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I used to go there when I was a student. I went with…” He paused, and then continued. “I went there with the boys, I suppose.”

  Bertie looked puzzled. “Small boys? Boys like me?”

  Stuart smiled. “No, not boys like you. Friends of mine. I used to call them the boys. We used to go to see rugby matches and we would also go to pubs.”

  “To get drunk?” asked Bertie politely.

  On the other side of the compartment a woman overheard this question and smiled. She had noticed this small boy in his dungarees and had been amused by his excitement over the trip.

  Stuart caught the woman’s eye and raised an eyebrow. “Not really, Bertie. Well…well, maybe some of the boys had a little bit too much to drink. But usually they didn’t.”

  Bertie digested this answer. He was intrigued by the thought that his father had had another life altogether different from the one which he led in Scotland Street. “What was it like before you met Mummy?” he asked suddenly. “Was it fun?”