Espresso Tales

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Stuart had signed up for a personal assertiveness workshop that would require him to spend two hours alone in the company of an assertiveness counsellor. He was looking forward to this, as he had gradually been reaching the conclusion that whatever level of assertiveness he managed to achieve in his working environment, this was far from adequate at home. In particular, he had concluded that if he was to do anything about his relationship with his son, Bertie, then he would need to stand up to Irene. And that was an alarming thought. It was all very well to have scored a minor victory with Bertie’s attendance at Tofu’s bowling party, but it would be quite another thing to achieve the goal of getting Bertie out of psychotherapy, of relieving him of the need to attend yoga lessons in Stockbridge, and to dismantle, as far as possible, the remaining planks of what Irene called the “Bertie project”. And yet he owed it to his son. He had vowed that he would not let the little boy down: he would restore to him the tiny pleasures and idle moments of a happy boyhood. He would make his life whole again.

  Stuart sat in Meeting Room 64A/3B/4/16 (west) in the offices of the Scottish Executive, awaiting the arrival of the assertiveness counsellor, who was already ten minutes late. Stuart passed the time reading a newspaper, and was immersed in an editorial when the door was opened by a slight man in his early thirties, wearing jeans and an open-neck shirt.

  “You’re Stuart Pollock?” asked the counsellor, glancing at a clipboard in his hand.

  Stuart replied that he was, and extended his right hand to shake hands. The counsellor seized his hand and squeezed it tightly.

  “Good to meet you, Stuart!” he said. “My name’s Terry. You got a problem with that?”

  Stuart blinked. “No,” he said hesitantly. “Of course not.”

  “You see,” said Terry, “some people think that the name Terry is a bit effeminate. Know what I mean by that?” Terry fixed him with a stare. “You don’t find me short, do you, Stuart?”

  “Not at all,” said Stuart.

  “And would it matter if you did?” asked Terry aggressively. “What exactly is wrong with being on the short side?”

  “I didn’t say anything was wrong with it,” said Stuart. “You raised it, not me. And, anyway, I don’t think your name is effeminate, Shorty…I mean, Terry. And your height is neither here nor there as far as I am concerned.”

  Terry continued to glare at him. “All right, let’s sit down. I’m going to take this chair, right? This one here. That’s my chair.”

  “That’s fine,” said Stuart.

  “But what if you really wanted to sit in that chair?” asked Terry. “What if you wanted my chair?”

  “I don’t think that I would make a fuss about it,” said Stuart. “It’s exactly the same as this chair over here. All the Scottish Executive chairs are the same, actually.”

  “And that worries you?” asked Terry. “Have you got a problem with the Scottish Executive, Stuart?”

  Stuart took a deep breath. Terry was extremely irritating, and they had had only five minutes of the two-hour session. He wondered whether he would be able to survive the full time; would it be entered in his file if he failed to complete the course? Would the conclusion be drawn that he lacked the requisite degree of assertiveness needed by a competent modern civil servant?

  “No,” he said in reply to Terry’s question. “I have no problems with the Scottish Executive. The only problem I have at present is a slight irritation with you.”

  Terry clapped his hands together. “That’s the spirit, Stuart! Well done! That’s exactly what I wanted you to say. I wanted you to assert yourself.”

  “Well, there you are,” said Stuart, relaxing visibly. “And I suppose, if I were to be completely frank…”

  “Always be frank,” said Terry. “Tell it how it is, Stuart. Don’t conceal. Get it out.”

  “Well,” Stuart continued, “I suppose that I do have a bit of a problem with my wife. She herself is rather on the assertive side.”

  “Assertive!” exclaimed Terry. “I bet she’s assertive! She’s emasculating you, Stuart. I’ve never met her but I can tell what’s happening. I see it all the time. Virtually every man I meet in this job has been emasculated by some woman. It’s endemic these days, absolutely endemic.”

  Stuart was surprised by the force with which the counsellor issued this judgment. By his own admission he did not know anything about Irene, and so how could he possibly judge her in such extreme terms? On the other hand…

  “Is it that bad?” he asked mildly.

  “You bet it’s that bad,” said Terry. “And it’s time for men to fight back. Men are going to have to fight back, to reclaim their space before it’s too late and they become the new victims, just as women used to be the victims of men. We have to fight back.”

  “So what should I do?” asked Stuart.

  “Tell her what you plan to do,” said Terry. “And if she objects, just ignore her. Leave the house. Women don’t like that. They don’t like it if you leave the house.”

  “Is that what you do?” asked Stuart.

  Terry thought for a moment. “It’s what I would do,” he said. “If I had to, that is. You see, I’m not heavily into relationships. I live by myself. I’m a relationship-free man. It’s the new thing.”

  “I see,” said Stuart.

  They talked for some time after that. There were exercises in self-assertiveness which Stuart was required to do–including assertive telephone techniques–and there was a lengthy discussion about assertive report-writing. And then, at the end, Terry placed an arm over Stuart’s shoulder and wished him good luck.

  “Do you feel better?” he asked.

  Stuart thought for a moment. No, he did not feel better. He felt, if anything, more afraid. It seemed to him that the odds had suddenly been seriously raised. It was not just Bertie’s future that was at stake–it was his own.

  91. Stuart Paints Bertie’s Room

  Stuart finished his self-assertiveness workshop at four in the afternoon. He decided to leave the office immediately, rather than wait until five. This was assertive, but not unduly so. He had arrived at work early that day and in terms of hours he was well in credit. So he left the office and made his way to a hardware store that he had walked past on numerous occasions but of which he had never taken much notice. It sold paints and paint brushes, he knew, and it was bound to have what he wanted–a large paint-roller and two tins of matt-finish white paint.

  He bought the supplies, thanked the shopkeeper, and began the journey home. He felt excited and anxious–in the same way as a schoolboy would be filled with a mixture of thrill and dread when planning some transgression. This, he thought, is how criminals must feel as they travel to the scene of the crime: hearts racing, mouths dry, every sense at a high pitch. And what he was proposing to do was, for him, almost criminal. He was planning to paint Bertie’s room, unilaterally, without consultation, in complete defiance of Irene’s wishes. It was she who had chosen the existing colour-scheme, opting for pink because of its alleged calming properties and its refutation of the culturally-conditioned assumptions about the preferences of boys. Boys don’t like pink, was the conventional wisdom. Well, we would soon see about that! There was no reason why a sensitive boy, a boy brought up to eschew the straitjacket of narrow gender roles, should not approve of pink.

  Stuart knew that Bertie did not like his room–or “space” as Irene called it–to be pink. He had told him as much and had also said that as long as his room remained pink he could not possibly invite any friends to the flat, not that he had any friends, of course.

  Stuart had listened sympathetically to his son. “But you must have some friends, Bertie,” he said. “What about that boy, Tofu? Isn’t he your friend?”

  Bertie looked doubtful. “I’m not sure about him,” he said. “He may be my friend, but I’m not too sure. He keeps asking me for money and food–he’s a vegan, you know. I think that he may like me just because I can give him the things he wants.”
>
  “Some friends are a bit like that to begin with,” said Stuart. “But then they change after a while and become real friends–friends who like you quite apart from anything you can do for them.” He paused. “And what about that girl, Olive?”

  Bertie shook his head. “She thinks I want her to get lockjaw,” he said. “And I don’t. I don’t want anyone to get lockjaw, Daddy. I really don’t.”

  Stuart smiled. “Of course you don’t, Bertie!” And then he had thought: but do I want anybody to get lockjaw?–and he had decided that the answer was that he did. There were public figures, and one or two so-called singers, he thought he would like to get lockjaw, which he imagined was the only way, even if somewhat drastic, of getting them to keep quiet. But such thoughts were uncharitable.

  Now, climbing up the stairs to the flat in 44 Scotland Street, Stuart looked at his watch. Irene would be out, he thought, as she was taking Bertie to his saxophone lesson and they were both going to an extra yoga session after that. They would not be back until well after seven, which would give him a good two hours in which to paint Bertie’s room. It was not a big room, and paint-rollers covered a lot of wall in a very short time. By the time Irene and Bertie returned, then, they would be faced with a fait accompli.

  He let himself into the flat. To verify that the coast was clear, he called out to Irene. There was silence; just the ticking of a clock and the humming, somewhere in the background, of a fridge. Stuart deposited the tins of paint and the paint-roller in Bertie’s room and then went to change out of his office clothes. He knew that Irene did not like him to leave his clothes lying on the floor, and so he tossed his shirt down onto the bedside rug and threw his dirty socks into a corner. As he did so, he thought of Terry, and of how proud he would have been of him to see this. He was sure that Terry left his clothes on the floor of his flat; mind you, being a relationship-free man, Terry would not have had anybody to object to the practice.

  Once changed, Stuart went back to Bertie’s room. He moved around the pink walls, taking down the pictures which Irene had pinned up. A poster proclaiming the merits of Florence, the periodic table, a picture of Mahler. He sighed as he took them down and, on sudden impulse, rather than fold the periodic table away for putting back up once the new paint had dried, he tore it up and tossed it into the wastepaper bin. Then, with the walls bare, he opened the first can of paint, poured it into a tray, and dipped in the paint-roller. Then he set to work.

  It did not take long to cover the walls with the easily-applied white paint. Stuart worked feverishly, oblivious to the spots of paint which were appearing on Bertie’s carpet. From time to time he looked at his watch, and listened for any sound from the hall. But no sound came, and he continued with his work until the entire room had been transformed. No pink was to be seen. It was gone. Now Bertie could bring any friend home and he would never suspect that anything was amiss.

  When he had finished, Stuart tucked the empty tins and the painting equipment into a cupboard. Then, having made a not altogether successful attempt to clean the paint off the carpet, he returned to the main bedroom and changed. The paint-spattered clothes he tossed to the floor in a heap. Then he went to the kitchen and poured himself a large whisky.

  There was the sound of a key in the front door and voices.

  “And remember, Bertie,” said Irene, her voice drifting in from the hall to the kitchen where Stuart sat. “Remember that you’ve got extra Italian this week. That nice story about a little Italian boy who…”

  There was a sudden silence. Stuart looked into his empty whisky glass. It would have been reassuring to have Terry with him at the moment, he thought.

  92. Discussions Take Place Between Irene and Stuart

  The silence was broken by Bertie. “My room!” he shouted. “Look, Mummy! My room’s turned white!”

  The joy in Bertie’s voice was unmistakable and indeed became even more apparent with his next exclamation. He did not use Italian spontaneously now, but this was an occasion, he thought, when Italian seemed more eloquent than English. “Miracolo!” he shouted. “Miracolo!”

  Irene, standing at the door to Bertie’s room, surveying the transformation, was momentarily lost for words. But then she found her voice.

  “What on earth has happened here?” she said. “Somebody has painted…”

  She stepped into the room and noticed the periodic table, torn up and tossed into the bin. She picked it up gingerly, as a detective might pick up a piece of evidence at the scene of the crime.

  “Isn’t it nice?” asked Bertie, nervously. He realised that his mother was far from pleased and he dreaded the possibility that she would immediately repaint it in pink. “I think white is such a good colour for…” He was going to say “for boys” but he knew that would merely provoke his mother. So he finished by saying “for rooms”.

  “We can talk about that later on,” said Irene grimly. “In the meantime, don’t touch anything. We don’t want you getting paint on your dungarees.”

  She turned on her heel and went through to the kitchen.

  “Well!” she said, glaring at Stuart. “Somebody’s been busy!”

  Stuart looked at her coolly. “I thought it was about time that we redecorated Bertie’s room,” he said. “I did it quite quickly, actually. You got a problem with that?”

  “What?” hissed Irene. “What do you mean have I got a problem?”

  Stuart shrugged. “You seem a bit taken aback. I thought you would be pleased to discover that your husband’s a skilled painter.”

  Irene turned and slammed the kitchen door behind her. She did not want Bertie to hear what was to come.

  “Have you gone mad?” she asked. “Have you gone out of your mind?”

  “No,” said Stuart, adding: “Have you?”

  Irene took several steps forward. “Listen to me, Stuart, I don’t know what’s come over you, but you’ve got a bit of explaining to do. What are you thinking of, for heaven’s sake?”

  Stuart held her gaze. “I decided that it was about time we let Bertie have one or two things his way. It’s been perfectly apparent for some time that he did not like his pink room. Nor, for that matter, does he like those pink dungarees of his.”

  “Crushed strawberry,” corrected Irene. She shook her head, as if to adjust a confused picture of reality. “I just don’t know what you think you’re doing. There’s a reason why Bertie is being brought up to like pink. It’s all to do with gender stereotypes. Can’t you even grasp that?”

  Stuart smiled. “There’s something which I grasp very well,” he said. “And that is this: it’s about time we let that little boy just be a little boy.”

  “Oh!” said Irene. “So that’s it, is it? You think that you know what it is to be a little boy? You, the inheritor of the patriarchal mantle, passing it on to your son! Get him interested in things like cars…”

  Stuart frowned. “By the way,” he interrupted. “Where’s our car?”

  Irene, derailed by the question, stared at her husband. “Outside in the street,” she said. “Where you parked it the other day.”

  “No it isn’t,” said Stuart. “You parked it.”

  “Nonsense!” said Irene. “You had it last. And you parked it in the street.”

  “I did,” he said. “I parked it there the other day and then you used it to go somewhere or other. You’re the one who parked it last.”

  Irene opened her mouth to say something and then thought better of it. He was right, she feared. She had driven the car recently and had parked it somewhere, but she had no recollection of where that was. But then, something else occurred to her; something which was more serious than the temporary mislaying of the car.

  “Be that as it may,” she said. “There’s something that I’ve been meaning to raise with you for some time now. That car of ours. How many gears does it have?”

  Stuart swallowed. He could see where this was leading, and suddenly the whole business of painting Bertie’s room seemed
to fade into insignificance.

  Irene stared at him. “How many?” she repeated.

  “Five,” said Stuart, his voice now deprived of all the assertiveness which he had injected into it earlier. So much for courage, he thought.

  “Oh yes?” said Irene. “Then why does it now have only four?” She waited a moment before continuing. Then: “So could it be that the car you brought back from Glasgow is not actually our car? Could that be so? And if it isn’t, then whose car, may I ask, is it?”

  Stuart was defeated. It had become perfectly obvious to him that Lard O’Connor had ordered the stealing of a car for him and its fitting up with false number-plates. And once he had discovered that, he should have gone straight to the police and told them what had happened. But he had not done that because he had been frightened. He had been frightened of what Lard O’Connor would do to him when he discovered that Stuart had reported him. So he had taken the easy way out and done nothing, denying the problem, hoping that it would go away.

  Irene sat down. “Now look,” she said. “We must settle this like sensible adults. We have several problems here, haven’t we? We’ve got this problem of our car. And then we’ve got a problem of your interfering with Bertie’s upbringing. Those are our two problems, aren’t they?”

  Stuart nodded. He felt miserable. He would have to abandon this wretched attempt to do things for himself.