Bertie bit his lip. “I can’t help it,” he said, struggling to keep his voice even. “You can’t help your mummy, Ranald.”
“Maybe she isn’t your real mother,” offered Ranald, helpfully. “Maybe there was a mistake at the hospital and they gave her the wrong baby. Maybe you really belong up in Morningside or somewhere, rather than down here in Scotland Street.”
“Maybe,” said Bertie. Morningside, or even Glasgow, he thought, allowing himself a vison of freedom enshrined, distilled, apotheosised.
5
The Speaking of Italian, etc.
Irene cast her eye about the kitchen in the Pollock flat on Scotland Street. Stuart and Nicola had tidied it before her arrival, but even so it was clear that she was ready to find fault.
“I see you’ve moved the breadbin,” she observed. “Whose idea was that?”
Stuart, who was far from relaxed, gave a nervous start. “Whose idea? My ma’s, I think. But…” He realised, too late, that this was not a wise answer. “Or me,” he added lamely. “It might have been my idea. Who knows?”
“Your mother’s?” crowed Irene. “I didn’t expect her to come in here and start moving the breadbin. Not that I don’t appreciate her help with the boys, but still…”
Stuart felt the back of his neck getting warm. It always did that when he was under stress; it had done that yesterday in a meeting at the office when the chairman of the finance company he now worked for questioned a report he had written. There was nothing wrong with the report – Stuart knew that – but there was everything wrong with the chairman’s grasp of the figures in it.
“It doesn’t matter,” he blurted out to Irene. “It doesn’t matter whether the breadbin is on that table or this one. What difference does it make?”
Irene pretended to be placatory. “Oh, it makes no difference, Stuart. Don’t be so sensitive. It’s just that there’s an obvious place for the breadbin – the place it used to occupy – and then there’s a place that’s not so intuitive. That’s all I’m saying.”
He should have let the matter drop – he knew that – but there was something that made him persist. This was a symbolic rather than a real battle. What was at stake here was the principle of autonomy. Nicola did not have to accept Irene’s way of doing things; she had the right to move the breadbin around if she so wished.
“I don’t think,” he began, “that you should come down from Aberdeen and start going on about the breadbin the moment you set foot in the house.”
Irene glared at him. “May I remind you, Stuart: this is still my house. I may be located in Aberdeen at present, but I still live here, you know.”
“A funny sort of living,” Stuart muttered.
Irene would not let that pass. “Oh yes? And what do you mean by that, Stuart?”
“I mean that you now live in Aberdeen. You went there. I didn’t say to you Go and live in Aberdeen, did I? You went to Aberdeen because you wanted to be with that shrink. It was your decision. And that implied loss of control over any breadbin in Edinburgh.”
“Don’t be so ridiculous,” snapped Irene. “And don’t call Hugo a shrink. That’s a very demeaning word.”
“Well, that’s what he is, isn’t he?”
Irene sighed. “Listen, Stuart, I haven’t come down to Edinburgh to argue with you about matters in respect of which I am quite clearly right. I’ve come down to Edinburgh to see Bertie and Ulysses.”
Stuart made an effort to control himself. “All right. Ulysses is sleeping at the moment…”
“Good,” said Irene. “I’m pleased that at least something is being handled properly. His afternoon sleep is very important.”
Stuart ignored the implication that there was much else that was not being properly. He would let that pass because he knew, from experience, that arguments with Irene could go on for ever, were inevitably bitter, and were never won by anybody but Irene herself.
“And Bertie is with Ranald Braveheart Macpherson. They’re in his room – reading, I think.”
“Reading what?” asked Irene.
Stuart shrugged. “I don’t know. They go in there and play with trains and read. They like reading to one another – or Bertie does the reading because Ranald can’t exactly read yet.”
Irene was silent for a moment, and then said, “I thought you’d know what Bertie was reading. It could be something unsuitable, you know.”
“Unsuitable? Of course it won’t be. It’s probably that scouting book he’s so fond of.”
No sooner had he uttered these words than he realised that this was going to lead to trouble.
“Scouting book?” asked Irene. “You’re not letting him read that dreadful book I confiscated, are you? That Baden-Powell book?”
Stuart was defiant. “There’s nothing wrong with it. That’s the sort of thing that boys like to read.”
The effect of this was immediate. “Excuse me, Stuart, there is no such thing as what boys like to do. That sort of talk is no longer acceptable. It’s as simple as that – no longer acceptable.”
Stuart took a deep breath. “But that, I’m afraid, is just the way it is, Irene. You may not like it, but there are certain differences between boys and girls. They often have different interests.”
Irene closed her eyes. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” she said. “Not today, not after all the conversations that this country has had over gender.”
“Conversations?” said Stuart. “I thought a conversation implied the free exchange of ideas.”
“I shall ignore that,” said Irene icily. She moved towards the door. “I shall go and see Bertie. We can talk some other time, Stuart.”
She left the kitchen and walked across the hall to the door that led into Bertie’s room. “Knock, knock,” she said. “Guess who’s here, Bertie.”
The door opened and Bertie appeared. He stood still for a moment, and then rushed to embrace his mother.
“Bertissimo,” Irene whispered. “Bertissimo mio.” Then she added, “Have you been practising your Italian, darling?”
Bertie disengaged. “A bit. Not actually speaking it, Mummy, but thinking it – a bit.”
“That’s good,” said Irene.
“Granny says that French is more use than Italian,” said Bertie.
Irene ruffled his hair. “Does she now? I wonder why Nonna would say something like that.”
“She says it’s because Italian is a one-country language. She says that they speak French in other places too. She also says that Spanish is a good language to learn as there are lots of countries that speak it. Did you know that they speak Spanish in South America, Mummy? Did you know that?”
Irene said that she had heard this to be the case. “But it’s not just a question of how many people speak a language, Bertie,” she said. “It’s what the language represents. You and I know – don’t we, Bertie? – that the Italian language is the language of the Renaissance. The language of Petrarch and Dante, of Michelangelo and da Vinci – not that your granny has probably heard of them, but still.”
Irene went into Bertie’s room. She smiled at Ranald and asked him when he was going home.
“But can’t Ranald stay?” asked Bertie.
“We all get back to our own houses, Bertie,” said Irene. “Ranald’s house is over in Morningside or Church Hill or somewhere like that, Bertie. We mustn’t monopolise him.”
“When are you going to go back to Aberdeen?” asked Bertie. “I’m just asking, Mummy. You can stay as long as you like, of course, but I just wanted to know.”
6
You Tattie-bogle
That night, while Irene conducted a lengthy telephone conversation with a friend from the Carl-Gustav Jung Drop-In Centre, Stuart put Bertie to bed. The ritual was always the same: with the main lights out and the room lit only by the glow of a small night-light, Stuart
would ask Bertie about his day, listen to the reports of activities down amongst the children, as he thought of it, and then he would tell his son a story. That story did not have to be a new one: stories that had been repeated many times were still appreciated, even more so, perhaps, than those that were new. Like so many children, Bertie was, at heart, a traditionalist – in the broadest sense of the word: he did not want things to change. Which is perhaps not such a surprising position: the child, for whom all things are new, might be forgiven for not wanting to abandon that which is only recently experienced and, for the most part, found good – because anything better has not yet been experienced.
A few days earlier, Bertie had asked about kelpies. His interest had been piqued by a newspaper photograph he had seen of the great metal kelpie statues near Falkirk – towering horses’ heads that had become so popular. “Were there really any kelpies?” asked Bertie. And then answered himself with a further question, “They’re mythical, aren’t they?”
Stuart had been relieved. Kelpies were typical water spirits, and there were few water spirits that were consistently benign. From what he remembered of the Scottish folklore on the subject, kelpies were particularly unpleasant. If you unwittingly climbed on a kelpie’s back, you would be stuck there, unable to get off, and would in short order be taken into the water and drowned. Thereafter the kelpie would eat you. This, after all, was folklore, and folklore is generally not for the faint-hearted. In that respect, the kelpie barely differed from the sirens whose charms lured sailors onto the rocks. With sirens, one must avert one’s gaze to have any hope; but there was only one way in which the kelpie could be mastered, and that was by seizing their bridles. It was for this reason that the Clan MacGregor was said to possess a potent bridle, passed down from generation to generation, exclusively for use on troublesome kelpies.
Stuart was happy to allay his son’s concerns. “Kelpies definitely do not exist,” he said. “Nor do many of those other creatures people talk about, Bertie. There’s no need to worry.”
From his drowsy pillow, Bertie muttered, “And tattie-bogles, Daddy? What about tattie-bogles?”
Stuart smiled. He knew all about Scottish scarecrows. “Oh, they exist, Bertie. But they’re just tattie-bogles – nothing more. They can’t chase you or do any of the things in stories. You won’t find any tattie-bogles walking about.”
He remembered a poem he had learned as a child. Now it came back to him, dredged from the recesses of memory. It was by Willie Soutar, a bed-ridden Scottish poet who had had such a short life – a little longer than Robert Fergusson’s, but still curtailed. Now he recited it to Bertie:
The tattie-bogle wags his airms:
Caw! Caw! Caw!
He hasna onie banes or thairms:
Caw! Caw! Caw!
We corbies wha hae taken tent,
And wamphl’d round, and glower’d asklent,
Noo gang hame lauchin owre the bent:
Caw! Caw! Caw!
(The tattie-bogle wags his arms: Caw! Caw! Caw! / He hasn’t any bones or insides: Caw! Caw! Caw! / We crows have taken heed of this and flown around, and looked sideways at him, and now go home in fits of laughter over the moor: Caw! Caw! Caw!)
Bertie listened quietly, and then, his voice increasingly drowsy, he asked his father to recite the poem again. Stuart did so, and by the time he finished, he realised that the little boy was asleep. He gazed at him for a few minutes, fascinated by his son’s face in repose. There was such vulnerability, as there was in the face of any sleeper, although in the case of a child that vulnerability can surely break any heart. Could surely melt ilka heirt…
He thought of Willie Soutar’s poem. His English teacher at school – one of those inspiring teachers who can arouse a love of poetry in even the most sceptical of young people – had told them about Soutar, reading to them Douglas Young’s touching tribute to the young poet. Twenty year beddit, ran that poem, and nou the mort-claith…Twenty years confined to bed, and now the shroud…Was his life warth livan? Ay, siccar it was. He was eident, he was blye in Scotland’s cause…
He returned to the kitchen, where Irene was finishing her telephone call.
“We need to bring that up with the committee,” she was saying. “They have to face reality.”
Stuart stared at her. It was typical of Irene that she should be more concerned with the affairs of the Carl-Gustav Jung Drop-In Centre than with her own small son, that little boy with all his anxieties about kelpies and his thoughts of tattie-bogles. But there was no point in going into that now. There was no point in talking to Irene about anything, really, because she simply did not hear what you said to her. Everything was filtered through a belief system that excluded any opinions – or evidence – that she did not want to hear.
Irene tucked her telephone back into a pocket and looked expectantly at Stuart. “Well?” she said.
“Well, what?” Stuart countered.
“What are you up to, Stuart?”
Stuart gave a gesture that embraced the flat about them. “Running this place,” he said. “Getting Bertie to school in the morning. Taking Ulysses for his inoculations. Earning the money to pay for all this.” He wanted to add, “Using up my life in keeping our heads above water,” but he did not. Irene was quick to detect self-pity and Stuart did not want to give her any ammunition.
“Are you happy, Stuart?”
He thought for a moment before he answered. He could say that while he was not sure that he was as happy as he might be, he was certainly happier than he used to be. “Enough,” he said. “I’m happy enough, I suppose.”
Irene looked at him quizzically. “I suppose one gets accustomed to failure,” she said.
He said nothing.
“Ambition is not for everyone,” Irene continued. “There are those who want to get ahead, and those who are content with staying where they are.”
Stuart held her gaze. “I suppose you’re putting me in the second category. Division two.”
“If that’s where you see yourself,” said Irene. She paused, as if waiting for a mea culpa to emerge. “Surely you know in your heart of hearts that it doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do. Nobody much is going to notice it.”
Stuart bit his lip. She was a tattie-bogle – that’s what she was. A real tattie-bogle.
Now she lowered her voice. “I’d be most interested to hear if you’re seeing somebody, Stuart,” she said.
He looked at her. Why would she want to know that? Their marriage was over and he regarded himself as perfectly free to see somebody if he wanted to; and the same was true of Irene.
He affected surprise. Surely she could not know about his romance: it was far too recent, too discreet, to have registered with anybody whom Irene might know.
“I might be,” he said. “But I feel that we don’t need to inform one another of this sort of thing. There are no requirements, I would have thought, of full disclosure…”
Irene drew in her breath. “I take it that means yes,” she said.
“I didn’t say that,” protested Stuart.
Irene spoke as if ex cathedra. “Often what you don’t say is more important than what you say.” She paused. “Who is she?”
Stuart did not reply, and Irene moved on.
“I’ve made up your bed on the sofa,” she said.
He closed his eyes. She was the visitor; she should sleep there. She was the one who had left, and he saw no reason why she should now feel she could return and put him out of his bed.
The injustice of it, he thought, the sheer injustice.
“Tattie-bogle,” he whispered under his breath.
“What?” said Irene.
7
More Than Anything Else in the World
On Monday morning Matthew planned to arrive at his gallery in Dundas Street earlier than usual. It was the
day on which he would be hanging the paintings in his new exhibition, and he was single-handed; Pat, his part-time assistant, had an interview for another part-time job and would not be able to get into work until after lunch. The task of hanging was difficult enough with two people doing it – with one, it became even more demanding. And yet Matthew was looking forward to it: as he drove into town from Nine Mile Burn, he reflected on how fortunate he was to be doing a job that he loved so much, in an incomparably beautiful city, in a country that, for all its faults, was an interesting and kind place to live. Scotland was a kind place because people still worried about one another and believed in the good of community, and in a rough – and reassuring – equality too. Only read Robert Burns to understand what that is about.
And there was the weather to be considered, too, in any counting of blessings. Scotland’s weather would not accord with anybody’s idea of an ideal climate, but it was better than many other possibilities. Many places were simply too hot: you could live on the plains of India, in the red heart of Australia, or the coast of the Persian Gulf, but in the height of summer such places were barely habitable. Many other regions were too cold, as was true of large swathes of northern Canada. There, in winter, the mislaying of a glove would quickly lead to the loss of fingers from frostbite, and people who stumbled off their path and into the snow might be frozen where they stood. Scotland was never too hot, but neither was it too cold. It might be blustery, but it would be blustery and fresh. It might be wet, but it would be wet only intermittently, and between the veils of rain there would be shafts of dreamy sunlight, rainbows, patches of soft-blue sky.
And there all these things were, laid out before him, as he made his way along the final stretch of road descending to the city’s boundary. Off to his left were the Pentlands, the hills that stood between the coastal plains and the rolling, feminine interior. Down on those plains, a few wisps of haar, of sea-mist, now lifting, blanketed the cluster of rooftops, the occasional church spire, of the Midlothian towns, of Carrington, of Roslin, of Dalkeith. And then beyond all that were the cold blue fields of the North Sea across which lay Denmark, and the places beyond Denmark. He saw the conical absurdity of Berwick Law, a geological scherzo, and the Bass Rock, guano-white even at this distance, and he spotted a dot on the blue that was a ship ploughing its course northwards to Dundee or Aberdeen.
A Promise of Ankles Page 3