The Bertie Project

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “You often don’t notice it when you actually pull the muscle,” said Matthew. “Then later on the pain starts.”

  “It was quite intense,” said Angus. “It was a sharp, insistent pain. Quite bad.”

  “And?”

  “Well, it got steadily worse after we got to St. Fillans. That night I found it difficult to bend my knee at all. It was hard to get into bed—I had to sit on the edge of the mattress and then swing the useless leg up. It was far from easy.”

  Matthew shook his head in sympathy. “Poor you.”

  “We were due to come back to Edinburgh the following afternoon, but we cut our trip short and drove back the next morning. Domenica drove, in fact, as I couldn’t move my leg. It was that painful.”

  Matthew waited. He was thinking of Cultybraggan Camp and the generations of young men who had passed through it, for some of whom, of course, it had been the prelude to real conflict, to war with real explosives rather than the fireworks their instructors used to simulate explosions.

  Angus continued his story. “I saw my doctor in Edinburgh and he prescribed a pretty strong anti-inflammatory. Cyril had something similar from the vet when he caught his front paw in a drain cover. It did the trick for me. I also had a blood test.”

  “And?” prompted Matthew.

  Angus looked morose, and Matthew wondered whether he was about to hear bad news; Angus did not look unwell, but then seriously ill people could often look perfectly healthy.

  “Gout,” muttered Angus.

  Matthew was relieved. “Oh well,” he said. “At least…”

  He did not finish.

  “It’s no joke,” said Angus. “People make light of it, you know. They know that gout often goes for the big toe, and they find that amusing, for some reason. But it can flare up in other joints.”

  Matthew started to grin, but checked himself.

  “Of course, the diagnosis is not definite,” said Angus. “Apparently the only way in which you can really confirm gout is to stick a needle into the joint and see if there’s any sign of uric acid crystals.”

  Matthew, being squeamish, made a face.

  “It’s crystals that cause it,” Angus continued. “They form if your uric acid level is too high. They’re shaped like needles—hence the pain.”

  “And how do they treat it?” asked Matthew.

  Angus’s face fell again. “There are pills you can take,” he said. “They neutralise the uric acid. But you can also treat it by avoiding the foods that cause it.”

  “Well, there you are,” said Matthew.

  “Which means cutting out everything I like the most,” Angus said. “Seafood, steak, red wine and…” He pointed to his glass of beer. “This stuff too.”

  Matthew sympathised. “Oh, bad luck.”

  “I was given a leaflet published by the British Gout Society,” said Angus. “It tells you about all the foods you have to avoid—or, if you must, eat in moderation.”

  Matthew could not help but imagine meetings of the British Gout Society. “The British Gout Society,” he mused. “Do you think they have an annual dance, like other societies?” he went on. “Can you imagine how much fun that would be?”

  Angus looked at him reproachfully. “I don’t find that at all funny,” he said. “And anybody can get it, you know. Not just men who drink port in clubs…”

  Matthew assumed a serious expression. “Of course. Sorry.” The problem, he thought, was that so much humour involved human misfortune of one sort or another, and now that same human misfortune was out of bounds—interdicted by self-appointed guardians of sensitivity. There was somebody to be offended by everything, he thought, which left little room for laughter.

  “I wasn’t making light of it, Angus. It’s just that the name of the society…”

  Angus waved a hand. “No, I know that. And I’m not hyper-sensitive. But I don’t think people should make light of gout. People don’t laugh at other conditions.”

  Matthew knew Angus was right, and decided that another change of subject was called for.

  “Bruce,” he said. “I saw him the other day, you know. He’s back in circulation—with a new Australian girlfriend.”

  “Poor girl,” said Angus.

  Matthew shook his head. “If sympathy is called for,” he said, “it should be directed towards Bruce. He’s the one I feel sorry for.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” said Angus. “Poor girl. Does she have any idea what he’s like?”

  “I suspect she does,” replied Matthew. “If I had to describe her eyes, I think I’d use the expression wide open.”

  “Ah,” said Angus. “Doe-eyed?”

  Matthew shook his head. “No,” he said. “Far from it.”

  Bruce in Danger?

  When Angus returned to Scotland Street, he found Domenica in her study. She was reading, engrossed in the latest issue of The Review of Contemporary Cultural Anthropology, the arrival of which, at quarterly intervals, was a high point in her calendar.

  He let Cyril off his lead. “Anything interesting?” he asked.

  Marking her page with a scrap of paper, she put the journal down on her desk. “A rather interesting piece on shifting identities,” she said. “Or perhaps it’s not so interesting—I haven’t quite made up my mind yet. And something on parting ceremonies in Java.”

  Angus contemplated shifting identities. He was not quite sure what they were—could identity really be shifted, or was it something that you acquired in your early years and kept for life? Could he, by some act of self-revision, become somebody other than the person he had always been? Of course people could change—they grew out of their earlier selves and sometimes became completely unrecognisable, looking the same, perhaps, but having a wholly different view of life. He suspected, though, that this was not the sort of shifting identity that the Review had in mind. These shifts, he imagined, were those created by changes in the identity of whole groups of people, perhaps even of nations, caused by…by what? What led to a change in identity so significant that the people who experienced it became different people altogether? Conquest, migration, religious conversion, the subjection of the poor and vulnerable by the strong and solvent?

  And parting ceremonies?

  “Formal acts of farewell,” explained Domenica. “We have them too. Retirement parties. Graduations. Waving goodbye to those embarking on a journey.”

  Angus looked thoughtful. “Do we still do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Wave goodbye to people.”

  Domenica frowned. “When we get the chance to do so. Mind you, I don’t suppose that’s all that often. You can’t wave farewell to people at airports. You don’t see them go. They disappear through a doorway and that’s that—in much the same way as they do at Warriston Crematorium.”

  Angus remembered his father talking about waving farewell to people boarding planes at Turnhouse Airport. “He said they used to let you go out onto the tarmac and wave to the plane as it took off. You could even pose for a photograph in front of the plane.”

  Domenica smiled. “That seems so quaint now. So trusting. Now we’ve come to expect that everybody we see wants to kill us.”

  “And ships too,” continued Angus. “Didn’t people stand on the quayside and catch paper streamers thrown down from the passengers on the deck of liners?”

  “They did,” said Domenica. “They held on to the streamers as the liner pulled away—until they broke.” She paused. “The streamers represented the links between those embarking on the journey and those staying behind. It was rather touching, don’t you think?”

  Angus nodded. “The Parting Glass,” he said. “Do you know the words?”

  Domenica did not, and so he told her. And since it falls unto my lot / That I should rise and you should not…“That song,” he said, “makes me choke up. That and Auld Lang Syne.”

  “And don’t forget Soave sia il vento,” added Domenica. “That great song of parting. Soave sia il
vento—may the breeze that carries you on your journey be a gentle one…”

  They looked at one another, and became briefly silent. Then Domenica said, “Perhaps we’ve no stomach for parting any more. Perhaps it’s denied, just as we tend now to deny death. We pretend it’s not happening. Pretend that we’re not actually saying goodbye.”

  “This conversation,” said Angus, “is becoming maudlin. Let me tell you, instead, about what happened at the pub.”

  Domenica smiled. She had been tempted on more than one occasion to conduct an anthropological study of the Cumberland Bar. “Matthew was there?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he said?”

  “He saw Bruce the other day.”

  Domenica raised an eyebrow. “The young man with the…”

  “With the hairstyle. Yes. And with the attitude.”

  “You told me once that Matthew didn’t like him.”

  Angus paused before saying, “I don’t think he does. They’re meant to be friends, and I suppose they treat one another as friends, but I get the impression that Matthew simply tolerates him. He has no great enthusiasm for him.”

  Domenica did not think this unusual. “Which I suspect,” she said, “is how many people think about at least some of their friends. They’re landed with them. They continue with the relationship, such as it is, simply because they can’t bring themselves to break it off.”

  “Perhaps,” said Angus. “But the point is this: apparently Bruce has found a new girlfriend.”

  “Not surprising. He’s very good-looking, isn’t he?”

  Angus’s lip curled. “Not my type,” he said.

  Domenica laughed. “Like all men, Angus,” she said, “you suffer from the male inhibition about commenting on the looks of other males. It’s a very strong taboo, isn’t it? The most that men will say is something like, ‘He’s thought to be good-looking’ or ‘I gather women find him handsome.’ They won’t say they do.”

  Angus remained silent, and Domenica continued, “Whereas we women—not being afflicted with this inhibition—are very happy to comment on female beauty. We find no difficulty in saying to another woman, ‘You’re looking very pretty today.’ Can you imagine many men saying that to another man?”

  “They wouldn’t use the word pretty,” suggested Angus. “Or…”

  “My point,” interjected Domenica.

  “Or they just don’t see it.”

  But Domenica disagreed. “Oh, they see it all right. Men are quite capable of judging male beauty in exactly the same way as women are.”

  “Well, they may be able to detect it,” conceded Angus. “But perhaps they don’t like to say anything because they actually resent it.”

  “You mean they’re envious of it? I think you may be right. But anyway, what about Bruce’s new girlfriend?”

  “Australian,” said Angus. “Six foot tall. Blonde.”

  “He’ll like that, no doubt.”

  “Apparently she was a waitress on an airline.”

  Domenica looked puzzled. “A waitress on an airline?”

  “You know,” said Angus. “The people who bring you your meals and serve coffee and so on.”

  Domenica’s look of puzzlement changed to a broad smile. “No, Angus; stewardess, you mean. Or flight attendant, now. Not waitress.”

  “Same thing,” said Angus casually. “Anyway, she was a wait…a stewardess for Qantas and then she decided to come and work in Scotland as a personal trainer. She’s very sporty, apparently.”

  “I suppose six-foot Australian stewardesses are highly likely to be sporty,” said Domenica.

  “Yes, but she’s keen on extreme sports,” said Angus. “You know, jumping off structures and so on. Can you believe it? Matthew thinks that Bruce is going to end up being killed.”

  Domenica’s eyes widened. “Oh, surely not.”

  “Her last boyfriend was,” said Angus.

  “But to lose two…”

  “As Oscar Wilde would say…”

  “To lose two vehicles sounds like carlessness.”

  They both laughed. Then Angus asked, “What’s for dinner, Domenica?”

  Domenica was about to reply when she remembered something. “I saw wee Bertie today—on the stair. We had a long conversation.”

  “Poor Bertie. I don’t suppose there’s any chance of his mother going away again?”

  Domenica shook her head. “Alas,” she said. “Not the slightest chance, I fear.”

  “If only she would take up extreme sports.”

  “Charity, Angus,” admonished Domenica. But then she added, “Yes, if only.”

  An Inquisition Begins

  In the flat immediately below Angus and Domenica’s, Bertie Pollock (7), the son of Stuart and Irene Pollock, and brother of Ulysses (1), was sitting on the floor attempting to complete a jigsaw puzzle. The picture in the puzzle was a distant view of Stirling Castle, with the curious tower of the Wallace Monument in the background. Unfortunately for Bertie, several pieces of the jigsaw were missing, including half of the Wallace Monument and several important parts of the castle’s defences.

  Irene was browsing through various magazines that had arrived during her recent prolonged absence in the Middle East, where, owing to a misunderstanding with a Bedouin sheikh and his staff, she had been sequestered for months in a remote desert harem. Now back in Edinburgh, remarkably unaffected by her experience—durance it might have been, but hardly vile—she was busy catching up with things that had happened while she was away.

  “I’m not going to be able to finish this puzzle, Mummy,” said Bertie from his position on the floor. “There are ten really important pieces missing. I’ve counted them.”

  “Ten?” said Irene. “You should take more care of these things, you really should. If we all lost our jigsaw pieces, then nobody would be able to complete a puzzle, would they, Bertissimo?”

  Bertie smarted under the injustice of the accusation. “But it wasn’t me,” he protested. “It was Ulysses. He ate them. I saw him spit some of them out, all chewed up. I saw it, Mummy. And that piece over there—the top of the Wallace Monument—he swallowed it. I saw him do it.”

  Irene glanced at Stuart, who was sitting on the other side of the room tapping an e-mail into his laptop computer.

  “Oh, really,” said Irene, becoming severe. “You shouldn’t have let your brother swallow things, Bertie. We’re old enough to prevent such things, aren’t we? Seven is old enough to take on responsibilities like that.”

  “But I wasn’t looking after him,” said Bertie. “Daddy was.”

  Stuart looked up from his computer, but said nothing.

  “Stuart,” said Irene, her voice quiet enough, but now carrying a note of menace. “Bertie says that Ulysses ate the Wallace Monument. Surely you must have noticed.”

  Stuart looked evasive. “He’s always putting things in his mouth. It’s difficult sometimes…I don’t know why he does it.”

  Irene put down her magazine. “It’s perfectly normal, Stuart. Oral gratification.” She spoke patiently, as if explaining something simple to one who might nonetheless not quite grasp it. “And during that stage we must be especially vigilant.”

  It was a reproof—Stuart was in no doubt about it—but he had learned not to argue with Irene. What was the point? Resistance, he felt, often just made matters worse.

  “Granny stuck a dummy in his mouth,” said Bertie. “That stopped his girning. It also stopped him swallowing things.”

  Irene bristled. “A dummy?”

  Stuart glanced at Bertie, as if to warn him—but it was too late.

  “Do I understand correctly,” she said, glaring at Stuart, “that your mother put a dummy in Ulysses’s mouth?”

  It was Bertie who answered. Eager to protect his father, he brought up something he had heard at school from Pansy, whose mother was American. “You know what they call those things in America? They call them soothers.” He felt increasingly concerned for his father; Irene
was now glaring at Stuart. “I read that the German word for dummy is Schnuller, Mummy. Did you know that? That’s because…”

  This did not distract his mother. “Stuart,” she said, ominously.

  Bertie persisted. “And he really loved it. Babies like dummies, Mummy. Pansy’s little sister used one until she was five.”

  Irene ignored this. “Stuart,” she said. “I thought I had made our policy crystal clear. No dummies.”

  Stuart fixed his gaze on his computer screen.

  “Stuart,” hissed Irene. “We need to talk. In the kitchen.”

  Sensing the danger his father was in, Bertie suggested his parents could talk where they were. And then he added, “It was my fault, Mummy. I told her he wanted one.”

  But Irene was already on her feet, signalling to Stuart. Bertie sighed, and returned to his puzzle. The Wallace Monument looked odd enough, he thought, even when complete; without its crown spire and top section it looked even odder—rather like an overgrown grain elevator. He wondered whether he could draw a substitute piece, or perhaps cut a photograph out of a brochure and repair the puzzle that way.

  Ulysses was all right as a brother, he thought, but he had no respect for other people’s property. This worried Bertie, as he was a prodigious reader and had recently read something about psychopaths. The article had said nothing about baby psychopaths, but presumably they existed, as adult psychopaths must have been babies at some stage. If Ulysses was a psychopath, as seemed likely to him, then Bertie felt he was in for a difficult few years, having to protect his property against the depredations of a younger psychopathic sibling. Perhaps he could be kept locked in his room, thought Bertie. He could be let out for meals and for short expeditions to Valvona & Crolla, chained to his pushchair if necessary, but for the most part he would have to be kept confined. He would be kind to him, of course, and pass on his older toys, but it seemed to him that community safety should come first.

  Behind the closed door of the kitchen, Irene confronted Stuart in a lowered, but chilling tone.

  “Your mother, Stuart…” she began.