The Bertie Project

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “So what happened?”

  “Well, they gave him his latte and he took it to a table.”

  “No!”

  Clare dug him in the ribs. “Don’t be sarcastic. Do you want to hear this or not?”

  “I’m all ears,” said Bruce. “This star took his coffee to his table. And then?”

  “He sat down and started to drink it. Then his phone went and he answered it. He cupped his hand round it so people couldn’t hear what he was saying.”

  “He was probably talking to another star,” suggested Bruce.

  Clare agreed. “Probably. Anyway, after a while he left and everybody started talking again. They were all talking about him, I think.”

  “Who was he?” asked Bruce.

  “I can’t remember. Anyway, I asked somebody at the table next to mine and she said, ‘Oh, it’s so-and-so.’ She was surprised I didn’t know. Apparently he acted the part of somebody or other in something big. She said that he had been nominated for an Oscar but hadn’t won because his eyebrows weren’t quite right.”

  “So that was LA,” muttered Bruce. “Quite the place.”

  “Yes, but as I said, there’s a tacky side to it. If you go into a restaurant there are all these wannabe actors hoping that somebody will notice them. Apparently if a director comes in for a meal there is always a massive fight to see who can serve at that table. Sometimes it gets really nasty.”

  “People want to be in the movies,” said Bruce. “I turned down offers, you know.”

  Clare was impressed. “To be in the movies?”

  “Yes,” said Bruce. “I’ve been asked.”

  Her incredulity showed. “And you said no?”

  “Yup. Got other things to do.”

  Clare leaned over and delicately licked the tip of his nose. “You’re so cute, Bruce. Seriously cute. You would have been great on the screen.”

  Bruce nodded. “I suppose so. But there we are.” He paused. Why did she keep licking the tip of his nose? Nobody had ever done that to him before and he was not sure how to react. Did she want him to lick the tip of her nose? He was not sure that he wanted to do that.

  “Tell me what happened,” he continued. “Why did you leave the airline?”

  Clare laughed. “It left me, actually. It was such a stupid thing. It should never have happened. And it wasn’t my fault.”

  “I didn’t think it would be,” said Bruce.

  “We were on a long-haul flight,” Clare said. “The plane was going from London to Sydney, via Singapore. I had flown up on a different flight from Melbourne to Singapore, and I had two days there before I was due to fly back down to Sydney. Have you ever been to Singapore, Bruce?”

  Bruce shook his head. “Not yet. It’s on the list, though.”

  “It’s a great place,” said Clare. “It’s really hygienic, you know. You can go and eat at a roadside stall and be absolutely confident that you won’t pick up something. Try to do that in some places and you’re dead. Big time.” She grimaced. “I had a friend, you know—somebody I worked with on the airline—who went somewhere dodgy and ate rice from a buffet. I think it was in Vietnam. Anyway she was in a perfectly good hotel somewhere or other—one with good TripAdvisor ratings—and there was this buffet, see, and she took some rice from it. Bad mistake. Never, ever eat rice from a hotel buffet in places like that. The reason? You know the reason?”

  Bruce shook his head.

  “It’s because rice is an ideal breeding ground for the organisms that cause food poisoning. They love it. They get in there and they say let’s multiply and they do. And then what do the hotel staff do, Bruce? I’ll tell you. When all the guests have had their lunch and there’s still a lot of rice left on the buffet, the waiters take the rice back to the kitchen and they keep it for use the next day. So when the next lunchtime comes round, what have you got? You’ve got whole colonies of bacteria and viruses too. Viruses like rice as well—a virus loves rice, Bruce.”

  Clare drew breath. “So this friend of mine ate some of this rice and she started to feel sick about four hours later. And she became sicker and sicker and ended up in hospital. She was on a drip, Bruce, because, well, not to put too fine a point on it, she was pretty dehydrated by having to go off to the dunny all the time. And you know what? They said she could have died. Actually died, as in dead, Bruce.”

  “As in dead dead?”

  “Yes. But she didn’t die. She lived.”

  “As in alive?”

  “Yes.”

  On the Flight Deck

  “So there you were in Singapore,” said Bruce.

  “Yes, ready to go on duty,” said Clare. “So we were collected from the hotel and taken out to the airport. It was all pretty straightforward. Briefing from the Purser, signing for the supplies and so on. Passenger manifest. An absolutely routine flight.” She stared up at the ceiling as she continued. “I was on duty in Business Class, which is always better than being in Economy. You don’t get as many difficult passengers there—usually. They can be demanding, but you don’t get kids being sick all over the place or nuns with guitars—only joking. I actually had a nun with a guitar on board once, you know—the real thing. When I saw her I thought she must be an actress, but she was an actual nun. If we’d got into difficulty—if the plane started to go down or anything like that—I’m pretty sure she would have calmed the passengers down by singing something appropriate.

  “Anyway, I was in Business Class and everything was going smoothly. We had served drinks once we took off and were taking orders for lunch. I was working the first few rows and one of the others was doing the next ones. You know the sort of thing—Are you going to be having the salmon or the beef en croute? Not exactly rocket science, but you have to make people think you really care about what they’re going to have.

  “Everything was going fine—and then we hit turbulence. Now most turbulence, Bruce, is not too bad. The plane just bumps about a bit, but nothing serious happens. This was like that—it was pretty mild, but the Captain decided to switch on the seat belt sign and everybody had to return to their seats. No big deal.

  “I went up to the front and began to work back down the cabin to check up that everyone was belted in. We suspended cabin service, naturally, until the Captain gave the say-so.

  “Well, there I was, going down the rows, and in the third row there’s this guy sitting there without his belt on. So I ask him to fasten his seat belt and he ignores me. He completely ignores me. So I tell him that he really needs to do it because the fasten seat belts sign is on. And then he gets up and sort of brushes past me to go and talk to this friend of his a few rows back.

  “I say to him, Listen sir, you have to get back to your seat—the Captain has switched on the seat belt sign.”

  Bruce was wide-eyed. “And did he do it?”

  Clare shook her head. “He completely ignored me.”

  “So what did you do? Tell the Captain?”

  Clare sighed. “That’s what they said I should have done. But I didn’t. I grabbed him and tried to push him back towards his seat.”

  Bruce whistled. “Well…”

  “He didn’t like it,” Clare went on. “He started to kick me—he really did. And so I hit him in the stomach and when he bent forward I gave him a sort of karate chop on the back of the neck. He didn’t like that one bit.”

  “He wouldn’t,” said Bruce.

  “Then the Purser came along and calmed him down. He led him to his seat and crouched down and talked to him for a while. Then he came back to where I was standing and he said, ‘You know who that was?’ I said, ‘It was an unruly passenger—that’s who it was.’ And he said something about not trying to be smart—something like that, and then he said, ‘That’s the Prime Minister of New Zealand.’ ”

  Bruce let out a hoot of laughter. “You didn’t! The Prime Minister of New Zealand!”

  “Not the current one,” said Clare. “This was someone called Jones. He didn’t last very long, bu
t he was Prime Minister at the time. How was I to know? Who can be expected to know who the Kiwi Prime Minister is? They keep changing them.”

  “You were in the right,” Bruce observed. “You can’t have people walking about planes when the seat belt sign is on. Anarchy.”

  “Too true. But did the airline think that? Oh no, the Purser went off to the Captain and he asked to speak to me right away. It was like being sent to the Principal’s office.”

  Bruce sympathised. “Poor you.”

  “So I go up to the flight deck and there’s the Captain sitting there reading a magazine while the plane flew itself. The First Officer was painting his nails. I’m not making this up, Bruce—I swear I’m not. And the Captain says to me, ‘I hear you’ve hit the Prime Minister of New Zealand.’ And then he wags his finger at me—like this—and says, ‘Naughty! Naughty!’ ”

  “Bizarre,” said Bruce.

  “And then the First Officer pipes up and says something like, ‘You’re for the naughty stool, sunshine!’ ”

  “I can’t stand it when people call me sunshine,” said Bruce. “It gets right up my left nostril.”

  Clare considered this for a moment. “I don’t like being called doll,” she said. “There was this passenger once who kept calling me doll. It really got to me. So I…” She hesitated.

  “Go on,” said Bruce. “Tell me.”

  “Well, this is a secret of the trade, so to speak. Don’t spread it around, but you know how cabin crew sort out people they really don’t like? They open the luggage bin above the passenger’s seat, pretending they have to rearrange things, and then they drop a case on the person’s head. They say Oops! and make out they’re really sorry, but it’s always intentional.”

  Bruce stared at her in astonishment. “So you did that?”

  Clare shook her head. “No, that’s the nuclear option. I opted for the response just below that. I spilt a drink on his lap.”

  “Going back to the Captain,” said Bruce, “what did he do?”

  It was evident that the recollection was painful. Clare lowered her eyes as she spoke. “He suspended me from duty. I had to go and sit right at the back of Economy for the rest of the trip. It was like being a prison warder and being sent to prison. I was right there among them. I felt seriously ashamed.”

  “And that was the end of your career?” asked Bruce.

  “Yes.”

  “And then?”

  “I came to Scotland.” She paused. “I met you and…and the rest is history.”

  “I’m glad we met,” said Bruce.

  She looked at him fondly. Then she leaned forward and very gently and precisely licked the tip of his nose.

  More Things in Heaven and Earth

  While Clare was relating her past to Bruce, out at Nine Mile Burn Elspeth and Matthew were closely examining Rognvald, one of their triplets.

  “I can’t really see in this light,” complained Elspeth. “Get a torch, Matthew. Then we can shine it right into his mouth.”

  They were in the kitchen at the time, and Rognvald, who was just beginning to take his first uncertain steps, was struggling to free himself from his mother’s parental grip.

  “Don’t let him fall over,” said Elspeth when Matthew returned with the torch.

  “He won’t stand still,” said Matthew. “Rognvald’s much steadier on his feet.”

  “This is Rognvald,” Elspeth pointed out.

  Matthew blushed. “I meant to say Tobermory,” he said hurriedly.

  Elspeth assured him that she was not criticising him. “I can get them mixed up too,” she said. “But I’ve worked out a way of telling them apart. I think Rognvald’s ears are a little bit smaller than Tobermory’s. And Fergus has got a little mark on his chin, a freckle—not very big, but the others don’t have it.”

  She took the torch from Matthew and then gently parted Rognvald’s lips. Shining the torch into his mouth, she peered at a small circular mark. “It’s very red,” she said.

  Matthew leaned forward. “It’s difficult to tell,” he said. “Mouths are naturally red.”

  “Yes, but not that red. And look, there’s another one.”

  “Mouth ulcers?”

  “I think so. And it would explain why he wouldn’t have his food at lunchtime. He threw it down on the floor. All of it—which is unlike him, as he’s normally a little hog.”

  “What did Patty say when you phoned her?”

  Patty was a cousin of Elspeth’s who was a paediatrician at the Sick Kids’ Hospital.

  “She said we should look for any other spots. She said to watch him and take him to the doctor if we find anything or if he seems really unwell.”

  “Where?” asked Matthew. “Where should we look for spots?”

  “She said the hands,” answered Elspeth. “Also the soles of his feet.”

  “And what did she think it was?”

  “I wrote it down,” said Elspeth. “Over there. That piece of paper.”

  Matthew picked up the piece of paper lying on the table and began to read it. “Hand-Foot-Mouth disease,” he read. “I thought that was what cattle got.”

  “They get Foot and Mouth,” said Elspeth. “Different virus. I’ve written down the name of the virus. It’s there.”

  Matthew read on. “Coxsackie virus. Is that it?”

  Elspeth had now taken off one of Rognvald’s socks and was flashing the torch on the sole of his foot.

  “Matthew!” she exclaimed. “Hundreds of them. Spots. Look.”

  Matthew peered at his son’s foot. “Oh dear,” he said. “That must be uncomfortable. Poor wee boy.”

  “He doesn’t seem to be noticing them,” said Elspeth. “Little stoic!”

  “Brave boy,” said Matthew, tickling Rognvald under the chin.

  Elspeth stood up. “Patty offered to drop by,” she said. “I’m going to ask her.”

  She left Rognvald with Matthew while she made the telephone call. The other two boys were with Birgitte and Anna, playing in the garden before it was time for bath and bed. Her cousin, who lived in Fairmilehead and who therefore did not have a long journey to make, assured her that it would be no trouble to call round. She was at a loose end, she said, as her fiancé, with whom she lived, was an engineer on an oil rig and was away for the entire week.

  Half an hour later she was with them, drawing up to the front door in the battered red coupé she had bought at medical school in Aberdeen and that had served her well since then. Matthew greeted her and took her through to the kitchen, where Rognvald was being entertained with a set of brightly coloured building bricks.

  Patty knelt down to join him at his play.

  “Well now, young Rognvald,” she said. “Who’s heading for the building industry?”

  Rognvald looked at her briefly, and then, in the casually rude manner of all small children, returned to his play. Patty looked at the exposed soles of his feet.

  “Yes,” she said. “Typical.”

  She managed to turn his head briefly while she expertly examined his mouth.

  “Yes,” she said. “Probably what I said over the phone.” She moved to the sink to wash her hands. “It’s not very infectious to adults. It can be highly contagious, though, with infants. Spreads like wildfire. Are the others all right?”

  Elspeth said she thought they were.

  “Have you taken his temperature?” asked Patty.

  Elspeth nodded. “It’s up.”

  “It has a febrile effect,” said Patty. “I mean, it can lead to fever. But the main symptom is those spots in typical places—hands, feet, and mouth. Hence the name.” She paused. “But it’s not really anything to worry too much about. He’ll probably be fine in a week or so. The others will probably come out in spots soon.”

  Elspeth and her cousin sat down to a cup of coffee while Matthew took Rognvald off to join the other two boys. There was a certain amount of family news to be exchanged: the illness of an uncle in Dunfermline, the graduation of another co
usin who had been studying to become a dental hygienist, and the arrival of Patty’s brother’s second baby. Those details exchanged, Elspeth asked Patty about her work. She had recently sat a further set of professional examinations and was awaiting the results.

  “But we’re all busy,” Patty said. “It doesn’t get any quieter. Particularly in the summer, when children get out a bit more. Our casualty department can be worked off its feet at times.”

  “I suppose there are also lots of children swallowing things,” said Elspeth. “I’ve always imagined that must form a major part of the business at the Sick Kids’.”

  Patty laughed. “We had a very strange case a couple of days ago. A three-year-old was brought in by his mother. She said that she had seen him swallow a 2p coin. She was adamant that it had gone down. So we said that she should take him back and wait for nature to take its course—it usually does, and the coin can be recovered when it’s gone through the system. Fairly straightforward.”

  “And all went well?”

  “Well, this is the extraordinary thing. She telephoned and said that she’d been vigilant and, lo and behold, the money eventually appeared. But—and listen to this—it was now two 1p coins! Can you believe it? Change!”

  “Surely not…”

  “The doctor in charge was flabbergasted. She’s going to write it up for the British Medical Journal—perhaps for their Christmas issue, which likes cheerful little articles.”

  “But…” began Elspeth.

  Patty shrugged. “What does Hamlet say to Horatio?” she asked.

  On the Success of Others

  Matthew had taken Rognvald back to join his as yet uninfected brothers, leaving Elspeth to see her cousin out to her car.

  “We must see more of one another,” said Patty. “It’s ridiculous—we live within a few miles of one another and yet we hardly ever meet.”

  “Yes,” agreed Elspeth. “But I know how busy you are. And your job must make it difficult to have much of a social life.”

  Patty sighed. “I cope. And what about you? You must have your hands full with the boys. One’s hard enough—but three!”