The World According to Bertie

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Big Lou snorted in disbelief. ‘It would be an awfie odd day that we saw you about the place at nine,’ she said.

  Matthew smiled tolerantly. ‘Reasonable for other people,’ he said. ‘What’s the point of opening a gallery at nine when it’s well known that nobody buys pictures before noon, or at least before eleven? I’d just sit there doing nothing if I opened up at nine.’

  Big Lou rolled her eyes. ‘That’s what you do anyway, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘And I doubt that you spend more than a few hours a day at your desk, what with your coffee drinking and those lunches you have. Two hours a day, something like that?’

  Matthew shrugged. ‘Well, Lou, it wouldn’t do you much good if I stopped drinking your coffee. You should be encouraging me, not making me feel guilty.’

  Big Lou said nothing. She liked Matthew, and he liked her, and these exchanges were good-natured, even if Big Lou meant every word of her criticism. But now it was time for her to prepare Matthew’s coffee, and besides, there was an important piece of information for her to impart to Matthew.

  While she clamped the grounds container in place, Big Lou asked Matthew over her shoulder whether he had heard of Cyril’s misfortune. Matthew had not, and while the espresso machine steamed and hissed, Big Lou related the melancholy story of Cyril’s detention by the Lothian and Borders Police.

  ‘Angus will be very upset,’ Matthew ventured.

  ‘Aye,’ Lou said. ‘Cyril is his only real friend.’

  Matthew thought this a bit extreme. ‘Oh, he’s got other friends, I think. Domenica, for example.’

  ‘She tolerates him,’ said Big Lou. ‘But only just. Have you heard the way she talks about him when he’s not there?’

  ‘There are people down at the Cumberland Bar,’ said Matthew. ‘He’s got friends there.’

  ‘Not much use having friends in a bar,’ said Big Lou enigmatically. ‘Anyway, Cyril meant a lot to Angus. And now I expect they’ll put him down. That’s the way it is for dogs. Step out of line, and that’s it. We had a dog in Arbroath that worried sheep and a farmer shot it. No questions. That’s how it is for dogs.’

  Matthew half-listened to this dire prediction. He was thinking of friendship: even if Angus had few friends – which he did not think was true – then how many close friends was it possible to have? Big Lou herself was hardly one to imply friendlessness on the part of Angus; Matthew had not heard her mention any friends, and he had always suspected that her life outside the coffee bar was a solitary one, immured, as she was, in her flat with all those books.

  ‘What about you, Lou?’ he asked. ‘You say that Angus doesn’t have many friends, but how many do you have? I’m not trying to be rude, asking this question – I was just wondering.’

  Big Lou reached for the polishing cloth. There was never any dirt on the bar, but that did not prevent her polishing it assiduously, staring into the reflective surface in the hope of finding a speck of something that she could rub away at.

  ‘Friends?’ she said. ‘Friends? I’ve got plenty, thank you very much, Matthew. Plenty of friends.’

  Matthew, leaning against the bar, took a sip of coffee. ‘Here in Edinburgh?’ he asked. ‘Or up in Arbroath?’

  Big Lou polished energetically, moving her cloth in large circles that threatened to collide with Matthew’s elbow. ‘Both places,’ she said. ‘Arbroath and Edinburgh. And some in Glasgow and Dundee. Everywhere, in fact.’

  ‘Who are your Edinburgh friends, Lou?’ pressed Matthew. ‘Not counting us, of course.’

  Big Lou glanced at him. ‘You’re very inquisitive today,’ she said. ‘But since you ask, there’s Mags and Neil and Humphrey and Jill Holmes and . . . well, quite a few others. I’ve got my friends, you know. Probably more than you have, Matthew, come to think of it.’

  Matthew smiled. ‘Maybe, Lou. Maybe.’ He paused. ‘But, I hope you don’t mind my asking, Lou: who are these people? We never see them in here, do we? Who are they? Mags, for instance, who’s she?’

  Big Lou finished her polishing with a final flourish and tucked her cloth away beneath the bar. ‘Mags,’ she said, ‘since you ask, is a very good friend of mine. I met her on the corner of Eyre Crescent, on the way down to Canonmills. She was standing there when I walked past.’

  Matthew stared at Big Lou. ‘You met her on the street? She was just standing there? And you went up to her and said . . . ?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Big Lou. ‘Mags was working in the street when I went past. I stopped to have a word with her.’

  Matthew rubbed his hands together. ‘This gets better and better, Lou,’ he said. ‘Working in the street, Lou? What exactly was she doing in the street?’

  ‘Working in the street,’ said Big Lou in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘You see, Mags drives one of these small steamrollers that road crews use. She was sitting on her steamroller with a cigarette in her mouth and she bent down and asked me if I had a light. I didn’t, but I said something about her steamroller and we started to chat.’

  ‘Just like that?’ said Matthew. ‘You started to chat? Two complete strangers?’

  ‘Not complete,’ said Big Lou. ‘Mags, you see, came from Arbroath. Unlike you, Matthew, she came from somewhere.’

  Matthew looked crestfallen. She was right, though, he thought. My trouble is that I come from nowhere. Money, education – these give you freedom, but they can take you away from your roots, your place.

  10. The Places in which Love Happens

  But Matthew wanted to know more about this Mags, the Madonna of the Steamroller, as he had now decided to call her. ‘Something interests me, Lou,’ he began. ‘What sort of woman thinks of getting a job on a road crew? How did Mags end up doing that?’

  Big Lou turned from her task – emptying the grounds container – and fixed Matthew with a stare. He looked back at her, unrepentant.

  ‘Well?’ said Matthew. ‘It’s a fair enough question to ask, isn’t it? One doesn’t see all that many women working on the roads.’

  ‘I thought that women could do anything these days,’ said Big Lou coldly. ‘Or have I got it wrong? Can men still tell us what we can and cannot do?’

  Matthew made a placatory gesture. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Lou,’ he said hurriedly. ‘I’m not suggesting that . . .’

  ‘Well, what are you suggesting then?’

  ‘All I was saying, Lou,’ said Matthew, ‘was that there are some jobs in which it’s still usual – that’s all, just usual – to see men rather than women.’

  Big Lou continued to stare at him. ‘Such as?’

  Matthew had to think quickly. He was about to mention airline pilots, but then he remembered that on the last two flights that he had taken, a female voice had issued from the cockpit to welcome passengers. And nobody, it seemed, had been in the slightest bit surprised, except, perhaps, Matthew himself. But then the woman beside him, possibly noticing his reaction, had leaned over and whispered to him: ‘How reassuring to have a woman at the controls, isn’t it? You do know, don’t you, that women pilots are much, much safer than men? Men take risks – it’s in their nature. Women are much more cautious.’

  Matthew had nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course.’

  So now he was having difficulty in thinking of examples. Firefighters? But then he remembered having seen a fire engine race past him the other day in Moray Place, and when he had looked at the crew he had seen not the usual male mesomorphs but a woman, clad in black firefighting gear, combing her hair.

  ‘I saw a woman fire . . . fireperson, the other day, Lou,’ he said brightly, hoping to distract Big Lou from the subject.

  ‘Plenty of them,’ said Lou. ‘But I’m waiting for you to come up with some for-instances. What jobs do women not do these days?’

  ‘It was in Moray Place,’ went on Matthew.

  ‘Good class of fire over there,’ said Lou. ‘None of your chip-pan fires in Moray Place. Flambé out of control maybe.’

  ‘She was combing her hair,’
said Matthew. And then, out of wickedness, he added: ‘And putting on lipstick. On the way to the fire. Putting on lipstick.’

  Big Lou frowned. For a few moments she said nothing, then: ‘Well, it was Moray Place, wasn’t it? A girl has to look her best . . .’ She paused. ‘Not that I believe you, Matthew, anyway. She might have been combing her hair – you don’t want your hair to get in the way when you’re working, do you? But she would not have been putting on lipstick.’

  Mathew was silent.

  ‘Well, Matthew? I’m waiting.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Lou,’ said Matthew at last. ‘Maybe I’m just old-fashioned.’

  ‘Maybe you need to think before you speak,’ muttered Big Lou. She looked at him reproachfully. They liked each other, and she did not wish to make him uncomfortable. So she moved back to Mags. ‘You asked me why Mags does what she does. The answer, I think, is that she suffers from claustrophobia. She told me about it. If she’s inside, she feels that she wants to get outside. So she needed work that took her outside all the time.’

  ‘And her steamroller would be open,’ mused Matthew. ‘No windows. No door.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Big Lou. ‘That’s Mags – an open-air girl.’

  ‘It’s a perfectly good job,’ said Matthew. He paused. ‘But the men who work on the roads can be a little bit . . . how does one put it? A little bit . . .’

  ‘Coarse?’ asked Big Lou. ‘Is that what you were trying to say?’

  Matthew nodded.

  ‘Then you should say it,’ said Big Lou. ‘Nae use beating aboot the bush. Say what you think. But always think first. Aye, they’re coarse all right. They’re always whistling at women and making crude remarks. That’s what Mags says.’

  ‘Very crude,’ said Matthew. One did not find that sort of behaviour in art galleries, he reflected. Imagine if one did! A woman might go into a gallery and the art-dealer would wolf-whistle. No, it would not happen.

  ‘What are you smiling at?’ asked Big Lou.

  ‘Oh, nothing much,’ said Matthew airily. ‘Just thinking about how different sorts of people go for different sorts of jobs.’

  Big Lou shrugged. ‘No surprise there. Anyway, Mags worked on the crew for eight years and everyone treated her like one of the boys. They just accepted her and took no special notice of her. Then, one day, she ran her steamroller over a piece of jewellery that somebody had dropped in the street. One of the men found it flattened and held it up for everybody to laugh at. But Mags cried instead. She thought that it might have been of great sentimental value to somebody, and there it was completely destroyed. She cried.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ said Matthew.

  ‘Well, that made all the difference for Neil,’ said Big Lou. ‘He operated a pneumatic drill and had been like the rest of them and had treated Mags as one of the boys. Now he started to look at her. A day or two later, he asked her out. That’s how they came to be together. They’re very happy, Mags says.’

  Matthew said nothing. He lifted his coffee to his lips and looked down into the detritus of the cup, the scraps of milk-foam. In the interstices of the big things of this world, he thought, were the hidden, small things; the small moments of happiness and fulfilment. People fell in love in all sorts of places; anywhere would do – amidst the noise and fumes of the daily world, in grim factories, in the most unpromising of offices, even, it would seem, amongst the din and dirt of roadworks. It could happen to anybody, at any time; even to me, he reflected, who am not really loved by Pat, not really. And who does not love her back, not really.

  11. Bruce Goes Flat-Hunting

  Bruce had cut out the advertisement from the newspaper and tucked it in the pocket of his jeans. He was house-hunting, and the earlier part of the morning had been frustrating. He had looked at two flats, both of which had been unsatisfactory. The first, in Union Street, had been promising from the outside but had revealed its unsuitability the moment he had stepped inside the front door and had seen the extent of the subsidence. This was the problem with that part of town, where movement in the ground had resulted in uneven floors and bulging walls. The buildings were safe enough – this movement was historical – but the impression created from heavy settlement could make one nauseous, as if one were at sea.

  ‘This place is subsiding,’ Bruce had said to the employee of the lawyers firm who was showing the flat.

  She looked at him coolly. ‘There’s a great deal of interest in this flat,’ she said evenly. ‘It won’t be on the market long.’

  They moved further into the hall. The flat had been vacated by its owners and the floor was bare: wide, yellow-stained pine boards, shipped from Canada all those years ago.

  Bruce smiled at her. ‘That so?’ he said. ‘Well, I can tell you that there’s subsidence. Nobody will find it easy to get a mortgage on this place. Bad news.’

  The young woman fiddled with the top of her folder. ‘That may be your view,’ she said primly. ‘Others,’ and it was clear that she numbered herself amongst such others, ‘others obviously think differently.’

  Bruce gestured for her to follow him into the kitchen. She did so hesitantly, and saw him extract a golf ball from his pocket. ‘Know what this is?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course I do. A golf ball.’

  ‘Right,’ said Bruce. ‘Clever girl. Now watch.’

  He bent down and placed the golf ball on the kitchen floor, giving it a slight nudge as he did so. Then he stood up and smirked.

  The golf ball rolled away from Bruce, gathering momentum as it did so. By the time it hit the wall at the other end of the kitchen, it was travelling quite fast.

  ‘See?’ said Bruce. ‘That ball agrees with me. The floor slopes.’

  The young woman bit her lip. ‘These buildings are very old,’ she said. ‘The whole town is very old.’

  Bruce nodded. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘That’s why one has to be so careful.’

  ‘I take it that you don’t want to see the rest of the flat?’

  Bruce caught his reflection in the kitchen window and turned his head slightly. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t. Thanks anyway for showing me the place. I hope you sell it.’

  They went downstairs in silence.

  ‘Coffee?’ said Bruce at the bottom of the stairs.

  The young woman looked at him. She was, he thought, on the verge of tears. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, thank you.’

  Bruce shrugged. ‘Oh well,’ he said. ‘Another flat to look at. Sorry about that place.’

  She had hesitated, he thought. She had hesitated when he had asked her to accompany him for a cup of coffee, which meant that she had been tempted. Of course she was tempted – they all were; they simply could not help themselves.

  The next flat was in Abercromby Place, a basement flat that described itself as lower ground floor. Bruce smiled to himself as he walked along Forth Street. He remembered writing the particulars of flats when he had worked as a surveyor in Edinburgh; he had referred to lower ground floor flats before, and had once even described a sub-basement as a pre-lower ground flat, well protected from excessive sun exposure. The lighting in that flat, which had to be kept on all day if the occupants were to see anything at all, had been described as imaginative and helpful. And the atmosphere of damp he had described as cool.

  The Abercromby Place flat did not take long.

  ‘You’re not seeing it at its best,’ said the owner. ‘It’s not a very bright day today.’

  Bruce raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh? I thought the sun was shining when I came in.’

  The owner looked down at the floor. ‘All the wiring has been renewed,’ he said. ‘And everything in the kitchen’s new, or next to new.’

  ‘Hard to see that,’ said Bruce.

  ‘Well, I assure you it is.’

  Bruce pointed to a door leading into gloom. ‘Is that a dark room?’ he asked. ‘Do you do photography?’

  ‘It’s the dining room.’

  The owner now became silent, a
nd he remained silent as Bruce made a cursory inspection of the remaining rooms. Then they moved back to the entrance hall and Bruce thanked him for showing him round.

  ‘You didn’t like it,’ said the owner miserably. ‘You didn’t, did you?’

  Bruce reached out and patted him on the arm. ‘You’ll find somebody,’ he said. ‘Just lower your price far enough and you’ll get a buyer. I’m a surveyor. I shifted dumps like this. It’s just a question of getting a buyer who’s desperate enough.’

  ‘That’s very reassuring,’ said the owner.

  Outside in the street, in the light, Bruce took out the scrap of paper on which he had noted the address of the third flat he was to look at. This was in Howe Street, a street which went sharply down the hill from the end of Frederick Street and then curved round into Circus Place. It was one of Bruce’s favourite streets in the Georgian New Town, and he had a good feeling about the flat that he was about to see.

  It was not only a question of the address, but the name of the owner. It was a woman called Julia Donald, and if Bruce was not mistaken that was the name of somebody he had known when he had first come to Edinburgh. She had, he thought, been rather keen on him, but he had had his hands full at the time with . . . it was difficult to remember who exactly it was, but it was some other girl; there had been so many.

  Bruce hummed a tune as he walked towards Howe Street. It was grand to be back in Edinburgh; grand to be back on the scene; utterly in control; the world at his feet. And what feet! he thought. Just look at them!

  12. An Old Flame Flickers

  ‘Brucie! So it was you!’ exclaimed Julia Donald. ‘My God, what a surprise! I thought, you know, when the lawyers phoned and said that a Mr Bruce Anderson would be coming to look the place over, I thought: can it be the one and only? And here you are!’

  ‘And I thought just the same,’ said Bruce. ‘I thought, there’s only one Julia D. in Howe Street that I want to see again, and here you are, it’s you!’

  He leaned forward and planted a kiss on her cheek. ‘Long time no kiss,’ he said. ‘And here’s another one.’