The World According to Bertie

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Stuart, who was standing in the doorway leading into the kitchen, seemed to sway. ‘Ulysses?’ he asked. His voice suddenly sounded strained.

  ‘Yes,’ said Irene sarcastically. ‘Your other son.’

  Stuart reached for the door handle and gripped it hard, his knuckles showing white under the pressure of his grip.

  ‘Oh no . . .’ he began.

  Irene let out a scream. ‘Stuart! What have you . . . ?’

  ‘I thought you had him,’ said Stuart. ‘You parked the baby buggy—’

  He did not finish. ‘I did not park it anywhere,’ shouted Irene. ‘You were meant to take him to the Fruitmarket Gallery. You were pushing him at Valvona & Crolla. You’re the one who parked him somewhere. Where is he? Where have you parked Ulysses?’

  Stuart threw himself across the room to the table on which the telephone stood. ‘I’ll phone them right away,’ he said. ‘Quick, Bertie, get me the telephone directory. Quick.’

  Bertie ran through to the hall and returned with the telephone directory. But then, noticing a Valvona & Crolla packet, he said, ‘We don’t need to look it up, Daddy. The number’s there on the packet. Look.’

  With fumbling fingers, Stuart dialled the number. It was a moment or two before the telephone was answered at the other end. ‘Our baby,’ he shouted into the receiver. ‘Have you found a baby in the shop, or outside?’

  ‘No,’ said a voice at the other end. ‘No babies. An umbrella, yes. But no babies.’

  64. Ulysses

  In the storm that followed, three voices were raised, each offering different suggestions. Irene, her face flushed with rage, insisted that Stuart go immediately to Valvona & Crolla and personally search the shop for any sign of Ulysses. Stuart disagreed, and tried to make his voice heard above the screech of his wife’s. There was no point in going back to the shop if they reported that there was no trace of a lost baby.

  ‘Lost?’ raged Irene. ‘You mean abandoned. Lost is when you . . . when you forget where you put something. Abandoned is when you simply walk away from something. Ulysses was abandoned.’

  ‘It takes two to tango,’ Stuart stuttered. ‘You were jointly in charge.’

  ‘What’s a tango?’ asked Bertie.

  Stuart looked down at his son. ‘It’s an Argentinian dance,’ he began to explain. ‘The Argentinians were very keen on dancing back in the—’

  ‘Stuart!’ shouted Irene. ‘We are discussing Ulysses. Every second may be vital, and there you are talking about Argentina.’

  Stuart blushed. ‘I thought you were going to take him when I said that I was going to the Fruitmarket Gallery,’ he said mildly. ‘I really did.’

  ‘Well you had no reason to think that,’ snapped Irene. ‘I distinctly remember saying to you that you should take him. We were standing outside the shop and I . . .’

  ‘So he wasn’t in the shop at all,’ said Stuart. ‘Well, that’s something. Now we know that we have to look for him in the street, rather than in the delicatessen.’ He paused. Irene had sunk her head in her hands and appeared to be crying.

  Bertie moved forward to comfort her. ‘Don’t cry, Mummy,’ he said. ‘Ulysses will be all right, I’m sure he will. Even if somebody’s stolen him by now, they’ll give him a nice home. He’ll be very happy somewhere.’

  For a moment, Bertie reflected on the opportunities that might have opened up for Ulysses. He might have been taken by a supporter of Hearts Football Club, for example, and these new parents might even buy him one of those baby outfits in the football team’s wine-red colours that Bertie had seen in the newspaper. Ulysses would like that, and when he grew up in that Hearts-supporting home, he could go to Tynecastle with his new father and watch the games. Ulysses would never have had that opportunity if he had remained in Scotland Street. And the new parents might have a better car, too, thought Bertie, a Jaguar perhaps, and they might send him to a boarding school, somewhere where there would be midnight feasts in the dorm and proper friends who were quite unlike Tofu and Larch. All of that was possible now.

  Bertie’s attempt to reassure his mother did not have the desired effect. Irene now rose to her feet and grabbed Stuart’s arm. ‘We must go to Leith Walk right now,’ she said. ‘We must look for . . . look for . . .’ Her voice broke. It was impossible for her to utter Ulysses’ name, and so it was left for Bertie to say it for her.

  ‘Ulysses,’ he said.

  Stuart rose to his feet. ‘I’ll call a taxi,’ he said. ‘It’ll be quicker.’

  By the time the taxi arrived, Irene, Stuart and Bertie were standing at the front door of 44 Scotland Street. Stuart gave directions to the driver that he was to take them to Valvona & Crolla and that they were then to drive slowly down Leith Walk while they looked for something they had lost.

  ‘What have you lost?’ he asked. ‘A bicycle? There’s lots of bicycles go missing in Leith Walk, I can tell you. My brother’s boy had a—’

  Stuart interrupted him. ‘Not a bicycle,’ he said. ‘A child.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the driver. ‘Bairns tend to come back of their own accord. Don’t worry too much. By the time he feels like he wants his tea, he’ll come strolling in the door.’

  ‘He can’t stroll,’ said Bertie. ‘In fact, he can’t walk at all. He’s only a baby, you see.’

  The taxi driver looked in his mirror. ‘You mean you lost a tiny baby?’ he asked.

  ‘It would seem so,’ said Stuart. ‘He was left in his baby buggy outside Valvona & Crolla. A mistake, you know.’

  The taxi driver whistled. ‘Well, if you ask me, we should go straight to the council child protection nursery. You know the place? It’s where they take babies who’ve been taken into care. Emergency cases. Things like that.’

  Stuart thought for a moment. ‘If the police had been called,’ he asked, ‘would they take the baby straight there?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the taxi driver. ‘They wouldn’t take the baby to the police station. They’d go straight to the nursery. That’s likely where your baby will be right now.’

  ‘Then we’ll go there,’ snapped Irene. ‘And please hurry.’

  It took less than fifteen minutes to reach the emergency nursery, a converted Victorian house on the other side of Duddingston. Slamming the door of the cab behind her, Irene ran up the path, leaving Stuart to pay the fare and bring Bertie to the front door. This door was locked, but she rattled at the handle and rang the bell aggressively until a woman appeared and opened up.

  ‘My baby,’ said Irene. ‘My husband left him outside Valvona & Crolla. Just for a few minutes, you’ll understand, and it was all a misunderstanding. But when we went back . . .’

  The woman gestured for Irene to enter. ‘And this is your husband here?’ she asked, nodding in the direction of Stuart, who smiled at her, but was rebuffed with a scowl.

  ‘Our baby,’ said Irene. ‘Has he been . . . handed in?’

  ‘Well we’ve just had a baby brought round,’ said the woman. ‘But we obviously can’t let him go to the first person who turns up. Can you describe the baby buggy he came in? And what he was wearing?’

  Irene closed her eyes and gave the description. The woman’s attitude irritated her, but she was astute enough to realise where power lay in these circumstances.

  When Irene had finished, the woman nodded her head. ‘Close enough,’ she said.

  ‘So can we have him back?’ asked Irene.

  ‘Yes,’ said the woman. ‘He’s in the nursery. We’ve given him a change and he’s sleeping very peacefully with the three other babies we’ve got in at the moment. If you come with me?’

  They followed the woman down a corridor into the house. ‘You wait outside,’ she said. ‘I’ll bring the baby out to you. We don’t want too many germs in there, if you don’t mind.’

  She opened a door off the corridor and went into a side-room. A few minutes later, she came out again and handed over Ulysses, who was now heavily swaddled in a rough, white shawl.

  ‘Here we a
re,’ she said as she passed Ulysses over to Irene. ‘Your baby. Safe and sound.’ And then she added: ‘None the worse for the neglect.’

  65. Bertie’s Shocking Discovery

  In the taxi on the way back to Scotland Street, Irene was unusually quiet. With Ulysses sleeping in her arms, she sat there, tight-lipped, deliberately making no eye contact with Stuart, who perched nervously opposite her on the jump seat, his hands clasped around his knees. He looked at Irene, and then looked away again; he understood her perfectly. It was his fault that Ulysses had been misplaced, and he knew that he would be reminded of it for a long time to come. But anyone, he thought, could have done what he had done; could have misunderstood who was in charge of the baby. It was all very well for Irene to heap the blame upon him, but had she never made a mistake herself? Of course she had; not that she liked to admit it. Irene was always right.

  Bertie could sense that his father was miserable, and his heart went out to him. He did not blame Stuart for what had happened to Ulysses, and the important thing, he thought, was that Ulysses was unharmed and back with his family – not that Bertie was entirely pleased with that; he would have been quite happy for Ulysses to have found somewhere else to live, but he knew that this was not the way in which adults looked on the matter, and he did not express this view.

  ‘There’s Arthur’s Seat,’ he said, in an attempt to cheer his father up. ‘Look, Daddy. There it is.’

  Stuart looked out of the window at the green bulk of the hill, outlined like a crouching lion against the sky. He nodded to Bertie. ‘Yes,’ he said, glancing at Irene. ‘That’s right, Bertie. There it is.’

  ‘Have you ever climbed Arthur’s Seat, Mummy?’ asked Bertie. ‘Right up to the top?’

  Irene pursed her lips. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I haven’t, Bertie. There’s no need to climb Arthur’s Seat.’

  There was silence. Then, quite suddenly, Irene looked up and addressed Stuart. ‘The humiliation,’ she began. ‘The sheer humiliation of it all. That woman. Did you hear what she said to me, Stuart? Did you?’

  Stuart looked out of the window. ‘I wouldn’t worry too much about that,’ he said mildly. ‘Often people mutter things that don’t really mean very much. I find that with my minister sometimes. You just have to let it flow over you. And then they forget that they ever said it. And you do, too. The other day, for example, the minister said that we needed a policy review of the statistical process. I was there with my immediate boss, and we both just said something about a pigeon that had landed on the windowsill – you know, one of those grey, Edinburgh City Council pigeons – and the minister plain forgot what he had just said and . . .’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Irene. ‘That woman in the nursery knew exactly what she was saying. She chose her words very carefully indeed.’

  Bertie had been following this exchange between his parents. Now he intervened. ‘What did she say, Mummy?’

  Irene’s answer was directed at Stuart, at whom she was now glaring. ‘She said that Ulysses was none the worse for the neglect. Neglect! That’s what she accused me of. And I had to stand there and take it, because otherwise she probably wouldn’t have given Ulysses back without all sorts of forms and waiting and heaven-knows-what. I felt so humiliated.

  ‘That sort of woman,’ went on Irene, ‘relishes every bit of authority she has. I know the type. And what does she know about me and how I bring up Ulysses? Nothing. And then she goes and accuses me of neglect.’

  Stuart shrugged. ‘People say things,’ he muttered. ‘Just forget it. The important thing is that we’ve got Ulysses back.’

  ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones,’ Bertie quoted, ‘but words will never hurt me. Have you heard that poem, Mummy? That’s what Tofu said to Larch.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Stuart. ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘Larch hit him,’ said Bertie. ‘He hit him and walked away.’

  ‘The point is,’ said Irene, resuming control of the conversation. ‘The point is that if there was any neglect, it was not on my part.’

  This was greeted by silence.

  ‘I’m going to get in touch with our councillor,’ said Irene. ‘And I’m going to complain about that woman. I’m going to insist on an apology.’

  Nothing much more was said during the rest of the journey. Ulysses was still asleep, and although he opened his eyes briefly when being carried up the stairs, he merely smiled, and went back to sleep.

  ‘He’s had such a traumatic experience, poor little thing,’ said Irene pointedly. ‘Imagine being left outside Valvona & Crolla in your baby buggy!’

  ‘He wouldn’t have minded, Mummy,’ said Bertie. ‘Ulysses doesn’t really know where he is.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Stuart.

  Ulysses was placed in his cot, and the family returned to the kitchen, where Irene heated up the soup she had been making and served out three bowls.

  ‘Such a relief,’ said Stuart. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Daddy’s sorry,’ said Bertie.

  Irene nodded. ‘I heard him, Bertie.’

  It was at this point that Ulysses started to cry. Bertie, eager to promote concord, decided that he would offer to change him; he had been instructed in this task, which he disliked intensely, but he felt that such an offer would mollify his mother.

  ‘Thank you, Bertie,’ she said. ‘And call us if you need any help. We’ll give Ulysses a bath later on, and then he can have his tea.’

  Bertie went through to the room at the end of the corridor. He picked up Ulysses, and laid him down on the changing mat. Then he began to remove the blanket in which he had been wrapped. Underneath was a romper suit, which Bertie carefully peeled off. And then . . .

  Bertie stood quite still. Ulysses was very different. Something awful had happened; something almost too terrible to describe.

  ‘Mummy!’ Bertie shouted. ‘Come quickly. Come quickly. Something’s happened to Ulysses! His . . . His . . . It’s dropped off ! Quick, Mummy! Quick!’

  There was the noise of a chair being knocked over in the kitchen and Irene came rushing into the room, followed by Stuart. She pushed Bertie aside and looked at Ulysses, who was lying contentedly on the changing mat.

  ‘Oh! Oh!’

  It was all she could say. Ulysses was not Ulysses at all. This was a girl.

  ‘The wrong baby!’ Stuart stuttered. ‘They’ve given us the wrong baby!’

  Bertie stared intently at the baby, who smiled back at him.

  ‘Do you think we can keep this one, Mummy?’ he asked.

  66. Speculation on What Might Have Been

  While the unsettling discovery was being made in the Pollock household, that the wrong baby had been handed over at the council holding nursery, Matthew was hanging his Back in Twenty Minutes sign in the doorway of his gallery. This sign, as had been pointed out by numerous people, including Pat, was ambiguous and mendacious. In the first place, it did not reveal when the twenty minutes began, so that the person reading it would not know whether it had been placed there nineteen minutes earlier, or just one minute before. Then, anybody who knew Matthew’s habits would be aware of the fact that he rarely spent less than forty minutes over coffee in Big Lou’s coffee bar, and that anybody choosing to wait on the doorstep of the gallery until his return could face a much longer wait than they anticipated.

  It was Angus Lordie who had suggested a different sign, one that said, quite simply: Out. That would have the merit of clarity and would raise no false hopes. ‘There are occasions,’ he said, ‘when the simple word is best. And that reminds me of the story told by George Mackay Brown, I think it was, about the Orcadian who completely disappeared for eight years. When he returned, simply walking into his house, he was asked by his astonished family where he had been. He gave a one-word answer: “Oot.”’

  Matthew had found this very amusing. ‘Funny,’ he said. ‘That’s really funny.’

  ‘Yes,’ mused Angus. ‘It’s funny to us. But, you know, I’m not sure if that would b
e all that funny outside Scotland. There are some things which are made funny because of a very specific cultural context.’

  ‘Oh, I think that would be funny anywhere,’ said Matthew.

  Angus smiled. ‘Maybe. But here’s something which is only funny in Scotland. It was told me by a teacher. Do you want to hear it?’

  ‘Only if it’s funny,’ said Matthew.

  ‘It is,’ said Angus. ‘It’s funny here, as I said. A teacher noticed that a boy called Jimmy wasn’t eating fish when it was served in the school lunch. After a while, she decided to take up the matter with the boy’s mother and wrote a note to her to this effect. Back came a letter from the mother which said: See me? See my husband? See Jimmy? See fish? We dinnae eat it.’

  There was only a moment’s silence before Matthew burst out laughing. ‘That’s very funny indeed,’ he said.

  Angus nodded. ‘Of course it is. But you could tell that story down in London and they’d look very puzzled. So why do we find it so amusing?’

  Matthew pondered this. There was the habit of saying ‘See’ before any observation; that was a common way of raising a subject, but in itself was not all that amusing. Was it the way in which the mother developed her response, step by step, in the manner of a syllogism? That was it! It was a peculiar variant of syllogistic reasoning, perhaps, and its expression in the demotic seemed surprising and out of place. But there was something more. It was the conflict between two worlds: the world of the teacher and the world of the mother. When two very different worlds come into contact, we are amused.

  Angus might have read Matthew’s mind. ‘It’s the desire to deflate officialdom,’ he said. ‘There’s a strong streak of that in Scottish humour, and that’s what’s going on here, don’t you think?’

  Matthew nodded, and thought: and there’s something funny about Angus.

  That day, which was Saturday, was usually a busy day for Matthew, and he might have felt reluctant to leave the gallery unattended, but by the time that ten o’clock came round he was feeling distinctly edgy, and thought that one of Big Lou’s double espressos might help.