The World According to Bertie

by Alexander McCall Smith

  ‘And the interesting thing is this,’ went on Dr Fairbairn. ‘As you’ll recall, one of the main concerns of Freud’s famous patient, Little Hans, was that he would suffer this unfortunate fate through the agency of dray horses.’ He paused, and looked at Irene with bright eyes. ‘Isn’t it extraordinary how real life mimics the classic cases. Don’t you agree, Dora?’

  Irene frowned. ‘You called me Dora.’

  Dr Fairbairn shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re mistaken.’

  ‘No, you made the mistake. And a classic one, if I may say so. Surely you don’t regard me as Dora?’

  Dr Fairbairn smiled urbanely. ‘Of course not. Perish the thought. But I didn’t call you Dora, anyway, and so let’s return to this issue of baby exchange.’

  ‘He suggested that we keep the girl,’ said Irene. ‘For some reason, he seemed quite happy that Ulysses had been mislaid.’

  ‘Well, there you are,’ said Dr Fairbairn. ‘He obviously feels that a girl would be no threat to him in his mother/son relationship with you. He’s Oedipus, you see, and you are Jocasta, mother of Oedipus and wife of Laius. Bertie resents his father – obviously – because he, Bertie, wants your unrivalled attention. Ulysses is a rival too, and that’s why Bertie secretly wishes that Ulysses did not possess that which marks him out as a boy.

  ‘When he saw that the baby whom he took to be Ulysses did not have that, then it was the fulfilment of his wildest dream. Now there was no danger for him – and that, you see, is why he would have wanted to keep the other baby.’

  Irene had to agree with the perspicacity of this analysis. He was really very clever, she thought, this doctor in his crumple-free blue linen jacket; so unlike virtually all other men she had ever met. Men were such a disappointing group, on the whole; so out of touch with their feminine side, so rooted in the dull practicalities of life; and yet here was Dr Fairbairn, who just understood.

  She sighed. Stuart would never understand. He knew nothing of psychodynamics; he knew nothing of the unconscious; he knew nothing, really.

  ‘Of course,’ she said suddenly. ‘There’s always Ulysses.’

  Dr Fairbairn said nothing. He picked up his pen and stroked it gently. ‘Oh yes?’ he said non-committally.

  ‘Ulysses will have identity conflicts, will he not? When he’s old enough to question who he is?’

  ‘We all wonder who we are,’ said Dr Fairbairn distantly. ‘Who doesn’t?’

  ‘So Ulysses will look at his family and think: who are these people? Who’s my mother, who’s my brother, who’s . . .’ She broke off. She had almost said ‘Who’s my father?’ but decided not to.

  Dr Fairbairn was staring down at his desk. Then he looked at his watch. ‘Gracious! Is that the time?’ He looked up. ‘I have somebody coming, I’m afraid. Is there anything else you need to tell me about Bertie before I see him tomorrow?’

  There was. ‘He’s had a bit of trauma at school,’ said Irene. ‘That will probably come out. His class teacher has been suspended, and he’ll no doubt lose her. She pinched one of the girls. A nice child called Olive.’

  ‘Goodness me!’ said Dr Fairbairn.

  ‘Yes,’ Irene continued, ‘I heard about it from Bertie, and of course I had to raise it with the school.’

  ‘You reported it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Irene. ‘I couldn’t stand by.’

  He thought for a moment. ‘But Bertie was very fond of that teacher, wasn’t he? He always spoke so warmly of her. Don’t you think that he might blame you for the fact that he’s losing her?’

  Irene was silent.

  Dr Fairbairn, realising that Irene seemed unwilling to pursue the matter, gave a shrug. ‘No matter. These losses are an inevitable part of life. We lose so much, and all we can hope is that our separation anxiety is kept within reasonable bounds. I have lost so much. You, no doubt, have done so too.’

  He looked out of the window. He was a lonely man, and he only wanted to help others. He wanted to help them to recover a bit of what they had lost, and it gave him great pleasure when he did that; it was like making something whole again, mending a broken object. Each of us, you see, has a secret Eden, which we feel has been lost. If we can find it again, we will be happy; but Edens are not easily regained, no matter how hard we look, no matter how desperately we want to find them.

  87. Dr Fantouse

  The breakup with Matthew was a great relief to Pat. She had been worried by Matthew’s completely unexpected proposal at the Duke of Johannesburg’s party; she was too young for that, she knew, and yet she was unwilling to hurt Matthew, who was, she also knew, in his turn unwilling to hurt her. She would never settle down with him; she would never settle down with anybody, or at least not just yet. She stopped herself. That was simply untrue. If somebody came who swept her off her feet, who intoxicated her with his appeal, well, it would be very pleasant to settle down with such a person. If one is really in love, really, then the idea of spending all one’s time in the company of the person one loves, tucked away somewhere, was surely irresistible. That was the whole point, was it not, about slow boats to China – they provided a lot of time to spend with another. And would she have wanted to get on a slow boat to China with Matthew? The answer was no. Or with Wolf ? The thought was in one sense appalling – Wolf was bad – but, but . . .

  For a moment, she thought of the cabin on this slow boat, in which she and Wolf were sequestered; and she saw herself and Wolf in this cabin, and there was only a half-light and the engine of the boat was throbbing away in the distance somewhere and it was warm and . . . She stopped herself again. This was a full-blown fantasy, and she wondered if it was a good thing to be walking down one side of George Square, fantasising about a boy such as Wolf, while around her others, whose minds were no doubt on higher things, made their way to and from lectures. Or were they fantasising too?

  She had reached the bottom of the west side of George Square, the point where the road dipped down sharply to a row of old stables on one side and Basil Spence’s University Library on the other. She had not been paying much attention to her surroundings, and so she was surprised when she found herself drawing abreast of Dr Geoffrey Fantouse, Reader in the History of Art at the University of Edinburgh, expert in the Quattrocento, and the man whose seminars on aesthetics she attended every Wednesday morning – together with fifteen other students, including Wolf, who sat, smouldering, on the other side of the room and studiously averted his gaze from hers; as well he might, given his history of deception and attempted seduction.

  ‘Miss Macgregor?’

  Pat slowed down. ‘Dr Fantouse. Sorry, I was thinking. I wasn’t looking.’ And she had been thinking, of course, though he would never guess about what.

  Dr Fantouse smiled. ‘As an aesthetician,’ he said, ‘I would be inclined to suggest that one should first look, then think.’

  Pat thought for a moment. She did not immediately realise that this was a joke, but then she understood that it was, and she laughed politely. Dr Fantouse looked proud, in a modest sort of way.

  It was clear that they were both walking in the same direction– across the Meadows, that broad, tree-lined expanse of park that separated the university area from the semi-Gothic nineteenth-century tenements of Marchmont – and so Pat fell into step with the aesthetician.

  ‘You’re enjoying the course?’ he asked, glancing at her in his mildly apologetic way.

  Pat suspected that nobody ever told Dr Fantouse that his course was enjoyable, and yet she knew how much effort he put into his work. It must be hard, she thought, being Dr Fantouse and being appreciated by nobody.

  ‘I’m really enjoying it,’ she said. ‘In fact, it’s the best course I’ve ever done. It really is.’

  Dr Fantouse beamed with pleasure. ‘That’s very good to hear,’ he said. ‘I enjoy it too, you know. There are some very interesting people in the class. Very interesting.’

  Pat wondered whom he meant. There was a rather outspoken, indeed opinion
ated girl from London who was always coming up with views on everything; perhaps he meant her.

  ‘Your views, for example,’ went on Dr Fantouse. ‘If I may say so, you always take a very balanced view. I find that admirable.’ He paused. ‘And that young man, Wolf. I think that he has a good mind.’

  Pat found herself blushing. Wolf did not have a good mind; he had a dirty mind, she thought, full of lascivious thoughts . . . like most boys.

  Dr Fantouse now changed the subject. ‘Do you live over there?’ he said, pointing towards Marchmont.

  ‘I used to,’ she said. ‘Now I live at home. In the Grange.’ It sounded terribly dull, she thought, but then Dr Fantouse himself was very dull.

  ‘How nice,’ he said. ‘Living at home must have its appeal.’

  They walked on. Dr Fantouse was carrying a small leather briefcase, and he swung this beside him as he walked, like a metronome.

  ‘My wife always makes tea for me at this hour,’ said Dr Fantouse. ‘Would you care to join us? There is usually cake.’

  Pat hesitated. Had the invitation been extended without any mention of a wife, then she would have said no, but this was very innocent.

  ‘That would be very nice,’ she said.

  Dr Fantouse’s house was on Fingal Place, a stone-built terrace which looked out directly onto the footpath that ran along the Meadows. Pat had walked past these houses many times before and had thought how comfortable they looked. They were beautiful, comfortable in their proportions, without that towering Victorianism that set in just a few blocks to the south. That an authority on the Quattrocento should live in one seemed to her to be just right.

  The flat was on the first floor, up a stone staircase on the landings of which were dried-flower arrangements. The door, painted red, bore the legend FANTOUSE, which for some reason amused Pat; that name belonged to the Quattrocento, to aesthetics, to the world of academe; it did not belong to the ordinary world of letter-boxes and front doors.

  They went inside, entering a hall decorated with framed prints of what looked like Italian cities of the Renaissance. A door opened.

  ‘My wife,’ said Dr Fantouse. ‘Fiona.’

  Pat looked at the woman who had entered the hall. She was strikingly beautiful; like a model from a pre-Raphaelite painting. She stepped forward and took Pat’s hand, glancing inquiringly at her husband as she did so.

  ‘Miss Macgregor,’ he explained. ‘One of my students.’

  ‘Pat,’ said Pat.

  Fiona Fantouse drew Pat away, into the room behind her. Pat noticed that she was wearing delicately applied eyeshadow, in light purple, the shade of French lavender.

  88. The Eriskay Love Lilt

  The sitting room into which Fiona took Pat was an intimate one, but big enough to accommodate a baby grand piano, along with two large mahogany bookcases. The wall behind the piano was painted red and was hung with small paintings – tiny landscapes, miniatures, two silhouetted heads facing one another. A low coffee table dominated the centre of the room, and on this were books and magazines, casually stacked, but arranged in such a way that they did not tower or threaten to topple. A large vaseline-glass bowl sat in the middle of the table, and this was filled with those painted wooden balls which Victorians and Edwardians liked to collect. The balls were speckled, like the eggs of some exotic fowl, and seemed to be, like other things in the room, seductively tactile.

  Pat noticed that to the side of the room there was a small tea table, covered with a worked-linen tablecloth. On this was a tray, with a Minton teapot and cups and saucers. Then there was a cake– as Dr Fantouse had said there would be – a sponge of some sort, dusted with icing sugar, and a plate of sandwiches – white bread, neatly trimmed.

  ‘We sometimes have people for tea,’ said Fiona. ‘And so we keep an extra cup to hand.’

  She sat herself beside the tea tray and asked Pat how she liked her tea. On the other side of the room, facing them, Dr Fantouse perched on a high-backed chair, smiling at Pat and his wife.

  ‘Miss Macgregor belongs to the coffee-house generation,’ he remarked. ‘Afternoon tea will not be her usual thing. Perhaps you would like coffee?’

  ‘I like tea,’ said Pat.

  ‘There are so many coffee houses,’ said Fiona. ‘And they are all full of people talking to one another. One wonders what they talk about?’

  Both Dr Fantouse and his wife now looked at Pat, as if expecting an answer to what might otherwise have seemed a rhetorical question.

  ‘The usual things,’ said Pat. ‘What people normally talk about. Their friends, I suppose. Who’s doing what. That sort of thing.’

  Dr Fantouse smiled at his wife. ‘More or less what we talk to our friends about,’ he said. ‘Nothing has changed, you see.’

  The two Fantouses looked at one another with what seemed to Pat to be relief. There was silence. Fiona passed Pat a cup of tea and Dr Fantouse rose to his feet to cut slices of cake.

  ‘There’s something very calming about tea,’ remarked Fiona. ‘I sometimes think that if people drank more tea, they would be calmer.’

  Pat looked at her. The Fantouses were very calm as it was; was this the effect of tea, or was it something more profound?

  Fiona seemed to warm to her theme. ‘Coffee cultures can be excitable, don’t you think?’ she said. ‘Look at the Latins. They never talk about things in a quiet way. It’s all so passionate. Look at the difference between Edinburgh and Naples.’

  There was a further silence. Then Dr Fantouse said: ‘I don’t know. Perhaps we might become a bit more . . .’

  All eyes turned to him, but he did not expand on his comment, but lifted a piece of cake and popped it into his mouth. Fiona turned to Pat, as if expecting her to weigh in on her side and confirm the difference between Edinburgh and Naples, but she did not.

  Dr Fantouse licked a bit of icing sugar off a finger. ‘Un po di musica, as Lucia would say. Would you care to play, my dear?’

  Fiona put down her teacup and smiled at Pat. ‘It’s something of a ritual,’ she said. ‘I usually play for a few minutes after we’ve finished tea. Do you play yourself ? I would be very happy for you to play rather than . . .’

  Pat shook her head. ‘I learned a bit, but never got very far. I’m hopeless.’

  ‘Surely not!’ said both Fantouses, in unison. But they did not put the matter to the test, as Fiona had now crossed the room and seated herself at the keyboard.

  ‘This is the Eriskay Love Lilt,’ she announced. ‘In a rather charming arrangement. It was Marjorie Kennedy Fraser, of course, who rescued it. And the words are so poignant, aren’t they? Vair me or ro van o / Vair me o ro ven ee / Vair me or ru o ho / Sad I am without thee.’

  Pat found herself watching Dr Fantouse as his wife played. He was watching her hands, as if transfixed. When she reached the end of the piece, he turned to Pat and smiled.

  ‘We could have more,’ he said. ‘But we ration ourselves. People have so much music – don’t you think? – that they don’t bother to listen to half of it. Music should be arresting, should be something which makes one stop and listen. But we’re inundated with music. Everywhere we go. People are plugged into their iPods. Music is piped into shops, restaurants, everywhere. A constant barrage of music.’

  ‘But you will have more tea?’ asked Fiona.

  Pat shook her head. ‘I must get on,’ she said. ‘You’ve been very kind.’

  ‘You must come again,’ said Fiona. ‘It’s been such fun.’

  ‘Yes, it has,’ said Dr Fantouse. ‘That’s the nice thing about Edinburgh. There are so many pleasant surprises.’

  They saw Pat to the door, where Pat shook hands with both of them. She saw again the delicate makeup on Fiona’s eyes. Who was it for? she wondered. For Dr Fantouse? Did he notice such things?

  As she went downstairs, a boy of about eleven or twelve was coming up. He looked as if he had been playing football, his knees muddied, his hair dishevelled. She looked into his face, a face of freckle
s, and saw that he had grey eyes. For a moment, both stopped, as if they were about to say something to one another, but then the boy looked away and continued up the stairs. Pat felt uneasy. It was as if she had seen a fox.

  She went out into the street, and glanced up at the windows of the flat. Dr Fantouse was standing at the window, his wife beside him. They noticed Pat and waved. She waved back, and thought: how many people in this city live like that? Or was this a caricature, an echo of what bourgeois Edinburgh once was like but was no more? Or, again, had what she had seen that afternoon been simple, quiet decency, nothing more? As she walked up the narrow road that led past the Sick Kids Hospital, she remembered what she had once read somewhere, words of little comfort: for most of us, nothing very much happens; that is our life.

  89. Across the Minch

  ‘So, Lou,’ said Robbie Cromach. ‘Tuesday’s your birthday, and you and I are going somewhere special! You choose.’

  Big Lou smiled at Robbie, her boyfriend of two months, the man whom she felt she knew rather well, but in a curious way did not know at all. He was a thoughtful man, and paid much more attention to Lou’s feelings than had any of her previous boyfriends. They had been a disaster – all of them – selfish, exploitative, weak; indeed, one or two of them all of these things at the same time. But Robbie was different; she was sure of that.

  ‘Well, that’s really good of you, Robbie,’ she said. ‘Only my birthday’s on Monday, not Tuesday and . . .’

  She did not finish. Robbie was frowning. ‘Monday . . .’ he began.

  ‘Yes. So we’ll have no difficulty getting in anywhere.’

  Robbie was still frowning, and Big Lou realised that he must have something on that evening. She had told him several times that her birthday was on Monday – he had asked her and she had told him. Now it appeared that he had made other arrangements for that night. She sighed, but she was used to this. Big Lou’s birthday had never been anybody else’s priority in the past, and it looked as if that would not change now; she had thought that it might be different with Robbie, but perhaps it was not.