She took a step forward, and was closer to him now, but stopped, and quickly turned away and walked out of the room. Bruce had been awake, and she had seen his eyes open at the last moment as she approached and the smile that flickered, just visible, about his lips.
104. The Place We Are Going To
Sitting on the top deck of a number 23 bus, bound for an interview at the Rudolf Steiner School, Irene and Bertie looked down on the passing traffic and on the pedestrians going about their daily business.
“It would have been easier to go by car,” Bertie observed. “We could have parked in Spylaw Road. The booklet said there was plenty of parking in Spylaw Road.”
“Travelling by bus is more responsible,” said Irene. “We must respect the planet.”
“Which planet?” asked Bertie. He had a map of the planets in his room – or his space as it was called – and he had learned the names of many of them. Which planet did his mother mean?
“Planet Earth,” said Irene. “The one we are currently occupying, as you may have noticed, Bertie.”
Bertie considered this for a moment. He had great respect for the planet, but he also respected cars. And it was still a mystery to him as to what had happened to their own car. He had last seen it five weeks earlier; now it had disappeared.
“Where is our car, Mummy?” he asked quietly.
“Our car is parked,” Irene replied.
“Where?”
Irene’s tone was short when she replied. “I don’t know. Daddy parked it. Ask him.”
“I did,” said Bertie. “He said that you parked it somewhere.”
Irene frowned. Had she parked the car? She tried to remember when she had last driven it, but it seemed so long ago. Deciding to leave the conversation where it stood, she looked out of the bus window, over Princes Street Gardens and towards the distant, confident shape of the Caledonian Hotel. This trip to the Steiner School for an interview had been Dr Fairbairn’s idea, although she had accepted it, eventually.
“Bertie must be able to move on,” said the psychotherapist. “We all need to move on, even when we’re five.”
Irene looked pained. If Bertie moved on, then where, in the most general sense, would he go? And where would that leave her, his mother? Bertie was hers, her creation.
Dr Fairbairn picked up her concern, and sought to reassure her. “Moving on means that you may have to let go a bit,” he said gently. “Letting go is very important.”
This did not help Irene, and her expression made her disquiet clear. Melanie Klein would never have approved of the term moving on, which had a distinctly post-modern ring to it. Nor did she speak of closure, which was another word that in her opinion was overworked and clichéd. She had imagined Dr Fairbairn to be above such terms, but here he was using the words as easily as he might talk about the weightier concepts of transference and repression. She decided to sound him out about closure.
“And closure?” she said hesitantly, as one might propose something slightly risqué.
“Oh, he certainly needs closure,” said Dr Fairbairn. “He needs closure over that Guardian incident. And then we need closure on trains. Bertie’s trains need to reach their terminus.”
Irene looked at Dr Fairbairn. This was a most puzzling remark to make, and perhaps he would explain. But he did not.
“First we should think of how he can move on,” said Dr Fairbairn. “Bertie needs a sense of where he’s going. He needs to have a horizon.”
“Well,” said Irene, slightly resentfully. “I can hardly be accused of not offering him a sense of his future. When I take him to saxophone lessons I point out to him how pleased he will be in the future that he worked at the instrument. Later, much later, it will be a useful social accomplishment.”
Dr Fairbairn nodded vaguely. “Saxophone?” he said. “Is an ability to play the saxophone a social accomplishment or is it an anti-social accomplishment? No reason to ask that, of course; just wondering.”
Irene was quick to answer. “Saxophones provide a lot of pleasure for a lot of people,” she said. “Bertie loves his saxophone.” (She was ignoring, or had forgotten perhaps, that awful scene in the Floatarium where Bertie had shouted, quite unambiguously, Non mi piace il sassofono.)
“Oral behaviour,” muttered Dr Fairbairn. “One puts the saxophone mouthpiece in the mouth. That’s oral.”
“But you have to do that with a wind instrument,” began Irene. “And even if you have no oral fixation might you not still want to play the saxophone? Just for the music?”
“One might think that,” said Dr Fairbairn, “if one were being naïve. But you and I know, don’t we, that explanations at that level, attractive though they may be, simply obscure the symbolic nature of the conduct in question. Let us never forget that the apparent reason for doing something is almost always not the real reason for doing it.
“Take the building of the Scottish Parliament,” went on Dr Fairbairn, warming to the theme. “People think that the fact that it is taking so long is because of all sorts of problems with designs and plans and so on. But have we stopped to ask ourselves whether the people of Scotland actually want to finish it? Could it not be that we are taking so much time to finish it because we know that once we finish it we’ll have to take responsibility for Scotland’s affairs? Westminster, in other words, is Mother – and indeed doesn’t it call itself the Mother of Parliaments? It does – the language itself gives it all away. So Mother has asked us to build a parliament and that is exactly what we are doing. But when we finish, we fear that Mother will ask us to go away – or, worse, still, Mother will go away herself. Many people don’t really want that. They want Mother still to be there. So they’re doing everything they can to drag out the process of construction.
“And here’s another thing. Why does the parliament building look as if it’s been made out of children’s wooden building blocks? Isn’t that obvious? It’s because we want to please Mother by doing something juvenile, because we know that Mother herself doesn’t want us to grow up. That’s why it looks so juvenile. We’ll win Mother’s approval by doing something which confirms our child-like dependence.”
Irene listened to all this with growing enthusiasm. What a brilliant analysis of modern Scotland! And he was right, too, about saxophones; of course they were oral things and she was no doubt running a risk of fixing Bertie in the oral stage by encouraging him to play one. But at least she knew now, and the fact that she knew would mean that she could overcome the sub-text of her actions. So she could continue to encourage Bertie to play the saxophone, while at the same time helping him to progress through the oral stage to a more mature identity.
She looked at Dr Fairbairn. “What you say is obviously true,” she said. “But I wonder: what shall I do to move Bertie on?”
“Give him a clear sense of where he’s going next,” replied Dr Fairbairn. “Take him to the place he’s going to. That is what we all need – to see the place we’re going to.”
105. Bertie’s Friend
Bertie sat in a small waiting room while Irene talked to the director of admissions at the Steiner School. He was not alone; on the other side of the simply-furnished room was a boy of about his own age, or perhaps slightly older, a boy with tousled fair hair, freckles around the cheek bones, and a missing front tooth. Bertie, who was wearing corduroy dungarees and his red lace-up shoes, noticed that this boy was wearing jeans and a checked shirt. It was a splendid outfit, thought Bertie – the sort of outfit which he would have seen cowboys wearing in cowboy films, had he ever been allowed to watch any.
For a time they avoided eye contact, staring instead at the brightly-coloured pictures on the wall and the pattern of the tiles on the floor. Every so often, though, one of the boys would sneak a glance at the other, and then quickly look away before he was noticed.
Eventually, though, they glanced at the same time, and their eyes locked together. Bertie opened his mouth to speak, but the other boy spoke first.
Bertie caught his breath. Jock was a wonderful name to have – it was so strong, so friendly. Life must be easy if one were lucky enough to be called Jock. But instead they had called him Bertie, and of course he could hardly tell this boy that.
“I don’t usually give my name,” Bertie said. “Sorry.”
Jock frowned. ‘You can tell me. I won’t tell anybody.”
Bertie looked Jock squarely in the eye. “You can’t break promises, you know.”
“I know that,” said Jock. “And I never would.”
“Bertie,” said Bertie.
“Hah!” said Jock.
A short silence followed. Then Bertie said: “Are you going to Steiner’s?”
Jock shook his head. “I’ve come here for them to look at me,” he said. “But I don’t think my parents will send me here. I’m going to go to Watson’s.”
Bertie’s eyes narrowed. Watson’s! That was where he wanted to go – that was where they played rugby and had secret societies. That was where real boys went; sensitive boys came to the Steiner School. The thought caused him a pang of anguish. He would have liked Jock to be his friend, but now it seemed as if they would be going to different schools. All Bertie wanted was a friend – another boy who would like the same sort of things that he liked – trains and things of that sort. And he had no such person.
“I envy you going to Watson’s,” said Bertie. “You’re lucky. Will you play rugby?”
“Yes,” said Jock. “I’ve already started going to rugby for the under-sixes.”
The words stabbed at Bertie. Rugby was the game he wanted to play – like that nice man, Bruce, who lived on the stair. But he had never had the chance, and it was clear, too, that his mother disapproved of Bruce, and of Mrs Macdonald, and of everyone, really, except for Dr Fairbairn, who was mad, as far as Bertie could work out. Would Irene disapprove of his new friend, Jock? He thought she probably would.
“Do you like trains?” Bertie asked suddenly.
Jock took the sudden change of subject in his stride. “I love them,” he said.
Bertie looked wistful. “Have you … have you ever been on a train?” he asked.
Jock nodded. “Of course,” he said. “I went to London on a train, and back again. And I’ve been to Dundee. I went over the Forth Bridge and the Tay Bridge. Then we came back and went over the bridges again. That’s four times over a bridge altogether. Or does that make five?”
“Four,” said Bertie. What did it matter if Jock was no good at mathematics? – he played rugby and was just the sort of friend for whom Bertie had longed all his life.
“And I’ve got a model train set in my room,” Jock went on. “I’ve got a Flying Scotsman. It goes under my bed and round the chair. I’ve got bridges too, and a station.”
Bertie was silent for a moment. Then he spoke. “You’re lucky,” he said. And then repeated: “You’re lucky.”
Jock looked at him. Then he stood up and crossed the room to sit next to Bertie.
“You’re sad about something,” he said quietly. “What’s wrong?”
Bertie looked into the face of his new friend, gazing at the freckles and the space where the tooth had been. “I don’t have much fun,” he said. “And I’ve got no friends.”
“You’ve got me,” said Jock. “We could become blood brothers. One of my babysitters read me a story about some boys who became blood brothers. They cut their hands just there and they mixed their blood together. And that makes you a blood brother.”
“Doesn’t it hurt?” asked Bertie.
“No,” said Jock. “We could become blood brothers right now. I’ve got my penknife.”
Bertie was astonished: he had never been allowed a knife, but now Jock took a bulky Swiss Army penknife out of his pocket and showed it in the palm of his hand. “See,” said Jock. “See that.”
Bertie gazed at the knife. There were numerous blades and devices on the knife; one could do anything with an implement like that.
“Here,” said Jock, prising out a blade. “I’ll cut myself first, if you like. You have to do it here, in this bit of skin between the thumb and this finger. Then you squeeze the blood out into the palm of your hand and you shake hands with your friend. That’s how it works.”
Bertie watched in fascination as Jock held the gleaming blade above the taut skin, and drew in his breath sharply as his new friend made a small incision. Small droplets of blood welled up, and were quickly smeared by Jock across his palm.
“Now your turn,” said Jock, wiping the blade on the leg of his jeans.
Bertie held out his right hand, the forefinger pulled back from the thumb, revealing the waiting stretch of skin. Jock steadied the blade and looked at Bertie.
“Are you ready?” he asked. “Do you want to close your eyes?”
“No,” said Bertie. “I don’t mind. It won’t hurt, will it?”
“No,” said Jock. “It won’t hurt.”
And at that moment the door opened and Irene came out. For a moment she stood quite still, slow to absorb the extraordinary sight before her. Then she screamed, and rushed forward to snatch the knife from Jock’s hand.
“What on earth are you doing?” she shouted.
Bertie looked down at the floor. He struggled against the tears, but in vain; he did not want Jock – brave Jock – to see him cry. He had longed for a friend like Jock, and now he was being taken away from him, snatched away by his mother. It had been so close, that ceremony of blood brotherhood, and it would have made all the difference to have had a blood brother. But it was not to be.
Bertie felt a great sense of loss.
106. Lunch at the Café St Honoré
Sasha had been shopping in George Street. She had spent more than she intended – over two hundred pounds, when one totted it up – but she reminded herself that money was no longer an object. A few days earlier, she had received a letter from a firm of solicitors to the effect that the residue of her aunt’s estate, which had been left to her, amounted to over four hundred and eighty thousand pounds. When she had been first told that she was the residuary beneficiary, Todd had explained that the residue was what was left after everybody else had taken their share.
“It’s unlikely to be more than a couple of hundred pounds,” he had said. “The legacies are bound to swallow most of it up, not that the old trout had very much, I suspect.”
The old trout, however, had been as astute an investor as her legacies had been mean. Five hundred pounds had been left to the Church of Scotland. Twenty-five pounds had been left to the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; a further twenty-five pounds to the Ghurka Trust, and ten pounds to St George’s School for Girls. The residue was to go to Sasha, and now that the estate had been ingathered by Messrs Turcan Connell it amounted to almost half a million pounds after the payment of duty.
It had taken some time for Sasha to accustom herself to the fact that she now had a considerable amount of money at her disposal. They had been comfortable enough before on Todd’s drawings on the partnership of Macaulay Holmes Richardson Black, but having these uncommitted hundreds of thousands of pounds was material wealth on a scale which Sasha had previously not experienced. She was not a spendthrift, though, and this minor shopping spree in George Street had made her feel vaguely uncomfortable. If she spent two hundred pounds a day, every day, she wondered, how long would it take her to get through her fortune? About eight years, she calculated, allowing for the accumulation of interest.
She thought for a moment of what eight years of profligacy might be like. She could buy a new pair of shoes every day, and have at the end of that eight-year period more than two thousand pairs of shoes. But what could one do with such a mountain of shoes? This was the problem; there was a limit to what one could do with money. And yet here I am, she thought, feeling guilty about spending two hundred pounds.
She was thinking of this wh
en she wandered into Ottakars Bookshop. Sasha was not a particularly keen reader, but she belonged to a book group that met every other month and she needed to buy the choice for their next meeting: Ronald Frame. At their last meeting they had discussed a novel by Ian Rankin, and one or two of the members had been slightly frightened. Sasha had been able to reassure them, though: nothing to worry about, she had said. Very well written, but nothing like that ever happens in Edinburgh. Or at least not in the Braids.
She moved to the Frame section in Ottakars. There was The Lantern Bearers, and there was Time in Carnbeg, the book group’s choice. She picked it up and looked for a picture of the author. Sasha liked to know what the author looked like when she read a book. She did not like the look of Somerset Maugham, and had not read him for that reason. And she did not like the look of some of the younger woman novelists, who did nothing, it would seem, with their hair. If they do nothing with their hair, then will they do much more with their prose? she asked herself. And answered the question by avoiding these writers altogether. Such frumps. And always going on about how awful things were. Well, they weren’t awful – and certainly not if one had four hundred and eighty thousand pounds (minus two hundred).
It was while she was examining the Carnbeg book for a picture of Ronald Frame that she became aware of another customer standing on her right, examining a shelf of wine books. And a further glance revealed that it was Bruce, the young man from the firm who had come to the Edinburgh South Conservative Association Ball at the Braid Hills Hotel. She had liked him even before the ball and his courteous behaviour on that evening – he had been extremely polite to Ramsey Dunbarton when he was going on about having been the Duke of Plaza-Toro in some dreadful operetta back in the year dot – had endeared him further to her. And he was terribly good-looking too, bearing in mind that he came from somewhere like Dunfermline, or was it Crieff?
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