Espresso Tales 4ss-2

by Alexander McCall Smith

  302 Discussions Take Place Between Irene and Stuart She stepped into the room and noticed the periodic table, torn up and tossed into the bin. She picked it up gingerly, as a detective might pick up a piece of evidence at the scene of the crime.

  “Isn’t it nice?” asked Bertie, nervously. He realised that his mother was far from pleased and he dreaded the possibility that she would immediately repaint it in pink. “I think white is such a good colour for . . .” He was going to say “for boys” but he knew that would merely provoke his mother. So he finished by saying “for rooms”.

  “We can talk about that later on,” said Irene grimly. “In the meantime, don’t touch anything. We don’t want you getting paint on your dungarees.”

  She turned on her heel and went through to the kitchen.

  “Well!” she said, glaring at Stuart. “Somebody’s been busy!”

  Stuart looked at her coolly. “I thought it was about time that we redecorated Bertie’s room,” he said. “I did it quite quickly, actually. You got a problem with that?”

  Discussions Take Place Between Irene and Stuart 303

  “What?” hissed Irene. “What do you mean have I got a problem?”

  Stuart shrugged. “You seem a bit taken aback. I thought you would be pleased to discover that your husband’s a skilled painter.”

  Irene turned and slammed the kitchen door behind her. She did not want Bertie to hear what was to come.

  “Have you gone mad?” she asked. “Have you gone out of your mind?”

  “No,” said Stuart, adding: “Have you?”

  Irene took several steps forward. “Listen to me, Stuart, I don’t know what’s come over you, but you’ve got a bit of explaining to do. What are you thinking of, for heaven’s sake?”

  Stuart held her gaze. “I decided that it was about time we let Bertie have one or two things his way. It’s been perfectly apparent for some time that he did not like his pink room. Nor, for that matter, does he like those pink dungarees of his.”

  “Crushed strawberry,” corrected Irene. She shook her head, as if to adjust a confused picture of reality. “I just don’t know what you think you’re doing. There’s a reason why Bertie is being brought up to like pink. It’s all to do with gender stereo-types. Can’t you even grasp that?”

  Stuart smiled. “There’s something which I grasp very well,”

  he said. “And that is this: it’s about time we let that little boy just be a little boy.”

  “Oh!” said Irene. “So that’s it, is it? You think that you know what it is to be a little boy? You, the inheritor of the patriar-chal mantle, passing it on to your son! Get him interested in things like cars . . .”

  Stuart frowned. “By the way,” he interrupted. “Where’s our car?”

  Irene, derailed by the question, stared at her husband.

  “Outside in the street,” she said. “Where you parked it the other day.”

  “No it isn’t,” said Stuart. “You parked it.”

  “Nonsense!” said Irene. “You had it last. And you parked it in the street.”

  304 Discussions Take Place Between Irene and Stuart

  “I did,” he said. “I parked it there the other day and then you used it to go somewhere or other. You’re the one who parked it last.”

  Irene opened her mouth to say something and then thought better of it. He was right, she feared. She had driven the car recently and had parked it somewhere, but she had no recollection of where that was. But then, something else occurred to her; something which was more serious than the temporary mislaying of the car.

  “Be that as it may,” she said. “There’s something that I’ve been meaning to raise with you for some time now. That car of ours. How many gears does it have?”

  Stuart swallowed. He could see where this was leading, and suddenly the whole business of painting Bertie’s room seemed to fade into insignificance.

  Irene stared at him. “How many?” she repeated.

  “Five,” said Stuart, his voice now deprived of all the assertiveness which he had injected into it earlier. So much for courage, he thought.

  “Oh yes?” said Irene. “Then why does it now have only four?”

  She waited a moment before continuing. Then: “So could it be that the car you brought back from Glasgow is not actually our car? Could that be so? And if it isn’t, then whose car, may I ask, is it?”

  Stuart was defeated. It had become perfectly obvious to him that Lard O’Connor had ordered the stealing of a car for him and its fitting up with false number-plates. And once he had discovered that, he should have gone straight to the police and told them what had happened. But he had not done that because he had been frightened. He had been frightened of what Lard O’Connor would do to him when he discovered that Stuart had reported him. So he had taken the easy way out and done nothing, denying the problem, hoping that it would go away.

  Irene sat down. “Now look,” she said. “We must settle this like sensible adults. We have several problems here, haven’t we?

  We’ve got this problem of our car. And then we’ve got a problem The Gettysburg Address

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  of your interfering with Bertie’s upbringing. Those are our two problems, aren’t they?”

  Stuart nodded. He felt miserable. He would have to abandon this wretched attempt to do things for himself.

  “So,” said Irene, her voice low and forgiving. “So, what you need to do, Stuart, is to let me sort everything out. You don’t have to worry. I’ll handle everything. But, as a quid pro quo, you just behave yourself. All right?”

  Stuart nodded. He was about to say: yes, it was all right, but then he remembered the trip on the train with Bertie and what he had said to him. So now he looked Irene in the eye. “No,”

  he said. “It’s not all right.”

  93. The Gettysburg Address

  “Six years ago,” said Stuart, “we conceived a child, a son . . .”

  Irene interrupted him. “Actually, I conceived a son,” she said.

  “Your role, if you recall the event, was relatively minor.”

  Stuart stared at her. “Fathers count for nothing then?”

  When she replied, Irene’s tone was gentle, as if humouring one who narrowly fails to understand. “Of course I wouldn’t say that. You’re putting words into my mouth. However, the maternal role is undoubtedly much more significant. And when it comes down to it, women do most of the work of child-rearing.

  They just do. Who takes Bertie to Italian? Who takes him to yoga, to school? Everywhere in fact? I do.” She paused. “And whom do I see there, at these various places? Not other fathers.

  Mothers, like me.”

  Stuart took a deep breath. “That’s part of the problem. Bertie doesn’t want to go to Italian lessons. He hates yoga. He told me that himself. He said that it makes him feel . . .”

  She did not let him finish. “Oh yes? Oh yes? And where would you take him then? Fishing?”

  Stuart smiled. “Yes, I would. I would take him fishing.”

  “Teach him to kill, in other words,” said Irene.

  306 The Gettysburg Address

  “Fishing is not killing.”

  “Oh yes? So the fish survives?”

  Stuart hesitated. “All right, it’s killing. But . . .”

  “And that’s what you want to teach him to do! To kill fish!”

  Stuart looked out of the window. The evening sky was clear, bisected on high by the thin white line of a vapour trail. And at the end of the trail, a tiny speck of silver, was a plane heading west; a metaphor for freedom, he thought, even if the freedom at the end of a vapour trail was a brief and illusory one.

  “I want him to have some freedom to be a little boy,” he said.

  “I want him to be able to play with other boys of his age, doing the sort of thing they like to do. They like to ride their bikes.

  They like to hang about. They like to play games, throw balls about, climb trees. They don’t l
ike yoga.”

  The roll-call of boyish pursuits was a provocation to Irene.

  “What a perfect summary of the sexist concept of a boy,” she exclaimed. “And what about ungendered boys, may I ask? What about them? Do they like to climb trees and ride bikes, do you think?”

  “I have no idea what ungendered boys wish to do,” answered Stuart. “In fact, I’m not sure what an ungendered boy is. But the whole point is that Bertie is not one of them. He wants to get on with being what he is, which is a fairly typical little boy.

  He’s clever, yes, and he knows a lot. But the thing that you don’t seem able to understand is that he is also a little boy.

  And he needs to go through that stage. He needs to have a boyhood.”

  Irene was about to answer, but Stuart, in his stride now, cut her off. “For the last few years I think I’ve been very patient. I was never fully happy with the whole Bertie project, as you called it. I expressed doubts, but you never let me say much about them. You see, Irene, you’re not the most tolerant woman I’ve known. Yes, I’m sorry to have to say that, but I mean it. You’re intolerant.”

  He paused for a moment, gauging the effect of his words on his wife. She had become silent, her face slightly crumpled. Her confidence seemed diminished, and for a moment Stuart thought The Gettysburg Address

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  that he saw a flicker of doubt. He decided to press on with his address.

  “Then you were surprised,” he went on, “when Bertie rebelled. Do you remember how shocked you were when he set fire to my copy of the Guardian while I was reading it? You do?

  And here’s another thing, by the way: has it ever occurred to you that I was secretly pleased that he had done that? No? Well, let me tell you, I was. And the reason for that is that I was never consulted about what newspaper we should take in this house.

  You never asked me. Not once. You never asked me if I would like to read the Herald or the Scotsman, or anything else. You just ordered the Guardian. And that’s because you can’t tolerate another viewpoint. Or . . . or is it because you’re trying so hard to be right-on, to have all the correct views about everything?

  And in reality, deep underneath . . .”

  Irene, who had been looking at the floor, now looked up, and Stuart, to his horror, saw that there were tears in her eyes.

  “Now look,” he said, reaching out to touch her, “I’m sorry . . .”

  “No,” she said. “You don’t have to be sorry. I’m the one who should be sorry.”

  “I don’t know,” said Stuart. “I’m sure you were doing your best.”

  Irene disregarded this. “I had so many ambitions for Bertie.

  I wanted him to be everything that I’m not. What have I done with my life? What have I ever achieved? You have a job – you have a career. I haven’t got that. I’m just a woman who stays at home. Nothing I do ever changes the world. So I thought that with Bertie I could achieve something, at least have something that I could point to and call my creation. And now all that I’ve achieved is to get Bertie to hate me, and you too, it seems.”

  “I don’t hate you,” said Stuart. “I admire you. I’m proud of you. I love you very much . . .”

  “Do you? Do you really?”

  “I do.” But he added: “I want you to loosen up. I want you to be yourself. I want you to let Bertie be himself. I want you to stop trying.”

  308 Bertie’s Dream

  “And what if the self I should be is something quite different?”

  asked Irene, dabbing at her cheek with a corner of tissue. “What then?”

  “That doesn’t matter.” But he was intrigued by the possibilities. Was there a side to Irene that he had never guessed at? “Are you different?”

  Irene nodded. “I’m quite conservative,” she said. “In my heart of hearts, I’m conservative. You see, Stuart, there’s something I’ve never told you before. You don’t know where I come from, do you?”

  “Moray,” he said. “You come from Moray.”

  “No,” said Irene. “Moray Place.” She paused, studying Stuart’s reaction. He seemed to be taking it fairly well, she thought; well there was more news for him.

  “And there’s something else,” she said. “I’m pregnant.”

  94. Bertie’s Dream

  That night, Bertie was reluctant to switch off his bedside lamp, so happy was he just to gaze at his newly-painted walls. He was still convinced that the transformation of his room had been achieved through some form of supernatural intervention, although he was not sure what precise form this had taken. One possibility was that the room had been painted by angels, as Bertie had recently read an account of the activity of angels which stressed that the heavenly beings frequently undertook good deeds by stealth. But ultimately it did not matter in the least who, or what agency, had effected the change in his colour scheme; the important thing was that he no longer lived in a pink room, but in a white one.

  After he had been lying on his bed for half an hour or so, gazing dreamily at the walls, his parents came through to say goodnight to him, as they always did. His father was first to appear, looking shocked and dazed, and then, after he had gone, his mother, whose eyes and cheeks struck Bertie as being puffy and red.

  Bertie’s Dream

  309

  “Are you all right, Mummy?” asked Bertie. “You haven’t been crying, have you?”

  Irene bent down and kissed Bertie on his brow. “No, Bertie, carissimo. Not crying. Just re-evaluating.”

  “Good-night, then,” said Bertie, snuggling down into his bed.

  “Buona notte, Bertie,” said Irene. She reached out to turn off his light and stood at his bedside for a few moments, wistfully, looking down at her young son. Then she turned away and left the room, leaving the door very slightly ajar to allow in the small chink of light that Bertie liked to have at night, against the greater darkness.

  Bertie closed his eyes and thought of what he might do now that he had a white room. He might invite Tofu round some afternoon and give him bacon sandwiches to eat in the room. There was always plenty of bacon in their fridge and Tofu wouldn’t mind too much if it were to be uncooked. And then he might even invite Olive. He wondered about her. He had felt very wounded when she had accused him of wishing lockjaw upon her, but he thought that it was now time for both of them to move on. He would forgive her for spreading rumours that she was his girlfriend (he had even heard that she had told people that they were actually engaged and that there would be a notice to that effect in the school magazine quite soon). And if he forgave her for that, then she should surely forgive him for the misunderstanding over lockjaw.

  Lockjaw, of course, was not the only threat. Bertie had also heard about the dangers of cutting the skin between one’s thumb and forefinger. That, he was told, induced immediate blood-poisoning, unless, of course, one had ready access to a frog, in which case the rubbing of the frog on the wound was a quick and effective treatment. Merlin, the boy in his class who was consulted on all physical matters, had reliably informed them that there was a special tank at the New Royal Infirmary where frogs were bred for this precise purpose, along with leeches, which, he explained, doctors used to treat patients whom they particularly disliked. Olive, Tofu said, would definitely have a leech attached to her if she were for any reason to be admitted to the Royal Infirmary.

  310 Bertie’s Dream

  Bertie eventually drifted off to sleep and during the course of the night had a dream. In this dream, which he remembered vividly upon waking, he found himself walking in a field of grass, alone to begin with, but first joined by a spotted dog, which trotted content-edly at his heels, and then by a friend. And this friend was Tofu, who walked beside him, his hand resting on Bertie’s shoulder in comfortable companionship. Bertie felt proud to have a friend, even if it was only Tofu, and to have a dog, too, added to his pleasure.

  Above them was a high sky of freedom, unsullied by clouds.

  Then suddenly the spotted
dog ran away. It scampered off into the undergrowth and Bertie called out to it, but it did not come back. He felt bereft now that the dog had gone and he turned to Tofu for reassurance, but Tofu himself had skipped off, disappearing into a thicket at the edge of the field. Bertie called after him, just as he had called after the dog, but a wind had arisen, and it swallowed his words.

  Now he was alone, but only for a short time, for his mother suddenly appeared round the corner of a path and she rushed towards him and lifted him up, smothering him with caresses.

  Bertie squirmed, trying to escape, but could not; his mother was too powerful; she was like the wind, a gale, an irresistible tide; she could not be vanquished. She held him in her grip, which was a strong one, and prevented him from moving.

  But at last she put him down, and Bertie looked up at her and saw something which made his heart turn cold. Irene had a baby in her arms, and she held this baby out to Bertie, saying:

  “Look, Bertie! Look at this baby!”

  Bertie stared at the baby and thought: Now I have a brother.

  “Yes,” said Irene. “You have a brother, Bertie!”

  Bertie did not know what to say. He stood quite still while Irene held the baby up to allow it to gaze down on Bertie, which it did with a smile, like one of those babies one sees in pre-Raphaelite paintings, slightly sinister babies. Then Irene turned.

  To her side there was a piano and a piano stool, and she put the baby down on the stool. The baby reached out and began to play the piano, its tiny, chubby fingers dancing across the keyboard with great skill.

  The Wind Makes the Trains Sound Faint 311

  Bertie watched. He was fascinated by the baby’s ability to play the piano. My mother has forced him to learn the piano, he thought. And he is only six months old!

  He looked more closely at the baby, who had reached a difficult passage in the music and was frowning with concentration.

  Then the baby stopped, and turned towards Bertie and smiled.

  And Bertie saw that the baby was wearing a baby suit made of the same blue linen as that worn by Dr Fairbairn.