The Unbearable Lightness of Scones: A 44 Scotland Street Novel

by Alexander McCall Smith

  ‘You tell me,’ said Angus. ‘You’ve always been there for all of us, Lou. Now we must be there for you. Sorry to use a cliché, but there are times when clichés are just right, and this, I suspect, is one of them.’

  47. The New Pretender

  Angus knew just what Big Lou had been obliged to put up with: of her trials with those various unsuitable men; of her struggle to make something of her life; of everything she had endured. She never, or rarely, complained, and so to see her now in this state of distress was a real cause for concern. Of course he had known from the beginning that Robbie was, as Matthew had so succinctly put it, ‘bad news’. It was not as if Robbie were violent or drunken, or suffered from any of the other obvious defects to which the male was heir; it was not that. It was more a question of his being a man with a cause, and the cause in question being so . . . well, one would really have to say odd.

  ‘Oh, Lou,’ said Angus. ‘Tell me. Tell me what’s wrong.’

  He reached out over the bar and laid his hand over hers. It was a gentle gesture; a gesture of fellow-feeling that was immediately appreciated. She looked at him.

  ‘Robbie?’ he asked. ‘He’s making you unhappy? Is that it?’ Of course he was; what else could it be?

  Big Lou bit her lip. ‘I’m very fond of him, Angus. You ken that. Very fond.’

  ‘Of course you are, Lou. And I’m sure he’s fond of you.’ But not as fond of you, he thought, as he is of Charles Edward Stuart and James VII and all that crowd.

  Big Lou nodded. ‘I think he is. He tells me he is. But . . .’

  ‘But what, Lou?’ He hesitated. ‘Is it something to do with his Jacobitism? Is that the problem?’ He knew that it was; of course it was. Robbie had a screw missing, as Matthew again had put it.

  Big Lou confirmed that it was. ‘I understand what it means to him,’ she said. ‘And I’ve tried to enter into the spirit of it. But now I think that they’re taking it too far. It’s all very well having an interest in history, but when you can’t seem to tell the difference between reality and fantasy . . .’ She paused. ‘You know that they’ve been planning a visit from their pretender? Some Belgian who claims to be the successor of Bonnie Prince Charlie. They’re tremendously excited. And I think that they’re going to do something stupid. I really do.’

  Angus’s first reaction was to laugh, but, with effort, he controlled himself.

  ‘And when does the Pretender arrive?’

  Big Lou looked towards the door, as if to check that the Pretender was not already there, waiting outside. Did pretenders knock, Angus wondered, irreverently, or did they merely barge in?

  Speaking in a whisper, Big Lou answered Angus’s question. ‘He’s already here.’

  Angus’s eyes widened. ‘Here in Edinburgh? Or . . . or out in the heather?’

  ‘Here in Edinburgh.’

  There was a silence. The Pretender had been a joke when he had merely been a possibility. Now that he was real, and was in Edinburgh, it seemed different. Angus found himself clasping Big Lou’s hand more tightly when he eventually spoke. ‘Where, Lou? Where?’ His voice was lowered; so might one covert Jacobite speak to another as Whig agents passed by.

  ‘In my flat,’ replied Lou. ‘Down in Canonmills.’

  ‘Lou!’ exclaimed Angus. ‘What on earth are you doing - sheltering a . . . a pretender?’

  Lou sighed. ‘I didn’t invite him,’ she said. ‘Credit me with more intelligence than that. Robbie did. Robbie brought him along after he had arrived. They came straight to my place. I couldn’t very well turn him away.’

  Angus wondered how the Pretender had arrived. By boat from France? Perhaps he had come from the Zeebrugge ferry, if he was Belgian. That would have brought him in to Rosyth, and then there was a bus that crossed the Forth Road Bridge and would have dropped him off at St Andrew Square bus station. But that was hardly a very romantic way for a pretender to arrive in his kingdom.

  Big Lou confirmed this was, indeed, the way in which the Pretender had arrived. ‘Robbie met him at the bus station,’ she said. ‘Along with others. They had a piper who played “Will Ye No Come Back Again” and “Roses of Prince Charlie”.’

  Angus smiled. ‘And then?’

  ‘And then they walked with him down onto Queen Street and hailed a taxi. There was a bit of an incident, though, before they left.’

  ‘With the authorities? The authorities got to hear of it?’

  ‘No,’ said Lou. ‘It was nothing to do with that. It’s just that Michael - you know, the one who’s in charge of . . . of the cause . . . he dropped the Pretender’s duty-free whisky on the pavement and the bottles broke. Apparently the Pretender was furious and said that Michael would have to buy him some new bottles. He started to shout in Flemish, Robbie said, and only stopped shouting once Michael had agreed to buy the whisky on the way to my flat.’

  Angus listened to this story in complete amazement. ‘And so now he’s staying with you, Lou?’

  Lou nodded. ‘Yes. Robbie said that they looked into the possibility of a hotel, but the Pretender said that it would be more secure for him to stay with one of the supporters. I think he believes that there are more supporters than there really are. In fact, there are only eight or nine of them, as far as I can see.’

  ‘But why can’t one of them put him up?’ asked Angus. ‘It seems a bit unfair to land him on you when you’re not a real supporter.’

  ‘Robbie said that it was best for him to stay with somebody who wouldn’t be known as a Jacobite. He said it would be safer that way.’

  ‘And now what?’

  Big Lou shrugged. ‘I have no idea. He’s sleeping in my kitchen, on a camp bed. And this morning he used all the hot water - every drop of it. And there were only two eggs in the fridge, but he ate both of them. Robbie says that we must cater to his every need. Those were his exact words. And the Pretender seems to think so himself. He never says thank you. He just looks at you as if it’s your job to wait on him hand and foot. He takes everything for granted.’

  Angus frowned. Everybody took advantage of Big Lou’s kindness: customers at the coffee bar, demanding relatives, boyfriends, pretenders . . . ‘You’ll have to put your foot down, Lou,’ he said. ‘Tell Robbie that he’ll have to find somewhere else for the Pretender to stay. Send him up to the Highlands. To the Outer Hebrides. Anywhere.’

  Big Lou began to polish the bar once again. ‘That’s what they’re planning,’ she said. ‘He’s going up north. Robbie says they have a plan. But I have a bad feeling, Angus. A gey bad feeling.’

  48. Loyalties Tested

  When Angus Lordie emerged from Big Lou’s coffee bar he had a great deal to think about. It had been an eventful morning, what with Lou’s surprise announcement, and the retrieval of Domenica’s blue Spode teacup. His artist’s eye detected a certain symmetry in these events - the welcoming of the Pretender represented an absurd, misguided attempt to rectify what was seen by some as a historical injustice; the restoration of the teacup was also an attempt - and a successful one at that - to set right a wrong.

  Now Angus knew that there were those who would regard the whole matter of the teacup as a small thing, a minor issue between neighbours that should hardly merit our notice. In the scale of wrongs which plagued the world, the theft of a teacup, even one which was of sentimental value to its owner, might seem to count for very little. Certainly it was dwarfed by the crying injustices with which humanity had to contend; but that was not really the point, at least in Angus’s view. Every small wrong, every minor act of cruelty, every act of petty bullying was symbolic of a greater wrong. And if we ignored these small things, then did it not blunt our outrage over the larger wrongs?

  It was, thought Angus, a question of zero tolerance. When Mayor Giuliani decided to tackle petty street crime in New York, he realised this fundamental truth: the small things stand for the big things. And by stopping minor street crimes - littering, riding bicycles on the pavement, pushing people out of the way and so on
- he signalled that anti-social behaviour of any sort would not be tolerated. And the result? One of the safest large cities in the world.

  Mayor Giuliani, thought Angus, would not have tolerated Antonia’s removal of Domenica’s blue Spode teacup. And nor had he, Angus Lordie. He had gone into Antonia’s kitchen, quickly located the cup in question, and returned it to Domenica. Then they had both left the flat, locking the door behind them. Domenica had been effusively grateful and had invited Angus in for a further cup of coffee, but he had declined, as Cyril was restless now and wanted some exercise. They would walk together up to Big Lou’s and have the second cup of coffee there.

  ‘I’m immensely grateful to you for getting my cup back for me,’ said Domenica. ‘It had been rankling.’

  ‘As well it might,’ said Angus. ‘It’s never comfortable seeing evil flourish unchecked.’

  ‘I don’t know if I’d quite call it evil,’ said Domenica. ‘But it was certainly an act of dishonesty on Antonia’s part.’

  ‘And what do you think she’ll do when she discovers that it’s not there?’ asked Angus. ‘Will she suspect us?’

  ‘She might,’ Domenica replied. ‘But even if she does, she can hardly complain. After all, we merely took back what was rightfully mine. She has no leg to stand on. She is quite without visible means of support.’

  ‘White-collar crime,’ mused Angus. ‘Stealing somebody’s blue Spode teacup is, I suppose, an example of white-collar crime. Which makes Antonia a white-collar criminal.’

  ‘Well, there you are,’ said Domenica. ‘It just goes to show how frayed are the bonds that bind us one to another in this society. It used to be that you could trust your neighbour . . .’

  Angus shook his head. ‘That was when we had a society,’ he said. ‘That was before they dismantled the idea of community; the idea of being a nation.’

  Domenica looked doubtful. ‘But there’s still a lot of talk about community. Don’t we even have a Minister for Communities or some such thing?’

  Angus shrugged. ‘Possibly. But so much of that is just pious talk. The things that really bind people to one another are a shared sense of who you are - a shared identity. Common practices. Common loyalties. Those are the things that bind us together. But what is being done to those things now? They are being dismantled. Deliberately and with specific intent they are being dismantled. Look at Christmas. Look at those think-tank people who advocated diminishing Christmas so that those who adhered to other faiths would not feel excluded. The truth of the matter, though, is that the celebration of Christmas has been going on for an awful long time in this country and is exactly one of those customs that make us a community rather than just a random collection of people who happen to live in the same place. And you can say the same thing about a hundred other manifestations of our national culture. We have a national culture, just as other countries have. We have one, and we are entitled to say that we want to preserve it. It’s a great mish-mash of social customs and observances; of ways of greeting one another; of memories of nursery rhymes and poems and people. All of that. And these wretched, arrogant relativists and pluralists are setting out - on what authority, one asks? - to dismantle it, bit by bit, so that there is nothing, absolutely nothing left. They prevent people from being who they are; they forbid them to express themselves in the name of preventing offence. Cyril’s offensive to cats, but is he to stop being a dog? They pour scorn on those who have a sense of themselves. One might weep. One might weep for everything that is being taken from us, our fundamental, basic identity as Scots, as Britons too - all of that.’

  He paused - and drew breath. ‘And don’t think for a moment that this sense of having something taken away is restricted to bourgeois dreamers, to middle-class romantics, to hopeless irredentists; don’t think that. Look at what very ordinary people have lost, and think about that for a moment. What has happened to working-class communities in Scotland? To miners, for example. To fishermen? Who? You might well ask. To men and women who work with their hands? Who again? These people are being swept away by globalisation. Swept away. Now they’re all so demoralised that they’re caught in the culture of permanent sick notes. And who speaks for the young Scottish male, as a matter of interest? Nobody. Where’s he going to live? What’s he going to do? Nobody cares. He’s finished. Abandoned. And he knows it. And all the solace he can get he will have to get from football and drinking. That’s the only meaning he can find for his life. Football! And an ersatz electronic culture of mindless cinematic violence from the cynical pyrotechnicians of Hollywood. But don’t get me started, Domenica.’

  ‘I won’t,’ said Domenica.

  49. A Subtle Knife Question

  The contretemps between Irene and Stuart over the question of whether Bertie would be allowed to join the cub scouts had been resolved in favour of Stuart. It was impossible for Irene to do very much now; certainly there was little that she could do in the presence of Bertie himself, as for all her faults she did not believe in presenting a child with mixed parental messages. But that did not prevent her from confronting Stuart once Bertie had been dispatched to bed.

  That dispatching had been carried out by Stuart, who had supervised the cleaning of teeth and the various other small rituals that Bertie performed before settling down for the night. That evening, though, Stuart was aware of what awaited him in the kitchen, and prolonged his time with his son, sitting on the edge of the bed in the artificial gloaming provided by Bertie’s small plug-in night-light.

  ‘So you’ve had a good day, Bertie,’ he said, taking the small hand that was resting on the top of the counterpane and giving it a brief, friendly squeeze.

  Bertie hesitated before he replied. ‘A bit,’ he said. ‘Some of it was good and some was bad. But thank you for asking, Daddy.’

  ‘Oh, some of it was bad, was it?’ asked Stuart. ‘Why was that, Bertie? I thought you had fun having your friends round to play.’

  ‘Olive’s not really my friend, Daddy,’ confided Bertie. ‘She thinks she is, but isn’t really. I never invited her here and once she comes all she wants to do is to play house. I hate playing house. We’re incompatible.’

  Stuart gave a start at the sophisticated word; his son had a great capacity for astonishing him, never less than in his vocabulary. He was sympathetic to Bertie’s point. He had a vague memory of being forced to play house when he was a small boy and hating it too. And now that he came to think of it, his life with Irene was a bit like being obliged to play house on a prolonged scale. In fact, there were many men who were forced to play house when they really did not want to . . .

  ‘Girls can be a bit different, Bertie,’ he said.

  ‘Mummy says they aren’t,’ chipped in Bertie. ‘Mummy says that it’s society that imposes different roles on boys and girls.’

  Stuart looked at his son. He was probably right. That was exactly what Irene would have said.

  ‘I’m sure that Mummy had a point,’ he said loyally. ‘But let’s not worry too much about that. Tell me, did Tofu enjoy himself?’

  ‘No,’ said Bertie. ‘Tofu and Olive fight every time they see one another. Tofu always spits at her and she scratches him. She tried to scratch his face this afternoon but only managed to scratch his neck. That made Tofu pull her hair and quite a bit came out.’

  ‘That’s not so good,’ said Stuart. ‘One does not expect such things to happen among one’s guests. But at least you’ve got the cub scouts to look forward to.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bertie. ‘I can’t wait.’

  ‘We’ll go and get your uniform tomorrow,’ said Stuart.

  ‘Can I carry a knife?’ asked Bertie. ‘That book I was reading, about Baden-Powell and Scouting for Boys, says that every scout should have a knife. Did you have a knife, Daddy?’

  Stuart was silent. He had not thought about it for many years - and it seemed such a long time ago. But yes, he did have a knife, although he very much doubted that cubs had knives these days.

  �
��I did have a knife, Bertie,’ Stuart said. ‘I had a lovely red Swiss Army knife with twelve blades, as I recall. Well, they weren’t all blades - they did various things. One was a hook to take stones out of the feet of horses. And another was a corkscrew, I think. It was a lovely knife. I was very proud of it.’

  Bertie was listening with rapt attention. It thrilled him to learn that his father had had a knife, and a Swiss Army one at that. He had seen a picture of a Swiss Army knife once, in a magazine - it was Scottish Field, he thought, which he read in Dr Fairbairn’s waiting-room. It had never occurred to him that he might one day have such a knife, but now that his father had said that he had owned such a thing, then there was a chance, he supposed, a remote chance that he might get one.

  He looked at his father. The warm intimacy of the half-light made him wonder whether now might not be the time to make the request.

  ‘Do you think I could have a Swiss Army knife?’ he asked, his voice small in the darkness. ‘Do you think I could, Daddy?’

  Stuart said nothing for a moment. He remembered that he had been given his Swiss Army knife at the age of eight, and Bertie, of course, was only six. But children grew up faster these days and six, perhaps, was the new eight . . . And how could he say no to this little boy who had been said no to so many times - by his mother - and all those nos had been left unchallenged by him? Well that was going to change, and it would change dramatically, whatever Irene said.

  ‘Of course you can have a Swiss Army knife, Bertie,’ said Stuart. ‘We can get it tomorrow when we go to buy your uniform. You just remind me.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Daddy,’ said Bertie, beaming with pleasure. ‘Can we go in the car to get the uniform?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Stuart.

  ‘Where is it, Daddy?’ asked Bertie. ‘I haven’t seen our car for ages.’

  Stuart smiled. ‘Where is our car? Oh, in the usual place, Bertie. Parked.’