The Bertie Project Read online

  PRAISE FOR ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH’S

  44 Scotland Street Series

  “[McCall Smith] proves himself a wry but gentle chronicler of humanity and its foibles.” —Miami Herald

  “Entertaining and witty….A sly send-up of society in Edinburgh.” —Orlando Sentinel

  “McCall Smith is a tireless student of human nature, at once acutely observant and gently indulgent.” —The Sydney Morning Herald

  “McCall Smith, a fine writer, paints his hometown of Edinburgh as indelibly as he captures the sunniness of Africa [in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series]. We can almost feel the mists as we tread the cobblestones.” —The Dallas Morning News

  “This is Alexander McCall Smith at his most charming….He is a delightful writer.” —The Washington Times

  ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH

  THE BERTIE PROJECT

  Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, the Isabel Dalhousie series, the 44 Scotland Street series, the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series, and the Corduroy Mansions series. He is professor emeritus of medical law at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and has served with many national and international organizations concerned with bioethics.

  www.alexandermccallsmith.com

  BOOKS BY ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH

  IN THE 44 SCOTLAND STREET SERIES

  44 Scotland Street

  Espresso Tales

  Love Over Scotland

  The World According to Bertie

  The Unbearable Lightness of Scones

  The Importance of Being Seven

  Bertie Plays the Blues

  Sunshine on Scotland Street

  Bertie’s Guide to Life and Mothers

  The Revolving Door of Life

  The Bertie Project

  IN THE NO. 1 LADIES’ DETECTIVE AGENCY SERIES

  The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

  Tears of the Giraffe

  Morality for Beautiful Girls

  The Kalahari Typing School for Men

  The Full Cupboard of Life

  In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

  Blue Shoes and Happiness

  The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

  The Miracle at Speedy Motors

  Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

  The Double-Comfort Safari Club

  The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party

  The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection

  The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon

  The Handsome Man’s De Luxe Café

  The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine

  Precious and Grace

  IN THE CORDUROY MANSIONS SERIES

  Corduroy Mansions

  The Dog Who Came in from the Cold

  A Conspiracy of Friends

  IN THE ISABEL DALHOUSIE SERIES

  The Sunday Philosophy Club

  Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

  The Right Attitude to Rain

  The Careful Use of Compliments

  The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday

  The Lost Art of Gratitude

  The Charming Quirks of Others

  The Forgotten Affairs of Youth

  The Perils of Morning Coffee (eBook only)

  The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds

  At the Reunion Buffet (eBook only)

  The Novel Habits of Happiness

  Sweet, Thoughtful Valentine (eBook only)

  IN THE PORTUGUESE IRREGULAR VERBS SERIES

  Portuguese Irregular Verbs

  The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs

  At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances

  Unusual Uses for Olive Oil

  FOR YOUNG READERS

  The Great Cake Mystery

  The Mystery of Meerkat Hill

  The Mystery of the Missing Lion

  OTHER WORKS

  La’s Orchestra Saves the World

  The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa

  Trains and Lovers

  The Forever Girl

  Fatty O’Leary’s Dinner Party (eBook only)

  Emma: A Modern Retelling

  Chance Developments

  My Italian Bulldozer

  AN ANCHOR BOOKS ORIGINAL, FEBRUARY 2017

  Copyright © 2016 by Alexander McCall Smith

  Illustrations copyright © 2016 by Iain McIntosh

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd., Edinburgh, in 2016.

  Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book is excerpted from a series that originally appeared in The Scotsman newspaper.

  The Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file at The Library of Congress.

  Anchor Books Trade Paperback ISBN 9780525433002

  Ebook ISBN 9780525433019

  Author illustration © Iain McIntosh

  Cover illustration © Iain McIntosh

  www.anchorbooks.com

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  Contents

  Cover

  Alexander McCall Smith: The Bertie Project

  Books by Alexander McCall Smith

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Beer and Knees

  News of Bruce

  Bruce in Danger?

  An Inquisition Begins

  Irene on Popular Culture

  A Letter from Portugal

  Coulter’s Candy

  The Case for Matron

  I Want to Eat You Up!

  At Presbyterian Ladies’

  Quandong Berries

  Poor Darling. Poor You

  A Sighting in the Museum

  The Intimacy of Tents

  Spitfires, Courage, Statistics

  Rhododendron Issues

  Distressed Oatmeal

  The Rescue of Hollandaise Sauce

  Birgitte Offends

  Fra Filippo Lippi

  Stuarts and Campbells

  Outside the Playhouse Theatre

  At Valvona & Crolla

  Silting Up

  The Anthropology of Electricity

  We Are Surrounded by New Puritans

  Clare Talks to Bruce

  On the Flight Deck

  More Things in Heaven and Earth

  On the Success of Others

  Not in the Ordinary Sense of the Word…

  The Pronunciation of Gullane (Part 72)…

  Domenica and Nicola Walk to Stockbridge, and Beyond

  Irene as Termagant

  All About Hipsters

  You’ve Got Great Contours

  They Simply Cried

  Scottish Defenestrations

  Mist-Covered Mountains

  The Association of Scottish Nudists

  A Meeting in a Bistro

  Ulysses Reacts

  What Ulysses Almost Said

  Extreme Sports

  Among the Watsonians

  The Play’s the Thing

  The Isobars of Guilt

  Imagined Interrogations

  A Cry of Freedom and Defiance

  Hipster Pyjamas

  An Eighty-four Horse-Power, Six-Cylinder Narcissist

  The Symbolism of Scones

  Metaphorical Falls

  Deceit and Concealment

  Squtlandiyah

  Shed Issues

  Snakes and Ladders br />
  Chez Macpherson

  Bring Back Matron

  Clare Takes Over

  In Moray Place

  Falling Veils of White

  Thoughts on the 23 Bus

  I Cannot Live Without You

  Clare’s Proposal

  Para-Mountain-Biking on Skye

  Freedom Come All Ye

  Walking Home

  Kitchen Talk in Scotland Street

  See, I Am Here

  In memory of Dr. Herbert Gold, a wise and kind doctor.

  Beer and Knees

  On any Friday evening, the Cumberland Bar, just round the corner from Drummond Place and Scotland Street, might be expected to be busy, the meeting place of assorted mercantile tribes, of office workers from further down the hill, of young accountants, of estate agents and lawyers, and, conspicuous by their less formal attire, of some of the more bohemian, the more artistic inhabitants of this eastern corner of Edinburgh’s Georgian New Town. At least two of this last group were present early that evening—Angus Lordie, portrait painter and owner of the dog, Cyril, and his friend, Matthew, proprietor of a small art gallery on Dundas Street, husband of Elspeth, and father of the robust and increasingly rumbustious triplets, Tobermory, Rognvald, and Fergus. Cyril, the only dog in Scotland to have a gold tooth, and the only dog anywhere to have been trained to lift his leg at the mention of the controversial conceptual art award, the Turner Prize, was also there, lying contentedly beneath the table at which Matthew and Angus sat. Underneath this table was to be seen an empty metal bowl, licked clean of the dark stout poured into it only ten minutes earlier, and the consumption of which had induced Cyril’s state of somnolent contentment.

  “Your dog,” observed Matthew, “really is a most peculiar creature. I’ve never quite worked him out, you know. He keeps looking at me in a distinctly disconcerting way.”

  Angus glanced down at Cyril. Although one of the dog’s eyes was closed, he saw that the other, half-open, was focused on Matthew’s feet.

  “It’s as if he had something against me,” Matthew continued. “Some canine grudge perhaps.”

  “Oh, I don’t think Cyril dislikes you. Quite the opposite, in fact.” Angus smiled at Matthew. “It’s just that he’s always had this thing about your ankles.”

  “He nipped me,” said Matthew accusingly. “Remember?”

  “Yes. That was when he couldn’t control himself any further. He yielded to temptation.” Angus paused, ready to defend his dog. “We all have our temptations, don’t we? Some hidden desire, something we’re perhaps a bit ashamed of. Nobody’s immune to that.” He paused again, before concluding, “Chocolate…”

  Matthew stared at Angus. He blushed. He had yielded to temptation only that afternoon, eating an entire bar of expensive Belgian chocolate bought by his assistant, Pat, as a birthday present for Elspeth. The chocolate had been entrusted to him, beautifully wrapped, for delivery to Elspeth, and he had sat and gazed at it, struggling with temptation, until at last he had succumbed. He had then eaten it in a single sitting when Pat went to post some letters, afterwards concealing the wrapping in the drawer of his desk. He had told himself that he would replace it in good time and that Elspeth would never know. But it was, he later decided, an entirely shameful thing to do—no different from the act of a postman who steals a parcel, or a charity collector who pockets donations. Was it possible that Angus had guessed what he had done? That seemed so unlikely, and yet why else would he suddenly bring chocolate into the conversation?

  He dismissed his scruples; it was hardly anything to get into a fankle over, hardly an issue at all…chocolate was a fungible, after all; something that could be replaced by more of the same. A fankle—the Scots word seemed just right for its purpose, as so many Scots words did; a fankle was a mess, a state of confusion, sometimes leading to a stramash—another useful Scots word—and it was something one sought to avoid if at all possible.

  Angus raised his glass to his lips. Having broached the topic of temptation, he was keen to abandon the subject. He himself experienced the occasional temptation—nothing serious, of course, and barely anti-social—but he was not sure that he would actually own up to such thoughts. Better, though, to think about something else altogether, which was, of course, a recommended way of tackling temptation in the first place.

  But it was Matthew who moved the conversation on. “Oh well,” he said. “Be that as it may, have you seen the plans for that new building?”

  Angus had, and sighed. “You’d think…” he began, and then stopped. There was not much one could add, he felt, to the charges of gross Philistinism that had already been levelled at the developers.

  “Exactly,” said Matthew, “you’d think, wouldn’t you? However, I just don’t have the energy to protest. I know I should; I know we should all rise up as one and flood the council with objections, but do they care? Does anyone actually imagine they give any weight to the likes of us, Angus? Les citoyens?”

  Angus thought for a moment, and then answered, “No.”

  “So perhaps we should just give the matter a Gallic shrug…”

  Angus looked puzzled. “A Gallic shrug?”

  “The French are always shrugging,” explained Matthew. “You ask their view on things and they give a sort of insouciant shrug, as if to say that these things happen and they, at least, are completely unsurprised.”

  Angus knew what Matthew meant. He remembered a visit that he and Domenica had been paid by a French anthropologist a few months previously. The topic of French politics had cropped up in the conversation—there was a long and crippling strike in France, with the government digging in against virtually everybody—and the French visitor had simply shrugged. Pouf! he had said, adding, for clarification, Bif!

  “Perhaps a shrug is not such a bad response,” Angus said. “What’s the alternative? Getting all steamed up? Hot under the collar? You end up being angry—outraged even—but does that actually do any good?”

  Matthew himself was about to shrug, but stopped in time. One could not pronounce on shrugs with a shrug. “I suppose that a shrug indicates acceptance,” he said.

  “Which is what we should all cultivate,” added Angus. “Those who accept things are calmer, more resolved…and, I imagine, live much longer than those who rail against them.”

  “Probably,” said Matthew.

  “I can’t abide moaning,” said Angus, taking a sip of his beer. “Moaning gets us nowhere. It confirms the moaner in his state of discontent, and it irritates those who have to listen to the complaints.” He paused, and looked enquiringly at Matthew. “Have I told you about my knee?” he asked.

  Matthew shook his head. “You’re having knee trouble?”

  “A bit,” said Angus. He looked at his beer glass, half full, with an expression of regret. “I can only have one beer; you know—because of my knee.”

  Matthew frowned. “Because of your knee?”

  Angus told him. “You see what happened,” he began, “is this…”

  News of Bruce

  “I first noticed it,” said Angus, “when I was driving up to St. Fillans. We have friends there, you see. Actually, she’s some sort of cousin of Domenica’s, and he used to manage a branch of the Bank of Scotland in the days when banks had proper managers in their branches—somebody you could actually speak to.”

  Matthew rolled his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “Remember our wonderful, solid, Presbyterian banks, Angus?” He paused. “Who wrecked our banks? Who actually did it? And I don’t mean who lost the money by gambling on toxic mortgages and things like that, but who actually decreed that we shouldn’t be able to speak to anybody if we phoned the branch? Or who said that banks needn’t answer letters their customers wrote to them? Who ended the idea that banks actually supported people through rough times? Who ended all that?”

  “People down in the City of London,” said Angus. “Avaricious, arrogant people. I have a list of them somewhere. I cut it out of the newspaper. But, as I w
as saying…”

  “Of course—as you were saying.”

  “We were driving up to St. Fillans, going by way of Comrie. You know that back road that goes from Braco—up over the hills?”

  Matthew thought for a second before he remembered. As a sixteen-year-old boy he had gone to cadet camp during the summer and they had been driven in an ancient green army truck along that winding road, half looking forward to, half dreading the experience ahead: the tepid, frequently cold, showers, the rough camaraderie of the Nissen huts, the bullying (both subtle and unsubtle), the shouting and the crudity of males living in close proximity to one another for a week or more. “Past Cultybraggan Camp?” he said.

  “Almost,” said Angus. And he, too, remembered what that had been like in his own day. For a moment there was an additional bond between them, a bond that surpassed the ordinary ties of friendship, a bond based on a shared tribal experience. He continued, “It was on that road, just as it begins to drop down sharply towards Comrie—that’s when I felt this pain in my knee. I thought I’d pulled something.”