Bertie Plays the Blues Read online

  “You’re really good, Ranald,” said Bertie.

  “Yes,” said Ranald. “I am. And when Tarzan swings on a vine, he goes like this.”

  He uttered a piercing shriek – a sort of strangulated yodel – and then let go of the rope, landing, standing up, at Bertie’s side.

  It was now Bertie’s turn, and he spent several very exciting minutes swinging to and fro while Ranald tugged on his ankles. That done, they went into the house.

  “My dad’s quite rich,” said Ranald, as they went into the entrance hall. “He keeps most of his money in a safe. Would you like to see it?”

  He led Bertie to a small study off the hall. On one wall there were bookshelves, and against another stood a squat grey safe.

  “I don’t know the combination,” said Ranald. “But I could ask my dad to open it if you’d like to see our money.”

  “Where did he find all the money?” asked Bertie.

  Ranald shrugged. “He has a business,” he said. “He puts advertisements in the papers and then people send him their savings. Then he puts it in the safe. He’s allowed to keep some himself, but he has to give most of it back to them when they ask him.”

  Bertie listened to this explanation. “It must be nice to have a lot of money,” he said. “You could buy anything you wanted. Any time.”

  Ranald thought about this. “We’ve got just about everything we need,” he said. “But we may think of something else some time. You never know.”

  They left the study and went upstairs to inspect Ranald’s room. There Bertie was shown Ranald’s collection of model aeroplanes and the shells that he had found on the beach at Gullane.

  “My granddad lives at Gullane,” he said. “He calls it Gillan rather than Gullane. He says that’s the way it should be pronouced and that anybody who pronounces it differently needs their head examined.”

  Bertie nodded. “I’m sure he knows.”

  Ranald agreed. “He’s really clever, my granddad. When he dies the University of Edinburgh is going to take his brain and put it in the freezer and charge admission to look at it.”

  “A good idea,” said Bertie.

  They were now summoned by Ranald’s father, Ross, a tall man wearing a cardigan and a pair of mustard-coloured corduroy trousers.

  “A very nice tea has been prepared for you boys,” he said. “Do you like chocolate cake, Bertie?” Bertie said that he did.

  “You’re allowed to have as much as you like, Bertie,” said Ranald. “That’s true, isn’t it, dad?”

  Ross Macpherson winked at his son. “I don’t see why not. After all, the purpose of chocolate cake is to be eaten by appreciative boys. That is its destiny, I believe.”

  Bertie marvelled at this. He was rarely allowed to eat chocolate cake, and certainly never permitted to eat as much as he wanted of anything, let alone something as delicious as chocolate cake.

  “Right, boys,” said Ross Macpherson.” À table! as our Gallic cousins might say.”

  “That means let’s go to the table in French,” explained Ranald. “My dad’s always saying that.”

  “Parents repeat themselves a lot,” said Bertie.

  They made their way downstairs. As they did so, Ranald turned to Bertie and said, “Do you know something, Bertie? I’m adopted. These people are not my real mum and dad. Did you know that?”

  Bertie shook his head. The idea intrigued him, though: that somebody should arrive, a deus ex machina, and take one into a warm and friendly house, one distinguished for its chocolate cake, and give one a more congenial home. Could it happen, he wondered, to those who had a placement at present, but who might wish, secretly of course, for something better?

  27. Dinner with Dr Macgregor

  While Bertie was dining in the house of Ranald Braveheart Macpherson – enjoying a meal of macaroni cheese followed by copious quantities of chocolate cake – Pat was making her way to dinner with her psychiatrist father at his house in the Grange. She often did this on a Sunday, a day noted for its melancholic potential, but on this occasion was going on a Friday. Dr Macgregor, who normally went nowhere, had announced that on that particular Sunday he hoped to attend a concert in the Queen’s Hall and would Pat mind coming for dinner on Friday instead? She would not mind at all, she assured him; in fact, it was quite convenient, as on Sunday there was a showing at Film House of Casablanca and she had been invited to go with friends.

  “Casablanca,” mused Dr Macgregor, as they sat down together for a pre-dinner glass of wine. “I remember the first time I saw that film. I was a student and it was on at the Cameo. It made such an impression on me. Rather like the first time I saw an opera. That was Cav and Pag in Glasgow. And the first time I had a glass of champagne – I was fourteen. At a wedding in Kelso.” He smiled. “These are big milestones in one’s life. First Casablanca, first opera, first taste of champagne. Middle-class milestones, of course, but you know something, my dear? We are middle class. We can’t help it.”

  She looked at her father, returning his smile. You are so accustomed, she thought, to seeing parents as part of your own world, that you forget the world they had before you. BM should be the acronym for that, she decided: Before Me. Things happened BM, of course, but did not really happen.

  “And what about you?” he said. “Have you seen it before?”

  “Yes, of course. Everybody’s seen Casablanca. It was at the Dominion in my case. I saw it when I was about fifteen, I think.”

  He looked thoughtful. “Why do we like that film so much?”

  “Because it’s really a play,” said Pat. “There’s that formality about the dialogue. People address one another as if they’re on the stage. They say important things, memorable things. It’s Shakespearean.”

  He nodded. “Whereas they don’t do that any more? They say superficial things?”

  “Mostly.”

  Dr Macgregor reflected on this. “We’re losing the ability to converse in sentences, I think. We use phrases, a few words here and there. We don’t think about the shape of a conversation.”

  “Maybe.”

  He warmed to the topic. “There’s a lovely line in a poem by Michael Longley, you know. He talks about Emily Dickinson, the poet. He writes about her waking early each morning in her house in Amherst, Massachusetts …”

  While he struggled to remember the line, Pat thought: but everybody awakes in their house; the observation that one does so is hardly earth-shattering. Folk-singers, for instance, were always waking up one morning: Woke up one morning, feeling kind of blue … and so on.

  He found what he was looking for. “Yes. He thinks of her waking up early in the morning and then – and this is the bit I love – dressing with care for the act of poetry. What do you think of that? Dressing with care for the act of poetry.”

  “Is poetry an act?”

  “Yes, I think it is. The poet sits at his table, puts pen to paper.”

  She took a sip of her wine. “Or switches on his computer?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t think one could write poetry on a computer, do you?”

  She was not sure. But he was probably right, she thought.

  “Computers change the way we deal with words,” Dr Macgregor continued. “They somehow unlock language in the mind. But they do so in a very particular way – they induce … well, I suppose we should call it logorrhoea, a sort of verbal diarrhoea. The words come tumbling out and people feel they can go on and on. And they do. Poetry has to be much more disciplined, much more concise.”

  Pat thought about this. Computers had always been around, it seemed to her, and she wondered how people could possibly write with a pen any more. BM there were pens, of course, but now …

  “There’s another thing I’ve been thinking about,” said Dr Macgregor. “Have you noticed how rude people are in their exchanges on the Web? Have you seen that?”

  “In the comments they make?”

  “Yes. And generally in the things they write online. They insul
t people with gay abandon. They resort to personal abuse when discussing things in which personal abuse should have no place. It’s astonishing.”

  It was true, she decided; so true that she had never thought about it.

  “It’s the same with driving,” Dr Macgregor continued. “When people are behind the wheel of a car their personality changes. They lose their temper with other drivers just like that – in an instant. They scowl at them, they shout, they insult them – all for some tiny mistake – turning left when indicating right, or something like that – or failing to let them overtake when they want. All that sort of thing.” He paused. “If you were walking along the pavement and somebody bumped into you by mistake, would you yell at him? Would you shake your fist and swear? Or would you accept his apology and carry on?”

  “I’d accept the apology.”

  “Of course you would, because that’s the ordinary human thing to do. The trouble with technology is that it’s dehumanised us – it’s removed the restraints of ordinary human interactions. So we lose the notion that the person with whom we’re dealing is a person like us, with failings and feelings. It’s exactly the same as in wartime. When people are engaged in conflict, they very easily lose sight of the humanity of the other. They become capable of doing things that they would never do in their ordinary lives.”

  “War crimes?” Pat asked.

  “Yes, exactly. But war is an extreme example, of course. Politics provides perhaps a better illustration. Look at the dismissive way in which people treat one another in politics – slanging matches, abuse, refusal to accept that one’s opponent might have a point, or at least be half-right. People adopt positions and the positions dictate their response to the other, dehumanising everybody in the process.”

  “Oh well,” said Pat. “Isn’t it time for dinner?”

  28. Innocence Before Freud

  Dr Macgregor had prepared an egg and potato pie for his daughter. Once they settled themselves at the table and the pie had been served out, he filled Pat’s glass with wine.

  “Chianti is perfect with egg and potato pie,” he said. “Not many people know that. In fact, I don’t.”

  Pat laughed. Her father’s remarks frequently required close analysis. What did he mean by this? That Chianti did not go with egg and potato pie? Or was he simply being self-effacing? That was the problem with being the daughter of a psychiatrist: you never quite knew what was what – or was not.

  She looked about the dining room. It was familiar enough, of course, but becoming less so. A painting had been moved from one wall to another; a vase on the sideboard had disappeared; the curtains, exposed to the sun in a south-facing room, were more faded than she remembered. The house had changed since she had gone off to university and there would come a time, she supposed, when it would seem quite alien. For the time being, though, it was still home.

  Dr Macgregor raised his glass in a toast. “To your happiness,” he said.

  It was what he always said, and Pat would have been concerned if he had said anything different, but for some reason that evening his words seemed rather more deliberate than usual.

  “And to yours.” She paused. “Because happiness is important, isn’t it?”

  He was slightly taken aback by this remark. “Of course it is,” he said. “It’s the most important thing there is. If you’re happy, then everything else is irrelevant.”

  “And yet it does seem to elude rather a lot of people, don’t you think? Those surveys you read about …”

  Dr Macgregor smiled. “Those surveys come up with some very surprising results. Most of us, it seems, are a bit unhappy about something.”

  “There’ll always be something wrong with your life,” suggested Pat. “It’s unrealistic to think that everything can be perfect.”

  Dr Macgregor agreed. “You know, darling, my work as a psychiatrist has taught me one thing. I know that people are immensely complicated – they just are – but in one respect they are quite simple. They have to get the major thing in their life right – if they do that, then they’re happy. But if they get that wrong …” He sighed. “Then they are condemned to Sisyphean unhappiness.”

  “What’s the major thing?”

  “It depends. For most people, though, it’s love. We all need to give love and receive it in return. I suppose that’s the main thing.”

  Pat frowned; she was remembering something. “I’ve just thought of something in the McEwan Hall. Do you remember it? Right up at the top there is an inscription: Wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom. We have exams in there and if you look up from your exam desk you see those words. There’s a mural of ancient Greek philosophers talking to young men. Then those words.”

  He thought about this. “Yes, maybe wisdom is the principal thing. If you possess wisdom, then you’re able to deal with the other important things in life. If you’re wise, then you can’t be hurt in love. If you’re wise, you’ll understand that you can’t have everything you want materially. And so on.”

  They were both silent for a minute or two. Pat was thinking of her father and of the sadness that she knew he felt for his failed marriage; he deserved better, she felt, but she could never say that to him. She wanted to hug him, to tell him that she understood how he must feel, and had the silence continued, she might have done that. But now he spoke, and the moment passed.

  “I had a friend at university,” he said. “When I was about your age. He fell in love – really rather badly. She was at the physical education college – Dunfermline – and was Northern Irish. They can be such attractive people, you know, and she certainly was. He talked about her non-stop.

  “The problem was that she had this boy back home, somewhere in Fermanagh, I think it was. She had known him more or less all her life and there was an understanding between them. She was allowed to see other boys, but ultimately she was destined to marry him. My friend sensed this and felt it terribly.

  “When he went to their home he met her sister. The girl whom he loved – the physical education one – had eyes only for this boy from Fermanagh and so my friend took up with her sister. Now I can see that you’re surprised, but that happens more often than you imagine. People marry people who are close to the person they really want. They see it as a way of getting closer to the real object of their affection.”

  Pat looked incredulous. “Surely not.”

  Dr Macgregor assured her that it was perfectly possible. “There have been some remarkable instances of this. Look at Siegfried Sassoon. By nature he found himself attracted to a series of younger men with whom he became infatuated, although he appeared to remain scrupulously chaste through these affairs. It was rather innocent, really – the love of the scholar poet for the hero athlete, in an age when we were not so worldly-wise, when such things could be seen as unsullied.”

  “Pre-Freud,” said Pat.

  “Before his ascendancy. Everything was more innocent before Freud. Innocent, but not really innocent, if you see what I mean. Anyway, Sassoon was in love with a young man who did not share his inclinations. So he became engaged to the young man’s sister. Needless to say …”

  “It didn’t work out.”

  “No.”

  “How sad.”

  “Yes. How sad.” He paused. “Don’t forget, my dear, how many and how varied are the permutations of unhappiness to which the human soul is susceptible.”

  “And the same can be said of happiness?”

  He appeared to think about this, and Pat waited for his answer.

  “No,” he said. “Happiness is so much simpler. It’s really just like the sun, and there’s only one sort of sunlight, I would have thought.”

  29. The Home Life of Ranald Braveheart Macpherson

  Half a mile away from Dr Macgregor’s house, where the gentle psychiatrist was having dinner with his student daughter, Bertie Pollock was sitting at the dining room table in the house of his friend, Ranald Braveheart Macpherson, licking the last crumbs of ch
ocolate cake from his fingers.

  “You enjoyed that, didn’t you, Bertie?” asked Ida Macpherson.

  “Very much, Mrs Macpherson,” said Bertie. “Thank you very much.”

  “Chocolate cake is so good for a growing boy,” said Ross Macpherson. “You like it too, don’t you, Ranald? It builds up the muscles.”

  Ranald nodded. “Tarzan ate it,” he said. “That’s why he was so strong.”

  Ross Macpherson winked at him. “Quite right, Ranald. Well done you!”

  The plates were cleared away and Bertie and Ranald had a brief time to play together before it was time for bed.

  “My dad always comes up to tell me a story, Bertie,” said Ranald. “He’s really good at that. True stories mostly. You’ll like them, Bertie.”

  “He’s really nice, your dad,” said Bertie. “You’re lucky that they chose you, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Ranald. “I was really small when they found me and took me to a children’s home. Then my mum and dad came and picked me out and took me back here. I’m really pleased it was them.”

  Bertie asked Ranald where he had been found.

  “It was on the banks of the Water of Leith,” came the reply. “I was in a basket.”

  “They found you in a basket? In the water?”

  Ranald’s tone was matter-of-fact. “Yes. There were some bulrushes and my basket had drifted into them. A social worker came past. He must have been fishing, I think, and he picked my basket out of the river. That’s how I came to be adopted.”

  “That’s really amazing, Ranald,” said Bertie. He paused. “Do you think that somebody who’s a bit older – maybe six – could get adopted?”