Unbearable Lightness of Scones Read online

  He had borrowed this book from the school library and had taken it home to Scotland Street.

  “What’s that you’re reading, Bertie?” his mother had asked when she had come into his room – without knocking, as usual – and had found her son stretched out on his bed, absorbed in a book.

  “It’s about Mr. Baden-Powell, Mummy,” said Bertie. “I’ve just got to the place where he’s fighting in the Matabele War and he’s thought it would be fun to make a club for boys who wanted to do that sort of thing.”

  Irene walked over to Bertie’s bed and took the book from him. “Let me see this,” she said. “Now, Bertie…”

  She broke off as she read the offending text. “Baden-Powell was a very brave man. While taking part in the action to suppress the uprising in Matabeleland, he developed a series of skills suited to fighting in the bush. He learned a great deal from the trackers that the British Expeditionary Force used to hunt down the last of Mzilikazi’s warriors as they hid in the valleys and caves of the Matopos hills…”

  Really! She would have to speak to the school about allowing such literature in the library. Scouting for Boys indeed!

  “Now, Bertie,” Irene began. “I’m going to have to take this book away. I’m sorry because, as you know, Mummy doesn’t believe in censorship, but there are limits. This is awful nonsense, Bertie, and I don’t think you should fill your mind with it.”

  “But, Mummy,” protested Bertie. “The book says that Mr. Baden-Powell was a good man. He was brave and he liked to help boys have fun.”

  Irene closed her eyes, a sign that Bertie knew well meant that her mind was resolutely made up. He had noticed it when she read something in The Guardian that she agreed with – which was the whole newspaper, he thought. She closed her eyes after reading the article.

  “Bertie,” she began, “you must realise that this book is very much out-of-date. Nobody today thinks that this Baden-Powell was a good man. Au contraire. He was an imperialist, Bertie, somebody who went and took other people’s countries. Poor Mzilikazi had every right to rise up against people like Baden-Powell.” She paused. “Of course these things are very complicated when you’re only six, I know that. But an intelligent boy like you should be able to see them, Bertie. Scouting is a thoroughly bad thing. It’s very old-fashioned.”

  “But why, Mummy?” Bertie protested. “All this happened a long time ago. And cubs and scouts have lots of fun – the book says so. Look, let me show you the bit.”

  “Certainly not,” snapped Irene, and then, more gently, “You see, Bertie, the problem is that these organisations appeal to a very primitive urge in boys. They make them want to pretend to be little hunters. They make them want to join together and exclude other people. They make them want to get dressed up in ridiculous uniforms, like Fascisti. That’s why Mummy thinks they’re a bad idea.”

  Bertie said nothing. The more his mother denigrated the activities of the boy scouts, the more desirable they seemed to him. Hunters! Uniforms! It would be such fun, he thought, to dress up and make one of those circles that he had seen pictured in the book. And they went camping too, which must be the most wonderful fun. There were photographs of boys standing about their tent while others made a camp fire. And then there was a picture of boys, all in their uniforms, sitting about their fire singing a song. The book gave some of the words of the song, “One man and his dog, went to mow a meadow…” That sounded like a very exciting song, thought Bertie; so rich in meaning; and for a moment he imagined the man and his dog setting off to cut the grass in Drummond Place Gardens. And the man was Angus Lordie and the dog was Cyril, whom Bertie had always liked.

  But he knew that he would never be able to be a cub or a scout. There would not be time for it, for one thing, what with his Italian lessons, his yoga and his psychotherapy. Which was why he was now sitting in Dr. Fairbairn’s waiting room while his mother went through for her private chat with the therapist before Bertie was called in. He knew that they were discussing him, and he had once tried to listen through the keyhole while his mother and Dr. Fairbairn had talked. He had not been able to make out what they were saying, although he did hear mention of Melanie Klein’s name once or twice and something about avoidance, whatever that was. Then his mother muttered something about Bertie’s little brother, Ulysses. This was followed by silence.

  10. A Setback for the Bertie Project

  In the consulting room of Dr. Hugo Fairbairn, the distinguished psychotherapist and author of Shattered to Pieces: Ego Dissolution in a Three-Year-Old Tyrant, Irene sat on the opposite side of the desk, staring at Dr. Fairbairn uncomprehendingly.

  “A chair?” she said, eventually. “A chair?”

  Dr. Fairbairn beamed back at her. “I wanted you to be one of the first to know,” he said. “I shall, of course, be writing to all my patients, and there may even be something in the press about it…” He broke off, smiling in a self-deprecatory way. “Not that I’m newsworthy, of course, but the fact of the matter is that Aberdeen has decided to create the first chair of child psychotherapy at a Scottish university and, well, they’ve very kindly chosen me.”

  Irene struggled to pull herself together. “But why can’t you do this here in Edinburgh? What’s wrong with Edinburgh University or any of the other universities we’ve got here? Queen Margaret University – they go in for that sort of thing, don’t they? Health sciences and so on. Why don’t you be a professor there? Or Napier University? What about them? They’ve got that film school or whatever – they’re forward-looking.”

  Dr. Fairbairn smiled. He appreciated such praise from Irene, but he wondered if she knew much about the mechanisms of getting a university chair. “It’s not that simple,” he explained. “There’s nothing available in Edinburgh at the moment. Maybe some time in the future, but now… well, it’s Aberdeen who have taken the step. And I must say I do feel somewhat flattered.”

  Irene decided to change tack. “Flattered by being offered a chair? Come now, Hugo, somebody of your eminence… A chair is not even a sideways move; you have far bigger fish to fry…”

  Dr. Fairbairn frowned. Was it possible that Irene did not know what a singular honour it was to be asked to become a chair? What did she think chairs were for? Sitting in?

  “There will be a great deal for me to do in Aberdeen,” he said slowly. “They would specifically like to raise their profile in psychotherapeutic studies. They know about…” He paused, as if modesty prevented the mention of his book, but decided to continue. “Shattered to Pieces. It has, I believe, been used as a textbook in Aberdeen.”

  Irene snorted. “Aberdeen! What do they know in Aberdeen?”

  Dr. Fairbairn’s expression now began to show signs of irritation. “A great deal, I would have thought,” he said. “It is one of our most distinguished pre-Reformation universities. It is a very prestigious institution.”

  “Oh, I know all that,” said Irene quickly. “It’s the place I was thinking of.”

  “And the city too,” said Dr. Fairbairn. “As a city, Aberdeen has an illustrious history. It’s a very significant place.”

  “And very cold too,” Irene interjected.

  For a few moments nothing was said. Irene reached out and picked up a pencil that was lying on Dr. Fairbairn’s desk. “Of course there are other considerations,” she said, almost casually.

  Dr. Fairbairn watched her. He said nothing.

  “I would have thought that you would have rather too many commitments in Edinburgh to leave,” she said.

  He waited. Then, in a hesitant voice, “Such as?”

  “Oh, your practice?” said Irene airily. “Your patients. Wee Fraser…” She was not going to mention Bertie… yet.

  “Wee Fraser is no longer a patient,” said Dr. Fairbairn defensively. “He is a former patient with whom I have not had any dealings for some considerable time.”

  That was not true, of course, and he knew it; but by dealings he meant professional dealings, and the punch to the jaw t
hat he had administered – in a moment of madness, and in response to being head-butted by the now adolescent Wee Fraser – on the Burdiehouse bus did not count as a professional dealing.

  Irene knew about his burden of guilt. She knew full well – because he had, in a moment of weakness, told her all about it – she knew of how he had gently smacked Wee Fraser when the boy, then three, had bitten him in the course of play therapy involving small farm animals. Dr. Fairbairn had suggested to Fraser that the miniature pigs with which the small boy was playing (or, more correctly, enacting his inner psychic dramas) were upside down. Wee Fraser had obstinately insisted that the pigs’ legs should point upwards and, when corrected again by Dr. Fairbairn, had bitten the psychotherapist. Anybody, even St. Nicholas of Myra, the patron saint of children, might be tempted to slap a child in such circumstances – and Irene conceded that; indeed there was an entire school of psychotherapy, Cause-Effect Theory, which held that people needed to know that unpleasant consequences flowed from unpleasant acts. This theory, however, had been widely discredited, and Dr. Fairbairn should never have raised a hand to the biting child. That was crystal clear. Psychotherapists did not slap their patients, and the metaphorical rucksack of guilt that Dr. Fairbairn carried with him was entirely his own fault.

  “Well, Wee Fraser is neither here nor there,” said Irene, adding, “perhaps.” Irene’s knowledge of Dr. Fairbairn’s guilt gave her some leverage over him; she would not want Wee Fraser to be completely forgotten.

  Dr. Fairbairn said nothing. He was looking out of the window, in the direction of Aberdeen, which lay several hours to the north. There would be a great deal of psychopathology in Aberdeen, he imagined, but people might be unwilling to talk about it very much. If Californians were at one end of the spectrum of willingness to talk about personal problems, Aberdonians were at the other. It was a form of verbal retention, he thought; one did not want to part with the words unnecessarily. Words needed to be hoarded, at least in the verbal stage. He thought of a possible title for a paper, “Verbal Retention in a Cold Climate.” That was rather good, even if not as good as Shattered to Pieces, a title of which he was inordinately proud. It was quite in the league of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

  Irene was watching him look out of the window. She had not imagined that Bertie’s psychotherapy would come to a premature end and that she would be deprived of these comfortable conversations with this fascinating man in his wrinkle-resistant blue linen jacket. Suddenly she felt very lonely. Who would there be to talk to now? Her husband?

  Her words came out unbidden. “And what about Bertie? What about the Bertie project? Weren’t you going to write him up?”

  Before he could reply, she added, “And then there’s Ulysses.”

  11. A Spoiled Secret

  Matthew and Elspeth had left their wedding party in Moray Place Gardens not in a car, but on foot, which gave their going-away not only an intimate, but also a contemporary conservationist feel. Matthew, of course, was modest and would have eschewed any ostentation; he ridiculed the appearance in the streets of Edinburgh of stretch limousines and had no car himself, instead preferring to walk or take a bus wherever possible. For her part, Elspeth had a car, but only a small one, which had a permanently flat battery and was therefore little burden on the environment.

  They did not have far to walk. India Street, where Matthew – and now Elspeth – lived, was only two blocks away, down Darnaway Street and along a small section of Heriot Row. They were to go there when they left the wedding party, now winding down after the ceilidh band had packed up their instruments and the dancing had stopped. Then, on the following day, they were to leave for their honeymoon, to a destination Matthew had kept steadfastly secret from Elspeth.

  When they reached the front door of his flat on the third floor, he fumbled for the key in the pocket of his kilt-jacket.

  “You should keep it in your sporran,” said Elspeth, “along with all the other things that men keep in their sporrans.”

  Matthew looked at her in surprise. “But what do men keep in their sporrans?” he asked. He had no idea, but he knew that his was always empty.

  “Oh, this and that,” said Elspeth. She had only the haziest notion of what men did in general, and none, in particular, of what they kept in their sporrans. Indeed, as she looked at Matthew standing before the door of their new home, it occurred to her that she had done an extraordinary thing – or at least something that was extraordinary for her – that she had married a man, and that this person at her side – much as she loved him – was, in so many important ways, quite different from her. He would look upon the world through male eyes; he would think in a masculine fashion; he was something else, the other.

  “You could look in my sporran if you like,” Matthew said.

  She looked down at the leather pouch and very gently reached down to touch it.

  She said nothing; both were somehow moved by what was happening; this sharing of a sporran was an unexpected intimacy; ridiculous, yes, but not ridiculous.

  “I’ve found my key,” said Matthew, after a while. “Here.”

  He slipped the key into the lock and opened the door. Inside, at Matthew’s request, and placed there by his best man a few hours before the wedding, a large bunch of flowers dominated the hall table, red and white carnations.

  “Thank you for marrying me,” Matthew said suddenly. “I never thought that anybody…”

  “Would marry you? But there must have been lots of girls who…”

  “Who wanted to marry me?” Matthew shook his head.

  She said, “I don’t believe that.”

  “It’s true. Nobody. Until you came along and then we knew, didn’t we? We just knew.”

  Elspeth smiled. “I suppose that’s right. I thought that I was on the shelf. I thought that I would spend the rest of my days teaching Olive and Bertie and… Tofu.” She gave an involuntary shudder: Tofu. “But you took me away from all that.”

  Matthew took her hand, moved by the frankness of what she had said. These words, he felt, were like an act of undressing. “You took yourself away.”

  He dropped her hand and walked across the hall to switch on a light. “Is your suitcase all ready?”

  She nodded.

  “And your passport?” Matthew asked.

  She laughed. “Do we need that for Arran?”

  “I wouldn’t mind going to Arran,” said Matthew. “We used to go over there when I was a boy. My uncle had a house near Brodick and we would go there in the summer. It was mostly Glasgow people and there was a boy there whom we called Soapy Soutar and who threw a stone at me because I was from Edinburgh. He said I deserved it and that if I came back next summer it would be a rock. I remember it so clearly.”

  “So it’s not Arran. Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Because I want it to be a surprise.”

  She reached out and slipped her hand back into his. “You’re a romantic.”

  “If you can’t be a romantic about your own wedding,” he said, “then what can you be romantic about?”

  “So no clue at all?”

  He thought for a moment. “A tiny one… maybe. All right. A tiny clue.”

  She looked at him, searching his expression. She hoped that it would be Italy; that he would say something like “where there’s water in the streets” or “the Pope lives nearby” or hum a few bars of “Return to Sorrento.”

  “It’s a big place,” said Matthew at last.

  So they were going to America (or Canada, or Russia, or Argentina).

  “You’ve got to tell me more than that. You must.”

  Matthew looked at her teasingly. “I really want it to be a surprise. So that’s all I’m going to say.”

  “Texas. Texas is big.”

  Matthew frowned. If she insisted on guessing, sooner or later she would come up with the right answer and he was not sure that he would be able to remain impassive when at last she
did.

  “So it’s not Texas.”

  “No. It’s not Texas.”

  She moved forward and kissed him gently on the cheek. “It’s Australia, isn’t it?”

  She knew immediately that she was right, and at the same time she immediately regretted what she had done; now she had spoiled it for him. They had been married for less than twenty-four hours and she had already done something to hurt him. How would that sound at marriage counselling?

  Mind you, there had been brides who had done worse than that. She had recently read of the wife of one of the Happy Valley set in Kenya all those years ago. She was said to have had an affair with another man on her honeymoon, on the boat out to Mombasa. That took some doing; took some psychopathology.

  She put her arms round Matthew. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to spoil it for you. I shouldn’t have asked. It’s just that…”

  “What?”

  “It’s just that you should have asked me where I wanted to go, Matthew. What if I didn’t want to go to Australia? What then?”

  Matthew turned away. It was spoiled – already.

  12. Of Love and Lies

  But by the time they were in the taxi on the way to the airport, travelling through the well-set neatness of Corstorphine, past the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland’s zoo, they had forgotten about their minor tiff over the secrecy of their destination. And the night had brought self-forgiveness too, and reassurance that marriage would be an arrangement of delight and enhancement, not one of doubts and quibbles.

  Matthew, who like many young men imagined that he could never be loved, not for himself, now at last thought: I have found the one person on this earth, the one, who loves me. And Elspeth did love him, and had proved it by drawing a heart in lipstick on his stomach, with their initials intertwined – that most simple, clichéd declaration that the love-struck have always resorted to; carved on tree trunks with pen-knives; traced in the dust on the back of unwashed cars; furtively scribbled on walls in pencil; and which, for all its simplicity and indeed its naiveté, is usually nothing but believed-in and sincere. It had been a strange thing to do, but Matthew had been touched, and when he looked out of the window the next morning – he was up early, to bring her a cup of tea in bed – India Street itself seemed transformed, as a lover’s eyes will do to any landscape; will do to any company. The prosaic, the quotidian are infused with a new gentleness, a new loveliness, by the fact that one senses that there is love in the world and that one has glimpsed it, been given one’s share.