Bertie's Guide to Life and Mothers Read online

  “What’s Bertie up to?” asked Stuart, in a lull in the action from Celtic Park.

  “Reading,” answered Irene. “And has that ridiculous tribal encounter finished yet?”

  “It’s football, actually,” said Stuart.

  “Exactly,” said Irene.

  Stuart ignored the taunt. “Reading what?”

  Irene sighed. “Tintin. I’ve done my best to discourage it, but he gets hold of it from the library. You’d think they’d know better than to display such books—if you can call them that—in the children’s section, of all places.”

  “I don’t know,” said Stuart mildly. “I rather liked Tintin. It’s pretty harmless stuff, I would have thought.”

  Irene turned round to glare at Stuart. “Harmless? Are we talking about the same books?”

  “I imagine so,” said Stuart. “That young Belgian detective. The boy in plus-fours.”

  “Boy?” snorted Irene. “He’s utterly sexless. Androgynous.”

  “Well …” began Stuart.

  “And as for the violence,” continued Irene, “I’ve come across a very interesting analysis of that. Do you realise the sheer amount of head trauma in those books, Stuart? Tintin himself loses consciousness at least fifty times in twenty-three volumes. Fifty times! Mostly from being hit over the head with a blunt instrument.”

  Stuart could not repress a laugh. “But that’s always happened in that sort of thing. Remember westerns? Remember how often everybody was knocked out? Losing consciousness is essential to the plot.”

  Irene’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t think you should make light of it, Stuart. Those books are about anger, you know. Look at that ridiculous Captain Haddock. There’s an immense amount of anger there—manifesting itself in swearing, Stuart. Yes, swearing. He rants and raves all the time, expressing intense inner anger. Is that a suitable role model for boys?”

  Stuart shrugged. “I honestly don’t think anybody sees Captain Haddock as a role model. Bertie certainly won’t. The good captain is more of a joke than anything else, and as for swearing, it happens, doesn’t it? Look at contemporary Scottish literature. Some of it consists entirely of expletives.”

  “That,” said Irene scornfully, “is social realism. That’s swearing as an expression of outrage. That’s different.”

  Stuart turned back to face the screen. At Celtic Park, the police had finished making their arrests and the game had resumed. “Well,” he said, “we can talk about that later perhaps. I’d better watch. Hearts are having a tough time.”

  Irene returned to the contemplation of her blank sheet of paper. Her conversation with her husband had been apposite to the task in hand, which was to prepare a talk for the next meeting of her book club. This club, which met every month in a flat in Great King Street, was composed of eight like-minded readers, all interested in psychological issues. It had emerged from the ruins of a previous book club founded by Irene, which had been devoted to the critique of the works of Melanie Klein, but had deteriorated into rebarbative arguments after there had been some fairly fundamental differences of opinion. Irene had picked up the pieces and re-formed the group, excluding those members who had disagreed with her. Now, she felt, reason prevailed, and the meetings of the group had become a much-anticipated fixture in the members’ diaries.

  The meetings always took the same form. The evening would begin with a short talk by one of the members—often Irene—on a subject of literary interest, and this would be followed by a lively discussion of the ideas presented in the talk. Then there would be coffee and shortbread, after which the book chosen for that month would be introduced by the member who had picked it—often, also, Irene.

  At the next meeting, Irene was due to give a short talk on the subject of hidden meanings in children’s literature—hence her recent reading of Tintin and “Colleagues Go to the Doctor,” an article from the American Journal of Neuroradiology that she had downloaded from the web. Much else had been revealed in her trawl of the literature on the subject, including a ground-breaking psychiatric study of Winnie the Pooh that she intended to address in some detail in her talk. There was, she had found, so much to be said from the Freudian and Lacanian points of view about children’s literature that it was difficult to know where to start—and that was why her piece of paper remained stubbornly virginal.

  She decided to start with Milne. The author was the father to the book, and if one wanted to understand just what was going on in Winnie the Pooh—and there was a great deal going on beneath the surface—then it would be necessary to start with the man who created this strange menagerie of stunted and unhappy stuffed animals. So she picked up her pen, and deliberately ignoring the muffled sounds of cheers from Stuart’s football game she began with an observation on the transparency of the authorial act.

  “All authors come from somewhere,” she wrote, pleased with the turn of phrase which had, she felt, the necessary authority for a first sentence. “And so when we confront that strange and rather sinister world that is the world of Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin we must ask ourselves not only who was A. A. Milne but also why was A. A. Milne.

  “Milne,” she wrote, “was the product of a typically repressed and authoritarian Edwardian household. His childhood was unhappy, as all childhoods are where an authoritarian figure forces children into a world in which they do not want to be. Later in life, the child may remember the unhappiness, but still seek to idealise the whole idea of a childhood that he never had.”

  She put down her pen, and for a moment allowed herself to be satisfied with the acuity of her insight. Then she picked up her pen and wrote: “So, all authors are unhappy as children. All authors suffer, and that is why they write. They are calling for help. Listen! Can you hear them?”

  18. A Serious Case of Male Fright

  Irene was getting into her stride. A few more paragraphs were devoted to Milne and his desire to create an Arcadia by constructing a world of childhood that was secure and timeless. In the books, she decided, Christopher Robin was not subjected to what Milne suffered at school—bullying, threats and violence. These staples of English private education—Scotland had its own particular problems—had produced generations of repressed and unhappy boys, taken from their mothers and their homes and put into a world in which the denial of feeling was the norm. Coerced into submission, these boys were ideal material to staff the sprawling enterprise that was the British Empire. Who else could bear the isolation of distant postings, the deprivation of female companionship that was the lot of colonial officials and army officers, the acceptance of authority and hardship? But some of these boys would, as adults, pick up a pen and then … and then it all came out. Kipling. Maugham. Dahl.

  “So,” wrote Irene, “Milne created an Arcadia, but in this Arcadia he was destined, by virtue of his early experience, to reveal the pathologies that had blighted his own childhood and childhoods like his. Consequently in the characters who are Christopher Robin’s companions—that stuffed bear and so on—we see embodied all the sequelae of the emotional deprivation and repression of the author’s own childhood.

  “Take Pooh for instance. He is described, and depicted by the artist, as physically battered. This is because physical abuse at the hands of all-powerful adults was the lot of Edwardian children. The bear is now reduced to pathetic dependence on the boy, and must accept the boy’s authority in all matters. This is the continued infantilisation that results from a childhood spent in fear of authority figures.”

  There was more, and by the time that Stuart’s football game was finished Irene had covered both sides of an A4 sheet of paper with her dissection of Milne and of the problems of the Hundred Acre Wood. She was pleased with what she had written: parts of it might be slightly abstruse, but that would serve to inspire other members of the book club to raise the intellectual level of their own contributions which was, almost without exception, considerably below that of Irene’s observations. That was the problem with book groups, thou
ght Irene: one had to put up with people who simply were not up to one’s own standards. She sighed. The trouble with living in society was society … If only one did not have to put up with the weaker brethren who could be so … so trying. Still, she resolved, those to whom the gift of insight is given have to shoulder the burden as best we can and take a lead. There should be more of us in the Scottish Parliament, of course, thought Irene; the trouble with that body is that we aren’t there in sufficient numbers to guide them in their deliberations.

  With the encounter at Celtic Park over—resolved in favour of the west of Scotland rather than the east—Stuart rose from his chair and came to peer over Irene’s shoulder.

  “Writing?” he asked.

  Irene glanced down at her satisfactorily filled paper. “Yes. Some remarks for the book group.”

  Stuart nodded. “Perhaps I should join a book group.”

  Irene raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think there are many for men. At least not round here.”

  “Odd, that,” mused Stuart. “I wonder why?”

  Irene knew the answer. “Male fright,” she said.

  Stuart frowned. “Male fright?”

  Irene explained. “Men are fearful of intellectual intimacy,” she explained. “They’re more comfortable when they are making a series of statements or propositions—putting them out to people. They don’t really talk to one another—not in the way that women do.”

  “I see,” said Stuart.

  “Yes,” said Irene. “And that’s something I really want Bertie to avoid. I want him to be able to talk to others as a woman can.”

  Stuart said nothing. He was staring at his wife.

  “So,” continued Irene, “I’m keen for him to be able to see the world through female eyes.”

  Stuart tensed. “I’m surprised you don’t make him wear a dress.”

  Irene shot him a withering glance. “There’s no need to be facetious, Stuart. It ill becomes you.”

  “I’m not being facetious,” he countered. “I’m deadly serious.” Stuart hesitated before continuing. “Do you want him to grow up rejecting masculine identity?”

  Irene spun round. “That,” she said, “is a typically shallow and, if I may say so, offensive comment. But now that you ask, the answer is: what is wrong with a rejection of masculinity? Is there anything intrinsically good in being masculine?”

  After this, for a moment neither said anything. Then Stuart spoke. “There’s a difference, surely, between accepting something and setting out to ensure that it happens. I would always accept Bertie however he turned out. But that is a very long way from setting out to put him off being masculine. You shouldn’t set out to manipulate these things.”

  Irene rose to her feet. “Oh no? And what do you think society does at the moment? Do you think there’s no pressure, no manipulating of people to conform to a created notion of masculinity when it comes to these things? What planet are you on, Stuart?”

  Stuart moved away, struggling to control himself. He stared out of the window as he replied. “I suggest we don’t let this argument go nuclear. I’m sorry if I spoke out of turn. Let’s not fight.”

  “All right,” said Irene. “I have no desire to quarrel with you, Stuart. All I ask is that you don’t make offensive remarks. I have Bertie’s best interests at heart, as you well know. All that I am trying to do is to make sure that our son grows up adapted to the gender-neutral world that is being constructed around us. That means that a lot of old-fashioned ideas are going to have to be scrapped. That’s all. Just don’t stand in the way of that—that’s all I ask.”

  Stuart decided to change the subject. “His birthday—he’s very excited about it.”

  “Yes.”

  “What shall we get him?”

  Irene folded the piece of paper on which she had written her speech. “I’ve already bought him his present,” she said. Then, raising a finger, she continued, “And I don’t want any backtalk from you when I show it to you.”

  19. Antonia Writes from Italy

  While the increasingly acrimonious exchange between Irene and Stuart was raging, upstairs at 44 Scotland Street, in their now-shared flat, Domenica Macdonald and her new husband, Angus Lordie, were talking about something that had every bit as much unsettling potential as the topic being discussed below. This was the arrival that morning of a letter from their erstwhile neighbour, Antonia Collie, announcing that she would shortly be arriving from Italy and proposing that she stay with them for a couple of weeks.

  “Read me her letter again, Angus,” said Domenica. “I really have to savour the nuances. One gets so few letters with nuances these days.”

  Angus retrieved the envelope from its place on the kitchen dresser.

  “She has such peculiar writing,” he began, glancing at the face of the envelope. “A graphologist would have a field day with her.”

  “Graphology’s nonsense,” said Domenica. “It’s pop psychology at its worst.”

  “Her writing slopes all over the place,” said Angus. “And Antonia herself is all over the place, isn’t she?”

  “Possibly. But we must not be uncharitable, Angus. We must bear in mind that Antonia is a new person since she joined that convent. I’m sure that the old Adam is well and truly put in his place by now.”

  “Or Eve,” said Angus.

  “No, I never felt that Eve had a fair trial. But let’s not get bogged down in such minor details. The letter—read it to me.”

  Angus took the letter from the envelope. It was written on two thin sheets of paper—paper of the sort that used to be employed for the airmail edition of The Times.

  “ ‘My dear friends,’ ” he began.

  “Stop there,” said Domenica. “Note the tone, Angus. Who addresses people as ‘my dear friends’? Who does she think she is? The Pope, now that she’s so cosy with Rome?”

  “I think she’s being friendly,” said Angus.

  “Perhaps,” said Domenica. “Although it would have been more natural to say ‘Dear Domenica and Angus.’ Or even ‘Dear Angus and Domenica.’ ”

  Angus looked thoughtful. “That raises an interesting question,” he said. “Are we Angus and Domenica or are we Domenica and Angus?”

  “Interesting,” said Domenica. “I suppose a couple’s names do tend to find their order, so to speak. Interesting.”

  “You put the more forceful, more outgoing person first,” said Angus, thinking, as he spoke, in that case, it’s Domenica and Angus, definitely.

  Domenica thought the same thing, and then thought that she would make an effort to sign cards from Angus and Domenica. A man might well feel destabilised if he saw his name taking second place all the time.

  “Perhaps that’s why she wrote ‘dear friends,’ ” said Angus. “It meant that there was no issue as to whose name went first.”

  “Read on,” said Domenica.

  “ ‘Dear friends,’ ” read Angus, “ ‘At the moment we are having gorgeous weather here in Tuscany—so different from the dreary weather you are no doubt having in Scotland, poor you.’ ”

  “Well!” exclaimed Domenica. “How rude! You should never crow over somebody else’s weather.”

  “Even if what you say is true?”

  “Especially if what you say is true,” emphasised Domenica. “You do not remind somebody of their geographical misfortunes—or indeed any other misfortune. But carry on.”

  “ ‘And here at the convent we are busy with so many things that need to be done—the sorts of tasks that I never even thought about when I lived in Edinburgh—clearing paths, tending vegetables, gathering wood for the fire.’ ”

  “Listen to that!” exclaimed Domenica. “She implies that we have no paths to clear.”

  “We don’t.”

  “Nor wood to gather for the fire.”

  “And we don’t have that either,” said Angus.

  “Carry on.”

  Angus looked down at the letter. “ ‘How I envy the two of you your leisur
e,’ ” he continued.

  “So we have nothing to do,” said Domenica. “Sitting here idly. Read on.”

  “ ‘Being busy, though, is such a privilege, as I can offer up all my works to my Creator and know that they are good in His sight.’ ”

  “So she hopes,” said Domenica. “Although frankly I doubt whether the Supreme Being is all that interested in her path clearing and wood gathering. He has bigger fish to fry, no doubt. Carry on, Angus.”

  “Now we get to the interesting part,” said Angus. He returned to the letter. “ ‘I hope that you don’t mind if I come to Edinburgh for a few weeks, as I have some work to do in the National Library in connection with my Scottish Saints book. I am so looking forward to staying in my flat—it will be just like old days, looking out of my window onto Scotland Street again!’ ”

  “That’s the bit,” said Domenica. “ ‘My flat.’ She should say ‘my former or erstwhile flat.’ I don’t like to stand on ownership, but there are occasions when people make remarks as if they had no regard at all for what the Registers of Scotland have to say to us on these matters. Her flat is now our flat, Angus. She is not entitled to use the term ‘my flat.’ She has no flat at all. She is quite without a flat. That’s not to say that she doesn’t have many other things in this life—she has her path clearing and wood collecting, for instance—but she does not have a flat.” She paused. “Nor does she have a window. ‘My window.’ Where, one might ask, is this window? I know of no window in Edinburgh out of which Antonia is entitled to look and think, contemporaneously, I am looking out of my window. I just don’t.”

  Angus gazed at Domenica in sheer admiration. In his eyes, she was like a galleon in full sail, a fully rigged vessel prepared for engagement on the highest of high seas. Before such opposition, what chance did somebody like Antonia, an ill-equipped minor ship of the line, have? None, he thought.

  “I’d be perfectly prepared to have Antonia to stay,” he said. “But I do think it’s a bit much proposing yourself on somebody for, what is it? Three weeks. And …”