Bertie Plays the Blues Read online

  “So what do we do?”

  “We get help. We get a …”

  “Nanny?”

  He swallowed. He reflected on the implications of this; to live in the New Town and to have a nanny as well! What, he wondered, would be the next step on from that?

  “We can’t have a nanny,” he said. “Or rather, we can’t have somebody who’s called a nanny. It’s just too …” He trailed off. He was not sure what the word for it was. “Too … Edinburgh …”

  Elspeth said, “But should we be worried about what people think of us?”

  Matthew conceded reluctantly. “No, maybe not.” He wondered whether it would be better to have an au pair. “An au pair is not quite as grand as a nanny,” he said. “Less pretentious.”

  “Do au pairs still exist?” asked Elspeth. “They used to, I know, but nowadays?”

  Matthew was not sure; the arrival of the triplets had taken him into distinctly unfamiliar waters, had introduced him to all sorts of equipment that he had never handled before – sterilisers, wipes, carry-cots, and so on – au pairs were just another possible constituent of that world.

  “I think we should find out,” he said. “I noticed that there was a firm that called itself Domestic Solutions – I walked past it the other day. I think that’s what they do.”

  Elspeth, although tired, smiled weakly. “Solutions? Have you noticed how everybody calls themselves solutions? There are kitchen solutions, office solutions, travel solutions and so on. Lots of solutions.”

  She was right, thought Matthew. Perhaps his gallery could be called Art Solutions or even Wall Solutions. One did not associate solutions with the art world, but he saw no reason why one should not. Perhaps when they had decided to paint the Sistine Chapel roof they had called up Ceiling Solutions, or Renaissance Solutions. He allowed his thoughts to drift for a moment. We’ve got this ceiling, you see, and we were wondering … Could you give us a quote?

  “Matthew?”

  He gave a start. “I was thinking.”

  “Thinking about what?”

  “The Sistine Chapel.”

  He knew that this sounded strange, but he was too tired – just too tried to bother about being coherent. And another thought had come into his mind. He had seen something in the gardens, and he wanted to mention it to Elspeth.

  “I saw something odd,” he mumbled. He was feeling drowsy now, and his words were beginning to slur. “Something odd in the gardens down below. Through the hedge.”

  Elspeth looked down at Rognvald – or was it Tobermory? “Oh yes?”

  Matthew leaned back into the soft embrace of the sofa. When had he last slept? Thirty hours ago?

  “I think I saw some people in the gardens without their …” His voice became faint. “Not wearing any …”

  Elspeth herself was struggling to stay awake. What was Matthew going on about? People not wearing anything in the gardens? Did that make sense? Of course: the Moray Place nudists that people had spoken about. How very odd! How remarkable that Matthew should have …

  She struggled back into wakefulness.

  “Matthew,” she said, reaching out to shake him. “Phone Domestic Solutions now. Now.”

  He looked at his watch. “Too early.”

  “Leave a message. Say it’s an emergency. Ask them to send a solution. Now, Matthew, now.”

  24. Stuart and Irene Discuss Freemasonry

  For a small boy, Bertie’s life was remarkably full. Much of his time, of course, was taken up by commitments of his mother’s making: saxophone lessons, yoga, Italian conversazione and psychotherapy were all imposed by Irene, but there was still room in this crowded schedule for those things that Bertie himself wanted to do. Foremost of these was the cub scouts, an activity that his father had managed to arrange for him in the face of a scathing maternal response.

  “You might as well sign him up for the masons,” said Irene.

  “Oh come now,” said Stuart. “The cub scouts are hardly in the same league. And, anyway, I’m not sure that I see anything wrong in being a mason, if that’s what one wants to be. It strikes me as being fairly harmless these days.”

  Irene glared at him. “Harmless? Am I hearing you correctly, Stuart? Is it harmless to belong to an exclusively male organisation? And one that encourages people to dress up in aprons?”

  Stuart winced; he had never been able to stand up to his wife when she was at full volume. “The aprons are historical, I think. And I thought that you would have approved of men in aprons. Very new man.”

  Irene’s eyes flashed. “Not very funny, Stuart. And I don’t think one should joke about the masons.”

  Stuart looked at the floor. “All that I was saying was that I saw no reason to compare the cub scouts to the masons. And I was wondering – just wondering – whether there was any proof that the masons got up to … anything untoward. They might have in the past, but these days, as far as I can work out, it’s a perfectly above-board fraternal organisation.”

  She stared at him. “A secret society, you mean.”

  Stuart continued to look at the floor. “I don’t think they are, actually. You make it sound very sinister. They have private rituals, but they’re not a secret society in the sense in which the Mafia is a secret society.”

  Irene was silent. When she eventually spoke, her voice was quiet. “You seem to know a lot about the Freemasons, Stuart.”

  His reply came quickly. “Not really. I read something about them the other day. Did you see it? That piece in the paper. They mentioned Rosslyn Chapel.”

  Irene shook her head. “That’s another thing,” she said. “All this fascination with Rosslyn Chapel. Utter nonsense.”

  Stuart shifted his feet. “I rather like Rosslyn Chapel. Those pillars are remarkable examples of the masons’ skill.”

  “Masons?” said Irene sharply. “Oh yes? And you’ll be suggesting that there are hidden messages next. Numbers in the stonework. A code perhaps … All that da Vinci nonsense.”

  Stuart laughed. “Of course not. But it is a lovely place, you know. We could take Bertie out there some weekend. It’s right on our doorstep and I think he’d love to see it.”

  “Certainly not,” said Irene. “We don’t want to fill Bertie’s head with reactionary mysticism. And getting back to the cub scouts, I still have my misgivings, you know.”

  “He loves it,” said Stuart, becoming slightly firmer now. “He looks forward to Friday evenings all week. It’s his big thing.”

  The uneasy truce on the question of the cub scouts meant that it was Stuart, rather than Irene, who took Bertie to the Episcopal church hall at Holy Corner each Friday evening and collected him at the end of the meeting. That week, as they travelled up from Dundas Street on the 23 bus, he sat with Bertie on the upper deck while his son chatted excitedly about what lay ahead.

  “Mrs Gold – she’s Akela, you know – has promised that we can play British Bulldog,” he said. “Did you ever play that, Daddy?”

  Stuart smiled. “Of course I did, Bertie. I loved it.”

  Bertie began to discuss the rules with his father. “One boy stands in the middle and the others have to rush past him. He’s the bulldog.”

  “That’s right, Bertie,” said Stuart.

  “And then the boy in the middle – the bulldog – tries to grab hold of somebody and has to shout out British Bulldog, one, two, three! If he holds on to him for long enough to say this then the other boy becomes a bulldog too. Do you remember that bit, Daddy?”

  “I certainly do, Bertie. It’s pretty exciting, isn’t it?”

  Stuart might have answered his own question; it was, indeed, pretty exciting. But he had been reminded of something he had read recently about a campaign against the game. Yes, that was it. Schools had banned the game because of the risk of injury. And now they were being encouraged to allow it again because children were becoming more and more obese through lack of exercise. Banning British Bulldog! How ridiculous, thought Stuart. There were peopl
e who wanted to ban everything, or change it out of all recognition. British Bulldog was a red rag to such people, of course, and an outright ban was what they wanted; unless, of course, they could neuter the game in other ways. Calling it British, for example, was provocative and chauvinistic: European poodle would be far better in their eyes. The poodle could stand in the middle and the other players would try to run past – or walk, perhaps, which would be safer – until they were apprehended by the poodle, who would simply touch them and invite them to become a poodle too.

  “Why are you smiling, Daddy?” asked Bertie.

  “Just thinking, Bertie.”

  They arrived at their bus stop near Hughes Fish Shop and alighted. Berite noticed that his father was carrying a small case that had, when they left the flat, been concealed in a large plastic bag.

  “What’s in your case, Daddy?” he asked.

  Stuart looked at his son. “Can you keep a secret, Bertie?” he asked.

  Bertie nodded solemnly. “I promise I won’t tell anybody, Daddy. Cross my heart and hope to die. Cub scout’s honour.”

  Stuart lowered his voice. “While you’re at cub scouts, Bertie, I’ve been going to a … special club nearby. They’re making me a member. But you mustn’t tell anybody … even Mummy. Especially Mummy, in fact.”

  “I promise,” said Bertie. He looked at the small leather case. “Has that got the stuff you need for your club in it?”

  Stuart nodded. “Yes, Bertie, it has.”

  “That’s really exciting,” said Bertie.

  “Yes,” said Stuart. “It is.”

  25. The People Out There

  It had been agreed that on that particular evening, Bertie would not be picked up as usual by his father, but would go on for a sleep-over at the house of one of his fellow cub scouts, Ranald Braveheart Macpherson. The invitation to do this had been issued some weeks previously by Ranald’s mother when she and Stuart were waiting to collect the children at the end of the Friday meeting. Stuart, who had struck up several conversations over the months with Ida Macpherson, and who had also met Ranald’s father, Ross, had readily accepted. He had long felt that Bertie needed more friends, and it seemed to him that Ranald Braveheart Macpherson was rather more promising than Tofu, whom Bertie appeared to tolerate, rather than actually like, and Olive, whom Bertie – quite understandably in Stuart’s view – could not stand.

  “You mustn’t let people push you around, Bertie,” he had said to his son. “The world is full of people who want to push other people around. You have to stand up to them, you know.”

  Bertie listened gravely. “Especially girls,” he said. “Why do they like to push boys around, Daddy?”

  Stuart suppressed a smile. “Not all girls are like that, Bertie. You must remember that there are some very nice girls … out there.” He hesitated over these last words: the expression out there was used far too much, he thought. People at work – in the Statistics and Public Awareness Department of the Scottish Government – were always talking about what was being thought out there. But where, Stuart wondered, was out there? Were the people who were out there the same as the electorate, or the community perhaps, or were they somehow a little bit further out, just as some of the fielders on a cricket pitch are further out than those who lurk close to the batsman, ready, like hovering vultures, to catch him out should he send the ball in their direction?

  He had explored this line of thought further. When people in Edinburgh referred to what was being thought or done out there, were they referring to people who lived somewhere like Bathgate, or Linlithgow, perhaps, or did they really mean Glasgow? No, thought Stuart; when Edinburgh people referred to people in Glasgow, they would surely say people over there, not out there; just as Glaswegians – or Weegies, as they were affectionately known – referred to Edinburghers – or the Edimbourgeoisie as they were affectionately known – as people back there. And there was a further complication: there was a slightly threatening aspect to being out there. People out there were often dangerous, unpredictable, or, frankly, ill-informed, sometimes taking it into their minds to ignore official advice – even when tendered by statisticians – to eat the wrong food, and, in a remarkable show of perversity, to vote for the wrong political parties. There was no limit, in fact, to the general awkwardness of people out there.

  “No, Bertie,” Stuart continued. “You mustn’t get it into your head that all girls like pushing boys about. There are many who do not.”

  “Name one,” said Bertie.

  He said this not in any confrontational sense; he was simply trying to find an example. In his own life, of course, it seemed to him, there were many who illustrated his general proposition rather well. To begin with, there was his mother, who was in charge of music lessons, yoga, Italian conversazione and psychotherapy, in all of which fields of endeavour Bertie felt that he was, on balance, being pushed around. And his mother, as far as he could see, pushed his father around with equal, if not greater, determination. He was not even allowed to choose his own purchases at Valvona & Crolla, being given a list by Irene and made to stick to it. And that list, Bertie could not help but observe, very rarely contained any of the things that his father expressed an interest in buying and eating.

  Following hard on the heel of Irene came Olive. His classmate and now – to Bertie’s abiding despair – his fellow cub scout seemed to devote a great deal of her emotional and intellectual energy to finding ways in which to cajole and threaten the boy whom she had frequently announced she intended to marry in due course.

  “Actually, Bertie’s really my fiancé,” he had heard her say to a group of other girls in the school playground. “I’d prefer you to call him that rather than call him my boyfriend. He is my boyfriend, of course, but ever since he asked me to marry him he has been my fiancé as well. It’ll be announced in The Scotsman quite soon: I’m saving up the money for the advertisement. They aren’t cheap, you know.”

  Bertie had listened to this with a growing sense of horror. He had told Olive that he had no intention of marrying her, but she had ignored his protests. “You can’t change your mind just like that, Bertie Pollock,” she said, wagging a finger in his face. “God will punish you really hard if you do that sort of thing. You’ll see. You’ll find yourself getting the same as Tofu, who’s going to be dealt with really firmly when his time comes. God’s going to pull Tofu’s fingernails out one by one; that’s what’s going to happen to him. So you just be careful, Bertie. You remember that.”

  “God doesn’t do that sort of thing,” protested Bertie.

  “That’s what you think, Bertie,” said Olive knowingly.

  “Yes,” said Olive’s friend, Pansy. “Olive’s right, Bertie. So you just watch your step!”

  Bertie felt a certain despair that the level of theological and other debate in the playground was so low. He wished that Olive and Pansy would stop telling him what to think, and would occasionally listen to what he had to say. He wished that Tofu would stop spitting at Olive and threatening to cut off her pigtails. He wished that the world was different – not a whole lot different, but a little bit different; that there was a bit more sharing and a few less tears. If he had a wish, he would ask for that, he thought. And more panforte di Siena, of course, if supplementary requests were to be allowed.

  26. Ranald Braveheart Macpherson’s Revelation

  It proved to be a very successful cub scout meeting. The game of British Bulldog was every bit as thrilling as Bertie had anticipated, with relatively few injuries, and a wonderful denouement. This occurred when Tofu, finding himself to be the last to brave the bulldogs, fought his way through a throng of opponents with much the same tenacity as Horatius had shown defending the Pons Sublicius against the Etruscan hordes.

  “That was very courageous, Tofu,” said Rosemary Gold, the Akela. “An example to all of us, I think. Don’t give up, boys and girls, just because there may be more of the others than there are of you. Stand up for what is right.”
r />   The strenuous exercise of British Bulldog had rather tired the pack, and so the final part of the meeting was spent practising knots.

  “You never know when you’re going to need a knot,” said Akela. “Baden-Powell was always tying knots. He was prepared, you see.”

  Bertie found himself sitting next to Ranald Braveheart Macpherson, who was struggling to master a reef knot. “You’re coming to my house after this,” said Ranald. “It’s all fixed up. You have to come.”

  Bertie assured Ranald that he was perfectly happy with these arrangements. “You don’t have to force me,” he said.

  “Good,” said Ranald. “You’ll really like my place. My dad’s got surround sound. Did you know that, Bertie?”

  Bertie shook his head. “I bet it’s good.”

  “It is,” said Ranald. “And we’ve got a small billiard table. It’s only got three legs now, but it’s still good fun.”

  Bertie expressed an interest in billiards. “My dad said that he used to play when he was at university. But then he met my mummy.”

  Ranald nodded. “My dad stopped having fun round about that time too.”

  They went outside, where Ida Macpherson was waiting for them.

  “Ranald is very pleased that you’re coming to the house, Bertie,” she said. “You’ve been talking about it all day, haven’t you, Ranald?”

  Ranald looked slightly embarrassed. “That, and other things,” he muttered.

  They walked back to Ranald’s house, which was in a quiet street immediately behind the Church Hill Theatre. Bertie was impressed with the garden, which had several large trees from one of which a rope descended invitingly.

  “I swing on that, Bertie,” said Ranald. “Just like Tarzan. Would you like to see?”

  While his mother went into the house to prepare their supper, Ranald showed Bertie his expertise on the swinging rope. It was an impressive performance, even if, as Bertie noted afresh, Ranald’s legs were extremely spindly. Tarzan, he thought, was somewhat more muscular, but this did not detract from the expertise of the performance.