17. Lament for a Bird
One of the great charms of Prestonfield House Hotel – apart from its rich history – is the open parkland in which the house sits. Rus in urbe – the countryside in the city – would be as appropriate a motto as any for the place chosen by Domenica for her wedding reception and enthusiastically agreed to by her new husband, Angus Lordie. For Domenica, the choice was an obvious one, as she claimed descent, although by a distant and convoluted route, from the Lady Cunyngham who lived in the house at the time the Jacobite army camped within sight during the 1745 uprising. Her son, Alexander, had met and befriended Charles Edward Stuart, the Bonnie Prince himself, in Italy, and she had been generous to the prince when he eventually arrived in Edinburgh from his Highland triumphs sorely in need of financial support, a change of clothing, and midge repellent.
This parkland is used to dramatic effect: at night, burning brands are placed at intervals along the drive that leads from the gates to the house itself, providing a sense of imminent occasion that electricity alone would never achieve. And in the grounds, with all the assurance (and quarrelsomeness) of their breed, peafowl strut and call their strident bugle calls. It was one of these, a distinguished and well-ornamented peacock, that was now seen by Bertie as he rounded the corner of the house on his way to comfort Cyril in durance vile.
Bertie stopped in his tracks as he took in the terrible scene. It was obvious to him that Cyril had slipped free of the leash that had secured him to a garden tap beside a flower bed. That leash now lay abandoned on the ground, with Cyril’s collar at its end, while the dog himself stood, some yards away, the long tail of a decorative peacock firmly clasped in his jaws, the bird itself collapsed before him.
Bertie ran forward, crying out as he did so. Cyril, surprised by the shouts, half turned, glanced at Bertie, and then once again busied himself with worrying the elaborate display of feathers.
“Cyril!” screamed Bertie as he reached the scene of the crime. “Drop it, Cyril! Let go, you bad dog!”
Cyril, who was obedient to a fault, reluctantly opened his jaws and let go of the peacock’s tail. Too late, though, for the poor bird. It took a couple of staggering steps, let out a strangled cry, a final wail, and then fell forward. It had been too much for the tiny peafowl heart; the bird was dead.
Bertie held the bird’s neck in his hands. An eye looked up at him, but it was lifeless, unseeing. In it he noticed the sky – a tiny patch of blue, the last thing the poor bird had seen.
Bertie turned and stared at Cyril. “Look what you’ve done, Cyril,” he said. “Just look.”
Cyril stared back at Bertie. He was not sure why the bird was still. He had been having fun with it; it was the most natural thing in the world for a dog to seize a bird and shake it. What was wrong with that? That was what happened. And yet here was Bertie clearly cross with him, and Cyril felt stung by his displeasure. He lowered his snout and whined apologetically. Then, for good measure, he rolled over on his back and adopted a submissive position. He closed his eyes.
Bertie stood up, suddenly aware that he was no longer alone. One of the young men in kilts who had been directing the guests as they arrived was now beside him.
“Oh my goodness,” said the young man. “Oh jings!”
Bertie looked up. “I don’t think he really meant it,” he said. “He was just pulling the tail.”
The young man bent forward and kneeled beside the bird. “Oh no,” he muttered. He stood up again. “Is this your dog?”
Bertie shook his head. “No. He belongs to Mr. Lordie. He was tied up over there but he slipped out of his collar.”
The young man glanced in the direction of the leash. “I don’t think Mr. Thomson will be pleased,” he said.
Bertie looked down at the ground. “Will they shoot Cyril?” he asked. “I hope they don’t. He’s a good dog, really. I promise you: he’s a good dog.”
The young man shook his head. “Don’t worry, of course they won’t shoot him … what’s your name, by the way?”
Bertie gave his name and the young man introduced himself as Alastair.
“What shall we do?” asked Bertie.
Alastair stroked his chin. “I think we should bury it,” he said. “Bury the evidence, so to speak. After all, Cyril was just doing what dogs do. And I’m sure you’re right – he didn’t mean it.”
He suggested to Bertie that he stay where he was while he fetched a spade. Within a few minutes he was back, carrying a large green spade and a rectangular black box. Then he and Bertie lifted up the inert body of the peacock and carried it over towards a stand of large elms. At the foot of one of these trees, Alastair dug a hole, not a very deep one, as roots were in the way, but large enough to take the body of the peacock.
“All right, Bertie,” he said. “We can say goodbye now to this poor bird.”
They placed the bird in the grave and Alastair then shovelled the earth back over it. All that showed now was a small mound; the grave of a bird is not a large thing.
Alastair now opened the box and extracted a set of pipes. “Even a bird deserves a send-off, don’t you think, Bertie?”
Bertie nodded gravely.
Alastair prepared the pipes and took the chanter into his mouth. “ ‘Flowers of the Forest,’ ” he mumbled. “It’s a sad tune, Bertie, but it’s the one for this sort of thing.”
Bertie stood to attention, his small hands stiff by the sides of his trousers, trying to be as brave as he could be, trying not to cry. But as the notes of the lament rose from the pipes, his eyes filled with tears.
Alastair put the pipes away. He put a hand on Bertie’s shoulder, and left it there for a few moments before the two of them walked back towards the house.
18. Cyril in Exile
Matthew’s concern over the failure of Angus Lordie to make any honeymoon arrangements was understandable, but, as it happened, unnecessary. Not only had Domenica organised – and paid for – the reception, but she had also wisely assumed that Angus would have done nothing about bookings, or even decided where they might go. Acting on this well-founded suspicion, she had contacted a cousin who owned a house in Jamaica and had in the past offered to lend it to her. If husbands could make surprise arrangements for honeymoons without consulting their future wives, then future wives could certainly do the same, and, in this case, did.
The cousin was generous. “It’s yours,” she said. “A wedding present from me. It’s near Port Antonio. It’s a very creaky place, but it’s on top of a hill and it gets wonderful breezes. You’ll like it, I think, and there’s plenty for Angus to paint.”
Domenica had never been to the Caribbean, and was intrigued. A house on a hill outside Port Antonio sounded very romantic to her, even if she understood that it was likely to be a far cry from the villas frequented by the likes of Noël Coward and Ian Fleming, who did not, she imagined, inhabit creaky houses. Port Antonio was close, she read, to a place called the Blue Lagoon, and that, in her mind, was the clinching attraction. If one was going to have a honeymoon, and if one was in the fortunate position of being able to afford to fly all the way to Kingston and back – as Domenica and Angus were – then what could be more attractive than the prospect of swimming in the Blue Lagoon and then sitting in the shade of one of the surrounding sea-grape trees – and any piece of water called the Blue Lagoon was bound to be ringed by sea-grape trees – reading, perhaps, A High Wind in Jamaica or Wide Sargasso Sea, or something of that sort, and counting the slowly moving hours until it was time for a sundowner of rum punch, followed by an evening meal of Jamaican Thirteen-Bean Soup and spicy stew with ackee, all to be rounded off with flambé bananas and a cup of pungent Blue Mountain coffee?
And that was the destination for which Angus and Domenica left the next morning, leaving behind them, for three weeks, their Edinburgh lives, their Edinburgh flats, and, of course, their Edinburgh dog. Cyril, of course, was now in the care of Bertie and his family, who had welcomed him with enthusiasm, except for Irene
, who remained coldly hostile.
“You got us into this,” she said to Stuart. “That wretched dog is nothing to do with me.” She fixed her husband with a warning stare. “You’re in charge of everything, remember – everything. Food, watering, walking – all the things, whatever they are, that dogs require.”
Stuart nodded. “No problem,” he assured her.
“And please don’t say that to me,” Irene snapped. “No problem! No probs! I can’t stand those expressions.”
“No p—” began Stuart, and then quickly changed to “pifficulty.”
“Pifficulty?”
“I said difficulty. No difficulty.”
Irene looked at him. “And I don’t want him anywhere near the kitchen. Dogs are walking reservoirs of every sort of infection you’d care to name. Ulysses likes to crawl on the floor there and I don’t want him picking up anything.”
The creation of an exclusion zone – rigorously enforced – was one of the hardest things for Cyril to understand once he moved into his new home. In Angus’s studio in Drummond Place, he had enjoyed the free run of every room, and had never been forbidden to sit on any chair or sleep on any bed. Not only that, but he had been trained by Angus to open the fridge door with his nose and to help himself, within reason, to anything he found inside – a piece of bacon, perhaps, a cold sausage, the occasional lamb chop. Angus minded none of this: Cyril, after all, lived there, just as he did, and he saw no reason to impose burdensome restrictions on a flatmate, even if that flatmate happened to be a dog.
How different it was in Scotland Street. Not only was the kitchen a no-go area, but so were all chairs, all beds, and, most difficult of all, every carpet in the house. That last interdiction meant that Cyril had to negotiate his way around the Pollock flat staying as close as possible to the walls. At one or two points, where the positioning of rugs was particularly tricky, he had to jump for several feet if he were not to infringe the rules about not walking on carpets. He was an intelligent dog, and quite prepared to abide by a few necessary rules (such as not sinking his teeth into ankles), but he found this new set of proscriptions utterly opaque and quite beyond canine mastery.
The effect of this regime soon caused Bertie more than a little distress. He had been so looking forward to having Cyril to stay with him and now he found that all the time he could have spent playing with the dog was occupied in enforcing his mother’s rules in order to avoid direct conflict between the two of them.
“I’m sorry, Cyril,” he whispered. “I didn’t make the rules.”
It was a protest that any child might voice: no child made the rules. The world, as seen by children, was one regulated by rules not of their making. Rules were like the weather or the facts of physical geography – they were just there, imposed by adults, to be complied with by children … and dogs. And no amount of explanation as to why rules existed made them easier to understand or to bear in their arbitrariness.
Cyril looked at Bertie with that curious melting, liquid look that dogs have. He liked Bertie, and he sensed that this new life of his – one beset with all these strange prohibitions – was not of his creation. But where was Angus? Why had he abandoned him? Was this how the rest of life would be?
19. Cyril in Disgrace
The conditions now imposed on Cyril by Irene soon began to tell on the dog’s general demeanour. Whereas his normal mood had been one of jaunty cheerfulness, the dog gradually became withdrawn, almost to the point of being furtive. On Bertie’s departure to school each morning, he would sit in a corner of his young guardian’s room, gazing wistfully out of the window at a sky that represented the freedom that he once knew but that he now so clearly lacked. And had he been thinking about anything in particular, it must have been about how he would get through the next six hours or so before Bertie came back.
Bertie was aware that something was wrong, and understood.
“She doesn’t really mean it,” he tried to explain to the dog one afternoon. “She’s just not used to dogs.”
Cyril gazed at Bertie longingly. He knew that Bertie was fun on his own; the difficulty was that whenever they went out, Irene contrived to accompany them, and Ulysses too, whom Cyril was yet to fathom. He thought that Ulysses was probably a human, but was not quite sure yet; no doubt it would become clear in time. But the effect of these other presences was to destroy any chance of a good game – of a session of chasing sticks in Drummond Place Gardens, of going for a good long walk along Queen Street, or even of being allowed to run free of the leash in the old marshalling yards at the end of Scotland Street. All the things a dog might like were now firmly out of reach.
The sense of resentment brewing in Cyril eventually began to show itself. There was the occasional growl, sotto voce, of course, and usually directed against Irene. There were episodes of irrational barking and chasing of the tail. There was a general sneaking about the house, eyeing the doors, as might a prisoner test the bounds of his incarceration.
“There’s something wrong with that dog,” Irene observed to Stuart. “Very odd.”
“He’s just taking time to settle in,” said Stuart. “I’m sure he’ll be all right.”
But Cyril was far from being all right, as was to become apparent a day or two later when Irene took Bertie and Ulysses to Valvona & Crolla to replenish supplies of pasta and sun-dried tomatoes. Initially she had forbidden Bertie to bring Cyril with them, as he would have to be tied up outside the shop and she therefore saw no point in his accompanying them. Bertie, however, had begged her to allow Cyril to come, and she had eventually, and somewhat uncharacteristically, weakened.
Now, striding up Broughton Street, a few yards ahead of his mother and Ulysses, Bertie felt considerable pride at being in charge of Cyril in public. Passersby, he imagined, would think that Cyril was his dog, and it was perfectly possible that they might then ignore the crushed-strawberry dungarees and the T-shirt with the name Melanie Klein printed across the front. That T-shirt had been an idea of his mother’s, and a particularly bad idea at that; she had ordered it, on impulse, to mark the anniversary of the celebrated psychoanalyst’s birth, along with a matching T-shirt for herself. Bertie had been covered with embarrassment, and had taken to telling friends who enquired what the words meant that Melanie Klein was, in fact, a fashion designer and that the T-shirt was the latest thing in designer-wear. To his surprise, this story had been readily accepted. Olive, for instance, had claimed to know all about her and to possess already a pair of Melanie Klein jeans as well as a T-shirt that was very similar, even if of a different colour. “Not that I wear them any more, Bertie,” she had said. “They’re very last year, you know. Ed Miliband’s the new designer. I’ve seen him in the papers. That’s what everybody’s wearing.”
“Ed Miliband’s rubbish,” said Tofu. “Nobody wears him any more, Olive. You’re the one who’s last year. You’re the one who’s really tragic.”
When they reached Valvona & Crolla, Irene instructed Bertie to tie Cyril’s lead to a lamppost.
“He’ll be fine,” she said. “Dogs are used to waiting.”
Cyril looked at her with venom. It was not his usual expression, but since moving to Scotland Street his brow had become quite furrowed with anger.
“We won’t be long, Cyril boy,” Bertie whispered as he secured the leash. “And I’ll ask if we can buy you a treat.”
Cyril licked Bertie generously, to show that if there was ill-feeling it was certainly not directed towards him.
The delicatessen was busy when they went in. Irene spent some time considering her choice of pasta and was diverted by a sampling of various olive oils that was being conducted at the end of one of the aisles. For his part, Bertie detached himself from his mother and Ulysses and went to gaze at the selection of panforte di Siena and amaretti di Saronno. He looked carefully at the prices on the small boxes of panforte and worked out how many weeks of pocket money would be required to purchase one of them. It was a depressing calculation. How wonde
rful, he thought, it must be to be a boy growing up in Siena, where presumably people had panforte for breakfast. And garlic sausage. And pizza. And where they didn’t have psychotherapy and yoga but rode around, instead, on noisy little scooters and waved to their friends all the time …
Suddenly there was a cry and the sound of tins and jars crashing to the ground. Bertie looked up from the display of panforte to see one of the assistants emerge from behind the counter in pursuit of the scurrying form of Cyril.
“Salami!” shouted the assistant. “He’s got a salami!”
His heart hammering within him – he understood immediately that Cyril had once again slipped his leash – Bertie set off in pursuit of the miscreant dog. And Cyril, hampered as too-successful thieves sometimes are by the sheer size of their booty, was soon apprehended on the pavement outside and a large Milanese salami prised from his jaws.
Bertie handed the stolen salami back to the assistant.
“He’s a good dog,” he pleaded. “He normally doesn’t …”
The assistant was examining the tooth marks in the skin of the sausage.
“Nobody will notice,” said Bertie. “Nobody will see the tooth marks. Honest.”
20. Dog Therapy
“So,” said Dr. St. Clair, leaning back in his chair. “So, tell me, how are things going with our young friend through there?”
Irene, who had left Bertie and Ulysses in the waiting room where Bertie was reading, and Ulysses was eating, a copy of Scottish Field, had a lot to tell him. “He’s fine,” she began. “But unfortunately we have a major issue in the household. I thought I might tell you about it, if I may.”