Bertie was very keen to accompany his mother. He had never been in a police station, he pointed out, and this was the only chance he would have.
“Anyway, I can help you, Mummy,” he said. “I can provide corroboration of what you say.”
Irene glanced at her son. She was aware that Bertie had a wide vocabulary, but she had not heard him refer to “corroboration” before. It was very interesting; one day she would have to attempt to measure the extent of his vocabulary. She had seen a kit which enabled one to do just that: one asked the meaning of certain words and then extrapolated from the results. Extrapolation, she thought. Would Bertie know what extrapolation meant?
She decided to indulge Bertie. “Very well, Bertie,” she said. “You can come to the police station with me. I don’t think that there’s much to be seen there, quite frankly. Police stations are rather boring places, I understand.”
Bertie looked puzzled. “Then why do people like to read about them, if they’re so boring?”
Irene laughed. “I suppose that’s because the people who write about them–people like that Ian Rankin–have no idea what a real police station is like!”
“So they just make it up?” asked Bertie. “Does Mr Rankin just make everything up?”
“He has a very active imagination,” said Irene. “He makes Edinburgh sound very exciting, with all those bodies and so on. But that’s not at all what real life’s like. Real life is what we do, Bertie. Real life is you and me. Valvona and Crolla. That sort of thing.”
Bertie thought for a moment. “Poor Mr Rankin,” he said after a while. “It’s sad that he has to make things up. Do you think he’s unhappy, Mummy? Do you think that having to tell so many fibs makes him unhappy?”
Irene reached down and patted Bertie on the head. It was a gesture which Bertie particularly disliked, and he dodged to avoid her hand. “Dear Bertie,” she said. “Don’t you worry about Ian Rankin! He’ll be fine. I don’t think he knows that he’s making things up, I really don’t. I think he probably believes it’s all true.” She paused. “But anyway, Bertie, let’s not concern ourselves too much about all that. If we’re going to Gayfield Square, then we should leave now. And then, afterwards, we can go and buy sun-dried tomatoes at Valvona and Crolla. Would you like that?”
Bertie said that he would, and a few minutes later they were making their way up Scotland Street to the Drummond Place corner. Irene walked slowly, while Bertie skipped ahead of her. Every so often he would turn round and run back to join his mother, before detaching himself from her again. She noticed that when he skipped, he kept his gaze carefully on the pavement in front of him. And his gait, too, was controlled, as if he was taking care to avoid putting his feet…It was that old business with the bears and the lines again, she thought, with irritation. It really was most vexing that Bertie, who appeared to know what corroboration was, who was able to speak Italian with such fluency, and who could reel off all the main scales, major and minor, should believe that if he put his foot on a line in the pavement, bears would materialise and eat him. She had no idea where he got such notions from. She had never encouraged magical thinking in her son; she had always pointed out that darkness was just the absence of light, not cover for all sorts of ghosts and bogles; she had never encouraged any of that nonsense, and yet here he was being irrational. Of course, he got it from other children; she was sure of that. There was even now a whole world of childish belief–lore and language–that survived the most determined rationalistic attempts to tame it. And those belief structures still seemed able to lay a claim to the juvenile mind, sending it off down ridiculous avenues of fantasy.
She called out to Bertie, who had skipped ahead and was just about to turn the corner. Hearing his mother’s voice, Bertie stopped, turned round, and then began to run back to her.
“I want to talk to you, Bertie,” said Irene. “We can talk as we walk along.”
Bertie looked crestfallen. He had planned to keep some distance between himself and his mother, in case anybody should think that he belonged to her. Now this would be impossible. He sighed. What did she want to talk about? She would ask him questions, he was sure of that, and she would give him a lecture about bears. He would listen, of course, but if she was going to try to get him to tread on any lines, then the answer would be no. Bertie knew what happened if you trod on lines. Of course he understood that there was no question of bears; bears were just a metaphor for disaster, that’s all they were. But try to explain that to an adult–just try.
19. Leerie, Leerie, Licht the Lamps
Irene looked down at Bertie as they walked slowly round the north-eastern sweep of Drummond Place.
“I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind, Bertie,” she said. “You know how Mummy is, don’t you, with her intellectual curiosity? Silly Mummy! But Mummy does like to know what’s going on in her little boy’s head, that’s all.”
“I don’t mind,” Bertie muttered, crossing his fingers as he spoke. It was well known that if you crossed your fingers, you could lie with impunity. Would his mother cross her fingers in the police station? he wondered. Perhaps he would suggest it to her closer to the time.
“I’ve been wondering where you get your ideas from,” Irene began. “I know that you get a lot of things from Daddy or from me.” (Mostly me, she thought. Thank heavens.) “And you learn a lot from your teacher at the Steiner School, of course. But you must also pick up some things from the other children. You do, don’t you?”
Bertie shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe,” he said. He thought of the other children he knew: Tofu, Hiawatha, Olive. He was not sure if he learned much from any of them. Tofu knew virtually nothing, as far as Bertie could ascertain. Hiawatha hardly ever said anything, and anyway he spoke with a curious accent that very few people could understand. And as for Olive, she was always imparting information to others, but it was almost always quite wrong. Bertie had been shocked to discover that Olive thought Glasgow was in Ireland. And she held this view although she had actually been there–“Well, it seemed like it was in Ireland,” she had said in her own defence. And then she had said that a tiger was a cross between a lion and a zebra and had stuck to this position even after Bertie had pointed out that lions ate zebras and would therefore never get to know one another well enough to have offspring. Olive had simply stared at him and said: “What’s that got to do with it?” And so they had left the subject where it stood.
“Perhaps you’ll tell me some of the things you pick up from other children,” coaxed Irene. “Do you know any counting rhymes, for example?”
“Counting rhymes?” asked Bertie.
“Yes,” said Irene. “Here’s one that I remember. Shall I tell it to you?”
“If you must,” muttered Bertie.
“Very well,” said Irene. “Here we go:
Bake a pudding, bake a pie,
Send it up to Lord Mackay,
Lord Mackay’s not at home,
Send it to the man o’ the moon.
The man o’ the moon’s making shoes,
Tippence a pair,
Eery, ary, biscuit, Mary,
Pim, pam, pot.”
Bertie looked at his mother. Then he looked away again. In his astonishment, he had almost trodden on a line. He would have to be more careful in future.
“So,” said Irene jauntily. “Do you know anything like that?”
Bertie stopped and looked up at his mother. “I know some rhymes, Mummy. Is that what you want to know?”
“Yes,” said Irene. “You tell them to me, Bertie, and I’ll tell you if I knew them when I was a little girl. A lot of these things are very old, you know.”
“Postie, postie, number nine,” said Bertie suddenly. “Tore his breeks on a railway line!”
“Well!” exclaimed Irene. “Poor postie! I don’t believe I know that one, Bertie. How interesting!”
“Leerie, leerie, licht the lamps,” continued Bertie. “Lang legs and crookit shanks.”
r />
“My goodness!” said Irene. “That’s remarkable. I suspect that’s a very old one. The leerie was the lamplighter, Bertie. We don’t have lamplighters any more, and yet there you are still using that rhyme in the playground. Isn’t that interesting, Bertie? It shows the persistence of these things.”
Bertie nodded. “Here’s another one, Mummy,” he said.
“There was an old man called Michael Finigin
He grew whiskers on his chinigin
The wind came up and blew them inigin
Poor old Michael Finigin, begin igin.”
Irene clapped her hands in delight. “Oh yes, Bertie! I remember that. And there’s more!
There was an old man called Michael Finigin
Climbed a tree and hurt his shin igin
Tore off several yards of skin igin
Poor old Michael Finigin, begin igin.”
Bertie frowned. “Poor Michael Finigin,” he said. “Nothing went right for him, did it, Mummy?”
“No,” said Irene. “A lot of these things are very cruel, Bertie? People laugh at cruelty, don’t they? We think that we don’t, but we do. Just listen to the jokes that people tell one another. They’re all about misfortune of one sort or another. And people seem to find misfortune funny.”
“And it wasn’t funny for Michael Finigin,” observed Bertie.
“No,” said Irene. “There are lots of people for whom it’s not funny. Not funny at all.”
They had now reached the end of London Street and were not far from the East New Town Nursery School, where Bertie had once been enrolled. Irene had said nothing about the nursery school on this trip, hoping that Bertie had forgotten all about the trauma of his earlier suspension. But she noticed now that he was looking nervously in the direction of the school, and she feared that painful memories were rising in his mind.
“You used to go to nursery school there, Bertie,” she said. “A long time ago. But we don’t have to think about that any more. We’ve moved on.”
Bertie looked down the road that led to the nursery school. He had been happy there, and he could never understand why they had suspended him. That woman, Miss MacFadzean, had encouraged them to express themselves, and that was all he had been doing. It was really rather unfair. He looked at his mother, and reached for her hand. Poor Mummy! he thought. She has such strange ideas in her head, but she really means well, in a funny sort of way. And here she was getting excited about a few peculiar old rhymes that he had seen in Iona and Peter Opie’s book The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren. Bertie had found a copy in the house and had read it from cover to cover. There was so much in it. It was a pity all of that had been forgotten–such a pity! Perhaps he would try to teach some of them to Olive, and she could pass them on to the other girls. There was no point trying to teach Tofu any folklore–no point at all.
20. Truth and Truth-Telling in Gayfield Square
At Gayfield Square Police Station, Irene and Bertie were greeted by a policeman, who smiled warmly at Bertie. “Lost your bicycle, son?” the policeman asked. Bertie looked at the policeman blankly. “I don’t have a bicycle,” he said. “I wish I had a bicycle, but I don’t. Mummy won’t let me…”
“The officer is just being playful, Bertie,” Irene interrupted. “It’s his idea of a joke, you see.”
The policeman looked at Irene sharply. “And what can we do for you, Madam?” he asked coldly.
“I’ve come to report the theft of a car,” said Irene.
“I see,” said the policeman. “And are we sure it’s been stolen? It hasn’t been towed, has it?”
Irene gave a start. Towed? It had not occurred to her that the car might have been legitimately removed. What sort of line was there on the road at that point? Was it residents’ parking? It was residents’ parking, surely…
“I don’t think it will have been towed,” she said. “It was parked in Scotland Street, where we always park it. Now it’s gone.”
The policeman nodded. “The most surprising cars get towed, you know. You’d be astonished at how many people come in here to report their car stolen and all the time it’s down at the vehicle pound.”
Irene gave the policeman the number of their car and he went away briefly to feed the details into a computer. While he was gone, Bertie looked around the room with interest. There were several notices pinned on a board and he sidled over to these and peered up at them. There was a notice about the depth of tread required on a car tyre and one about the closing of a road. And then there was a Wanted poster, complete with the photograph of the wanted person. Bertie peered at the photograph. It was very interesting. Surely not…
“Mummy,” he whispered. “Come over here and look at this. Look at this Wanted poster.”
“Not now, Bertie,” said Irene. “We must deal with our car first.”
“But I recognise the person in that photograph,” Bertie persisted. “Look, Mummy! Look at the person in the photograph.”
“Oh really, Bertie,” said Irene, the exasperation rising in her voice. “I don’t see what…” She stopped. Slowly she leant forward and studied the picture. “My goodness…” she began.
“You see,” said Bertie. “It is him, isn’t it?”
Irene stood up again and pulled Bertie away from the notice board. “Hush, Bertie,” she said. “We haven’t come here to look at Wanted posters. We’re here to find our poor car…”
“But,” said Bertie. “But the notice says that anybody who recognises…”
The policeman was now returning to the front desk.
“Your car has not been towed,” he said. “So if you’d like to tell me when you last saw it and where it was when you last saw it.”
“We’ve just see that pho…” Bertie began, but was interrupted by Irene.
“Now then,” she said loudly. “When did we last see the car, Bertie? Can you put on your little thinking cap? When did Mummy park the car up at the top of Scotland Street?”
Bertie scratched his head. “Last week, I think. Yes, Mummy, it was last week. Daddy was out drinking, remember, and you…”
“Last week,” interrupted Irene. “Yes, last week. And, Bertie, Daddy does not go out drinking, as you put it. Daddy had gone to meet somebody from the office and it just so happened it was in the Cumberland Bar. It was a working meeting.” She smiled at the policeman. “Honestly! Out of the mouths of babes…”
The policeman looked at Bertie and winked. “So it was last week some time?”
“Yes,” said Irene. “I think it was Tuesday. Yes, it was Tuesday.”
“So it was stolen some time after Tuesday but before the day on which you found it to be missing, which was…”
“Yesterday,” said Bertie. “I took Mummy up the street to show her that it wasn’t there. She was very cross. She said a rude word.”
“Bertie!” exclaimed Irene. “I did not say a rude word. You’re making it up.”
“But you did, Mummy,” said Bertie. “You said…”
“No need,” said the policeman. “None of us is perfect. Let’s proceed. I shall need to take all your details at this stage. Then we’ll enter the particulars of the car on the national stolen-cars register. And we shall make inquiries.”
“It might have been stolen before,” said Bertie suddenly.
Irene spun round sharply and glared at him. Then she turned back to the policeman. “He has a very vivid imagination,” she explained. “You know how children are. They construct these vivid imaginative worlds. Melanie Klein…”
The policeman looked at Bertie. “You said it was already stolen?” he asked. “Who stole it? This Melanie Klein? Your Dad?”
“No,” said Bertie. “Daddy would never steal a car. He works for the Scottish Executive.”
“So,” the policeman continued. “Who stole it then?”
“Oh really!” Irene interrupted. “This is completely pointless. It was just a bit of childish fantasy. You were making things up, weren’t you, Bertie?”
r /> Bertie shook his head. “I think it might have been that friend of Mr O’Connor’s. You remember, Mummy, I told you about him. Gerry. He might have…”
“I think we’ve had quite enough of this,” said Irene, reaching out for Bertie’s hand. Turning to the policeman, she explained that they had to do some shopping and that if there was anything further that the police needed to know they could telephone her. Then, pushing Bertie before her, she hurried towards the exit.
“But what about that poster?” Bertie said, as they made their way out.
“Later, Bertie,” said Irene. “We’ll talk about that later.”
Outside now, and heading up the square in the direction of Valvona and Crolla, Irene pointedly refrained from meeting Bertie’s gaze. The little boy, head down, was a picture of dejection.
“I’m sorry, Mummy,” he said after a while. “Did I say something wrong?”
Irene pursed her lips. “There are times when it’s best to leave things to grown-ups, Bertie,” she said. “That was one of them.”
“But I was just telling the truth,” protested Bertie. “Do grown-ups not tell the truth?”
“They do,” said Irene crossly. “They certainly do. It’s just that grown-ups know how to handle the truth. You’ll learn that in due course, Bertie. You’ll learn.”
Bertie said nothing. He was thinking of the poster and the photograph on it. Who would have guessed?
21. Missing Domenica
Angus Lordie knew immediately that the letter came from Domenica. When he picked it up, there it was–a brightly-coloured Malaysian stamp portraying local flora, and beneath it the address, written out in Domenica’s characteristic script. She had learned that script at St Leonard’s School, St Andrews, all those years ago, at the feet of the redoubtable Miss Powell, a teacher who, so Domenica had once informed Angus, believed that clarity of expression in handwriting and speech was the greatest of goods which an education could confer. “It does not matter, girls,” she had said, “if you do not have the most profound thoughts to convey–and I suspect that you don’t–as long as you convey them clearly.” Miss Powell, Domenica explained, had been a teacher of great antiquity, and had died in office, in the staff room, with much dignity. They had found her with an open exercise book on her lap with two words written, in her own handwriting, on an otherwise unsullied page–“the end”. Or so the story went–schoolgirls, put together, were notoriously prone to fancy and indeed to the exchange of wild rumour.