Stuart helped, of course, but there is a major difference between merely helping and actually shouldering the burden. Even if he cooked the evening meal from time to time, he rarely did the shopping required to stock the kitchen cupboard. And even if he bundled clothes into the washing machine, very seldom did he remove them, and even less often did he iron them.
Like Bertie, he had encouraged Irene to take up her prize of a five-day free holiday; like Bertie, he had imagined that these five days would be a period of blissful freedom. And that is what they were. But at the end of the fifth day, when the news came through that Irene had gone off to a desert encampment, Stuart had begun to discover that supplies were running low in the kitchen, that the hall carpet was looking particularly dirty, and that there were very few clean flannelette rompers left in the drawer given over to Ulysses’ clothing. And that was even before he had to tackle the issue of getting Bertie to school and arranging day care for Ulysses.
Stuart’s solution had been to take ten days of compassionate leave from his job as a statistician with the Scottish Government. His immediate superiors had been supportive. “Of course you’ll need a bit of time to get things sorted out,” his departmental head reassured him. And then, with a sympathetic look, had continued, “Look, we all hope that your wife will be found—the uncertainty must be truly awful.”
“Oh, they know where she is,” said Stuart. “It’s really a question of getting her out again.”
“Of course.”
Eyes were lowered. Everyone knew from the press reports that Irene was last seen entering a harem, and everyone’s imagination had been working overtime to construct a picture of her there. For some, it was simply impossible, harems being so beyond the normal range of contemporary experience; surely there was some mistake, they thought, and Irene was merely the victim of some mix-up over a visa or a permis de séjour and everything would shortly be sorted out. Others envisaged Irene in a scene that would not have been out of place in an Orientalist painting, with blue-tiled walls, marbled pools, and great feather fans being swayed gently by sultry boys. And behind such imaginings was the awful, insistent thought: had Irene been obliged to go through some marriage ceremony with the Bedouin sheikh whose guest she had been?
Stuart himself had not a single doubt in his mind but that Irene would rapidly have taken control of the harem and engaged in the task of raising the awareness levels of the women who were quartered there. There were some indications that she had organised a book group in the harem, as Blackwell’s Bookshop on South Bridge had received a bulk order for twenty copies of a novel recently reviewed positively in the Guardian. The delivery address for this order was in one of the Gulf states, to an office known by British consular officials to be the address of the Bedouin sheikh’s coastal agent. As far as Stuart was concerned that was proof positive that Irene, although not free to travel, was not cowed.
The solution to Stuart’s difficulties came from an unexpected quarter. His mother, Nicola Pollock, now in her early seventies, had lived in Portugal for the previous ten years after marrying a shipper of Douro wines. Stuart’s father had died a few years before this second marriage, and Nicola had not taken well to life on her own in Melrose, where they had spent much of their married life. She had met the wine shipper on a Baltic cruise on which the women had outnumbered the men by almost three to one. Such single men as there were—and there were not more than eight of these on board—found themselves in constant demand, and indeed one or two had taken to having their meals in the seclusion of their cabins, so pursued were they if they ventured into any of the ship’s public rooms.
Nicola Pollock had met Abril Tavares de Lumiares in the bridge club that took over the aft saloon every evening before dinner. Abril was a year or two older than she was and had not been married before. He had been engaged for a number of years in an arrangement that had a dynastic flavour to it—both families saw the business sense in the union—but eventually, after eleven years, he and his fiancée had drifted apart. Abril had decided that marriage, perhaps, was not for him, and had thrown himself into building up the business that sent Douro wines, fortified and table, off to markets his father had developed in the United States, Canada, and Brazil. On the cruise, though, away from the demands and pressures of the business, he had decided that he and Nicola should be for one another more than newly-discovered bridge partners.
He declared himself in the course of a bid, in what might well have been the only proposal of marriage in the history of bridge; bridge, of course, being the catalyst for many a divorce: foolish bidding, although not in itself a ground for divorce may well be a cause of divorce.
“Five hearts,” he had opened.
The likely lie of the cards made this absurd, and they all laughed; it was friendly bridge.
“Are you mad?” asked Nicola.
“No,” said Abril. “But perhaps I am in love. That is why I am thinking of hearts—and of the contract that might result.”
This remark was greeted with silence. Then one of the other players said, “Double,” greatly increasing the risk of the original bid.
“Double is better than single,” said Abril.
“Beds?” asked somebody, and laughed.
6. A Mother-in-Law Reflects
“I’ll drop everything,” said Nicola over the telephone. “I can get a flight from Porto first thing tomorrow. I could be in Stansted by eleven and Edinburgh by lunchtime.”
Stuart felt a surge of relief. He should have contacted his mother straightaway, rather than leaving it until Irene had been missing for a few days. A boy’s best friend is his mother…yes, he thought, but perhaps not in every case. Perhaps that should be reworded: A boy’s most ardent champion is his mother…
“I really don’t want to put you out,” said Stuart. “Maybe I’ll be able to cope.”
Nicola was brisk; she, at least, had made up her mind. “How exactly would you do that?” she asked. “You have to go back to work. Who’s going to look after wee Ulysses then?”
“I’ll think of something. Aren’t there crèches?”
“No doubt there are. But you’ve got to get him there. Then you have to pick him up again, and you also have to collect Bertie from school. How do you think you’re going to manage all that?” She paused. “And you have to feed them and sort out their clothes and…” She sighed. “You can’t do it, darling—you really can’t.”
He knew that she was right, and he realised that it was time to concede. “It’s really good of you,” he said. “But what about Abril?”
“He works all the time. And anyway, he’ll understand how important it is. We have a woman who helps in the house—she loves cooking. She’ll hold the fort while I’m in Scotland. She’ll spoil Abril rotten.” A note of resentment crept into her voice. That woman would dearly love her to board a flight never to return, leaving Abril for her to feed, care for, and eventually marry. What right had a foreign woman—a Scotswoman, for the love of Maria!—to march into Portugal and snap up one of the most eligible men along the entire length of the Douro? None; that was the answer to that: none at all.
He thanked her again. He had not seen much of his mother in recent years and he would be pleased to be able to spend some time in her company. He knew that she and Irene did not get on, and it was the coolness between them that had led to Nicola’s staying away. It would be far easier in Irene’s absence to slip back into the comfortable relationship they had enjoyed before his marriage.
The coolness between Nicola and Irene had started at their first meeting and had continued through the years. At the bottom of the icy chasm between them was a fundamental difference of outlook: Nicola accepted things for what they were, whereas Irene engaged with the world as a potential adversary, as a place that had to be changed. Nicola was a defender of female independence but nonetheless understood that men and women might sometimes see things in a distinctively different way, and that these differences need not be an affront to either se
x. Irene, by contrast, thought that men were deeply flawed and would only redeem themselves were they to renounce their maleness in favour of androgyny at the very least, but preferably femininity. “There can be no truces,” she said. “Women will never be free from male oppression until men and masculinity are vanquished. That’s all there is to it.”
This severe view might have condemned Irene to a life devoid of male company, spent, perhaps, amongst a sisterhood united in its antipathy to masculinity. Such sisterhoods can be sustaining, and would have provided Irene with a perfectly adequate social network, but this solution was precluded by a powerful feature of Irene’s makeup: at the age of fourteen, rather to her dismay, she found that she was interested in boys. There were no boys at the school she attended—Mary Erskine’s—but there were plenty of boys at Daniel Stewart’s, the school just round the corner, and as she waited at the bus-stop after school she found herself watching the Stewart’s boys as they jostled with one another on their way to rugby practice. She wished they would jostle her. The Stewart’s boys wore a uniform that included knee-length red socks, and Irene’s eye was drawn to these socks as the eye of a female bird may be drawn to the gaudy plumage of a male bird. She felt confused and unsure of herself, but the die was in the process of being cast: the resentment of men was already there, but so was the desire to be with men, to get their attention, in short, to possess them.
When Stuart had told his mother that he and Irene were planning to get married, she had become very quiet. It was only for a few moments, but she needed the time to compose herself.
“But that’s such exciting news, darling,” she said faintly. “I’m so…” She stumbled. It was hard to enunciate the word “delighted” when one’s heart was a cold stone of despair, but it had to be said. Pleased came out instead. “I’m so pleased. That’s such good news.” It was not; it was dreadful news. One might as well say that the eruption of Vesuvius or the sinking of the Titanic was good news. It was not.
“You do like her, don’t you?”
“Of course, darling, I think she’s…” She almost said horrific instead of terrific, but stopped herself in time. “She’s just right for you.” She was not. She would ruin his life.
Nicola was astute. Like most parents who saw their offspring making the wrong choice of partner, she understood that the options were stark: you either accepted the boyfriend or girlfriend, or you lost your son or daughter. It was that simple. She decided to make the most of the situation and went out of her way to welcome Irene to the family. Irene, though, saw through the forced bonhomie.
“I don’t wish to run down your mother,” she said to Stuart. “But her insincerity is staggering. I’m treated to performances that would easily win her a place at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama—a scholarship even—but I can tell she dislikes me. And she’s so…well, sorry to have to say it, she’s a major pain.”
Stuart groaned at the insult. He thought it was unfortunate that Irene thought this of his mother, but it was even more unfortunate that she should have been overheard; for Nicola was outside the door at the time and heard exactly what her new daughter-in-law thought of her. From that moment on, the contours of their relationship were determined. So now, as Nicola sat back on the flight from Porto to Stansted, she was able to think: how nice it would be if Irene were never to return. She did not want anything too unpleasant to happen to her, of course; she merely wanted her exile to be permanent, or semi-permanent, perhaps; we cannot always expect permanence in our affairs and should settle for the semipermanent should it be on offer.
7. The Transmissibility of Cowness
“My grandmother’s coming to stay,” announced Bertie in the special period at school where the members of the class were invited to give their news. “She’s arriving tomorrow—from Portugal.”
“From Portugal!” said the teacher. “Did we all hear that, boys and girls? Bertie’s grandmother is arriving from Portugal. How nice for Bertie!”
Olive looked at Bertie with interest. “To make up for your mother’s running away?” she said. “As a sort of mother-substitute?”
“Olive!” exclaimed the teacher. “Bertie’s mother did not run away. What a terrible thing to say!”
“Sorry,” said Olive. “That slipped out. I didn’t mean to say it.”
“I should think not,” snapped the teacher. “Poor Bertie!”
Tofu, who had been following the exchange with some interest, now joined in. “My dad says Bertie’s mummy’s a cow,” he said. “I wonder if his granny will be a cow as well.”
Olive had views on this, and expressed them before she could be stopped. “It depends on whether she’s his granny on his mummy’s side or on his dad’s side. If it’s on his mummy’s side, then there’s a good chance she’ll be a cow too. It all depends, you see.” She gave Tofu a withering look. “Mind you, you’re one to talk, Tofu. My dad said that your mummy was a real tart, and my dad is always right about these things. I’m sorry to mention it now that she’s dead of starvation, but there’s no point hiding from the truth, is there?” She waited for an answer that did not come, and so she added, “I could have warned her about starvation, of course. That’s what comes of being a vegan—I could have told her that.”
“She didn’t die of starvation,” muttered Tofu. “She’s still alive.”
“Just,” said Olive.
“Now, now!” said the teacher. “This is not at all nice. The important thing is that Bertie is going to have a visit from his grandmother.”
“I hope she doesn’t drink too much,” said Olive. “Pansy’s granny never stops drinking.”
“Not all the time,” said Pansy mildly. “Just in the evening.”
Tofu sought clarification. “What time does she start?” The question was posed with a politeness that was unusual for him. Any exchanges between Tofu and Olive tended to be short, scornful, and as often as not curtailed by his spitting at her. Although Olive’s principal lieutenant, Pansy, had a secret soft spot for Tofu and they usually addressed one another courteously enough, except when Olive was around, when Pansy felt that she had to follow her friend’s lead.
Pansy thought for a moment. “About five,” she said. “Sometimes a bit earlier, but usually at about five.”
“Now listen,” said the teacher. “We should not talk about other people’s grannies like that, even if…” She hesitated. What Olive had said was probably true—children did not miss these things. And the teacher herself had seen the grandmother in question collecting Pansy from the school gate one afternoon and she had looked rather the worse for wear. It was her nose, of course, that set alarm bells ringing; that degree of red, that deep, almost purple colour seemed so unnatural. Of course, people other than drinkers could have red noses, but when you combined a red nose with a somewhat irregular gait surely there was legitimate cause for concern.
Olive took the opportunity to fill the brief silence. “Have you seen her nose, Miss Campbell? Have you seen Pansy’s granny’s nose close up?”
Pansy turned and gave Olive a discouraging look. She was prepared to discuss her grandmother’s drinking, but to pick on her nose was a different matter.
“I’ve seen it,” interjected Tofu. “I saw it one day last term, when she came to the school concert. When they turned the lights out in the hall for the concert, you could still see Pansy’s granny’s nose glowing in the dark. It was like one of those red lights that say EXIT.”
It was rare for Olive to agree with Tofu, but on this occasion she did. “That’s right,” she said. “It was a good thing there wasn’t a fire during the concert because that would have meant that everybody would have run over towards Pansy’s granny’s nose—by mistake of course. She could easily have been crushed.”
The teacher clapped her hands together to bring this unsavoury conversation to an end. “That’s quite enough,” she said. “We mustn’t make personal remarks. It’s most unhelpful.”
“Even if they’re true?
” asked Tofu.
“Even if they’re true,” repeated the teacher. “It doesn’t help at all. It just makes people feel bad about themselves and it leads to arguments. The point is this, children: some people don’t look the same as us, and that…”
“They have different noses?” interrupted Tofu.
“Yes. There are many different noses. One nose is very much the same as any other nose. It’s what’s inside the nose that counts.”
It was a well-intentioned remark, but perhaps unhelpful before such an audience. Olive grimaced, and several other children tittered.
“What I meant to say, boys and girls; what I meant to say is that it’s what’s inside a person that counts. What’s really important is what sort of person they are inside—not just inside their nose or indeed any other part of them, but inside them.”
The teacher looked out over the faces of the fifteen children seated at their desks, each one, she reflected, a complex and unique personality—as her psychology tutor had drummed into them at teacher training college. “What you are going to be doing in your careers,” the tutor had said, “is take that raw material, the basic personality so to speak, and enable it to develop. You should not try to make it what you want it to be; you should try to make it discover itself and blossom. That is what your job amounts to—that is your immense privilege.”