The Bertie Project

  “I manage. I’ve got those Danish au pairs, you see…and Matthew’s a very hands-on dad.”

  “Yet boys…”

  It was Elspeth’s turn to sigh. “You know, I look at my friends who have girls and I think, How easy it must be for you. Girls play quietly with their dolls; they don’t rush around destroying whatever’s in sight. There’s no kicking, shoving, pushing. No testing the breakability of things.”

  Patty smiled. “Yes, boys are different. And men too.”

  “Yet we’re expected to deny it. We’re so busy trying to promote the notion that there are no differences…”

  Patty took this up. “Thereby ignoring the evidence of biology. Men and women are different—they just are. That’s not to say that some of these differences aren’t socially constructed…of course they are, but you can’t deny certain basic attributes.”

  “Yet they do,” said Elspeth. “The deniers, that is. They make the fundamental mistake of saying that what they want to be the case is the case.” She paused. “And have you noticed something else, Patty? Have you noticed how people think it’s all right to run down men? To say that men are dim or insensitive? That women are far more competent at all sorts of things?”

  She looked at her cousin, and saw that her words resonated. She knew that she had to be careful: to express a view contrary to the received opinion, the policed consensus, could be dangerous. As in Stalinist Russia, in contemporary Scotland even a cousin might turn one in…

  “Oh, I’ve noticed that,” said Patty. “People think they can say anything derogatory about men—things they’d never dare say about women—and rightly so. It’s called gender defamation, I think—something like that.”

  “Poor men,” sighed Elspeth. “Discriminated against. Condescended to. Labelled as incompetent.”

  “All the things that used to happen to women,” murmured Patty.

  “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” said Elspeth.

  Patty did not disagree. But she remembered something. “I saw a report in the paper of a visit a well-known politician made to an all-girls’ school.”

  “Are there any left?”

  “One or two. Anyway, he went there to give prizes at the speech day—you know, the usual thing. Where a girl called Flora Thompson, or whoever, gets all the prizes—tennis, mathematics, poetry, art and so on; awful girl…”

  Elspeth stopped her. “Flora Thompson?”

  “I was just making up the name. She could be called anything…”

  “But she was called Flora Thompson. I remember her. She was in my year at school. She won everything—everything. She used to sit at the desk in front of me and when we had tests she would always finish twenty minutes before the rest of us. She’d put down her pen and look round at us with a look that said What’s taking you so long?”

  “I really wasn’t talking about anybody in particular. Flora Thompson’s a very common name.”

  Elspeth assured Patty that she understood that; there were numerous Flora Thompsons, she said. There was more, though, that she wanted to say about her Flora Thompson. “She had a bag that she used to carry round,” she said. “She kept her books in it. And her pen. And her gym shoes. It was made of blueish canvas-type stuff. And it had Flora Thompson sewn on it. And underneath, in smaller letters, was Ravelston Dykes. That’s where she came from, you see—Ravelston Dykes.”

  Patty laughed. “I can see it. I’m sure that there are plenty of entirely unobjectionable people who come from Ravelston Dykes, but somehow…”

  “Exactly.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “After she left school? After she had finished being head girl?”

  “Yes. She must have had a brilliant career somewhere. After all, if you’re Flora Thompson from Ravelston Dykes…”

  “She went to Oxford. Somerville College.”

  “Of course. Of course. Where she got a first?”

  “Yes. In something like Sanskrit.”

  “And then?”

  Patty waited.

  “So you really want to hear?” asked Elspeth.

  “Yes, of course.”

  Elspeth smiled. “Do you want to hear about her fall?”

  Patty did not conceal her delight. “I knew it! I knew that something awful would happen to her. Nemesis never lets these people get away with it.”

  “But what if there’s no fall? Would you be disappointed?”

  Patty’s grin faded. “You’re going to tell me she found a wonderful man? You’re going to tell me about her meteoric rise in the City of London? You are, aren’t you?”

  “I read about her wedding in the former pupils’ mag. There was a picture of Flora with a very handsome man. Really handsome…”

  Patty winced. “To die for?”

  “Yes, to die for. He raced vintage cars down in the Borders. He had a house somewhere near Kelso, I think. And his family had a marmalade factory. You see their marmalade in the supermarkets. They’re big marmalade people.”

  “I don’t want to hear about that. I just don’t.”

  “I looked very closely at the photograph,” Elspeth went on. “I wanted to see if there was something wrong with his looks—just anything would do. Some flaw. A weak jaw. Even a mole would have helped.”

  “And there wasn’t?”

  “No, he was perfect. He was just so beautiful.”

  “Rats!”

  “Well there’s more,” Elspeth continued. “She got herself into the Guinness Book of Records. The fastest ascent of Ben Nevis by any woman—ever. There it is: Flora Thompson.”

  Patty closed her eyes.

  “Why do we resent the success of others?” asked Elspeth. “We should be glad for Flora Thompson.”

  They were silent. They stood on the drive outside the house and were silent.

  “Perhaps we need to forgive her,” said Elspeth.

  “Or ourselves,” added Patty. “We need to forgive ourselves for not being Flora Thompson ourselves.”

  Elspeth looked up at the sky. She felt that she had been vouchsafed a profound insight in what Patty had just said. She needed forgiveness as much as anybody else—but it had never occurred to her that this forgiveness might come from herself. How, she wondered, did one forgive oneself? By some sort of formal act—by words addressed to oneself? Or by trying to forget?

  She said goodbye to Patty and then watched her cousin’s car drive away. She waved, but Patty did not see her, and soon disappeared, anyway, into the rhododendrons and their hidden green tunnel.

  Not in the Ordinary Sense of the Word…

  It took Matthew some time to settle Rognvald, but at last the small boy, relegated to a cot in a spare room so as not to disturb his brothers, fell asleep. Returning to the kitchen, Matthew found Elspeth preparing boeuf bourguignon, snipping at rashers of bacon with a large pair of kitchen scissors.

  He seated himself at the scrubbed pine table. “Poor little boy,” he said. “He was a bit uncomfortable, I think. He wasn’t scratching, though—just niggling.”

  Elspeth dropped the trimmed bacon into the pot. “And the others?”

  “Sleeping like logs,” answered Matthew. “I shone a torch on their faces to check for spots. Nothing.”

  Elspeth thought it possible they might escape infection. “Patty said it’s pretty contagious amongst children, but she didn’t say it was a foregone conclusion that they’ll get it.”

  “Nor that we would,” observed Matthew.

  “I suppose we should tell Birgitte and Anna. They’re going to have to help me nurse them. Have you said anything yet?”

  He said that he had not.

  “I think you should call them in.”

  Matthew nodded. “They’re in Anna’s room. I heard them moving about.”

  Elspeth frowned. “Moving about?”

  “Yes. There were various sounds. I couldn’t make out exactly what was going on.”

  Elspeth stirred the stew thoughtfully. “Go and knock on the door,”
she said. “Remember to knock. Don’t go in.”

  “What shall I say?”

  “Tell them that Rognvald’s not well and we need to talk to them.”

  He left, and a few minutes later returned with the two Danish girls. One of them, Birgitte, was wearing a dressing gown wrapped around and secured with a broad purple belt; the other had on an outfit that looked like a Scandinavian traditional costume: an old-fashioned, aproned dress in plain red and white.

  Elspeth surveyed their unusual garb, but left it unremarked upon. “Rognvald’s ill,” she said.

  Birgitte, who was usually the more assertive of the two, spoke first. “Matthew said.” She paused, looking at Matthew in a slightly accusing way. “So, what’s wrong with him?”

  “It’s something called Hand-Foot-Mouth disease.”

  Birgitte gasped. “Foot and Mouth?” She turned to Anna, and said something in Danish. Anna now gasped.

  “Well, that’s its common name,” said Elspeth. “It’s caused by a virus. Coxsackie virus.”

  Birgitte screamed. It was a sudden, high-pitched scream that caught Elspeth unawares, causing her to drop the spoon into the boeuf bourguignon.

  “It’s not serious,” blurted out Matthew. “Highly infectious, but not serious.”

  Birgitte spun round to face Matthew. “Infectious? Highly infectious?”

  Matthew looked to Elspeth for help.

  “My cousin dropped in,” she said. “She’s a paediatrician. She said…”

  She did not finish. “Infectious?” screamed Birgitte. “We’ll get it too? We’ll get this Foot and Mouth?”

  Matthew tried to calm her. “It’s not the Foot and Mouth you’re thinking of,” he said.

  Birgitte was having none of this. “When cattle get Foot and Mouth,” she said, “they shoot them. That’s what happens. They shoot them. And yet you say that it’s not serious?”

  Elspeth, having failed to extract the spoon from the boeuf bourguignon, was becoming increasingly irritated. “Listen, you stupid girl,” she began. “It’s not the same disease.”

  Birgitte stared at her through narrowed eyes. “Who’s stupid?” she shouted.

  Matthew moved forward. “There’s no need for anybody to get upset,” he said. “Nobody’s stupid.”

  “Your wife said I was,” shouted Birgitte. “She called me a stupid girl.”

  “Well you are,” muttered Elspeth. “And what do you two do in that room all the time? You lock yourselves away. What are we to think?”

  Birgitte looked at Anna as if to confirm the magnitude of the insinuation. Anna began to cry.

  “Look,” said Matthew. “Let’s all just calm down. Birgitte, Elspeth didn’t mean to call you stupid—not in the ordinary sense of the word.”

  “Yes I did,” muttered Elspeth.

  “See!” yelled Birgitte. “Did you hear that?”

  Matthew gave Elspeth a reproachful look. “She didn’t mean that. She’s upset. We’re all upset.”

  “I am very calm,” said Birgitte. “I am listening to all these insults, but I remain very calm. Look at me—am I not calm?”

  “Actually, your face is all red,” said Elspeth.

  The effect of this on Birgitte was instantaneous. “You hear that, Matthew? You hear what this wife of yours says?”

  Matthew tried again. “Let’s just forget it. The important thing is to think of the boys. We’ll probably need help with nursing them tomorrow—Elspeth won’t be able to cope on her own.”

  Birgitte drew in her breath. “That’s a great pity,” she said. “Because Anna and I are not going near them. We’re not going to get Foot and Mouth.”

  “But you must,” said Matthew. “You can’t just ignore them.”

  “Yes, we can,” snapped Birgitte. “Very easily.”

  “Then you’re fired,” said Elspeth. “Thank you very much for your help in the past, but now you’re fired. You can go back to Denmark tomorrow. We’ll get you both a ticket.”

  The effect of these words was to bring about complete silence. As Elspeth delivered her blow, Matthew opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. Birgitte froze, as did Anna, while Elspeth herself, the deed done, looked down at the floor, as if ashamed.

  Brigitte’s nostrils flared. “I resign,” she said.

  “Too late,” said Elspeth. “You’ve already been dismissed.”

  “No,” said Birgitte, her voice rising. “Don’t try to beg us to stay. It won’t work. Anna and I are leaving right now.”

  “You pigs,” whispered Anna. “You Scottish pigs.”

  Elspeth laughed. “Coming from a Dane, I take that as a compliment.”

  Matthew looked at his wife in dismay. This was no time to make jokes about Danish bacon. “I’m very sorry it’s come to this,” he said gently.

  Birgitte gave him a dismissive look. “Too late,” she said.

  The two young Danes swept out of the room. Elspeth looked at Matthew and shrugged. “I didn’t start that,” she said. “I really didn’t.”

  “Nobody said you did,” said Matthew.

  “I’m not going to get another au pair in a hurry,” Elspeth said. “Those two…”

  “Anna was all right,” said Matthew. “She was led astray by Birgitte. We should never have allowed it.”

  The Pronunciation of Gullane (Part 72)…

  Nicola looked at her watch.

  “I don’t want to break the party up, so to speak,” she said. “But I was thinking of taking a walk. Interested?”

  Domenica had enjoyed their conversation over tea and was happy to continue it on a walk. Their discussion had ranged widely, and Nicola was a good listener. Domenica appreciated this because she found that Angus, although prepared to listen, often appeared to lose the thread while she was speaking. This resulted in his asking questions that may have had a bearing on something she had said much earlier rather than on the point she had reached. At tea that afternoon, they had skirted round politics—“So confrontational, so bitter,” Nicola had remarked—and were delicately discussing the affairs of the Pollock household. Domenica was cautious: she sensed that Nicola and Irene were at odds, but did not want to say anything critical of somebody who was, after all, her guest’s daughter-in-law.

  She need not have worried.

  “I don’t wish to be disloyal,” Nicola remarked, “but I find I have nothing in common with Irene.”

  Domenica raised an eyebrow. “I see.”

  “I tried,” said Nicola. “I tried right from the beginning.”

  “I’m sure you did.”

  Nicola gazed out of the window. “What alternative does one have as a parent? Your son or daughter brings home somebody you can’t abide: what do you do?”

  Domenica shrugged. “I don’t know: I’ve never had that experience.”

  Nicola hesitated. She understood the sensitivity of those who had not had children. People could go on about their offspring without realising that the childless might find such conversations painful.

  But Domenica had no such feelings as she now went on to speculate on just how difficult such a situation might be. “You can’t tell them, can you? You can’t tell your child that you don’t like his friends, can you?”

  “In general, no,” said Nicola. “Most parents encounter that at some stage—the child gets in tow at school with the wrong sort—what do you do? One thing you shouldn’t do is come out with it outright. That can have the opposite effect.”

  “It makes the disliked friend seem more attractive? Forbidden fruit tastes sweeter?”

  Nicola nodded. “Exactly. And that’s particularly serious if the child is at the rebellious stage—or thereabouts. That’s asking for trouble.”

  “In such circumstances,” suggested Domenica, “perhaps you say the opposite of what you feel. You say, How I like your new friend! And that then makes your offspring think there’s something wrong with the friend, and go cool on him or her.”

  “I tried that,” said Nicola. “Right at th
e beginning—when Stuart turned up with Irene—I tried that. I told him how much I approved of her. I told him that she seemed just right for him.”

  “And it didn’t work?”

  “It didn’t work at all. So then I tried the opposite. I said that I wondered whether he and Irene were entirely compatible. I said that there was nothing wrong with her, but was she right for him.”

  “And?”

  “He was too smitten. I don’t think he took in what I said. I could have said that she was wanted for murder and he wouldn’t have noticed.”

  Domenica smiled wryly. “Love is blind, isn’t it? All the clichés about love are absolutely true. Love is blind.”

  “Or at least partially sighted,” said Nicola.

  “Partially sighted in the sense of being partial in the way it views things—yes, of course it is.” She was about to continue and say that she assumed that Nicola meant partly sighted but she did not: there were some battles that had been lost a long time ago and only the most diehard pedant would still fight: the confusion between partially and partly; the splitting of the infinitive; the distinction between hopefully (in the sense of with hope or hoffentlich) and it is to be hoped; the whole issue of whether Gullane was pronounced Gullun or Gillin (the latter, of course, being the correct pronunciation). On that last point she had recently heard a friend talk of Gullun (sic)—a friend who should have known better. She had remonstrated with him in vain and had been rebuffed; he had thrown in the towel, it seemed, unwilling to stand any more in the way of those who regarded the correct pronunciation as somehow elitist. She had felt sorry to see one of the few remaining bastions topple and fall, but had realised that those who pandered to the enthusiasms of the moment just wanted to be loved—as everybody did—and had chosen this form of identification with error to strike the pose that would, they hoped, bring them love and acceptance from those who pronounced Gullane incorrectly. And her understanding of this brought with it another insight: those with whom one seeks to curry favour will never accept one fully. Those who pronounced Gullane incorrectly would never accept as one of them those who had in the past called Gullane by its correct name. No amount of ovine clothing brought the wolf an invitation to the family occasions of sheep.