The Bertie Project

  But now there was this apparent lover, and that suggested that underneath it all, Stuart may well have been seething. He was a bit mild to have an affair, Angus felt, although the most unlikely people have secret love lives in which they do things you would never imagine they would do. There had been several cases of that in Edinburgh, and the city’s collective jaw had hit the table when details emerged—as they eventually did in most cases of this sort.

  Having thought about it along these lines, Angus ventured an opinion.

  “I don’t blame him,” he said. “If it’s true, as you suggest…”

  “It’s true,” said Domenica.

  “Then she has only herself to blame.”

  Domenica had to agree. “She’s pushed them all around so much. It’s what keeps her going, I think.”

  “I was rather hoping that she’d stay in Dubai,” Angus said wistfully.

  “So was I,” confessed Domenica. “It’s a very uncharitable thought to have of a neighbour, but it would have been a very satisfactory outcome. But I gather that she was too much of a match for the Bedouin sheikh in whose harem she was confined. She started a book club for his wives, you know. It went down very well, but when the wives started to discuss books that their husband didn’t exactly approve of, it was time for Irene to return to Scotland.”

  Angus looked thoughtful. “I wonder what those books were,” he mused.

  “Oh the usual thing,” said Domenica airily. “The Oasis of Loneliness, for example. Fifty Tents of Grey…”

  Angus burst out laughing. “What fun we have,” he said.

  Domenica nodded. Then she said, “Oh, Angus, could you open that window for me? I think it’s stuck. Rain must have got in somehow.”

  He rose from his chair and began to struggle with the recalcitrant window. Suddenly the sash moved and the window, to which Angus had been applying his shoulder, flew wide open.

  Angus was defenestrated.

  Scottish Defenestrations

  It happened so quickly. One moment he was in the kitchen, struggling to open a window and thinking: water has penetrated the wood and it’s swollen and I should have had the outside painted when we last had the painter in…

  Defenestration, properly so-called, should be distinguished from falling from a window through inattention or a loss of balance, or any of the factors that precede accidental descent. Those who jump out of windows voluntarily, either in pursuit of self-destruction or to escape from pressing threat, are not, according to ordinary usage, defenestrated: that occurs when a person is ejected out of a window by force, human or natural. In the case of Angus Lordie, defenestrated from his kitchen window in Scotland Street, the force was a natural one—the window to which he applied his shoulder was less firmly stuck than he had imagined. Thus it was that he was defenestrated, even if no human agency was involved in the mishap.

  He had no idea how he suddenly came to be upside down. He saw the sky above him, and his immediate thought was of its indifference. Something important was happening to him, and the sky was neutral to it. And then he thought: if I believed in something—anything—then I wouldn’t experience this abandonment, because the sky would be part of a world in which I am not as insignificant as I now feel…

  Defenestration has a long history in Scotland, even if there is nothing in Scottish history to match the Defenestration of Prague—actually the Second Defenestration of Prague—a famous event that achieved a notoriety quite out of proportion to its actual, immediate impact; after all, nobody died, at least not through the actual defenestration: the Catholic dignitaries who were in this way so discourteously treated survived their ignominious fall, landing, partisan pamphleteers claim, in a dung heap. That was the Protestant version of events—the victims of the defenestration being Catholic. According to Catholic accounts, those defenestrated were unharmed because they were caught by angels on the way down. The First Defenestration of Prague, which occurred in 1419, involved the fatal throwing out of the Town Hall of a number of members of the City Council.

  Generations of schoolchildren were exposed to the exam question: “What were the consequences of the Defenestration of Prague? Do you think that the Defenestration was the most important cause of the Thirty Years’ War?” These issues, along with those raised by the Schleswig-Holstein Question, and indeed the West Lothian Question, circulate endlessly in the dim corridors of half-forgotten historical knowledge, ready for picking by any examiner short of a question.

  Angus thought: Prague, Prague. I’ve never been to Prague—I meant to, but never got round to arranging it because there were so many other things…and who would have looked after Cyril? Cyril, my unquestioning friend, in whose eyes I am omnipotent—the founding principle of his canine universe. Cyril, who loves me so, and whose heart will be broken beyond repair…

  The major Scottish defenestration was perpetrated by King James II. James was born in a time in Scotland when simply to be a member of a particular family would constitute a destiny of plotting, fear and bloodshed. He was not the best of hosts: the famous Black Dinner of 1440 saw the entertaining of two young members of the Douglas clan at his table in Edinburgh. Following the last course of the meal, the guests were dragged from their chairs, taken outside, and executed. James was only ten at the time, and there must have been an adult hand in the background, but it was not a good sign. If he picked up bad habits as a youth, he was to show them again when he murdered Lord Douglas when he was his guest in Stirling Castle. According to the Auchinleck Chronicle, a contemporary manuscript source, James stabbed his guest twenty-six times when Douglas refused to decouple himself from an alliance that would have challenged royal authority. He then defenestrated him, much to the delight of his secretariat, who joined in the fun, removing the Earl’s brain with an axe.

  These were colourful times in Scottish history, and we must be careful not to judge by contemporary standards. Everyone of any significance in Scotland, we may assume, had either got to where they got through violence, or kept their position by the same means. But this sort of thing did set an unfortunate precedent for Scottish hospitality—a reputation that was to be reinforced by the behaviour of the Campbells towards their MacDonald guests at that fateful dinner party in Glencoe. The Massacre of Glencoe, as that incident used to be called, is now more politely referred to as the Misunderstanding of Glencoe, although there are those who continue to harp on about not murdering one’s dinner guests.

  The Defenestration of Stirling Castle is relatively well-known; other Scottish defenestrations are more obscure. There was the Defenestration of Colonsay, a small Hebridean island—a defenestration that is still talked about today, although nobody knows who was thrown out of the window, by whom, or when it happened. There has been speculation as to the cause, but there is no authoritative view on that. What is agreed, though, is that it would not have had serious consequences, as all the buildings on the island were, at that time, only one storey high. Moreover, in keeping with the architectural style of croft houses in that part of Scotland, they would not have had large windows—if they had windows at all, being known as black houses. The Defenestration of Colonsay therefore probably involved no injury to anybody, and may indeed have been no more than an attempted defenestration—foiled by an absence of windows.

  More recently, the Defenestration of Hawick involved the throwing out of a window in a municipal building of a large section of the Conservative faction on the Borders Council. Accounts of this are confused, but press reports of the time suggest that being tired of bickering, the combined factions of the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party threw the Conservatives out of a window, again on the ground floor. The Conservatives were then chased by the keelies of the town, who hurled insults before dispersing into local bars. This incident is still talked about in the Borders, but probably never took place.

  Angus Lordie, however, was defenestrated and…

  Why am I not dead? he thought. And why am I in this tree, suspended
upside down, with that terrible pain in my leg; and the sky is darkening, and who will give Cyril his dinner…?

  Mist-covered Mountains

  He was dimly conscious of the sky. There was cloud and a shaft of buttery sunlight. But the light, it seemed to him, was going the wrong way, and it was replaced by haze. There was grey, that was stone, and there was white somewhere that was detached from any object—just white. And then the light and colours became confused, as if he had been peering into a kaleidoscope that had been given a good shake: triangles, shards, diamonds; glowing liquid pools, like watercolours running into one another, without edge; this, perhaps, was how an artist died, among the colours that had been his life.

  He did not mind. He felt no regret, or pain, or feeling that what was happening to him was anything but that which had to happen, was right to happen. The self was a small thing, a tiny but insistent illusion that was now being gently awed into silence. It did not matter; it did not matter…He was aware of movement; some pressure on his arms, as if somebody were pulling him, and for a few moments he resented that there should be this intrusion. But then he felt sleep claim him, and all sensation drained away, faded, and he no longer cared. So this was what it was like to die: it was an abandonment, a giving up, an allowing of life to drain away. It did not matter, he thought. It did not matter.

  —

  There was silence, and then a voice, clear and resonant, and it was talking about Angus. “His work was highly regarded. I remember how, when we were at the Art College together, he was already in demand as a portrait painter, painting friends and relatives at first, and then getting small commissions to paint others. How we envied him that—nobody would buy our work, of course—not at that point, because in those days one had to have talent to call oneself an artist and we were still learning. Years of hard work lay ahead of us in which we would practise our skills before we could presume to call ourselves artists, whereas now…oh dear, if you can move a few objects around and stack them one on another then you are greeted with the most enthusiastic encomia and the world beats a path to your door. And you win the Turner Prize if you’re outrageous or superficial enough, and you go around talking about your practice rather than your art. And the more deliberately provocative or obscure you are the better because you know and others do not know because they are old-fashioned, or reactionary, or they simply don’t understand what the function of art is and they’re hung up on the naïve notion that art is somehow connected with the concept of beauty. The concept of beauty! In a world of pain and exploitation—to talk of beauty!

  “But Angus would have none of that, and throughout his life he saw his role as an artist to be one of showing us those qualities of truth and beauty—the two are interchangeable concepts, to an extent—that lie beneath the surface of our world. It was his job to reveal the character of the person whose portrait he was painting, to allow the beauty within that life—no matter how mundane a life it may seem—to emerge. In other words, he saw it as his job to allow the least of men the chance to demonstrate in some way the value of their lives, their moments of splendour…”

  And Big Lou, seated by herself at the back of the church, held her handkerchief in her hands and twisted it in her sorrow, and then looked up because the eulogy had drawn to a close and his friend, his old friend from Art College days, who had delivered it, was stepping down and going back into the body of the kirk; stepping down in his old black suit, in places shiny through wear, at the elbows, at the seat of the pants, his starched white shirt flecked at the collar with tiny specks of blood from where he had nicked himself on the chin while shaving that morning, dressing with such care for the farewell to an old friend, but shaky with emotion…

  And then the sound of the pipes—two pipers, long plaids draped over their shoulders, a green tartan, and Mist-covered Mountains played with all the heart, with all the emotion that comes from the love of country that the pipes can express, it seems, as no other instrument can; a wail from the heart, the sound of tears distilled, the sound of the broken heart that grieves not just for one man but for a whole country…

  And there, outside, a dog, held on a lead, confused, but knowing that something momentous was happening, and this momentous thing was about loss and separation, that dogs know only too well, although they have no words for such things.

  “Angus?”

  A voice penetrating through layers of drowsiness.

  “Angus?”

  He was confused. Somebody had been talking about him and his work. Somebody had said something about portrait painting. And he had seen Cyril, who seemed to be upset about something; perhaps because dogs can find the sound of the pipes disturbing. Cyril hated Scotland the Brave, he always had, and would howl and howl if he heard it played on the pipes. That, Angus said, was the tailored hell that awaited Cyril if he were to become a bad dog and die unrepentant…

  Another voice said, “He’s confused, but everything seems to be going in the right direction.”

  And Domenica said, “What a relief!” and repeated, “Angus, can you hear me?”

  He nodded. “Yes. Loud and clear. I was dreaming. Pretty odd dreams.”

  “Well, you’re in the Infirmary now and they say you haven’t broken anything, which is something of a miracle.”

  “A tree…”

  “Yes, you fell into a tree. Thank heavens.”

  He opened his eyes to see a nurse peering at him. “You feeling better, sweetheart?”

  He opened his eyes wider. “Sweetheart?”

  The Association of Scottish Nudists

  “Two years of disputes,” said the Secretary of the Association of Scottish Nudists to the Chairman over lunch in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. “What did we do to deserve all that aggravation?”

  The Chairman, who had taken a mouthful of quiche, took a few moments to reply. Then, reaching for his glass of cloudy lemonade, he said, “Nothing at all, my dear chap—nothing at all. Everything was going perfectly well until those tiresome people from Glasgow…”

  “It wasn’t just Glasgow,” interrupted the Secretary. “The Weegies were the ringleaders, of course, but they had plenty of collaborators. There was that woman from Perth—I forget her name, but I can just see her…”

  The Chairman closed his eyes. Perth? And was the Secretary envisaging the member in question clothed or unclothed?

  “She was a shocker, that woman—so strident,” continued the Secretary.

  “Well, we’ve put their gas at a peep,” said the Chairman.

  “We certainly have,” agreed the Secretary with a grin of satisfaction. “It’s a wonderful feeling to have returned to normality, isn’t it? Edinburgh back in control; upstarts back in their box.”

  “Skulking in their tents,” said the Chairman.

  “Hah!”

  The issue to which the two principal office bearers of the Association of Scottish Nudists were referring was the constitutional battle that had shaken the Association to its core. This had arisen when a substantial group of members had voiced their opposition to the Association’s constitution, a document drawn up by an Edinburgh solicitor in the nineteen fifties and distinguished by its unusual voting structure. This gave an unequal number of votes to the various categories of member, with Edinburgh members receiving three votes each and members from other towns and areas having two, one, or, in some cases, half a vote. This had proved unacceptable to members living outside Edinburgh, who had not been persuaded by the committee’s defence of the existing arrangements—a defence based entirely on the notion that this system had provided stability for years and should not be disturbed just because some felt disenfranchised.

  The uprising by non-Edinburgh members had proved irresistible, and after an undignified vote of no confidence, the existing Edinburgh committee had been replaced by a geographically more representative one. It was only through a cunning scheme dreamed up by the former Chairman and former Secretary that the coup had been reversed and the old com
mittee re-established. This had been achieved through the recruitment of a large number of new Aberdeen members whose votes were effectively controlled by the ancien régime. Once that had been done, there had been a very effective splitting off of the old Association, leaving dissatisfied members from Glasgow and elsewhere with their newly renamed but under-funded association, Nudism Scotland—previously the Scottish Association of Nudists which was too easily confused with the Association of Scottish Nudists.

  The victory had been Edinburgh’s—there was no doubt about that, but it had left the nudist movement in Scotland with a serious divide. Who spoke for the Scottish nudist community? Was it the older, much better endowed—in the financial sense—Association of Scottish Nudists, or was it the more recently formed but more contemporary-sounding Nudism Scotland?

  It was this question that had prompted the Chairman to invite the Secretary to join him for discussion over lunch. In spite of their satisfaction that the constitutional wrangles were over, there were grounds for concern over two matters that had recently arisen. The first of these was the issue of who would be entitled to a European Union grant for the furtherance of nudist objectives. This had recently been advertised amongst offers of breath-taking largesse for a variety of causes, and had already attracted the attention of Nudism Scotland, who had applied for a grant of three hundred and twenty thousand Euros for a variety of projects. These included a survey of public awareness of nudism, a research project on the production of nudist-friendly public signage, and a publication grant to support the translation into Gaelic of a number of books on the ideology of the nudist movement in Europe.