He swallowed. His mother had provided a lifeline. “…was very helpful,” he interjected. “She came to our rescue. How could I have looked after Bertie and Ulysses and gone to work? She saved the day.”
“I’m not denying she helped,” said Irene. “But you could have found somebody local. There are plenty of local girls looking for this sort of job.”
The way that Irene said local girls irritated Stuart. There was an ocean of condescension, he felt, in those two words.
“Local girls,” he began. “By that I take it you mean proletarian.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Stuart. You know my political views. I identify with the proletariat.”
Stuart’s eyes widened. Irene had been brought up in Moray Place. Whatever that was, by no stretch of the imagination was it proletarian. “From somewhere like Muirhouse?” Stuart persisted. “Is that what you meant?”
Irene’s voice turned into a hiss. “Don’t try to obscure the issue, Stuart. The point is that your mother clearly has all the wrong ideas about child-rearing—just as I expected.”
“She raised me,” said Stuart.
“Let’s not go there,” said Irene.
“And she was a very good mother,” continued Stuart.
“Dummies!” exploded Irene. “Dummies are a way of shutting the child up, of distracting her from engagement with the world. You may as well plug the child into the television set.” She paused. “I take it she didn’t allow the boys to watch television?”
Stuart was silent.
Irene on Popular Culture
“Well, Stuart?” challenged Irene. “Did she or did she not?” Stuart looked out of the window. On the other side of the street, the impassive windows of Scotland Street, beautiful in the regularity of classical Georgian architecture, offered no help to one in a corner, as he was. The sky, though, did; it was high and clear, a pale blue patch of hope above the roofs of the tenements; it reminded him that what he suffered down below was just that—suffering down below.
Irene repeated her challenge. “Did Bertie and Ulysses watch television in my absence? It’s a simple question, Stuart—one to which an unadorned yes or no will be sufficient answer.”
Stuart worked for the Scottish Government, and this involved close contact with politicians. He knew that there were ways of avoiding a yes or no question—some politicians were masterly at executing such side-steps, but as he withered under Irene’s forensic gaze he found it difficult to remember how they did it. But from somewhere deep in his mind the appropriate answer surfaced.
“They were given a great deal of intellectual stimulation,” he said. “My mother was…”
Irene cut him short. “I’m asking a very simple question, Stuart, and I assume by your refusal to respond that the answer must be yes, they did.”
“I didn’t say that,” said Stuart. “Did you hear me say yes? You did not.”
Irene’s nostrils flared. “There are more ways than one of saying yes. Non-verbal communication, Stuart—you should be aware of that.”
Stuart tried another tack. “There’s a great deal of evidence that forbidding children to do things simply makes the forbidden thing more attractive to them.”
If he had imagined that this might mollify his wife, he was wrong. “Oh yes?” she crowed. “And where exactly is this evidence? Chapter and verse, Stuart.”
“You quote evidence to me without giving the source. You’re always doing it.”
Irene inched forward. “Oh, I am, am I? And are you now presuming to teach me about infant psychology, Stuart? Are you suddenly the big expert in a subject you’ve never studied? Or does being a statistician make you a psychologist too? Perhaps I’m missing something here.”
Stuart sighed. “I don’t want to argue with you,” he said.
“Good. Well, let’s look at the damage. What did they watch?”
“I wasn’t always there.”
This did not satisfy Irene. “Well, did Bertie tell you?”
“He might have.”
“He might have…What exactly does that mean?”
Stuart realised that it was a lost cause. “I think that they watched some discs she had of pre-recorded television shows. There was something called Andy Pandy. It’s a classic, I believe. Very old-fashioned.”
It was the wrong term to use.
“Old-fashioned?” Irene burst out. “It’s out of the Ark, Stuart. Look at the gender roles. Looby Loo is subservient—Andy is the initiator of the little schemes. It’s atrocious, Stuart.”
Stuart gazed out of the window. He had always thought Andy Pandy rather appealing—in an innocent sort of way.
He decided on full disclosure. If Irene were to find out later that he had not told the whole truth, the situation could become far worse. “They also watched a film, I think. I believe. Something historical.”
The steely tone returned. “Oh yes? And what was that? I know I’m only their mother, but I feel I have a right to know what films my children are watching.”
“Something to do with Scottish history.”
Irene’s eyes narrowed. “What exactly?”
Stuart had no further room to wriggle. “Braveheart, I believe.”
For a moment Irene said nothing. Then, when she spoke, her voice was thin, each chiselled word falling from her lips like a sliver of ice.
“Your mother allowed them to watch Braveheart? That…that travesty? That meretricious two hours of nonsense? That catalogue of tribal violence? We’ll have Bertie painting a saltire on his face next.”
He sought in vain to defend the film. “I don’t know if it’s that bad,” he said. “The essential story is there. William Wallace…”
He remembered that Ulysses had eaten the Wallace Monument and that he had been blamed for that too. And he thought: what would Braveheart himself have done had he been obliged to deal with a hectoring wife like Irene? He would have chopped her head off, probably, with his claymore or whatever it was that the Scots wielded with such enthusiasm before they all became new men. That would have stopped Mrs. Braveheart’s nagging.
Irene interrupted his reverie. “Any other films?”
“The Cruel Sea. We all watched that together—my mother has always loved that film. She liked Jack Hawkins, you see…”
“Jack Hawkins!”
Stuart threw caution to the winds. “And The Jungle Book. Bertie loved that. He liked Shere Khan.”
This was too much for Irene. Now raising her voice almost to a scream, she gave Stuart her views on The Jungle Book. “Do you realise, Stuart, that The Jungle Book is by Rudyard Kipling. Kipling! The arch-imperialist! Why not throw John Buchan into the mix while you’re about it? You might as well let Bertie watch The 39 Steps.”
“Well, actually…” They had watched The 39 Steps and enjoyed it immensely, even if Ulysses had been sick three or four times during the film.
“Not only is The Jungle Book by Kipling, but it’s also by way of Walt Disney.” Irene paused to let the name sink in. “Walt Disney, Stuart!”
Stuart thought that children rather enjoyed Disney films, but did not think it wise to point this out. In a last desperate move, he threw in Mary Poppins. “Bertie loved Julie Andrews as Mary Poppins,” he said.
Irene looked at him with scorn. “Flying nursemaids? Sweeps with very bad attempts at English accents?”
“It sounds as if you’ve watched it yourself,” said Stuart.
There was a silence, and Stuart realised he had overstepped the mark.
“Only joking,” he said. “I imagine you read about it in the Guardian.”
Irene shook her head. “I’m very disappointed in you, Stuart,” she said. “When you consider how much time we’ve invested in the Bertie Project. When you think of the efforts I’ve put in to protect him from the baneful effects of popular culture—an uphill battle that has to be fought every inch of the way, Stuart, and then that mother of yours goes and destroys the whole thing with a flood—a positive flood—of cin
ematic rubbish. I despair, I really do.”
Stuart transferred his gaze from the window to the floor. “I suggest we just forget about the whole thing,” he said. “You’re back now—that’s all that counts.”
Irene pursed her lips. “We’ll see. These ideas, you know, are insidious. This dross is addictive. It’s like sugar—give children a taste of sugar and they clamour for more.”
Stuart nodded, miserably. “If you say so,” he muttered.
“I do,” said Irene.
A Letter from Portugal
The ire that Irene felt over Nicola’s spell of looking after Bertie and Ulysses hardly needed to be communicated verbally. Ever since coming home, Irene had conveyed her message unambiguously through a combination of glassy stares and a stiff, antagonistic body posture. Finally, after she had suggested Nicola should leave for Portugal within forty-eight hours of her own return from the Middle East, all pretence of civility had been abandoned and open battle lines were drawn up.
Had Irene been less unpleasant, Nicola might well have left Edinburgh, but her daughter-in-law’s attitude was so confrontational—not to say shockingly ungrateful—that she decided she would not give her the satisfaction of outright victory. It also occurred to Nicola that although she had never interfered in her son’s marriage, now she might do just that. Stuart was weak, but he might have just enough backbone to be persuaded to stand up to this dreadful virago whom he had married.
Having abandoned a plan to live in Moray Place, Nicola had then managed to secure the tenancy of a Northumberland Street flat belonging to a distant cousin of hers. This cousin, Dorothy MacNab, was spending a year in London to be near her married daughter in Chiswick. The daughter already had two children and needed help with her eight-month-old son when she went back to work as an optometrist. Dorothy also had a son, Siggi, who had until recently played rugby for Scotland and was famous for bursts of speed unseen on the rugby pitch since the days of David Johnston.
Stuart did not comment on his mother’s decision to stay longer in Edinburgh; he foresaw trouble, but was unwilling to interfere. He felt immensely grateful to Nicola for her uncomplaining help while Irene was in the desert. He also rather liked the idea of having his mother in Edinburgh for a longer period; it was true that she had a slight tendency to direct him—what she called “jollying him along”—but if a mother did not encourage her son, then she would not be doing her job. That, he felt, was what mothers did—they encouraged their sons. And they also turned a blind eye to their sons’ shortcomings, which meant that although Stuart knew that he did not stand up for himself enough in the face of Irene’s onslaughts, Nicola was tactful enough to make only indirect and very gentle allusion to this failure.
It was shortly after she moved into the flat in Northumberland Street that Nicola received a letter from her husband, the Portuguese wine-grower, Abril Tavares de Lumiares. In it, Abril began by saying that there were some things that it was easier to say in writing than to another’s face. This prepared her for a shock—indeed it enabled her to guess immediately what was to follow. The ground prepared, the letter went on to express the view that their marriage was not going anywhere. Nicola struggled with that phrase: were marriages expected to go somewhere? Surely the whole point of a marriage was to provide the emotional security implicit in stasis, in not moving into unsettling waters; marriage was about contentment in the place where one was. Or so Nicola had always thought.
“I have been aware of this for some time,” he wrote, “and while I wanted to talk to you about it, I have always felt incapable of raising the issue directly. You know how fond I am of you, but somehow I feel that the road we have travelled together has come to a dead end. Raising my eyes to look beyond this point on that road, I see green fields and uplands that I fear we shall never reach together.”
She grimaced. The Portuguese could be flowery in the way they expressed themselves: green fields and uplands. What exactly did that mean?
“And so,” Abril continued, “I feel that we should go our separate ways, each taking the path that God has set out for him or her…” And why bring God into this? Nicola asked herself. If God had any views on the subject he would surely say: Be very careful of green fields and uplands.
“God has in fact spoken to me,” wrote Abril, “and he has suggested that I should marry Maria.” For a moment Nicola imagined that Abril had completely lost his reason, but then she realised that he did not mean marriage to the Blessed Virgin, but to Maria, the housekeeper.
“This is not Maria’s idea…” Of course it is, thought Nicola. It’s the one thing that Maria has wanted for years. Now at last she is getting her way.
“As to financial matters, you will be hearing from the lawyers with an offer that I am sure you will consider very generous. You need have no concerns on that score. You will be looked after handsomely.
“So, my dear Nicola, we set off into our futures. May yours be one that is filled with the spring flowers of delight and discovery—the future that I have been unworthy of giving you but that I am confident you will find yourself. And I shall cherish memories of our time together and reflect how fortunate I have been to have had you in my life. Your loving friend, Abril Tavares de Lumiares.”
Nicola re-read the letter. She rose to her feet. She tore up the sheet of letter-paper into small fragments and let them fall to the floor. She closed her eyes. Suddenly, and with brutal swiftness, her feelings for him changed. She loathed him. She had never loved him—never. She had thought that she did, but how could love, if it had been that, give way so rapidly and completely to loathing?
She went into the kitchen and opened her fridge. She took out a bottle of gin and made herself a martini, dry, with a twist of lemon. She raised the glass to her lips.
She looked out of the window onto the street below. There was a poem that she remembered—or half-remembered—about a man hearing bad news in a doctor’s surgery in London, in Devonshire Street. She had forgotten who wrote it—Betjeman, perhaps—but she recalled the line: No hope. And the X-ray photographs under his arm / Confirm the message. The man looks at the people in the street. In his eyes they become merciless, hurrying Londoners indifferent to his fate. She looked now at the few people she saw in Northumberland Street down below. They were not in a hurry. They walked slowly. And she thought that they looked merciful; of course they did.
She began to weep, but stopped herself. No, she would not cry. She was free. She had her task ahead of her: to bring that freedom to those from whom it was currently withheld. And she knew exactly who they were: her son, Stuart, and her grandson, Bertie. She would not allow herself the luxury of tears until their hearth, from which freedom was excluded, knew it once more.
Coulter’s Candy
Just round the corner from Nicola’s rented flat was Big Lou’s Coffee and Conversation Bar, the haunt of Matthew and Angus, and of many others who lived or worked in Dundas Street. Neither Matthew nor Angus had been in that morning: Angus was busy with a portrait sitting and Matthew was viewing paintings at Bonhams auction house. Big Lou felt their absence; although she maintained a stream of banter with her two regular customers, it was at heart friendly and was something she looked forward to each day. She tried to remember what they had said the previous day about their plans for the week ahead; she thought that Angus had mentioned what he was proposing to do, but she could not remember what it was.
The absence of her regular customers was all the more noticeable because for some reason there was nobody else in the café. There had been the usual early morning rush, when those on their way to work called in for coffee and the Aberdeen buttery rolls that Big Lou had taken to serving, but by nine thirty the last of those customers had departed for the office and the café was quite empty. There were things for Big Lou to do, of course: the large Italian coffee machine, the Magnifica, always benefited from cleaning, and the counter, possibly the cleanest café counter in Scotland, could be given another scrubbing with the special
green cloths reserved for that task. If you came from a farm in Angus, as Big Lou did, then the training you received in keeping the milking parlour clean never left you, and would show in the cleanliness of your kitchen or, as in this case, your café.
As she performed her tasks, Big Lou thought of young Finlay, the small boy whom she had recently fostered, and whom she now planned to adopt. She had raised the possibility of adoption with the council’s fostering department, and they had been cautiously encouraging. She should think further about it, they said, as the process was a lengthy one that some people found distressing. She would have to submit, they explained, to the most rigorous screening process, as children could not be given to the first person who came along and offered a home. “Some people find it intrusive,” said the social worker. “You can’t have a thin skin. We have to find out a lot about you.”
She had wondered about this. What more did they need to know about her? They had taken character references when she had first been considered as a foster parent; they knew who she was and where she came from. She had told them how much money she had in her bank account and how much the café made each year. She had explained to them that she owned the flat outright, as she did the café, thanks to the legacy she had received from the patient she had looked after in the Granite Nursing Home in Aberdeen. What more could they possibly want to know about her? They could ask Finlay, perhaps, and he would confirm that he was happy and wanted to stay.
“We need to be sure of your motivation,” said the social worker.
“Aye,” said Big Lou. “You need to know that I’m serious about it—I ken that. And you already know that, don’t you? I’ve looked after that wee boy for some time now and I want to look after him for the rest of his childhood. Surely that’s obvious.”
“It’s not that simple,” said the social worker.
“Why?” asked Big Lou.
The social worker had frowned. “You may not be sure of your own motivation. You may think you want something, but do you?”