And now, still unaided, Bertie was struggling with the wings of the B.O.A.C. Comet when he heard the front door open. It was a Saturday afternoon, and Stuart usually watched sport on television on a Saturday afternoon. Bertie was not particularly interested in sport – other than rugby, which he longed to play – and he was certainly more interested in his plane than in the rather tedious golf competition that Stuart was currently following.
That afternoon, though, the familiar sound of the commentator’s voice and the polite applause of the spectators was replaced by the sound of raised voices in the kitchen. Bertie listened; his mother was saying something to his father, and now his father was replying. They were arguing about something, Bertie decided. It was something to do with the Labour Party, he thought, as he heard a few names he recognised from the news. Then there was something about a club, and his heart stood still; if his father was in trouble over his club, then Bertie thought that this was his fault, and felt mortified.
He put down the Comet and made his way quietly down the corridor.
“… what if my friends discovered you were one of them?” It was Irene’s voice, and it was full of reproach.
Stuart replied with something that Bertie did not quite catch. All that he heard was the word freedom and then, jumbled up with something else, he heard the word emasculation. That brought a tirade from Irene, so voluble and so rapid that Bertie could make nothing of it.
He withdrew to his room. His parents did not argue with one another very frequently, but, like all children, Bertie was dismayed when signs of parental discord surfaced. He did not want his parents to fight; he wanted nobody to fight. But it seemed that this was a forlorn wish: people fought. Tofu fought with Olive, and Olive occasionally fought with Lakshmi, who in turn fought with Pansy, who was jealous of her friendship with Larch. And now his parents were fighting too, and all over whether Stuart should be allowed to join a club and vote, if he wished, for the Conservatives.
Bertie sighed. Adoption was the only answer. If he were to be adopted and went to live in Glasgow, then he could see his real parents at weekends. That would keep everybody happy, which is all that Bertie, from the depths of his seven-year-old soul, desired.
45. The Male Menopause
Bertie put the B.O.A.C. Comet to one side and lay down on his bed. From the sitting room on the far side of the flat drifted the monotonous commentary on the golf tournament his father was watching on television. It sounded very dull to him, and he could not understand why his father should be interested in such a boring spectacle; but it was better, he thought, than arguing with his mother.
The row between Stuart and Irene had been rather more heated than usual. In fact, their usual rows were very low-key affairs, consisting of no more than some barbed comment from Irene followed by a brief word or two from Stuart. The infrequency with which these occurred was connected, perhaps, with their one-sidedness. Stuart saw no reason to argue, because he inevitably lost the argument to his more forceful and opinionated wife. So rather than pursue the matter, he tended to shrug his shoulders and leave things where they stood. This had the result of making Irene feel that she had won – which of course she had. And that suited her very well.
The heated discussion that day had been different. Armed with the intelligence that she had gleaned from Bertie, Irene had confronted Stuart about two matters: his clandestine political affiliations and his membership of some mysterious club on the south side of the city.
“I’ve been talking to Bertie,” she said, as he came into the house.
“Oh yes.”
“And it was very revealing.”
Stuart was silent. There was something in Irene’s tone that made him feel wary.
“Yes,” continued Irene. “A very interesting conversation indeed.”
“Bertie’s a great wee conversationalist,” Stuart observed. “I’ve often thought he should have a chat show of his own. Not a late-night one, of course, because that would be beyond his bedtime – something a bit earlier – six o’clock maybe.”
Irene glared at him. “Don’t be flippant, Stuart. It ill becomes you.”
“Whatever,” said Stuart.
“And don’t say whatever. That’s teenage slang these days. It’s a substitute for thought.”
“What …” Stuart stopped himself just in time.
Irene, who had been consulting a recipe book in the kitchen, slammed the book shut. “Yes, Stuart, and what have you been telling Bertie about the Conservative Party?”
“Nothing,” said Stuart. “I think Bertie’s a bit young for politics, wouldn’t you say? I know there’s talk about bringing the voting age down, but six …”
Irene continued to glare at him. “What did the Jesuits say, Stuart? Didn’t they say something about having children up to seven and then having them in their intellectual grasp for life?”
Stuart laughed. “Well, I don’t think the Conservatives take the same line on that. And if you listened to your Gilbert and Sullivan you’d remember their observation about how all children are born liberal or conservative. Remember that?”
“I have no interest in shallow operetta, Stuart, as you well know.”
Stuart frowned. “Shallow operetta? That’s a bit steep, isn’t it?”
Irene made a dismissive gesture. “Let’s not get distracted with all that, Stuart. The issue is this: Where were you at lunchtime?”
Stuart hesitated. “Today?”
Irene’s voice was steely. “Yes.”
“I had lunch with some chaps, actually.”
“Oh yes, and who were they?”
Stuart hesitated. He looked up at the ceiling for a moment, and then out of the window. This, he told himself, is a watershed moment. There was no reason for him to accept it any longer. He had endured it for so long and done nothing about it. He had put up with Irene’s ways for years and now, he decided, he had quite simply had enough.
“Masons,” he said. “I’ve joined the masons. I’ve got my regalia here, if you’d like to see it.”
“Stuart!” Irene’s voice was raised to a shriek. “Have you taken leave of your senses?”
He looked at her calmly. “No, not at all. It’s entirely harmless – in fact, the main purpose – as far as I can see – is to do various bits of charitable work. And what’s wrong with that, may I ask?”
Irene opened her mouth to speak, but could not. Wives discover things about their husbands – sometimes quite dark things – and for many their first reaction is: How can I have failed to see? Of course they do see – they may see quite well – but what we see we do not always accept.
“And I’ll tell you something else,” Stuart continued. “I have no intention of resigning. It’s going to be my thing from now on.” And to add emphasis, he concluded, “Whatever.”
There then followed an exchange of views that was both forthright and heated. Stuart held his ground, and it was at some point in this exchange that he used the word emasculation. “That’s what you want to do to men,” he shouted. “You want to emasculate them. That’s what you want!”
Irene’s gaze moved to her kitchen scissors, but moved away again. I must be calm, she told herself. I must try to imagine what Melanie Klein would have done if her husband had accused her of contemplating emasculation. She would have reached for a notebook, she felt, and written it all down for subsequent analysis.
She closed her eyes. What age was the male menopause? Was this it? Stuart was surely a bit young for that, as she understood that men were afflicted by it in their fifties, and Stuart was in his early forties. Was it a midlife crisis then? The life expectancy of the average male in the east of Scotland must surely be approaching eighty now. Divide that by two and that gave you a midlife point of forty.
The brief arithmetical calculation gave Irene some comfort. The best policy, perhaps, would be to ignore all this. If he wanted to be a mason, then she should let him. It was no more than a much-delayed form of adolescent rebellion. Or i
t might just be a desire to engage in male bonding brought on by a sense of male powerlessness. That would also explain his ridiculous remark about emasculation; if he had fears of emasculation it was because he was aware of the disempowerment of the modern male. Poor men. They were so, so useless, and it must be an understanding of this uselessness that made them want to be masons or members of male-only golf clubs, or similarly ridiculous things. Yes. That was it. And she could afford to be understanding because, as the French had it, tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner.
“It’s all right, Stuart,” she said soothingly. “You be a mason. I understand. It’s quite all right.” And then she added, “There, there.”
46. Lives of Purpose
Angus Lordie’s day usually began with a walk in the Drummond Place Gardens with Cyril. This was an important event, not to be missed even in the most inclement weather, including snow. That, of course, was a distant memory in high summer, and an unpleasant one, at least from Cyril’s point of view. Some dogs may enjoy snow, but he was not one of them, and he had a tendency to blame Angus for the uncomfortable white disaster that snow represented for him.
“Not my fault, Cyril,” Angus would say under Cyril’s reproachful gaze. “I can do nothing about the weather, I’m afraid. We must both bear it with as much patience as we can muster.”
That, unfortunately, was no answer. Cyril regarded Angus as omnipotent, the author and controller of his life, and by natural extension, of the conditions under which it was lived. Angus was, in fact, God to Cyril: a simple metaphor that has not escaped the attentions of some theologians who see the man/dog relationship as a helpful cipher for our own relationship with a creator. But whereas the human notion of god allows the creator freedom to order the world in a way which we might not find to our taste – acts of God, it must be remembered, include typhoons, lightning, and pestilence, at least as far as the interpretation of insurance contracts is concerned – in Cyril’s theology there was no room for such discretion. Snow was uncomfortable and should not be there: Why had Angus allowed it and what was he proposing to do about it?
Here was no such issue that day: the Drummond Place Gardens, their stately trees in full leaf, were illuminated by shafts of morning sun – conditions that were ideal for the canine investigation of grass and shrub and the analysis of the scents left behind by the night. Some of these were intriguing, some – especially those left by squirrels, or worse still, cats – were simply irritating, an affront to any dog whose ambition was the ethnic cleansing of all felines.
These matters settled, Cyril returned to his master and to his leash. Then the two of them left the gardens and returned to the flat for breakfast. For Cyril this was a small bowl of reconstituted dog meal; for Angus it was eggs and bacon and a croissant, consumed while reading the copy of The Scotsman pushed through the letterbox by the paper boy. Angus read the letters column first, and was always pleased to read the contributions of the regulars. For the most part, these were people with causes, who were always primed and ready to sound off about their favourite issue. The letters column, not only of The Scotsman but of the other papers too, was the true national conversation of Scotland, Angus thought. The Oban Times and the Press and Journal were exactly the same; throughout the country there were people who were of the strong view that things were not quite right, and that this was the fault of others, who were then identified and shamed. The solution, of course, was simple, but for some reason had not been grasped by the Scottish Parliament, Argyll and Bute Council, or Aberdeen City Council. Would these bodies never learn? And then there were the bankers. They were clearly incapable of learning, and were simply laughing at the rest of us on their way to the bank … No, they were already in the bank.
The letter column digested, Angus turned to the obituaries. This page gave him the greatest pleasure, but it was not out of Schadenfreude. Angus was not one of those who read the obituaries with satisfaction at having outlived their subjects; he read them with a sense of proper awe at what people managed to make of their lives. What impressed him most of all were those lives that demonstrated a sense of purpose. Most of us, he thought, led lives that happened to us. We drifted into what we did; we fumbled our way past the challenges and obstacles we encountered; we took up one thing, dropped another; and then, rather too suddenly for most of us, the realisation came that it was almost over, and what exactly had we done with our time? These people were not like that. They decided at a very young age what they wanted to do, and they then did it, step by step. They often met their spouse early, and then married her, or him, and the marriage itself had structure and purpose, and was happy – perhaps for these very reasons. They built a metaphorical house for themselves and then lived in it. It was undeniably impressive.
Of course purpose and pattern in a life did not have to be conscious. There were many lives, Angus thought, that revealed a pattern when one looked at them at the end, even if the people living those lives may not have seen that pattern while they were actually leading their lives. People did the things they were destined to do without having any real sense of that destiny. But when their lives were laid out it became apparent where they were heading; it became clear why they had made the choices they did. And then, at last, some dignity is given to what might have seemed to be an aimless or dull existence, to what might have been seen as not much of a life.
And of course we should remember, he told himself, that the small life, the humble life, is as wonderful, in its way, as any grand life of achievement and public recognition. He knew a man who had never been much of a success in his work, who had held a succession of small jobs and then no job at all, but who had been a great one for his doos, as he called them, his doves, and had raised dynasties of beautiful white birds in his patch of back garden in what had been an old mining village in East Lothian. That gave his life as much dignity as any of the public lives lauded in the bigger obituaries. He was appreciated by his friends, who came to see the doves and marvelled at their whiteness and their fluttering shyness, their gentle cooing, the way they flew up in the air, hovered, and then on silent wings were gone.
47. A Letter from Italy
Angus Lordie’s reading of the paper was interrupted on some, but not all, mornings by the arrival of the post. There were days on which he received nothing; he wrote few letters and received hardly any in return – rough justice that he fully accepted. While there were those who complained about their uninteresting or slender mailbag, little understanding that by and large we get the mailbag we deserve, Angus never blamed anybody but himself for the fact that nobody wrote to him. On this particular morning, though, be-sandalled Hermes smiled upon him: a few days earlier Angus had written to Antonia, and now here was a letter addressed to Angus Lordie DA (Edin), Drummond Place, Edinburgh, Scozia. Angus smiled at the formal inclusion of his ancient qualification; that was Italy already exerting its influence on Antonia – the Italians were punctilious about titles, with any graduate, or indeed anybody who wore glasses, being accorded the title dottore; while a professor was Chiarissimo (most renowned one) or, if the dean of a faculty, Amplissimo (most ample one). Angus was content that he should be a simple Diplomate in Art, enough, he thought, for any painter; further honours and distinctions, he felt, would merely clutter his work, weigh down his brush.
He slit open the envelope and extracted several pages of thick cream-coloured paper. Antonia’s handwriting, a small neat script, covered these pages, and for a moment or two Angus felt daunted, almost to the point of being unable to read what she had written. Antonia could go on, especially on the subject of early Scottish saints, and he was not sure that he was quite in the mood for that. But then he reminded himself that he had initiated the correspondence and the least he could do was to read her reply.
The letter was headed The Convent of Sant’ Annetta dei Fiori. Underneath this, Antonia had written the date in Roman numerals, followed by the salutation “My dear Angus.” Me, thought Angus; and read on.
“Your letter was a very pleasant surprise, as I had not expected to hear from you, although, as you know, there has been correspondence between me and Domenica. It gives me the pretext to say one or two things that I should have said some time ago, and never said. I shall deal with these and then go on to answer your question about that painting in my flat. That will be later, though, at the end of this letter. I tell you this now so that you should not read what I have to say with the irritation of one who feels that his question will go unanswered. I shall answer, I assure you.
“What happened to me in Florence was, as you know, somewhat distressing, not the least for you, I imagine. I had no idea that visiting Tuscany was so dangerous – and who could be expected to anticipate the sudden onset of Stendhal Syndrome? Looking back on it, of course, I can now see the signs that were there well before I collapsed in the Uffizi Gallery and was taken away so ignominiously. On reflection I can recall feeling slightly queasy two days earlier when I was paging through Gombrich, or was it Kenneth Clark, or somebody else altogether, and saw that photograph of Donatello’s David. At the time I thought it might have been the fig tart I had bought in Montalcino, but now I know that it was the first warning of Stendhal Syndrome.
“Since my diagnosis, I have done quite a bit of reading about the condition and I must say that I have been astonished to discover how distinguished is the company in which I find myself! If one has to have a medical condition, then I suppose it can be a comfort to know that it is a condition that has laid low such distinguished people! Of course, Stendhal Syndrome would not be expected to affect just anybody: one has to be attuned to the artistic possibilities of a situation before one can be overcome and suffer emotional collapse. A person with no imagination or with no interest in matters artistic or spiritual will hardly be expected to succumb to extreme emotion in the face of great art: such a person will usually be quite indifferent to these matters.