Of course the comment was an aberration, and Dr Fairbairn had been brought to his senses sharply enough by Irene’s reaction, but their relationship had very clearly changed as a result of the incident. Seeing him sitting so miserably at his desk, his distinguished head sunk in his hands, had brought out the maternal in Irene. And then the penny dropped. Indeed, it dropped so sharply that Irene stopped in her tracks, some way down Dundas Street, and gave a half-suppressed cry. Of course! Of course! Dr Fairbairn had no mother. By coming up with the absurd suggestion that she was smothering Bertie, he was trying to divert her natural mothering instincts away from her son to himself. Do not be a mother to Bertie, he was saying, so that you can become a mother to me. It was quite clear. In fact, it was glaringly obvious.
Hearing his mother gasp, Bertie stopped and looked up at her.
“Are you all right, Mummy?” he asked.
Irene looked down at her son. She had been so immersed in her thoughts that she had forgotten Bertie was with her. But there he was, in his dungarees, smiling with that appealing smile of his. What an odd little boy he was! So talented, what with his Italian and his saxophone, but still encountering such difficulties in the object relations context.
“Yes, thank you, Bertie,” she replied. “I just had a very important thought. You know how some thoughts are so important they make you go ‘oh!’? I had that sort of thought.”
“A moment of insight, you mean?” Bertie said.
Irene looked at him. She was occasionally surprised by Bertie’s vocabulary, but it made her proud, too. All of this he got from me, she said to herself. All of it. Bertie is my creation.
“Yes,” she said. “You could call it a moment of insight. I just had an insight there into what happened a little while ago in Dr Fairbairn’s room. You won’t know, but Dr Fairbairn and I had a tiny argument. Nothing serious, of course.”
Bertie pretended to be surprised. “A wee stooshie?” he asked.
Irene frowned. “I’m not sure if I’d call it a stooshie, and I’m not sure if I want you using words like that, Bertie.”
“Is it a rude word, Mummy?” asked Bertie. “Is it like…”
“It’s not rude,” said Irene. “It’s more, how shall I put it, it’s more vernacular, shall we say? It’s Scots.”
“Is Scots rude?” persisted Bertie.
“No,” said Irene. “Scots isn’t exactly rude. It’s just that we don’t use a lot of it in Edinburgh.”
Bertie said nothing. An idea had come to him. He would start talking Scots! That would annoy his mother. That would show her that although she could force him to wear pink dungarees she could not control his tongue! Ha! That would show her.
“Anyway,” said Irene, “we must get home. You have a saxophone lesson in half an hour, I believe, and you must do your homework before then.”
“Aye,” said Bertie quietly. “Nae time for onything else.”
“What was that, Bertie?” asked Irene. “Did you say something?”
“I didnae,” said Bertie.
“What?”
“No spikkin,” muttered Bertie.
“Really, you are a very strange little boy sometimes,” said Irene, a note of irritation creeping into her voice. “Muttering to yourself like that.”
Continuing down the street, they were now directly outside Big Lou’s coffee bar. They reached it just as Matthew and Angus Lordie came up the steps to the pavement, their coffee conversation having been brought to an end by the sudden prolonged howling of Cyril. The canine angst which had produced this outburst had presumably resolved itself as quickly as it had come into existence, as Cyril now seemed quite cheerful and wagged his tail enthusiastically at the sight of Bertie. Cyril liked boys; he liked the way they smelled–just a little bit off; and he liked the way they jumped around. Boys and dogs are natural allies, thought Cyril.
When he saw Bertie, Cyril rushed forward and sat down on the pavement in front of him, offering him a paw to shake.
“Bonnie dug,” Bertie said, taking the paw, and crouching down to Cyril’s level. “Guid dug.”
Cyril moved forward to lick Bertie’s face enthusiastically, making Bertie squeal with delight.
“Bertie!” shouted Irene. “Get away from that smelly creature! Don’t let him lick you!” And then, turning to Cyril, she leant forward and shouted at him: “Bad, smelly dog! Shoo! Shoo!”
As a dog, Cyril did not have a large vocabulary. But there are some words all dogs understand. They know what “walk” means. They know what “good dog” means, and “fetch”. And Cyril knew, too, what “smelly” meant, and he bitterly resented it. He had seen this tall woman before, walking in Drummond Place, and he did not like her. And now she was calling him both bad and smelly. It was just too much!
Irene’s ankles came into focus. They were close, and exposed. He hadn’t started this, she had. No dog, not even the most heroic, could resist. He lunged forward, opened his jaws, his gold tooth catching the light, glinting wickedly, and then he bit Irene’s right ankle. It was glorious. It was satisfying. It was so richly deserved.
76. Bruce Has Uncharitable Thoughts about Crieff
Bruce had been deeply disturbed by what George had said to him over the telephone. He had been buoyed by his purchase of the Petrus at such a favourable price, but had been completely deflated by George’s suggestion that the wine might be something quite different–an ordinary wine put into bogus Petrus bottles by calculating forgers.
At first, he had denied the possibility that George might be right. He had not even seen the wine in question; how could he pontificate on it? The problem with George, of course, was that he was so unadventurous. The idea of making an unconventional purchase, of buying something other than through the regular channels, was obviously alien to his cautious, accountant’s personality. Poor George! He had always been the timid one, even at Morrison’s Academy, where he would never do anything that was remotely likely to get him into trouble. What a mouse he was! But then mice sometimes had their uses, thought Bruce–especially if they had money.
But then, but then…perhaps George was right, to an extent at least, in saying that one had to be suspicious of bargains. If the Petrus was worth what it appeared to be worth, then why should Harry sell it to him at such a marked-down price? If it was worth more, and if, as Harry claimed, people were clamboring to get it, then why should he sell it to him at such a reduced price? It was not as if he had given him an extra few per cent discount–the sort of discount one feels that one has to give to a friend–he had cut savagely into the market price. He had effectively given away the three cases of wine.
The thought that George might be right made Bruce very uncomfortable. He had paid a lot of money for the wine and he had done so out of his own bank account. He had also paid the first month’s rental on the shop, again from his own account, and the debit side of the business would be mounting up rather sharply. And yet he had not obtained a single penny from George, even although George had assured him that the money would be available once he had sold the bonds. But how long did it take to sell bonds? Surely a call to one’s broker was all that was required?
He spent his second day in the shop taking delivery of stock he had ordered from a wholesaler in Leith. It was good, knockabout wine, in Bruce’s view–the sort of wine that Stockbridge people would buy to drink with their dinner or take to their parties–large Australian reds, various Chardonnays and even a range of sweetish German wines which he planned to place in a special section called Wines for Her. That last idea he considered rather good, and he thought it not unlikely that other wine shops would follow suit when they saw how appealing it was to women.
The shelves in his shop were now filling up. The New World was in the front, in accordance with Bruce’s personal tastes, and France and Italy were at the back. Spain was only represented in a very small way–again based on Bruce’s belief that Rioja was virtually undrinkable (“I wouldn’t even gargle with the stuff,” he was fond of sa
ying; a rather witty remark, he felt) and there was a similarly small South African section. This was based on Bruce’s dislike of the tactics of South African rugby, he being of the view that South African supporters had poisoned the All Blacks on more than one occasion when they were due to play the Springboks. “Entire rugby teams don’t all get diarrhoea on the eve of a match by accident,” he observed. And had the Scottish team been similarly poisoned? Bruce laughed at the question. “Who would bother?” he asked, bitterly.
The Petrus was not displayed. It was in the back room, under a table, three unopened cases with the keys of St Peter stencilled on the side. Bruce looked at them and felt a pang of doubt and regret. If the wine was not what it purported to be, then he would not be able to try to sell it. The last thing he could afford to do at the beginning of his new career was to get mixed up in that sort of scandal; that would obviously be the kiss of death. But how could he confirm these uneasy suspicions? That was far from clear.
Towards mid-afternoon, when he had almost finished stacking the shelves, Bruce decided to telephone George. He would have to arrange a meeting to sort out the financial arrangements so that he could pay the invoice of the Leith wholesaler–slightly over eight thousand pounds–which had to be settled within fourteen days.
George initially did not answer his telephone, but eventually he did, and agreed to come to the shop after work and meet Bruce there.
“I’d like to bring somebody,” he said. “Somebody I’d like you to meet.”
“Who?” asked Bruce.
“A friend,” George replied opaquely. “A girlfriend, actually.”
Bruce chuckled. “George! Got yourself fixed up at last? A real stunner, no doubt!” Which is exactly what he thought she would not be. He could just imagine the sort of girl George would end up with. She would be the absolute bottom of the heap; bargain-basement material. Sensible shoes. Markedly overweight. Dull as ditchwater. And probably from Crieff into the bargain! That girl he used to see–what was her name?–Sharon somebody or other, who lived with her parents in one of those little bungalows off the Comrie Road; that sort of girl. Poor George! Bruce was uncharitable about his home town. There was nothing wrong with Crieff, of course, but that was not the way he saw it. He had escaped to Edinburgh and he entertained the idea that one day he might even escape from Edinburgh to a wider world beyond that. New York? Sydney? Perhaps even Paris? Any of these was possible, he thought, if one has talent, which, he told himself, he had. But poor old George! It was back to Crieff for him.
77. Bruce Gets What He Deserves
George and Sharon arrived at Bruce’s new shop in St Stephen Street shortly before six. They were slightly late, which irritated Bruce, and indeed caused him more than passing concern. But at last there they were, standing outside the door, peering in through the glass panel. And it was that girl with him, Bruce observed. He had been right. That girl from Crieff, Sharon McClung, had finally got her talons into George. He smiled to himself as he went to open the door to his friend. We all get what we deserve in this life, he thought.
Now that was tempting the intervention of Nemesis! For Bruce, of all people, to invoke the principle of desert was asking for any lurking Greek goddess, underemployed, perhaps, because of the caution of others, to strike in a demonstrable and convincing way. And indeed it was Bruce’s bad luck that Nemesis had been stalking around that part of Edinburgh at precisely that time, hoping to detect members of the Scottish Parliament managing their expense accounts in a way which might be expected to attract her attention. She had failed to find anything but good behaviour, though, and so she was receptive to any reckless talk by the unworthy. And there it came in the form of Bruce’s thoughts from St Stephen Street. Swiftly she turned the corner and poked her comely head into the basement premises into which a slightly fleshy couple had been admitted by the occupant. Nemesis took one look at Bruce and knew in an instant that here was one who had been in the long tutelage of her fellow myth, Narcissus. She rubbed her incorporeal hands with glee.
“George!” enthused Bruce. “Welcome to the shop!” He turned to Sharon. “And you, Sharon! It’s amazing to see you after how long? Yonks and yonks! And you’re looking great, too!”
And he thought: look at her hair! Poor girl. And that haggis-shaped figure. Imagine being married to her. Mind you, he thought, poor George looks like a mealie-pudding himself, so perhaps it’s a good match.
He moved forward and gave Sharon a peck on the cheek. Poor girl. How she had longed for him to do that all those years ago when she had sat there in the chemistry class at Morrison’s Academy and stared at him in utter longing (along with nine other girls–all the girls, in fact, except one, and Bruce knew the reason why she was cool towards him. Oh yes, he did. With her short hair and her lack of interest in him. It stuck out a mile).
He shook hands with George. “So you and Sharon are an item! You kept that pretty secret!”
George smiled proudly. “Actually, Bruce, you’re going to be one of the first to know. Sharon and I are getting engaged.” He looked fondly in Sharon’s direction and gave her hand an affectionate squeeze. “We decided yesterday, didn’t we, Shaz?”
Shaz! thought Bruce. Shaz! And what would she call him? You couldn’t do much with George’s name.
“But that’s really great!” Bruce said. “Engaged. And…”
“And we’re going to get married in March,” George went on. “In Crieff.”
“In Crieff!” said Bruce. “That’s great. You’ll be able to have all the old crowd there.”
“With a reception at the Hydro,” said George.
“A good choice,” said Bruce, and thought: I suppose I’ll have to go. He is my business partner, after all, and I’ll be expected to be there.
He turned to Sharon. “Where are you living these days, Sharon?”
Sharon, who had been looking at George, now turned to Bruce. She looked him up and down in a way which he thought was a bit forward on her part. Who was she to look at him in that way, as if passing silent comment on his appearance?
“Crieff,” she said. “I’ve been working in Perth, but I’ve been staying with my folks. They’re getting on a bit these days.”
There was something in her tone which discomforted Bruce. It was as if she was challenging him in some way–challenging him to say that there was something wrong with continuing to live in Crieff.
“And what do you do in Perth?” he asked. “I’m a bit out of touch. You went off to uni in Dundee, didn’t you?”
Sharon nodded, fixing Bruce with a stare which suggested that again she was challenging him to say something disparaging about Dundee.
“I did law,” she said. “Now I’m a lawyer. I’m working for one of the Perth firms. I do a lot of court work.”
“Sharon goes to court virtually every day,” George said proudly. “The sheriff said the other day that she had argued a case very well. He said that in court.”
“He’s a very nice man,” said Sharon. “He always listens very carefully to what you have to say.”
“Great,” said Bruce. He looked at George. “Now, I must show you the ropes round here. I’ve spent the day putting in stock. See. It took me hours. And see that section over there, Sharon, Wine for Her. See it?”
Sharon glanced at the four shelves pointed out by Bruce. Then she turned round and glared at him. “Why have you put Wine for Her?” she asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that these are wines that women are more likely to enjoy,” said Bruce.
Sharon glanced quickly at George, who shifted slightly on his feet. Then she turned back to face Bruce. “And why do you think women would want different wines from men? Have they got different taste buds?”
Bruce met her stare. He was not going to have this haggis talking to him like that. And he knew what sort of wine she would like: Blue Nun! Perhaps he would give her a bottle of it as an engagement present.
“Yes,” he said. “Women like sw
eeter wine. And they like wine bottles with more feminine labels. Everybody knows that.” He paused. This was a waste of time talking to Sharon. He needed to talk to George about business. “Anyway, George, we have to talk about this place. I’ve spent a bit of money on the stock, so that if we could talk about that side of things for a mo…”
Sharon said: “George has changed his mind, Bruce. Sorry. Now that we’re getting married. We’re going to buy a house in Stirling. We’ll need the money for that. Sorry, Bruce.”
Bruce said nothing for a moment. At the door, the faintest stirring of air, a slight shift of light, was all there was to indicate a triumphant Nemesis returning in satisfaction to the street outside.
78. Old Business
“You gave me your word,” said Bruce, chiselling out the sentence. “You gave me your word, George. You told me that you would come in on this business with me. It was in the Cumberland Bar.”
The words the Cumberland Bar were uttered with all the solemnity with which one might invoke the name of a place in which commercial promises are scrupulously observed–the words the floor at Lloyds, for example, might be spoken in the same tone. But on this occasion, even the mention of the locus of the conversation failed to have the desired effect.