“That’s because he played such a great pantomime villain,” said Stuart. “And anyway, that’s simply justice, isn’t it? We like to see people being punished for what they’ve done. Is that really Schadenfreude?”
Irene’s answer came quickly. “Yes. If it weren’t, then punishment would be handed out with regret.”
“This hurts me more than it hurts you?” said Stuart. “That kind of thing?”
Irene nodded. “Precisely. It’s interesting, you know. I’ve never felt the desire to punish anybody. And I’ve never felt any pleasure in the discomfort of others.”
Stuart looked at her. Crossword clues were forming in his mind. All colours out on this monument, except one (whited sepulchre). Or, more simply: Sounds like one recumbent, teller of untruths (liar).
“Are you sure?” he said mildly.
“Of course I am,” said Irene. “I, at least, know what I think.”
Stuart thought for a moment. There was much he could say to this, but there was no point in engaging with Irene when he was tired after the office. His head was reeling with the statistics with which he had wrestled during his day’s work, and there was an unfinished, and possibly unfinishable, crossword in his briefcase. He decided that he would have a shower and then he might play a card game with Bertie before dinner. Bertie always won the games because he had invented them, and the rules inevitably favoured him, but Stuart enjoyed these contests between a mind of thirty-six and one of six. The advantage, he thought, was with six.
There was to be no time for a shower.
“That’s the bell,” said Irene. “Would you answer it, Stuart? You’re closest.”
Stuart went to the front door and opened it. Two burly policemen, radios pinned to their jackets and belts weighed down by truncheons, stood on the doorstep. Stuart looked at them in surprise. Had Bertie been up to some sort of mischief? Surely not. Irene…? For a brief moment he felt fear brush its wings against him. Yesterday was the day that Irene had gone to report the theft of their car, and she had lied. She had lied to the police. A quinquennium within, just punishment? he thought: five years inside.
“Mr Pollock?”
He felt the relief flood within him. They did not want her; they wanted him, and he had never lied to the police.
His voice sounded high-pitched when he answered. “Yes. That’s me.”
“Your car, sir,” said the policeman. “We’ve found it.”
Stuart smiled. “Really? That’s very good of you. Quick work.”
The policeman nodded. “Yes. We found it this morning, up in Oxgangs. It was parked by the side of a road. It would seem that whoever took it had abandoned it.”
“I’m surprised,” said Stuart. “It’s a nice car…”
“Old cars like that are often abandoned,” went on the policeman. “Not worth keeping.”
“I see.”
The senior policeman took out a notebook. “Perhaps you can explain, though, sir,” he said. “Perhaps you can explain why, when we searched this vehicle, we found a firearm hidden under the driver’s seat? Perhaps you have something to say about that?”
Stuart was vaguely conscious of the fact that Bertie had slipped into the corridor and was standing immediately behind him. Now Bertie stepped forward and tugged at his father’s sleeve. “Tell him, Daddy,” said Bertie. “Tell him about how we got that car from Mr O’Connor. Tell him about how we can tell that it’s not really our car at all.”
“Not now, Bertie,” whispered Stuart. “Go and finish your scales.”
The policemen looked keenly at Bertie. “What’s that, son?” one asked. “What do you mean when you say that it wasn’t your car?”
“It wasn’t,” said Bertie. “Our car had five gears. That one had four. It was a car which Mr O’Connor gave us.”
“Interesting,” said the senior policeman. “A Mr O’Connor gave you a car. Then a firearm is found in it which I imagine you’re going to say you know nothing about.”
“I don’t,” said Stuart. “I had no idea.”
“It must have belonged to this Mr O’Connor then?” asked the policeman.
“Yes,” said Bertie. “It must be his. Or his friend Gerry’s.”
The senior policeman smiled. “I think I’d like to ask a few questions,” he said, adding, and looking at Bertie as he spoke, “from you first.”
31. Bertie Makes His Statement
“Now then, Bertie,” said the policeman, as he took his seat in the kitchen. “When we talk to youngsters we like to check up that they know the difference between the truth and…”
He was cut short by Irene. “Of course Bertie knows the difference,” she snapped. “He’s a very advanced…”
The policeman glowered at her. “Excuse me, Mrs Pollock,” he said. “I’m talking to this young man, not to you.”
Irene opened her mouth to say something more, but was gestured to by Stuart, who raised a finger to his lips.
“Thank you,” said the policeman. “Now then, Bertie, do you know what I mean when I say that you must tell the truth?”
Bertie, perched on the edge of his chair, nodded gravely. “Yes,” he said. “I know the difference. I know that you mustn’t tell fibs, although Mummy…” He was about to point out that Irene told a whole series of fibs at the police station, but decided that it would be impolitic, and he stopped himself.
“Well,” said the policeman. “Perhaps you’d care to tell us about your car. Is it your car, or is it somebody else’s?”
“Well, really…” snorted Irene, only to be silenced by a warning look from the policeman.
“We used to have a car,” said Bertie. “Mummy and Daddy were always arguing about it.”
“Oh?” said the policeman. “Why was that? Was it anything to do with where it came from?”
“No,” said Bertie. “It wasn’t that. It was just that they used to forget where they parked it. Daddy left it in Tarbert once, and then he forgot that he had driven through to Glasgow and he came back by train.”
“Leaving the car in Glasgow?” prompted the policeman.
Bertie glanced at Stuart. “He didn’t mean to leave it there,” he said. “He forgot. Maybe it’s because he’s forty. I think you begin to forget things when you’re forty.”
The two policemen exchanged a glance. Irene was staring at Bertie, as if she was willing him to stop, but Bertie had his eyes fixed on the buttons of the policeman’s jacket. It was easier talking to this policeman, he thought, than to Dr Fairbairn. Perhaps that was because this policeman was not mad, unlike Dr Fairbairn. It was hard to talk to mad people, thought Bertie. You had to be very careful about what you said. By contrast, you could tell policemen everything, because you knew you were safe.
He wondered whether the policeman knew Mr O’Connor. He thought that the two of them would get on quite well if they met. In fact, he could just imagine the policeman and Mr O’Connor driving off together to the Burrell Collection in Mr O’Connor’s green Mercedes-Benz, talking about football, perhaps. Would they support the same football team? he wondered. Perhaps they would.
“So you went off to Glasgow?” prompted the policeman.
“Yes,” said Bertie. “Daddy and I went off to Glasgow together.” And for a moment he remembered; and recalled how he had been happy in the train with his father, with the ploughed fields unfolding so quickly past the window and the rocking motion of the train upon its rails, and the hiss of the wind. And they had talked about friends, and how important friends were, and he had not wanted the journey to end.
“And you found the car where Daddy had left it in Glasgow?” asked the policeman.
Bertie shook his head. “No. Our car had gone. And that’s when Gerry invited us into Mr O’Connor’s house. And Mr O’Connor said…”
The policeman held up a hand. “Hold on,” he said. “This Mr O’Connor–can you tell me a wee bit about him?”
“He’s very fat,” said Bertie. “Fatter even than you. And he was no good a
t cards. I won lots of money off him. But then he told Gerry to go and find our car, and Gerry did. He came back with our car. But it wasn’t exactly the same car. It was another car just like ours, but a bit different.”
The policeman looked thoughtful. “And did Daddy know it wasn’t your car?”
Bertie hesitated. He was not sure about that. He knew that adults often knew things but tried to pretend that they did not, and he thought that this might be such a case. On the other hand, his father had asked him not to tell his mother, which suggested that he knew that the car was not theirs all along.
What should he say? He should not tell the policeman any fibs because that would be wrong, and, anyway, if you told lies it was well known that your pants went on fire. But his father had never actually said that he thought it was somebody else’s car; he had never actually said that.
“No,” said Bertie. “He didn’t know that it wasn’t our car. I was the only one who knew that. You see, the handles on the door…”
The policeman looked rather disappointed. Off the hook, he thought. It was typical. These types always get themselves off the hook. Reset–having stolen goods in one’s possession–was a difficult crime to prove. You had to establish that the person knew that the goods were stolen (or should have known, perhaps), and it would be difficult to get anything to stick in this case. But there was still this O’Connor character to deal with, and this might just be a very good chance to sort him out. It was Lard O’Connor that this wee boy was talking about–that was pretty clear. Lard O’Connor, also known as Porky Sullivan. That was him. Strathclyde Police would love to get something on him, and they would be pretty sick if it came from Lothian and Borders! Hah!
“Well, Bertie,” said the policeman, snapping shut his notebook. “You’ve been very helpful. This Mr O’Connor character, I’m afraid, is not a very nice man. I fear that he might have given your Daddy a stolen car.”
Bertie swallowed. He liked Mr O’Connor and he was sure the policeman was wrong. It was Gerry who had stolen the car, not Lard. Surely if Mr O’Connor could be given the chance to explain then all would be made clear. Gerry is the fibber, thought Bertie. He’s the one whose pants will go on fire.
“I’ve got Mr O’Connor’s address,” said Bertie brightly. “I wrote it down. You can go and talk to him.”
The policeman reached out to shake Bertie’s hand. “Well done, son,” he said. “We’ll do just that.”
Stuart closed his eyes.
32. Sirens and Shipwrecks
Pat was worried. Her unnerving encounter with her flatmate Tessie–an encounter that had ended in a barely-veiled threat of dire consequences should Pat have anything to do with Wolf–had left her speechless. The threat, in fact, was the last thing that Tessie uttered before she walked out of the room, lips pursed, her expression calculated to leave Pat in no doubt of the seriousness of her intent.
For a few minutes after Tessie had left, Pat had contemplated following her into her room and asking her precisely what she meant by the threat. Yet it had been unambiguous enough, and Tessie might well merely have repeated it. Perhaps, then, she should assure her that she had in no sense encouraged Wolf and that she had no intention of doing so. That would, no doubt, reassure the other girl, but it would also amount to a complete capitulation in the face of aggression. It was rather like giving in to blackmail: if you did that, then it would simply come back again and again.
Her first instinct had been to telephone her father for advice. But then she decided that she could not go running to him over every setback. He would be supportive, of course, and patient too, but she could not burden him with this. What would he think of her if she confessed to him that she was attracted to a boy called Wolf who already had a girlfriend, and that girlfriend was her own flatmate? She could explain that she had not actually set out to attract Wolf (well she had, really: she had waited by the notice-board at the end of the seminar purely because he would walk past her). No, it would be better to talk to somebody else–somebody more her own age who would understand; somebody she knew reasonably well, but not too well; somebody like…Matthew.
There were several good reasons why she should talk to Matthew, not the least of these being that she had been feeling guilty about misleading him over Wolf. She wanted to make a clean breast of that to Matthew, and she could take the opportunity to talk to him about the awkward situation that had arisen in the flat. Matthew was a good listener. He had always been kind to her and had, on occasion, come up with useful advice. And if she told him the truth about Wolf, then she could also convincingly tell him that she thought of him as a confidant and not as anything else.
That day, following the confrontation with Tessie, she had a lecture to attend and planned to spend a couple of hours after that in the University Library. Matthew would be expecting her at twelve-thirty, so that she could look after the gallery while he went off for lunch, and she would stay there for several hours after he returned, as it was a Wednesday, and for some reason Wednesday afternoons in the gallery tended to be rather busy. She arrived in the lecture hall ten minutes early, and she was one of the first there. She picked a seat in the middle, behind a small group of students who were poring over a letter which one of them had received, and were laughing at the contents. She sat there, her pad of paper opened at the ready, as she paged through a photocopied article on proportion in the early Renaissance. It was a rather strange article, she thought, as the author was one of those people who believed that the ratio of phi would be found in every work of art of any significance. Even the human face could have lines superimposed on it in such a way as to come up with phi, and the more beautiful the face appeared, the more would the distance between the eyes and the length of the nose and such measurements all embody phi. Could this be true?
Suddenly, she became aware of somebody beside her and looked up from her article. Wolf. He had slipped into the seat beside her and had half-turned to smile at her.
“Phi,” he said.
For a moment Pat was confused. Had Wolf said phi?
“What did you say?” she asked.
“I just said hi,” said Wolf, smiling at her. And she thought: those teeth.
She tucked the article away in her bag. The hall was filling up now, and there was a hubbub of conversation.
“It’s Fantouse again, isn’t it?” said Wolf. “Wake me up if I fall asleep.” He closed his eyes in imitation of sleep and Pat noticed that with his eyes shut he looked vulnerable, like a little boy. And his lips were slightly parted, and she thought…this was very dangerous. It would be just too complicated if she became involved with Wolf. Tessie would be bound to find out, and if that happened the most appalling consequences could ensue. She would have to be strong. It was perfectly possible to be strong about these things, to tell oneself that the person in question meant nothing to one, that he was not all that good-looking and that one’s stomach was not performing a somersault and one’s pulse was not racing. That was what one could tell oneself, and Pat now did. But it did not work, and any private attempts at indifference which she might try to affect would be of even less use later on in the lecture, when Wolf’s knee came to rest against hers under the writing surface which ran shelf-like in front of each seat. The knee moved naturally, not in a calculated nudge, but with that natural looseness of relaxation, casually, and this, for Pat, was the defining moment. If I leave my own knee where it is, she thought, then I send a signal to Wolf that I reciprocate, that I consent to this contact. And if I move it, then that will be an equally clear signal that I want to keep my distance. And I should want to do that…I have to.
Then she thought: there will be others. I don’t need this boy. This room is full of boys and plenty of them are as attractive as this boy on my right…She looked up at the ceiling. She knew that she should not look at Wolf, because that would be to look into the face of the sirens and face inevitable shipwreck; but she did. “Phi,” she muttered.
“Phi yourself,”
whispered Wolf. “Little Red Phiding Hood.”
33. The Ethics of Dumping Others
In the corridor outside, in the midst of the post-Fantousian chatter, Pat turned to Wolf and addressed him in an urgent whisper.
“I’m really sorry,” she said. “I’ve thought about it. I really have. But we can’t…”
Wolf reached forward and placed a hand on her arm. “Listen,” he said. “You don’t know what’s really happening. Just let me tell you.”
Pat brushed his hand away. “I know exactly what’s going on,” she said. “You’re seeing Tessie. That’s it. You can’t see both of us.”
Wolf smiled. “But that’s what I’ve been wanting to tell you about,” he said. “Tessie and I are…Well, I’m about to break up with her.”
Pat stared at him. He was taller than she was, but he was bending forward now, his face close to hers. She noticed that he had neglected to shave at the edge of his mouth and there was a small patch of blonde stubble. And his shirt was lacking a button at the top. The small details, the little signs of being human; and all the time this powerful, physical presence impressing itself upon her, weakening whatever resolve there had been before. How could she resist it? Why did beauty set such a beguiling trap? The answer to that lay in biology, of course–the imperative that none of us can fight against. In the presence of beauty we are utterly reduced, made to acknowledge our powerlessness.
“Does she know?” she asked.
Wolf dropped his gaze, and Pat knew that he was ashamed. “Yes,” he said.
Pat had not expected this reply, and she doubted that it was true. If Wolf had told Tessie of his intentions, then he would not have felt ashamed.
“You’ve told her?” she pressed. “You’ve told her that’s it over?”