“You must have been looking in the wrong place, Bertie,” she said. “Maybe you were looking at the other side of the street. Our car is on the left as you go up the hill. Did you look on the right?”
“No,” said Bertie. “I looked on the left. And it wasn’t there, Mummy. I promise you.”
Irene frowned. Bertie was a very observant little boy and would normally not make a mistake about this sort of thing. But it was impossible that she had inadvertently parked the car somewhere else and forgotten about it. That was the sort of thing that Stuart was always doing; indeed, on one occasion he had parked the car in Glasgow and then returned to Edinburgh by train. That had been disastrous, as the car had sat across there for weeks, if not months. Perhaps Stuart had used the car since she had parked it. That would provide a rational explanation for its absence from the street, if it was absent; but then had Stuart driven the car over the past few days? He had not said anything about it, and he had hardly had the time to do much driving, as he and his colleagues were all working against a looming deadline on a report at his office in the Scottish Executive and he was not coming back home until after ten at night. It was unlikely, then, that such a simple explanation would be found.
“I tell you what, Bertie,” she said. “We’ll take a little walk and see whether the car is there or not. I need to take more exercise now that I’m pregnant.”
“Is it good for the baby?” asked Bertie, reaching out to lay a hand against his mother’s stomach.
“I’m sure it is,” said Irene. “Babies thrive if the maternal circulation is good. And a healthy mother means a healthy baby, Bertie!”
Bertie looked up at his mother. There was so much he wanted to say to her, but his conversations with her never seemed to go the way he wanted them to go. What he wanted to ask about was whether the arrival of the baby would change things for him.
He decided to try. “When the new baby arrives, Mummy,” he began, “will things be different?”
Irene smiled. “Oh yes,” she said. “Oh yes, they will! Babies make a terrible noise, I’m afraid, Bertie–even well-behaved Edinburgh babies! So we must expect a few disturbed nights until the baby settles. But you shouldn’t hear him at your end of the corridor. I’m sure you won’t be woken up.”
Bertie thought for a moment. “But what I was wondering about was whether you’ll be very busy. Will you be very busy, Mummy?”
“Of course,” said Irene. “New babies are very demanding creatures. Even you were demanding, Bertie. You sometimes became quite niggly for some reason. I used to play you Mozart to calm you down. It always worked. You loved ‘Soave sia il vento’, you know. You loved that. Così fan tutte, as you’ll recall. You adored Mozart when you were a baby. And you still do, of course.”
“But if you’re busy,” said Bertie carefully, “then you might have less time for me, Mummy. Is that right? You’ll have less time for me?”
Irene thought quickly. Poor little boy! Of course he was threatened; of course he felt insecure. He must be dreading the day when the new baby arrives and takes all my attention away from him. Oh poor Bertie!
“Bertie, carissimo,” she said, leaning down to enfold him in her arms. “You mustn’t think that for one moment. Not for one moment! Mummy will spend just as much time with you as before. Even more. I promise you that. Look, I’m crossing my heart. That’s how serious I am. I really mean it. You will have just as much time with me as you do now.”
Bertie struggled to release himself from his mother’s embrace, but it proved impossible, and he became limp. Perhaps if I go all floppy and stop breathing she will think that she’s smothered me, he thought. Then she’ll let me go.
Irene did release him, but only to adjust her hair, which had fallen over her face. “So, no more worries about that, Bertie,” she said, standing up.
Bertie nodded glumly. His real hope had been that the arrival of the new baby would so distract Irene that she would leave him, Bertie, alone. He wanted to spend less time with his mother, not more, and here she was telling him that the baby would make no difference. It was all very disappointing; a very bleak prospect indeed.
Irene went out of the room briefly to fetch her coat. Then they left the flat and began to walk up the street towards Drummond Place. It was a fine afternoon, with a gentle wind from the south-west. Although it was early autumn, the air was still warm, and there were still leaves on the trees in Drummond Place Gardens, even if many of them were now tinged with gold.
They reached the top of the road in complete silence.
“You see,” said Bertie. “No car.”
Irene shook her head. “I don’t know what to think,” she said.
“I do,” said Bertie. “It’s been stolen.”
13. An Average Scottish Face
When Stuart returned home that evening, Irene was in the sitting room with Bertie, playing a complicated card game of Bertie’s own invention, Running Dentist. The rules, which Bertie had explained at extreme length, and with great patience, seemed excessively complex to Irene and appeared to favour Bertie in an indefinable way, but the game was quick, and surprisingly enjoyable.
“Ah,” said Stuart, as he put down his briefcase. “Running Dentist! I take it that you’re winning, Bertie.”
“Mummy is doing her best,” said Bertie. “She’s really trying.”
Stuart glanced at Irene. He knew that she was a bad loser, and that it was hard for her when Bertie won a game, as he so often did.
“It’s a very difficult game to win,” observed Irene, “unless you happen to be the person who invented the rules.”
She laid her cards down on the table and looked up at Stuart. She had been thinking for some time of what she might say to him about the car. Although it was not Stuart’s fault that the car had been stolen–she could hardly blame him for that–in some inexpressible way she felt that he was responsible for this situation. He had, after all, brought the car back from Glasgow after its long sojourn there, and had brought home the wrong car. She had every right to feel aggrieved, she told herself.
“The car,” she said simply.
Stuart gave a start. She noticed his face cloud over; guilt, she thought. Guilt.
“What about it?” he said. He tried to sound unconcerned, but she could sense that he was worried.
“It’s been stolen,” chipped in Bertie. “Mummy left it at the top of the street, and it isn’t there now. We checked.”
“Yes,” said Irene. “Bertie’s probably right–it’s been stolen.”
Stuart shrugged. “These things happen. But there we are.” He hesitated for a moment. “I’m not at all sure why anybody would want to steal a car like that, but I suppose an opportunistic thief…”
“Be that as it may,” interrupted Irene, “the fact of the matter is that this puts us in a very tricky position.” She paused. “I’m surprised that you don’t realise what it is.”
“I don’t see what the problem is,” Stuart countered. “The car is hardly worth anything. And we very rarely use it.”
Bertie looked at his father in dismay. He was proud of their car, in the way all small boys are of their family cars, and he could not understand why his father should be so dismissive of it.
Irene sighed. It was a pointed sigh, as sighs sometimes are, not one cast into the air to evaporate, but one calculated to descend, precisely and with great effect, on a target.
“The problem,” she said quietly, “is that the car had already been stolen. When you went through to Glasgow and found that the car was not where you had so carelessly left it–I shall pass over that, of course–your new friend, Fatty O’Whatever…”
“Lard O’Connor,” interjected Stuart. “He’s called Lard O’Connor, and I wish you wouldn’t keep referring to him as Fatty.”
“That may be,” said Irene in a steely tone, “but the fact is that this Lard character then arranged for a similar car to be stolen to order. You brought back a stolen car–one masquerading under
our Edinburgh number plates, but at heart a stolen Glasgow car! Now the stolen car has been stolen again. And that means that we can hardly go to the police and report that our car has been re-stolen.”
“But we don’t have to tell them that we suspect it’s a stolen car,” he said. “As far as we’re concerned, that’s the car I left in Glasgow. The fact that it has only four gears rather than five is neither here nor there.”
Irene stared at him. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” she said. “I really can’t believe it…” She paused and threw a glance at Bertie. “Bertie, it’s time for you to go to your space and finish your Italian exercises.”
Bertie looked at his father, as if for confirmation of the order, but there was no support for him in that quarter and he picked up his playing cards and left.
“Now,” said Irene. “Now we can get down to brass tacks. I can’t believe that you openly encouraged deception in front of Bertie. Are you out of your mind, Stuart? Here I am, doing my utmost to bring Bertie up with the right set of values, and you go and torpedo the whole thing by suggesting that we lie to the police.”
Stuart hesitated. The first few faltering steps he had taken to assert himself–steps which followed his successful completion of an assertiveness training workshop at the office–had somewhat petered out. Now, faced with Irene’s accusations of delinquent behaviour, he was silenced. Sensing this, Irene continued.
“We are, unfortunately, in a position where we can do nothing at all,” she said. “We can’t go to the police. We can’t claim the insurance. In fact, we have to forget that our car ever existed.”
Stuart blinked. Forget you ever had a car. It sounded like the sort of thing that gangsters said when they threatened one another. And yet here was his wife saying it to him–and he had no answer. He turned away without saying anything to Irene and made his way into the bathroom. He took off his jacket. He took off his tie. Then he filled the basin with tepid water and washed his face. He looked up, into the mirror, and muttered to himself: “Statistician, middle-ranking, married, one son, one mortgage.” He looked more closely at his face. “Average Scottish face,” he continued. “Small lines beginning to appear around the eyes.” He stopped, and thought. Who was having fun? Other people in the office were having fun. They went to bars and held parties. They went off on weekends to Paris and Amsterdam. He never went anywhere. They had girlfriends and boyfriends. The girlfriends and boyfriends went with them to Paris and Amsterdam. They all had fun there.
“It’s about time you had some fun yourself,” he murmured, almost mournfully. Then he brightened and said: “Well, it’s possible, isn’t it?”
14. Distressed Oatmeal
Matthew left Pat looking after the gallery while he went off to seek solace in coffee. Her disclosure of Wolf’s existence had not only surprised him; he had always assumed that Pat had no boyfriend and that she would be available when he eventually got round to making up his mind about her. But added to this surprise was a stronger feeling, one which made him feel raw inside. This was jealousy. How could Pat have somebody else? And how could she spend time with this other person, this so-called Wolf (what a completely ridiculous name!), when she might spend time with him? He disliked Wolf, intensely, although he had not met him. He would be some awful braying type from somewhere in the south of England, the sort brought up to be completely self-confident, even arrogant. And the thought that Pat should waste herself on such a person was almost too much to bear.
When Matthew entered Big Lou’s coffee bar, Big Lou herself was standing in her accustomed position behind the stainless-steel service bar, reading a small book. It was evidently compelling reading, and she barely gave Matthew a glance as he came through the door. Matthew nodded to her and went to sit down in his usual place. Glumly, he opened the newspaper on the table in front of him and scanned the headlines. His state of distraction, though, was such that not even the headlines were taken in, let alone the reports.
Big Lou said something to him, which he missed. She looked at him sharply and repeated herself.
“I said that’s an orra jumper you’re wearing,” she said.
Matthew stared at her. He was vaguely familiar with the Scots word “orra”, but he thought it applied to tractormen, for some reason. An orra man was a farm worker, was he not? And why would Big Lou refer to his cashmere sweater in those terms? He felt flustered and annoyed.
“What’s wrong with you this morning?” Big Lou went on. “You’re looking awfie ill.”
“I’m not ill,” said Matthew curtly.
Big Lou seemed taken aback by the rebuff. “Of course by ill, I don’t mean ill in the way in which you mean it,” said Big Lou. “In Arbroath, when we say that somebody’s ill-looking we just mean that they don’t look themselves. That’s all.”
“I don’t care what you say in Arbroath,” said Matthew. And immediately regretted his rudeness. Matthew was, by nature, a courteous person and it was unlike him to speak in such a manner. Big Lou knew this and realised that something was amiss. But the way to deal with it, she thought, was not to barge in and ask him what was troubling him, but to allow him to bring it up in his own good time. So she said nothing, and busied herself with the preparation of his cappuccino.
Matthew sat in misery. I’m useless, he thought. Nobody likes me. I have no friends. I have no girlfriend. And who would want to go out with me? Name one person who has ever expressed an interest. Name just one. He thought. No names came to mind.
He looked down at the sleeves of his distressed-oatmeal cashmere sweater and then at the legs of his crushed-strawberry trousers. Perhaps Big Lou was right. Perhaps the sweater was really no more than an orra jumper, whatever that meant. And as for his trousers, who wore crushed strawberry these days? Matthew was not sure what the answer to that question was. Somebody wore them, obviously, but perhaps he was not that sort of person. Perhaps he had just succeeded in making himself look ridiculous.
He sipped at the coffee Big Lou had now brought him, and she, back behind the bar, had returned to her book. She sneaked a glance at Matthew. I should not have said that, she thought. Heaven knows what he spent on that jumper. And as for those trousers…Poor Matthew! There was not a nasty bone in his body, which was more than one could say about most men, Big Lou thought, but somehow Matthew just seemed to miss it.
Matthew drained the last dregs of coffee from his cup. He wanted another cup, but he felt so miserable that he could hardly bring himself to speak to Lou. Sensing this, Big Lou quietly prepared another cappuccino and brought it over to him. She sat down next to him.
“Matthew,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude to you.”
Matthew looked up from the table. “And I didn’t mean to be rude to you either, Lou,” he said.
“You’re unhappy?” Big Lou’s voice was gentle. “I can tell.” Those who have known unhappiness, as Big Lou had, knew its face, knew its ways.
Matthew nodded.
“That girl?” asked Big Lou.
Matthew said nothing, but he did not need to speak. Big Lou could tell.
“I always liked her,” said Big Lou. “And I can understand why you feel the way you do. She’s very bonny.”
“And we get on very well together,” mumbled Matthew. “I thought that maybe…But now she’s gone and got herself a boyfriend. Some student type.”
Big Lou reached out and took his hand. “I was in love for years with somebody who had somebody else,” she said. “I know what it’s like.”
“It’s such a strange feeling,” mused Matthew. “Have you noticed, Lou, how it feels when you know that somebody doesn’t like you? I’m not talking about love or anything like that–just somebody you know makes it clear that they don’t like you. And you know that you’ve done nothing to deserve this. You’ve done them no wrong. They just don’t like you. It’s an odd feeling, isn’t it?”
Big Lou looked up at the ceiling. Matthew was right. It was an odd feeling. One felt someh
ow that it was unfair that the other felt that way. But it was more than that. The unmerited dislike of another made one think less of oneself. We are enlarged by the love of others; we are diminished by their dislike.
“I’m sure that Pat likes you,” said Big Lou. “And perhaps she would like you even more if she knew how you felt about her. Have you ever told her that?”
“Of course not,” said Matthew. Big Lou should have known better than to ask that question. This was Edinburgh, after all. One did not go about the place declaring oneself like some lovesick Californian.
15. No Flowers Please
It may be that Big Lou would have urged Matthew to reveal his feelings to Pat–that would have been in keeping with her general tendency to speak directly–but if that is what she had been on the verge of doing, she was prevented from saying anything by the arrival of Eddie. Big Lou was now engaged to Eddie, the chef who had returned from Mobile, Alabama, with the intention of persuading Big Lou to marry him. She had readily agreed, as she loved Eddie, for all his inconsiderate treatment of her in the past, and an engagement notice had duly appeared in the personal columns of both The Scotsman, for the information of the general public, and The Courier, for the information of those who lived in Arbroath. The wording of this notice had been unfortunate, as Eddie had chosen it without consulting Big Lou. Both families are relieved to announce, it read, the engagement of Miss Lou Brown to Mr Edward McDougall. No flowers please.
When she had seen the notice, Big Lou’s hand had shot to her mouth in a gesture of shock. She was aghast, and she had telephoned Eddie immediately, her fingers shaking as she dialled his number. Before he answered, though, she replaced the handset in its cradle. Eddie was not good with words, and he had probably not realised how ridiculous the notice sounded. And very few people read such notices, in Edinburgh at least; it was different, of course, in Arbroath, where the personal columns were scoured for social detail by virtually everybody.