The World According to Bertie (4 page)

8. A Whole New Vista of Dread for Bertie

Bertie mused on this as he looked out over Scotland Street. Life was very dull, he thought, but would undoubtedly improve when he turned eighteen and could leave home to go and live somewhere far away and exotic–Glasgow, perhaps; his friend Lard O'Connor had more or less promised him a job over there, and it would be fun to live in Glasgow and go with Lard to the Burrell Collection and places like that. But that was daydreaming, and Bertie knew that he had another twelve years of his mother before he could get away. Twelve years! Twelve achingly slow years–a whole lifetime, it seemed to Bertie.

Yes, life was difficult, and it was becoming all the more difficult now that Irene had had her new baby. Bertie had suggested that they could perhaps have it adopted, but this suggestion had not been taken seriously.

“But, Bertie, what a funny thing to say!” Irene had said, looking anxiously about the maternity ward in which Bertie, visiting his mother, had made the suggestion.

“But they need babies for adoption, Mummy,” Bertie had said. “I was reading about it in the newspaper. They said that there weren't enough babies to go round. I thought that maybe we could share our baby with somebody else. You always said it was good to share.”

Irene smiled weakly. “And of course it is. But there are some things you don't share, Bertie, and a baby is one of them.”

It was not that Bertie disliked Ulysses, as his mother had insisted on naming his new baby brother. When Irene had first announced her pregnancy to Bertie, he had been pleased at the thought of having a brother or sister. This was not because he wanted the company, but mainly because he thought that the presence of a baby would distract his mother's attention. Bertie did not dislike his mother; he merely wished that she would leave him alone and not make him do all the things that he was forced to do. If she was busy looking after a baby, then perhaps she would not have the time to take him to psychotherapy, or to yoga. Perhaps the baby would need psychotherapy and could go to Dr Fairbairn instead of Bertie. It was an entertaining thought; Bertie imagined the baby lying in his pram while Dr Fairbairn leaned over him and asked him questions. It would not matter at all if the baby could say nothing in reply; Bertie doubted very much if Dr Fairbairn paid any attention to anything said to him by anybody. Yoga would be more difficult, at least until the baby was a few months old. There were some very young children at Bertie's yoga class in Stockbridge–one of them just one year old. Perhaps they could try putting the baby into yoga positions by propping it up with cushions; he could suggest this to his mother and see what she thought.

Bertie's hopes, though, that he would be left more to his own devices were soon to be dashed on the immovable, rock-like determination of Irene to ensure that her two sons–Bertie and baby Ulysses–should undergo a process of what she called “mutuality bonding.” This programme had two objectives. One was that the arrival of the baby should be part of Bertie's education in understanding the whole process of child-nurture, something which girls and women understood but which, in Irene's view, often escaped boys and men. The other objective was that the relationship which grew up between the two boys would be one in which there was a full measure of reciprocity. Bertie would come to know the baby's needs, just as the baby, in the fullness of time, would come to know Bertie's needs.

The first of these objectives–that Bertie should be brought up to understand what it was to look after a baby–meant that right from the beginning he would have to shoulder many of the tasks which went with having a baby. Bertie would be fully instructed in the whole business of feeding the baby, and had already been shown how to operate a breast pump so that he could help his mother to express milk for the baby should breast feeding become uncomfortable, which Irene thought likely.

“The trouble is this,
carissimo
,” said Irene. “When you were a little baby yourself–and remember, that's just six short years ago–yes, six!–you tended to be a little–how shall we put it?–guzzly, and you bit Mummy a little hard, making Mummy feel a bit tender. You don't remember that, do you?”

Bertie looked away in horror; the sheer embarrassment of the situation was more than he could bear.

“Well, you did,” went on Irene. “So now Mummy has bought this special pump, and you can help to put it on Mummy and get the milk out for baby when he comes along. That will be such fun. It will be just like milking a cow.”

Bertie looked at his mother in horror. “Do I have to, Mummy?”

“Now then, Bertie,” said Irene. “It's all part of looking after your new little brother. You don't want to let him down, do you?”

“I'll play with him,” promised Bertie. “I really will. I'll show him my construction set. I'll play the saxophone for him and let him touch the keys. I can do all of that, Mummy.”

Irene smiled. “All in good time, Bertie. Tiny babies can't do that sort of thing to begin with. Most of the things you'll be doing will be very ordinary baby things, such as changing him.”

Bertie was very quiet. He looked at his mother, and then looked away. “Changing him?” he said in a very small voice.

“Yes,” said Irene. “Babies need a lot of changing. They can't ask to go to the bathroom!”

Bertie cringed. He hated it when his mother talked about such things, and now a whole new vista of dread opened up before him. The thought was just too terrible.

“Will I have to, Mummy…?” He left the sentence unfinished; this was even worse, he thought, than the breast pump.

“Of course you will, Bertie,” said Irene. “These things are very natural! When you were a baby, Bertie, I remember…”

But Bertie was not there to listen. He had run out of the kitchen and into his room; his room, which had been painted pink by his mother, then white by his father, and then pink again by his mother.

9. So Who Exactly Are Big Lou's Big Friends?

Big Lou always opened her coffee bar at nine o'clock in the morning. There was no real reason for her to do this, as it was only very rarely that a customer wandered in before ten, or sometimes even later. But for Big Lou, the habit of starting early, ingrained in her from her childhood in Arbroath, resisted any change. It seemed to her the height of slothfulness to start the morning at ten o'clock–a good five hours after most cows had been milked–and it was decadence itself to start at eleven, the hour when Matthew occasionally opened the gallery.

“Half the day's gone by the time you unlock your door,” she had reproached Matthew. “Eleven o'clock! What if the whole country started at eleven o'clock? What then? Would folk lie in their beds until ten? Would they?”

“No,” said Matthew. “Most people will start much earlier than that. Nine o'clock seems reasonable to me.”

Big Lou snorted in disbelief. “It would be an awfie odd day that we saw you about the place at nine,” she said.

Matthew smiled tolerantly. “Reasonable for other people,” he said. “What's the point of opening a gallery at nine when it's well-known that nobody buys pictures before noon, or at least before eleven? I'd just sit there doing nothing if I opened up at nine.”

Big Lou rolled her eyes. “That's what you do anyway, isn't it?” she said. “And I doubt that you spend more than a few hours a day at your desk, what with your coffee drinking and those lunches you have. Two hours a day, something like that?”

Matthew shrugged. “Well, Lou, it wouldn't do you much good if I stopped drinking your coffee. You should be encouraging me, not making me feel guilty.”

Big Lou said nothing. She liked Matthew, and he liked her, and these exchanges were good-natured, even if Big Lou meant every word of her criticism. But now it was time for her to prepare Matthew's coffee, and besides, there was an important piece of information for her to impart to Matthew.

While she clamped the grounds container in place, Big Lou asked Matthew over her shoulder whether he had heard of Cyril's misfortune. Matthew had not, and while the espresso machine steamed and hissed, Big Lou related the melancholy story of Cyril's detention by the Lothian and Borders Police.

“Angus will be very upset,” Matthew ventured.

“Aye,” Lou said. “Cyril is his only real friend.”

Matthew thought this a bit extreme. “Oh, he's got other friends, I think. Domenica, for example.”

“She tolerates him,” said Big Lou. “But only just. Have you heard the way she talks about him when he's not there?”

“There are people down at the Cumberland Bar,” said Matthew. “He's got friends there.”

“Not much use having friends in a bar,” said Big Lou enigmatically. “Anyway, Cyril meant a lot to Angus. And now I expect they'll put him down. That's the way it is for dogs. Step out of line, and that's it. We had a dog in Arbroath that worried sheep and a farmer shot it. No questions. That's how it is for dogs.”

Matthew half-listened to this dire prediction. He was thinking of friendship: even if Angus had few friends–which he did not think was true–then how many close friends was it possible to have? Big Lou herself was hardly one to imply friendlessness on the part of Angus; Matthew had not heard her mention any friends, and he had always suspected that her life outside the coffee bar was a solitary one, immured, as she was, in her flat with all those books.

“What about you, Lou?” he asked. “You say that Angus doesn't have many friends, but how many do you have? I'm not trying to be rude, asking this question–I was just wondering.”

Big Lou reached for the polishing cloth. There was never any dirt on the bar, but that did not prevent her polishing it assiduously, staring into the reflective surface in the hope of finding a speck of something that she could rub away at.

“Friends?” she said. “Friends? I've got plenty, thank you very much, Matthew. Plenty of friends.”

Matthew, leaning against the bar, took a sip of coffee. “Here in Edinburgh?” he asked. “Or up in Arbroath?”

Big Lou polished energetically, moving her cloth in large circles that threatened to collide with Matthew's elbow. “Both places,” she said. “Arbroath and Edinburgh. And some in Glasgow and Dundee. Everywhere, in fact.”

“Who are your Edinburgh friends, Lou?” pressed Matthew. “Not counting us, of course.”

Big Lou glanced at him. “You're very inquisitive today,” she said. “But since you ask, there's Mags and Neil and Humphrey and Jill Holmes and…well, quite a few others. I've got my friends, you know. Probably more than you have, Matthew, come to think of it.”

Matthew smiled. “Maybe, Lou. Maybe.” He paused. “But, I hope you don't mind my asking, Lou: who are these people? We never see them in here, do we? Who are they? Mags, for instance, who's she?”

Big Lou finished her polishing with a final flourish and tucked her cloth away beneath the bar. “Mags,” she said, “since you ask, is a very good friend of mine. I met her on the corner of Eyre Crescent, on the way down to Canonmills. She was standing there when I walked past.”

Matthew stared at Big Lou. “You met her on the street? She was just standing there? And you went up to her and said…?”

“It wasn't like that,” said Big Lou. “Mags was working in the street when I went past. I stopped to have a word with her.”

Matthew rubbed his hands together. “This gets better and better, Lou,” he said. “Working in the street, Lou? What exactly was she doing in the street?”

“Working in the street,” said Big Lou in a matter-of-fact tone. “You see, Mags drives one of these small steamrollers that road crews use. She was sitting on her steamroller with a cigarette in her mouth and she bent down and asked me if I had a light. I didn't, but I said something about her steamroller and we started to chat.”

“Just like that?” said Matthew. “You started to chat? Two complete strangers?”

“Not complete,” said Big Lou. “Mags, you see, came from Arbroath. Unlike you, Matthew, she came from somewhere.”

Matthew looked crestfallen. She was right, though, he thought. My trouble is that I come from nowhere. Money, education–these give you freedom, but they can take you away from your roots, your place.

10. Matthew Is a Sexist (but a Polite One)

But Matthew wanted to know more about this Mags, the Madonna of the Steamroller, as he had now decided to call her. “Something interests me, Lou,” he began. “What sort of woman thinks of getting a job on a road crew? How did Mags end up doing that?”

Big Lou turned from her task–emptying the grounds container–and fixed Matthew with a stare. He looked back at her, unrepentant.

“Well?” said Matthew. “It's a fair enough question to ask, isn't it? One doesn't see all that many women working on the roads.”

“I thought that women could do anything these days,” said Big Lou coldly. “Or have I got it wrong? Can men still tell us what we can and cannot do?”

Matthew made a placatory gesture. “Don't get me wrong, Lou,” he said hurriedly. “I'm not suggesting that…”

“Well, what are you suggesting then?”

“All I was saying, Lou,” said Matthew, “was that there are some jobs in which it's still usual–that's all, just usual–to see men rather than women.”

Big Lou continued to stare at him. “Such as?”

Matthew had to think quickly. He was about to mention airline pilots, but then he remembered that on the last two flights that he had taken, a female voice had issued from the cockpit to welcome passengers. And nobody, it seemed, had been in the slightest bit surprised, except, perhaps, Matthew himself. But then the woman beside him, possibly noticing his reaction, had leaned over and whispered to him: “How reassuring to have a woman at the controls, isn't it? You do know, don't you, that women pilots are much, much safer than men? Men take risks–it's in the nature. Women are much more cautious.”

Matthew had nodded. “Of course,” he said. “Of course.”

So now he was having difficulty in thinking of examples. Firefighters? But then he remembered having seen a fire engine race past him the other day in Moray Place, and when he had looked at the crew he had seen not the usual male mesomorphs but a woman, clad in black firefighting gear, combing her hair.

“I saw a woman fire…fireperson, the other day, Lou,” he said brightly, hoping to distract Big Lou from the subject.

“Plenty of them,” said Lou. “But I'm waiting for you to come up with some for-instances. What jobs do women not do these days?”

“It was in Moray Place,” went on Matthew.

“Good class of fire over there,” said Lou. “None of your chippan fires in Moray Place. Flambé out of control maybe.”

“She was combing her hair,” said Matthew. And then, out of wickedness, he added, “and putting on lipstick. On the way to the fire. Putting on lipstick.”

Big Lou frowned. For a few moments she said nothing, then: “Well, it was Moray Place, wasn't it? A girl has to look her best…” She paused. “Not that I believe you, Matthew, anyway. She might have been combing her hair–you don't want your hair to get in the way when you're working, do you? But she would not have been putting on lipstick.”

Mathew was silent.

“Well, Matthew? I'm waiting.”

“Oh, I don't know, Lou,” said Matthew at last. “Maybe I'm just old-fashioned.”

“Maybe you need to think before you speak,” muttered Big Lou. She looked at him reproachfully. They liked each other, and she did not wish to make him uncomfortable. So she moved back to Mags. “You asked me why Mags does what she does. The answer, I think, is that she suffers from claustrophobia. She told me about it. If she's inside, she feels that she wants to get outside. So she needed work that took her outside all the time.”

“And her steamroller would be open,” mused Matthew. “No windows. No door.”

“Exactly,” said Big Lou. “That's Mags–an open-air girl.”

“It's a perfectly good job,” said Matthew. He paused. “But the men who work on the roads can be a little bit…how does one put it? A little bit…”

“Coarse?” asked Big Lou. “Is that what you were trying to say?”

Matthew nodded.

“Then you should say it,” said Big Lou. “Nae use beating aboot the bush. Say what you think. But always think first. Aye, they're coarse all right. They're always whistling at women and making crude remarks. That's what Mags says.”

“Very crude,” said Matthew. One did not find that sort of behaviour in art galleries, he reflected. Imagine if one did! A woman might go into a gallery and the art dealer would wolf-whistle. No, it would not happen.

“What are you smiling at?” asked Big Lou.

“Oh, nothing much,” said Matthew airily. “Just thinking about how different sorts of people go for different sorts of jobs.”

Big Lou shrugged. “No surprise there. Anyway, Mags worked on the crew for eight years and everyone treated her like one of the boys. They just accepted her and took no special notice of her. Then, one day, she ran her steamroller over a piece of jewellery that somebody had dropped in the street. One of the men found it flattened and held it up for everybody to laugh at. But Mags cried instead. She thought that it might have been of great sentimental value to somebody, and there it was completely destroyed. She cried.”

“I can understand that,” said Matthew.

“Well, that made all the difference for Neil,” said Big Lou. “He operated a pneumatic drill and had been like the rest of them and had treated Mags as one of the boys. Now he started to look at her. A day or two later, he asked her out. That's how they came to be together. They're very happy, Mags says.”

Matthew said nothing. He lifted his coffee to his lips and looked down into the detritus of the cup, the scraps of milkfoam. In the interstices of the big things of this world, he thought, were the hidden, small things, the small moments of happiness and fulfilment. People fell in love in all sorts of places; anywhere would do–amidst the noise and fumes of the daily world, in grim factories, in the most unpromising of offices, even, it would seem, amongst the din and dirt of roadworks. It could happen to anybody, at any time; even to me, he reflected, who am not really loved by Pat, not really. And who does not love her back, not really.