The World According to Bertie (7 page)

16. Domenica Is Left to Puzzle a Petty Theft

Antonia poured coffee into a blue-and-white Spode cup and passed it to Domenica. Her guest thanked her and carefully put it down on the kitchen table. The cup seemed familiar–in fact, she remembered that she had one exactly like it in her own flat, one which unfortunately had acquired a chip to the rim, more or less above the handle, just as this cup…She stopped herself. The cup which Antonia had handed her had a chip to the rim at exactly the same place.

She reached out and lifted the cup to her lips, taking the opportunity to examine the rim more closely as she did so. Yes, there it was, right above the handle, a small chip in the glazing, penetrating as far as the first layer of china, not enough to retire a well-loved cup, but clearly noticeable. She cradled the cup in her hands, feeling the warmth of the liquid within. Antonia had stolen her china! And if this cup had been removed, then what else had she pilfered during her occupancy of Domenica's flat?

She looked up at Antonia. It took a particularly blatant attitude, surely, to serve the dispossessed coffee in their own china. That was either the carelessness of the casual thief, or shamelessness of a high order. It was more likely, she decided, that Antonia had simply forgotten that she had stolen the cup, and had therefore inadvertently used it for Domenica's coffee. Presumably there were many thieves who did just that; who were so used to ill-gotten goods that they became blasé about them. And even worse criminals–murderers indeed–had been known to talk about their crimes in a casual way, as if nobody would sit up and take notice and report them. In a shameless age, when people readily revealed their most intimate secrets for the world to see, perhaps it was easy to imagine how the need for concealment might be forgotten.

Domenica remembered how, some years previously, she had been invited for a picnic by some people who had quite casually mentioned that the rug upon which they were sitting had been lifted from an airline. It had astonished her to think that these people imagined that she would not be shocked, or at least disapproving. She had wanted to say: “But that's theft!” but had lacked the courage to do that and had simply said: “Please pass me another sandwich.”

Later, when she had thought about it further, it occurred to her that the reason why they had been so open about their act of thievery was simply this: they did not consider it dishonest to steal from a large organisation. She remembered reading that people were only too willing to make false or exaggerated claims on insurance companies, on the grounds that they were big and would never notice it, nor were they slow to massage the figures of their expenses claims. All of this was simply theft, or its moral equivalent, and yet many of those who did it would probably never dream of stealing a wallet from somebody's pocket, or slipping their hand into a shopkeeper's till. What weighed with such people, it seemed to Domenica, was the extent to which the taking was personal.

Well, if that was the case–and it appeared to be so, in spite of the indefensibility of making such a distinction–then one would have thought that stealing one's friend's blue-and-white Spode cup was a supremely personal taking, especially when one's friend had let one stay in her flat for virtually nothing. That was the act of a true psychopath–one with no conscience whatsoever.

“Yes, synaesthesia,” said Antonia, pouring herself a cup of coffee into a plain white mug. “You know Edvard Munch's famous picture
The Scream
? That's a good example of the condition. Munch said that he was taking a walk one evening and saw a very intense bloodred sky. He then had an overpowering feeling that all of nature was screaming–one great, big, natural howl of pain.

“Now, as to my father,” Antonia went on. “His case is very simple. He thinks that numbers have colours. When you ask him what colour the number three is, without a moment's hesitation he says: ‘Why it's red, of course.' And ten, he says, is a shade of melancholy blue.”

Domenica thought for a moment. “But blue is often melancholy, isn't it? Or that's what I've always thought. Does that make me a synaesthetic?”

Antonia hesitated briefly before replying: “No, I don't think so. I think that is more a question of conditioning. We're told that blue is melancholy and so we associate that emotion with it. Just as Christmas is red, and white, being the colour of snow and ice, is cold. In my father's case, I suspect that when he was learning to read as a boy, he had a book which had the letters and numbers in different colours. The figure three was probably painted in red, and that association was made and stuck. Our minds are like that, aren't they? Things stick.

“The association between blue and melancholy,” Antonia continued, “is a cultural one. Somebody, a long time ago, a genuine synaesthetic perhaps, said: ‘I'm feeling blue,' and the expression caught on.”

“The birth of the blues,” said Domenica.

“Precisely,” agreed Antonia. She took a sip of her coffee. “Of course there are so many associations in our minds that it's not surprising that some get mixed up–wires get crossed. Whenever I hear certain pieces of music, I think of places, people, times. That's only natural.

“People are always doing that with popular music. They remember where they were when they listened to something that made an impression on them.”

“If you're going to San Francisco,” said Domenica suddenly, “be sure to wear some flowers in your hair…”

Antonia stared at her.

“A song,” explained Domenica. “Round about the late sixties, 1967, maybe. It makes me think not of San Francisco, but Orkney, because that's where I was when I listened to it. I loved it. And I can see Stromness, with its little streets, and the house I was staying in over the summer while I worked part-time in the hotel there. I was a student, and there was another student working there, a boy, and I suppose I was in love with him, although he never knew.”

Antonia was silent. She looked at Domenica. She had never thought of Domenica having a love life, but she must have, because we all fall in love, and some of us are sentenced to unrequited love, talking about it over cups of coffee in flats like this, with friends just like this, oddly comforted by the process.

17. A Restoration in Prospect–and a New Suspicion

Domenica looked about her. Antonia's flat was a mirror image of hers in the arrangement of its rooms. But whereas the original features of her flat had been largely preserved, Antonia's had suffered a bad 1970s experience. The original panelled doors, examples of which survived in Domenica's flat, had either been taken down in Antonia's and replaced with unpleasant frosted-glass doors–for what conceivable purpose? Domenica wondered–or their panels had been tacked over with plywood to produce an unrelieved surface. That, one assumed, was the same aesthetic sense which had produced the St James Centre, a crude cluster of grey blocks at the end of the sadly mutilated Princes Street, or, at a slightly earlier stage, had sought the turning of Princes Street into an urban motorway and the conversion of the Princes Street Gardens into a car park.

One might not be surprised when some of these things were done by those with neither artistic sense nor training, but both the St James Centre and the plan to slice the city in two with a motorway had been the work of architects and planners. At a domestic level, these were the very same people who put in glass doors and took out old fireplaces.

“Yes,” said Antonia. “I will have to do something about all this.”

Domenica pretended surprise for a moment, but Antonia had intercepted her glances and knew what she was thinking.

“Don't imagine for a moment that this is my taste,” Antonia warned. “I'm every bit as Georgian as you are.”

It was an amusing way of putting it, and they both laughed. Not everyone in the New Town lived a Georgian lifestyle, but some did. And of course Antonia and Domenica would find such people amusing with their insistence on period authenticity in their houses, although they themselves were equally inclined to much the same aesthetic.

Domenica waved a hand about her. “What are you going to do?”

“Just about everything,” said Antonia. “Those doors over there. The plywood will come off. Panels back. I'll free the shutters. Free the shutters–that's a rallying call in these parts, you know.”

Domenica looked at her friend. But her own shutters had indeed been freed, she had to admit.

“And then I'm going to take all the light fittings out,” Antonia went on. “All this…this stuff.” She pointed up at the spiky, angular light that was hanging from the ceiling. “And the fireplaces, of course. I shall go to the architectural salvage yard and see what they have.”

“You'll need a builder,” said Domenica, adding, with a smile, “We are mere women, you know.”

“Oh, I'm ready for that. You know, people are so worried about builders. They seem to have such bad experiences with them.”

“Perhaps it's that problem that builders have with their trousers,” Domenica mused. “You know that issue of…”

Antonia was dismissive of that. “Low trousers have never been a problem for me,” she said. “
Nihil humanum alienum mihi est
.
^*1
Although it is interesting–isn't it?–how trousers are getting lower each year. Or is it our age?”

Domenica thought for a moment. “You mean on young men? Young men's trousers?”

“Yes,” said Antonia. “It's now mandatory for them to show the top of their underpants above the trouser waist. And the trousers get lower and lower.”

As an anthropologist, there was little for Domenica to puzzle about in this. Male adornment occurred in all societies, although it took different forms. It was perfectly natural, she thought, for young men to display; the only question of interest was what limits society would put on it. And could one talk about society anymore when it came to clothing? T-shirts proclaimed the most intimate messages and nobody batted an eyelid. There were, she reflected, simply no arbiters.

Domenica decided that the issue of trousers had been explored enough. “And these builders,” she said. “Where will you get them?”

“My friend Clifford Reed is a builder,” Antonia said. “And a very good one, too. He'll help me out. He said he will. He has a Pole he's going to send over to take a look at what needs to be done, and then to do it. There are lots of Poles in Edinburgh now. All these builders and hotel porters and the like. All very hardworking. Staunch Catholics. Very reliable people.”

Domenica thought for a moment. “You'll have to get a large mug to serve your Pole his tea in,” she said. “None of this Spode for him. He'll want something more substantial.”

She watched Antonia as she spoke. It was a somewhat obvious thing for her to say, she thought, a bit unsubtle, in fact. But she watched to see its effect on Antonia. Of course the true psychopath would be unmoved; such people were quite capable of telling the coldest of lies, of remaining cool in the face of the most damning accusations. That was why they were psychopaths–they simply did not care; they were untouched.

“Of course not,” said Antonia flatly. “I keep my Spode for special occasions.”

Domenica was completely taken aback by this remark and was not sure how to take it. I keep my Spode for special occasions. This could mean that she kept her Spode (as opposed to stolen Spode) for such occasions, or that her own visit was such an occasion and merited the bringing out of the Spode. It must be the latter, she told herself. It must be.

Their conversation continued in a desultory fashion for a further half hour. There was some talk of the early Scottish saints–Antonia's novel on the subject was not progressing well, Domenica was told–and there was a brief exchange of views about the latest special exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Then Domenica looked at her watch and excused herself.

She rose to her feet and began to walk towards the door. As she did so, something lying at the foot of the kitchen dresser caught her eye. It was a slipper, a slipper embroidered in red, and it was remarkably similar to one that she had. She glanced at it quickly and then looked away. What were the odds that two people living on the same stair in Scotland Street would both have identical pairs of red Chinese slippers? Astronomically small, she thought.

18. Bruce Finds a Place to Stay–Just Perfect

Since he had returned to Edinburgh, Bruce had been staying with friends in Comely Bank. These people were a couple whom he had known in his earlier days in Edinburgh; Neil had been at school with him at Morrison's Academy in Crieff, and he had known Caroline slightly before she met Neil. Both Neil and Caroline were keen skiers who had met on a skiing trip to Austria. Not all romances which start in the chalet or on the ski slopes survive the descent to sea level, but this one did. Now they were married and living in Comely Bank in a Victorian tenement halfway up the hill towards the heights of the west New Town. “Not quite Eton Terrace,” Bruce had observed. “Nor St Bernard's Crescent, for that matter. But nice enough. If you like that sort of thing.” Comely Bank was comfortable and was only a fifteen-minute walk from the West End and Neil's office, but, in Bruce's words again, it was “hardly the centre of the known universe.”

In fact, even as he passed these somewhat dismissive comments, Bruce was trying to remember a poem he had heard about a man who died and who had “the Lord to thank / For sending him straight to Heaven from Comely Bank.” Or something along those lines. Bruce smirked at the thought. Comely Bank was fine for Neil and Caroline, but not for him. He still wanted some fun, and in his view all the fun was to be found in the New Town in places like…well, in places like Julia Donald's flat, for instance.

Julia had quickly agreed to his suggestion that he might move in with her for a while.

“But of course you're welcome, Brucie,” she had said. “I was going to suggest it, anyway. In fact, I'll probably stick around for a while. London can wait. You know what? I think Edinburgh's where it's at. I really do.”

Bruce had smiled at her. It's where I'm at, he thought, which perhaps amounted to the same thing. He looked at her. Nice girl, he thought. Not a feminist, thank God. More interested in…well, not to put too crude a point on it, interested in men. And why not? Why should girls not be interested in men? You could talk to girls who were interested in men; they liked to listen; they appreciated you. Those others, those feminists, were always trying to prove something, he thought, trying to make up for something that was missing in their lives. Well, he knew what was missing, and he could show them if they liked! What a thought! Thank heavens for girls like Julia and for her offer of a room in her flat.

“That's really great, Julia,” he said. “Can you show me the room?” He winked.

She led him to a room at the back of the flat. “This is the guest room, Brucie,” she said. “You can keep your stuff in that cupboard over there–it's empty. And I'm right next door.” She gestured at a door behind them. “When you need me.”

Bruce clicked his tongue appreciatively and gave her a playful pinch. “Good girl,” he said. “This is going to be fun.”

Julia gave a little laugh. “You bet. When do you want to move in?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Suits me fine.”

“And in the meantime,” said Bruce. “Let's go somewhere this evening. A wine bar? A meal afterwards?”

This suited Julia very well, and they made their arrangements to meet. Bruce then left and went out into the street. He smiled. This was perfect, just perfect. He had found himself somewhere to stay–somewhere where he would not have Neil and Caroline cooing away in the background. Really, what a pair of lovebirds–gazing into one another's eyes for hours on end and going to bed early, pretending to be tired. Sickening, really, and if that was what marriage was like, then he counted himself lucky still to be single. Of course, if he wanted to get married, then he could do so–any day. All he would have to do would be to click his fingers–like that–and the girls would be lining up. But there would be plenty of time for that.

He walked down Northumberland Street and turned into Dundas Street. It was good, he thought, to be back in this familiar part of town, amongst his old haunts. A few blocks down the hill was the Cumberland Bar, where he had spent so many good evenings, and just beyond that Scotland Street itself. When he went down to London, he imagined that he had put all that behind him; it was almost as if he had wanted to forget it all. But now that he was back in Edinburgh, his memories of that period of his life were flooding back, and it had not been a bad time in his life, not at all. He thought of the girls he had known–that American girl, the one he met in the Cumberland; she was a stunner, but then she had proved rather unreliable in the long run. He frowned. And of course there was Pat herself, his little flatmate as he called her. She fell for me in a big way, he thought, poor girl. But she would have been inexperienced and emotionally demanding, and she would have clung to me if I had started anything. Nothing worse than that–a girl who clings. That can get difficult.

He continued to walk down Dundas Street. He realised that he was close to the gallery that she worked in, the gallery owned by the rather wet Matthew. He was one person he could do without seeing again, and yet he would probably still be hanging about the Cumberland Bar hoping for something to turn up. Sad.

He glanced towards the gallery window, and at that moment Pat looked out. Bruce stopped. She was staring at him and he could hardly just ignore her. He could wave and continue down the street, which would give her a very clear message, or he could go in and have a word with the poor girl.

He looked at his watch. There was no point in going back to Comely Bank and sitting in Neil and Caroline's kitchen until it was time to go out to dinner. So why not?

He pushed open the gallery door and went in.