The Importance of Being Seven (7 page)

Now that Ulysses had arrived, the well-ordered routine that Irene Pollock had in place for Bertie, and that had worked so well, was subjected to the occasional moment of strain. Getting Bertie to the Steiner School in the mornings had once been a simple matter but now became considerably more complicated. In the past, Irene would dress Bertie, comb his hair, and place him at the table in front of a bowl of Bircher muesli. Then, ten minutes later, taking him by the hand, she would lead him off to the 23 bus on which they both travelled over to the other side of town. The muesli was prepared in advance, to a special recipe that she felt gave Bertie exactly the right nutritional start to the day.

Bertie did not mind his muesli too much, but occasionally asked if it would be possible to have something different. ‘Not every day, Mummy, I promise. But just now and then. Maybe sausages.
Hiawatha says that he has sausages for breakfast three days a week. He brought one in to show me.’

‘He brought a sausage into school?’ asked Irene.

‘Yes,’ said Bertie. ‘It was really nice. Tofu took it off him and ate it, but he let me look at it first and smell it.’

Irene did not approve. ‘How perfectly disgusting, Bertie! Do you realise what goes into sausages? And what on earth is Tofu doing eating a sausage? Does his father know?’

‘Tofu says that his daddy is getting weaker every day,’ said Bertie. ‘He’s a vegan, you know.’

Irene gave a snort of disagreement. ‘That’s absolute nonsense, Bertie. Complete nonsense. Tofu’s daddy is a picture of health. I saw him last week at the school gate. He was radiant.’

‘Is that the same as radioactive?’ asked Bertie. ‘Tofu said that one of his daddy’s friends has become radioactive from eating mushrooms brought to Scotland from Eastern Europe.’ He looked suspiciously at his muesli – this conversation was occurring over breakfast. He had not seen any mushrooms in his muesli, but his mother often put strange things in it and he could not be sure that these did not include the occasional mushroom.

‘Oh, really, Bertie! What nonsense people speak in the playground. I do wish that you wouldn’t play quite so much with Tofu. He really has some very odd ideas.’

Bertie took a spoonful of muesli. He also wished that he did not have to play so much with Tofu, but what were the alternatives? Olive? She was even worse, and Hiawatha was unpredictable and somewhat moody, and there was the problem of his socks. What Bertie needed was a good friend, somebody who thought the same way as he did, and who was neither selfish, like Tofu, nor bossy, like Olive. But it seemed that there was nobody like that, and so he had to make do with what he had.

The disruption to the morning routine had been brought about by Ulysses, and by Irene’s need to get Ulysses ready to accompany them on the bus to school. This was not an impossible task, of course, but it was a time-consuming one, as was any chore associated with a one-year-old baby. And now matters were complicated
even further by the fact that Ulysses was developing a rather worrying pattern of behaviour that manifested itself with particular vigour in the early mornings.

The behaviour in question had first been noticed by Irene a few weeks earlier, when Ulysses had started to scream on being picked up out of his cot in the morning. As she bent down over the cot, Ulysses had opened his eyes, focused on his mother’s face, and then uttered a startling cry of distress. At first she had taken this for hunger, and had hurried to give him his small yellow feeding cup of milk. This worked, but only for a few minutes, as Ulysses had soon rejected his cup, looked at his mother again, and then been sick all over her blouse.

Irene knew that babies could feel out of sorts, and she did not think much more of the problem, even when he was later copiously sick over her shoulder as they travelled up the Mound on the 23 bus.

‘His little stomach is a bit upset this morning,’ she explained to Bertie. ‘And don’t look so embarrassed, Bertie. Nobody on this bus is going to bat an eyelid because a little baby like Ulysses brings up a few drops of milk! They’re probably remembering how they used to be sick themselves when they were younger!’

Bertie glanced at his fellow passengers. A teenage girl sitting opposite them, bound for Heriot’s School, was looking at Ulysses with evident disgust. When he was sick a second time, on this occasion somewhat more copiously, the girl got up and moved to a seat further down the bus. Bertie, glowing with embarrassment, stared fixedly at the floor. If only his mother would stop talking to him, he thought, then the other passengers might think that she and Ulysses had nothing to do with him.

‘Here, Bertie,’ said Irene. ‘Take Ulysses for a moment while I attend to my blouse. There’s a good boy.’

‘But what if he’s sick all over me?’ Bertie protested. ‘I’ve got to go to school. I can’t go if I’ve got sick all over my shirt.’

‘He won’t be sick again, Bertie,’ Irene said reassuringly. ‘His little stomach is quite empty now.’

Bertie took Ulysses gingerly and propped him up on his lap.
The baby, recognising that he had been transferred from Irene to his brother, beamed with pleasure.

‘He seems quite happy now,’ said Irene. ‘Hold him carefully, Bertie, in case the driver has to put the brakes on suddenly. We don’t want little Ulysses flying out of the window – like Hermes.’

While Bertie held his brother, Irene wiped at her blouse with a baby-wipe. ‘They have such delicate little tummies,’ she explained to Bertie. ‘So any odd organism can make them bring things up. It’s perfectly normal.’

‘Maybe he doesn’t like milk,’ said Bertie. ‘Maybe you should give him something else.’

‘Of course he likes milk,’ retorted Irene. ‘You’ve seen him guzzling away on that yellow cup of his. He loves it.’

She finished her cleaning and gestured for Bertie to hand Ulysses back to her. The baby was handed back unprotesting, but when he saw his mother’s face again, he immediately started to wail and was promptly sick again, this time over the back of the seat.

‘Oh dear,’ said Irene. ‘We’re really feeling out of sorts this morning, aren’t we?’

Bertie was silent. He had noticed something: it seemed to him that what prompted Ulysses to bring up was the sight of his mother’s face. Poor Mummy, thought Bertie; she loves little Ulysses so much and already he’s sick of her.

If this distressing vomiting by Ulysses had lasted for no more than a day or two, then Irene would probably have continued to treat the matter as no more than a passing bug of the sort that children pick up so easily. Irene was not one to bother doctors – therapists were a different matter – partly because she felt that they often knew little more than she did, and sometimes rather less. However, after it had persisted for three days, she thought it wise to consult her doctor, a
mild-mannered man who ran a small practice round the corner from Scotland Street. The doctor took Ulysses’s temperature and gave him a general examination, during which Ulysses behaved impeccably.

‘This young man seems to be doing perfectly well,’ he said. ‘But you say that he seems distressed on occasion and then brings his food up?’

‘Yes,’ said Irene. ‘He cries and then regurgitates.’

The doctor looked down at Ulysses. ‘These stomach issues can be problematic. They can resolve, of course, but sometimes it’s necessary to have further investigation.’ He looked thoughtfully at Irene. ‘I think that we should perhaps watch the situation for a little while before we do anything more.’ He turned his attention back to Ulysses, who smiled back at him. ‘He seems a contented wee chap.’

‘Most of the time he is,’ said Irene. ‘It’s just when I pick him up. That’s when it tends to happen.’

‘It’s possibly just reflux,’ the doctor mused. ‘I wonder whether the movement has anything to do with it? I’ve not seen this before.’ He tickled Ulysses under the chin, and the child burst into a delighted chuckle. ‘He doesn’t seem to be dehydrated, so he’s obviously keeping something down.’

Irene nodded. She was looking over the doctor’s shoulder at the books on the shelf behind him. Shelves gave so much away about a person. Melanie Klein? Nothing as far as she could see, but then perhaps one should not expect too much of somebody who had to spend most of his time dealing with colds and rashes and things like that.

‘Shall we just watch over the next few days?’ said the doctor. ‘We may need to get the paediatric gastro-enterologists at the Sick Kids to take a look at him. But not just yet, I think.’

The consultation clearly at an end, Irene reached forward to pick up Ulysses. As she did so, Ulysses, who had continued to gurgle contentedly, puckered his face in rage and brought up over the front of his mother. The doctor was momentarily taken aback, and it was a few moments before he produced a wad of moist wipes to help Irene clean up.

‘There!’ said Irene. ‘You see.’

The doctor nodded. He was watching Ulysses, who was glaring at Irene, his small features contorted with emotion. Although until now he had refrained from reaching a diagnosis, he now felt sure.

‘It’s as if he’s over-excited,’ said Irene.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ said the doctor. ‘Sometimes these things are nothing to do with the stomach. Sometimes they are more on the mental side.’ He chose his words carefully; not everyone was comfortable with the term psychiatric.

‘Psychiatric?’ asked Irene abruptly.

The doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes, possibly. I’m not suggesting that you yourself are doing anything wrong. But sometimes the relationship between mother and baby gets a bit – how shall we put it? – complicated.’

He watched Irene carefully, but he need not have worried.

‘Well, we do have our other child in therapy,’ said Irene. ‘It won’t be hard to arrange.’

‘I could give you a referral,’ said the doctor. ‘There may be a bit of a waiting list, you know. Infant psychiatry services are in heavy demand, and …’

Irene stopped him. ‘I am sure that Dr St Clair will see Ulysses,’ she said. ‘He’s seeing Bertie at present.’

The doctor nodded. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘And how is Bertie doing?’

‘There are Oedipal issues to be resolved,’ said Irene. ‘We’re working on that.’

The doctor bit his lip. ‘Sometimes, of course, it’s best to let these things get sorted out by themselves. Most boys turn out all right if you leave them …’

He faltered. Irene was glaring at him. ‘That’s hardly what one expected of a medical person,’ she said icily. ‘I thought that benign neglect was no longer encouraged.’

The doctor made an effort to defend himself. ‘That’s in relation to somatic illness,’ he said mildly. ‘Of course one shouldn’t ignore worrying symptoms. But there’s always a common-sense limitation to intervention. Iatrogenic illness …’

‘I am not concerned with iatrogenic illness,’ Irene said, accentuating the iatrogenic; she, at least, was aware of what that meant, and she
would not be condescended to by a mere GP. ‘My concern is with the psychological issues. Somehow I feel that a laissez-faire attitude in the face of developing psychopathology is hardly appropriate.’

‘But do your boys really have symptoms of psychopathology?’ asked the doctor. ‘Bertie seems to me a very easy little boy – a bit intense, hot-housed, perhaps, but …’

He did not finish. Irene had fixed him with a gimlet eye. ‘Hot-housed, you say? May I ask exactly what you mean by that?’

The doctor clenched his fist in a gesture of nervousness. He thought quickly. ‘Oh, I merely thought that perhaps you had your central heating a bit high. He looked a little bit pallid, that’s all. Children shouldn’t be too hot.’

Irene continued to glare at him. ‘I see.’

The doctor sighed. ‘Well, let’s see how he does over the next few days.’ He looked at his notes. ‘I see from the hospital records that Ulysses is not the same blood group as Bertie, who’s O, I notice, as is Stuart. And you are A. Whereas little Ulysses here is …’ He stopped. His voice had become quieter – barely a whisper.

Irene sat quite still. Her glare had been replaced by a look of anxiety; the look of a creature caught in the headlights of an approaching car.

‘Whereas Ulysses,’ the doctor continued, ‘is AB.’

For a few moments there was complete silence in the surgery. Even Ulysses, who had been niggling, stopped doing so. He, like Irene, was watching the doctor.

‘Strange,’ said the doctor. He was enjoying himself. He disliked patients who knew more medicine than he did – or purported to – and this woman was a bad example of that. She was impossible – really she was – and his heart went out to those two little boys of hers.

Irene cleared her throat. ‘Well, these things happen, don’t they?’

The doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘Do they?’

‘Yes,’ said Irene as firmly as she could. And yet there was a wavering in her voice. ‘Mistakes are made in the laboratory. Every day.’

‘And elsewhere,’ said the doctor quietly. ‘Every …’ He wanted to say night, but decided that it was unprofessional.

Like St Augustine of Hippo, who had exchanged a life of casual venality for one of monastic virtue and moral self-examination, Bruce Anderson had undergone a significant change. Bruce was no saint yet – or at least not one in the same class as St Augustine; nor was he contemplating writing any Confessions to rival the saint’s. But he was certainly a better man than he used to be, if the progressively marked absence in his life of any of the great vices was to be taken as the measure of improvement.

Bruce’s abiding vice – at least until his apparent reform – had been vanity. He was undoubtedly extremely handsome – so good-looking, in fact, that female heads regularly turned when he entered the room or walked along the street. The reason for the turning of heads was obvious enough: any woman seeing Bruce felt an immediate, puzzling, and sometimes frankly alarming desire to stroke him. Few acted on this, even if on occasion one or two more temporarily disinhibited women got close to doing so, reaching out before being brought to their senses and controlling themselves. Had they carried through with their impulse, Bruce would not have minded; in fact, he regarded such attentions as no more than his due. ‘I suppose I’m just destined to give women pleasure,’ he had once remarked to a male friend while they had been sitting over a drink in the Canny Man’s. ‘See her,’ he went on, nodding in the direction of a woman sitting on the opposite side of the room. ‘I reckon she fancies me.’ The friend had glanced across the room and saw, with dismay, that the young woman in question was throwing Bruce a look of only lightly disguised longing. Notice me, the look said.

The friend had gritted his teeth, and at that moment had decided that he hated Bruce. And yet they would remain friends, in the way in which people do with those whom they find themselves allocated by chance. Everybody has friends they dislike; people they have slipped into relationships with, people they would not have chosen had they been more cautious, more circumspect.

But that was the old Bruce; the Bruce before the moment of insight in Leith changed him so profoundly. Now he could look
back on his old life, at its various stages, and it seemed to him that he was looking at the history of another person altogether.

Bruce had lived in Scotland Street, then in London, then back in Edinburgh, although not in Scotland Street. On his return he had moved in first with Julia, to whom he had been engaged for a short time, and then he had gone to live in Leith with George McNair, the freelance photographer and advocate of moral renewal. George had both photographed and renewed Bruce, who had then taken up with Lizzie Todd, daughter of Raeburn Todd, the well-known Edinburgh surveyor and Watsonian-Rotarian. This had led to another engagement, announced in the
Scotsman
in that time-honoured and rather embarrassing fashion as being a cause of pleasure to both families. Often both families are not delighted; indeed not even pleased. In this case, though, both families were happy enough with the engagement, but not quite in equal measure. Bruce’s parents were immensely relieved that their son was re-engaged, and heartily approved of Lizzie. By contrast, Raeburn Todd, although prepared to forgive Bruce his previous indiscretions, was secretly disappointed that his daughter had not set her sights somewhat higher. But he did not show that, although he was careful to avoid giving Bruce – or Lizzie – the impression that a partnership in the firm was in the offing.

The thought had occurred to him – more than once – that Bruce might have asked Lizzie to marry him for reasons other than love and affection. The Todds were not conspicuously wealthy, but they were comfortably off, and their firm had done reasonably well. If Bruce became a partner, then he would probably make about three times what he could expect to make as an employee, a fact of which he was surely fully aware. And there was also the question of the legacy left Lizzie by her maternal grandmother, which consisted of a portfolio of shares and, more significantly, a flat in Morningside. Put together, this all amounted to a fairly attractive package for a young man who, as far as Todd could tell, had no assets whatsoever.

He had raised the matter with Lizzie as delicately as he could. ‘Bruce is very fond of you, isn’t he?’

‘Of course he is. He asked me to marry him, didn’t he?’

Todd nodded. ‘Of course he did. And any young man in his right mind would be fond of you. It’s just that …’

‘Just that what?’ Lizzie asked sharply.

‘It’s just that people in our position sometimes have to be a little cautious as to motives. That’s all I’m saying.’

Lizzie glared at him. Her father had always been utterly transparent to her, and she knew exactly what he meant. ‘People in our position?’ she snapped. ‘What exactly is our position? Are we grand, or what?’

Todd laughed – nervously. ‘Of course we’re not grand. We’re perfectly ordinary Edinburgh people.’ If Edinburgh people can be perfectly ordinary, he thought. ‘But I have achieved a certain – how shall I put it? – achieved a certain amount and we live in the Braids and there’s the firm …’ He trailed off. Lizzie’s glare had become more intense and he was feeling distinctly uncomfortable.

‘Are you saying that Bruce is after my money – such as it is? Is that what you’re saying?’

Todd waved a hand airily; the very thought. ‘Of course not. I’d never say that.’

‘Then what are you saying?’

Todd swallowed. His daughter had always been direct, and he should have known better than to be so oblique. ‘What I’m saying is this: sometimes people – and I’m not saying that Bruce is one of those – calculate what marriage will bring them in terms of a job and a house and so on. Bruce works for me – I’m his boss. You’re the boss’s daughter. Now it doesn’t take much imagination to see that a young man in his position might – and I say might – be thinking of what he could get out of marrying you. I just raise the possibility, that’s all.’

Lizzie stared at her father. Her angry expression was now more baleful than anything else.

‘But Bruce isn’t like that,’ she said. ‘He just isn’t. You’ve completely misjudged him.’ She paused; she was on the point of tears. ‘You don’t even begin to understand, do you?’