The Unbearable Lightness of Scones (23 page)

Now Angus knew that there were those who would regard the whole matter of the teacup as a small thing, a minor issue between neighbours that should hardly merit our notice. In the scale of wrongs which plagued the world, the theft of a teacup, even one which was of sentimental value to its owner, might seem to count for very little. Certainly it was dwarfed by the crying injustices with which humanity had to contend; but that was not really the point, at least in Angus’s view. Every small wrong, every minor act of cruelty, every act of petty bullying was symbolic of a greater wrong. And if we ignored these small things, then did it not blunt our outrage over the larger wrongs?

It was, thought Angus, a question of zero tolerance. When Mayor Giuliani decided to tackle petty street crime in New York, he realised this fundamental truth: the small things stand
for the big things. And by stopping minor street crimes – littering, riding bicycles on the pavement, pushing people out of the way and so on – he signalled that anti-social behaviour of any sort would not be tolerated. And the result? One of the safest large cities in the world.

Mayor Giuliani, thought Angus, would not have tolerated Antonia’s removal of Domenica’s blue Spode teacup. And nor had he, Angus Lordie. He had gone into Antonia’s kitchen, quickly located the cup in question, and returned it to Domenica. Then they had both left the flat, locking the door behind them. Domenica had been effusively grateful and had invited Angus in for a further cup of coffee, but he had declined, as Cyril was restless now and wanted some exercise. They would walk together up to Big Lou’s and have the second cup of coffee there.

“I’m immensely grateful to you for getting my cup back for me,” said Domenica. “It had been rankling.”

“As well it might,” said Angus. “It’s never comfortable seeing evil flourish unchecked.”

“I don’t know if I’d quite call it evil,” said Domenica. “But it was certainly an act of dishonesty on Antonia’s part.”

“And what do you think she’ll do when she discovers that it’s not there?” asked Angus. “Will she suspect us?”

“She might,” Domenica replied. “But even if she does, she can hardly complain. After all, we merely took back what was rightfully mine. She has no leg to stand on. She is quite without visible means of support.”

“White-collar crime,” mused Angus. “Stealing somebody’s blue Spode teacup is, I suppose, an example of white-collar crime. Which makes Antonia a white-collar criminal.”

“Well, there you are,” said Domenica. “It just goes to show how frayed are the bonds that bind us one to another in this society. It used to be that you could trust your neighbour …”

Angus shook his head. “That was when we had a society,” he said. “That was before they dismantled the idea of community; the idea of being a nation.”

Domenica looked doubtful. “But there’s still a lot of talk about community. Don’t we even have a Minister for Communities or some such thing?”

Angus shrugged. “Possibly. But so much of that is just pious talk. The things that really bind people to one another are a shared sense of who you are – a shared identity. Common practices. Common loyalties. Those are the things that bind us together. But what is being done to those things now? They are being dismantled. Deliberately and with specific intent they are being dismantled. Look at Christmas. Look at those think-tank people who advocated diminishing Christmas so that those who adhered to other faiths would not feel excluded. The truth of the matter, though, is that the celebration of Christmas has been going on for an awful long time in this country and is exactly one of those customs that make us a community rather than just a random collection of people who happen to live in the same place. And you can say the same thing about a hundred other manifestations of our national culture. We have a national culture, just as other countries have. We have one, and we are entitled to say that we want to preserve it. It’s a great mish-mash of social customs and observances; of ways of greeting one another; of memories of nursery rhymes and poems and people. All of that. And these wretched, arrogant relativists and pluralists are setting out – on what authority, one asks? – to dismantle it, bit by bit, so that there is nothing, absolutely nothing left. They prevent people from being who they are; they forbid them to express themselves in the name of preventing offence; Cyril’s offensive to cats, but is he to stop being a dog? They pour scorn on those who have a sense of themselves. One might weep. One might weep for everything that is being taken from us, our fundamental, basic identity as Scots, as Britons too – all of that.”

He paused – and drew breath. “And don’t think for a moment that this sense of having something taken away is restricted to bourgeois dreamers, to middle-class romantics, to hopeless irredentists; don’t think that. Look at what very ordinary people
have lost, and think about that for a moment. What has happened to working-class communities in Scotland? To miners, for example. To fishermen? Who? You might well ask. To men and women who work with their hands? Who again? These people are being swept away by globalisation. Swept away. Now they’re all so demoralised that they’re caught in the culture of permanent sick notes. And who speaks for the young Scottish male, as a matter of interest? Nobody. Where’s he going to live? What’s he going to do? Nobody cares. He’s finished. Abandoned. And he knows it. And all the solace he can get he will have to get from football and drinking. That’s the only meaning he can find for his life. Football! And an ersatz electronic culture of mindless cinematic violence from the cynical pyrotechnicians of Hollywood. But don’t get me started, Domenica.”

“I won’t,” said Domenica.

The contretemps between Irene and Stuart over the question of whether Bertie would be allowed to join the cub scouts had been resolved in favour of Stuart. It was impossible for Irene
to do very much now; certainly there was little that she could do in the presence of Bertie himself, as for all her faults she did not believe in presenting a child with mixed parental messages. But that did not prevent her from confronting Stuart once Bertie had been dispatched to bed.

That dispatching had been carried out by Stuart, who had supervised the cleaning of teeth and the various other small rituals that Bertie performed before settling down for the night. That evening, though, Stuart was aware of what awaited him in the kitchen, and prolonged his time with his son, sitting on the edge of the bed in the artificial gloaming provided by Bertie’s small plug-in night-light.

“So you’ve had a good day, Bertie,” he said, taking the small hand that was resting on the top of the counterpane and giving it a brief, friendly squeeze.

Bertie hesitated before he replied. “A bit,” he said. “Some of it was good and some was bad. But thank you for asking, Daddy.”

“Oh, some of it was bad, was it?” asked Stuart. “Why was that, Bertie? I thought you had fun having your friends round to play.”

“Olive’s not really my friend, Daddy,” confided Bertie. “She thinks she is, but isn’t really. I never invited her here and once she comes all she wants to do is to play house. I hate playing house. We’re incompatible.”

Stuart gave a start at the sophisticated word; his son had a great capacity for astonishing him, never less than in his vocabulary. He was sympathetic to Bertie’s point. He had a vague memory of being forced to play house when he was a small boy and hating it too. And now that he came to think of it, his life with Irene was a bit like being obliged to play house on a prolonged scale. In fact, there were many men who were forced to play house when they really did not want to …

“Girls can be a bit different, Bertie,” he said.

“Mummy says they aren’t,” chipped in Bertie. “Mummy says that it’s society that imposes different roles on boys and girls.”

Stuart looked at his son. He was probably right. That was exactly what Irene would have said.

“I’m sure that Mummy had a point,” he said loyally. “But let’s not worry too much about that. Tell me, did Tofu enjoy himself?”

“No,” said Bertie. “Tofu and Olive fight every time they see one another. Tofu always spits at her and she scratches him. She tried to scratch his face this afternoon but only managed to scratch his neck. That made Tofu pull her hair and quite a bit came out.”

“That’s not so good,” said Stuart. “One does not expect such things to happen among one’s guests. But at least you’ve got the cub scouts to look forward to.”

“Yes,” said Bertie. “I can’t wait.”

“We’ll go and get your uniform tomorrow,” said Stuart.

“Can I carry a knife?” asked Bertie. “That book I was reading,
Scouting for Boys
, says that every scout should have a knife. Did you have a knife, Daddy?”

Stuart was silent. He had not thought about it for many years – and it seemed such a long time ago. But yes, he did have a knife, although he very much doubted that cubs had knives these days.

“I did have a knife, Bertie,” Stuart said. “I had a lovely red Swiss Army knife with twelve blades, as I recall. Well, they weren’t all blades – they did various things. One was a hook to take stones out of the feet of horses. And another was a corkscrew, I think. It was a lovely knife. I was very proud of it.”

Bertie was listening with rapt attention. It thrilled him to learn that his father had had a knife, and a Swiss Army one at that. He had seen a picture of a Swiss Army knife once, in a magazine – it was
Scottish Field
, he thought, which he read in Dr. Fairbairn’s waiting-room. It had never occurred to him that he might one day have such a knife, but now that his father had said that he had owned such a thing, then there was a chance, he supposed, a remote chance that he might get one.

He looked at his father. The warm intimacy of the half-light made him wonder whether now might not be the time to make the request.

“Do you think I could have a Swiss Army knife?” he asked, his voice small in the darkness. “Do you think I could, Daddy?”

Stuart said nothing for a moment. He remembered that he had been given his Swiss Army knife at the age of eight, and Bertie, of course, was only six. But children grew up faster these days and six, perhaps, was the new eight … And how could he say no to this little boy who had been said no to so many times – by his mother – and all those nos had been left unchallenged by him? Well that was going to change, and it would change dramatically, whatever Irene said.

“Of course you can have a Swiss Army knife, Bertie,” said Stuart. “We can get it tomorrow when we go to buy your uniform. You just remind me.”

“Oh, thank you, Daddy,” said Bertie, beaming with pleasure. “Can we go in the car to get the uniform?”

“Of course,” said Stuart.

“Where is it, Daddy?” asked Bertie. “I haven’t seen our car for ages.”

Stuart smiled. “Where is our car? Oh, in the usual place, Bertie. Parked.”

“But where?” pressed Bertie.

Stuart stroked his chin. Had he been the last to use the car? Suddenly his prospects seemed to be considerably less attractive. It was one thing to insist on the cub scouts, but it was quite another thing to promise Bertie a knife and to forget – again, it seemed – where the car was parked.

He looked down at his son. If there was one thing that he could wish for his son – one thing that he himself, as a father, did not possess, what would that be? Courage, he thought.

And Bertie looked up at his father and thought: How dare Tofu call my father a wimp? Tofu’s father would never have owned a Swiss Army knife. Tofu’s father … he drifted off to sleep.

Angus knew that after leaving Big Lou’s coffee bar he should return to his studio, to work. His easel awaited him there, a half-finished subject staring out at him disconsolately from the canvas. He knew in which direction duty was pointing, but chose to ignore it; it had been a most unsettling morning and so, looking at his watch and realising that it was now shortly after twelve, he decided that it was lunchtime and that work could wait until the afternoon, or very possibly the evening. Some days were like that, he thought; they had “liable to be cancelled at short notice” written all over them, and this was one. Better then, to walk up the road, cross at the junction of Dundas Street and Heriot Row, and slip into Glass and Thompson for lunch.

He looked down at Cyril. “Not the most productive of mornings, Cyril,” he said. “But then every day is like that for you. Apart from the day that you produced six puppies, that is. That’s the cost of having an affair, Cyril, old chap: minor pleasure and major consequences.”

Cyril looked up at his master. He tried to make sense of what Angus said, but it was mostly meaningless sound to him. Some words were recognisable, and bore meaning: walk, bad, dinner, bone, fetch – but that was about all. If a universe is formed by language, then this was a small one indeed; a small circle of understanding described in a morass of confusion and puzzlement. The key, Cyril knew, was to ascertain the mood of these unintelligible sounds. If Angus sounded cross then he, Cyril, should look contrite. And that, he thought, was how he should look now.