The Unbearable Lightness of Scones (26 page)

This news was greeted with horrified silence by the two boys.

“Well, that’s settled that,” said Akela. “Now I’ll administer the cub promise. This is a very solemn moment, boys and girls. So all stand in a line and put up your right hands like this. This is the special scout salute that Baden-Powell invented. No, Tofu, the fingers face inwards rather than the way you’re doing it. That’s right. Now I’ll say the words of the promise and you say them after me.”

There was no heart in it, no conviction; not now that Olive was there and had, in the space of a few minutes, been promoted above their heads. Bertie had a strong sense of justice, and this was now mortally offended. Olive did not deserve to be a sixer; the experience she claimed was completely imaginary – he was sure that she had never been a cub before. And how could Akela be fooled by Olive’s false claims? Why did she not ask Olive exactly what her experience had been and get her to show some proof of it?

Now, with the promise administered and everybody duly enrolled, Akela began to tell the cubs about badges. There were many badges they could get, she explained: collecting, swimming, history, model-making, cooking, music; whole vistas of achievement opened up.

“I’d like to get my cooking badge, Akela,” said Olive. “And music too. And map-reading – I always read the maps in the car. I read the map all the way to Glasgow once, and back again.”

“That’s not hard,” said Tofu. “There’s only one road to Glasgow and it has signs all the way along. It says Glasgow this way. You can’t go wrong.”

“Well, I’m sure Olive read the map very nicely anyway,” said Akela. “And what badge do you boys want to get? Bertie, what about you?”

Bertie looked up. “Mozart,” he said. “If you’ve got a Mozart badge, I could do that, Akela.”

Olive laughed. “Oh, Bertie, they don’t have that sort of thing in the cubs. Why don’t you do a cooking badge with me? I could teach him how to cook, Akela. Then we both could do the badge together.”

“That would be nice,” said Akela. “Would you like that, Bertie?”

Bertie stared down at the floor. His hopes of the cubs were dashed beyond redemption now. He had wanted to learn how to do tracking and how to make a fire by rubbing two sticks together. He wanted to learn how to use a penknife and how to use a wrist watch and the sun to find south. He wanted to learn all that, but instead he was going to be cooking with Olive. Is this really why Mr. Baden-Powell had invented scouting – so that boys could learn how to cook?

“Well,” pressed Akela. “Olive has made you a very kind offer there, Bertie? Would you like to take her up on it?”

Bertie stared at the floor. He felt the tears burning in his eyes, hot tears of regret over the ending of his hopes. Tofu, noticing his friend’s distress, turned to Olive. “You see what you’ve done,” he said. “You see!”

Olive reacted with indignation. “It’s not my fault that Bertie’s homesick,” she said. “He’s only six, after all.”

Bruce’s first photographic session with Nick McNair had been a resounding success. When the photographer had got the shots he wanted, he immediately downloaded them onto his studio computer and invited Bruce to look at the results.

“You know what I’d say, Bruce,” he remarked, tapping at an image on the screen. “I’d say you’ve got it. There’s no other way of putting it. You’ve just got it.”

Bruce leaned forward and stared at the image on the computer. This was one of the serious-looking poses, in which he was staring into the distance with a look of … well, how exactly would one describe his expression? One of determination? Confidence?

“Well, I suppose it looks all right to me,” he said. “I hope that the people in the agency …”

“The people in the agency are going to love you, Bruce,” interrupted Nick. “They can tell it when they see it.”

Bruce shrugged. “Well, there’s plenty more where that came from.”

“I know,” exclaimed Nick. “Oh boy, is your profile going to be raised! You’ll be on that poster in the airport. You know the one that greets you as you come down the steps at Edinburgh Airport? The one that says Welcome to Scotland? Well, it’s going to be you on that poster, Bruce. You – and underneath it’s going to say: The Face of Scotland. That’s the slogan. They’ve already approved that. Cost them two hundred thousand pounds.”

Bruce whistled. “The poster? Two hundred thousand?”

“No, not the poster,” said Nick. “The slogan. The poster cost …” He shrugged. “I don’t know what the poster cost. It’s the words that cost two hundred thousand. Some guy in one of the agencies invented them. That’s what a slogan costs these days. These things aren’t cheap.”

“But two hundred thousand …”

“Yeah, well that’s what quality costs, Bruce.”

Bruce was thinking. “And my face? The image?”

There was a change in Nick’s manner. Turning away from the screen, he faced Bruce. “We’ve got to talk about it,” he said. “I was going to raise the issue with you tomorrow. But we may as well talk about it right now.”

“No time like the present,” said Bruce, suddenly wondering
what was going to happen to the joint bank account he had set up with Julia. Would he have time tomorrow to draw something out of that – just his own money, of course – before she closed it down? She might be dim, he thought, but she had shown herself to be fairly astute when it suited her.

Nick rose to his feet. “The thing is,” he said, “we’re in this together. I take the snaps, and you jut the chin. I have a lot of overheads, you know. This place. Getting the shots out to the agency. Lunch with creative directors, and so on. That mounts up.”

And my overheads? Bruce felt like saying. Personal grooming. The gym. That mounts up too.

“Some of the talent gets an agent,” said Nick. “Personally, I don’t like working with agents, and I’m not sure how useful they are to the talent themselves. Twenty per cent for the local market; thirty per cent for overseas. So on, so forth. It all mounts up. And what does the talent get in the end? Far less than he would have got if he’d negotiated the deal directly.”

“So you think I don’t need an agent?” asked Bruce.

“I’m not saying that. I’m not saying that agents are totally useless. It’s just that I think that you have to be careful – especially at the beginning.”

Bruce nodded. It seemed to him that he was getting objective advice from Nick, and they had been at school together, after all. If there was anybody one could trust, then surely it would be somebody with whom one had been at school.

“So what I suggest is this,” Nick went on. “I have a standard form agreement here in the studio. You could sign that right now. It’s a sort of release form and working agreement rolled into one. Pretty standard terms. Sign that now, so that when we get down to brass tacks with the agency tomorrow, everything will be in position.” He paused. “That’s what I’d do if I were you, Bruce.”

Bruce stared at Nick. It was hard not to smile, but he managed to control himself. You must think I was born yesterday, he thought. You really must. “I don’t think so,” he
said evenly. “I think maybe I should get an agent after all.” Then he added. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Nick. It’s not that at all.”

Nick waved a hand in the air. “No, that’s fine. That’s absolutely fine. We can get you an agent tomorrow. No problem there. I know a good one.”

“Great,” said Bruce. “What’s his name?”

“David.”

“David what?”

Nick walked across the studio to pick up a lens hood that he had laid down on the floor. “McNair, actually. Same as me. He’s my brother, actually. He’s really good.”

Bruce’s eyes widened. “Your brother?”

Nick shrugged. “Yup. You’ll like him.” He looked at his watch. “I’m going to have to scoot. When do you need to move into the flat?”

Bruce explained that it would be most convenient if he could move in that evening. “I don’t want to go back to Howe Street,” he said. “If I go back there, even for one night, it’ll raise her hopes. I don’t want to do that.” He made a chopping movement with a hand. “It’s better to make a clean break, I think. Don’t you?”

Nick agreed. He was for clean breaks too. And lucky ones. In fact, any sort of break suited him. “That’s fine then,” he said. “We can go round there now and I’ll show you the place. I have to go out a bit later, but you’re welcome to tag along, if you’ve got nothing better to do. I’m going for a drink and bite to eat with some friends.”

“Suits me,” said Bruce.

They left the studio and made their way to Nick’s car. Bruce noticed that it was a Porsche.

“I had one of these,” he said. “But I got rid of it.”

“Why was that?”

“Noisy exhaust,” said Bruce.

They set off for Leith. Bruce felt the leather of the seat below him; very good. And the model was a better one than
his had been; more powerful, more expensive. Talent pays, he thought. Talent pays. There’s a slogan for you, he thought. And it cost nothing.

Nick McNair lived in a converted bonded warehouse in Leith. “Very bijou,” remarked Bruce as they walked across the car park at the back of the warehouse. “You forget that Edinburgh’s got places like this. London’s got all those new places along the river. All done up. But we’ve got this.”

Nick fished for the keys of the shared front door. “A word of advice,” he said. “We’re not actually in Edinburgh here. People feel a bit sensitive about it – or some people do. It’s Leith.”

Bruce smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said. ‘I’m good at merging with my surroundings. Leith it is.”

They went into the hallway, which had been cleverly converted, using old whisky barrels as panelling. “This was one of the biggest bonded warehouses in Scotland,” said Nick. “They converted the old bit and added the new, high bit at the end. I’m right at the top – the eighth floor. You’ll like it.”

Bruce threw an appreciative glance around the hall. “Who lives here?” he asked. “I mean, what sort of people?”

“Creative people,” said Nick. “Advertising. Media. And money people. Fund managers. Actuaries. People like that.”

“You must feel at home,” said Bruce. And he felt at home too, instantly. Julia Donald’s flat in Howe Street had been all very well, but it was hardly the epicentre of the New Edinburgh. This was far more like it, although he was not sure about the epicentre of Edinburgh being in Leith.

They got into a lift which was barely large enough for two people. Bruce felt slightly disconcerted to be standing in such
close proximity to Nick. And from that distance, from within the photographer’s personal space, he could not help but notice that his new flatmate had not shaved one side of his chin. He noticed the hairs, tiny black eruptions, emerging from the skin like little … like little spikes. And Nick had dandruff too; not very heavy, but small flakes of it on the collar of his jacket. Bruce found his eyes drawn compulsively to these as the lift moved slowly up between floors, and at the fifth floor, with three floors to go, he could no longer control himself, and he reached out to brush the dandruff off Nick’s collar, a friendly gesture, but one which misfired, as the lift lurched slightly and he missed and stroked Nick’s chin instead.

Nick looked at him in astonishment.

“Sorry,” said Bruce, immediately retracting his hand. “I was going to …”

Nick brushed the apology aside. “No, don’t worry,” he said. “It’s just that …”

But he did not finish, as the lift had reached the eighth floor and was opening onto another hall.

“I didn’t mean …” began Bruce, as they moved out. “I didn’t …”

“No, no worries,” said Nick.

“What I meant …”

“I said no worries,” repeated Nick pointedly. “We all have different ways of expressing ourselves.” And then, changing the subject, he pointed to the view from the large plate-glass window at the end of the hall.

“We look all the way over to the Calton Hill on that side,” he said. “And from the infinity pool we look all the way over to Fife.”

They entered the flat. “I’ll show you your room first,” said Nick. “Then I’ll show you the kitchen and where everything is. I’ve got two fridges and so you can keep your food in one and I’ll keep mine in the other.”

“That’s great,” said Bruce. “Did you know that the biggest source of aggro in shared flats is food? People get seriously
angry about people eating their food. They even write notes like ‘I’ve licked my cheese’ to put people off.

“And then somebody writes: ‘And so have I.’”

Nick grimaced. “Mind you,” he said. “Eating at home is so …so yesterday. I eat out most nights. I suppose you do too.”

“Always,” said Bruce.

“I thought that we could go and have a bite to eat at the place over the road,” said Nick. “It’s quite a good little bistro. Seafood. And not a bad wine list.”

“Perfect,” said Bruce.

“I was going to meet some of my friends there,” said Nick, glancing at his watch. “But they don’t mind putting another chair round the table. Meantime, take a look round. Make yourself at home. Where are your things, by the way?”

“Her old man is looking after them for me,” said Bruce. “He’s pretty disappointed that Julia and I aren’t a numero any more.”

“Sometimes the parents take it worse than the girl herself,” mused Nick. “They weigh the bloke up and decide that he’s good son-in-law material and then suddenly it’s all over. No more son-in-law. Back to square one.”

“Tough cheese,” said Bruce. “But these things happen.” He paused. “Tell me, what do we do next? Do I get to meet the agency people?”

“Sure,” said Nick. “You can come along tomorrow, if you like. I’ll show them a sheet of shots and they’ll give me their reaction. I can’t imagine that it will be anything other than a big yes. In fact, I know that’s what they’re going to say.”

“And then?”

Nick picked up an envelope from a table and slit it open with a forefinger. “Bills,” he said. “What happens then? Well, for a job this size they’ll involve the owner of the agency. He’s pretty hands-off, as he has lots of other businesses. But when there are hundreds of thousands of spondulicks at stake, then he likes to know what’s going on. He’ll probably want to meet you.”