The Unbearable Lightness of Scones (34 page)

Dr. Sinclair was looking at Bertie. “Your mummy tells me that you’re at the Steiner School,” he said. “I had a friend who was at a Steiner School, you know. He liked it a lot. Are you happy at school, Bertie? Have you got lots of friends there?”

“He’s very happy,” said Irene. “The Steiner School is an excellent school. And there are friends there, aren’t there, Bertie? Olive, for example.”

Bertie looked at his mother. It was his mother’s idea that Olive was his friend, not his. But he did not think that there was any point in trying to persuade her otherwise, and so he merely nodded, and then looked at the floor.

“Olive?” said Dr. Sinclair, his voice rising in pitch. “That’s a nice name. Tell me about Olive, Bertie.”

“She’s a very nice little girl,” said Irene. “Bertie has her to play from time to time. I know her mother quite well. We go to lectures at the Institute of Human Relations together. You’ll no doubt be in touch with them, once you get settled in.”

Dr. Sinclair was silent. He looked at Bertie for a few moments, and while he did so he fiddled with a pen he was holding. Then
he turned to Irene. “I think that perhaps Bertie and I are ready to have a little chat, just the two of us,” he said evenly.

Irene frowned. “I’m very happy to stay,” she said. “This first time, you know. It may be better for me to stay. I’m sure that’s what Bertie would like. Bertie …”

Dr. Sinclair rose to his feet. “That’s very good of you,” he said. “But I do think that it’s important that we have that little chat
à deux
. So, if you don’t mind, Mrs. Pollock, you can sit in the waiting room. I’ll call you if we need you.”

Irene had shown no sign of rising from her seat, but Dr. Sinclair was now standing directly behind her, gently tugging at the back of the chair, as if to dislodge her.

“Very well,” said Irene, her voice rather strained. “I shall wait outside.”

Once Irene was out of the room, Dr. Sinclair returned to his chair and smiled encouragingly at Bertie.

“You know where I come from, Bertie?” he asked. “Australia.”

“Oh,” said Bertie politely.

“Yes,” said Dr. Sinclair. “You’d love Australia, Bertie. Have you ever seen a kangaroo?”

Bertie had seen one at the zoo, when they had gone there on a school trip. Irene, who did not agree with zoos, had always refused to take him.

“I saw a kangaroo at the zoo,” he said. “I really like them.”

“Yes,” said Dr. Sinclair. “I like them. But you have to be careful with roos, Bertie. The bigger ones can be quite dangerous.”

“I’ve heard that,” said Bertie. “I’ve heard that they can kick you quite hard.”

Dr. Sinclair looked at him with interest. This, he thought, is an articulate, likeable little boy.

“And this Olive?” said Dr. Sinclair suddenly. “I bet you don’t really like her.”

“No,” said Bertie, and then, relenting, as he was a kind child, he said, “Well, I like her a tiny little bit, but not very much.”

Dr. Sinclair smiled. “Some girls can be quite bossy, can’t they?” he said.

Bertie relaxed. He was beginning to like Dr. Sinclair. “Yes, they can,” he said.

“And some mummies too,” said Dr. Sinclair very quietly, but just loudly enough for Bertie to hear.

Bertie hesitated. Then he nodded.

Dr. Sinclair looked at Bertie. You poor little boy, he thought. You haven’t got a mother – you’ve got a personal trainer.

The Braid Hills Hotel, the scene some years earlier of that disastrous South Edinburgh Conservative Ball at which numbers had been insufficient to make up an eightsome (but how things had changed), was now to be the setting of one of the strangest dramas to be enacted in Edinburgh for a considerable time. A few days after Angus had called at Big Lou’s flat and had first met the Pretender, Lou announced to him that at long last her unwelcome guest was moving on and that there was to be a farewell ceremony for him that very night.

“It’s a ceremony, not a party,” she told him when he and Matthew dropped in for mid-morning coffee. “Robbie’s quite particular about that. Historical occasions involve ceremonies, not parties.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that, Lou,” said Matthew. “There must have been some parties to mark big events. The millennium celebration down in London was a big one. They had a party in the Dome, didn’t they?”

“That ridiculous tent,” said Angus. “And can you imagine the sort of people they had at the party? Every exhibitionist, superficial crooner in the business. Football players, and worse.”

Matthew thought for a moment. He would rather have enjoyed being there, he decided, but he was not sure if he should say so. And anyway, Angus had marked views on these things and nothing that Matthew could say would change them.

“I knew somebody who went to it,” said Big Lou suddenly. “A very senior civil servant. He sometimes comes in for coffee in the late afternoon. On his way home. He told me that he went to that party.”

“Poor man,” said Angus. “But I suppose that duty called.”

“No,” said Big Lou. “He enjoyed it. He shook hands with the Prime Minister of the time – and he was wearing make-up. He noticed it, close up.”

“Well, he was going to be on television,” said Matthew. “He had to. He would have looked cadaverous otherwise.”

“I don’t think men should wear make-up – ever,” said Angus.

Matthew raised his hand to his face, but dropped it immediately, as if in guilt. Big Lou glanced at him.

“Moisturiser?” she asked Angus. “Can they use moisturiser?”

Angus shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not in my view.”

Matthew blushed. He had used moisturiser for two years now, and he had felt the benefits.

He looked at Angus’s skin, which was very dry; leathery almost. It was probably too late for him to start wearing moisturiser. “If you don’t wear moisturiser,” he said quietly, “then your skin can get all sorts of wrinkles in it.”

“Aye,” said Big Lou. “Matthew’s right there. Look at W. H. Auden. Look at his face. Have you seen pictures of it?”

“I have,” said Angus. “But Auden, as I happen to have read, had some rare skin condition. Even moisturiser wouldn’t have saved him. He said his face had undergone a geological catastrophe.”

“And ended up looking like a wedding cake that had been left out in the rain,” added Big Lou. She had a large collection of Auden in her flat; in the stock she had acquired from the former bookshop there had been a whole shelf of his work.

Angus now turned to Matthew. “Tell me, Matthew, do you wear moisturiser yourself?”

Matthew shifted in his seat. He looked over towards Big Lou, who was standing behind her counter, her cloth poised in mid-wipe.

“Tell him it’s none of his business,” she snorted.

Matthew shook his head. “No, I don’t mind. To be honest, Angus, I do. I wear moisturiser. I put it on in the morning, and then again at night. Elspeth and I use the same brand. We only discovered that when we got married.”

Angus stared at him. “I see. And what did she say when she found that out?”

“She was pleased,” said Matthew. He paused. “Actually, Angus, I hate to say this, but you’re rather out of date. I can tell you of loads of prominent men in Scotland who use moisturiser and are not ashamed to say so. From every walk of life.”

Angus was interested. “Politicians?”

“Yes, of course.” And Matthew now gave him the names of three prominent male figures in politics who used moisturiser.

“And the arts?”

“Hundreds,” said Matthew. “In fact, name one man in the arts – one man who’s any good, that is – who doesn’t use moisturiser. You won’t be able to.” He hesitated. “Apart from you, of course, Angus.”

“And in business?” Angus asked.

“Naturally,” said Matthew. “Not everyone does, of course. Some of them don’t need to. But lots of businessmen use it, I promise you. I was in the New Club bar with my father once and all those financial types were talking about moisturiser.”

Angus looked thoughtful. “So it’s not … it’s not effeminate to use it? Is that what you’re telling me?”

Big Lou could not help but laugh. “Oh, Angus,” she burst out, “you’re very old-fashioned. Nobody worries about being effeminate these days. Those things don’t matter any more. If men want to wear make-up, they can. If they want to sit around talking about … about …”

“About moisturiser,” Matthew provided.

“Yes, about moisturiser, well they can. Nobody’s going to stop them. Men have been liberated.”

Angus narrowed his eyes. “They have? Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” said Big Lou. “Men can be themselves now, without worrying about gender expectations. Those barriers came down years ago. You’ve been locked in that stuffy studio of yours and you’ve missed the news.”

Angus turned to Matthew. “Could you advise me where to buy it?” he said. “Or maybe you could go and get some for me.”

Matthew laughed. “And say to the woman at the cash register, ‘This isn’t for me, it’s for a friend’?”

Angus nodded. “Yes, something like that.”

They were silent. Matthew was thinking how sad it was that the news of the liberation of men should not have reached Angus before now; Angus was thinking of moisturiser, and wondering whether it would smell like shaving cream. And did one put it on before or after one shaved? And Big Lou’s thoughts had returned to the Braid Hills Hotel, and the hills beyond, whence came the Jacobites’ help.

The Braid Hills Hotel, of course, was more than a mere hotel – it was a symbol. Perched on the brow of a hill, it looked down over the rooftops of Morningside to the city and the hills of Fife beyond. It was solid, imperturbable, reassuring –
always there, as was the Castle itself in the distance, and it spoke of the values that created the city that lay before it. Like the Dominion Cinema, it had not changed much – a fact that was much appreciated by those who used it. There was far too much change in the world, and fantoosh hotels and glitzy cinemas would come and go. What people wanted was places that had always been there, places they could trust, places that had become deeply embedded in the folk memory.

It had been the scene of many important events over the years: weddings, funeral teas, Rotary Club dinners and so on; and many people had individual memories of these occasions which would be triggered as they looked up at the hotel from the road below. For Betty Dunbarton, for instance, relict of the late Ramsey Dunbarton WS, the glimpse of the Braid Hills Hotel afforded her as she drove out each Friday to lunch with her friend Peggy Feggie, in Fairmilehead, reminded her of the evening when she and Ramsey had dined there after the last performance of
The Gondoliers
at the Church Hill Theatre. Ramsey had played the role of the Duke of Plaza-Toro with great distinction and had ordered a bottle of champagne to mark the end of the run. And then, just as they embarked on their meal, the doors of the dining room had opened to admit the rest of the cast, who had decided to have their last-night dinner in the same place. Ramsey had looked surprised, and then embarrassed, and she had said, “But my dear, did you not know that there would be a cast party?” Without hesitation he had replied, “Of course I did, my dear, But I chose to dine with you instead.”

Later that evening, as they returned home, he had said, “I have to tell you, my dear, that I have lied to you. I did not know that there was to be a party. They did not invite me. I did not want you to be hurt.”

It was only the second time he had lied to his wife – and on both occasions he had done so to avoid causing her hurt or embarrassment. The first occasion had been when they were engaged and they had gone for a walk down at Cramond. They
had seen the
Gardyloo
, the boat then used to take sewage out to sea, and she had asked, “What is that odd-looking boat carrying, Ramsey?” And he had told her that it must be gravel, going over to Fife, in order that he should not have to tell her its true mission. Two white lies – both of which had been confessed, and both forgiven.

But the occasion to which the Braid Hills Hotel was now unwittingly playing host was of a very different nature. As Angus and Matthew arrived in the bar with Big Lou, a small group of Jacobites were already there. Lou recognised some of them as friends of Robbie, and nodded a greeting, but did not join them. Angus glanced at them with interest: strange specimens, he thought – that character Michael and his ridiculous spotty acolyte who hung on his every word; the odd woman who claimed to be able to trace her ancestry back to the sixth century or whenever; they were a very motley group.

“I must say this is a very peculiar occasion,” said Angus to Big Lou. “Where’s the Pretender?”

“He’s going to arrive with Robbie,” explained Lou. “Then they’re going to set off from the car park. There’ll be a piper, apparently.”

A few more Jacobites had now joined the other party, which had swollen to about thirty. They all had glasses of whisky in their hands and were toasting one another enthusiastically. There was a hubbub of noise, and it was growing louder when, from outside in the car park, there arose the wail of pipes. Clutching their whisky glasses, the Jacobites all headed for the door, followed by Angus, Matthew and Big Lou.