The Unbearable Lightness of Scones (18 page)

There was no shortage of takers, and Olive had started with Merlin, a boy whom she found less offensive than Tofu but considerably less attractive than Bertie (whom she had decided she would eventually marry in fifteen years’ time, when they both reached the age of twenty-one). Merlin’s hand was stretched out and Olive took it, peering carefully at the lines on his palm.

“You will be very rich and you will live in New York,” said Olive, pointing to several converging lines. “That’s a really good palm, Merlin. You’re lucky.”

Hiawatha was, somewhat reluctantly, given a reading. “You will eventually stop smelling,” said Olive. “You will be given a big present of soap. That’s what your palm says.”

Hiawatha seemed reasonably pleased with this and went off smiling. Now it was Bertie’s turn.

“You’ve got some very good lines here, Bertie,” said Olive. “You have a very good life ahead of you. You will meet a nice girl – you have probably already met her. That’s what this line says. And then you will marry her and have lots of children. That will be when you’re twenty-one. And this line here says that her name will probably begin with an O. That’s all it says, so we can’t be sure.”

Bertie said nothing, but withdrew his hand. Now it was Tofu who came up.

“If you’re so clever, read my palm,” he said, stretching out his hand.

“I will,” said Olive. “Hold it still, Tofu.”

There was a sharp intake of breath from Olive.

“What do you see?” asked Tofu. “Am I going to be rich too? Like Merlin?”

Olive looked at him with pity. “I don’t know if I should tell you this,” she said. “Maybe I shouldn’t. It’s best not to know some things, you know. I’m really sorry, Tofu. I’m sorry that I’ve been so unkind to you. This is not a time for being nasty to one another.”

“What do you mean?” snapped Tofu. “Is there something wrong with my palm?”

The others, clustered around in a small knot, were silent. “Everything,” said Olive. “It’s the saddest palm I’ve ever seen in all my experience.”

“One day,” snorted Tofu. “This is the first time you’ve done this.”

“You may say that,” said Olive. “And I won’t hold it against you. Not since you’re not going to be here much longer.”

“Bad luck, Tofu,” said Merlin.

“What do you mean?” asked Tofu. He was less confident now, and his voice wavered.

“Well, since you really want me to tell you,” said Olive, “I shall.” She reached again for Tofu’s hand and pointed to lines in the middle. “You see this line here? That’s your life line, Tofu, and you’ll see that it’s really short. So that means you’re not going to last long. Maybe another couple of weeks. No more than that.”

“Rubbish,” said Tofu. But he did not sound very convinced.

“You can call it rubbish if you like,” said Olive. “But that won’t make it any less true. And there’s another thing. You’re going to die painfully, Tofu. See that line there – that means you’re going to die painfully.”

If Olive had not embellished her reading with this last qualification, Tofu would probably have believed her. But this was
one prediction too far, and Tofu had seized her own hand, turned it over, and pointed to a line on her palm. “And what about you, Olive?” he had shouted. “Look. See this line here? You know what that means? It means that somebody’s going to spit at you. There, and it’s come true!”

Bertie wished that Tofu and Olive would not fight so much, and in particular that Tofu would stop spitting at her. But try as he might to make conciliatory remarks, they ignored his peace-making efforts and remained as bitter enemies as they ever had been. So having the two of them in his flat was not Bertie’s idea of a promising social mix.

“We’re going to play house,” announced Olive, looking defiantly at Tofu. “I’m going to be the mummy. Bertie’s going to be the daddy. And Tofu can be the marriage counsellor.”

“What’s that?” asked Tofu.

“You don’t know what a marriage counsellor is?” asked Olive.

“Neither do I,” said Bertie.

Olive sighed. “It would take too long to explain to you, Tofu. You’ll just have to make up your mind: do you want to play house or not?”

“No,” said Tofu. “I don’t.”

Olive turned to Bertie. “And you, Bertie? You want to play, don’t you?”

Bertie swallowed. “Well …”

“That’s fine then,” said Olive. “Bertie and I will play house. You can do what you like, Tofu. We don’t care.”

“I don’t know, Olive,” Bertie began. “Tofu is here to play too …”

Olive was not to be distracted. “Don’t worry about him, Bertie. Now let’s pretend it’s dinner time and you’ve come back from the office. I’ll ask you how your day was and then I’ll make you some tea. There, I’ve put the kettle on, and there, listen, it’s already boiled. How many spoons of sugar do you take, Bertie?”

Tofu had been watching attentively. Now he interrupted with a sneer. “If you were married to him, Olive, you would
know. You don’t get mummies asking daddies how much sugar they take. They know that already.”

Olive ignored this. “There, Bertie dear. Two spoons of sugar. And now I’ll cook your mince and tatties. Look, there it is. That’s your plate and that’s mine. What shall we talk about while we’re having dinner? Or should we just sit there, like real married people?”

How did all that go?” asked Stuart when he came home that evening. Irene, who was standing in the kitchen looking pensively out of the window, rolled her eyes heavenwards. “Not a conspicuous success,” she said. “As you know, Bertie had two guests this afternoon.”

“That’s nice for him,” said Stuart. “I’ve always thought that he needed a few more friends.”

Irene looked at her husband disapprovingly. The trouble with Stuart, she thought, was that he had an outdated, possibly even reactionary vision of childhood. Childhood was no longer simply play and picnics; childhood was a vital time for
potential self-enhancement, a time when one could develop those talents that would stand one in good stead in adult life. She had explained this to Stuart many times before, but he seemed incapable of grasping it. “Friends are not the issue,” she said. “Bertie gets plenty of opportunities for social interaction, both in the home, with you and me, and in the classroom, with his classmates. The issue with friends is not how many, but who.”

“Well, he seems happy enough with Tofu’s company,” said Stuart. “He seems a pleasant enough boy – in his way.”

Irene sighed. Stuart did not get it; he did not get this, and there were many other things that he did not get. Now she adopted the tone of voice that she used when explaining the obvious either to Bertie or to her husband, an
ex cathedra
tone redolent of the more condescending type of politician trying to avoid responsibility for some failure or other. “Tofu is completely unsuitable,” she intoned. “There is simply too much unresolved psychopathology there. He has a passive-aggressive personality, as you may or may not have noticed. He’s the worst possible influence on Bertie.”

“I was just making an observation,” Stuart said meekly. “That’s all.”

“Well, it wasn’t a very perceptive one,” snapped Irene. “I don’t know, I really don’t. Bertie seems to be doing so well with Dr. Fairbairn and now …”

Stuart raised an eyebrow. “Problems?”

Irene spoke carefully. She sounded insouciant – perhaps excessively so. “I meant to tell you. Hugo is going to Aberdeen. Very soon. Bertie has one more session and then that will be that.”

Stuart seemed relieved to hear the news. “Well, he’s had a long time with the good doctor. And I think he’s a bit fed up with going along there. He’ll be pretty pleased to hear the news.”

Irene’s eyes narrowed. “That,” she said, “is the very last thing I had in mind. Interruptions in therapy are extremely
counter-productive. We must try and arrange as smooth a transition as possible.”

“You mean …”

“Yes. Hugo is handing his practice on to a new therapist. A highly thought-of Australian, I gather. He’ll be fully briefed by Hugo. Bertie will be in safe hands.”

Stuart stood in silence, looking out of the window. He was remembering his conversation with Bertie in Dundas Street, the conversation in which the issue of joining the cub scouts had been raised. Did Irene know about this, he wondered; and, if not, should he raise it with her?

He turned away from the window to face Irene. “Perhaps we should ask Bertie what he wants,” he said. “He’s old enough now to have views.”

“I know very well what Bertie wants,” said Irene coldly. “I spend a lot of time with him, you know.”

Stuart was not sure if there was an element of censure in this last remark. Perhaps I am a failure as a father, he thought. But I don’t seem to get a look-in. She decides, all the time. I try, but she decides.

He took a deep breath. “So what does he want then?” he asked.

She had not heard him. “What?”

He repeated the question, louder now. “What does Bertie want? You said that you knew what his views were. Well, what does he want?”

Irene opened her hands; a gesture to be made when answering the obvious. “He wants to … He wants to learn Italian. He wants to go to yoga. And I suspect that underneath it all he enjoys his psychotherapy sessions. And, oh, he wants to have a train set. Which he’ll get one of these days.”

“No,” said Stuart. “He does not like learning Italian. He hates yoga. And he endures psychotherapy because he has no alternative.”

Irene looked down at the floor. This would pass. But Stuart
was warming to his theme now. “And as for what he actually wants to do,” he went on, “Bertie confided in me that he wants to join the cub scouts.”

Irene gave a cry of triumph. “Oh, I know all about that,” she said. “That came up this afternoon. Our little friend Tofu announced over tea that he wanted Bertie to join a club with him. So I asked what it was and was told that it was the Young Liberal Democrats! Can you believe it? So a bit of probing and the whole thing collapsed and it emerged it was some cub scout pack in Morningside and that the Young Liberal Democrats was Tofu’s idea of what I might approve of. Isn’t that rich?”

As Stuart listened, he felt his sorrow grow. Sorrow. Sorrow that the boys had felt they had to come up with such a ridiculous invention. Sorrow that Irene could not see what was so obvious.

“But he must join,” he said. “It’s a wonderful organisation. It’s exactly what he needs.”

Irene raised an eyebrow. “The matter’s closed,” she said. “I’m not having Bertie joining any paramilitary organisations. And I’ve told him that.”

Stuart let out an involuntary gasp. “Paramilitary organisation? Are you aware … even vaguely aware of what scouting is all about?”

“Self-confessed male bonding,” Irene snapped. “Reinforcement of primitive male rituals. It starts with the cub scouts and ends with … ends with Muirfield Golf Club. Is that what you want for our son, Stuart? Is it?”

Stuart said nothing. For a moment he looked at Irene in blank amazement, and then he walked smartly to the kitchen door and called down the hall. “Bertie! Come along here, my boy. I want to talk to you about the cub scouts and when we can get you started.”

“Stuart!”

“Shut your face.”

Domenica Macdonald had always been a believer in good-neighbourliness. Having spent her early years in the same Scotland Street flat in which she now lived, she understood the ethos which underlay the communal life of a Scottish tenement: you did your duty by those who lived on the same stair – you washed the steps according to the rota, you cut the green when it needed cutting (and you took on the turn of anybody who was ill or infirm), and you avoided arguments with your fellow residents. It was, she reflected, very much the same code of communal living that applied in any society in any country, and perhaps the most universal and the most important part of it was this: don’t pick fights.

Forty-four Scotland Street had always been at the equable end of the spectrum when it came to neighbourly relations. Domenica had her views on the Pollock family downstairs – she found Irene almost too ridiculous to be true – but there had never been any open hostility between them. With the two young men on the ground floor she got on perfectly well, although they kept very much to themselves; and as for the flat in the basement – that was something of a mystery: it belonged to an accountant in Dundee who used it occasionally when he came to Edinburgh on business, but he was never seen by anybody.

It was natural that Domenica should have more contact with the other flat on her landing, the flat currently owned by Antonia Collie. When Bruce had owned that flat, Domenica had enjoyed cordial relations with him, even though she had immediately and correctly identified him as, in her words, an eighty-four horse-power narcissist. She had liked Pat, Bruce’s flat-mate, and had sympathised with her when the young student found herself falling for her well-coiffed landlord. Indeed, Pat had become a good friend, in spite of the forty years that separated them in age, and she missed her now that she had gone back to live with her parents in the Grange. It was only the other side of town, not much more than forty
minutes’ walk away, and yet it was not a friendship that would survive geographical separation. And naturally so; Pat had a circle of her own age – and now that Matthew was married she would be less in evidence in Dundas Street, where she had worked closely with Matthew at his gallery.