44 Scotland Street

“Hamilton and Inches,” said Sasha knowingly.

“Wonderful,” said Betty. “Ramsey loves Hamilton and Inches.”

The other prizes she won were less exciting, but still represented a good haul. And when it came to Ramsey’s turn, although he was unmoved by the prize of the round of golf at Craiglockhart, he was extremely pleased with the two free tickets to the Lyceum Theatre to be followed by dinner (up 160

The Tombola

to the value of twenty-five pounds) in the Lyceum Restaurant.

His final prize was the picture which Bruce had brought as his contribution.

“A view of somewhere over in the west,” announced Sasha as she handed the Peploe? over to him. “A very nice prize indeed, thanks to Bruce.”

Ramsey and Betty nodded in Bruce’s direction in acknowledgment of his generosity. Then they placed the Peploe? with the fish knives and forks and waited for the next stage of the draw.

This saw Lizzie win the dinner at Prestonfield (“too fattening,”

she said), a jar of pickled red peppers from Valvona and Crolla (“can’t stand red peppers,” she remarked) and a copy of the latest novel by a well known crime-writer (“Ian who?” she asked). When it came to Sasha’s turn, she won, of course, the lunch with Malcolm Rifkind and Lord James at the Balmoral Hotel. This brought some envious muttering from Ramsey Dunbarton, who clearly would have liked to have won that, but this merely confirmed Sasha’s conviction that she had done the right thing.

“I couldn’t have imposed him on them,” she said to Todd later.

“Imagine them having to sit there and listen to stories about North Berwick and broken teeth.”

Laden with prizes, the party began to break up. The Ramsey Dunbartons’ taxi arrived to take them the short distance back to Morningside Drive and Bruce telephoned for a cab back to Scotland Street. Then he remembered the underpants. He had intended to slip into them earlier on, but had almost forgotten his state of undress. Now, as he remembered that the pants were in his sporran, it occurred to him that the simplest way of returning them to their owner would be to put them in the pocket of Todd’s coat, which he knew had been hung in the cloakroom on the ground floor.

Making his excuses, Bruce left the small knot of guests around the table and made his way to the cloakroom. There, as he had expected, was Todd’s black Crombie coat with its velvet collar.

Bruce crossed the room quickly, extracting the underpants from his sporran as he did so. Then, fumbling in the folds of the coat, he slipped the pants into the right-hand pocket.

Bertie Begins Therapy

161

“Did you enjoy yourself?”

It was Todd, standing at the door.

“That’s my coat,” said Todd. “Yours is over there, isn’t it?”

Bruce laughed nervously. “I must have had too much to drink,”

he said. “So it is!”

He moved over towards his coat and took it off the hook.

Then he turned and looked at Todd, who was watching him suspiciously. As he put on his coat, he felt Todd’s eyes remain on him. It was very disconcerting. Bruce was used to being looked at – in an admiring way – but this was different.

61. Bertie Begins Therapy

For Irene Pollock, the mother of that most talented five-year-old, Bertie, the decision to seek advice from the Scottish Institute of Human Relations was an entirely appropriate response to a trying set of circumstances. Bertie’s sudden outburst at the Floatarium – when he had so unexpectedly declared his opposition to speaking Italian and learning the saxophone – had been only the first sign of a worryingly rebellious attitude. Although it was difficult to put a finger on any particular incident or comment (other than his extraordinary behaviour at the Floatarium, which followed hard on the heels of the graffiti incident) there was no doubt that he was less co-operative than he used to be. An indication of this attitude was his subtle abandonment of the first names which he had been encouraged to use when addressing his parents; Irene and Stuart had come so naturally to him, and seemed so right; now it was Mummy and Daddy – terms which were acceptable when used by Irene or Stuart themselves, but which seemed disturbingly hierarchical – even reactionary – when uttered by Bertie.

And then there had been a shift in attitude towards his room.

One afternoon she had gone into his room – which she called 162

Bertie Begins Therapy

his space – to discover Bertie standing in the middle of his rug, staring disconsolately at the walls. He had not said anything at first, but she had formed the distinct impression that he was thinking about the colour – a reassuring pink – and might even have been imagining the walls in another colour.

“You’re very lucky to have a space like this,” said Irene, pre-emptively. “You really are.”

Bertie looked at her briefly, almost in reproach, and had then turned away. “Other boys have different spaces,” he said. “They have trains and things.”

“Other boys are not as lucky as you are,” Irene countered.

“Other boys are forced into moulds, you know. Forced to play football, for example. Horrid things like that. Do you understand what I mean? We’re giving you something very different, Bertie.