Dr Fairbairn stared at the tee-shirts and then at the faces of the couple. They were, he imagined, about nineteen or twenty, and reasonably composed in their appearance and manner. Why then did they wear tee-shirts with messages? Was it a question of fashion – others broadcast messages on their clothing and therefore they felt they had to do it too? That was a simple, but powerful explanation. The desire to conform in clothing was almost universal. Jeans were a statement that one was just like everybody else. They were the modern uniform, achieving a flat monotony of look that would have warmed the heart of Mao at his height of enthusiasm for the destruction of sartorial salience.
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But messages, he thought, were different. In having something written on one’s clothing – written on the outside, be it noted – one was effectively making oneself into a walking bill-board. This meant that one’s clothing could make both a passive and an active ideological statement. The red shirt with the head of Che Guevera said:
were likely to be seen as far more credible activists than those timid souls whose shirts merely said
The whole point, though, of having writing on one’s shirt was an exhibitionist one. To draw attention to oneself through clothing is exhibitionist, and of course, as Dr Fairbairn knew very well, exhibitionism was a substitute for real giving, real intimacy. The exhibitionist appears to be giving, but is actually not giving at all. He trumpets out the message
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real human exchange, with the other. The external is all that is on offer with the exhibitionist; the internal is hoarded, protected, Freudice: retained. The last person you see when you are confronted with an exhibitionist is the real person inside. That person is not on display.
Dr Fairbairn glanced at the young man’s shirt with its negative message. NO was perhaps not too bad a message to be proclaiming. At least it was modest. At least it was not like the obscene messages that some people wore on their clothing. Such people were shameless exhibitionists, but they were also polluters of our common space.
He shifted in his seat, which gave him a better view of the seats at the back of the bus. It was an average group of people: a young man in a suit (a bank-teller, perhaps, thought Dr Fairbairn), a person with a full shopping bag and a look of resignation about her (a woman, perhaps, he thought), an elderly man who had fallen asleep. And then, very near the back, sitting alongside his mother, whom Dr Fairbairn recognised after all these years . . . Wee Fraser himself.
Dr Fairbairn caught his breath. He had prepared himself for a meeting with Wee Fraser, but had not prepared himself for a meeting on the bus. And now, faced with the reality of this 14-year-old boy, with his short hair and his aggressive lower lip, Dr Fairbairn was not at all sure what to do. Should he wait until they got off the bus, at which point he could himself alight, or should he go and speak to them now? Would it be awkward to say what he had to in the bus, or would he need privacy?
He thought about this, indifferent to his surroundings, but when he looked out of the bus window he realised that they were almost at Burdiehouse. In fact, now they were there, and Wee Fraser and his mother were rising to their feet.
Dr Fairbairn waited for them to pass, before he got up. As they made their way past, Wee Fraser looked at Dr Fairbairn, and his eyes narrowed. Somewhere, in the very recesses of his mind, a memory was at work.
Dr Fairbairn stood up, and in so doing he inadvertently jostled Wee Fraser, who spun round, muttered aggressively and then, 282
with extraordinary speed, launched his head forward and head-butted the psychotherapist.
Almost instinctively, but moved, too, by sheer rage, Dr Fairbairn raised his fist and hit Wee Fraser soundly across the side of his chin. There was a crack as the jaw broke.
“Maw! Maw!” wailed Wee Fraser, the words strangely slurred by the loosened jaw.
Dr Fairbairn pushed his way up to the front of the bus and burst out of the door. We repeat our mistakes, he reflected, as he made his way hurriedly down the road. Endlessly. In ways that speak so eloquently of our deepest inner urges.
Janis and Gordon met that night at eight o’clock at the Cafe St Honore. Gordon had suggested dinner, and Janis had readily accepted, as she had been hoping for an opportunity to give him the Crosbie which she had bought from Matthew. The painting had appealed to her when she first saw it, and when she took it home, to her house in the Stockbridge colonies, she had become even more taken with it. She had wrapped it carefully in the red gift paper which she used in her florist shop, and had written a short message on an accompanying card.
Gordon had suggested that he call for her in a taxi, but she had decided to walk up the hill to the dinner engagement, as it was a fine evening. The first signs of autumn could be detected by those on the look-out for them, a slight sharpening of the air, an attenuation of the light. But for now, on that still evening, there was still every reason to be out under the pale sky, every reason to be walking through the streets of Edinburgh with the prospect of conversation and companionship at one’s destina-tion. Which is what we are all looking for, thought Janis – in our various ways.
She thought about her day as she walked up Howe Street.
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They had been busy at the shop, and she and her two assistants had been exhausted when they closed the door at six. There had been a large delivery for two weddings they were doing the following day and there had also been a steady stream of customers. In the mid-afternoon, a man had come in and chosen a large spray of roses. She had prepared the flowers and had handed them to him.
