“Yes,” went on Irene. “We’ve been thinking, your father and I, that maybe you should do more of the things you really want to do. Would you like that, Bertie?”
Bertie smiled at his mother. “Very much,” he said. He was pleased, but still rather doubtful. He was not sure whether his mother really understood what he wanted to do. Would he be let off yoga today?
“So, Bertie,” said Irene, “I thought that although today is Saturday, and we normally have double yoga on a Saturday, we might skip it .”
“Oh thank you!” shouted Bertie. “Thank you, Mummy!”
“And instead,” continued Irene, “we shall . . .”
Bertie’s face fell as he wondered what the alternative would be. Double Italian? Or perhaps the floatarium?
“We shall get Daddy,” said Irene, “we shall get Daddy to take you up to the Princes Street Gardens. You can climb that bit underneath the castle there and look down on the trains. Would you like that, Bertie?”
Bertie let out a whoop of delight. “I’d love that, Mummy. We could see the trains leaving for Glasgow!”
Irene smiled. “An unusual pleasure, in my view,” she mused.
“But there we are.
Bertie finished his porridge quickly and then returned to his room to put on a sweater. It was a warm day for the time of the year, but by wearing a sweater he could cover the top part of his dungarees and people would not necessarily think that he was wearing them. From a distance, and if they did not look too closely, they might even think that he was wearing nothing more unusual than red jeans. That is what he hoped for, anyway.
Stuart emerged shortly after Bertie had got himself ready.
After a quick breakfast, with Bertie champing at the bit to be out, they left the flat and Scotland Street and began to walk up the hill towards Princes Street. It was a fine morning and when they reached Princes Street the flags on the flagpoles were fluttering proudly in a strong breeze from the west.
314
“It makes you proud, doesn’t it, Bertie?” said Stuart. “Look at the wonderful scene. The flags. The Castle. The statues.
Doesn’t it make you proud to be Scottish, to be part of all this?”
“Aye, it does that, Faither,” said Bertie.
They crossed the road and made their way into the Gardens.
Then, crossing the railway line on the narrow pedestrian bridge, they headed for the steep path that led up the lower slopes of the Castle Rock. After a short climb, they found a place to sit, half on rock, half on grass, and from there they watched the trains run through the cutting down below. As they passed, some of the trains sounded their whistles, and the sound drifted up to them, and the sound, to Bertie at least, meant the freedom of the wider world, the freedom of which he was now, at last, being offered a glimpse. And he was happy, even when the wind swallowed up the sound of the whistles and made the train sounds seem faint and far away.
“I had a very strange dream last night, Daddy,” said Bertie suddenly.
“Oh yes, Bertie. And what was that?”
“I dreamed that Mummy had a new baby,” said Bertie. “And the baby was dressed in blue linen, which is what Dr Fairbairn wears. It was very funny. A little blue linen baby suit.”
Stuart looked at his son. Down below a train went past and sounded a warning whistle, audible for a moment, but then caught by the wind and carried away.
Ramsey Dunbarton looked at Betty with all the fondness that comes of over forty years of marriage. “I don’t think that you’re finding my memoirs interesting, Betty,” he said. “But don’t worry, I’m not going to read much more.”
“But they
conservatory and I find myself drifting off from the heat. It’s not you, Ramsey, my dear. You read on.”
“I’m only going to read two more excerpts,” said Ramsey, shuffling the papers of his manuscript. “And then I’m going to stop.”
“Read on, Macduff,” said Betty.
“Why do you call me Macduff ?” asked Ramsey, sounding puzzled. “We have no Macduffs in the family as far as I know.
No, hold on! I think we might, I think we just might! My mother’s cousin, the one who came from Forres, married a man whom we used to call Uncle Lou, and I think that he had a brother-in-law who was a Macduff. Yes, I think he was! Well, there you are, Betty! Isn’t Scotland a village!”
“Do carry on,” said Betty, closing her eyes. “I love the sound of your voice, Ramsey.”
“Now then,” said Ramsey, referring to his manuscript. “This happened about twenty years ago. I had a client, not Johnny Auchtermuchty, but somebody quite different, who had a large hotel in Perthshire. We acted for them in some Court of Session business that they had and I went up there one Saturday to have lunch with my client and to discuss the progress of the legal action down in Edinburgh. It was a very complicated case and I was not at all sure that the counsel we had instructed understood some of the finer points involved. I had suggested this to him – very politely, of course – and he had become quite shirty, implying that advocates generally knew more about the law
