Espresso Tales

biologically significant information. He proved it with the milk-top hypothesis.”

Irene frowned. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I did look at that book, ages ago, and I’ve forgotten . . .”

“No need to apologise,” said Barnabas. “Sheldrake reminds us that before the war birds had worked out how to peck away at the foil tops of milk bottles and drink the top of the milk on the doorstep. It took them some time to learn this, but eventually they did. Then along came the war and they stopped using those foil tops – metal had to be kept for other uses.

And so several generations of birds never saw those milk tops.

Then, after the war they were able to introduce those tops again and, lo and behold, the birds knew immediately what to do.”

On the Way Home

59

“And Sheldrake says?”

“That the only way in which the birds could have picked up that knowledge would be if there had been some sort of energy field which contained that information for them. He calls it morphic resonance.”

Irene reflected on this. It was challenging stuff. “And your book?” she asked.

“It explores the possibility that nuts have feelings,” said Barnabas solemnly. “And it concludes that they do. Not feelings in the sense that we might use the term about ourselves, but feelings in the sense of some form of quasi- conscious response to the world.” He paused. “Not everyone would agree with me, of course. But it does have major dietary implications.”

“It means that eating nuts is cruel?” prompted Irene.

“Not exactly,” said Barnabas. “But it might be thought inconsiderate.”

“Do you eat them yourself ?” asked Irene. “Not that I mean to be personal. I hope you don’t mind my asking.”

“I’m in the process of giving them up,” said Barnabas. “After all, I feel that I should practise at least some of what I preach.”

Irene was about to say something when there was a sudden noise of shouting and laughing and the children streamed out of the building. When Bertie saw Irene, he seemed to hesitate for a few seconds, but then came forward to her.

“Well, Bertie,” asked Irene. “How was it? How was your first day of school? Did you learn anything?”

“I learned a little about life,” said Bertie.

“Good,” said Irene. “Now let’s go home. We’ll get the 23

from up the road.”

They walked back up Spylaw Road and on towards Bruntsfield. They were just in time for a 23 bus as it came up the road from Holy Corner.

“We shall sit on the top, Bertie,” said Irene. “We can look out and see what’s happening on the pavement.”

They found seats and sat down on the upper deck. Bertie was silent as the bus started its journey back. He looked down at the dirt stain on the knee of his trousers, the stain caused by 60

Matthew’s Situation

the assault perpetrated on him by the poor, doomed Tofu. Could Olive be right that he was starving to death? Were people allowed to starve to death these days, now that the Labour Party was in power? Surely not.

Irene was lost in her thoughts too. The bus had stopped near a bank cash machine, and she noticed a young man, blanket around his legs, sitting on the pavement right next to the machine. As people came to draw their money, he looked up at them and asked for change. The sight made her angry. He was able-bodied, was he not? He was young enough to work, or draw benefit if he could not: what right did he have to impor-tune people in this way? People had the right to draw money, she felt, without being subjected to any pressure. And where were the police? Did they stand by and tolerate this? It appeared that they did.

She stopped herself. Should I be thinking like this? she wondered. Like what? She supplied her own answer: like a Conservative. The problem was that whenever the Conservatives made a policy statement these days she found herself agreeing with it. That was awkward, in her book, and she put the thought out of her mind. But then the thought occurred to her: perhaps I’m a Conservative leftist. That sounded much more respectable than being a leftist Conservative. But what exactly was the difference?

19. Matthew’s Situation

Matthew, proprietor of the Something Special Gallery, and Pat’s employer of four months’ standing, opened the gallery that morning rather earlier than usual. Pat often arrived well before he did. She came in shortly after nine, at a time when all the other galleries in the area were still firmly closed. And what would have been the point of their opening that early? People did not buy paintings at that hour, and indeed the sort of people who bought paintings were still enjoying a leisurely breakfast then or were hard at work in their offices.

Matthew’s Situation

61

Matthew had tried to work out exactly who his customers were. He had read few business books, but had eventually picked one more or less at random from the business section of a bookshop, that section so distinguished by such titles as Cut out the Competition! and The New Executive You. His choice was called Retail Success: Ten Secrets Revealed. Matthew thought the title absurd but had found the book more interesting than he had imagined it would be. Retail, it appeared, was a complicated process, in which people who were unwilling, for entirely understandable reasons, to hand over their money to others, were persuaded by those very others to do just that. That was secret number one: nobody really wanted to buy anything. It was then revealed that the second secret, closely allied to the first, was that even if people were persuaded to hand over their money, they wished to minimise the extent to which they did so. This led the authors of the book to counsel the reader to encourage unanticipated overspend.