Espresso Tales

And there was a difficulty with doing even that. Bertie was now allowed out alone in Scotland Street and Drummond Place, provided that he did not cross any busy roads and provided that he told Irene exactly where he was going. This allowed him to sit on the steps outside No 44 and watch people going in and out of their houses. It also allowed him to stand at the end of Scotland Street Lane in the hope of seeing one of the motorcycles that occasionally roared out of the vintage-motorcycle garage (out of bounds).

Bertie liked the motorcyclists, who sometimes waved or nodded to him. He would like to have a motorcycle like that, which he could ride to rugby matches, and he would do so, he thought, when he was bigger.

His mother would not like it, of course – she said that motorcycles were noisy things – worse than cars – and that if she were the Lord Provost of Edinburgh she would ban them from the streets. But even if he got hold of a motorcycle, she would still try to spoil it for him, thought Bertie. Motorcyclists wore leather outfits, sometimes with badges on them; she would force him to wear leather dungarees, he thought, and all the other motorcyclists would laugh at him.

If Paddy lived on Fettes Row, then he would have to go and seek him there. But again there were obstacles. Although one section of Fettes Row was accessible, the other section, where Paddy lived, lay beyond Dundas Street, and the crossing of Dundas Street was definitely forbidden.

Bertie wrestled with this. He could not tell his mother that he was going to the other side of Fettes Row because she would forbid him outright. And if he lied, which he did not want to do – for he was a truthful boy (apart from his habit of occasionally giving a false name) – then he would surely give himself away with his blushes. So he would have to 108 Bertie Makes a Move

develop a form of words which allowed for the crossing of Dundas Street.

“Can I go down to Royal Crescent?” he asked one afternoon.

Irene glanced up from the book she was reading, a new biography of Melanie Klein. For a moment she wondered how Melanie Klein would have answered had anybody asked her permission to go to Royal Crescent. It would have been too simple just to say yes. Perhaps she would have said: Why do you want to go to Royal Crescent?

“Why?” she said.

Bertie shrugged. “I want to play.”

Irene looked back at the book. The biographer had reached a point where Kleinian theories of play were on the point of being discussed at an important meeting in London. Melanie was anxious about the implications of a possible attack from Freudian loyalists who believed she had strayed too far from the fold. The pace of the account, with all its intrigue, was building up.

“That’s fine, Bertie. You play. And then maybe we can talk about how you played. Would that be all right? You could tell Mummy about your little games?”

Bertie pursed his lips. It was none of her business how he played. He wanted to play Chase the Dentist, but she said that it was too violent, and he could never find anybody to play it with him. But he did not want to argue about that now; bland acceptance was a better policy.

“And then I’ll go round to the end of the street and then come back,” he said.

Every word of the sentence had been rehearsed, and he delivered his line faultlessly. It was true, after all, and there was no need to feel ashamed or to blush over what he had said. Royal Crescent and Fettes Row were, strictly speaking, separate streets, but in a broad sense they were the same street, as Fettes Row was a continuation of Royal Crescent. And the section of Fettes Row which lay on the far side of Dundas Street could, of course, be described as the same street as the bit that lay on the near side. So he felt that it was quite reasonable for him to say that Bertie Makes a Move

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he was going to the end of the street, even if he knew that Irene might misinterpret what he said. A boy was not responsible for the misinterpretations of his mother, he thought. That was carrying things far too far.

Irene nodded. “Be careful,” she said. “And don’t be too long.”

She paused, and looked up again from her book. “And have you done your Italian today, Bertie?”

Bertie had taken the precaution of doing his Italian exercises to prevent their being used as a way of thwarting his plan.

“Si, si,” he said. “Ciao, Mama!”

“Ciao, ciao, bambino!” Irene muttered, and returned to her Melanie Klein. It was typical, she thought, that institutional forces should have sought to discredit truly innovative developments in the international psychoanalytical movement. It was absolutely typical.

For a moment she allowed her mind to wander. Dr Fairbairn had been something of a pioneer himself – a recent pioneer –

with his theory of the juvenile tantrum. But he must have encountered opposition to his theories when he first published his study of Wee Fraser.

Presumably there were those who were envious of his success, who wanted to bring him down because they hated the fact that he had done something. There were always people like that, she thought. They are unsettled by the good fortune, or the happiness, of others. They allowed envy, that most corrosive of human emotions, to prompt them to make sneering remarks.

And all they achieved in this way was an increase in the sum total of the world’s unhappiness and a contraction, a deforma-tion, of their own hearts.

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34. Bertie Prepares to Cross Dundas Street Bertie left the front door of 44 Scotland Street in that state of heightened excitement of mind and senses that goes with the performance of the dangerous, or the plainly forbidden. He had not lied to his mother – he was certain of that – but at the same time what he was proposing to do was clearly outside the understanding that existed between them.

He thought for a moment: I am going to cross Dundas Street, alone, and the enormity of his adventure came home to him. In such a state of anticipation might Adam have reached up to pick the fruit, thought Bertie, although