as all boys, and men, knew, that was really Eve’s fault. If he was breaking the rules, then, it was obviously his mother’s fault for making them in the first place.
This thought encouraged him, and he smiled as he began to walk along Royal Crescent and then to Fettes Row, with its fateful conjunction with Dundas Street. He knew that this mission might prove futile, that there might be no trace of Paddy, and that he would return with nothing accomplished.
But it was at least a first step in the execution of his plan, and he was confident that sooner or later he would meet up with Paddy and put his proposal to him. And Paddy would accept, of course; he was that sort of boy. He went fishing in the Pentland Hills and caught trout. For a boy who did that, the task which Bertie had planned for him would be simplicity itself.
Bertie had decided that he would walk up and down Fettes Row for half an hour or so in the hope that Paddy might emerge.
It was a warm afternoon, part of an Indian summer in which Edinburgh was basking, and Paddy might well come out on to the street to play. But even if he did not, then Bertie had brought with him a small piece of blackboard chalk, and with this he would leave a message for Paddy on some of the stairs that led up to the front doors on Fettes Row. PADDY, he would write, MEET ME IN SCOTLAND STREET SOON. URGENT.
SECRET. BERTIE.
That would draw him out, thought Bertie. No boy could resist a message like that. And then Bertie thought: will Paddy know how to read? If he did not – and that was perfectly likely
– then there would be no point in writing the message. This conclusion slightly dampened his spirits; it was not easy, he realised, being more advanced than others. And again this was not his fault, he thought with irritation; it all came back to his mother. She’s the one who has ruined my life. She’s the one.
Royal Crescent, a terrace of high, classical buildings, was quiet as Bertie made his way along it. A cat watched him from the top of a car, its eyes narrowing as it assessed the threat which he presented to its peace of mind and safety. But Bertie was no threat and the cat closed its eyes again. And then a woman came out of a front door and stood for a moment at the top of her steps as Bertie walked past. Bertie looked up, and she smiled.
“Going somewhere?” she asked in a friendly tone.
Bertie stopped in his tracks. “Yes,” he said.
The woman continued to smile. “Don’t get up to any mischief,” she said.
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“I won’t,” he muttered.
“Good,” she said, and turned away, fumbling with her key.
Bertie continued on his way, more slowly, more circumspectly.
Now the end of the first section of Fettes Row was in sight and there was Dundas Street, with its traffic. A bus went past on its way up to town, its engine straining against the hill. Behind it, a blue van waited its chance to overtake. The traffic seemed heavy.
As he came to the corner, the shadows of the buildings gave way to a burst of sunlight. Bertie stopped at the edge of the pavement and looked across the busy thoroughfare of Dundas Street. For a moment, out of ancient habit, he looked up beside him, expecting to find the familiar adult, his mother or his father, at his side. That is how one crossed the street – beside an adult
– with one’s hand in the adult hand, safe and guided. But there was no adult now; no mother, no teacher, no psychotherapist.
Bertie was alone. He swallowed hard, and closed his eyes for a moment. Nobody had taught him the principles of crossing a busy street. Should he wait until there were no cars in sight and then walk slowly across? The problem with that was that he would stand there forever: there were always cars in sight on this busy road.
He looked up the hill. The traffic came down more quickly than it went up. This meant that if he could find a break in the traffic coming down, it would not matter so much if there was something coming up the hill – such traffic would always take longer to reach him. But how long would he need? It was difficult to judge the precise speed of the traffic, and although the buses seemed to be moving very slowly, some of the cars were doing anything but that. Indeed, as he stood there, a small red car shot past him so quickly that he would have missed it, he felt, had he blinked. That car would most certainly have run him over if he had been crossing the street when it had roared round the corner of Henderson Row.
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For a few moments, Bertie considered abandoning his mission. It would be simple to turn round and retrace his steps
– as yet innocent steps – back to Scotland Street and home. If he did that he would have done nothing wrong at all and could face his mother and tell her exactly what he had done. He had gone to the end of the safe part of Fettes Row – that was all.
But to do this was a complete capitulation. If he did not even have the courage to cross Dundas Street, then would he have the courage to do anything at all? And what of Gavin Hastings?
he thought. Would he have been afraid to cross Dundas Street at the age of six? He would not. He imagined that Gavin Hastings had run across Dundas Street on many occasions as a boy; run and jumped and kicked his heels so that anyone watching would have nodded their heads wisely and said: Look at that boy! That’s a boy who’s bound to play rugby for Scotland!
Bertie took a deep breath. He decided to run.
Peter Backhouse, musician and aficionado of old railways, happened to be walking down Dundas Street that afternoon.
