Stuart frowned. “You must have some friends, Bertie. What about this boy you mentioned to me. Paddy? What about him?”
“I don’t really know him very well,” said Bertie. “I hardly ever see him. I have to go to psychotherapy and yoga all the time.”
Stuart reached out and took his son’s hand. It felt so small; dry and small. “Friends are very important, aren’t they?”
Bertie nodded. Stuart continued: “I had a best friend, you know. That’s very important, too. To have a best friend.”
“What was he called?” asked Bertie.
“He was called Mike,” said Stuart. “He was very kind to me.”
“That’s nice,” said Bertie. “Kind friends are the best sort, aren’t they?”
Stuart nodded his assent to this and they both looked out of the window, Bertie’s hand still resting in his. I shall not fail this little boy, he thought. My God, how close I’ve come to doing that. What is that corny line from that musical?
The woman who had overheard this conversation had been staring at the page of her book – staring but not reading. She had heard every word and now she looked very discreetly in their direction and saw the two of them quite still, quite silent, sunk in their thoughts. She transferred her gaze back to the words on the page before her, but she could no longer concentrate. It had nothing to do with her, of course – the business of others. But now she willed with all her heart that this stranger into whose life she had unwittingly strayed should listen to every word that the little boy had said. And when she glanced again, and saw the expression on the man’s face, she knew that he would.
As the Edinburgh train neared Glasgow, the light with which the passing countryside had been suffused became subtly attenuated. The clear skies of the east of Scotland yielded place to a lowered ceiling of grey and purple rain clouds. And above the train, rising on each side of the railway line, reared up the shapes of high flats, great dispiriting slabs of grey. Bertie watched the changing landscape, his mouth open in awe; so this was Glasgow, this was the place of which his mother had spoken so ominously. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps it was a dark and dangerous place after all. And to think that such a place existed less than an hour away from Edinburgh! That was the extraordinary thing. One could be in Edinburgh, with its floataria and coffeehouses, and then, in the space of a short train journey, one could be in this place, under these purple clouds, facing heaven knows what perils.
They left their railway carriage and stepped out onto the platform. Bertie looked down at his feet and thought: “I’m standing on Glasgow!” The stone of the platform, a special, highly-polished stone, chosen by the railway authorities as the surface most likely to become dangerously slippery if wet, was very similar to the slippery stone floors he had seen at Waverley Station. And the people waiting at the barrier were not all that different from the people he had seen at Waverley Station, he thought.
“This way, Bertie,” said Stuart, pointing in the direction of a large glass door. “We’ll get a taxi out there.”
Bertie hurried along behind his father, his duffel coat buttoned up to the top to disguise the fact that he was wearing crushed-strawberry dungarees. He had not noticed any crushed-strawberry trousers in Glasgow yet, and he was sure that they did not wear them here.
“Where are we going?” he asked his father, as they took their place in the short queue for taxis. “Do you remember where you left the car?”
“More or less,” said Stuart, waving a hand in the general 172
direction of the Dumbarton Road. “I’ll recognise the place . . .
I think.”
Their turn came to get into a taxi. Stuart opened the door and Bertie climbed in. This was far better than the No 23 bus, he thought: comfortable seats, small glowing red lights, and a taxi driver who looked at them in his rear-view mirror and smiled cheerily.
“Whauryousesgaahn?” the driver asked.
“Dumbarton Road, please,” said Stuart.
The driver looked back up at the mirror. “Radumbartonroad?
B u t w h i t p a r t o r a d u m b a r t o n r o a d y o u s e s w a n t i n a n t h a t ?
Radumbartonroadizzaroadanahafwhaurabit?”
Stuart explained that he was not sure exactly which part of the Dumbarton Road they wanted, but that he would let the driver know when they neared it. The driver nodded; people who got off the Edinburgh train were often a bit vague, he had found, but they very rarely tried to jump out of the taxi without paying. Nor did they try to walk half the way in order to save money. You had to watch the Aberdeen train for that.
“Now, Bertie,” said Stuart. “Look over there. That’s . . . well, I’m not sure what that is, but look over there anyway.”
Bertie looked out at Glasgow. It seemed busier than Edinburgh, he thought, and the buses were a different colour.
But everybody seemed to know where they were going, and seemed happy enough to be going there. He was going to like Glasgow, he thought, and perhaps he would even come to live here when he was eighteen. If he did that, then he would even start to learn the language. It sounded quite like Italian in some respects, and was possibly even easier to learn.
They made their way to St George’s Cross and then down below Glasgow University. Stuart pointed in the direction of the university and drew Bertie’s attention to the fact that his own father, Bertie’s grandfather, had studied medicine there.
