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“That would be very nice, Mr O’Connor,” said Bertie.
“Good,” said Lard. “But that’s just between you and me.
Understand?”
Bertie nodded, and the party then moved on. There was much more to see – great urns, Greek antiquities, paintings – all of it much appreciated by Lard and, although to a lesser extent, by Gerry.
“Do you think they have anything by your man Vettriano?”
Lard asked at one point.
Stuart thought not. “Sir William Burrell died in 1958,” he said. “Jack Vettriano is our own contemporary.”
Lard fixed Stuart with a glare. “You trying to tell me something, Stewie?” he said. “You think I don’t know all that?”
Stuart made a placatory remark and then looked at his watch. “I wonder if we shouldn’t be getting back to Edinburgh now,” he said. “Bertie’s mother will be wondering what’s keeping us.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want that, would we, Bertie?” said Lard.
Bertie was silent. It was exactly what he wanted, but he thought it best not to say it to Lard. So they left the gallery and returned to the car. A short time later they were back outside Lard’s house, where their own car, the shabby red Volvo, was ready to be driven back to Edinburgh. Farewells were said and telephone numbers exchanged. Then, waved to by Lard and Gerry, who stood at the gate to see them off, Bertie and Stuart drove back down the road, back in the direction of the motorway that would bring them home to Edinburgh.
“It feels great to be back in one’s own car again,” said Stuart as they left the outskirts of Glasgow behind them.
“Yes,” said Bertie. “I wonder how Gerry managed to find our car so quickly.”
Stuart smiled. He would not disabuse Bertie of his touching faith in humanity. He would not spell it out to him that strong-arm tactics had undoubtedly been used to wrest their car back from the people who had stolen it. He would let him believe in the goodness of Gerry and Lard. But what a bunch of rogues!
“Daddy,” said Bertie suddenly. “This isn’t our car.”
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Stuart looked down at Bertie, who had been examining something on the door panel.
“Nonsense, Bertie,” he said. “I looked at the number plate.”
“Yes,” said Bertie. “But look at the door handles. Ours had round bits at the end. These are straight. And look at the radio.
It’s a different make.”
Stuart glanced quickly, fearfully, in the direction indicated by Bertie. Then he swallowed. “Don’t tell Mummy, Bertie,” he said.
“Please don’t tell Mummy.”
It was a time to take stock – not that any of those who lived under the same roof at 44 Scotland Street knew that it was such a time.
But had they been considering their position, then they might have realised that there were metaphorical crossroads ahead.
Irene and Stuart Pollock, parents of that gifted six-year-old, Bertie, might have realised, but did not, that their marriage was going nowhere – if marriages are meant to go anywhere, of course; there are many people who are very happy in marriages that show no sign of movement in any direction, neither forwards, backwards, nor indeed sideways. Such people are often contented, not realising, perhaps, that they are going in that direction in which we all go – downwards.
Irene and Stuart, though, were about to face a fundamental trial of strength, in which Irene, who thought that she made all the decisions in the marriage – and did – would have to deal with Stuart’s new determination to do something about the way in which Bertie was treated. Stuart had realised that he had not been a good father to Bertie, and had resolved, in the course of those luminous moments on the Glasgow train, those moments when he had held his son’s hand and discussed friendship, that he would play a much greater role in Bertie’s upbringing. And if this meant a clash with the iron-willed Irene, armed as she was with a great body of knowledge and doctrine on the subject
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of child-raising, and supported to the rear by her ally, Dr Fairbairn, the renowned psychotherapist, author of the seminal volume on the analysis of Wee Fraser, the three-year-old tyrant, then so be it. Or rather, to reflect Stuart’s weakness, then so might it be. (Wee Fraser, incidentally, now almost fourteen, had been spotted recently crossing the road at the end of Princes Street, heading in the direction of South Bridge. He had been seen by Dr Fairbairn himself, who had stopped in his tracks, as Captain Ahab might have sighted Moby Dick and stood rooted to the deck of his whaler. In this case, though, there had been no pursuit.)
Even if his parents were not consciously taking stock of their position, Bertie still reviewed his plight from time to time, with a degree of insight which was quite remarkable for a six-year-old boy. He was quite pleased with the way things were going.
There had been setbacks, of course, his ill-fated attempt to enrol at George Watson’s College being one, but that was compensated for by his discovery that Steiner’s was where he wanted to be.
Friendship had been an area fraught with difficulties. Adults sometimes glimpse only in the dimmest way the intensity of the child’s need for friends; this need is profound, something that seems to the child to be more powerful and pressing than any other need. And Bertie felt this. Jock, brave Jock, with whom his first meeting had
