Love Over Scotland

Cosi fan tutte, as you’ll recall.

You adored Mozart when you were a baby. And you still do, of course.”

“But if you’re busy,” said Bertie carefully, “then you might have less time for me, Mummy. Is that right? You’ll have less time for me?”

Irene thought quickly. Poor little boy! Of course he was threatened; of course he felt insecure. He must be dreading the day when the new baby arrives and takes all my attention away from him. Oh poor Bertie!

“Bertie, carissimo,” she said, leaning down to enfold him in her arms. “You mustn’t think that for one moment. Not for one moment! Mummy will spend just as much time with you as before. Even more. I promise you that. Look, I’m crossing my heart. That’s how serious I am. I really mean it. You will have just as much time with me as you do now.”

Bertie struggled to release himself from his mother’s embrace, but it proved impossible, and he became limp. Perhaps if I go all floppy and stop breathing she will think that she’s smothered me, he thought. Then she’ll let me go.

Irene did release him, but only to adjust her hair, which had fallen over her face. “So, no more worries about that, Bertie,”

she said, standing up.

38

An Average Scottish Face

Bertie nodded glumly. His real hope had been that the arrival of the new baby would so distract Irene that she would leave him, Bertie, alone. He wanted to spend less time with his mother, not more, and here she was telling him that the baby would make no difference. It was all very disappointing; a very bleak prospect indeed.

Irene went out of the room briefly to fetch her coat. Then they left the flat and began to walk up the street towards Drummond Place. It was a fine afternoon, with a gentle wind from the south-west. Although it was early autumn, the air was still warm, and there were still leaves on the trees in Drummond Place Gardens, even if many of them were now tinged with gold.

They reached the top of the road in complete silence.

“You see,” said Bertie. “No car.”

Irene shook her head. “I don’t know what to think,” she said.

“I do,” said Bertie. “It’s been stolen.”

13. An Average Scottish Face

When Stuart returned home that evening, Irene was in the sitting room with Bertie, playing a complicated card game of Bertie’s own invention, Running Dentist. The rules, which Bertie had explained at extreme length, and with great patience, seemed excessively complex to Irene and appeared to favour Bertie in an indefinable way, but the game was quick, and surprisingly enjoyable.

“Ah,” said Stuart, as he put down his briefcase. “Running Dentist! I take it that you’re winning, Bertie.”

“Mummy is doing her best,” said Bertie. “She’s really trying.”

Stuart glanced at Irene. He knew that she was a bad loser, and that it was hard for her when Bertie won a game, as he so often did.

“It’s a very difficult game to win,” observed Irene, “unless you happen to be the person who invented the rules.”

She laid her cards down on the table and looked up at Stuart.

An Average Scottish Face

39

She had been thinking for some time of what she might say to him about the car. Although it was not Stuart’s fault that the car had been stolen – she could hardly blame him for that – in some inexpressible way she felt that he was responsible for this situation. He had, after all, brought the car back from Glasgow after its long sojourn there, and had brought home the wrong car.

She had every right to feel aggrieved, she told herself.

“The car,” she said simply.

Stuart gave a start. She noticed his face cloud over; guilt, she thought. Guilt.

“What about it?” he said. He tried to sound unconcerned, but she could sense that he was worried.

“It’s been stolen,” chipped in Bertie. “Mummy left it at the top of the street, and it isn’t there now. We checked.”

“Yes,” said Irene. “Bertie’s probably right – it’s been stolen.”

Stuart shrugged. “These things happen. But there we are.”

He hesitated for a moment. “I’m not at all sure why anybody would want to steal a car like that, but I suppose an opportunistic thief . . .”

“Be that as it may,” interrupted Irene, “the fact of the matter is that this puts us in a very tricky position.” She paused. “I’m surprised that you don’t realise what it is.”

“I don’t see what the problem is,” Stuart countered. “The car is hardly worth anything. And we very rarely use it.”

Bertie looked at his father in dismay. He was proud of their car, in the way all small boys are of their family cars, and he could not understand why his father should be so dismissive of it.

Irene sighed. It was a pointed sigh, as sighs sometimes are, not one cast into the air to evaporate, but one