The World According to Bertie

skirting-boards and tiles. A copy of the plans had been given to Antonia by Alex, and it was these that she was now trying to understand.

Antonia understood about the inconvenience which building work brought in its wake. In Perthshire, they had attempted an enlargement of their farm kitchen, a small project that had taken 130 The Builders Who Began with a Bow almost eighteen months to complete owing to the builder’s disappearance halfway through the work.

“They all disappear,” a friend had comforted her. “But they come back. The important thing to do is not to abandon belief in your builders. It’s rather like believing in fairies in Peter Pan; if you don’t believe in builders, their light goes out.”

There were more stories of this nature. Another friend narrated the tale of a builder he had engaged for a house in France; this builder had been arrested for murder some time into the contract, and had been replaced by his son, who had then been shot by the relatives of his father’s victim; passions ran deep in the French countryside, it seemed. But her position was different – she had the best builder in the business on her side.

Now, at her table, Antonia heard the bell ring and realised that the two men sent to begin work had arrived. Their rubbish skip, a giant, elongated bucket, had preceded them by a day or two and stood on the roadside, ready to receive the detritus from Antonia’s flat. In time-honoured Edinburgh fashion, though, the neighbours had sneaked out at night and deposited unwanted property in the skip: several large pieces of wood, a pile of flattened cardboard boxes, an old tricycle missing its chain and a wheel – the abandoned property, Antonia decided, of that strange little boy downstairs . . . Bertie, or whatever he was called. And there was also a pile of old editions of Mankind Quarterly, which could only have been put there by Domenica. Really! thought Antonia. I’m paying for that skip, every single cubic foot of it, and yet people think that they have the right . . .

Antonia went to the front door and opened it to the men standing outside. It was obvious enough from their outfits that they were the builders, but she asked them nonetheless who they were.

“I take it that you’re from Hutton and Read?” she said.

“Clifford’s men?”

The taller of the two men, a man in his early thirties with a rather good-looking face, nodded enthusiastically. “Clifford!” he said, and then added for emphasis “Clifford!”

The Builders Who Began with a Bow 131

Antonia gestured for the two men to enter. They turned round and each picked up a small chest of tools that they had put down on the landing behind them.

“I don’t know where you want to start,” said Antonia. “I suggest that you just begin wherever you want to. Don’t mind me.”

She looked at the two men, who returned her stare. The tall man smiled and nodded. “Brick,” he said.

Antonia frowned. “Brick?”

“Brick,” said the man.

“I don’t know about that,” said Antonia. “I assume that you use brick in your internal walls. But I really don’t know. I take it that you’ve seen the architect’s plans, have you?”

“Brick,” said the builder. He had now put down the tool chest in the hall and was struggling with the catch that secured its lid.

“I really don’t see the point of saying brick,” said Antonia, somewhat tetchily. “What I really want to know is where you want to start.”

“Poland,” said the tall man.

Antonia looked at him. It had taken a few minutes, but at least now it was clear. “Poland?” she asked.

The tall man smiled. “Poland,” he replied, pointing out of the window vaguely in the direction of Cumberland Street.

Antonia shook her head. “No,” she said. “That’s west. Poland is over there. There.” She pointed in the direction of London Street and the Mansfield Traquair Church.

The builder looked concerned and glanced at his colleague, as if for reassurance.

“Poland,” said the second man, staring intensely at Antonia.

“Well, I do get the point,” said Antonia. “And I don’t think we need worry too much about the exact location of Poland. I think that you make your point clearly enough. You’re Polish.

And you’re here to work on my flat. But I take it that you understand nothing of what I have just said.”

“Poland,” said the tall man and held out his hands, palms up, in a gesture of resignation.

132 A Significant Revelation on the Stair Antonia nodded, and pointed to the kitchen. “Go and look,”

she said. “Kitchen.”

The senior Pole bowed to her and moved towards the kitchen with his friend. Scottish builders did not bow, thought Antonia, but then they did not carry on their shoulders quite such a history of defeat and invasion and dashed hopes. She watched the Poles as they entered the kitchen and set down their cases of tools. What was it like, she wondered, to be so far from home, in a country where one could not speak the language, without one’s family? These men knew the answer to that, she assumed, but they could not tell her.

She went through to the kitchen, put on the kettle, and made tea. The Poles, in between the unpacking of their tool chests, watched her. And when she poured them each a mug of tea, they took it gravely, as if it were a precious gift, and cradled the mug in their hands, tenderly. She saw that these hands were rough and whitened, as if they had been handling plaster.

The tall man watched her and smiled. His eyes, she thought, had that strange blueness which one sometimes sees in those who come from northern places, as if they could see long distances, faraway things that others could not see.

Antonia raised her mug to them, as if in toast. The tall man returned the gesture. As he did so, he mouthed