In the storm that followed, three voices were raised, each offering different suggestions. Irene, her face flushed with rage, insisted that Stuart go immediately to Valvona & Crolla and personally search the shop for any sign of Ulysses. Stuart disagreed, and tried to make his voice heard above the screech of his wife’s.
There was no point in going back to the shop if they reported that there was no trace of a lost baby.
“Lost?” raged Irene. “You mean abandoned. Lost is when you
. . . when you forget where you put something. Abandoned is when you simply walk away from something. Ulysses was abandoned.”
“It takes two to tango,” Stuart stuttered. “You were jointly in charge.”
“What’s a tango?” asked Bertie.
Stuart looked down at his son. “It’s an Argentinian dance,”
he began to explain. “The Argentinians were very keen on dancing back in the . . .”
“Stuart!” shouted Irene. “We are discussing Ulysses. Every second may be vital, and there you are talking about Argentina.”
Stuart blushed. “I thought you were going to take him when I said that I was going to the Fruitmarket Gallery,” he said mildly. “I really did.”
“Well you had no reason to think that,” snapped Irene. “I distinctly remember saying to you that you should take him. We were standing outside the shop and I . . .”
“So he wasn’t in the shop at all,” said Stuart. “Well, that’s something. Now we know that we have to look for him in the street, rather than in the delicatessen.” He paused. Irene had sunk her head in her hands and appeared to be crying.
Bertie moved forward to comfort her. “Don’t cry, Mummy,”
he said. “Ulysses will be all right, I’m sure he will. Even if somebody’s stolen him by now, they’ll give him a nice home. He’ll be very happy somewhere.”
For a moment, Bertie reflected on the opportunities that might have opened up for Ulysses. He might have been taken by a supporter of Hearts Football Club, for example, and these new parents might even buy him one of those baby outfits in the football team’s wine-red colours that Bertie had seen in the newspaper. Ulysses would like that, and when he grew up in that Hearts-supporting home, he could go to Tynecastle with his new father and watch the games. Ulysses would never have had that opportunity if he had remained in Scotland Street. And the new parents might have a better car too, thought Bertie, a Jaguar perhaps, and they might send him to a boarding school, somewhere where there would be midnight feasts in the dorm and proper friends who were quite unlike Tofu and Larch. All of that was possible now.
Bertie’s attempt to reassure his mother did not have the desired effect. Irene now rose to her feet and grabbed Stuart’s arm. “We must go to Leith Walk right now,” she said. “We must look for
. . . look for . . .” Her voice broke. It was impossible for her to utter Ulysses’s name, and so it was left for Bertie to say it for her.
“Ulysses,” he said.
Stuart rose to his feet. “I’ll call a taxi,” he said. “It’ll be quicker.”
By the time the taxi arrived, Irene, Stuart, and Bertie were standing at the front door of 44 Scotland Street. Stuart gave directions to the driver that he was to take them to Valvona & Crolla and that they were then to drive slowly down Leith Walk while they looked for something they had lost.
“What have you lost?” he asked. “A bicycle? There’s lots of 216
bicycles go missing in Leith Walk, I can tell you. My brother’s boy had a . . .”
Stuart interrupted him. “Not a bicycle,” he said. “A child.”
“Oh,” said the driver. “Bairns tend to come back of their own accord. Don’t worry too much. By the time he feels like he wants his tea, he’ll come strolling in the door.”
“He can’t stroll,” said Bertie. “In fact, he can’t walk at all.
He’s only a baby, you see.”
The taxi driver looked in his mirror. “You mean you lost a tiny baby?” he asked.
“It would seem so,” said Stuart. “He was left in his baby buggy outside Valvona & Crolla. A mistake, you know.”
The taxi driver whistled. “Well, if you ask me, we should go straight to the council child protection nursery. You know the place? It’s where they take babies who’ve been taken into care.
Emergency cases. Things like that.”
Stuart thought for a moment. “If the police had been called,”
he asked, “would they take the baby straight there?”
“Yes,” said the taxi driver. “They wouldn’t take the baby to the police station. They’d go straight to the nursery. That’s likely where your baby will be right now.”
“Then we’ll go there,” snapped Irene. “And please hurry.”
It took less than fifteen minutes to reach the emergency nursery, a converted Victorian house on the other side of Duddingston. Slamming the door of the cab behind her, Irene ran up the path, leaving Stuart to pay the fare and bring Bertie to the front door. This door was locked, but she rattled at the handle and rang the bell aggressively until a woman appeared and opened up.
