The World According to Bertie

“My baby,” said Irene. “My husband left him outside Valvona

& Crolla. Just for a few minutes, you’ll understand, and it was all a misunderstanding. But when we went back . . .”

The woman gestured for Irene to enter. “And this is your husband here?” she asked, nodding in the direction of Stuart, who smiled at her, but was rebuffed with a scowl.

“Our baby,” said Irene. “Has he been . . . handed in?”

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“Well we’ve just had a baby brought round,” said the woman.

“But we obviously can’t let him go to the first person who turns up. Can you describe the baby buggy he came in? And what he was wearing?”

Irene closed her eyes and gave the description. The woman’s attitude irritated her, but she was astute enough to realise where power lay in these circumstances.

When Irene had finished, the woman nodded her head. “Close enough,” she said.

“So can we have him back?” asked Irene.

“Yes,” said the woman. “He’s in the nursery. We’ve given him a change and he’s sleeping very peacefully with the three other babies we’ve got in at the moment. If you would come with me?”

They followed the woman down a corridor into the house.

“You wait outside,” she said. “I’ll bring the baby out to you. We don’t want too many germs in there, if you don’t mind.”

She opened a door off the corridor and went into a side-room. A few minutes later, she came out again and handed over Ulysses, who was now heavily swaddled in a rough, white shawl.

“Here we are,” she said, as she passed Ulysses over to Irene.

“Your baby. Safe and sound.” And then she added: “None the worse for the neglect.”

65. It Was Almost Too Terrible to Describe In the taxi on the way back to Scotland Street, Irene was unusually quiet. With Ulysses sleeping in her arms, she sat there, tight-lipped, deliberately making no eye contact with Stuart, who perched nervously opposite her on the jump seat, his hands clasped around his knees. He looked at Irene, and then looked away again; he understood her perfectly. It was his fault that Ulysses had been misplaced, and he knew that he would be reminded of it for a 218 It Was Almost Too Terrible to Describe long time to come. But anyone, he thought, could have done what he had done, could have misunderstood who was in charge of the baby. It was all very well for Irene to heap the blame upon him, but had she never made a mistake herself? Of course she had, not that she liked to admit it. Irene was always right.

Bertie could sense that his father was miserable, and his heart went out to him. He did not blame Stuart for what had happened to Ulysses, and the important thing, he thought, was that Ulysses was unharmed and back with his family – not that Bertie was entirely pleased with that; he would have been quite happy for Ulysses to have found somewhere else to live, but he knew that this was not the way in which adults looked on the matter, and he did not express this view.

“There’s Arthur’s Seat,” he said, in an attempt to cheer his father up. “Look, Daddy. There it is.”

Stuart looked out of the window at the green bulk of the hill, outlined like a crouching lion against the sky. He nodded to Bertie. “Yes,” he said, glancing at Irene. “That’s right, Bertie.

There it is.”

“Have you ever climbed Arthur’s Seat, Mummy?” asked Bertie.

“Right up to the top?”

Irene pursed her lips. “No,” she said. “I haven’t, Bertie. There’s no need to climb Arthur’s Seat.”

There was silence. Then, quite suddenly, Irene looked up and addressed Stuart. “The humiliation,” she began. “The sheer humiliation of it all. That woman. Did you hear what she said to me, Stuart? Did you?”

Stuart looked out of the window. “I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” he said mildly. “Often people mutter things that don’t really mean very much. I find that with my minister sometimes. You just have to let it flow over you. And then they forget that they ever said it. And you do, too. The other day, for example, the minister said that we needed a policy review of the statistical process. I was there with my immediate boss, and we both just said something about a pigeon that had landed on the windowsill – you know, one of those grey, Edinburgh City It Was Almost Too Terrible to Describe 219

Council pigeons – and the minister plain forgot what he had just said and . . .”

“Nonsense!” said Irene. “That woman in the nursery knew exactly what she was saying. She chose her words very carefully indeed.”

Bertie had been following this exchange between his parents.

Now he intervened. “What did she say, Mummy?”

Irene’s answer was directed at Stuart, at whom she was now glaring. “She said that Ulysses was none the worse for the neglect.

Neglect! That’s what she accused me of. And I had to stand there and take it, because otherwise she probably wouldn’t have given Ulysses back without all sorts of forms and waiting and heaven-knows-what. I felt so humiliated.

“That sort of woman,” went on Irene, “relishes every bit of authority she has. I know the type. And what does she know about me and how I bring up Ulysses? Nothing. And then she goes and accuses me of neglect.”

Stuart shrugged. “People say things,” he muttered. “Just forget it. The important thing is that we’ve got Ulysses back.”