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p r a i s e f o r t h e 4 4 s c o t l a n d s t r e e t s e r i e s
“Irresistible. . . . Packed with the charming characters, piercing perceptions and shrewd yet generous humor that have become McCall Smith’s cachet.”
— Chicago Sun-Times
“Will make you feel as though you live in Edinburgh, if only for a short while, and it’s a fine place to visit indeed. . . . Long live the folks on Scotland Street.”
— The Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
“McCall Smith’s generous writing and dry humor, his gentleness and humanity, and his ability to evoke a place and a set of characters without caricature or condescen-sion have endeared his books . . . to readers.”
— The New York Times
“Entertaining and witty. . . . A sly send-up of society in Edinburgh.”
— The Orlando Sentinel
“Just about perfect. . . . Contains a healthy helping of McCall Smith’s patented charm.”
— St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Mr. McCall Smith, a fine writer, paints his hometown of Edinburgh as indelibly as he captures the sunniness of Africa. We can almost feel the mists as we tread the cobblestones.”
— The Dallas Morning News
Alexander McCall Smith
THE WORLD
ACCORDING
TO BERTIE
Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the international phenomenon The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, the Isabel Dalhousie series, the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series, and the 44 Scotland Street series. He is professor emeritus of medical law at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and has served on many national and international bodies concerned with bioethics. He was born in what is now known as Zimbabwe and he was a law professor at the University of Botswana. Visit his Web site at www.alexandermccallsmith.com.
b o o k s b y
a l e x a n d e r m c c a l l s m i t h i n t h e i s a b e l d a l h o u s i e s e r i e s The Sunday Philosophy Club
Friends, Lovers, Chocolate
The Right Attitude to Rain
The Careful Use of Compliments
The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday
i n t h e n o . 1 l a d i e s ’ d e t e c t i v e a g e n c y s e r i e s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
Tears of the Giraffe
Morality for Beautiful Girls
The Kalahari Typing School for Men
The Full Cupboard of Life
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
Blue Shoes and Happiness
The Good Husband of Zebra Drive
The Miracle at Speedy Motors
i n t h e p o r t u g u e s e i r r e g u l a r v e r b s s e r i e s Portuguese Irregular Verbs
The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs
At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances i n t h e 4 4 s c o t l a n d s t r e e t s e r i e s 44 Scotland Street
Espresso Tales
Love Over Scotland
The World According to Bertie
The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa THE WORLD
ACCORDING
TO BERTIE
THE WORLD
ACCORDING
TO BERTIE
ANCHOR BOOKS
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, NOVEMBER 2008
Copyright © 2007 by Alexander McCall Smith Illustrations copyright © 2007 by Iain McIntosh All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Originally published in Great Britain by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd., Edinburgh, in 2007.
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book is excerpted from a series that originally appeared in the Scotsman newspaper.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948–
The world according to Bertie by / Alexander McCall Smith.
—1st Anchor Books ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-45522-2
1. Apartment houses—Fiction. 2. Edinburgh (Scotland)—Social life and customs—Fiction. i. Title.
PR6063.C326W67 2008
823'.914—dc22
2008028140
www.anchorbooks.com
v1.0
This book is for
Derek and Dilly Emslie
Preface
The 44 Scotland Street books, of which The World According to Bertie is the fourth, started as a single serial novel in The Scotsman newspaper. When I began to write this story, I had no idea that the story would continue for as long as it has; nor had I any idea that Bertie, that engaging boy of six, burdened, as he is with his extremely demanding mother, would become so important a character. I certainly did not imagine that he would acquire so many supporters – or sympathisers, perhaps.
Bertie’s problem is his mother, one of those ambitious parents who sees her son as a project rather than a little boy. Such mothers are legion, and many sons spend the rest of their lives trying to cut invisible but powerful apron strings. Bertie wants only to be a typical boy; he wants to have fun, to play with other boys, to do all the things that Irene’s programme for him prevents him from doing. Instead he is forced to learn Italian, play the saxophone, and attend yoga classes for children.
Bertie seems to strike a chord with many readers. Recently I was in New York and attended a lunch where the first thing I was asked was how Bertie was doing. This happens to me throughout the world: people are more anxious about Bertie than they are about any of my other fictional characters. They want him to find freedom. They want him to escape.
This book continues the story of Bertie – who has, quite astonishingly, remained six for the past four volumes, even while other characters have aged and progressed. But it does not deal only with Bertie – I have carried on my conversation with Big Lou, Domenica, Angus Lordie, and all the others who have walked into Scotland Street and found their place in the saga. All of these people are, in their own way, looking for some sort of resolution in their lives, some happiness, which is what, I suppose, xi
i
Preface
all of us are doing. Some of them find it in this volume – or appear to find it – others will have to wait. The whole point of a serial novel is that the future is open. If freedom eludes Bertie in this book, and if Big Lou does not just yet find romantic fulfilment, then all is not lost – there is always another chapter.
Alexander McCall Smith
THE WORLD
ACCORDING
TO BERTIE
1. In Hanover Street. Watch Out, Pat, Bruce Is Back
. . . Or Is He?
Pat saw Bruce at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning, or at least that is when she thought she saw him. An element of doubt there certainly was. This centred not on the time of the sighting, but on the identity of the person sighted; for this was one of those occasions when one wonders whether the eye, or even the memory, has played a trick. And such tricks can be extraordinary, as when one is convinced that one has seen the late General de Gaulle coming out of a cinema, or when, against all reasonable probability, one thinks one has spotted Luciano Pavarotti on a train between Glasgow and Paisley; risible events, of course, but ones which underline the proposition that one’s eyes are not always to be believed.