“No, I don’t mean that. I’m talking about when you murmur a word to yourself. A name perhaps. The name of a place.” She did not say the name of a street, of course.
Anguish
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There was a moment’s silence at the other end. Dr MacGregor realised that this was not theoretical inquiry; doctors were never asked theoretical questions. They were asked questions about things that were happening to real people, usually to the questioner.
“Why?” he asked gently. “Have you found yourself doing this?”
“Yes,” said Pat. “I suppose I have.”
“It’s nothing too worrying,” said Dr MacGregor. “It’s usually an expression of agony. Something worries you, something haunts you, and you give verbal expression to your anguish. And what you say may have nothing to do with what you feel. It may be the name of somebody you know, it may be a totally meaningless word.”
“Such as . . . such as Spottiswoode?”
“Yes. Spottiswoode would do.” Dr MacGregor paused. So that was what his daughter had uttered. Well, Spottiswoode was as good as anything. “You’re unhappy about something, aren’t you? That’s why you gave a cry of anguish. It’s a perfectly normal response, you know. Lots of people do it. They don’t admit it, but they do it. People don’t admit things, you see, Pat.”
“They don’t?”
“No, they don’t. And that’s very sad, isn’t it? We’re all weak, human creatures, with all those foibles and troubles which make us human, and we all – or most of us – feel that we have to be strong and brave and in command of ourselves. But we can’t be.
The people with the strong, brave exteriors are just as weak and vulnerable as the rest of us. And of course they never admit to their childish practices, their moments of weakness or absurdity, and then the rest of us think that’s how it should be. But it isn’t, Pat. It isn’t.
“And here is another thing, Pat. When you find yourself doing something like this – something which appears to have no meaning – remember that it might just be plain old superstitious behaviour. A lot of the things we do are superstitious. And although we don’t know it, we do them because we think that our actions will protect us from things getting even worse.”
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Fibs
Pat was intrigued. For the time being, she had forgotten about her misery and about Spottiswoode and its attendant embarrassments. It was so like her father to understand so completely.
And it was so like him, too, to make it that much easier.
“Of course,” went on Dr MacGregor, “this will all be about a boy, won’t it?”
She drew in her breath. He always knew; he always knew.
“Yes, it is.”
“In that case,” he said, “your options are very clear, you know.
You find out whether it’s going to work out, or you forget him.
If he’s unattainable, or not interested in you, then you simply have to forget him. Forget he exists. Tell yourself that he’s really nothing to you.”
Their conversation continued for a few minutes after that.
Then Pat went to the window and looked out. Wolf is nothing to me, she said to herself. Wolf is nothing to me.
She heard a noise outside the closed door, and she spun round.
The thought occurred to her that she had said – actually articulated the words Wolf is nothing to me – rather than merely thinking them. She could not be sure. And if that was Wolf outside, then he would have heard her.
But it was not Wolf. It was Tessie.
18. Fibs
Irene had taken Stuart to task for suggesting in front of Bertie that they should report the theft of their car without mentioning their suspicions that the car was already a stolen car, passed on by the Glasgow businessman, Lard O’Connor. Her squeamish-ness, though, did not preclude her from reporting the matter herself; she had been shocked by the idea that Bertie might hear of the planned concealment rather than that Stuart should propose such a thing in the first place.
“It’s not really a deception,” she said to Stuart, once Bertie was out of earshot. “All we are doing is reporting the theft of Fibs
55
a car which has a certain number plate. It makes no difference that the car in question is not the original vehicle which had that number. That’s all there is to it.”
Stuart was not sure that it was so simple. In his view, the difference between their positions was that while Irene was happy to employ half-truths, he was happy to achieve the same end by simple misstatement. The end result was the same – as far as he could see. But he felt disinclined to argue the point with Irene, who inevitably won any such debate between them. So he agreed with her that she should make the report to the police, and should do so at the Gayfield Square Police Station, which was only ten minutes’ walk from Scotland Street, at the very eastern edge of the New Town.
Bertie was very keen to accompany his mother. He had never been in a police station, he pointed out, and this was the only chance he would have.
“Anyway, I can help you, Mummy,” he said. “I can provide corroboration of what you say.”
Irene glanced at her son. She was aware that Bertie had a wide vocabulary, but she had not heard him refer to “corroboration” before. It was very interesting; one day she would have to attempt to measure the extent of his vocabulary. She had seen a kit which enabled one to do just that: one asked the meaning of certain words and then extrapolated from the results.
Extrapolation, she thought. Would Bertie know what extrapolation meant?
She decided to indulge Bertie. “Very well, Bertie,” she said.
“You can come to the police station with me. I don’t think that there’s much to be seen there, quite frankly. Police stations are rather boring places, I understand.”
Bertie looked puzzled. “Then why do people like to read about them, if they’re so boring?”
Irene laughed. “I suppose that’s because the people who write about them – people like that Ian Rankin – have no idea what a real police station is like!”
“So they just make it up?” asked Bertie. “Does Mr Rankin just make everything up?”
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Fibs
“He has a very active imagination,” said Irene. “He makes Edinburgh sound very exciting, with all those bodies and so on.
But that’s not at all what real life’s like. Real life is what we do, Bertie. Real life is you and me. Valvona and Crolla. That sort of thing.”
Bertie thought for a moment. “Poor Mr Rankin,” he said after a while. “It’s sad that he has to make things up. Do you think he’s unhappy, Mummy? Do you think that having to tell so many fibs makes him unhappy?”
Irene reached down and patted Bertie on the head. It was a gesture which Bertie particularly disliked, and he dodged to avoid her hand. “Dear Bertie,” she said. “Don’t you worry about Ian Rankin! He’ll be fine. I don’t think he knows that he’s making things up, I really don’t. I think he probably believes it’s all true.”
She paused. “But anyway, Bertie, let’s not concern ourselves too much about all that. If we’re going to Gayfield Square, then we should leave now. And then, afterwards, we can go and buy sun-dried tomatoes at Valvona and Crolla. Would you like that?”
Bertie said that he would, and a few minutes later they were making their way up Scotland Street to the Drummond Place corner. Irene walked slowly, while Bertie skipped ahead of her.
Every so often he would turn round and run back to join his mother, before detaching himself from her again. She noticed that when he skipped, he kept his gaze carefully on the pavement in front of him. And his gait, too, was controlled, as if he was taking care to avoid putting his feet . . . It was that old business with the bears and the lines again, she thought, with irritation. It really was most vexing that Bertie, who appeared to know what corroboration was, who was able to speak Italian with such fluency, and who could reel off all the main scales, major and minor, should believe that if he put his foot on a line in the pavement, bears would materialise and eat him. She had no idea where he got such notions from. She had never encouraged magical thinking in her son; she had always pointed out that darkness was just the absence of light, not cover for all sorts of ghosts and bogles; she had never encouraged any of that nonsense, and yet here he was being irra-tional. Of course, he got it from other children; she was sure of Leerie, Leerie, Licht the Lamps