Bertie’s hopes, though, that he would be left more to his own devices were soon to be dashed on the immovable, rock-like 26
A Whole New Vista of Dread for Bertie determination of Irene to ensure that her two sons – Bertie and baby Ulysses – should undergo a process of what she called
“mutuality bonding.” This programme had two objectives. One was that the arrival of the baby should be part of Bertie’s education in understanding the whole process of child-nurture, something which girls and women understood but which, in Irene’s view, often escaped boys and men. The other objective was that the relationship which grew up between the two boys would be one in which there was a full measure of reciprocity. Bertie would come to know the baby’s needs, just as the baby, in the fullness of time, would come to know Bertie’s needs.
The first of these objectives – that Bertie should be brought up to understand what it was to look after a baby – meant that right from the beginning he would have to shoulder many of the tasks which went with having a baby. Bertie would be fully instructed in the whole business of feeding the baby, and had already been shown how to operate a breast pump so that he could help his mother to express milk for the baby should breast feeding become uncomfortable, which Irene thought likely.
“The trouble is this, carissimo,” said Irene. “When you were a little baby yourself – and remember, that’s just six short years ago – yes, six! – you tended to be a little – how shall we put it? – guzzly, and you bit Mummy a little hard, making Mummy feel a bit tender. You don’t remember that, do you?”
Bertie looked away in horror; the sheer embarrassment of the situation was more than he could bear.
“Well, you did,” went on Irene. “So now Mummy has bought this special pump, and you can help to put it on Mummy and get the milk out for baby when he comes along. That will be such fun. It will be just like milking a cow.”
Bertie looked at his mother in horror. “Do I have to, Mummy?”
“Now then, Bertie,” said Irene. “It’s all part of looking after your new little brother. You don’t want to let him down, do you?”
“I’ll play with him,” promised Bertie. “I really will. I’ll show So Who Exactly Are Big Lou’s Big Friends?
27
him my construction set. I’ll play the saxophone for him and let him touch the keys. I can do all of that, Mummy.”
Irene smiled. “All in good time, Bertie. Tiny babies can’t do that sort of thing to begin with. Most of the things you’ll be doing will be very ordinary baby things, such as changing him.”
Bertie was very quiet. He looked at his mother, and then looked away. “Changing him?” he said in a very small voice.
“Yes,” said Irene. “Babies need a lot of changing. They can’t ask to go to the bathroom!”
Bertie cringed. He hated it when his mother talked about such things, and now a whole new vista of dread opened up before him. The thought was just too terrible.
“Will I have to, Mummy . . . ?” He left the sentence unfinished; this was even worse, he thought, than the breast pump.
“Of course you will, Bertie,” said Irene. “These things are very natural! When you were a baby, Bertie, I remember . . .”
But Bertie was not there to listen. He had run out of the kitchen and into his room; his room, which had been painted pink by his mother, then white by his father, and then pink again by his mother.
9. So Who Exactly Are Big Lou’s Big Friends?
Big Lou always opened her coffee bar at nine o’clock in the morning. There was no real reason for her to do this, as it was only very rarely that a customer wandered in before ten, or sometimes even later. But for Big Lou, the habit of starting early, ingrained in her from her childhood in Arbroath, resisted any change. It seemed to her the height of slothfulness to start the morning at ten o’clock – a good five hours after most cows had been milked – and it was decadence itself to start at eleven, the hour when Matthew occasionally opened the gallery.
“Half the day’s gone by the time you unlock your door,” she 28
So Who Exactly Are Big Lou’s Big Friends?
had reproached Matthew. “Eleven o’clock! What if the whole country started at eleven o’clock? What then? Would folk lie in their beds until ten? Would they?”
“No,” said Matthew. “Most people will start much earlier than that. Nine o’clock seems reasonable to me.”
Big Lou snorted in disbelief. “It would be an awfie odd day that we saw you about the place at nine,” she said.
Matthew smiled tolerantly. “Reasonable for other people,” he said. “What’s the point of opening a gallery at nine when it’s well-known that nobody buys pictures before noon, or at least before eleven? I’d just sit there doing nothing if I opened up at nine.”
Big Lou rolled her eyes. “That’s what you do anyway, isn’t it?” she said. “And I doubt that you spend more than a few hours a day at your desk, what with your coffee drinking and those lunches you have. Two hours a day, something like that?”
Matthew shrugged. “Well, Lou, it wouldn’t do you much good if I stopped drinking your coffee. You should be encouraging me, not making me feel guilty.”
Big Lou said nothing. She liked Matthew, and he liked her, and these exchanges were good-natured, even if Big Lou meant every word of her criticism. But now it was time for her to prepare Matthew’s coffee, and besides, there was an important piece of information for her to impart to Matthew.
While she clamped the grounds container in place, Big Lou asked Matthew over her shoulder whether he had heard of Cyril’s misfortune. Matthew had not, and while the espresso machine steamed and hissed, Big Lou related the melancholy story of Cyril’s detention by the Lothian and Borders Police.
“Angus will be very upset,” Matthew ventured.
“Aye,” Lou said. “Cyril is his only real friend.”
Matthew thought this a bit extreme. “Oh, he’s got other friends, I think. Domenica, for example.”
“She tolerates him,” said Big Lou. “But only just. Have you heard the way she talks about him when he’s not there?”
“There are people down at the Cumberland Bar,” said Matthew. “He’s got friends there.”
So Who Exactly Are Big Lou’s Big Friends?
29
“Not much use having friends in a bar,” said Big Lou enigmatically. “Anyway, Cyril meant a lot to Angus. And now I expect they’ll put him down. That’s the way it is for dogs. Step out of line, and that’s it. We had a dog in Arbroath that worried sheep and a farmer shot it. No questions. That’s how it is for dogs.”
Matthew half-listened to this dire prediction. He was thinking of friendship: even if Angus had few friends – which he did not think was true – then how many close friends was it possible to have? Big Lou herself was hardly one to imply friendlessness on the part of Angus; Matthew had not heard her mention any friends, and he had always suspected that her life outside the coffee bar was a solitary one, immured, as she was, in her flat with all those books.
“What about you, Lou?” he asked. “You say that Angus doesn’t have many friends, but how many do you have? I’m not trying to be rude, asking this question – I was just wondering.”