Angus looked thoughtful. “You say we can’t have that freedom. It’s interesting to think about what the reach of we is: we as individuals, or we as bigger groups—nations and so on? They’re separate issues, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, I suppose…”

  Angus cut Domenica short. “You see,” he continued, “people talk a lot about freedom at the individual level—liberal individualism has secured that particular conversation. But what about freedom at a higher level: the freedom of nations? Have we given up on that, do you think?”

  “You mean sovereignty?”

  Angus nodded. “Yes, I suppose I do. Isn’t it the same thing? The right of self-determination?”

  “It still exists,” said Domenica. “There was some discussion of it in the paper the other day. It was about Woodrow Wilson and the rights of nations to determine their future. The Americans have always disliked other people’s empires. Their own, of course, was a different matter…”

  “Unacknowledged.”

  “Yes, but to be fair to them, it was different from the old European empires. And they do take freedom seriously, the Americans. They really do. They fight over it in the courts all the time. They still seem to believe in freedom. I’m not sure if we do.”

  “No,” said Angus. “There are plenty of people only too ready to stop other people from saying things with which they disagree. It’s grossly illiberal, of course—intolerance, in fact—not that they’d see it as such. The intolerant never do. How few of them look in the mirror and confess their intolerance? Or their pride?”

  Domenica smiled. “Looking in the mirror is a useful exercise. Looking straight into it and describing yourself. Who likes to do that?”

  “Narcissists?” suggested Angus.

  “Perhaps. But their descriptions are rarely honest. In fact, they’re compliments rather than descriptions. There’s a difference.”

  Angus remembered something. “Bruce Anderson—you’ve met him in the Cumberland Bar.”

  “The building surveyor? The one with the hair?”

  Angus nodded. “Yes, him. His hair’s cut en brosse and he puts gel on it. It smells of cloves. Which makes me think of dentists. Cloves trigger Proustian memories for me—when I was a boy my dentist must have used oil of cloves.”

  “What about Bruce?” asked Domenica.

  “I saw him in the Gents at the bar,” Angus said. “He was standing in front of the mirror, staring at his reflection, grinning with satisfaction.”

  “Well, he is good-looking, after all. If you look like him, what you see in the mirror won’t be exactly displeasing.”

  Angus wrinkled his nose with distaste. “Good looks are something that should be accepted with proper diffidence. It’s rather like having money, or an enviable talent. Like being able to play the piano rather well, or having a low golf handicap. You don’t parade it. You close the piano lid modestly when somebody comes into the room, and you say Just practicing, or I never seem to get that particular piece right. That’s what you say. You don’t boast I’m a bit of a Paderewski. Or, mutatis mutandis, Tiger Woods.”

  Domenica laughed. “I hate to say it, Angus, but you sound distinctly old-fashioned. Expectations have changed. If you have it these days, you flaunt it. You blow your own trumpet. You bask in your good fortune, and you don’t care if it makes others feel inadequate.”

  Angus sighed. “So it seems. But I still believe we should be modest.”

  Domenica agreed. “Oh yes. You and I should be modest—and I hope we are. But I suspect we’re in a minority. Have you seen anybody’s CV these days—their résumé? People trumpet their achievements to the rafters—and beyond. They tell you themselves how marvelous they are; how good they are at doing this, that and the next thing. How popular they are. How effective.”

  “Do people believe them?” asked Angus.

  Domenica doubted it. “I suspect they disregard it. That’s the trouble with formulae of any sort. People get to know that it’s no more than going through hoops—uttering the necessary shibboleths.”

  “Noise,” said Angus.

  “Yes, noise. It’s rather like these mission statements that clutter up the announcements and advertisements of public bodies. They signal their virtue. They tell us how they’re there to serve us and how they are even-handed in everything they do. Of course they should be even-handed; of course they should behave correctly, but the problem of this constant signalling of virtue is that it weakens the message when the message really needs to be put across. People just don’t hear it any more because it’s always there. The message loses its power. People don’t see it because it has become so omnipresent, so ritualistic.”

  “Yes,” said Angus. “It’s interesting how…”

  But he did not finish; Domenica had more to say. “I have a Russian friend,” she said. “I met her at a conference. She teaches anthropology at St. Petersburg University. She told me that in Soviet days people got so accustomed to strident propaganda—you know, those great red posters and so on—that they simply did not see it. They filtered it out—they didn’t see it. And when she told me this, we were sitting with somebody from Los Angeles, and she said, ‘It’s odd that you should say that because we’re the same with adverts. We don’t see the billboards all over the place. We don’t hear the inane jingles on the radio. It’s there, of course, but we become blind to it.’ ”

  Angus tapped a finger on the table. “How did we get on to this?” he asked.

  “Sovereignty,” said Domenica. “We were talking about freedom and sovereignty.”

  “Ah, yes.”

  “And you said…”

  Angus remembered. “I said that we no longer seemed to be all that concerned about nations—or states, perhaps—having the right to control their future. I wondered if we were losing that altogether.”

  “Or just being realistic?” asked Domenica. “We’re all interdependent now, aren’t we? John Donne redivivus?”

  “Yes, but…” He was not sure how to go on. He felt uncomfortable about giving up freedom, and yet so many people seemed to be enthusiastic about doing just that. Perhaps the idea that a country could control its own destiny was just no longer possible, not in the world in which we now lived. Brussels. London. Berlin. Washington. Places where there’s real power. Not us, not us. Not small people like us. He thought of Hamish Henderson and his lovely lament, Freedom Come All Ye. One might try to sing that, he thought, but what if the choir has gone away—or no longer cares?

  3

  Aberdeen

  “But speaking of freedom,” said Domenica. “What about downstairs?”

  Downstairs was the flat below, the home of the Pollock family—of Bertie Pollock, now, at last, seven; of his young brother, Ulysses, one-ish; and their father, Stuart Pollock, formerly a statistician in the Scottish Government. It was also the home of Irene Pollock, of course, enthusiast for the works of Melanie Klein, former counselor at the Carl Gustav Jung Drop-in Center in the Edinburgh New Town, and now a registered PhD student in the University of Aberdeen. This fact would make Scotland Street her home only for brief periods—weekends, for the most part—while for the remaining five days of the week she would live in a small shared flat in the university area of Aberdeen.

  Irene had taken the unusual step of leaving her family behind in Edinburgh while she went back to university. For many, this was as outrageous as it was inexplicable.

  “That woman,” Domenica had observed, “has responsibilities. She has a small child—not much more than a baby—and poor little Bertie. She has a husband too—poor man. And yet she gaily waltzes off to Aberdeen to undertake some half-baked PhD. Can you credit it?”

  There were two reasons why it had been easy for Irene to take herself off to Aberdeen. The most important of these was that Stuart’s mother, Nicola, having been deserted by her Portuguese husband, was now back in Scotland and had been prepared to move out of her rented flat in Northumberland Street in order to look after the boys. Nicola had little time for Irene—in fact, she had no time for her at all—and felt nothing but relief that Irene had largely left Scotland Street. She loved her grandchildren, and was only too pleased to step into the maternal shoes vacated by Irene. She had time on her hands, and filling it with the demands of two small boys was, in her view, an inestimable privilege.

  The other factor that made Irene’s departure relatively easy was the encouragement that she had received to pursue her studies in Aberdeen. In Stuart’s view, the marriage, which he had never had the courage to end, was effectively over. It suited him that Irene should have a new goal to pursue, and that she should choose to do that in a city other than Edinburgh. There was something between her and Dr. Fairbairn—Stuart was sure of that—and he did not resent it in the least. In fact, he was relieved that Irene should become the emotional responsibility of somebody else. So he came up with no objections when the move was first mooted. His difficulty then was to try not to appear too enthusiastic. Irene had a habit of doing the opposite of what she thought Stuart wanted, and he was concerned that if she sensed keenness on his part, then she might change her mind and stay after all.

  Bertie was too young to show such tact. “That’s a wonderful idea, Mummy!” he enthused. “I’ve always thought you should do a PhD.”

  “Have you now, Bertie?” Irene responded. “Well, I must say that’s very supportive of you.”

  Bertie nodded solemnly. “And I’m sure it’s a good idea to do it in Aberdeen,” he went on. “Aberdeen’s a jolly good place to do a PhD, Mummy.”

  “Do you think so, Bertie?” said Irene.

  “Yes, I do.” He paused. “And you can go and live up there, can’t you? It would be best to go up there and spend all your time on it. You could come back every other year, maybe…for a visit. Or you could phone us if you didn’t want to do the train journey. A phone call would be fine.”

  “Bless you, Bertie,” said Irene. “I’ll come back every weekend. Mummy wouldn’t want to leave her boys too long.”

  “But we’ll be fine, Mummy,” protested Bertie. “We have to learn to stand on our own two feet.”

  Irene laughed. “But Bertie, Ulysses can’t even stand properly yet. He’ll need Mummy to look after him.”

  Bertie bit his lip. He knew how Ulysses felt about his mother. It had been obvious right from the very beginning of his small brother’s life, when Ulysses had spontaneously and copiously thrown up whenever his mother approached him. Bertie had diagnosed this as fundamental antipathy, and although loyal to his mother in the face of all her scheming had attributed this to her ill-fated attempt to start Ulysses on music lessons at the age of eight weeks.

  “I gather that a six-year-old recently auditioned for the Conservatoire in Glasgow,” Irene had remarked to Stuart.

  “Ridiculous,” had been his response, which had brought forth a severe rebuke from Irene.

  “That, Stuart,” she lectured him, “is exactly the sort of attitude that destroys potential. What if Leopold and Anna Maria Mozart had not given their son music lessons when he was very young? What if Leopold Mozart had said ‘Ridiculous’?”

  “You don’t want to hot-house children excessively,” Stuart had protested. But his heart was not in the argument, as he knew that he would lose—just as he had lost every argument with Irene, on every subject, throughout their marriage.

  Bertie realized that insofar as Irene would return at weekends, he would probably still have to endure his yoga and saxophone lessons, both of which took place on Saturday. His psychotherapy appointments, however, were another matter, as these were usually scheduled for Thursday afternoons when, according to Irene’s new timetable, she would be safely up in Aberdeen and therefore unable to take him to his psychotherapist in Queen Street.

  He had hardly dared hope—and his pessimism was justified: before she started her new life, Irene had extracted an undertaking from Stuart that Bertie would continue in therapy.

  “I can’t emphasize it enough,” she said to Stuart. “Continuity in these matters is of the essence—the very essence. If Bertie is to grow up neurosis-free, then he must continue in therapy. He needs it, Stuart, he needs it…”

  “Like a hole in the head,” muttered Stuart, sotto voce, but not quite sotto enough.

  Irene’s glance told him she had heard. “I’ll be watching you, Stuart,” she said. “Aberdeen is not all that far away, you know.”

  Would that it were further, thought Stuart.

  4

  Ranald Braveheart Macpherson’s Book Club

  Irene’s departure for Aberdeen had been easy for her, but difficult for Stuart. On the day on which she was due to drive up to Aberdeen in the family’s old Volvo estate car, its back seats flattened to allow room for her luggage, he suggested that Bertie and Ulysses be sent to Nicola’s flat.

  “I don’t want them to see you going,” he said to Irene. “It’s not going to be easy for them.”

  He almost choked on the words as the reality of what was happening struck home. This woman was about to leave her two small children. She might be intending to return at weekends, but the brute fact of the matter was that she was leaving home. Any parting would be a wrench, even one in which a fundamental pathology lay at the heart of a relationship; a parting was still the end of something, and he did not want his sons to see their mother drive away. That could not happen—it simply could not be allowed to happen.

  Irene looked at him. “We’ve discussed this,” she said. “You assured me that the boys would have emotional continuity.”

  “I know, I know, I know. You don’t have to tell me that.”

  She sighed. “So why now? Why talk about their experiencing trauma just when I’m about to go?”

  He returned her stare. Irene had always had a good complexion, with skin that seemed much younger than her years. How old was she? He suddenly realized he was not sure. She was two years younger than he was, and so she was thirty-eight. And he saw that around the edges of her eyes there were tiny crow’s feet developing. It was such a human thing to happen to a face; she was all mind, all theory, all domination of the world, and yet here was ordinary humanity touching her, ordinary being-in-the-world staking its claim.

  “I don’t want them to see you go,” he insisted.

  “It’s only for five days,” she said. “I’ll be back at the weekend.”

  He shook his head. “No, you won’t.”

  She raised her voice. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said: you won’t be back. I don’t want you.”

  She moved toward him. He felt his heart beating faster.

  “What did you say, Stuart?” she hissed. “Have you taken leave of your senses?”

  He gasped. He had never been able to stand up to her. He could not. It was impossible.

  He looked down at his feet, at his suede shoes that were showing their age now, and had become shabby. His shoes. His shoes. He suddenly felt ashamed of them. “All right,” he said. “Come back.”

  She seemed relieved. “Yes, I will. Just as we agreed. Remember our agreement, Stuart?”

  He nodded. “Yes, I remember.” He paused. “But at least let me take them round to my mother’s. At least let me do that.”

  She hesitated. “If it means that much to you. I don’t think it’s necessary, but if you really want it.”

  “I do.”

  “All right. I’ll say goodbye here and then you can take them round to her.”

  He hated the way she referred to his mother as her or she. “She has a name,” he muttered.

  “Nicola, then.”

  “Yes, that’s her name.” He paused. “And she’s the one who’s going to be stepping into the breach.”

  Irene sighed. “You’re being very petty, Stuart.”

  He felt raw. There was a persistent, numb wound somewhere within him. He had always felt that way when he witnessed human conflict or bad behavior. He felt dirtied by it, and the feeling of dirtiness soon became a feeling of regret at the way the world was, at the thought that people could treat one another so badly.

  Bertie and Ulysses were in the sitting room. Bertie was reading and Ulysses was in his bouncer—a strange construction in which he could sit, supported by straps that were in due course attached to heavy-duty rubber bands.

  Bertie looked up as Stuart entered the room. “Has Mummy gone yet?” he asked.

  Stuart tried to sound cheerful. “Not quite yet, Bertie.”

  “Has she forgotten to go?” asked Bertie. There was a note of disappointment in his voice.

  “No,” answered Stuart. “She hasn’t forgotten. But you could say goodbye now and I’ll take you round to Granny’s.”

  Bertie closed his book. He was reading Walter Scott. “Rob Roy was very fierce,” he said.

  Stuart grasped at the straw. “I’m glad you’re enjoying it, Bertie.”

  “I am,” said Bertie. “Ranald Braveheart Macpherson and I have started a book club, you know.”

  “Oh yes?” said Stuart brightly, bending down to release Ulysses from his bouncer.

  “We’re going to read Rob Roy and then Kidnapped, which I’ve already read but Ranald says I should read again. That’s by Mr. Stevenson, Daddy. Did you know he built lighthouses?”

  “His people did,” said Stuart. “I’m not sure whether he built any himself.”

  “They made one out on the Bell Rock, Daddy,” Bertie continued. “It was right out at sea and they had to wait for the tide to drop before they could build it. Every day the bits they had just built were covered by the sea until the next low tide. It was jolly hard, Daddy.”

  “I bet it was, Bertie. And what a good idea to have a book club. Just like Mu—” He stopped himself. He did not want to mention her. It was ridiculous, he knew, but he did not want to mention her—not just yet.