The Importance of Being Seven (24 page)

Once Ulysses was cleaned and dressed in fresh clothes, the three of them made their way down the stair and out into Scotland Street.

‘It’s a pity that Ulysses is sick so often,’ said Bertie. ‘He’s quite a nice little baby when he’s not actually vomiting.’

‘His little stomach is finding its way in the world,’ said Irene breezily. ‘He’ll grow out of it, without doubt.’

‘Mind you, Mummy,’ Bertie went on, ‘I’ve noticed that he only seems to be sick when he sees your face. Have you noticed that?’

Irene pursed her lips. ‘Nonsense, Bertie! That’s quite untrue.’

Bertie frowned. He was a completely truthful child and he would never think of making anything up – unlike people like Tofu, and Olive, and Hiawatha for that matter. And Pansy.

‘But it is true, Mummy,’ he persisted. ‘Ulysses is never sick when I pick him up. Or Daddy. He’s never been sick – not even once – when Daddy is with him.’

Irene ignored this. ‘Now look, Bertie, this is no time to discuss such matters. We are going to watch a very important occasion.
So let’s concentrate on that rather than on speculating about Ulysses’s entirely random regurgitation.
Basta
, Bertissimo!’

Bertie looked down the hill. At the end of Scotland Street, the old marshalling yard, now partly waste ground and partly a children’s playground, was filling up with people. Three large container lorries were lined up, bright balloons tied to protuberant rear-view mirrors.

‘Are they going all the way to Romania, Mummy?’ he asked.

‘They are indeed, Bertie,’ Irene said proudly.

Bertie asked how long that would take.

‘About three days, Bertie. They go by ferry to Belgium and then drive all the way across Western Europe to Romania. Can you tell me the countries they’ll cross?’

‘Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary and then Romania,’ rattled off Bertie.

Irene thought for a moment. ‘Yes,’ she said, hesitantly. ‘That sounds about right. They are very hardy men, those drivers. They sleep in little beds in the backs of their cabs, you know, Bertie.’

They negotiated their way down the steps to the yard. One or two other members of the committee greeted Irene, who shook hands with one of the drivers. A piper who was standing nearby was given a signal, and started to tune his drones. Soon the familiar skirl, so spine-tingling, so stirring in its effect, filled the air. And at that point, a large official car drew up and a tall, rather dignified man stepped out.

‘That’s the Lord Provost,’ Irene whispered to Bertie.

The Lord Provost shook hands with several people and was shown the containers before he made a short speech wishing the convoy a safe and uneventful journey. There was applause and the piper, who fortunately had stopped for the speech, resumed playing.

‘I shall just go and take a look at the containers,’ said Irene. ‘You stay here with Ulysses, Bertie. I won’t be a minute.’

Bertie stood beside Ulysses’s pushchair and watched the crowd milling about the open rear doors of the containers, inspecting the contents stacked within. ‘They’re going to be very pleased at the other end, Ulysses,’ Bertie said.

Ulysses gurgled his agreement.

Engines started and there were cries from several members of the crowd. ‘
Bon voyage!
’ shouted somebody. And another shouted, ‘Good luck!’ The piper, on cue, struck up with that most poignant of farewells, ‘Will ye no come back again?’

Slowly the container lorries moved off. Bertie waved, and continued to wave until they had turned onto the road and disappeared from sight. Then he looked around for his mother. The crowd was thinning out now, and Bertie began to feel a bit anxious. His mother had said that she would only be a minute or so, and that was already about ten minutes ago.

He waited patiently with Ulysses. Now there was virtually nobody there – just a few teenagers who were standing gossiping and giggling by the fence. Bertie was not sure what to do. His mother must have gone home. Perhaps she had forgotten she had them with her; or perhaps she needed to go to the bathroom urgently and had rushed back to the flat.

He made his decision. There was no point in staying any longer, he thought. The best thing for him to do would be to return to the flat and see if she was there. If she was not, then he could wait outside the door until she came back from wherever it was that she had gone. Yes, that would be what Mr Baden-Powell would advise in such a situation.

He started on his way, and within a few minutes he was outside the door of the flat. Trying the door, he found that it was locked, and there was no reply when he rang the bell. Ulysses watched him with interest.

‘Well, Ulysses,’ said Bertie. ‘We’re just going to have to wait here until Mummy comes back. Sorry about that.’

He sat down, and that was where he was when Domenica came up the stairs about forty minutes later and happened upon him.

‘Hello, Bertie,’ she said. ‘Are you locked out?’

‘I don’t know where my mummy is,’ said Bertie, his voice wavering. ‘I thought that she would come back, but she hasn’t.’

As Bertie told her what had happened Domenica listened, wide-eyed. That woman, she thought, is very peculiar, sure enough, but this takes the shortbread – hands down.

‘I think that you had better come up to my flat,’ she said. ‘Then I can look after you until Mummy comes home.’ Then she added. ‘And I might just phone the police too.’

Bertie looked alarmed. ‘The police? Why?’

Domenica wondered how to put it tactfully. ‘Well, Bertie, it sounds as if your mummy might have … lost her way. The police could help find her.’

Bertie swallowed hard. Like all young children, he blamed himself for misfortune, and now he was in no doubt at all that this disappearance of his mother was somehow his fault. It was he who had wished that she would stop talking so much, or at least stop talking about the things that she tended to talk about; it was he who wished for more time by himself; it was he who wished that he was eighteen and free to move to Glasgow, or Paris. All of this evidence was now amassed against him, indicting him for this disaster. He had wished his mother gone, and now she was. Be careful of what you wish for, Bertie Pollock! They were the very words that Olive had used a few days earlier, when she had seen Bertie looking thoughtful. Well, they were wise words, unexpectedly prescient, as wise words sometimes prove to be.

Bertie drew a deep breath. It was all his fault.

He began to cry.

Oh, poor wee boy, thought Domenica, as she bent down to comfort him. Poor, poor wee boy.

Over the next few days, the police made several visits to Scotland Street, and the neighbourhood, now abuzz with speculation, became accustomed to the sight of white police cars parked in the street. Throughout the vicinity, posters appeared on the railings bearing the legend
Have you seen this woman?
Underneath was a photograph of Irene, followed by a brief invitation to any member of the public
who had spotted her after her recent disappearance at the foot of Scotland Street to contact the Gayfield Square Police Station without delay.

Stuart, on compassionate leave from the Department of Statistics, underwent several searching interviews with police officers, while Bertie and Ulysses were looked after by a woman police constable in the room next door.

‘I’m sorry that we have to ask this question, sir,’ explained the senior police officer who had taken over the case, ‘but is it possible that your wife was perhaps seeing somebody?’

Stuart looked blank. ‘Seeing somebody?’

‘You know, sir, having an affair?’

Stuart opened his mouth to say something; but he could not speak.

The police officer was sympathetic. ‘As I said, we don’t like to pry into these private matters, sir, but it’s often the case that missing persons have been seeing somebody else and have simply gone off with that person. We had a case recently – and I won’t mention any names, of course – where this woman went missing and her husband had no idea that she was carrying on with a man in Dundee. She just went off with him, without a word of warning. It was a total surprise.’

‘My wife …’ Stuart began, but then stopped himself. He had been intending to say, ‘My wife is not that kind of person’ – but he suddenly asked himself whether he really could say this, and he felt that he could not. He had remembered Hugo Fairbairn and the remark that Bertie had made about the relationship between Irene and the psychotherapist. ‘She really likes him, you know, Daddy,’ Bertie had said. ‘I think he’s her best friend actually. When Dr Fairbairn is sent to Carstairs, I’m sure that Mummy will visit him there.’ Stuart had smiled, and dismissed it as one of Bertie’s amusing little remarks, but then there had been that rather disquieting comment that Bertie had made about the appearance of Ulysses. Again, he had not paid much attention, but now the issue was being raised and it all came back.

Noticing his hesitation, the police officer gave a gentle nudge.
‘You can talk to us in complete confidence, you know. Nothing you say will go beyond these walls.’

Stuart nodded. He felt miserable; it was disloyal, surely, even to make the suggestion. ‘It’s possible she may have,’ he said at last.

The police officer looked away tactfully. ‘I see. And do you think that this affair is still going on?’

Stuart bit his lip. ‘He went up to Aberdeen. Of course, I can’t be sure whether there was anything going on.’

‘Nobody can be sure about such matters, sir,’ said the police officer. ‘People can be very discreet. Understandably.’ He paused. ‘Was everything all right at home?’

Stuart shrugged. ‘I think so. My wife is not necessarily an easy person. She’s a bit … a bit opinionated. She has strong views.’

It was clear that this interested the police officer. ‘Strong views on what?’

‘On everything, I suppose.’

The policeman nodded. ‘But you hadn’t had a recent row? Nothing that could have made her go off suddenly – without any warning?’

Stuart shook his head. ‘No. Nothing like that.’

The policeman cleared his throat. ‘There’s one other thing, sir. I’m sorry to have to bring this up, but you might know that we have a note in our files about contact between you and a certain Glasgow underworld figure. Could this have any bearing on your wife’s disappearance, do you think?’

Stuart gasped in astonishment. ‘Underworld figure?’ he stuttered.

‘One Aloysius O’Connor,’ said the policeman. ‘More generally known as Lard O’Connor. Now deceased.’

‘But I hardly knew him,’ Stuart protested. ‘I left my car outside his house by mistake. That’s all.’

‘And yet you were observed visiting the Burrell Collection with him,’ said the police officer quietly. ‘Does one go to a gallery with a complete stranger? And you were accompanied on this little cultural outing by one Gerald Sean Flaherty, known to our colleagues in the Strathclyde Police as the Sage of Maryhill, not a
man widely believed to be interested in the arts. Yet you all went to this gallery together.’

Stuart looked dazed. ‘I really didn’t know these people,’ he said. ‘And anyway, I don’t see what this has to do with my wife’s disappearance.’

‘It very likely has nothing to do with it at all,’ said the officer. ‘But I’m sure you’ll understand why we have to look into all possible explanations.’ He paused. ‘And I’m afraid, sir, that I am very concerned over this case. You see, women do not normally leave their children – their husbands, yes, but not their children. So this makes me very concerned about your wife’s welfare.’

Stuart looked down at his hands. Of course it had occurred to him that Irene had met some terrible fate, but this was the first time that anybody in officialdom had been prepared to acknowledge that.

The officer spoke gently. ‘So you’ll understand why I must ask this question: did she have any enemies?’

‘Lots.’ Stuart had not intended to answer in this way but the response came spontaneously. ‘She didn’t deserve them, of course, but sometimes she was a bit outspoken. People are rarely ready for that.’

The policeman nodded. ‘Anybody in particular?’

Stuart thought; it was difficult to list the arguments that Irene had had with various people. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It was mostly over smallish things – small ideological things.’

‘Is there anybody who would stand to gain from her disappearance?’

Again Stuart answered quickly, without thinking. ‘I would.’

The policeman looked at him. There was something troubling about his gaze; it was a look of scepticism, Stuart decided. That was understandable enough; he must have to deal with all softs of meretricious behaviour.

‘Could you tell me where you were at the time that she went missing?’ The voice was low, almost as if inviting a confidence.

‘I was at work … And I’ve got twelve people to prove it.’

The officer raised a hand in a calming gesture. ‘That’s fine. I have to exclude you – that’s all.’

‘Well, I resent the implication.’

‘I’m sorry about that. But I had to ask. And, look, I know how you must feel. And I wish I could allay your fears, but frankly I’m very worried that something very unfortunate indeed has happened to your wife. I’m so sorry. I really am.’