4

Stuart Is Unactivated

As Domenica and Angus began their meal of tomato soup and scrambled eggs, in the flat below theirs at 44 Scotland Street, Nicola Pollock was preparing dinner for her son, Stuart Pollock, having slightly earlier on that evening made egg and potato pie for her two grandsons, Bertie and his younger brother, Ulysses. Bertie loved egg and potato pie and would willingly have eaten it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, were it to be offered for him. Such an offer, though, was never made: breakfast was invariably a plate of muesli and a boiled egg, and lunch, which he normally had at school, was vegan fish fingers or soya mash, or something of that sort, served shortly before midday eurythmics. Only at dinner could egg and potato pie become a possibility, and not every day at that.

The preparation of meals in the Pollock household was very much a shared responsibility, with Stuart and his mother taking it in turns, day and day about, to cook dinner for the two sittings – early, for the children, and late for the adults – to supervise the evening bath, and then to read the bedtime story. The last of these was far from simple, as the expectations of the two boys were so radically different. Ulysses would listen only to stories about dogs – of which there was, of course, a finite supply – while Bertie, who was a keen reader on his own account, had a taste in literature far beyond what would be expected of the average seven-year-old. He had recently completed Walter Scott’s Waverley and had now embarked on the first volume of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu in the Scott Moncrieff translation. Now, in the session with Stuart, he was currently engrossed in The Odyssey, which Stuart was reading out to him, five pages at a time, before lights out. When it was Nicola’s turn to read to the boys, Bertie preferred the Katie Morag books, which he considered to be only slightly Proustian, but most enjoyable nonetheless.

On that particular evening, with the boys off to sleep, Nicola was preparing a simple dish of grilled salmon and mustard potatoes for the two of them. As she flipped the salmon from the skillet onto a serving plate, she mentally rehearsed what she intended to say to Stuart. She had a potentially awkward subject to discuss with him: that of his emotional life. That had, in her view at least, stalled. She had her ideas about this, and had been meaning to discuss these with him, but had been putting off the matter because she was concerned that it could turn into a fraught conversation and possibly even a confrontation.

Now, as she passed Stuart his plate of salmon and potatoes, she made her opening gambit. “I’ve been thinking,” she began.

Stuart looked at his plate. “This is a very nice bit of salmon,” he said.

“Good,” said Nicola. “I’ve been––”

He did not let her finish. “Farmed, of course. I don’t suppose it’s possible to get wild salmon these days.”

“Possibly not,” said Nicola. “I’ve been thinking…”

Stuart put his fork into the salmon steak. “I’m not sure where I stand on the issue,” he went on. “I know that we’re going to have to farm fish – if we want to carry on eating it. Wild fish supplies will soon be exhausted, I imagine. Flag- hopping is the problem.”

Nicola abandoned her attempt to direct the conversation. “Flag-hopping?” she asked.

“Using flags of convenience to get round international controls. Large fishing vessels are registered under a flag of convenience – Liberia, the Bahamas and so on – and then they go off and overfish in the territorial waters of others. They don’t report their catch and the coastal states may be too weak or disorganised to police their bit of sea. Result: fish are disappearing. We’re hunting them to extinction – just as we hunted so much else out of existence in the past.”

Nicola shook her head. “We never learn, do we?” She paused. “Who’s doing this?”

“China,” said Stuart. “Russia. Spain. Their great factory ships have been sweeping the oceans of life.”

Nicola sighed. The world was a lawless place, it seemed, and becoming increasingly so. What had Hobbes said about this? Without the social contract, life would become nasty, brutish and short. Well, it already was.

“We delude ourselves,” Stuart continued, taking a mouthful of salmon, “if we think that people will stick to the rules. They won’t. There are some countries that will never co-operate with others to preserve something for the future. They just won’t. And we fondly imagine that they will act with concern for others – well, they won’t. That’s not in the DNA. It just isn’t. It’s sauve qui peut.” He paused. “There are plenty of places that would eat others for breakfast, you know, and indeed are doing so right now.”

Nicola sighed again. “Of course, we aren’t perfect ourselves, are we? Look how we expropriated the assets of others during the high days of empire.”

“True,” said Angus. “But we aren’t doing it now, are we? Or not so brazenly.”

Nicola tried again. “Stuart,” she began, “I’m your mother––”

He interrupted her with a laugh. “I’ve long suspected that. You know, the way you’ve encouraged me to change my socks…”

“Don’t laugh at motherhood,” Nicola said. “Or apple pie for that matter.”

Stuart looked apologetic. “I’m not laughing, Mother. Far from it.”

“Good. And what I was going to say is that, as your mother, I’m worried about you.”

Stuart waited.

“How long is it since Irene went up to Aberdeen?”

“A year?”

“Yes, a year. At least.”

He watched her. Nicola had no time for Irene; he had always known that.

“And what have you done about replacing her?”

Stuart struggled to conceal his astonishment. “Replacing her? You make her sound like a household appliance that’s gone wrong.”

“You know what I mean, Stuart.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know if I do.”

“You need to find somebody. Now, I know that you had that brief dalliance with that young woman – the one who was interested in poetry. But that didn’t last, did it? And in my view – it’s just one view, of course – you should have tried again. You can’t expect these things just to happen.”

Stuart bit his lip. He wanted to tell his mother to keep out of his affairs – or, lack of them, perhaps. But you did not say that to your mother. So, instead, he said, “Well, Mother, what do you suggest?”

“I’ve put you online.”

He stared at her. “You’ve…put me online?

Stuart stared at his mother. She returned his stare.

“I’m only trying to be helpful,” she said.

Stuart struggled. What did you say to your mother when, without permission, she puts you online – like an unwanted item for which a buyer is sought?

She sought to reassure him. “I haven’t activated you yet,” she said. “I’d obviously get your consent for that.”