11

Merry Hart with Small Possessioun…

That Saturday, when Angus Lordie took Cyril out for his morning walk in Drummond Place Garden, he came across Bertie sitting on the stairs, directly outside the Pollocks’ front door. That door was slightly ajar, and Angus could hear a radio playing music inside the flat, along with the sound of voices. Then a child began to cry.

“That’s Ulysses, Mr. Lordie,” Bertie ventured. “My little brother.”

“Of course,” said Angus. “I’ve met Ulysses, Bertie. And a fine little chap he is, too.”

Bertie looked doubtful. “He cries a lot, Mr. Lordie. When Mummy was here he cried all the time. Now that she’s in Aberdeen, he doesn’t cry quite so much.”

Angus said nothing, but thought: post hoc, propter hoc. He looked down on the small boy and smiled. He noticed that Bertie was wearing a freshly ironed shirt, and trousers with a well-pressed crease. The formality of his outfit was finished off by a small, clip-on tartan bow tie.

“Special occasion today, Bertie?” he asked.

Bertie took a few moments to answer. He stared down at the stone step on which he was sitting; he looked disconsolate. Eventually he said, “There’s a party, Mr. Lordie.”

“Ah,” said Angus. “And am I to assume that you don’t want to go? Is that right?”

Bertie nodded mutely. Cyril, a good judge of human mood, nudged gently at his side—canine body language for I understand. Dogs understood misery.

“Whose party is it?” asked Angus. “Somebody at school?”

Bertie nodded again. “It’s a girl called Olive,” he said. “She’s very bossy. When I went to her last birthday party, it was full of girls, Mr. Lordie. Hundreds of them. I was the only boy.”

“Oh, that’s bad luck, Bertie.”

“Yes. They played Jane Austen all the time—that’s all that they wanted to do. And I had to be Mr. Darcy for the whole afternoon.”

Angus suppressed a smile. “That can’t be easy, Bertie.” And added, “Even for Mr. Darcy himself, I imagine.” He paused. “Do you have to go, Bertie? You could always send your apologies.”

Bertie sighed. “My granny says I have to go. She said I had accepted the invitation, and we must always keep our promises.”

“Did you accept?” asked Angus.

Bertie sighed again. “Only because Olive made me,” he replied. “She said that if I didn’t accept she’d tell everybody never to talk to me again.”

Angus frowned. “That’s very bad, Bertie. But I can see why you felt you had to say yes.”

“So now I have to go. At least Ranald will be there this time.”

Angus remembered Ranald Braveheart Macpherson, whom he had met, with Bertie, after that remarkable rugby match when Scotland trounced New Zealand at Murrayfield. “Well, that’s something. Maybe Olive’s party won’t be so bad after all.”

Bertie looked unconvinced. Once again, Cyril nudged at him with his sympathetic, wet, dog’s nose.

“Cyril doesn’t want you to be sad, Bertie,” said Angus. “He wants you to cheer up.”

“I’ll try, Mr. Lordie,” said Bertie. “But I wish I could…I wish I could go and live in Glasgow, Mr. Lordie. That’s what I’d really like.”

Angus lowered himself onto the stair beside Bertie. “Listen,” he said, “the world often isn’t quite as we’d like it to be, Bertie. But it’s a mistake, you know, to think that things will be better somewhere else. It’s an old mistake.” He paused. Things were better, he thought, for this little boy now that his mother had decamped to Aberdeen, but obviously not everything was perfect just yet.

“Have you heard of the town mouse and the country mouse, Bertie?”

Bertie shook his head.

“Well, it’s a famous old Scottish poem by Robert Henryson. He got the story from Aesop. They both lived quite a long time ago.”

Bertie was listening.

“And the story’s quite simple really,” Angus continued. “There was a mouse who lived in the country, you see, and she thought it would be a good idea to come into town and stay with her sister. She was told of all the fine food—the luxuries—that her sister had in the town. And the food was pretty good. But there was a cat, Bertie, and he gave the country mouse a real fright. He was called Gib, if I remember correctly.”

“Did Gib eat her?”

“No, he threw her about a bit, but the country mouse managed to get away—just. But it made her think. And do you know what she thought?”

“No.”

“She thought that it was a mistake to leave her simple life in the country. She thought it was a mistake to think that somebody else’s life is better than your own.”

Angus waited. Cyril looked at Bertie, who continued to stare at the stone beneath his feet.

“I don’t remember many of the lines,” Angus said. “But I do remember these. Henryson—he was the poet, Bertie—said: Thairfor, best thing in eird, I say for me / Is merry hart with small possessioun. That’s in old Scots, Bertie, but I rather think you’ll understand it. Have a merry heart even if you don’t have much else.”

He watched the small boy struggle. And as he did so, he felt that urge we all feel when we see the young in their unhappiness. We want to reassure them, This will not last—it really won’t. It will get better. It will. But we don’t say that, and even if we did, the young would not listen, for the simple reason that they have not lived long enough to know what we, for our part, have learned.

Angus rose to his feet. “There’s another poem about a mouse, Bertie.”

He did not have time to tell him. “ ‘To a mouse,’ ” said Bertie. “Mr. Burns wrote it, Mr. Lordie. He disturbed a mouse when he was plowing a field. He felt very sorry for it.”

“He did indeed, Bertie,” said Angus.

Bertie stood up. “I have to go,” he said.

“Feeling better?” asked Angus.

Bertie was silent, but his nod gave the answer.

“And some time soon I must tell you about a plan I’ve hatched.”

Bertie looked up enquiringly.

“I’m going to build a shed,” said Angus. “I’m going to build a shed in Drummond Place Garden.”

Bertie drew in his breath. A shed! He looked up at Angus, who knew immediately what the look meant.

“Of course you can,” said Angus. “Of course you can use my shed.”

Olive’s party, and all the dread it entailed, receded. A shed would change everything. But then Bertie thought: What possible use could an adult have for a shed? Was Mr. Lordie planning something?