Alexander Smith - Unbearable Lightness of Scones

Mayor Giuliani, thought Angus, would not have tolerated Antonia’s removal of Domenica’s blue Spode teacup. And nor had he, Angus Lordie. He had gone into Antonia’s kitchen, quickly located the cup in question, and returned it to Domenica. Then they had both left the flat, locking the door behind them. Domenica had been effusively grateful and had invited Angus in for a further cup of coffee, but he had declined, as Cyril was restless now and wanted some exercise. They would walk together up to Big Lou’s and have the second cup of coffee there.

“I’m immensely grateful to you for getting my cup back for me,” said Domenica. “It had been rankling.”

“As well it might,” said Angus. “It’s never comfortable seeing evil flourish unchecked.”

“I don’t know if I’d quite call it evil,” said Domenica. “But it was certainly an act of dishonesty on Antonia’s part.”

“And what do you think she’ll do when she discovers that it’s not there?” asked Angus. “Will she suspect us?”

“She might,” Domenica replied. “But even if she does, she can hardly complain. After all, we merely took back what was rightfully mine. She has no leg to stand on. She is quite without visible means of support.”

“White-collar crime,” mused Angus. “Stealing somebody’s blue Spode teacup is, I suppose, an example of white-collar crime. Which makes Antonia a white-collar criminal.”

“Well, there you are,” said Domenica. “It just goes to show how frayed are the bonds that bind us one to another in this society. It used to be that you could trust your neighbour…”

Angus shook his head. “That was when we had a society,” he said. “That was before they dismantled the idea of community; the idea of being a nation.”

Domenica looked doubtful. “But there’s still a lot of talk about community. Don’t we even have a Minister for Communities or some such thing?”

Angus shrugged. “Possibly. But so much of that is just pious talk. The things that really bind people to one another are a shared sense of who you are – a shared identity. Common practices. Common loyalties. Those are the things that bind us together. But what is being done to those things now? They are being dismantled. Deliberately and with specific intent they are being dismantled. Look at Christmas. Look at those think-tank people who advocated diminishing Christmas so that those who adhered to other faiths would not feel excluded. The truth of the matter, though, is that the celebration of Christmas has been going on for an awful long time in this country and is exactly one of those customs that make us a community rather than just a random collection of people who happen to live in the same place. And you can say the same thing about a hundred other manifestations of our national culture. We have a national culture, just as other countries have. We have one, and we are entitled to say that we want to preserve it. It’s a great mish-mash of social customs and observances; of ways of greeting one another; of memories of nursery rhymes and poems and people. All of that. And these wretched, arrogant relativists and pluralists are setting out – on what authority, one asks? – to dismantle it, bit by bit, so that there is nothing, absolutely nothing left. They prevent people from being who they are; they forbid them to express themselves in the name of preventing offence; Cyril’s offensive to cats, but is he to stop being a dog? They pour scorn on those who have a sense of themselves. One might weep. One might weep for everything that is being taken from us, our fundamental, basic identity as Scots, as Britons too – all of that.”

He paused – and drew breath. “And don’t think for a moment that this sense of having something taken away is restricted to bourgeois dreamers, to middle-class romantics, to hopeless irredentists; don’t think that. Look at what very ordinary people have lost, and think about that for a moment. What has happened to working-class communities in Scotland? To miners, for example. To fishermen? Who? You might well ask. To men and women who work with their hands? Who again? These people are being swept away by globalisation. Swept away. Now they’re all so demoralised that they’re caught in the culture of permanent sick notes. And who speaks for the young Scottish male, as a matter of interest? Nobody. Where’s he going to live? What’s he going to do? Nobody cares. He’s finished. Abandoned. And he knows it. And all the solace he can get he will have to get from football and drinking. That’s the only meaning he can find for his life. Football! And an ersatz electronic culture of mindless cinematic violence from the cynical pyrotechnicians of Hollywood. But don’t get me started, Domenica.”

“I won’t,” said Domenica.

The contretemps between Irene and Stuart over the question of whether Bertie would be allowed to join the cub scouts had been resolved in favour of Stuart. It was impossible for Irene to do very much now; certainly there was little that she could do in the presence of Bertie himself, as for all her faults she did not believe in presenting a child with mixed parental messages. But that did not prevent her from confronting Stuart once Bertie had been dispatched to bed.

That dispatching had been carried out by Stuart, who had supervised the cleaning of teeth and the various other small rituals that Bertie performed before settling down for the night. That evening, though, Stuart was aware of what awaited him in the kitchen, and prolonged his time with his son, sitting on the edge of the bed in the artificial gloaming provided by Bertie’s small plug-in night-light.

“So you’ve had a good day, Bertie,” he said, taking the small hand that was resting on the top of the counterpane and giving it a brief, friendly squeeze.

Bertie hesitated before he replied. “A bit,” he said. “Some of it was good and some was bad. But thank you for asking, Daddy.”

“Oh, some of it was bad, was it?” asked Stuart. “Why was that, Bertie? I thought you had fun having your friends round to play.”

“Olive’s not really my friend, Daddy,” confided Bertie. “She thinks she is, but isn’t really. I never invited her here and once she comes all she wants to do is to play house. I hate playing house. We’re incompatible.”

Stuart gave a start at the sophisticated word; his son had a great capacity for astonishing him, never less than in his vocabulary. He was sympathetic to Bertie’s point. He had a vague memory of being forced to play house when he was a small boy and hating it too. And now that he came to think of it, his life with Irene was a bit like being obliged to play house on a prolonged scale. In fact, there were many men who were forced to play house when they really did not want to…

“Girls can be a bit different, Bertie,” he said.

“Mummy says they aren’t,” chipped in Bertie. “Mummy says that it’s society that imposes different roles on boys and girls.”

Stuart looked at his son. He was probably right. That was exactly what Irene would have said.

“I’m sure that Mummy had a point,” he said loyally. “But let’s not worry too much about that. Tell me, did Tofu enjoy himself?”

“No,” said Bertie. “Tofu and Olive fight every time they see one another. Tofu always spits at her and she scratches him. She tried to scratch his face this afternoon but only managed to scratch his neck. That made Tofu pull her hair and quite a bit came out.”

“That’s not so good,” said Stuart. “One does not expect such things to happen among one’s guests. But at least you’ve got the cub scouts to look forward to.”