The Enigma of Garlic by Alexander McCall Smith

Author:Alexander McCall Smith [McCall Smith, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2023-04-11T00:00:00+00:00

30

A Swiss Army Knife

It was the last day of term at the Steiner School and the talk in the playground was all about plans for the upcoming summer holidays. Bertie was unsure what Stuart and Nicola had planned for him – there had been some talk of going away for a week or two in the Highlands, but nothing definite seemed to have been arranged. Bertie himself had asked whether it might be possible to have a holiday in Glasgow, but this suggestion had been met with silence and glances between his father and grandmother that he had found difficult to interpret.

Then Stuart had said, “That’s an interesting idea, Bertie, but usually, if you live in a city already, you go somewhere different for your holidays.” He paused. “That’s not to say that Glasgow isn’t a good place to go. I’m sure that there’s a lot to do there.”

“One could go down the Clyde,” Nicola suggested. “There’s the Waverley paddle steamer, and then there’s…” She looked to Stuart for help.

“The People’s Palace. And the Burrell Collection is not far away. And…”

“There’s plenty to do in Glasgow,” Nicola said. “But I think that we might go further afield.” She looked fondly at Bertie. “You love Glasgow, don’t you, Bertie?”

Bertie nodded. Glasgow was a promised land to him – it had always been a place of freedom and excitement – a place devoid of the constraints of life in Edinburgh, where you had to watch what you did, where there were people like Olive and Pansy around to criticise anything you said, even if life was, admittedly, easier since his mother had gone to Aberdeen and the psychotherapy and yoga had stopped. There was no yoga in Glasgow and very little psychotherapy, he had been told, and there were lots of jokes, too, because all the photographs he saw of Glasgow were full of smiling people. And they liked pies there, and everyone drank Irn-Bru, which was widely discouraged in Edinburgh for some reason.

But now there was a cloud – ill-defined and distant, but a cloud nonetheless – on Bertie’s horizon. This was the remark that Stuart had made about the possibility of him being sent to some sort of camp outside Edinburgh. “Mummy thought you might enjoy it,” Stuart said, glancing at Nicola as he spoke. “It’s out near Carlops somewhere, Bertie, and they have all sorts of things for the boys and girls to do.”

Nicola was silent. Bertie did not notice her eyes rolling up as Stuart spoke.

“Will it be a scout camp, Daddy?” Bertie asked. It had long been an ambition of his to go to scout camp. “Will we be able to cook sausages on a fire?”

“Vegan sausages possibly,” muttered Nicola.

Stuart shot his mother a warning glance.

“I’m sure they’ll have campfires,” he said.

Nicola muttered again. “I’m not.”

Bertie sensed that his grandmother had her reservations. “And will we be able to do some tracking?” he asked. He had read about tracking in Scouting for Boys and he was keen to try it.

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