44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith [136]
“My dream,” said Dr Fairbairn, “occurred some years ago –
many years in fact, and yet my memory of it is utterly vivid. In this dream I was somewhere in the West – Argyll possibly – and staying in a large house by the edge of a sea loch. The house was a couple of hundred yards from the edge of the loch, and it was set about with grass of the most extraordinary verdant colour. And this grass was touched with the golden light, as of the morning sun.
“The woman who lived in this house had a name, unlike so many people who come to us in our dreams. She was called Mrs Macgregor – I remember that very distinctly – and she was kind to the guests. There were other people there too, but I did not know them. Mrs Macgregor was gentle and welcoming
– she made a tray of tea and then took me gently by the hand and led me across the lawn to a shed beside the loch. And I can remember the smell of the air, which had that tangle of seaweed Irene and Dr Fairbairn Converse
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that you get in the West and that softness too. And I did not want her to let go of my hand.
“We came to the shed and she opened it for me, and do you know, there inside was a lovingly preserved art-nouveau typesetting machine. And I marvelled at this and turned round, and Mrs Macgregor was walking away from me, back towards the house, and I felt a great sense of loss. And that is when I awoke, and the house and the grass and the sea loch faded, but left me with the most extraordinary sense of peace – as if I had been vouchsafed a vision.
“Many years later, I was in a restaurant in Edinburgh, with a largish group of people after a meeting. We were sitting there waiting for our dinner to be served and the subject of dreams arose. I decided to narrate my dream, and there was a sudden hush in the restaurant. Everybody had started to listen to it – the other diners, the waiters, the Italian proprietor of the restaurant, Pasquale, as he was called – everybody.
“And there was a complete silence when I finished. Then, one of the other members of the party – a most distinguished Edinburgh psychiatrist, broke the silence. He said: Mrs Macgregor is your mother!
“And of course Henry was right, and everybody in the restaurant started to talk again, loudly, with relief, perhaps, because they were reassured that their mothers were with them too – their mothers had not gone away.”
Irene was touched by this story, and she was silent too, as had been the diners in that restaurant. She wondered whether she dared tell Dr Fairbairn about her own dream, that had come to her only a few nights previously, in which she had been in the Floatarium, in the flotation tank, and there had been a knocking on the door, and she had opened the lid and seen a blonde child standing outside, like that figure of Cupid in the painting, Love Locked Out. And now she realised that BLONDE
CHILD could be translated, in Scots, or half in Scots, to make FAIR BAIRN.
She could not tell him this, because this was dangerous, dangerous ground. So she closed her eyes instead, and thought
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Bruce Takes a Bath, and Thinks
of her life. She was married to Stuart, and she was the mother of Bertie. And yet she was lonely, hopelessly lonely, because there was nobody with whom she could talk about these things that mattered so much to her. Perhaps things would change when Bertie went to the Steiner School, as he was due to do shortly. Then there would be other Steiner mothers, and she could talk to them. There would be coffee mornings and bring-and-buy sales in aid of the new personal development equipment for the school. And she would not have to go to the Floatarium and float in isolation but would be part of something bigger, and more vibrant, and accepting, as communities used to be, before our fall from grace, the shattering of our Eden.
99. Bruce Takes a Bath, and Thinks
In the bathroom of his flat at 44 Scotland Street, Bruce Anderson stood before the mirror, wearing only the white boxer shorts which his mother had given him for his last birthday. The