Scotland Street Volume 18, Chapter 12: A whole country to love

“I offered to buy you some potatoes.”

She looked at him, uncertain whether she might have offended him. People had their pride, and some found it difficult to accept gifts – especially from complete strangers.

Then he smiled. “I thought that’s what you said.” He shook his head – not in refusal, but in puzzlement. “Why?”

“Because I saw you lose … well, not lose all of them, but quite a few. And because I don’t like the idea of anyone eating potatoes that have been in the gutter. Germs –”

“But why you? I mean, we don’t know one another, do we?”

She shook her head. “We don’t. I’m called Nicola, by the way … and I’m just a … well, I suppose I’m just a passer-by in this particular situation.”

He smiled again. “I’m David. And I suppose I’m just a cyclist who stupidly spilled a whole lot of potatoes on Dundas Street.”

“I’d really like you to let me do this,” said Nicola. “And, if you do, we can put the dirty potatoes in the bin. Please let me.”

She looked at him again. It suddenly occurred to her that he might think she was trying to pick him up; that she was one of those women on the lookout for men, who would not hesitate to accost a stranger. Such things happened. She blushed at the thought, and decided that she should end the encounter now.

But then he said, “That’s very kind of you – if it’s what you really want to do.”

“It is,” she said. He had given in quickly, and she sensed that there was something vulnerable about him – some sadness.

He wheeled his bicycle beside her as they walked to the small grocery store a few hundred yards down the street.

“This rucksack’s ancient,” he said. “One of the straps has perished. That was why the potatoes spilled out.”

“I like rucksacks,” said Nicola. “I find them convenient. You don’t feel the weight so much if it’s on your back.”

He seemed to consider this. Then he said, “Yes, you’re right. I use it to take stuff to work.”

“Which is? I mean, what do you do? If you don’t mind my asking.”

He assured her that he did not mind. “I work in a spectacles lab,” he said. “I’m part-time now. Coasting down to retirement, I suppose. I make up the prescriptions.”

“You make lenses?”

“Yes. The machines do a lot of the work now. But you have to have humans checking everything. It gets fiddly.”

They reached the grocery store, and went inside together. There were potatoes alongside the other vegetables.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” he said, as she took them to the counter.

“Well, I am.”

She handed them over to him. He looked at her with bemused gratitude. “Then you must let me buy you a cup of coffee next door. There’s that deli. They serve coffee.”

She thought of Stuart, who would be waiting for her. She looked at her watch. “I’ll have to get on in fifteen minutes or so. My son’s waiting for me. He wants to talk to me about something important – although I don’t know what it is.”

He looked apologetic. “Sorry, I don’t want to keep you.”

“No. I’ve got the time.”

They went into the deli, where he bought them both a cup of coffee. When he came back to the table, carrying the two cups on a tray, Nicola said, “Do you enjoy your work? Making all those glasses?”

David placed a cup of coffee in front of her. “It’s all right. I’ve been doing it for years. I’m not qualified to do anything else.”

Nicola smiled. “I’ve got no qualifications myself. Or none that are much use.” She thought, but did not say, but I own a pie factory: you don’t need paper qualifications if you own a pie factory.

“Qualifications,” mused David. “My dad had none…” He trailed off.

“Your dad?”

“My dad had no qualifications.”

“People didn’t – in the past. But he probably did all right, did he?”

David nodded. “He did, yes. He was a miner, you see. He was one of the last of his generation to go down the pits. Bilston Glen. He was sixteen when he went down, and then the mines closed, and he was left high and dry. Maggie Thatcher. He never forgave her. His whole world ended, you see. The community he lived in. All the history, the ties. A whole chunk of working Scotland. Finished.”

“I know,” said Nicola.

“He was a hard-working man, my dad. He was typical of a certain sort of old-fashioned Scotsman. He ended up working on a farm. He became a tractor man.” He paused. “We lost him last week. He was eighty-seven.”

She hesitated. “Just last week?”

“Yes,” said David. “Last Tuesday.”

She caught her breath. “Oh, I’m sorry …”

He inclined his head. “We all have to go sooner or later. I hoped that he might have lasted a little bit longer than he did, but it wasn’t to be. He was ill for quite some time, you see. Then I went to see him on the Monday and he was really frail. They said to me that if there was anything I wanted to say to him, I should say it. They were giving him this morphine syrup, you see. You know when they do that, that it’s not going to be long.”

He looked at her, and she reached out to take his hand in hers. He looked down at her hand on his, but did not resist.

“I loved him very much, you know. He could be a bit prickly at times, but that came from being in the mines, I think, and everything that went with that. And he felt that he and the men he worked with had been let down.”

“They weren’t the only ones,” said Nicola.

“I loved him,” said David. “We don’t have enough time to love people, do we? And often we don’t get round to it –”

“Until it’s too late.”

He had lowered his gaze, now he looked into her eyes. “Do you have somebody that you love? Or maybe I shouldn’t ask that question.”

She told him that it was a question we should not be afraid to ask – or be asked.

“I was married. I loved him. But then I stopped. That was abroad. That was Portugal. Then I came back to Scotland and there were people to love here. My two grandsons. And my son.” She paused. “And a whole lot of other people, I suppose. A whole country, if one thinks about it.”

© Alexander McCall Smith, 2025. Bertie’s Theory of Ice Cream will be published by Polygon in August, price £17.99. The author welcomes comment from readers and can be contacted at [email protected]