Free The Forgotten Affairs of Youth by Alexander McCall Smith Page A

manipulators who did not think for a moment of the victims of their economic games, those financially concupiscent bankers who rewarded themselves with immense bonuses—had behaved exactly the way they did: shifting money about with a view to a quick profit. Shame on you, she muttered. Shame on you.
    JAMIE BROUGHT CHARLIE HOME shortly after twelve. The little boy ran into Isabel’s study—or tottered, as his running was still a headlong, almost uncontrolled projection—launching himself into her arms.
    “And what happened this morning?” she asked, kissing him as she spoke.
    He grimaced and wiped his cheek; she could imagine him thinking,
I’m not a baby!
but not yet having the words to express the thought. Boys grew away from their mothers, she understood—but did it start this early? Small boys needed love and cuddles; there would be time enough to be masculine, and lonely, later on.
    Charlie seized one of the bulldog clips that Isabel kept on her desk and set about forcing it open. The spring was initially unyielding, and his little fingers were barely up to the task, but he succeeded eventually, fastening it to Isabel’s blouse—much to his amusement.
    Standing behind Charlie, Jamie signalled to Isabel. “We need to talk,” he whispered, adding: “out of range of juvenile ears.”
    Distracting Charlie with a piece of paper and a red pencil, she rose to her feet and joined Jamie at the doorway of the study. Charlie seemed indifferent to the presence of his parents; a red pencil, applied with force to a blank sheet of paper, was far more interesting.
    “What is it?”
    Her first thought was of head lice. Every so often a note would come back from the playgroup informing parents that there had been a case of head lice—lice letters went with the territory of being the parent of a small child, people said, and it was no reflection on hygiene: the letters always stressed that clean hair was more attractive to lice. Of course they did not say
whose
hair was affected, much as some parents would have relished getting that information—provided it was not their child, of course. There should be no shame, and yet inevitably there was; one did not advertise the fact that one’s child was lousy, in the same way as people did not talk about their colonoscopies or haemorrhoid surgery. In general we love to share our medical conditions with our friends—but not all medical conditions.
    Jamie read her mind. “No, it’s not lice,” he said, his voice lowered. “It’s swearing.”
    Isabel gave a start. “Swearing? Charlie’s been swearing?”
    Jamie nodded. He was trying his best to be serious, but there was a smile playing about his lips. “Mrs. What’s-her-face at the playgroup—the other one, the helper—she said—”
    “Mrs. Macfie.”
    “Yes, her. She drew me aside and told me that Charlie had used what she described as ‘a very bad word.’ She said it had surprised her and she thought that perhaps she had misheard. But then he said it again. He was grabbing some toy from one of the other children and he uttered this unspeakable word.”
    Isabel’s eyebrows shot up. “Good heavens. Do you have any idea what the word was?”
    “I asked her, actually, and she blushed to the roots of her hair. She said it was unnecessary for her to repeat it but she could write it down for me. Which she did. Here’s the piece of paper.”
    He reached into his pocket and took out a folded piece of paper. At the top of the paper was the name of the playgroup and its address:
Little Sunbeams Playgroup, Merchiston.
And underneath was written a word in common usage among builders, soldiers, teenagers and novelists.
    “Where on earth did he learn that?” asked Isabel. “You haven’t been … No, of course not.”
    Jamie never used even mildly scatological language. He just did not. Neither did Isabel.
    “Not me,” said Jamie. “Maybe I’ve
thought
it on occasion; who hasn’t? But—”
    “The Pope?”