44 Scotland Street - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Alexander McCall Smith (Начало книги) #1

This book has been optimized for viewing at a monitor setting of 1024 x 768 pixels.

praise for

A L E X A N D E R M c C A L L S M I T H

“Utterly enchanting. . . . It is impossible to come away from an Alexander McCall Smith ‘mystery’ novel without a smile on the lips and warm fuzzies in the heart.”

—Chicago Sun-Times

“McCall Smith’s generous writing and dry humor, his gentleness and humanity, and his ability to evoke a place and a set of characters without caricature or condescension have endeared his books . . . to readers.”

— The New York Times

“Pure joy. . . . The voice, the setting, the stories, the mysteries of human nature. . . . [McCall Smith’s] writing is accessible and the prose is beautiful.”

—Amy Tan

“Mr. Smith, a fine writer, paints his hometown of Edinburgh as indelibly as he captures the sunniness of Africa. We can almost feel the mists as we tread the cobblestones.” — The Dallas Morning News

“Alexander McCall Smith has become one of those commodities, like oil or chocolate or money, where the supply is never sufficient to the demand. . . . [He]

is prolific and habit-forming.”

— The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

“[McCall Smith] captures the cold, foggy, history-drenched atmosphere of Edinburgh . . . with a Jane Austen–like attention to detail.”

— USA Today

alexander mccall smith

4 4 S C O T L A N D S T R E E T

Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the huge international phenomenon, The No. 1 Ladies’

Detective Agency series, and The Sunday Philosophy Club series. He was born in what is now known as Zimbabwe, and he was a law professor at the University of Botswana and at Edinburgh University. He lives in Scotland.

b o o k s b y a l e x a n d e r m cc a l l s m i t h i n t h e n o . 1 l a d i e s ’ d e t e c t i v e a g e n cy s e r i e s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Tears of the Giraffe

Morality for Beautiful Girls

The Kalahari Typing School for Men The Full Cupboard of Life

In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

i n t h e s u n d ay p h i l o s o p h y c l u b s e r i e s The Sunday Philosophy Club

Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

i n t h e p o rt u g u e s e i r r e g u l a r v e r b s s e r i e s Portuguese Irregular Verbs

The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs

At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa 44 Scotland Street

SCOTLAND

STREET

SCOTLAND

STREET

A L E X A N D E R M c C A L L S M I T H

Illustrations b y

I A I N M c I N TO S H

a n c h o r b o o k s

A Division of Random House, Inc.

New York

FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, JUNE 2005

Copyright © 2005 by Alexander McCall Smith Illustrations copyright © 2005 by Iain McIntosh All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Originally published in Great Britain by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd., Edinburgh, in 2005.

This book is excerpted from a series that originally appeared in the Scotsman newspaper.

Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948–

44 Scotland Street / Alexander McCall Smith ; illustrations by Iain McIntosh.

p. cm.

eISBN 0-307-27679-1

1. Young women—Fiction. 2. Art galleries, Commercial—

Employees—Fiction. 3. Edinburgh (Scotland)—Fiction.

4. Apartment houses—Fiction. 5. Roommates—Fiction. I. Title: Forty-four Scotland Street. II. McIntosh, Iain, ill. III. Title.

PR6063.C326A613 2005

823'.914—dc22

2005043627

w w w . a n c h o r b o o k s . c o m

v1.0

This is for Lucinda Mackay

Chapter title

vii

Preface

Most books start with an idea in the author’s head. This book started with a conversation that I had in California, at a party held by the novelist, Amy Tan, whose generosity to me has been remarkable. At this party I found myself talking to Armistead Maupin, the author of Tales of the City. Maupin had revived the idea of the serialised novel with his extremely popular serial in The San Francisco Chronicle. When I returned to Scotland, I was asked by The Herald to write an article about my Californian trip. In this article I mentioned my conversation with Maupin, and remarked what a pity it was that newspapers no longer ran serialised novels. This tradition, of course, had been very important in the nineteenth century, with the works of Dickens being perhaps the best known examples of serialised fiction. But there were others, of course, including Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, which nearly landed its author in prison.

My article was read by editorial staff on The Scotsman, who decided to accept the challenge which I had unwittingly put down. I was invited for lunch by Iain Martin, who was then editor of the paper. With him at the table were David Robinson, the books editor of the paper, Charlotte Ross, who edited features, and Jan Rutherford, my press agent. Iain looked at me and said: “You’re on.” At that stage I had not really thought out the implications of writing a novel in daily instalments; this was a considerable departure from the weekly or monthly approach which had been adopted by previous serial novelists. However, such was the air of optimism at the lunch that I agreed.

The experience proved to be both hugely enjoyable and very instructive. The structure of a daily serial has to be different from that of a normal novel. One has to have at least one development in each instalment and end with a sense that something more may happen. One also has to understand that the readership is a newspaper readership which has its own very special characteristics.

The real challenge in writing a novel that is to be serialised XII

Preface

in this particular way – that is, in relatively small segments –

is to keep the momentum of the narrative going without becoming too staccato in tone. The author must engage a reader whose senses are being assailed from all directions – from other things on the same and neighbouring page, from things that are happening about him or her while the paper is being read.

Above all, a serial novel must be entertaining. This does not mean that one cannot deal with serious topics, or make appeal to the finer emotions of the reader, but one has to keep a light touch.

When the serial started to run, I had a number of sections already completed. As the months went by, however, I had fewer and fewer pages in hand, and towards the end I was only three episodes ahead of publication. This was very different, then, from merely taking an existing manuscript and chopping it up into sections. The book was written while it was being published. An obvious consequence of this was that I could not go back and make changes – it was too late to do that.

What I have tried to do in 44 Scotland Street is to say something about life in Edinburgh which will strike readers as being recognisably about this extraordinary city and yet at the same time be a bit of light-hearted fiction. I think that one can write about amusing subjects and still remain within the realm of serious fiction. It is in observing the minor ways of people that one can still see very clearly the moral dilemmas of our time. One task of fiction is to remind us of the virtues – of love and forgive-ness, for example – and these can be portrayed just as well in an ongoing story of everyday life as they can on a more ambitious and more leisurely canvas.

I enjoyed creating these characters, all of whom reflect human types I have encountered and known while living in Edinburgh.

It is only one slice of life in this town – but it is a slice which can be entertaining. Some of the people in this book are real, and appear under their own names. My fellow writer, Ian Rankin, for example, appears as himself. He said to me, though, that I had painted him as being far too well-behaved and that he would never have acted so well in real life. I replied to him that his Preface

XIII

self-effacing comment only proved my original proposition.

Then there are some who appear as themselves, but have no speaking part. That great and good man, Tam Dalyell, does that.

We see him, but we do not hear what he says. We also see mention of another two admirable and much-liked public figures, Malcolm Rifkind and Lord James Douglas Hamilton, who flit across the page but who, like Mr Dalyell, remain silent.

Perhaps all three of them could be given a speaking part in a future volume – if they agree, of course.

I enjoyed writing this so much that I could not bear to say goodbye to the characters. So that most generous paper, The Scotsman, agreed to a second volume, which is still going strong, day after day, even as I write this introduction to volume one. In the somewhat demanding task of writing both of these volumes, I have been sustained by the readers of the paper, who urged me on and provided me with a wealth of suggestions and comments. I feel immensely privileged to have been able to sustain a long fictional conversation with these readers. One reader in particular, Florence Christie, wrote to me regularly, sometimes every few days, with remarks on what was happening in 44 Scotland Street. That correspondence was a delight to me and helped me along greatly in the lonely task of writing. I also had most helpful conversations with Dilly Emslie, James Holloway and Mary McIsaac. Many others –

alas, too numerous to mention – have written to me or spoken to me about the development of characters and plot. To all of these I am most indebted. And, of course, throughout the whole exercise I had the unstinting daily support of Iain Martin and David Robinson of The Scotsman. I was also much encouraged by Alistair Clark and William Lyons of the same newspaper.

But the most important collaboration of all has been with the illustrator of this book, Iain McIntosh. Iain and I have worked together for many years. Each year for the last twenty years or so I have written a story at the end of the year which has been printed for private circulation by Charlie Maclean and illustrated by Iain. Iain then illustrated my three novels in the Portuguese XIV

Preface

Irregular Verbs series. His humour and his kindness shine out of his illustrations. He is the modern John Kay, and Edinburgh is fortunate to have him to record its face and its foibles.

Alexander McCall Smith, January 2005

Central Edinburgh

SCOTLAND

STREET

1. Stuff Happens

Pat stood before the door at the bottom of the stair, reading the names underneath the buttons. Syme, Macdonald, Pollock, and then the name she was looking for: Anderson. That would be Bruce Anderson, the surveyor, the person to whom she had spoken on the telephone. He was the one who collected the rent, he said, and paid the bills. He was the one who had said that she could come and take a look at the place and see whether she wanted to live there.

“And we’ll take a look at you,” he had added. “If you don’t mind.”

So now, she thought, she would be under inspection, assessed for suitability for a shared flat, weighed up to see whether she was likely to play music too loudly or have friends who would damage the furniture. Or, she supposed, whether she would jar on anybody’s nerves.

She pressed the bell and waited. After a few moments something buzzed and she pushed open the large black door with its numerals, 44, its lion’s head knocker, and its tarnished brass plate above the handle. The door was somewhat shabby, needing a coat of paint to cover the places where the paintwork had been scratched or chipped away. Well, this was Scotland Street, not Moray Place or Doune Terrace; not even Drummond Place, the handsome square from which Scotland Street descended in a steep slope. This street was on the edge of the Bohemian part of the Edinburgh New Town, the part where lawyers and accountants were outnumbered – just – by others.

Stuff Happens

She climbed up four flights of stairs to reach the top landing.

Two flats led off this, one with a dark green door and no nameplate in sight, and another, painted blue, with a piece of paper on which three names had been written in large lettering.

As she stepped onto the landing, the blue door was opened and she found herself face-to-face with a tall young man, probably three or four years older than herself, his dark hair en brosse and wearing a rugby jersey. Triple Crown, she read. Next year. And after that, in parenthesis, the word: Maybe.

“I’m Bruce,” he said. “And I take it you’re Pat.”

He smiled at her, and gestured for her to come into the flat.

“I like the street,” she said. “I like this part of town.”

He nodded. “So do I. I lived up in Marchmont until a year ago and now I’m over here. It’s central. It’s quiet. Marchmont got a bit too studenty.”

She followed him into a living room, a large room with a black marble fireplace on one side and a rickety bookcase against the facing wall.

“This is the sitting room,” he said. “It’s nothing great, but it gets the sun.”

She glanced at the sofa, which was covered with a faded chintzy material stained in one or two places with spills of tea or coffee.

It was typical of the sofas which one found in shared flats as a student; sofas that had been battered and humiliated, slept on by drunken and sober friends alike, and which would, on cleaning, disgorge copious sums in change, and ballpoint pens, and other bits and pieces dropped from generations of pockets.

She looked at Bruce. He was good-looking in a way which one might describe as . . . well, how might one describe it?

Fresh-faced? Open? Of course, the rugby shirt gave it away: he was the sort that one saw by the hundred, by the thousand, streaming out of Murrayfield after a rugby international.

Wholesome was the word which her mother would have used, and which Pat would have derided. But it was a useful word when it came to describe Bruce. Wholesome.

Bruce was returning her gaze. Twenty, he thought. Quite expensively dressed. Tanned in a way which suggested outside

Stuff Happens

pursuits. Average height. Attractive enough, in a rather willowy way. Not my type (this last conclusion, with a slight tinge of regret).

“What do you do?” he asked. Occasions like this, he thought, were times for bluntness. One might as well find out as much as one could before deciding to take her, and it was he who would have to make the decision because Ian and Sarah were off travelling for a few months and they were relying on him to find someone.

Pat looked up at the cornice. “I’m on a gap year,” she said, and added, because truth required it after all: “It’s my second gap year, actually.”

Bruce stared at her, and then burst out laughing. “Your second gap year?”

Pat nodded. She felt miserable. Everybody said that. Everybody said that because they had no idea of what had happened.

“My first one was a disaster,” she said. “So I started again.”

Bruce picked up a matchbox and rattled it absent-mindedly.

“What went wrong?” he asked.

“Do you mind if I don’t tell you? Or just not yet.”

He shrugged. “Stuff happens,” he said. “It really does.”

After her meeting with Bruce, Pat returned to her parents’ house on the south side of Edinburgh. She found her father in his study, a disorganised room stacked with back copies of the Journal of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. She told him of the meeting with Bruce.

“It didn’t last long,” she said. “I had expected a whole lot of them. But there was only him. The others were away somewhere or other.”

Stuff Happens

Her father raised an eyebrow. In his day, young people had shared flats with others of the same sex. There were some mixed flats, of course, but these were regarded as being a bit – how should one put it? – adventurous. He had shared a flat in Argyle Place, in the shadow of the Sick Kids’ Hospital, with three other male medical students. They had lived there for years, right up to the time of graduation, and even after that one of them had kept it on while he was doing his houseman’s year. Girlfriends had come for weekends now and then, but that had been the exception. Now, men and women lived together in total innocence (sometimes) as if in Eden.

“It’s not just him?” he asked. “There are others?”

“Yes,” she said. “Or at least I think so. There were four rooms.

Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worrying.”

“You are.”

He pursed his lips. “You could always stay at home, you know.

We wouldn’t interfere.”

She looked at him, and he shook his head. “No,” he went on.

“I understand. You have to lead your own life. We know that.

That’s what gap years are for.”

“Exactly,” said Pat. “A gap year is . . .”

She faltered. She was not at all sure what a gap year was really for, and this was her second. Was it a time in which to grow up?

Was it an expensive indulgence, a rite de passage for the offspring of wealthy parents? In many cases, she thought, it was an expensive holiday: a spell in South America imposing yourself on a puzzled community somewhere, teaching them English and painting the local school. There were all sorts of organisations that arranged these things. There might even be one called Paint Aid, for all she knew – an organisation which went out and painted places that looked in need of a coat of paint. She herself had painted half a school in Ecuador before somebody stole the remaining supplies of paint and they had been obliged to stop.

Her father waited for her to finish the sentence, but she did not. So he changed the subject and asked her when she was going to move in. He would transport everything, as he always did; the Stuff Happens

bundles of clothing, the bedside lamp, the suitcases, the kettle.

And he would not complain.

“And work?” he asked. “When do you start at the gallery?”

“Tuesday,” said Pat. “They’re closed on Mondays. Tuesday’s my first day.”

“You must be pleased about that,” said her father. “Working in a gallery. Isn’t that what most of you people want to do?”

“Not in particular,” said Pat, somewhat irritated. Her father used the expression you people indiscriminately to encompass Pat, her age group, and her circle of friends. Some people wanted to work in a gallery, and perhaps there were a lot of those, but it was hardly a universal desire. There were presumably some people who wanted to work in bars, to work with beer, so to speak; and there were people, plenty of people, who would find themselves quite uncomfortable in a gallery. Bruce, for instance, with his rugby shirt and his en brosse haircut. He was not gallery material.

That had been another interview altogether. She had seen the discreet, hand-written notice in the window of the gallery a few streets away. A bit of help wanted. Reception. Answering the phone

– that sort of thing. The wording had been diffident, as if it was almost indecent to suggest that anybody who read it might actually be looking for something to do. But when she had gone in and found the tall, slightly lost-looking young man sitting at his desk – the wording had seemed perfect.

“It’s not much of a job,” he had said. “You won’t have to sell any paintings, I expect. You’ll just be providing cover for me.

And you’ll have to do the occasional other thing. This and that.

You know.”

She did not know, but did not ask. It looked as if he might have found it tedious to give the details of the job. And he certainly asked her nothing about herself, not even her name, before he sat back in his chair, folded his arms, and said: “The job’s yours if you want it. Want it?”

2. A Room with a Smell

Bruce had shown Pat the vacant room in the flat and this had brought home to him what a complete slut Anna had been. He had asked her to clean the room before she left – he had asked her at least twice – and she had assured him, twice, that it would be done. But he should have known that she did not mean it, and now, looking at the room with a visitor’s eyes, he saw what she had done. The middle of the carpet had been vacuumed, and looked clean enough, but everywhere else looked dirty and neglected. The bed, pulled halfway away from the wall, had large balls of dust under it, as well as a collapsed stack of magazines.

A glass of water, with lipstick stains on the rim, had been left on the bedside table. She had moved out a week ago and he should have checked, but he had always hated going into the room while she was there and her presence somehow lingered. So he had left the door closed and tried to forget that she had ever lived there.

Pat stood still for a moment. There was a musty odour to the room; a smell of unwashed sheets and clothes.

“It’s got a great view,” said Bruce, striding across to draw the curtains, which had been left half-closed. “Look,” he said. “That’s the back of that street over there and that’s the green. Look at the pigeons.”

“It’s big enough,” said Pat, uncertainly.

“It’s not just big, it’s huge,” said Bruce. “Huge.”

Pat moved over towards the wardrobe, a rickety old oak wardrobe with half-hearted art nouveau designs carved up each side. She reached out to open it. Bruce drew his breath. That slut Anna, that slut, had probably left the cupboard full of her dirty washing. That was just the sort of thing she would do; like a child, really, leaving clothes on the floor for the adults to pick up.

“That’s a wardrobe,” he said, hoping that she would not try to open it. “I’ll clean it out for you. It might have some of her stuff still in it.”

Pat hesitated. Was the smell any stronger near the wardrobe?

She was unsure.

“She didn’t keep the place very clean, did she?” she said.

A Room with a Smell

Bruce laughed. “You’re right. She was a real slut, that girl. We were all pleased when she decided to go over to Glasgow. I encouraged her. I said that the job she had been offered sounded just fine. A real opportunity.”

“And was it?”

Bruce shrugged. “She fancied herself getting into television journalism. She had been offered a job making tea for some producer over there. Great job. Great tea possibilities.”

Pat moved towards the desk. One of the drawers was half-open and she could see papers inside.

“It almost looks as if she’s planning to come back,” she said.

“Maybe she hasn’t moved out altogether.”

Bruce glanced at the drawer. He would throw all this out as soon as Pat went. And he would stop forwarding her mail too.

“If there’s any danger of her coming back,” he said, smiling,

“we’ll change the locks.”

Later, when Pat had left, he went back to the room and opened the window. Then he crossed the room to the wardrobe and looked inside. The right-hand side was empty, but on the left, in the hanging section, there was a large plastic bag, stuffed full of clothes. This was the source of the musty odour, and, handling it gingerly, he took it out. Underneath the bag was a pair of abandoned shoes, the soles curling off. He picked these up, looked at them with disgust, and dropped them into the open mouth of the plastic bag.

He moved over to the desk. The top drawer looked as if it had been cleared out, apart from a few paper clips and a chipped plastic ruler. The drawer beneath that, half-open, had papers in it. He picked up the paper on the top and looked at it. It was a letter from a political party asking for a donation to a fighting fund. A smiling politician beamed out from a photograph. I know you care, said the politician, in bold type, I know you care enough to help me care for our common future. Bruce grimaced, crumpled up the letter, and tossed it into the black plastic bag. He picked up the next piece of paper and began to read it. It was hand-written, the second or subsequent page of a letter as it began halfway through a sentence: which was not very clever of me! Still, 8

A Room with a Smell

I wasn’t going to see them again and so I suppose it made no difference. And what about you? I don’t know how you put up with those people you live with. Come through to Glasgow. I know somebody who’s got a spare room in her flat and who’s looking for somebody. That guy Bruce sounds a creep. I couldn’t believe it when you said that you thought he read your letters. You reading this one, Bruce?

It was settled. Pat had agreed to move in, and would pay rent from the following Monday. The room was not cheap, in spite of the musty smell (which Bruce pointed out was temporary) and the general dinginess of the décor (which Bruce had ignored).

After all, as he pointed out to Pat, she was staying in the New Town, and the New Town was expensive whether you lived in a basement in East Claremont Street (barely New Town, Bruce said) or in a drawing-room flat in Heriot Row. And he should know, he said. He was a surveyor.

“You have found a job, haven’t you?” he asked tentatively. “The rent . . .”

She assured him that she would pay in advance, and he relaxed.

Anna had left rent unpaid and he and the rest of them had been obliged to make up the shortfall. But it was worth it to get rid of her, he thought.

A Room with a Smell

He showed Pat to the door and gave her a key. “For you. Now you can bring your things over any time.” He paused. “I think you’re going to like this place.”

Pat smiled, and she continued to smile as she made her way down the stair. After the disaster of last year, staying put was exactly what she wanted. And Bruce seemed fine. In fact, he reminded her of a cousin who had also been keen on rugby and who used to take her to pubs on international nights with all his friends, who sang raucously and kissed her beerily on the cheek.

Men like that were very unthreatening; they tended not to be moody, or brood, or make emotional demands – they just were.

Not that she ever envisaged herself becoming emotionally involved with one of them. Her man – when she found him –

would be . . .

“Very distressing! Very, very distressing!”

Pat looked up. She had reached the bottom of the stair and had opened the front door to find a middle-aged woman standing before her, rummaging through a voluminous handbag.

“It’s very distressing,” continued the woman, looking at Pat over half-moon spectacles. “This is the second time this month that I have come out without my outside key. There are two keys, you see. One to the flat and one to the outside door. And if I come out without my outside key, then I have to disturb one of the other residents to let me in, and I don’t like doing that.

That’s why I’m so pleased to see you.”

“Well-timed,” said Pat, moving to let the woman in.

“Oh yes. But Bruce will usually let me in, or one of his friends . . .” She paused. “Are you one of Bruce’s friends?”

“I’ve just met him.”

The woman nodded. “One never knows. He has so many girlfriends that I lose track of them. Just when I’ve got used to one, a quite different girl turns up. Some men are like that, you know.”

Pat said nothing. Perhaps wholesome, the word which she had previously alighted upon to describe Bruce, was not the right choice.

The woman adjusted her spectacles and stared directly at Pat.

A Room with a Smell

“Some men, you see, have inordinate appetites,” she remarked.

“They seem to be genetically programmed to have a rather large number of partners. And if they’re genetically predisposed to do that sort of thing, then I wonder whether we can actually blame them for it. What do you think?”

Pat hesitated. “They could try a bit harder not to cheat.”

The woman shook her head. “Not easy,” she said. “I believe that we have much less free will than we think. Quite frankly, we delude ourselves if we think that we are completely free. We aren’t. And that means if dear Bruce must have rather a lot of girlfriends, then there’s not very much he can do about it.”

Pat said nothing. Bruce had said nothing about the neighbours, and perhaps this was the reason.

“But this is very rude of me,” the woman said. “I’ve been talking away without introducing myself. And you’ll be wondering: Who is this deterministic person? Well, I’m Domenica Macdonald, and I live in the flat opposite Bruce and his friends. That’s who I am.”

Pat gave the woman her name and they shook hands. Her explanation that she had just agreed to take the spare room in Bruce’s flat brought a broad smile to Domenica’s face.

“I’m very pleased to hear that,” she said. “That last girl – the girl whose room you’ll be taking . . .” She shook her head.

“Genetically programmed to have lots of boyfriends, I think.”

“A slut? That’s what Bruce called her to me.”

This surprised the woman. “Male double standards,” said Domenica sharply, adding: “Of course, Edinburgh’s full of double standards, isn’t it? Hypocrisy is built into the stonework here.”

“I’m not sure,” ventured Pat. Edinburgh seemed much like anywhere else to her. Why should there be more hypocrisy in Edinburgh than anywhere else?

“Oh, you’ll find out,” said Domenica. “You’ll find out.”

3. We See a Bit More of Bruce

“Terrific!” said Bruce, unbuttoning his Triple Crown rugby shirt.

“That looks just terrific!”

He was standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom, waiting for the bath to fill. It was a favourite mirror of his, full-length – unlike most bathroom mirrors – which made it possible to inspect at close quarters the benefits of his thrice-weekly sessions in the gym. And the benefits were very evident, in whatever light they were viewed.

He pulled the shirt up over his head and flung it down on the top of the wicker laundry basket. Flexing his biceps, he stared back at the mirror and liked what he saw. Next, by crouching slightly, as if poised to leap forward, the muscles that ran down the side of his trunk – he had no idea what they were called, but could look them up in the chart his personal trainer had given him – these muscles tensed like a series of small skiing moguls.

Moguls, in fact, might be a good word for them, he thought.

Biceps, pecs, moguls.

He removed the rest of his clothes and looked again in the mirror. Very satisfactory, he thought – very satisfactory. Reaching up, he ran his fingers lightly across the top of his en brosse haircut. Perhaps a little off round the sides next week, or, again, perhaps not. He might ask his new flatmate what she thought.

Would I look better with longer hair? What do you think, Pat?

He was not sure about this new girl. She was not going to be any trouble – she could pay the rent and he knew that she would keep the place clean. He had seen her look of concern over the state of the room, and that had been a good sign. But she was a bit young, and that might be problematic. The four years that separated them were crucial ones, in Bruce’s mind. It was not that he had no time for twenty-year-olds, it was just that they talked about different things and listened to different music. He had often had to hammer on Anna’s door late at night when he was being kept awake by the constant thump thump of her music.

She played the same music all the time, day-in day-out, and when he had suggested that she might get something different, 12

We See a Bit More of Bruce

she had looked at him with what was meant to be a patient expression, as one might look at somebody who simply did not understand.

And of course Bruce could never think of anything to say to her. He would have loved to have been able to come up with a suitable put-down, but it never seemed to be there at the right time, or at any other time, when he came to think of it.

He tested the temperature of the bath and then lowered himself into the water. The cleaning of Anna’s room had made him feel dirty, but a good soak in the bath would deal with that. It was a wonderful bath in which to soak; one of the best features of the flat. It must have been there for fifty years, or even more; a great, generous tub, standing on four claw-feet, and filled from large-mouthed silver taps. He very rarely saw a bath like that when he did a valuation, but when he did, he always drew it to the attention of the client. Fine bathroom fittings, he would write, knowing that he could be writing the epitaph of the bath, which would be removed and replaced by something half its weight and dura-bility.

He lay back in the water and thought of Pat. He had decided that she was not his type, and in general he preferred to keep relationships with flatmates on a platonic basis, but one should not make absolute rules on these matters, he thought. She was attractive enough, he reflected, although she would not necessarily turn his head in the street. Comfortable, perhaps, was the word. Undisturbing. Average.

Perhaps she would be worth a little attention. He was, after all, between girlfriends, now that Laura had gone down to London. They had agreed that she would come up to Edinburgh once a month and he would go down to London with the same frequency, but it had not worked out. She had made the journey three months in a row, but he had been unable to find the time to do the same. And she had been most unreasonable about it, he thought.

“If you cared anything about me, you would have made the effort,” she had said to him. “But you don’t and you didn’t.”

He had been appalled by this attack. There had been very Fathers and Sons

good reasons why he could not go to London, apart from the expense, of course. And he had had every justification for cancelling that weekend: he had entered the wrong date for the Irish international at Murrayfield in his diary and had only discovered his error four days before the event. If she thought that he was going to miss that just to go down for a weekend which could be rearranged for any time, then she was going to have to think again, which she did.

He stood up and stepped out of the bath. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and smiled.

4. Fathers and Sons

Somebody had pushed a bundle of advertisements into the mail box of the Something Special Gallery, which irritated Matthew Duncan. It was Tuesday morning, and the beginning of another working week for Matthew, who took Sundays and Mondays off.

He was early that morning – normally he opened at ten o’clock, as it was unheard of to sell a painting before ten, or even eleven.

He believed that the best time to make a sale was just before lunch, on a Saturday, to a client who had accepted a glass of sherry. Of course, private views were even better than that, because crowd behaviour then entered into the equation and red spots could proliferate like measles. That, at least, was what he had been told when he had taken over the gallery a few weeks previously. But he could not be sure, as he had so far sold nothing. Not one painting; not one print; nothing at all had been bought by any of the people who had drifted in, looked about them, and then, almost regretfully in some cases, almost apologetically in others, had walked back out of the front door.

Matthew flung the advertisements into the wastepaper bin and walked into the back of the gallery to deal with the alarm, which had picked up his presence and was giving its first warning pips.

Fathers and Sons

The code keyed in, he flicked the light switches, bringing to life the spotlights that were trained on the larger paintings on the walls.

He enjoyed doing this because it seemed to transform the room so entirely, from a cold, rather gloomy place, inadequately lit by natural light from the front window, into a place of warmth and colour.

It was not a large gallery. The main room, or space as Matthew had learned to call it, stretched back about thirty feet from the two wide display windows that looked out onto the street.

Halfway down one side of this room there was a desk, which faced outwards, with a telephone and a discreet computer terminal.

Beside the desk there was a revolving bookcase in which twenty or thirty books were stacked; a Dictionary of Scottish Artists, bound catalogues of retrospectives, a guide to prices at auction. These were the working tools of the dealer and, like everything else, had been left there by the former owner.

Matthew had acquired the gallery on impulse, not an impulse of his, but that of his father, who owned the building and who had repossessed it from the tenant. Matthew’s father, who was normally unbending in his business deals, had been an uncharacteristically tolerant landlord to the gallery. He had allowed unpaid rent to mount up to the point where the tenant had been quite incapable of paying. Even then, rather than claim what had been owing for more than two years, he had accepted gallery stock in settlement of the debt and had paid rather generously for the rest.

Matthew’s father, despaired of his son ever amounting to much in the world of business. He had started Matthew off in a variety of enterprises, all of which had failed. Finally, after two near-bankrupt stores, there had been a travel agency, a business with a promising turnover, but which under Matthew’s management had rapidly lost customers. His father had been puzzled by this, and had eventually realised that the problem was not laziness on his son’s part, but a complete inability to organise and moti-vate staff. He simply could not give directions. He was a completely incompetent manager. This was a bitter conclusion for a father who had dreamed of a son who would turn a small Scottish business empire, the result of decades of hard work, Attributions and Provenances

into something even bigger. So he had decided that he might as well accept his son’s limitations and set him up in a business where he would have virtually no staff to deal with and where there was very little business to be done anyway – a sinecure, in other words. A gallery was perfect. Matthew could sit there all day and would therefore technically be working – something which he believed to be very important. He would make no money, but then money appeared not to interest him. It was all very perplexing.

But he’s my son, thought Matthew’s father. He may not be good for very much, but he’s honest, he treats his parents with consideration, and he’s my own flesh and blood. And it could be much worse: there were sons who caused their fathers much greater pain than that. He’s a failure, he thought; but he’s a good failure and he’s my failure.

And for Matthew’s part, he knew that he was no businessman.

He would have liked to have succeeded in the ventures that his father had planned for him, because he liked his father. My father may have the soul of a Rotarian, thought Matthew, but he’s my Rotarian, and that’s what counts.

5. Attributions and Provenances

It was not Pat’s first job, of course. There had been that disastrous first gap year, with all the varying jobs that that had entailed.

She had worked for the person she could now only think of as that man for at least four months, and had it not been for the fire – which was in no sense her fault – then she might have spent even longer in that airless, windowless room. And one or two of the other jobs had hardly been much better, although she had never encountered employers quite as bad as he had been.

This was clearly going to be very different. To start with, there was nothing objectionable about Matthew. He had been offhand at the interview, quite casual, in fact, but he had not been rude 16

Attributions and Provenances

to her. Now, as she reported for work on that first Tuesday, she noticed that when she came into the room Matthew stood up to greet her, holding out his hand in a welcoming way. The standing up was something that her mother would have noticed and approved of; if a man stands up, she had said, you know that he’s going to respect you. Watch your father – when anybody comes into the room he stands up, no matter who they are. That’s because he’s a . . . She had hesitated, looking at her daughter.

No, she could not bring herself to say it.

“Because he’s a what?” Pat had challenged. It was always gratifying to expose parents as hopelessly old-fashioned. She was going to say gentleman, wasn’t she? Hah!

“Because he’s a psychiatrist,” her mother had said quickly.

There! She would find out soon enough, the difference between the types of men, if she did not already know it. And I will not be patronised by her, just because she’s twenty and I’ve reached the age of . . . My God! Have I?

Matthew, sitting down again, unaware of the memory he had triggered, indicated the chair in front of his desk.

“We should talk about the job,” he said. “There are a few things to sort out.”

Pat nodded, and sat down. Then she looked at Matthew, who looked back at her.

“Now then,” Matthew said. “The job. This is a gallery, see, and our business is to sell paintings. That’s it. That’s the bottom line.”

Pat smiled. “Yes.” This was surprising. But why was the sale of paintings the bottom line? She was not at all sure what bottom lines were, although everybody talked about them, but perhaps he would explain.

Matthew sat back in his chair, propping his feet on an upturned wastepaper basket at the side of the desk.

“I freely admit that I haven’t been in this business for very long,” he said. “I’ve just started, in fact. So we’ll have to learn together as we go along. Is that all right with you?”

Pat smiled encouragingly. “I like paintings,” she said. “I did a Higher Art at school, at Edinburgh Academy.”

“The Academy?” said Matthew.

Attributions and Provenances

“Yes.”

He looked thoughtful for a moment. Then he said: “I used to go there. You didn’t hear anything about me there, did you?”

Pat was puzzled. “No,” she said hesitantly. “Not that I remember.”

“Good,” said Matthew, with the air of one changing the subject.

“Now, the job. You need to sit here when I go out. If somebody comes in and wants to buy a painting, the prices are all listed on this piece of paper over here. Don’t let a painting out of the gallery until they’ve paid and the cheque has cleared, so tell them that they can collect the painting in four or five days, or we’ll deliver it. If we know them, we can take their cheques.”

Pat listened. Matthew was making it clear enough, but surely there must be something else to the job. He could hardly be expected to pay her just to watch the shop for him when he went out.

“Anything else?” she asked.

Matthew shrugged. “Some bits and pieces.”

“Such as?”

PEPLOE: Samuel John Peploe (1871-1935), Edinburgh-born artist much influenced by French Impressionist painters such as Cézanne. In his later years, his still-life works brought him recognition as a colourist.

Bruce Takes a Look at a Place

He looked about him, as if searching for ideas. He looked at the paintings and then turned his gaze back on Pat. “You could do a proper catalogue of stock,” he said, and then, warming to the idea, explained: “I had something like that, but I’m afraid that it got lost somewhere. You could go through everything and find out what we have. Then make a proper catalogue with the correct

. . . correct . . .” What was the word they used? “Attributions.

Yes, attribute the paintings. Find out who they’re by.”

Pat glanced at the wall behind her. There was a painting of an island, in bright colours, with strong brush strokes. She could just hear the voice of her art teacher at school, intoning, reverentially:

“That, boys and girls, is a Peploe.”

But it couldn’t be a Peploe. Impossible.

6. Bruce Takes a Look at a Place

Bruce worked in a firm of surveyors called Macaulay Holmes Richardson Black. In spite of the name, which implied at least four partners and a global reach, it was not a large firm. There were in fact only two partners, Gordon Todd and his brother, Raeburn, known to the staff as Gordon and Todd. They were good employers, and both of them were prominent in the affairs of their professional association, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Gordon always wore a tie with the Institute crest on it, and Todd had a gold signet ring on which the same crest had been engraved. Both were strong golfers. Gordon had become a member of Muirfield (after a rather long wait), and Todd was hoping that the same honour would one day befall him.

“I can’t understand why I have to wait longer than he did,”

Todd said to his wife, Sasha.

“Does it matter?” she asked. “What’s so special about that place? Surely one golf course is much the same as another.

Fairways, greens, holes. What’s so special about Muirfield?”

Bruce Takes a Look at a Place

Todd had looked at her with pity. “Women don’t understand,”

he said. “They just don’t.”

“Oh yes we do,” she said. “We understand very well.”

“Then explain it!” Todd had crowed.

“But that’s what I just asked you to do,” she said. “I asked you what the difference was, and you don’t answer that question by batting it back to me. What’s the difference? You tell me.”

Todd had said nothing. He was confident that Muirfield was special, but he was not sure that he could explain it. Ultimately, it had something to do with the people who played there; special people. But that was not something one could put into words –

without a measure of embarrassment – and it was certainly not something that his wife would understand. She would not think of these people as special; that was her mistake.

The firm preferred, if at all possible, to employ sporting assistants. Both brothers found that they could relate easily to sporty types, and such people were also rather good at generating business. Business was done on golf courses (or some of them), and it helped to have sociable employees who would meet clients at parties and in pubs. It was a sociable profession.

Bruce was popular in the firm. Both brothers liked him, to an extent, and Todd had given him a spare seat at Murrayfield on several occasions. Todd had a daughter, Lizzie, who might be suitable for Bruce, so Todd thought, if only she would get over her unreasonable prejudice about him. She seemed to have taken against him on first meeting, and it was quite unfair, although there was perhaps something about this young man which was not quite right – something to do with the way he preened himself? Todd had seen him preening once, looking at himself in the rearview mirror of the firm’s Land Rover, and he had been slightly surprised by it.

“Satisfied?” he had said to him, in a joking tone, and Bruce had leapt up, surprised, and muttered something about needing a haircut. But there had been something else going on, and Todd had remembered it.

Now, as he arrived in the office that morning, the morning on which Pat began at the gallery, Bruce saw that Todd had put 20

A Full Survey

a file on his desk, to await him. He was to do a survey by eleven o’clock that morning, to report back to the client by eleven-thirty.

The property in question, a large top-floor flat overlooking the Dean Valley, had offers closing at noon and the client wanted to bid. This was tight, as he would need to pick up the keys, inspect the property, and dictate a short written report within half an hour of returning to the office.

Bruce took a taxi to the firm of solicitors in York Place. It did not take long to sign for the keys, go back to fetch the company car, and then make his way over the Dean Bridge to the quiet terrace where the flat was located. Once inside, he moved from room to room, noting the condition of the floors and the many other things which it had become second nature to observe.

Power points. Fireplaces. The state of the cornices (if any).

He walked through to the kitchen, which was the last room he inspected. There was nothing exceptional about it. The cupboards were in bad taste, of course, because they had stinted on the joinery, but the floor (a sealed cork) was new, and that would not need replacing for some years. So you could live with this kitchen.

He walked past a large microwave oven, which had been placed at eye-level. Its wide, opaque door of smoked glass made him stop. There was something inside it. No. Just me.

He stood still for a moment, and then smiled.

Nice micro-onde, he wrote in his notebook. Bruce liked to give French names to certain things, if he knew the words. Of course he would use English terms in his official report. Imagine Todd wrestling with words like micro-onde!

Now for le toit, Bruce said to himself.

7. A Full Survey

The flat which Bruce was surveying was on the top floor of a four-storey, late-Georgian tenement. The way into the roof space A Full Survey

was through a trapdoor in the ceiling immediately above the top landing of the common stair. A stepladder was needed to reach this trapdoor, but there was one conveniently to hand in the hall cupboard of the flat. Bruce set this up below the trapdoor and climbed up to open it.

He pushed against the trapdoor, but it would not budge. He tried again, and this time it opened, reluctantly, but only halfway.

Something – a heavy object of some sort – was preventing the trapdoor from opening inwards into the roof space. Bruce lowered it, and then tried again. Still it would not open sufficiently for him to crawl through.

Bruce swore softly under his breath. Looking at his watch, he realised that he now had only fifteen minutes or so to finish the survey if he was going to have sufficient time to write it up by the deadline. Looking up, he peered through the half-open trapdoor into the darkened roof space. He sniffed: if there was rot he might be able to smell it. He knew surveyors who could diagnose the various forms of rot merely by smelling. He could not yet trust himself to rely on that, but he was still able to recognise at least some of the musty smells that could mean that something was wrong. He sniffed again. The air was quite fresh.

There was no rot up there.

Closing the trapdoor, Bruce climbed down the ladder. He would have a look from outside, he decided. He had a pair of binoculars in the car and he could use those. He would be able to see if there was anything that needed to be done, which he was sure that there wasn’t.

He replaced the ladder, locked the flat, and then made his way downstairs. On the other side of the street there was a set of gardens which sloped steeply down the hill to the Water of Leith below. Bruce crossed over and stood on the pavement, his binoculars trained on the roof of the building. It was by no means ideal, he thought; the angle from which he had to observe the roof made it impossible for him to see more than the first third of it, but that seemed perfectly all right. He ran the binoculars over the stonework along the front of the roof. That seemed fine as well. Roof inspected and found to be in good condition, he dictated 22

A Full Survey

to himself. He looked at his watch. He had ten minutes to get back to the office, twenty minutes to dictate the report, and that would mean that the client would get it just in time. There was the valuation to think about, of course, but that was not going to be a particular problem. The location was good: the flat was a ten-minute walk from Charlotte Square; the street was quiet, and there was nothing to suggest that the neighbours were difficult. A flat three doors down had gone recently for three hundred and eighty thousand pounds (Todd had told him about that transaction) but that was on the first floor, which added to the price, and so: Three hundred and twenty thousand pounds, thought Bruce, and then, feeling benevolent to the purchasers and their mortgage needs, he added a further eight thousand pounds for good measure. A fine, late-Georgian flat with many original features.

Superb cornice in the south-facing drawing room; wainscoting in all public rooms; a fine bath which a purchaser might wish to preserve, and a decorated fireplace in the rear bedroom depicting the Ettrick Shepherd, Walter Scott and Robert Burns in conversation with one another in a country inn. These reports wrote themselves, thought Bruce, if one was prepared to loosen up one’s prose a bit.

He drove back to Queen Street, parked the car in the mews garage (for which the firm had paid the equivalent price of a small flat in Dundee) and made his way into the office. There the report was dictated, presented to the secretary, and delivered to Todd in a crisp blue folder.

Todd gestured for Bruce to sit down while he read the survey.

Then, looking up at his employee, he asked him quietly: “You inspected the roof, did you?”

“Yes,” said Bruce. “Nothing wrong there.”

“Are you sure?” asked Todd, fingering the edge of the folder.

“Did you get up into the roof space?”

Bruce hesitated, but only for a moment. There was nothing wrong with that roof and it would have made no difference had he been able to squeeze through the partly-blocked trapdoor. “I went up,” he said. “Everything was fine.”

Todd raised an eyebrow. “Well,” he said. “It wasn’t when I went up last week. I looked at it for another client, you see. He Hypocrisy, Lies, Golf Clubs

lost interest in offering before I wrote a report, and so I thought a fresh survey appropriate. Had you really gone up, you might have seen the fulminating rot and also noticed the very dicey state of one of the chimney stacks. But . . .”

Bruce said nothing. He was looking at his shoes.

8. Hypocrisy, Lies, Golf Clubs

The silence lasted for several minutes. Todd stared at Bruce across his desk. I trained this young man, he thought; I am partly responsible for this. I had my reservations, of course, but they were about other things, about more general failings, and all the time I was missing the obvious: he’s untruthful.

Bruce found it difficult to meet his employer’s gaze. I tell far fewer lies than most people, he thought. I really do. Everybody

– everybody – has cut the occasional corner. It’s not as if I had made a report in bad faith. That roof looked fine to me, and I did open that trapdoor and look inside. Fulminating rot? Surely I would have smelled it.

Todd drew in his breath. He was still staring at Bruce accusingly, a gaze which was unreturned.

“If surveyors lie,” said Todd, “then whom can we believe?”

Bruce said nothing, but shook his head slightly. Self-reproach?

“You see,” said Todd, “when a client approaches a professional person, he puts his trust in him or her. He doesn’t expect to be misled. Hmm?”

Bruce looked up briefly. “No,” he said. “You’re right, Todd.”

“We rely on our reputation,” went on Todd. “If we lose that

– and you can lose that very quickly, let me tell you – then we have nothing. Years and years of hard work by my brother and, if I may say so, by me, go out of the window just because somebody is found to be misleading a client. I’ve seen it happen.

“And there are much broader considerations,” he went on.

“All of our life is based on acts of trust. We trust other people 24

Hypocrisy, Lies, Golf Clubs

to do what they say they’re going to do. When we get on an aeroplane we trust the airline to have maintained its aircraft. We trust the pilot, who has our lives in his hands. We trust other people, you see, Bruce. We trust them. And that’s why what you’ve done is so dreadful. It really is. It’s unforgivable. Yes, sorry, but that’s the word. Unforgivable.”

It was at this point that Bruce realised that he was about to lose his job. Up to now, it had been one of the little lectures that Todd occasionally gave his staff; now it was something different.

He looked at his employer, meeting his gaze, hoping to read his intentions.

Todd’s face registered not anger, but disappointment. This confirmed Bruce’s fears. I’m unemployed, he said to himself. As of five minutes from now, I’m an unemployed (and unemploy-able, he suddenly realised) surveyor.

“So when you went into that building at No 87 Eton Terrace, you were doing so on trust. You were . . .”

Bruce sat up straight. “Number 78.”

Todd paused. “Number . . .” He looked at the file in front of him. “Number . . .”

Bruce closed his eyes with relief. Yes, there had been a flat for sale at No 87. He remembered somebody saying something about it over coffee. Todd had confused the two.

Todd had now extracted a diary from a drawer and was checking a note. He closed the book, almost reluctantly, and looked up at Bruce.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “This is my mistake. I’m very sorry. I was mixing up two properties. You see . . .”

Bruce shook his head. “You don’t need to apologise, Todd,”

he said. “We all make mistakes. All of us. You really don’t need to apologise to me.” He paused, before continuing. “The important thing is to remember that, and to own up to one’s mistakes when one makes them. That’s the really important thing. To tell the truth. To tell the truth about one’s mistakes.”

Todd rose to his feet. “Well,” he said. “We can put that behind us. There’s work to be done.”

“Of course,” said Bruce. “But I was wondering whether I Hypocrisy, Lies, Golf Clubs

could possibly have the afternoon off. I’m pretty much up to date and . . .”

“Of course,” said Todd. “Of course.”

Bruce smiled at his employer and rose to leave.

“A moment,” said Todd, reaching for the file. “Was there an old or a new tank in the roof space? Some of those places still have the lead tanks.”

Bruce again hesitated, but only for an instant. “It was fine,”

he said. “New tank.”

Todd nodded. “Good,” he said.

Bruce left the room. He was trying to trap me, he thought.

One would have imagined that he had learned his lesson, but he was still trying to trap me. As if I would lie, as if. He felt angry with Todd now. What a hypocrite! Sitting there lecturing me about lies when he comes from a whole world of lies and hypocrisy.

What hypocrites! Masonic lodges! Golf clubs! – even though he’s not a member of the golf club he really wants to be a member of, thought Bruce, with a certain degree of satisfaction.

9. SP

Pat was hardly surprised when Matthew announced that he was going to take a coffee break. She had been sitting in her cramped office at the back of the gallery, retyping the now somewhat grubby list of paintings which Matthew had handed her. Matthew had been reading the newspaper at his desk in the front, glancing at his watch from time and time and sighing. It was obvious to Pat that he was bored. There was nothing for him to do in the gallery and his mind was not on the newspaper.

Shortly before half-past ten, Matthew folded up his newspaper, rose to his feet and announced to Pat that he was going out.

“I go to that place on the other side of the road,” he said.

“The Morning After, it’s called. Not a very good name, if you ask me, but that’s what it’s called. Everyone calls it Big Lou’s. If you need me, you can give me a call.”

“When will you be back?” asked Pat.

Matthew shrugged. “Depends,” he said. “An hour or so. Maybe more. It all depends.”

“I’ll be fine,” said Pat. “Take your time.”

Matthew gave her a sideways glance. “It is my time,” he muttered. “It goes with being your own boss.”

Pat smiled. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. I just wanted you to know that I think I’ll be all right.”

“Of course, you will,” said Matthew. “I can tell you’re going to be a great success. I can tell these things.” He touched her lightly on the shoulder. “Smart girl.”

Pat said nothing. She was used to condescension from a certain sort of man, and although she did not like it, it was better than what she had experienced on her gap year – her first gap year.

Alone in the gallery, Pat seated herself at Matthew’s desk and looked out onto the street. She watched Matthew cross the road and disappear into The Morning After. She would make herself a cup of coffee in a few minutes, she thought. She rationed herself to three cups a day, and eagerly looked forward to the first cup of the morning.

Matthew had left his newspaper on the desk, and she picked it up. The front page was filled with political news, which she skipped over, in favour of an article on an inside page about a new film which everybody was talking about but which nobody, apparently, had seen. The violence in this film, it was said, was particularly graphic. There were severed heads, and limbs, and the breaking of bones. This, the writer said, was all very exciting. But why was it exciting, to see others harmed in this way? Were we addicted to fear, or dread? Pat was reflecting on this when she heard the muted note of the bell which announced that somebody had entered the gallery. She looked up and saw a man of about forty, wearing corduroy trousers and a green sweater. He was not dressed for the office, and had the air of a person with no pressing engagements.

“May I?” he said, gesturing at the paintings.

“Of course,” said Pat. “If there’s anything you want to know . . .” She left the sentence unfinished. If there was something he wanted to know it was unlikely that she would be able to give him any information. She could call Matthew, of course, but then he appeared to know nothing as well.

The man smiled, looking about him as if deciding where to start. After a few moments he went up to a small still-life, a Glasgow jug into which a bunch of flowers had been stuffed at a drunken angle.

“Not the way to arrange flowers,” he said, and then added:

“Nor to paint them . . .”

Pat said nothing. It was an unpleasant, amateurish painting; he was quite right. But she said nothing; she felt vaguely protective of Matthew’s paintings, and it was not for customers to come in and criticise them, even if the criticism was deserved.

The man moved over to the painting which looked like a Peploe; school of Peploe perhaps. He stood in front of it for a few moments and then turned to address Pat.

“Very nice,” he said. “In a derivative sort of way. Peaceful.

Shore of Mull from Iona, or shore of Iona from Mull?”

Pat picked up the list from her desk and walked over to join him. “According to this, it’s Mull,” she said. “Mull, near Tobermory, by, and then there’s a question mark.”

The Road from Arbroath

“It’s not a Peploe,” the man said. “That’s pretty obvious. But it has its points. Look over there, that nice shading. Confident brush strokes.”

Pat looked. How can he be so sure it’s not a Peploe, she wondered. Particularly since there were the initials SP painted in the bottom right-hand corner. Then it occurred to her: SP –

School of Peploe.

10. The Road from Arbroath

Matthew felt that he was the discoverer of Big Lou’s coffee bar, although, like everything that is discovered (America or Lake Victoria being examples), it had always been there; or at least it had been there for the last three years or so. Before that it had been a second-hand bookshop, noted for its jumbled stock, that observed no known principle in the shelving of its collection.

Topography rubbed shoulders with poetry; books on fishing and country pursuits stood side-by-side with Hegel and Habermas; and nothing was too recondite to find a place, even if no purchaser.

Nobody wanted, it seemed, a guide to the walking paths of Calabria, to be found, quite fortuitously, next to an India-paper edition of South Wind by Norman Douglas, signed by the author, and forgotten.

Only the proprietor loved these books, so fiercely and possessively, perhaps, that he discouraged purchasers. At length, as if crushed by the sheer weight of his duty and slow-moving stock, he died, and the shop was sold by his executors to Big Lou, together with its books. And then, in a gesture which was to change her life, she took all the books home to her flat in Canonmills and began to read them, one by one. She read the Norman Douglas, she read the guide to Calabrian walking paths, and she read the Hegel and the Habermas. And curiously enough, she remembered the contents of all these books.

Big Lou came from Arbroath, and that was all that anybody The Road from Arbroath

knew about her. Questions about what she had done before she arrived in Edinburgh were ignored, as if they had not been asked, and as a result there was some speculation. She had been married to a sailor; no, she was a sailor herself, having gone to sea dressed as a man and never been unmasked; no, she had been a man, who had gone to Tangier for an operation and returned as a woman. None of this was correct. In fact, Big Lou had done very little with her life. In Arbroath she had looked after an aged uncle until she reached the age of thirty. Then she had left, but the leaving had been ill-starred. Having decided to go to Edinburgh on the death of the demanding uncle, she had shut up the house, handed the keys to a relative, and walked to the station with her suitcase. Arbroath Station is not complicated, but Big Lou had nonetheless mistaken the north-bound platform for the south-bound one, and had boarded a train to Aberdeen.

She had been tired; the carriage was warm, and she almost immediately went to sleep, to wake up shortly before the train reached Stonehaven. She alighted at Aberdeen Station and felt too discouraged to return immediately. Somehow, Aberdeen was less threatening than she suspected Edinburgh might be. Directly outside the station there was a small café, and in the window of this she saw a notice advertising a vacancy for care assistants at a nursing home. That, she thought, is what I am. I am a carer.

I care for others, which is exactly what she did for the next eight years in the Granite Nursing Home.

Although it was in some respects discouraging, this job ultimately proved to be extremely lucrative. One of the residents, a retired farmer from Buchan, had named her as the principal beneficiary in his will, and she had come into a substantial sum of money. This was the signal to stop caring for people in Aberdeen – in every sense – and to take the train that she had missed those eight years before. She was now in a position to buy the coffee bar and the flat in Canonmills, and to start a new life.

The coffee bar had been designed for her by a man she had met in a launderette. Like most of the things that had happened in Big Lou’s life, she was not properly consulted. Things happened to her; she did not initiate anything. And so she was never asked 30

The Road from Arbroath

whether she wanted the booths that this man designed and constructed for her; nor whether she approved of the large and expensive mahogany newspaper rack which he installed near the front door. This was all done without anything having been agreed, and she appeared to accept this, just as she had accepted that she should have devoted the early years of her adult life to looking after her uncle, while her friends from school had gone off to Glasgow or to London and had all led lives of their own making.

There had been men, of course, but they had treated her badly.

One had been a married man who had harboured no intention of leaving his wife for Big Lou; another had been a chef on an oil rig, who had left her to take up a job in Galveston, cooking for Texan oilmen. He had written to tell her about his life in Texas and also to tell her not to come out to join him. Galveston was no place for a woman, he had said.

Big Lou kept this letter, as it was one of the few personal letters she had ever received. She wanted to keep it, too, because she loved this man, this oily cook, and she hoped that one day he might return, although she knew this would never happen.

11. The Origins of Love and Hate

Matthew negotiated his way down the stairs that led to Big Lou’s coffee bar. They were hazardous stairs, down which Hugh MacDiarmid had fallen on at least two occasions in the days when the bookshop had been there. Then, it had been the unevenness of the tread; now, to this peril was added the hazard of a collapsed railing. Big Lou had intended to fix it, but this had never been done.

The coffee bar had been divided into booths – low divisions that enabled the tops of heads to be seen above the wooden parti-tions. The booths were comfortable, though, and Big Lou never encouraged her customers to hurry. So one might sit there all day, if one wished, and not feel any of the unease that one might feel elsewhere.

Matthew usually stayed for an hour or so, although if the conversation was good he might sit there for two hours, or even more. He was joined each morning by Ronnie and his friend, Pete, furniture restorers who occupied a workshop in a lane off an elegant New Town crescent. Ronnie specialised in cabinet work, while Pete was a French polisher and upholsterer. They had worked together for two years, having met in a pub after what had been a traumatic afternoon for their football team. Matthew knew nothing about football, which interested him not at all, and by unspoken agreement they kept off the topic. But Matthew sensed that there were unresolved football issues somewhere beneath the surface, as there so often are with upholsterers.

Ronnie was married; Pete was not. Matthew had only known Ronnie since he had taken over the gallery, and during this time he had not had the opportunity to meet Ronnie’s wife, Mags.

But he had heard a great deal about her, some of it from Pete, and some from Ronnie himself.

When Ronnie was not there, Pete was voluble on the subject of Mags.

“I wouldn’t bother to meet her,” he said. “She’ll hate you.”

Matthew raised an eyebrow. “I don’t see why she should hate me. Why?”

The Origins of Love and Hate

“Oh, it’s not you,” said Pete. “It’s nothing personal. Mags could even like you until she found out.”

Matthew was puzzled. “Until she found out what?”

“That you’re a friend of Ronnie’s,” explained Pete. “You see, Mags hates Ronnie’s friends. She’s jealous of them, I suppose, and she can’t help herself. She looks at them like this. See? And they don’t like it.”

Matthew winced. “What about you? Does she hate you?”

“Oh yes,” said Pete. “Although she tries to hide it. But I can tell that she hates me.”

“What’s the point?”

Pete shrugged. “None that I can see. But she does it nonetheless.”

Big Lou had been listening to this conversation from behind her counter. Now she chipped in.

“She hates you because you threaten her,” she said. “Only insecure people hate others. I’ve read about it. There’s a book called The Origins of Love and Hate. I’ve read it, and it tells you how insecurity leads to hatred.”

The two men turned and looked at Big Lou.

“Are you sure?” asked Pete after a while. “Is that it?”

“Yes,” said Big Lou. “Mags hates Ronnie’s friends because she’s afraid of losing him and because they take him away from her. How much time does Ronnie spend talking with Mags?

Have you ever seen him talk to her?”

“Never,” mused Pete. “Never.”

“Well, there you are,” said Big Lou. “Mags feels neglected.”

Pete was about to say something in response to this when he suddenly stiffened and tapped Matthew on the forearm.

“They’re here,” he whispered. “Ronnie, with Mags in tow.”

Matthew turned round to look. Ronnie was making his way down the steps, followed by a woman in a flowing Paisley dress and light brown suede boots. The woman was carrying a bulging shopping bag and a folded copy of a magazine. As they entered the coffee bar, Ronnie exchanged a glance with Pete and then turned to Mags to point to the booth where his two friends were sitting.

She followed his glance and then, Matthew noticed, she frowned.

Chanterelles Trouvées

Ronnie approached the booth.

“This is Mags,” he said, almost apologetically. “Mags, this is Matthew. You haven’t met him before. Matthew’s a friend of mine.”

Matthew stood up and extended a hand to Mags.

“Why do you stand up?” she said sharply. “Do you stand up for everybody, or is it just because I’m a woman?”

Matthew looked at the floor. “I stand up because I intend to leave,” he said evenly. “Not wishing to be condescended to, or whatever, I intend to leave. You may have my seat if you wish.”

He walked out, and started up the perilous steps. He was shaking, like a boy who had done something forbidden.

12. Chanterelles Trouvées

Bruce had offered to cook dinner for Pat that evening. The offer had been made before he left the flat in the morning as he popped his head, uninvited, round her half-open door.

“I’m cooking anyway,” he said. “It’s as easy to cook for two as it is for one.”

“I’d love that,” said Pat. She noticed his glance move around her room as they spoke, resting for a moment on her unmade bed before moving to the suitcase which she had not yet fully unpacked.

Bruce nodded. “You will,” he said. “I’m not a bad cook, if you don’t mind my saying so. I could teach Delia a thing or two.”

Pat laughed, which seemed to please Bruce.

“Only about surveying,” he went on. “Not about cooking.”

He finished, and waited for Pat to laugh again, but she did not.

“I’m sure it’ll be very good,” she said solemnly. “What will we have?”

“I only cook pasta,” said Bruce. “Pasta with mushrooms probably. Chanterelles. You like mushrooms, don’t you?”

“Love them,” said Pat.

“Good. Chanterelles in a butter sauce, then, with cream.

Garlic. Black pepper and a salad dressed with olive oil and a dash 34

Chanterelles Trouvées

of balsamic vinegar. Balsamic vinegar comes from Modena, you know. Has to. How about that?”

“Perfect,” said Pat. “Perfect.”

When she returned to Scotland Street that evening, late –

because Matthew had asked her to show a painting to a client who could only come in after six – Bruce had laid out the ingre-dients of his pasta dish on the kitchen table. She sat there as he cooked, explaining as he did so some troubling incident at work that day, a row over defective central heating and a leaky cupola.

“I told them they’d have trouble with these people,” he said.

“And I was right. It always happens. You get people moving up in the world and they start putting on airs. They probably had to look up the word ‘cupola’ in the dictionary before they complained about it. Cup-er-lah. That’s what they call it. I’ve got a leaky cup-er-lah. ”

“It can’t be any fun having a leaky cupola,” Pat pointed out, mildly. “You can’t blame them.”

“All cup-er-lahs leak,” said Bruce. “People who have cup-er-lahs are used to that. It’s just when you get promoted to having a cup-er-lah that you get all uptight about it. Nouvelle cup-er-lah.

That’s what they are.”

The pasta cooked, he had tipped helpings onto two plates, had added the yellow sauce, and sat down at the table opposite her. The sauce, although too rich for her taste, was well-made, and she complimented him.

“Where did you get the mushrooms?” Pat asked.

“From my boss,” said Bruce. “ Mr Todd. He found them and gave them to me.”

Pat paused, looking down at her plate.

“He picked them?”

“Yes. He picked them on a golf course up in Perthshire. He hit a ball off the fairway and it landed in the middle of these mushrooms, under a tree.”

Pat fished a piece of mushroom out of the pasta and looked at it. “Does he know what he’s doing?”

Bruce smiled. “No. He’s pretty ignorant. Useless, in fact.”

“Then how does he know that these are chanterelles? How does he know these aren’t . . . aren’t poisonous?”

Chanterelles Trouvées

“He doesn’t,” said Bruce. “But I do. I can tell chanterelles. I know they’re all right. I’ve only been wrong about mushrooms once – a long time ago.”

“And you were ill?”

“Very,” said Bruce. “I nearly died. But I’m right about these.

I promise you. You’ll be fine.”

They continued with the meal in silence.

“You don’t have to eat this if you don’t want to,” Bruce said sulkily.

Pat thought for a moment, but shook her head and finished her helping, rather quickly, thought Bruce. Then, over coffee, which Bruce brought to the table, they talked about Matthew and the gallery.

“I’ve met him,” said Bruce. “His old man’s a big Watsonian.

Rugby. The works. Lots of tin. But the son’s useless, I think.”

“You seem to find a lot of people useless,” remarked Pat. She did not want to sound aggressive, but the remark came out as a challenge.

Bruce took her observation in his stride. “Well, they are. There are lots of useless people in this city. It’s the truth, and if it’s the truth then why bother to conceal it? I spell things out, that’s all.”

They finished their coffee and then Bruce explained that he was going to meet friends in the Cumberland Bar. Pat was welcome to come if she wished. They were interesting people he said: surveyors and people from the rugby club. She should come along. But she did not.

13. You Must Remember This / A Kiss Is Just a Kiss After Bruce had left the flat for the Cumberland Bar, Pat went back into her room and lay down on her bed. It was proving to be a rather dispiriting evening. It was not easy listening to her flatmate and his opinionated views, and she wondered if she was beginning to feel queasy. Those mushrooms had tasted all right, but then that was often the case with poisonous fungi, was it not?

She lay on her bed and placed a hand on her stomach. What would the first symptoms be? Nausea? Vomiting? Or would one simply become drowsy and fade away, as Socrates had done when given hemlock? She should have refused to eat them, of course; once Bruce had announced their origins she should have had the courage of her convictions. She would have to change. She would have to stand up to him.

She picked up her mobile phone and opened the lid. She had told herself that she would not phone home at the first sign of feeling miserable, because she had to learn to stand on her own two feet. But phoning home was always so reassuring, particularly if she spoke to her father, who was so calm about everything and had an outlook of cheerful optimism – a vindication of the proposition that the one requirement for a successful career in psychiatry is a sense of humour.

Pat started to key in the number but stopped. Somebody was playing a musical instrument, a clarinet, or was it a saxophone?

Yes, it was a saxophone; and it seemed that it was being played directly outside her door. She listened for a moment, and then realised that the sound was coming up through the wall beside her bed. It was not bad; there was the occasional stumble, but it was no rank amateur playing.

She continued dialling and heard her father answer at the other end. He asked where she was.

“I’m in my room. I’m lying on my bed listening to somebody downstairs play the sax. Listen.” She put the mobile up against the wall for a few moments.

“‘As Time Goes By’,” said her father. “From Casablanca. And it sounds as if it’s being played on a tenor sax. Not badly either.”

The Smell of Cloves

“It’s very loud,” said Pat. “It comes right up into my room.”

“I suppose you must expect some saxophone music if you live in a flat,” he said. “Still, you could ask them to keep it down, couldn’t you? Didn’t Tommy Smith learn to play the sax with socks stuffed down it because of the neighbours? I think he did.”

“I don’t really mind,” said Pat. “It’s better than listening to Bruce.”

“Your flatmate?”

“Yes,” said Pat. “But I suppose he’s not too bad.”

There was a short silence at the other end of the line. “You don’t want to come home, do you?”

“No. I don’t.”

14. The Smell of Cloves

Pat switched off the mobile. The saxophone player had stopped, and only silence came through the walls.

She began to think of Bruce, and how she should deal with him. It was not that he had been rude or stand-offish; it was more a question of his having patronised her. That might have been something to do with the fact that he was a crucial few years older than she was, but somehow it seemed to be more than that. It would be better, she thought, when the other two flatmates, Ian and Sheila, arrived, as Bruce would perhaps be a little bit less overbearing. But where were these other two? Bruce had said that they were away travelling, but had not been specific.

He thought that they were in Greece, but he was not sure. And he had not said what they were doing there.

Pat got up from her bed and closed the curtains. Her room still had a musty smell to it, and she had left the window slightly open to freshen the air. She had also bought a supply of joss sticks, and she lit one of these now, savouring the sharp sandalwood smell of the curling wisp of smoke.

Picking up her towel from where she had draped it over the 38

The Smell of Cloves

back of her chair, she made her way through to the bathroom.

It was a good opportunity to use it; Bruce tended to monopolise it when he was in, and the previous evening, when she had been trying to luxuriate in the bath, he had knocked on the door and asked her when she would be coming out. This was a small thing, perhaps, but it was irritating.

Pat closed the bathroom door behind her and began to run a bath. Putting her towel down on the bentwood bathroom chair, she slipped out of her shoes and was about to get undressed when her eye was caught by the mirrored cupboard above the hand-basin. This was a large cupboard, and she noticed that there were greasy fingerprints on the mirror near the handle where somebody, presumably Bruce, had touched the mirror as he opened the cupboard door.

A shared bathroom is not a place of secrets, and Pat felt quite entitled to open the cupboard. After all, she might store her things there too; Bruce did not have an exclusive claim to storage space, even if he was the senior resident.

There were three shelves in the cupboard, and all of them were virtually full of jars and tubes. Pat peered at the labels on the jars nearest the front: après rasage pour hommes actifs; restoring cream for the masculine face; gel pour l’homme sportif. Pat leaned forward and made a closer inspection. She knew that men used cosmetics, but this, surely, was an over-abundance. And did men actually use body butter? Bruce apparently did.

Pat reached forward and took out the jar of gel pour l’homme sportif. Opening it, she stuck a finger into the oleaginous substance and sniffed at it. It was not unpleasant; redolent of cloves perhaps. She took a further sniff at the gel, and then the jar slipped out of her hands and fell to the floor. It bounced once and shattered, leaving a circle of green gel on the floor, like a small inverted jelly, covered with fragments of glass.

She stared at the broken glass and the now useless gel. A spicy smell hung in the air. So might Zanzibar smell, on a hot night, or an Indonesian bar with its cloud of clove tobacco smoke in the air; or the bathroom of a flat in Scotland Street. She left 560 SEC

the mess where it was, intending to clear it up after her bath.

And she thought of her father, and a remark he had made about accidents and how they reveal our repressed wishes. We destroy that which we love, he had said. Had she intended to destroy Bruce’s hair gel, because she was falling in love with him?

Impossible. She could not fall in love with Bruce. She simply could not.

15. 560 SEC

Pat left the flat the next morning at precisely the time that Domenica Macdonald opened her door onto their mutual landing. Domenica, wearing a green overcoat and carrying a scuffed leather bag, greeted her warmly and enquired about her settling in.

“I’m very happy,” said Pat, but thought immediately of the fact that she had not told Bruce about the dropping of the gel.

“It’s all going well, or . . .” Quite well was what she meant to say.

“I know,” said Domenica, lowering her voice. “Bruce might be a little bit, how should we put it? Difficult? Is that the right word, difficult?”

“Different,” suggested Pat.

Domenica smiled, and took Pat’s arm as they went downstairs.

“Men are different, aren’t they? I remember when I first lived with a man – my husband, in fact, things being somewhat more respectable in those days, I found it very strange indeed. Men are so . . . so. . . well, I must say I don’t quite know the word for men, do you?”

“Masculine?” suggested Pat.

Domenica laughed. “Exactly. That says everything, doesn’t it?

Bruce is masculine. In a way.” She looked at Pat in a shared moment of feminine understanding. “They’re little boys, aren’t they? That’s what I think they are.”

They were now on the landing of the floor below, and 40

560 SEC

Domenica gestured at the door of the flat on the right. “Speaking of little boys, that’s where young Bertie lives. You will have heard him playing the saxophone last night, I assume.”

Pat glanced at the door, which was painted light blue and bore a sticker indicating that no nuclear power was produced, nor used, within.

“Yes,” she said. “I heard him.”

Domenica sighed. “I don’t object to the noise. He plays remarkably well, actually. What I object to is his age.”

Pat was uncertain what this meant, and looked at Domenica quizzically. It was difficult to imagine how one might object to the age of another person: age was something beyond one’s control, surely.

Domenica sensed her confusion. “Bertie, you see, is very young. He’s about five, I believe. And that’s too young to play the saxophone.”

“Five!”

“Yes,” said Domenica, looking disapprovingly at the landing behind them and at the light blue door. “Very pushy parents!

Very pushy, particularly her. They’re trying to raise him as some sort of infant prodigy. He’s being taught music and Italian by his mother. Heaven knows why they decided on the saxophone, but there we are. Poor child!”

Pat found it difficult to imagine a five-year-old boy playing As Time Goes By on the saxophone. If it was a tenor instrument, then it would be difficult to see how his fingers would span the keys. And a saxophone would be almost as tall as the boy himself.

Did he stand, then, on a chair to play it?

“The whole point about childhood,” Domenica went on, “is that it affords us a brief moment of innocence and protection from the pressures of the world. Parents who push their children too hard intrude on that little bit of space. And of course they make their children massively anxious. You weren’t pushed by your parents, were you?”

Pat shook her head. “Not at all. I was encouraged, but not pushed.”

“There’s a big difference,” said Domenica. “And I could tell

560 SEC

that you weren’t pushed. You’re too calm and sensible. You seem to be a very balanced person to me. Not that I know you terribly well. In fact, I don’t know you at all. But one gets that feeling about you.”

Pat felt vaguely embarrassed by this conversation, and was about to change the subject, but they had by now reached the front door and Domenica had disengaged her arm.

“You’re on your way to work?”

“Yes,” said Pat.

“I could give you a lift,” Domenica offered. “My car is right there in the street. It would be no trouble.”

“Work is just round the corner,” said Pat. “It’s kind of you, though.”

Domenica paid no attention to this refusal. “That’s it over there,” she said. “That custard-coloured Mercedes-Benz 560

SEC. That’s my car.”

Pat stared at the car which was being pointed out by Domenica.

It was a sleek-looking coupé with gleaming silver hub caps and a proud Mercedes circle worked into the grille. “It’s a very beautiful car,” she said. “A lovely car.”

“It’s a dream to drive,” said Domenica. “It has a double kick-down feature. You press your foot right down and it shifts the automatic gear-box down, twice, if you need it. And the power! The engine capacity is five point six litres, which gives it the power of five Minis!”

“Five Minis!” exclaimed Pat.

“Yes!” said Domenica. “Five Minis! Now come, my dear, let’s get in it!”

16. Irrational Beliefs and the Mind of the Child Bertie and his mother came out of the front door of 44 Scotland Street just after Domenica and Pat had strapped themselves into the front seats of the custard-coloured Mercedes-Benz. Neither couple noticed one another: Domenica was busy with the starting of the engine, while Pat was looking with admiration at the plush off-custard leather upholstery and the polished walnut dashboard. For their part, the two members of the Pollock family, young Bertie, aged five, and his mother, Irene, aged thirty-four, were concerned about getting to the East New Town Nursery in good time. For Bertie, an early arrival was important if he was to secure the train set before other boys, with lesser moral entitlements, claimed it; for Irene, an early arrival meant that she could speak to the supervisor, Miss Christabel Macfadzean, before she became too distracted by children and parents to give her any attention. There were several matters which she wished to raise with her, and it was no good writing to her as she never gave anything more than a brief acknowledgment of the note.

Irene did not like Christabel Macfadzean, even if she had to admit grudgingly that the teacher had a few good points – she was conscientious enough, and the children seemed quite attached to her. The trouble was, though, that she did not appear to realise just how gifted Bertie was and how much extra stimulation and attention he needed. This was not to say that other children did not have their needs – of course they did – it’s just that Bertie’s needs were special. The other children could not read, for instance, while Bertie read English well and was making good progress with Italian. He had a well-used Italian children’s book, L’Avventure del Piccolo Roberto which he could now read in its entirety, and he had moved on to an Italian translation of Max und Moritz (not something with which Irene saw eye to eye ideologically, but it was better, she decided, than the Struwwelpeter with its awful cruelties).

As they walked through Drummond Place, Bertie held onto his mother’s hand and desperately tried to avoid stepping on any of the cracks in the pavement.

Irrational Beliefs and the Mind of the Child 43

“Do come along, Bertie,” said Irene. “Mummy has not got all day. And why are you walking in that silly way?”

“Cracks,” said Bertie. “If I step on the cracks, then they’ll get me. È vero.”

“What nonsense!” she said. “Non è vero! And who are they anyway? The CIA?”

“Bears . . .” Bertie began, and then stopped. “The CIA? Do they get you too?”

“Of course they don’t,” said Irene. “Nobody gets you.”

They walked on in silence. Then Bertie said: “Who are the CIA? Where do they live?”

“The CIA are American spies,” said Irene. “They watch people, I suppose.”

“Are they watching us?”

“Of course not. And they don’t mind if you step on the cracks.

Plenty of people step on the cracks and get away with it.”

Bertie thought for a moment. “Some people get away with it?

And other people? What happens to them?”

“Nothing,” said Irene. “Nothing happens to anybody if they step on the cracks. Look, I’m stepping on the cracks, and nothing is happening to me. Look. Another crack, right in the middle, and nothing . . .”

She did not complete her sentence. Her heel, caught in a rather larger than usual crack, became stuck and she fell forwards, landing heavily on the pavement. Her foot, wrenched out of its shoe, twisted sharply and she felt a sudden pain in her ankle.

Bertie stood quite still. Then he looked up at the sky and waited for a moment. If there was to be further retribution, perhaps it would be from that quarter. But nothing came, and he felt safe enough to bend down and take his mother’s hand.

“I’ve twisted my ankle,” said Irene, miserably. “It’s very sore.”

“Poor Irene,” said Bertie softly. “I told you, didn’t I?”

Irene rose to her feet tentatively. The twisted ankle was painful, but not too painful to walk upon, and they could continue their journey, although more slowly than before.

“It’s very important that you don’t think that was anything but an accident,” she said firmly, a few minutes later. “That’s all 44

An Educational Exchange

it was. I don’t want you developing magical ideas. Belief in fairies and all the rest.”

“Fairies?” asked Bertie. “Are there any fairies?”

They were now at the end of London Street. The nursery was not far away.

“There are no fairies,” said Irene.

Bertie looked doubtful. “I’m not so sure,” he said.

17. An Educational Exchange

Miss Christabel Macfadzean, proprietrix of the East New Town Nursery, looked concerned when she saw Irene limp through the front door. “You’ve hurt your ankle?” she asked solicitously.

“An accident?”

“Not an accident,” muttered Bertie, only to be silenced by Irene.

“Yes, an accident,” she said. “But a very minor one. I tripped on the pavement in Drummond Place.”

“So easily done,” sympathised Christabel. “You take your life in your hands walking anywhere these days. If one doesn’t fall into a hole, then one might get stuck to the pavement because of all the discarded chewing-gum. One might just stand there, stuck and unable to move.”

Irene smiled tolerantly. Although Christabel was surely no more than forty-five, she was very old-fashioned, she thought, with remarks like that about chewing-gum – anti-youth remarks, really. In normal circumstances she might have been inclined to challenge her on that and say, Is that remark really about chewing-gum, or is it directed against teenagers in general? but the conversation had to be brought round to Bertie.

“I wanted to discuss Bertie for a moment,” she said. “I know you’re busy, but . . .”

Christabel glanced at her watch. “A few minutes. I really must . . .”

An Educational Exchange

Irene seized her chance. “You’ll have noticed how bright he is,” she said.

Christabel looked away for a moment. Of course Bertie was bright – frighteningly so – but she was not going to encourage this pushy woman. There was nothing worse in her view, nothing, than a pushy parent.

“He’s not slow,” she said, carefully.

Irene’s eyes widened in surprise. “Not slow? Of course he’s not slow. He’s gifted.”

“In what respect?” asked Christabel evenly. “Most children have gifts of one sort or another. That little boy over there –

that tall one – he’s very good with a ball. Gifted, in fact.”

Irene’s lips pursed. “That’s different, quite different. Gifted is a term of art in developmental psychology. It should only be used for children who have exceptional intelligence.”

“I don’t know,” said Christabel casually. “I haven’t had all that much experience of young children, I suppose – no more than twenty-two years – but I do think that most children have their little gifts. Certainly Bertie is quite good at assembling the train set. And he’s not bad when we have our little sing-songs.”

Irene struggled to contain herself. “And his Italian?” she blurted out. “His Italian? Have you noticed that he speaks Italian?”

Miss Macfadzean had, but too much was at stake now to tell the truth.

“Italian?” she said. “How interesting. Are you Italian? Or your husband? We often get bilingual children in – when one of the parents speaks another language. Children pick it up so readily in the home. They’re remarkable linguists. All of them – not just Bertie.”

“I am not Italian,” said Irene. “Nor is my husband, for that matter. Bertie has learned Italian. It is an accomplishment he has

– one of a number of accomplishments.”

“How useful,” said Miss Macfadzean coolly. “He will be well placed should he go on holiday to Italy.”

“That’s not the point,” said Irene. “He has learned Italian to read it and appreciate the culture.”

An Educational Exchange

“How nice,” said Miss Macfadzean, glancing at her watch.

“Such noble people the Italians, sometimes.”

“Yes,” said Irene. “And he’s recently passed Grade six saxophone. Grade six.”

“What an active little boy!” said Miss Macfadzean. “I’m surprised that he finds time to come to playgroup! We’re obviously very lucky to have him.”

“He needs more stimulation,” Irene pressed on. “If you could find the time to work with his reading . . .”

“Out of the question,” said Miss Macfadzean. “There are all the other children to think about. I’m sorry.” She paused for a moment. “Anyway, I did want to have a word with you about Bertie’s behaviour. He needs to work a bit more on his co-operation with other children. He’s not exactly gifted in that respect. Sometimes there are incidents.”

“Incidents?”

“Yes,” went on Miss Macfadzean. “He likes the train set. But he must learn to share it a bit more. He destroyed a rather nice little station set-up that one of the other children had made. He said that he had blown it up. He said it was something to do with politics.”

Irene smiled. “Dear Bertie! That’s the trouble, you see.

He’s so much more advanced than the other children. They won’t know anything about politics. They won’t even know the word.”

“No, they won’t,” agreed Miss Macfadzean. “But he shouldn’t really spoil their games. We have to teach them how to live and let live. We have to encourage socialisation.”

“Bertie knows all about socialisation,” said Irene quickly.

“The problem is that all the other children are . . . well, sorry to have to say this, but they’re just not up to him. They won’t understand him. And that means he gets frustrated. You have to see it from his point of view.”

Miss Macfadzean glanced at her watch again. “Perhaps he needs to be left alone a bit more. Perhaps he needs a little more space to be a five-year-old boy. Do you think . . .?” She tailed off weakly, disconcerted by Irene’s stare.

The Works of Melanie Klein

“Bertie is a very special child,” Irene said quietly. “But not everyone seems to understand that.” She glanced at Miss Macfadzean, who looked away again. It was hopeless, Irene thought; hopeless.

18. The Works of Melanie Klein

The unsatisfactory interview over, Irene walked back to Scotland Street, giving a wide birth to the section of pavement which had been the cause of her downfall. She knew very well what Miss Macfadzean had thought of her; it had been apparent in her every look and in her every insulting remark. She thought that here was another pushy mother – one of those women who thinks that their child is special and is not getting enough attention.

That’s what she thought about her, and it was all so wrong, such an unfair judgment. They had never pushed Bertie – not for one moment. Everything that they had done with him had been done because he wanted it. He had asked for a saxophone. He had asked to learn Italian after they had gone to buy sun-dried tomatoes at Valvona and Crolla. They had never pushed him to do any of this.

And what did that woman mean when she talked about the space to be a five-year-old boy? What exactly did that mean? If it meant that they had to deny Bertie’s natural curiosity about the world, then that was outrageous. If a child asked about something, you could hardly deny his request for information.

There are certain difficulties with Christabel Macfadzean, thought Irene. Firstly, she’s a cow. Now, that was putting it simply.

But even as she thought this – and it gave her some satisfaction to think in these terms – Irene realised that such thoughts were unworthy of her. That’s how ordinary people thought. She knew that the real difficulty lay in the fact that this woman purported to run an advanced playgroup (the brochure claimed that they adhered to the latest educational principles, whatever those were).

The Works of Melanie Klein

In spite of these claims, this woman knew nothing about how children behaved. She had made some sarcastic reference to her mere twenty-two years’ experience, but no amount of experience, not even fifty years, could make up for her complete ignorance of Melanie Klein. That was the astonishing thing, in Irene’s view: to claim to be able to look after children and not to have read a page, not one single page, of Melanie Klein. It quite took one’s breath away.

Had Christabel Macfadzean been familiar with the merest snippets of Kleinian theory, she would immediately have understood that when Bertie blew up that other child’s train station, this was purely because he was expressing, in a person-object sense, his fundamental anxieties over the fact that society would never allow him to marry his mother. This was obvious.

It was remarkable, when one came to think of it, that Bertie should behave so like Richard, the boy whom Melanie Klein analysed during the war. Richard had drawn pictures of German aeroplanes swooping in for attack, thus expressing the anxieties he felt about the Second World War, and about his mother. In destroying the train station, Bertie had merely acted out what Richard must have felt. Irene stopped. A remarkable thought had occurred to her. Had Bertie read Klein? He was an avid reader, but probably not, unless, of course, he had been dipping into the books on her shelves . . . If he had been reading Klein, then he might unconsciously have mirrored Richard’s behaviour because he realised that his anxieties so closely matched Richard’s. This, then, was his way of communicating, and it had gone completely unnoticed by the very adult who was meant to be guiding him through these first, delicate steps towards socialisation.

It angered Irene just to think about it, and for a few moments she paused, standing quite still in the middle of the pavement, her eyes closed, battling with her anger. She had been going to the Floatarium recently and she imagined herself back in the tank, lying there in perfect silence. This sort of envisioning always helped.

She would take Bertie to the Floatarium next time and put him in the tank. He would like that, because he had an interA Modest Gift

est in meditation. And he might go to yoga classes too, she thought. He had asked her about yoga recently and she had made enquiries. There was a yoga class for children in Stockbridge on a Monday evening, Bendy Fun for Tots, it was called, and Bertie was always free on a Monday evening. Any other evening would have been difficult, but Monday was fine.

She would pencil it in.

19. A Modest Gift

The custard-coloured Mercedes-Benz drew up outside the gallery and Pat stepped out. She waved her thanks to Domenica Macdonald, who waved back, and then drove off down the hill.

Matthew had not yet arrived, but Pat had a key and had been instructed in the operation of the alarm. Scooping up the morning’s mail from the floor, she placed it on the front desk before she went through to the back of the gallery to make herself a cup of coffee.

Matthew had told her to open the mail, which she now did.

There was a bill from the electrician for a new light switch which he had installed and an enquiry from a prospective customer who was interested in purchasing a Hornel. Had they anything in stock, he asked, and Pat reflected that an honest answer would be: We have no idea, as they did not know what they had. There could be a Hornel, for all she, or Matthew knew, although it was unlikely. She suspected that there was nothing of any great value in the gallery, although even as she thought that she looked at the painting of Mull/Iona and wondered. How much was a Peploe worth these days? The day before she had paged through a magazine which she had found in the back of the gallery and which had featured the previous year’s auction prices for Scottish art. A large Peploe had gone for ninety thousand pounds, and so if the painting at which she 50

A Modest Gift

was now staring was indeed a Peploe then it would be worth, what, forty thousand pounds?

The door chime sounded and Pat looked up. It was the man who had called in yesterday – the man in the casual sweater who had examined the painting and pronounced on it with such authority.

He walked over towards the desk.

“I was just passing by and I thought I might take a quick look at one or two other things. I have a birthday present to buy, and that’s terribly difficult, you know. A little painting perhaps

– nothing too pricy, but something that will hang on any wall without shouting. You know what I mean.”

“Please look around,” said Pat, gesturing at the display on the walls. “You might find something.”

The man smiled and sauntered over to the wall to Pat’s right.

“D.Y. Cameron prints,” he muttered, just loudly enough for her to hear. “Not bad for one’s aunt, but not really suitable for one’s lover. Know what I mean?”

Pat was not sure how to respond; she had an aunt, but no lover, and so she laughed. This made the man turn round and look at her with a raised eyebrow.

“You think otherwise?” he asked.

“No,” said Pat. “I’m sure you’re right.”

He resumed his browsing, now moving over to the wall on which the Peploe imitation hung. He stopped and peered down at it more closely.

“How much are you asking for this . . . this Saturday afternoon work?”

“Saturday afternoon?”

“It’s when amateurs get their paints out,” he explained. “This person, for example, was probably a retired bank manager from Dumfries or somewhere like that. Painted a bit. Like our friend Mr Vettriano.”

Pat caught her breath. She had seen the comments about Mr Vettriano and she knew that some people had a low opinion of his work, but she did not share these views. She rather liked pictures of people dancing on beaches in formal clothes, with The Boys Discuss Art

their butlers; she had never seen this happen, of course, but it was always possible. Just.

She reached for the list which Matthew kept in the top drawer.

Running her eye down the figures, she came to the appropriate entry. Scottish school – Unknown: initials SP – Some Person? One hundred and fifty pounds.

“One hundred and fifty pounds,” said Pat.

The man stood back and stroked his chin. “One hundred and fifty? A bit steep, isn’t it? But . . . but, maybe. It would be a nice little gift for my friend.” Then, turning to Pat, he said decisively:

“I’ll take it. Wrap it up please. I’ll pay in cash.”

Pat hesitated. “On the other hand,” she said. “If it’s a Peploe, then one hundred and fifty might be a little bit low. Perhaps forty thousand would be more appropriate.”

The man, who had been crossing the floor towards the desk, stopped.

“Peploe? Don’t be ridiculous! Would that it were! But it isn’t.

Out of the question.”

Pat watched him as he spoke. She saw the slight flush of colour to his brow and the movement of his eyes, which darted sideways, and then returned to stare at her. She was convinced now that she had taken the right decision. The painting was no longer for sale.

20. The Boys Discuss Art

Matthew arrived in the gallery just before it was time for him to cross the road for morning coffee at Big Lou’s. Pat started to tell him of the two visits of the would-be purchaser of the Mull/Iona painting, but he stopped her.

“This is big,” he said. “Come and tell me about it over coffee.

The boys will want to hear about this. We’ll close the shop for an hour. This is really, really big.”

They made their way over the road to Big Lou’s, crossing the 52

The Boys Discuss Art

cobbled street down which the tall buses lumbered. At the bottom of the street, beyond the rooftops of Canonmills, lay Fife, like a Gillies watercolour of sky and hills. Matthew saw Pat pause and look down the road, and he smiled at her.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

She nodded. She had not thought that he would notice something like that, but then she knew very little about him.

Matthew was not like Bruce, who would never notice a view.

There was something more to Matthew, a gentle quality that made her feel almost protective towards him.

They turned away from Fife and made their way down Big Lou’s dangerous stairs. Ronnie and Pete were already in the coffee bar, sitting in their accustomed booth. Matthew introduced Pat to his friends.

“This young lady has just made a major discovery,” he said.

“There’s a very important painting in the gallery. I missed it. I would have sold it for one hundred and fifty and it’s worth . . .?”

He turned to Pat. “Ten thousand?”

“Forty, maybe.”

Ronnie whistled. “Forty grand!”

Big Lou came over with coffee and set mugs in front of them.

“I’m reading Calvocoressi’s book about Cowie at the moment,” she said. “Very interesting.”

“Yes,” said Pete. “You bet. But this painting, how do you know that it’s whatever you think it is? How can you tell?”

Pat shrugged. “I can’t tell,” she said. “I don’t know very much about all this. I did Higher Art, I suppose, and we learned a little bit about Scottish painters. We learned about Peploe, and I think this looks like a Peploe.”

Ronnie said: “Lots of things look like something else. Lou looks like the Mona Lisa, don’t you, Lou? But you aren’t. You have to know about these things.” He turned to Matthew. “Sorry, pal, but you may be jumping the gun a bit.”

This remark seemed to worry Matthew, and he turned to Pat anxiously. “Well, Pat, how can you be sure?”

“I can’t,” said Pat. “I’ve just said that. But I’m pretty sure that this man who came in had recognised it as being something The Boys Discuss Art

valuable. He was pretending – I could tell. He was pretending not to be too interested in it, and when I said that it might be a Peploe he almost jumped. I could tell that he was . . . well, he was annoyed. He thought he had a bargain.”

“Sounds good,” said Pete. “Remember when we bought that table, Ronnie, and that dealer pretended not to be interested in it? We saw him looking underneath it before he came to us and offered us twice what we’d paid. We could tell.”

“Yes,” said Ronnie. “You can tell.” He paused. “But how are you going to be sure? You can’t put it in the window as a Peploe or whatever unless you know what you’re talking about.”

“I’ll get an opinion,” said Matthew. “I’ll take it to somebody who knows what they’re talking about.”

“Unlike you?” said Pete.

“I’ve never said that I know anything about art,” said Matthew.

“I’ve never made any claims.”

Ronnie looked down at his coffee. “So who do we ask? Lou?”

“I know more than you do,” said Lou from behind the counter.

“You know nothing. Both of you. You and your friend, Pete, you know nothing. You’re just afa feels. ”

“Let’s not fight over this,” said Matthew quietly. “Even in the Doric. I think that what we need to do is to take this to somebody else on the street here – another dealer. And we’ll ask what they think.”

“Good idea,” said Ronnie. “Just take it down to that what’s his name – that one on the corner there. Ask him.”

“I can’t do that,” said Matthew. “He’d laugh at me. And he’d tell everybody else that I don’t know what I have. No, we need to get somebody else to do it.” He looked at Pat. “Pat? What about you? You take the painting down to him and say that it’s yours. Ask him for an opinion. Is that all right with you? Do it tomorrow?”

“I suppose so,” said Pat. This involved her telling a lie, even if it was a small one. But she was truthful by inclination, and the thought of telling any untruth made her feel uncomfortable. And she did not feel easy in the company of Ronnie and Pete. There was something unsettling about them, something 54

A Daughter’s Dance Card

of the late afternoon perhaps, even if not quite something of the night.

21. A Daughter’s Dance Card

It was not a particularly busy day at the offices of Macaulay Holmes Richardson Black, Chartered Surveyors and Factors.

The senior partner, Gordon, had gone to London to look at a commercial property in Fulham which a client of the firm had just inherited from a relative. The client wanted to sell the building, but distrusted London agents, a view with which Todd had readily agreed.

In Gordon’s absence on this inspection trip, the firm was run by his younger brother, Raeburn Todd, who was spending the day going through the files in his brother’s filing cabinet. Bruce pretended not to notice. It was information which he could perhaps use one day, if it were necessary. One never knew when one might be in a tight corner, and it was useful to have some cover.

Bruce had very little to do that day and he was bored. After twenty minutes of the newspaper, he rose to his feet and went to look out of the window. It had turned into a wet day outside, although the showers were light and sporadic. From their offices, on the fourth floor of a building in Queen Street, they could look out over the roofs of Heriot Row and Great King Street, down to the distant greens of Trinity, and beyond. Although he was a relatively junior member of staff, Bruce had a room with this view, and he was staring at it absently when the telephone rang and he was summoned to Todd’s room. He’s finished snooping, thought Bruce. Now he wants to interfere with my work.

He picked up a file on a Lanarkshire fencing project and walked through.

“How is Gordon getting on in London, Todd?” asked Bruce.

A Daughter’s Dance Card

“Fine, as far as I know,” said Todd. “He’ll probably phone me at lunchtime. He’ll have taken a look at that Fulham place by then. Three thousand square feet in a good part of London, just off a main shopping street. Do you know what that’s worth?”

Bruce shrugged. “I haven’t looked at the recent tables,” he said. “I don’t deal with anything in London. I can tell you what that would be in Edinburgh or Glasgow. But not London. Lots of boodle, though. Lots.”

Todd frowned. “You should keep an eye on things, Bruce.

You should read the trade press. You should keep an eye on London.”

Bruce thought: he’s brought me here for a lecture, and his eyes glazed over.

“Yes,” said Todd. “It’s important to keep abreast of changing values in London, because that affects us. Business relocation is all about comparing prices. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Bruce, patiently, and then: “Have you been busy yourself, Todd? Catching up on paperwork?”

Todd looked at him warily. “A bit of reading,” he said.

“Keeping current, you know.”

Bruce smiled. “Good policy,” he said.

Todd stared at him for a moment, and then continued: “But I didn’t ask you in here to discuss work,” he said. “This is a personal matter. I hope you won’t mind if I raise it.”

Bruce was intrigued. “I don’t mind at all. Fire away.”

“You know that Mrs Todd and I enjoy quite a full social life.”

There was a note of pride in Todd’s voice.

“Yes. I saw your picture in Scottish Field. A party somewhere.”

“Indeed,” said Todd. “A party. Max Maitland-Weir’s fiftieth.

But that wasn’t the only one we’ve been to. We go out a great deal.”

Bruce nodded politely. He was not sure where this conversation was going, but it seemed to him that a proposition was about to be made.

“We’ve got tickets to a ball,” said Todd. “I’m not so wild about it, but my wife is dead set on getting a party together. My 56

Bruce Comes Under Consideration

elder daughter’s keen, too, but the problem is, well, we don’t exactly have anybody to partner her. And so I wondered whether you would be good enough to join us and perhaps have the odd dance with my daughter.” He paused, and for a moment Bruce felt a surge of sympathy for him. Poor man! That awful wife of his and that dreadful daughter of his. They were very heavy going – Bruce was well aware of that – but it seemed as if he would have to accept the invitation. It would not be easy to say no.

“I’d be honoured,” said Bruce. “What ball is it?”

“The South Edinburgh Conservative Association,” said Todd.

“I’m convener of the ball committee, and we’re having a bit of a battle getting enough people to come to it. We’ve hired the hotel, so it’s going to have to go ahead, but we’re a bit thin on the ground. In fact, it’s only going to be the four of us so far.”

Bruce stared at him mutely. Was this a social problem, he wondered, or was it a political one?

22. Bruce Comes Under Consideration After Bruce had left his office, Todd sat back in his seat and stared at the ceiling. For a few minutes he did nothing, but then he reached for the telephone, pushed a memory button labelled domestic bliss and called his wife.

Todd had married Sasha when they were both in their mid-twenties. She had just completed her training as a physiotherapist and had been one of the most popular and sociable students at Queen Margaret College. At their first meeting, Todd had decided that this was the woman whom he wished to marry, and, as he said to his brother, he had never regretted the decision for one moment.

“Really?” Gordon had said. “Are you sure?”

The question had not been intended as a slight, even if it had sounded like it. It had made Todd think, though. Was his Bruce Comes Under Consideration

wife as attractive and compelling a personality to others as she was to him? People had different tastes, and it might be that there were those who found her too . . . well, what could they possibly object to in her? Sasha had opinions, of course, but that was far better than being a passive, reflective sort.

Of course there was jealousy to be taken into account. Sasha was undoubtedly attractive, with her blonde hair in bouffant style and her trouser suits. She never looked anything but well turned-out, and this could attract envy. That is the problem with this country, thought Todd. We sneer at people who do well, and who want to make something of their lives. Look at the remarks which a certain sort of person makes about Bearsden. What is wrong with living in Bearsden, or, indeed, with having the sort of attitudes that go with living in Bearsden?

Nothing.

The people who ridicule people like us, thought Todd, are making up for their own failure. And there are plenty of people

– Labour politicians, for example – who want people to remain thirled to poverty, who do not want them to have any spirit or independence. These are the sort of people who think that there’s something good about having a limited life.

As he pondered these matters of political philosophy, Sasha picked up the telephone at the other end.

“Honey bunch?” she asked.

“Sugar,” replied Todd.

“Is everything all right?”

“Yes. I’m sitting here in my office thinking. Things are a bit quiet. Gordon is in London looking at a building down there, and nothing much is happening in the office.”

“Come home, then.”

“I can’t. I can’t leave the office in the hands of the staff. On which subject, that young man, Bruce Anderson. You’ve met him.”

“The one in your office?” said Sasha. “The good-looking one?”

Todd paused, tripped up by the taboo that prevents one man from commenting, except adversely, on the looks of another. You couldn’t say it – you just couldn’t.

Bruce Comes Under Consideration

“Hah!” he said. “I suppose the girls might say that. I don’t know about these things.”

“He is rather dishy,” said Sasha. “Dark hair. Lovely shoulders.

Well-shaped . . .”

Todd felt slightly irritated. “Well-shaped what?” he asked.

“He’s got a well-shaped what?”

“Nothing. I just said well-shaped. He’s well-shaped. That’s what I meant to say.”

Todd moved the conversation on. “Anyway, that’s the one.

I’ve asked him about the ball. He says that he can come. He’ll be happy to dance with Lizzie.”

“That’s wonderful! Lizzie met him once at that Christmas do and I think he made a bit of an impression on her. Good.”

Todd sighed. “But there’s still this wretched problem with the tickets. Has anybody else said that they can come?”

“No,” said Sasha. “I phoned around again this morning. A lot of people are tied up in one way or another that weekend. Archie and Molly said that they might think about it, but I hear he’s just been carted off to hospital again and so that’s them out.

Perhaps we should call it off.”

“No we won’t,” said Todd firmly. “That’s the last thing – the last thing – we’ll do. It would be a total admission of failure.

We have the prizes for the tombola and the band booked.

Deposits paid. We’re going ahead, even if it’s only us. That’s it.”

“All right. And we’ll enjoy ourselves even if it’s a small party.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Todd, now mollified.

They rang off and he returned to staring at the ceiling. He was pleased that Sasha had approved of his decision to invite Bruce – which he had not previously consulted her about.

Lizzie would like it, he was sure, and although there was something odd about that young man – the mirrors and that substance on his hair – he was probably perfectly all right under the surface. Todd was concerned about Lizzie: she wanted a boyfriend, he knew, but did not seem to have had much success in finding one. Most young men went out with Goings-on in London

one another these days, he had observed, which meant that there were rather few young men left over for the girls. Terrible pity.

Perhaps something would come of this. And what would be wrong with that? If Bruce and Lizzie made a go of it, then they could take him into the partnership and the succession would be assured. And the responsibilities of marriage would soon sort Bruce out. Yes. Not a bad idea at all.

23. Goings-on in London

Gordon Todd stood by a window on the first floor of the building he had been inspecting in London. The position of the property impressed him – tucked away in a mews avenue off the Fulham Road, but close enough to really fashionable parts of Chelsea and South Kensington to attract tenants with the means to pay a substantial rent. It would be a good office, he thought, for a design studio or an advertising agency.

His client, who had inherited the property, was wondering about selling it. That would not be difficult, Gordon thought, because the place was in good condition and he could not imagine any obvious planning drawbacks. But it might be better to hold on to it for a couple of years and see whether its value went up appreciably. He could do the arithmetic after he had spoken to his London contacts and worked out just what might be paid for a place like this.

Gordon looked out of the window. The street was quiet – a good sign, he thought, as it suggested that the mews houses on the other side of the road were still being used as houses rather than as offices. And they were attractive, he thought, with their white-painted fronts and their panelled doors. London was full of pleasant corners, he reflected, even if there were trackless wastes further out. One might even live in London, at a pinch, 60

Goings-on in London

provided that one were not too tall and in danger of bumping one’s head at every turn on their ridiculously low ceilings, and provided one were not too readily shocked by what one saw in the street.

As he thought about this, he noticed that a light had gone on in a room in the opposite house. It was a living room, not very large, he thought, although it was comfortably furnished with a few easy chairs and a sofa . . . Gordon stopped. There were two people on the sofa, a man and a woman, and . . .

Well really! You would think that people would close the curtains if they proposed to engage in that sort of thing. Of course they must have thought that the building opposite was empty – that was reasonable enough – but how would they know that there might not be a surveyor in it, or a possible purchaser? And there they were, obviously on very close terms, completely unaware of the fact that anybody might be able to see them.

He was about to turn away when he saw a small and expensive sports car draw up in front of the house in question and a man step out. The man reached into his pocket, took out a key, and opened the front door. Gordon caught his breath. The window at which he was standing afforded a good view not only of the living room, but of the hall outside it. Now, as he watched, he saw the man’s head appearing above the level of the stairs and then, a few moments later, he was standing in front of the door to the living room, his hand upon the door-knob.

The man paused. Then, leaning forward slightly, he appeared to put his ear to the door. Gordon stood quite still. This was the husband, obviously, and he had arrived home unexpectedly, to find his wife in flagrante with a lover. It was a very trite scene, but seeing it enacted in front of him seemed quite extraordinary.

Would he knock on the door, or would he creep away, shocked and disappointed?

The man did neither. Slowly he tried the handle of the door, twisted it, and found it locked. He stood back, appeared to think for a few moments, and then moved towards the hall window –

Goings-on in London

the window through which the unobserved observer was now watching him.

Gordon looked on in amazement as the man opened the window – which was a large one – and began to climb out onto the small ironwork window box. Then, very slowly, the man inched himself towards the neighbouring window – the window of the room in which the woman and the man were still unaware of the danger of discovery.

Gordon thought: so this is the sort of thing one sees in London! It’s obviously a hotbed of adultery and goings-on.

And then the man on the ironwork window box slipped.

Gordon saw him grab at the brickwork and, quite slowly at first, topple backwards. Gordon gave a cry, involuntarily, and closed his eyes. Then he leaned forward and saw the man lying on the top of the canvas roof of the small sports car, which had been parked directly beneath him. He was staring up at the sky, and for a moment their eyes met. Then, without moving the rest of his body, the man raised a hand and waved to Gordon, a wave that one might give to a friend one has just noticed in a café, or on the other side of the street.

24. Unwelcome Thoughts

That morning, when Pat had been given the unnecessary ride in the custard-coloured Mercedes-Benz belonging to Domenica Macdonald, an invitation to dinner had been extended, and accepted.

“I’ll knock together a few bits and pieces,” said Domenica airily.

“I’m not a very good cook, I’m afraid. But we can talk. Sans Bruce.”

They had exchanged a look.

“He’s all right,” said Pat. “But it would be nice to talk.”

“I can tell you all about everyone on the stair,” promised Domenica. “Not that there’s much to relate, but there is a bit. You may as well know about your neighbours before you meet them.”

Pat had been told to ring Domenica’s doorbell at six-thirty, which gave her time to get back from the gallery and have a bath before she crossed the landing. Bruce had already arrived at the flat when she came home and he was sitting in the kitchen reading a catalogue.

“Sold any paintings today?”

“No.” She paused. “Well almost, but not quite.”

Bruce laughed. “I don’t think that gallery is going to do spectacularly well. I was hearing about him, you know, your boss, Matthew. Walking cash-flow problem. It’s only the fact that his old man pays the bills that keeps him going.”

“We’ll see,” said Pat.

“Yes,” said Bruce. “We’ll see. And if you need a new job, I can get you one. A friend of mine needs somebody to do some market research. He said . . .”

“I’m fine,” said Pat.

“Well, just let me know,” said Bruce, returning to his catalogue.

“And by the way, have you seen my hair gel?”

For a few moments Pat said nothing. She opened her mouth, but then closed it again.

“Well?” asked Bruce. “Have you seen it?”

Pat swallowed, and then replied. “I broke it,” she said. “I’m very sorry. I’m going to buy you some more. I’ll get the same stuff if you tell me where to get it.”

Unwelcome Thoughts

Bruce lowered his catalogue. “Broke it? How did you do that?”

Pat looked up at the ceiling. She was aware that Bruce was staring at her, but she did not wish to meet his gaze.

“I was looking at it,” she said. “It fell out of my hands and it broke. I was going to tell you.”

Bruce sighed. “Pat,” he said. “You know that it’s very important to tell the truth when you’re living with people. You’ve got to tell the truth. You know that. Now, what really happened?

Were you using it?”

The accusation made her feel indignant. Why should he imagine that she would use his hair gel? And why would he imagine that she would lie about it? “No,” she said. “I did not use it.

I was looking at it.”

“Is hair gel that interesting?”

“Not yours,” she snapped.

Bruce looked at her and wagged a finger. “Temper!” he said.

“Temper!”

Pat looked at him scornfully, and then turned and made her way back into her room slamming the door behind her. He was impossible; he was self-satisfied; he was smug. She could not live with him. She would have to move.

But if she moved, then it would be his victory. She could just imagine what he would say when he showed the next person her room. There was a girl here, but she didn’t stay long. Very immature type. Second gap year, you know.

She sat down on her bed and stared down at the bedside rug.

There is no real reason to feel unhappy, she thought, but she did. She had a job, she had the place at St Andrews for next October, she had her supportive parents: she had everything to look forward to. But somehow her life seemed to be slow and pointless: it seemed to her that there was a gap in it, and she knew exactly what that gap was. She wanted a boyfriend. She wanted somebody to phone up, right then, and tell about what Bruce had said. And he would sympathise with her and ask her to meet him for dinner, and they would laugh about Bruce over dinner, and she would know that this other person – this boy –

regarded her as special to him. But she had none of that. She 64

Dinner with Domenica

just had this room, and this emptiness, and that sarcastic, self-absorbed young man out there, with that look of his, and his eyes, and his en brosse hair, and . . .

She stopped herself thinking about that. Her father had once spoken to her about unwelcome thoughts; thoughts that came into one’s mind unbidden. They were often rather disturbing thoughts – thoughts about doing something outrageous or shocking – but this was not something to be too concerned about.

The whole point about these thoughts was that they were never translated into action because they did not represent what one really wanted to do. So one never discarded one’s clothes and ran down the street, nor jumped over the waterfall, nor over the cliff for that matter, even if one thought how easy it would be to throw oneself over the edge, and to fall and fall down to the very bottom. So easy.

25. Dinner with Domenica

“Now,” said Domenica with a gesture that embraced the room.

“This is where I work. I sit at that desk over there and look out over Scotland Street. And if I run out of ideas, I go and sit in that chair and wait.”

“Until an idea comes along?”

“In theory. But I might just fall asleep or become restless. You know how it is.”

Yes, Pat did. She felt restless. The encounter with Bruce had unsettled her and her spirits had been low when she had knocked at Domenica’s door on the other side of the landing. Domenica, looking at her guest over her half-moon spectacles, could tell that something was wrong. So she asked Pat what it was, and Pat told her the story of the hair gel.

Domenica smiled. “Hair gel! All over the floor? The best place for it, in my opinion!” But she saw that Pat was worried, and her tone became concerned. “That young man, you know, is a Dinner with Domenica

narcissist. It’s perfectly obvious. Clear as day. And the point about narcissists is that they just can’t see anything wrong with themselves. They’re perfect, you see. And they are also quite incapable of laughing at themselves. So he would never think it remotely funny that his hair gel had come to an unfortunate end.”

“He didn’t make it easy for me,” said Pat.

“Of course he wouldn’t. He expects you to admire him, and he’s annoyed that you don’t appear to be falling at his feet. So he’s a bit uncertain how to deal with you.”

This discussion with an ally made Pat feel more cheerful and she put Bruce out of her mind. Domenica was far more interesting, she thought, with her sharp comments and her book-lined study. She wanted to find out more about her neighbour, and what she did. Did Domenica have a job? She kept odd hours, she had noticed, and when she had driven her off in the custard-coloured Mercedes-Benz that morning she had not appeared to be going to work. And if she sat at her desk waiting for ideas, what were these ideas about?

“You’re wondering what I do,” said Domenica abruptly. “How rude of me. I know that you work in a gallery, so I have the advantage of you. And I have kept you guessing about me.”

“Well,” admitted Pat, “I suppose I was wondering.”

“I’m not gainfully employed,” said Domenica. “I’m a bit of a dilettante. I do this and that. Which doesn’t tell you very much.

I produce the occasional article for obscure journals and I act as secretary for a society. And I write a great number of letters to people. And that, I suppose, is it.”

“Your articles?” asked Pat.

“Anthropological. I trained as an anthropologist, and I’ve dabbled in it on and off for years. But I’m not very professional about it and I imagine that the real anthropologists – the ones in institutes and universities – rather turn their noses up at me.

Not that that ever bothered me in the slightest.”

Domenica gestured to a chair and invited Pat to sit down.

Fetching an empty glass, she poured a generous helping of sherry into it and offered it to her guest.

“I take it that you drink,” she said. “This is a very dull sherry 66

Dinner with Domenica

but it will have to do. It’s the sort of sherry that ministers serve in the manse. But let’s persist with it nonetheless, in the sure and certain knowledge that things will improve at dinner. I have a very nice bottle of something much less dull which we can drink at the table.”

Pat raised her glass and they toasted one another. So Domenica was an anthropologist. She had expected her to be something exotic, and an anthropologist seemed about right. “I’ve never met an anthropologist,” she said hesitantly. “It sounds so . . .”

Domenica interrupted her. “Sounds so, but isn’t. Anthropologists are really rather mundane people, for the most part.

They used to be interesting in the days of Pitt-Rivers and Margaret Mead and all the others. But now it’s all very dry and technical. And of course they’ve run out of people to study.

Everybody is more or less the same these days. I expect that if one went to New Guinea, for example, one would find that all those people who used to have a resident anthropologist attached to them are watching American television through their satellite dishes. No time for inter-group warfare or initiation rites when you have all that popular culture to absorb. So the anthropologists have a rather thin time of it.”

“That’s rather sad,” remarked Pat. “Who wants everywhere to be the same?”

Domenica shrugged. “The European Commission, I suppose.

But back to anthropology. It used to be such fun when you chose your field work, back in the heyday of the subject. Everybody wanted to go to New Guinea, of course, and many did. But there were other places. Hill tribes in India were a good choice. Or the Bushmen of southern Africa. Everybody knew about them after Laurens van der Post wrote all his nonsense.”

“Where did you go?” asked Pat.

Domenica looked into her glass of sherry. “I went here and there,” she said. “Mostly in India, though. You see, I worked on feral children and I went to visit a number of communities where there were claims of feral children being found.”

Pat was unsure of what she meant. “Feral children?”

“You’ve heard of Romulus and Remus?” asked Domenica.

A Room, a Photograph, Love and Memory 67

“They were brought up by wolves. Well, they were feral. And there were many others. Wolves, monkeys, even gazelles. Animals can make very good parents, you know. And they tend not to be too pushy – unlike those people downstairs.”

26. A Room, a Photograph, Love and Memory Pat looked around Domenica’s room. Two of the walls were covered with book shelves, towering up to the ceiling, and the others were liberally hung with framed photographs and paintings.

“Yes,” remarked Domenica, noticing Pat’s interest. “It is a bit of a mess this room. That wall over there, with its photographs, is a bit like one of those Italian restaurants where they have pictures of the well-known people who have eaten there. Usually these days it’s Sean Connery, but I really can’t imagine that he’s spent all hours in those Italian restaurants. Where would he find the time to get on with being famous, poor man? And if you go to Italy, all the restaurants have photographs of Luciano Pavarotti, who also couldn’t possibly have been to all the places which claim him. It’s rather like the cult of saints and their bones.

There are so many bits of the more popular saints that one could assemble several hundred skeletons of each of them. St Catherine of Siena for example – she of the miraculous water barrel – must have had numerous fingers. I’ve seen at least twenty in various churches in Tuscany. Quite miraculous!”

Pat laughed. “I find those old bones a bit creepy,” she said.

“But I suppose that some people like them.”

“Yes, I understand that Neapolitans and the like find great consolation in such things,” Domenica said. “But you are a most tolerant girl. Yours is a tolerant generation. The religious enthusiasms of others can be a bit trying, but they are important, don’t you think? They allow people to express their sense of the spiritual.”

A Room, a Photograph, Love and Memory Domenica took a sip of her sherry. “I don’t mind a good-going religious ritual of the sort you see in India,” she continued. “You know, something with coloured smoke and elephants

– though the Scottish Episcopal Church doesn’t go in for elephants very much, alas. I can see a bishop on an elephant, can’t you?”

Pat had noticed the prints on the wall, and the metal candlestick on the table, in the shape of a three-headed cobra. And on Domenica’s desk, in a small porcelain pot, a bundle of joss sticks.

“Yes,” said Domenica, who seemed to have an uncanny facility for guessing exactly what it was that Pat was going to ask.

“Some mementoes from India. But actually I was born right here in Scotland Street.”

“Right here? In this building?”

Domenica nodded. “In those days people were born in places where people lived. Astonishing, but true. I came into this world, would you believe it, in this very room. It was my parents’

bedroom and their bed was over there, against that wall. I was born in that bed. Precisely sixty-one years ago next Friday afternoon. There was a war on, as you may recall, and I had been conceived when my father came back on home leave from convoy duty. He did not survive the North Atlantic, I’m afraid, and so I never knew him.” She pointed to a photograph above a small, corner fireplace. “That’s my father there.”

Pat got up and crossed the room to stand before the A Room, a Photograph, Love and Memory 69

photograph. A tall man was standing on what seemed to be a dune, the grass about his feet bending in the breeze. The face was an intelligent one, the mouth relaxed into a smile. His hair was ruffled, blown by the wind.

“I loved him very much,” said Domenica. “Although I never knew him, I loved him very much. Does that sound odd to you?

To love somebody you never knew?”

Pat thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think so. People fall in love with all sorts of people. People write letters to one another and fall in love even if they never meet. That happens.”

Domenica nodded. “It’s a special sort of love that one has for such a person. It’s an idealised love, I suppose. You’re in love with a memory, with an idea of somebody. And I suppose that for some people that’s all they have.”

For a short while there was silence. Pat looked again at the picture of Domenica’s father and then returned to her seat. She had always imagined that the saddest fate for a child would be to have no parents. But perhaps it was sadder still to have parents who did not love you. At least, if you had no parents you could think that they would have loved you, if they had been there.

But if you knew your parents did not love you, then you would be denied even that scrap of comfort.

She looked at Domenica. “I’m sure he would have loved you,”

she said. “I’m sure that he would have loved you a great deal.”

“Yes. I think he would.”

They said nothing for a moment. Then Domenica looked at her watch. “We must go through to the kitchen,” she said. “And then while I’m getting dinner ready, we can talk a little more. I don’t want to bore you, though. Sixty-one can be very boring for twenty whatever it is you are.”

“Twenty. Just twenty.”

“A good age to be,” said Domenica. “As is every age, I imagine, except for the years between fourteen and seventeen and a half. An awful time for everybody. Were you a dreadful teenager? I was, I think. In fact, I was exactly the sort of person I would not have liked to be. Does that make sense? Let’s think about it.”

27. The Electricity Factory

Domenica chopped the onions with a large-bladed knife, while her guest sat at the scrubbed-pine table and watched her.

“When did you live in India?” Pat asked.

Domenica tipped the onions into a saucepan. “I shall explain,”

she said. “It will be simpler if you get the whole story. Reduced, of course, to five minutes. Time marched on, and it continued to do so until I was eighteen, when my mother suddenly decided that she wanted to go off to India. She had been offered the job of principal at a school for girls in south India. It was run by a Scottish charity, some people in Glasgow. I stayed behind – I was about to go to university – and she went off. When I had finished my degree, I went out to see her. You travelled by ship in those days – a tremendous thrill for me.

“Her school was in the hills above Cochin, in Kerala. It’s a lovely state, Kerala – all that greenery and those waterways and those cool towns up in the Western Ghats. I fell in love with the place immediately, and begged her to let me stay with her, which I did. I had no idea what I was going to do at home, and Scotland was pretty dull, remember, in the early Sixties. I suppose we were still in the Fifties while everybody else had moved on.

“So I stayed with my mother in the principal’s lodge at the school. It seemed very grand to be living in a lodge, but it was quite a modest house, really. There was a verandah which ran round two sides of the house and a garden with fire coral trees. There were pepper vines growing up these trees and we used to harvest our own pepper and let it dry on banana leaves on the ground.

“I loved living there, as you can imagine, although I didn’t have all that much to do. I was taken on as a teacher, but I was not paid for this, and the duties were pretty light. But it was easy work, because the girls at the school were all very well-behaved and wouldn’t dream of being rude to the staff. Nobody was rude then. Rudeness was invented much later.

“And that’s where I stayed for three years. Then, at a lunch party held by the manager of a tea company, I met the man who became my husband. He came from Cochin, where his father The Electricity Factory

had owned a business – more of that in a moment. He was called Thomas, as many people are in that part of the world because, as you know, it’s a largely Christian state – Thomist Christians.

Very ancient communities. In fact, you get all sorts of churches, including the Syrian Orthodox Church, which goes in for fire-works in a big way on important saints’ days. Quite wonderful.

“Thomas asked me to marry him, and I said that I would. I had fallen for India, you see, and the idea of marrying into the country was a very exciting one. And Thomas was a good man

– very quiet and thoughtful, and very kind. Of course, I hadn’t realised that I would have to put up with his mother too, who would live with us in our house in Cochin. But that’s what happens when you marry into an Indian family. You get the whole lot.

“Thomas told me that he had a job in the business that his father had set up, but he didn’t explain what the business was. He would show me the factory, he said, and I would see. But before that, when I met his mother for the first time and I was drinking tea under her enquiring eye, I asked what the family factory made.

“She looked at me in surprise, and then said: ‘Why, we make electricity. It’s an electricity factory. We make very fine electricity.

Everybody knows that.’

“I was surprised. I thought that power stations would belong to the government, or to very large companies, but, no, it seemed that there was a role for a few private generating companies, and we were one of them. Varghese Electricity was the name of the company and the factory, as they called it, was a large building to the east of Cochin. It had a railway line running into it, and the trains brought loads of coal into our private siding.

“Thomas went to the factory every morning, but did not stay long, as there was nothing for him to do. He had an office there, but there never seemed to be any papers on the table and the whole place was run by very efficient managers. So he used to go off to his club and read the newspapers until it was time to come back for lunch. Then he would supervise the gardener in an orchid-house which we had at the back of the property, and after that he would go and sleep for an hour or so until the worst of the afternoon heat was over.

“That was our life, and I suddenly realised that this was what 72

Thomas Is Electrocuted

I was going to be doing for the rest of my days. Suddenly, India did not seem quite as beguiling and I began to wonder whether I had made the most awful mistake.”

Domenica looked at Pat. “What would you have done in my circumstances? Married to a nice man who owned an electricity factory, but with a great emptiness of years stretching out ahead of you? What would you have done?

28. Thomas Is Electrocuted

“No, that’s unfair,” said Domenica Macdonald, withdrawing her own question. “Nobody really knows how they would react to hypothetical situations.”

“I don’t know,” said Pat. “We can imagine what we would do.

I think that if I found myself in your position, I would possibly have . . .”

Domenica raised a hand. “You don’t know, though. You don’t really know what you would do. But I can tell you what I did. I left Thomas. I remained with him for five years, and then, shortly after my thirtieth birthday, I asked him what he would feel if I left him.

“Of course he said that he would be very upset. My light would go out, is what I think he said. The whole family talked like that. They used the metaphors of electricity. I am a bit below my normal wattage. I feel like shorting out. That sort of thing.

“That made me hesitate, but I persisted. I explained to him that I was not cut out for the sort of life that we were leading. I wanted to travel. I wanted to get to know people. I couldn’t face the prospect of sitting there on the verandah for the next goodness knows how many years, drinking afternoon tea with his mother while she went on and on about some complicated injustice that had been done to her family twenty years before. I just couldn’t face it.

“He tried to persuade me to stay. He offered to build a new house next to the existing one, which I could then live in and not have to share with his mother. He said that he would pay Thomas Is Electrocuted

for people – educated people, he said – to come and talk to me during the day. He made all sorts of offers.

“I became more and more depressed at the thought of what I was doing. Thomas was such a good man, and I was behaving as if I was some petulant Madame Bovary. But I couldn’t stop how I felt. I couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for a life which I found so completely unfulfilling and so I eventually gave him a date on which I proposed to leave.

“Two days before I was due to go – I had already packed everything and had the flight from Bombay all organised – two days before, there was the most awful kerfuffle. One of the managers from the factory arrived and he was sobbing and waving his arms about. It took some time before I managed to work out what it was all about. There had been an accident at the factory. Thomas had taken it upon himself to inspect a piece of equipment and had inadvertently touched a live wire. They had tried to revive him, the manager said between his sobs, but it had been to no avail. ‘You are widow now,’ he said. ‘I am very sorry, but now you are widow. Your husband has died of electricity.’

“You can imagine how guilty I felt. And I still do, to an extent.

That man had offered me nothing but affection and support, and I had repaid him with what I suppose he must have viewed as contempt. That is not what I felt, of course, but that is what he must have seen it as.

“His mother now became mute. She looked at me, but then looked away, as if it was painful even to see me. I did my best to speak to her, but she simply didn’t seem to hear me. And in the meantime, I had to deal with the lawyers, who informed me that I now effectively controlled the electricity factory, as Thomas had left his entire shareholding to me. This was worth quite a bit of money. The family was well-off anyway, but the factory, it turned out, had some very valuable land attached to it. I could easily live very well on the income which the shares produced, even if we sold none of the extra land. And I could live on that not only in India, where things are cheap, but back in Scotland.

“To begin with, of course, the thought of controlling the factory appalled me, as it tied me down even more. But I did make an 74

Friendship

effort, and I stayed for a further few years, getting the hang of how the business worked. Eventually, I decided that I had done enough and that I could leave without feeling too guilty. The old woman

– Thomas’s mother – had become demented by now, and spent her time wandering around the garden with a long-suffering attendant, chopping the heads off flowers. I returned to Scotland for a while, and then went off on further adventures for quite some time, which I regret that I can’t tell you about just now because this risotto I’m making is requiring my complete attention and I cannot talk about anthropology and make a proper risotto all at the same time. So the rest of my life will have to wait for some other occasion.”

29. Friendship

Pat left Domenica shortly after ten, crossed the landing to her flat, and went straight to her room. Bruce’s door was shut, but the narrow band of light from beneath it told her that he was in. And there was music too; in the hall she could just make out the faint sound of the Cuban bands that he liked to play. He was considerate in that respect, at least, as he was always careful to keep the volume low.

She closed her door behind her and prepared for bed. The evening had started badly with that exchange over the hair gel –

she would replace that tomorrow, she had decided – but Domenica’s company had soon made her forget her irritation. Domenica and Bruce were polar opposites: she represented wit, and subtlety; Bruce represented . . . well, what did he represent? She closed her eyes and thought of Bruce, to see what free association might bring, but she opened them again sharply. A jar of hair gel.

She had been unsure what to expect of Domenica. On the face of it, dinner with a sixty-one-year-old neighbour might have been a dull prospect, but it had turned out to be anything but that. There were, presumably, dull sixty-one-year-olds, but there were also plenty of dull twenty-year-olds. It might even be, Friendship

thought Pat, that there were more of the latter than the former.

Or did it not matter what age one was? If one was dull at twenty, then one would still be dull at sixty-one.

Age was not of great importance to Pat. The secret, she thought

– and she had read about this somewhere – was to talk to people as if they were contemporaries, and that was something that Domenica obviously understood. Her older neighbour had not talked down to her, which she might easily have done. She had treated her as somebody with whom she could easily share references and common experiences. And that had made it all seem so easy.

She had found out a certain amount about Domenica – about India and anthropology and, tantalisingly, a few snippets about feral children – but she was sure that there was much more to come. During dinner, their conversation had not let up, but Domenica had said little more about herself. Rather, she had told Pat something of the neighbours: of Tim and Jamie, who lived in the flat below, of Bertie’s parents, Irene and Stuart, and of the man in the ground-floor flat, the man whom nobody saw, but who was there nonetheless.

“There may be a perfectly simple explanation,” said Domenica.

“Agoraphobia. If he suffers from that, poor man, he won’t want to go out at all.”

Pat noticed that Domenica spoke charitably, but when it came to Irene and Stuart, her tone changed.

“That poor little boy is nothing but an experiment to them,”

she said. “How much music and mathematics and so on can be poured into him before the age of seven? Will he compose his first symphony before he starts at primary school? And so on.

Poor little boy! Have you seen him?”

“I’ve heard him,” said Pat.

And Tim and Jamie downstairs? “There are many different recipes for unhappiness in this life,” said Domenica, “and poor Tim is following a very common one. To love that which one cannot attain. It’s terribly sad, really. But people persist in doing it.”

Pat said nothing. She had seen a young man walking up the stairs in front of her, but by the time she reached the landing he had disappeared. That, she assumed, was Tim or Jamie.

Friendship

“Tim is very attached to Jamie,” Domenica went on. “And Jamie is very keen on a girl who’s gone to Canada for a year. So that’s that, really.”

“It can’t be easy,” said Pat.

Domenica shrugged. “No, it can’t. But sometimes people decide to be happy with what they’ve got. I’ve known so many cases like that. People hold a candle for somebody who’s never going to be for them what they want them to be. It’s hopeless.

But they carry on and on and make do with the scraps of time and attention that come their way.”

“Sad.”

“Very,” Domenica replied, and then thought for a moment.

“When I had him up here one evening for sherry, all he wanted to talk about was Jamie, and what Jamie was doing. Jamie was going to Montreal to see this girlfriend of his. And all that Tim was thinking of was this. His sadness was written large for me to see. He was losing his friend.”

“And what made it worse for him was that there were so few people he could talk to about this, because he feared their lack of understanding, or their scorn. People are cruel, aren’t they?”

After that they had sat in silence for a while and Pat had thought, and thought again, now that she was back in her room: we love the unattainable. Yes, we do. Foolishly. Hopelessly. All the time.

30. Things Happen at the Gallery

Pat arrived at the gallery slightly early the next morning, to find that the postman, a cheerful man with a weather-beaten face, had already been and there was a letter on the floor. She opened it and saw that it was an invitation to an opening to be held in a gallery further down the road. They were always getting this sort of thing, and it struck her that there was a lot of this in the art world: dealer sells to dealer, round and round in a circle.

Eventually a genuine customer would have to buy a picture, but where were they? So far they had sold nothing, and the only person who had shown the slightest interest in buying something had turned out to be intent on obtaining a bargain. Perhaps things would change. Perhaps somebody would come and buy one of the D.Y. Cameron prints; somebody who would not make a dismissive remark about Mr Vettriano; somebody who liked pictures of hills and glens.

She put the gallery invitation on Matthew’s desk and was about to go through to the back, when she stopped. Usually, when she came in in the morning, she would hear the alarm signal and have to key in the security number to stop it. This had not happened this morning, or had it? It was perfectly possible to go through the motions of a familiar action and not remember that one had done it. But Pat was sure that she had not attended to the alarm this morning. She had come in, opened the letter, and then walked over to Matthew’s desk, where she now stood. The control box was on the other side of the gallery, near the light switch, and she had definitely not been over there.

Had the alarm been set? Pat tried to remember who had been last to leave the gallery last night. It was not Matthew. He had gone off to meet his father shortly after four and she had stayed at work until five. She remembered leaving the gallery and when she had done so, because she had been concerned about being in time for Domenica’s invitation.

She glanced towards the control box, across the semi-darkened gallery. Two small red lights blinked regular pulses back at her. That was different. Normally, when she came in a single 78

Things Happen at the Gallery

red light flashed until the code was keyed in. Now there were two.

Pat looked about her. The gallery had a large expanse of glass at the front, and this gave out onto the street. There were people on the pavement, traffic on the road. The door was only a few feet away. But even so, she felt suddenly uneasy, and now she saw that the door that led to the room at the back was ajar. She closed that door – always – before she left. She would not have left it open like that, as the alarm system depended on its being closed.

Now she felt frightened, and she ran across the room to switch on the lights. Then, with the gallery bathed in light, each of the larger pictures illuminated by their spotlights, she found the courage to walk over to the inner office door and tentatively push it open.

The intruder had managed to raise the lower panel of the back window about eighteen inches. The glass was not broken, but the catch had been forced and there were splinters of wood on the floor – she saw those immediately.

She stood in the doorway, quite still, her feelings confused.

There was a feeling of intrusion, almost of violation. They had been burgled at home once, and she remembered how dirtied she had felt at the thought that somebody had come into their house and just been there, just been physically present and uninvited. She had spoken to her father about it, and he had simply nodded and said: Yes, that’s how it feels.

She stepped back from the doorway and walked calmly to Matthew’s desk, where she picked up the telephone and dialled the emergency code. A comforting voice told her that the police would arrive within minutes and that she should not touch anything until that happened. So she stood there, her heart pounding within her, wondering what had happened. Why had the alarm not gone off? Why was the office door ajar? It suggested that the intruder had managed to get in through that small opening and had then been disturbed, perhaps by the sounding of the signal on the control box. That would have made a perfectly audible sound, even if the main part of the alarm, the siren, had failed to go off.

The Lothian and Borders Police Art Squad 79

Or perhaps Matthew had come in last night for some reason, set the alarm improperly, and then left the door ajar; he was the only other person with a key, as far as Pat knew.

But then if he had done this, why would he have forced the window?

It suddenly occurred to Pat that a break-in could be quite convenient for Matthew. He was having difficulty in selling any of his paintings; perhaps it would be easier to arrange an insurance claim.

31. The Lothian and Borders Police Art Squad A few minutes later, as promised by the calm voice on the telephone, a police car drew up outside the gallery and two uniformed officers, generously equipped with radios, handcuffs, and commodious pockets, emerged. Pat went to the front door and opened it to them.

“An art gallery?” asked one of the policemen, the younger one, as they came in.

“Well it’s not a supermarket,” said the older one. “Pretty obvious.”

Pat saw the younger policeman look down at the floor. He had been embarrassed by the put-down, but said nothing.

She showed the two men the alarm control unit, which was still flashing mutely.

“Can’t have worked properly,” said the younger policeman.

“Pretty obvious,” said the older one.

Pat said nothing. Perhaps it was the end of a long shift for them and they needed their sleep. But even if that were the case, she did not think that the young man deserved this humiliation.

She led them through to the back room and pointed at the fragments of wood on the floor. The younger policeman bent down and picked up one of the splinters.

“From the window,” he said.

The Lothian and Borders Police Art Squad The older policeman looked at Pat, who met his gaze briefly, and then he turned away. He peered at the window glass and shook his head.

“No prints there,” he said. “Nothing. I should think that whoever it was who wanted in was disturbed by something.

It happens all the time. These people start an entry and then something gets the wind up them and they’re offsky.”

“Offsky?” Pat asked.

“Yes,” said the policeman. “Offsky. And there’s not much we can do, although I can probably tell you who did this. All we can suggest is that you get your alarm seen to. And get a new catch – a more secure one – and put it on this window at the back. That’s about it.”

Pat listened in astonishment. “But how do you know who did it?” she asked.

The older policeman looked at her patiently. Then he raised his wrist and tapped his watch. “I retire in six hours’ time,” he said. “Thirty-six years of service. In that time, I’ve seen everything

– everything. Horrible things. Sad things. And in my time in the Art Squad, aesthetically disturbing things. And after all that time I’ve reached one conclusion. The same people do the same things all the time. That’s how people behave. House-breakers break into houses. Others break into shops. It’s no mystery. I can take you right now to the houses of the house-breakers in this city.

I can take you to their actual doors and we can knock on them and see if they’re at home. We know exactly who they are –

exactly. And we know where they live. We know all that. And so if you think I’m picking on anybody, then let me tell you this. This was probably done by a man called Jimmy Clarke

– James Wallace Clarke, to be precise. He’s the person who steals paintings in this city. That’s what he does. But of course we can’t prove it.”

Pat looked at the younger policeman, who returned her glance impassively.

“It must be frustrating for you,” she said.

The older policeman smiled. “Not really,” he said. “You get used to it. But my colleague here has it all in front of him. I’m Akrasia: The Essential Problem

offsky this afternoon. My wife and I have bought a bed-and-breakfast in Prestonpans. That’s us fixed up.”

The younger policeman raised an eyebrow. “Will anybody want to stay in Prestonpans?”

“It gets visitors,” said the older policeman curtly.

“Why?”

The question was not answered, and they moved back into the main gallery. The older policeman walked about, looking at the paintings, leaving the younger man by Pat’s side.

“My name’s Chris,” said the policeman, his voice lowered.

Pat nodded. “Mine’s Pat.”

“He’s very cynical,” said the policeman. “You know what I mean?”

“Yes,” whispered Pat. “I do.”

“Not everyone I meet in this job knows what cynical means,”

said Chris. “It’s nice to come across somebody who does.” He paused. “Would you like to go for a drink tonight? That is, if you’re not doing anything.”

Pat was taken by surprise and it was a few moments before she answered. She was free that evening, and there was no reason why she should not meet Chris for a drink. She had only just met him, of course, but if one couldn’t trust a policeman, then whom could one trust?

“I wouldn’t mind,” she said.

He was visibly pleased with her response and he gave her the name of a wine bar off George Street. He would be there at seven o’clock, he said, adding: “Not in uniform, of course. Hah, hah!”

Pat winced. She suddenly realised that she had made a terrible mistake. She could not go out with a man who said hah, hah like that. She just could not. Offsky, she thought.

32. Akrasia: The Essential Problem Before Matthew came into Big Lou’s coffee bar that morning, full of the news of the attempted break-in at the gallery, Big Lou 82

Akrasia: The Essential Problem

had been engaged in conversation with Ronnie and Pete about the possibility of weakness of the will.

“Ak-how much?” asked Ronnie.

“Akrasia,” said Big Lou, from her accustomed position behind the counter. “It’s a Greek word. You wouldn’t know about it, of course.”

“Used in Arbroath?” asked Ronnie coolly.

Big Lou ignored this. “I’m reading about it at the moment.

A book on weakness of the will by a man called Willie Charlton, a philosopher. You won’t have heard of him.”

“From Arbroath?” asked Ronnie.

Big Lou appeared not to hear his remark. “Akrasia is weakness of the will. It means that you know what is good for you, but you can’t do it. You’re too weak.”

“Sounds familiar,” said Pete, stirring sugar into his coffee.

“Aye,” said Big Lou. “You’d know. You’re a gey fine case of weakness of the will. You know that sugar’s bad for you, but you still take it. That’s weakness of the will. That’s what philosophers all incontinence of the will.”

Pete glanced at Ronnie. “That’s something else. That’s diar-rhoea of the will.”

Big Lou sighed. “Diarrhoea and akrasia are different. But it’s useless trying to explain things to you.”

“Sorry,” said Ronnie solemnly. “You tell us about akrasia, Lou.”

Big Lou picked up a cloth and began to wipe the counter.

“The question is this. Does weakness of the will make sense?

Surely if we do something, then that means that we want to do it. And if we want to do it, then that means that must be because we think that it’s in our best interests to do it.”

Ronnie thought for a moment. “So?”

Big Lou intensified her rubbing of the counter. “So there’s no such thing as a weakness of will because we always do what we want. All the time. You see?”

“No,” said Pete.

Big Lou looked at Ronnie. “And you? Do you see?”

“No.”

Akrasia: The Essential Problem

Big Lou sighed. It was difficult dealing with people who read nothing. But she chose to persist. “Take chocolate,” she began.

“Chocolate?” said Ronnie.

“Yes. Now imagine that you really want to eat chocolate but you know that you shouldn’t. Maybe you have a weight problem.

You see a bar of chocolate and you think: that’s a great wee bar of chocolate! But then something inside you says: it’s not good for you to eat chocolate. You think for a while and then you eat it.”

“You eat the chocolate?”

“Yes. Because you know that eating the chocolate will make you happier. It will satisfy your desire to eat chocolate.”

“So?”

“Well, you can’t be weak because you have done what you really wanted to do. Your will was to eat the chocolate. Your will has won. Therefore your will has been shown not to be weak.”

Ronnie took a sip from his sugared coffee. “Where do you get all this stuff from, Lou?”

“I read,” she said. “I happen to own some books. I read them.

Nothing odd in that.”

“Lou’s great that way,” said Ronnie. “No, don’t laugh, Pete.

You and me are ignorant. Put us in a pub quiz and we’d be laughed off the stage. Put Lou on and she’d win. I respect her for that. No, I really do.”

“Thank you,” said Lou. “Akrasia is an interesting thing. I’d never really thought about it before, but now . . .”

She was interrupted by the arrival of Matthew, who slammed the door behind him as he came in and turned to face his friends, flushed with excitement.

“A break-in,” he said. “Wood all over the place. The cops have been.”

They looked at him in silence.

“The gallery?” asked Pete.

Matthew moved over towards the counter. “Yes, the gallery.

They were disturbed, thank God, and nothing was taken. I could have lost everything.”

“Bad luck,” said Ronnie. “That might have helped.”

Peploe?

There was a silence. Big Lou glared at Ronnie, who lowered his gaze. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that. I meant to say that it was bad luck that they tried to break in. That’s what I meant.” He paused. “What else could I have meant? Why the sensitivity?”

Matthew said nothing. “They could have taken the Peploe. In fact, I reckon that’s what they were after.”

Pete looked up. “The one worth forty grand?”

“Yes,” said Matthew. “They must have been after that. All the rest is rubbish.”

Ronnie looked thoughtful. “That character wanting to buy the painting the other day – he must be the one. Who else knows about it?”

Matthew frowned. “Nobody, as far as I know. Just us.”

“Then, it’s him,” said Ronnie.

“Or one of us,” said Big Lou, looking at Pete.

Nobody spoke. Big Lou turned to make Matthew his coffee.

“Not a serious remark,” she said. “It just slipped out.”

“Weakness of the will?” said Ronnie.

33. Peploe?

“This is no time for levity,” said Matthew. “The fact is, somebody is after my Peploe.”

“If it’s a Peploe,” interrupted Ronnie. “You don’t know, do you? So far, the only person who’s said it’s a Peploe is that girl, Pat. And what does she know about it? And you know nothing, as we all know.”

“All right,” said Matthew. “We’ll call it my Peploe? That is, Peploe with a question mark after it. Satisfied? Right then, what do we do?”

“Remove it from the gallery,” suggested Pete. “Take it home.

Put it in a cupboard. Nobody’s going to think there’s a Peploe?

in your cupboard.”

Big Lou had been following the conversation closely and had Peploe?

stopped wiping the counter. “That’s where you’re wrong,” she said. “If this person – the one who was interested in it – is really after it, then he’ll have found out who Matthew is. Are you in the phone book, Matthew?”

Matthew nodded.

“Well, there you are,” said Lou. “He’ll know where you live.

And if he was prepared to break into your gallery, then he’ll be prepared to break into your flat. Take the Peploe? somewhere else.”

“The bank,” said Pete. “I knew this guy who kept a Charles Rennie Mackintosh bureau in the Bank of Scotland. It was so valuable that he couldn’t afford the insurance. It was cheaper to keep it in the bank.”

“What’s the point of that?” asked Lou, frowning. “What’s the point of having a bureau if you can’t use it?”

“They’d keep kippers in it up in Arbroath,” said Ronnie.

“Smokies even.”

“What do you know about Arbroath?” asked Lou. “You tell me. What do you know about Arbroath?”

Pete answered for him. “Nothing. He’s never been there.”

Matthew was becoming impatient. “I don’t think that we should be talking about Arbroath,” he said, irritably. “You two should stop needling Lou. The real question is: what do I do with my Peploe??”

They sat in silence, the three of them at the table, and Lou standing at her counter. Ronnie glanced at Matthew; he might have arranged the break-in to claim insurance. But if he had done that, then why had none of the paintings disappeared? There were several possible answers to that, one of which was that this was just the cover – the real stealing of the painting would come later.

But if the Peploe? were to prove to be a Peploe, then why would he need to have it stolen in the first place? He would get his forty thousand or whatever it was by taking the picture to an auction.

Why go to all the trouble of claiming the insurance, particularly when he would have no evidence of value to back up his claim?

Lou, too, was thinking about the situation. Pete had been right to suggest that the painting should be removed from the gallery.

Peploe?

But they would have to ensure that it was kept somewhere else.

Should she offer to look after it for him? It would be safe in her flat, tucked away behind a pile of books, but did she want to have something so valuable – and so portable – sitting there?

Forty thousand pounds could buy a perfectly reasonable place to live in Arbroath. No, it would be better for the Peploe? to go elsewhere.

“Pat!” she said abruptly. “Get that girl to take the painting back to her place. She’s the one who identified it. Let her look after it.”

“John won’t know who she is,” said Pete. “She won’t have told him . . .”

Matthew turned to Pete. “Who’s John?” he asked.

Pete looked down at his coffee. “John? I didn’t say John.”

“You did,” said Matthew. “You said something about John not knowing who Pat was. But why did you call him John? Do you know him?”

Pete shook his head. “You misheard me. I didn’t say anything about a John. I don’t know any Johns.”

“Rubbish,” said Lou. “Don’t know any Johns? Rubbish.”

“What I said was that he – this man who wants the Peploe?

– whoever he is, and how would I know he’s called John? – he’ll not know who Pat is and won’t know where she lives. Which is, where?”

“No idea,” said Matthew.

Pete shrugged. “All right. Tell her to take it back to her place and keep it in a cupboard until you’ve decided what to do with it. It’ll be safe there.”

“Good idea,” said Matthew. “I’ll speak to her about it. I’ll ask her to take it home this evening.”

They finished their coffee in silence. Matthew was the first to go, leaving the other two men at their table.

“I suppose we have to get back,” said Ronnie after a while.

He looked at Lou. “Perhaps I should have been a philosopher instead, Lou. Easier job, I think.”

Lou smiled. “I wouldn’t know. But I suspect that it’s not as easy as you think. They worry a lot. Life’s not simple for them.”

On the Way to the Floatarium

“Nor for us,” said Pete, rising to his feet.

“Maybe,” said Big Lou. “But then, ignorance can be comfortable, can’t it?”

34. On the Way to the Floatarium

Irene had an appointment at the Floatarium, but with a good half-hour in hand before she was due to submit to the tank’s womb-like embrace, she had time to enjoy the bright, late spring day. Strolling along Cumberland Street that morning, she noted the changes brought by relentless gentrification. A few years back there had been at least some lace curtains; now the windows with their newly-restored astragals were reassuringly bare, the better to allow, at ground level at least, expensive minimalist or neo-post-Georgian furniture to be admired. Irene paused before the windows of one flat and pondered the colour scheme. No, she would not have chosen that red, which was almost cloying in its richness. Their own flat was painted white throughout, apart from Bertie’s room, which they had chosen to paint pink, to break the sexist mould. Or, rather, she had chosen to paint the walls pink. Stuart, her husband, had been less certain about this and had argued for white, but had been overruled. Irene was not sure about Stuart’s commitment to the project of Bertie’s education, and she had even wondered on occasions whether he fully understood what she was trying to do. The discussion over colour schemes had been a case in point.

“Boys don’t like pink,” he had observed. “I didn’t, when I was a boy.”

Irene had been patient. “That, of course, was some time ago, and your upbringing, as we both know, was not exactly enlightened, was it? Attitudes are different now.”

“Attitudes may be different,” said Stuart, “but are boys? Boys are much the same as they always were, I would have thought.”

Irene was not prepared to let such a patently false argument 88

On the Way to the Floatarium

go unrefuted. “Boys are not the same!” she said. “No! Definitely not! Boys are constructed socially. We make them what they are. A patriarchal society produces patriarchal boys. A civilised society produces civilised boys.”

Stuart looked doubtful. “But boys still want to do boyish things.

If you put them in a room with dolls and toy cars, won’t they choose the cars? Isn’t that what they do?”

Irene sighed. “Only boys who have had no other options will go for cars. Some boys will go for other things.”

“Dolls?”

“Yes, dolls. If you give them the chance. Boys love playing with dolls.”

“Do they?”

“Yes. As I said, if you make the environment right.”

Stuart thought for a moment. “Well, look at Bertie. He loves trains, doesn’t he? He’s always going on about the train set at the nursery school. He loves it.”

“Bertie loves trains because of their social possibilities,” said Irene quickly. “The train set enables him to act out social dramas.

Bertie likes trains for what they represent.”

Matters had been left at that, but doubts about Stuart’s commitment had lingered in Irene’s mind, and she often reflected, as she was doing now on her stroll down Cumberland Street, that raising a gifted child was not easy if one did not have the complete support of the other parent. And this difficulty was compounded, surely, by the absence of support from that nursery school woman, Christabel Macfadzean, that cow, thought Irene, who clearly resented Bertie’s talents and seemed determined to prevent him from developing them – all in a spirit of misplaced egalitarianism. Irene, of course, was deeply committed to egalitarianism in all its forms, but this did not prevent the paying of adequate attention to gifted children. Society needed special people if egalitarian goals were to be met. Unexceptional people – ordinary people, as Irene called them – were often distressingly non-egalitarian in their views.

She reached the end of Cumberland Street and decided not to take the more direct route along Circus Lane, but to make Latte Interrupta

her way along Circus Place, where she might just treat herself to a latte before the Floatarium. There was a café there she liked, where she could read the papers in comfort and occasionally make a start on one of the more challenging crosswords. Irene had thought of teaching Bertie how to do crosswords, but had decided that his programme was probably a bit too full at the moment. What with his Grade seven music theory examination coming up – Bertie was the youngest Scottish entrant for that examination that the Royal College of Music had ever registered

– and with his new course of mathematics tutorials, there would be little time to take him through the conventions of crosswords.

Perhaps he should learn bridge first, although it might be difficult to find partners for a bridge four. Stuart was not keen, and when Irene had raised the possibility of playing the occasional hand with that woman upstairs, that Macdonald woman, she had actually laughed at the thought that Bertie might play.

There was something odd about that woman, thought Irene.

She was a type which one often encountered in Edinburgh. A woman with intellectual pretensions and a haughty manner.

There were so many of them, she reflected; so many.

35. Latte Interrupta

It was while she was sitting in the small café in Royal Circus with her generous cup of latte, skimming through the morning newspaper, that Irene’s mobile phone (with its characteristic Stockhausen ring) notified her of the incoming call from the East New Town Nursery. Christabel Macfadzean came right to the point. Would Irene mind coming round to the nursery immediately? Yes, Bertie was perfectly all right, but an incident had nonetheless occurred and it would be necessary to discuss it with her.

Irene thought that she might finish her latte. It was an imposition to be summoned back to the nursery, and she would 90

Latte Interrupta

have to cancel her appointment at the Floatarium. But Christabel Macfadzean would not think of that, of course; in her view, parents had nothing better to do than drop everything and listen to her complaints. Obviously there had been some little spat between Bertie and one of the other children, presumably over that wretched train set. That was no reason to drag her into it.

If Christabel Macfadzean had bothered to acquaint herself with the works of Melanie Klein, then she would have been in a position to understand these so-called “incidents” and she would not over-react – as Irene was fairly certain she was doing right now.

Irene’s growing irritation prevented her from enjoying the rest of her coffee. She folded the newspaper and tossed it onto a side table. Then, having exchanged a few brief words with the young woman behind the counter, she began to make her way to the nursery. As she walked, she rehearsed what she would say to Christabel Macfadzean. She was adamant that she would not allow Bertie to be victimised. An incident, as Christabel Macfadzean called them, required two participants, and there was not reason to imagine that Bertie had started it.

By the time she arrived at the nursery, Irene was ready for whatever conflict lay ahead. So when Christabel Macfadzean’s assistant opened the door and ushered her in, Irene was ready to go on the offensive.

“I’m surprised that you deemed it necessary to call me,” she said to Christabel when she appeared from behind the water-play table. “I was actually rather busy. This is not really convenient.”

Christabel Macfadzean dried her hands carefully on a small red towel.

“There has been an incident,” she said calmly. “It is always my policy to involve the parents when an incident is sufficiently serious. I would be failing in my duty if I did not do so.”

She looked up and fixed Irene with a firm stare. She knew that this woman would be difficult, but she was looking forward to the encounter with all the pleasure of one who knew that her position was quite unassailable.

“Incident?” said Irene sharply. “Surely the life of a nursery school is filled with incident. Children are always acting out little Latte Interrupta

dramas, aren’t they, as Melanie Klein pointed out. You’re familiar with the works of Melanie Klein, I take it?”

Christabel Macfadzean closed her eyes for a few moments.

Ignoring the question, she said: “There are little dramas and big dramas. Then there are incidents. This is an incident which requires parental involvement. We can’t cope here with serious bad behaviour all by ourselves. We have to invoke parental assistance.”

Irene drew in her breath. “Serious bad behaviour? A little spat over the train set? Do you call that serious bad behaviour? Well, really . . .”

Christabel Macfadzean interrupted her. “It has nothing to do with the train set – nothing at all.”

Irene glared at her. “Well, something equally trivial, no doubt.”

“No,” said Christabel Macfadzean. “It’s by no means trivial.”

This is most enjoyable, she thought. This particular galleon is having the wind taken right out of her sails, and it is a most agreeable experience, for me at least.

“Well,” said Irene. “Perhaps you would be good enough to let me know what it is. Has Bertie been involved in a fight? Fighting is to be expected of little boys, you know, particularly if they are not adequately supervised . . .”

This last remark drew an angry snort from Christabel Macfadzean. “I shall pass over that comment,” she said. “I shall assume that I misheard you. No, there has been no fighting.

What there has been is vandalism.”

Irene laughed. “Vandalism! Children break things all the time!

There’s no call for a fuss!”