Espresso Tales

“I’ve brought you a present. It’s not a very big present, but I hope you like it.”

His eyes widened. “But it’s not my birthday.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

284 In the Café St Honoré

She passed the red parcel over to him and he took it from her gingerly.

“Open it.”

He slid a finger under a flap of the paper and peeled it back.

The card was exposed and he took this out and read it.

“That’s very kind of you to say that.”

“I mean it.”

“Well, thank you. I’m the one who should be giving you a present. These months have been happy ones for me, too.”

He took off the rest of the paper and held the painting out at arm’s length. He said nothing at first, and then he smiled at her. “I like harbours,” he said. “And I particularly like this one.”

“Matthew thought you would,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow at the mention of his son’s name. “My Matthew? He said that?”

“It was his idea,” Janis said. “I wanted to get you something.

He thought you would like this.”

I’m not telling a complete lie, she told herself. Matthew had implied that he would like it and had not actively discouraged her from buying the painting. That, by a short leap, could be interpreted as being behind the idea. Gordon looked at the painting again. “That was thoughtful of him,” he said. He paused. “How was he? I mean, how did you find him? The other night at the club . . .”

Janis shook her head. “I understand,” she said. “It can’t be easy for him. People are jealous of their parents. They don’t like to see them with other people. It doesn’t matter if you’re eight or twenty-eight. These feelings can be very strong.”

He looked down at the tablecloth. “I don’t know what to do.

If we ask him to join us for anything, we’ll just have a repeat of last time. Surly, immature behaviour.”

“That’s because he loves you. If he didn’t, then he wouldn’t care at all.”

“But it makes it very hard for you, doesn’t it?” he said. “And it’ll be even harder when we tell him that we’re getting married . . .”

He stopped himself. He coloured deeply. He reached for his Domenica Takes Food to Angus

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table napkin and the sudden action sent another glass to the floor.

“I’m so sorry,” he stuttered. “That was a slip of the tongue.

I wasn’t . . .”

“But I accept,” said Janis. “Don’t worry. I accept.”

The waiter reappeared, brush and pan in hand.

“I’ve done it again,” said Gordon. “I’ll pay for all these glasses.

Please add them to the bill.”

The waiter shook his head. “Doesn’t matter,” he said.

“Do you have any champagne glasses?” asked Gordon. “Not that I intend to break those. But I think we’re going to need a bottle of champagne.”

The waiter went off to fetch the champagne and the glasses.

By the time that he returned, Gordon had discreetly opened his wallet and extracted a crisp Bank of Scotland fifty-pound note, which he slipped into the waiter’s hand.

“You’re very kind,” said the waiter.

Janis thought: But there’s 10,999,950 more where that came from.

87. Domenica Takes Food to Angus

Angus Lordie did not often receive a visit from Domenica, but every now and then she would call in on him, usually unannounced, and usually bringing him a small present of food, normally cheese scones, which she baked herself.

“I’m convinced that you don’t feed yourself properly, Angus,”

said Domenica, placing a small bag of provisions on his kitchen table. “I’ve made you an apple pie and there’s a pound of sausages from that marvellous butcher down at the end of Broughton Street – the one who makes the real sausages. You do remember that wonderful line from Barbara Pym, do you not, where one of the characters says that men need meat? Not men in the sense of people in general, but men in the sense of males. Priceless!”

286 Domenica Takes Food to Angus

“And yet you’ve brought me a pound of sausages,” said Angus.

“For which, thank you very much indeed. But doesn’t that suggest that you, too, feel that men need meat?”

“Not at all,” said Domenica. “Men can get their protein from anywhere in the protein chain, if there’s such a thing. You’d be better off not eating meat at all, you know. Look at the statistics for the survival of vegetarians. They do much better. Perhaps I should take those sausages back.”

“As long as they drink,” said Angus. “Vegetarians who drink a couple of glasses of wine a day do terribly well.”

“A thirty-five per cent improvement in mortality,” said Domenica.

Angus Lordie peered at the sausages. “And yet the government can’t exactly encourage us to drink, can it?”

“Certainly not,” said Domenica. “We know that the government itself drinks, but on this issue it has to be hypocritical.”

Angus Lordie, who had stopped painting when Domenica arrived, moved to the window. Picking up a rag, he wiped a small spot of oil paint off his hands. “I’ve never understood the objection to hypocrisy,” he said. “There must be some circumstances in which it’s permissible to be hypocritical.”

“Such as?”

“Let me think,” said Angus. “Yes. On the receipt of a present that one doesn’t like. Do you really think that one should say how much one likes it?”

Domenica thought about this. “I suppose so. But is that being hypocritical, or is it something different?”

“Hypocrisy is saying one thing and doing another,” said Angus. “If you say that you like the gift and say how much you’re looking forward to using it or looking at it, or whatever, then surely you’re being a hypocrite.” He paused for a moment. “So, should a politician tell other people not to drink or not to eat sausages, and all the while he drinks and eats sausages himself, then he’s being hypocritical. But it may be the right thing for him to do.”

“But would you yourself choose to be hypocritical?”

Angus replaced the oily rag on a table. He smiled. “I’m as Domenica Takes Food to Angus

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weak as anybody else,” he said. “I suppose I’ve told my share of lies. I’ve been hypocritical on occasions.”

Domenica laughed. “Tell me, then. You don’t like sausages.”

“No, I don’t,” said Angus.

Domenica saw that he meant it. “You should have told me,”

she said.

“But I didn’t want to offend you. And I can’t stand apple pie either.”

Domenica frowned. “But why not tell me? You would just have wasted them. I would have gone away thinking that you would be enjoying my little offerings and all the time you’d be putting them out in the bin.”

Angus shook his head. “I would not,” he said defensively. “I would have given the sausages to Cyril, and I would have put the apple pie out in the gardens for the squirrels.”

“I will not have you giving my Crombie sausages to that dog of yours,” said Domenica. “You presume on my friendship, Angus!”

“I didn’t ask you to bring me sausages,” said Angus peevishly.

“And I certainly shall not bring you any sausages in the future,” said Domenica stoutly.

“Good,” said Angus. “So, no sausages then.”

They looked at one another reproachfully. Then Angus shrugged. “What are we to do about these sausages?” he said, gesturing to the package on the table. “I suppose you’d better take them back and eat them in Scotland Street.”

“But I don’t like sausages myself,” said Domenica. “I can’t stand them, in fact.”

For a few moments they stared mutely at the package of sausages.

“Do you know anybody who would like them?” asked Domenica. “Any of your neighbours?”

“My neighbours would find it very strange if I started offering them sausages,” said Angus. “We don’t have that sort of relationship.”

“I wasn’t aware that there was a category of relationship which permitted the giving and taking of sausages,” said Domenica.

288 Bruce Reflects

“Well, there is,” said Angus. “You have to know people quite well before you start giving them sausages.”

Domenica said nothing. She knew that Angus occasionally became argumentative, and there was no point in engaging with him when he was in such a mood. “Well, let’s . . .”

Angus cut her short. “Before we abandon the subject of sausages,” he said, “I must tell you about an occasion on which I was obliged to eat sausages – and with every visible sign of enjoyment. It was at a terribly grand house in Sutherland. I went there for lunch one day and there were ten people round the table. We were looking forward to a good meal, but we certainly didn’t get that. We had sausages with boiled potatoes. And that was it. But what I remember about that meal was that the subject of flying boats came up. I don’t know how it did, but somebody must have raised it.

“And I said to our hostess: ‘You know, Your Grace, you should get yourself a flying boat. You’ve got that great stretch of loch out there – it’s ideal for a flying boat.’ And you know what she said? She said: ‘But we do have a flying boat somewhere or other.’ Then she turned to the factor, who was sitting down at the end of the table, and she said: ‘Mr Grant, have you seen the flying boat? Do you know where it is?’”

That was all there was to the story. Angus Lordie looked at Domenica. Then he burst into laughter, into wild peals of laughter.

And Domenica laughed too. It was extremely funny for some reason. It may have been hard to put one’s finger on the reason, but neither of them was in any doubt but that it was terribly funny.

But it was also rather sad. And again, to work out why it should be sad, required a measure of reflection.

88. Bruce Reflects

After his unfortunate experience with George and his new fiancée, Bruce returned to Scotland Street in what almost amounted to a state of shock. He had set off for his shop in a Bruce Reflects

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mood of confidence and optimism, but this had been conclu-sively shattered by the confrontation with his erstwhile business backer, now his former friend. There was to be no money from George, and with the disappearance of that support his liabilities now exceeded his assets. The payment to the wine dealer in Leith could not be put off for more than a short time, and now he simply did not have sufficient funds to pay. He would have to return all the stock, virtually every bottle of it, and that would leave him with empty shelves, including in that new section of which he was so proud – the innovative Wines for Her.

Pat was in her room when Bruce returned. For a moment he hesitated, unsure whether to knock on her door and offer to make her a cup of coffee. He did not want her to think that he needed her company in any way – she should be in no doubt that he could take or leave that as he wished – but eventually his need for comfort and reassurance got the better of him.

Pat greeted him politely. Yes, that was kind of him; she would join him for a cup of coffee in the kitchen in a few moments.

“So,” she said. “The business. How’s it going?”

“Great,” Bruce started to say. “Just great . . .”

He broke off. He looked at the floor. “Actually,” he went on,

“it’s going badly. Really badly.”

Pat raised an eyebrow. “Is there a problem with that shop you’re renting?”

Bruce shook his head. “No, it’s more than that. In fact, Pat, it’s awful.” He sat down at the kitchen table, his head sunk in his hands.

Pat looked down at him. Poor Bruce – to be so vain and so pleased with yourself and then to become so obviously wretched.

It was difficult not to sympathise with him.

“Money?” she said.

Bruce nodded miserably. “I’ve been let down.”

“By?”

“By somebody I was at school with back in Crieff,” said Bruce.

“He should have stayed there.”

Pat frowned. “Why are you rude about Crieff, Bruce? Aren’t you proud of the place you came from?”

290 Bruce Reflects

“No,” said Bruce. “I’m not.”

Pat thought about this. “May I ask why?” she said. “I don’t see anything wrong with Crieff. In fact, I think it’s really a very nice place.”

“You would,” said Bruce bitterly.

Pat almost let this remark pass, but decided that Bruce had gone too far. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, you do think that you’re superior, don’t you? You think that by being rude about Crieff you can build yourself up. Well, you’re wrong, you know. You’re wrong about Crieff, completely wrong. Crieff is a great place.

I know people who live there who like it very much indeed. And these are people with rather better judgment than yours, Bruce.

By running Crieff down you tell me more about yourself than about Crieff. That’s true, you know.”

Bruce said nothing, while Pat fixed him with her stare. “The trouble with you, Bruce, is that you think nowhere and nobody is good enough for you. You think that you’re too good for Crieff. You think that you’re too good for your old friends. You think that this old friend of yours has let you down, but I suspect that it’s exactly the opposite. I suspect that you’ve been trying to use him.”

Bruce looked up abruptly. “And why do you think that, may I ask?”

Pat shrugged. “Because that’s the way you do things.” She paused. “But there’s no point in my talking to you like this, is there? I doubt if you’re going to change.”

Bruce stood up. “No,” he said. “There’s no point. Because I have no intention of listening to you, Patsy girl, thank you very much.”

And with that he left, crossed the hall into his room, and slammed the door behind him. Inside his room, though, the confidence which he had tried to show crumpled. He owed money, and he owed a great deal of it. The thought occurred to him that he could go back to his parents and ask them to lend him the money to pay the most immediate bills, including the one from Leith, but he simply could not face that. He could imagine what his father would say to him. He would be lectured The Restoration of Fortunes

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about caution and misjudgment. He would be told that he should never have attempted go into business without getting the necessary experience first. And if he tried to explain about George, and how he had brought all this about, his father would probably just take George’s side. He had always liked him, Bruce recalled, and had said that he thought he was the best of his son’s friends. That shows how much judgment he has, thought Bruce.

He sat on his bed and considered his situation. Assets and liabilities – the fundamentals of business. He knew the assets and he knew the liabilities. The assets were the flat in Scotland Street, which was heavily mortgaged, a small amount of money in a deposit account at the bank, and . . . He had almost forgotten.

There were three cases of Petrus. It was only George’s view that these were not the real thing – but there was a chance, even if only a slim chance, that the Petrus was genuine and he remembered that he had read somewhere that there was a wine auction coming up in Edinburgh. They might be able to take late entries, and if the wine were genuine, then . . .

But who could advise him on that? If he asked the auction-eers, then that might plant a doubt in their mind. So he should seek a private opinion, and who better than Will Lyons! If anybody could distinguish between genuine and false wine then it would be him, and he had very generously given Bruce advice in the past. He would ask Will round for a glass of Petrus, not say anything to him about the price he had paid, and then see what the verdict was. It was a brilliant idea, and he would see if Will was free that very evening! How handy it was to live in Edinburgh, he reflected, and to have expertise so ready to hand.

89. The Restoration of Fortunes

Will Lyons had better things to do than to visit Bruce, but agreed, out of sheer kindness, to call in at 44 Scotland Street that evening shortly before eight. He would not be able to stay 292 The Restoration of Fortunes

long, he explained, as he had work to do. He had recently agreed to write a history of the Edinburgh wine trade, and the manuscript was growing slowly beneath his hands. It was a pleasant sensation seeing the pile of pages grow higher, but, like every author, he knew that he had to guard jealously the spare hours in which he could write. There were histories to be written about those whose histories had never progressed beyond chapter one, or indeed the introduction.

Will sighed as he made his way up the stairs to Bruce’s flat.

He did not particularly like Bruce, whom he found both opinionated and ignorant in equal measure. He had tried to warn him about the drawbacks of going into the wine trade, but his warn-ings had not been heeded. It was clear to him that Bruce did not have even the basic knowledge that would enable him to run a wine shop. Nor did he possess the specialised knowledge and taste that would be required to run a wine shop in somewhere like Edinburgh’s New Town, where the number of opinionated and demanding people was very high, and where many of these prided themselves on their knowledge of wine. Any enterprise of Bruce’s was bound to fail, the only question being how long the failure would take, and how spectacular it would be.

Bruce opened the door to his guest and ushered him into the flat. He had been preparing coffee and it was into the kitchen that they now went and took a seat at the large, scrubbed pine table.

“I see that you have the original flagstones,” said Will, pointing at the fine stone floor.

“For the time being,” said Bruce. “I haven’t got round to fixing that up yet.”

“Fixing it up?” asked Will. “It looks in quite good condition to me.”

“Modernising it,” said Bruce. “I want an oak-look effect.

There’s a new sort of flooring that looks just like oak. I’d challenge anybody to tell the difference. It’s a bit pricey, though.”

Will kept his counsel. His eye had been caught by a bottle standing on a nearby shelf. Could it be? Was it possible?

“Yes,” said Bruce jauntily, noticing the direction of his host’s gaze. “Petrus. Would you like to take a look?”

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“It’s a very fine wine,” said Will. “Many people would say that it’s the finest wine there is, you know.”

“Oh, I know that,” said Bruce. “That’s why I got in a supply.”

“A supply?”

Bruce affected nonchalance. “Actually, I bought three cases for that new business of mine. I thought that Edinburgh being the sort of place that it is, there might be demand for it. There are a lot of wealthy people who live here, you know – people who will be prepared to fork out for this sort of stuff.”

“Oh, I know that,” said Will. He peered at the bottle on its shelf. “Would you mind if I took a look?”

“Of course not,” said Bruce. “In fact, how about a glass?”

Will raised an eyebrow. “That’s very generous of you,” he said. “I wasn’t . . .”

“Of course not,” said Bruce, rising to his feet. “I’ve been looking forward to trying it myself and who better to share it with?”

He crossed the room to take the bottle from the shelf. Then he handed it to Will, who examined it closely.

“Lovely year,” said Will. “I take it that you know that this is pretty valuable?” He hesitated. “I suppose that you must know that, if you bought three cases of it.”

Bruce was not giving anything away. “Yes,” he said, smiling.

“This wine isn’t cheap, by any means. But what’s the use of having the stuff if you aren’t prepared to have the occasional glass?”

He reached for a corkscrew and passed it to Will. “Care to do the honours?”

Will carefully exposed the cork and looked at the top of it.

Then, as Bruce fetched the glasses from the cupboard, Will gently twisted the screw into the cork and drew it up the neck of the bottle. It emerged with a satisfactory pop and he immediately sniffed at it and smiled.

“So far, so good,” he said. “Now if you pass me the glasses, we’ll see what we have here.”

Bruce’s expression was anxious as he passed over the glasses.

This, he thought bitterly, is the moment of humiliation – the crowning humiliation, in fact, coming on top of everything that had gone wrong for him in recent months – that business over 294 Self-assertiveness Training for Civil Servants that stuck-up American girl, the loss of his job at that pathetic firm of Macauley Holmes Richardson Black, and finally that terrible betrayal by George and his haggis-like fiancée. He closed his eyes briefly, hardly daring to look at the dark red liquid which Will was now sniffing at and swirling round his glass.

He watched in fascination as Will took a sip of the wine and moved it about his mouth, drawing in air through the lips.

Nervously, he raised his own glass and sipped at the wine. It tasted all right to him – rather good, in fact – but then, in a rare moment of honesty, he said to himself: what do I know about this?

Will looked at Bruce. “What a stunner!” he said.

Bruce looked startled. “Stunner?”

“A beautiful wine,” went on Will. “So supple and ripe – yet it has elegance and length. One can understand why this is seen as such a great wine. One really can.”

Afterwards, when Will had left the flat, Bruce went into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. His face was lit with triumph, and in his ears rang Will’s parting words. His visitor had explained that he thought there would be no trouble in entering the remaining wine, now reduced to thirty-five bottles, but still a very impressive quantity, in the wine auction that was due to take place in a few days’ time. And then he had said: “And I suspect that you’ll clear at least thirty thousand for the lot, once commissions are taken.”

Bruce looked back into the mirror and smiled at himself.

“You’re a stunner yourself,” he said in self-compliment. “A human Chateau Petrus!”

90. Self-assertiveness Training for Civil Servants It was about this time that the Scottish Executive decided that all civil servants above a certain level of seniority should receive self-assertiveness training. The reason why this training was offered only to those in more senior positions was simple: there appeared to be no need to increase the self-assertiveness of the Self-assertiveness Training for Civil Servants 295

more junior civil servants, whose confidence generally exceeded that of their superiors. Indeed, greater self-assertiveness in the higher echelons of the Executive was thought to be the only way in which policies could be implemented in the face of opposition from below. And in due course, it had been announced, ministers themselves would receive self-assertiveness training to assist them to assert unpopular policies in the face of widespread public opposition and thereby to force their acceptance. (This is not to say that these policies were bad. Indeed, many of them were good; it’s just that the public cannot always be trusted to recognise a good policy when they see it.) Stuart had signed up for a personal assertiveness workshop that would require him to spend two hours alone in the company of an assertiveness counsellor. He was looking forward to this, as he had gradually been reaching the conclusion that whatever level of assertiveness he managed to achieve in his working environment, this was far from adequate at home. In particular, he had concluded that if he was to do anything about his relationship with his son, Bertie, then he would need to stand up to Irene.

And that was an alarming thought. It was all very well to have scored a minor victory with Bertie’s attendance at Tofu’s bowling party, but it would be quite another thing to achieve the goal of getting Bertie out of psychotherapy, of relieving him of the need to attend yoga lessons in Stockbridge, and to dismantle, as far as possible, the remaining planks of what Irene called the

“Bertie project”. And yet he owed it to his son. He had vowed that he would not let the little boy down: he would restore to him the tiny pleasures and idle moments of a happy boyhood.

He would make his life whole again.

Stuart sat in Meeting Room 64A/3B/4/16 (west) in the offices of the Scottish Executive, awaiting the arrival of the assertiveness counsellor, who was already ten minutes late. Stuart passed the time reading a newspaper, and was immersed in an editorial when the door was opened by a slight man in his early thirties, wearing jeans and an open-neck shirt.

“You’re Stuart Pollock?” asked the counsellor, glancing at a clipboard in his hand.

296 Self-assertiveness Training for Civil Servants Stuart replied that he was, and extended his right hand to shake hands. The counsellor seized his hand and squeezed it tightly.

“Good to meet you, Stuart!” he said. “My name’s Terry. You got a problem with that?”

Stuart blinked. “No,” he said hesitantly. “Of course not.”

“You see,” said Terry, “some people think that the name Terry is a bit effeminate. Know what I mean by that?” Terry fixed him with a stare. “You don’t find me short, do you, Stuart?”

“Not at all,” said Stuart.

“And would it matter if you did?” asked Terry aggressively.

“What exactly is wrong with being on the short side?”

“I didn’t say anything was wrong with it,” said Stuart. “You raised it, not me. And, anyway, I don’t think your name is effeminate, Shorty . . . I mean, Terry. And your height is neither here nor there as far as I am concerned.”

Terry continued to glare at him. “All right, let’s sit down. I’m going to take this chair, right? This one here. That’s my chair.”

“That’s fine,” said Stuart.

“But what if you really wanted to sit in that chair?” asked Terry. “What if you wanted my chair?”

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“I don’t think that I would make a fuss about it,” said Stuart.

“It’s exactly the same as this chair over here. All the Scottish Executive chairs are the same, actually.”

“And that worries you?” asked Terry. “Have you got a problem with the Scottish Executive, Stuart?”

Stuart took a deep breath. Terry was extremely irritating, and they had had only five minutes of the two-hour session. He wondered whether he would be able to survive the full time; would it be entered in his file if he failed to complete the course?

Would the conclusion be drawn that he lacked the requisite degree of assertiveness needed by a competent modern civil servant?

“No,” he said in reply to Terry’s question. “I have no problems with the Scottish Executive. The only problem I have at present is a slight irritation with you.”

Terry clapped his hands together. “That’s the spirit, Stuart!

Well done! That’s exactly what I wanted you to say. I wanted you to assert yourself.”

“Well, there you are,” said Stuart, relaxing visibly. “And I suppose, if I were to be completely frank . . .”

“Always be frank,” said Terry. “Tell it how it is, Stuart. Don’t conceal. Get it out.”

“Well,” Stuart continued, “I suppose that I do have a bit of a problem with my wife. She herself is rather on the assertive side.”

“Assertive!” exclaimed Terry. “I bet she’s assertive! She’s emasculating you, Stuart. I’ve never met her but I can tell what’s happening. I see it all the time. Virtually every man I meet in this job has been emasculated by some woman. It’s endemic these days, absolutely endemic.”

Stuart was surprised by the force with which the counsellor issued this judgment. By his own admission he did not know anything about Irene, and so how could he possibly judge her in such extreme terms? On the other hand . . .

“Is it that bad?” he asked mildly.

“You bet it’s that bad,” said Terry. “And it’s time for men to fight back. Men are going to have to fight back, to reclaim their 298 Stuart Paints Bertie’s Room

space before it’s too late and they become the new victims, just as women used to be the victims of men. We have to fight back.”

“So what should I do?” asked Stuart.

“Tell her what you plan to do,” said Terry. “And if she objects, just ignore her. Leave the house. Women don’t like that. They don’t like it if you leave the house.”

“Is that what you do?” asked Stuart.

Terry thought for a moment. “It’s what I would do,” he said.

“If I had to, that is. You see, I’m not heavily into relationships.

I live by myself. I’m a relationship-free man. It’s the new thing.”

“I see,” said Stuart.

They talked for some time after that. There were exercises in self-assertiveness which Stuart was required to do – including assertive telephone techniques – and there was a lengthy discussion about assertive report-writing. And then, at the end, Terry placed an arm over Stuart’s shoulder and wished him good luck.

“Do you feel better?” he asked.

Stuart thought for a moment. No, he did not feel better. He felt, if anything, more afraid. It seemed to him that the odds had suddenly been seriously raised. It was not just Bertie’s future that was at stake – it was his own.

91. Stuart Paints Bertie’s Room

Stuart finished his self-assertiveness workshop at four in the afternoon. He decided to leave the office immediately, rather than wait until five. This was assertive, but not unduly so. He had arrived at work early that day and in terms of hours he was well in credit. So he left the office and made his way to a hard-ware store that he had walked past on numerous occasions but of which he had never taken much notice. It sold paints and paint brushes, he knew, and it was bound to have what he wanted

– a large paint-roller and two tins of matt-finish white paint.

He bought the supplies, thanked the shopkeeper, and began the journey home. He felt excited and anxious – in the same Stuart Paints Bertie’s Room

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way as a schoolboy would be filled with a mixture of thrill and dread when planning some transgression. This, he thought, is how criminals must feel as they travel to the scene of the crime: hearts racing, mouths dry, every sense at a high pitch. And what he was proposing to do was, for him, almost criminal. He was planning to paint Bertie’s room, unilaterally, without consulta-tion, in complete defiance of Irene’s wishes. It was she who had chosen the existing colour-scheme, opting for pink because of its alleged calming properties and its refutation of the culturally-conditioned assumptions about the preferences of boys. Boys don’t like pink, was the conventional wisdom. Well, we would soon see about that! There was no reason why a sensitive boy, a boy brought up to eschew the straitjacket of narrow gender roles, should not approve of pink.

Stuart knew that Bertie did not like his room – or “space” as Irene called it – to be pink. He had told him as much and had also said that as long as his room remained pink he could not possibly invite any friends to the flat, not that he had any friends, of course.

Stuart had listened sympathetically to his son. “But you must have some friends, Bertie,” he said. “What about that boy, Tofu?

Isn’t he your friend?”

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

“He may be my friend, but I’m not too sure. He keeps asking me for money and food – he’s a vegan, you know. I think that he may like me just because I can give him the things he wants.”

“Some friends are a bit like that to begin with,” said Stuart.

“But then they change after a while and become real friends –

friends who like you quite apart from anything you can do for them.” He paused. “And what about that girl, Olive?”

Bertie shook his head. “She thinks I want her to get lockjaw,”

he said. “And I don’t. I don’t want anyone to get lockjaw, Daddy.

I really don’t.”

Stuart smiled. “Of course you don’t, Bertie!” And then he had thought: but do I want anybody to get lockjaw? – and he had decided that the answer was that he did. There were public figures, and one or two so-called singers, he thought he would 300 Stuart Paints Bertie’s Room

like to get lockjaw, which he imagined was the only way, even if somewhat drastic, of getting them to keep quiet. But such thoughts were uncharitable.

Now, climbing up the stairs to the flat in 44 Scotland Street, Stuart looked at his watch. Irene would be out, he thought, as she was taking Bertie to his saxophone lesson and they were both going to an extra yoga session after that. They would not be back until well after seven, which would give him a good two hours in which to paint Bertie’s room. It was not a big room, and paint-rollers covered a lot of wall in a very short time. By the time Irene and Bertie returned, then, they would be faced with a fait accompli.

He let himself into the flat. To verify that the coast was clear, he called out to Irene. There was silence; just the ticking of a clock and the humming, somewhere in the background, of a fridge. Stuart deposited the tins of paint and the paint-roller in Bertie’s room and then went to change out of his office clothes. He knew that Irene did not like him to leave his clothes lying on the floor, and so he tossed his shirt down onto the bedside rug and threw his dirty socks into a corner.

As he did so, he thought of Terry, and of how proud he would have been of him to see this. He was sure that Terry left his clothes on the floor of his flat; mind you, being a relationship-free man, Terry would not have had anybody to object to the practice.

Once changed, Stuart went back to Bertie’s room. He moved around the pink walls, taking down the pictures which Irene had pinned up. A poster proclaiming the merits of Florence, the periodic table, a picture of Mahler. He sighed as he took them down and, on sudden impulse, rather than fold the periodic table away for putting back up once the new paint had dried, he tore it up and tossed it into the wastepaper bin. Then, with the walls bare, he opened the first can of paint, poured it into a tray, and dipped in the paint-roller. Then he set to work.

It did not take long to cover the walls with the easily-applied white paint. Stuart worked feverishly, oblivious to the spots of Discussions Take Place Between Irene and Stuart 301

paint which were appearing on Bertie’s carpet. From time to time he looked at his watch, and listened for any sound from the hall. But no sound came, and he continued with his work until the entire room had been transformed. No pink was to be seen. It was gone. Now Bertie could bring any friend home and he would never suspect that anything was amiss.

When he had finished, Stuart tucked the empty tins and the painting equipment into a cupboard. Then, having made a not altogether successful attempt to clean the paint off the carpet, he returned to the main bedroom and changed. The paint-spattered clothes he tossed to the floor in a heap. Then he went to the kitchen and poured himself a large whisky.

There was the sound of a key in the front door and voices.

“And remember, Bertie,” said Irene, her voice drifting in from the hall to the kitchen where Stuart sat. “Remember that you’ve got extra Italian this week. That nice story about a little Italian boy who . . .”

There was a sudden silence. Stuart looked into his empty whisky glass. It would have been reassuring to have Terry with him at the moment, he thought.

92. Discussions Take Place Between Irene and Stuart The silence was broken by Bertie. “My room!” he shouted.

“Look, Mummy! My room’s turned white!”

The joy in Bertie’s voice was unmistakable and indeed became even more apparent with his next exclamation. He did not use Italian spontaneously now, but this was an occasion, he thought, when Italian seemed more eloquent than English. “Miracolo!”

he shouted. “Miracolo!”

Irene, standing at the door to Bertie’s room, surveying the transformation, was momentarily lost for words. But then she found her voice.

“What on earth has happened here?” she said. “Somebody has painted . . .”

302 Discussions Take Place Between Irene and Stuart She stepped into the room and noticed the periodic table, torn up and tossed into the bin. She picked it up gingerly, as a detective might pick up a piece of evidence at the scene of the crime.

“Isn’t it nice?” asked Bertie, nervously. He realised that his mother was far from pleased and he dreaded the possibility that she would immediately repaint it in pink. “I think white is such a good colour for . . .” He was going to say “for boys” but he knew that would merely provoke his mother. So he finished by saying “for rooms”.

“We can talk about that later on,” said Irene grimly. “In the meantime, don’t touch anything. We don’t want you getting paint on your dungarees.”

She turned on her heel and went through to the kitchen.

“Well!” she said, glaring at Stuart. “Somebody’s been busy!”

Stuart looked at her coolly. “I thought it was about time that we redecorated Bertie’s room,” he said. “I did it quite quickly, actually. You got a problem with that?”

Discussions Take Place Between Irene and Stuart 303

“What?” hissed Irene. “What do you mean have I got a problem?”

Stuart shrugged. “You seem a bit taken aback. I thought you would be pleased to discover that your husband’s a skilled painter.”

Irene turned and slammed the kitchen door behind her. She did not want Bertie to hear what was to come.

“Have you gone mad?” she asked. “Have you gone out of your mind?”

“No,” said Stuart, adding: “Have you?”

Irene took several steps forward. “Listen to me, Stuart, I don’t know what’s come over you, but you’ve got a bit of explaining to do. What are you thinking of, for heaven’s sake?”

Stuart held her gaze. “I decided that it was about time we let Bertie have one or two things his way. It’s been perfectly apparent for some time that he did not like his pink room. Nor, for that matter, does he like those pink dungarees of his.”

“Crushed strawberry,” corrected Irene. She shook her head, as if to adjust a confused picture of reality. “I just don’t know what you think you’re doing. There’s a reason why Bertie is being brought up to like pink. It’s all to do with gender stereo-types. Can’t you even grasp that?”

Stuart smiled. “There’s something which I grasp very well,”

he said. “And that is this: it’s about time we let that little boy just be a little boy.”

“Oh!” said Irene. “So that’s it, is it? You think that you know what it is to be a little boy? You, the inheritor of the patriar-chal mantle, passing it on to your son! Get him interested in things like cars . . .”

Stuart frowned. “By the way,” he interrupted. “Where’s our car?”

Irene, derailed by the question, stared at her husband.

“Outside in the street,” she said. “Where you parked it the other day.”

“No it isn’t,” said Stuart. “You parked it.”

“Nonsense!” said Irene. “You had it last. And you parked it in the street.”

304 Discussions Take Place Between Irene and Stuart

“I did,” he said. “I parked it there the other day and then you used it to go somewhere or other. You’re the one who parked it last.”

Irene opened her mouth to say something and then thought better of it. He was right, she feared. She had driven the car recently and had parked it somewhere, but she had no recollection of where that was. But then, something else occurred to her; something which was more serious than the temporary mislaying of the car.

“Be that as it may,” she said. “There’s something that I’ve been meaning to raise with you for some time now. That car of ours. How many gears does it have?”

Stuart swallowed. He could see where this was leading, and suddenly the whole business of painting Bertie’s room seemed to fade into insignificance.

Irene stared at him. “How many?” she repeated.

“Five,” said Stuart, his voice now deprived of all the assertiveness which he had injected into it earlier. So much for courage, he thought.

“Oh yes?” said Irene. “Then why does it now have only four?”

She waited a moment before continuing. Then: “So could it be that the car you brought back from Glasgow is not actually our car? Could that be so? And if it isn’t, then whose car, may I ask, is it?”

Stuart was defeated. It had become perfectly obvious to him that Lard O’Connor had ordered the stealing of a car for him and its fitting up with false number-plates. And once he had discovered that, he should have gone straight to the police and told them what had happened. But he had not done that because he had been frightened. He had been frightened of what Lard O’Connor would do to him when he discovered that Stuart had reported him. So he had taken the easy way out and done nothing, denying the problem, hoping that it would go away.

Irene sat down. “Now look,” she said. “We must settle this like sensible adults. We have several problems here, haven’t we?

We’ve got this problem of our car. And then we’ve got a problem The Gettysburg Address

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of your interfering with Bertie’s upbringing. Those are our two problems, aren’t they?”

Stuart nodded. He felt miserable. He would have to abandon this wretched attempt to do things for himself.

“So,” said Irene, her voice low and forgiving. “So, what you need to do, Stuart, is to let me sort everything out. You don’t have to worry. I’ll handle everything. But, as a quid pro quo, you just behave yourself. All right?”

Stuart nodded. He was about to say: yes, it was all right, but then he remembered the trip on the train with Bertie and what he had said to him. So now he looked Irene in the eye. “No,”

he said. “It’s not all right.”

93. The Gettysburg Address

“Six years ago,” said Stuart, “we conceived a child, a son . . .”

Irene interrupted him. “Actually, I conceived a son,” she said.

“Your role, if you recall the event, was relatively minor.”

Stuart stared at her. “Fathers count for nothing then?”

When she replied, Irene’s tone was gentle, as if humouring one who narrowly fails to understand. “Of course I wouldn’t say that. You’re putting words into my mouth. However, the maternal role is undoubtedly much more significant. And when it comes down to it, women do most of the work of child-rearing.

They just do. Who takes Bertie to Italian? Who takes him to yoga, to school? Everywhere in fact? I do.” She paused. “And whom do I see there, at these various places? Not other fathers.

Mothers, like me.”

Stuart took a deep breath. “That’s part of the problem. Bertie doesn’t want to go to Italian lessons. He hates yoga. He told me that himself. He said that it makes him feel . . .”

She did not let him finish. “Oh yes? Oh yes? And where would you take him then? Fishing?”

Stuart smiled. “Yes, I would. I would take him fishing.”

“Teach him to kill, in other words,” said Irene.

306 The Gettysburg Address

“Fishing is not killing.”

“Oh yes? So the fish survives?”

Stuart hesitated. “All right, it’s killing. But . . .”

“And that’s what you want to teach him to do! To kill fish!”

Stuart looked out of the window. The evening sky was clear, bisected on high by the thin white line of a vapour trail. And at the end of the trail, a tiny speck of silver, was a plane heading west; a metaphor for freedom, he thought, even if the freedom at the end of a vapour trail was a brief and illusory one.

“I want him to have some freedom to be a little boy,” he said.

“I want him to be able to play with other boys of his age, doing the sort of thing they like to do. They like to ride their bikes.

They like to hang about. They like to play games, throw balls about, climb trees. They don’t like yoga.”

The roll-call of boyish pursuits was a provocation to Irene.

“What a perfect summary of the sexist concept of a boy,” she exclaimed. “And what about ungendered boys, may I ask? What about them? Do they like to climb trees and ride bikes, do you think?”

“I have no idea what ungendered boys wish to do,” answered Stuart. “In fact, I’m not sure what an ungendered boy is. But the whole point is that Bertie is not one of them. He wants to get on with being what he is, which is a fairly typical little boy.

He’s clever, yes, and he knows a lot. But the thing that you don’t seem able to understand is that he is also a little boy.

And he needs to go through that stage. He needs to have a boyhood.”

Irene was about to answer, but Stuart, in his stride now, cut her off. “For the last few years I think I’ve been very patient. I was never fully happy with the whole Bertie project, as you called it. I expressed doubts, but you never let me say much about them. You see, Irene, you’re not the most tolerant woman I’ve known. Yes, I’m sorry to have to say that, but I mean it. You’re intolerant.”

He paused for a moment, gauging the effect of his words on his wife. She had become silent, her face slightly crumpled. Her confidence seemed diminished, and for a moment Stuart thought The Gettysburg Address

307

that he saw a flicker of doubt. He decided to press on with his address.

“Then you were surprised,” he went on, “when Bertie rebelled. Do you remember how shocked you were when he set fire to my copy of the Guardian while I was reading it? You do?

And here’s another thing, by the way: has it ever occurred to you that I was secretly pleased that he had done that? No? Well, let me tell you, I was. And the reason for that is that I was never consulted about what newspaper we should take in this house.

You never asked me. Not once. You never asked me if I would like to read the Herald or the Scotsman, or anything else. You just ordered the Guardian. And that’s because you can’t tolerate another viewpoint. Or . . . or is it because you’re trying so hard to be right-on, to have all the correct views about everything?

And in reality, deep underneath . . .”

Irene, who had been looking at the floor, now looked up, and Stuart, to his horror, saw that there were tears in her eyes.

“Now look,” he said, reaching out to touch her, “I’m sorry . . .”

“No,” she said. “You don’t have to be sorry. I’m the one who should be sorry.”

“I don’t know,” said Stuart. “I’m sure you were doing your best.”

Irene disregarded this. “I had so many ambitions for Bertie.

I wanted him to be everything that I’m not. What have I done with my life? What have I ever achieved? You have a job – you have a career. I haven’t got that. I’m just a woman who stays at home. Nothing I do ever changes the world. So I thought that with Bertie I could achieve something, at least have something that I could point to and call my creation. And now all that I’ve achieved is to get Bertie to hate me, and you too, it seems.”

“I don’t hate you,” said Stuart. “I admire you. I’m proud of you. I love you very much . . .”

“Do you? Do you really?”

“I do.” But he added: “I want you to loosen up. I want you to be yourself. I want you to let Bertie be himself. I want you to stop trying.”

308 Bertie’s Dream

“And what if the self I should be is something quite different?”

asked Irene, dabbing at her cheek with a corner of tissue. “What then?”

“That doesn’t matter.” But he was intrigued by the possibilities. Was there a side to Irene that he had never guessed at? “Are you different?”

Irene nodded. “I’m quite conservative,” she said. “In my heart of hearts, I’m conservative. You see, Stuart, there’s something I’ve never told you before. You don’t know where I come from, do you?”

“Moray,” he said. “You come from Moray.”

“No,” said Irene. “Moray Place.” She paused, studying Stuart’s reaction. He seemed to be taking it fairly well, she thought; well there was more news for him.

“And there’s something else,” she said. “I’m pregnant.”

94. Bertie’s Dream

That night, Bertie was reluctant to switch off his bedside lamp, so happy was he just to gaze at his newly-painted walls. He was still convinced that the transformation of his room had been achieved through some form of supernatural intervention, although he was not sure what precise form this had taken. One possibility was that the room had been painted by angels, as Bertie had recently read an account of the activity of angels which stressed that the heavenly beings frequently undertook good deeds by stealth. But ultimately it did not matter in the least who, or what agency, had effected the change in his colour scheme; the important thing was that he no longer lived in a pink room, but in a white one.

After he had been lying on his bed for half an hour or so, gazing dreamily at the walls, his parents came through to say goodnight to him, as they always did. His father was first to appear, looking shocked and dazed, and then, after he had gone, his mother, whose eyes and cheeks struck Bertie as being puffy and red.

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“Are you all right, Mummy?” asked Bertie. “You haven’t been crying, have you?”

Irene bent down and kissed Bertie on his brow. “No, Bertie, carissimo. Not crying. Just re-evaluating.”

“Good-night, then,” said Bertie, snuggling down into his bed.

“Buona notte, Bertie,” said Irene. She reached out to turn off his light and stood at his bedside for a few moments, wistfully, looking down at her young son. Then she turned away and left the room, leaving the door very slightly ajar to allow in the small chink of light that Bertie liked to have at night, against the greater darkness.

Bertie closed his eyes and thought of what he might do now that he had a white room. He might invite Tofu round some afternoon and give him bacon sandwiches to eat in the room. There was always plenty of bacon in their fridge and Tofu wouldn’t mind too much if it were to be uncooked. And then he might even invite Olive. He wondered about her. He had felt very wounded when she had accused him of wishing lockjaw upon her, but he thought that it was now time for both of them to move on. He would forgive her for spreading rumours that she was his girlfriend (he had even heard that she had told people that they were actually engaged and that there would be a notice to that effect in the school magazine quite soon). And if he forgave her for that, then she should surely forgive him for the misunderstanding over lockjaw.

Lockjaw, of course, was not the only threat. Bertie had also heard about the dangers of cutting the skin between one’s thumb and forefinger. That, he was told, induced immediate blood-poisoning, unless, of course, one had ready access to a frog, in which case the rubbing of the frog on the wound was a quick and effective treatment. Merlin, the boy in his class who was consulted on all physical matters, had reliably informed them that there was a special tank at the New Royal Infirmary where frogs were bred for this precise purpose, along with leeches, which, he explained, doctors used to treat patients whom they particularly disliked. Olive, Tofu said, would definitely have a leech attached to her if she were for any reason to be admitted to the Royal Infirmary.

310 Bertie’s Dream

Bertie eventually drifted off to sleep and during the course of the night had a dream. In this dream, which he remembered vividly upon waking, he found himself walking in a field of grass, alone to begin with, but first joined by a spotted dog, which trotted content-edly at his heels, and then by a friend. And this friend was Tofu, who walked beside him, his hand resting on Bertie’s shoulder in comfortable companionship. Bertie felt proud to have a friend, even if it was only Tofu, and to have a dog, too, added to his pleasure.

Above them was a high sky of freedom, unsullied by clouds.

Then suddenly the spotted dog ran away. It scampered off into the undergrowth and Bertie called out to it, but it did not come back. He felt bereft now that the dog had gone and he turned to Tofu for reassurance, but Tofu himself had skipped off, disappearing into a thicket at the edge of the field. Bertie called after him, just as he had called after the dog, but a wind had arisen, and it swallowed his words.

Now he was alone, but only for a short time, for his mother suddenly appeared round the corner of a path and she rushed towards him and lifted him up, smothering him with caresses.

Bertie squirmed, trying to escape, but could not; his mother was too powerful; she was like the wind, a gale, an irresistible tide; she could not be vanquished. She held him in her grip, which was a strong one, and prevented him from moving.

But at last she put him down, and Bertie looked up at her and saw something which made his heart turn cold. Irene had a baby in her arms, and she held this baby out to Bertie, saying:

“Look, Bertie! Look at this baby!”

Bertie stared at the baby and thought: Now I have a brother.

“Yes,” said Irene. “You have a brother, Bertie!”

Bertie did not know what to say. He stood quite still while Irene held the baby up to allow it to gaze down on Bertie, which it did with a smile, like one of those babies one sees in pre-Raphaelite paintings, slightly sinister babies. Then Irene turned.

To her side there was a piano and a piano stool, and she put the baby down on the stool. The baby reached out and began to play the piano, its tiny, chubby fingers dancing across the keyboard with great skill.

The Wind Makes the Trains Sound Faint 311

Bertie watched. He was fascinated by the baby’s ability to play the piano. My mother has forced him to learn the piano, he thought. And he is only six months old!

He looked more closely at the baby, who had reached a difficult passage in the music and was frowning with concentration.

Then the baby stopped, and turned towards Bertie and smiled.

And Bertie saw that the baby was wearing a baby suit made of the same blue linen as that worn by Dr Fairbairn.

That was Bertie’s dream.

95. The Wind Makes the Trains Sound Faint When he awoke the next morning, Bertie was initially unwilling to open his eyes. He had gone to sleep in a room which had miraculously turned white; now he feared that it would have changed colour again overnight, back to the pink that he so disliked. But it had not, of course, and he was able to gaze, wide-eyed, at his new colour-scheme and confirm that it was true.

After he had dressed, Bertie went through to the kitchen, from which he heard the strains of an aria from The Magic Flute issuing forth.

“Good morning, Bertie,” said Irene. “Do you know what they’re singing about on the radio?”

“Catching birds,” said Bertie. “Isn’t that the man who catches birds?”

“Yes,” said Irene. “Papageno. Do you know, I briefly considered calling you that when you were born? But then I decided that Bertie sounded better.”

Bertie felt weak. It would have been impossible to live down a name like that, and he felt immensely relieved at his narrow escape. But if she had been thinking of calling him Papageno, then what would she have called that baby in the dream?

Irene looked at him. “Your father and I had a discussion last night,” she said. “We talked a little bit about you.”

Bertie looked at his mother impassively. She was always talking 312 The Wind Makes the Trains Sound Faint about him, although it was perhaps a bit unusual for his father to do so too. He reached for his porridge bowl and poured in the milk.

“Yes,” continued Irene. “We talked about you and we thought that you might like to change things a bit.”

Bertie looked up from his porridge. “Really, Mummy?” He thought quickly. Perhaps this was his chance.

“Could I go and live in a hotel, Mummy?” he asked. “There’s one round the corner in Northumberland Street. I’ve seen it. I could go and live there. You could come and see me now and then.”

Irene smiled. “What nonsense, Bertie!” she said.

Bertie looked back at his porridge. The milk was the sea and the lumps of porridge were tiny islands. And his spoon, placed carefully down on the surface of the milk, was a little boat.

Perhaps he could go to sea. Perhaps he could sign on as a cabin boy in the Navy and make the captain’s tea. Bertie had read one of the Patrick O’Brian books and he made it sound so much fun, although the parts where the ships did battle were rather frightening. However, it wouldn’t be like that these days, he thought, now that the European Union had stopped British ships firing upon Spanish or French ships. Perhaps they just met at sea these days and exchanged new European regulations.

“Yes,” went on Irene. “We’ve been thinking, your father and I, that maybe you should do more of the things you really want to do. Would you like that, Bertie?”

Bertie smiled at his mother. “Very much,” he said. He was pleased, but still rather doubtful. He was not sure whether his mother really understood what he wanted to do. Would he be let off yoga today?

“So, Bertie,” said Irene, “I thought that although today is Saturday, and we normally have double yoga on a Saturday, we might skip it .”

“Oh thank you!” shouted Bertie. “Thank you, Mummy!”

“And instead,” continued Irene, “we shall . . .”

Bertie’s face fell as he wondered what the alternative would be. Double Italian? Or perhaps the floatarium?

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“We shall get Daddy,” said Irene, “we shall get Daddy to take you up to the Princes Street Gardens. You can climb that bit underneath the castle there and look down on the trains. Would you like that, Bertie?”

Bertie let out a whoop of delight. “I’d love that, Mummy. We could see the trains leaving for Glasgow!”

Irene smiled. “An unusual pleasure, in my view,” she mused.

“But there we are. Chacun à son goût. ”

Bertie finished his porridge quickly and then returned to his room to put on a sweater. It was a warm day for the time of the year, but by wearing a sweater he could cover the top part of his dungarees and people would not necessarily think that he was wearing them. From a distance, and if they did not look too closely, they might even think that he was wearing nothing more unusual than red jeans. That is what he hoped for, anyway.

Stuart emerged shortly after Bertie had got himself ready.

After a quick breakfast, with Bertie champing at the bit to be out, they left the flat and Scotland Street and began to walk up the hill towards Princes Street. It was a fine morning and when they reached Princes Street the flags on the flagpoles were fluttering proudly in a strong breeze from the west.

314 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VII – Bridge at Blair Atholl

“It makes you proud, doesn’t it, Bertie?” said Stuart. “Look at the wonderful scene. The flags. The Castle. The statues.

Doesn’t it make you proud to be Scottish, to be part of all this?”

“Aye, it does that, Faither,” said Bertie.

They crossed the road and made their way into the Gardens.

Then, crossing the railway line on the narrow pedestrian bridge, they headed for the steep path that led up the lower slopes of the Castle Rock. After a short climb, they found a place to sit, half on rock, half on grass, and from there they watched the trains run through the cutting down below. As they passed, some of the trains sounded their whistles, and the sound drifted up to them, and the sound, to Bertie at least, meant the freedom of the wider world, the freedom of which he was now, at last, being offered a glimpse. And he was happy, even when the wind swallowed up the sound of the whistles and made the train sounds seem faint and far away.

“I had a very strange dream last night, Daddy,” said Bertie suddenly.

“Oh yes, Bertie. And what was that?”

“I dreamed that Mummy had a new baby,” said Bertie. “And the baby was dressed in blue linen, which is what Dr Fairbairn wears. It was very funny. A little blue linen baby suit.”

Stuart looked at his son. Down below a train went past and sounded a warning whistle, audible for a moment, but then caught by the wind and carried away.

96. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story:

Part VII – Bridge at Blair Atholl

Ramsey Dunbarton looked at Betty with all the fondness that comes of over forty years of marriage. “I don’t think that you’re finding my memoirs interesting, Betty,” he said. “But don’t worry, I’m not going to read much more.”

“But they are interesting,” protested Betty. “They’re very interesting, Ramsey. It’s just that it gets so warm here in the The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VII – Bridge at Blair Atholl 315

conservatory and I find myself drifting off from the heat. It’s not you, Ramsey, my dear. You read on.”

“I’m only going to read two more excerpts,” said Ramsey, shuffling the papers of his manuscript. “And then I’m going to stop.”

“Read on, Macduff,” said Betty.

“Why do you call me Macduff ?” asked Ramsey, sounding puzzled. “We have no Macduffs in the family as far as I know.

No, hold on! I think we might, I think we just might! My mother’s cousin, the one who came from Forres, married a man whom we used to call Uncle Lou, and I think that he had a brother-in-law who was a Macduff. Yes, I think he was! Well, there you are, Betty! Isn’t Scotland a village!”

“Do carry on,” said Betty, closing her eyes. “I love the sound of your voice, Ramsey.”

“Now then,” said Ramsey, referring to his manuscript. “This happened about twenty years ago. I had a client, not Johnny Auchtermuchty, but somebody quite different, who had a large hotel in Perthshire. We acted for them in some Court of Session business that they had and I went up there one Saturday to have lunch with my client and to discuss the progress of the legal action down in Edinburgh. It was a very complicated case and I was not at all sure that the counsel we had instructed understood some of the finer points involved. I had suggested this to him – very politely, of course – and he had become quite shirty, implying that advocates generally knew more about the law than solicitors did, which is why they were advocates in the first place. I replied that I very much doubted this and to prove the point I asked him whether he could name, from the top of his head, a certain section of a statute to do with the sale of goods. He looked at me in a very rude way, I thought, and then he had the gall to tell me that the legislation to which I was referring had been repealed the previous year, and did I know that? It was not an amicable exchange.

“The client, though, was a very agreeable man, and it was a mark of his status in that part of Perthshire that just as we were finishing lunch at his house the telephone went and it was none other than the Duke of Atholl! Now deceased, sadly.

“The Duke was a very strong bridge player – international 316 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VII – Bridge at Blair Atholl standard, in fact – and they were just about to have a game of bridge up at Blair Atholl and they needed a fourth player. The Duke wondered whether my host would care to play. Unfortunately he could not, as he had a further engagement that afternoon, but then he turned to me and asked me whether I would like to go up in his stead. Now, my bridge is not very strong, but I had played a bit with the Braids Bridge Club and of course it was a great honour to be invited to play with the Duke, and so I readily agreed.

“I went up to Blair Atholl more or less straightaway. A servant let me into the house and showed me up to the drawing room, where I met the Duke and two others, a man and a woman who were staying with him as his guests – people from London whose names I did not catch, but who seemed quite civil, for Londoners.

Then we all sat down at the bridge table, with me partnering the Duke. He opened the bidding on that first hand with one heart, and I rapidly took him up to four hearts on the strength of my single ace. Unfortunately, we did not make it, the Duke very quietly saying that he thought it was perhaps a slightly bad split.

“The game continued, and I must say that I enjoyed it immensely, even if the Duke and I were three rubbers down at the end. He did not seem to mind this very much, and was a very considerate host. We had a cup of tea after the bridge and we talked for about half an hour before the Duke had to attend to some other matter and I took my leave.

“ ‘Do have a wander round, Dunbarton,’ ” the Duke said very kindly. “ ‘Take a walk up the brae if you wish.’ ”

“I decided to take him up on this invitation since it was such a pleasant late afternoon. There was a path which led up a small hill and I followed this, admiring the views of the Perthshire countryside. Then the most remarkable thing happened. I turned a corner and there before me, charging through the heather, was a group of armed men, all wearing kilts and carrying infantry rifles. I stopped in my tracks – the men had clearly not seen me

– and then I rapidly turned round and ran back to the castle.

Beating on the door, I demanded of the servant who came to answer that I had to see His Grace immediately, on a matter of the utmost urgency.

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“I was taken to the drawing room again, where I found the Duke sitting with his two other guests, engaged in conversation.

“‘Your Grace!’ I shouted. ‘Call the police immediately! There’s a group of armed men making their way down the hillside!’

“The Duke did not seem at all surprised. In fact, he smiled.

“ ‘Oh them,’ he said. ‘Don’t you worry about them. That’s my private army.’

“And then I remembered. Of course! The Duke of Atholl has the only private army allowed in the country. I should have thought about that before I panicked and raised the alarm, and so I left feeling somewhat sheepish. But the bridge had been enjoyable, and I reflected on the fact that it would probably be a long time before I would be invited to play bridge again with a duke. In fact, I never received a subsequent invitation, but I have in no sense resented that. Not in the slightest.”

97. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story:

Part VIII – I Play the Duke of Plaza-Toro

“From real dukes,” read Ramsey Dunbarton, “to stage dukes.

And to that most colourful character, the Duke of Plaza-Toro, whom I had the particular honour to play at the Church Hill Theatre. Looking back on my life, which has been an eventful one by any standards, I might be tempted to say that that episode is probably one of the great saliences of my personal history.

“At the risk of sounding boastful, I have always had a rather fine voice. As a boy I sang in the local church choir, and had I auditioned for one of the great Edinburgh choirs, the choir of St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, for example, I would probably have got in. But I did not, and so never sang in Palmerston Place. I did, however, join the Savoy when I was at university and was in the chorus of several productions. I am quite certain that I would have had principal roles were it not for the fact that the various producers who did those productions did not like me for some reason. It is very wrong when producers allow 318 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VIII – I Play the Duke . . .

personal preferences to dictate casting. It happens all the time.

People pick their girlfriends and boyfriends to sing the choice parts; it’s never a question of merit. And I gather that you find exactly the same thing in the West End and on Broadway.

“After the Savoy, I joined the Bohemians, and appeared in a number of their productions, often at the King’s Theatre, again in the chorus. There was The Merry Widow, which I always enjoyed very much, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Porgy and Bess, to name just a few. In Porgy, I was an understudy for one of the principals, but was not called upon to sing. I must admit that it is very difficult not to wish ill on a principal in those circumstances, but I shall never forget the story told me by one of the Bohemians about how, some time ago, he had been an understudy for somebody in Cav and Pag, and had wished that the other singer would fall under a bus. Which he did. I’m not sure which number the bus was, but I think that it might even have been the 23, the bus which goes up Morningside Road. Fortunately, he survived, although one of his legs was broken, and of course the understudy felt so bad about it that he could barely bring himself to sing the part.

“After a break from the Bohemians, I joined the Morningside Grand Opera, an amateur group which put on a range of performances at the Church Hill Theatre each year. They were ambitious and even did Wagner’s Ring Cycle one year, to mixed reviews, but they also did a lot of the old favourites, such as The Gondoliers. And it was in The Gondoliers that I sang my first principal role, that of the Duke of Plaza-Toro.

“It was a wonderful role, and I would have enjoyed it far more than I actually did if the other singers had been slightly stronger than they actually were. Only a day or two before the first night, I could not help but notice that a number of them had not bothered to learn the words correctly, and there was one young man, who sang the part of Luiz, who just sang la, la, la when he came to a bit that he had not learned. And as for the woman who sang the part of the old nurse, she only had two lines to sing (where she reveals that Luiz was really the baby), but she could not even remember those!

The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VIII – I Play the Duke . . .

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“The young man who played Luiz was particularly irritating.

My feelings over his behaviour became quite strong at an early stage in the rehearsals, when I overheard him saying to one of the gondolieri that he, rather than I, should have been cast as the Duke of Plaza-Toro.

“If the whole idea had not been so laughable I would have remonstrated with him. One needs a certain gravitas to play the Duke of Plaza-Toro, and I had that and he simply did not. I was a WS, after all, and he was not. He was also far younger than I was and it would have been absurd to see him pretending to be the leader of the ducal party.

“But it gets worse than that. He had a most annoying manner, that young man. I expected him to call me Mr Dunbarton (or perhaps ‘Your Grace’ in the circumstances!) but he actually used my first name immediately after we had been introduced. And then he presumed to shorten it, and began to refer to me as

‘Ramps’. That was almost unbearable, particularly when he turned to me at one point in a rehearsal and said ‘That’s a B-flat by the way, Ramps!’

“I must also admit my doubts as to the casting of the Duchess.

The woman who had the part was very friendly with the producer. I shall say no more about that. However, I did feel that a more appropriate person might have been cast in that role. In particular, there was somebody in the chorus who had been Head Girl many years before of the Mary Erskine School for Girls, when it used to be in Queen Street, where it had that wonderful roof garden for the girls to play on. That sort of background would have equipped her very well to play the role of the Duchess of Plaza-Toro, but do you think that the producer took that into account for one single moment? He did not.

“But these were minor matters, when all is said and done. The final production was not at all bad, and a number of people said that my own performance as the Duke of Plaza-Toro was the best portrayal they had ever seen of that role. That was very kind of them. It’s so easy to be disparaging of other people’s efforts, and I must confess that there is a slight tendency in that direction in Edinburgh. But I am not one to criticise Edinburgh, in

320 Younger Women, Older Men

spite of its occasional little failing. We are very lucky to live here and I for one will never forget that, bearing in mind what so many people have to put up with when they live in other places.”

He put down his memoirs and looked at Betty. Her head was nodding in agreement, or, if one took the uncharitable view, sleep.

98. Younger Women, Older Men

Down the steps into Big Lou’s coffee bar, the very steps down which Christopher Grieve had descended when books were sold there (in the days when coffee was instant, and undrinkable); down those steps went father and son, Matthew and Gordon.

Gordon had arrived at his son’s gallery without notice, had saun-tered in, and indicated that he wanted to talk to his son. And Matthew, embarrassed by the memory of his churlish behaviour over dinner – behaviour which he somehow had seemed just unable to control – had said: “We must have coffee, Dad. I usually go about this time to a place over the road.”

“Anywhere, son,” Gordon replied. “You know my feelings about coffee.”

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Matthew frowned. “I don’t, actually,” he said. “I didn’t know you had views on coffee.”

“It’s a racket,” said Gordon. “All these fancy alternatives.

Skinny latte with vanilla. Double espresso. Americano. So on.

It’s all just coffee, isn’t it?”

Matthew thought about this. “But what about your malt whiskies?” he said. “You go on about fifteen-year-old this and twenty-year-old that. It’s all just whisky, isn’t it?”

Gordon looked at his son with pity. “That’s different, Matt,”

he said, adding: “As you well know.”

Matthew had said nothing in response to this. He had never been able to argue with his father, whose tactic of defending a position was to imply that the other side knew full well that what he, Gordon, said was right. And there was no time for argument anyway, as they were now entering the coffee bar and Matthew had to introduce his father to Big Lou. A thought occurred to him, and made him smile: Big Lou would now be able to say of him, I ken his faither. This was a useful thing to be able to say in Scotland, as it could be used with devastating effect to cut somebody down to size. And cutting others down to size, Matthew knew, was at the heart of Scottish culture. What better way of suggesting that the other person was just a jumped-up wee boy than to say that one kent his faither?

Matthew did not choose his usual table, as he was concerned that they might be joined by Angus Lordie, if he came in, or that vague woman from the flat above the coffee bar, that woman whose name he could never remember and who tried, unsuccessfully, to appear mysterious. Matthew knew that he had to talk to his father. He had to express the fears which had been preying on him since he had first met Janis and which would not go away. He was convinced that the florist was primarily interested in his father’s money, and Matthew wanted to protect him from this, but until then he had been unwilling to broach the subject with him directly. Yet it could not be put off forever.

Used they not to say in marriage ceremonies: Speak now or forever hold your peace? He would have to speak now.

They sat down together while Big Lou prepared the coffee.

322 Younger Women, Older Men

She had smiled at Matthew’s father and shaken his hand, and Gordon had responded warmly. “Nice woman, that,” he had whispered to Matthew. “Lots of hard work in her.”

“Yes,” said Matthew. “Lou has certainly worked hard.”

“There’s nothing like hard work,” said Gordon thoughtfully.

“That’s what makes money, you know, Matthew. Hard work.”

Matthew pursed his lips. There was censure in his father’s words, but he resisted the temptation to respond in kind. If they had an argument, then he would be unable to raise the issue of Janis. Of course, now that Gordon had mentioned money it gave him his opportunity.

“Yes,” said Matthew. “You’ve worked hard for your money.

Everybody knows that. I do.” He paused, watching his father.

Gordon sat impassively. Of course he had worked hard for his money, and he did not need his son to point that out to him.

“And that’s why I wouldn’t like to see anybody take it away from you,” Matthew went on. He spoke hurriedly, rushing to get the words out.

Gordon frowned. “Naturally,” he said. “But why do you think anybody would try to get my money away from me?”

Matthew’s heart was thumping wildly within him. It was too late to stop now; he would have to complete what he had to say.

“Well,” he said. “There are some people who try to marry others for their money. Gold-diggers, you know.”

Gordon’s eyes narrowed as Matthew finished. “I take it that you are referring to Janis,” he said icily. “Am I correct? Are you?”

Matthew lowered his eyes. He had always found it difficult to hold his father’s gaze, and now it was impossible. And of course he knew that this made his father consider him shifty and elusive, which was not the case. But he could not look into those eyes and see the reproach which had just always seemed to be there.

“Look, Dad,” he began. “All I’m saying is that when a younger woman gets in tow with a . . . with a slightly older man, then one has to be a bit careful if the older man happens to have a lot of smackers. Which, I’m afraid, rather applies to you, doesn’t Janis Exposed

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it? You’re not exactly on the bread line, are you? And the problem is that there have been one or two things in the press about how much you’re worth. Eleven million, isn’t it? Something like that?

Janis can read.”

Gordon was about to reply, but was interrupted by Big Lou bringing their coffee to the table.

“Here you are, boys,” she said breezily. “One double espresso.

One South American roast with double low-fat milk.”

Gordon reached for his coffee, thanking Big Lou politely.

“Does my son here patronise your business regularly?” he asked.

“Every day,” she said. “He comes in every morning.

Sometimes stays for hours.”

Matthew tried to catch Big Lou’s eye, but the damage was done.

“Oh yes?” exclaimed Gordon, glancing at Matthew. “Sits here for hours, does he?”

Big Lou realised her tactlessness and looked apologetically at Matthew. “Not really,” she laughed. “That’s wishful thinking on my part. I’d like him to sit here for hours, but he doesn’t really.

Just a little joke.”

Big Lou now went back to her counter, leaving the two men seated opposite one another, one glaring at the other.

“Let me get this straight,” hissed Gordon. “Are you calling Janis a gold-digger? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes,” said Matthew. “I am.”

99. Janis Exposed

Now I’ve done it, thought Matthew. I’ve very specifically accused my father’s girlfriend of being after his money, and the accusa-tion has gone down more or less as I thought it would.

And in that, Matthew was right. Gordon’s face had coloured with anger.

“Tell me exactly why you have this low opinion of my friend,”

324 Janis Exposed

Gordon said. “If you’re going to make allegations like that, then presumably you have some basis for them. Tell me, what is it?

What evidence do you have? Or do you just throw things like that – insulting things – throw them about on the basis of suspicion or, and I’m sorry to say this, jealousy?”

Matthew thought. What evidence did he have? Now that he thought of it, none at all. So what was it? And at that point he realised that the reason why he took this view was simple. It was simple, but true. Janis did not love his father. You can tell when somebody loves another. It shows in the eyes; the attitude. There was none of that feeling in this case, thought Matthew. Any overt signs of affection on her part just did not seem to ring true. She was a gold-digger; it was obvious, and yet his poor father, infatuated because an attractive younger woman had shown an interest in him, simply could not see what her real motive was.

Matthew wondered whether he should tell his father this. It was a hard thing for anybody to hear – that love was unreciprocated. Many people would simply not believe that if they heard it. And yet, his father was an adult (offspring often have to remind themselves of that hard fact) and could not be protected from uncomfortable knowledge. So he looked at his father, met his gaze, and said: “Dad, she doesn’t love you. I can tell.”

At first, Gordon did nothing. He stared at his son, as if uncomprehending, and then reached for his coffee cup and took a sip of his espresso. He’s struggling, thought Matthew.

He’s struggling with his dented pride (poor man) and with his amour-propre. This is very painful. This is very hard.

“So,” said Gordon quietly. “So she doesn’t love me, you say.”

Matthew nodded. “She doesn’t love you.”

“And so when I asked her to marry me,” went on Gordon,

“and she accepted – that meant nothing, did it?”

Matthew sighed. “You’ve gone and proposed?” he asked. “Oh, Dad, Dad, Dad! You’re making a big mistake. Mega-disaster all round. Oh, no, no, no!”

“Give me your evidence,” said Gordon grimly. “Give me one Janis Exposed

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single shred of evidence you have that she doesn’t love me. Show me. Just show me.”

“But can’t you see?” said Matthew, raising his voice. “Can’t you see that there’ll be no evidence as such? You sense these things. You know them. You can’t necessarily find any evidence.”

Gordon held up a hand to stop his son. “Right,” he said.

“You’ve said enough as far as I’m concerned. You’ve insulted the woman I love. I’m not going to stand for it, Matthew. I’m just not.”

“I’m only trying to help you,” protested Matthew. He reached out to touch his father, but Gordon sat back, out of reach.

“Look,” went on Matthew. “Try to think. Have you told her about your money? Did she ask you?”

“I’ve spoken to her,” said Gordon. “She raised it with me.”

Matthew’s eyes widened. “She raised it?” he asked. “She did?”

“That’s correct,” said Gordon. “She asked me some fairly searching questions. And I gave her perfectly frank answers.”

“Well, there you are!” cried Matthew. “It’s just exactly as I said. She’s interested in getting her hands on your cash. It’s glaringly obvious.”

Gordon shook his head. “You stupid boy,” he said. “Sorry, but that’s what you are, Matthew. She raised the issue because she wanted to talk to me about divesting myself of a large part of it.”

“To her, I suppose,” observed Matthew wryly. “Great tactic.”

“No,” said Gordon patiently. “You’re one hundred per cent wrong there, Matthew. You see, Janis has persuaded me to set up a charitable fund. I thought I might set one up for golfers in distress. Then she has urged me to transfer a considerable amount of money to you, as it happens. She’s suggested that I should, in fact, give away about seven million. Three to the fund and four to you.”

Matthew was silent. He stared at his father. And then he bit his lip.

“Yes,” said Gordon. “Do you know, when you were a wee boy you used to bite your lip like that whenever you were in the wrong over something. You just bit your lip.

326 Big Lou

“And I see you doing it right now. It’s funny, isn’t it? – how we keep these little mannerisms over the years.”

“Dad,” Matthew began. “I didn’t . . .”

“No,” said Gordon, “you didn’t know. Well, as they say, ye ken noo.”

“Yes,” said Matthew. “I ken noo.”

“And can you think of any reason,” Gordon asked, “why I should not reverse my decision to transfer that money to you?

After all, you have such a low opinion of my fiancée. I wouldn’t want to force a decision of hers upon you, would I?”

“I’m sorry,” said Matthew. “I really am. I’m sorry.”

Gordon stared at his son. My son has never been a liar, he said to himself. He has been lazy, maybe, and a bit weak, but he has never been a liar. And so if he says that he is sorry for what he said, then he is. And the least I can do is to accept that apology.

Gordon stood up. “Stand up, Matthew,” he said. Matthew, shamefacedly, stood up, and Gordon walked round the side of the table and faced his son.

“That’s fine by me,” he said. He leaned forward, so that nobody else might hear what he had to say. “And do you know something, Matthew? Well, here’s something you should know: I’m proud of you. I never told you that, and I should have. I’m proud of what you are. I’m proud of the fact that, unlike me, you’ve never trodden on anybody else, or even considered doing that. And that makes you more of a man than I am, in my book.”

Matthew could not say anything. So he stood there with his father, and Gordon put his arm about his son’s shoulder and left it there, to reassure him, to show what he felt but could not find the words to say.

100. Big Lou

Big Lou watched as Matthew and his father went their separate ways, Matthew to his gallery over the road and Gordon up the hill in the direction of Queen Street. It had been obvious to her Big Lou

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what was going on: a reconciliation of some sort between father and son. That pleased her; Big Lou did not like conflict and estrangement – what was the point, she thought, in being at odds with those whom we should love when our time on this earth was so very short?

She stared out of the window onto the steps that climbed up to Dundas Street. The coffee bar was now empty, but a customer would no doubt soon appear. Angus Lordie, perhaps, with that dog of his, or one of the antique dealers from down the road, from the Three Estaits, who would entertain Lou with news from the auction rooms.

But it was the postman who arrived, a thin-faced man who came from Dundee and always asked Big Lou about Arbroath, although she had nothing to tell him. This morning he extracted a couple of letters from his sack and placed them carefully on the counter.

“Arbroath,” he said, looking at Big Lou’s face with searching eyes. “Did you know some people called McNair? He was a joiner there, a long time ago. Then they moved to Dundee.”

Big Lou shook her head. “Sorry, Willy. It’s been a long time.”

She glanced at the letters. Was it? Yes, it was.

“They had a daughter who went to Glasgow,” continued the postman. “I think she trained as a nurse at Yorkhill.” Scotland was like that; long stories, endless links, things that half-happened.

Big Lou was staring at the letters. “Oh yes,” she said. “I didn’t know anybody called McNair. They might have been there while I was, but you know how it is when you’re younger. You just think of yourself.”

“That’s it,” he said. “You’re right there, Lou.”

Big Lou looked down at the letters and then glanced at her watch.

“Won’t keep you,” said the postman. “Cheerio, Lou.”

As he turned to leave, she reached for one of the letters and slit the envelope open with a bread-knife. The postmark had told her who it was, and now she unfolded the letter within and saw his characteristic handwriting, the same writing that had 328 Big Lou

been on the letter which she had cherished for all those years, the years of his absence.

“Dear Lou,” she read, “you know, don’t you, what a bad letter-writer I am. This is not because I find it difficult to write things down – I don’t. It’s just because I find it hard to write to you, because I have treated you so badly. Well, maybe I haven’t treated you badly, exactly, but I have not been very good about telling you things. And then there were all those years in which I never wrote to you at all although I knew that you must have been wondering what I was doing and when I was going to come back to Scotland.

“Well, I let you down on that, didn’t I? When I wrote to you and told you that I was going to be in Edinburgh you must have wondered whether I was going to remember my promise to invite you over to Texas. And I had not even had the decency to write to you and tell you that I was married and that I had moved to Mobile. I’m sorry about that, Lou. I should have told you. Men sometimes don’t think about these things and then they are surprised when women are upset about it. I want you to know that I’m sorry about that.

“I told you, didn’t I, about how I had moved to Mobile and opened a restaurant which I was running with my wife? Well, we ran that restaurant for six months and then I discovered something really hard for me. My wife was carrying on with one of the waiters. I had no idea that this was happening until I discovered them together at a fun-fair. She had said that she was going to see her aunt and I believed her. But then I telephoned the aunt and she said that she wasn’t there. So I knew that she was lying.

“I went out for a drive. It was a way of calming my anger that she should have lied to me, and by chance I found a fun-fair on a bit of wasteland near this big causeway that we have in Mobile. I don’t know why I stopped, but I’m glad that I did, as I found the two of them going round and round on the great wheel. I got into one of the cars behind them and up and round we went. They had not seen me, but I could see them and I could see him put his arm around her and kiss her. That was hard, Lou – it was very hard.

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“I did nothing for a while, and then I shouted out: I can see you!

“She turned round and spotted me up above them and I thought she was going to fall out of the car. But she did not, and when they went down again they signalled to the operator to let them out and they ran off to the car park and climbed into his van. That’s the last I saw of her. I shouldn’t have married her, Lou. She was too young for me. Sixteen’s too young for a girl to marry.

“So I divorced her and now I’m coming back to Scotland and I want to know two things. The first is whether you will be prepared to see me again. And the second is whether you will agree to marry me. That is what I want to know. I hope you do, Lou, because you are the lady I have always loved, even when I told myself that I loved somebody else. I didn’t. I loved you. That’s all, Lou. That’s all there is to it.”

Lou put the letter down, and then, fumbling with the strings, she tore off her apron, picked up a sign that said CLOSED, and half walked, half ran, out of the coffee bar and up the steps to the road above. She had to tell somebody, and Matthew would do. He would not be particularly interested, she knew, but she would tell him anyway. She had to share her joy, as Lou knew that joy unshared was a halved emotion, just as sadness and loss, when borne alone, were often doubled.

101. In the Bookshop

Seated on a comfortable blue sofa in the coffee shop of Ottakar’s Bookshop, Domenica Macdonald was in conversation with her old friend, Dilly Emslie. Beside her, in a plastic shopping bag, lay Domenica’s haul from her trip to the bookshop: a racy biography of an eighteenth-century German princeling (or Domenica hoped it was racy – the cover certainly suggested that, but covers were notoriously meretricious), a history of aspirin, and a novel about a young woman who went 330 In the Bookshop

to London, discovered it was a mistake, and returned to her small town in Northumbria, where nothing happened for the remainder of the book.

“I almost bought a book about pirates,” Domenica remarked.

“Pirates are such an interesting subject, don’t you think? And yet there are very few anthropological studies of pirate life.”

“It must be rather difficult to do,” Dilly said thoughtfully.

“Presumably pirates wouldn’t exactly encourage anthropologists.”

Domenica took a sip of her espresso. “I’m not sure about that,” she said. “Most people are flattered by attention. And remember that anthropologists have studied all sorts of apparently dangerous people. Head-hunters in New Guinea, for example. Those people became very used to having an anthropologist about the place. Some of them became quite dependent on their anthropologists – rather like some people become rather dependent on their social workers.”

“But of course it’s a bit late now, don’t you think?” said Dilly.

“Today’s pirates must be rather elusive.”

“There are more than you imagine,” said Domenica. “I gather that the South China Seas are riddled with them. And they’re becoming bolder and bolder. They even try to board tankers and ships like that. They’re very piratical.”

The two friends were silent for a moment. There was a certain incongruity in discussing pirates in George Street. But Domenica had a further thought. “Do you know that pirates used to be quite active, even in British waters? They used to plague the south coast of England, coming ashore and carrying off the local women into captivity. Can you imagine going about your day-to-day business in your kitchen and suddenly having a large pirate bursting in and carrying one off ? What a shock it must have been.”

Dilly agreed. It must have been very disruptive, she thought.

Domenica warmed to her theme. “Of course, it might have suited some women to be carried off by pirates. You know, the plainer sort of girl may have found it livened up her life a bit, don’t you think? In fact, one might just imagine groups of plainer girls having endless picnics on likely-looking cliffs, just on the In the Bookshop

331

off-chance that a pirate ship might go past. Waving, perhaps, to attract attention . . .”

They both laughed.

“That’s enough about pirates,” said Dilly. “What about you, Domenica? What have you been up to?”

Domenica thought for a moment. What had she been up to?

The answer, it seemed, was very little. She had gone nowhere, she had stopped writing the paper she was working on, and she had hardly even spoken to her neighbours for months. It was a depressing thought.

“Very little,” she answered. “In fact, Dilly, I feel quite stuck.

I’m in a rut.”

“Impossible,” said Dilly. “I’ve never known you to be anything but involved. You do so much.”

“Not any more,” said Domenica. “I’m stalled.”

Dilly smiled. “You need a new project. A new anthropological study. Something novel. Something that will make waves.”

Domenica looked at the ceiling. A new project was a good idea, but what was there for her to do? She had no stomach for further theoretical speculation on method and objectivity, and she had no idea of what opportunities there were in the field.

New Guinea was stale these days, and the head-hunters were more concerned with human rights than they used to be . . .

Besides, it was politically incorrect even to use the term head-hunter. They were . . . what were they? Head re-locators? Or, by some lovely inversion, personnel recruiters?

“I have an idea for you,” said Dilly. “What about pirates?

What about a pioneering anthropological study of the life and customs of modern pirates in the South China Seas? You could live with them in their mangrove swamps and then sit in the back of their boats as they dash out to commit acts of piracy.

Of course, you’d have to be completely detached. You could hardly join in. But you anthropologists know all about detach-ment and disinterested observation.”

Domenica, who had been cradling her coffee cup in her hands as Dilly talked, now put it down on the table with a thud.

“Do you know?” she said. “That’s a very intriguing idea.

332 In the Bookshop

There are plenty of studies of modern criminals – even the Mafia has been looked into by anthropologists and criminologists. But, as far as I know, nobody has actually gone and lived with pirates.”

“And would you?” asked Dilly.

“I feel like a change,” said Domenica. “I’m fed up. I need a new challenge.”

“This will be challenging,” said Dilly, expressing a note of caution. “In fact, I wonder if it would be altogether wise. These people sound as if they are rather desperate characters. They might not appreciate . . .”

But it was too late for caution. Domenica had gone to New Guinea on impulse; she had carried out her ground-breaking study of bride-price procedures amongst the Basotho on the passing suggestion of a colleague; and she had spent an entire year among the Inuit of the North-West Territories simply because she had seen a striking picture of the Aurora Borealis, pictured from Yellowknife. Pirates now beckoned in exactly the same way, and the call would be answered.

“It’s a marvellous idea,” Domenica said. “I shall get in touch with the Royal Anthropological Institute. I imagine that they’ll be positive about it.”

“We shall miss you,” said Dilly, “when you’re with the pirates.”

“Oh, I expect they’re on e-mail these days,” said Domenica.

“I shall keep in touch.” They said goodbye to one another at the front door of the bookshop and Domenica began the walk back to Scotland Street. On the surface, it was an outrageous idea; but then so many important anthropological endeavours must have seemed outrageous when first conceived. This would certainly be difficult, but once one had established contact, and trust, it would be much the same as any fieldwork. One would observe the households. One would study family relationships.

One would look at the domestic economy and the ideological justification structure (if any). It would, in many senses, be mundane work. But pirates! One had to admit there was a certain ring to it.

Matthew Thinks

333

102. Matthew Thinks

After Big Lou had burst into the gallery, full of her good news, and had burst out again, Matthew and Pat sat quietly around a desk, sorting out the photographs for a catalogue that they were planning.

“I’m very pleased for Big Lou,” Matthew said. “She had written him off, you know. She thought she’d seen the last of him.”

“She deserves some good luck,” said Pat. “I hope that he’s good for her.”

“Big Lou can look after herself,” said Matthew. “She’s strong.”

Pat disagreed, at least in part. “And it’s often the strong women who suffer the most,” she said. “You’d be surprised, Matthew. Strong women put up with dreadful men.”

“Anyway,” said Matthew, “the important thing is that Big Lou is happy.”

“Yes,” said Pat. “That’s good.”

Matthew looked at Pat. It made her uncomfortable when he looked at her like that; it was almost as if he were reproaching her for something.

“And I’m feeling pretty happy too,” he said. “Do you know that? I’m feeling very happy this morning.”

“I’m glad,” said Pat. “And why is that?”

“That talk I had with my old man,” said Matthew. “It was

. . . well, shall we say that it was productive.”

Pat waited for him to continue.

“I was wrong about Janis,” went on Matthew. “I thought that she wasn’t right for him.”

“In what way?” asked Pat. “Too young?”

“That . . . and in other ways,” said Matthew. “But I was wrong.

And now I know that one shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”

“And you told him this?” asked Pat.

“I did. And he was really nice to me – really nice. He said something very kind to me. And then . . .”

Pat waited. She was pleased by this reconciliation – she liked Gordon and she had thought that Matthew had been too hard on him.

334 Matthew Thinks

Matthew seemed to be debating with himself whether to tell Pat something. He opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it. But at last he spoke.

“He was very generous to me,” he said. “He gave me some money.”

“That’s good of him,” said Pat. “He’s done that before, hasn’t he?”

“Oh yes, he’s done that before. But never on this scale.”

Pat sighed. “My father gave me fifty pounds last week,” she said. “How much did you get? A hundred?”

Matthew looked down at the desk and picked up a photograph of a painting. It was of a sheep-dog chasing sheep; the sort of painting that nineteenth-century artists loved to paint, on a large scale, for upwardly mobile purchasers. Nobody painted sheep-dogs any more, it seemed.

“Four million,” he said quietly.

There was complete silence. Matthew put down the photograph, but did not look at Pat. She was staring at him, her mouth slightly open. Four million.

At last she spoke. “Four million is a lot of money, Matthew.

What are you going to do with it?”

Matthew shrugged. He had no idea what he would do with four million pounds, other than to put it safely away in the bank.

Adam and Company would be the safest place for that.

“I don’t know,” he said. He looked about the gallery. “I could put some of it into this place, of course. I could go to the auctions and bid for the expensive paintings. A real Peploe, for example.

A Hornel or two. A Vettriano.”

“You had a Vettriano,” said Pat. “And then . . .”

“That was some months ago,” said Matthew. “There’s also Elizabeth Blackadder. People like her work. All those flowers and Japanese what-nots. Or Stephen Mangan, with those thirties-like people; very enigmatic. People like him. I could have all these people in here now if I wanted to.”

Pat reflected on this. “It could become the best gallery in town.”

Matthew beamed. “Yes,” he said. “There’s nothing to stop us Matthew Thinks

335

now. The London galleries will be very jealous. Stuck-up bunch.”

He looked down at the photographs on the table before them.

The paintings seemed somewhat forlorn after the roll-call of famous artists he had just pronounced. Yet there was a comfortable integrity about these paintings, with their earnest reporting of domestic scenes and picturesque scenes. But they were not great art, and now he would be able to handle great art. It would all be very different now that he had four million pounds.

“It’s odd, isn’t it,” said Matthew, “what a difference four million pounds makes? You wouldn’t think that it did, would you? – and yet it does.”

“Yes,” said Pat. “I wouldn’t mind having four million pounds.”

Then she added: “Are you going to buy a new car, Matthew?”

Matthew looked surprised. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said.

“Do you think I need to?”

Pat’s reply came quickly. “Yes,” she said. “You could get yourself something sporty. One of those little BMWs. Do you know the ones?”

“I’ve seen them,” said Matthew. “I don’t know . . .”

“But you must,” said Pat. “Can’t you see yourself in one of them? Shooting down the Mound in one of those, with the top down?”

“Maybe,” said Matthew. “Or maybe one of those new Bentleys

– the ones with the leather steering wheel and the back that goes like this. I wouldn’t mind one of those.”

“Well, you can get one,” encouraged Pat. “Now that you’ve got four million pounds.” She thought for a moment, and then went on, “And just think of the trips you can make! French Polynesia! Mombassa! The Caribbean!”

“That would be interesting,” admitted Matthew.

“Well, you can do all of that,” Pat concluded. “All of that –

and more.”

They returned to their work, putting aside thoughts of expensive cars and exotic trips, at least on Matthew’s part. After about ten minutes, Pat looked up from her task of arranging photographs to look at Matthew.

“What are you doing tomorrow night?” she asked him.

336 All Goes Well for Bruce

“Domenica’s having a dinner party and asked me. She said that I could bring a friend, if I wished. Would you . . . ?”

Matthew accepted quickly. He was delighted to receive an invitation from Pat, and had long hoped for one. Now, at last, she . . . He stopped. He stood up and walked over to the window to look out on the street. He looked thoughtful, for there was something very specific to think about here, something which sapped the pleasure that he had felt. There was something worrying to consider.

103. All Goes Well for Bruce

“So he’s going away,” said Dr Macgregor. “To London, you say?”

Lying on her bed, talking to her father on the telephone, Pat gazed up at the ceiling. “Yes,” she said. “He came back this evening looking tremendously pleased with himself.”

“But that’s not unusual for that young man,” said Dr Macgregor. “The narcissistic personality is like that. Narcissists are always pleased with themselves. They’re very smug.” He paused. “Have you ever come across anybody who always looks very smug? Somebody who just can’t help smiling with self-satisfaction? You know the type.”

“Yes,” said Pat.

“Apart from Bruce, that is,” said her father.

Pat thought for a moment. There had been a boy at school who had been very smug. He came from a smug family in Barnton. All of them were smug. And what made it worse was that he won everything: the boys’ 100-metre dash; the under-sixteen 50-metre breaststroke; the school half-marathon . . .

“Yes,” she said. “There was somebody like that.”

“And did you feel envious?”

“Yes,” said Pat. “We all felt envious. We hated him. We wanted to prick him with a pin. Somebody actually did that once.”

“Not surprising,” said her father. “But it really doesn’t help, you know. These people are impervious to that sort of deflation.

All Goes Well for Bruce

337

They’re psychologically tubeless, if I may extend the metaphor.”

“Bruce is exactly like that,” said Pat. “He’s undeflatable.”

Dr Macgregor laughed. “So he announced his departure?

Why is he going?”

“It’s a bit complicated,” said Pat. “He lost his job, you see.

Then he started a business, a wine dealership. He says that he was let down by somebody who had promised to invest. He bought some tremendously grand wine at a knock-down price.

He sold most of it today at a wine auction in George Street.”

She remembered Bruce’s triumphant return to the flat earlier that evening, brandishing the note of sale from the auction house.

“He made over thirty thousand on the wine,” she went on.

“He was very pleased. He said that he wouldn’t bother with the wine trade now and would go down to London instead. He would live there for a while on the proceeds of the auction and then get a job. He said that he was keen to try commodity trading.”

“And what about the flat?” asked Dr Macgregor.

“I’m afraid he’s selling it,” said Pat. “He’s going to put it on the market next week.”

“Which means that you’re going to have to move out.”

“Yes,” said Pat. “That’s the end of Scotland Street for me.”

There was silence at the other end of the line. The world was a lonely place, a place of transience, of change, of loss; only the bonds, the ties of friendship and family protected us from that loneliness. And what parent would not have wished his daughter to say: “Yes, I’m coming home”, and what parent with Dr Macgregor’s insight would not have known that this would have been quite the wrong answer for Pat to give him?

“You’re always welcome to come back here,” he said. “But you’ll want somewhere with other students, which would be much better. Will it be hard to find somewhere?”

“I’ve got a friend in Marchmont,” said Pat. “She says that there’s a place in her flat. It’s one of those big flats in Spottiswoode Street.”

“You must take it,” said Dr Macgregor.

After they had concluded their conversation, Pat got up and went through to the kitchen. Bruce was sitting at the table, a 338 All Goes Well for Bruce

newspaper spread out on the table in front of him. He looked up and smiled at Pat.

“Do you realise how much this place is going to go for?” he asked her. “I’m looking at some of the prices of places nearby.

I’m going to make a packet, you know.” He sighed. “Pity you can’t afford to buy it, Pat. Then you could stay here instead of moving out to some obscure street on the South Side. Acne-Timber Street, or whatever it’s called.”

“Acne-Timber Street?”

“That’s what I call Spottiswoode Street,” Bruce said. “Where’s your sense of humour?”

“Of course, if you buy something in London,” Pat said, “then you’re going to have to pay through the nose for it, Bruce. You won’t get anything in Fulham for what you get for Scotland Street, you know. You’re going to be in some dump somewhere, Bruce. Or Essex. You might even end up in Essex.”

Bruce laughed. “No danger of that for me! I’m moving in with somebody in Holland Park. You know it? Just round the corner from that nice restaurant, Clarke’s. You know the place? You can get a Clarke’s cookbook. Everybody goes there. All the creative people. You get noticed there. I saw Jamie Byng there once.”

Pat stared at him. They might part company on bad terms or good. If it was to be bad terms, then she could tell him now, before it was too late, what she thought of him. But what would be the point of that? Nothing could dent Bruce – nothing; it was just as her father had said. Bruce was perfection incarnate in his own eyes. It would be good terms, then. She was big enough for that.

“You’re going to love London, Bruce,” she said. “And you’ll do pretty well there.”

“Thanks,” said Bruce. “Yes, I think it’s going to go rather well.

And this flat I’m moving into, very bijou – I’ll be sharing with the girl who owns it. Her old man’s pretty well-off. He likes me, she says. And she’s got her views on that, too, if you know what I mean. She’s a stunner. English rose type. Long, blonde hair.

Job in PR. Who knows what lies ahead? Who knows?”

Pat nodded. “That’s very nice for you, Bruce.” She paused.

Preparing Dinner

339

“And thanks, Bruce, for everything you’ve done for me. Letting me live here and so on.”

Bruce rose to his feet. Taking a step forward, he reached out and placed both his arms lazily on her shoulders.

“You’re not a bad type, Pat,” he said. “And you know what?

I reckon I’m going to miss you a bit when I’m down there. And so . . .” He bent forward and then, to Pat’s astonishment, planted a kiss on her lips, not a gentle kiss, but one that was remarkably passionate, for Edinburgh.

Drawing back, he looked down at her and smiled. “There,”

he said. “That’s what you’ve been wanting for so long, isn’t it?”

Pat could not speak. Cloves, she thought. Now I smell of cloves.

104. Preparing Dinner

“Porcini mushrooms,” intoned Domenica. “Place dried porcini mushrooms in a bowl of hot water and allow the mushrooms to reconstitute. Keep the liquid.”

“Why?” asked Pat. “What are we going to do with it?”

340 Preparing Dinner

“We are going to cook the Arborio rice in it,” explained Domenica. “In that way, the rice will absorb the taste of the mushrooms. It’s the same principle as in the old days when people in Scotland ate tatties and a pass. The pass was the passing of a bit of meat over the tatties. The father ate the meat and the children just got a whiff of it over their tatties.”

“Life was hard,” said Pat, slitting open the packet of mushrooms.

“Yes,” said Domenica. “And now here we are, descendants of those very people, opening packets of imported mushrooms.”

She looked out of the window, down onto Scotland Street, to the setts glistening after the light evening rain which had drifted over the town and was now drawing a white veil over Fife. “And to think,” she went on, “that the woman who lived in this house when it was first built probably had only one or two dresses.

That’s all. People had very few clothes, you know. Even the wives of well-to-do farmers – they might have had only one dress. Life was very different.”

“It’s hard to imagine,” said Pat.

“Yes,” said Domenica. “But we need to remind ourselves. We need to renew that bond between ourselves and them, our great-great-grandparents, or whatever they were. It’s what makes us a people. It’s the knowledge of what they went through, what they were, that brings us together. If we lost that, then we’d be just an odd collection of people living on the same little bit of land. And that would be my nightmare, Pat – it really would. If our sense of ourselves as a group, a nation, as Scots, were to disappear.”

Pat shrugged. “But nobody’s going to make that disappear,”

she said. “Why would they?”

Domenica spun round. “Oh, there are plenty of people who would be quite happy to see all that disappear. What do you think globalisation is all about? Who gains if we’re all reduced to compliant consumers, all with the same tastes, all prepared to accept decisions which are made at a distance, by people whom we can’t censure or control?

“I, for one, refuse to lie down in the face of all that,” went Preparing Dinner

341

on Domenica. “I want to live in a community with an authentic culture. They may sound trite, but I can find no other words for it. I want to have a culture that is the product of where I am – that engages with the issues that concern me. It’s the difference between electronic music and real music. Between the pre-digested pap of Hollywood and real film. It’s that basic, Pat.”

Domenica reached for her recipe book. She sighed.

“I sometimes feel very discouraged,” she said. “You must forgive me. I look out at our world and I just get terribly discouraged. And if I ever turn on a television set, which I try to avoid if at all possible, it only gets worse. All that crudity, that dumbing-down. Inane, mindless game shows. People laughing at the humiliation and anger of others. The most basic, triumphalist materialism, too.

“And the crassness, the sheer crassness of the characters who are paraded across the national stage to be jeered at or applauded.

The vain celebrities, the foul-mouthed bullies. What a wonderful picture of our national life all this presents!

“And what voices are there in all this . . . all this noise? What voices are there to say something serious and intelligent? When the justice minister went to her own constituency to try to do something about the selling of alcohol to young teenagers, she was barracked and sworn at by teenage boys, and nothing was done to stop it. Did you see that? Did you see that shocking picture? That poor woman! Trying to do an impossible job as best she could, and that’s her reward.

“I don’t know, Pat. I don’t know. I have the feeling that we’ve seen the dismantling of civilisation, brick by brick, and now we’re looking at the void. We thought that we were liberating people from oppressive cultural circumstances, but we were, in fact, taking something away from them. We were killing off civility and concern. We were undermining all those little ties of loyalty and consideration and affection that are necessary for human flourishing. We thought that tradition was bad, that it created hidebound societies, that it held people down. But, in fact, what tradition was doing all along was affirming community and the sense that we are members one of one another. Do 342 Farewell

we really love and respect one another more in the absence of tradition and manners and all the rest? Or have we merely converted one another into moral strangers – making our countries nothing more than hotels for the convenience of guests who are required only to avoid stepping on the toes of other guests?”

Domenica put down her recipe book. “I’m so sorry, Pat,” she said. “You shouldn’t have to listen to all this from me. I know that one could argue the exact opposite of what I’ve just said. I know that one might point out that moral progress of all sorts has been made – and it has. In many respects we are more aware of others’ feelings than we used to be. And, of course, there’s the ready availability of porcini mushrooms . . .”

They both laughed, and Domenica looked at her watch. “The guests will be here in an hour,” she said. “And we still have a great deal to do. Open the wine, will you, Pat? We must let it breathe. It’s very kind of you to bring those bottles.”

“I found them in the cupboard,” said Pat. “They belong to Bruce, actually, and I didn’t have the chance to ask him. But he’s always helped himself to my wine and replaced it later with cheap Australian red. So I thought I’d do the same.”

“Quite right,” said Domenica.

Pat stood up and went over to the table where she had placed the three bottles of wine.

“Chateau Petrus,” she said, reading the label. “I wonder if they’ll be any good?”

“No idea,” said Domenica. “Never heard of it.”

105. Farewell

They stood around the fireplace in Domenica’s drawing room, glasses of wine in their hands, the guests of Domenica. They were her friends, and here and there the friend of a friend. Angus Lordie was there, wearing a frayed cravat and a jacket patched with leather at the elbows and cuffs; without Cyril, now, who Farewell

343

was tied to a railing below and who was happy, nonetheless, with the smells of Scotland Street in his nostrils and the occasional glimpse of a furtive cat on the other side of the street. And standing next to Angus, smiling at a remark which the painter had made, James Holloway, Domenica’s friend of many years, and Judy Steel too, perched on the arm of a chair and talking to one who was sunk within the chair, Willy Dalrymple, who had been the only one to recognise the Chateau Petrus and had complimented Domenica on it. And then there was Olivia Dalrymple and Pat herself, and Matthew, who had come as her guest, and who stood on the other side of the fireplace, curiously remote in his attitude towards her, Pat thought – but Matthew had his moody periods, and this must be one.

The conversation had ranged widely. They had considered the question of the Reverend Robert Walker skating on Duddingston Loch and had been equally divided. Some believed that it was beyond doubt by Raeburn; others were convinced by the Danloux hypothesis. The summer: some believed that it had confirmed that global warming had arrived; others felt that the summer had been indistinguishable from any other summer of recent memory. And so the areas of potential agreement and disagreement had revealed themselves, to be dissected and discussed and passed over for the next topic.

At nine o’clock, Domenica led her guests through to the dining room, where they sat about her large mahogany table while she and Pat went through to the kitchen to collect the first course.

“That wine is quite delicious,” said Domenica. “Willy seemed to imply that it was something special.”

Pat felt a momentary pang of doubt. Bruce had told her that she could help herself; she clearly remembered his saying so, and he had himself taken two bottles of her Chilean Merlot on one occasion. So she had nothing to worry about, and she put the thought out of her mind.

The risotto was perfect, acclaimed by all, and after the plates had been cleared away, Angus Lordie tapped his glass with a spoon. The glass, which was empty, the Chateau Petrus having 344 Farewell

been consumed to the last drop, rang out clear across several conversations and brought them to silence.

“Dear friends,” he said, “we are coming to the end of something here. When I was a little boy I hated things to end, as all children do, except their childhood – no child, of course, wants his childhood to go on forever. And when I became a young man, I found that I still hated things to end, though now, of course, I was learning how quickly and hard upon each other’s heels do the endings come.

“Today, our dear friend, Domenica, told us that she was proposing to go away for some time. She is a scholar, and she obeys the tides of scholarship. These tides, she told us, now take her to the distant Malacca Straits, to a particularly demanding piece of fieldwork. I have my own views on that project, but I respect Domenica for her bravery in going to live amongst those whom she intends to study.

“We who are left behind in Edinburgh can only imagine the dangers which she will face. But tonight we can assure her that she goes with our love, which is what we would wish, I’m sure, to any friend about to undertake a journey. You go off clad in the clothes of our love. For that, surely, is what friendship is all about – about the giving of love and the assurance of love.”

Angus stopped, and there was silence. He looked at Domenica, across the table, and she smiled at him.

“Dear Angus,” she said. “A poem is called for.”

“It is,” said James Holloway.

Angus looked down at his plate, at the crumbs that lay upon it; all that was left.

“Very well,” he said. “A poem about small things, I think.”

He stood up, closed his eyes briefly, and then opened them as he began to speak.

Dear one, how many years is it – I forget –

Since that luminous evening when you joined us In the celebration of whatever it was that we were celebrating – I forget –

It is a mark of a successful celebration

Farewell

345

That one should have little recollection of the cause; As long as the happiness itself remains a memory.

Our tiny planet, viewed from afar, is a place of swirling clouds And dimmish blue; Scotland, though lodged large in all our hearts Is invisible at that distance, not much perhaps, But to us it is our all, our place, the opposite of nowhere; Nowhere can be seen by looking up

And realising, with shock, that we really are very small; You would say, yes, we are, but never overcompensate, Be content with small places, the local, the short story Rather than the saga; take pleasure in private jokes, In expressions that cannot be translated, In references that can be understood by only two or three, But which speak with such eloquence for small places And the fellowship of those whom you know so well And whose sayings and moods are as familiar As the weather; these mean everything, They mean the world, they mean the world.

Document Outline

Praise for Alexander McCall Smith�s

Preface

1. Semiotics, Pubs, Decisions

2. Letting Go

3. Narcissism and Social Progress

4. On the Way Back to Scotland Street

5. All Downhill from Here

6. Domenica Gets into Top Gear

7. Anger and Apology

8. An Exchange of Cruel Insults

9. Sally�s Thoughts

10. Bruce�s Plan

11. A Bus for Bertie

12. A Thin Summer

13. Bertie�s List

14. Pat and Bruce Work It Out

15. Domenica Advises

16. Bertie Goes to School Eventually

17. Down Among the Innocents

18. On the Way Home

19. Matthew�s Situation

20. Second Flowering

21. Demographic Discussions

22. Chow

23. An Astonishing Revelation Is Almost Made

24. Bruce Meets a Friend

25. Agreement Is Reached

26. Bertie�s Idea

27. Socks

28. Lonely Tonight

29. At the Film Theatre

30. At Big Lou�s

31. Act and Omission

32. The Two Wicked Uncles: Possible Solutions

33. Bertie Makes a Move

34. Bertie Prepares to Cross Dundas Street

35. Halfway Across

36. Ramsey Dunbarton

37. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part 1 � Early Days

38. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part 2 � Courting Days

39. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part 3 � Further Highlights

40. Bertie�s Plan Is Launched

41. Irene�s Plan for Bertie

42. Bertie Escapes!

43. Rugby!

44. Going Back

45. Dinner with Father

46. The Language of Flowers

47. Information

48. Private Papers

49. Australian Memories

50. A Trip to Glasgow in the Offing

51. On the Glasgow Train, a Heart Is Opened

52. Arriving in Glasgow

53. Lard O�Connor

54. A Game of Cards and a Cultural Trip

55. At the Burrell

56. Domenica Meets Pat

57. The Natural Approach

58. Moray Place

59. Robert Garioch

60. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part IV � Legal Matters

61. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part V � Johnny Auchtermuchty

62. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VI � a Perthshire Weekend

63. Bertie Receives an Invitation

64. Bertie�s Invitation Is Considered

65. Stuart Intervenes

66. Tofu�s Party

67. Bruce�s Enterprise

68. A Petrus Opportunity

69. The Best Laid Plans o� Mice and Men

70. Cyril Howls

71. Crushed Strawberry

72. Ink and the Imagination

73. Wee Fraser Again

74. The Wolf Man, Neds, Motherwell

75. Cyril�s Moment of Glory

76. Bruce Has Uncharitable Thoughts about Crieff

77. Bruce Gets What He Deserves

78. Old Business

79. At the Gallery

80. Dogs and Cuban History

81. Havana

82. A Great Sense of Purity

83. In Moray Place Gardens

84. The Memory of Pigs

85. Encounter, Catharsis, Flight

86. In the Caf� St Honor�

87. Domenica Takes Food to Angus

88. Bruce Reflects

89. The Restoration of Fortunes

90. Self-assertiveness Training for Civil Servants

91. Stuart Paints Bertie�s Room

92. Discussions Take Place Between Irene and Stuart

93. The Gettysburg Address

94. Bertie�s Dream

95. The Wind Makes the Trains Sound Faint

96. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VII � Bridge at Blair Atholl

97. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VIII � I Play the Duke of Plaza-Toro

98. Younger Women, Older Men

99. Janis Exposed

100. Big Lou

101. In the Bookshop

102. Matthew Thinks

103. All Goes Well for Bruce

104. Preparing Dinner

105. Farewell