The World According to Bertie

“Sounds good,” said Matthew. This was better, he thought, than Eddie, with his Rootsie-Tootsie Club and his teenage girls.

“Yes,” Big Lou went on. “He’s very good at that. Architects use him. Historic Scotland. People like that. But his real passion is history. That’s how I met him. I went to a lecture at the museum and I found myself sitting next to him. That’s how it happened. It was a lecture by Paul Scott on the Act of Union.

Robert was there.”

“Nice,” said Matthew. He knew this sounded trite, but he could not think of anything else to say. And it was nice, he thought, to picture Big Lou going to a lecture on the Act of Union and finding a man. There were undoubtedly many women who went to lectures at the museum and did not find a man.

Then Matthew thought of something else to say. He was fond of Big Lou; an almost brotherly affection, he felt, and brothers should on occasion sound a warning note. “You’ll be careful, won’t you, Lou?” he said quietly. “There are some men who . . .

Well, I don’t want to remind you of Eddie, Lou, but remember what happened there. I don’t want your heart to be broken again, Lou.”

She reached out and put a hand on Matthew’s forearm. They had never touched before; this was the first time. “I’ll be careful,”

she said. “And thank you for saying that.”

Matthew lifted up his cup. It was completely empty, without even any froth around the rim to lick off. He looked at the bottom of the cup, where there was a small mark and some printing. China, it said.

“Look,” he said to Big Lou. “See.”

Lou took the cup from Matthew and looked at its base. “But that’s what it is,” she said.

29. That Chap Over There – Know Who That Is?

That evening, Matthew went to the Cumberland Bar. He was due to meet Pat at eight and had promised to take her somewhere exciting for dinner. That promise was beginning to worry him – not because he was unwilling to take her out, rather it was the difficulty of choosing somewhere which she would consider exciting. In one interpretation, exciting was synonymous with plush and expensive; in which case they could go to the Witchery or even Prestonfield House. But that, he thought, was not what Pat had in mind. An exciting restaurant for her probably meant a place where both the décor and the people were unusual, the sort of place where celebrities went. But where were these places, and were there any celebrities in Edinburgh anyway? And if there were, then who were they? The Lord Provost? Sir Timothy Clifford? Ian Rankin? Possibly. But where did these people go for dinner?

Ian Rankin went to the Oxford Bar, of course, but you wouldn’t get much to eat there. And the Lord Provost had her own dining room in the City Chambers. She probably had dinner there, looking out over the top of Princes Street, reading council minutes, wondering which streets could be dug up next.

Angus Lordie was in the bar, sitting morosely at his table, the place at his feet where Cyril normally sat deserted now.

Matthew joined him.

“Where’s your young friend?” Angus asked.

“She’s got a name,” said Matthew. “Pat.”

“That’s the one. Where is she?”

Matthew took a sip of his beer. “I’m meeting her later on.

We’re going out for dinner.”

Angus nodded at this information. He did not seem particularly interested, and indeed it was very uninteresting information, Matthew thought. That’s my trouble, he said to himself – I’m not exciting.

“I haven’t decided where to take her yet,” said Matthew. He 96

That Chap Over There – Know Who That Is?

looked at Angus quizzically. “Tell me, Angus, do you know any exciting restaurants?”

Angus shook his head. “Exciting restaurants? Not me, I’m afraid. I never go out for a meal, except for lunch at the Scottish Arts Club. Of course, I had a meal down in Canonmills once, but that place closed. And there’s a nice Italian place round the corner, but the proprietor went back to Italy. Lucca, I think.”

He paused. “Has that been any help?”

“Not really,” said Matthew. “Although I suppose it closes off certain possibilities.”

“Mind you,” said Angus, “there used to be some exciting restaurants in Edinburgh. There was the Armenian Restaurant, of course, which used to be down in that old steamie opposite the Academy. You won’t remember it, but I used to go there from time to time. Then he moved up to that old place near Holyrood. He may still be there – I don’t know. Very exotic place that – exciting too, if the proprietor got on to the subject of Armenian history.”

Angus looked down at Cyril’s empty place. It was at this very table that, some time ago, he had been reunited with Cyril after he had escaped his captors. He looked up at the door through which Cyril had been led by his rescuer, the man who worked for the Royal Bank of Scotland. If only he would come back through that door again, with Cyril on a lead; idle thought, impossible thought; the state was a much more efficient kidnapper of dogs, and Cyril would be firmly under lock and key, conditions that would require a Houdini Terrier – if there was such a breed – to enable escape.

He looked up. “Why not make her dinner at your place?

Candlelight. A nice bottle of something. That’s what I would do if . . .” He broke off, his attention suddenly attracted by something he had seen on the other side of the room. “Interesting.”

“What?”

“That chap over there,” said Angus, inclining his head to the far side of the bar. “That one, with the grey jacket. Yes, him.

You know who that is?”

That Chap Over There – Know Who That Is?

97

Matthew looked at the person indicated by Angus. He was a man somewhere in his late thirties or early forties, neatly dressed, with dark hair. He was engaged in conversation with a couple of other men seated at his table. One of them was leaning forward to listen to him, while the other sat back and looked up at the ceiling, as if weighing up what was being said.

Matthew turned back to Angus. “Never seen him,” he said.

“Who is he?”

Angus leant forward conspiratorially. “That, Matthew my friend, is Rabbie Cromach – Big Lou’s new friend. That’s who he is!”

Matthew turned back to stare at the man. “I see,” he said.

“Well, that’s interesting.”

“Yes,” said Angus. “But what’s more interesting is the company he’s in.”

Matthew’s heart sank. It seemed that Big Lou was destined to choose unsuitable men – men who bordered on the criminal.

Was she doing it again? He hardly dared ask. “Bad company?”

he said finally.

Angus smiled. “Depends on your view of a number of things,”

he said. “The Act of Settlement for one thing. The Hanoverians.

General Wade. The list could go on.”

“I’m not with you,” said Matthew.

Angus leant forward again. “Sorry to be obscure, but you’ll soon see what I mean. That man directly opposite Rabbie –

the one with the blue jacket – him, yes him. He’s an eighty-four-horsepower fruitcake, if I may mix my metaphors. Always writing to the papers. Got chucked out of the public gallery at the General Assembly a few years ago and out of the Scottish Parliament too. Shouting his heid off about Hanoverian usurpers.

Get my drift?”

Matthew looked in fascination. “Jacobites?”

“Yes,” said Angus. “Those two – I forget the other one’s name, but he’s in it up to here – those two are well-known Jacobites – the real McCoy. They actually believe in the whole thing. King over the Water toasts and all that.”

98

Things Behind Things in the Circular City Matthew looked at the three men in fascination. It struck him as odd that people could harbour a historical grudge so long –

to the point of disturbing the succession to the throne. But then, the whole story was such a romantic one that people just forgot what the Stuarts, or many of them, were actually like. Of course they thought that the Hanoverians were German – and they were right.

Through Matthew’s mind there suddenly ran a snatch of song, half-remembered, but strangely familiar. “Noo a big prince cam to Edinburgh-toon / And he was just a wee bit German lairdie / For a far better man than ever he was / Lay oot in the heather wi’ his tartan plaidie!”

One could get caught up in sentiments like that. Perhaps it was not as ridiculous as it seemed.

Angus now patted Matthew on the forearm. “Matthew,” he said. “I want to tell you a story. About those characters.

Interested?”

30. Things Behind Things in the Circular City Matthew was interested. Angus Lordie’s views on the world were often rather quirky – off-centre, in an unexpected way – but he had an extraordinary knowledge of things that were out of the experience of most people. This came in part from his unconventional background, and in part from his interest in what he termed “things behind things.”

On another occasion, when they had been talking to one another in the Cumberland Bar, Matthew had asked him: “And what exactly do you mean by ‘things behind things’?” To which Angus had replied: “It’s all about what people really mean. Most people, you see, act on two levels – the public and the private.

They have a public life, which anybody can see, and then they have a private life, which is what really counts. So take politicians, for instance; they all say more or less the same thing –

Things Behind Things in the Circular City 99

utter the same slogans about improving services and so on – but what really counts is the private understandings they have with one another, with their backers. So things are not necessarily what they seem to be on the surface. You have to look at the networks.”

He had expanded. “And this city is a good example. It’s full of understandings, connections, networks. Some of these are fairly open. Everybody knows who’s in which political party and who their friends will be. So when a public job comes up, the rhetoric will be about who’s best for the post and so on. But we all know that that is just rhetoric. What really counts is who knows the people in power. Which shouldn’t surprise anybody, I suppose. That’s how most places are run, isn’t it? We like our friends; we trust them; we reward them.

“But if you think that it’s all that open, then you need to think again. It’s the connections beneath the surface that can be really important. If you go to some grand function or other, what do you find? I’ll tell you, Matthew: everybody there knows one another, except you! Isn’t that interesting? When I was on the Artists’ Benevolent Committee, I would be thrown a few scraps of invitations to some of these official parties – receptions and so on – and what do you think I found? Everybody who came in the door immediately went off and chatted with somebody or other. Nobody stood around and looked spare. They all knew one another.

“Now, I’m not one of these people who imagine conspira-cies, Matthew, but I’m not blind. And I’m also quite interested in what makes things tick, and so I had to ask myself: how did they all know one another? And what do you think the reason is?”

Matthew looked vague. He was thinking of how many people he knew, and he had decided that it was not very many. He was intrigued, though, and he wondered if Angus knew of some secret cabal. Was his father involved? he asked himself.

His father seemed to know an awful lot of people, and Matthew 100 Things Behind Things in the Circular City had always assumed that this was because he was a Watsonian and had played rugby. But was there something more to it than that? He looked at Angus. “Are there . . . are there circles?”

For a moment, Angus appeared puzzled by the question.

Then he leant forward and whispered: “Yes. There are circles.”

And with that he had made a circular movement with a finger.

Matthew was not sure how to take this. So he simply repeated:

“Circles.”

Angus nodded gravely. “Lots of them.”

“But what proof do you have?” Matthew asked.

“Look at the architecture,” said Angus. “And I don’t just mean Rosslyn Chapel, although that’s very interesting. Look at Moray Place. Start walking at one point and carry on, and where do you end up? Where you started! It’s a circle, you see.

“And then there’s Muirfield Golf Course, where the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers has its seat. What happens if you start on the first tee? You walk all over the place, but you end up more or less where you started – back at the clubhouse. Circular.”

“So what does all this mean?” asked Matthew.

“I would have thought it’s pretty obvious,” replied Angus.

“This is a city which is built on the circular. So if you want to understand it, you have to get into that circular frame of mind.

And that frame of mind is everywhere. Look at an Eightsome Reel. How do people arrange themselves? In a circle. And that’s a metaphor, Matthew, for the whole process. You get in a circle, and you work from there. You refer to others in the same circle.

You don’t think outside the circle.”

“You mean outside the box,” Matthew corrected him.

“No, I said circle,” insisted Angus. “And that’s what I mean.”

And then Angus had become silent. Matthew wanted him to say more, but he had not, and he had been left with the uncomfortable conclusion that Angus was either slightly mad Things Behind Things in the Circular City 101

or . . . , and this was a distinct possibility, slightly circular. But the conversation had remained with him, and now, sitting again in the Cumberland Bar, again with Angus, he had reason to recollect it as they looked across the room at the small circle of men at the other table . . . circle . . .

“That,” said Angus quietly, “is a Jacobite circle. The one in the blue jacket is called Michael somebody-or-other and he’s the one I’ve met before. I was in a pub over the other side of town, the Captain’s Bar, in South College Street, near the university. It’s a funny wee place, very narrow, with a bunch of crabbit regulars and a smattering of students. Not the sort of place one would have gone in the old days if one objected to being kippered in smoke. I was there with an old friend from art college days who liked to drink there. Anyway, there we were when in came that fellow over there, Michael, and another couple of people – a lang-nebbit woman wearing a sort of Paisley shawl and a man in a brown tweed coat. Jimmy, my friend from art college, knew the woman in the shawl, and so we ended up standing next to one another and a conversation started. It was pleasant enough, I suppose, and we bought each other a round of drinks. Then Michael looked at his watch and said that they had to go, but that we were welcome to go along with them if we had nothing better to do. Jimmy said: ‘I suppose you’re off to one of your meetings.’ And Michael laughed and said that they were, but that we would be welcome too. There would be something to eat, they said, and since we were both feeling hungry, we agreed to go.

“And that,” said Angus, “is how I became aware of that particular circle of Jacobites, and their strange interest in things Stuart. Would you like to hear about what they get up to? Will you believe me if I tell you?”

Matthew nodded. “I would like to hear, and yes, I will believe you. You don’t embroider the truth do you, Angus?”

Angus smiled. “It depends,” he said.

102 Edinburgh Is Full of All Sorts of Clubs 31. Edinburgh Is Full of All Sorts of Clubs

“We went off with these three,” said Angus. “Michael, the woman in the shawl and the man in the brown tweed coat. A motley crew, I must admit.

“I asked Jimmy what sort of meeting we were heading for, but he didn’t answer directly. ‘Edinburgh’s full of all sorts of clubs,’ was all he said. Which was true, of course. We all know that Edinburgh’s riddled with these things, and always has been. Back in the eighteenth century, there were scores of them. The Rankenian Club, for example – Hume was a member of that. That was intellectually respectable, of course, but some of the clubs were pretty much the opposite of that. You’ve heard of the Dirty Club, perhaps, where no member was allowed to appear in clean linen. Or the Odd Fellows, where the members wrote their names upside down. And there was even something called the Sweating Club, the members of which would enjoy themselves in a tavern and then rush out to chase whomsoever they came across and tear his wig off, if he was wearing one. The idea was to make the poor victim sweat. Very strange.

“Burns belonged to a club, you know. He joined the Crochallan Edinburgh Is Full of All Sorts of Clubs 103

Fencibles, as poor Robert Fergusson had joined the Cape Club before him. He so enjoyed that – Fergusson did – and his life was to be so brief. I still weep, you know, when I see his grave down in the Canongate Kirkyard. He could have been as great a poet as Burns, don’t you think? Burns certainly did.

“Speaking of the eighteenth century, there were some clubs which would never have survived into Victorian Scotland because of the onset of prudery. There’s the famous Beggar’s Benison club, which started in Fife, of all places – not a place we immediately associate with licentiousness. I really can’t say too much about that club, Matthew; decency prevents my describing their rituals, but initiation into the membership was really shocking (if one is shocked by things like that). What is it about men in groups that makes them do that sort of thing, Matthew? Of course they felt that London was trying to take away all the fun – the English had imposed a new monarchy, and a Union to boot. What was there left for Scotland to do but to turn to the older, phallic gods?

“So there have always been these clubs, and of course old habits die hard. There are still bags of these clubs in Edinburgh, but nobody ever talks about them. And why do you think that is, Matthew? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s because there are too many people who want to stop us having fun. That’s the reason. They’ve always been with us. And if it’s a group of males having fun together, then look out!

“So the Edinburgh clubs went more or less underground.

How many people, for instance, know about the Monks of St Giles?”

Matthew looked blank. “I don’t.”

Angus lowered his voice. “The Monks of St Giles is a club.

It still exists – still meets. They give themselves Latin names and they meet and compose poetry. They even have a clubhouse, but I’m not going to tell you where it is. Some very influential people are members. And it sounds terrific fun, since they wear robes, but there’d be such a fuss if word got out. Can you imagine the prying, humourless journalists who would love to have a go 104 Edinburgh Is Full of All Sorts of Clubs at them? I can. Composing poetry in private! Not the sort of thing we want in an inclusive Scotland, where everybody will have to be able to read everybody else’s poetry!

“Have you seen the Archers? That’s another club. They’ve got a clubhouse too. Over near the Meadows. They call it their Hall, which is rather a nice name for a clubhouse. They’re frightfully grand, and I’d like to know how you become a member. Can you apply? If not, why not? But we shouldn’t really ask that sort of question. Why can’t these people get on with their private fantasies without being taken to task for being elitist or whatever the charge would be? Or for not having female monks, or whatever? Women are fully entitled to their secret societies, Matthew, and have them, in this very city. Have you heard of the Sisters of Portia, which is for women lawyers?

Virtually all the women lawyers in Edinburgh belong to that, but they don’t let on, and they certainly wouldn’t let men have a men-only legal club. Can you imagine the fuss? Of course, some of them say that men used to have a male-only club called the Law Society of Scotland, but I don’t think that’s funny, Matthew. Do you? The Sisters of Portia are every bit as fishy as the Freemasons, if you ask me. They give one another a professional leg-up and they close ranks at the drop of the hat.

Or the Red Garter, which is a club that meets every month in the Balmoral Hotel. That’s for women in politics, except for Conservatives, who aren’t allowed. And most of the women politicians are in it, but nobody lets on, and they even deny it exists if you ask.

“I haven’t mentioned the most secretive one of all. That’s a strictly women’s club called the Ravelston Dykes. They meet every other week in Ravelston. But let’s not even think of them, Matthew. They’re fully entitled to exist and have a bit of fun.

If only they’d extend us the same courtesy.

“And then there’s another society which is said to have survived from the eighteenth century and which meets by candlelight on Wednesday evenings. The thing about that one, Matthew, is that it doesn’t actually exist! Every so often, people make a fuss about Some Relative Warmth for the Ice Man 105

it, but the truth of the matter is that it’s entirely fictional! But I’m not concerned with apocryphal clubs like that one; I want to tell you about the club that we ended up going to that night.

And it was far from apocryphal!”

Matthew looked encouragingly at Angus. He enjoyed listening to these strange accounts of Edinburgh institutions, but he was keen for Angus to get on to the point of the story. What sort of club was it that he and his friend were taken to that night?

Was it a reincarnation of the Beggar’s Benison? Surely not something so lewd as that. Edinburgh, after all, was a respectable city, and whatever the eighteenth century had been like, the twenty-first was certainly quite different.

He looked at Angus. Such an unreconstructed man, he thought; it’s surprising that he hasn’t been taken to task, or even fined, for the things he says.

32. Some Relative Warmth for the Ice Man Angus continued the story of his meeting with Big Lou’s friend and his friends in the Captain’s Bar.

“As we went out into the night,” he said, “the woman in the Paisley shawl introduced herself to me and we walked along together. She was called Heather McDowall, she told me, and she was something or other in the Health Board – an adminis-trator, I think. She then explained that she had a Gaelic name as well, and she pointed out that I could call her Mhic dhu ghaill, if I wished.

“We were walking along South College Street when she said this. The others were slightly ahead, engaged in conversation of their own, while la McDowall and I trailed a bit behind. It had rained, and the stone setts paving the road glistened in the street lights. I felt exhilarated by the operatic beauty of our surroundings: the dark bulk of the Old College to our left, the high, rather dingy tenement to our right. At 106 Some Relative Warmth for the Ice Man any moment, I thought, a window might open in the tenement above and a basso profondo lean out and break into song.

That might happen in Naples, I suppose, but not Edinburgh; still, one might dream.

“La McDowall then launched into an explanation of the name McDowall and her ancestry. Have you noticed how these people are often obsessed with their ancestry? What does it matter?

We’re most of us cousins in Scotland, if you go far enough back, and if you go even farther back, don’t we all come from five ur-women in Western Europe somewhere? Isn’t that what Professor Sykes says in his book?

“Talking of Professor Sykes, do you know that I met him, Matthew? No, you don’t. Well, I did. I happened to be friendly with a fellow of All Souls in Oxford. Wonderful place, that.

Free lunch and dinner for life – the best job there is. Anyway, this friend of mine is an economic historian down there –

Scottish historians, you may have noticed, have taken over from Scottish missionaries in carrying the light to those parts. And we’ve got some jolly good historians, Matthew – Ted Cowan, Hew Strachan, Sandy Fenton, with his old ploughs and historic brose, Rosalind Marshall, who’s just written this book about Mary’s female pals, Hugh Cheape, who knows all about old bagpipes and suchlike, and any number of others. Anyway, I knew this chap when he was so-high, running around Perthshire in funny breeks like Wee Eck’s. He invited me down for a feast, as they call it, and I decided to go out of curiosity. I was put up in a guest room in All Souls itself – no bathroom for miles, of course, and an ancient retainer who brought in a jug of water and said something which I just couldn’t make out. Some strange English dialect; you know how they mutilate the language down there.

“The feast was quite extraordinary, and it reaffirmed my conviction that the English are half mad when they think nobody’s looking. They’re a charming people – very tolerant and decent at heart – but they have this distinct streak of insanity which comes out in places like Oxford and in some of the London Some Relative Warmth for the Ice Man 107

clubs. It’s harmless, of course, but it takes some getting used to, I can tell you.

“We had roast beef and all the trimmings – roast tatties, big crumbling hunks of Stilton, and ancient port. They did us proud.

There were a couple of speeches in Latin, I think, and of course we kicked off with an interminable grace which, among other things, called down the Lord’s fury on the college’s enemies.

That one was in English, just in case the Lord didn’t get the point. This brought lots of enthusiastic amens, and I realised that these people must be feeling the pressure a bit, what with all this talk of relevance and inclusiveness and all those things.

And I couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for them, you know, Matthew. Imagine if you had fixed yourself up with a number like that and then suddenly the winds of change start blowing and people want to stop you having feasts and eating Stilton. It can’t be easy.

“Of course, it’s foolishness of a high order to destroy these things. The Americans would sell their souls just to get something vaguely approximating to All Souls – they really would.

It’s such a pity, because they would have such fun in places like that. The Canadians, of course, have got something like it. I know somebody who visited it once – a place called Massey College in Toronto. It was presided over by Robertson Davies, you know – that wonderful novelist. He was the Master. Now they’ve got somebody of the same great stripe, an agreeable character called John Fraser, who has a highly developed talent for hospitality, as it happens. Thank God for the Canadians.

“Well, at the feast, I ended up sitting next to none other than Professor Sykes, the genetics man, and he told me the most extraordinary story. I know it has nothing to do with anything, Matthew, but I must tell you. You may remember that he was the person who did the DNA tests on the Ice Man, that poor fellow they dug out of a glacier in France. He’d kicked the bucket five thousand years ago, but was in pretty good condition and so they were able to conduct a postmortem and look at the DNA 108 Old Injustices Have Their Resonances while they were about it. Anyway, Sykes decided to ask for a random volunteer down in England somewhere and see if this person was connected in any way to the Ice Man. Some woman stepped up to the block and he nicked off a bit of her nose, or whatever it is that these people do, and – lo and behold! – she shares a bit of DNA with the old Ice Man. Which just goes to prove what Sykes had been saying for years – that we’re all pretty closely related, even if some of us shrugged off this mortal coil five millennia ago.

“But then, Matthew, it gets even more peculiar. When this woman from Dorset or wherever it was got wind of the fact that she was related to the Ice Man, do you know what she started to do? She began to behave like a relative, and started to ask for a decent burial for the Ice Man!

“Which just goes to show, Matthew, that when expectations are created, people rise to the occasion. They always do. Always.”

Angus paused. “What do you think of that, Matthew?”

“I think she did the right thing,” said Matthew.

33. Old Injustices Have Their Resonances Angus Lordie stared at Matthew incredulously. “Did I understand you correctly?” he asked. “Did you say that this woman did the right thing? That she should have asked for a decent burial for the Ice Man?”

Matthew thought for a moment. He had answered the question impulsively, and he wondered if he was right. But now, on reflection, even if brief, he decided that he was.

“Yes,” he said evenly. “I think that this was probably the right thing. Look, Angus, would you like to be put on display in a museum or wherever, even if you were not around to object? If you went tomorrow, what would you think if I put you on display in, say, a glass case in Big Lou’s café? You’d not want that, I assume. And nor, I imagine, would the Ice Man have wanted to Old Injustices Have Their Resonances 109

be displayed. He might have had beliefs about spirits not getting released until burial, or something of that sort. We just don’t know what his beliefs were. But we can imagine that he probably would not like to be stared at.”

Angus frowned. “No, maybe not. But then, even if we presume that he wouldn’t want that, do we really have to respect the wishes of people who lived that long ago – five thousand years?

Do we owe them anything at all? And, come to think of it, can you actually harm the dead? Can you do them a wrong?”

Matthew thought that you could. “Yes,” he said. “Why not?

Let’s say I name you executor in my will. I ask you to do something or other, and you don’t do it. Don’t you think that people would say that you’ve done me a wrong, even though I’m not around to protest?”

Matthew was warming to the theme. The argument, he thought, was a strong one. Yes, it was wrong to ignore the wishes of the dead. “And what about this?” he continued. “What if you snuffed it tomorrow, Angus, and I told people things about you that damaged your reputation – that you were a plagiarist, for instance? That your paintings were copies of somebody else’s. Wouldn’t you say that I had harmed you? Wouldn’t people be entitled to say: ‘He’s done Angus Lordie a great wrong’?”

Angus looked doubtful. “Not really,” he said. “There’ll be no more Lordie. I’ll be beyond harm. Nothing can harm me then.

That’s the great thing about being dead. You don’t mind the weather at all.”

“But you could say: ‘He’s harmed his reputation’? You could say that, couldn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Angus. “You could say that, because I shall still have a reputation – I hope – for a short time after I go. But the Ice Man’s another matter altogether. As is Julius Caesar or Napoleon Bonaparte. You can say whatever you like about them because . . . because they’re no longer part of the human community.” Angus looked pleased with the phrase. “Yes, that’s it –

that’s the distinction. Those who have recently left us are still 110 Old Injustices Have Their Resonances part of the human community – and have some rights, if you will – whereas those who left us a long time ago don’t have those rights.”

Something was bothering Matthew. “What about these posthumous pardons? What about the men who were shot for cowardice in the First World War? Aren’t they being pardoned now? What do you think of that, Angus? With your argument, surely they would be too long dead to have any claim to this?”

Angus took a sip of his beer. “I’m not sure about that,” he said. “They still have relatives – descendants perhaps, who want to clear their names. They feel strongly enough and they’re still very much with us. So the duty is to the living rather than to people who no longer exist.”

“But what if their descendants knew nothing about it?” asked Matthew. “What if there weren’t any families asking for pardons? Would we have any duty to them then? A simple, human duty to recognise that they were people . . . people just like us?”

Angus was beginning to look uncomfortable. He had argued himself into a position in which he appeared to be careless of the human bonds which united us one to another, quick and dead. Matthew, he thought, was right. Feeling concerned for the Ice Man was a simple recognition of human hopes, whenever they had been entertained. Ancient feelings were feelings nonetheless; old injustices, like the shooting of those poor, shell-shocked men, had their resonances, even today. And the govern-ment, he thought, was probably quite right to pardon the lot of them on the grounds that you couldn’t distinguish between cases at this distance.

“You’re right,” Angus said. “You win.”

“Oh,” said Matthew. “I didn’t think you’d agree.”

“Well, I do,” said Angus. “But let’s get back to la McDowall.

Where were we?”

“You were walking down South College Street. She was telling you about McDowalls in general.”

Old Injustices Have Their Resonances 111

“Oh yes,” said Angus. “Well, she suddenly turned to me, la McDowall did, and said: ‘We go back a very long way, you know, my family.’ Of course I refrained from pointing out to her that we all went back as far as each other, and so she continued. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I can trace things back quite a way, you know. I happen to be descended from Duegald de Galloway, younger grandson of Prince Fergus de Galloway, and his forebears can be traced back to Rolf the Dane, who died back in 927 AD.’

“That was pretty rich, but I let her go on. It’s best not to interrupt these people once they get going – they can easily blow a valve. So she said: ‘Oh yes. And if we go back from Rolf we eventually get back to Dowal himself, who lived in Galloway in 232 BC.’

“I ask you, Matthew! What nonsense. And here was this otherwise perfectly rational woman, who went each day into an office somewhere in Edinburgh and made administrative decisions or whatever, claiming that she went back to 232 BC!” He shook his head. “Personally, I blame the Lord Lyon, you know. He has the authority to stamp that sort of thing out, but what does he do? Nothing. He should tell these McDowalls that their claims are outrageous and that they shouldn’t mislead people with all this nonsense.”

“But I’ve heard he’s a very nice man,” said Matthew.

“Perhaps he just feels that people like that are harmless. And if he started to engage with the McDowalls, he’d have all those Campbells and MacDonalds and people like that on to him.

Scotland’s full of this stuff. It’s what keeps half the population going.”

The earlier consensus between them disappeared, immediately. “That sort of thing is very important,” said Angus. “I happen to believe that clan reunions, clan gatherings and so on

– these are important. They remind us who we are.”

“Oh well,” said Matthew. “I know who I am. But let’s not disagree. If you don’t mind, tell me what happened.”

112 Miss Harmony Has a Word in Bertie’s Ear 34. Miss Harmony Has a Word in Bertie’s Ear On the day that Olive was due to come to visit Scotland Street, Bertie went to school with a heavy heart. He had pleaded with his mother to cancel the invitation, but his imprecations had been rejected, as they always seemed to be.

“But Bertie, carissimo,” said Irene. “One cannot cancel an invitation! Pacta sunt servanda! You can’t uninvite people once you’ve invited them! That’s not the way adults behave.”

“I’m not an adult, Mummy,” said Bertie. “I think that boys are allowed to uninvite people. I promise you, Mummy; they are. Tofu invited me to his house once and cancelled the invitation ten minutes later. He does that all the time.”

“What Tofu does or does not do is of no concern to us, Bertie,” said Irene. “As you well know, I have reservations about Tofu.”

Bertie thought he might try another tack. “But I’ve read about invitations being cancelled by grown-ups,” he said. “The Turks invited the Pope to see them and then some of them said that he shouldn’t come, didn’t they?”

Irene sighed. “I’m sure that the Turks didn’t mean to be rude,”

she said. “And I’m sure that the Pope would have understood Miss Harmony Has a Word in Bertie’s Ear 113

that. I’m also one hundred per cent sure that if the Pope invites you to the Vatican, the invitation is never cancelled. So we cannot possibly uninvite Olive. And we don’t want to, anyway! It’s going to be tremendous fun.”

Bertie had abandoned his attempt to persuade his mother.

But in a last, desperate throw of the dice, on the morning of the visit, using a red ballpoint pen, he applied several spots to his right forearm and presented this with concern to his mother.

“I don’t think that Olive will be able to come to play, Mummy,”

he said, trying to appear regretful. “It looks like I’ve got measles, again.”

Irene had inspected the spots and then laughed. “Dear Bertie,”

she said. “Have no fear. Red ballpoint ink is not infectious.

Messy, perhaps, but not infectious.”

At school that morning, it was not long before Olive had an opportunity to make her plans known.

“I’m going to Bertie’s house this afternoon,” she volunteered, adding, “by invitation.”

“How nice!” said Miss Harmony. “It is very encouraging, children, when we see you all getting on together so well. We are one big, happy family here, and it is good to see the girls playing nicely with the boys, and vice versa.”

Bertie said nothing.

“I don’t think Bertie wants her to go,” said Tofu. “Look at his face, Miss Harmony.”

Miss Harmony glanced at Bertie. “I’m sure that you’re mistaken, Tofu. Bertie is a very polite boy, unlike some boys.”

She tried not to look at Tofu when she said this, but her eyes just seemed to slide inexorably in his direction.

“No, I’m not mistaken,” said Tofu. “Bertie hates Olive.

Everybody knows that. It’s because she’s so bossy.”

Olive spun round and glared at Tofu. “Bertie doesn’t hate me,” she said. “Otherwise, why would he invite me to his house?

Answer me that, Tofu!”

Bertie opened his mouth to say something, but Miss Harmony, 114 Miss Harmony Has a Word in Bertie’s Ear sensing complications, immediately changed the subject, and the class resumed its reading exercise. But later, when everybody was involved in private work, she bent down and whispered in Bertie’s ear. “Is it true, Bertie? Did you invite Olive to play?”

“No,” whispered Bertie. “I didn’t, Miss Harmony. It’s my mother. She invited her. I don’t want to play with Olive, I really don’t. I want to play with other boys. I want to have fun.”

Miss Harmony slipped her arm over his shoulder. “I’m sure that you must have some fun, Bertie. I’m sure you do.”

“Not really, Miss Harmony,” said Bertie. “You see my mother thinks . . .” He broke off. He was not sure what his mother thought. It was all too complicated.

The teacher crouched beside him. Bertie could smell the scent that she used, the scent that he had always liked. It was lavender, he thought, or something like that. In his mind it was the smell of kindness.

“Bertie,” whispered Miss Harmony. “Sometimes mummies make it hard for their boys. They don’t mean to do it, but they do. And the boy feels that the world is all wrong, that nothing works the way he wants it to work. And he looks around and sees other people having fun and he wonders whether he’ll ever have any fun himself. Well, Bertie, the truth of the matter is that things tend to work out all right. Boys in that position eventually get a little bit of freedom and are able to do the things they really want to do. That happens, you know. But the important thing is that you should try to remember that Mummy is doing what she thinks is her best for you. So if you can just grin and bear it for a while, that’s probably best.”

Bertie listened attentively. This was a teacher speaking; this was the voice of ultimate authority. And what was that voice saying to him? It was hard to decide.

“So just try to be nice to Olive,” went on Miss Harmony.

“Try to look at things from her point of view.”

“She wants to play house,” whispered Bertie. “I don’t want to do that.”

Bedrooms Are the Place for Playing House 115

Miss Harmony smiled. “Girls love playing house.” And she thought: genetics – the bane of nonsexist theories of child-rearing. Stubborn, inescapable genetics.

Bertie was silent. Miss Harmony stayed with him for a moment longer, but she was now beginning to attract curious stares from Tofu and Olive, and so she gave him a final pat on the shoulder and straightened up.

“Do try to pay attention to your own work, Tofu,” she said.

“It’s always best that way. And you, Olive, should do so too.”

Bertie kept his eyes down on his desk. He had been encouraged by what Miss Harmony had said to him – a bit – and he would make the effort to be civil to Olive. And he was cheered, too, by the prospect of liberation that the teacher had held out to him. She must have met people like his mother before, and boys like him too, and if she had seen things go well for them, then perhaps there was a chance for him. But the way ahead seemed so long, so cluttered with yoga and psychotherapy and Italian conversazioni, that it was as much as he could do to believe in any future at all, any prospect of happiness.

“You’ll enjoy playing house,” said Olive to Bertie as they travelled back on the bus with Irene. “I’ll be the mummy and you, Bertie . . .” She paused for a moment. “And you will be the mummy’s boyfriend.”

35. Bedrooms Are the Place for Playing House

“Now, where would you two like to play?” asked Irene as she unlocked the door to the Pollock flat in 44 Scotland Street.

“In the bedroom, please,” said Olive confidently. “We’re going to play house, Mrs Pollock, and that’s the best place.”

Bertie caught his breath. He had been hoping to keep Olive out of his bedroom, because if she saw it she could hardly fail to notice that it was painted pink. And that, he feared, would give her a potent bit of information which she 116 Bedrooms Are the Place for Playing House would undoubtedly use as a bargaining chip. All she would have to do would be to threaten to reveal to Tofu and the other boys at school that his room was pink unless he complied with whatever schemes she had in mind. It would be a hopeless situation, thought Bertie; he would be completely in her power and unable to stand up for himself, which, he suspected, was exactly what Olive had in mind.

“If you don’t mind,” said Bertie, “we could play in the sitting room. There are some very comfortable chairs there, and it will be just right for playing house in. Don’t you agree, Mummy?”

He looked imploringly at his mother, willing her to agree with him.

“I don’t think so,” said Irene. “House is best played in bedrooms. And I’m planning to write some letters in the sitting room. You won’t want me interfering with your game of house, will you, Olive?”

“No, thank you,” said Olive. “Although you could always be the granny.”

Irene glanced at Olive. She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I see.”

“You could pretend to be the granny who has to stay in bed, and we could feed you soup from a cup,” Olive went on. “And you could pretend to forget everything we said to you.”

“I don’t think so, Olive,” said Irene coldly. “But thank you anyway. You two just go off and play in Bertie’s room. At half past four, I’ll make you some juice and scones. I’ll be putting Ulysses down for a sleep shortly and he will be ready to wake up then.”

“He’s a very nice baby, Mrs Pollock,” said Olive. “My mummy says that you’re lucky to have him.”

Irene smiled. “Well, thank you, Olive,” she said. “We’re all very lucky to have Ulysses come into our lives.”

“Yes,” Olive continued. “Mummy said that she thought you were too old to have another baby. She said that wonders will never cease.”

Irene was silent for a few moments. “I think that you should go and play now,” she said, tight-lipped. “Off you go!”

Bedrooms Are the Place for Playing House 117

“Where’s your room, Bertie?” asked Olive. “Can you show me the way, please?”

Bertie cast his eyes about in desperation. There seemed to be no escape, or was there?

“It’s at the end of this corridor,” he said, pointing in the direction of the dining room. “That’s the door over there.”

Olive walked over to the door and opened it. She looked inside, at the table and chairs, and the small bureau where Stuart sometimes did the work that he brought home with him. “Is this it?” she asked. “Is this your room, Bertie?”

Bertie nodded.

“Where’s your bed?” asked Olive. “Don’t tell me you sleep on the table.”

Bertie gave a forced laugh. “Oh no,” he said. “I don’t sleep on the table. I sleep over there, in that corner. We have some cushions and a sleeping bag. We put them over there each night before I go to bed. It’s healthier, you see.”

“So you don’t even have a proper bed?” asked Olive.

“No,” said Bertie. “But that’s quite common these days. Didn’t you know that?”

Olive did not wish to appear uninformed, and so she nodded in a superior way. “You don’t have to tell me that,” she said. “I know about these things.” She paused, looking around at the sparsely furnished room. “But where do you keep your clothes?”

Bertie glanced at the sideboard. “In those drawers over there,”

he said.

Olive turned her head and looked in the direction of the sideboard. Then, without giving any warning, she took a few steps across the room and opened the top drawer.

“You mustn’t,” protested Bertie. “That’s private. You can’t go and look in other people’s drawers. What if they keep their pants in them?”

“There are no pants here,” said Olive scornfully. “All there is, are these mats. What are these table mats doing in your drawer, Bertie?”

“I collect them,” said Bertie. “It’s my hobby.”

118 Bedrooms Are the Place for Playing House

“A pretty stupid hobby,” said Olive. She slammed the drawer shut and then immediately bent down and opened the drawer beneath it.

“And there aren’t even any clothes in this one either,” she said. “Look. Just candles and some knives and forks. Why do you keep knives and forks in your bedroom, Bertie? What’s wrong with you?”

Bertie sat down on the floor. “I’m very ill,” he said. “You’re going to have to go home, Olive. I’m too ill to play house. I’m sorry.”

Olive looked at him for a moment. “You don’t look ill,” she said. “But anyway, you can still play house when you’re ill. I’ll just put you to bed and nurse you. Then you can get up when you’re better. Come, Bertie, let’s find a better room for that.”

Bertie tried to resist, but Olive had seized his hand and had dragged him to his feet. She was surprisingly strong for a girl, he thought.

Half-pulled, half-pushed, Bertie was propelled down the corridor by Olive. His bedroom door was slightly ajar, and she now pushed this open and saw the bed within. And she saw Bertie’s construction set, which was on the floor, and his spare pair of shoes at the bottom of the bed.

“So this is your real room!” she exclaimed, with the satisfaction of one who has discovered an important secret. “And it’s pink.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Bertie weakly. “You mustn’t say it’s pink.

It’s crushed strawberry.”

“Crushed strawberries are a pink colour,” Olive retorted, pushing Bertie towards the bed. “This is a very nice room, Bertie!

But quick, you must get into bed since you’re so ill. I’m the nurse now. Come along, darling, into bed you go. That’s better.

Now, you’re very lucky that I brought my nurse kit with me.”

Bertie watched in mute horror as Olive took a small plastic box from her school bag. It had a red cross on the lid, and when she opened it he saw a tiny plastic hammer, some wooden spat-ulas, and a few small bottles. But Olive was interested in none What Exactly Is the Problem with Caroline? 119

of these. She had taken out a disposable syringe, complete with a long, entirely real needle.

“You’re going to have to give a blood sample, Bertie,” Olive said. “It’ll only hurt a little, but you’ll feel much better afterwards, I promise you. Now where do you want me to take it from?”

36. What Exactly Is the Problem with Caroline?

It had been a very satisfactory day for Bruce. His flat-hunting, which had taken less than three hours, had resulted in his finding a very comfortable room in Julia Donald’s flat in Howe Street.

There had been no mention of rent – not once in the conversation – and Bruce saw no reason why the subject should ever come up. From his point of view, he was going to be staying with her as a friend, a close friend probably, and it was inappropriate for friends to pay one another rent, especially when the friend who owned the flat had no mortgage to pay. So that was a major advantage to the arrangement, he thought. And even if Julia should become a little bit trying – and she was a bit inclined to gush, Bruce thought – he was still confident that he could handle her firmly, but tactfully. Bruce knew how to deal with women; he knew that he had only to look at them with the look – and they were putty in his hands. It was extraordinary: the slightest smoulder from Bruce, just the slightest, seemed to make them go weak at the knees, and in the head too. Bruce smiled. It’s so very easy, he thought – so very easy.

Before he went out that evening, Bruce took a shower in Neil and Caroline’s flat in Comely Bank. There were minor irrita-tions involved in this, as he did not like the multiple bottles of shampoo and conditioner which Caroline insisted on arranging on the small shelf in the shower. Bruce moved these every time he used the shower, shifting them to a place on top of the bathroom cupboard, but he noticed that they always migrated back 120 What Exactly Is the Problem with Caroline?

to their position within the shower cubicle. He thought of saying something to Caroline about this, but refrained from doing so, as he was not absolutely sure if she appreciated him as much as most women did. He had tried giving her the look, but she had returned it with a blank stare, which thoroughly unsettled him.

Normally, he would have put such a response down to a lack of interest based on lesbianism, but the fact that Caroline was happily married to Neil made that judgement unlikely. So what exactly is her problem? Bruce asked himself. Was it something to do with rent? He saw no reason why he should pay them anything when he was going to be there for such a short time, and they had, after all, invited him to stay, or almost. No, there was something more complicated at work here, he decided.

And then it occurred to him exactly what this was. Bruce decided that Caroline was jealous of him. That must be it! Neil, her husband, was such a weedy specimen in comparison with Bruce, that it must be hard for Caroline to have somebody in the house who was so clearly at the opposite end of the spec-trum from him. So rather than resenting her husband for being puny, she was transferring her dissatisfaction onto Bruce himself.

This insight made Bruce feel almost sorry for Caroline, and as a result of this he had said something to her in an attempt to make things easier.

“Don’t judge Neil too harshly,” he remarked one evening when he found himself alone in the kitchen with her.

She had looked at him in astonishment. “What on earth do you mean? Judge Neil harshly? Why would I do that?”

Bruce had smiled. “Well, you know. Some men are a bit more

. . . how shall I put it? Impressive. Yes, that’s it. Impressive.”

She stared at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He winked. “Don’t you . . . ?”

She had continued to stare at him. “I really have no idea what you’re going on about, Bruce,” she had said. “And, by the way, do you mind not moving my conditioner bottles from the shower?

You know that little shelf in there? That’s where I like them to be. That’s where I put them.”

What Exactly Is the Problem with Caroline? 121

Bruce smiled. “Come and show me,” he said. “Show me when I’m in the shower.”

She did not appreciate that, he decided, which was typical of somebody like her. There was a sense-of-humour failure there, he thought. A serious one. And she did not take well either to his next remark, which took the form of a good-natured question.

“Are you interested in other women, Caroline?” he asked. “I just want to know.”

“What do you mean?”

Bruce sighed. “I’m really having to spell it out,” he said. “I mean: are you, you know, interested in other women? Don’t look so cross. Lots of people are a little bit that way, you know, now and then. It’s perfectly understandable, you know . . .”

“How dare you!” Caroline screamed. “I’m going to tell Neil when he comes back. I just can’t believe it. I can’t believe that I’m being talked to like this in my own kitchen.”

“Temper! Temper!” said Bruce. “Most people these days don’t get all uptight about these things. We live in a very enlightened age, you know. I mean, hello!”

Now, standing in the shower, Bruce poured on a bit of Caroline’s conditioner and rubbed it into his hair. His conversation with his hostess had not been an edifying one, and it was probably just as well that he was going out for dinner with Julia Donald that evening. He might even move out that very evening, which would give Caroline something to think about, but any decision could wait. For the moment, he had the sheer pleasure of the shower ahead of him; a shower first, then decisions, said Bruce to himself. That’s a good one, he thought. Just like Bertolt Brecht with his Grub first, then ethics.

He turned his head slightly and caught sight of his reflection in the glass wall of the shower cubicle. His profile, he thought, was the real strength of his face, that straight nose, in perfect proportion to the rest of the features – spot-on. It was amazing, he thought, how nature gets it just right. And the cleft in his chin – how many women had put the tip of their little finger 122 A Little Bit of Bottle Bother at the Tower in there? – it was almost as if they could not resist it, a Venus fly-trap, perhaps.

He pouted. “Drop-dead gorgeous,” he whispered, through the sound of the shower.

37. A Little Bit of Bottle Bother at the Tower Bruce had suggested to Julia that they should meet in the Tower Restaurant, above the Museum. He had been there once before when a client of Macauley Holmes Richardson Black had invited him to discuss over lunch the purchase of a piece of land near Peebles. Bruce had made a mental note to return for a more leisurely meal, but then he had become occupied with his wine business – a “semi-success” as he called it – and that had been followed by his removal to London. Eating out in London, of course, was ruinously expensive and, unless invited, he had avoided it as far as possible. Now, back in Edinburgh, he contemplated, with pleasure, the variety of restaurants he would be able to explore with Julia. She was the sort of girl who would pay the bill without complaint, although he would reach into his own pocket from time to time if pressed; Bruce was not mean.

The Tower Restaurant was above the new part of the National Museum of Scotland. As a boy, Bruce had been taken to the museum on several occasions, on school trips from Crieff, and had enjoyed pressing the buttons of the machines kept on display in great, ancient cases. The cavernous hall of the museum, with its vast glass roof, had been etched into the memory of those days, and could still impress him, but now it was the business of dinner that needed to be attended to.

He was early. Perched on one of the bar stools, he nursed a martini in front of him while waiting for Julia. Bruce did not normally drink martinis, but tonight’s date justified one, he thought; and the effect, he noted, was as intended – the gin, barely diluted by vermouth, indeed possibly unacquainted A Little Bit of Bottle Bother at the Tower 123

with it, was quickly lifting his spirits even further. How had Churchill made martinis? he asked himself. He smiled as he remembered the snippet he had read in The Decanter or somewhere like that – Churchill had poured the gin on one side of the room while nodding in the direction of the vermouth bottle on the other side. What a man, thought Bruce, a bit like me in some ways.

Julia arrived ten minutes late.

“Perfect timing,” said Bruce, rising from the bar stool to plant a kiss on her cheek. “For a woman, that is. And you look so stunning too. That dress . . .”

Julia beamed. “Oh, thank you, Brucie! It’s ancient – prehis-toric, actually. I bought it from Armstrongs down in the Grassmarket. You know that place that has all those old clothes.

Très retro!”

Bruce touched the small trim of ostrich feathers around the neck of the dress. “It’s a flapper dress, isn’t it?”

Julia was not sure what a flapper dress was, but it sounded right. “Yes,” she said. “It’s good for flapping in.”

“Very funny!” said Bruce.

They both laughed.

“Let’s go to our table,” said Bruce. “That’s the maître d’ over there. I’ll catch his eye.”

“You can catch anybody’s eye, Brucie,” said Julia playfully.

“You’re eye candy.”

“Eye toffee,” said Bruce, taking hold of her forearm. “I stick to people.” He smiled as he remembered something. “You know, we had a dog up in Crieff and he had a sweet tooth. I gave him a toffee once and he started to chew it and got his teeth completely stuck together. It was seriously funny.”

Julia laughed. “When I was at Glenalmond, we gave our housemistress a piece of cake with toffee hidden in the middle.

It stuck her false teeth together and she had to take them out to get rid of it!”

“The things one does when young,” said Bruce.

“A scream,” said Julia.

124 A Little Bit of Bottle Bother at the Tower They moved to the table. “You must let me treat you,” said Bruce as they were handed the menu.

“Oh, please let me,” said Julia.

“All right,” said Bruce quickly. “Thanks. What are you going to have?”

If Julia was taken aback, it was only momentarily. “I love oysters,” she said. “I’m going to start with those.”

“Make sure that you put a bit of Tabasco in,” said Bruce.

“And lemon. Delicious.”

“What about you?” asked Julia.

“Lobster,” said Bruce, examining the menu. “Market price.

That’s helpful, isn’t it? Everything is market price if you come to think of it. Anyway, I’ll start with lobster, then . . .” he examined the menu. “Which do you think would win in a fight? A lobster or an oyster?”

Julia looked out of the window. “That’s a very interesting question, Brucie. I’ve never thought about that, you know.”

“The lobster would have the advantage of mobility,” said Bruce. “But the oyster has pretty good defences, I would have thought. It would probably be a stand-off.”

“Yes,” agreed Julia. “Interesting.”

The waiter came and took their order. “And wine?” he asked.

Bruce looked at the list. “You know, I was in the wine trade for a while,” he said to Julia, but loud enough for the waiter to hear.

“I’ll fetch the sommelier,” said the waiter.

“No need . . .” Bruce began. But the waiter had moved off and was whispering something into the ear of a colleague. The sommelier nodded and came over to Bruce and Julia’s table.

“So, sir,” he said. “Have you any ideas?”

Bruce looked at the wine list. “Bit thin,” he said. “No offence, of course. No Brunello, for instance.” He smiled at Julia as he spoke. She made a face as if to mourn the absence of Brunello.

“Oh, but I think there is, sir,” said the sommelier. “Perhaps you did not register the name of the producers. Look, over there, for example. Banfi. We don’t always feel it’s necessary to describe Anyway, What Are You Going to Do, Brucie? 125

exactly where a wine comes from. We assume that in many cases people know . . .”

“Where?” snapped Bruce. “Oh, yes, Banfi. Wrong side, of course.”

“Of what, sir?”

“The river,” said Bruce.

“But there isn’t a river in Montalcino,” said the sommelier gently. “Perhaps you’re thinking of somewhere else. The Arno perhaps?”

Bruce did not respond to this; he was peering at the list.

“What about a Chianti?” he said. “What about this one here?”

The sommelier peered over his shoulder. “Mmm,” he said.

“I find that a bit unexciting, personally.”

“Well, why do you have it on the list, then?” Bruce said. His tone was now defensive, rattled.

“Well,” said the sommelier, smiling, “we like to have one or two – how shall I put it? – pedestrian wines for some of our diners who have . . . well, not very sophisticated tastes. We don’t actually carry Blue Nun, but that’s pretty much for the diner who would go for a bottle of Blue Nun. I would have thought that you might be interested in something much more . . . much more complex.”

Bruce kept his eyes on the list. “We’ll have a bottle of this,”

he said, pointing wildly.

“Oh, a very good choice,” said the sommelier. “And well worth the extra money. I always say that when you pay that much, you’re on safe ground. Well chosen, sir.”

38. Anyway, What Are You Going to Do, Brucie?

Bruce ate his lobster with gusto, watched by Julia, whose oysters had slipped down with alacrity. He offered her a claw, but she declined, a small appetite for one so curvaceous, Bruce thought.

126 Anyway, What Are You Going to Do, Brucie?

“I prefer really small courses,” she said. “We went to a restaurant in New York once, you know the one near the new modern art thingy. Mummy, or whatever it’s called.”

“MoMA,” muttered Bruce, wiping mayonnaise from the side of his mouth.

“That’s the place. Strange name.”

Bruce reached out and patted her gently on the wrist.

“Nothing to do with mother,” he said. “It stands for the Museum of Modern Art.”

Julia thought for a moment. “I don’t get it. Anyway, this place, you wouldn’t know that it’s a restaurant, as there’s nothing on the door. Just a glass door. It’s really cool.”

Bruce nodded. “That’s to keep the wrong sort out,” he said.

“They have to do that. It’s the same in London. There are no signs outside the really good clubs. Nothing to tell you they’re there. You could spend weeks in London and not see any of the really good places because you just wouldn’t know.”

Julia looked at Bruce. She was studying his chin, which had a cleft that she found quite fascinating. She watched that and she noticed, too, how when he smiled the smallest dimple appeared in each of his cheeks. It was unfair, she thought, it really was that a man should have a skin like that and not have to worry about moisturisers and all the expensive things that she had to use. Unfair, just unfair. He put something on his hair, though, something with a rather strange smell. What was it?

Cloves? Perhaps she should ask him. Would he mind? Or she could find out by going through his things in the bathroom, that would be easy, and interesting. Julia liked going through men’s things in the bathroom; it was a sort of hobby, really.

She brought herself back to the present. “Yes,” she said. “That restaurant in New York served tiny portions. Tiny. This size.”

She made a tight circle with her thumb and forefinger.

Bruce speared a piece of lobster meat. “Really?”

“Yes. I filled up on olive bread and Daddy asked for a banana.

Everything cost thirty-six dollars. Except for the banana, which was free.”

Anyway, What Are You Going to Do, Brucie? 127

“There you are,” said Bruce. “Every cloud . . .”

Julia interrupted him. “Anyway, Brucie, what are you going to do, now that you’re back?”

Bruce, the lobster finished, pushed his plate to one side. “Well, I’m not going back to being a surveyor. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Pas plus de ça pour moi. So I’ve been thinking and I’ve had one or two ideas.”

“Such as?”

Bruce sat back in his chair. “Personal training,” he said. “I think I’ll be a personal trainer.”

A shadow of disappointment crossed Julia’s face. She had not envisaged settling down with a personal trainer. “You mean one of those types you see in the gym?” she said. “The ones who hold their stopwatches and tell you how long to spend on the treadmill?”

It was clear to Bruce that she did not think much of his plan.

He would have to explain; Julia was a bit – how might one put it? – limited in her outlook, poor girl. Rich, but limited.

“Personal trainers do much more than that,” he said. “Getting people fit is one part of it, but there’s much more to it. Lifestyle advice, for example. Telling people how to dress, how to deal with anxiety, stress and all the rest. Sorting out relationships.

That sort of thing.”

Julia’s reservations evaporated. “Brilliant!” she said. “I’m sure that there’ll be a demand for that sort of thing. Lifestyle coach.

Style guru. That sort of thing.” She paused. “And personal shopper?”

Bruce looked doubtful. “I’ve heard of them. But I’m not sure what a personal shopper does.”

Julia knew. “They usually have them in big shops,” she said.

“If you go somewhere like Harrods or Harvey Nicks, they have these people who will get you what you need. You tell them your general requirements and they find it for you. But one could do it as a freelance. Then you could shop all over the place.”

“I don’t know if I could do that,” said Bruce. “I don’t know enough about shopping.”

128 Anyway, What Are You Going to Do, Brucie?

“I do,” said Julia quickly. “I’ve done a lot of shopping.”

Bruce smiled. He had no doubt about that; Julia was certainly a shopper. Then a possibility came to him. He and Julia could enter into a . . .

“Partnership?” said Julia. “Do you think it would work, Brucie?

You do the personal thingy and I’ll do the personal shopping.

We can offer a complete service.”

Bruce nodded. “There are start-up costs,” he said. “There always are.”

Julia waved a hand dismissively. “How much?”

It was a fine calculation for Bruce. It was always difficult to decide just how much to ask for. The trick, he had read, was to try to put oneself in the shoes of the person with the funds and work out how much they would think reasonable. In this case, the start-up costs would be quite small – a few advertisements, a brochure, perhaps a press launch. But then there would be a salary for him, for, say, six months.

“Thirty thousand,” he said. “Give or take a couple of thousand.”

He watched her face. “Thirty thousand?” She hesitated. “All right. We’re in business.”

She looked down at her plate. I’m buying him for thirty thousand, she thought. But if that’s what it costs to get a husband, then that’s what it costs. And her father, she knew, would not quibble over a small sum like that. He had been hoping that she would settle down with a suitable man, and he would certainly approve of Bruce. Dear Daddy! He had said to her once, when she was twenty or so: “When you eventually decide to settle down with somebody, darling, don’t for God’s sake go for some dreadful spiv or intellectual. Go for good stock. You know what I mean by that? Do you? Do I have to spell it out to you?”

He would like Bruce, she knew it. And that would complete her happiness. A husband, a contented father, and before too long a couple of children. For that’s what her father had meant, and she had known it. Good breeding stock. And Bruce was definitely that. Just look at him.

The Builders Who Began with a Bow 129

She looked at Bruce and smiled. And as she did so, she thought: maybe I should just forget to be careful. It’s so easily done, particularly if you want to forget.

39. The Builders Who Began with a Bow Antonia Collie sat in her flat in Scotland Street, a set of architect’s drawings on the table before her; to her side, in a Spode blue and white cup, possibly stolen from Domenica Macdonald’s family – or removed by mistake – the Earl Grey tea she so appreciated. Antonia was engrossed in the drawings and in their complexity; what seemed to her to be a simple business of extracting old kitchen units and inserting new ones, of removing an old and uncomfortable bath and installing a modern and inviting one, and of doing one or other minor improvements to the flat, had been translated into page after page of detailed drawings by her friend Alex Philip, the architect. These were all executed in black ink with careful instructions to the builders as to the thickness of materials, the positioning of screws and wiring, about plaster and skirting-boards and tiles. A copy of the plans had been given to Antonia by Alex, and it was these that she was now trying to understand.

Antonia understood about the inconvenience which building work brought in its wake. In Perthshire, they had attempted an enlargement of their farm kitchen, a small project that had taken 130 The Builders Who Began with a Bow almost eighteen months to complete owing to the builder’s disappearance halfway through the work.

“They all disappear,” a friend had comforted her. “But they come back. The important thing to do is not to abandon belief in your builders. It’s rather like believing in fairies in Peter Pan; if you don’t believe in builders, their light goes out.”

There were more stories of this nature. Another friend narrated the tale of a builder he had engaged for a house in France; this builder had been arrested for murder some time into the contract, and had been replaced by his son, who had then been shot by the relatives of his father’s victim; passions ran deep in the French countryside, it seemed. But her position was different – she had the best builder in the business on her side.

Now, at her table, Antonia heard the bell ring and realised that the two men sent to begin work had arrived. Their rubbish skip, a giant, elongated bucket, had preceded them by a day or two and stood on the roadside, ready to receive the detritus from Antonia’s flat. In time-honoured Edinburgh fashion, though, the neighbours had sneaked out at night and deposited unwanted property in the skip: several large pieces of wood, a pile of flattened cardboard boxes, an old tricycle missing its chain and a wheel – the abandoned property, Antonia decided, of that strange little boy downstairs . . . Bertie, or whatever he was called. And there was also a pile of old editions of Mankind Quarterly, which could only have been put there by Domenica. Really! thought Antonia. I’m paying for that skip, every single cubic foot of it, and yet people think that they have the right . . .

Antonia went to the front door and opened it to the men standing outside. It was obvious enough from their outfits that they were the builders, but she asked them nonetheless who they were.

“I take it that you’re from Hutton and Read?” she said.

“Clifford’s men?”

The taller of the two men, a man in his early thirties with a rather good-looking face, nodded enthusiastically. “Clifford!” he said, and then added for emphasis “Clifford!”

The Builders Who Began with a Bow 131

Antonia gestured for the two men to enter. They turned round and each picked up a small chest of tools that they had put down on the landing behind them.

“I don’t know where you want to start,” said Antonia. “I suggest that you just begin wherever you want to. Don’t mind me.”

She looked at the two men, who returned her stare. The tall man smiled and nodded. “Brick,” he said.

Antonia frowned. “Brick?”

“Brick,” said the man.

“I don’t know about that,” said Antonia. “I assume that you use brick in your internal walls. But I really don’t know. I take it that you’ve seen the architect’s plans, have you?”

“Brick,” said the builder. He had now put down the tool chest in the hall and was struggling with the catch that secured its lid.

“I really don’t see the point of saying brick,” said Antonia, somewhat tetchily. “What I really want to know is where you want to start.”

“Poland,” said the tall man.

Antonia looked at him. It had taken a few minutes, but at least now it was clear. “Poland?” she asked.

The tall man smiled. “Poland,” he replied, pointing out of the window vaguely in the direction of Cumberland Street.

Antonia shook her head. “No,” she said. “That’s west. Poland is over there. There.” She pointed in the direction of London Street and the Mansfield Traquair Church.

The builder looked concerned and glanced at his colleague, as if for reassurance.

“Poland,” said the second man, staring intensely at Antonia.

“Well, I do get the point,” said Antonia. “And I don’t think we need worry too much about the exact location of Poland. I think that you make your point clearly enough. You’re Polish.

And you’re here to work on my flat. But I take it that you understand nothing of what I have just said.”

“Poland,” said the tall man and held out his hands, palms up, in a gesture of resignation.

132 A Significant Revelation on the Stair Antonia nodded, and pointed to the kitchen. “Go and look,”

she said. “Kitchen.”

The senior Pole bowed to her and moved towards the kitchen with his friend. Scottish builders did not bow, thought Antonia, but then they did not carry on their shoulders quite such a history of defeat and invasion and dashed hopes. She watched the Poles as they entered the kitchen and set down their cases of tools. What was it like, she wondered, to be so far from home, in a country where one could not speak the language, without one’s family? These men knew the answer to that, she assumed, but they could not tell her.

She went through to the kitchen, put on the kettle, and made tea. The Poles, in between the unpacking of their tool chests, watched her. And when she poured them each a mug of tea, they took it gravely, as if it were a precious gift, and cradled the mug in their hands, tenderly. She saw that these hands were rough and whitened, as if they had been handling plaster.

The tall man watched her and smiled. His eyes, she thought, had that strange blueness which one sometimes sees in those who come from northern places, as if they could see long distances, faraway things that others could not see.

Antonia raised her mug to them, as if in toast. The tall man returned the gesture. As he did so, he mouthed something, and smiled. Antonia, who had hardly looked at a man over the previous year, looked at him.

40. A Significant Revelation on the Stair While Antonia was busy communicating, albeit to a very small degree, with her new Polish builders, Angus Lordie was making his way up the stair of No. 44. He was coming to visit Domenica, not Antonia; indeed, it was the cause of some anxiety on his part that Antonia could, theoretically, be met on the way up to Domenica’s house. Angus was in some awe of Antonia.

A Significant Revelation on the Stair 133

There was to be a meeting on the stair that morning, but not between Angus and Antonia. Halfway up, as he turned a corner, Angus came across a small boy sitting disconsolately on one of the stone steps. It was Bertie.

“Ah!” said Angus, peering down and inspecting Bertie. “The young man who plays the saxophone, I believe. The very same young man who exchanged warm words with my dog . . .”

The mention of Cyril had slipped out, and it revived the pain that seemed to be always there, just below the surface, as the mention of the names of those we have lost can do.

“He’s a very nice dog,” said Bertie. “I wish I had a dog.”

“Oh, do you?” said Angus. “Well, every boy should have a dog, in my view. Having a dog goes with being a boy.”

“I’m not allowed to have one,” said Bertie. “My mother . . .”

“Ah, yes,” said Angus. “Your mother.” He knew exactly who Irene was, and Bertie had his unreserved sympathy. “Well,” he went on, “don’t worry. I’m sure that you’ll get a dog one of these days.”

There was a brief moment of silence. There’s something wrong, thought Angus. This little boy is feeling miserable. Is it something to do with that mother of his? I would certainly feel miserable if I were her son, poor little boy.

“Are you unhappy?” Angus asked.

Bertie, still seated on the stone stair, hugging his knees in front of him, lowered his head. “Yes,” he said. His voice was small, defeated, and Angus felt a surge of feeling for him. He, too, had endured periods of unhappiness as a boy – when he had been bullied – and he remembered what it was like. Unhappiness in childhood was worse than the unhappiness one encountered in later life; it was so complete, so seemingly without end.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Angus said. “It’s rotten being unhappy, isn’t it?” He paused. “I’m a bit unhappy myself at the moment. But you tell me why you’re unhappy and then I’ll tell you why I’m feeling the same way. Maybe we could help one another.”

“It’s because of Olive,” said Bertie. “She’s a girl at school. She 134 A Significant Revelation on the Stair came to play today and she pretended to be a nurse. She took some of my blood.”

Angus’s eyes widened. “Took some of your blood?”

“Yes,” said Bertie. “She had a syringe which she found in her bathroom cupboard. It had a proper needle and everything.”

“My goodness,” said Angus. “Did she actually . . . actually . . . ?”

“Yes,” said Bertie. “She stuck the needle into my arm – there, just about there – and then she squirted the blood into a little bottle. She said she was going to do some tests on it and would let me know the result.”

“Well, I’m sorry to hear about that,” said Angus. “She shouldn’t have been playing with needles.”

“She said that the needle was a clean one,” said Bertie. “It was all wrapped up in plastic and she had to take it out.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” said Angus. “But why did you let her do this? I wouldn’t.”

“I thought that she was just pretending,” said Bertie. “So I closed my eyes. Then the next thing I knew she had the needle in my arm and was telling me not to move or it would go all the way through to the other side.”

Angus extracted a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. “How very unpleasant for you, Bertie,” he said. “Did you tell your mother about this?”

“Yes,” said Bertie. “I ran through and told her, but I don’t think she heard me. She just started to talk to Olive, who was pretending that nothing had happened. She’s very cunning that way.”

“I can imagine that,” said Angus. “Well, Bertie, I don’t know what to say, other than to suggest that you give Olive a wide berth in the future. But I suppose that’s difficult. And I certainly won’t say to you that you should cheer yourself up by thinking of how many other people are worse off than you are yourself.

The contemplation of the toothache of another does very little to help one’s own toothache, you know.”

Bertie nodded. “Daddy sometimes says: worse things happen at sea. But when I ask him what these worse things are, he can’t tell me. Do you know what they are, Mr Lordie?”

A Powerful Ally in the Campaign to Free Cyril 135

Angus thought for a moment. Terrible things undoubtedly happened at sea, but he did not think it appropriate to tell Bertie about them. “Oh, this and that, Bertie,” he said. “It’s best not to talk about these things.”

Bertie appeared to accept this. He looked up at Angus and asked: “Mr Lordie, you said that you were unhappy too. Why are you unhappy?”

“My dog,” said Angus. “He’s in the pound. He’s been accused of biting people in Northumberland Street.”

Bertie thought for a moment. “That’s another dog,” he said eventually. “It looks like your dog, but it’s another one. I’ve seen it.”

Angus hardly dared speak. “Are you sure?” he whispered.

“Of course,” said Bertie. “There’s a dog who lives in a basement flat in Northumberland Street. They let him wander about.

And he’s a very bad dog – he tried to bite me once in Drummond Place Gardens, but I ran away in time.”

Angus could barely contain his excitement. “Bertie!” he said.

“Would you be able to help me find that dog? Would you?”

“Of course,” said Bertie. “I can show you where he lives. But you’ll have to ask my mother if I’m allowed.”

“I most certainly shall,” said Angus. “Oh, Bertie, you excellent boy! You have no idea what this means to me.”

“That’s all right, Mr Lordie,” said Bertie. “And I’m glad that you’re happy again.”

“Happy?” exclaimed Angus. “I’m ecstatic!”

41. A Powerful Ally in the Campaign to Free Cyril

“I’ve just had the most extraordinary conversation,” said Angus, as he entered Domenica’s flat. “I met that funny little boy from down below. He was sitting on one of the stairs, like Christopher Robin, his head bowed, looking utterly miserable.”

“It’s his mother,” said Domenica. “She’s a frightful woman.

136 A Powerful Ally in the Campaign to Free Cyril That poor little boy has the most terrible time at her hands.

She’s always banging on about Melanie Klein and the like, while all that poor wee Bertie wants to do is to have a normal boyhood. He’s mad keen on trains, I believe, but she, of course, thinks that his time is better spent in yoga lessons. Yoga lessons! I ask you, Angus. What six-year-old boy wants to do yoga?”

“There might be some,” mused Angus. “In these ashrams, or whatever. Some of the monks are tiny – young boys, really.”

“Those are Buddhists,” said Domenica. “You really should get your facts right, Angus. Buddhists meditate – there are some Buddhist schools of yoga, but generally the Buddhists don’t turn themselves inside out.”

“Well, be that as it may,” said Angus. “I had a conversation with young Bertie, and he came up with an extraordinary story about some game of doctors and nurses that he had been involved in. But then . . .” he paused for effect; Domenica was watching him closely. “But then he revealed that he knew the dog who had done the biting with which Cyril is charged. And he says that he can show me where he lives!”

Domenica clapped her hands together. “What a relief! You’ve been like a bear with a sore head since Cyril was arrested, Angus.

It will be a great relief to have you back with us again.”

“And what about Cyril’s feelings?” asked Angus peevishly.

“Aren’t you pleased for his sake?”

“Of course I am,” said Domenica soothingly. “Nobody wants the innocent to suffer.”

“So all we have to do is to explain to the police that it was this other dog – whoever he is – who did it, and they’ll release Cyril.”

Domenica frowned. It would not necessarily be so simple, she thought. One could hardly get the fiscal to drop proceedings just because somebody – and an interested party at that –

explains that he thinks that another dog is to blame. No, they would have to be more convincing than that.

“We’ll need to think about this,” she said to Angus. “We can’t just barge in and expect to get Cyril out. We must marshal our A Powerful Ally in the Campaign to Free Cyril 137

facts. We must prepare our case, and then, at the right moment, we produce the real culprit from a hat – metaphorically speaking, of course.”

Angus nodded his agreement to this. He was convinced now that Cyril would be exculpated, and he did not mind if the process required some planning and thought. In fact, he was quite willing to leave all this to Domenica; she was so forceful, he thought, she would be a very powerful ally for Cyril in the campaign to establish his innocence.

“Whatever you say, Domenica,” Angus said. “Cyril and I are quite content to leave our fate in your hands.”

They moved through to the kitchen, where Domenica prepared a cup of coffee for them both. Then she turned and addressed Angus with the air of one about to make an important statement. “Angus,” she began, “don’t you find that there are times when everything seems to be happening at once?

When, for some reason, life seems speeded up?”

“Most certainly,” said Angus. “And do you think we are in such a time right now?”

“It seems a little bit like that to me,” said Domenica. “Here I am, back from the Malacca Straits. No sooner have I returned than Antonia announces her intention of becoming my neighbour on a permanent basis. Not that she asked me, mind you.

I’ve always thought that one should ask one’s neighbours before one gets too firmly settled in.”

“Impossible,” said Angus. “Neighbours are given to us on the same basis as we are given our families. There is no element of choice involved – none at all.”

“Is there not?” asked Domenica. “Well what about Ann Street? I was under the impression that the people who live in Ann Street will buy up any house that comes on the market in order to make sure that it doesn’t end up in the wrong hands.”

“Nonsense,” said Angus. “That really is an ancient canard, Domenica. People have been saying that about Ann Street for years. But it’s complete nonsense. It’s a very inclusive street.

138 A Powerful Ally in the Campaign to Free Cyril Anybody who’s got a million pounds to spend on a house is in.

They’re terrifically accepting.”

“Then all these stories about Edinburgh being full of icy types are false?”

“Absolutely,” said Angus frostily.

Domenica was not convinced, but she did not want to get involved at that moment in a discussion about the mores of Edinburgh; she had other news to impart to Angus.

“Yes,” she said. “Developments seem to be occurring at a frightening rate. And here am I with somebody else coming to live with me. No sooner have I dispatched Antonia, than I hear from my aunt that she would like to come and spend a few months in Edinburgh with me.”

“How nice for you,” said Angus. “Company, and so on.”

“Yes,” said Domenica. “I don’t begrudge her the visit. It’s just that she belongs to a generation that was used to paying rather long visits. We think in terms of three days; they thought nothing of descending on people for three months.” She paused.

“And she’s virtually one hundred years old; ninety-six I think.

But remarkably sprightly.”

“Then she will have a great deal to talk about,” said Angus.

“A lot will have happened in those ninety-six years.”

“Indeed,” said Domenica. “We can expect to hear a great deal about it.”

“Do I detect a certain lack of enthusiasm?” asked Angus.

“Well . . .”

“Because I would love to have somebody like that stay with me,” said Angus. “You should be more appreciative, Domenica.”

Domenica thought for a moment. “All right,” she said. “She can stay with you, Angus. Thank you for the offer.”

Angus looked flustered. “But I’m not sure that she would approve of my lifestyle,” he said. “You know . . .”

“My aunt is very tolerant,” said Domenica. “So thank you, Angus, it really is very kind of you.”

“No, Domenica. Sorry. She’s your responsibility. Blood is thicker than whisky.”

A Dinner Date with Pat . . . and a Surprise 139

“Whisky?”

“Why, thank you,” said Angus.

42. A Dinner Date with Pat . . . and a Surprise After leaving the Cumberland Bar, where he had been regaled by Angus Lordie with all the details of that extraordinary evening with the Jacobites, Matthew had returned to his flat in India Street to prepare for his dinner outing with Pat. Angus had not been much help in recommending restaurants, and so he had consulted a guide and chosen a small place, Le Bistrôt des Arts, at the Morningside end of Colinton Road, convenient for Pat –

it was ten minutes’ walk from the Grange – and well-reviewed by a normally picky critic.

He was at the table when she arrived. He appeared to be studying one of the spoons, but he was really looking at his reflection in the silver. The concave shape distorted him, but even taking that into account, Matthew felt that it captured the essential him. And the problem with that was that the essential him, he thought, was nothing special. I really have nothing to offer this girl, he told himself; me, with my distressed-oatmeal sweater – a failure – and my crushed-strawberry trousers –

another failure – and my Macgregor tartan underpants. I just don’t have it.

She slipped out of her coat. “You’ve been waiting for ages?

I’m sorry.”

“No,” he said. “Five minutes. If that.” He stood up to greet her, and she kissed him on the cheek. She did not always do that, and he flushed with pleasure. Matthew wanted this to work; he thought that it would not, but he wanted it.

“I’m going to order champagne,” he said impulsively. He might be a failure, but he was a failure with more than four million three hundred thousand pounds (the market was doing well). “Would you like that?”

140 A Dinner Date with Pat . . . and a Surprise She swept the hair back from her forehead, and he saw that there were small drops of rain on her skin. “What’s the occasion?” she asked.

He smiled. “Meeting you here. Being with you.”

He stopped. Did that sound corny? Nobody said that sort of thing, he thought. But he had said it spontaneously; he had meant it, and now, to his relief, he saw her return his smile.

“That’s a very sweet thing to say, Matthew. Thank you.”

He felt emboldened. “Well, I meant it. I like being with you.

I like you so much, you see. So much.”

She looked down at the table. I’ve embarrassed her, he thought.

I should not have said that. She doesn’t want to be liked by me.

“I like you too, Matthew.”

Well, he thought, that’s something. But how much did she like him? As much as he liked her? As much as she had liked Wolf? Or Bruce for that matter? Or was that a different sort of liking? Wolf and Bruce were sexy; they dripped with sexual appeal, if one can drip with such a thing. Dripping came into it somewhere, but Matthew was not sure where and did not like to think about it really, about the things that he did not have.

For a few moments there was silence. Then he said: “Do you think there’s much of a future for us?”

Pat raised her eyes to meet his. “What do you mean?”

“A future. You know. Are we going to carry on going out together?”

She seemed to relax – quite visibly – and it occurred to him that she might have misinterpreted him. He imagined that she had thought that he was proposing to her, and the thought appalled him. It was not that he would not like to marry Pat, but he had never thought of marriage to anybody. She would do fine, of course, if he did; but he hadn’t . . .

“I’d like to carry on seeing you,” she said, reaching for the menu. “So let’s not talk about it anymore. Let’s just carry on.”

She reached across the table and took his hand, gave it a squeeze, released it. He thought: she might do that with a brother – take his hand, squeeze it, and let go. If he had been A Dinner Date with Pat . . . and a Surprise 141

Wolf, would she not have taken his hand, squeezed it, and then clung on?

“All right,” he said.

“Now let’s choose something to eat,” she said.

Matthew turned round to catch the proprietor’s eye. “I’m going to order that champagne,” he said. “Bollinger.”

She glanced at the menu. It looked expensive, and she could not tell the difference between champagnes. “A bit extravagant.”

He shrugged. “Why not?”

She said: “Have you forgiven me?”

He was puzzled. “For what? What have I got to forgive you for?”

“For that business over Angus Lordie’s painting. For selling it to . . .”

“To that man with the mustache? The Duke of . . .”

“Johannesburg. Yes. For doing all that. Because, anyway, I’ve sorted it all out.”

He looked puzzled. “Has he paid?”

He had not. But she had felt guilty about it and been in touch with him. He had said that he would pay, she explained. “He was very nice about it,” she said. “He said that he had been meaning to get in touch and that he was glad that I had phoned.

And he’s asked us to a party.”

“Hold on,” said Matthew. “He – the Duke, that is – has asked us – you and me, that is – to a party?”

“Yes,” said Pat. “Tonight. Any time before twelve. He said that things get a bit slower at midnight.”

Matthew shook his head. “I can’t believe this! You went off and set all this up – why didn’t you ask me? What if I had been going to do something else?”

“But you wouldn’t,” Pat said. “You never do . . .” She left the sentence unfinished, as well she might – she had not intended even to begin it. It was true, of course; Matthew never did anything, never went out. His life, when one came to think of it, was remarkably empty, not that she had meant to tell him that.

142 Like a Couple of Boxers, Waiting to Land a Blow But he had heard. “I never do what?” There was an edge to his voice, disclosing, perhaps, a sense of having been misjudged.

“You never do anything on a Tuesday night,” Pat said quickly.

“It’s Wednesday.”

“Same difference,” she said. “Anyway, the point is this: the Duke has invited us and I think we should go. And he said that he’d give us the cheque there. So we have to go.”

“All right,” said Matthew. But he did not think that it was all right; it was all wrong in his view. He was so passive, so useless, that she had to make the decisions. He looked down at his new pair of midbrown, handmade shoes that had arrived from John Lobb that morning. She had not noticed them; she never would.

43. Like a Couple of Boxers, Waiting to Land a Blow After dinner, Matthew and Pat took a taxi out to Single-Malt House, on the southern extremes of the city. Matthew had cheered up during the course of the meal, and they had both laughed to the brink of tears when a garlic-buttered snail had slipped off Matthew’s fork and disappeared down his shirt front.

Like a Couple of Boxers, Waiting to Land a Blow 143

“You’re so sweet,” Pat had said suddenly. “With your snails and . . .”

Matthew was not sure whether it was a good thing to be called sweet. Being called cute was a different matter; that was a compliment, and one did not have to be in short trousers to receive it. But most men, he thought, would object to being called sweet. Indeed, the Scots term sweetie-wife was commonly used, in a pejorative sense, for a man who liked to gossip with women. Matthew, for his part, saw nothing wrong in gossiping with women, which he rather enjoyed when he had the chance. He liked talking to Big Lou; he liked talking to Pat; in fact, he liked talking to any woman who was prepared to talk to him. At the heart of Scots culture, though, was an awful interdiction of such emotional closeness between men and women; a terrible separation inflicted by a distorted football-obsessed emotional tyranny, such a deep injury of the soul.

Yet it was not an evening to take offence at what was undoubtedly intended as a compliment, and so Matthew said nothing, but merely nodded in acknowledgement. “And you’re sweet too,”

he said, adding, “in a different way.”

The conversation moved on.

“Who was in the Cumberland Bar this evening?” asked Pat.

“The usual crowd,” said Matthew. “But I only spoke to Angus Lordie. You’ve heard about Cyril?”

“I have,” said Pat. “And it’s awful. My father says that they’ll have him put down, for sure. He said that he has a patient whose dog was put down for biting. My father said that the owner experienced real grief and suffered from depression for a long time. You’d think that they’d take that into account before they order dogs to be destroyed. Those dogs are members of somebody’s family.”

“Exactly,” said Matthew. “And Angus is really upset, as you can imagine. Anyway, he told me about Big Lou’s new boyfriend, Robert something-or-other. It’s one of those very Scottish surnames – Crolloch or something like that. Crumblie, maybe.

Robert Crumblie? No, I don’t think so.”

144 Like a Couple of Boxers, Waiting to Land a Blow

“Smellie? That’s a common name.”

Matthew laughed. “Yes, it is. I knew a boy called Smellie at school. The family came from Fife, where they often have these interesting names. There are people called McSporran up there, which is fine, but you have to admit it is a pretty striking name.

Like Smellie.”

Pat was intrigued. “What was Smellie like?”

Matthew thought for a moment. He was trying to remember what Smellie’s first name was. Archie MacPherson Smellie. That was it. And then he smiled at the memory.

“Archie,” he said. “Archie Smellie. He was a great betting man, or, I suppose, betting boy. He had a numbers racket at school, which we all paid into. You would choose a number between one and fifty and Archie would write it down in his book. Then, each week, Archie would announce which number he was going to pay up on, and you’d get fifteen times your stake if it was your number.”

“How did he choose the number?”

Matthew laughed. “That’s the point. Archie never told us that, and sometimes there were weeks in which he said no number came up and he pocketed the whole proceeds. You’d think that we would have seen through it, but we didn’t. I suppose we were very trusting.”

“And what became of him?”

“He became an accountant,” said Matthew. “I saw him the other day in Great King Street. He was walking along in the opposite direction. I stopped him and said: ‘Hello, Smellie,’ and he stared at me for a moment. Then I think he vaguely recognised me and muttered: ‘Actually, it’s Smiley these days.’ ”

“That’s sad that he felt that he had to change his name.”

Matthew agreed, but said that he understood. “Your name defines you,” he said. “And I don’t see why you should go through life being called something that embarrasses you. Mind you, some people make a point of sticking to an embarrassing name.

They more or less challenge you to laugh. People like that show great courage, I think.”

Like a Couple of Boxers, Waiting to Land a Blow 145

Pat tried to think of people she knew who had shown courage in the face of an embarrassing name. She could not think of anybody.

But Matthew could. “I know somebody called Winterpoo,”

he said. “Martin Winterpoo. Poor chap. But he’s stuck to his name, which shows great qualities, in my view.” He paused.

“Would you like to be called something different, Pat?”

Pat hesitated before answering. The truth of the matter was that she would. Pat was such a brief name, so without character.

It said nothing about its bearer. And it was androgynous.

She looked at Matthew. “You think I should be called something else? Is that what you think?”

“No, I didn’t say that. I just asked you. There’s nothing wrong with being called Pat.”

Pat looked down at the tablecloth. “And what about your own name, Matthew? What about that? If I’m Pat, then you’re Matt.”

Reaching for the champagne, Matthew topped up Pat’s glass.

We’re arguing again, he thought. It seems to happen rather too often recently. We’re like two boxers dancing around one another in the ring, waiting to land a blow. This thought depressed him, and he did not want to be depressed; not tonight, with the Bollinger on the table and the prospect of a party at the Duke’s house. He decided to change the subject.

“What should we call the Duke?” he asked. “Your Grace?”

“No,” said Pat. “That’s far too formal. I think that we should probably just call him Johannesburg.”

“Is that what dukes are called by their friends?”

Pat shrugged. “No, they use their first names. Harry, or Jim, or whatever. But he called himself Johannesburg.”

“I see,” said Matthew. He paused. “Do you think that he’s a real duke, Pat? I looked him up in Who’s Who in Scotland, and he wasn’t there. He wasn’t there under Johannesburg or Duke.

Nothing.”

“I think he’s a fraud,” said Pat. “His real name is probably Smellie, or something like that.”

“We’ll find out,” said Matthew.

146 Dukes Don’t All Live in Grand Houses

“Will we?”

“Maybe not.” Then he asked: “I wonder who else will be there, Pat? Le tout Edimbourg?”

44. Dukes Don’t All Live in Grand Houses Single-Malt House was a comfortable, rather rambling farm-house on the very edge of town. It stood on the lower slopes of the Pentland Hills, those misty presences that provide the southern backdrop to Edinburgh. To the east, dropping slowly towards the North Sea, lay the rich farmland of East Lothian, broken here and there by pocket glens sheltering the remnants of old coal mines – the villages of miners’ cottages, the occasional tower, the scars that coal can leave on a landscape.

The house itself was not large, but was flanked by a byre, behind which a garden sloped up to a stand of oaks, and beyond the oaks, the steeper parts of the hillside itself, pines, scree, the sky.

“I’ve driven past this place hundreds of times,” said Matthew, as he and Pat alighted from the taxi in the driveway. “And never noticed it. That’s the Biggar road out there. We used to go out to Flotterstone Inn when I was a boy. We’d have sandwiches and cakes from one of those three-tiered plate things and then go for a walk up to the Glencorse Reservoir.”

“So did we,” said Pat. “And there were always crows in those trees near the reservoir wall. Remember them? Crows in the trees, and sheep always on the wrong side of the dyke.”

They stood for a moment under the night sky, the taxi reversing down the drive behind them. Matthew reached out and put his arm around Pat’s waist. “We could walk over there now,” he said. “We could go over the top of the hill, then down past the firing ranges.” He wanted to be alone with her, away from distraction, to have her full attention, which he thought he never had.

Dukes Don’t All Live in Grand Houses 147

She shivered. “Too cold,” she said. “And we’ve been invited to a party.”

They looked up at the house behind them. There was clearly a party going on inside, as lights spilled out of the front windows and the murmur of many conversations could be heard coming from within.

“Somehow, I don’t imagine him living here,” said Matthew.

“I don’t know why. I just don’t.”

“They don’t all live in grand houses,” Pat said. “Some dukes are probably pretty hard-up these days.”

Matthew raised an eyebrow. “But this one paid thirty-two thousand for a plain white canvas. That doesn’t sound like penury.” He paused. “Of course, he hasn’t paid yet.”

They walked to the front door and Matthew pulled at the old-fashioned bell tug.

“They’ll never hear that inside,” said Pat. “Let’s just go in.”

Matthew was reluctant. “Should we?”

“Why not? Look, nobody’s answered. We can’t just stand here.”

They pushed the door open and entered a narrow hall. At the side of this hall was an umbrella and walking-stick stand of the sort which is always to be seen in country houses – a jumble of cromachs, a couple of golf umbrellas, and to the side, along with a boot scraper, mud-encrusted Wellingtons, a pair of hiking boots for a child, a tossed-aside dog collar and lead.

The hall became a corridor which ran off towards the back of the house. The sound of conversation was louder now –

laughter, a tap being run somewhere in the background – and then, from a door to their right, a man emerged. He was wearing a crumpled linen suit and a forest green shirt, open at the neck.

“So, there you are,” said the Duke of Johannesburg. “Hoped for, but not entirely expected.” He came up to Pat and kissed her lightly on each cheek – a delicate gesture for a large man.

Then he turned to Matthew and extended his hand.

Matthew, flustered, said, “Your Grace.”

“Please!” protested the Duke. “Just call me Johannesburg.

148 Dukes Don’t All Live in Grand Houses We’re all very New Labour round here.” He turned to Pat as he said this and winked. “Hardly,” he added.

Pat smiled at the Duke. “Where exactly is Johannesburg?”

she asked.

The Duke looked at her in surprise. “Over there,” he said, waving his hand out of the window. “A long way away, thank God.” He paused. “Do I shock you? I think I do. That’s the problem these days – nobody speaks their mind. No, don’t smile.

They really don’t. We’ve been browbeaten into conformity by all sorts of people who tell us what we can and cannot say.

Haven’t you noticed it? The tyranny of political correctness.

Don’t pass any judgement on anything. Don’t open your trap in case you offend somebody or other.”

He led them through the door into the room from which he had just emerged.

“Everybody knows,” he went on, “that there are some places which are, quite frankly, awful, but nobody says that out loud.

Except some bravely spoken journalists now and then. Do let me get you a drink.”

He reached for a couple of glasses from a library shelf to his side. “Some years ago,” he continued, “The Oldie ran a series called Great Dumps of the World – a brilliant idea. They got a rather clever friend of mine, Lance Butler, to write about Monaco, and he did a brilliant job. What a dump that place is!

All those rich people busy not wanting to pay tax and living in chi-chi little apartments above glove and perfume shops.

Disgusting place! And their funny wee monarchy with its clock-work soldiers and the princess who took up with a lion tamer –

can you believe it? What a dump! But they didn’t like it at all.

There was an awful fuss. These people take themselves so seriously.

“Come to think of it,” the Duke continued, “Johannesburg isn’t all that bad. Once they get crime under control, it’ll be rather nice, in fact. That beautiful, invigorating highveld air.

Marvellous. And nice people. They put up with an awful lot in the bad old days – oppression, cruelty etc. – but they came out Minimalism Is Not Confined to the Canvas 149

smiling, which says a lot for them. So I hope things turn out well.”

He handed Pat and Matthew their glasses. “You may be wondering why I’m the Duke of Johannesburg. Well, the reason is that my grandfather gave an awful lot of money to a political party a long time ago on the express understanding that they would make him a duke. He had visited Jo’burg years before when he was in the Scots Greys and he rather liked the place, so he chose that as his title. And then they went and ratted on their agreement and said they didn’t go in for creating dukedoms anymore and would he be satisfied with an ordinary peerage? He said no and used the moniker thereafter, as did my old man, on the grounds that he was morally entitled to it.

So that’s how it came about. There are some pedants who claim that I shouldn’t call myself what I do, but I ignore them.

Pedants!”

He raised his glass. “Slàinte!”

45. Minimalism Is Not Confined to the Canvas But there were others in the room. Matthew and Pat had hardly noticed them, so engaged had they been by the flow of their host’s conversation. So that was the reason why there was no mention of a Duke of Johannesburg in Who’s Who in Scotland –

there was no such duke, at least not in the sense that one would be recognised by the Lord Lyon. Yet what did such recognition amount to? Matthew asked himself. All that it did was give a stamp of purely conventional authenticity, conventional in the sense of agreed, or settled, and ultimately that was merely a question of arbitrary social arrangements. There was no real difference between this duke and any other better-known duke, just as there was no real difference between a real duke and any one of Jock Tamson’s bairns. We were all just people who chose to call ourselves by curious things known as names, and the only

150 Minimalism Is Not Confined to the Canvas significant difference between any of us lay in what we did with our lives.

Matthew found himself drawn to the Duke of Johannesburg, with his easy-going conviviality and his cheerful demeanour.

This was a man, he thought, who dared and, like most men, Matthew admired men who dared. He himself did not exactly dare, but he would like to dare, if he dared.

“Yes,” said the Duke, looking around the room. “There are a couple of other guests. And I’m ignoring my social responsibilities by not introducing you. I shouldn’t go on about these old and irrelevant matters. Nobody’s interested in any of that.”

“Oh, but we are!” said a man standing near the fireplace.

“That’s where you’re mistaken, Johannesburg. We all like to hear about these things.”

“That’s my Greek chorus over there,” said the Duke, nodding in the direction of the man by the fireplace. “You must meet him.”

The Duke drew Matthew and Pat over to the other guest and made introductions.

“Humphrey Holmes,” said the Duke.

Matthew looked at Humphrey. He had seen him before – and heard of him – but he had never actually met him. He was a dapper man, wearing a black velvet jacket and bow tie.

Minimalism Is Not Confined to the Canvas 151

“I hear you sold Johannesburg a painting,” said Humphrey.

“He was telling me about it. Something very minimalist, I gather.”

Matthew laughed. “Very.” He glanced around the room, at the pictures on the walls. There were several family portraits –

a picture of three boys in kilts, in almost sepia tones, from a long time ago; one looked a bit like the Duke, but it was hard to tell. Then there was a powerful James Howie landscape, one of those glowing pictures that the artist scraped away at for years in order to get the light just as he wanted it to be. Matthew knew his work and sold it occasionally, when Howie, a perfec-tionist, could be persuaded to part with a painting.

“I was surprised when he said he’d bought something minimalist,” remarked Humphrey. “As you can see, this isn’t exactly a minimalist room.”

“Perhaps he’ll hang it somewhere else,” said Pat.

Humphrey turned to her and smiled politely. “Perhaps.

Perhaps there are minimalist things here already – it’s just that we can’t see them. But, tell me, do you like minimalism in music?”

Matthew looked down at his feet. “Well, I’m not sure . . .”

“You mean people like Glass and Adams?” Pat interjected.

“Yes,” said Humphrey. “Some people are very sniffy about them. I heard somebody say the other day that it’s amazing how people like Adams make so much out of three notes. Which isn’t exactly fair. There’s quite a lot there, you know, if you start to look at Pärt and people like that.”

“I like Pärt,” said Pat.

“Oh, so do I,” said Humphrey.

“And then there’s Max Richter,” said Pat. “Do you know that he lives in Edinburgh? His music’s wonderful. Really haunting.”

“I shall look out for him,” said Humphrey. “Johannesburg wouldn’t be interested, of course. He listens to the pipes mostly.

And some nineteenth-century stuff. Italian operas and so on.

One of his boys is shaping up to be quite a good piper. That’s him coming in now.”

152 Minimalism Is Not Confined to the Canvas They looked in the direction of a boy who had entered the room, holding a plate of smoked salmon on small squares of bread. From behind a blond fringe, the boy looked back at them.

“Will you play for us, East Lothian?” asked Humphrey.

“Yes,” answered the boy. “Later.”

“Good boy,” said Humphrey. “Johannesburg has three boys, you know. That lad’s East Lothian. Then there’s West Lothian and Midlothian. Real boys. And he’s taught them to do things that boys used to know how to do. How to make a sporran out of a badger you find run over on the road. How to repair a lobster creel. Things like that. I think . . .”

He was interrupted by the return of the Duke, who had gone out of the room once he had made the introductions.

“I have my cheque book,” said the Duke, holding up a rectan-gular green leather wallet. “If I don’t pay for the painting now, I shall forget. So . . .” He unfolded the wallet, and leaning it on Humphrey’s back, scribbled out a cheque, which he handed to Matthew with a flourish.

Matthew looked at the cheque. The Duke’s handwriting was firm and clear – strong, masculine downstrokes. Three hundred and twenty pounds.

Matthew’s expression gave it away.

“Something wrong?” asked the Duke. There was concern in his voice.

“I . . .” Matthew began.

Pat took the cheque from him and glanced at it. “Actually, the painting was thirty-two thousand pounds,” she said.

“Good heavens!” said the Duke. “I thought . . . Well I must have assumed that there was a decimal point before the last two zeros. Thirty-two thousand pounds! Sorry. The exchequer can’t rise to that.”

“This’ll do,” said Pat firmly. “Our mistake. This’ll do fine, won’t it, Matthew?”

Matthew glanced at Humphrey, who was smiling benignly.

Elsewhere in the room, there was silence, as other guests had He Wanted Her Only to Answer His Question 153

realised what was going on. It was easy to imagine a mistake of this nature being made. And three hundred and twenty pounds was quite enough for that particular painting, far too much, really.

“I shall be more careful in my labelling in future,” Matthew said magnanimously. “Of course that’s all right.”

The tension which had suffused the room now dissipated.

People began to talk again freely, and the Duke reached for a bottle of wine to refill glasses.

“That was good of you,” murmured Humphrey.

“It was nothing,” said Matthew. “It really was.”

“But it wasn’t,” protested Humphrey.

“I meant the painting was nothing,” said Matthew, which was true.

46. He Wanted Her Only to Answer His Question Later in the evening, Matthew, wanting, he said, to get some air, suggested that they go out into the garden. Pat nodded and followed him out through the hall. She had gone out into gardens with boys before this and knew what it meant. Boys were usually not very interested in gardens, except at night, when their interest sharpened. Outside, the evening was unusually warm for the time of the year, almost balmy; the air was still, the branches of the oak trees farther up the steeply sloping garden were motion-less.

For a few moments, they stood on the driveway. Matthew reached for Pat’s hand. “Look at that,” he said, gesturing up at the sky. “We don’t often see that in town, do we? All that?”

The sky was a dark, black velvet, rich and deep, studded here and there with small points of starlight, one or two of which seemed to burn with great intensity.

“No,” she said. “All those yellow streetlights. Light pollu-tion.”

154 He Wanted Her Only to Answer His Question Matthew squeezed her hand. This time, she returned the pressure, did not let go of his hand.

“Whenever I look up there,” he said, “I think the same thing.

I think of how small we are and how all our concerns, our anxieties and all the rest of it, are so irrelevant, so tiny. Not that we think they are – but they are, aren’t they?”

She looked at him. “I suppose they are.”

“And I also think of how we make one another miserable by worrying about these small things, when we should really just hug one another and say thank you to somebody, to something, for the great privilege of being alive – when everything up there”

– he nodded in the direction of the sky – “when everything up there is cold and dead. Dead stars. Collapsing stars. Suns that are going out, dying.”

She was silent. She wanted to say to him: “I think so too.”

But she did not.

He began to walk over towards the byre, leading her gently by the hand. “You know, a long time ago, when I had just left school, I had a friendship with another boy. It was the most intense friendship I ever had. I really loved my friend. And why not? It was pure – it really was. Nothing happened. It was completely innocent. Do you understand about that?”

“Of course I do,” she replied. “Women are much easier about loving their friends. It’s only men who have difficulty with that.”

“Yes. Anyway, we were in Perthshire once, fishing, and we sat down on the rocks beside the river and I looked up at the sky, which was completely empty, and I suddenly had the feeling that I wasn’t alone anymore. I can’t explain it in any other way.

I suppose it was one of those moments that people sometimes call mystical. A moment of insight. And I never forgot it. I still think of it.”

They were outside the byre now. It had been converted and appeared to be used as some sort of office. A French window, framed by creepers, was open, and they could see into the room on the other side of the window.

He Wanted Her Only to Answer His Question 155

“Come,” said Matthew. “Come on, I don’t think they’ll mind.”

They pushed open one of the French windows and stepped inside the room. Through a large window in the roof there was enough light coming in from outside, from the glow that spilled out from the main house, from the light of the sky itself, to reveal a cluttered desk, a wall of bookshelves, and a sofa. In the far corner of the room, a squat, dark shape revealed the presence of a wood-burning stove. There was, about the room, an air of wood-smoke that had settled, a reassuring, comfortable smell that had also been present in the house, with its open fires.

“This looks like his study,” said Matthew. His voice was lowered, almost to a sepulchral whisper, although there was nobody about.

“It’s so quiet after the din back there,” Pat said.

They sat down on the sofa. Matthew felt his heart beating within him and knew that even if he had not made up his mind in a conscious sense, at the level of the subconscious there was certainty.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he whispered. “Just us. Without anybody else around. I wanted to ask you . . . to ask you whether you thought that we could . . . well, whether we could get engaged.”

He had said it, but he had said it in such a clumsy fashion.

Nobody said that anymore, he said to himself; nobody asks anybody else if they would like to be engaged. Like everything I do, he thought, it sounds awkward and old-fashioned.

For a few moments, Pat said nothing, and Matthew wondered if she had heard him. They were seated so close together that she must have been able to sense the agitated beating of his heart and must have known. At least she knew her presence excited him, made him catch his breath, made his heart go like that; one could not fake those symptoms of affection.

Then a square of light fell onto the driveway and lighted, too, the byre’s interior. The front door had been opened and somebody came out, footfall upon gravel.

156 The Statistical Lady Is Not for Smiling at She said: “Somebody’s coming.”

The steps came nearer and reached the French windows, a figure moving in the darkness, a shadow. Matthew wanted her only to answer his question – gauche though it may have been, it expressed everything that he now felt. Because I’m fed up, he thought, with being lonely and out of place and seeing everybody else in the company of somebody they love. That was why he wanted an answer to his question.

“Please tell me,” he said. “Please just think about it.”

She did not have the time to answer, or if she answered he could not hear. Young East Lothian, his pipes under his arm, was inflating the bag, his drones were beginning to wail; that protest of the pipes before they wrought their magic. He had gone out there to warm up, and now he began to play.

“‘Mist-covered Mountains,’” said Matthew. “Do you know it?”

“Yes,” said Pat. And then: “That question you just asked . . .”

“You don’t have to answer,” said Matthew. “I’m sorry.”

“But I want to . . .” she said, and his heart gave a great leap, then descent: “I want to think about it. Give me . . . give me a few weeks.”

“Of course.”

Outside, the “Mist-covered Mountains” continued; such a tune, expressing all the longing, the love, that we feel for country and place, and for people.

47. The Statistical Lady Is Not for Smiling at Stuart Pollock, statistician in the Scottish Executive (with special responsibility for the adjustment of forecasts), husband of Irene Pollock, father of Bertie (six) and Ulysses (four months); co-proprietor of the second flat (right) in 44 Scotland Street, Edinburgh; all of this is what Stuart was, and all of these descrip-tors he now mulled over as he walked home early, making his The Statistical Lady Is Not for Smiling at 157

way down Waterloo Place after a long and tedious meeting in the neo-Stalinist St Andrew’s House.

A life might be summed up within such short compass, thought Stuart. He saw actuaries do it in their assessments in which we were all so reduced to become, for instance, a single female, aged thirty-two, nonsmoker, resident of the Central Belt – so truncated a description of what that person probably was, about her life and its saliences, but useful for the purposes for which they made these abridgements. Such a person had an allotted span, which the actuaries might reel off in much the same way as a fairground fortune-teller might do from the lines of the hand or on the turn of the Tarot card. You have thirty years before the environmental risk of living in the Central Belt becomes significant. The fortune-teller was not so direct, and certainly less clinical, but it amounted to the same advice: beware.

It had been a long-drawn-out meeting, and a frustrating one, in which Stuart, together with four other colleagues and a couple of parliamentarians, had been looking at health statistics. The news from Scotland was bad, and the Executive was looking for ways of making it sound just a little bit better. Nobody liked to pick on Glasgow, a vigorous and entertaining city, but the inescapable fact was that everybody knew that it had the worst diet in Western Europe and the highest rate of heart disease.

Was there any way in which this information might be presented to the world in a slightly more positive way? “Such as?” Stuart had asked.

This question had not gone down well. The politicians had looked at one another, and then at Stuart. Did one have to restrict the area in question to Western Europe? Could one not compare the Glaswegian diet with, say, diets in countries where there was a similar penchant for high-fat, high-sodium, high-risk food? Such as parts of the United States, particularly those parts with the highest obesity rates? Yes, but although the United States has a similar fondness for pizza, they don’t actually fry it, as they do in Scotland. There’s a difference there.

158 The Statistical Lady Is Not for Smiling at Very well, but what exactly was Western Europe anyway? If one took Turkey into account, and Turkey was almost in Western Europe – particularly if one overlooked the fact that most of it was in Asia and perhaps somewhat far to the east – did it change the picture? Might Glasgow not be compared with Istanbul, and, if one did that, how did the comparison look? Still bad, alas: the Turks did not eat so many fats and sweet things, and they were really rather good about consuming their greens. So were there not other places somewhere, anywhere, where everybody smoked like chimneys, drank to excess, and fried everything . . . ? No, not really.

Stuart smiled as he negotiated the corner at the end of Waterloo Place and began to walk towards Picardy Place. As a statistician, he thought, I’m a messenger; that’s what I do. And, like all messengers, some people would prefer to shoot me.

He looked down the street at the people walking towards him, young, old, in-between. After that day’s meeting, it was taking some time for him to move back from the professional to the personal. Here, approaching him, was a sixty-year-old woman, with two point four children, twenty-three years to go, with a weekly income of . . . and so on. Now there were carbon footprints to consider, too, and that was fun. This woman was walking, but had probably taken a bus. She did not go on holiday to distant destinations, Spain at the most, and so she used little aviation fuel. Her carbon footprint was probably not too bad, particularly by comparison with . . . with those who went to international conferences on carbon footprints. The thought amused him, and he smiled again.

“You laughing at me, son?”

The woman had stopped in front of him.

Stuart was startled. “What? Laughing at you? No, not at all.”

“Because I dinnae like being laughed at,” said the woman, shaking a finger at him.

“Of course not.”

She gave him a scowl and then moved on. Chastened, Stuart The Statistical Lady Is Not for Smiling at 159

continued his walk. The trouble with allowing one’s thoughts to wander was that people might misunderstand. So he put statistics out of his mind and began to think of what lay ahead of him. Bertie had to be taken to his saxophone lesson, and he would do that, as Irene had her hands full with Ulysses. That suited Stuart rather well, as he found that the late afternoon was a difficult time for Ulysses, who tended to girn until he had his bath and his evening feed. Stuart had rather forgotten Bertie’s infancy, what it was like, and the presence of a young baby in the flat was proving trying. At least going off to the lesson would give him the chance to get out with Bertie, which he wanted to do more often.

They had once gone through to Glasgow together on the train and that had been such a success, or at least the journey itself had been. The meeting in Glasgow with that dreadful Lard O’Connor had been a bit of a nightmare, Stuart recalled, but they had emerged unscathed, and Irene and Bertie’s subsequent encounter with Lard, when he had shown up unannounced in Scotland Street, had been mercifully brief. It was important that Bertie should know that such people as Lard O’Connor and his henchmen existed, that he should not think that the whole world was like Edinburgh. There were people who did assume that, and who were rudely surprised when they travelled furth of the city; going to London, for example, could be a terrible shock for people from Edinburgh.

Stuart wanted to spend more time with Bertie and – the awkward thought came unbidden – less time with Irene. That was a terrible thought, and he suppressed it immediately.

He loved and admired Irene, even if she was sometimes a bit outspoken in her convictions. Then another awkward thought intruded: if he wanted to spend less time with Irene, Bertie probably wanted exactly the same thing. But should I, a father, he asked himself, try to save my son from his mother? Was there a general answer to that, he wondered, an answer for all fathers and all sons, or did it depend on the mother?

48. He Wanted So Much to Be the Average Boy

“Ask Lewis Morrison when he thinks Bertie will be ready for his Grade Eight exam,” said Irene, as Stuart helped Bertie into his coat.

“But he’s just done his Grade Seven,” Stuart pointed out.

“Two months ago.” He looked down at Bertie and patted him on the shoulder. “And we got a distinction, didn’t we, my boy?”

“The sight reading was a very easy piece,” said Bertie modestly.

“Even Ulysses could have played it. If his fingers were long enough.”

“There you are,” said Irene. “Bertie’s obviously ready for the next hurdle.”

Bertie listened to this solemnly, but said nothing. He did not mind doing music exams, which for the most part he found very easy, but he wished that he had slightly fewer of them. He had thought that Grade Eight of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music was the highest examination available, and he had been dismayed when Irene had pointed out that it was possible to do examinations beyond that – in particular the Licentiate. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to fail Grade Eight deliberately and continue to fail it at every resitting. But he had tried that technique with his audition for the Edinburgh Teenage Orchestra and had only succeeded in getting himself accepted into the orchestra immediately. He looked up at his father. “Why all these hurdles, Daddy?” he whispered.

“What was that, Bertie?” his father asked.

Bertie glanced at Irene. She was watching him.

“He said he enjoys hurdles,” said Irene. “So just ask Lewis for the details – set pieces and all the rest. Then Bertie can get cracking.”

“People who do Grade Eight are usually much older,” said Bertie. “Sixteen, at least.”

Irene reached forward and ruffled his hair fondly. “But you’re exceptional, Bertie,” she said. “You’re very lucky. I don’t wish to swell your little head, Bertie, but you are not the average boy.”

He Wanted So Much to Be the Average Boy 161

Bertie swallowed hard. He wanted so much to be the average boy, but he knew that this would forever be beyond his reach.

The average boy, he knew, had the average mother, and his mother was not that.

They left the flat with the issue of Grade Eight unresolved.

As they went downstairs, Bertie asked his father if they were going to go to the lesson by bus or car. Bertie loved going in their car and rarely had the chance to do so, as Irene believed in using the bus whenever possible.

“You’d like to go in the car, wouldn’t you?” said Stuart.

Bertie nodded his head vigorously.

“Well, in that case,” said Stuart, “let’s go in the car, Bertie!

And then afterwards – after your lesson – we could take a spin out into the Pentlands, perhaps, or down to Musselburgh. Would you like that?”

Bertie squealed with pleasure. “Yes, Daddy,” he said. “Or we could drive round Arthur’s Seat, all the way round.”

“That’s another possibility,” said Stuart. “The whole world –

or at least that bit of it within twenty miles or so of Edinburgh –

is our oyster, Bertie. We can go wherever we like!”

Bertie, who was holding his father’s hand as they walked downstairs, gave the hand a squeeze of encouragement.

“Thank you, Daddy! Thank you so much!”

Stuart smiled. Bertie was so easy to please, he found; all that he wanted was a bit of company, a bit of time. Now they stepped out into the street and Bertie looked about him.

“Where’s our car, Daddy? Is it far away?”

Stuart hesitated. He looked up Scotland Street, up one side, and then down the other. There was no sign of the car.

“Has Mummy used it today?” he asked.

Bertie shook his head. “No, Daddy. You were the last one to use it. Last week. You came in and said that you had parked the car and you put the keys down on the kitchen table. I saw you, Daddy.”

Stuart scratched his head. “You know, Bertie, I think that you’re right. But I just can’t for the life of me remember where 162 He Wanted So Much to Be the Average Boy I parked it. Did I say anything about where I’d parked it?”

Bertie thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think so, Daddy.

Can’t you just try to remember?”

Stuart glanced at his watch. “I’m sorry, Bertie, I can’t. And time’s getting on a bit. If we don’t leave now we’ll be late for Lewis Morrison, and Mummy will be cross. So we’re just going to have to go and catch a bus on Dundas Street.”

Bertie knew that what his father said was true. It was a bitter disappointment to him, though; his parents were always forgetting where they parked the car, and it often meant that outings were delayed or cancelled altogether. His mother was always telling him that people who lost or otherwise did not look after their things did not deserve to have them in the first place. Well, if that was the case, he wondered if his parents deserved to have a car, or if it should be taken away from them and given to somebody who deserved it. It was so disappointing. Other boys had cars which were never mislaid; and most of these cars were rather more impressive than the Pollocks’ old red Volvo. Even Tofu, whose father had converted their car to run on vegetable oil, had a better car than Bertie had, and one that collected him every afternoon at the school gate, its motor purring away as contentedly as if it were running on ordinary petrol. That was Tofu. And then there was Hiawatha, whose mother had a small open BMW sports car in which she would collect him from school each afternoon. Olive had expressed the view that Hiawatha’s family needed to have an open-topped car because of the way that Hiawatha’s socks smelled, but Bertie had ignored this uncharitable suggestion, even if it had the ring of truth about it.

Bertie walked in silence to the bus stop with his father. There would be no run out to the Pentlands or Musselburgh.

There would be no circumnavigation of Arthur’s Seat. There would just be a saxophone lesson and a return to Scotland Street to his mother and Ulysses with all his girning.

Stuart understood his son’s silence. “Bertie,” he said, “I This Is a Very Nice Place – Is It a Nightclub? 163

promised you an outing, and you will have one. When we come back, we’ll go to that little café in Dundas Street. We might find something really unhealthy to eat. Would you like that?”

Bertie said that he would, Scottish genes.

49. This Is a Very Nice Place – Is It a Nightclub?

With Bertie’s saxophone lesson over, he and Stuart made their way back across town by bus. The lesson had gone well; Lewis Morrison had been pleased with Bertie’s performance of Boccherini’s Adagio and Moszkowski’s Spanish Dance. There had been some technical issues with his interpretation of Harvey’s Rue Maurice-Berteau, but these had quickly been sorted out, and had Bertie himself not drawn attention to them they might even have passed unnoticed.

They got off the bus shortly after the junction of Dundas Street and Heriot Row. It was now just early evening, but Big Lou’s Coffee Bar was still open; Lou did not like to leave before six-thirty, even if there were no customers. She had never stopped work before then when she was in Arbroath or Aberdeen, and the habit had remained.

Stuart, who was carrying the saxophone case in his right hand, gave Bertie his left as they crossed the road.

“The café’s still open, Daddy,” said Bertie excitedly, pointing over the road. “I can see the lights.”

“Good,” said Stuart. “And I do hope that Big Lou has some really nice cake for us. She often does, you know.”

“One with cream?” asked Bertie.

“Possibly. Or maybe a piece of millionaire’s shortbread. Have you ever had that?”

“No,” said Bertie. “But Tofu had a piece at school once. He let me look at it, and have just one lick, on approval, and then he tried to sell it to me.”

164 This Is a Very Nice Place – Is It a Nightclub?

“Quite the little entrepreneur, your friend Tofu,” said Stuart, laughing. “You didn’t buy it?”

“No,” said Bertie. “But I might buy the X-ray specs that he says he’ll sell me. I’d like those.”

Stuart smiled. X-ray specs! What boy has not yearned for a pair of X-ray specs, as advertised in the faded pages of half-forgotten comics, complete with illustrations of the fortunate possessor of a pair of such specs looking through the clothing of passers-by, to the manifest envy of his friends! An irresistible advertisement, at any age.

They made their way down the steep steps that led to Big Lou’s. As they descended, they caught a glimpse of Big Lou inside, at the counter, polishing cloth in hand, talking to a man in a black overcoat.

“Yes,” said Stuart, winking at Bertie. “We’re in business, Bertie!”

Bertie pushed open the door and they entered the coffee bar. Big Lou looked up as they went in. She smiled. She knew Stuart slightly as one of her occasional customers, and although she had never met Bertie before, she had seen him once or twice. From conversations with Angus and Matthew, she also knew that Bertie’s life was not an easy one, at least from the maternal point of view. Big Lou remembered the incident in This Is a Very Nice Place – Is It a Nightclub? 165

which, under severe provocation, Cyril had sunk his teeth into Irene’s ankle. Although this incident was not talked about during Cyril’s current legal difficulties, it had been remembered in the area and had indeed passed into local legend.

“Well, young man,” said Big Lou, smiling at Bertie. “I see that you’ve brought your father in for a treat. That’s kind of you.”

Stuart nodded to the other man standing at the counter, the man who had been talking to Big Lou when they had entered.

Then he asked Big Lou if she had something large and sweet for Bertie to eat. She replied that, as it happened, there was a Dundee cake which she had baked herself and which tasted rather good with copious quantities of sweetened cream ladled on the top. This went rather well with Irn-Bru, she said, and what would Bertie’s views be on that?

With the order placed, Bertie and his father sat down at one of the nearby tables.

“This is a very nice place, Daddy,” said Bertie politely, swinging his legs backwards and forwards under the table. “Is it a nightclub?”

“No,” said Stuart. “Nightclubs are a bit different, Bertie.” He thought for a moment. He wondered if he had ever been in a nightclub before and concluded that he had not. And if there were nightclubs in Edinburgh, where were they? He looked at Bertie. “Where did you hear about nightclubs?”

“From Tofu,” said Bertie. “He says that he goes to nightclubs sometimes.”

Stuart suppressed a smile. “Quite the lad, Tofu,” he said.

Bertie nodded. “Most of the time he tells fibs,” he said. “So I don’t really believe him.”

“Rather wise,” said Stuart.

They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes while Big Lou prepared the order, which she then brought across.

Bertie stared appreciatively at the large glass of orange-coloured fizzy drink that was placed before him and the sizeable chunk 166 This Is a Very Nice Place – Is It a Nightclub?

of rich Dundee cake under its mantle of whipped cream. He looked up at Big Lou and smiled. “Thank you,” he said.

“Aye, well, that’s the stuff that a boy needs,” she said.

“Especially after a music lesson.” She nodded in the direction of the saxophone case. “Is that your trumpet, Bertie?”

“It’s a saxophone,” said Bertie. “The saxophone was invented by Adolf Sax, who was a Belgian . . .” He did not finish his explanation. The man who had been talking to Big Lou, and who was still standing at the bar, now turned round. “A sax?” he said.

“And you play it?”

Bertie looked at his interlocutor. “Yes,” he said. “I can play jazz, and some other things. I used to play ‘As Time Goes By’

a lot, but now I’ve got a new piece from Mr Morrison.”

Big Lou, who was standing nearby, thought it time to effect introductions. “This is my old friend Alan Steadman,” she said.

“His cousin married my cousin, up in Kirriemuir. He runs a jazz show on Radio Tay. And a club too. Near Arbroath.”

“Arbroath?” said Stuart. “Is there jazz up there?”

Big Lou rounded on him. “What do you mean, is there jazz up there? Of course there’s jazz in Arbroath.”

“Hospitalfield, actually,” said Alan. “Do you know it? It’s an art college these days, but, as it happens, we do have a monthly jazz club there. There are lots of people round about who like to listen to jazz. We get great players going up there, you know.

Brian Kellock’s coming up in a few weeks’ time. He’s based here in Edinburgh, but comes up to Arbroath now and then. Great pianist.”

“Aye, he’s that,” joined in Big Lou. “He did a great Fats Waller tribute some time ago. I heard it.”

“You should come up and listen,” said Alan. “You and your dad. You’d be very welcome, you know.”

“Aye,” said Big Lou. “I’ll come along with you. It’s about time somebody went up to Arbroath.”

Stuart smiled. Why should he and Bertie not go up to Arbroath with Big Lou and listen to jazz together? He would have to find the car first, of course, but after that . . . Well, why not?

Bertie’s Words Stop Stuart in His Tracks 167

“Thanks,” he said. “We’ll come.” He looked at Bertie, who was busy drinking his Irn-Bru through a straw.

“Great stuff, that,” said Alan Steadman. “Made from girders.”

And sugar, thought Stuart.

50. Bertie’s Words Stop Stuart in His Tracks They walked back to Scotland Street, hand in hand, Stuart and Bertie, father and son. The visit to Big Lou’s had been an unqualified success – in every respect. Two generous pieces of Dundee cake had been followed by three large squares of vanilla tablet, and the whole thing had been washed down with a couple of brimming glasses of Barr’s Irn-Bru. That had been Bertie’s portion. For his part, Stuart had restricted himself to a large cup of café latte and a dovetail-shaped piece of Big Lou’s home-baked shortbread; more modest fare than that of his son, but for both of them it had been perfect.

The invitation extended by Big Lou’s friend, Alan Steadman, had been an agreeable bonus. They would all three of them –

Stuart, Big Lou, and Bertie – travel up to Arbroath for the next jazz evening at Hospitalfield. Alan wrote out the details on a piece of paper, along with the directions, and scribbled down his telephone number in case they should need to contact him.

Everything was satisfactorily arranged. And if they left early enough on the Saturday afternoon, Big Lou promised, they would be able to call in at her cousin’s farm, and Bertie could look at the two retired Clydesdale horses who lived there. That was also agreed, and duly planned for.

“What will Mummy do while we’re up in Arbroath?” asked Bertie, as they made their way back round Drummond Place.

Stuart thought for a moment. “She’ll stay and look after Ulysses,” he answered. “Ulysses, you see, is too young to appreciate jazz. Pity about that, but there we are.”

168 Bertie’s Words Stop Stuart in His Tracks Bertie nodded. It would be best to leave his mother behind, he thought, as he could not imagine her in a jazz club in Arbroath.

He hoped that she would agree.

As they walked down Scotland Street, Stuart fell silent.

“Are you all right, Daddy?” asked Bertie. “You didn’t eat too much, did you?”

Stuart looked down at Bertie and laughed. But there was a nervous edge to his laugh. “No, I didn’t,” he said. “I’m just thinking. That’s all.”

“About statistics?” asked Bertie.

It would have been easy for Stuart to answer yes to that, as he had been thinking about his chances, which appeared to be diminishing the nearer they approached the front door of 44 Scotland Street. To begin with, before any other charges were considered, he and Bertie were late. They had spent rather longer than he had intended at Big Lou’s, and the meal which Irene would have prepared for them would have been ready a good twenty minutes earlier. That would undoubtedly be an issue.

But then there was the question of the trip to Arbroath. He was reluctant to ask Bertie not to mention it, as that would suggest that something was being kept from Irene, but if Bertie mentioned it before he, Stuart, had the chance to do so, then the whole outing might not be presented in quite the right light.

Irene could hardly be expected to agree to Bertie’s going to a club of any sort; there had been that unseemly row over his attending Tofu’s birthday party at the bowling alley in Fountainbridge, and a jazz club was surely even one step beyond that. It would be far better, Stuart thought, if they could present the occasion as a concert. To say that one was going to Arbroath for a concert sounded much better than saying that one was going to a jazz club in Arbroath – that was clear.

He broached the subject with Bertie as they climbed the stairs to their front door. “Bertie,” he began, “let me tell Mummy about that concert we’re going to. I think that might be best.”

“What concert?” asked Bertie. “Do you mean the jazz club?”

Bertie’s Words Stop Stuart in His Tracks 169

“Well, yes, I suppose I do. It’s just that there are ways of explaining things to other people. Mummy is not a great aficionado of jazz, is she? She doesn’t know about jazz clubs, but she does know about concerts. I think it might be better for us to say that we’re going to a concert – which is true, of course.

It will be a sort of a concert, won’t it?”

Bertie nodded. He was relieved that his father seemed willing to take on the task of persuading Irene. “Of course, Daddy,” he said. “And Mummy is your wife, isn’t she? You know her better than I do, even if Ulysses might not be your baby.”

Stuart stopped. He stood quite still. They were halfway up the stairs, and he stopped there, one foot on one stair and one on another, as if caught mid-motion by some calamity, as at Pompeii. Bertie stood beside him, holding his hand, looking rather surprised that his father had come to this abrupt halt.

“Now, Bertie,” said Stuart, his voice barely above a whisper.

“That’s a very odd thing to say. Why do you think Ulysses might not be my baby? Whatever gave you that idea?”

“He doesn’t look like you, Daddy,” said Bertie. “At least, I don’t think he does.”

Stuart’s relief was palpable. “Oh, I see. Is that all it is?” He laughed and patted Bertie on the shoulder. “Babies often don’t look like anybody in particular, Bertie. Except Winston Churchill, of course. All babies look like Winston Churchill. But you can’t draw any conclusions from that!”

“But Ulysses does look like somebody, Daddy,” said Bertie.

“He looks like Dr Fairbairn. You should look at Dr Fairbairn’s ears, and his forehead too. Ulysses has this little bump, you see . . .”

Bertie became aware that something was amiss. Stuart was leaning back against the banister, staring at him.

“Are you feeling all right, Daddy?” asked Bertie, the concern rising in his voice. “Are you sure that you didn’t have too much shortbread?”

“No, I’m all right, Bertie,” Stuart stuttered. He leaned forward so that his face was close to Bertie’s. On the little boy’s breath 170 So Many Books Unread and Bikes Uncycled he could smell the Irn-Bru, an odour of sugar, and violent orange, an odour of a whole Scotland that would disappear one day, along with the Broons and Oor Wullie, a whole culture, things so loved, so taken for granted.

He recovered, but only to the extent of being able to say to Bertie: “I don’t think that you should talk about that, Bertie.

That sort of thing is a bit sensitive. People are funny about it.”

“I know,” said Bertie. “You should have seen how Dr Fairbairn looked when I asked him.”

51. So Many Books Unread and Bikes Uncycled The following morning, Domenica Macdonald took slightly longer over her breakfast than usual. This was not because there was more to eat – her breakfasts were always the same: a bowl of porridge, made from the cut oats she obtained from the real-food shop in Broughton Street and two slices of toast, one spread thinly with Marmite and one with marmalade. This breakfast never varied, at least when she was at home, and it was accompanied by whatever reading was current at the time – Mankind Quarterly, with its earnest anthropological papers, rubbed shoulders with the toast as easily as did the daily newspaper or an interesting letter set aside for leisurely perusal. Not that there were many of those: Domenica still wrote letters, by hand, but received few back, so depleted had the ranks of letter-writers become.

She had read somewhere that the vast majority of boxes of notelets that were sold in stationery shops were never used.

They were bought with good intentions, or given as presents in the same spirit, but they remained in their boxes. But that, she reflected that morning, was a common fate for so many objects which we make and give to one another. Exercise bicycles, for example, were not designed to go anywhere, but the wheels, at least, were meant to go round, which they rarely did.

So Many Books Unread and Bikes Uncycled 171

Exercise bicycles in gyms might be used, but this did not apply to those – the majority – bought for use in the home. They stood there, in mute affront to their owners, quite idle, before being moved to a spare room and ultimately to an attic. Then they were recycled, which did not mean, in this case, that they had been cycled in the first place.

She poured herself a cup of coffee and stared out of the window. And then, she thought, there were those books bought and not read. Somewhere there might be those who read each and every book they acquire – read them with attention and gravity and then put them carefully on a shelf, alongside other books that had received the same treatment. But for many books, being placed on the shelf was the full extent of their encounter with their owner. She smiled at this thought, remembering the anecdote about the late King George VI – she thought, or V

perhaps, or even Edward VII – who was presented with a book by its author and said: “Thank you, Mr So-and-So, I shall put it on the shelf with all the other books.” This was not meant to be a put-down to the author – it was, by contrast, a polite and entirely honest account of what would be done. And one could not expect one who was, after all, an emperor, to read every book given to him, or indeed any. Although – and this thought came to Domenica as she took a first sip of her coffee – even those whose office makes them too busy to read are never too busy to write their book when they leave office – a book which, by its very nature, will be most likely to appeal to those in similar office, who will be too busy to read it.

Some books, of course, were destined not to be read, largely because of their unintelligibility to all except a very small number of people. Domenica could think of several examples of this, including the remarkable books of her friend Andrew Ranicki, a professor of mathematics at the university. She had once asked him how many people in the world would understand his highly regarded but very obscure books from cover to cover, and he had replied, with very little hesitation: “Forty-five.” He had said this not with an air of resigned acceptance, as might be shown by an 172 So Many Books Unread and Bikes Uncycled author reporting on the public’s failure of taste, but with the air of one who knows from the beginning that he is writing for forty-five people. And surely it is better that forty-five should buy the book and actually read it, than should many thousands, indeed millions, buy it and put it on their shelves, like George VI (or V, or Edward VII, or possibly somebody else altogether). That, she remembered, had been the fate of Professor Hawking’s Brief History of Time. That was a book that had been bought by many millions, but had been demonstrated to have been read by only a minute proportion of those who had acquired it. For do we not all have a copy of that on our shelves, and who amongst us can claim to have read beyond the first page, in spite of the pellucid prose of its author and his evident desire to share with us his knowledge of . . . of whatever it is that the book is about?

And then, she thought, there were those novels that went on forever. Readers in a more leisurely age may have stayed the course, but not now. Domenica herself had tried to read Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy four times, but on each occasion had got only as far as page eighty. This was not because of any lack of merit in the novel – it was very fine – but because of its sheer scale. Such a fat book, she thought, in her defence, so many pages and marriages and family relationships. Almost like Proust, whom she had never finished, and whom she accepted she now never would. À la recherche du temps perdu was on her shelves –

and in a prominent position – and every so often she would dip into it and wander away into a world of dreamy reminiscence, but she would never finish it; she knew that. The sentences were too long. Modern sentences are short. In Proust, we encounter sentences which appear interminable, meandering on and on in a way which suggests that the author had no desire to bring a satisfying or intriguing line of thought to any form of conclusion, wishing rather to prolong the pleasure, as one might wish if one were an author like Proust, who spent most of his time languishing in bed – he was a chronic hypochondriac – rather than experiencing life – an approach which encouraged him to produce sentences of remarkable length, the longest one being

It Was a Pity That Things Had Come to This 173

that sentence which, if printed out in standard-size type, would wind round a wine bottle seventeen and a half times, or so we are told by Alain de Boton in his How Proust Can Change Your Life, a book which has surely been read by most of those who have bought it, so light and amusing it is.

Domenica stopped. She had been gazing out of the window, allowing her thoughts to wander. But there were things to be done that day, and Proustian reverie would not help. One of these things was to remind Antonia that it would be her turn to sweep the common stair next week, not an onerous duty perhaps, but one of those small things upon which the larger civilisation in which we live is undoubtedly based.

52. It Was a Pity That Things Had Come to This When Domenica went out of her flat onto the landing, she noticed immediately that the pot plant which grew beside the banister had been damaged. It was a large split-leaf philodendron, which she had bought some years before and which she had nurtured to its current considerable size. In this task she had received, she observed, very little support. When Bruce had occupied the other flat on the landing, he had professed an interest in the plant’s welfare, but had rarely, if ever, raised a finger in support. Such a narcissistic young man, Domenica 174 It Was a Pity That Things Had Come to This thought; had the leaves developed reflective surfaces, of course, it might have been different. Pat, who had at that point shared the flat with Bruce, had been more conscientious and helpfully had washed the leaves from time to time, something which the plant appeared to appreciate and which it rewarded with fresh sprouts of growth. But Antonia, in spite of having been very specifically asked to ensure that the plant was well-watered while Domenica was in the Far East, had proved to be an indifferent guardian at best, and Domenica was convinced that it was only as a result of Angus having come in to water it discreetly that the plant had survived her absence.

Now something had ripped the plant’s largest leaf and something else had broken one of the stems, leaving a leaf hanging by no more than a few sinews. Domenica stared in dismay at the damage that had been done: two years’ growth, she thought, had been casually destroyed in a few moments of carelessness.

She looked up and saw that Antonia’s front door was ajar. It was as if a detective had arrived on the scene of the crime and seen the culprit’s footprint etched clearly into the ground. It was now obvious to her what had happened – Antonia had been carrying something into the flat, swinging her bag perhaps, and had brushed against the plant, thus causing this damage.

And rather than attend to it – to break off the damaged leaf – and rather than knock on Domenica’s door and offer some sort of apology, she had merely disregarded what had happened. Well!

That showed gratitude. That showed how much she appreciated everything that Domenica had done for her – offering her flat for the full period of her absence for nothing, and indeed getting nothing in return other than this cavalier conduct towards the local flora.

And then there had been the incident of the blue Spode teacup, which Domenica had found Antonia using in her flat, having obviously removed it from her own kitchen. Remove was a charitable term in this context; steal might be more accurate. That was business that had yet to be resolved, and it was difficult to It Was a Pity That Things Had Come to This 175

see how this could be done. It is a major step to accuse one’s neighbour of theft; it implies a complete breakdown in relations and leads one into a position from which there is no easy retreat.

It is quite possible, though, to make a remark that falls short of an outright accusation, but yet which makes a clear implication of negligence at the very least.

Domenica had given some thought to the Spode issue and had decided that she would raise the matter by saying: “I wonder if you’ve forgotten, perhaps, to return the cup you borrowed.”

That would indicate to Antonia that she knew that the cup was there, that she had not got away with it, but at the same time it did not amount to a direct accusation of theft.

It was a pity that things had come to this, she thought. Antonia had been a friend, and she had not imagined that there would be any breach in relations. But it had occurred, or was about to occur, and this, Domenica thought, demonstrated the wisdom of those who said that you never really knew your friends until you had lived in close proximity with them for some time. Going on holiday with friends was a good way of testing a friendship.

In some cases, this worked well, and served to cement the relationship; in others, it revealed the fault lines in that relationship as accurately as any seismograph will reveal the movement between plates.

Domenica had welcomed Antonia to Scotland Street even though she thought that it was slightly tactless of Antonia to have moved into the next-door flat without consulting her.

She had wondered whether she was being excessively sensitive about this, as strictly speaking it was none of her business which flat Antonia should choose to buy. There was an open market in housing, and Scotland Street was part of that market. But then she thought that Antonia’s purchase of the neighbouring flat meant that she who had come as a guest to the larger address – 44 Scotland Street – would not be leaving, but remaining. And that, Domenica decided, constituted a unilateral extension of a relationship that had been entered into on the understanding that it would be temporary. Or that 176 She Could See the Attraction – It Was the Eyes is how an anthropologist might put it, which was what Domenica was.

As she stood there, peering at Antonia’s half-open door, there crossed Domenica’s mind the idea that one way of signalling displeasure to another would be to write an academic paper expressing this displeasure, but couched in general terms and, of course, without mentioning the specific casus belli. So, in this case, she might write a paper which she would ask Antonia to read before she sent it off to Mankind Quarterly, or Cultural Anthropology. The title would be something like “Residential Property Exchanges and Expectations of Continuing Neighbourhood Relationships,” and it would purport to deal with the issue of social expectations in circumstances where one party (Antonia, obviously, but just not so described) accepts a time-limited gift of another’s house (Domenica’s flat in Scotland Street, but again not described).

That would set the scene, and there would then follow a discussion of how important it is for social harmony that the party accepting the gift should understand that he or she should not presume to transform the host/guest relationship into something quite different, namely, a neighbour/neighbour relationship.

Antonia was a perceptive person, thought Domenica, and she would get the point of that. But there was a further challenge, and that was more difficult: how would one incorporate into such a paper some mention of a blue Spode teacup? After all, one did not want to be too obvious.

53. She Could See the Attraction – It Was the Eyes Domenica peered round Antonia’s door into the hall. She would normally have knocked, but her sense of grievance over the ruined philodendron made her feel disinclined to extend to Antonia that courtesy; wanton destroyers of philodendra She Could See the Attraction – It Was the Eyes 177

must expect some consequences. The hall light was on, and a portable workbench had been set up, with pieces of timber stacked against it; there was sawdust on the floor and the smell of cut wood. A large metal box lay open beside the bench, with various tools displayed – a power saw, a jumble of cable, clamps.

Domenica cleared her throat. “Antonia?”

She waited a few seconds for a reply and then called out again. It now occurred to her that Antonia was out and that the door had been left open by the workmen. More than that, the workmen appeared to have left the flat unattended for some reason, as there was no response from them. She realised now that she had jumped to conclusions: the damage to the plant would not have been Antonia’s doing, but must have been caused by the builders. Manipulating a piece of timber around a small landing would not be easy, and any philodendron that should find itself in the way was bound to be damaged. She sighed. It would have been easy for somebody to have spoken to her about this in advance and to have suggested that the plant be stored in her flat until the work was over. That would have been so simple and straightforward, but nobody had thought of that –

including herself, she concluded, which gave a different complexion to the whole matter. It was an accident, she decided; Antonia, I forgive you.

She moved further into the hall. A light was coming from the bathroom, and she looked into that. The floorboards were up, revealing the joists and copper piping below. The sides of the bath enclosure had been removed too, and everything was covered with a layer of dust. She moved away. Dust, or at least dust in such quantities as that, made Domenica’s eyes water –

an allergy with which she had struggled when she had lived in India, where the dust had settled every day, no matter how assid-uously the house servants had swept and polished.

“Domenica?”

She spun round. Antonia had emerged from a door on the other side of the hall and was standing there, her hair slightly ruffled.

178 She Could See the Attraction – It Was the Eyes

“Oh.” It was all that Domenica could manage initially, but then, after a few seconds of hesitation, she added, “I knocked.”

She had not intended to say that, because she had not knocked, but it came out nonetheless.

“I didn’t hear you,” said Antonia. “I was . . . I was busy.”

“Of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to barge in like this.” She paused. It did not seem to her that Antonia was angry over the intrusion; in fact, it seemed to her that her neighbour looked defensive, as if it was she who had been discovered in the other’s flat.

Domenica continued. “It’s just that I noticed that the plant outside,” she gestured in the direction of the landing. “The plant was damaged. It must have been the workmen. Easily done, of course, with all this stuff being brought in.”

She stopped. A man had appeared in the doorway behind Antonia, a tall man wearing jeans and a checked shirt. He glanced at Domenica, and then looked at Antonia, as if expecting an explanation.

“This is Markus,” said Antonia. “Markus. Domenica.”

The man took a few steps across the hall and shook hands with Domenica. She felt his hand, which was warm, and rough-ened by work.

“Markus is Polish,” said Antonia, straightening her hair with her right hand. “He’s my builder, as you see. We’ve been looking at the plans. That’s why I didn’t hear you.”

Domenica knew immediately that this was a lie, and she knew immediately what had been happening. She was amused. That was why Antonia had been almost defensive at the beginning; she had been caught in the arms of her builder. Of course, there was nothing wrong with that, she thought. One might fall in love with a Polish builder as readily as one might fall in love with anybody else, but it all seemed a bit sudden. Building work had only started a day or two ago; one would have thought that one might wait

. . . what, a week? . . . before one fell in love with the builder.

She turned to Markus. “So, Markus,” she said brightly. “Are you enjoying living in Scotland?”

Markus looked at her gravely. “Brick,” he replied.

She Could See the Attraction – It Was the Eyes 179

“Markus doesn’t have much English yet,” said Antonia. “I’m sure that he’ll be learning it, but at the moment . . .”

Domenica nodded. She turned back towards Markus and, speaking very slowly and articulating each word with great care, she said: “Where are you from in Poland, Markus?”

The builder looked at her again, and Domenica noticed his eyes. She could understand why Antonia had fallen; it was the eyes.

“Brick.”

Domenica turned to Antonia. “Markus says brick a lot, doesn’t he?”

Antonia waved a hand in the air. “It’s all he says,” she answered.

“But then, how many words of Polish do we know? Could we even say brick in Polish?”

Markus now bowed slightly to Domenica. “Poland,” he said.

“Ah yes,” said Domenica. “Poland.”

There followed a silence. Then Markus bowed his head again slightly in Domenica’s direction and walked over to the toolbox from which he extracted an electric drill.

“Well,” said Antonia breezily, “work must get on. How about a cup of tea, Domenica?” She paused, and then added, “Since you’re here.”

Domenica had not intended to stay, but she felt that in the circumstances she could not very well leave, and so she accepted.

They moved through to the kitchen.

“A nice man,” said Domenica.

“Very.”

Domenica waited for Antonia to say something else, but she did not. The electric kettle, switched on without an adequate amount of water inside it, began to hiss in protest. “Will you teach him English, do you think?” she asked.

“Perhaps,” said Antonia. “I suspect that he will prove a quick learner.”

“Well, he’s already learned brick,” said Domenica. “That’s a start.”

“Yes.”

“And the novel?” asked Domenica. “Are you managing to write 180 It Did Not Do to Think About Sex on Heriot Row with all this building going on? Surely it’s a bit difficult to get yourself back into the minds of those Scottish saints of yours while there are electric drills whining away in the background.”

Antonia looked out of the window.

“Their own times were noisy enough,” she said. “I imagine that they had to contend with all the noises that humanity makes when it’s in close proximity with itself. Crying babies. People groaning because they were in pain. That sort of thing. Remember that people didn’t have much domestic room in those days. Our flats would have been considered palaces. They lived in hovels, really.”

She turned and fixed Domenica with a stare – as if in reproach.

54. It Did Not Do to Think About Sex on Heriot Row Domenica felt unsettled when she went out into Scotland Street.

The encounter with Antonia had been unsatisfactory from her point of view: she had entered the flat in a spirit of righteous indignation over the damage to the philodendron. She had expected that Antonia would at least make some attempt at an excuse, even if she did not actually apologise, but none of that had been forthcoming. Indeed, after Domenica had broached the subject, nothing more had been said about the plant, as Markus had appeared in the hall in highly suggestive circumstances. This had completely thrown Domenica; after that, it had been impossible to raise the issue of the plant, which she would now simply have to move into her own flat for a while in protest at her neighbour’s attitude towards its safety. Not that Antonia would necessarily notice, but at least it would be a gesture.

She was not sure how to take Markus. The question of having an affair with somebody with whom one could not communicate in language was an interesting one, and as she walked up Scotland Street, she turned this over in her mind. If one could not say anything to the other, and he could say nothing to you, what remained? All close relationships between people – unless they It Did Not Do to Think About Sex on Heriot Row 181

were purely instrumental – were based on some feeling for the other. That feeling required that one should know something about that person and that one should be able to share experiences. If one could say nothing about the world to one another, then what precisely was the shared experience upon which the relationship was founded? Only the carnal, surely; or could there be spiritual and emotional sharing without language? Human vulnerability, human tenderness – the understanding of these required no words, but could be achieved through gestures, through looking, through mute empathy; a bit boring, though, Domenica thought, once the initial excitement of the physical side of the relationship wore off; if it was to wear off, and sometimes the pulse remained quickened, she understood, for years . . .

But that was another question altogether which she would have to come back to, as she had now reached the corner of Heriot Row, and it did not do to think about sex on Heriot Row.

She smiled at the thought. It was another Barbara Pym moment.

Of course, one could think about sex while walking along Heriot Row – these days. That tickled her, although not everybody, she thought, would be amused about that: the words “these days”

did a lot of work there. It all depended on an understanding of Edinburgh as a city of cultivated, outward respectability beneath which there lay of world of priapic indulgence. But was that still the reality? Perhaps it was. One had only to look at Moray Place, that most respectable of addresses and reflect on how many nudists lived there. That was very strange: Jekyll clothed, and then, after a quick disrobing, there was Hyde unclothed!

Domenica had agreed to meet her friend James Holloway for coffee at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, where he was the director. By the time she arrived at the Gothic Revival sandstone building on Queen Street, she had put out of her mind all thought of Antonia’s torrid affair – at least she assumed it was torrid and, anyway, she wondered if there was any point in having an affair which was not torrid. Now, as she sat in the coffee room, waiting for James to come down from his office upstairs, she looked up at the Bellany portraits on the wall above 182 It Did Not Do to Think About Sex on Heriot Row her table. Sean Connery looked out of one of them rather forbid-dingly, but then he was perhaps a touch disapproving, which was why people in Scotland were so proud of him. Scots heroes were not meant to be benign in their outlook; they needed to be at least a little bit cross about something, preferably an injustice committed against them, individually or nationally, some time ago. Sean Connery certainly looked rather cross about something. Perhaps he was cross at having his portrait painted, in the way in which such people often looked cross at having their photographs taken. Perhaps, thought Domenica, there were paparazzi portraitists, who lurked with their easels outside hotels and fashionable nightclubs and painted quick likenesses of well-known people as they left the building – absurd thought.

James arrived and fetched the coffee. “I need your advice,”

he said as he sat down. “We’ve been offered an exhibition of the photographs of famous anthropologists. Pitt Rivers, Mead, and the like. I’d like to show you the names. Some of them are unfamiliar to me. There’s one who spent some time among headhunters in the Philippines . . .”

“Probably R.F. Barton,” interjected Domenica. “He spent some time with head-hunting tribes there back in the nineteen-thirties, although there was an anthropologist who lived among headhunters as late as the late nineteen-sixties. That was Renato Rosaldo, if I remember correctly.”

“Did they come back?” asked James, adding, “In one piece?”

“Oh yes,” said Domenica. “The headhunters were usually very good hosts. They tended to go for heads belonging to their enemies, not their friends. Friends’ heads were left in situ, so to speak.”

James looked thoughtful. “I see,” he said. “I suppose this very gallery is full of heads. Pictures, of course, but heads nonetheless. Does that make us headhunters?”

“Virtual,” said Domenica. “Virtual headhunters. But enough of that, James, what about your travels?”

“Since I last saw you,” said James, “there’s been India. Again.”

“On your motorcycle?”

“Not my Ducati,” said James. “That stayed in Scotland. But

It Did Not Do to Think About Sex on Heriot Row 183

I got hold of a very nice hired bike. A Royal Enfield Bullet, 650cc. Made in Madras. I went up to the Himalayas and down into Rajasthan.”

Domenica frowned. “Is Madras still Madras? Isn’t it . . . ?”

“Chennai,” supplied James. “For some people it may be, and that’s fine, but we’re talking English, aren’t we? And we have English words for certain places. Those words exist irrespective of what the people who live in the place in question may call it. So why change the name?”

He paused. “Take Florence,” he said. “Would you ever say I’m off to Firenze? You would not, unless you were extremely pretentious, which you aren’t. Or Milan. Who goes to Milano? And the French have Édimbourg and Londres. Would you insist on their using Edinburgh and London? No, you wouldn’t. In fact, one can’t insist that the French do anything – everybody knows that.

“So I go to Bombay,” he continued, “rather than to Mumbai, and I must say that when I’m there I find that most people I talk to say Bombay rather than Mumbai.”

Domenica thought for a moment. There was a scrap of a poem coming back to her. What was it? Yes, that was it.

“Under Mr de Valera,” she ventured inconsequentially,

“Ireland changed herself to Eire / England didn’t change her name / And is still called England just the same.”

“What odd things one remembers,” said James.

55. What Can Be the Secret of the Tiny Stars?

“But don’t you think that it’s a question of respect?” asked Domenica. “We went round the world giving names to places that already had their own names. This is a gesture – a sign that we respect the real identity of the places we named incorrectly.”

James Holloway shook his head. “I don’t think it reveals any lack of respect to call Naples Naples rather than Napoli.”

Domenica looked up at the ceiling. There was a difference, she thought, but what exactly was it? “But we didn’t impose Naples on the Italians. The name Naples was for our use, not theirs. We imposed Bombay on India. Now we are saying: we’ll call you what you want us to call you. That’s a rather different attitude, I think.”

James picked up his coffee cup. “Of course, the names of whole peoples have been changed too. Remember the Hottentots? They’ve become the Khoi now, which means that the Germans will have to retire that wonderful word of theirs, Hottentotenpotentatenstantenattentäter, which means, as you know, one who attacks the aunt of a Hottentot potentate.” He paused.

“But I’m uncomfortable with the deliberate manipulation of the language. I think that we have to be careful about that. It’s rather like rewriting history. We can’t go back and sanitise things.”

The subject now had to be changed. James wanted to show Domenica the list of anthropologists, and that would entail going up to his office above the coffee room. He suggested that they do this, and they left.

“Such a nice smell of cooking,” observed Domenica as they made their way up the small staircase that led to the director’s office.

James laughed. “They’re doing something with coriander today. I suspect that this is the only gallery in the world where the director works immediately above the kitchen,” he said. “A great privilege.”

They sat at the large conference table in James’s office. There were two other members of the gallery staff there – Anne What Can Be the Secret of the Tiny Stars? 185

Backhouse, who extracted the list of anthropologists from a large file marked Anthropologists, and Nicola Kalinsky, the chief curator, who had been waiting to see James about another matter.

“Nicola knows all about Jacobite glass,” said James as he introduced Domenica. “And Gainsborough, of course. She’s been putting things together for the Drambuie collection which we’re showing.”

Domenica looked at a large photograph which Nicola had on the table in front of her. A wine glass, long-stemmed and elegant, stood against a dark background. The glass was engraved with a rose, intertwined with leaves, behind which there was what looked like a field of stars.

“That dates from about seventeen fifty,” said Nicola. “Not too long after the Forty-Five. I suppose that whoever had it then might be drowning his sorrows over the fate of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the attempt at the Stuart restoration. The rose is a Jacobite symbol, as you know. And this is a particularly attractive one.”

Domenica picked up the photograph. “I’m always surprised that old glass survives,” she said. “You’d think that over a couple of centuries somebody might fumble and drop it.”

“Ah, but these Jacobite glasses were special,” said James. “And special things have a way of surviving. These glasses were tucked away for use in secret – they would not have been everyday ware.”

“I don’t have a particularly high opinion of the Stuarts,” said Domenica. “Apart from Mary, Queen of Scots, of course, who had such a difficult cousin, after all. And Charles II, of course, had what we might today call an enlightened arts policy. . . . But as for Charlie . . . well, that was a narrow escape for Scotland, if you ask me.”

She examined the photograph more closely. “Those stars are so delicately engraved,” she said. “Look at them all.”

“Yes,” said James. “But that’s the extraordinary thing. That glass is part of a set of six – or it looks like a set. Usually, one comes across only one or two together, but there are six with that design. Very strange, wouldn’t you agree, Nicola?”

186 What Can Be the Secret of the Tiny Stars?

Nicola nodded. “There’s something very unusual about it.

Normally, one finds only one star on these glasses, if there is a star at all. But here we have hundreds of little stars – it’s very strange.”

“And you have no idea of the meaning?” asked Domenica.

“None, I’m afraid,” said Nicola. “I’ve looked through the literature on the subject – and there’s quite a bit on Jacobite glass – but these particular glasses seem to be completely unusual.

We just don’t know what the stars mean.”

For a few moments the room became silent; outside in Queen Street, the vague hum of traffic; light slanted in through a window, pure, thin, northern light. Domenica felt the presence of the gallery around her; the repository of a nation’s memory, now distilled into this precious object depicted in the photograph – a moment of contact between the hands that had made the glass and engraved it so finely, and her.

James broke the silence. “There seems to us to be some pattern to the stars,” he said. “Look. Here and here. And again here.

They’re in clusters. Shapes.”

“I wondered if they could make a coded message of some sort,” said Anne from her desk at the side of the room.

Domenica looked at the photograph. She would mention it to Angus, who had said something about Jacobites to her recently –

what was it? She could not remember, but it was something about modern Jacobites sounding off even now about the Stuarts, still wanting them back.

“Of course, there are modern sympathisers of the cause, are there not?” asked Domenica.

“Oh yes,” said James. “They have their pretender, Francis II, who lives in Bavaria, I believe. Not that he has ever made any claim to the throne. But there are one or two people who still claim that he is the real King of Scotland.”

“How colourful,” said Domenica. She was still trying to remember what Angus had said. She had not been paying particular attention, but it involved Big Lou for some reason. What So Many Moves – Time to Make the Next One 187

possible connection could Big Lou have with Prince Charlie and Francis II and the whole arcane Stuart dynasty?

James tapped the photograph with his finger. “If there were a coded message on the glasses, it would be rather interesting to find out what it is,” he said. “Perhaps we could get Bletchley Park, or whoever cracks codes these days, to work out what it says.”

Domenica laughed. “Let’s not let our imaginations run away with us,” she said. “Codes only occur in ridiculous novels. The real world is much more prosaic.”

The photograph was slipped back into a large envelope and Domenica turned her attention to the list of anthropologists.

Fifteen minutes later, James Holloway escorted her to the front door of the gallery and said goodbye to her there. They would see one another again soon, he said; Domenica suggested lunch with their mutual friend, Dilly Emslie, and James agreed. Then she walked down the hill towards Drummond Place and Scotland Street. As she passed Queen Street Gardens, the wind moved the branches of the trees against the sky, gently, almost imperceptibly.

This city is so beautiful, she thought, so intriguing. If one had it, the city, as one’s lover, that would be almost enough, almost enough.

56. So Many Moves – Time to Make the Next One Moving, thought Bruce, had become rather familiar. Within the space of a year there had been his move from Edinburgh to London, where there were several moves, and then the move back to Edinburgh. His first flat in London had been a shared one in Fulham. He had liked that and would have been prepared to stay there longer, but had been unable to resist an offer he had received to move in with friends in Notting Hill. That had suited him perfectly; the flat was a couple of doors from an Italian restaurant and a small set of film studios. The film people often ate in the restaurant, along with other creative types, and this

188 So Many Moves – Time to Make the Next One appealed greatly to Bruce. They had been stand-offish, though, and had not welcomed an overture which Bruce had once made, when he had offered their table an olive from a plate of olives on his own table. Bruce had thought this rude; there was something symbolic about rejecting an olive – or was the symbolism attached purely to whole olive branches? In spite of that, he still felt that by living there, and eating from time to time in that particular restaurant, he was at the heart of this fashionable and vibrant part of London. Je suis arrivé, he said to himself and reflected on how unimportant and faraway Scotland now seemed.

But things in London had not worked out quite as Bruce had planned. The flat in Notting Hill was expensive, even when the rent was divided three ways, and Bruce soon found that the money he had brought with him – most of it from that highly lucrative Chateau Petrus deal – soon haemorrhaged away, as money has a habit of doing in London. There was no shortage of work there, of course, but not all of it was the sort of work that Bruce wanted to do, and he began to think with a degree of regret of the job with Macauley Holmes Richardson Black, the Edinburgh surveyors. It had been time to move on from that, of course, and he could not imagine himself doing that sort of work for the rest of his life, but it had been steady and reasonably well paid, and often involved free tickets to Murrayfield for the rugby, even for the popular game against England, for which tickets were always in such short supply.

So Many Moves – Time to Make the Next One 189

It was all the fault of that awful Todd woman, thought Bruce.

She had accosted him – yes, accosted – in that bookshop in George Street and virtually forced him to take her to lunch at the Café St Honoré. Of course I should have been on my guard, he thought: Edinburgh was full of women like that who were itching for an affair with a younger man, particularly somebody like me, and I should have shown a little bit more savvy. But what made it all so unjust was that nothing had happened, and it was only because her husband had come into the restaurant at the precise moment that this rapacious woman had seized his hand that the situation had become awkward.

Nothing like that had happened in London, of course, but over the months it had become apparent to Bruce that the reality of life in London was one of struggle; people worked hard, put up with cramped conditions, and had to travel miles to conduct their social lives – they struggled. With the inherent good nature of the English, they generally remained remarkably cheerful about all this, but such hardships began to wear Bruce down.

He looked back with longing to the days when he had been able to walk to work – even to go home for lunch or for a quick dalliance with a girlfriend if he so desired; that was impossible in London. He remembered how he could walk from the Cumberland Bar to Murrayfield Stadium in half an hour, with his friends, and then walk with them to a dinner and a party thereafter. And he remembered those friends: Gordon, Hamish, Iain, Simon, Fergus . . . and he found that he missed them.

So there had been the move back to Edinburgh and into the flat in Comely Bank owned by his friend Neil. Now there was the move out of that flat and into the flat in Howe Street owned by Julia Donald. So many moves . . . He zipped up his suitcase and moved it off the bed and onto the floor. Caroline, Neil’s wife, was standing in the doorway, watching him, and Bruce turned round to face her.

“Well,” he said. “That’s more or less it. I hope I haven’t left anything. If I have, give it to the Oxfam shop.” He paused. He did not like the way that Caroline watched him; it was distinctly 190 So Many Moves – Time to Make the Next One disconcerting, and he wondered if she did it to Neil too. I could never put up with being married to somebody like her, thought Bruce; poor Neil.

“Neil said that I should offer to drive you over there,” Caroline said. “Would you like me to do that?”

Bruce considered the offer for a moment. It was significant, he thought, that she had said that Neil had made the suggestion. She was not making the offer, her husband was. “No thanks,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to put you out. I’ll phone for a cab.”

She nodded. “Do you want to leave anything for the phone?”