Unbearable Lightness of Scones

12. Of Love and Lies

But by the time they were in the taxi on the way to the airport, travelling through the well-set neatness of Corstorphine, past the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland’s zoo, they had forgotten about their minor tiff over the secrecy of their destination. And the night had brought self-forgiveness too, and reassurance that marriage would be an arrangement of delight and enhancement, not one of doubts and quibbles.

Matthew, who like many young men imagined that he could never be loved, not for himself, now at last thought: I have found the one person on this earth, the one, who loves me. And Elspeth did love him, and had proved it by drawing a heart in lipstick on his stomach, with their initials intertwined – that most simple, clichéd declaration that the love-struck have always resorted to; carved on tree trunks with pen-knives; traced in the dust on the back of unwashed cars; furtively scribbled on walls in pencil; and which, for all its simplicity and indeed its naiveté, is usually nothing but believed-in and sincere. It had been a strange thing to do, but Matthew had been touched, and when he looked out of the window the next morning – he was up early, to bring her a cup of tea in bed – India Street itself seemed transformed, as a lover’s eyes will do to any landscape; will do to any company. The prosaic, the quotidian are infused with a new gentleness, a new loveliness, by the fact that one senses that there is love in the world and that one has glimpsed it, been given one’s share.

The taxi driver, looking in his mirror, said, “So, where are we off to today?”

“Australia,” said Matthew, and turned to smile at Elspeth.

“Oh yes,” said the driver. “Honeymoon?”

Neither Matthew nor Elspeth replied immediately. They were passing a large computer shop, painted in garish purple, a building of great aesthetic ghastliness, and their eyes were drawn to that. The taxi driver glanced into the mirror again. “Yes,” he said. “People come in along this road – visitors – and they’re thinking I’ve heard Edinburgh’s one of the most beautiful cities in Europe and what do they see? That place.”

“Then, when they get to town they see the St. James Centre,” said Matthew. “Who inflicted that on us?”

“Oh well,” said the taxi driver. “At least they’re trying to disguise it now. So it’s your honeymoon. We went to Florida, you know. Six years ago. That’s when we got married.”

“Florida is very…” began Matthew, and then stopped. What could one say about Florida, particularly if one had never been there?

The driver waited for a moment, but when the sentence was not completed merely added, “Yes, it is. It’s a great place for golf. They have these highly manicured golf courses, the Americans. They go round them with nail scissors.”

“Well, at least you never lose the ball,” said Matthew. What did one say about golf when one has never played it? Did one ask somebody if he had ever got a hole in one?

“Did you ever…” he began.

“We went on British Airways,” continued the taxi driver, waving to another taxi coming in the opposite direction. “We were in the back of the plane and the purser happened to ask us right at the beginning how we were doing. He was Scottish, and when we told him we were on our honeymoon, he indicated that we should get up out of the seats and follow him, bringing our hand baggage.”

“Upgraded?” asked Matthew.

“Yes,” said the driver. “There was hardly a soul in business class and so we settled in there. Champagne. Feet up on those stools they have. It was a great start to our marriage. One Scotsman doing a good turn for another.”

“The so-called Scottish Mafia,” said Matthew.

“It exists,” said the driver. “Thank goodness.”

They were now approaching the airport turn-off; close by, a plane climbed up into the air, as if from a mustard-yellow field.

“The following year,” the driver continued, “when we went back to Florida, I thought that I might try the same thing. I told the attendant that we were on our honeymoon and she smiled. I’ll see what I can do, she said. And then I looked further down the plane, and there was the same man, the one who had helped us.”

Matthew and Elspeth exchanged glances. An act of kindness had been repaid with an act of dishonesty. Suddenly, the whole story soured.

The taxi driver looked in his mirror and laughed. “I’m only joking. I didn’t. But I thought that’s what would happen if you did something like that. That would be the result, wouldn’t it?”

The tension dissipated. “People don’t think it wrong to lie any more,” said Elspeth. “They don’t see anything wrong.”

“Too right,” said the taxi driver.

They turned off the main road and started to negotiate the series of traffic roundabouts that preceded the terminal.

“I was only joking back there,” said the driver. “That bit about doing the same thing twice. Only joking.”

“Of course,” said Matthew.

“I count the air strokes on my golf card,” the driver went on. “Put them all down. Which is more than some do.”

“Naturally,” said Matthew.

They paid and got out of the taxi. “I’m afraid that I don’t believe him,” said Matthew, as they walked through the doors into the terminal.

Elspeth disagreed. “Why?” she asked. “Why disbelieve him?”

“I bet that he tried it twice.”

Elspeth shook her head. “You have to believe people,” she said. “You have to start off by trusting them.” She felt that, of course, but then she thought for some reason of Tofu, and Olive, and of the facility, the enthusiasm, with which they distorted the truth. Bertie was the only completely truthful child she had known, and perhaps Lakshmi. The rest…

They went to the check-in and handed in their suitcases. The woman behind the desk smiled at them. “Honeymoon?” she asked.

Matthew showed his surprise. “How did you know?”

“Because you have that look about you, and…” She paused for effect. “You didn’t say that you were on honeymoon. So many others do. Looking for special treatment. And then you look at the finger, and what do you see? No ring.”

Matthew glanced at his left hand. So strange; it was so strange, this public declaration of commitment, this announcement of love, made gold in this modest band.

“We’re going to have such a marvellous time,” he whispered to Elspeth, who looked up at him and said, “Yes.”

He was thinking of life; she of Australia.