A Promise of Ankles

by Alexander McCall Smith

  He thought of the two artists whose work he would show in his new exhibition. One of them painted Homeric subjects, placing figures from Greek myth in a landscape made up of bits of Greece and bits of Scotland. The Cyclops, with that hesitation of those whose vision is less than 20/20, stood astride a path in a landscape that could be right here, where he was driving, although the sky in the painting would be Aegean. Circe worked her magic in another painting, where men became pigs, delving greedily in the half-worked earth. The other artist was a watercolourist who painted architectural studies with a palette of earthen colours – sienna, umber, gold – and with a view of the world that was of light and shadow and an underlying order.

  His mind wandered to the house he had just left behind him – to his triplets, Rognvald, Fergus and Tobermory. He had left them that morning seated at the small table that was their domain, their breakfast before them – and on the floor, too, as they were messy eaters, even by the standards of small children. There had been the smell of burnt toast in the air, as one of the boys had stood on a chair and been able to interfere with the toaster settings, producing slices of smouldering black and provoking an exasperated scolding from Elspeth. Matthew thought: each morning I leave all that behind me: the noise, the rough and tumble, the chaos that lurks beneath the surface of any household of children, and yet Elspeth, who stays behind with it and for whom it is her whole day, still actually loves me. He knew that. She loved him, because suddenly she had said just that in the bathroom that morning as he shaved with his new triple-action floating-head electric razor, the achievement of some unsung Dutch designer of shaving technology. She had touched his arm, as if to remind him of something he had promised to do, and had said, “I love you so much, Matthew – I really do.” And then, above the buzz of his shaver, she had said, “And your boys love you too, you know. Tobermory said as much last night. He said, I love Daddy more than anything else in the world. Which is not bad for three, don’t you think?”

  He had not thought too much about it then, because when he had finished shaving he had to get dressed and make the private muesli he made for himself to keep sugar out of the equation. He had not thought about it because when you have mundane things to do you do not contemplate your good fortune. Now he did, though: I am so fortunate, he thought. I could die right now, and still be considered lucky for what I have had so far.

  He slowed down. He was now on the edge of the city and approaching a roundabout. It would be easy to describe a circle at that roundabout and return in the direction from which he had just come. He could drive right back to Nine Mile Burn – he would be there within fifteen minutes – and say to Elspeth that he had decided to stay at home that day to be with her, to help her with the boys, perhaps to take them all off for a picnic on the beach at Gullane (pr. Gillin) or on an expedition to explore Tantallon Castle. He could do that, and Elspeth, who loved spontaneity, would readily agree and would quickly prepare sandwiches and boiled eggs wrapped in tinfoil with salt and pepper in little twists of newsprint. And they would go off together and forget about Edinburgh and the claims of the gallery.

  But you didn’t do that – you just didn’t. You went into work and you did what you had to do, although at times in the working day you might pause and think about what was said to you in the bathroom, and bathe in it, as one bathes in the warmth of a profession of love, or even just friendship.

  8

  A Bit of Forever

  By ten o’clock, Matthew had hung six pictures, two of which he had subsequently taken down and substituted with others. By ten-thirty he had swapped a further two and moved one to a new position. He was pleased: the effect was good, and he seemed to be achieving what he set out to achieve, which was to give each painting the room to be itself without fighting with its neighbour.

  He looked at his watch and saw that it was time to cross the road for his morning coffee. He put on his jacket and hung up, on the glass front door, the sign given to him by a German friend: Ich bin bald wieder zurück. Then he made his way across the road towards Big Lou’s coffee bar.

  He only remembered as he descended the steps to Big Lou’s basement premises that one per cent of Big Lou’s, as the café was widely known, now belonged to him and Elspeth. This had come about as a result of a rescue operation mounted by Matthew: Big Lou, in need of money to send her adopted son, Finlay, to ballet school in Glasgow, had been on the point of accepting an offer for her coffee bar from a developer; Matthew had stepped in, offering to buy half of the business for Elspeth. She and Big Lou would then expand the coffee bar and run it as a partnership. They would employ another au pair to help with the boys and thus make Elspeth available to work in the coffee bar for at least half the day. That would give her time out of the house, away from the incessant demands of the triplets, without the constraints of a full-time job. “When you have more than one small child on your hands,” a friend had advised, “you need a retreat if you are to maintain your sanity.”

  That had proved to be true: there had been times when Elspeth had been at the end of her tether and had only survived thanks to the help she received from Matthew, from James, their young male au pair – nephew of the Duke of Johannesburg – and from a bottle of Tio Pepe bone-dry sherry kept in the fridge and self-administered judiciously, and responsibly, when the mayhem got too overwhelming. James, the au pair, had exceeded all expectations. He was an exceptional cook, with a particular talent for turning what Matthew called nursery food – fish fingers, baked beans etc. – into concoctions that the triplets found irresistible. The cajoling and persuasion that had been a feature of the boys’ dinner time before James’s arrival quickly became a thing of the past: now plates were licked clean and demands made for more even as the food appeared on the table.

  And the same culinary skills were in evidence when James cooked for Elspeth and Matthew, which he did four nights a week. His preference was for Italian cuisine – for rich Tuscan bean stews with floating chunks of bread that he himself had made; for antipasto plates decorated with marinated artichoke hearts and dried tomatoes that he prepared in the baking oven of Elspeth’s Aga; for delicate sauces that accompanied home-made tagliatelle. These dishes he would announce as he served them at the table, explaining their origin and the circumstances in which he had learned to make them. Once a week, he took a bus into town to visit Valvona & Crolla and stock up with the provisions that he used in these dishes, although he had also found local sources of which he made full use – a farmer who sold him chickens; a woman in the nearby village who cultivated chanterelles in her shed; an angler who had a source (not investigated too closely) of trout and occasionally of langoustines.

  But James, of course, being an au pair, would not last for ever. Elspeth had hardly dared ask him about his plans, but she knew that he was intending at some point to go to university, and that she would lose him. He was now just a few weeks short of his twentieth birthday, and she realised that sooner or later she would have to discuss with him the climbing trip that he planned to take to Switzerland with Pat, Matthew’s assistant in the gallery. Elspeth had her misgivings about that relationship: Pat was four years older than James and although there was nothing inherently wrong in that age gap, she still felt that James was, in some vague way, vulnerable and that Pat should be careful.

  Matthew did not share that concern. “What’s four years?” he asked. “And anyway, if it were the other way around – if she were twenty, or whatever, and he was twenty-four, would anybody bat an eyelid? They wouldn’t, would they?”

  Elspeth looked wistful. “I know, I know. But still. James is just so…so special. I suppose that’s what I want to say. He’s special.”

  Matthew was puzzled. “What do you mean? So, he can cook. And he’s good with the boys. And he…”

  “And look at how kind he’s been to his uncle,” Elspeth added. “After the Duke crashed his flying boat up in Argyll, look at how James went to the hospita
l every single day and then took him to physiotherapy for weeks. He never complained.”

  “Yes, he’s great,” said Matthew. “But we must face the fact that James won’t be with us all that much longer. We’ll have to get somebody else.”

  Elspeth looked thoughtful. “I’ve had an idea, Matthew.”

  “You’ve thought of somebody?”

  She shook her head. “No, but it’s occurred to me that we could somehow hold onto James.”

  Matthew frowned. “He’s not going to want to be an au pair for the rest of his life.”

  “No, I know that. Obviously not. But he’s spoken about going to university in Edinburgh, hasn’t he? He’s never said anything about going away.”

  Matthew agreed: James had indicated on more than one occasion that he wanted to study in Edinburgh.

  “Well, why don’t we give him a part-time job? That’s what Pat had all the way through her student days. He could do the same. We could employ him.”

  “At the gallery?” asked Matthew. Pat had worked for him in the gallery, and still did.

  “I wasn’t thinking of that,” said Elspeth. “He could do some work there, I suppose, but I was thinking of Big Lou’s. He could do shifts at Big Lou’s once we get going there. Then he could do the odd weekend for us, perhaps. The triplets would love to have him about the place, Tobermory in particular: he loves him to bits. You can see that.”

  Matthew smiled. “We can’t keep him for ever,” he said. “Boys like that grow up.”

  “We can at least keep him for a bit of forever,” said Elspeth.

  9

  Mr Fifty-One Per Cent

  “We need to have a chat,” Matthew said to Big Lou as he entered the coffee bar. Looking around, he saw that there were a few customers who had been served with coffee and, in one case, a bacon roll. In the air there hung the smell of freshly cooked bacon, that enticing smell that is, for the newly converted vegetarian, the most painful temptation, a distilled evocation of a life now rejected. Matthew had often thought that were the manufacturers of aftershave lotions and men’s fragrances to do their market research properly, the scents they would offer their customers would not be the usual cedarwood or sandalwood, but fried bacon, the smell of a new shirt fresh out of its cellophane wrapper, or freshly ground coffee. These were the scents that men liked, but that somehow did not appeal to the advertising agents. Porc pour l’homme had a ring about it, but not quite the ring desired by the marketeers, and so there was no range of men’s products that catered to that side of men’s sensibilities.

  Big Lou gave him a cheerful nod. “And the usual, Matthew?”

  She knew that she did not have to ask, but she did so anyway. It was a Monday, and on a Monday Matthew always had a skinny latte (medium) and a small bottle of Pellegrino sparkling water on the side. On Wednesday and Friday, that would be broadened to include a bacon roll with a dab of English mustard. These bacon rolls were, as Matthew described them, off the record, as he did not report them to Elspeth. Her policy was to restrict bacon to a once-a-week treat – for health reasons – and she would not have approved. Matthew felt guilty about this, but only slightly. In terms of matrimonial deceptions, this was at the most innocent end of the scale, and even then he was planning to confess his secret bacon rolls to her when he got round to it, which for some reason had not yet happened.

  Matthew sat down on one of the stools at the bar. Behind the stainless-steel counter, Big Lou operated the large Italian coffee machine; steam hissed and clouded; water within boiled and gurgled; from a concealed spout came a stream of dark brown coffee. Into this, heated milk was poured, the surface being topped off with a creamy twirl of foam depicting a thistle-head.

  “You wanted to talk?” Big Lou said as she passed the cup to Matthew. “It’s about this place, I take it?”

  Matthew nodded. “You and I need to have a meeting with Elspeth. We need to agree a business plan.”

  Big Lou pursed her lips. “My accountant keeps talking about making a business plan. I tell him I’m here to make coffee, not business plans. Coffee and bacon rolls – which are proving gey popular, by the way.”

  “I’m sure they are,” said Matthew. “But we do need to have some idea where this place is going.”

  “It’s not going anywhere,” said Big Lou quickly. “I haven’t noticed any movement.”

  Matthew laughed dutifully. “Of course not. But you know what I meant – it’s a question of knowing where the business is going in a general sense. That’s why we need a business plan.”

  Big Lou shrugged. “If you say so, Matthew.”

  “And Elspeth and I already have some ideas,” Matthew continued. “Would you like to hear them?”

  “Aye,” said Big Lou. “I’m happy to hear them.”

  Matthew gave her an intense look. He was fond of Big Lou – as everyone was – and he had been quick to help her when he heard that a developer was circling round. But he wondered now whether his offer had been too quick, and whether running a business with Big Lou would be more difficult than he imagined. Elspeth had a good relationship with Big Lou, but she did not know her all that well and of course they had never worked together. It was working with somebody, with all the compromises and adjustments that involved, that could be a real test of a relationship.

  “Of course, I’m happy to hear your own ideas, Lou,” he said. “We’re going to be partners, after all – I didn’t get involved to…” He struggled to find the right form of words. He wanted to reassure Big Lou, but he did not want to condescend to her. “I didn’t get involved to tell you what to do.”

  He heard Big Lou take a deep breath. This was not a good sign. People took deep breaths for a reason.

  “Tell me what to do?” said Big Lou. “You tell me what to do, Matthew?”

  Matthew was flustered. “That’s exactly what I don’t intend to do, Lou. That’s why I brought the subject up, you see.”

  Big Lou reached for her cloth and began polishing the counter surface energetically. Matthew decided that was another bad sign. “I didn’t mean to offend you, Lou,” he offered.

  The polishing increased in vigour.

  “You couldn’t tell me what to do,” she muttered.

  Matthew took a sip of his coffee. He was not fond of conflict, and the idea of arguing with Big Lou over anything was anathema to him. And yet it was important, he felt, to make the terms of their business relationship clear. If he did not, then he would merely be putting off an inevitable row to some point in the future. No business, he thought, could leave the issue of ultimate control unsettled. At some juncture, sooner or later, somebody would have to know where real power lay.

  “Listen, Lou,” Matthew began. “We need to be aware of where each of us stands.”

  Big Lou put down her cloth. “Aye, Matthew,” she said. “I’m standing behind this counter, running this place, and you’re sitting on the stool on the other side. That’s where we are, I think.”

  Matthew sighed. “You’re not making this easy for me, Lou.”

  “Easy to do what?” she challenged.

  “Easy to work out what we do.”

  Big Lou frowned. “But what’s there to do?” She gestured to the tables, only one of which was unoccupied. “See them over there? They’re the customers, and they’re not complaining, are they?”

  Matthew glanced over his shoulder. He was uncomfortable about having this discussion in the open, in the middle of the coffee bar. But he had started it and it would only be more difficult in the future if he put it off.

  “You see,” he began, “the arrangement we reached, you’ll remember, was that I acquired just over half of the business – and all its assets, including this bit of the building – when I paid you that money. Remember? It was three hundred thousand. Three hundred and fifty thousand, to be precise.”

  “I know how mu
ch it was,” said Big Lou. “I put it in the bank.”

  “Yes,” said Matthew. “You put it in the bank and so I became the controlling shareholder in the little company we set up. Remember that? Big Lou Limited?”

  “That’s me and you,” she said. “Aye, I mind that well. And I’m happy to be in business with you, Matthew. And I’m grateful to you for coming up with the money and joining me.”

  “I was happy to help, Lou, but…”

  Big Lou did not let him finish. “And I look forward,” she said, “to working with Elspeth – when she has the time. There’s no hurry, as far as I’m concerned – you know that, I think.”

  10

  Tribal Markings

  While Matthew and Big Lou engaged in these preliminary exchanges at the counter, at the back of the café, seated at a table directly in front of the window giving onto the shared green, were two men in their mid-forties. They were smartly dressed in grey, pin-stripe suits, one suit being slightly darker than the other, although both disclosed an attention to cut. The tie that each wore revealed, to any experienced spotter of such plumage, the wearer’s institutional affiliations. Ties, for men, can be a tribal marking, as clear in their statement as any system of facial tattooing to be found in Polynesia. A tie can demonstrate the wearer’s preferred sport, his education, and, in the case of politicians, his party membership and position on the left-right spectrum. A deep red tie indicates uncompromising attachment to socialism, while a tie of a lighter red is a sure sign of the left-centrist; a tie shading into pink may be making a different statement altogether. A navy blue tie is an indication of bone-deep conservatism, while one that is sky-blue will proclaim a more liberal disposition, yet still be a tie of the right. Green ties are worn by Greens – and are almost always recycled. There is a small but thriving industry that takes red, blue and yellow ties discarded by other politicians and dyes them before selling them to Greens. In Big Lou’s that morning, one tie, sported by the taller of the two, a man with a fine aquiline nose and a general air of distinction, even if faded, bore the motif of the Bank of Scotland; the other proclaimed, in bold silver and maroon stripes, membership of the Watsonian Rugby Club.