Sunshine on Scotland Street

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Stuart shrugged. “Seems all right to me. Gives the time and place. You don’t need much else, do you?”

  Irene reached for the invitation. “It’s twee, Stuart. Terribly twee. You are invited to share our wedding. How twee can you get?”

  “I don’t know,” said Stuart. “Maybe that’s better than requesting the pleasure of your company. That’s always struck me as being somewhat cold – almost as if their company won’t be all that pleasurable.”

  Irene was looking at the invitation again. “And did you see the embossed hearts up at the top?”

  Stuart shrugged again. “If that’s what they want …”

  “Oh, they can have whatever sort of invitation they want,” said Irene, generously. “Embossed livers, if one has to be anatomical. It’s just that there’s this awful, cloying sentimentality about weddings.”

  Bertie listened intently. He had observed that his mother was dismissive about things like weddings and birthday parties, and yet she had herself had a wedding – Bertie had seen the pictures – and she always enjoyed celebrating her birthday. Perhaps she just felt that about other people’s weddings and birthdays and not about her own …

  Bertie was looking forward to this wedding. He had seen his own name written at the top of the invitation and had felt profoundly boosted by this. It was his name – his – and they wanted him there. It said up at the top Stuart, Irene, and Master Bertie Pollock. He gazed at the wording. Master! That was him!

  “We must get them a present,” said Stuart. “And that’ll be a bit difficult when they’ve both got households already. They’ll have all the necessary junk.” And with that he gestured to the contents of the Pollock kitchen – necessary junk.

  “We’ll think of something,” said Irene, scraping the last of Ulysses’ boiled egg from the plate. “At least we won’t be getting them a decanter.”

  Stuart looked thoughtful. “A decanter? They might find that useful … although I imagine they’ve got one already, or Angus will, I’m sure, with his fondness for wine. Should we ask …”

  Irene cut him short. “Oh really, Stuart! Do you seriously imagine they’d like a decanter? A decanter is a complete cliché. No person of any … any discernment would give anybody a decanter – not anymore.” She looked at her husband witheringly, and sighed. “Don’t you know about the ur-decanter? The decanter that’s been doing the rounds in Edinburgh for the last forty years? People get given it as a wedding present and then wrap it up and pass it on the next time they’re invited to a wedding. I’ve heard that it changes hands every three months – as a recycled present.”

  Stuart was not sure whether to take this seriously. He had heard of a legendary box of After Eights that had done the rounds of Edinburgh dinner parties, being taken as a present for the host and then passed on, unbroached, by the recipient. By now the chocolates were said to be in an advanced state of decomposition – not that anybody would ever find out, as nobody ever opened them. They were, in a way, rather like the Flying Dutchman, doomed to circulate forever and never find a home.

  “Bourgeois Edinburgh,” Irene continued, shaking her head. “It’s a most extraordinary place. I’m so glad we’re not part of it.”

  Stuart looked at her with surprise. “But you …” He stopped. Irene did not like to be reminded that she had started life in Moray Place. Of course that was hautbourgeois, if anything, but he knew better than to raise that point.

  It was as if she had not heard him. “Yes,” she went on. “There is so much to be thankful for. For our freedom from all that; from the chains of respectability; from the sheer clutter of middle-class existence. We’re very lucky.”

  But what are we? Stuart asked himself. If they were not middle-class, then what were they? Did these labels matter, anyway, or were they all part of a political and social battlefield that had long since been abandoned?

  He looked at the invitation. “I knew about this already,” he said.

  “About this wedding? Who told you?”

  He had no alternative now but to confess. “Angus did, actually. He told me and then he asked me.”

  “Asked you what?”

  “Whether we could look after Cyril when they went on honeymoon.”

  Irene stared at him. “And?”

  “I said yes, of course.”

  Bertie’s face broke into an immediate and delighted grin. He was fairly indifferent to weddings, but dogs – well, they were another matter altogether.

  Irene gasped. “Have you taken leave of your senses, Stuart?” she hissed. “Have you?”

  Stuart closed his eyes.

  “No,” he said. “Au contraire.” It was strong language for the Edinburgh New Town, but he had to say it.

  “Don’t au contraire me,” said Irene.

  But it was too late. He had.

  9. A Room at the Gritti Palace

  Bertie could barely control his excitement when he learned that Cyril was to board with the Pollock family while Angus and Domenica were away on their honeymoon. He had only the sketchiest idea of what a honeymoon was, having been told by Tofu, with whom he had raised the subject, that it was a form of compulsory holiday, taken immediately after the wedding, in which children were acquired. Some people, Tofu revealed, went off on honeymoon and came back several weeks later with three or four children. This was unusual, he said, but had been known to happen. “Most of the time, they just come back with one baby,” he said. “That’s the way things work, Bertie.”

  Olive, who had overheard this conversation, was quick to pour scorn on Tofu’s theory. “Shows how much you know, Tofu,” she said scornfully. “Honeymoons are all about getting away from other people. If you’ve just married somebody, then it’s nice to get away from other people so that you can get to know the person you’ve married. It’s very romantic, not that you’d know anything about that, Tofu.”

  Tofu started to remonstrate that he knew a great deal about these subjects and that his uncle had just got married and had come back from his honeymoon with two small babies; Olive could come and look at them if she didn’t believe him. The uncle in question lived in Balerno and all that Olive would have to do would be to catch a bus.

  Olive was scathing. “I don’t care where your uncle lives, Tofu,” she retorted. “And I certainly don’t want to see those babies of his, who are bound to be really horrid, since they’re related to you and have your yucky genes.” She paused. “No, I’d prefer to think about the honeymoon that Bertie and I are planning to take after we get married. When we’re twenty, that is.”

  Bertie began to protest. “I didn’t ever say I would, Olive. I really didn’t.”

  Olive was not listening. “We’re going to go to Venice,” she said. “That’s a place in Italy where they have lots of canals and restaurants. Bags of people go there to do their honeymoon. We’re going to stay in a hotel called the Gritti Palace – I’ve seen photographs of it and have made a booking already.”

  Bertie drew in his breath sharply. “You’ve already booked?”

  “Yes,” said Olive, somewhat smugly. “I’ve sent them an e-mail asking them to keep a room for us for when we’re twenty.”

  Bertie’s voice was small. Olive really should have asked him about this. It was bad enough to try to force him to marry her, but to book a honeymoon too was, he felt, taking matters too far. “And?”

  “They haven’t been in touch,” said Olive. “But they’ve got my booking. We don’t need to worry.”

  “But I never said that I wanted to marry you, Olive …”

  She cut him short. “Yes you did, Bertie. And I’ve got it in writing, remember? I’ve got a piece of paper that has your signature on it. It says that you agree to marry me – those are the exact words, Bertie, and you can’t deny them.”

  “But …”

  “No buts, Bertie. If you don’t keep your promise then you’ll get into serious trouble. Big time. You could go to prison, and then what? And there’s God too. God watches these thi
ngs and if he sees you breaking promises he can really get you. He does it all the time.”

  At this point, Tofu decided to intervene on Bertie’s behalf. Walking up behind her, he leaned forward suddenly and spat down the back of her neck. “You can have that in writing too,” he said. “I promise to spit at Olive once a day for the next five years. Official. Signed: Tofu. Hah!”

  It had ended in tears and recrimination, as it always did. But now, wearing his best clothes for the wedding – a smart white shirt, a pair of black trousers his mother had bought from a charity shop in Stockbridge (a couple of sizes too big but very rarely worn by the previous owner, and, blessedly, not crushed strawberry), and his best lace-up shoes – Bertie closed his eyes and imagined what it would be like to have Cyril staying in the house. It was the most delicious of thoughts: a dog in the house, always there at his feet, ready to go out for a walk, to run after a ball, to fetch sticks, to bark at cats … And at night, Cyril would sleep on a mat beside him, or even creep onto the end of the bed. One of the boys at school had a dog that did that, he claimed; and another had two dogs that he said actually slept under the blankets with him. That must be almost unimaginable bliss, thought Bertie.

  Icy in defeat, Irene had made no further mention of Cyril’s impending arrival, leaving all arrangements for the arrival of what she described as “our uninvited guest” to Stuart. Bertie had suggested that they should get supplies of food for Cyril from Valvona & Crolla, but Stuart had explained that delicatessens usually did not stock dog food and that they would need to go to a pet shop. That trip, undertaken with his father, had thrilled Bertie to the core, admitting him to an Aladdin’s cave of caged birds, scurrying hamsters, mewing kittens, and a litter of tiny Highland terrier puppies.

  They had purchased a whole case of tinned dog meat, a bag of dry food called Super Dog, and a large carton of dog biscuits called Good Boy Treats. Bertie had gazed in fascination at the box of biscuits and marvelled at the name. Somebody should make something like that for real boys, he thought – not just for dogs. Boys deserved treats, especially if they were good, and Bertie felt that he did his level best to be good. But the world, it seemed to him, was not like that. You could do your best to be good but would get precious little credit for it. All that would happen would be that you would be told to do even better. It was very hard, very unfair.

  They took the dog food supplies back to the flat, where they were stacked behind the door of Bertie’s room, ready for Cyril’s arrival.

  “I can’t wait!” Bertie whispered to his father.

  Stuart looked at his son and smiled. “I know,” he whispered back.

  And he reached out and ruffled his son’s hair, leaving his hand there where it lay, in a gesture that was one of both complicity and love.

  10. Irregular Marriages in Scots Law

  Matthew at last managed to get Angus out of the flat and into the street. He was more aware of the time now, as they had at least two important tasks to perform on their way to Palmerston Place; not for them, then, the leisurely few hours that most grooms spent before their appointment at the altar – a time of quiet reflection on the significance of the ceremony to come. One’s last few hours as anything were always very important, thought Matthew: those moments one spends thinking, This is the last day of my working life, or This is my last morning at school, or This is the last time I pilot a jumbo jet. He had read somewhere about how an American president – it was President Clinton, he thought – had spent his last night in office awake and thinking; and what thoughts those must have been. These are my last few hours of power. What could a person do in such circumstances? Grant pardons, it seemed, was one thing he could do, and indeed did. How much better that was than a last-minute, rash decision to press a red button before the codes are taken away from one.

  And so a bachelor might think, These are my last hours as a single man, my last hours of freedom. That, of course, thought Matthew, cast a pejorative light on marriage – a boyish, immature vision of what marriage amounted to. Matthew did not feel unfree being married to Elspeth Harmony. Quite the contrary, in fact. He had found that marriage had relieved him of anxiety, and that was a freeing, a removal of a psychological shackle. He no longer had to worry about whether he would find somebody who liked him: he had found her. He no longer had to worry about how he looked and whether his distressed-oatmeal sweater would be the subject of scorn; married men could wear distressed oatmeal if that was what they wished to do. No, marriage was not a diminution of freedom, Matthew thought; it was its enhancement.

  Did Angus think that? he wondered. Looking at Angus now as they walked up Dublin Street towards York Place and Queen Street, he was not at all sure what Angus thought. Angus had failed to make the most elementary preparations for the wedding, failing to check his kilt and forgetting altogether to buy a ring. Matthew was not sure whether that amounted to a lack of organisation that went with the artistic personality, or whether it was symptomatic of a lack of enthusiasm for his wedding. It was too late, though, to enquire: his responsibility now as best man was to ensure that he got Angus to the right place at the right time and with the necessary ring. If Angus had any reservations, then it was simply too late. Matthew now had a responsibility to Domenica to ensure that she was not embarrassed in any way, and he would discharge that to the best of his ability.

  Angus was largely silent as they walked up Dublin Street. At the top of the street, though, and when they began to make their way along the pavement opposite the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, he began to talk again. “It’s a pity weddings can’t be a little bit more low-key,” he said. “All this dressing up – all this fuss. It should be simpler.”

  “It can be,” said Matthew. “Some people have very simple weddings.”

  “That used to be the case in Scotland,” mused Angus. “I think these fancy weddings are a result of us trying to imitate the English.”

  “Really?” asked Matthew. “I thought Scottish weddings were always rather more enjoyable affairs. Big parties and lots to eat. I’ve always been under the impression that English weddings are much less lavish – a few canapés and so on, not a sit-down meal.”

  “I was thinking of the actual ceremony,” said Angus. “We had these things called irregular marriages in Scotland until our political masters decided that they didn’t like them. It’s the old story of the state wanting to regulate everything.”

  “You mean Gretna Green and all that?”

  “Yes,” said Angus. “Gretna Green was all about parental consent not being needed in Scotland. Young lovers from England could hop over the border and get married in Scotland in the face of their parents’ disapproval. And good for them. But it was all about informality as well. You could simply declare yourself married in Scotland – you didn’t need a minister to do the necessary, as long as you had witnesses. And there was also a wonderful system called marriage by habit and repute.”

  “By habit?”

  Angus nodded. “And by repute. It meant that if you let everybody think that you were married – called yourself Mr. and Mrs. Macgregor or whatever – then the courts could hold that you were in fact married. It helped with things like pensions and wills and so on.”

  “How nice,” said Matthew. “Pension funds do that sometimes with dependants, don’t they? People who live together and rely upon one another might be looked after.”

  “I believe they do,” said Angus. “It’s always struck me as rather cruel that people who are to all intents and purposes married to somebody can’t enjoy the benefits that those who are formally married get.”

  “I agree,” said Matthew.

  They both became silent and this silence continued until Angus broke it. “I cannot understand it,” he said. “There are people who seem to take pleasure in belittling others, in denying them their small chance of happiness. Why? What pleasure do such people get out of making others feel bad, or somehow inferior? What possible pleasure?”

  Matthew sho
ok his head. “I don’t know. Perhaps they feel it builds them up. Perhaps they think they’ll feel bigger inside if they make somebody else feel smaller.”

  Angus thought about this. “Perhaps.” He paused. “Cyril, you know, disapproves of nobody. Look at him. He’s happy to lick anybody who comes his way.”

  Cyril, who was trotting at his master’s feet, now looked up at him and gave him a lopsided canine grin – all pink tongue and saliva, and of course his single, flashing gold tooth. Then he looked down from gazing at his master to the contemplation of Matthew’s ankles. Cyril had been tempted by Matthew’s ankles ever since he had first seen them under the table at Big Lou’s coffee house. He had wanted to bite them more than anything else he wanted to do. They were delicious – uniquely and overwhelmingly delicious. And yet he knew that he could not do this, and especially not today, as something was definitely in the air and he had an impression that something momentous, something life-changing from both the human and the canine point of view, was about to occur.

  11. The Campbell Kilt Is Repaired

  As they approached Frederick Street, Matthew pointed to a corner shop with an elaborate panelled frontage. “In there,” he said, taking Angus’s arm and propelling him through the doorway.

  Angus knew immediately what Matthew had in mind. “I feel extremely embarrassed,” he mumbled. “To buy one’s wedding ring in a pawnshop …”

  “It’s the thought that counts,” Matthew retorted. “Rather than the foresight.”

  An assistant came up to them. “A wedding ring for a bride,” Matthew announced.

  The assistant smiled. She had seen the kilt draped over Angus’s arm and the jacket on its hanger carried by Matthew.

  “This afternoon?” she asked.

  Matthew nodded. “Imminent,” he said.