Bertie Plays the Blues

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “I’m going to celebrate,” she said to Matthew.

  “That’s great, Lou. How?”

  “I’ll work something out,” she said.

  Matthew realised that his enquiry had been tactless. Big Lou lived on her own, and the thought of her celebrating by herself, opening a bottle of wine, perhaps, in her flat in Canonmills and then drinking a toast that would be echoed by nobody else, saddened him. Life could be a lonely affair, and there was no justice in allocation of company. There were many selfish and unmeritorious people who were surrounded by more friends than they could manage; there were many good and generous people who were alone, who would love to have somebody to go home to, but who did not.

  Big Lou was one of those. Matthew had met some of her male friends, and had taken a thorough dislike to them. There was that cook who had gone off to Mobile, Alabama, and who had shown excessive interest in young waitresses – Matthew had not liked him at all. Then there had been the Jacobite plasterer, who had gone on about the Stuarts and their restoration and who had, in Matthew’s view, been certifiably insane. No, Big Lou had not had the luck she deserved, but could anything be done about it? Should she wait until some man wandered into her life – if that was ever going to happen – or should her friends perhaps speak to her about a dating agency? Why not? Dating agencies worked – sometimes – and Matthew had read of one that allowed you to get as many men as you liked – seriatim, of course – for three hundred and fifty pounds. Matthew had three hundred and fifty pounds; perhaps he would speak to Big Lou – tactfully of course. Big Lou came from Arbroath, and people who came from Arbroath were fine people in so many ways, but could be unexpectedly touchy-touchy, not touchy-feely.

  3. Sons of Auchtermuchty

  Domenica Macdonald heard of the birth of Rognvald, Tobermory and Fergus from her fiancé, Angus Lordie, who had in turn heard it from Big Lou. Matthew had tried to reach Angus by telephone to give him the news, but Angus had not been in and his answering machine was full. That answering machine, in fact, had been full for three and a half years – ever since Angus had bought the phone – not having been listened to because Angus did not know that it existed. Some human messages never reach their destination, but remain in electronic limbo, waiting for some future archivist, centuries hence, some archaeologist of quotidian things, to unearth them and reconstruct a distant social past. Meet me at three – usual place could have the same fascination as some Pictish or Linear-B inscription over which scholars of our own time have scratched their heads.

  “They’ve arrived,” said Angus, himself arriving at Domenica’s flat in Scotland Street. “Three boys. Rognvald, Tobermory and Fergus. Royal Infirmary.”

  Domenica shook her head. “Poor woman,” she said. “I suppose they have everything ready, though. Three babies. And then imagine having three toddlers about the place. Three sets of temper tantrums. Three everything.”

  “She’ll cope, I expect,” said Angus. “She seems a very placid type. I always thought her name rather suited her. Elspeth Harmony – the Harmony bit is very reassuring.”

  Domenica was interested in the names chosen for the triplets. “We can be grateful that they’ve chosen real names,” she said. “You can’t go wrong if you name a child after a prominent geographical feature. Tobermory is very nice.”

  “I read about somebody called Glasgow the other day,” said Angus.

  “Not bad,” said Domenica. “It has a certain friendliness to it. One could be … well, I suppose, a pop singer with a name like that. You know, one of these people who seem to think that the only way one can sing is in an American accent, even if one is markedly not American. Very peculiar. Give me The Proclaimers any day. There’s no doubt they come from Auchtermuchty, rather than the middle of the Atlantic somewhere. Along with Jimmy Shand – what a great man he was! These are honest people.”

  “Names,” Angus reminded her. “We were talking about names.”

  “So we were,” said Domenica. “Glasgow as a name. Yes, I rather like it. Glasgow Maclean. Glasgow Wilson. Glasgow seems to go with any surname, doesn’t it?”

  Angus agreed. “Tobermory is a comfortable name. It’s redolent, I think, of Toby, which is very easy-going. He’s destined for a happy life, that boy.”

  They were in Domenica’s kitchen when Angus made that remark, he sitting at the table, she standing in front of the newly acquired espresso machine, waiting for the coffee to start dripping into the tiny jug. Angus had given her the machine shortly after they had returned from Italy as a newly engaged couple. Now Domenica looked up as Angus referred to happiness; she looked up at her ceiling and thought of the words he had used. Were there really people who were destined for a happy life right from the beginning, or did we embark on that course – or its opposite – only a little bit later? Were there still people, she wondered, who embraced predestination in the stern, old-fashioned sense; who believed that some of us were damned whatever we did? Burns had pilloried that so beautifully in “Holy Willie’s Prayer” which went …

  “‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’, Angus? How does it go again? The bit about predestination?”

  Angus had been watching the espresso machine huff and puff itself into action, and had been wondering whether a new aphorism was required to accommodate contemporary coffee culture – people today not watching kettles perhaps as much as they used to. A watched espresso machine never … never what? Never expresses. That was it.

  “‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’? Now then: let me think.”

  “Remember to put on your Burns face.” Domenica had discovered that Angus, and indeed many others, assumed a particular facial expression when reciting Burns. It was a very curious expression: one of reverence mixed with a look of satisfaction that comes from finding that one can remember the lines. Perhaps it had its equivalent elsewhere, she thought; perhaps there was a universal face that people put on when they quoted their national poets – if they had them. Some nations had no national poet, of course; they had an airline, perhaps, but not a poet.

  Angus looked out of the window, subconsciously, perhaps, turning to Ayrshire as some may turn to Mecca. “O Thou that in the heavens does dwell / Wha as it pleases best Thysel / Sends ane to Heaven and ten to Hell / A for Thy glory / And no for any guid or ill / They’ve done before Thee.”

  Domenica smiled. “That says it perfectly. Just perfectly.”

  “Yes,” said Angus. “It does, doesn’t it? And he’s still with us, you know.”

  “Holy Willie?”

  Angus nodded. “In a different guise. Not perhaps in predestination terms, but in terms of disapproval of others. There are any number of people who take real pleasure in lecturing and hectoring us.”

  Domenica frowned. “Is it the same thing? Is that what Holy Willie is about?”

  “Yes, I think it is. But of course Burns is having a go at hypocrisy too.”

  Domenica said that she found hypocrisy rather complicated. “Is it just a question of saying one thing and doing another? Or saying something that you don’t mean?”

  “That’s insincerity,” said Angus.

  “But a hypocrite is insincere too, isn’t he?”

  “No,” said Angus. “He may really believe what he goes on about. It’s just that his actions don’t match his words.” He paused. “You know the best example of sincerity? The absolute gold standard?”

  “Who?”

  Angus pointed to the door, outside which Cyril was waiting patiently. “A dog. Have you ever met an insincere dog – a dog who hides his true feelings?”

  Domenica looked thoughtful. “And cats?”

  “Dreadfully insincere,” said Angus. “Psychopaths – every one of them. Show me a cat, Domenica, and I’ll show you a psychopath. Textbook examples.”

  4. Where, Then, Shall We Live?

  The conversation between Angus and Domenica about triplets, hypocrisy, and national poets – all of them subjects of undoubtedly great interest – now became concerned with that topic of
even greater profundity in the minds of any newly engaged couple: where to live. While this topic tends to be fraught for the young, who will generally have to scrimp and save to find a place of their own, for those at a later stage of life the problem can be quite otherwise – that of surplus. Both Domenica and Angus were owners of the flats in which they lived: Domenica’s flat being in 44 Scotland Street, directly above the Pollock family, and Angus’s being several hundred yards away in Drummond Place. On the face of it, Drummond Place seemed more desirable than Scotland Street, at least in financial terms. But neither party to this engagement was hard up, and so there was no need for either of them to sell his or her flat. So the decision about where to live became one based entirely on domestic preference. Where would they be more comfortable and therefore happier: in the more intimate setting of Scotland Street accommodation, or in the distinctly larger premises in Drummond Place?

  In the early days of the engagement, nothing had been said about a move. Angus had assumed that he would move into Scotland Street, as it seemed to him that Domenica was the senior party in the arrangement; he was being admitted to her life rather than she to his. For her part, Domenica had made a similar assumption; indeed, one of the main issues for her had been the question of what to do about Cyril. Marrying Angus meant acquiring Cyril, and that was not something that could be lightly undertaken. However, she had found that her feelings had mollified, and now the prospect of having Angus’s dog actually living in the flat was not as appalling as it had seemed before. In fact, although she would not have admitted this to Angus, Domenica had begun to relish the prospect of having Cyril in the flat and being able to take him for walks in the Drummond Place Gardens or, at weekends, along the road that led from Flotterstone into the Pentland Hills. She looked forward to the conversation that dog owners have amongst themselves on such walks, the dogs breaking the ice for their owners.

  Of the two flats, Angus’s was by far the bigger. He was on the south side of the square, in a flat that occupied the top two floors of a converted Georgian terraced house. The house had been undivided until the nineteen-fifties, when an Edinburgh architect had sliced it into three flats: one in the basement, one occupying the ground and drawing room floors, and one incorporating the top and attic storeys.

  Although they were not as high as those on the drawing room floor, where they were a good fourteen feet, Angus’s ceilings were nonetheless twelve feet on his main floor and ten in the attic. The other dimensions of the rooms were appropriately generous, with the result that Angus had a studio with the necessary feeling of space. Here he kept his easels, his drawers of paints and thinners, his spattered ground sheets. Here he kept the chair he used for portrait sittings, an antiquated Edwardian library chair covered in green velvet through which the horsehair stuffing protruded at points.

  The rest of the flat consisted of four bedrooms; a study filled with papers, well-thumbed art magazines and books; an echoing, cold bathroom with an ancient tub; and a kitchen dominated by a massive scrubbed pine table used for the preparation of food and the entertainment of guests. It was a comfortable flat in the sense that it had a lived-in feel and contained nothing that was aesthetically offensive, but it was irretrievably masculine and no woman could reasonably be expected to live in it, no matter how much she was in love with its owner.

  Angus imagined that once he and Domenica married, he would keep the Drummond Place flat as his studio. That would mean that the only impedimenta he would have to move down to Scotland Street would be his clothes, his shaving bag, and a selection of paintings that he thought Domenica would like too: a pencil sketch by James Cowie of a child with prominent front teeth, a Philipson nude (with cathedral background), an Alberto Morrocco study of a melon, and a snowy Scottish landscape by Anne Redpath. There would be Cyril’s modest possessions too: the basket in which he slept, his bowl, and the collection of bright bandannas which Angus tied to the dog’s collar when he took him for walks along Queen Street or Heriot Row.

  “I’ve been thinking about flats,” said Domenica. “We’ll need to do something about that.”

  Angus continued to look out of the window. “Do we?”

  “Yes. You see, there’s not much point in having two flats – especially two that are so close together.”

  “I don’t know,” he said casually. “My flat is not just a flat – it’s my studio.”

  “Of course,” said Domenica. “But I thought that perhaps the spare bedroom here would do for that. It’s quite large, after all. And the light’s quite good.”

  Angus was silent. He could not imagine painting in a spare bedroom. “I’m not sure,” he began. “I’m very fond of …”

  Domenica held up a hand. “I don’t want to put you under any pressure, Angus, but I really think we should consider something.”

  He turned away from the window and looked directly at her. “Consider what?”

  “I’ve had a letter from Antonia,” said Domenica. “And what she says has a bearing on what we might do.”

  Angus’s curiosity was aroused. “How is she? Has she fully recovered?”

  Antonia Collie, who owned the flat next to Domenica’s, had accompanied them on their trip to Italy. Unfortunately, she had succumbed to Stendhal Syndrome, a rare condition that affects a small proportion of visitors to the great art cities of Italy. She had been referred to a psychiatric hospital in Florence and from there had been transferred to the care of a group of nuns in the Tuscan countryside.

  “She’s doing very well,” said Domenica. “And she’s asked me to do something for her that affects us very significantly, Angus.”

  “Tell all,” he said.

  5. A Request from Italy

  Domenica went to the Welsh dresser and took an envelope from a fruit bowl. “This arrived yesterday,” she said, holding up the letter. “I recognised her handwriting immediately even if it has become a bit more – how shall I put it? – disciplined than it used to be.”

  “The result of being looked after by nuns, perhaps,” said Angus. “I should imagine that nuns are fairly quick to spot one’s faults if one’s staying with them. They’d be polite about it, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Domenica. “I believe that nuns can communicate a great deal just with looks. There will be a certain sort of look that says, quite clearly, ‘You must improve your handwriting’ or, rather, ‘We must improve our handwriting.’” She paused. “Have you noticed how useful the first person plural is for criticism, Angus? If I say to you ‘We must do a little better’ I may mean you need to do a little better, but somehow saying ‘we’ makes the criticism a little less blunt. Is it because it suggests that I share the fault?”

  Angus did not agree. “No. It’s just condescending. It’s as if you’re talking to a child. If you want to suggest that you share the problem, then you can say things like ‘I’m not one to talk, but …’ Or, ‘I have exactly the same failing and I find that …’ That’s much better.”

  “Oh well,” said Domenica, slipping the folded notepaper from the envelope. “Listen to what she has to say.”

  They both sat down. Angus watched Domenica as she prepared to read; she has such a peaceful, resolved face, he thought; I must ask her to sit for me. Portrait of my Wife. He found the simple title oddly moving, and he felt grateful, and proud too: my wife. Thank you, thank … whatever divinity has brought me this good fortune. Thank you.

  Domenica put on a pair of reading glasses. Looking at Angus over the rim of these, she began to read.

  “My dear Domenica …” She paused. “It’s interesting, Angus, that she should say my dear rather than dear.”

  “Some people do,” said Angus. “I quite like it, actually. It somehow suggests greater affection.”

  “Yes,” said Domenica. “Perhaps it does.”

  She looked down at the letter and continued, “I am writing to you from Italy.” She looked up at Angus. “Well, we know that, don’t we?”

  “Carry on.”
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br />   “I am writing to you from Italy,” Domenica continued, “where the sisters with whom I am staying have been so kind to me and helped me through this difficult period. I have very little recollection of what happened in the Uffizi …”

  Domenica looked up. “I have,” she said. “She started to moan in a most embarrassing way. The entire gallery resounded to her moans.”

  “She was not herself,” said Angus.

  “No, indeed, but there we are. Shall I continue?”

  “You must.”

  “Fortunately,” she went on, “the human memory has powers to commit to oblivion many things that would otherwise distress us. I have recovered from whatever affliction it was that seized me in the Uffizi and have put all that behind me. I have discovered, I am happy to tell you, a whole new purpose in life. I have been helping the sisters with the running of the small farm that they have here. Sister Celestina is the bee-keeper and she has been giving me some training in apiculture. It is most satisfying, I feel, to see the bees doing the Lord’s work with such energy and determination! An inspiration for the rest of us, says Sister Celestina, and I believe she is right.

  “My early Scottish saints would have been happy here, I think, and I like to believe that the life that I am leading now is not all that different from the life they themselves led in their rude dwellings in Whithorn. Indeed, I cannot help but feel that Saint Ninian himself is at my elbow here, and that my own journey is not entirely dissimilar to his.”

  Domenica paused, looking up at Angus. “Well! That’s a bit steep – even for Antonia. Ninian must have travelled to Rome by boat and horseback – she went to Italy by Ryanair. Quite different, if you ask me.”

  Angus smiled. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s pretty basic on some of these cheap airlines. I think Saint Ninian might have felt quite at home.”