Bertie Plays the Blues

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Pat’s father, Dr Macgregor, had never enquired directly about any of these boys, but had made remarks about love in general. “Don’t make the mistake of confusing love with infatuation,” he said. “So many people do. They don’t realise that love is something that takes time. It never, ever announces itself immediately.”

  Pat was not sure about this. Had the poets got it quite that wrong? “So love at first sight is an impossibility?”

  He nodded. “I’m afraid so. People may feel a strong and sudden interest in somebody else, but that’s almost always purely physical. It might transform itself into love, but you have to wait and see about that.”

  “So what makes people notice each other?”

  Dr Macgregor thought for a moment. “One of two things: beauty or the biological imperative to settle down.”

  She waited for him to explain. “Beauty triggers interest because we yearn for the beautiful. We want to possess it because it represents harmony and resolution – things that we all need, whether we know it or not.” He paused. “We also feel that it rubs off on us. If we are in the company of a beautiful person we ourselves feel more beautiful. Yes, we do. Don’t laugh, Pat. I assure you this is so.”

  She apologised. “I’m not laughing. Well, all right, I was. It was just the thought of beauty rubbing off on people – like mascara or blush. Can’t you see it? A very unpre-possessing man standing next to a beautiful woman with make-up smeared all over his shirt.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I can see that. But look at the pictures in those magazines you read …”

  “I don’t buy them,” said Pat defensively.

  “Of course not.”

  “I see them in the hairdressers. Or people leave them in the flat.”

  “Of course. But look at the pictures of those rich middle-aged men with their younger wives or girlfriends.”

  “Trophies.”

  “Exactly. And every one of them – the women, that is – beautiful. In other cases, though, where money and status are not a factor, then have you noticed something else?”

  She looked puzzled. “What?”

  “That people choose people who look like them.”

  “Do they?”

  “Yes. I’ve made a habit of comparing spouses and partners. It’s quite extraordinary, you know, but so many people choose others who have roughly similar facial features. Blondes prefer blondes. People with high cheekbones marry people who have equally high cheekbones.”

  Pat laughed. “Surely not.” She thought of her friends who were in relationships. Surely they were not … Her smile faded. She had thought of her friend Zoe, and her boyfriend, Zack. Zoe had a long, thin neck and Zack … had that too. And they both had names beginning with Z: was that significant? Did people choose others whose names were similar? There might just be a connection – it was probably true that one met more people who shared the letter of one’s surname, at least, because one met them in groups where membership was allocated alphabetically, or in queues where the As had it over the Bs, and so on.

  She thought of Elspeth and Matthew. Yes, they looked remarkably similar; it was something to do with their eyes, Pat thought. They both had rather gentle eyes; eyes that could never be calculating or intimidating. Then she thought of Bruce, just as she was returning from her coffee with Big Lou, and the thought made her stop. Bruce. Did she look like Bruce? Was that it?

  She went into the gallery and opened the door of the small kitchen that gave off the storeroom. There was a mirror on the wall there, just above the sink, and she approached this and stared in at her reflection. Was this the female face of Bruce? She shuddered.

  I’m going to be strong, she said to herself. I’m going to telephone him and call the date off. “I’m going to go and speak to Lou about it and get her to tell me that I’m doing the right thing. I’m going to … She looked away and sighed. It was not going to work. She was going to see Bruce, she knew it, because she simply could not resist the temptation that he represented. There was no point in her telling herself that she could resist him: she could not. He had suggested they meet again after the evening in George Street and she had agreed; she had not been able to help herself. She felt exactly as she imagined a drug addict must feel when he needs the next hit. No matter what the higher part of the self – the will, the conscience, call it what you will – no matter what that may say, the receptors in the pleasure centres of the brain demand the satisfaction, the union, they have been led to expect. It was a chemistry every bit as powerful as magnetism, and every bit as impervious to efforts of will.

  She returned to the front of the gallery and sat morosely at her desk. Before her was a small pad of paper, virginal, with a sharpened pencil beside it. She picked up the pencil absent-mindedly and began to sketch lightly on the paper. The pencil moved swiftly, unhesitantly, propelled by something within her but not of her. She looked down and gasped. Had she drawn Bruce as David? Were the almost automatic movements of the pencil a pointer to the truth – every bit as revealing as the needle of a polygraph?

  She blushed, ripping the sheet of paper off the pad and crumpling it up in her fist. Then she tossed it into the wastepaper basket, with determination and accuracy, as an author will throw away a piece of paper that takes his plot in entirely the wrong direction, down shameful ways that he knows will lead to nothing but disaster.

  57. Anna Receives a Shock in Moray Place

  If Pat’s private life was showing signs of deterioration, then the opposite was true of the life that Matthew and Elspeth were leading in Moray Place. Even if they had been previously heading for collapse under the pressure of gross sleep-deprivation brought about by looking after triplets, the arrival of the Danish au pair, Anna, had changed everything. Now they had both enjoyed long and refreshing periods of sleep – in Matthew’s case for fourteen, blissful hours – and were feeling the benefits; and not at any apparent cost to Anna, who, in spite of having been on duty during this period, appeared fresh and untroubled by this long shift.

  “I feel very reassured,” Matthew remarked to Elspeth. “I was able to sleep like that because I knew that Anna was on duty. I suppose that’s how a president or prime minister must feel when he has to have an anaesthetic and the vice-president or deputy prime minister officially takes over.”

  Elspeth thought about this. “That happens in the United States, doesn’t it? But what about here? Do you even know who the deputy prime minister is? Do you think they’d know who to put in charge?”

  Matthew thought for a moment. “We never used to have a deputy prime minister,” he said. “Then we started to get one. That chap, the one who almost hit somebody … he was deputy prime minister, wasn’t he?”

  “He was responding to somebody who threw an egg at him. You can hardly blame him for that. He didn’t start it.”

  Matthew was thoughtful. “Maybe not entirely. But still …”

  “So who’s the deputy prime minister now?”

  Matthew scratched his chin. “That other one – you know the one I mean. Him. He’s the deputy prime minister, isn’t he?”

  “Could be,” said Elspeth. “He looks unhappy enough these days. Maybe it’s being in power. His party had a terrible shock when it discovered it was sharing power, didn’t it? Power isn’t really what they were for. They were more in the … in the advisory tradition, I thought.”

  “Nice people,” said Matthew.

  “Yes, they are.”

  “And they try to do the decent thing. They really do.”

  “The cares of office,” mused Elspeth. “Do you think that the Prime Minister wakes up in the morning and realises immediately that he’s running the country, or do you think he has to remind himself?”

  “I expect he has to remind himself,” said Matthew. “I sometimes forget about the gallery – at least before breakfast, and then I say to myself: oh no, I’ve got to go to work.”

  Elspeth smiled. “Do you think we could ever forget the boys?”

 
Matthew shook his head. “Parents never forget they have children. Never. And I’ve heard that it goes on forever. That you worry about them even when they’re forty and you’re … goodness knows how old.”

  “Thank heavens for Anna,” Elspeth said. “Have you noticed how efficient she is?”

  “I could hardly miss it. I opened the fridge earlier on today and there were three little bottles all lined up like skittles in a bowling alley. And the bathroom … she has all the changing stuff carefully laid out with spare bits and pieces and creams and so on. It’s like a clinic. It’s fantastic.”

  Elspeth agreed. Yes, Anna was fantastic – a heroine, a life-saver, a … solution. “She’s even been organising the shopping,” she said. “She went through all the cupboards and made a list of things that looked as if they were about to run out. Then she went off to the supermarket and came back with a whole bag of supplies. She even asked me what your favourite marmalade was and whether I thought you might like Danish fish roe.”

  “Those little black fish eggs? The ersatz caviar? I love it. I love it on boiled egg. I could eat it all day.”

  “She bought some,” said Elspeth. “And she bought some odd fish paste that she’s going to use for smorgasbord. She’s going to …”

  They were interrupted by the sound of Anna coming back; she had taken the triplets in their triple-baby-buggy for a walk round the Moray Place Gardens, and was now struggling with the front door. Matthew went off to help her.

  He could tell immediately that something was wrong.

  “Are the boys all right?” he asked. “You look upset.”

  Anna shook her head. “The boys are fine. I’m going to put them in their cribs for their sleep. They’re fine.”

  “But you …”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me. I am fine too.”

  Matthew could see that this was not so. “But you look …”

  “Don’t worry about me. I am strong.”

  It was a strange thing to say, thought Matthew. One did not say that one was strong unless there was a reason why one needed to be strong. He stepped forward to help her get the boys out of the buggy.

  “It’s just that I have seen something,” said Anna. “I saw something in the gardens.”

  Matthew frowned. “What? What did you see?”

  Anna busied herself with laying Rognvald down in the crib. “I saw some strange people,” she said. “Ten people maybe. They were … they were in the bushes.”

  Matthew sighed. “Oh … Oh, I think I may know.”

  “Some of them were not wearing any clothes,” she said. “And then, when they saw me they walked off quickly and went into a house nearby.”

  Matthew looked at Elspeth with a mixture of astonishment and resignation. “It’s those people,” he muttered.

  Elspeth looked at Anna solicitously. “This is ridiculous. It really is.” She turned to Matthew. “Matthew, you’re going to have to do something about it. They’re entitled to be the Association of Scottish Nudists, or whatever they call themselves, but they’re not entitled to frighten people.”

  Matthew agreed. “Of course not. I’m so sorry, Anna.”

  Anna smiled weakly. “We have many nudists in Scandinavia, but they usually keep to the beaches.”

  “Yes, well our beaches are a bit wild,” said Matthew. “They’d be swept away into the North Sea most likely.”

  “You’re going to have to talk to them, Matthew,” said Elspeth. “You really will.”

  Matthew was resolute. “I shall. Which house was it, Anna? I’ll go there right away.”

  58. The Great Highland Midge

  Anna had indicated that the nudists had disappeared into a front door three or four houses up.

  “It was a very respectable-looking door,” she said. “Who would have guessed that such things were going on behind it?”

  Matthew shook his head. “Don’t be fooled,” he said. “You do know, don’t you, that Robert Louis Stevenson was from Edinburgh.”

  Anna looked puzzled. “The author of Kidnapped?”

  “Yes,” said Matthew. “The very same. But he also wrote The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Have you heard of that?”

  Anna had not. “I have read Kidnapped, in Danish, but I have not read this other book.”

  “Well,” said Matthew, “I know it’s a hoary old chestnut …”

  “Excuse me? A hoary old chestnut …”

  “An expression,” said Matthew. “An expression used to describe an observation that is rather … well, over-used. And this business about Jekyll and Hyde is often wheeled out to describe contrasts in Edinburgh. People say it is a city with two identities: one respectable, the other quite the opposite.”

  “And Mr Jekyll?”

  “Stevenson’s story was about a man who had two identities. There was Dr Jekyll and then there was Mr Hyde. But they were both the same person.”

  Anna looked thoughtful. “So Edinburgh has a respectable exterior and a not-so-respectable interior?”

  Matthew sighed. “I wish it were that simple. I think that the metaphor is somewhat over-used. Most cities are like that – they have a conventional, cautious side to them, and then they have an underbelly – a bohemian, darker side. In Edinburgh’s case, I suppose it’s just a little bit more obvious than in other places. So where we live here is regarded as being very … well, respectable is perhaps the word. And yet there are clearly things going on which represent the opposite of that.”

  “Such as nudism?”

  “Yes, I suppose so. Nudism involves removing the restraints of clothing, and yet Moray Place is full of restraint. People here are very conscious of who they are and where they live.”

  “I see.”

  “Which is fine,” Matthew conceded. “But they really should keep their nudism to themselves. Not everybody wants to see people romping around unclothed.”

  “No,” said Anna. “We do not like that sort of thing in Copenhagen either.”

  “So I’m going to go and see them,” said Matthew. “I’m going to go and complain.”

  Now he stood before the door that Anna had identified earlier and he felt less confident than he had done when he had first announced his intention of complaining. The door looked almost forbidding, with its shiny lacquer black paint and its impressive brass numerals. The numerals were Roman, which seemed to make the task of complaint all the more daunting. It is easy to complain to a set of modern figures, he thought, or to a plastic sign; to complain to the sort of person who used Roman numerals, and brass ones at that, was a different matter altogether.

  Matthew stared at the small brass name-plate beside the bell-push. The lettering had been dulled by the elements or by excessive polishing – as can sometimes happen to much-loved brass – and it was difficult to make out the name. The first two letters were clear enough – Je – but then they became unintelligible. He took a deep breath and pressed the bell. I’m in the right, he thought. I don’t like to complain to neighbours, especially having moved in so recently, but I really am in the right.

  He heard sounds within the flat, a subdued hubbub of voices, he thought. And then the bell rose shrilly above them and he heard footsteps on the other side of the door.

  Matthew had seen several of the neighbours since moving in but he did not recognise the man who came to the door. He was a thin, rather ascetic-looking man in his forties, wearing a white linen suit and a pair of canvas deck shoes. He looked, Matthew thought, rather like a weekend sailor about to set off on his yacht.

  “Ah,” said the man. “Do come in.”

  The tone was welcoming, and Matthew was momentarily nonplussed. He had expected their exchange to be formal and to take place on the doorstep.

  “Come on,” encouraged the man. “I’m Bill Jekyll, by the way. Do come in. We’re about to start through there.”

  Matthew opened his mouth to speak. “I was actually …”

  “Come along,” said the man. “Through here. There are
still a few seats. Come and sit down.”

  Matthew followed his host into the drawing room. There were about twenty people already there, most of them sitting, but one or two standing. He was relieved to see that everybody was fully clothed, although one or two of the men had a few of the front buttons of their shirts undone, revealing glimpses of tanned chests.

  “Sit down over there,” said Bill Jekyll, pointing to an empty seat on a sofa.

  Matthew realised that he had been admitted to a meeting of some sort, and it did not take long for the nature of the meeting to be revealed.

  “We’re very fortunate to have Tom MacNaught as our speaker tonight,” announced Bill Jekyll. “Tom has kindly agreed to bring along pictures of the Glencoe expedition. I know a lot of you were there and have your own photos, but Tom is a particularly good photographer and we can look forward to some very fine shots tonight.” He turned to a man in a casual shirt and jeans, who was standing in front of an open laptop computer. “All right, Tom, it’s all yours.”

  The lights were dimmed and Tom began to project photographs onto a bare patch of wall. “Buachaille Etive Mhor,” he said. “I always look on this mountain as one of the guardians to Glencoe. I’ve climbed it several times. The day of our outing to Glencoe, as you’ll remember, was a peach of a day. Not a cloud in the sky – and how often can you say that of the Western Highlands?”

  There were murmurs of agreement.

  “Of course,” Tom went on. “It was midge season, and the little devils were out in force, in spite of the sun. Midges are a particular hazard for members of our club, as I’m sure you all well know.”