Bertie Plays the Blues
Page 28
Angus looked out of the window. “Do you think she’s happy?”
“Certainly,” said Domenica. “Look at her letters. And you know something, Angus? It is undoubtedly the case that the practice of the virtues makes one happier. We’ve somewhat lost sight of that essential truth, now that we, as a society, admire selfishness and vanity so much. Look at this so-called celebrity culture. Look at what it’s doing to the minds of our children. Did you see that item in the press about the survey of the career ambitions of contemporary children? You know what most of them say they want to be? Celebrities! Can you credit it? Where are all those little boys who wanted to be firemen and pilots and circus strongmen and the like? Or the girls who wanted to be nurses? Where are they?”
“Perhaps we’re just getting away from stereotypes,” ventured Angus. “Perhaps the boys want to be nurses now and the girls pilots.”
“Possibly,” said Domenica.
“And as for little Bertie, do you think he’ll survive that mother of his?”
“Of course he will,” said Domenica. “Bertie will be fine. That little boy has a heart, and a head, in the right place. He represents goodness, I think. He represents innocence, and innocence has taken such a profound battering in our times. We have mocked it. We have sullied it. We have put it in intensive care, and frankly, I don’t see how it can survive. And yet here and there one sees flickers of its light – just flickers. And so we know that innocence isn’t entirely dead.”
Angus was silent as he thought about this. Domenica was undoubtedly right, as she was about so many things. And as he reflected upon this, he thought of his good fortune in having found somebody like her, prepared to take on somebody like him, and a dog like Cyril thrown in for good measure. The shoulders of women were broad indeed, and none broader, he felt, than this amusing, entertaining and observant woman who had agreed to marry him and, in so doing, had agreed to reduce the sum total of this world’s loneliness by a minute, but to him, inestimably important measure.
80. Finale
On the evening before the wedding, Domenica and Angus held a dinner party in Scotland Street. It was a largish affair by the standards of Domenica’s dinner parties, but by creating two tables, one in the kitchen and one in the drawing room, they were able to fit everybody in.
“People will have their first course at one table and then the guests will change round and have their second course at the other table,” Domenica announced to Angus. “That will ensure that everybody gets the chance to speak to everybody else. Or to at least to look at them, if they have nothing to say.”
“A good idea,” said Angus. But then, after a moment, he added, “Hold on, Domenica. If they all change tables, then they’ll be with the same people all over again. In a different place, of course, and that might be important, but it will be the same dramatis personae.”
“True,” said Domenica. “You’re very perceptive, Angus.”
He acknowledged the compliment with an inclining of his head. “So what I suggest is that we get the men to change, and the women remain where they are.”
Domenica thought about this. “But then that will mean that the men all have to listen to the same men, and the women all have to listen to the same women. That surely defeats the object of the exercise.”
Then Angus raised another objection. “And there’s always the problem of glasses with such arrangements. If you have two glasses – a water glass and a wine glass – then you should really take both with you. And your table napkin. Because otherwise you’ll get the germs of the person who was sitting there before you.”
“There are very few germs in Edinburgh,” said Domenica. “But I see what you mean. So perhaps we shall just have two separate tables.”
That issue was resolved, and by the time that the first guests arrived, the seating plans seemed so natural as to give no clue to the thought that had gone into them. Many of the guests were those who usually came to Domenica’s dinner parties; one or two were newcomers, but everybody, of course, knew one another.
“It’s so reassuring,” said James Holloway, “to see no new faces.”
“Precisely,” said Susanna Kerr. “It would be a terrible shock if one went to a dinner party in Edinburgh and met people you didn’t know.”
The conversation before dinner was every bit as good as the conversation during the meal, and indeed after it. There was so much to discuss, and a great deal to provoke intense merriment. When the subject of the latest Turner Prize shortlist arose, the laughter almost made the windows rattle.
At the table, toasts were proposed, and drunk. David Robinson, who had known Domenica for years, spoke briefly, expressing the pleasure of all the guests at the satisfactory conclusion to the long friendship between host and hostess. On the other side of the table, opposite David, by coincidence sat Mhairi Collie, the surgeon who had been so kind to him, and to so many others. She nodded her head in agreement with the sentiments he expressed. Beside her, entertaining all around him with amusing stories, sat Harvey McGregor, who would, after the dinner, play several Noel Coward numbers on the piano. In the adjoining room, the guests who were at the table there could not, of course, hear any of this, but they received brief summaries of what was said, passed on by the one who sat nearest the door. This made them feel very much part of the evening and in no sense second class.
Halfway through, Angus slipped out to check up on Cyril, who was waiting outside on the landing. Cyril’s personal hygiene issues made it impossible for him to attend dinner parties in person, but he had been given a bone, and was happy with that, as most dogs are – and people, too, when the bone is metaphorical.
Angus discovered that Bertie had heard Cyril barking and was sitting on the steps beside him, in his pyjamas and dressing gown.
Angus sat down on the steps.
“Are you having fun in there?” asked Bertie.
“Yes,” said Angus. “And shortly I shall go back in and recite a poem. I always do that, Bertie.”
“Could I hear it?”
“I don’t see why not,” said Angus.
He closed his eyes. The words came to him, and came so easily.
Dear friends, gathered again together in a place
That has become so familiar to all of us,
We might wish to forget the world outside,
Might wish to think that here, with our friends,
We are the world. Would that were true:
The world outside is not the world
We would like it to be; I don’t need
To enumerate its woes – they are legion,
And greet us each time we open a newspaper.
But it would be wrong to become cynical,
Would be wrong to dismiss the possibility
Of making bearable the suffering of so many
By acts of love in our own lives,
By acts of friendship, by the simple cherishing
Of those who daily cross our path, and those who do not.
By these acts, I think, are we shown what might be;
By these acts can we transform that small corner
Of terra firma that is given to us,
In our case this little patch of earth
That we call Scotland, into a peaceable
Kingdom, a place where love and friendship
Are writ large not doubted, nor laughed at,
But embraced and proclaimed, made the tenor
Of our quotidian lives, made the register
In which we conduct ourselves.
How foolish I once thought I was
To believe in all this; how warmly
I now return to that earlier belief;
How fervently I hope that it is true,
How fervently I hope that this is so.
Angus opened his eyes. Bertie was staring at him.
“Sorry, Bertie,” he said. “I got carried away.”
“I understand, Mr Lordie,” said Bertie.
And he gave Angus
his hand, and Angus held it briefly. Such a small thing, he thought: so fragile, so human, so precious.