Love Over Scotland

by Alexander McCall Smith

  He walked along Queen Street, in the direction of Dundas Street and his gallery. This route took him past Stewart Christie, the outfitters, and that is where he paused, looking thoughtfully into the window. It was a shop that sold well-made clothes for men, not the expensive rubbish–as Matthew thought of it–produced by Italians, but finely-tailored jackets made of Scottish tweed; yellow-checked waistcoats for country wear; tight-fitting tartan trews for formal occasions.

  On impulse, he went into the shop and began to examine a rack of ties. Many of them were striped, which would not suit him, as he would not like others to think that he was one of those people who was emotionally tied to an institution of some sort–an institution that gave you stripes by which to remember it. He picked out a spotted tie and set it aside without looking at the price. You don’t have to ask the price any more, he told himself. It doesn’t matter. You can afford anything you want. The thought, which he had not entertained to any extent since his fortunes had changed, was an intoxicating one. What did it entail? If he went down to London, then he could walk into John Lobb’s shop in St James’s Street and have himself measured for a pair of bespoke shoes. Matthew had read about that recently in a lifestyle supplement, and had remembered the price. Two thousand four hundred pounds that would cost, and that was without the shoe trees. Shoe trees made by John Lobb would cost an additional three hundred pounds.

  Matthew reached for a box of lawn handkerchiefs. He would take that, as he did not have many handkerchiefs. And then he saw some socks, all wool with toes reinforced with a special fabric, described as revolutionary. Matthew pulled out three pairs of these and then a further two. One could never have enough socks, particularly in view of the tendency of socks to disappear in the laundry. No matter what precautions were taken, socks disappeared into a Bermuda Triangle for socks, a swirling vortex that swallowed one sock at a time, leaving its partner stranded.

  He was now assisted by a solicitous young man who had appeared from the back of the shop. Together, they chose four shirts, an expensive cashmere sweater which cost one hundred and twenty pounds, a pair of crushed-strawberry corduroy trousers, and a covert coat in oatmeal drill.

  “Very nice,” said the assistant. “You can wear that for shooting.”

  Matthew frowned. He did not go shooting, but then it occurred to him that he could if he wanted to. I can do anything, he thought, and smiled. He closed one eye and swung up an imaginary shotgun. “Bang,” he said.

  “Quite,” said the assistant. “Bang.”

  His purchases nestling in a copious carrier bag, Matthew left the outfitters and continued his walk along Queen Street. The spending of a large amount of money within a short space of time had been a strangely liberating experience. In a way which he found difficult to express, the whole process of shopping had made him feel better. The tie, the fine cashmere sweater, the covert coat–all of these had been added to him and had made him bigger. He felt more confident, more assured, and, critically, less vulnerable. Having money, he thought, means that the world cannot hurt you. You can lose things and just replace them. You can protect yourself against disappointment because you can get the best things available. Ordinary shoes might pinch; shoes made for you by John Lobb did not.

  He reached Dundas Street and turned down the hill. There, at the end of the street, beyond the roofs of Canonmills, was Fife–a dark green hillside, clouds, a silver strip of sea. Passing Glass and Thompson, he decided to call in for a slice of quiche and a glass of melon juice. Big Lou’s was just a little way down the street, but Big Lou did not make quiche and there was no melon juice to be had there.

  Matthew perched on a stool at one of the tables. There were a few other customers in at the time–a woman in a dark trouser suit, engrossed in a file of papers; a thin man paging through an old copy of a design magazine, an architect, as Matthew knew.

  He picked up a copy of a newspaper and turned the pages at random. Split trust victims seek compensation, a headline read. And then another: with-profits policies encounter painful shortfall. Matthew paused, his glass of melon juice half way to his lips.

  Outside, he did not have to wait long for a taxi, and he was soon outside the lawyers’ offices again, and then, within minutes, inside, seated opposite the lawyer himself.

  “Very wise,” said the lawyer. “Very wise to change your mind.” And then he added: “You know, I seem to recollect that my boy Jamie–he’s quite different these days–was a bit tough on you when you were boys. Sorry about that, you know.”

  Matthew nodded. “It’s fine,” he said. And he thought: yes, it is fine, isn’t it? You’re back. Back where you came from. The solid, cautious, Scottish mercantile class; among your own people. But for a moment, a brief moment, you had been about to do something yourself.

  10. Does He Wear Lederhosen?

  That had been a Monday. Now it was Tuesday, and that, under the new arrangement with Pat, was one of the days on which she came into the gallery for three hours to help Matthew. He had hoped to have had more of her time, as he had grown accustomed to her presence, as she sat at her desk, or stacked paintings in the storeroom, and without her the gallery seemed strangely empty. But Pat was now a student and had the requirements of her course to consider–essays to write, pages of aesthetic theory and art history to plough through, although she skipped, she had to admit, rather than ploughed. With all these things to do, she was unable to get down to the gallery for more than nine hours a week, and these hours were divided between Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

  Of course, Matthew could have employed somebody fulltime, had he wished to do so. Four million pounds is enough to finance a two-room gallery for which no rent had to be paid and which was not encumbered by any debt. But Matthew did not wish to have anybody else; he wanted Pat, because she knew the business, had a precociously good eye for art, and because…well, if he were to admit it to himself, Matthew wanted to have what one might call a closer relationship with Pat.

  On that Tuesday, Matthew left his flat in India Street dressed in the new clothes he had bought from Stewart Christie the previous day. He wore one of the expensive shirts, the spotted silk tie, the crushed-strawberry trousers and the cashmere sweater. The sweater, which was an oatmeal colour (“distressed oatmeal” was the official description of the shade), went well with the trousers and the tie, which had a dark green background (the spots being light green). Over all this he donned the covert coat, then examined himself in the hall mirror and set off into the street.

  By the time that Pat arrived in the gallery at ten o’clock, Matthew had dealt with the few letters that he had received that morning and had almost finished paging through a new auction catalogue. There were several paintings in this catalogue that he wanted to discuss with Pat–a Hornel study of a group of Japanese women making tea, a Blackadder of a bunch of peonies in a white vase, and a shockingly expensive Cadell portrait. Matthew reflected that he could afford any of these–indeed, he could afford them all–but he knew that he would have to be careful. The market had its price, and it was foolish to allow a personal enthusiasm for a painting to encourage one to pay more than the real market figure. What one paid in such circumstances was the market as far as that particular sale was concerned, but not the broader market. The real market was more fickle, and it was all very well having an expensive Cadell on one’s walls, but what if nobody else wanted it? So he ticked the Blackadder and put a question mark next to the listing of the Cadell.

  When Pat came in, he showed her the Cadell and she shook her head. “Not for us,” she said. “Remember who comes into this place. Our clients don’t have that sort of money.”

  “But if we had that sort of painting,” Matthew objected, “then we’d get that sort of person. Word would get out.”

  “Too risky,” said Pat. “Stick to the clients you have.”

  Matthew smiled. “But we have the means, Pat,” he said. “We have money. Plenty of it.”

  Pat said nothing. She had notic
ed the new distressed-oatmeal cashmere sweater and the covert coat hung over the back of his chair. Was Matthew dressing for her benefit? And if he was, then had his feelings for her revived–the feelings that she had been so concerned to discourage, even if gently? She glanced at Matthew, at the new shirt, the new tie, the crushed-strawberry trousers. These were all signs.

  “Well,” she said airily. “We can think about it later on. You don’t have to reach any decisions just yet.” She paused. A few words would be sufficient. “Do you mind if I make a telephone call, Matthew? I have to ring my boyfriend.”

  She saw his expression change. The human face was so transparent, she thought, so revealing of the feelings below; in this case, there was just a loss of light, so subtle that one would never be able to pinpoint how it occurred; but there was less light.

  “So,” he said. “You have a romance on the go.”

  Pat did not like to lie, but there were times when the only kind thing to do with men was to lie to them. If one did not lie to men, then they suffered all the more. And she was not sure that what she was telling was a lie anyway. She had met Wolf, and had taken to him. What she had felt on that first encounter and in the subsequent conversation in the Elephant House had everything to do with romance, she would have thought; certainly the physiological signs had been present–the feeling of lightness in the stomach, the slight racing of the heart, the prickling of the skin. So she would not be lying at all.

  “Yes,” she said, looking down at the ground. It is easier to lie to the ground, in general.

  Matthew fiddled with the edge of his desk. His knuckles, she saw, were white.

  “What’s he called?” he asked.

  She hesitated. It was none of Matthew’s business to know the names of her friends, but she could not tell him this.

  “Wolf,” she said.

  He stared at her for a moment. Then he laughed. “You’re not serious! Wolf? Is he German by any chance? Wears lederhosen?”

  Pat shut her eyes. She had been too gentle with him. How dare he talk of Wolf like that; gentle, kind Wolf. She paused. She knew nothing about Wolf. She had no idea whether he was gentle and kind, and there was at least some evidence that he was not–and had he not mouthed the predatory words: hey there, little Red Riding-Hood? What sort of boy said that? Only a wolf, she thought.

  11. The Bears of Sicily

  If there had been change on the top floor of 44 Scotland Street, with the departure of Domenica and the arrival of Antonia, then there had been change, too, elsewhere in the building.

  On the top landing, opposite Domenica’s flat, was the flat which had been owned by Bruce Anderson, who had now left Edinburgh to live in London, in the hope that Chelsea or Fulham might provide that which he felt to be missing from his life in Edinburgh. Pat had been his tenant, but had left when Bruce had placed the flat on the market and eventually sold it to a young architect turned property developer. On the floor below, Irene and Stuart Pollock had not moved, thus providing the continuity required if a building is to have a collective memory. That was one of the features which made those Edinburgh streets so special; in contrast with so many other cities, where people may come and go and leave no memory, the streets and houses of the Edinburgh New Town bore an oral history that might survive, thirty, forty, even fifty years. People remembered who lived where, what they did, and where they went. People wanted to belong. They wanted to be part of something that had a local feel, a local face.

  Irene Pollock was the mother of that most talented of six-year-olds, Bertie Pollock, now of the Steiner School in Merchiston and sometime pupil (suspended) at the East New Town Advanced Nursery. Bertie was still in therapy with Dr Hugo Fairbairn, author of that seminal work on child analysis, Shattered to Pieces: Ego Dissolution in a Three-Year-Old Tyrant. He had been referred to Dr Fairbairn after he had set fire to his father’s copy of The Guardian, while his father was reading it. This act of fire-raising might have alerted one familiar with the literature on juvenile psychopathology to that well-known but still puzzling triangular syndrome in which an interest in setting fire to things is accompanied by a tendency to be cruel to animals and to suffer from late bed-wetting. The literature in forensic psychiatry contains several reports on this curious combination of behaviours and symptoms, and any well-informed child psychiatrist encountering a youthful fire-raiser would do well to inquire along these lines. Dr Fairbairn, however, ruled this out immediately. Unlike Frederick in the Struwelpeter, who so persecuted the good dog Tray, Bertie was not a cruel little boy. He was not unkind to animals, nor did he suffer from nocturnal enuresis, having been dry and out of nappies (and into dungarees) at the remarkably early age of eight months. His mother, indeed, had been so proud of his achievements in that department that she had contacted the newspapers to find out whether they were interested in interviewing her (and possibly having a few words with Bertie too) about this, and had been surprised, and hurt, by their indifference.

  Bertie had accomplished a great deal since his early and distinguished toilet training. He had become reasonably fluent in Italian and a more than competent saxophonist. Both of these were skills which had been forced upon him by his mother, who, in the case of Italian lessons, had started these shortly after his third birthday. While other children listened to tapes of nursery rhymes–almost all of which were, in Irene’s view, patriarchal nonsense–Bertie listened to the complete set of Buongiorno Italia! tapes, playing and replaying the recorded conversations these featured. By the age of four, he was quite capable of asking the way to the railway station in faultless Italian, or engaging in a conversation with an Italian waiter about the most typical dishes of the various Italian regions. After this, he graduated to listening with perfect understanding to Buzzati’s story of the invasion of Sicily by bears, a vaguely sinister story which was later to surface in his concerns over the possibility of encountering bears in the streets of Edinburgh. Ma, Bertie, non ci sono orsi a Edimborgo! Irene had said to him (But, Bertie, there are no bears in Edinburgh!) To which Bertie had replied: Non ci sono orsi in Sicilia, Mama, ma ecco qui la storia di Buzzati in cui incontriamo orsi! (There are no bears in Sicily, Mother, but here is this story of Buzzati’s in which we meet bears!)

  His progress in music was equally meteoric. At the age of four, he was playing the soprano recorder with some facility, and had made a start on rudimentary music theory. By five, he had embarked–or been embarked, perhaps–on the study of the saxophone, and on this instrument he made particularly rapid progress. He showed an early propensity for the playing of jazz, although Irene was slightly uneasy about this, as she was not convinced that jazz encouraged the same musical rigour as did classical music. Bertie’s rendition of ‘As Time Goes By’, although hardly jazz, was easy on the ear, and indeed had been much appreciated by Pat, whose bedroom in 44 Scotland Street lay immediately above the room in which Bertie practised.

  But all this hot-housing produced precisely that reaction which any reasonable parent might have foreseen: Bertie rebelled, first by minor acts of non-cooperation (occasionally refusing to talk Italian) and then by major gestures (burning his father’s copy of The Guardian). Irene had responded by placing her trust in psychotherapy, but had gradually been persuaded to allow Bertie more freedom, and in particular, to do things with his father. This had improved the situation, but if leopards do not change their spots, neither does the Weltanschauung of people such as Irene change in the space of a few days. And pregnancy–the condition in which she now found herself–had a strange effect: it led to renewed vigour in her desire to impose her views on others. This was probably a result of the loss of control she felt of her body and world: as the sheer brute fact of carrying another life within her resulted in a diminution of her sense of personal autonomy, so her need to assert herself in other respects grew.

  This manifested itself in a variety of ways, but most remarkably in an increase in the number of altercations in which she became involved. There was the famous campaign aga
inst Nurse Forbes of the National Childbirth Trust, and then there was the terrible row over the Pollock car, which once again had gone missing. It was Bertie who had precipitated the row over the car when he made an apparently innocent observation. “Mummy,” he said. “You know how you left our car at the top of Scotland Street, outside Mr Demarco’s house? Well, it’s not there anymore.”

  12. Quality Time with Irene

  “Nonsense!” expostulated Irene. “Of course it’s there.” She was replying to the question which Bertie had posed about the disappearance of the Pollock car. Of course the car was parked in Scotland Street–she herself had parked it there only two days earlier, when she had driven to Valvona and Crolla to stock up on sun-dried tomatoes and olives. She distinctly remembered parking it because she had almost run over one of the cats which sauntered about the street and which had narrowly escaped being crushed by the back wheels of Irene’s reversing Volvo. For a moment or two, she thought that she had actually crushed the cat, as she felt a slight bump, which proved to be nothing more than a folded up newspaper which somebody had dropped and which had become a sodden mound in the gutter.