Espresso Tales 4ss-2

by Alexander McCall Smith

  – anything but – it’s just that all sort of ridiculous misuse of money would have to be sanctioned in the name of testamentary freedom.

  I have very strong views on that.

  “One never forgets cases like that. And there were many of them, including the famous case of Donoghue v. Stevenson, which was concerned with the unfortunate experience of a Mrs May Donoghue who went into the Wellmeadow Café in Paisley and was served a bottle of ginger beer in which there was a decaying snail. Mrs Donoghue was quite ill as a result, and so we should not laugh at the facts of the case. But it must certainly be very disconcerting indeed to find a snail in one’s ginger beer!

  And there were other very good Scots cases, such as the case of Bourhill v. Young, which dealt with the claim of Mrs Euphemia Bourhill, a fishwife, who saw a motorcyclist suffer

  200 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part V – Johnny Auchtermuchty an unfortunate accident very close to the bus in which she was travelling. There is a remarkable, but little known fact about that case. The former professor of jurisprudence at the University of Edinburgh, the late Professor Archie Campbell, employed a housekeeper whose nephew was involved in the accident! I happen to know that, but not many others do. And there is a further coincidence. Archie Campbell used to live in one of those streets behind the Braid Hills Hotel, which is not far from the house occupied by me and my wife, Betty. Edinburgh is a bit like that.”

  Ramsey Dunbarton paused after these disclosures, and looked at his wife. She had gone to sleep.

  61. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story:

  Part V – Johnny Auchtermuchty

  “I do think it’s a bit rude of you to nod off like that,” said Ramsey Dunbarton. “Here I am going to the trouble of reading you my memoirs and I look up and see you fast asleep. Really, Betty, I expect a bit more of you!”

  The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part V – Johnny Auchtermuchty 201

  Betty rubbed at her eyes. “I’m terribly sorry, dear. I was only away for a moment or two. I think that you had got to the point where somebody was building a statue of a dog in Dundee.”

  “Oh really!” Ramsey said peevishly. “You’ve got it all mixed up. It was Musselburgh that the bronze equestrian statue . . .”

  “Of a dog?” interrupted Betty. “Surely not. Surely one couldn’t have an equestrian statue of a dog? Wouldn’t that look a bit odd, even in Musselburgh?”

  Ramsey sighed. “My dear, if you had been listening, instead of sleeping, you would have understood that the dog was in Dundee, and there was never any question of erecting a statue to it, equestrian or otherwise. But, look, do you want me to go on reading or do you want me to stop?”

  “Oh, you must carry on reading, Ramsey,” said Betty enthusiastically. “Why don’t we do this: you read and then, every so often, take a look in my direction and see if my eyes are closed.

  If they are, give me a gentle nudge.”

  Ramsey agreed, reluctantly, and took up his manuscript again.

  “Well, after all that legal training and whatnot I was duly admitted as a solicitor and found myself as an assistant in the Edinburgh firm of Ptarmigan Monboddo. It was a very good firm, with eight partners, headed by Mr Hamish Ptarmigan. I liked him, and he was always very good to me. If ever I needed advice, I would go straight to him and he would tell me exactly what to do. And he was never wrong.

  “ ‘Always remember,’ he said, ‘that although you have a duty to do what your client wishes, you need never do anything that offends your conscience. If a client asks you to do that, you can simply decline to accept his instructions. And if you do this, you will never get into any trouble with either the Law Society of Scotland, or God.’

  “And I remembered this advice when a client came to me and said that he wished to transfer all his assets into immoveable property – or land, as laymen call it – and in this way to defeat the right of his son, whom he did not like, to claim his legal rights to a share of the property on his father’s death. I was 202 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part V – Johnny Auchtermuchty appalled by this, because I knew the son, and knew him to be a perfectly decent man. So I said to the client that I did not think that this was the right thing to do, especially as the person who stood to benefit from the arrangement was his mistress, a sleazy woman who drank a lot and had a real roving eye.

  “The client became very agitated by this and said: ‘If that’s the way you feel, then I can always go to another firm.’ So I said to him, ‘You do just that! I would remind you that I am a professional man and not some paid lackey you can order to do this, that and the next thing.’

  “He took his business away from the firm and I had to report this to Mr Ptarmigan. I shall never forget his reaction. He said:

  ‘Dunbarton, you have done the right thing, even if this is going to cost the firm a lot of money, for which I must express a slight regret. But well done, nonetheless.’

  “Later, I am happy to say, the son, whose interests I had sought to protect, and who had heard of my stand, became very successful and brought his business to us. Mr Ptarmigan noted that fact and pointed out that virtue was not always its own reward, in the sense that it sometimes brought additional benefits of a material nature. We both had a good laugh over that!

  “Of course that particular client was an important one, but I never got to know him particularly well. I knew other clients rather better, and one or two of them even became friends.

  Johnny Auchtermuchty was one of these.

  “Johnny had an estate up near Comrie. His father, Ginger Auchtermuchty, had been a well-known golfer, but had not been particularly good at keeping the estate in good order. In fact, he was rather bad at that, and by the time that Johnny had left the South East Scotland Agricultural College everybody thought that it would probably be too late to do much with the farms that they had in hand. The fencing was in a pretty awful state and a lot of work needed to be done on the steadings. In fact, when Ginger handed over to Johnny and went to live in Gullane, we were very much expecting to have to sell off a large parcel of land just to keep the place from folding up altogether.

  The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VI – a Perthshire Weekend 203

  “I first met Johnny when he came in to discuss the possibility of raising some money to do essential repairs. I prepared a deed which gave security for the loan and I remember thinking that he would never be able to repay even part of what he had to borrow. How wrong I was! Johnny proved to have a real nose for the managing of shooting and fishing and within a few years the estate was one of the most successful in Perthshire. And Johnny was also one of the most socially successful people of his day. Everybody liked him and invited him to stay with them.

  He used to make people laugh and told the most wonderful stories.

  “I had heard about his house parties, which were legendary, but I had never received an invitation to one of them. This slightly distressed me, and I began to wonder whether Johnny thought of me as just his lawyer and not worth having anything to do with socially. That would have been very unjust. I enjoyed a party in exactly the same way as the rest of them did and even if I was not a particularly experienced shot I saw no reason why I shouldn’t be invited to join in now and then.

  “And then at last the invitation came. Would I care to come up to Mucklemeikle to shoot? Friday to Sunday? I replied that I would be delighted to do this. I did not ask what it was that we were going to shoot. Betty, who did not treat the invitation with the same enthusiasm as I did, suggested that it might be fish in a barrel. That was meant to be a joke, but I must admit that I did not find it very funny at the time. Indeed, I don’t find it funny now. In fact, it has remained as unfunny as it was when she first uttered it – it really has.”

  62. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story:

  Part VI – a Perthshire Weekend

  “Now,” said Ramsey Dunbarton to his wife, Betty, as he read his memoirs to her. “Now things get really interesting.”

  “Johnny Auchtermuchty!” mused Bet
ty. “What a card he was, 204 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VI – a Perthshire Weekend Ramsey! And such a good-looking man with that moustache of his.”

  “A great man,” agreed Ramsey.

  They were both silent for a moment. Then Betty asked: “And they found no trace of him?” she said. “Not even a few scraps?”

  “Not a trace,” said Ramsey sadly. “But let’s not slip into melan-choly. I’ll resume with my memoirs, Betty.” He looked at his watch. “This will have to be the last reading for the time being, my dear. People will just have to wait for the rest.”

  “And we haven’t even got to the part where you played the Duke of Plaza-Toro at the Church Hill Theatre,” said Betty.

  “Time enough for that in the future,” said Ramsey. “Now back to Johnny Auchtermuchty and the invitation up to Comrie.

  “I was delighted, of course, to receive this invitation to shoot, even though, quite frankly, I had not done a great deal of shooting before. In fact, if the truth be told, I had hardly ever handled a shotgun, although I had done a bit of clay-pigeon shooting when I was much younger. I don’t hold with shooting really: I’m rather fond of birds and I think that the whole idea of blasting them out of the sky is a bit cruel. But it was not really for me to criticise my clients and certainly Johnny Auchtermuchty would have been very surprised if I had taken a stand on the matter. There are plenty of Edinburgh solicitors who would have jumped at the chance of a day’s shooting with Johnny and some of them would not have been above a bit of subtle persuasion that he should perhaps take his legal business to them rather than to Ptarmigan Monboddo. Now I am not going to mention any names, but I’m sure that if any of them are reading this they will know that I mean them.

  “Betty decided that she would not come after all, and so I motored up to Comrie by myself on the Friday afternoon. I had borrowed a friend’s Rolls-Royce for the occasion and I enjoyed the drive very much, taking the road past Stirling and then up across the hills behind Glenartney. Johnny was standing outside the Big Hoose, as we called it, when I arrived and he said to The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VI – a Perthshire Weekend 205

  me: ‘Nice Rolls there, Dunbarton! You chaps must be charging us pretty handsomely to afford a car like that!’ I was a bit embarrassed by this and started to explain to him that it really belonged to a solicitor from another firm but he paid no attention. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Blame the other chaps! Old trick that, Dunbarton!’

  “We all had dinner that night and had a very good time too.

  There were a couple of people from Ayrshire and somebody from Fife. Johnny’s wife was a splendid cook and had prepared a very fine set of dishes for us. I asked her if she could give me the recipes to take home to Betty, but she said no. I thought that this was rather rude of her, but I fear that she had long been nursing a grudge against me, at least since she unfortunately had overheard me, some years before, telling somebody that I thought that Johnny had married beneath him. That was most unfortunate, but I was absolutely right. He had, and I think she knew it. I also noted that I was given the smallest bedroom in the house – one at the end of the corridor and that the sheets on the bed did not quite reach the end. And the water in the flask beside my bed did not taste very nice at all, and so I decided not to drink it.

  “In the morning we went out to shoot. Johnny had a keeper who I think was hostile to me from the start, although he was polite to the others. He looked at my shoes and asked me whether I thought they were sufficiently robust for the occasion – I thought that was a cheek and I decided there and then that he could expect no tip from me, and told him as much. He was a Highlander, of course, and these people can be quite resentful when they get some sort of notion.

  “We took our places alongside several pegs which the keeper had inserted in the ground. I was right at the end, which I suspected was the worst place to be, as there was a clump of whin bush immediately to my right which kept scratching me. Then they started to drive the birds out of their cover and suddenly people started to point their shotguns up in the air and blast away. I did my best, but unfortunately I did not seem to get any birds going in my direction and so I got nothing. Then quite

  206 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VI – a Perthshire Weekend suddenly a bird flew up immediately in front of me and I jerked up my shotgun and pulled the trigger.

  “I only heard the keeper shout when it was too late, and by then the bird, which I noticed was quite black, had gone down into the heather. I realised then that I had shot a blackbird and I felt very apologetic about it.

  “ ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ I shouted. ‘I seem to have shot a blackbird.’

  “The keeper came storming over. ‘That’s no blackbird, sir,’

  he hissed. ‘That was a black grouse.’ Then he added: ‘And you gentlemen were very specifically told that you were not to shoot any black game. Perhaps you forgot yourself, sir.’

  “In the meantime, Johnny Auchtermuchty had wandered over. He had a word with the keeper and I overheard what he said. He told him to bite his tongue as he wouldn’t have him being rude to any of his guests. Then he said something about how Mr Dunbarton was from Edinburgh and one shouldn’t expect something or other. I didn’t really hear the rest of it.

  “I must say that I was very embarrassed about all this, although I very much enjoyed Johnny Auchtermuchty’s company and the Bertie Receives an Invitation

  207

  rest of the shoot were very decent to me and said nothing about what had happened. I left the next morning after breakfast, although my departure didn’t go all that well. The Rolls would not start for some reason and they had to push me down the drive to start it that way.

  “Poor Johnny Auchtermuchty – I miss him very much. He was the life and soul of the party and the most exciting friend I am ever likely to have in this life. I think that it’s an awful pity what happened and I wish they had found at least some bit of him that we could have given a decent send-off to. But they didn’t. Not even his moustache.”

  63. Bertie Receives an Invitation

  The invitation from Tofu was solemnly handed to Bertie in the grounds of the Steiner School. “Don’t flash it around,” said Tofu, glancing over his shoulder. “I can’t invite everybody. So I’ve just invited you, Merlin and Hiawatha. And don’t show it to Olive.

  I really hate her.”

  Bertie looked briefly at the invitation before tucking it into the pocket of his dungarees. It was the first invitation that he had ever received – from anybody – and he was understandably excited. Tofu, the card announced, was about to turn seven and would be celebrating this event with a trip to the bowling alley in Fountainbridge. Bertie was invited.

  “Can you come?” asked Tofu, as they went back into the classroom.

  “Of course,” said Bertie. “And thanks, Tofu.”

  Tofu shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t forget to bring a present,” he said.

  “Of course I won’t,” said Bertie. “What would you like, Tofu?”

  “Money,” said Tofu. “Ten quid, if you can manage it.”

  “I’ll do my best,” said Bertie.

  “Better had,” Tofu muttered.

  Back in the classroom, while Miss Harmony read the class 208 Bertie Receives an Invitation

  a story, Bertie fingered the invitation concealed in his pocket.

  He felt warm with pleasure: he, Bertie, had been invited to a party, and in his own right too! He was not being taken there by his mother; it was not a party of her choosing; this was something to which he had been invited in friendship! And bowling too – Bertie had never been near a bowling alley, but had seen pictures of people bowling and thought that it looked tremendous fun. It would certainly be more fun than his yoga class in Stockbridge.

  Seated beside him, Olive watched Bertie’s fingers go to the shape in his pocket and move delicately over the folded card.

  “What’s that you’ve got?” she whispered.

  “What?” asked Berti
e, guiltily moving his hand away.

  “That thing in there?” insisted Olive. “It’s something important, isn’t it?”

  “No,” said Bertie quickly. “It’s nothing.”

  “Yes it is,” said Olive. “You should tell me, you know. You shouldn’t keep secrets from your girlfriend.”

  Bertie turned to look at her in horror. “Girlfriend? Who says you’re my girlfriend?”

  “I do, for one,” said Olive, with the air of explaining something obvious to one who has been slow to realise it. “And ask any of the other girls. Ask Pansy. Ask Skye. They’ll tell you. All the girls know it. I’ve told them.”

  Bertie opened his mouth to speak, but no words came.

  “So,” said Olive. “Tell me. What’s that in your pocket?”

  “I’m not your boyfriend,” Bertie muttered. “I like you, but I never asked you to be my girlfriend.”

  “It’s an invitation, isn’t it?” Olive whispered. “It’s an invitation to Tofu’s party. I bet that’s what it is.”

  Bertie decided that he might as well admit it. It was no business of Olive’s that he was going to Tofu’s party. In fact, it was no business of hers how he spent his time. Why did girls – and mothers – think that they could order boys around all the time?