Espresso Tales 4ss-2

by Alexander McCall Smith

  That was Bertie’s dream.

  95. The Wind Makes the Trains Sound Faint When he awoke the next morning, Bertie was initially unwilling to open his eyes. He had gone to sleep in a room which had miraculously turned white; now he feared that it would have changed colour again overnight, back to the pink that he so disliked. But it had not, of course, and he was able to gaze, wide-eyed, at his new colour-scheme and confirm that it was true.

  After he had dressed, Bertie went through to the kitchen, from which he heard the strains of an aria from The Magic Flute issuing forth.

  “Good morning, Bertie,” said Irene. “Do you know what they’re singing about on the radio?”

  “Catching birds,” said Bertie. “Isn’t that the man who catches birds?”

  “Yes,” said Irene. “Papageno. Do you know, I briefly considered calling you that when you were born? But then I decided that Bertie sounded better.”

  Bertie felt weak. It would have been impossible to live down a name like that, and he felt immensely relieved at his narrow escape. But if she had been thinking of calling him Papageno, then what would she have called that baby in the dream?

  Irene looked at him. “Your father and I had a discussion last night,” she said. “We talked a little bit about you.”

  Bertie looked at his mother impassively. She was always talking 312 The Wind Makes the Trains Sound Faint about him, although it was perhaps a bit unusual for his father to do so too. He reached for his porridge bowl and poured in the milk.

  “Yes,” continued Irene. “We talked about you and we thought that you might like to change things a bit.”

  Bertie looked up from his porridge. “Really, Mummy?” He thought quickly. Perhaps this was his chance.

  “Could I go and live in a hotel, Mummy?” he asked. “There’s one round the corner in Northumberland Street. I’ve seen it. I could go and live there. You could come and see me now and then.”

  Irene smiled. “What nonsense, Bertie!” she said.

  Bertie looked back at his porridge. The milk was the sea and the lumps of porridge were tiny islands. And his spoon, placed carefully down on the surface of the milk, was a little boat.

  Perhaps he could go to sea. Perhaps he could sign on as a cabin boy in the Navy and make the captain’s tea. Bertie had read one of the Patrick O’Brian books and he made it sound so much fun, although the parts where the ships did battle were rather frightening. However, it wouldn’t be like that these days, he thought, now that the European Union had stopped British ships firing upon Spanish or French ships. Perhaps they just met at sea these days and exchanged new European regulations.

  “Yes,” went on Irene. “We’ve been thinking, your father and I, that maybe you should do more of the things you really want to do. Would you like that, Bertie?”

  Bertie smiled at his mother. “Very much,” he said. He was pleased, but still rather doubtful. He was not sure whether his mother really understood what he wanted to do. Would he be let off yoga today?

  “So, Bertie,” said Irene, “I thought that although today is Saturday, and we normally have double yoga on a Saturday, we might skip it .”

  “Oh thank you!” shouted Bertie. “Thank you, Mummy!”

  “And instead,” continued Irene, “we shall . . .”

  Bertie’s face fell as he wondered what the alternative would be. Double Italian? Or perhaps the floatarium?

  The Wind Makes the Trains Sound Faint 313

  “We shall get Daddy,” said Irene, “we shall get Daddy to take you up to the Princes Street Gardens. You can climb that bit underneath the castle there and look down on the trains. Would you like that, Bertie?”

  Bertie let out a whoop of delight. “I’d love that, Mummy. We could see the trains leaving for Glasgow!”

  Irene smiled. “An unusual pleasure, in my view,” she mused.

  “But there we are. Chacun à son goût. ”

  Bertie finished his porridge quickly and then returned to his room to put on a sweater. It was a warm day for the time of the year, but by wearing a sweater he could cover the top part of his dungarees and people would not necessarily think that he was wearing them. From a distance, and if they did not look too closely, they might even think that he was wearing nothing more unusual than red jeans. That is what he hoped for, anyway.

  Stuart emerged shortly after Bertie had got himself ready.

  After a quick breakfast, with Bertie champing at the bit to be out, they left the flat and Scotland Street and began to walk up the hill towards Princes Street. It was a fine morning and when they reached Princes Street the flags on the flagpoles were fluttering proudly in a strong breeze from the west.

  314 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VII – Bridge at Blair Atholl

  “It makes you proud, doesn’t it, Bertie?” said Stuart. “Look at the wonderful scene. The flags. The Castle. The statues.

  Doesn’t it make you proud to be Scottish, to be part of all this?”

  “Aye, it does that, Faither,” said Bertie.

  They crossed the road and made their way into the Gardens.

  Then, crossing the railway line on the narrow pedestrian bridge, they headed for the steep path that led up the lower slopes of the Castle Rock. After a short climb, they found a place to sit, half on rock, half on grass, and from there they watched the trains run through the cutting down below. As they passed, some of the trains sounded their whistles, and the sound drifted up to them, and the sound, to Bertie at least, meant the freedom of the wider world, the freedom of which he was now, at last, being offered a glimpse. And he was happy, even when the wind swallowed up the sound of the whistles and made the train sounds seem faint and far away.

  “I had a very strange dream last night, Daddy,” said Bertie suddenly.

  “Oh yes, Bertie. And what was that?”

  “I dreamed that Mummy had a new baby,” said Bertie. “And the baby was dressed in blue linen, which is what Dr Fairbairn wears. It was very funny. A little blue linen baby suit.”

  Stuart looked at his son. Down below a train went past and sounded a warning whistle, audible for a moment, but then caught by the wind and carried away.

  96. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story:

  Part VII – Bridge at Blair Atholl

  Ramsey Dunbarton looked at Betty with all the fondness that comes of over forty years of marriage. “I don’t think that you’re finding my memoirs interesting, Betty,” he said. “But don’t worry, I’m not going to read much more.”

  “But they are interesting,” protested Betty. “They’re very interesting, Ramsey. It’s just that it gets so warm here in the The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VII – Bridge at Blair Atholl 315

  conservatory and I find myself drifting off from the heat. It’s not you, Ramsey, my dear. You read on.”

  “I’m only going to read two more excerpts,” said Ramsey, shuffling the papers of his manuscript. “And then I’m going to stop.”

  “Read on, Macduff,” said Betty.

  “Why do you call me Macduff ?” asked Ramsey, sounding puzzled. “We have no Macduffs in the family as far as I know.

  No, hold on! I think we might, I think we just might! My mother’s cousin, the one who came from Forres, married a man whom we used to call Uncle Lou, and I think that he had a brother-in-law who was a Macduff. Yes, I think he was! Well, there you are, Betty! Isn’t Scotland a village!”

  “Do carry on,” said Betty, closing her eyes. “I love the sound of your voice, Ramsey.”

  “Now then,” said Ramsey, referring to his manuscript. “This happened about twenty years ago. I had a client, not Johnny Auchtermuchty, but somebody quite different, who had a large hotel in Perthshire. We acted for them in some Court of Session business that they had and I went up there one Saturday to have lunch with my client and to discuss the progress of the legal action down in Edinburgh. It was a very complicated case and I was not at all sure that the counsel we had instructed understood some of the finer points involved. I had sugges
ted this to him – very politely, of course – and he had become quite shirty, implying that advocates generally knew more about the law than solicitors did, which is why they were advocates in the first place. I replied that I very much doubted this and to prove the point I asked him whether he could name, from the top of his head, a certain section of a statute to do with the sale of goods. He looked at me in a very rude way, I thought, and then he had the gall to tell me that the legislation to which I was referring had been repealed the previous year, and did I know that? It was not an amicable exchange.

  “The client, though, was a very agreeable man, and it was a mark of his status in that part of Perthshire that just as we were finishing lunch at his house the telephone went and it was none other than the Duke of Atholl! Now deceased, sadly.

  “The Duke was a very strong bridge player – international 316 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VII – Bridge at Blair Atholl standard, in fact – and they were just about to have a game of bridge up at Blair Atholl and they needed a fourth player. The Duke wondered whether my host would care to play. Unfortunately he could not, as he had a further engagement that afternoon, but then he turned to me and asked me whether I would like to go up in his stead. Now, my bridge is not very strong, but I had played a bit with the Braids Bridge Club and of course it was a great honour to be invited to play with the Duke, and so I readily agreed.

  “I went up to Blair Atholl more or less straightaway. A servant let me into the house and showed me up to the drawing room, where I met the Duke and two others, a man and a woman who were staying with him as his guests – people from London whose names I did not catch, but who seemed quite civil, for Londoners.

  Then we all sat down at the bridge table, with me partnering the Duke. He opened the bidding on that first hand with one heart, and I rapidly took him up to four hearts on the strength of my single ace. Unfortunately, we did not make it, the Duke very quietly saying that he thought it was perhaps a slightly bad split.

  “The game continued, and I must say that I enjoyed it immensely, even if the Duke and I were three rubbers down at the end. He did not seem to mind this very much, and was a very considerate host. We had a cup of tea after the bridge and we talked for about half an hour before the Duke had to attend to some other matter and I took my leave.

  “ ‘Do have a wander round, Dunbarton,’ ” the Duke said very kindly. “ ‘Take a walk up the brae if you wish.’ ”

  “I decided to take him up on this invitation since it was such a pleasant late afternoon. There was a path which led up a small hill and I followed this, admiring the views of the Perthshire countryside. Then the most remarkable thing happened. I turned a corner and there before me, charging through the heather, was a group of armed men, all wearing kilts and carrying infantry rifles. I stopped in my tracks – the men had clearly not seen me

  – and then I rapidly turned round and ran back to the castle.

  Beating on the door, I demanded of the servant who came to answer that I had to see His Grace immediately, on a matter of the utmost urgency.

  The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VIII – I Play the Duke . . .

  317

  “I was taken to the drawing room again, where I found the Duke sitting with his two other guests, engaged in conversation.

  “‘Your Grace!’ I shouted. ‘Call the police immediately! There’s a group of armed men making their way down the hillside!’

  “The Duke did not seem at all surprised. In fact, he smiled.

  “ ‘Oh them,’ he said. ‘Don’t you worry about them. That’s my private army.’

  “And then I remembered. Of course! The Duke of Atholl has the only private army allowed in the country. I should have thought about that before I panicked and raised the alarm, and so I left feeling somewhat sheepish. But the bridge had been enjoyable, and I reflected on the fact that it would probably be a long time before I would be invited to play bridge again with a duke. In fact, I never received a subsequent invitation, but I have in no sense resented that. Not in the slightest.”

  97. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story:

  Part VIII – I Play the Duke of Plaza-Toro

  “From real dukes,” read Ramsey Dunbarton, “to stage dukes.

  And to that most colourful character, the Duke of Plaza-Toro, whom I had the particular honour to play at the Church Hill Theatre. Looking back on my life, which has been an eventful one by any standards, I might be tempted to say that that episode is probably one of the great saliences of my personal history.

  “At the risk of sounding boastful, I have always had a rather fine voice. As a boy I sang in the local church choir, and had I auditioned for one of the great Edinburgh choirs, the choir of St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, for example, I would probably have got in. But I did not, and so never sang in Palmerston Place. I did, however, join the Savoy when I was at university and was in the chorus of several productions. I am quite certain that I would have had principal roles were it not for the fact that the various producers who did those productions did not like me for some reason. It is very wrong when producers allow 318 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VIII – I Play the Duke . . .

  personal preferences to dictate casting. It happens all the time.

  People pick their girlfriends and boyfriends to sing the choice parts; it’s never a question of merit. And I gather that you find exactly the same thing in the West End and on Broadway.

  “After the Savoy, I joined the Bohemians, and appeared in a number of their productions, often at the King’s Theatre, again in the chorus. There was The Merry Widow, which I always enjoyed very much, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Porgy and Bess, to name just a few. In Porgy, I was an understudy for one of the principals, but was not called upon to sing. I must admit that it is very difficult not to wish ill on a principal in those circumstances, but I shall never forget the story told me by one of the Bohemians about how, some time ago, he had been an understudy for somebody in Cav and Pag, and had wished that the other singer would fall under a bus. Which he did. I’m not sure which number the bus was, but I think that it might even have been the 23, the bus which goes up Morningside Road. Fortunately, he survived, although one of his legs was broken, and of course the understudy felt so bad about it that he could barely bring himself to sing the part.

  “After a break from the Bohemians, I joined the Morningside Grand Opera, an amateur group which put on a range of performances at the Church Hill Theatre each year. They were ambitious and even did Wagner’s Ring Cycle one year, to mixed reviews, but they also did a lot of the old favourites, such as The Gondoliers. And it was in The Gondoliers that I sang my first principal role, that of the Duke of Plaza-Toro.

  “It was a wonderful role, and I would have enjoyed it far more than I actually did if the other singers had been slightly stronger than they actually were. Only a day or two before the first night, I could not help but notice that a number of them had not bothered to learn the words correctly, and there was one young man, who sang the part of Luiz, who just sang la, la, la when he came to a bit that he had not learned. And as for the woman who sang the part of the old nurse, she only had two lines to sing (where she reveals that Luiz was really the baby), but she could not even remember those!

  The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VIII – I Play the Duke . . .

  319

  “The young man who played Luiz was particularly irritating.

  My feelings over his behaviour became quite strong at an early stage in the rehearsals, when I overheard him saying to one of the gondolieri that he, rather than I, should have been cast as the Duke of Plaza-Toro.

  “If the whole idea had not been so laughable I would have remonstrated with him. One needs a certain gravitas to play the Duke of Plaza-Toro, and I had that and he simply did not. I was a WS, after all, and he was not. He was also far younger than I was and it would have been absurd to see him pretending to be the leader of the ducal party.

  “But it gets worse than that. He had a most
annoying manner, that young man. I expected him to call me Mr Dunbarton (or perhaps ‘Your Grace’ in the circumstances!) but he actually used my first name immediately after we had been introduced. And then he presumed to shorten it, and began to refer to me as

  ‘Ramps’. That was almost unbearable, particularly when he turned to me at one point in a rehearsal and said ‘That’s a B-flat by the way, Ramps!’

  “I must also admit my doubts as to the casting of the Duchess.

  The woman who had the part was very friendly with the producer. I shall say no more about that. However, I did feel that a more appropriate person might have been cast in that role. In particular, there was somebody in the chorus who had been Head Girl many years before of the Mary Erskine School for Girls, when it used to be in Queen Street, where it had that wonderful roof garden for the girls to play on. That sort of background would have equipped her very well to play the role of the Duchess of Plaza-Toro, but do you think that the producer took that into account for one single moment? He did not.

  “But these were minor matters, when all is said and done. The final production was not at all bad, and a number of people said that my own performance as the Duke of Plaza-Toro was the best portrayal they had ever seen of that role. That was very kind of them. It’s so easy to be disparaging of other people’s efforts, and I must confess that there is a slight tendency in that direction in Edinburgh. But I am not one to criticise Edinburgh, in

  320 Younger Women, Older Men

  spite of its occasional little failing. We are very lucky to live here and I for one will never forget that, bearing in mind what so many people have to put up with when they live in other places.”

  He put down his memoirs and looked at Betty. Her head was nodding in agreement, or, if one took the uncharitable view, sleep.

  98. Younger Women, Older Men

  Down the steps into Big Lou’s coffee bar, the very steps down which Christopher Grieve had descended when books were sold there (in the days when coffee was instant, and undrinkable); down those steps went father and son, Matthew and Gordon.