Espresso Tales 4ss-2

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “Of course, if you buy something in London,” Pat said, “then you’re going to have to pay through the nose for it, Bruce. You won’t get anything in Fulham for what you get for Scotland Street, you know. You’re going to be in some dump somewhere, Bruce. Or Essex. You might even end up in Essex.”

  Bruce laughed. “No danger of that for me! I’m moving in with somebody in Holland Park. You know it? Just round the corner from that nice restaurant, Clarke’s. You know the place? You can get a Clarke’s cookbook. Everybody goes there. All the creative people. You get noticed there. I saw Jamie Byng there once.”

  Pat stared at him. They might part company on bad terms or good. If it was to be bad terms, then she could tell him now, before it was too late, what she thought of him. But what would be the point of that? Nothing could dent Bruce – nothing; it was just as her father had said. Bruce was perfection incarnate in his own eyes. It would be good terms, then. She was big enough for that.

  “You’re going to love London, Bruce,” she said. “And you’ll do pretty well there.”

  “Thanks,” said Bruce. “Yes, I think it’s going to go rather well.

  And this flat I’m moving into, very bijou – I’ll be sharing with the girl who owns it. Her old man’s pretty well-off. He likes me, she says. And she’s got her views on that, too, if you know what I mean. She’s a stunner. English rose type. Long, blonde hair.

  Job in PR. Who knows what lies ahead? Who knows?”

  Pat nodded. “That’s very nice for you, Bruce.” She paused.

  Preparing Dinner

  339

  “And thanks, Bruce, for everything you’ve done for me. Letting me live here and so on.”

  Bruce rose to his feet. Taking a step forward, he reached out and placed both his arms lazily on her shoulders.

  “You’re not a bad type, Pat,” he said. “And you know what?

  I reckon I’m going to miss you a bit when I’m down there. And so . . .” He bent forward and then, to Pat’s astonishment, planted a kiss on her lips, not a gentle kiss, but one that was remarkably passionate, for Edinburgh.

  Drawing back, he looked down at her and smiled. “There,”

  he said. “That’s what you’ve been wanting for so long, isn’t it?”

  Pat could not speak. Cloves, she thought. Now I smell of cloves.

  104. Preparing Dinner

  “Porcini mushrooms,” intoned Domenica. “Place dried porcini mushrooms in a bowl of hot water and allow the mushrooms to reconstitute. Keep the liquid.”

  “Why?” asked Pat. “What are we going to do with it?”

  340 Preparing Dinner

  “We are going to cook the Arborio rice in it,” explained Domenica. “In that way, the rice will absorb the taste of the mushrooms. It’s the same principle as in the old days when people in Scotland ate tatties and a pass. The pass was the passing of a bit of meat over the tatties. The father ate the meat and the children just got a whiff of it over their tatties.”

  “Life was hard,” said Pat, slitting open the packet of mushrooms.

  “Yes,” said Domenica. “And now here we are, descendants of those very people, opening packets of imported mushrooms.”

  She looked out of the window, down onto Scotland Street, to the setts glistening after the light evening rain which had drifted over the town and was now drawing a white veil over Fife. “And to think,” she went on, “that the woman who lived in this house when it was first built probably had only one or two dresses.

  That’s all. People had very few clothes, you know. Even the wives of well-to-do farmers – they might have had only one dress. Life was very different.”

  “It’s hard to imagine,” said Pat.

  “Yes,” said Domenica. “But we need to remind ourselves. We need to renew that bond between ourselves and them, our great-great-grandparents, or whatever they were. It’s what makes us a people. It’s the knowledge of what they went through, what they were, that brings us together. If we lost that, then we’d be just an odd collection of people living on the same little bit of land. And that would be my nightmare, Pat – it really would. If our sense of ourselves as a group, a nation, as Scots, were to disappear.”

  Pat shrugged. “But nobody’s going to make that disappear,”

  she said. “Why would they?”

  Domenica spun round. “Oh, there are plenty of people who would be quite happy to see all that disappear. What do you think globalisation is all about? Who gains if we’re all reduced to compliant consumers, all with the same tastes, all prepared to accept decisions which are made at a distance, by people whom we can’t censure or control?

  “I, for one, refuse to lie down in the face of all that,” went Preparing Dinner

  341

  on Domenica. “I want to live in a community with an authentic culture. They may sound trite, but I can find no other words for it. I want to have a culture that is the product of where I am – that engages with the issues that concern me. It’s the difference between electronic music and real music. Between the pre-digested pap of Hollywood and real film. It’s that basic, Pat.”

  Domenica reached for her recipe book. She sighed.

  “I sometimes feel very discouraged,” she said. “You must forgive me. I look out at our world and I just get terribly discouraged. And if I ever turn on a television set, which I try to avoid if at all possible, it only gets worse. All that crudity, that dumbing-down. Inane, mindless game shows. People laughing at the humiliation and anger of others. The most basic, triumphalist materialism, too.

  “And the crassness, the sheer crassness of the characters who are paraded across the national stage to be jeered at or applauded.

  The vain celebrities, the foul-mouthed bullies. What a wonderful picture of our national life all this presents!

  “And what voices are there in all this . . . all this noise? What voices are there to say something serious and intelligent? When the justice minister went to her own constituency to try to do something about the selling of alcohol to young teenagers, she was barracked and sworn at by teenage boys, and nothing was done to stop it. Did you see that? Did you see that shocking picture? That poor woman! Trying to do an impossible job as best she could, and that’s her reward.

  “I don’t know, Pat. I don’t know. I have the feeling that we’ve seen the dismantling of civilisation, brick by brick, and now we’re looking at the void. We thought that we were liberating people from oppressive cultural circumstances, but we were, in fact, taking something away from them. We were killing off civility and concern. We were undermining all those little ties of loyalty and consideration and affection that are necessary for human flourishing. We thought that tradition was bad, that it created hidebound societies, that it held people down. But, in fact, what tradition was doing all along was affirming community and the sense that we are members one of one another. Do 342 Farewell

  we really love and respect one another more in the absence of tradition and manners and all the rest? Or have we merely converted one another into moral strangers – making our countries nothing more than hotels for the convenience of guests who are required only to avoid stepping on the toes of other guests?”

  Domenica put down her recipe book. “I’m so sorry, Pat,” she said. “You shouldn’t have to listen to all this from me. I know that one could argue the exact opposite of what I’ve just said. I know that one might point out that moral progress of all sorts has been made – and it has. In many respects we are more aware of others’ feelings than we used to be. And, of course, there’s the ready availability of porcini mushrooms . . .”

  They both laughed, and Domenica looked at her watch. “The guests will be here in an hour,” she said. “And we still have a great deal to do. Open the wine, will you, Pat? We must let it breathe. It’s very kind of you to bring those bottles.”

  “I found them in the cupboard,” said Pat. “They belong to Bruce, actually, and I didn’t have the chance to ask him. But he’s always help
ed himself to my wine and replaced it later with cheap Australian red. So I thought I’d do the same.”

  “Quite right,” said Domenica.

  Pat stood up and went over to the table where she had placed the three bottles of wine.

  “Chateau Petrus,” she said, reading the label. “I wonder if they’ll be any good?”

  “No idea,” said Domenica. “Never heard of it.”

  105. Farewell

  They stood around the fireplace in Domenica’s drawing room, glasses of wine in their hands, the guests of Domenica. They were her friends, and here and there the friend of a friend. Angus Lordie was there, wearing a frayed cravat and a jacket patched with leather at the elbows and cuffs; without Cyril, now, who Farewell

  343

  was tied to a railing below and who was happy, nonetheless, with the smells of Scotland Street in his nostrils and the occasional glimpse of a furtive cat on the other side of the street. And standing next to Angus, smiling at a remark which the painter had made, James Holloway, Domenica’s friend of many years, and Judy Steel too, perched on the arm of a chair and talking to one who was sunk within the chair, Willy Dalrymple, who had been the only one to recognise the Chateau Petrus and had complimented Domenica on it. And then there was Olivia Dalrymple and Pat herself, and Matthew, who had come as her guest, and who stood on the other side of the fireplace, curiously remote in his attitude towards her, Pat thought – but Matthew had his moody periods, and this must be one.

  The conversation had ranged widely. They had considered the question of the Reverend Robert Walker skating on Duddingston Loch and had been equally divided. Some believed that it was beyond doubt by Raeburn; others were convinced by the Danloux hypothesis. The summer: some believed that it had confirmed that global warming had arrived; others felt that the summer had been indistinguishable from any other summer of recent memory. And so the areas of potential agreement and disagreement had revealed themselves, to be dissected and discussed and passed over for the next topic.

  At nine o’clock, Domenica led her guests through to the dining room, where they sat about her large mahogany table while she and Pat went through to the kitchen to collect the first course.

  “That wine is quite delicious,” said Domenica. “Willy seemed to imply that it was something special.”

  Pat felt a momentary pang of doubt. Bruce had told her that she could help herself; she clearly remembered his saying so, and he had himself taken two bottles of her Chilean Merlot on one occasion. So she had nothing to worry about, and she put the thought out of her mind.

  The risotto was perfect, acclaimed by all, and after the plates had been cleared away, Angus Lordie tapped his glass with a spoon. The glass, which was empty, the Chateau Petrus having 344 Farewell

  been consumed to the last drop, rang out clear across several conversations and brought them to silence.

  “Dear friends,” he said, “we are coming to the end of something here. When I was a little boy I hated things to end, as all children do, except their childhood – no child, of course, wants his childhood to go on forever. And when I became a young man, I found that I still hated things to end, though now, of course, I was learning how quickly and hard upon each other’s heels do the endings come.

  “Today, our dear friend, Domenica, told us that she was proposing to go away for some time. She is a scholar, and she obeys the tides of scholarship. These tides, she told us, now take her to the distant Malacca Straits, to a particularly demanding piece of fieldwork. I have my own views on that project, but I respect Domenica for her bravery in going to live amongst those whom she intends to study.

  “We who are left behind in Edinburgh can only imagine the dangers which she will face. But tonight we can assure her that she goes with our love, which is what we would wish, I’m sure, to any friend about to undertake a journey. You go off clad in the clothes of our love. For that, surely, is what friendship is all about – about the giving of love and the assurance of love.”

  Angus stopped, and there was silence. He looked at Domenica, across the table, and she smiled at him.

  “Dear Angus,” she said. “A poem is called for.”

  “It is,” said James Holloway.

  Angus looked down at his plate, at the crumbs that lay upon it; all that was left.

  “Very well,” he said. “A poem about small things, I think.”

  He stood up, closed his eyes briefly, and then opened them as he began to speak.

  Dear one, how many years is it – I forget –

  Since that luminous evening when you joined us In the celebration of whatever it was that we were celebrating – I forget –

  It is a mark of a successful celebration

  Farewell

  345

  That one should have little recollection of the cause; As long as the happiness itself remains a memory.

  Our tiny planet, viewed from afar, is a place of swirling clouds And dimmish blue; Scotland, though lodged large in all our hearts Is invisible at that distance, not much perhaps, But to us it is our all, our place, the opposite of nowhere; Nowhere can be seen by looking up

  And realising, with shock, that we really are very small; You would say, yes, we are, but never overcompensate, Be content with small places, the local, the short story Rather than the saga; take pleasure in private jokes, In expressions that cannot be translated, In references that can be understood by only two or three, But which speak with such eloquence for small places And the fellowship of those whom you know so well And whose sayings and moods are as familiar As the weather; these mean everything, They mean the world, they mean the world.

  Document Outline

  Praise for Alexander McCall Smith�s

  Preface

  1. Semiotics, Pubs, Decisions

  2. Letting Go

  3. Narcissism and Social Progress

  4. On the Way Back to Scotland Street

  5. All Downhill from Here

  6. Domenica Gets into Top Gear

  7. Anger and Apology

  8. An Exchange of Cruel Insults

  9. Sally�s Thoughts

  10. Bruce�s Plan

  11. A Bus for Bertie

  12. A Thin Summer

  13. Bertie�s List

  14. Pat and Bruce Work It Out

  15. Domenica Advises

  16. Bertie Goes to School Eventually

  17. Down Among the Innocents

  18. On the Way Home

  19. Matthew�s Situation

  20. Second Flowering

  21. Demographic Discussions

  22. Chow

  23. An Astonishing Revelation Is Almost Made

  24. Bruce Meets a Friend

  25. Agreement Is Reached

  26. Bertie�s Idea

  27. Socks

  28. Lonely Tonight

  29. At the Film Theatre

  30. At Big Lou�s

  31. Act and Omission

  32. The Two Wicked Uncles: Possible Solutions

  33. Bertie Makes a Move

  34. Bertie Prepares to Cross Dundas Street

  35. Halfway Across

  36. Ramsey Dunbarton

  37. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part 1 � Early Days

  38. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part 2 � Courting Days

  39. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part 3 � Further Highlights

  40. Bertie�s Plan Is Launched

  41. Irene�s Plan for Bertie

  42. Bertie Escapes!

  43. Rugby!

  44. Going Back

  45. Dinner with Father

  46. The Language of Flowers

  47. Information

  48. Private Papers

  49. Australian Memories

  50. A Trip to Glasgow in the Offing

  51. On the Glasgow Train, a Heart Is Opened

  52. Arriving in Glasgow

  53. Lard O�Connor

  54. A Game of Cards and a Cultural Trip

  55. At the Burrell

&n
bsp; 56. Domenica Meets Pat

  57. The Natural Approach

  58. Moray Place

  59. Robert Garioch

  60. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part IV � Legal Matters

  61. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part V � Johnny Auchtermuchty

  62. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VI � a Perthshire Weekend

  63. Bertie Receives an Invitation

  64. Bertie�s Invitation Is Considered

  65. Stuart Intervenes

  66. Tofu�s Party

  67. Bruce�s Enterprise

  68. A Petrus Opportunity

  69. The Best Laid Plans o� Mice and Men

  70. Cyril Howls

  71. Crushed Strawberry

  72. Ink and the Imagination

  73. Wee Fraser Again

  74. The Wolf Man, Neds, Motherwell

  75. Cyril�s Moment of Glory

  76. Bruce Has Uncharitable Thoughts about Crieff

  77. Bruce Gets What He Deserves

  78. Old Business

  79. At the Gallery

  80. Dogs and Cuban History

  81. Havana

  82. A Great Sense of Purity

  83. In Moray Place Gardens

  84. The Memory of Pigs

  85. Encounter, Catharsis, Flight

  86. In the Caf� St Honor�

  87. Domenica Takes Food to Angus

  88. Bruce Reflects

  89. The Restoration of Fortunes

  90. Self-assertiveness Training for Civil Servants

  91. Stuart Paints Bertie�s Room

  92. Discussions Take Place Between Irene and Stuart

  93. The Gettysburg Address

  94. Bertie�s Dream

  95. The Wind Makes the Trains Sound Faint

  96. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VII � Bridge at Blair Atholl

  97. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VIII � I Play the Duke of Plaza-Toro

  98. Younger Women, Older Men

  99. Janis Exposed

  100. Big Lou

  101. In the Bookshop

  102. Matthew Thinks

  103. All Goes Well for Bruce

  104. Preparing Dinner

  105. Farewell

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: 36417222-62c8-410a-b14e-6d2bc1ed9aa0