Love Over Scotland 4ss-3

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “Oh dear,” said Bertie quickly. “But thank you, anyway, Mummy.”

  “However,” said Irene. “Mummy has had an idea. Yet another one. You know that old chair which Daddy has? The one I’ve been meaning to get re-covered one of these days? The one where he sits and reads the paper?”

  Bertie knew the old leather chair, but did not have the time to say so, as the doorbell sounded. Muttering something about not expecting anybody, Irene crossed the hallway and opened the door. A heavily-built man, out of breath from the effort of walking up the stairs, stood on the landing.

  “Mrs Pollock?”

  Irene nodded. She did not recognise the man, and she did not like the way that his glance shot into the hall behind her.

  Stewart had told her to use the chain when opening the door, but she never did. Perhaps . . .

  “Bertie!” the man suddenly exclaimed. “So there you are, son!”

  Irene gave a start as Bertie suddenly materialised from behind her. “Mr O’Connor!” he said.

  The mention of the name made Irene freeze. So this was that man from Glasgow, Fatty O’Connor, or whatever he called himself. She looked at him coldly. “I suppose this is something to do with our car?” she said.

  Lard O’Connor smiled at her. He was not easily intimidated, and he did not want to talk to her anyway. It was Stewie he was looking for. “I’d like to talk to your man,” he said flatly. “And aye, it’s about your motor.”

  “Well he’s not here,” said Irene, beginning to close the door.

  “You’ll have to come back some other day. Very sorry.”

  Lard O’Connor glanced at Bertie. “You keeping well, son?”

  he asked. “Good. Well tell your Da that our man Gerry left something behind by mistake in the car. He’d like to have a wee look for it.”

  202 Reunited

  “But you can pick that up from the police, Mr O’Connor,”

  said Bertie. “They found something in the car, you see.”

  Lard O’Connor took a step backwards. “Oh jings!” he said quietly.

  65. Reunited

  That evening, Angus Lordie went to the Cumberland Bar, as he did once or twice a week; but today there was no anticipation on his part of a couple of hours spent in pleasant company, conversing and catching up on the day’s news. Rather there was a heart which was still numbed by loss. Cyril always accompanied him to the bar and was a popular canine figure there. Seated under a table, the dog would wait patiently until a dish of beer was placed before him, to be lapped at in contentment. Then Cyril would rest his head on the ground and sleep for a while before waking up and looking around the room with interest.

  It was a reassuring routine for both man and dog, but now it was over. Cyril was lost; he was stolen; he was, quite possibly, no more.

  Angus sat alone at his table, teetering on the edge of self-pity. And then he fell in, closed his eyes, and gave himself over to thoughts of how pointless his life was. Here he was, fifty-ish, solitary, barely recognised as an artist, and then only by those who were themselves fifty-ish and unrecognised for anything very much. When had he last had a show? Two years ago, at least; and even then the paintings had hung on the walls unsold until Domenica – bless her – had out of loyalty bought one.

  Tom Wilson – bless him, too – had invited him to submit something for his small-scale Christmas show, and Angus, grateful for the invitation but worried that he had nothing small to offer, had simply cut a small portion out of the middle of one of his canvases and framed that. And later, when Angus had dropped in at the Open Eye Gallery to see the show and look at what others had submitted, he had noticed a couple standing in front

  Reunited 203

  of his painting, peering at it. They had not noticed Angus, which was as well, for he knew them slightly – Humphrey and Jill Holmes – and he had heard Humphrey turn to Jill and say:

  “That’s funny! I could swear that this is part of a larger painting.

  Don’t you get that feeling?” And Angus had slipped out of the gallery in shame and had even contemplated withdrawing his painting, but had not done so. It would come back to him later on, he feared, unsold, and in this he had been proved right.

  So now he sat in the Cumberland Bar and reflected on how bad was the hand of cards dealt him. If I died tomorrow, he asked himself, who would notice, or care? Now that Domenica had gone, there were few people he could drop in on; few people who were close friends. The people he knew in the Cumberland Bar went there to drink, not to see him, and if he were not there, they would carry on drinking just the same. Oh, life was dreadful, he told himself, just dreadful. And the words came back to him, the words of a song he had picked up in the Student Union bar, all those years ago, the bowdlerised words of a song sung at Irish wakes and which expressed so clearly what he now felt: Let’s not have a sniffle, boys,

  Let’s have a jolly good cry,

  204 Reunited

  For always remember the longer you live, The sooner you jolly well die . . .

  “Angus?”

  One of the barmen, the one he occasionally chatted with, had walked round the end of the bar and was standing at his table, drying his hands on a brewery towel. Angus looked up.

  “You seemed very deep in thought,” said the barman.

  Angus tried to smile. “I suppose I was,” he said. “An unhealthy state to be in. Sometimes.”

  The barman laughed. “Well, I wanted to tell you that that fellow who works down in the Royal Bank of Scotland – I forget his name – a nice guy. Comes in here from time to time. He phoned earlier today and left a message for you. I meant to tell you when you came in, but I forgot.”

  Angus looked confused. “I’m not sure if I know him,” he said.

  “Which . . .”

  The barman finished drying his hands and began to fold the towel neatly. “He said he found your dog. He found Cyril. He’s bringing him in here this evening. He didn’t know where you lived and he couldn’t find you in the phone book . . .”

  He did not finish, for at that moment the door opened and a man entered with Cyril on a lead. When Cyril saw Angus, he launched himself forward, as if picked up and propelled by a great gust of wind. The lead was pulled from the man’s hand, but he did not try to stop it, as he had seen Angus at his table and he understood.

  Cyril bounded over the floor of the bar, a strange sound coming from his mouth, a howl of a sort that one would not have thought a dog capable of, a whoop, an almost human wail of delight. Angus rose to his feet, and with a great leap Cyril was in his arms, licking his face, twisting his body this way and that in sheer delight, still howling in between gasps for air.

  In a far corner of the bar, a young man sitting quietly at a table with a friend, turned and said: “You see that? You see that?

  That shows you – doesn’t it? – how if you’re looking for love in this life, you’d better buy yourself a dog.”

  The other said: “That’s rather cynical, isn’t it?”

  Bathroom Issues 205

  “Realistic, you mean,” said the first.

  And they were silent for a moment, as were many in the bar who had witnessed the reunion, for they had all seen something which touched them to a greater or lesser extent. And at least some felt as if they had been vouchsafed a vision of an important truth: that we must love one another, whatever our condition in life, canine or otherwise, and that this love is a matter of joy, a privilege, that we might think about, weep over, when the moment is right.

  66. Bathroom Issues

  Matthew had become so accustomed to living on his own that when he arose that first morning of Pat’s residence in his India Street flat he quite forgot that she was there. His morning routine was set in stone: he would pick up any post lying on the doormat, glance at the letters, and then he would take a shower in the very bathroom whose walls might have been knocked down had Leonie’s plans progressed. Leonie, though, was not in his mind as he slipped out of the Macgregor-tartan j
ockey shorts in which he liked to sleep and stepped into the shower.

  Matthew was thinking of whether he should wear his new distressed-oatmeal sweater that day. He was not one to worry unduly about clothes, but he had recently realised that there was a uniform for art dealers and that if he wanted to be convincing in the role, then he had to look the part. And the one thing that art dealers in Edinburgh did not wear, it seemed, was distressed-oatmeal sweaters. That had been a mistake.

  Many people in Edinburgh, it seemed to Matthew, had a uniform. Lawyers were most conspicuous in this respect, of course, with advocates in their strippit breeks striding up the Mound on their way to Parliament House each morning. India Street and its environs provided a good place for the more pros-perous advocates to live, discreetly, of course, behind Georgian doors on which professional brass plates had been fixed, and 206 Bathroom Issues

  Matthew knew some of them sufficiently to nod to in the morning when he made his way to the gallery. What was their life like? he wondered: full of arguments and interpretation and the drafting of answers? His father, Gordon, had wanted him to study law, but Matthew had resisted. He had read – and quoted to his father – Stevenson’s account of life in Parliament House, where the courts sat, and where advocates had to pace up and down the Hall deep in conversation with their instructing solicitors and their clients. They could make very incongruous groups, marching up and down, heads bowed in thought. Tall advocates were at an advantage, in that they could look down on their bread and butter trotting beside them – bread and butter that, by having to look up, would be reminded just who was running the case. But height could work to the disadvantage of these tall advocates, who might not be instructed by short solicitors who did not like to be overshadowed in this way, whatever the realities of the professional relationship.

  Matthew had heard of one very short advocate whose career had been built upon instructions given him by not-very-tall solicitors, who could walk in Parliament Hall with him and enjoy the – for them – rare experience of being able to look down on an advocate. He had done very well, even if the cases he received were small ones, with short hearings. That, thought Matthew, was an unkind story, typical of the unkind stories which lawyers told one another. The Bar, he had been told, was a strange place, given to the imposition of nicknames, which stuck. An acquaintance of Matthew’s had once told him of some of these, and Matthew had listened in fascination. Who was the Pork Butcher?

  Who was the Tailor’s Dummy? Who was the Head Prefect?

  Stevenson, he pointed out to his father, had been forthright.

  He had been unhappy while training to be a lawyer and had called Parliament Hall la Salle des Pas Perdus of the Scottish Bar, where

  “intelligent men have been walking daily here for ten or twenty years without a rag of business or a shilling of reward . . .”

  Matthew’s father had sighed. “What Stevenson wrote is hardly anything to do with the law today,” he said. “Think of what fun you could have, Matthew. Look at Joe Beltrami.”

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  “Who’s Joe Beltrami?” Matthew had asked.

  “He’s a very influential criminal lawyer,” Matthew’s father had replied. “A very great jurist, I believe. Glasgow, of course.”

  Matthew was silent. “I don’t think it’s really what I want to do,” he had said. And his father had looked at him tight-lipped and the subject had been dropped.

  That was the law. But now Matthew had found his vocation, which was in art dealing, although he had to sort out the appearance side of things. He had looked closely at what the other art dealers in Dundas Street wore and had decided that there was a distinct style. Denim was safe, but not blue denim. A black denim jacket on top of olive moleskin trousers was fine, and the shirt should be open-necked. In general, a slightly distressed look was appropriate, but this did not extend to distressed oatmeal.

  Matthew finished his shower and had dried himself prior to getting dressed when Pat came into the bathroom. For a moment he stood stock-still, frozen in surprise. He had not locked the door because he never did so; people who lived by themselves rarely did. Pat was similarly motionless in the doorway. She had not heard the shower being run, and had just woken up. Seeing a light on in the kitchen – one which Matthew had, in fact, forgotten to switch off the previous night – she had assumed that he was in there having his breakfast. But he was not, as she now saw. He was standing before her in the nude, an expression of astonishment on his face.

  Her eye ran down – to the pair of Macgregor undershorts lying on the chair. That was her family tartan.

  “That’s Macgregor tartan,” she heard herself mutter.

  Matthew looked down at the undershorts. It seemed to him that she was accusing him of something; that she was implying that he had no right to wear Macgregor tartan undershorts.

  Surely, he thought, that’s no business of hers.

  Pat recovered herself and turned away, closing the door behind her. Out in the hall, she looked up at the ceiling. This unexpected encounter with Matthew had unnerved her. It was not the embarrassment of the intrusion – anybody can burst in on anybody inadvertently – but it was that the memory of 208 Bathroom Issues (Continued)

  Matthew standing there had affected her in a curious way.

  The fact she had discovered was this: Matthew was very attractive. It was just a question of seeing him in the right light, so to speak, and now she had.

  But at the same time, it irritated her to know that he wore Macgregor undershorts. What right had he to do that? she asked herself.

  67. Bathroom Issues (Continued)

  Matthew did not see Pat over breakfast that morning. When he emerged from the bathroom, fully clad, to have his breakfast, Pat’s door was closed. And while he was eating his breakfast, which always consisted of a couple of slices of toast and an apple, he heard the bathroom door being opened and subsequently locked, almost demonstratively, and then the sound of a bath being run. He was glad to have the opportunity of creeping out of the flat without encountering his new flatmate. It would be embarrassing enough to appear naked to a flatmate with whom one had lived for some time; to do so on the very first morning of cohabitation was immeasurably worse. Of course, it was not his fault, unless one took the view that it was incumbent upon those within to prevent those from without from bursting in.

  And that was the precise question which he asked Big Lou when he crossed the road at ten-thirty for his morning cup of coffee in her coffee bar.

  The coffee bar was empty when Matthew arrived – apart from the familiar figure of Big Lou, of course. The resourceful auto-didact from Arbroath was standing behind the counter, a cloth on the polished surface to her left, a book open before her. As Matthew came in she looked up and smiled. She liked him, and being from a small town she had that natural courtesy which has in many larger places all but disappeared.

  “Hello, Matthew,” she said. “You’re the first in today. Not a soul otherwise. Not even Angus and that dog of his.”

  Bathroom Issues (Continued) 209

  Matthew leaned against the bar and peered at Big Lou’s book.

  He reached out and flipped the book over to reveal its cover.

  “A Pattern Language: Towns, Building, Construction?” he said.

  “Interesting, Lou. You going to build something?”

  Big Lou reclaimed her book. “You’ll lose my place, you great gowk,” she said affectionately. “It’s a gey good book. All about how we should design things. Buildings. Rooms. Public parks.

  Everything. It sets out all the rules.”

  Matthew raised an eyebrow. “Such as?”

  Big Lou turned to her coffee machine and extracted the cupped metal filter. Opening a battered white tin, she spooned coffee into the small metal cup and slotted it into place. “Such as always have two sources of light in a room,” she said. “This Professor Alexander – he’s the man who’s written this book –

  says that if you have
a group of people and let them choose which of two rooms they’ll go into, they’ll always choose the room with two windows – with light coming from more than one source. That’s because they feel more comfortable in rooms like that.”

  Matthew looked around him. There was only one window in Big Lou’s coffee bar, and a gloomy window at that. Did he feel uncomfortable as a result? Big Lou noticed his glance and frowned. “I know,” she said. “I’ve only got one window. But sometimes one has no choice. I didn’t design this place, you know.”

  “And what else does he say?” asked Matthew.

  “Always put your door at the corner of the room,” said Lou, leafing through the book to find the reference. “If you put the door in the middle, then he says that you divide the room into two.”

  For a moment Matthew visualised his flat in India Street.

  Like most flats in the Georgian New Town, it was designed with attention to classical principles, and in particular with an eye to symmetry. Palladio had understood what proportions made people feel comfortable, and so had Robert Adam and Playfair.

  Matthew’s doors in India Street, he reflected, were all at the corner of a room, and the rooms certainly felt comfortable. This 210 Bathroom Issues (Continued)

  mention of doors made him remember the awkward event of earlier that morning. He would ask Big Lou about it, because it was just the sort of question which she relished and because he thought that in most matters she was intuitively right.

  “Lou,” he began. “You know how one locks the bathroom door when one . . . er . . . has a bath or shower or whatever.”

  Lou stared at him. “I believe I’ve heard of the custom,” she said.

  “Well, of course,” said Matthew. “But the point is this, Lou.

  Do you have to lock it when you go in, or is it up to the person who is coming in to check and see if the bathroom’s occupied?