Love Over Scotland 4ss-3

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “People said that he had a tendency to go on and on, and I suppose he did. But those long stories of his, sometimes without any apparent point to them, were stories that were filled, yes filled, with enthusiasm for life. Ramsey found things fascinating, even when others found them dull. In his own peculiar way, he celebrated the life of ordinary people, ordinary places, ordinary things.

  “I suspect that Scotland is full of people like Ramsey Dunbarton. They are people whose lives never amount to very much in terms of achievement. They are not celebrated or fêted in any way. But there they are, doing their best, showing good-will to others, paying their taxes scrupulously, not cheating in any way, supporting the public good. These people are the back-bone of the country and we should never forget that.

  “His death leaves me feeling empty. I feel guilty, too, at the thought of the occasions when I have seen him heaving into sight and I have scuttled off, unable to face another long-winded story. I feel that I should have done more to reciprocate the feelings of friendship he undoubtedly had for me. I never asked him to lunch with me; the invitations always came from him. I never even acknowledged him as a friend. I never told him that I enjoyed his company. I never told him that I thought he was a good man. I gave him no sign of appreciation.

  “But we make such mistakes all the time, all through our lives.

  Wisdom, I suppose, is seeing this and acting upon it before it is too late. But it is often too late, isn’t it? – and those things that we should have said are unsaid, and remain unsaid for ever.

  “I am heart-sore, Domenica. I am heart-sore. I shall get over it, I know, but that is how I feel now. Heart-sore.”

  He finished, read it through, and then very slowly tore it up.

  He would not send it to Domenica, even if he meant every word, every single word of it.

  97. Domenica Makes Progress

  Domenica may not have received the letter from Angus Lordie, but she had enough to think about anyway. Her life in the pirate village on the Malacca Straits was becoming busier – and more intriguing – after a somewhat disappointing start. She had at last done something about Ling, the interpreter who had proved to be excessively interventionist and unreliable. Matters had been brought to a head when she had gone with him to see an elderly member of the community and Ling had refused point-blank to interpret what the man had said to her.

  “You need not bother with what this old man is saying,” Ling had said dismissively. “He is all mixed up.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” said Domenica. “You can be assured that I can distinguish between reliable and unreliable material.”

  “It is a waste of time,” said Ling, looking scornfully at the elderly pirate in his rattan armchair. “Stupid old man.”

  “I don’t think that’s very helpful,” said Domenica. “And I really must insist on making my own decisions as to what is significant material and what is not.”

  “No,” said Ling. “I do not want to waste your time.”

  Domenica sighed. It was a hot morning and her clothes were sodden with perspiration. She did not want to spend her time arguing with Ling, and yet she was now adamant that she would not accept his decisions as to what she should listen to and what she should not.

  “Look, Mr Ling,” she said loudly. “I am the one who’s paying you. Understand? I decide what we do. And that’s final.”

  Ling’s lower lip quivered. “You cannot make that decision when you don’t know anything,” he said. “I do not wish to be rude to you, honourable anthropologist, but you don’t know anything, do you?”

  That had been the last straw, and Domenica had dismissed him on the spot. Ling appeared to be taken aback by this, and stormed off, leaving her alone with the retired pirate. She turned and smiled at the old man, who gave her a toothless grin in return.

  Domenica Makes Progress 305

  “Tok Pisin?” he suddenly asked (Do you talk Neo-Melanesian Pidgin by any chance?).

  Domenica clapped her hands in joy. “Ya. Mi toktok Pisin gutpela. Mi amamas” (Yes, I speak very good Neo-Melanesian Pidgin, I’m happy to say).

  The old man became quite animated, pointing in the direction of Ling’s retreating figure. “Dispela man bilong pait!” (This can best be translated as: That fellow’s somewhat aggressive, don’t you think? Note man bilong pait: pait is fight).

  Domenica nodded. “Yumitupela toktok. Dispela Ling autim!”

  (You and I can talk. We can do without that chap Ling! Note autim, literally out him, to get rid of ).

  “Ya. Mipela holem long tingting,” said the old man. “Mipela roscol boscru.”

  Domenica had to think about this remark for a few moments.

  What he had said was: Yes. I remember (a lot). (Holem long tingting, hold on to many things for a long time, is simply translated as to remember. Here it has an additional contextual meaning of recalling things long past, in an almost Proustian sense. If Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu were to be translated into Pidgin – which has not yet happened – then perhaps it might be called: Onepela Proust bilong Frans Holem Long Tingting.) Then he had said: mipela roscol, which would normally be translated as: I am a criminal. This puzzled Domenica for a few moments, until she realised that there might be no word in Pidgin for pirate, and that roscol was possibly the closest one could get, if one added to it boscru, which means sailor (boat’s crew).

  “Yupela roscol boscru? Yupela no damn gut?” she asked.

  “Ya,” he confirmed. “Mipela Roscol! Yupela man bilong savvy!” (Yes, I am a pirate! You, by contrast, would appear to be a scholar). (This makes one think of the Pidgin translation of the Pirate King song from Gilbert and Sullivan, ‘For I am a Pirate King, /And it is, it is a glorious thing to be a Pirate King!’

  The Pidgin Gilbert and Sullivan has this as: Mipela Rocol boscru luluai, Ya, Ya!/Roscol boscru luluai nambawan ting, Ya, Ya!) Once they had established that they would be able to enjoy 306 Domenica Makes Progress

  a good conversation in Pidgin, Domenica sat down with the old man, who introduced himself as Henry, and began to ask him the questions which she had been prevented by Ling from asking.

  She rapidly established his lineage (his family was one of the oldest ones in the village), his status (he was a widower, his wife having died ten years previously) and his means of support (he had a son in Singapore who was a senior clerk in a firm of merchants and another who was a first officer with a Taiwanese shipping line – both of these sent him money each month).

  Henry was happy to talk about all the other households too.

  He explained about the family who lived next to Domenica –

  the one with the two sons, Freighter and Tanker. Freighter was a clever boy, Henry said, but Tanker was not. Henry suggested that this could be because he was really not the son of the woman’s husband, but the result of an affair she had had with a fisherman from a neighbouring village. Domenica did not note this last piece of information down. Once an anthropologist began to question acknowledged genealogy, then everything could unravel.

  After they had talked for an hour or so, Domenica asked Henry about the pirates’ work. She explained that she had seen the men going off early in the morning, walking down the path that led to the sea. Was this them setting off to work?

  Yes, said Henry. That was exactly it. He paused for a moment and then asked Domenica whether she would like him to take her – discreetly, of course – to watch what they got up to. They could follow them in his small boat, he said. Would she like to do that?

  Domenica only hesitated for a moment before she said yes.

  She had not imagined that she would get mixed up in piracy, but this offer was just too tempting to resist. And she would not actually participate in any illegal activities. That was out of the question. She would simply watch.

  “Tumora moningtaim,” said Henry. “Samting sikispela.

  Klosap haus bilong mipela” (Tomorrow morning, then. Around about six. At my house).

&
nbsp; 98. Poor Lou

  “You look very pleased with yourself,” said Big Lou to Matthew as he entered the coffee bar that morning. “Have you sold a painting?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have,” said Matthew, smiling broadly at Lou. “This very morning. A man came in and took a shine to those McCosh bird paintings I had. He said: ‘This man is the new Thorburn’, and bought all three of them.”

  Big Lou wiped her cloth over the surface of the bar. “He saw a bargain,” she said. “Maybe you should have hung onto them.

  There must be people who think that about their Hockneys and their Bacons.”

  “But I don’t want to hold onto them,” said Matthew. “I want people to know about him. There he is, the finest wildfowl painter to come along for a long, long time. Right on our doorstep. Right outside Edinburgh. All those beautiful paintings. I want people to have them. I don’t want to sit on them.”

  “Well,” said Lou. “They’ve gone now.”

  Matthew smiled pleasantly. He was pleased about the sale of the paintings, but that was not the real reason for his positive state of mind. He looked at Big Lou, busying herself now with the mysteries of her coffee-making craft. Should he tell her?

  “Actually, Lou,” he said. “I’m feeling rather happy.”

  “Aye,” said Big Lou, without turning round. “Well, that’s good to hear, Matthew.”

  “Aren’t you interested in hearing why, Lou?”

  Lou laughed. “I’m going to hear anyway.”

  “Pat,” said Matthew, simply.

  “What about her?” asked Lou. “Is she coming over for coffee?”

  “No, she has a lecture. She’s up at the university.”

  Big Lou turned round with the cup of coffee. “Well, she is a student, after all,” she said. “I suppose that she has to show up there from time to time.”

  Matthew did not take his cup of coffee to his table, but stayed where he was, at the bar. “Pat and I . . .” he began. “Well, Pat and I are going out together.” He paused, adding rather lamely: 308 Poor Lou

  “I thought you would be interested to hear that.”

  Big Lou reached for her cloth and began to polish the bar with vigorous circular sweeps.

  “Are you sure about this?” she said.

  Matthew seemed taken aback, almost crestfallen. “Sure? Well, yes, of course I’m sure. I’ve liked Pat a lot right from the beginning. When she first came to work for me . . .”

  “That’s the point,” said Big Lou. “She came to work for you.”

  “I don’t see . . .”

  Big Lou put her cloth to one side and leaned over to take hold of Matthew’s forearm. “Matthew: that girl is younger that you. She’s a nice girl, sure enough, but there she is at the beginning of her time at university. She’s just starting. She’ll be looking for something very different from what you’re looking for. She will be wanting a bit of fun. Parties and so on. What do you think you’re looking for? You’re almost twenty-nine. You’re thinking of settling down. That’s when men start to think of settling down. You need somebody your own age.”

  “There’s only eight years between us,” said Matthew. “That’s nothing.”

  Big Lou shook her head. “Eight years can be a big difference at certain stages in our lives. It all depends on where you are.

  There’s a big difference between being two and being ten, and between being ten and being eighteen. You see? Big differences.”

  “I’m not Eddie . . .” Matthew began, and immediately regretted what he had said.

  Big Lou looked at him. “I didn’t say you were Eddie,” she said quietly. “I didn’t say that.”

  She looked at him, and Matthew saw that her eyes were filling with tears. She lifted her cloth and wiped at her eyes and cheeks.

  “I’m sorry, Lou,” he said, reaching out to take her hand. “I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I wasn’t thinking . . .”

  “I ken fine what he’s like,” sobbed Big Lou, her shoulders shaking. “I ken he’s no a guid man. But I loved him, Matthew.

  I thought I could change him. You know how it is. You have somebody you think has some good points and you think that those will be enough.”

  Poor Lou 309

  Matthew waited, but Big Lou said nothing more.

  “Have you seen him?” he asked gently. “Have you ended it with him?”

  Big Lou rubbed at her eyes. “I have. I saw him and told him that I didn’t think that it would work. Not after this last business with those girls down at that club of his. He said that I was being unreasonable but that he didn’t want to carry on with a woman who would lock him away. That’s what he said. Lock him away.”

  “You’re well rid of him, Lou. You really are. And there’ll be other men. There are lots of nice men in this town. There are plenty of nice men who would appreciate somebody like you, Lou.”

  Lou shook her head. “I’ll be going back to Arbroath,” she said. “There’s an old cousin of my father’s who needs looking after. I’ve done that sort of thing before. I can do that.”

  “But Lou!” said Matthew. “You can’t leave us! You can’t leave all this . . .” He gestured helplessly about the room. At the tables.

  At the newspaper rack with its out-of-date newspapers. At the rickety stairs outside.

  “I don’t want to,” said Lou. “But I don’t see what else I can do. You see, when Eddie and I got engaged, I made over a half share in the business to him. Now he wants the money for that, and I can’t pay him. So he’s going to insist on selling the coffee bar. And he can, according to the agreement that his lawyer drew up.”

  Matthew stood quite still. He had heard about the money that Eddie had persuaded Lou to give him; this, though, was new, and more serious. But then he thought: I have four million pounds.

  And if one has four million pounds there are occasions when one should use that financial power to make a difference to the lives of others. This, he thought, was just such an occasion.

  “I’ll buy him out, Lou,” he said. “I’ll buy him out and we can get rid of him that way.”

  Big Lou shook her head. “I could never accept that, Matthew,”

  she said. “You’re a good boy. I’ve known that all along. But I can’t accept that from you. I just can’t.”

  99. And Here’s the Train to Glasgow, Again For the rest of that day, after his conversation in the coffee bar, Matthew was preoccupied with thoughts of how he could contact Stuart. He knew that Stuart lived in Scotland Street, and he thought it was somewhere near Pat’s former flat. But he wasn’t sure of Stuart’s surname, nor of exactly where he worked, and Pat, who might be expected to know, for some reason was not answering her mobile phone.

  He had to see Stuart as soon as possible. Stuart had said that he knew somebody in Glasgow who could help Lou. Had he contacted him? Had he come up with anything? Matthew realised that unless they were able to do something quickly, then Big Lou would sell the coffee bar and go back to Arbroath. He could not allow that to happen – he would not allow it. Big Lou was a feature of his life and, he suspected, the lives of so many others in that part of town. If she went, a little bit of the character of the place would die. One of the new coffee bars would move in, with its standard international décor and its bland sameness. The coffee might be good enough, but these places spelled death to the particular, to the sense of place that a real local coffee bar embodied. They were simply without character, although they might never understand how people could think that. But people did. It was the difference between French cheese, unpasteurised and odiferous (but divine), and the processed rubbery paste that the big food interests passed off as cheese. International business, once allowed to stalk uncontrolled, killed the local, the small, the quirky. International business, thought Matthew, had ruined cheese, will ruin wine, and then will move on to ruin everything. No, he thought, Big Lou’s little coffee bar was now the front line.

  Eventually, Matthew decided that the only thing he co
uld do was to go to the Cumberland Bar shortly after five that evening and wait to see if Stuart came in. And if he did not, he could ask the barman or one of the regulars; somebody was bound to know where he lived.

  As it happened, Matthew did not have long to wait. Shortly And Here’s the Train to Glasgow, Again 311

  before five-thirty, Stuart came in and walked over to the bar.

  Matthew left his seat to intercept him. “Listen,” he said. “I’ve got to talk to you urgently. I’ve already bought you a drink. It’s at the table.” He took Stuart by the elbow and led him away from the bar.

  Stuart was slightly irritated by Matthew’s insistence, but he was in a good humour, as he had been left on his own for a couple of hours. Bertie had been returned safely from Paris that afternoon and had been dragged off for a specially-arranged session with Dr Fairbairn. The psychotherapist had been asked to determine whether there was any psychological trauma that might result from the experience of being left in Paris; Irene was of the view that early identification of trauma helped to reduce its long-term impact. And anything could have happened in Paris; anything. In fact, Bertie had enjoyed himself immensely, and had felt his heart sink when he returned to the hotel after the Sorbonne lecture to discover his mother, and several French policemen, waiting for him. The sight of the policemen had not worried him, but the realisation that his mother had come to take him home had filled him with such despair that he had burst into tears. This had been interpreted by Irene as a sign of trauma.

  “My wee boy’s just come back from Paris,” Stuart remarked conversationally, as they went over to Matthew’s table. “He went over there with an orchestra. Then they somehow managed to . . .”

  “Oh yes,” said Matthew, without any real interest. “Good.”

  They sat down and Matthew got straight to the point. “You said you knew somebody in Glasgow who might get Eddie to pay Lou back,” he said. “Any progress?”