‘In the kitchen?’ asked the woman. ‘Can I dump it through there?’
Again she did not wait for an answer, and made her way across the hall and through the kitchen door. Once in the kitchen she put the box down on the table and straightened up, to look at the two astonished men.
‘Angus Lordie!’ the woman exclaimed. ‘Now this is a surprise! Of course you live round here, don’t you. Jimmy said he’d bumped into you in Drummond Place five or six years ago.’
Angus struggled to his feet. ‘Maeve,’ he said weakly. ‘I had no idea . . .’
‘Of course you didn’t,’ she said briskly.
‘I . . . I . . .’ stuttered Angus.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about all that. It’s ages ago. And I’ve been happily married for years. Don’t worry about a thing. Water under the Forth Bridge. Lots of it.’
88. Illicit Skills
James and Domenica exchanged glances: the confusion which now so clearly covered Angus Lordie had extended to them too, though to a lesser degree. They, at least, knew where to look, which was at Angus; he, however, was staring firmly at the floor, as if it might reveal the solution to what was evidently a situation of considerable personal embarrassment. Domenica felt sympathetic. It is awkward enough, she thought, even in ordinary circumstances to encounter a former lover whom one has mistreated; how much more difficult must it be to do so in circumstances such as these, where the former lover reveals herself as a master criminal.
And there were loyalty issues too, she thought. The decision to report a neighbour to the authorities was one thing; it was quite another to report at the same time, in a single grand denunciation, both a neighbour and a former love. As she looked with some pity on Angus, he blushed red and stuttered, and she speculated further on what had happened between the portrait painter and this somewhat unlikely drug-dealer. For a few heady and ridiculous moments she imagined that this woman might have been his model; that these long limbs, now encased in sexless corduroy, might once have been bared and draped across some stylised couch in Angus’s studio; that from that sultry scene a torrid romance might have developed. It was possible, but her thoughts were interrupted by the model herself, if that is what she had been, who now addressed Angus again, in a perfectly matter-of-fact way, and not as one discovered in flagrante delicto.
‘The traffic across the bridge was as bad as ever,’ she remarked. ‘It’s all very well abolishing tolls, but that just encourages people to drive.’
Angus looked up. ‘It’s the trains,’ he said. ‘If we had a decent rail service, then people would come in by train. But compare what we’ve got with any other European city . . .’
The woman nodded. Then she turned to Domenica. ‘You must think me terribly rude,’ she said. ‘I’ve barged in without introducing myself.’ She glanced at Angus, as if to censure him for his failure to make the introduction. He noticed, and effected it, introducing Maeve Ross to both Domenica and James. ‘Maeve,’ he said, rather lamely, ‘is an old friend.’
‘Well, that’s one way of putting it,’ said Maeve cheerfully. ‘But yes, Angus and I go back some time. Youthful ardour.’ She laughed. ‘Youthful ardour followed, in each case, by more mature reflection. What would you say to that, Angus?’
Angus laughed nervously. ‘Well put, Maeve.’ He paused. ‘But I must say that I’m rather surprised to . . . to find you mixed up in all this.’
Maeve frowned. ‘In what?’ She tapped the cardboard box. ‘In this? In this stuff?’
Angus nodded, almost apologetically. ‘Yes. This business with Antonia. Is it wise? What if you were caught?’
Maeve gave a dismissive snort. ‘You can’t go through life worrying about being caught. And anyway, I see nothing wrong with this at all. Willing seller, willing buyer.’
Angus drew in his breath sharply. ‘But what about the misery?’ he asked. ‘This stuff ruins lives.’
Maeve looked at him in astonishment. ‘Only if you have too much of it. Not that I’ve ever encountered anybody doing that.’
Maeve’s insouciant attitude seemed to give Angus the courage to argue. ‘You’ve never encountered anything like that? How can you say that? People overdose all the time. They get addicted. Their lives - their whole lives - are directed to getting more. How can you ignore that?’
As he spoke, Maeve looked at him as if she was struggling to make sense of what he said. ‘I’m really not with you,’ she said.
‘And then there’s the law,’ Angus continued. ‘It’s a criminal offence, you know. Or maybe you’ve never encountered that side of it either.’
James and Domenica, watching like tennis umpires, their gaze fixed first on one and then on the other, now looked at Maeve to see how she would react.
‘Oh, I don’t care about the law,’ she said. ‘The law has become ridiculous. It’s become oppressive. Those bureaucrats in Brussels with their unending desire to regulate us out of existence - resistance is the only answer to that. And resist we shall . . .’ She paused, judging the effect of her words. Then she leaned forward and opened the top of the cardboard box. Three pairs of astonished eyes watched in fascination as she extracted a jar from within.
‘This marmalade,’ she announced, ‘is utterly harmless. And yet those meddlers - yes, I repeat, those meddlers - in Brussels would prevent us from making it and selling it to our friends. And we in the Scottish Rural Women’s Institute (Provisional Wing) are not going to lie back and let that happen. Oh no! We shall not.’
She passed the jar to Domenica. ‘Look. Isn’t that a beautiful, rich colour? The finest Seville oranges, roughly cut. Marvellous stuff - a hundred times tastier than the watery rubbish that passes for marmalade in the supermarkets. And yet that’s all that many people can get these days, now that the home-made stuff has been driven underground.’
Domenica prised open the lid of the jar and sniffed at the contents. ‘One could certainly get addicted to this,’ she said, smiling.
‘Indeed you could,’ Maeve agreed. ‘And if people weren’t prepared to run this stuff over from places like Fife and Perthshire, then I can assure you there would be many in Edinburgh who would be like addicts deprived.’
‘Would you mind if I sampled some?’ Domenica asked. ‘I have some oatcakes in the cupboard.’
‘Delighted,’ said Maeve. ‘I always pop a few extra jars in for Antonia. I’m sure that she won’t mind.’
The oatcakes were produced and plates were distributed.
‘Ah,’ said Maeve. ‘Blue Spode. I have a particular liking for Spode. Antonia has a similar pattern, if I remember correctly.’
Domenica avoided Angus’s eye. Life was full of connections - and coincidences. Love, blue Spode, marmalade - these were all things that worked away in the background, binding people to one another in invisible nets. She suddenly thought of a piece of seventeenth-century music - was it seventeenth century? - that had haunted her since first she heard it. ‘In Nets of Golden Wires’ - that was what it had been called. In nets of golden wires - such a lovely image of how life, and love, may ensnare us, and now she took a small bite out of the oatcake Maeve passed her. It was a sharing - almost sacramental in its solemnity - and it had for her an evocative power every bit as strong as that which had been exerted upon Proust by those small madeleine cakes, years ago, in a very different world.
89. Confession Time
At more or less the same time that the illicit home-made marmalade, spread generously on Nairn’s low-salt oatcakes, was being tasted in Scotland Street, Matthew crossed Dundas Street to have his morning coffee at Big Lou’s. It had been an unusual morning for him in that he had sold a painting before ten-thirty, the time when he normally slipped across the road for coffee. Most of his business, such as it was, was done at lunchtime or in the late afternoon, but on this occasion a man had come in, glanced around the gallery, and immediately bought a small nineteenth-century watercolour which Matthew had only recently acquired. It was a satisfactory sale from Ma
tthew’s point of view, unless . . . and as he crossed the road he began to have his doubts. The purchase had been so quick, so decisive, that it was possible that the man had recognised the painting and Matthew had not.
By the time he reached the coffee bar and had negotiated his way carefully down Big Lou’s dubious stairs - the very stairs down which Lard O’Connor had tumbled out of this world - Matthew had decided that he had made a grave mistake.
‘I think I’ve just undersold something,’ he remarked miserably. ‘I had this little watercolour, you see, Lou, and this man came in and bought it.’
From behind her counter, Big Lou listened politely. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s what you do, isn’t it, Matthew? You’re an art dealer, are you not? You can no more get emotionally involved with your paintings than I can with my coffee beans. Both have to go some time or other.’
Matthew attempted a smile. ‘It’s not funny, Lou. He took such a quick look round I should have realised that he was just skimming the place for bargains. Then he saw the watercolour and bought it immediately.’
Big Lou smiled. ‘Then that means that he didn’t recognise it as something else.’
Matthew did not see how that followed, but Big Lou went on to explain. ‘If he had thought that it was really . . . what, a Turner, he would have pretended to think about it. He would have hummed and hawed and then eventually he would have tried to beat you down. Swooping on something like that is not usually a signal for the seller himself to have doubts and to delay the sale.’
This observation, which Matthew had to acknowledge was reasonable enough, served to put him in a better mood. ‘You’re probably right, Lou,’ he said. ‘And anyway, even if it is something special, should I begrudge him his find? I can afford to lose money.’
‘Just as well,’ muttered Big Lou. She had always had her doubts about Matthew’s ability to run a business, although now, with Elspeth in the background, she felt more confident. Back home, when she was a mere girl, her mother - and her aunts, for that matter - had drummed into her that old Arbroath saying, ‘A man on his own is a farm heading for disaster’. She had heard it so often, sometimes apropos of nothing at all, that she had come to accept it as unquestioned truth. Indeed one of her aunts had the words worked into a sampler that hung on the kitchen wall, alongside other aged samplers with equally pithy sentiments. ‘The last ewe is the one you dinnae see’ was one such message; opaque, perhaps, but obviously redolent of something in the mind of the female relative who had worked the stitches.
Big Lou turned the tap of the steam pipe on her coffee machine. It was the part of the process that she liked the most, and it made her feel, in a small way, like a ship’s engineer opening a valve, or the driver of an old steam train. She liked the hiss; she liked the agitation of the milk; and she liked the small cloud of steam that arose if the nozzle emerged for a second or two above the level of the foam.
‘You never told me much about Perth,’ she said. ‘You liked it well enough, I take it?’
Matthew watched her pour the foamed milk into his cup. His reply was terse. ‘Yes, I liked it.’
She picked up the hesitation, and glanced at him. That girl Pat, the one he used to employ, she had been to Perth, Big Lou recalled, and something had happened there; something that she never explained. Had something similar happened to Matthew?
‘You don’t sound enthusiastic,’ she said. ‘Did something happen, Matthew?’
Matthew looked up at her. He had not wanted to talk about it, but standing now at Big Lou’s coffee bar, with nobody else about but this strong, sympathetic woman, his resolve broke.
‘I was washed out to sea,’ he said. ‘It happened so quickly. I was washed out to sea and then . . .’
‘Well you obviously survived.’
‘Yes. I did. I was saved . . . I was saved by a dolphin.’
He looked at her, expecting her to ridicule him, but she did not. ‘That’s happened before,’ she said.
He looked at her with gratitude. ‘Does that mean you believe me?’
‘Of course,’ said Big Lou. ‘I know you well enough to know that you don’t make things up. If you say that you were saved by a dolphin, then as far as I’m concerned you were saved by a dolphin. And why not? They like us, though heaven knows why.’
Matthew felt the relief flood over him. The fact that he had been able to tell Big Lou about his experience and not be laughed at made things much easier for him.
‘I don’t know why it means so much to be able to tell you that,’ he said. ‘But it does.’
‘Of course it does,’ said Big Lou. ‘You’ve had a traumatic experience. We need to talk about things like that. And this dolphin business - well, that’s an extraordinary thing that happened and you need to be able to speak to somebody about it. Otherwise you’d begin to wonder if it ever really happened.’
‘Thank you, Lou. Thank you very much.’ He paused. Big Lou was still frowning, and had started to rub briskly at the surface of the coffee bar with her towel. Matthew knew the signs: when Big Lou did that, she was troubled. ‘And you, Lou,’ he said gently. ‘You need to tell me something too.’
‘Oh, Matthew,’ Lou burst out. ‘It’s Robbie. Robbie and that wretched Pretender.’
Of course it is, thought Matthew. At the heart of every woman’s distress there always lay a man. Or, as in this case, two.
90. Transvestites Rescued in the Minch
‘Tell me about it, Lou,’ said Matthew. And she did, standing there at her coffee bar, her familiar, well-used polishing towel in hand. There was nobody else present, just Matthew, but it probably would not have made much difference had there been strangers there; Big Lou would still have spoken. And anybody, even one who did not know her, who knew nothing of her history of involvement with feckless or downright peculiar men, would have been moved by her story.
‘Well,’ began Big Lou, ‘after Robbie and the Pretender left the Braid Hills Hotel that day, they drove up north on the Stirling motorway. Robbie phoned me that evening from that hotel up in Glencoe, you know, the one in the middle of nowhere. They planned to stay there that night. He phoned from the bar.’
‘The Pretender likes a drink, doesn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ said Big Lou. ‘And when Robbie phoned he said that there had just been a major row in the bar. Apparently the Pretender had started to create a bit of a fuss over some remark that the barman passed as to his outfit. He threw a glass of whisky at him and was chucked out for his pains. So they had to move on. It was misty and Robbie was worried about riding the motorbike in the dark because the lights didn’t work very well.’
Matthew’s eyes widened. ‘Of course, he was always talking about being out in the heather, like his illustrious predecessor.’
‘Aye,’ said Big Lou bitterly. ‘Always talking more or less sums it up. Anyway, they eventually got to Fort William and Robbie suggested that they stay there and the Pretender said that he did not want to stay anywhere where there were likely to be troops.’
Matthew burst out laughing. ‘Well, really! What century does he think he’s in? And, anyway, there are no troops in Fort William. There’s the mountain rescue people, I suppose, but that’s about it.’
‘I think that Robbie had to put his foot down,’ continued Big Lou. ‘So they stayed there overnight in some bed and breakfast. The owner wasn’t pleased to be woken up, I gather, but took them in anyway. But they were thrown out the next morning when the Pretender tried to recruit the owner. He tried to get him to rise up against the English. But the owner was English himself and did not take too well to this.
‘So they went on. And eventually they got up to Skye and caught the Uig ferry over to North Uist.’
Matthew was listening attentively. ‘To meet up with Flora Macdonald?’
Big Lou shrugged. ‘I don’t know what they thought they were doing. But that’s where he wanted to be. Robbie telephoned me from Benbecula, which is the last I heard from him. He said that the Pretender had
met up with somebody or other and had got drunk with him. He was trying to sober him up. And then the battery on Robbie’s mobile ran out and that was it. They were on their own.’
‘So they’re still there?’ Matthew asked. ‘Still on Benbecula?’
Big Lou shook her head. ‘No. They were probably there for a few days. That was Thursday I heard that, and that was when I heard from him last.’ And she reached under the counter for a half page cut from a newspaper. She unfolded the clipping and laid it on the counter so that Matthew could read it.
He picked up the newspaper article. Above the text was a photograph of a smallish rowing boat being towed behind what looked like a rescue lifeboat. There were two figures in the rowing boat: two women, both wearing rather old-fashioned bonnets. The face of the lifeboat’s skipper could be made out quite clearly; he was smiling.
He read out loud the text below. ‘Dramatic rescue in the Minch,’ the article said. ‘The Uig lifeboat was called out yesterday to deal with a small craft which had been spotted in trouble in the Minch. Reports had reached Uig of a rowing boat crewed by what appeared to be two transvestites getting into difficulty and moving in circles in increasingly high seas. The lifeboat’s efforts were at first resisted but eventually the occupants of the boat were persuaded to accept a line and they were brought in safely to Uig.
‘The two occupants of the boat were interviewed by police on landing and a doctor was called. The doctor subsequently detained two men under the Mental Health (Scotland) Act and the two have been taken to Glasgow for further psychiatric examination. The crew of the lifeboat declined to go into further details, but were reported to have been amused by what they regard as a highly unusual rescue. “It reminds me very strongly of something,” said the lifeboat skipper. “But I can’t quite put my finger on it.”’
The Unbearable Lightness of Scones: A 44 Scotland Street Novel Page 31