44 Scotland Street 4ss-1

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Todd said nothing, and so Bruce, forcing the best smile he could manage, began to walk back down the corridor towards the drawing room. His insouciance was misleading; the encounter had been deeply embarrassing. It was bad enough to be found in the drying room, but he wondered whether Todd had seen him pocket, or sporran, the underpants. Would he have said anything, had he seen him? The answer to that was far from obvious. If he had seen him, then one could only speculate as to what he would have thought. Presumably he would have thought of him as being one of those unfortunate people who steal the clothing of others for reasons too dark, too impenetrable, to discuss. That would be so unjust: the thought that he might harbour a trait of that sort was inconceivable. After all, he was a rugby enthusiast, a recently-admitted member of the Royal Institution of Chartered

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  Discovered

  Surveyors, and . . . It was difficult to put one’s finger on other badges of respectability, but they were certainly there.

  Well, there was nothing that he could do about it. What did it matter if Todd thought that of him? He reached the drawing room before he managed to provide himself with an answer to that question.

  “Bruce got lost,” said Todd in a loud voice, behind him. “He ended up in the drying room.”

  Sasha, who had been talking to Lizzie, looked up in surprise.

  “Lost in our house?” she exclaimed. “How did you manage that?”

  “I took a wrong turning,” said Bruce. He turned to look reproachfully at Todd. A host had no excuse to embarrass a guest like this, even if the host was the guest’s boss.

  “Very strange,” said Lizzie, looking coolly at Bruce. “So you ended up among all the family underwear?”

  Sasha’s head swung round sharply, and Lizzie found herself fixed with a hostile stare from her mother. Bruce, who was now blushing noticeably, turned to look out of the window.

  “I hope it doesn’t rain,” he said.

  56. At the Braid Hills Hotel

  “The nice thing about this job,” observed the functions manager of the Braid Hills Hotel, “is that it has its surprises.”

  His assistant, surveying the room in which the South Edinburgh Conservative Association Ball was to be held, nodded his agreement. The room, although well-decorated with several sprays of flowers, had only two tables, one with four chairs around it and one with two. And even if the hotel had fielded its best napery – starched and folded to perfection – and chosen bright red glassware – there was a distinctly desolate feel to the almost-empty room.

  “You’d think that they would have sold just a few more tickets,” said the assistant, adding, “in an area like this.”

  The manager shrugged. “I’m sure that they did their best.

  Still, I cannot understand why they’ve insisted on keeping the tables apart. Surely it would have been much better for all six of them to sit together – somehow less embarrassing.”

  When Sasha had called round earlier that day to review arrangements, he had suggested to her that the tables be put together, but she had firmly refused.

  “I wouldn’t mind in the least,” she said. “But my husband has views on the matter.”

  So the tables had remained apart, and they were still apart when the first guests, Ramsey and Betty Dunbarton, arrived in the hotel bar, several minutes before the arrival of the Todd party.

  Ramsey Dunbarton was a tall, rather distinguished-looking man who was only now beginning to stoop slightly. He thought of himself as being slightly on the Bohemian side, and had been a stalwart of amateur dramatic circles and the Savoy Opera Group.

  On more than one occasion he had appeared on the stage of the Churchhill Theatre, most notably – and this was the height of his stage career – as the Duke of Plaza-Toro in The Gondoliers.

  Betty Dunbarton was the daughter of a Dundee marmalade manufacturer. She had met Ramsey at a bridge class at the Royal Overseas League, and they had ended up marrying a year or so later. Their marriage had been childless, but their life was a full 146

  At the Braid Hills Hotel

  one, and the Conservative Ball was just another event in a busy social round. The following day they were due to go to lunch at the Peebles Hydro; the day after that there was a meeting of the Friends of the Zoo (with lunch in the Members’ Pavilion); and so it went on.

  Ramsey and Betty were standing near the bar when the Todd family, accompanied by Bruce, came in. Ramsey noticed that Todd did not smile at him, which was hurtful, he thought. That man doesn’t like me, he said to himself. I’ve done nothing to deserve it, but he doesn’t like me. And as for that daughter, that Lizzie, she was such a fright, wasn’t she? What could one say about her? – one could really only sigh.

  Introductions were made and drinks were bought before they went through to the function room.

  “It’s a pity there are not more of us,” said Ramsey Dunbarton, looking at Todd. “Perhaps we should have made more of an effort with the tickets.”

  Todd glared at him. “Actually, we did our best,” he said. “Not that we had much help from the rest of the committee, or from any members, for that matter.”

  “There are some things you just can’t sell,” muttered Lizzie.

  They all looked at her, apart from Bruce, who was staring at the line of whiskies behind the bar. One way through the evening would be to get drunk, he thought, but then again . . .

  “It doesn’t matter that there are so few of us,” said Sasha breezily. “The important thing is that we have a good time. And there’ll be lots of room to do some dancing.”

  “A sixsome reel?” asked Lizzie.

  This time, Bruce looked away from the bar and caught her eye.

  She doesn’t want to be here either, he thought. And who can blame her? He smiled at her, encouragingly, but she did not respond.

  They moved through to the room itself.

  “Oh look!” exclaimed Betty Dunbarton. “Look at that pretty glassware. Just like the cranberry-ware which my cousin used to collect. Remember those glasses, Ramsey? Remember the jug she had in the display cabinet in Carnoustie – the one which was shaped like a swan? Remember that?”

  The Duke of Plaza-Toro

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  “I always thought it was a duck,” said Ramsey Dunbarton. “In fact I could have sworn it was a duck.”

  “No,” said Betty, turning to Sasha, as if for support. “Its neck was too long for it to be a duck. It was a swan. And when you poured, the liquid would go all the way down the swan’s neck and out of its beak.”

  “Wonderful,” said Todd. “But look, we’d better get to our tables. I think that’s yours over there.”

  Betty Dunbarton shook her head. “No,” she said. “They’ve arranged it in a very silly way. Let’s put the tables together so that we can talk. Ramsey, you go and ask that waiter over there to put the tables together.”

  Ramsey complied. He was sure that it had been a duck; he was sure of it. But now was not the time.

  57. The Duke of Plaza-Toro

  Once seated, Ramsey Dunbarton leaned across the table to address Bruce. They were separated by one place, occupied by Lizzie, and by a plate of cock-a-leekie soup which the Braid Hills Hotel had decreed should be the first course.

  “I always think that soup’s a good start to an evening,” he said.

  Bruce looked at his bowl of cock-a-leekie. They had started every evening meal with soup at home, and when they went out, to the Hydro or to the Royal Hotel in Comrie, they had soup too. Soup reminded him of Crieff.

  “There are some people,” Ramsey Dunbarton continued, “who don’t like starting a meal with soup. They say that you shouldn’t build on a swamp.” He paused. “They think, you see, that having soup first makes the swamp – only a figure of speech, of course.

  Not a real swamp.”

  Bruce glanced at Lizzie, who was staring fixedly across the table at the arrangement of flowers. Had she noticed that he had no underpants? It was difficult to tell. And wh
at did it matter, 148

  The Duke of Plaza-Toro

  anyway? A certain level of recklessness sets in when one is not wearing underpants, and Bruce was now experiencing this. It was an unusual feeling to experience – in Edinburgh, at least.

  “I had an aunt who was a wonderful cook,” said Ramsey Dunbarton. “I used to go and stay with her down in North Berwick, when I was a boy. We used to go down there in the summer. I was sent with my brother. Do you know North Berwick?”

  Bruce shook his head. “I know where it is. But I don’t really know it as a place. You remember it, I suppose?”

  “Oh yes,” said Ramsey Dunbarton. “I remember North Berwick very well. I don’t think one would forget North Berwick very readily. I wouldn’t, anyway. North Berwick and Gullane too.

  We used to go to Gullane a great deal – from North Berwick, that is. We used to go and have lunch at the Golf Hotel and then we would go for a walk along the beach. There are sand dunes there, you know. And a wonderful view over the Forth to Fife. You can see places like Pittenweem and Elie. That’s if the weather is clear enough. But it’s often a bit misty. You get a bit of a haar sometimes. Do you know Elie?”

  “I know where Elie is,” Bruce replied. “But I don’t really know Elie as a place.” He turned to Lizzie in an attempt to involve her in the conversation. “Have you been to Elie?”

  Lizzie looked down at her soup, which she had yet to touch.

  “Where?” she snapped. Her tone was that of one whose train of thought had been wantonly interrupted.

  “Elie,” said Bruce.

  “Where?” Lizzie asked again.

  “Elie.”

  “Elie?”

  “Yes, Elie.”

  “What about it?”

  Bruce persisted. She was being deliberately unpleasant, he thought. She’s a real . . . What was she? A man-hater? Was that the problem? “Do you know it?” he asked. “Have you ever been to Elie?”

  “No.”

  Ramsey Dunbarton had been following the exchange with The Duke of Plaza-Toro

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  polite interest and now resumed with further observations on Elie. “When I was a bit younger than you,” he said, nodding in Bruce’s direction, “I used to have a friend whose parents had a place over there. They went there for the summer. His mother was quite a well-known figure in Edinburgh society. And I remember I used to go over there with my friend and we’d stay there for a few days and then come back to Edinburgh. Well, I always remember that they had a very large fridge in the basement of their Elie house and my friend opened it one day and showed me what it contained. And what do you think it was?”

  Bruce looked at Lizzie to see if she was willing to provide an answer, but she was looking up at the ceiling. This was unnecessarily rude, he thought. All right, so this old boy was boring them stiff but it was meant to be a ball and it was probably the highlight of his year and it would cost her nothing to be civil, at least.

  “I really can’t imagine.” He paused. “Explosives?”

  Ramsey Dunbarton laughed. “Explosives? No, goodness me.

  Furs. Fur coats. If you keep them in the fridge the fur is less likely to drop out. The fridge was full of fur coats. People used to buy them from the Dominion Fur Company in Churchill.

  This lady had about ten of them. Beautiful fur coats. Mink and the like.”

  “Well, well,” said Bruce.

  “Yes,” said Ramsey Dunbarton. “The Dominion Fur Company was just over the road from the Churchhill Theatre. We used to do Gilbert and Sullivan there. First in the University Savoy Opera Group and then in the Morningside Light Opera. I played the Duke of Plaza-Toro, you know. A wonderful role. I was jolly lucky to get it because there was a very good baritone that year who was after the part and I thought he would get it. I really did. And then the casting director came up to me in George Street one day, just outside the Edinburgh Bookshop, and said that I was to get the part. It was a wonderful bit of news.”

  Sasha, who was seated beside Bruce, and who had been talking to Betty Dunbarton, had now disengaged and switched her attention to the conversation between Bruce and Ramsey.

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  Catch 22

  But in the course of this change, she had heard only the mention of the Duke of Plaza-Toro.

  “The Duke of Plaza-Toro – do you know him?” she asked.

  Ramsey Dunbarton laughed politely. “Heavens no! He’s in The Gondoliers. Not a real duke.”

  Sasha blushed. “I thought . . .” she began.

  “There aren’t all that many dukes in Scotland,” Ramsey Dunbarton observed, laying down his soup spoon. “There’s the Duke of Roxburghe, our southernmost duke, so to speak. No, hold on, hold on, is the Duke of Buccleuch more to the south?

  I think he may be, you know, come to think of it. Is Bowhill to the south of Kelso? I think it may be. If it is, then it would be, starting from the south, Buccleuch, Roxburghe. . . let me think . . . Hamilton, then Montrose (because he sits on the edge of Loch Lomond, doesn’t he, nowhere near Montrose itself), Atholl, Argyll, and then Sutherland. Hold your horses! Doesn’t the Duke of Sutherland live in the Borders? I think he does. So, he would have to go in that list between . . .”

  Bruce looked around the table. All eyes had been fixed on Ramsey Dunbarton, but now they had shifted. Todd, who was still smarting over the moving together of the tables – against his explicit instructions – was glowering at Sasha, who was looking at Bruce, but in a way that he had not noticed; for he was looking at Betty Dunbarton, whose eyes, he saw, went in slightly different directions, and so could have been looking at anything; while Lizzie looked at the waiter who was watching the bowls of soup, ready to whisk them away and allow the service of the next course, and the course after that, so that the dancing could begin.

  58. Catch 22

  “Tories,” muttered Jim Smellie, leader of Jim Smellie’s Ceilidh Band. “And gey few of them too! Look, one two . . . six altogether. See that, Mungo? Six!”

  Catch 22

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  Mungo Brown, accordionist and occasional percussionist, drew on a cigarette as he looked across the dance floor to the table where the guests were sitting, waiting for the arrival of their coffee. “Don’t complain,” he said, smiling. “This bunch won’t stay up late. We’ll be out of here by eleven-thirty.”

  “Aye,” said Jim, gazing across the empty dance floor. They were still deep in conversation, it seemed, and he wondered what they were talking about. In his experience there were two topics of conversation that dominated bourgeois Edinburgh: schools and house prices.

  At the table, Betty Dunbarton turned to Todd, who was looking about anxiously, waiting for the coffee to be served. The service had been very good – one could not fault the Braid Hills Hotel, which was an excellent hotel, and it was certainly nothing to do with them that the two tables had been placed together – but it was now time for coffee, distinctly so, and then they could get out on the dance floor and he could get away from this woman at last.

  “I do hope that we get a piece of shortbread with our coffee,” Betty remarked. “Although, you know, I had a very bad experience with a bit of shortbread only last week. Ramsey was down at Muirfield . . .”

  Todd turned round sharply. “Muirfield?”

  “Yes,” said Betty brightly. “He plays down there at least once a week these days. He’s a little bit slow now, with his leg playing up, but he always gets in nine holes. He has the same four-some, you know. David Forth, you know, Lord Playfair . . .”

  “Yes, yes,” said Todd irritably. The mention of Muirfield had annoyed him. How long had Ramsey Dunbarton been on the waiting list, he wondered. Probably no time at all. And what was the use of his being a member? He would surely get as much enjoyment from playing somewhere closer to town.

  “You know him?” asked Betty. “You know David?”

  “No, I don’t,” said Todd. “I know who he is. I don’t know him.”

  “I thought that you
might have met him out at Muirfield,”

  she said. “Do you get out there a great deal?”

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  Catch 22

  Todd looked over his shoulder in an attempt to catch the waiter’s eye. “No,” he said. “I don’t. My brother plays there, but I don’t. I play elsewhere.”

  “Wouldn’t it be nice to be in the same club as your brother?”

  asked Betty.

  Todd shrugged. “I’m perfectly happy,” he said. “And I really don’t get the chance to play much golf these days. You know how it is. Not everyone wants to be a member of Muirfield, you know.”

  Betty laughed – a high-pitched sound which irritated Todd even more. It would be impossible to be married to a woman like this, he thought, and for a moment he felt sympathy for Ramsey, but no, that was going too far.

  “I was going to tell you about this shortbread,” said Betty. “I was sitting down for a cup of tea while Ramsey was out at Muirfield, with David and the others, and I decided to have a piece of shortbread. Now the shortbread itself was interesting because it had been baked by no less a person than Judith McClure, who’s headmistress of St George’s. You know her?”

  Todd stared at her glassily. “No,” he said. “But I know who she is.”

  “Well,” continued Betty, “I had gone to a coffee morning at St George’s, in the art centre, with a friend, who’s got a daughter there – a very talented girl – and I’m friendly with her mother, who lives over in Gordon Terrace, and she very kindly invited me to come to the coffee morning. Anyway, we went off and there was a stand with all sorts of things which had been baked by the girls and by the staff too. They were selling scones and the like to raise money for a school art trip to Florence. So I decided to buy something to add my little contribution to the cause. I love Florence, although Ramsey and I haven’t been there for at least twenty years.

  “Mind you,” she went on, “there are lots of people who say that Florence is ruined. They say that there are now so many visitors that you have to queue more or less all morning to get into the Uffizi in the afternoon. Can you believe that? Standing there with all those Germans and what-not with their backpacks?