44 Scotland Street 4ss-1

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Will was waiting for him in the wine bar. Although they had not met before, Bruce had been told to look out for the most dapper person in the room. “That’ll be Will,” Ed had said.

  They shook hands.

  “You must let me do this,” said Bruce, reaching for his wallet.

  “Glass of wine?”

  “Thank you,” said Will, reaching for the wine menu.

  Bruce picked up a copy of the menu and looked down it.

  “Not too bad.” He paused, and frowned. “But look at all these Chardonnays! Useless grape! Flabby, tired. Did you see that article in The Decanter a few weeks ago? Did you see it? It was all about those ABC clubs in New York – Anything But Chardonnay. I can see what they mean – revolting against Chardonnay.”

  “Well,” said Will quietly, “there are some . . .”

  “I never touch it myself,” said Bruce. “It’s fine for people who get their wine in supermarkets. Fine for women. Hen parties.

  Bruce Expounds

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  That sort of thing. Fine for them. But I won’t touch it. May as well drink Blue Nun.”

  “Do you like champagne?” Will asked politely.

  “Do I like champagne?” replied Bruce. “Is the Pope a Catholic?

  Of course I do. I adore the stuff.”

  “And Chablis?”

  “Boy, do I love Chablis! I had the most marvellous bottle the other day. Fantastic. Flinty, really flinty. Like biscuits, you know.

  Just great.”

  Will was about to point out that the Chardonnay grape was used to make both champagne and Chablis, but decided not to.

  It was fashionable, amongst those who knew very little, to decry Chardonnay, but it was still a great variety, even if its reputation had been damaged by the flooding of the market with vast quantities of inferior wine.

  “Of course I’m much more New World than Old World,”

  Bruce went on, scanning further down the list. “France is finished in my view. Finished.”

  Will looked surprised. “France? Finished?”

  Bruce nodded. “Washed out. They just can’t compete with the New World boys – they just can’t. If you sit down with a bottle of good California – even a modestly-priced bottle – and then you sit down with a bottle of Bordeaux, let’s say, the California wins every time – every time. And a lot of people think like me, you know.”

  Will looked doubtful. “But don’t you think that these New World wines wane after two or three mouthfuls?”

  “No,” said Bruce. “Not at all.”

  Will smiled. “But, you know, these New World wines give you a sudden burst of delight, but don’t you think that they rather drown the flavour? French wines usually are much more complex.

  They’re meant to go with food, after all.”

  “You can eat while you’re drinking New World wines, too,”

  said Bruce. “I often do that. I have a bottle of California and I find it goes well with pasta.”

  “Red or white?” asked Will.

  “White with pasta,” said Bruce. “All the time.”

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  Bruce Expounds

  They both looked at the menu.

  “Here’s one for me,” said Bruce. “I’m going to get a half bottle of Muddy Wonga South Australian. That’s a big wine – really big.”

  Will looked at the Muddy Wonga listing. “Interesting,” he said. “I’ve never heard of that. Have you had it before?”

  “Lots of times,” said Bruce. “It’s got a sort of purple colour to it and a great deal of nose.”

  “Could be the mud,” suggested Will quietly, but Bruce did not hear.

  “And you?” asked Bruce. “What are you going to have?”

  “Well,” said Will. “I rather like the look of this Bordeaux.

  Pomerol.”

  “A left bank man,” said Bruce.

  “Actually, it’s on the right bank,” said Will quietly.

  “Same river,” said Bruce.

  Will agreed. “Of course.”

  “Of course at least you’ll get it with a cork in it,” said Bruce.

  “None of those ghastly screw caps. Do you know I was at a restaurant the other day – with this rather nice American girl I’ve met – and they served the wine in a screw cap bottle. Can you believe it?’

  “Screw caps are very effective,” Will began. “There are a lot of estates . . .”

  Bruce ignored this. “But can you believe it? A screw cap in a decent restaurant? I almost sent it back.”

  “Corked?” ventured Will.

  “No, it had a screw cap,” said Bruce.

  They ordered their wine, which was served to them in a few minutes. Bruce poured himself a glass and held it up to his nose.

  “Superb,” he said. “The winemaker at Muddy Wonga is called Lofty Shaw. He had some training at Napa and then went back to Australia. Here, smell this.”

  He passed his glass under Will’s nose.

  “Blackcurrants,” said Bruce. “Heaps of fruit. Bang.”

  Will nodded. “It’s a big wine,” he said.

  “Huge,” said Bruce. “Muscular. A wine with pecs!”

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  Will said nothing for a moment. Then he asked Bruce about his plans.

  “I’m fed up to here with surveying,” said Bruce. “So I thought I might try something in the wine trade. Something that will allow me to use my knowledge.”

  Will looked thoughtful. “You have to work your way up,” he said. “It’s like any business.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Bruce. “But I know the subject. I would have thought I could start somewhere in the middle and then get my MW in a year or so.”

  “It’s not that simple,” said Will.

  “Oh, I know,” said Bruce. “But I’m prepared to wait. A year, eighteen months, max.”

  Will stared at Bruce. He was uncertain what to say.

  101. Pat and Bruce: An Exchange

  Bruce was quite pleased with the way in which the meeting with Will Lyons had gone. He had been able to set him right on one or two matters – including the primacy of New World wines –

  and he had also been able to change his mind, he was sure, about Chardonnay. It was strange, thought Bruce, that somebody like that should be prepared to drink Chardonnay when everybody else was getting thoroughly sick of it.

  And the end result of all this was that Will had offered to speak to somebody and find out if there were any openings coming up in the wine trade. Bruce was confident that there would be such an opportunity, and had decided that he might as well hand in his resignation at Macaulay Holmes Richardson Black. He would probably have to work out a month or two of notice, but that would mean that he could take a holiday for a month or so before starting in the wine trade.

  Todd would probably try to persuade him to stay, but he would refuse. He could just imagine the scene: Todd would talk about 294

  Pat and Bruce: An Exchange

  the training the firm had given him – “Does that mean nothing to you, Bruce? – and he would try to appeal to his better nature.

  But all that would be in vain.

  “I’m very sorry,” he would say. “I’m very sorry, Mr Todd, but my mind is made up. I’ve got nothing against Macaulay Holmes and so on but I really feel that I need something more stimulating. Less dull.”

  That would floor Todd – to hear his world described as dull.

  Bruce relished the thought. He might go on a bit, although he would not really want to rub it in. “Being a surveyor is all right for some,” he would say. “I’m sure that you’re happy enough doing it, but some of us need something which requires, how shall I put it, a little bit more flair.”

  Poor Todd! He would have no answer to that. It would almost be cruel, but it needed to be said and it would make up for all the humiliation that Bruce had endured in having to listen to those penny-lectures from his employer. All that going on about pro
fessional ethics and obligation and good business practice and all the rest; no more of that for Bruce. And in its place would come wine-tastings and buying trips to California, and the opportunity to mix with those glamorous, leggy, upper-crust girls who tended to frequent the edges of the wine trade. What an invigorating thought! – and it was all so close. All that he needed to do was find the job.

  It occurred to Bruce that it would be nice if he were to be interviewed for the job by a woman. Bruce knew that he could get women to do anything he wanted them to do, and if he could somehow engineer things that the job decision was to be made by a woman, then he was confident that he would walk into it.

  He had returned to the flat and was sitting in the kitchen, thinking of this delicious future, when he heard the door open.

  That would be Pat, poor girl, coming home from a dull evening somewhere. He would be nice to her, he decided; he could afford to be generous, now that things were going so well for him.

  When Pat came into the kitchen, Bruce gave her a smile.

  Pat and Bruce: An Exchange

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  “Cup of coffee?” he said. “I was going to make myself one.”

  Pat blushed. She tried to stop herself, but she blushed, and he noticed, for he smiled again. Poor girl: she can’t look at me without blushing.

  Bruce rose to his feet and went to the coffee grinder.

  “I’ll make you something really nice,” he said. “Irish coffee. I learned how to do it in Dublin. We went over for a rugby tour once and one of the Irish guys taught me how to make Irish coffee. I’ll make you a cup.”

  “I’m not sure,” said Pat, faltering. “I’m a bit tired.”

  “Nonsense,” said Bruce. “Sit down. I won’t make it too strong.”

  Pat sat down at the kitchen table and watched him going about the business of making the coffee. She could not help but stare at the shape of his back and the casual way he stood; at his arms, half-exposed by the rolled-up sleeves of his dark-blue rugby jersey; and she thought: I can’t help myself – I just can’t. I have to look at him.

  He turned round suddenly and saw her staring at him. He lowered his eyes, as if in embarrassment, and then looked up again.

  “It’s hard for you, isn’t it?” he said.

  She bit her lip. She could not speak.

  “Yes, it must be hard for you to deal with,” he went on. “Me and Sally. And there’s you. Hard.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pat muttered, her face burning with shame.

  Bruce took several steps forward and stood next to her. He touched her on the shoulder, and then moved his hand across to lay it gently against her cheek.

  “You’re burning up,” he said. “Poor Pat. You’re burning up.

  Poor wee girl. You’re on fire.”

  She moved a hand to brush him away from her cheek, but Bruce simply closed his hand about hers.

  “Look,” he said. “Let’s be adult about this. I’m involved with this American girl, but not as involved as you might think. I’m not going to marry her after all. I’ll still go out with her, but it’s nothing permanent. So I can make you happy too. Why not?

  Share me.”

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  Paternal Diagnosis

  For a moment Pat said nothing. Then, as the meaning of his words became clear to her, she gasped, involuntarily, and pulled her hand away from his grasp. Then she pushed her chair back, knocking it over, and stumbled to her feet. She looked at him, and saw him quite clearly, more clearly than she would have believed possible. And she was filled with revulsion.

  “I don’t believe it,” she whispered. “I don’t believe it.”

  Bruce smiled, and then shrugged. “Offer’s on the table, Patsy girl. Think about it. My door is always open, as they say.”

  102. Paternal Diagnosis

  In her misery, she hardly remembered the journey across town by bus, or the walk from Churchhill to the family house in the Grange.

  Her father was alone in the house – her mother was in Perth for several days, visiting her sister – and he was waiting for her solicitously in the hall. She fumbled with her key and he opened the door to let her in, immediately putting his arm about her.

  “My dear,” he said. “My dear.”

  She looked up at him. He had realised from her telephone call that there was something wrong, and he was there, waiting for her, as he had always been. It had never been her mother who had comforted her over the bruises of childhood – she had seemed so distant, not intentionally, but because that was her way, the result of an inhibited, unhappy youth. Her father, though, had always been at hand to explain, to comfort, to sympathise.

  They went through to the family living room. He had been reading, and there were several books and journals scattered across the coffee table. And there, near the chair, were his slippers – the leather slippers that she had bought him from Jenners for a birthday some years ago.

  “I don’t think I even have to ask you,” he said. “It’s that young man, is it not? That young man in the flat.”

  It did not surprise her that he should have guessed. He had Paternal Diagnosis

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  always had an intuitive ability to work out what was happening, the ability to see what it was that was troubling people. She imagined that this came from years of experience with his patients, listening to them, understanding their distress.

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “I thought I liked him. Now I don’t.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. But I’m . . . I’m a bit upset.”

  Her father took his arm from her shoulder. “Of course you’re upset. Falling out of love is every bit as painful as falling out of a tree – and the pain lasts far longer. Most of us have shed pints of tears about that.

  “From what you told me about that young man, I would say that he has a narcissistic personality disorder. Such people are very interesting. They’re not necessarily malevolent people – not at all

  – but they can be very destructive in the way they treat others.”

  Pat had discussed Bruce with her father, briefly, shortly after she had moved into the flat in Scotland Street. He had listened with apparent interest, but had said nothing.

  “He’s just so pleased with himself,” she said. “He thinks that everyone, everyone, fancies him. He really does.”

  Her father laughed. “Of course he does. And the reason for that is that he sees himself as being just perfect. There’s nothing wrong with him, in his mind. And he thinks that everybody else sees things the same way.”

  Pat thought about this. By falling for Bruce – that embarrassing aberration on her part – she had behaved exactly as he had thought she would behave. It had been no surprise to him that she had done this; this was exactly what women did, what he expected them to do.

  She turned to her father. “Is it his fault?”

  Her father raised an eyebrow. “Fault? That’s interesting.

  What’s fault got to do with it?”

  “Can he help himself?” Pat said. “Could he be anything other than what he is? Could he behave any differently?”

  “I’m not sure if your personality is under your control,” said 298

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  Pat’s father. “It’s the way you are, in a sense, rather like hair colour or stature. You can’t be blamed in any way for being short rather than tall, or having red hair.”

  “So Bruce can’t be blamed for being a narcissist?”

  Pat’s father thought for a moment. “Well, we have some control over defects in our characters. For example, if you know that you have a tendency to do something bad, then you might be able to do something about that. You could develop your faculty of self-control. You could avoid situations of temptation.

  You could try to make sure that you didn’t do what your desires prompted you to do. And of course we expect that of people, don’t we?”
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  “Do we?”

  “Yes, we do. We expect people to control their greed, their avarice. We expect people who have a short temper at least to try to keep it under control.”

  “So Bruce could behave less narcissistically if he tried?”

  Her father walked to the window and looked out into the darkness of the garden. “He could improve a bit perhaps. If he were given some insight into his personality, then he might be able to act in a way which others found less offensive. That’s what we expect of psychopaths, isn’t it?”

  Pat joined him at the window. She knew each shadow in the garden; the bench where her mother liked to sit and drink tea; the rockery which in recent years had grown wild; the place where she had dug a hole as a child which had never been filled in.

  “Is it?” she asked.

  He turned to her. She liked these talks with him. Human nature, sometimes frightening; evil, always frightening, seemed tamed under his gaze; like a stinging insect under glass – the object of scientific interest, understood.

  “Yes,” he said. “Most people don’t understand psychopathy very well. They think of the psychopath as the Hitchcockian villain – staring eyes and all the rest – whereas they’re really rather mundane people, and there are rather more of them than we would imagine. Do you know anybody who’s consistently selfish? Do you know anybody who doesn’t seem to be troubled if And Then

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  he upsets somebody else – who’ll use other people? Cold inside?

  Do you know anybody like that?”

  Pat thought. Bruce? But she did not say it.

  “If you do,” her father went on. “Then it’s possible that that person is a psychopath. One shouldn’t simplify it, of course.

  Some people resort to a check list, Professor Hare’s test. It stresses anti-social behaviour that occurs in the teenage years and then continues into the late twenties. There are other criteria too.”

  Pat’s father paused. “Tell me something, my dear. This young man – could you imagine him being cruel to an animal?”

  Pat was hesitant at first, but then decided. No, he would not.