44 Scotland Street 4ss-1

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Angus Lordie smiled. “Absolutely. If I had the wall space I’d buy it myself.”

  Matthew turned and glanced at Pat. “I thought it might be,”

  he said.

  “Well, it is,” said Angus Lordie. “He lived in Moniaive, I think. Or somewhere down . . .” He paused. He had seen the non-Peploe, which was stacked casually against the side of Matthew’s desk. “Well! Well! Look at that. Very intriguing!”

  “Not a Peploe,” said Matthew, smiling. He was warming to Angus Lordie now, having disliked him when he first met him in the Cumberland Bar with Pat. The identification of the Paterson had cheered Matthew. He had no idea who James Paterson was, but he would soon find out. And Matthew was not sure where Moniaive was either, but he could look that up too.

  “Oh, I can tell it’s not a Peploe,” said Angus Lordie, walking across the room to pick up the painting. “What interests me is the shape I can make out – very vaguely – underneath.”

  “An umbrella,” Matthew said quickly. “Rather like the umbrellas that the French impressionists painted. You’ll know that one in Chicago, of course. The Art Institute. Wonderful place.”

  Pat said nothing. It was good to see Matthew’s confidence growing. She looked at Cyril who was sitting near the door, his 318

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  mouth half-open, the sun glinting off his gold tooth. Cyril was perfectly confident – quite at ease in the space he occupied, as every animal is, except us.

  Angus Lordie held the painting at an angle to the light.

  “Fascinating,” he said. “The painting on the top is rubbish, of course, but a deft application of paint-stripper might show something rather interesting. Would you like me to do it for you? We could do it in my studio.”

  Matthew hesitated. “Well . . .”

  “What a good idea!” exclaimed Pat. “Don’t you agree, Matthew?”

  Matthew turned and looked at Pat, reproach in his eyes.

  He did not like people making decisions for him, but this is what they inevitably did. One day I’m going to say no, he thought. I’m going to become myself. But then he said: “I suppose so. Yes, I suppose it would be good to see what’s underneath.”

  “What about this evening?” said Angus Lordie. “You two come round to the studio. And bring Domenica. We’ll make a party of it.”

  The time was agreed, and Angus Lordie, with Cyril at his side, set off up the road. As he walked, he thought of the painting. It was really very exciting. He had his ideas, of course, as to what lay underneath, and if he were proved right, then that would have major implications for Matthew. And it would be nice, too, to be credited with the discovery, just as Sir Timothy Clifford had got a lot of credit when he discovered a da Vinci drawing under a sofa in the New Club. (That had made the papers!) There would be mention of his own discovery in the newspapers and perhaps a photograph of himself and Cyril. He would be modest, of course, and would downplay the significance of what he had done. Anybody could have seen it, he might say. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

  “But it required your expert hand to reveal the secret!” the reporter would say. And he would smile, and say, self-effacingly:

  “Yes, perhaps it did. Perhaps it did.”

  109. A Most Remarkable and Important Discovery

  “Angus is an extremely good host,” Domenica had said, and she was right. He welcomed his guests with a tray of devils on horseback and small oat-cakes on which thick-cut slices of smoked salmon had been balanced. Then there were crackers with boiled egg, ersatz caviar, and small circles of mayonnaise.

  All of this was provided in generous quantities.

  His flat, which occupied the top two floors of a Drummond Place stair, was built with a generosity which escapes modern builders; the ceilings soared up to fifteen feet, the dark pine wainscoting reached waist-level, and the floor boards were a good twelve inches wide. And everywhere on the walls there were paintings and hangings – portraits, landscapes, figurative studies. A Cadell picture of a man in a top hat, raffish as the proprietor, smiled down above the fireplace in the drawing room. A large Philipson, crowded with cathedrals and ladies, occupied the expanse of wall to its side, and a magnificent Cowie, schoolgirls in a painter’s loft, hung beside that.

  And then there were the bookshelves, which filled the hall and the dining room; towering constructions with books stacked two and three deep. Domenica, drink in hand, stopped beside one of these and exclaimed with delight as she drew out a volume.

  “Ruthven Todd!” she said. “Nobody reads him these days, and they should. Look at this. Acreage of the Heart, published by William McLellan. The Poetry Scotland series.”

  Angus Lordie came to her side, licking mayonnaise off his fingers.

  “That contains a very fine poem, Domenica,” he said. “Personal History. Do you know it?”

  Domenica turned a page. “I was born in this city,” Domenica began to read aloud. “Where dry minds . . . ”

  “Grow crusts of hate/ Like rocks grow lichen”, Angus Lordie took it up. “Such powerful, powerful lines.”

  Pat looked puzzled. “Why did he write that?”

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  “Because it’s true,” said Angus Lordie. “Or, at least it used to be true. Todd was born into haut-bourgeois Edinburgh, which used to be just like that. Brittle. Exclusive. Turned in on itself.

  And immensely snobbish.”

  “And still is a bit like that,” said Domenica quietly. “In its worst moments.”

  “But much better than it used to be,” Angus Lordie countered.

  “You very rarely see those real, cold Edinburgh attitudes these days. The arrogance of those people is broken. They just can’t get away with it. That horrid disapproval of anything that moves

  – that’s gone.”

  Domenica did not appear to be completely convinced. “I’m not sure,” she said. “What makes Edinburgh different from other cities in these islands? It is different, you know. I think that there is still a certain hauteur, a certain intellectual crustiness. It’s not nearly as marked as it was in Todd’s day, but . . .”

  Angus Lordie smiled. “But Domenica rather likes all that,”

  he suggested mischievously. “She’s a bit of a Jean Brodie, you see.”

  Pat looked at Domenica, wondering whether she would take offence. Hadn’t Jean Brodie been a fascist? Wasn’t that the whole point about Spain and the betrayal and all the rest? Matthew simply looked confused. What was this man talking about? And where was that peculiar dog of his?

  They were all standing in the drawing room overlooking the Drummond Place Gardens. It was about nine o’clock, and the sky was still light. The branches of the trees moved gently against the sky and the stone of the buildings opposite, for there was a slight breeze. Pat sipped at the drink that Angus Lordie had given her – a gin and tonic flavoured with lime; she was happy to be here, with these people, with Matthew, whom she liked more and more for his gentleness; with Angus Lordie, who amused her and seemed so grateful for her company, and who was not a threat to anyone; and with Domenica, whom she admired. What a difference, she thought, between this company, interesting and sympathetic, and the company of Bruce and his friends in the Cumberland Bar. What a profound mistake to fall in love with A Most Remarkable and Important Discovery 321

  that man – she realised that now. She had no feeling for him, not even revulsion; she felt nothing. At that crucial moment, when she had seen him awake and smiling at her, she had realised that she was free.

  Angus Lordie interrupted her thoughts. “We should do something about the picture now,” he said. “Let’s go into my studio and get to work.”

  They followed him from the drawing room, down a book-lined corridor, and into a large room, two floors high, with large skylights set into the ceiling. Matthew, who had been clutching the painting, now handed it over to Angus Lordie and watched anxiously as their
host laid it down on a table and reached for a large, opaque bottle. He placed the bottle beside him and then raised his glass of whisky to Matthew.

  “Paint-stripper,” he said. “In the bottle that is – not the glass!

  Hah!”

  Matthew said nothing, but narrowed his eyes as Angus Lordie took the top off the bottle and sprinkled a viscous liquid across the painting. Then he rubbed this gently with a cloth.

  “Draw near and see,” said Angus Lordie. “We’ll give this a moment to act, and then I’ll give it a wipe. All should be revealed.”

  Slowly the surface of the painting began to blister and bubble.

  The shore of Iona disappeared, and then the coast of Mull. Next went the sea; those blue waves which had rather impressed Matthew became grey and then brown.

  “Now a gentle wipe,” said Angus Lordie. “That’ll get rid of all this superfluous paint. Here we go.”

  They were all huddled over the painting now. Pat noticed that Matthew looked pale, and that his breathing was shallow.

  Domenica, catching Pat’s eye, gave her a conspiratorial nod. And Angus Lordie, absorbed in his task, looked only at the surface of the painting, which was now changing colour markedly.

  “Now then,” Angus Lordie said, dabbing at a section of the painting. “Gently does it. Gently.”

  “An umbrella,” whispered Domenica. “Look. An umbrella.”

  “Yes!” said Angus Lordie, triumphantly. “Yes! And look what we have here. A beach. Yes! And do we have people in evening

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  suits dancing under that umbrella, which is being held up, is it not, by a butler? Yes we do! We do!”

  Angus Lordie straightened up. “Yes!” he shouted. “Exactly as I had suspected! A Vettriano!”

  110. Gain, Loss, Friendship, Love

  Matthew was quietly pleased. He had lost a Peploe (which he had never really had, anyway) but he had gained a Vettriano (which he had never known he had). After the initial shock of the discovery, he turned to Angus Lordie and embraced him warmly. “I’m so glad that you offered to do this,” he said. “I would never have imagined it. A Vettriano!”

  Angus Lordie smiled, wiping his hands on a piece of cloth.

  “I was alerted by the shape of the umbrella,” he said. “I just had a feeling that it was our friend Mr Vettriano underneath. I don’t know why, but I had this feeling.”

  “Never underestimate the power of intuitions,” said Domenica. “They are a very useful guide. They can show us the way to all sorts of things – including the way to being good.”

  Angus Lordie raised an eyebrow. “How so?” he asked. “What have intuitions to do with goodness?”

  “Intuitions help us to know what is right and wrong,” said Gain, Loss, Friendship, Love

  323

  Domenica. “If your intuitions tell you that something is wrong, then it probably is. And once you start to use your moral faculties to work out why it’s wrong, you’ll see that the intuition was right in the first place.”

  “Interesting,” said Angus Lordie. “But I suspect that the intuition is merely a form of existing knowledge. You know something already, and the intuition merely tells you that the knowledge is buried away in your mind.”

  “But that’s exactly what an intuition is,” said Domenica. “That’s exactly why they’re so useful.”

  Angus Lordie replaced the cap on the bottle of paint-stripper.

  “Enough of all this,” he said. “I propose that we go through to the drawing room and open a bottle of champagne. Leave the painting here, Matthew. It needs to dry a little. I’ll come back in a moment and fetch it.”

  They followed their host back down the corridor and into the large, formally furnished drawing room. Angus Lordie busied himself with the opening of a bottle of champagne, which he took from a concealed fridge in a walnut cabinet. Then he poured a glass for each of them and they stood in the middle of the room, under the Murano chandelier, and raised their glasses to each other.

  “To the successful sale of the Vettriano,” said Angus Lordie, chinking his glass against Matthew’s. “That is assuming that you will be selling it. Vettriano, of course, is not to everybody’s taste.

  But the point is there’s a strong market for them and it seems to be getting stronger.”

  Matthew looked into his glass. He did not like to talk about financial matters, but he was very curious to know what value Angus Lordie might put on his painting. “You wouldn’t have any idea,” he began.

  “Of what it’s worth?” said Angus Lordie.

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” said Angus Lordie. “Let’s think. I think that this is a very early Vettriano, but it’s an important one in terms of his development as a popular painter. It’s his beach period, I would have thought – with touches of his umbrella period. So that 324

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  makes it very interesting. And the value would be . . . Let’s think.

  Perhaps, a hundred thousand. Something like that?”

  Pat glanced at Matthew and noticed that his hands were shaking. She reached across and touched him gently on the shoulder. “Well done!” she whispered. “Well done!”

  Matthew smiled back at her. He liked this girl, and he wondered if there was still a chance that she might like him too.

  Perhaps she had overcome her ridiculous attachment to that ghastly Bruce. Perhaps she would want somebody more settled, like me. That is what he thought, but he knew, even as he thought it, that he was hoping for too much. Nobody liked him in that way; they just didn’t.

  Angus Lordie put down his glass. “I’ll go and fetch it,” he said. “The light is slightly better through here at this time of the evening. We can take a close look at it.”

  He left them, and a short time later he returned, holding the painting out before him. He cleared his throat and started to say something, but no words came and they knew immediately that something was wrong.

  Angus Lordie held the painting out to Matthew. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “The paint-stripper appears to have continued to act. The Vettriano seems to have gone.”

  Matthew looked at the painting in dismay. The beach, the umbrella, the butler, the dancing couple – all had merged into a set of curiously-coloured streaks and puddles of paint. Matthew looked at Angus Lordie, and then he laughed. It was a laugh that surprised them all – except Pat. “I was never really too keen on Vettriano,” he said. “Don’t feel too bad about it.” With that comment, that simple forgiving comment, Pat realised the depth of Matthew’s goodness. She would not forget that.

  Angus Lordie let out a sigh of relief. “That’s very good of you,”

  he said. “But I was thinking – you could still try to sell this as an abstract Vettriano. That’s what it’s become, you see. Vettriano put this paint on this canvas, and it certainly looks pretty abstract now.”

  Matthew smiled. “Perhaps.”

  Angus Lordie placed the abstract Vettriano down on a table and fetched another bottle of champagne from the fridge. Domenica,

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  who had been silent since Angus Lordie had returned to the room with the news of the restoration mishap, now said: “Angus, you’ve been a rotten restorer, but you remain, in my view, a rather more competent poet. Cheer us all up with one of your impromptu pieces.”

  “Something Chinese?” asked Angus Lordie. “Late Scottish-Tang?”

  “No,” said Domenica. “Not that. Something else.”

  “Why not?” he said. “How about this?”

  He moved to the window and then turned to face his guests.

  Together again he began.

  Here in this place,

  Of angled streets and northern light, Under this particular moon, with Scotland Quiet and sleeping behind and around us; Of what may I speak but friendship, And of our human wish for love – not just for me But for frien
ds too, and those who are not my friends; So if you ask me, now, at this moment, What is my wish: it is for love over Scotland, Like tears of rain – that is enough.

  Scotland Street

  Document Outline

  Preface

  1. Stuff Happens

  2. A Room with a Smell

  3. We See a Bit More of Bruce

  4. Fathers and Sons

  5. Attributions and Provenances

  6. Bruce Takes a Look at a Place

  7. A Full Survey

  8. Hypocrisy, Lies, Golf Clubs

  9. SP

  10. The Road from Arbroath

  11. The Origins of Love and Hate

  12. Chanterelles Trouv�es

  13. You Must Remember This / A Kiss Is Just a Kiss

  14. The Smell of Cloves

  15. 560 SEC

  16. Irrational Beliefs and the Mind of the Child

  17. An Educational Exchange

  18. The Works of Melanie Klein

  19. A Modest Gift

  20. The Boys Discuss Art

  21. A Daughter�s Dance Card

  22. Bruce Comes Under Consideration

  23. Goings-on in London

  24. Unwelcome Thoughts

  25. Dinner with Domenica

  26. A Room, a Photograph, Love and Memory

  27. The Electricity Factory

  28. Thomas Is Electrocuted

  29. Friendship

  30. Things Happen at the Gallery

  31. The Lothian and Borders Police Art Squad

  32. Akrasia: The Essential Problem

  33. Peploe?

  34. On the Way to the Floatarium

  35. Latte Interrupta

  36. Bertie in Disgrace

  37. At the Floatarium

  38. Mother/Daughter Issues

  39. The Facts of Life

  40. In Nets of Golden Wires

  41. Your Cupboard or Mine?

  42. Gallery Matters

  43. The Sort of People You See in Edinburgh Wine Bars

  44. Tales of Tulliallan

  45. More Tulliallan Tales

  46. Humiliation and Embarrassment