Pianos and Flowers

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “He fell two days before the Armistice. It was that close, that close.”

  She did not say anything. She had learned, through experience, that there were times when nothing could be said.

  He was looking away. “Over the top,” he said, “and overcome.” He paused. “Another zeugma, I fear.” He tried to smile; he tried.

  She reached out and took his hand again. A small flock of pigeons flew past, a flutter of wings, silent in their flight; but then, from another place, birdsong, farther and farther … all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire, she thought, as another had said, who had also gone. Yes, I remember Adlestrop. That poem. The words came back to her.

  “All the birds …” she began.

  And he said, “… of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. Yes.”

  Urchins

  FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: WILLY HENDERSON (LYING DOWN), Graham Davie (with box on head), Tommy White (leaning against crate), Johnny Soutar (in toorie), Wee Jimmy Edwards (striding out), Mac Burns (seated on pavement), Norrie Burns (leaning against wall) and Martin Henderson (also leaning).

  Look first at Johnny Soutar. He seems pensive; as if trying to weigh something up.

  His father was an engine driver, who was born in Perth in 1888. His mother was Irish, a dressmaker who took in repair work to help support her six children. His father died of tuberculosis. He said to the minister who visited him in hospital, “I’ve done my best by my bairns.” And the minister said, “I know that, Thomas. I know.”

  These are Johnny’s boots:

  Boots were passed from child to child, sometimes being sixth or seventh hand. These would serve no child after Johnny, barely seeing him through to the winter. They were parish boots, public boots made available to children of poor families.

  This photograph was taken in 1920, when Johnny was nine. In 1939, Johnny was twenty-eight and a welder in an engineering works in Clydebank, when he joined the army, signing up in the 51st Highland Division. He acquired a reputation as a fighter and was often on a charge. His Regimental Sergeant Major, however, understood him, and said that for all his faults you could always rely on Johnny Soutar.

  He landed with the 51st in Sicily and fought his way across the island. One of his officers was a man called Hamish Henderson, who wrote words to accompany that haunting pipe tune ‘Farewell To The Creeks’. Years later, when Johnny heard Hamish singing it in Sandy Bell’s Bar in Edinburgh, he wept openly. All the bricht chaumers are empty … He remembered the echoing emptiness of the barrack rooms left behind. He saw the crowds of women, children, men – all relieved at the end of their nightmare and the arrival of the liberators. He saw a woman come out to throw her arms around him and kiss him. There was wine on her breath. She was in tears.

  Johnny married a young woman from Dunoon. They had three children, one of whom went to Glasgow University and became a marine engineer. Johnny died in 1974. George Macleod spoke at his funeral and called him a fine man who was a credit to Scotland. A piper played ‘Farewell To The Creeks’ and people then adjourned to a local hotel, where tea and sandwiches were served. That was the life of Johnny Soutar – not much, perhaps, but he played his part in the freeing of the world from a frightening tyranny. He asked no thanks for that; expected no plaudits.

  “You’re an awfie wee actor, Willy Henderson,” they said. “One of these days folk are going to take you seriously and then what?”

  But Willy was incorrigible. His favourite trick was to surprise people by playing dead. Sometimes he would do this around corners so that people would suddenly come across a supine figure, eyes closed, on the pavement at their feet. They would not see Willy watching them through a crack in his eyelids, struggling to keep a straight face. On a number of occasions an ambulance would be called and would arrive, bell clanging, to find an embarrassed member of the public struggling to explain what had happened. “There was a wee boy right there,” they would say. “Right there. I thought he was deid. Then up he gets and hares off.”

  “Willy Henderson,” said the ambulance men. “That wee devil. We’ll tan his hide if we ever lay hands on him.”

  At eighteen, Willy Henderson found a job as a stage hand. By a stroke of good luck, he was given a small part in a pantomime after a flu epidemic depleted the cast. He acted with Harry Gordon, who played the Laird of Inversneaky, and with Stanley Baxter. He was never happy.

  ‘I want to play Hamlet,” he said.

  People thought that a joke, but he meant it.

  He never married. There was a woman in the background, people said. She came from somewhere in the Far East – the Philippines, some opined; others were sure it was Thailand.

  He lived in a flat in which he grew bonsai trees.

  Graham Davie carried a box on his head. He always wore the same cap, several sizes too big for him, and he would rest the bottom of the box on that. “Your lugs keep your cap on and your cap keeps your box on,” Willy Henderson said. “If you took away your lugs the whole thing would collapse.”

  These are his shoes, which were passed down to him from his two brothers.

  Nobody knew what Graham carried in the box. Some said that it was a body; others said that it was money. One day, the box disappeared. Graham refused to discuss the matter.

  “Where’s that box of yours, Graham?”

  He looked away, and declined to answer.

  Graham joined the merchant navy. In 1942 the ship he was serving on was torpedoed in the North Atlantic. He survived the attack, although his chest never recovered from ingested oil. He opened a bar in Gourock and became a member of the Labour Party. “Everything we have,” he said, “we’ve had to fight for. Fight, fight, fight. Nothing comes to you without effort.”

  John Smith, the leader of the Labour Party, said of him, “Graham didn’t know the answer to all the important questions, but my God, he knew the questions to ask.”

  This is Martin Henderson, cousin of Willy. He is older than the others and at the time at which this photograph was taken had already had two girlfriends. Both had given him up on the grounds that his clothes were too dirty and shabby. He said that he didn’t care: “Lassies are a waste of time,” he said. “Everybody kens that. A complete waste of time.”

  Martin’s father beat him regularly. It started after his father was released from Barlinnie Prison, where he served a two-year sentence for a botched robbery. He and his friend, Tam Connor, attempted to rob a post office but were beaten off by the customers. Fleeing down the street they found themselves running straight into the arms of the police. The sheriff who sentenced them expressed surprise at their stupidity. “You are very inept,” he said. “Very.”

  Martin hated his father and told his mother that he wanted him dead.

  “He’s not your faither,” she said. “I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

  He looked at her. “So you had other men?”

  She shrugged. “Everybody did. And don’t come over all moral with me, young man. You don’t know what it’s like.”

  On certain nights at the local ballroom, it was considered permissible for married women to meet other men. On such nights, groups of women would accompany their friends to the ballroom, where they would be bought drinks by the various predatory men who frequented the bar.

  “So who’s my faither then?” asked Martin.

  “He was a better class of man than him,” replied his mother, nodding in the direction of her husband.

  “What was his name?” asked Martin.

  “It doesnae matter.”

  “It does tae me.”

  She sighed. “All right. Your faither is a man who played the accordion in a ceilidh band. He was called Ross and he came from Mull. He was a kind man.”

  He stared at her. “You should have told me. You could easily have told me that.”

  She wondered what good it would have done. “You wouldn’t have seen much of him,” she said. “We needed somebody right here – somebody who could pay the bills – not somebody who
didn’t even know he was your faither.”

  “I might have wanted to meet him.”

  ”What for? What’s the point?”

  Martin did not press the matter. But years later, when he was seventeen, he defended himself against the man who said he was his father. On that occasion he knocked him to the ground and straddled him. He resisted the temptation to strike at his head and simply pinioned his arms so that he could not unseat him.

  “I hate you,” he said. “You’re a bully.”

  His father – he still called him that – met his gaze. “You know something?” he said. “Your real faither is a tout – an informer. You know that? The polis use him. We all ken that.”

  Martin rose to his feet. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Your head’s full o’ mince.”

  “That’s what you think,” said his father. “But it’s your heid that’s full of mince.”

  Martin had a job in a bakery, but lost it when the baker went bankrupt. He then worked for a while in a hotel in the West End of Glasgow, until he was dismissed for stealing tips from the staff tip boxes.

  “That was an utterly despicable thing to do,” scolded one of the bar-room staff.

  “Shut it,” muttered Martin. These are Martin’s shoes. There is something slightly feminine about these boots – perhaps because of their built-up heels. The effect was to give Martin a slight sense of superiority. He had little time for these kids, with their shabby footwear. His boots had high heels that gave him a good inch and a half extra.

  In 1974, Martin killed Johnny Soutar. It happened in a pub that was popular with stock car racers. There was an argument – some witnesses said it was over football, others were not so sure. Johnny Soutar laughed at Martin and said that the football team he supported was never going to get anywhere. Martin, who had taken drink, swung a fist at Johnny, knocking him to the floor. Johnny’s head hit the corner of the bar and he never recovered consciousness. It was generally accepted Martin did not intend to kill Johnny, but that was what he did. Some of the witnesses affirmed that Johnny provoked Martin; others thought that Martin was the aggressor.

  Martin was tried for culpable homicide. The judge told the jury that the confusion as to exactly what had happened made it very important that they should deliberate on their verdict very carefully. He clearly thought that Johnny’s death was an accident.

  Martin was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison. In his car on the way back to Edinburgh, the judge sat quite silently. He thought he had just passed a sentence for what was not much more than an unfortunate accident. He hated that. He hated everything that had made Martin’s life such a narrow and deprived one. He knew he could not change anything – that people suffered because they had to. He knew that in a life of privation and violence there would rarely be any room for joy. This narrow, sad life – which he had just made even sadder – would simply have to be endured by Martin Henderson.

  “I dislike my job,” muttered the judge to himself, gazing out of the car window.

  His driver glanced in the rear-view mirror. He had driven judges for years. They had a difficult job, but so did plenty of other people. And he, Norrie Burns, knew just how difficult it was for them to forget the things they had to do.

  St John’s Wort

  JEAN DEARLY LOVED HER HUSBAND, BRIAN, BUT WAS distressed by his worrying.

  “I know it’s a good idea to be aware of risks,” she said. “I know that. And I would never court disaster, but there have to be limits, don’t there? You can’t wrap yourself in cotton wool your whole life, can you?”

  “You can’t,” said her friend, Hen. “You’d never get out of the house if you started to worry about all the things that might happen to you. Might, mind you. A lot of the things that could happen never will happen because … well, because they are very unlikely to happen.”

  “Exactly,” said Jean. “We could be hit by a meteorite at any moment, we’re told. There might be one coming towards us right now – even as we stand here and speak about it. You can’t see them during the day, you know. They could be coming right for you and you wouldn’t know.”

  Hen looked up anxiously. “You mean, there’s no warning? They’re just there, flying towards us?”

  Jean nodded. “That’s what happened to the dinosaurs, apparently. A very large meteorite hit the earth and sent us a giant cloud of dust. It blocked the warmth of the sun and the dinosaurs became extinct.”

  Hen shuddered. “Heavens. And the same thing could happen to us?”

  Jean nodded. “Yes, except it probably won’t – at least not while you and I are still alive, Hen. We’re unlikely to become extinct.”

  “That’s a relief,” said Hen. She paused. “Is that what your man’s worried about? Becoming extinct?”

  “Oh, he’s worried about that in the past. It’s always one thing or another – now it’s Cuba.”

  Hen frowned. “Cuba? That place over there …” She waved vaguely towards the horizon.

  “I think it’s more in that direction,” said Jean, pointing elsewhere. ‘But it doesn’t matter too much where it is – the point is that there’s a lot of trouble brewing over there. Have you listened to the news? Have you heard about it on the wireless?”

  Hen shook her head. “Our radio’s broken,” she said. “The lights still go on when you switch it on, but there’s no sound. It’s the valves, I think. My Archie knows a bit about radios and he says when a valve goes you’re in trouble.”

  “It sounds like an old radio,” said Jean. “Valves are on the way out, I’m told.”

  “What will they think of next?” said Hen. “No valves in a radio! Well, that makes you think.”

  Jean smiled. She had always found her friend to be otherworldly. She had not heard about what was going on in Cuba, and probably barely knew where it was. And here she was in 1962 still talking about the valves in radios.

  “Cuba,” she said. “It’s one of these Communist places, you know. There’s a certain Mr Castro …”

  “Nice name,” interjected Hen.

  “Fidel Castro in full.”

  “Very nice,” said Hen.

  “Big black beard. Great head of hair. Very revolutionary type.”

  Hen’s eyes widened. “Revolutionary? Like that fellow …” She looked for assistance.

  “Marx? Yes, but different. Younger. More of a film star than Marx.”

  Hen frowned. “He’s been making trouble then – this Castro?”

  “Yes,” replied Jean. “A lot of trouble. Him and the Russians. They’ve sent over a lot of their rockets – you know, the ones with bombs at the end. Atomic bombs.”

  “You don’t want those,” said Hen.

  “No, you don’t. And so the Americans have been getting into a real spin over it. Their President …”

  “Eisenhower?”

  “No, it’s Kennedy now.”

  Hen remembered. “Yes, of course. Him. He’s not too pleased about this Castro having all those atomic bombs?”

  “He certainly isn’t. He’s told old Khrushchev that if he doesn’t remove them, then he’s going to send in the US Navy or something like that. And Khrushchev hasn’t been too pleased with being threatened like that and so it’s all very worrying.”

  “And your Brian is worried about that?”

  Jean sighed. “Everybody should be worried – at least a little bit worried. But Brian – well, you know how he is. There we are, living in the back of beyond, and about as far away from everything as you can get, and Brian is sitting there fretting and pacing about and listening to the news every hour. Even at night, he listens. He gets foreign stations on the long wave and listens to what they’re saying about it all. It’s really getting on top of me, Hen.”

  Living in the back of beyond. That was Brian’s choice. Before they moved to the semi-detached farm cottage they had found advertised in their local paper, they had lived for years on the edge of a small town in a prosperous farming area. Brian was
a tractor mechanic who had set up his own business selling and servicing John Deere tractors. This had prospered because of his reliability and competence in tractor matters. “I understand what a tractor is trying to tell me,” he said. “If you listen, a tractor will tell you what the problem is.”

  Shortly after his fifty-seventh birthday, a competing firm, much larger and more aggressive in its sales techniques, had made an offer for Brian’s business. The terms seemed absurdly generous, and at first Brian had imagined that a mistake had been made in the noting down of the offer. But it had not: the details set out in the letter of offer were exactly those that the prospective purchasers intended. Brian accepted and he and Jean decided to move to the country. It was at this point that Brian’s growing anxiety came to the surface.

  “We need to find somewhere really remote,” he said. “It’ll be safer.”

  Jean looked at him in puzzlement. “Safer from what?”

  Brian looked over his shoulder. “From threats,” he said. “Safer from threats of … of all sorts, really. The way this country’s going, soon we’ll all have to be able to take care of ourselves. It would be much safer to get out into the country, really far from everything, and sit it out there.”

  “Sit what out?” asked Jean.

  Brian lowered his voice. “The coming crisis. The disaster.”

  “Are you sure there’s going to be one?” she asked. “Other people don’t seem to be too concerned about things.”

  “Hah!” said Brian. “There you have it. Foolishness. Lack of a plan. Those people will find out all right.”

  They found a remote cottage, one half of which was on the market for very little. Jean did not like it very much: it was several miles from the nearest village, and although it had electricity, there was no telephone line. “We don’t need a telephone,” said Brian. “We don’t need to phone anybody.”

  Behind the cottage was a line of trees – Scots pine, sycamore, and oak. Ravens nested in some of these trees, and could be heard throughout the day squabbling over the sort of territorial issues that birds like to squabble over. In front of the cottage, whin bushes marched off in disorder towards the narrow road that led to the village. In flower, the whin scented the air, while the sky, which was wide and open, seemed to smell of the rich Lanarkshire farming land that stretched out in all directions. That was a smell of dark soil, and cattle, and freshly mown hay.