The Revolving Door of Life

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Matthew looked unconvinced. “Really? I thought that was exactly what society was becoming—more androgynous.”

  He looked to Angus for support, but Angus was struggling with the concept of androgyny.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore whether we are male or female,” Matthew continued, wondering, as he spoke, whether he really believed what he was saying. We new men, he thought, have been taught what to say. “We’ve escaped the constraints of imposed gender roles. We can just be…people, I suppose. People rather than male people or female people.” If they could hear me at the rugby club, thought Matthew.

  “Except we aren’t,” said Domenica. “Oh, we may be get-ting rid of irrelevant distinctions—and entirely unjust and indefensible distinctions—such as the idea that a woman can’t be a firefighter or a man can’t be a nurse, but that doesn’t change certain instincts. Those are a matter of genes—of chromosomes. And it’s not something we can wish out of existence just because we believe—quite rightly—in equality.”

  “You’re at risk of sounding old-fashioned,” said Angus.

  Domenica defended herself. “Is it old-fashioned to observe differences in the way people behave?”

  “Possibly,” said Matthew.

  “Well then, I don’t care,” said Domenica. “I happen to believe there is a difference between male conversation and female conversation.”

  “In what respect?” asked Matthew.

  Domenica thought for a moment. “Women’s conversation is more subjective. Women talk about feelings and reactions. Men may talk about these things, but they tend not to—at least when talking to other men. They may talk to women friends about their feelings, but they don’t to other men. That’s why so many men are lonely. That’s why so many men suffer to such a degree: they can’t talk to anybody about how they feel.”

  Matthew suggested that this was exactly what was changing. “Men can do that now,” he said. “Men are now allowed to talk about their feelings—because they don’t have to conform to the straitjacket of masculine identity. Men can just be people, in the same way that women can be people.” He paused. “Men can cry now. They used not to be able to cry—now they can.”

  “Perhaps,” said Domenica. “But I was just thinking: can you tell whether something is written by a man or a woman? If you read it and don’t know the name of the author: can you tell?”

  “Always,” said Angus.

  “Never,” said Matthew.

  Domenica looked from one to the other. “An interesting difference of opinion,” she said.

  “Well, can you?” asked Matthew.

  “Invariably,” replied Domenica. “Look at Jane Austen. How could that voice be a man’s?”

  “That’s a compromised example,” said Matthew. “We know that it’s Austen because it sounds like her. And we know she was a woman.”

  “And Hemingway?” asked Angus. “Could anybody ever mistake a passage of Hemingway for something written by a woman?”

  “Hemingway is another dubious case,” said Matthew. “Hemingway was a writer who wanted to sound like a particular sort of man. Most men don’t think—or speak—like Hemingway. Being Hemingway must have been tremendously exhausting.”

  Angus was reminded of something. “Have you seen that photograph of Hemingway when he was a small boy? The one where he’s dressed in a skirt?”

  Matthew raised an eyebrow. “Hemingway in a skirt?”

  “Yes,” said Angus, smiling. “Little boys used to be dressed in skirts until they reached a certain age. Look at Dutch seventeenth-century portraits of little boys. They all wear skirts.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t like it,” mused Matthew.

  “I bet he didn’t,” said Angus. “That probably explains everything. The hunting. The big game fishing. The whisky. It was probably all an attempt to get over the knowledge that he once wore a skirt.”

  “How sad,” said Matthew. “Whereas all the time he was interested in interior decoration?”

  Domenica laughed. “And you accuse me of stereotyping,” she said.

  36. Clothing Speaks

  “I’m not convinced,” said Matthew.

  “Not convinced of what?” asked Angus.

  “Of the ability of people to judge whether something is written by a man or a woman. I just don’t see how you do it. The language is the same, surely.”

  Domenica had views on that. “I seem to recollect reading something somewhere,” she said. “Yes, it was an essay by Ved Mehta. He said that it was more difficult to tell now whether a writer was male or female because language itself has become so bland. Style has gone out of the window; all that matters now is that meaning is conveyed in as uncluttered a way as possible.”

  “Interesting,” said Matthew. “But I’m not sure whether I would look at style. I’d look at content—if I were going to find any difference, I imagine I’d find it there.”

  “Clothing?” said Angus. “I’ve found that male authors don’t mention what their characters are wearing. Female authors always describe clothing.”

  “Are you sure about that?” asked Matthew. “Or is that just another of these stereotypes?”

  Angus smiled. “I’m trying to think whether Hemingway describes people’s clothing—since we seem to be taking him as the quintessentially male author.”

  “I can’t recall,” said Matthew. “I’ve read a little Hemingway, but not very much. I can’t take the intensity of it. He’s like D. H. Lawrence in that sense—too intense.”

  “Well, I do remember something,” said Angus. “I remember his description of Francis Macomber. He is described as wearing new safari clothing—and the clothing has a great deal of work to do, as I recall.”

  Matthew raised an eyebrow. “How can clothing have work to do?”

  “It says something about character. Put a character in fancy clothing and you have a popinjay personality. Vain. Selfish, perhaps. Put him in modest, simple clothing and you have a modest, simple personality. It’s that straightforward.”

  “So this new safari clothing was symbolic?”

  Angus nodded. “The new safari clothing says: no substance. What do the Texans say? All hat, no cattle.”

  “I love that,” said Domenica. “The converse, I imagine, must be all cattle, no hat. When would one use that, I wonder?”

  “When you were talking about somebody who’s a bit too unrefined,” suggested Matthew. “You might say all cattle, no hat of somebody who has the substance all right, but is pretty unsophisticated.”

  “This man with the new safari clothing,” said Domenica. “What sort of character was he?”

  “He ran away from a lion,” said Angus. “That gave the game away—that, and his new safari clothing.”

  “I think it completely sensible to run away from lions,” said Domenica. “If I encountered a lion, I should certainly run away.”

  Matthew laughed. “That would be a bad mistake, as it happens, Domenica. Lions are programmed—hardwired, so to speak—to chase after anything that runs away from them. No lion could forebear to chase you if you ran away. Look at the domestic cat—put something at the end of a piece of wool and drag it along in front of the cat—it chases it.”

  “I shall remember that, Matthew,” said Domenica.

  Matthew returned to authorship. “If people are able to detect gender, then how do authors get away with it when they claim to be…”

  “Men…” prompted Angus.

  “…Or women,” said Matthew. “And they’re not.” He paused. “If it’s possible to tell whether you’re reading a man or woman, then how do these people get away with it—sometimes indefinitely—or until somebody goes and looks up a birth certificate or something of the sort.”

  “That happens?” asked Angus. “I knew that it did in the past—when women had to claim to be men just in order to get published. But now?”

  “It still goes on,” said Matthew. “Apparently most men are reluctant to read books by women. There’s been
market research that establishes that. Whereas women…”

  “Are more open-minded?” suggested Domenica.

  “Yes. Apparently women don’t mind.”

  “There you are,” said Domenica. “One of the differences I was talking about.”

  “I find it odd,” said Angus. “I wouldn’t care at all whether I was reading a book by a man or a woman.”

  “But lots of men do,” said Matthew. “I saw something in the papers recently about an author who had a very wide readership of her male/male romances. She claimed to be a man, but she wasn’t. She was a woman. She just used her initials and her surname. There was a major row.”

  “Assumption of voice,” said Domenica. “Some people think you can only write about certain things if you’re a member of the world you’re writing about.”

  “It must be difficult to sustain that,” mused Angus. “Shakespeare wasn’t Danish, and yet he wrote Hamlet.”

  “Nor was he Scottish, and yet he wrote Macbeth,” Domenica pointed out. “Of course, some contend there was a very anti-Scottish element in Macbeth. Had he written it today, Shakespeare would have been subjected to pretty strong abuse on the social media. People wouldn’t have paid any attention to how well both Duncan and Malcolm came out of it.”

  “Our national shame,” said Matthew. “Our open sore: the abusing and threatening of others.”

  “A London dramatist,” said Angus, with a smile.

  They sat in silence for a moment, and then Matthew said, “I have to talk to you about something. It’s been preying on my mind.”

  Angus exchanged a glance with Domenica. Angus had told her that he felt Matthew was worried about something. Now, it seemed, it was about to be disclosed. Not a marriage problem, thought Angus; please may it not be a marriage problem.

  It was as if Matthew had anticipated the question. “It’s an artistic issue.”

  Angus heaved a sigh of relief. “Tell all,” he said. “Is it a question of attribution?”

  “No,” said Matthew. “I think not. One of the paintings in question has been given very firmly to its painter, who just happens to be Vuillard.”

  Angus’s eyes widened.

  “I don’t know about the others,” said Matthew. “I’m at present trusting my own judgement. But the point is not that at all. The point is: do I own them?”

  “If you bought them, you own them,” said Angus. He paused. “They weren’t looted, were they? There have been a lot of paintings coming onto the market that are being restituted to the heirs of owners who had them looted by the Nazis.”

  “Not that,” said Matthew. “No, I found them in a secret room.”

  “How remarkable,” said Domenica. “There are so few people who have secret rooms these days.”

  “That’s what they may think,” said Angus, with a smile. “By their very nature, there are more secret rooms than we might suspect.”

  37. Problems of Ownership

  Angus and Domenica listened intently as Matthew told them about the discovery of the paintings. When he finished, Domenica sat back, stared at Matthew as if in disbelief, and said, “Well, I’m astounded. That just doesn’t happen anymore.”

  “Oh, but it does,” said Angus. “It happens far more often than you’d imagine. There was that Caravaggio discovered in Dublin in a Jesuit parlour. And the Michelangelo found behind a sofa in Buffalo.”

  “A sofa!” exclaimed Domenica. “Shades of Lady Bracknell…”

  “Those are the spectacular cases,” Matthew went on, “but there are lots of more modest discoveries. For instance, paintings that have been attributed to the wrong artist and are then found to be by somebody far more significant.”

  “So finding a Vuillard in a hidden room is not unusual?” asked Angus.

  “Unusual, but not impossible,” replied Matthew. “The question, though, is this: the paintings in question were in a concealed room in a house I bought. Are they mine?”

  Angus thought it depended on whether Matthew had bought the house and its contents. “Did you buy the furniture? The bits and pieces? The curtains?”

  “Some things were specifically mentioned,” said Matthew. “We bought those.”

  “And nothing else?” probed Angus.

  Matthew frowned. “That’s the problem. The Duke apologised for leaving a few items of furniture in various rooms. He said: ‘Please help yourself to anything we’ve left behind. If you can’t use it, Oxfam it.’ Those were his words.”

  Angus reached a quick decision. “That’s it, then: if he said that you could have whatever was left behind, then it’s yours.” He looked to Domenica for support. “Wouldn’t you agree, Domenica?”

  Domenica was not so sure. “Isn’t it a question of intention? Isn’t the test of whether somebody gives you something—or sells it to you, for that matter—whether they intend that ownership should pass?” She paused. “And in this case surely he couldn’t intend to pass ownership of something that he didn’t know was there.”

  Matthew saw a flaw in that. “But then how can you own something if you don’t know it exists?”

  “Quite easily,” said Angus. “If Domenica gives me a present to pass on to you—it being your birthday, shall we say—and I set out to deliver it to you, then, until I actually hand it over, you don’t know that you own whatever it is I have. Yet you do.”

  “Do I?” asked Matthew. “Or do I have a right to take ownership of it sometime in the future?”

  They were silent as they contemplated this refinement.

  “I think you own it,” said Domenica. “But are we talking about the law here, or is it morality?”

  “So,” said Matthew, “you’re going to ask whether the Duke has a moral right to the pictures?”

  “Yes, actually I was,” said Domenica. “You may have a moral right to something you don’t know you have a moral right to—if I make myself sufficiently clear.” She looked at Matthew. “I know that you’re scrupulously honest, Matthew, and the last thing you would wish to do would be to deprive the Duke of something that would be his, if he just knew about it.”

  Matthew looked at the ground. “I find these things very complex,” he said. “But I feel bad about holding on to these pictures. They were his, in my view—it’s just that he didn’t know they were his. But that doesn’t make them any the less his.”

  “No,” said Domenica. “I think that’s right.”

  Angus thought of an objection. “But were they his?”

  Matthew frowned. “What do you mean? If he owned the house—which he did—then he owned the things it contained.”

  “No,” said Angus. “That’s simply not true. The fact that you own the container doesn’t mean you own the contents. Waverley Station doesn’t own the things you leave in the left luggage lockers.”

  “Are there left luggage lockers in Waverley Station?” asked Domenica. “In these days of suspicion, do left luggage lockers still exist?”

  “I don’t know,” said Matthew. “I can’t remember when I put anything in a left luggage locker.”

  “I can,” said Angus. “I visited the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and they have left luggage lockers. I had bought a rather bulky book on Piero di Cosimo in the bookshop there and I didn’t want to cart it round the museum, so I put it in one of their lockers and…” He became silent.

  “And?” prompted Angus.

  Angus looked at Domenica—a look of sheepishness. “Did I remember to pick it up when we left? Do you remember whether…” He faltered. “I didn’t, you know. I didn’t collect it. It’ll still be there.”

  “How long ago was this?” asked Matthew.

  “Four months ago, I think. I was in Oxford to see a friend. He invited me to a feast at All Souls.”

  “I’m surprised they still call them feasts,” said Domenica. “I would have thought it more tactful to call them light suppers, or snacks, perhaps.”

  “Your book won’t be there,” said Matthew. “Sorry, Angus, but they’ll clear
out unopened lockers at the end of the day.”

  “So what will have happened to it?” Angus asked miserably. “It cost thirty-five pounds, as I recall. It had wonderful plates—di Cosimo’s gorgeous work. Beautiful. You know that one of the man in the landscape with the dogs? You know that one?”

  “It will have been put in their lost property department…”

  Angus brightened. “Good, well…”

  “…and then sold,” continued Matthew. “Still, it could have been worse. You could have put an actual di Cosimo in the locker.”

  “The point about all this,” interrupted Domenica, “is what?”

  Angus was emphatic. “The point is that you just don’t know whether the Duke owned those paintings. They could have belonged to the person who owned the house before he had it.”

  “They’d had the house for a long time,” Matthew pointed out.

  “Even so, his father, or whoever,” Angus went on, “could merely have been looking after them for somebody else. Somebody may have hidden them there, for all we know, because they were stolen.”

  “In which case they belong to the original owners—or their heirs,” said Domenica. “You don’t lose your right to things that are stolen from you.”

  “But what about acquirers in good faith?” asked Angus.

  Domenica ignored the question. She had to think again about the di Cosimo book. What if Angus had simply lost it—left it on the train from Oxford to Edinburgh—a train journey so slow and tedious that one might easily forget what one had on one, or in an extreme case, where one was going. “Lost property,” she said. “Who owns books about di Cosimo that are simply lost? Lost for a long time? So long that nobody knows who owns them?”

  “Ultimately, the Queen,” said Matthew. “Or at least I think she does. If something belongs to nobody else, she gets it. There’s somebody called the Queen’s and Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer who can claim things that belong to nobody.”

  “All those umbrellas,” mused Domenica. “Thousands and thousands of them. And the Crown owns them all.”

  Matthew looked irritated. “I think I need to speak to him,” he said. “In fact, I’m going to go and tell him.”