The Revolving Door of Life

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Matthew’s response was mild. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Most women work these days, don’t they? My accountant’s a woman. My lawyer’s a woman. My hairdresser is a woman. My…”

  Bruce interrupted him. “All of the things you mentioned are women’s work,” he said. “Soppy stuff. I’m talking about real work.”

  Matthew’s eyes widened. “Soppy stuff? Are you serious?”

  “Never more serious,” said Bruce. “Girly stuff. Same difference. I’m talking about jobs that require a spot of the old testosterone. Flying a plane, for instance…”

  Matthew remembered something he had read about women pilots. “But there are plenty of female pilots,” he said. “I was reading the other day that they’re actually safer, because they take fewer risks.”

  “Lies,” said Bruce immediately. He laughed, as if he had just remembered something. “Imagine what they’d be like at parking planes? Or reversing them?”

  Matthew looked at the floor. He could not look at Bruce directly—at the en brosse haircut with its clove-scented gel and the opinions that seemed to suit that haircut so very well. “You shouldn’t say things like that,” he muttered.

  Bruce stared at him. “Shouldn’t speak the truth? Is that what you’re saying to me, Matteo? More PC speech control? Is that it?”

  Matthew decided to let the matter slip. “You can say what you like,” he said.

  “Oh thank you!” said Bruce sarcastically. “Thanks for the permission.” He paused. “You’re like the rest of them, Matthew. You’ve been suppressed. You’ve let women run all over you, telling you what to do, what you can and cannot think. You may not have had the old two snips treatment but you’re well and truly neutered, you know.”

  Matthew shook his head. “Let’s move on,” he said.

  “You’re a eunuch now,” said Bruce. “God, it’s depressing…Women stick their noses into everything we say or do.”

  Matthew saw his chance. “I was going to tell you about one of these women,” he said.

  41. The Ethics of Temptation

  Matthew took a deep breath. He could not remember when he had last been quite this tense. He had always felt anxious when faced with examinations, and at the beginning of his university finals he had almost passed out at the entrance to the examination hall. Then, much more recently, he had felt full of trepidation immediately before Angus Lordie’s wedding, when he had acted as best man and had tried to make up for all of his friend’s oversights. And of course he had felt shell-shocked when Elspeth had given birth to triplets…but on all of these occasions his anxiety had had nothing to do with the fact that he was actually doing something wrong…and now he was.

  What he was about to do was wrong because it involved deception, even if his motive was to help Pat and her father. He had agreed to approach Bruce with a view to proving that Dr. MacGregor’s Czech fiancée was after his money. It was, then, an errand of mercy of a sort—but how many such errands were accompanied by something quite as…He searched for an adjective…quite as low as this?

  He had tried to rationalise. Why, he asked himself, should people stand by when people showed themselves to be on the point of making a really bad decision? If you were walking along a path and you saw somebody on the point of taking a wrong turning—about to turn off onto a path that you knew went over a cliff—would you not be justified in doing something to prevent him, even if it involved grabbing him or bringing him down with a rugby tackle? The end justified the means, did it not? Or was the end/means point raised here by those who wanted to show that the end never justified the means? That possibility unsettled him.

  The answer, he decided, lay in the relationship between ends and means, in the balance of evils. If you had to kill one person to save fifty, would you do it? A suicide bomber is walking down the street intent on reaching a group of innocent people at the other end. You have the suicide bomber in the sights of your high-powered rifle; all you need to do is to pull the trigger and the mortal danger facing the fifty is averted. Would I pull the trigger, Matthew asked himself. Of course I would; who wouldn’t?

  There were at least some who would say no, who would argue that the prohibition against taking life was absolute, that it would never be right to do something intrinsically wrong simply to prevent another doing something disastrous. That was the position of the pacifist, surely, and there were plenty of people who held those views, and held them strongly and sincerely. But would the pacifist witnessing the marching of innocent people into an execution pit not use force to overcome the guards and save the victims before the machine guns opened up? Perhaps not—but how could anybody with the slightest degree of moral imagination fail to be appalled by that failure?

  He had thought this through and then felt vaguely ashamed of himself for even bringing up that particular analogy. This was not a matter of life and death—this was simply a matter of exploitation and dishonesty—if indeed it was that. Pat said that Anichka was mercenary, but was there any actual proof?

  He thought of entrapment. Perhaps it was better to think of this as an attempt to recruit an agent provocateur. An agent provocateur offered people the chance to do something forbidden or illegal and then, when somebody did it, he or she was arrested. The police used to do this in the days in which they spent their time trapping people into making sexual advances and then arresting them for it. It was a tawdry old trick. Or they offered them illegal drugs and then, when the offer was accepted, pounced.

  Was there anything wrong in that? Matthew was sure that it was wrong to persuade people to do something they would not otherwise have done, but what if you were quite willing to do something and were just waiting for an opportunity—which then materialised? All that the agent provocateur was doing in such circumstances was revealing that you were, indeed, the sort of person who would buy drugs if given the chance, or who would deal in illegal weapons if somebody claimed to have a consignment, or would engage in any other illegal pleasures if somebody were kind enough to offer you them.

  If Anichka fell for Bruce, then that showed that she was not prepared to be faithful to Dr. MacGregor. It was entrapment, yes, but Bruce could be told not to persuade her actively but simply to present an opportunity. There was a big moral distinction there, thought Matthew.

  “Right,” said Bruce. “What’s this about a woman? Have you been misbehaving, Matsworth? Tut, tut—and you a father of three—so far, and presumably more in due course.”

  Matthew blushed. He did not like Bruce. He had never liked him. He had no idea why he should continue to consider him a friend.

  “Not me,” he said. “I’m married.”

  “Hah!” said Bruce. “So was Casanova.”

  “I’m telling you—it’s not about me. It’s about a woman who’s planning to rip off Pat’s father.”

  Bruce put down his glass of beer. “Pat MacGregor?”

  “Yes.”

  Bruce looked serious. “Her old man was quite nice. I liked him. A shrink, isn’t he? Up at the loony bin?”

  “Yes,” said Matthew. “Except that’s not what they call it these days.”

  Bruce made a dismissive gesture. “Okay, funny farm then. Anyway, who’s this broad and what’s her angle?”

  Matthew wanted to laugh at the Runyonesque expression. Who’s this broad…“She’s a Czech lady.”

  “From Czechoslovakia?”

  “That doesn’t exist any more. You’ve got two countries…”

  Bruce brushed him aside. “Yeah, yeah. Your actual Czech whatever and your actual Slovenia.”

  “Slovakia.”

  “Slovenia, Slovakia, Slobonia…what’s the difference? Anyway, who is she?”

  “She’s called Anichka and she’s engaged to Pat’s father.”

  Bruce whistled. “There’s life in him yet. I really like it when oldies get hitched. Life doesn’t stop at forty, it seems. There are pills that can keep you going.”

  Matthew bit his tongue. Hateful creep, he thought. G
hastly Bruce. You don’t deserve to have two eyebrows.

  42. The Canny Man’s Plan

  Bruce stared at Matthew. Very slowly, he started to smile. The smile was a smug one.

  “I think I know what you’re going to ask me,” he said. “Am I right, or am I right?”

  Matthew’s irritation at Bruce’s turn of phrase was mollified by the sudden realisation that he might not have to spell out what he and Pat wanted of him. “You’re probably right,” he replied.

  Bruce sat back in his chair. “So,” he said, “you want me to…how shall I put it? You want me to distract this woman.”

  Distract, thought Matthew. Yes, that was one way of putting it.

  Bruce looked triumphant. “You’re pretty transparent, Matt, you know. I could see what you had on your mind, nae bother.” His smile became an enthusiastic grin. “So you want me to meet this chick. She takes one look at me and goes weak at the knees. MacGregor père sees what’s going on and puts two and two together. Gives her her papers. Problem solved.” He paused. “That’s what you had in mind, right?”

  Matthew was surprised by his own sense of relief. For some reason it seemed to make a major difference that Bruce should articulate the plot for himself; it was as if it were his own idea, which made a moral difference, didn’t it? If somebody does something without its being actually suggested, then does the person who would have suggested it, had he had the opportunity, bear any responsibility for what happens? Matthew thought not; or, if there were some responsibility, then it would be considerably less than the responsibility that flowed from a suggestion actually made.

  “Not a bad idea,” said Matthew, as if it were Bruce who had come up with the scheme.

  The disingenuousness was blatant, and most people would have disclaimed credit for the plan, attributing it, quite rightly, to those who first thought of it—Pat and Matthew. But Matthew knew that Bruce would never resist basking in any credit on offer.

  “Thanks, Matt.” He frowned, adding, after some hesitation, “What’s she like?”

  “I haven’t actually met her,” said Matthew. “But I gather she’s attractive enough. She’s much younger than Dr. MacGregor.”

  Bruce seemed reassured. “Not that it matters to me, of course. Sense of duty, you see. Anything for the cause.”

  “Of course,” said Matthew. “It’s really good of you, Bruce.”

  Bruce made an airy gesture. “No sweat,” he said, and then added, “Where and when?”

  Matthew and Pat had already discussed this. Now he explained to Bruce that Pat would have a dinner party in her flat and would ask her father and Anichka. Bruce would be invited, along with one or two others, and Pat would make sure to seat Anichka next to him at the table. “Thereafter, it’s up to you. Maybe you could arrange to meet her in a bar somewhere. Then, once you’ve set up the date and she’s accepted…”

  “…Which is likely,” interjected Bruce.

  Matthew tried to conceal his feelings. What was it like, he wondered, to be so utterly and completely pleased with yourself, to be so sure that others would like you as much as you liked yourself? It was a gift possessed by infants, puppies, and young men like Bruce.

  “You’ve set up the date,” Matthew continued. “You tell Pat where and when…”

  “The Canny Man’s,” interrupted Bruce. “They have this dining section at the back.”

  “All right. You book the table for a certain time and you let Pat know. She asks her dad to a film at the Dominion. Then she suggests getting a bite to eat afterwards. Carefully timed, of course.”

  Bruce was enjoying himself. “They come in and find that what’s-her-name…”

  “Anichka.”

  “All right, they see Anichka sitting with me looking at me with mute adoration…”

  Matthew could not stop himself from bursting out laughing. There was no end, it seemed, to Bruce’s self-regard.

  Bruce looked puzzled. “I said something funny?”

  Matthew adopted a straight face. “No, I was just thinking of their reaction—that’s all.”

  “Oh yes,” said Bruce. “She sort of jumps back—you know, like this—and acts all innocent. But of course Pat’s old man, being a shrink, is too switched-on to be fooled.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So he does the mathematics and he realises that this Annetta…”

  “Anichka.”

  “…that this Anichka is bad news. End of engagement.”

  Matthew nodded.

  Bruce rubbed his hands. “Very funny. Serves her right.”

  It occurred to Matthew then that Bruce actually did not like women. He was a misogynist—of course he was! He should have seen it before, but now he understood perfectly. Like all great lady-killers, he did not like women. And it was not that he liked men—not in that way: his sexual tastes were as they were advertised to be, but they were not accompanied by any feeling for women as people.

  Now Bruce looked thoughtful. “One thing,” he said. “What’s in it for me?”

  Matthew was momentarily at a loss for a response. But then something within him rebelled. “Why do you even ask that?” he snapped. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that you might do this just to help Pat—and Dr. MacGregor too? Isn’t that enough?”

  Bruce flinched. “Okay, okay, keep your hair on, Matthieu! I was just asking. We can’t all be St. Francis.”

  Matthew swallowed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bite your head off. It’s just that Pat’s worried sick about this.”

  Bruce smiled. “You care for her, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do. She’s a nice girl.”

  Bruce continued to smile. “Yes, she is. I wish she’d be nice to me.” He paused. “I mean, nice in a nice sort of way.”

  Matthew closed his eyes. He could not believe that Bruce would be expecting…

  Bruce laughed. “Only joking. No, I’m happy to be able to help her,” Bruce continued, “for nothing. Pro bono.”

  “Yes,” said Matthew. “Pro bono, just as you say.”

  “Virtue is its own reward, isn’t it, Mathsbury?”

  Matthew reached for his glass of beer and took a sip. “What exactly are you doing these days, Bruce? I’ve lost track, I’m afraid.”

  Bruce pointed to the ceiling. “My career’s taking off big time,” he said.

  “Doing what?”

  “I’ve bought a wine bar.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. There’s this guy I was at school with—at Morrison’s. His uncle owned a wine bar in Dundee and one in Edinburgh. The uncle wanted to retire and he said he’d sell the Edinburgh one to his nephew. He had another buyer for the Dundee place.”

  “So your friend bought it?”

  “He had no cash and that’s where I came in. I had a bit of dosh to invest, and so I bought most of it. I own eighty percent and he has twenty. We split the profits fifty-fifty, but he has to do all the work.”

  “Very satisfactory,” said Matthew. “For you, that is.”

  “Too true,” said Bruce. “But then that’s the way things are, isn’t it? You have to look after numero uno, in this case moi.”

  Matthew did not answer. What’s the point? he asked himself. And the answer, of course, was: none. But then he turned to Bruce and said, “What’s this place called?”

  “Bruce’s,” said Bruce. “Natch.”

  43. Tiny Slivers of Favour

  The invitation was addressed to both Angus and Domenica. The Lord Provost requests the pleasure of your company at a reception to mark the appointment of this year’s Artist in Residence, at the City Chambers, the High Street, Edinburgh.

  Domenica held it up to the light, and smiled. “Seems genuine enough.”

  “But I don’t know him,” said Angus. “Do you?”

  She did, but not particularly well. “He’s good news—I rather approve of him.” She looked thoughtful. “We’ve been lucky with civic leaders. The last two—the woman and the tall man—both did a good job.
And now the current one is good as well. We’ve been fortunate.” She paused. “Look at London. Look at some of their local politicians.”

  “The one with the hair? Or the one who kept newts?”

  “I wasn’t necessarily thinking of them. They’re all right. I was thinking of some of the rotten boroughs.”

  “Local politics is not about point-scoring against the other side,” said Angus. “That’s why it’s better than Westminster politics.”

  Domenica raised an eyebrow. “Or Holyrood?”

  “Oh, I don’t know…”

  She frowned. “A country that ignores the advice of its own judges should ask itself some searching questions…We Scots love to boast about how marvellous we are but we don’t sit down and look at ourselves critically. We think we do, but we don’t. We prefer, you see, the security of our preconceptions, our prejudices.”

  “If we have problems with the Scottish Parliament,” said Angus, “I think it’s something to do with the way Holyrood’s debating chamber is laid out. It’s a sort of semicircle, isn’t it? That’s not ideal.”

  Domenica looked surprised. “You’re not suggesting that the Westminster layout is better? Two sides facing each other and shouting and waving order-papers in each other’s face. Surely not.”

  “Well, you might just be surprised,” said Angus. “It’s fashionable to say that system is dysfunctional, but are the alternatives any better? Is our standard of debate higher? Is our committee system more effective?”

  He waited for an answer that was not forthcoming. “Whatever view one takes on that,” he continued, “people thought it would be helpful to have a different system.”

  “Really? I don’t see why.”

  “Because people can’t relate to one another if they are sitting in a line. They just can’t. And the arrangement there consists of rows of people, shoulder to shoulder—to all intents and purposes.”

  She waited for this to continue. Angus was unpredictable in his views, and this was not one she had heard before.

  Angus sucked air through his teeth. It was a habit of his, and Domenica was going to speak to him about it—but not just yet. Some habits are best left uncommented upon until at least one’s fifth wedding anniversary; they had been married for barely a year. The sucking of air through the teeth, it appeared, was an aid to deliberation.