The Revolving Door of Life

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “Well, well,” said Angus as he saw Bertie. “You’re wearing the kilt, Bertie. That’s a fine thing.”

  Bertie beamed as Angus admired his new kilt. Bending down, he patted Cyril on the head and the dog, famous for his gold tooth, gave him a broad smile of welcome.

  “Is Cyril going for a walk, Mr. Lordie?” asked Bertie.

  “He is indeed, Bertie,” said Angus. “We’re having a bit of an issue about dogs in the Drummond Place Gardens, but I take the view that regulations do not apply to Cyril. He’s a special case in my view.” He paused as Nicola caught up with them. “And good morning to you, Nicola. I was complimenting your grandson on his very fine kilt. And let’s see…” He broke off and looked at Bertie with dismay. “No sporran, Bertie?”

  “They didn’t have one,” explained Bertie.

  Angus frowned. “I think we might be able to do something about that. I still have the sporran I wore as a boy and…well, sporrans in cupboards are of no use to anybody. A sporran on a boy is another matter altogether.”

  Bertie held his breath. He thought he understood, but he hardly dared hope.

  “Nicola?” Angus went on. “Why don’t the two of you join me within? Domenica has gone shopping and so whatever coffee is served will be made by me, although…” He looked at his watch. “A martini, perhaps?”

  52. Bertie’s Sporran

  Angus Lordie led the way into the kitchen of his flat in Scotland Street. He was only just getting used to the fact that what he had always seen as Domenica’s flat was now his as well, and that by the same token she had become the owner of half of his own flat and studio in Drummond Place. The change, though, had not been a difficult one, as the Scotland Street flat was ample enough for both of them to spread out; this was the result of Domenica’s acquisition of the next-door flat and the removal of the wall dividing the two.

  That flat had been the property of Antonia Collie, author of an unpublished work on the lives of the Scottish saints and now a lay member of a community of nuns in Italy. Antonia had recently been in Scotland but had gone back to Italy, leaving behind her friend, the enigmatic nun, Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori di Montagna. Sister Maria-Fiore, whose liking for an aphorism appeared to have a hypnotic effect on many of those who met her, had been something of a social success in Scotland, having been invited to all the major parties, gallery openings, and Holyrood receptions that enlivened the social life of the capital. After Antonia’s return to Italy, the nun had remained in Scotland, and was last heard of staying on a Perthshire estate, where she was successfully holding court. Not everyone was well-disposed to the nun, of course, and various people had expressed views that were distinctly less than charitable. “A cliché in black and white,” one Perthshire hostess had remarked, referring to the black and white habit Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori di Montagna wore. “Rasputina,” said another, adding, “Oh, for another Prince Yusupov!”

  There was enough room to entertain in the drawing room, but Domenica and Angus habitually received visitors in the kitchen, a homely room dominated by a large cooking range and a line of copper-bottomed saucepans hanging against one wall. It was here that Angus read the morning paper while Domenica answered correspondence or perused the various anthropological journals to which she subscribed.

  Angus invited Nicola and Bertie to take a seat around the large pine table while he went into the room where he stored his clothes in the generously proportioned Edwardian wardrobe Domenica had bought for him at a Lyon & Turnbull auction. After a minute or two, he returned with an old cardboard box out of which he extracted a small sporran. Dusting the sporran with the cuff of his shirtsleeve, Angus handed it over to Bertie with a flourish.

  “There, young man,” he said. “A very smart boy’s sporran, circa 1965, previously the property of one Angus Lordie, RSA (rejected), DA (Edinburgh School of Art, with distinction), now in the possession of Master Bertie Pollock. How about that?”

  Bertie took the sporran as one might take a revered religious object. “Is it for me?” he asked, his voice so small and overawed as to be almost inaudible.

  “It is,” said Angus. “And if you look at the plate at the top, Bertie—that silver bit—you’ll see that it has the most beautiful Celtic designs. I think they might be by George Bain himself—he was the greatest of our modern Celtic artists. He did those lovely swirling illustrations you see here and there. Look at that.”

  He reached over to touch the design etched into the silver, tracing one of the whorls with the tip of his finger.

  “I remember one of George Bain’s designs that really moved me,” he said. “It was a picture of a figure of modern Scotland, represented by a boy, being comforted by the encompassing arms of a seated woman. It was so touching.”

  Nicola swallowed. She had been looking at Bertie’s face; at the joy of his expression. “I can imagine,” she said quietly.

  “Your own design there is a bit different, Bertie,” Angus continued. “But it is beautiful nonetheless.”

  While Bertie prepared to put the strap and chain of the sporran round his waist, Angus turned to Nicola. “I mentioned a martini,” he said. “Shall I?”

  “Most kind of you,” said Nicola.

  He went to fetch the drinks, fetching at the same time a glass of Irn Bru for Bertie.

  “Irn Bru is just what you need,” said Angus, handing Bertie the drink. “Slàinte, Bertie!”

  Bertie raised his glass to the Gaelic toast. “Thank you so much, Mr. Lordie,” he said.

  “Not at all, Bertie,” replied Angus. “I’m delighted that my sporran will see the light of day again.” To Nicola, he said, “Do I detect a certain, how shall I put it? A certain lightening of the mood upstairs since…”

  Nicola glanced at Bertie, but he was not paying attention, being absorbed in the investigation of his new sporran. “Yes,” she said quietly. “The mood music is very different.”

  Angus nodded. “Frankly, I’m surprised that a certain young person hasn’t absented himself before this—such is the provocation he’s received from a now enGulfed party.”

  “You mean…” Again Nicola checked to see that Bertie was not listening. “You mean…run away?”

  “Exactly,” said Angus. “I had a friend who ran away, you know. He ran away from the boarding school we were sent to. He was at odds with the whole ethos at the time—the insistence on sports, the Philistinism, the cold showers, the whole lot. He was sixteen. He went to Glasgow and was apprehended there within hours by a policeman who recognised him from his circulated description.”

  “And he was sent back to the same school?”

  “No,” said Angus. “His father consulted a firm of educational consultants that he saw advertised in The Times. They recommended that he be sent to school abroad. His father was quite well off and so he was able to comply with their advice. He wanted his son to learn French, and so he thought their recommendation was spot-on. He was sent to a school in France.”

  “How interesting,” said Nicola.

  “Unfortunately, the educational agency was very badly informed. They were very slack, in fact. They had not done their research properly and the school he was sent to was actually a finishing school for girls!”

  “Oh, my,” exclaimed Nicola “What a mistake!”

  “The school, it transpired, was having a bit of a tough time filling its places, and so they wanted him to stay—in order to get the fees. And he was perfectly happy to comply. He had a whale of a time. The girls were all studying cookery and deportment, but he was allowed to go into the village, drink coffee, and smoke Gauloises. They—the girls—were very pleased to have a boy about the place, and when he wrote home to his father he simply referred to what ‘the other chaps’ were doing—the other chaps being, in fact, all girls. It was no more than a white lie, I feel.

  “He told me it was the best year in his life,” concluded Angus. “He remembers it with such pleasure, he really does.”

  53. The Trap is About to be S
prung

  Pat replaced the telephone receiver on the hook and immediately sank her head in her hands. She felt terrible. She had made the call to her father, inviting him to dinner at her flat, with Anichka, and he had sounded pleased; he had sounded cheerful and trusting as he walked right into her trap. How could she have done it? How could she have deceived her father, of all people, the man who had stood by her all her life, who had supported and encouraged her, who would never—in any circumstances—mislead or betray her? Now she had done precisely that to him.

  But then she thought of the alternative. If she did nothing, then he would marry Anichka, who would make off with as much of his money as she could get her hands on, and he would find himself deserted and considerably poorer. If she were letting him down now, it was as nothing to what Anichka was planning to do.

  “What a nice idea,” he said over the telephone. “Saturday? Yes, we’re free as it happens. And Anichka will be very interested to see your flat.”

  Pat closed her eyes. Yes, Anichka would be very interested to see her flat—and to ask about how much it cost, which is what she always asked about everything.

  “Can we bring anything?” asked her father. “Wine? My cellar’s a bit depleted at the moment, but I could find something no doubt.”

  Pat opened her eyes—wide. Why, she wondered, was his cellar depleted? Her father was a modest drinker and he usually replaced bottles as he used them. Had he been entertaining more than usual, or had Anichka been working her way through them? Or stealing them, perhaps?

  “Sorry to hear that the cupboard’s almost bare,” she said, trying to sound lighthearted. “Old Mother Hubbard and all that…”

  “Oh, there are a couple of bottles,” said her father. “Don’t worry.”

  “How’s it happening?” asked Pat. “Having lots of parties?”

  There was a moment’s hesitation at the other end of the line. “Oh, you know how it is,” said Dr. MacGregor.

  Pat felt her heart pounding with her. “Does Anichka like a glass of wine?” she asked.

  “Now and then,” replied her father.

  She did not pursue the point, but Pat was sure that her suspicions were well-founded. The conversation was concluded and she rang off. Now, more than ever, she was determined to foil this woman, but she was not prepared for the flood of guilt that overcame her. “Be strong,” she whispered to herself. “Just do it.”

  Her next phone call was to Bruce, to tell him that the dinner had been arranged. “I’ll be there, Pat baby,” he said. “What would you like me to wear? Something seductive?” He laughed.

  Pat gritted her teeth. “You’re the one with the experience,” she said. “You’re the professional.”

  For a few moments Bruce was silent. “Are you suggesting I’m a gigolo?”

  “Of course not,” said Pat quickly. “What I meant to say is that you’re the one who knows what turns women on—clothes-wise, I mean.”

  The note of resentment left Bruce’s voice. “You’re right there,” he said. “I think I’m going to wear black. Black is it this year. And a bit of grey. Women are heavily into grey these days, you know. It’s that book they’ve all been reading. You read it yet, Patsy?”

  “No. Definitely not.”

  “Come on,” said Bruce. “You can admit it. You’ve read it, Pat. I know.”

  “I have not read it,” she said, chiselling out the words. “I have not.”

  “Well, I bet this Polish woman will have read it. Totally sure.”

  “She’s Czech.”

  “Same difference. They’re all reading that book. Poles, Czechs, Russians. It’s answering a need that all women have—obviously. They’re not reading Winnie the Pooh, they’re reading the book.”

  “Let’s get back to what you’re going to wear,” said Pat.

  “Okay: black and grey. Jeans and a Jermyn Street shirt—grey. Linen jacket with two buttons in the front, both undone. Friendship bracelet—elephant hair. That’s should do the business for this old Czech chick.”

  Pat winced. “I hope so. But look, Bruce, don’t overdo it. Be subtle.”

  “Have I ever been anything but?

  “Well…”

  “See you,” he said breezily. “Got to go.”

  That conversation took place on a Monday and the dinner party was due to be held the following Saturday. Pat asked Matthew and Elspeth to the dinner as well; this was better than inviting people who would not be parties to the plot.

  “I suppose it means having dinner with Bruce,” said Matthew, “and that is not exactly appealing, but duty calls—so the answer is yes, we’ll come along.”

  Now, with the guest list complete, Pat planned her meal. She would serve borscht as the first course, a vague nod in the direction of Eastern Europe (they did eat borscht, she imagined, or was it an exclusively Russian soup?). That would be followed by salmon steaks, broccoli, Puy lentils and potatoes. The final course—by which time she hoped Bruce’s magic would have had its effect—would be a lemon sorbet made in the ice-cream maker her father had given her for Christmas.

  By six o’clock on Saturday evening she had the borscht and the sorbet prepared, the wine in the fridge, and the table laid for six. She had planned the placement carefully; she would sit at the head of the table, with Bruce on her right and Anichka on the other side of him. Her father would be at the other end of the table, so that if Bruce were to be indiscreet in his flirting he would not see it: it was not part of the plan that Dr. MacGregor should suspect anything at this stage. It was to be on the discovery of the two of them in the Canny Man’s that the scales would fall from his eyes.

  Poor Daddy, she thought; to have scales on your eyes at fifty-eight was extremely unfortunate; how lucky, though, he was to have a daughter who could see those scales and who was prepared to do something about it. That slightly self-congratulatory thought made her feel a great deal better—as slightly self-congratulatory thoughts so often do.

  54. What to Take to a Dinner Party

  Matthew and Elspeth arrived first. They brought with them a box of chocolates (regifted) and two bottles of South Australian Shiraz. This, Matthew said, was exactly the right combination. “There are rules about these things,” he explained to Elspeth. “And these rules are quite clear.”

  “That’s the first I’ve heard of them,” said Elspeth.

  “Well, the fact that one hasn’t heard of a set of rules doesn’t mean they don’t exist,” said Matthew patiently. “Ignorantia iuris neminem excusat, as you well know.”

  “You’re trying to intimidate me with Latin,” said Elspeth.

  Matthew smiled. “Remember what Jean Brodie said of the headmistress, who’d summoned her for four-fifteen, or something like that? ‘She’s trying to intimidate me by the use of quarter-hours.’ What a wonderful thing to say—or write; I think Muriel Spark got Edinburgh better than anybody else. Captured the essential…”

  “Brittleness?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Elspeth sighed. “Back to the issue of offerings for dinner. I can understand one bottle of wine, but why two?”

  Matthew looked serious. “Because this is to help Pat in a bit of a spot—and I’m her employer, after all. However, there may be circumstances in which you wouldn’t take even one bottle of wine. It depends on the hosts, you see.”

  Elspeth clearly found this abstruse. “I’m not with you.”

  “Well, here are the rules,” said Matthew. “Let’s start with students. Students invite other students to a meal in their flat: the guests must take a bottle of wine each—no exceptions. It needn’t be expensive—but it would be socially unacceptable for them to arrive empty-handed.”

  “Even if they’re owed an invitation?”

  Matthew nodded. “Even if.”

  “That seems fair enough.”

  Matthew agreed. “Oh, these rules are very fair. Now let’s say that it’s people—no longer students—but actual people…”

  “A strange way
of putting it.”

  “Well,” continued Matthew. “There is a transition, you know. The student life is very different from the life led by the rest of us. So, people in their first job, say: twenty-something…”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “All right,” said Matthew. “Twenty-six. Going for dinner with other twenty-six-year-olds. The same rule applies, but now the quality will be slightly better. Eight pounds is the current minimum. The important thing is it isn’t just any old bottle that was lying around. Chocolates, though, are optional. However, there are qualifications to this general rule.”

  “Such as?”

  “Where the invitation comes from somebody much older. So let’s say that a young couple…”

  “Aged twenty-six?”

  “Yes, aged twenty-six, are…”

  “Is…couple is singular.” Elspeth paused. “I was a teacher, remember.”

  Matthew smiled. He loved Elspeth for all her attributes, but particularly for having been what she was in life—a teacher of children.

  “All right: a young couple is invited to dinner with the boss of one of them—let’s say hers. So the invitation comes in. Dinner in Nile Grove—deep Morningside. Let’s say the boss is a partner in a legal firm—something like that. They don’t have to take a bottle of wine. In fact, they shouldn’t—it would embarrass the host because he’s not going to serve what they bring. He’ll have made his own choice. And the rule then is: no wine, but flowers.”

  “Not chocolates?”

  “No, because chocolates fall into the category of presents that people may not want. Think of the chocolates you received when you were a teacher. Did you ever think Oh, good! Chocolates! Did you ever eat them?”

  “No. But then I taught at the Steiner School. I loved it, but I didn’t get chocolates. I was given organic carrots sometimes, or soap from Mull—not chocolates.”