Bruce rolled his eyes. “You sure?”
“Yes, I’m very sure. I think I’m wrong about…” She lowered her voice still further even though there was no danger of her being overheard: Elspeth and Anichka were at the opposite end of the room, having now been joined by Dr. MacGregor. They seemed immersed in their own conversation and would not be able to pick up what Pat was saying. She completed her sentence. “I’m wrong about her.”
Bruce made a gesture of resignation. “Oh well,” he said. “Her loss.”
Matthew gave him a withering look, but it went unnoticed.
“I’ll change the seating arrangements,” said Pat.
Bruce held up a hand. “No, don’t do that. Let me sit next to her—as per plan. I give you my word I won’t switch on the magnets.”
“Why do you want to sit next to her?”
“Interest,” said Bruce.
“You promise you won’t try it on?”
Bruce gave her a broad smile. “Do I look like the sort of man who would try it on? Is that what you think of me?”
Pat ignored his question. “I think we should start the meal,” she said loudly, to the entire room. And then to Matthew, “Will you help me bring stuff through?”
Matthew agreed, and when they were both in the kitchen, Pat said to him, “How can you tolerate it, Matthew? How can you put up with him?”
“He’s largely harmless,” said Matthew. “He’s just being Bruce.”
Pat shook her head. “How can you say that? It reminds me of what a prominent politician said of one of his colleagues who had just done something completely inappropriate. He said, ‘Fred’s just being Fred.’ I thought: what a thing to say!”
A few minutes later, seated at the table, with their main course on their plates before them, Pat was able to relax for the first time that evening. She felt immense relief that she had been able to call off her plan—she had been very much weighed down by the subterfuge she had embarked upon, and that weight was now gone. Of course, it meant that she still had to contend with Anichka, but if the Czech woman made him happy, and if she was only the way she was because of several hundred years of European history, then Pat could tolerate her.
The meal began. Pat was seated next to her father, who seemed anxious to move to uncontroversial topics. That suited her too, and when he raised the topic of a gallery exhibition he had recently been to, she responded enthusiastically.
“Cowie,” he said. “James Cowie. He was a wonderful draftsman.”
Pat agreed. “And that portrait of the four friends in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art—I love that picture. I’ve sometimes thought I could write a book about it.”
“Could one write a whole book about one picture?” asked Dr. MacGregor.
“Oh yes. I’ve got a book about Hopper’s Nighthawks—you know that painting of the people at the bar of the diner? And then there’s a book all about Poussin’s picture of the man killed by the snake. That’s all it’s about—that one picture.”
Dr. MacGregor shook his head. “Poussin leaves me cold, I’m afraid. I find him bloodless. I know that plenty of people…”
He did not finish, and Pat who had been looking towards the other end of the table, now turned to look at her father. He, in turn, was looking across the table to where Anichka was sitting next to Bruce. The two of them were talking, and Pat noticed that Anichka was leaning sideways in her chair, gazing at Bruce. And then, as Bruce emphasised some point, her hand touched his forearm and remained there. There was no mistaking it; any witness of the scene who failed to diagnose fascination might well be accused of being chronically unobservant.
Pat felt dismay overwhelm her. Bruce had promised to refrain from flirting, but his resolution was irrelevant now. Flirting was in full sway, and there was no doubt about who was flirting with whom: Anichka had seized the initiative.
Pat saw that her father had noticed this. She glanced away, and then looked at him again. He had lowered his eyes. He saw, she thought.
She was about to say something to him, to make light of what was so clearly happening, but he spoke before she did.
“You know, darling, I’m not feeling terribly well. Would you mind if I just slipped out and went home? Would you mind terribly?”
“But Daddy…”
He had already risen to his feet. He did not say anything to anybody else; indeed Anichka, busy with Bruce, did not even see him go.
58. A Meeting with Marchmont
The Lord Provost’s party in the City Chambers was in full swing when Angus Lordie and Domenica Macdonald met the Duke of Johannesburg. The Duke was wearing a lightweight linen suit, a red neckerchief, and a pair of brown suede brogues. He had reminded Angus of their previous meeting, which was at a whisky nosing conducted by the Duke himself, an authority on the subject and author, under a nom de plume or, as he put it, a nom de malt, of several books on the whiskies of Scotland.
Angus had forgotten the occasion but, prompted by the Duke, now remembered it. “We had some very peaty island malts, as I recall,” he said. “You used some colourful terms to describe them.”
The Duke laughed. “Our whisky-nosing terminology is much less pretentious than our dear colleagues in the wine business,” he said. “They’re always going on about things being very agreeable and flinty and so on. They actually don’t have all that many terms to use, anyway. Once you’ve said something tastes of black currant, you’ve said it all.”
“I think you described one of the whiskies as tasting of diesel oil,” said Angus. “And another reminded you of the leathery smell of an old Rover car’s interior.”
“Very probably,” said the Duke. “We call a spade a spade in the whisky business.” He took a sip of his host’s wine, and made a face. Then he leaned forward to whisper a confidence to Angus. “Would you fancy a pukka drink? I mean an actual dram…?”
Angus smiled. “Is there any? You never see whisky on these occasions?”
The Duke patted the pocket of his jacket. “I have a hip flask to hand,” he said. “Never go anywhere without it. Be prepared! As Baden Powell used to say to the boys. Purely for emergency use, you understand, but I think this counts as an emergency.”
He turned to Domenica. “Mrs. Lordie? Would you care for a dram too?”
Domenica declined. She was not a whisky drinker. “You go ahead,” she said to Angus.
The Duke fished a small silver hip-flask out of his pocket, along with two small silver beakers engraved with a coat of arms. He poured a dram into each, replaced the hip-flask, and raised his beaker in toast. “Slàinte!” Angus reciprocated.
“This is actually rather a special whisky,” said the Duke. “They asked me to write some tasting notes for them. What do you think of it?”
Angus took a sip of the whisky. “Peppery?” he said.
The Duke nodded. “Yes, a good amount of pepper. There’s a prickliness, I’d say.”
“What is it?” asked Angus.
The Duke drew him aside. Domenica had now drifted off to make conversation with somebody she had spotted in a knot of people near the door, leaving Angus and the Duke together.
“This,” he whispered, “happens to be the oldest casked whisky in Scotland. 1939, would you believe, and they’re only now getting ready to bottle it. How about that, Angus—1939?”
Angus was thinking. “Do you know that poem by Auden? September 1, 1939? The one that begins with his sitting in a bar in New York and reflecting on—what did he call it?—‘a low dishonest decade’?”
The Duke did. “He disowned it, didn’t he? The poem, that is—not the world.”
“He did,” said Angus. “He thought it was meretricious. He didn’t like political posturing.”
The Duke made a face. “Who does? People are so keen to wear their heart on their sleeve and…” He trailed off, peering into the far corner of the room. Angus followed his gaze.
“That chap over there,” whispered the Duke. “His face looks vaguel
y familiar. You don’t know who he is?”
Angus followed the Duke’s gaze. A well-groomed man, wearing a light brown tweed jacket, was talking to a small circle of guests. “That’s Adam Bruce.”
The Duke frowned. “Have I met him? I think I have, but I can’t quite place him.”
“He’s Marchmont.”
“Marchmont? Lives in Marchmont?”
Angus shook his head. “No, Marchmont Herald. He’s one of the Lord Lyon’s men. He used to be Unicorn Pursuivant, but now he’s Marchmont. He’s pretty knowledgeable on heraldic matters.” Angus paused. “In fact, I think I saw Unicorn here as well. Somewhere or other…” He looked about the room and then pointed to a far corner of the gathering. “Yes, Unicorn’s over there.”
The mention of these ancient heraldic offices would have caused no more than slight interest in most circumstances, but the effect on the Duke of Johannesburg was profound. The confident, cheerful demeanour, exemplified in the red neckerchief, became almost immediately furtive, the sanguine complexion drained of colour.
“The Lord Lyon’s men…” stuttered the Duke.
“They’re in plain clothes,” observed Angus. “No tabards or anything like that. Obviously not on duty—not looking for any false display of arms or anything like that.”
The Duke was silent. Angus noticed that he was looking towards the door, as if calculating the distance between it and himself.
“Are you feeling all right?” asked Angus.
At first, the Duke seemed almost too preoccupied to answer. But then he turned to Angus and said, “Look, you do know, don’t you, that I’m not quite the real McCoy? You know that, don’t you?”
Angus shrugged. “I’d heard something said in the Scottish Arts Club. Somebody said your claim was a bit dodgy…”
“Not a bit dodgy—not recognised by Lyon at all, I’m sorry to say. Morally, yes, but not strictly speaking in, how shall we put it, a legally watertight sense. You know how pedantic some people can be.”
Angus laughed. “I wouldn’t worry if I were you. The Lord Lyon and his people have got far better things to do than chase after people calling themselves this or that.”
“Better things to do?” said the Duke. “Such as?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Angus. “They keep quite busy, I believe.”
It was at this moment that Marchmont Herald looked across the room. The Duke stiffened, reaching for Angus’s forearm. “Oh no,” he muttered. “He’s seen me.”
Angus looked across the room. At first he had doubted the Duke, but now he saw that Marchmont was indeed looking in his companion’s direction—and frowning.
The Duke’s grip on Angus’s forearm tightened. “Look,” he whispered, “I’m going to have to make myself scarce. Would you mind terribly helping me? It’ll look far less suspicious if the two of us make for the door—deeply engaged in conversation about something. If I scarper by myself, they’ll think that…well, they’ll think I’m scarpering.”
Angus could hardly refuse, and he accompanied the Duke as he began to sidle towards the door. One or two people, recognising the Duke on his way out, tried to engage him in conversation, but were quietly but firmly fobbed off.
“Terribly sorry,” muttered the Duke. “Another engagement. How nice to see you.”
They reached the door, and Angus turned round.
“Marchmont’s following us,” he said to the Duke. “What now?”
59. Fear and Jeopardy in Mary King’s Close
They stopped immediately outside the door.
“Listen,” said Angus. “I can’t leave the party just like that. My wife’s still in there and I haven’t spoken a word to the Lord Provost—he is our host, after all.”
The Duke looked anxiously back into the room in which the party was being held.
“You can return,” he said. “All I’m asking you to do is to help me get away from Marchmont.”
Angus sighed. “All right. I’ll help you get a taxi—something like that. Let’s go.”
They began to make their way along the corridor leading to the stairs. As they did so, Angus looked over his shoulder. Marchmont was still following them, walking fast and with a determined look on his face. Angus nudged the Duke, who looked back too and gave a small cry of alarm. “Oh no,” groaned the Duke. “It looks as if he means business.”
“Let’s run for it,” said Angus.
They ran as quickly as they could down the red-carpeted staircase, taking two or three steps at a time, launching themselves downwards with as much dispatch as they dared. As they reached the bottom of the staircase, they saw that their pursuer, eager to match their speed, had tripped on the first of the stairs and taken a tumble. He was now picking himself up, but the delay gave them precious seconds.
“That way,” said the Duke, pointing down another corridor. “Come on!”
Angus and the Duke hurried along the darkened corridor. They ran past several closed doors until they reached a turning; the Duke hesitated for a moment before urging Angus to follow him. “Mary King’s Close,” he said. “We’ll throw him off down there.”
Angus paused to recover his breath but was encouraged not to linger. “No time,” muttered the Duke. “He’ll be here in a second—just follow me.”
Angus did not argue. The whole situation was so unreal: this cannot be me, he told himself; this cannot be me running away like a delinquent schoolboy; this cannot be me, the portrait painter, the member of the Royal Scottish Academy, the former convenor of the Scottish Arts Club Social Committee, the husband of the anthropologist Domenica Macdonald…the list of positions and roles acquired by accretion over the years could have continued, but the absurd contrast was already made.
Yet ridiculous though the situation may be, it was still real enough. There was no doubt but that Marchmont Herald was keen to speak to the Duke—presumably on a matter pertaining to heraldry and, Angus imagined, the broader issue of misdescription. Angus was vaguely aware that the Court of the Lord Lyon had a criminal jurisdiction, and that people who used crests or coats of arms without proper permission could be prosecuted by the Lyon Court’s procurator. Angus imagined that fines could be imposed, and perhaps even a sentence of imprisonment in an egregiously bad case, but would anyone bother these days—particularly with somebody like the Duke of Johannesburg who, even if not a real duke in the strictest sense, nonetheless looked like one? Who was harmed by this piece of innocent nonsense?
These were his thoughts as they rushed down the steps into Mary King’s Close.
“It’ll be dark down there,” the Duke said. “We’ll find somewhere to hole up for a while and then, when the coast is clear, we can nip out again.”
The steps negotiated, they began to run along a narrow, descending cobbled alleyway, part of the whole network of streets and dwellings that had been entombed beneath the buildings above it, now the City Chambers, since the seventeen hundreds. These streets had once been part of the bustling centre of the Old Town but had been sealed off for centuries, preserving the houses and shops much as they were when they were last part of the city’s living heart.
The faint glimmer of light from above that had enabled them to see their way into the beginning of the close had now faded, and they were surrounded by pitch black. The Duke, though, had a box of matches with him, and he now rolled up the Lord Provost’s letter of invitation to form a rough and brief brand. It was by this short-lived light they saw a room open up a few steps away—a room that had once been a ground-floor kitchen or living room for a family in that vanished Edinburgh. At the back of this room they could make out a small area recessed into a wall—an ancient cupboard or storeroom—that the Duke suggested would be a perfect place to hide.
There was just enough room, and there was just enough time to conceal themselves within the cupboard before they heard the sound of approaching footsteps—and the low rumble of voices.
“Two of them,” whispered the Duke. “He probably went off to
fetch Unicorn.”
Angus shivered. “I think they’ve got hold of a torch,” he said under his breath. He had seen a light play across a wall and then disappear into the darkness.
“It’s a long time since I hid anywhere,” whispered the Duke. “I think I was a teenager.”
Angus, also whispering, replied, “Surely it’s a bit late to be playing hide-and-seek when one’s a teenager?”
“Not hide-and-seek,” said the Duke. “Sardines. That’s a great game for teenagers. A couple of people go off and hide somewhere in the house and then everybody else creeps around until they find them. Then they join them in their hiding place—getting as close as possible—hence the name—until eventually they’re all hiding together and the last person turns up. The last person to find them loses.”
Angus remembered. He had played that once when he was sixteen. He had found himself hiding with a girl and had hoped that nobody would discover them. That was so long ago, when everything was so fresh, so unsullied, so innocent—well, not entirely innocent.
60. I May Be Some Time
Hiding with the Duke of Johannesburg in Mary King’s Close, aware of the presence elsewhere in that dark warren of Adam Bruce, Marchmont Herald, intent on finding them, Angus Lordie’s mind naturally turned to the subject of fear. When had he last felt frightened? It was a question that he could not remember ever asking himself, which meant that it contained, in its very posing, a pointer to the absence of fear in his life. He had felt anxiety, of course, but not actual fear—raw, physical fear; he had felt anxiety over Cyril, his dog, whose canine life, it seemed, was led at an entirely different level and to a mood music considerably more ominous than that which accompanied his own life. Dogs faced constant challenges from other, bigger dogs—those burly mesomorphic breeds—Rottweilers, whose dire press precedes them; the Neapolitan Mastiff, the keeping of which, in Romania at least, requires a certificate of psychological fitness to be obtained by the owner; or the Maryhill Terrier, a short-legged Glaswegian breed, whose style of fighting with other dogs involves head-butting, a rare phenomenon in the canine world. All of that was faced by Cyril, but not by Angus, whose life had been largely without any saliences marked out by fear.
The Revolving Door of Life Page 22