Espresso Tales

by Alexander McCall Smith

  96. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VII–Bridge at Blair Atholl

  Ramsey Dunbarton looked at Betty with all the fondness that comes of over forty years of marriage. “I don’t think that you’re finding my memoirs interesting, Betty,” he said. “But don’t worry, I’m not going to read much more.”

  “But they are interesting,” protested Betty. “They’re very interesting, Ramsey. It’s just that it gets so warm here in the conservatory and I find myself drifting off from the heat. It’s not you, Ramsey, my dear. You read on.”

  “I’m only going to read two more excerpts,” said Ramsey, shuffling the papers of his manuscript. “And then I’m going to stop.”

  “Read on, Macduff,” said Betty.

  “Why do you call me Macduff?” asked Ramsey, sounding puzzled. “We have no Macduffs in the family as far as I know. No, hold on! I think we might, I think we just might! My mother’s cousin, the one who came from Forres, married a man whom we used to call Uncle Lou, and I think that he had a brother-in-law who was a Macduff. Yes, I think he was! Well, there you are, Betty! Isn’t Scotland a village!”

  “Do carry on,” said Betty, closing her eyes. “I love the sound of your voice, Ramsey.”

  “Now then,” said Ramsey, referring to his manuscript. “This happened about twenty years ago. I had a client, not Johnny Auchtermuchty, but somebody quite different, who had a large hotel in Perthshire. We acted for them in some Court of Session business that they had and I went up there one Saturday to have lunch with my client and to discuss the progress of the legal action down in Edinburgh. It was a very complicated case and I was not at all sure that the counsel we had instructed understood some of the finer points involved. I had suggested this to him–very politely, of course–and he had become quite shirty, implying that advocates generally knew more about the law than solicitors did, which is why they were advocates in the first place. I replied that I very much doubted this and to prove the point I asked him whether he could name, from the top of his head, a certain section of a statute to do with the sale of goods. He looked at me in a very rude way, I thought, and then he had the gall to tell me that the legislation to which I was referring had been repealed the previous year, and did I know that? It was not an amicable exchange.

  “The client, though, was a very agreeable man, and it was a mark of his status in that part of Perthshire that just as we were finishing lunch at his house the telephone went and it was none other than the Duke of Atholl! Now deceased, sadly.

  “The Duke was a very strong bridge player–international standard, in fact–and they were just about to have a game of bridge up at Blair Atholl and they needed a fourth player. The Duke wondered whether my host would care to play. Unfortunately he could not, as he had a further engagement that afternoon, but then he turned to me and asked me whether I would like to go up in his stead. Now, my bridge is not very strong, but I had played a bit with the Braids Bridge Club and of course it was a great honour to be invited to play with the Duke, and so I readily agreed.

  “I went up to Blair Atholl more or less straightaway. A servant let me into the house and showed me up to the drawing room, where I met the Duke and two others, a man and a woman who were staying with him as his guests–people from London whose names I did not catch, but who seemed quite civil, for Londoners. Then we all sat down at the bridge table, with me partnering the Duke. He opened the bidding on that first hand with one heart, and I rapidly took him up to four hearts on the strength of my single ace. Unfortunately, we did not make it, the Duke very quietly saying that he thought it was perhaps a slightly bad split.

  “The game continued, and I must say that I enjoyed it immensely, even if the Duke and I were three rubbers down at the end. He did not seem to mind this very much, and was a very considerate host. We had a cup of tea after the bridge and we talked for about half an hour before the Duke had to attend to some other matter and I took my leave.

  “‘Do have a wander round, Dunbarton,’” the Duke said very kindly. “‘Take a walk up the brae if you wish.’”

  “I decided to take him up on this invitation since it was such a pleasant late afternoon. There was a path which led up a small hill and I followed this, admiring the views of the Perthshire countryside. Then the most remarkable thing happened. I turned a corner and there before me, charging through the heather, was a group of armed men, all wearing kilts and carrying infantry rifles. I stopped in my tracks–the men had clearly not seen me–and then I rapidly turned round and ran back to the castle. Beating on the door, I demanded of the servant who came to answer that I had to see His Grace immediately, on a matter of the utmost urgency.

  “I was taken to the drawing room again, where I found the Duke sitting with his two other guests, engaged in conversation.

  “‘Your Grace!’ I shouted. ‘Call the police immediately! There’s a group of armed men making their way down the hillside!’

  “The Duke did not seem at all surprised. In fact, he smiled.

  “‘Oh them,’ he said. ‘Don’t you worry about them. That’s my private army.’

  “And then I remembered. Of course! The Duke of Atholl has the only private army allowed in the country. I should have thought about that before I panicked and raised the alarm, and so I left feeling somewhat sheepish. But the bridge had been enjoyable, and I reflected on the fact that it would probably be a long time before I would be invited to play bridge again with a duke. In fact, I never received a subsequent invitation, but I have in no sense resented that. Not in the slightest.”

  97. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VIII–I Play the Duke of Plaza-Toro

  “From real dukes,” read Ramsey Dunbarton, “to stage dukes. And to that most colourful character, the Duke of Plaza-Toro, whom I had the particular honour to play at the Church Hill Theatre. Looking back on my life, which has been an eventful one by any standards, I might be tempted to say that that episode is probably one of the great saliences of my personal history.

  “At the risk of sounding boastful, I have always had a rather fine voice. As a boy I sang in the local church choir, and had I auditioned for one of the great Edinburgh choirs, the choir of St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, for example, I would probably have got in. But I did not, and so never sang in Palmerston Place. I did, however, join the Savoy when I was at university and was in the chorus of several productions. I am quite certain that I would have had principal roles were it not for the fact that the various producers who did those productions did not like me for some reason. It is very wrong when producers allow personal preferences to dictate casting. It happens all the time. People pick their girlfriends and boyfriends to sing the choice parts; it’s never a question of merit. And I gather that you find exactly the same thing in the West End and on Broadway.

  “After the Savoy, I joined the Bohemians, and appeared in a number of their productions, often at the King’s Theatre, again in the chorus. There was The Merry Widow, which I always enjoyed very much, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Porgy and Bess, to name just a few. In Porgy, I was an understudy for one of the principals, but was not called upon to sing. I must admit that it is very difficult not to wish ill on a principal in those circumstances, but I shall never forget the story told me by one of the Bohemians about how, some time ago, he had been an understudy for somebody in Cav and Pag, and had wished that the other singer would fall under a bus. Which he did. I’m not sure which number the bus was, but I think that it might even have been the 23, the bus which goes up Morningside Road. Fortunately, he survived, although one of his legs was broken, and of course the understudy felt so bad about it that he could barely bring himself to sing the part.

  “After a break from the Bohemians, I joined the Morningside Grand Opera, an amateur group which put on a range of performances at the Church Hill Theatre each year. They were ambitious and even did Wagner’s Ring Cycle one year, to mixed reviews, but they also did a lot of the old favourites, such as The Gondoliers. And it was in The Gondolie
rs that I sang my first principal role, that of the Duke of Plaza-Toro.

  “It was a wonderful role, and I would have enjoyed it far more than I actually did if the other singers had been slightly stronger than they actually were. Only a day or two before the first night, I could not help but notice that a number of them had not bothered to learn the words correctly, and there was one young man, who sang the part of Luiz, who just sang la, la, la when he came to a bit that he had not learned. And as for the woman who sang the part of the old nurse, she only had two lines to sing (where she reveals that Luiz was really the baby), but she could not even remember those!

  “The young man who played Luiz was particularly irritating. My feelings over his behaviour became quite strong at an early stage in the rehearsals, when I overheard him saying to one of the gondolieri that he, rather than I, should have been cast as the Duke of Plaza-Toro.

  “If the whole idea had not been so laughable I would have remonstrated with him. One needs a certain gravitas to play the Duke of Plaza-Toro, and I had that and he simply did not. I was a WS, after all, and he was not. He was also far younger than I was and it would have been absurd to see him pretending to be the leader of the ducal party.

  “But it gets worse than that. He had a most annoying manner, that young man. I expected him to call me Mr Dunbarton (or perhaps ‘Your Grace’ in the circumstances!) but he actually used my first name immediately after we had been introduced. And then he presumed to shorten it, and began to refer to me as ‘Ramps’. That was almost unbearable, particularly when he turned to me at one point in a rehearsal and said ‘That’s a B-flat by the way, Ramps!’

  “I must also admit my doubts as to the casting of the Duchess. The woman who had the part was very friendly with the producer. I shall say no more about that. However, I did feel that a more appropriate person might have been cast in that role. In particular, there was somebody in the chorus who had been Head Girl many years before of the Mary Erskine School for Girls, when it used to be in Queen Street, where it had that wonderful roof garden for the girls to play on. That sort of background would have equipped her very well to play the role of the Duchess of Plaza-Toro, but do you think that the producer took that into account for one single moment? He did not.

  “But these were minor matters, when all is said and done. The final production was not at all bad, and a number of people said that my own performance as the Duke of Plaza-Toro was the best portrayal they had ever seen of that role. That was very kind of them. It’s so easy to be disparaging of other people’s efforts, and I must confess that there is a slight tendency in that direction in Edinburgh. But I am not one to criticise Edinburgh, in spite of its occasional little failing. We are very lucky to live here and I for one will never forget that, bearing in mind what so many people have to put up with when they live in other places.”

  He put down his memoirs and looked at Betty. Her head was nodding in agreement, or, if one took the uncharitable view, sleep.

  98. Younger Women, Older Men

  Down the steps into Big Lou’s coffee bar, the very steps down which Christopher Grieve had descended when books were sold there (in the days when coffee was instant, and undrinkable); down those steps went father and son, Matthew and Gordon. Gordon had arrived at his son’s gallery without notice, had sauntered in, and indicated that he wanted to talk to his son. And Matthew, embarrassed by the memory of his churlish behaviour over dinner–behaviour which he somehow had seemed just unable to control–had said: “We must have coffee, Dad. I usually go about this time to a place over the road.”

  “Anywhere, son,” Gordon replied. “You know my feelings about coffee.”

  Matthew frowned. “I don’t, actually,” he said. “I didn’t know you had views on coffee.”

  “It’s a racket,” said Gordon. “All these fancy alternatives. Skinny latte with vanilla. Double espresso. Americano. So on. It’s all just coffee, isn’t it?”

  Matthew thought about this. “But what about your malt whiskies?” he said. “You go on about fifteen-year-old this and twenty-year-old that. It’s all just whisky, isn’t it?”

  Gordon looked at his son with pity. “That’s different, Matt,” he said, adding: “As you well know.”

  Matthew had said nothing in response to this. He had never been able to argue with his father, whose tactic of defending a position was to imply that the other side knew full well that what he, Gordon, said was right. And there was no time for argument anyway, as they were now entering the coffee bar and Matthew had to introduce his father to Big Lou. A thought occurred to him, and made him smile: Big Lou would now be able to say of him, I ken his faither. This was a useful thing to be able to say in Scotland, as it could be used with devastating effect to cut somebody down to size. And cutting others down to size, Matthew knew, was at the heart of Scottish culture. What better way of suggesting that the other person was just a jumped-up wee boy than to say that one kent his faither?

  Matthew did not choose his usual table, as he was concerned that they might be joined by Angus Lordie, if he came in, or that vague woman from the flat above the coffee bar, that woman whose name he could never remember and who tried, unsuccessfully, to appear mysterious. Matthew knew that he had to talk to his father. He had to express the fears which had been preying on him since he had first met Janis and which would not go away. He was convinced that the florist was primarily interested in his father’s money, and Matthew wanted to protect him from this, but until then he had been unwilling to broach the subject with him directly. Yet it could not be put off forever. Used they not to say in marriage ceremonies: Speak now or forever hold your peace? He would have to speak now.

  They sat down together while Big Lou prepared the coffee. She had smiled at Matthew’s father and shaken his hand, and Gordon had responded warmly. “Nice woman, that,” he had whispered to Matthew. “Lots of hard work in her.”

  “Yes,” said Matthew. “Lou has certainly worked hard.”

  “There’s nothing like hard work,” said Gordon thoughtfully. “That’s what makes money, you know, Matthew. Hard work.”

  Matthew pursed his lips. There was censure in his father’s words, but he resisted the temptation to respond in kind. If they had an argument, then he would be unable to raise the issue of Janis. Of course, now that Gordon had mentioned money it gave him his opportunity.

  “Yes,” said Matthew. “You’ve worked hard for your money. Everybody knows that. I do.” He paused, watching his father. Gordon sat impassively. Of course he had worked hard for his money, and he did not need his son to point that out to him.

  “And that’s why I wouldn’t like to see anybody take it away from you,” Matthew went on. He spoke hurriedly, rushing to get the words out.

  Gordon frowned. “Naturally,” he said. “But why do you think anybody would try to get my money away from me?”

  Matthew’s heart was thumping wildly within him. It was too late to stop now; he would have to complete what he had to say.

  “Well,” he said. “There are some people who try to marry others for their money. Gold-diggers, you know.”

  Gordon’s eyes narrowed as Matthew finished. “I take it that you are referring to Janis,” he said icily. “Am I correct? Are you?”

  Matthew lowered his eyes. He had always found it difficult to hold his father’s gaze, and now it was impossible. And of course he knew that this made his father consider him shifty and elusive, which was not the case. But he could not look into those eyes and see the reproach which had just always seemed to be there.

  “Look, Dad,” he began. “All I’m saying is that when a younger woman gets in tow with a…with a slightly older man, then one has to be a bit careful if the older man happens to have a lot of smackers. Which, I’m afraid, rather applies to you, doesn’t it? You’re not exactly on the bread line, are you? And the problem is that there have been one or two things in the press about how much you’re worth. Eleven million, isn’t it? Something like that? Janis can re
ad.”

  Gordon was about to reply, but was interrupted by Big Lou bringing their coffee to the table.

  “Here you are, boys,” she said breezily. “One double espresso. One South American roast with double low-fat milk.”

  Gordon reached for his coffee, thanking Big Lou politely.

  “Does my son here patronise your business regularly?” he asked.

  “Every day,” she said. “He comes in every morning. Sometimes stays for hours.”

  Matthew tried to catch Big Lou’s eye, but the damage was done.

  “Oh yes?” exclaimed Gordon, glancing at Matthew. “Sits here for hours, does he?”

  Big Lou realised her tactlessness and looked apologetically at Matthew. “Not really,” she laughed. “That’s wishful thinking on my part. I’d like him to sit here for hours, but he doesn’t really. Just a little joke.”

  Big Lou now went back to her counter, leaving the two men seated opposite one another, one glaring at the other.

  “Let me get this straight,” hissed Gordon. “Are you calling Janis a gold-digger? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes,” said Matthew. “I am.”

  99. Janis Exposed

  Now I’ve done it, thought Matthew. I’ve very specifically accused my father’s girlfriend of being after his money, and the accusation has gone down more or less as I thought it would.

  And in that, Matthew was right. Gordon’s face had coloured with anger.

  “Tell me exactly why you have this low opinion of my friend,” Gordon said. “If you’re going to make allegations like that, then presumably you have some basis for them. Tell me, what is it? What evidence do you have? Or do you just throw things like that–insulting things–throw them about on the basis of suspicion or, and I’m sorry to say this, jealousy?”