A Promise of Ankles

by Alexander McCall Smith

  To the casual observer, these two would seem to be typical Edinburgh businessmen, one obviously employed by the Bank of Scotland, the other possibly a member of one of the law firms that had migrated from Charlotte Square to the financial quarter behind the old Caledonian Hotel. Such an observer, had he or she bothered to speculate, might suggest that their meeting would be the prequel to a larger meeting to take place at one of the banks or investment firms – an opportunity to discuss strategy or explore a position before the dynamics changed and people from London joined in the discussion.

  Such an assessment would, of course, be wrong, as the look of concern on the face of one of these men, leading to a frown on the face of the other, was nothing to do with the vagaries of business affairs but had everything to do with the continuing difficulties of a voluntary association that was against its will being drawn into territory in which it would prefer to remain uninvolved.

  The man wearing the Bank of Scotland tie was, in fact, a senior figure in Scottish Widows, a life assurance and pension company set up in 1815 to look after the female dependents of men who had lost their lives in the Napoleonic wars. He was a successful middle-level manager in a solid company, but that was by no means all that he was. In addition to his business role, he was the Chairman of the Association of Scottish Nudists, and his companion at the table, a partner in a firm of commercial property managers, was the Secretary of the Association. When they had both recently assumed office, neither had been aware of the looming crisis that now threatened to divide the Association. It was this crisis that had disturbed the sleep of the Chairman for the last two nights and had prompted him to telephone the Secretary with the suggestion that they meet for coffee and a chat at Big Lou’s. Big Lou’s was, in fact, convenient for both of them that day as they were both to attend an earlier meeting at the headquarters of the Association, which was only a few blocks west of Big Lou’s in Moray Place – an elegant Georgian circus looking in upon a sedate urban garden. The garden, with its shady canopy of trees and its well-kept paths, was a favourite haunt of members of the Association, and was the site of the well-attended annual Scottish Nudist Country Dance Weekend, an event coinciding with the main Edinburgh Festival each year and drawing its audience from all over the world.

  The Chairman looked up at the ceiling, as if for guidance from some hidden oracle. “It’s very difficult to know what to do,” he remarked.

  The Secretary nodded his agreement. “I feel as if we’re destined to lurch from crisis to crisis,” he said. “There was that entryism debacle a few years back – remember that? And I thought we’d got over that whole wretched business.”

  “Just when you thought it safe to get back into the water…” mused the Chairman. It was a metaphorical observation, although even as he made it, the Chairman was reminded of the particular hazard that swimming now presented to Scottish nudists with the proliferation of jellyfish species along the West Coast of Scotland.

  The entryism episode had been a bruising experience for Scottish nudists: a group of Glaswegian nudists, smouldering with resentment over Edinburgh domination of the committee, had plotted to take over the Association and all its assets. These attempts had required a quick response from the Edinburgh membership, and this defence had eventually succeeded. But it left bad feeling that had not been entirely dispelled and had, in fact, been fanned by the choosing at the last election of a committee made up exclusively of members from Edinburgh and its environs.

  “What about us?” one of the Glasgow troublemakers had complained. “Do we count for nothing over here? What about Paisley? They have one of the most active memberships in the country and they don’t have a single voice on the council. Not one.”

  The crisis had been weathered, and the committee was now hoping for a period of stability. But nobody on the committee had anticipated the consequences of appointing a new editor and editorial board to the Association’s bi-monthly magazine, The Scottish Naturist. This new editor, who had impressed the sub-committee set up to make the appointment, had seemed plausible enough. He had given an address in South Queensferry, and it had been assumed that this was where he came from. But that proved not to be the case. The editor, it transpired, was only staying for a few months with his sister-in-law in South Queensferry while his house was being renovated; his real address, disclosed nowhere on the application form, was in Pollokshields. And everybody knew that Pollokshields was in Glasgow.

  11

  Muckle Birkies

  “Oh jings!” said the Chairman of the Association of Scottish Nudists. “We should have been more careful. There are plenty of ways of telling where somebody is from – if you look out for the tell-tale signs.”

  The Secretary shook his head sadly. “You’re right. We haven’t been vigilant enough.” But then he thought: just how did one tell whether somebody claiming to be from South Queensferry was really from Pollokshields?

  The Chairman answered the unspoken question. “The verbal cues are the really important ones. We should have noticed that he spoke rather quickly. Remember? He ran his words together with scant regard for the natural break between words.” He sighed. “I sometimes wonder how people in Glasgow manage to breathe. All the words come tumbling out without any pause for breath. It’s extraordinary.”

  The Secretary knew what the Chairman meant. “It’s as if they can’t wait to get things out,” he said. “It’s as if speed adds force to what they say.”

  “Perhaps that’s intentional,” mused the Chairman. “If you speak so quickly that nobody can understand what you’ve said, you’ve probably scored an initial victory. The person to whom you’re speaking is left in doubt.”

  “And then there’s the inflection,” added the Secretary. “There’s an underlying challenge in most Glaswegian sentences. Each statement implies: contradict me if you dare. The tone goes up at the end, and you’re left there.”

  “These are subtle matters,” said the Chairman. “We haven’t even considered the patois. Do you remember when we offered him a glass of sherry at the end of the interview…”

  “It being past twelve o’clock,” interjected the Secretary, primly.

  “Yes, and remember what he said?”

  The Secretary frowned. He had not paid particular attention to the interview, such was his relief that somebody had actually applied for the post of editor of the magazine. “What was that?” he asked.

  The Chairman grimaced. It was not easy for an Edinburgh financier to use the demotic, irrespective of its origin. “He said…and I quote, of course, ipse dixit, as we say, I wouldnae mind a wee swally.’

  The Secretary gasped. “Oh no! And I didn’t notice!”

  “Well, that’s what he said. A wee swally, no less. I thought that he was being ironic, in the same way in which you and I take leave of one another with see yous. We would never pluralise the second person singular, because we know, of course, that the same form includes both singular and plural. But we do use it ironically.”

  “Like those people who say au reservoir?”

  The Chairman nodded. “Exactly. And so I just smiled and said Oloroso?” He paused. “And you know what that led to? He looked at me and said, Where’s that?”

  “No!” exclaimed the Secretary. “What a hoot!”

  The Chairman nodded. “Of course, one can’t count on any degree of knowledge about anything these days. You would imagine, would you not, that a senior official in the Department of Culture and the Arts could be expected to know who Giotto was? You’d think that, I believe. And yet I met one a few years ago who thought Giotto was a sort of cheese. Yes! He asked whether you could get Giotto at Valvona & Crolla – he really did.”

  “Astonishing,” exclaimed the Secretary. “Giotto, of all French painters!”

  “Hah!” said the Chairman. “Très drôle.”

  Their mirth seemed to cheer them up – and there was more to come.<
br />
  “That same chap,” said the Secretary, “might have thought pointillism was a skin disease.”

  The Chairman doubled up, laughing so much that a seam on his waistcoat split. “Characterised by extensive spots,” he said.

  There was more laughter. Up at the counter, Big Lou interrupted her conversation with Matthew to observe, “Those twa over there,” she muttered. “See them, Matthew? Those twa lang-nebbit chiels who run roond with their bahookies on show – something’s making them cheerful the day.”

  But the chat at the two men’s table had already reached its comic apogee. Now came a descent into concern and anxiety.

  “You see,” said the Chairman, “he didn’t indicate at all what his editorial line would be – other than to say no change. Do you remember that? Because I thought: any new editor who says no change gets my support. I have always supported those who say no change – and I am always disappointed when they are swept away.”

  “I can see why you believed him,” said the Secretary. “You mustn’t reproach yourself. South Queensferry, after all, is completely acceptable. Nobody would imagine that Glasgow was lurking in the background.”

  “It’s not Glasgow,” said the Chairman. “I like Glasgow – in its place…”

  “Which is forty miles west of here.”

  The Chairman smiled, but the time for laughter was over. “I like their cheerfulness and their good humour. I don’t always see the point of their jokes, but that might just be me…”

  “Au contraire,” said the Secretary. “It’s me as well.”

  The Chairman smiled. He and the Secretary were, he thought, almost always on the same page. It was very reassuring. “Well, there you are,” he said. “But the real point is this: Glasgow should keep its nose out of other people’s business. The Association has always been based in Edinburgh and run by Edinburgh people. And did anything go wrong? It did not. And the magazine has always been neutral on political issues – we’ve always made a point of welcoming everyone, no matter what their political views may be. We’re all Jock Tamson’s bairns, after all, aren’t we? Once the clothing’s off, we’re all the same underneath.”

  “Well, to a degree,” said the Secretary. “Some of us have perhaps allowed ourselves to go to seed a bit. But we’re never ashamed of the human body, whatever its contours might be.”

  “That’s a very good metaphor,” remarked the Chairman. “Take ownership of your contours! I think that would be a very good slogan.” He paused. “But to write that provocative editorial and then to fill the magazine with pictures of a South Ayrshire naturist pilgrimage to Bannockburn where everybody – and I mean everybody – had Saltires painted all over them…Well! There was no mistaking the political message there.”

  The Secretary sighed. “I take a broad view of the national question. I respect both camps, and I really don’t think that our magazine should identify with one side or the other.”

  “My views entirely,” said the Chairman. “But what do we do?”

  “We could ask him to show editorial balance,” said the Chairman. “Are there any big Unionist naturist events coming up?”

  The Secretary looked at the ceiling. “I have heard of something,” he said. “But I don’t think we should discuss it just yet.” He made a sign to the Chairman – a strange movement of the fingers across the lips.

  The Chairman recognised this immediately. This was the New Club sign for omertà.

  “Lips sealed,” he said, and made the sign back to the Secretary.

  From behind the counter, Big Lou whispered to Matthew, “Look at them, Matthew. Twa muckle birkies.” She shook her head. “Mair coffee, Matthew?”

  12

  Down Among the Men

  “Please feel free to go out, Stuart,” Irene said over her shoulder, as she browsed through the contents of the food cupboard. She did not wait for a response before continuing, in a slightly sarcastic tone, “Now what have we here? Smoked oysters? Product of China. Well, that’s a thought, isn’t it? Chinese oysters.”

  She turned to face Stuart, who was sitting at the kitchen table, a copy of the Scotsman crossword in front of him. He was trying to ignore Irene, but her presence made it very difficult for him to concentrate on the crossword. “An air force man looks jaunty!” he muttered, more for his own benefit than for Irene’s.

  Irene smiled. “Pretty obvious.” She paused. “Is that the children’s crossword or the adults’?”

  The slight was intended. Irene had always been better at crosswords than Stuart, and she took considerable delight in coming up with solutions that were, in retrospect, glaringly obvious but which had for some reason not occurred to Stuart.

  “Well, then?” goaded Irene. “An air force man looks jaunty.”

  She waited. Stuart tried to ignore her. He would move on to the next clue, he thought, rather than give Irene the satisfaction of solving this one. Long experience had taught him that if you moved the conversation on, you could wrong-foot her. Sometimes.

  “I’ve got it,” he muttered, and then, “An old woman at first is followed by part of a backward analyst: tasty in January!” Haggis, he thought. Hag, followed by the first part of Sigmund, backwards. That would show Irene.

  “You solved that first one?” asked Irene. “The jaunty aviator?”

  Stuart hesitated. He was truthful by nature, but Irene was a force that disturbed all known patterns of type and character. He felt justifiably irritated. She had the right to visit the boys, but she had no right to go through the kitchen cupboard, make comments on tins of smoked oysters – implicit at this stage, but doubtless with more to come; nor had she the right to interfere with his doing of the Scotsman crossword. You never told people the answers to a puzzle they were doing. You just did not. It was the equivalent of telling somebody about the ending of a book or a play: it was a spoiler. Irene loved spoilers, as long, of course, as they originated with her.

  “Yes, I’ve moved on,” said Stuart.

  “So?” Irene persisted. “What was it?”

  Stuart bit his lip. Sometimes Irene made him feel as if he were Bertie’s age, or even less. He had put up with that in the past, swallowing the pride that a grown man must feel on being treated as a small boy, but now that he was free at last – and that was the word he used: free – that small, so emotive word, heady in its potency – now that he was free he did not have to put up with this.

  He looked up at Irene. He was seated – she was standing. This, he thought, was how the world must seem to Bertie, with all these adults a few feet above one’s own head. This was the view from down among the children.

  Down among – that phrase could be used in so many different contexts where there was an upper and a lower level. Down among the children; down among the desperate; down among the…He stopped, remembering a paper that Irene had once delivered to a meeting of her Progressive Book Group. This was a book group that was based in the New Town and met once a month in places such as North West Circus Place and Howe Street to excoriate those who, for one reason or another, were not considered progressive, or at least were not progressive enough. The group consisted entirely of women, as far as Stuart could ascertain; he had once enquired of Irene whether there were any male members, only to be told that none had been deemed suitable. Stuart had very tentatively proposed himself, but this suggestion had been met with silence, and was not aired again.

  It was for delivery at this book group that Irene had written her paper Down Among the Men. Stuart had discovered this on the family computer, and had printed it out to read it in a more leisurely way. For reasons of security, he had read it while sitting on one of the benches in Drummond Place Garden, where the chances of being discovered by Irene or any of her allies were low.

  The main premise of Down Among the Men was that all male writers worked under the influence of a subconscious archetype to which Irene
had given the name The Inner Hemingway.

  “Scratch any male writer,” Irene had written, “and you will find a Hemingway not far below the surface. This Inner Hemingway is a Weltanschauung that sees the world as a tabula rasa upon which the dominant male must mark his territory – just as a wolf does. But there are other wolves around – we must never forget that – and they will be required to be subdued by the projection of strength. It is this projection of strength that informs every male endeavour, whether it be the subduing of Gaia (Earth, femininity) through big civil engineering projects, the annexation of the Crimea, or the creation of a fictional universe. It is all the same. Every man is a Hemingway. Every man is a Norman Mailer. Do not be fooled by those writers who claim to have a different vision: men are never different. Go down among the men and see for yourselves.”

  Stuart had waded through this, feeling increasingly angry and despondent in roughly equal measure. It was just so unfair. There were Hemingways – of course there were – but there were also plenty of sensitive, sympathetic men who did not see the world in these terms. How unjust to describe half of humanity, or whatever percentage men were, with this dreadful stereotype. It was every bit as bad as those misogynistic comments that slipped from the lips of unreconstructed men from time to time and resulted in their rapid suspension or dismissal from their university chair.