A Promise of Ankles

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “Probably the less serious sister,” suggested Angus, tucking Cyril’s lead into the pocket of his jacket. “There’s always one. Asclepius, of course, came to a sticky end, did he not? Hades had taken a dim view of the number of people he was bringing back to life. That rather defeated the point of dying, he thought. He persuaded Zeus to remove Asclepius with a bolt of lightning.”

  “Zeus needed no encouragement to do that sort of thing,” said James.

  Angus looked thoughtful. “Imagine living under gods who were quite so prone to temper tantrums. We’re so used to a belief in the benign: a benign deity, a benign government, a benign system of justice. Imagine if we had none of that – if we felt at the mercy of the irrational and the malignant. Imagine if we felt that those in authority actually hated us.”

  James shrugged. “Plenty of people have had to live like that.”

  “I suppose so,” Angus conceded. “And still do, if one thinks about it. There’s no shortage of people who are oppressed by their own government. Minorities of one sort or another. It’s a familiar story, isn’t it?’

  “Yes. And a bleak one.”

  Angus watched Cyril race along the path. He called out to him, and the dog stopped and came trotting back towards him.

  “How obedient,” said James.

  “Well brought up,” said Angus. “Dogs need to be disciplined. They’re pack animals who instinctively need a leader.” He pointed at his chest. “Me, in Cyril’s case. I suppose he thinks of me as Zeus – in a way. Zeus could put him on short rations. Zeus might not have heard of the smacking ban. Zeus has immense power – in his eyes.”

  “Which I’m sure you exercise with restraint.”

  Angus laughed. “I try to. And I think that dogs do have a sense of fairness, somewhere, deep down.” He paused. “But, going back to people being oppressed…Does it make a difference, do you think, if people who are on the receiving end of that sort of treatment have some idea in their head of the ultimate wrongness of what is being done to them?”

  James looked doubtful. “Possibly.”

  Angus explained. “You see, if you are being treated badly, you must feel a bit better if you know that the people who are doing that to you are offending something bigger than themselves – if you see what I mean. You must feel a bit better if you can say to yourself: what they’re doing is wrong according to some…” He searched for the right word. “Some form of natural justice. Or, I suppose, some ultimate value. In other words, if you think you’ve got right on your side. Would it make things easier to bear if you thought your persecutor would be judged – and punished – in due course?”

  James thought it possible. “I suppose there’s some satisfaction to be had at the thought that the person tormenting you will be punished – by somebody. And the courts do that, don’t they? People are publicly sent off to their punishment, and the victims, or the victims’ families, watch from the public benches. They seem to need that, don’t they? That’s what they mean when they ask for justice. They want that satisfaction.”

  “If it’s satisfaction,” said Angus. “And I’m not sure whether it really is. They think they’ll feel better when the wrongdoer is punished, but I don’t think they necessarily do. They might even feel better if they were able to forgive.”

  They resumed their walk, heading towards the gate that would admit them to the wild gardens sloping up to their left. Angus, though, was still thinking about the problem of ultimate authority. “What worries me,” he said, “is relativism. I’ve often discussed this with Domenica, you know. If you say that morality is a matter for the individual to decide upon – if you abolish all imposed codes, for instance – all religious commands and precepts – if you say there really is no ultimate just figure in the universe who watches what we do – and that’s what most people in this country believe, of course – then how do we deal with the emptiness of knowing that bad behaviour – oppression, exploitation, whatever – will go unpunished? Or, indeed, that it may even get away with not being identified as such? It’s all very well saying that people can work that out for themselves, but there are plenty of people who need some sort of structure for those matters.” He paused. “They may need some bigger tune. They need to be able to point to something – to some tradition, some moral flag, in a sense – some band of others who say, Yes, we’re with you!”

  They reached the entrance to the gardens before James could answer. Angus, having fished the key out of his pocket, opened the gate to admit them, and Cyril rushed through, tearing off up a path on which some cold scent of squirrel could still be detected. They watched as he disappeared into a heavy thicket, and then reappeared and made his way further up the slope. Then he was lost to them.

  “I think we’d better try to keep an eye on him,’ said Angus. “Dogs can get over-excited and go off for miles if you let them.”

  They left the path and clambered up towards the bushes into which Cyril had dived. Parting the branches with a stick he had picked up off the ground, Angus revealed Cyril halfway down a large hole in the side of the cliff, a small cave that had appeared with a fresh fall of rock.

  “Has he found something?” asked James.

  “A speluncean entrance,” said Angus, adding, “Gorgeous word, that.”

  37

  Homo Neanderthalis

  Angus called out, “Cyril, Cyril! Get out of there! Immediately!”

  He was addressing the dog’s hindquarters, though, and the metronome of Cyril’s tail, set at an excited prestissimo, continued to wag at an impossible rate.

  “I don’t think he can hear you,” said James. “With his head down that hole…”

  Angus agreed. “Like many dogs, he suffers from selective deafness anyway. If he’s doing something he’s enjoying, he pretends not to hear. Some men are like that with their wives, I believe.” He was aware that one should not make such observations, but he made it anyway, because he thought it was true. In fact, he knew an elderly member of the Scottish Arts Club who had a setting on his hearing aid that could cut out the frequency of his wife’s voice. That vision of marriage, though, was very old-fashioned and stereotyped: the persistently nagging wife was a stereotype who no longer existed, just as the irresponsible, domestically inadequate husband had become an outdated caricature. And yet, just as one abolished an outdated persona, one met, in real life, its perfect embodiment…

  If Angus’s train of thought was heading off in that direction, it was abruptly brought to a halt by a bark from Cyril, muffled by the surrounding earth into which he was burrowing.

  “He’s after something,” said Angus. “This might be a fox’s den.”

  He decided to act. If Cyril had driven to earth a fox or some other creature, then he should be stopped. It was hard enough for wild animals to survive in cities, even in small areas of wilderness like this one, and if they were harried by people’s dogs, then life could become impossible. Edinburgh, like most cities, had its population of urban foxes, and Angus rather enjoyed encountering them. From time to time, if he woke up early enough on a summer morning, he saw a local fox trotting down Scotland Street, stopping from time to time to sniff at some prospect, an abandoned chicken bone here, a luckless mouse there. He found himself wondering where that fox had its home – how it found sufficient privacy amongst all the urban clutter, a bolthole where it could bring up its cubs. Perhaps this was that place, and now here was Cyril rudely breaching the peace, terrifying the cubs in their chambers.

  He bent down and grabbed Cyril’s tail, tugging on the protesting appendage. Cyril gave a yelp, and started to reverse out of the hole in the ground. As his head emerged, Angus seized his collar, pulling him free of the fankle of exposed roots and clumps of earth that he had been so eagerly investigating.

  James peered into the hole. “It doesn’t go very far,” he said. “But I think there’s a very small rockfall. It’s created a sort of
cave.”

  Angus pushed Cyril away and instructed him to sit. Looking rather disconsolate, Cyril obeyed.

  “If you put him back on his leash,” said James, “I’ll hold him while you have a better look.”

  With Cyril back under control, Angus went down on his hands and knees and looked into the small cave. It was not a fox’s den, nor, it seemed, the home of any other creature; if it was, then its occupant was nowhere to be seen. What was visible, though, was a largish round object that had been buried and was now half exposed as a result of Cyril’s burrowing.

  “He’s certainly found something,” said Angus.

  James looked over his shoulder. “That thing in the middle?”

  Angus reached inside. The earth smelled rich and dry, and was warm to the touch. This was the earth, he thought, to which we all return…And this, he thought, is how home feels to a fox, or to a mole perhaps: roots, soil, rock. He touched the object, and it moved slightly. He tugged at it, and his fingers went into some sort of cavity. Instinctively, he let go, because there could be anything inside whatever it was he was tugging: spiders, perhaps, and Angus, like most people, had a healthy measure of arachnophobia. But then he conquered his distaste, and pulled again at what seemed to him now to be a large clump of earth attached to a rock or perhaps a bolus of roots.

  Suddenly the object became detached from the earth around it and came away in Angus’s grasp. Now he could scoop it out, and bring it to the mouth of the opening. He stood up and surveyed the exposed object.

  James bent down to get a better look. He turned to Angus, who was rubbing the earth off his hands. “That,” said James, “looks like a skull.”

  Angus very gingerly lifted up the earth-covered object. It was certainly skull-shaped, but then it was also the shape of a small football, or a round vase, or any number of other things. He turned to James and smiled. “We are not in a Scandinavian noir,” he said. “So one doesn’t discover skulls in New Town gardens.”

  James laughed. “Well, it looks a bit like it to me.”

  Angus put the object down, and dusted off his hands once more. “If it were a skull,” he said, “what would we do?”

  “Contact the police,” said James. “They’d come over and erect some of that tape they use to protect crime scenes. Then they’d go away.”

  “But I don’t think it’s a skull,” said Angus. “It could be anything under all that mess.”

  “It could,” said James. “Why not take it back to Scotland Street? Play the amateur archaeologist. Dust everything off and see what you end up with. A Roman religious figure statue, perhaps? Didn’t they find a rather marvellous Roman lion not far away? Something like that?”

  Angus always carried a plastic bag with him when he took Cyril for walks, in case he needed to clean up after him. This now proved just large enough for the discovery, and it was duly placed in it. Then, deciding that the walk had taken long enough, he began to head home, saying goodbye to James at the foot of India Street and promising to let him know what emerged once he had the chance to examine Cyril’s find more closely.

  That examination took place on the kitchen table in the flat, where the object was placed in the middle of a large baking tray and then, under Domenica’s guidance, scraped clean of surrounding mud, earth, and vegetable matter.

  Slowly it emerged, and slowly their excitement mounted. Then, when they had finished, Domenica turned to Angus. Her expression was one of wide-eyed astonishment.

  “Perfectly Neanderthal,” she said, her voice lowered for the momentous announcement. “Homo Neanderthalis, Angus.” She reached out to him, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Look at the forehead.”

  Angus smiled. “No need to whisper, Domenica.”

  “But this is dynamite, Angus. Tell me again: where did you find this?”

  “I didn’t,” said Angus. “Cyril did.”

  Cyril, at their feet, looked up. His gold tooth flashed. He vaguely sensed that he had done something exceptional, but he had, of course, no idea what it was.

  38

  Generic Guilt

  While Angus wrestled with the implications of finding himself in possession of what appeared – in Domenica’s view, at least – to be a Neanderthal skull, Stuart was leaving the flat below to make his way to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery on Queen Street. He felt gloriously unencumbered. Bertie and Ulysses were off shopping with Nicola, who was proposing to take them for a lunchtime pizza after she had bought Bertie his jeans and Ulysses his bandana. Thereafter, she had promised to look after the children for the rest of the day, in order to allow Stuart and Katie time to have their walk at Cramond and their lunch at South Queensferry. No mother, it seemed, could be more encouraging of a son’s extramarital liaison: Nicola felt that Stuart deserved every moment of love and affection he could find after years of marriage to Irene. That woman, she thought, that woman…But stopped herself thinking about her, as whenever Irene came to mind, she felt her blood pressure rising. Irene was extremely bad for blood pressure – every bit as bad, she suspected, as large helpings of salt. Irene had health warning written all over her in large, Scottish Government-approved lettering. No, she would not think of her; she would simply deny her mental time. And yet, whenever she went into the room that had been converted from Irene’s space, as she called it, to her own study, Nicola felt a surge of sheer delight – as might a territorial usurper, some seeker of Lebensraum, some covetous surveyor of another’s property, feel when contemplating the fruits of a successful land grab. Of course, she was the usurper in this case, not that that detracted in the slightest from the sheer pleasure she had derived from bundling Irene’s possessions away and replacing them with her own.

  The packing away of Irene’s possessions – her books and papers – had been particularly satisfying. Nicola had unceremoniously dumped these items in cardboard boxes and then written on the boxes: ASSORTED RUBBISH. She had not thrown the boxes away, of course, but had stored them in the cupboard off the hall, where they would be available for Irene to collect, should she want to take them up to Aberdeen. The labelling had been an intensely pleasurable moment, although on noticing it Stuart had raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that a bit childish, Mother?” he asked.

  “Very,” Nicola replied, unapologetically. “Very childish. But then we all need the occasional moment of childish pleasure, Stuart – whatever age one happens to be.”

  He was doubtful. “I don’t know…What’s that famous line? When I became a man, I put away childish things…?”

  Nicola smiled. “Yes, yes, Stuart, but I happen to know what C. S. Lewis said about that.”

  Stuart waited. If somebody threatened to quote C. S. Lewis to you, there’s not much one could do but wait.

  “C. S. Lewis said, ‘When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.’ ” She looked at Stuart unflinchingly. “And all I would add to that is mutatis mutandis in relation to the man bit.”

  Stuart sighed. “All right, Mother. But don’t antagonise her unnecessarily, please. We still have to see her from time to time.”

  “As I’m only too painfully aware.” Nicola sighed. “But yes, I shall avoid occasions of conflict. We don’t want Bertie to pick anything up.”

  Stuart thought that Bertie already understood how difficult Irene made it for practically everybody. He was loyal to his mother, but there was no doubt in Stuart’s mind that a great weight had lifted off Bertie’s shoulders since Irene had gone off to Aberdeen to pursue her PhD.

  But now, as he made his way up Dublin Street to the Portrait Gallery, he put out of his mind any thought of Irene and concentrated on the prospect of seeing Katie. She had been pleased by his invitation, and when he had suggested that they should meet for coffee at the gallery, she had said that this would suit her very well. She had planned to go to Valvona & Cr
olla and that was only a ten-minute walk from the gallery. She was going to buy Parmesan cheese, she said – and how it excited him to imagine her eating Parmesan, crumb by delicious crumb; such an evocation would not work with Cheddar, but Parmesan was different…He looked about him, as if anxious that somebody would be watching him and would somehow detect the concupiscence pervading such thoughts. How disturbing it would be if others could read what went on in our minds, could imagine what we were thinking, for all the innocence of our outward appearance; that another could look at somebody like him, walking innocently up Dublin Street, and know that he was thinking of an attractive young woman eating Parmesan cheese, while all about him was the classical architecture, the order of the Edinburgh New Town

  Stuart arrived a good quarter of an hour in advance of the time they had agreed upon. The café on the ground floor of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, a popular meeting place, was already busy, and he had to hover for a few minutes before he was able to stake a claim to a table. It was the usual mixture of people: retired teachers from Morningside, book groups on outings connected to their next historical novel, people from the country doing a day of museums in Edinburgh, young people thinking of writing a novel but struggling for ideas, sixth formers from local schools gossiping with one another on their study days, people killing time before a meeting in St Andrew Square, people at all not sure what to do and doing this because they could think of nothing else. He looked about him. Were there others, he asked himself, who were here, as he was, to meet a lover? Perhaps even clandestinely, snatching at shared moments with somebody in an unhappy marriage or relationship of habit, guilty, furtive, a little bit afraid? As he was – if he were to be honest with himself – because he was still technically a married man.

  He looked at the portrait hung on the wall behind him. It was one of the gallery’s most popular pictures, Guy Kinder’s brooding portrait of the crime writer, Ian Rankin, sitting in the Oxford Bar, the haunt of his fictional Edinburgh detective. Ian Rankin was looking directly at Stuart, making Stuart avert his gaze. He sees through me, he thought. And yet, and yet…And yet he understands. Because I’m entitled to this. I’m entitled to a bit of romance after all those years with Irene. Why should I feel guilty about that? Why?