A Promise of Ankles

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Bertie, though, appeared to have lost interest in Ossian. “Where will we go when we arrive in Glasgow?” he asked. “Will we go straight to that lady’s house? The one we’re going to be staying with?”

  Nicola yawned. It was too late now to snatch any further sleep. “No,” she replied. “I think we’ll go first to the place where I have to do a bit of business. You remember that I own a little factory in Glasgow. You remember about that?”

  Bertie did not say anything, but she heard him catch his breath.

  “Yes,” she said. “I still have that little business. Of course, I don’t run it myself – there’s a manager to do that. But I like to drop in from time to time.”

  She felt Bertie quivering again with excitement. “Your pie factory?” he asked, his voice seeming far away, as if to utter the question might be to close off the possibility it raised.

  “Yes,” said Nicola. And then, “Would you like to go there, Bertie? I’ve always promised you I’d take you.”

  Bertie was too overcome to give voice to his reply. Instead, he gripped Nicola’s hand under the bedsheet and pressed it to his chest, to his heart, in a gesture of complicity and love.

  57

  Inclusive Pies

  Breathless with excitement, strapped into the rear seat of Nicola’s beige estate car, Bertie and his friend, Ranald Braveheart Macpherson, saw Glasgow begin to materialise before them, viewed over the rim of the car window. Unlike Edinburgh, with its ordered classicism, or Paris, with Haussmann’s broad boulevards, this was a lived-in cityscape, like a pair of comfortable trousers hung up to dry beside the Clyde estuary. Sunlight was upon the buildings and the low green hills that embraced them, sunlight like attenuated gold, descending in shafts. No painter, steeped in the romantic Scottish landscapes of the nineteenth century, no Horatio McCulloch attempting to capture Loch Katrine or some other scene of mists and mountains, could have done better than Glasgow herself as she revealed herself that morning.

  “I think that’s Glasgow, Ranald,” said Bertie.

  Ranald nodded. “I think so too, Bertie.”

  Bertie sighed with pleasure. Turning to Ranald, he said, “I’m glad we came, aren’t you, Ranald?”

  Ranald nodded again. “It’s the best thing we’ve ever done, Bertie. And you’re my best friend in the whole world. Promise.” And with that, Ranald crossed himself in a gesture intended to underline the seriousness, and honesty, of what he had just said.

  Bertie inclined his head. He felt that about Ranald, too. And he thought of his good fortune, that he should be here in Glasgow with his friend, and with a whole, uncharted month ahead of them. He reached out for his friend’s hand and squeezed it briefly – a gesture returned by Ranald in a small ceremony of devotion. It was a brief moment, but its timing was perfect, as they were now approaching a turn-off on the motorway and from the front seat Nicola announced that the pie factory was only half a mile off to the left and that they would be there within minutes, traffic permitting.

  Her prediction was correct, and very soon the beige estate car rolled into a parking place at the side of a rather shabby industrial building proclaiming itself to be the headquarters of Inclusive Pies.

  “That’s us,” announced Nicola as she switched off the car’s engine. “This is the pie factory, boys.”

  Inclusive Pies was a firm that Nicola had inherited from a childless Glaswegian aunt. The solicitors administering the estate had advised her to sell it, but she had declined, as she had met the staff, took to them immediately, and did not like the thought of casting them adrift to face an uncertain future. She would keep the factory going; another owner could easily strip the firm of its principal asset, the site it occupied, and bring pie production, and the jobs that went with it, to an untimely end. If I am to be a capitalist, Nicola said to herself, then I shall be an enlightened one. This had led her to institute an employee share participation scheme, that had diluted her holding to sixty per cent of the shares, but had markedly raised the morale, and the productivity, of the firm. There were five employees, including the manager, and all of them had been there for years, pleased with their growing stakes in the company and proud, too, of the Scotch pies they produced. These had won several prizes at food festivals, including, most recently, an award for the greasiest pie at the annual Scottish Food Convention in the Scottish Event Campus on the Clyde.

  The firm had been founded by Nicola’s late uncle, who had set it up under the name of Pies for Protestants. It had been successful, and the name, if anything, had either not been noticed by purchasers, or had been positively approved of. However, changing times and a certain embarrassment over the perhaps unintended connotations of the title, had prompted a relaunch as Inclusive Pies, which had resulted in new markets being opened up and a sustained rise in profits. This was considered to be all the more of an achievement, given the public campaign that had been waged for some time against the Scotch pie in general. This had been triggered by research revealing the total weight of Scotch pies consumed by the average adult Scot each year: fifty-six pounds. That, together with the figures for the volume of Irn-Bru drunk by that same average Scottish adult (sixteen gallons), had led to calls for health warnings to be attached to each Scotch pie. These moves had become bogged down in disagreements over the wording of the warning: there had been strong support for These pies will kill you sooner than you think, but the alarmist tone of that message had put some people off. This pie will damage your health was thought to be too similar to existing warnings for tobacco and alcohol, while Dinnae put this stuff in your gob, was thought to be too self-consciously demotic and perhaps a touch vulgar. The debate had been long and acrimonious, and as a result the initiative fizzled out. The Scotch pie continued to be sold to its consumers in rising numbers.

  None of this was in the minds of Bertie and Ranald, and indeed Nicola, as, noses quivering at the delicious smells emanating from the factory, the Edinburgh party made its way up the front steps to be greeted by the manager, Mr Hen McQuoist.

  “Well, here you are!” Mr McQuoist exclaimed. “Come away in.”

  Hen and Nicola were old friends, and they embraced warmly at the front door.

  “Is he your Granny’s lover?” whispered Ranald Braveheart Macpherson.

  Bertie shook his head. “I don’t think so, Ranald,” he replied.

  Ranald was not convinced. “He kissed her,” he said. “And she kissed him back. I saw it. She probably put her tongue in his mouth, Bertie. You know that?”

  Bertie did not think that his grandmother could ever have done such a thing. Besides, he was doubtful if Ranald knew anything about these matters. And the same went for his grandmother, who should be protected, he thought, from such crude speculation.

  “She’s only kissing him to be polite,” he said. “If she didn’t kiss him, then he’d think she thought he had germs. People in Glasgow are quite sensitive about that sort of thing, Ranald. They know that there are some people in Edinburgh who think there are more germs in Glasgow.”

  “Are there?” asked Ranald, looking about himself with a certain nervousness.

  Bertie shook his head. “There are hardly any germs in Glasgow, Ranald. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  With that, they entered the factory, led by Hen McQuoist, who was pointing out to Nicola a machine that they had bought cheaply for the bulk mixing of Scotch pie ingredients. To Bertie’s eye, it looked remarkably like a concrete mixer, and this conclusion was confirmed by the inscription he saw painted on its side – Property of Aberdeenshire Council Roads Department.

  “We’re very pleased with our new pastry mixer,” Hen said to Nicola. “It was a real bargain. I got it cheap.”

  “Where did you buy it?” asked Nicola.

  “The Sarry Heid,” replied Hen.

  58

  Ranald’s Crisis

  While Hen McQuoist and Nicola went
into the office to look over quarterly sales figures for the Scotch pies produced by Inclusive Pies, Bertie and Ranald Braveheart were taken on a tour of the factory by the production supervisor, Maggie. Maggie, a woman in her mid-fifties from Greenock, had joined the firm thirty years ago, during its early years of expansion from a two-person cottage industry run from the home of its founders, Nicola’s uncle and aunt. She was the daughter of a butcher and it had been anticipated that she would have taken over the family butchery on the retirement of her father, Winston Churchill Wilson, generally known as Church Wilson. Church had been a senior member of a local Orange Lodge and chairman of a lawn bowling club. He had lost his wife, Maggie’s mother, to sudden septicaemia, but had been a conscientious and devoted single father to the daughter, on whom he doted. Maggie would have liked to take over the butchery when Church retired, but she was then seeing a young man, Eddie Hislop, who had his own hairdressing business in the West End, and wanted to join him in that rather than work in the butchery. Her marriage to Eddie had not worked out; she had discovered that he was having an affair with one of his regular clients, and on being challenged had confessed to several other infidelities. “I can’t resist these ladies,” he said. “I know it sounds weak, but I just can’t.”

  Once divorced, Maggie met Nicola’s aunt at a Jimmy Shand tribute concert and was offered a job at the pie factory. She was soon an indispensable part of the operation, and in due course recruited Hen McQuoist, with whom she had been at primary school. She remembered him from those days, but he did not, although they both appeared in school photographs, seated a few places away from one another, polished and smiling through missing milk teeth.

  They became lovers, and eventually spouses. Hen had proposed to Maggie twice before she eventually accepted him: once at a dog race, on another occasion in a café at Central Station, and finally in an Italian restaurant on Byres Road. On the first two occasions, she had turned him down as tactfully as she could; certainly, she loved him – and told him so – but her experience of marriage to Eddie had put her off the institution of marriage. “We can be just as happy as we are,” she said to Hen. “We don’t need to bring the Church of Scotland into this.”

  Hen had accepted the situation, although he secretly nursed an intention to propose to her again. They were happy living together – they had a small house in Shawfield – and working as colleagues in the pie factory. People sought greater things, of course; the ambitious would regard their situation as being modest to the point of dullness, but they were wrong. A small, ordered life, lived quietly and without fuss, causing no harm to anybody (if one discounted the widespread arterial damage caused by their Scotch pies) was preferable, surely, to one of excitement and risk.

  Maggie smiled broadly when Hen introduced the boys. “Ever been in a pie factory before?” she asked.

  Bertie shook his head. “We’re from Edinburgh.”

  Maggie laughed. “Frae Edinburgh then? And there are no pie factories in Edinburgh?”

  Ranald Braveheart Macpherson answered for the two of them. “None,” he said.

  Maggie rolled her eyes. “So what do you folk eat over there?”

  “Healthy food,” said Bertie, adding, “most of the time.”

  “Nothing unhealthy about oor pies,” said Maggie, winking at Hen as she spoke. “Come with me and I’ll show you how we do it.”

  Hen went to join Nicola in the office and left Maggie to take the boys to the large mixing machine – ex-Aberdeenshire Roads Department.

  “This is a highly sophisticated piece of catering equipment,” said Maggie. “State of the art, I believe. You put the flour, water and lard in the top there, you see, and then you switch it on and it mixes it.”

  Bertie stared up at the towering cement mixer. “That must make a lot of pies,” he said.

  “Oh yes,” said Maggie. “Each load makes seven hundred. Would you like to see it working?”

  The boys nodded eagerly.

  “Yous can shovel some of the lard in, if you like,” said Maggie. “We’ve already put in the flour and hot water.”

  The boys helped transfer the contents of several barrels of lard into the maw of the mixer. Then Maggie instructed them to stand back while she turned on a switch. With a grumble and a shaking, the great machine began to turn its barrel round and round, mixing the ingredients. Maggie increased the speed and after a few minutes flicked another switch. The barrel tilted and the mixture began to pour out into moulds sunk in large trays. These trays had been slipped into position by a young man with ginger hair, who waved to the boys as he expertly manoeuvred the recipient trays into position.

  “See him?” said Maggie. “That’s Billy. Big Rangers supporter. Maybe he’ll take you to a game one of these days.”

  It was a promise beyond the wildest dreams of both Bertie and Ranald Braveheart Macpherson and words might have been expected to fail them. But they both knew that they were representing Edinburgh here, and must be polite.

  “That would be very nice,” said Bertie.

  And Ranald Braveheart Macpherson said, “Thank you, I would like that very much indeed. Thank you.”

  The boys watched in fascination as the rest of the pie-making process was revealed. Then, moving to the baking side of the factory, they were rewarded with the sight of trays of pies being taken out of the oven and left to cool on racks.

  “Fancy a pie?” asked Maggie, handing each boy a still-hot and deliciously aromatic Scotch pie.

  They each ate three pies. Then, replete almost to the point of discomfort, they were taken by Maggie back to the office, where Nicola and Hen had just completed their discussion of the accounts.

  “Smart wee fellows,” said Maggie, smiling at Nicola.

  “Perhaps we could fix them up with apprenticeships,” said Hen. “A wee bit later on, of course.”

  “Yes, please,” said Bertie eagerly. He could think of nothing more exciting than being an apprentice pie-maker in Glasgow. He might be too young at present, but he had heard that at sixteen you could leave school and start an apprenticeship. That is what he would do. He would not tell anybody in Edinburgh where he was going, as he would not want them to try to stop him. In particular, he was unwilling for Olive to know where he was. She could be told that he was dead: that was by far the best solution, Bertie thought. Olive could be told that he had been swept out to sea or struck by lightning – anything that was swift and final. She would have to find somebody else to torment then.

  Nicola said goodbye to Hen and to Maggie and took the boys back to the car. “Well, then,” she said. “Now we can get over to Bearsden and the place where you two will be staying for the next month.”

  Bertie glanced wide-eyed at Ranald: one month, he thought, one whole month – in Glasgow – by ourselves. The sheer enormity of what they were about to do came upon him suddenly – and it came upon Ranald Braveheart Macpherson too, who began to cry, the tears welling in his eyes – and spotted by Bertie as they ran their course down his cheeks, although Ranald had turned his head away so that his friend might not see them and think him weak, in spite of the heroic name he bore. He had eaten too many Scotch pies, and he wanted to be sick.

  “I want to go back to Edinburgh,” said Ranald. “I’ve had enough of Glasgow.”

  59

  Bacon Recipes

  James settled quickly into the new routine that Elspeth and Matthew had planned for him. Each week, two mornings and one evening would be spent helping to look after the boys. To this would be added one Saturday a month and the occasional Sunday, if circumstances required it. For these duties he would receive three hundred pounds a week, along with his accommodation – he would remain in the attic bedroom that he so liked – and his board. This was considerably more than the going rate for the hours involved, but Matthew and Elspeth were generous employers. Matthew had always taken the view that there was something fundamentally w
rong in the way in which society increased its rewards as people became older. That, he thought was precisely the wrong way round: people should start off being paid more when they were young and their salaries should gradually tail off with the years. That was only right, he thought, because young people could do more with money than older people: they had fewer of the things that we need in this life, whereas older people had acquired far more. They had mortgages to pay and children to feed and clothe, while such claims on a person’s pocket diminished as the years went by.

  James said, “You’re paying me too much, Matthew.”

  That was a protest that is rarely heard – anywhere and in any circumstances, but James was unusual, as were Matthew and Elspeth. The protest was met with surprised silence, and then laughter. Nothing more was said.

  The rest of James’s working time was allocated to Big Lou’s coffee bar, where James had quickly made himself indispensable. Big Lou had been sceptical at first – “Do I need anybody?” she asked Matthew. “I can do all the things that need doing myself. I can make the bacon rolls…”

  Matthew had been tactful. The bacon rolls were the problem – not in their essence, as they were as delicious as bacon rolls can be expected to be, but in their singularity, as they were the only thing on the menu. He wanted to say to her, We live in an age of choice, Lou, but he held back. Big Lou was sensitive to criticism, and he sensed that consumer choice was not a priority for her. Nor was any attempt to broaden the customer base: “We get the people who want to come here, Matthew,” she had said to him. “We don’t get the people who don’t want to come. They go elsewhere, you see – to the places they want to go to.”