Sunshine on Scotland Street

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Dr. St. Clair nodded. “That’s why I’m here,” he said. “Household issues are very much individual issues. The dynamic, you see …”

  “Yes, yes,” said Irene briskly. Sometimes she wondered whether Dr. St. Clair was aware of just how much she knew about psychodynamics. Hugo had certainly known, and appreciated her insights, but Hugo, for reasons she had never been able to fathom, had taken it upon himself to go off to Aberdeen. “The domestic issue concerns a dog.”

  “Ah,” said Dr. St. Clair. “That is something on which I happen to have views. People often forget, you know, just how much pets enter into the equations of family psychopathology.”

  “Exactly,” said Irene.

  “It’s actually an interest of mine,” continued Dr. St. Clair.

  Irene looked at him keenly. “Really?”

  “Yes,” continued the psychotherapist. “I took an interest in the subject when I was working on my PhD in Melbourne. We had somebody in the department at Monash who had quite a thriving practice in dog psychotherapy. He knew all the big names in the field – Mugford, and people like that – and he had written quite a lot himself; some very interesting papers. When I was there he was just about to publish a paper that became quite influential – ‘Barking as a Cry for Help.’ It was something of a classic, actually.”

  “Fascinating,” said Irene. “And did you do any work in the field yourself?”

  Dr. St. Clair nodded. “A bit. I sat in on a number of his consultations. Fascinating stuff.” He paused. “Have you read James Serpell’s book?”

  “Not yet,” said Irene. “But …”

  “It’s very instructive,” continued Dr. St. Clair. “The Domestic Dog: its evolution, behaviour and interactions with people. It’s a collection of first-rate chapters on a whole range of subjects. It has some very good strategies for dealing with disturbed behaviour in dogs. And they can be very disturbed, you know.”

  Irene had become increasingly interested. She was now sitting on the edge of her seat, listening to Dr. St. Clair. “You mentioned sitting in on consultations,” she said. “Would the dog be present?”

  Dr. St. Clair shook his head. “Usually not in the first instance. We took a history from the dog’s owners to begin with. That gave us a good enough idea of the problem. Of course, quite a number of them came to us feeling guilty. They blamed themselves, you see.”

  “For the dog’s behaviour? They blamed themselves for that?”

  “Yes,” said Dr. St. Clair. “Some years back there was a rather well-known dog trainer called Barbara Woodhouse. She expressed the view that there was no such thing as a bad dog – it was really a case of a bad owner. So this encouraged people to think that if their dog behaved badly, then it was because they were at fault.”

  “And they aren’t?”

  “Sometimes they may be, but often the dog misbehaves because of some quite other factor. He may misinterpret what’s going on, or may interpret things correctly but get confused in relation to what’s expected of him. The aetiology of canine behavioural issues is pretty broad – and complex too.”

  “Fascinating,” said Irene.

  “Yes,” agreed Dr. St. Clair. “It’s truly extraordinary how our lives intertwine with these creatures.”

  Irene said that she was of the same view. But how odd it was, she went on to say, that dogs should have chosen to throw in their lot with us.

  “Oh, but they didn’t,” said Dr. St. Clair. “It was the other way round. We chose dogs, or, rather, we chose their ancestors – wolves.”

  Irene waited for him to expand upon this.

  “You see,” Dr. St. Clair went on, “dogs are descended from wolves. About ten thousand years ago they didn’t exist as a separate species at all – there were just wolves. And then some ancestor of ours got chummy with a wolf cub, tamed him, and discovered that he made quite a good hunting companion. Result? The domestic dog – after a number of years, of course.”

  Irene gazed at him with admiration. Dr. St. Clair was so much more interesting than Stuart, as had been Dr. Fairbairn. Did Stuart even know that dogs were descended from wolves? If he did, he had never told Irene about it and one might assume that he had no ideas on the subject at all. Yet here was a man – and a rather good-looking man too – who could talk with complete ease and confidence on the lupine ancestry of dogs.

  “I remember back in Melbourne,” he reminisced, “we had a very wolf-like dog brought in by its owner. The dog had a number of problems that were making life rather difficult for his owners and, frankly, he was on his last chance. That always ups the stakes a bit. One never has that with human clients – nobody’s threatening to put them down if they don’t respond to treatment!”

  Irene laughed politely. “Of course not.” She was trying to keep her mind on the subject under discussion, but she was finding it difficult. The conversation might have been about dogs, and their problems, but she could not help thinking about Dr. St. Clair, whom she was now envisaging standing on an Australian beach wearing one of those very fetching swimming costumes of the kind that Australian lifeguards wear with such distinction – a tiny slip of a costume that seemed to suit them so well and surely would suit Dr. St. Clair too. Not Stuart, though. Stuart needed to go to the gym and get rid of that waist of his, so that he could one day aspire to an Australian swimming costume.

  She stopped herself. I am a married woman, she said to herself. I have a husband and two sons. I should not be thinking of Australian swimming costumes. But what else was there to think about?

  “Would you be prepared to undertake some therapy on this wretched dog we’re looking after?” she asked.

  “Delighted,” said Dr. St. Clair. “Just make an appointment.”

  21. Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen

  Matthew and Elspeth were able to enjoy the wedding reception at Prestonfield House without thought to their triplets thanks to their extraordinarily competent Danish au pair, Anna. This young woman, who had come to live with them shortly after the birth of the three boys, Tobermory, Rognvald, and Fergus, had provided a lifeline for both Matthew and Elspeth, in whom the symptoms of chronic sleep deprivation had been manifest soon after their return from the Royal Infirmary’s maternity ward.

  “I am come from Copenhagen to help you,” Anna had said, using the powerful and poetic construction I am come. It would undoubtedly have sounded more prosaic had she said I have come; how much more portentous was I am come, a construction that one might expect to be used by Fra Angelico’s annunciatory angel, perhaps, or some other great and welcome messenger – an Automobile Association mechanic, for instance. I am come implies purpose and solution all rolled into one: I am come to help you is as reassuring to one awaiting great news for mankind as it is to one awaiting rescue at the side of the road. And so it proved with Anna, who immediately and without a murmur took over the running of the triplets, allowing Elspeth to recover her strength after the birth, and Matthew to return to something resembling a normal sleep pattern.

  Anna’s presence also enabled Matthew and Elspeth to accept social invitations once more and even to go out for the occasional restaurant meal or trip to the Filmhouse on Lothian Road.

  “It’s such an amazing feeling,” said Elspeth. “Going out and not worrying about the boys. I can hardly believe it.”

  “We have many things to be thankful for,” said Matthew. “And one of those things is Anna. Thank God for the Danes! Do you think we’re still producing girls like that in Scotland?”

  Elspeth pondered this for a moment. “Probably not. We’re having great difficulty finding nurses, aren’t we? Wasn’t there something about that in the paper recently?”

  “There was,” said Matthew. “There was some big report to the effect that nobody wanted actually to nurse anybody any more. Nurses are too busy filling out forms, they said.”

  “So nobody’s prepared to give people bed-baths and mop their brows? Or even just hold their hands?”

  “Apparently
not. The report said that nurses were far too grand for that now. They leave that to ward assistants – their menials.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Elspeth. “I’ve met some very sympathetic nurses.”

  Matthew shrugged. “It’s what the report said.” He paused. “But back to Anna: frankly, I just don’t see many people like her wandering around. She’s so competent. So warm. So helpful.”

  These qualities of helpfulness were to be tested to the utmost fairly shortly after Anna’s arrival when Matthew and Elspeth moved out of their ground floor flat in Moray Place back to India Street. The move to Moray Place had been a mistake. Although the flat was spacious, and although there was a useful strip of lawn running down to the top of Lord Moray’s Pleasure Gardens, both Matthew and Elspeth secretly pined for India Street, with its far more pleasing proportions. Fortunately Matthew was in a position to buy the flat back from Bruce, who had acquired it from him only a couple of months earlier. The price was high: Bruce had realised how desperate Matthew was for a deal to be made and had extracted every last penny his superior bargaining power could secure. Matthew bit his lip and paid. He hoped that Bruce would come unstuck one day, but did not imagine that this day of reckoning would come early, if at all. People like Bruce had a nasty habit of getting away with things.

  The arrangements for the move were demanding. Everything so recently unpacked had to be packed up again and made ready for the removers. Arrangements had to be made to ensure that gas and electricity flowed without interruption during the handover and, at the same time, Moray Place had to be shown to prospective purchasers. Estate agents will tell you that there are various things you can do to prompt viewers of a property to form a favourable impression. The old trick of baking bread is well enough known, as is the expedient of placing large bunches of flowers in just the right places (in front of any known defects). It is also wise for the sellers to drop the occasional remark about how sad they are to be leaving, and if this leads to the direct challenge “Then why are you moving?” the seller must be ready to activate his cell phone in his pocket, making it necessary for him to excuse himself to take the call.

  But what no estate agent or conveyancing solicitor will say is that the presence of triplets in the house will help the process. Anna, however, had risen to the challenge and not only had she kept the boys’ nursery extremely tidy, but she had also taken them out for a walk in their triple buggy whenever a prospective purchaser was due to arrive.

  “What tidy babies you have!” remarked one woman, as she popped her head round the nursery door.

  “Yes, they are,” said Elspeth.

  “Just what one expects in Edinburgh,” the woman continued.

  “Indeed,” said Elspeth. “And now, may I show you the dining room?”

  But Anna also organised the packing of the flat’s contents, wrapping the china and crockery in old copies of The Scotsman and placing them securely in the crates provided by the movers. And when it came to the day of the move, she took command of the situation as a skilled general will move men and equipment from camp to camp. Matthew and Elspeth found that they had very little to do as Anna, standing in the hall with a clipboard in her hand, ticked off items and gave orders to the four powerfully built mesomorphs from the removal company. These men complied with her every command, recognising authority when they saw it, even going so far as to mistake her for a German.

  “How lucky we are with her,” said Matthew, as he and Elspeth sat in their reclaimed kitchen in India Street.

  Elspeth looked at him with affection. “Yes,” she said. And she thought: does Anna have any flaws? Any?

  22. The Reel of the 51st

  Matthew and Elspeth did not return from the reception at Prestonfield House until shortly after midnight. Both were exhausted: Matthew from all the anxiety of being best man to Angus, and Elspeth from the sheer amount of dancing she had done at the evening ceilidh. In that respect she had been more energetic than Matthew, who would dance only the Gay Gordons, the Dashing White Sergeant and, if pressed, an eightsome reel. Elspeth, by contrast, had briefly served on the committee of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society and had learned – and remembered – many of the more obscure dances. Speed the Plough (frequently danced in Inverness and the Laigh of Moray) held no terrors for her, nor did the Wind on Loch Fyne (a popular dance with those inclined to flatulence), or even the Reel of the 51st Division and the De’il among the Tailors. Matthew admired the intricacy of these dances, but did not have a good memory for the steps, and preferred to sit them out and watch Elspeth undertake them with confidence and style. He was so proud of her – as a wife, a mother of triplets, and now as a dancer. I am very blessed, he thought; I do not deserve the good fortune that has come my way, but at least I’m aware of it.

  In the taxi on the way home, he said to Elspeth, “I loved watching you dance. You looked so … so …” He paused. “So beautiful.”

  She smiled at him, taking his hand briefly in hers and pressing it gently.

  “Well, now they’re married,” she said. “For better or for worse. And I hope they’ll be as happy as we are.”

  Matthew hoped so too. He was concerned, though, at how Angus would make the adjustment. “He’s not very well organised,” he said. “You know that we bought the ring on the way to the church? And his kilt had this muckle great hole in it.”

  Elspeth laughed. “They’ll be all right. He wants mother – that’s all.”

  He wondered what she meant.

  “Most men do,” Elspeth continued. “When they’re boys, they have their mothers, and then when they’re men, they have their wives.”

  Matthew frowned. Could that be true? “Are you sure?”

  “Of course,” said Elspeth lightly. “Angus wants somebody who will take care of him. He wants somebody who’ll make him meals, run the household, and generally take care of him. Comfort – that’s what we search for in life, you know. Comfort. It’s as simple as that.”

  “And women?” asked Matthew. “What do they want?”

  “Oh, that’s simple enough,” said Elspeth. “They want to do exactly what men want them to do. They want to nurture. They want to be maternal.”

  “Not everybody wants that,” said Matthew.

  Elspeth agreed. But most did, she said. “Look at the way that little girls play,” she said. “Look at the way they fuss over their dolls – pretending to feed them, put them to bed, and so on. Look at poor wee Bertie. Look at the way he yearns to do boyish things – play with dogs and have a penknife. That dreadful mother of his does her level best to change all that – making him wear crushed-strawberry dungarees and so on – but he keeps reverting to type. No, Matthew: gender is our destiny, no matter how hard we may fight against it.”

  “I don’t agree,” said Matthew. “I don’t see myself like that.”

  “None of us see ourselves the way we really are. None.”

  He looked at her in astonishment; had Elspeth had too much to drink, he wondered. Not that inebriation made any real difference; he had always thought that the maxim in vino veritas was entirely true. We revealed our true personalities when we took too much drink: nice people were nice drunks while nasty people were nasty drunks. It was as simple as that. So if Elspeth after a few glasses of wedding reception champagne expressed the view that human life was biologically determined, then that was what she really thought. And that, perhaps, should not be a surprise. At heart, Matthew thought, everybody was conservative, even if they identified themselves as being the opposite. Scotland, he was firmly convinced, was deeply conservative but did not realise it, or, if it did, chose to deny it.

  But now the taxi had reached the top of India Street and was slowing down to disgorge them. He looked up; he could see that the lights in the flat were still burning. He pointed this out to Elspeth. “The boys must still be up. I hope that they haven’t been running rings round Anna.”

  They went upstairs and let themselves in. From somewhere within the fla
t there drifted the sound of music; inane, repetitive lyrics: boom-pa, boom-pa, boom-pa, boom-pa-pa; la, la, la.

  “Abba!” said Elspeth.

  At first Matthew bit his tongue. He liked Abba, but realised that he could hardly say that openly – not in Edinburgh; not in India Street. Perhaps it was a bit like harbouring conservative thoughts: one couldn’t express them openly in Scotland, but one could at least think them in the privacy of one’s room.

  “Ha!” he said disdainfully. “Abba!”

  The door of the drawing room was ajar and Matthew pushed it open.

  La-la boom, la-la boom, hoop, hoop, hoop! went the music. And there, sitting on the couch, was Anna, and at her feet, his back against the couch, legs sprawled out, staring up at the ceiling, was a man of about Matthew’s age, fair-haired and wearing a pair of narrow rectangular black spectacles.

  “So, here you are,” said Anna. “Was the wedding a good one?”

  Elspeth began to reply, but the young man now rose to his feet and introduced himself.

  “I am Bo,” he said. “I am a friend of Anna’s.”

  They shook hands.

  “Did you dance at the wedding?” asked Anna. “I hear that Scottish weddings are very turbulent affairs.”

  Matthew smiled. “Turbulent? I think that might not be the best word. Spirited, perhaps.”

  “I danced quite a bit,” said Elspeth. “Matthew isn’t so keen. But I think he still enjoyed himself.”

  Bo now joined the conversation. “I am very interested in filming some Scottish country dancing,” he said. “They would be very keen to watch Scottish country dancing on Danish television.”

  “Bo makes films,” said Anna. “And he’d like to talk to you.”

  23. A Danish Proposal

  Tired though he was, Matthew decided that he was getting his second wind.

  “Would you like a dram?” he asked Bo, and then, sensing the Dane’s confusion, he explained, “A whisky?”