Bo’s face lit up. “That is very generous of you,” he said. “We are very fond of your whisky in Denmark. We drink it all day.”
“I think he means every day,” corrected Anna. “Every day, Bo, means one whisky a day; all day means many whiskies, all the time.”
Bo nodded. “We are not like you Scottish people,” he said politely. “You are drunk all the time.”
Again Anna explained. “I don’t think that’s quite what Bo means,” she said. “He means that sometimes people in Scotland drink at different hours from people in Denmark.”
“That is correct,” said Bo. “When I went through Glasgow Airport at eight in the morning there were people in the bar drinking whisky and beer at the same time. I was very depressed.”
“Impressed,” corrected Anna.
Bo shook his head. “No, depressed.”
Matthew thought it time to fetch the bottle of twelve-year-old Laphroaig that he kept in the kitchen. Returning with two glasses – Anna and Elspeth having declined – he poured a generous amount of the highly peated whisky into each and handed one to Bo.
“This is a very earthy whisky,” he explained. “It’s very popular.”
Bo raised the glass to his lips and took a sip. For a moment his face was impassive, but then he gasped.
“Like it?” asked Matthew.
Bo nodded. “It is very interesting. In Denmark we have something very like this that we apply to the chest for colds.”
“Some people find it slightly medicinal,” said Matthew. “I’m sure that one can equally well apply it to the chest for colds. But tell me, Bo, what sort of films do you make?”
They sat down at each end of the couch vacated by Anna, who had gone off with Elspeth to check on the triplets.
“I make a special sort of documentary,” said Bo. “You call them fly-on-the-wall films, I think.”
Matthew nodded. “Where you observe people going about their ordinary lives?”
“Exactly. My last film was made on a Danish offshore patrol frigate, the Hvidbjørnen. Have you heard of it?”
Matthew shook his head. “No, I can’t say I have.”
“I went to sea with the men for two weeks and showed them going about their work, writing letters home and doing all the things that sailors do on boats. Tying knots. Scrubbing the decks. Eating their dinner. One of the young sailors was very homesick and I filmed him crying in his berth. It was very sad.”
“It can’t be easy, being a sailor,” said Matthew. “Being away from home for long periods.”
“Yes,” said Bo. “But the sailors were all very kind and polite. And after a while they forgot that I was there with my camera – they just accepted me. That’s the key to filmmaking – or any sort of photography. The subjects must forget that you’re there. They must be quite natural.”
“I can understand that,” said Matthew. “Isn’t that what the physicists say about experiments: the presence of the observer changes the event?”
“That’s true,” said Bo. “People certainly change when you point a camera at them. Have you noticed how everybody in photographs today is smiling?”
Matthew had not thought about it, but saw what Bo meant. “Yes, they do smile, don’t they? I suppose that’s because they feel they have to. And of course photographers tell them to smile.”
“That is smiling under orders,” said Bo. “But the interesting thing is this: in older photographs people never smiled. You saw their faces just as they were. They didn’t feel that they had to smile.”
“So it somehow just started?”
“Yes. Perhaps it came from America – I don’t know. The Americans feel that you have to be happy, you see. Look at their politicians: they have to smile all the time or they won’t get elected. Do these people smile in bed too, do you think? They lie there asleep, perhaps, with a smile on their face. We Scandinavians never felt that: we allowed people to be melancholy. Indeed, we expected people to feel that way. I suspect that people in Scotland are a bit like us in that respect. You’re very happy to be miserable, I believe.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Matthew. “There are those who put that sort of image about, but I’m not sure that absolutely everybody in Scotland is miserable. Our politicians tend to be miserable, I suppose – and our writers, artists, and singers too. And our financiers and manufacturers and farmers and policemen and delivery men and nurses and journalists and teachers and lawyers and busdrivers and people you see in the street – they’re all pretty miserable, but the rest certainly aren’t. Or not all the time anyway.”
Bo looked thoughtful. “I shall be very interested to find out if that’s true,” he said. “Which brings me to the question I have for you.”
Matthew looked at him expectantly. “Yes?”
“I would like to make a documentary film about your daily life,” he said. “It would be one month in the life of a typical Scottish family. I would observe, but you would soon get used to me and my camera. I would be like that fly on the wall – you never notice him, you never worry about him.”
Matthew frowned. “A typical Scottish family? An art gallery director with triplets, living in … living in a Georgian flat in Edinburgh? I’m not sure whether that’s exactly typical.”
Bo seemed ready for this objection. “I know what you mean,” he said. “But that’s nothing to worry about. I meant typical in the sense of typical documentary material. Actual ordinary people – people leading average lives, people without triplets and art galleries and Georgian flats – are really pretty much unfilmable. You, by contrast, will look very good on film, as will your wife, and your three sons. It will be very popular on Danish television – there is no doubt about that. It will give us Danes a window into Scottish life.” He paused. “And will there be a chance that you will do some of this Scottish country dancing? Perhaps you and your neighbours could dance out on the street, on those pretty cobblestones. That would be very nice for people in Denmark to see, I think.”
24. The Man from Mains of Mochle
Big Lou had had two invitations for that wedding Saturday – one, which took clear precedence, was to the wedding itself, at which she was to act as bridesmaid; the other was to go to the Farmers’ Market, held weekly immediately below the towering rampart of the Castle. That invitation came from Alex Macphail, who farmed a farm called Mains of Mochle, just outside Arbroath, and who had now obtained a stall at the Edinburgh Farmers’ Market.
Big Lou had known Alex forever, or so it seemed. They had been in primary school together, although she found it impossible to remember him at that age. In her class of twenty-two children, there had been slightly more boys than girls, and all the former seemed to merge into one vague, composite boy undistinguished for anything but an ability to disrupt the class, annoy the girls during interval play, and copy from others during tests. It was only later, when they started at high school, that Big Lou became aware of the quiet, rather soft-spoken boy who, like her, came from a farm. There was no question of romance, but an undemanding, casual friendship developed between the two of them. Like many school friendships, the separation that came with leaving school allowed for a fading of what bond there was. And that, of course, can be a blessing. There is nothing but disappointment in store for those who seek, after many years – sometimes almost a whole lifetime – to rekindle a friendship of early childhood. The one we admired so much for his litheness, for a smile, for amusing opinions and sense of fun, has become thick-set, dour, and dull. Time – and gravity – have done their work and we wonder how we could possibly have been so admiring, so taken with the person we now see before us. Of course we ourselves have changed – we, too, are thick-set, dour, and dull – but do not see ourselves as such. Eighteen or nineteen is the age at which most of us are permanently stuck – at least in our own eyes. And why the world should not see us thus is a mystery.
Big Lou and Alex met again at Crieff Hydro, where Big Lou had gone for the weekend with her then friend Da
rren, an Elvis impersonator. The occasion had been a weekend Elvis impersonators’ conference – a trying event, as it turned out, for Big Lou. Darren had more or less ignored her in favour of Elvis discussions and she had felt hurt and rebuffed. By sheer chance she had found herself sitting next to Alex, who was not there for Elvis-related reasons, but had come to the Hydro to spend a quiet weekend by himself. He was a widower, his wife having died a little more than a year ago, and his pleasure at bumping into Big Lou had been manifest. They had talked about all sorts of things – Mains of Mochle, rare-breed pigs, the agricultural affairs of the east of Scotland, and so on – all subjects which Big Lou continued to find interesting, no matter how long she spent in the city. His company was the catalyst that prompted her to detach herself from the rude and ungracious Darren, and she and Alex had subsequently enjoyed dinner together in the Hydro dining room. Since then there had been telephone calls, a visit by Big Lou to the Mains of Mochle, and a trip to Glasgow to listen to a Jethro Tull concert. “Those boys are gey musical,” was Alex’s verdict on that.
Big Lou was not quite sure where she stood with Alex. If there was going to be a romance, then she wondered why it had not already started. The answer, she decided, was that he was not ready: Alex had married at a young age – he and his wife were both twenty-two – and they had had twenty years of marriage before her death. A year was too short a time for the grief that followed such a long time together. She had read somewhere that the typical period needed to recover from such a loss was eighteen months. If that were true, then Alex would not be quite ready to embark on another relationship. He would need time – and she was perfectly prepared to give him that. After all, there had been nobody else as remotely suitable as Alex. Big Lou had been unlucky in her affairs – the seedy chef, the unrepentant Jacobite, the secret Elvis impersonator – it was not an impressive list. Alex Macphail was a different matter altogether, and if she had to wait until he was ready, then wait she would.
“I’m going to be at the Farmers’ Market every Saturday from now on, Lou,” Alex had said. “You could drop in maybe.”
“I’ll try,” she said. “But it’s difficult, Alex. I have to get somebody to look after the coffee bar. And Saturday can be an awfy busy day.”
“Please try, Lou,” he said. “You could keep me company.”
There was something pleading in his invitation, and she decided to ask Pat Macgregor whether she would mind relieving her in the coffee bar for a few hours on the Saturday after the wedding. Pat, who was a student, worked part-time in Matthew’s gallery and regularly called in for coffee at Big Lou’s. In spite of their difference in age – Big Lou was at least twenty years older than Pat – they got on well; indeed they had become friends.
Pat agreed to cover for as long as was needed, and so Big Lou found herself walking along Queen Street towards the West End, ready to spend a couple of hours with Alex in his stall at the Farmers’ Market. When she arrived, he greeted her warmly, planting a kiss on her cheek. He had never kissed her before, and this chaste peck made her blush. When was I last kissed – by anyone? she asked herself. With Darren she had not got that far – and his greasy hair would have made it an unpleasant experience; the Jacobite was too preoccupied with history to kiss; the chef too crude to bother with such preliminaries. So this kiss, delivered in full view of the shopping throng and under Alex’s sign that read Mains of Mochle Country Bacon, was as romantic an encounter as Big Lou had enjoyed for how many years … ten? Twelve? One kiss every dozen years. That was not very much, but there were people, Big Lou reminded herself, who had not even that. She looked at the bacon. Kisses and bacon. “Bacon and Kisses.” It could be the title of a song, or of a reel perhaps, to be danced at a ceilidh. She closed her eyes. She could hear the music.
25. The Cuddliness of Thistles
Big Lou returned to the coffee bar an hour later. She had not spent much time with Alex, as the stall had been busy and he had not had the time to talk to her very much. He had promised, though, to come down to see her in Dundas Street once he closed up at lunch time. He would bring her some bacon, he said, so that she could make bacon rolls for any customers who might like to try them. “They’d love them, Lou,” he said. “This saddleback bacon isn’t like the ordinary stuff you get in the supermarkets. That’s full of brine, and it comes out as white scum. You seen that, Lou? Horrible white scum.”
She had returned to the coffee bar in a state of near-elation. Pat was dealing with a customer when Big Lou came down the steps – those very steps on which Christopher Murray Grieve, more widely known as the poet Hugh MacDiarmid, had stumbled all those years ago, when Big Lou’s coffee bar had been a bookshop. And they were the same steps too down which the late Lard O’Connor (RIP) had fallen and expired not all that long ago on a visit to the capital from his native Glasgow. There were doubtless other steps in Edinburgh that had claimed more than one victim, but none perhaps as distinguished as these two; distinguished for very different reasons, of course: MacDiarmid for his fierce championing of the Scots language and his rambling verse – sublime at times, and on other occasions contrived and also unforgiving; Lard O’Connor for his egregious espousal of a lethal diet and his embodiment of the bourgeois nightmare. Both came from a Scotland that was uncompromising; from a Scotland that could be perverse, awkward, and as cuddly as a thistle. Big Lou came from an entirely different place – from a hinterland of neat farms and hard-working people – but she understood what MacDiarmid meant, even if she had little time for Lard. She had read the poet, as she had read her way through shelf after shelf of the books she had bought when she had acquired the shop premises, and she had glimpsed, and understood, his vision.
Down those distinguished steps of stone worn by generations of feet came Big Lou, and she pushed open the door of her coffee bar. Pat looked up and smiled a greeting. She was pleased that Big Lou had returned to relieve her, although she had been enjoying serving coffee and would have been happy to go on had she not had shopping to do.
The customer’s coffee cup pushed across the spotless counter, Pat turned to Big Lou. “Everything obviously went very well,” she said. “And you look pleased.”
Big Lou joined Pat behind the counter. “Aye, it wasn’t bad. Lots of people there.” She poured herself a glass of water. “But he’s keeping some bacon for me. He’s bringing it down later.”
Pat studied her friend. Her instinct for this sort of thing was usually reliable. Something significant had happened.
“This chap, Alex,” she said. “Tell me about him.”
“He’s a friend,” said Big Lou.
“I gathered that.” She paused. “A close friend?”
Big Lou looked at her. “Close enough. I knew him when he was a wee boy. We were at school together – all the way through.”
“And then?”
“He got married. She died. He’s a farmer.”
One needs few words, Pat thought, to sum up a life. We all grew up. We worked. We lost the people we hoped not to lose.
There was a silence. Then Big Lou said, “Did you have friends you knew as a child and then didn’t see for a long time?”
Pat nodded. “Most people have friends like that.”
“And did it work? Did the friendship start up again?”
Pat thought for a moment. “Sometimes.” She looked at Lou. “Lou, I hope that this one works for you. I really do.”
Lou stared down at the floor. “It would be nice.”
“I know that you’re happy by yourself,” said Pat, “but there are times when it’s just nice to have …”
“To have a fella? Aye, it is.” She reached out for the cloth with which she habitually polished the counter and set to the task, with wide, circular sweeps. “By the way,” she went on. “Talking of fellas, I saw somebody I know when I was coming back here a few minutes ago. Walking up towards Queen Street. That fella.”
“Which one? Matthew?”
“No, not him. Matthew’s not a f
ella, if you see what I mean. Matthew’s just Matthew. No, that good-looking fella. You used to know him. The one with the hair and the face.”
“With the face?”
“With that braw face. I cannae mind his name … Bruce. Aye, that was it.”
Pat stood quite still. “Here?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Big Lou. “He said hallo and I asked him what he was up to. He said that he’s just moved in round the corner. Albany Street. He asked after you.”
Pat’s heart skipped a beat. “Me? Bruce asked after me?”
“Yes. He said he hoped to see you some day.”
Pat made a conscious effort to control herself. She shrugged insouciantly. “Oh, him. I haven’t seen him for ages. I thought he’d gone away.”
“I wouldn’t get involved with him, if I were you,” said Big Lou. “He made you unhappy before, didn’t he?”
Pat took a few moments to answer. Then at last she said, “He did. But I got over him.”
“Did you?”
“I hope so.”
Big Lou looked doubtful. “Boys like that are very dangerous,” she said.
“I know that,” said Pat. She spoke too forcefully, and the determination in her answer made it apparent that even as she knew of the danger that Bruce presented, she was equally aware of her weakness. If she had got over him as she claimed, then she would not be closing her eyes now and picturing Bruce standing before her, the top two buttons of his shirt undone, his jeans low on his hips, his hands tucked into his pockets, and smiling at her, and smiling. She knew that she would have to see him again. Just to look at. She had to.
Pat opened her eyes and looked directly at Big Lou. There was perfect understanding between them. Both knew then exactly what it was to be a woman, and how hard it was. They might also have understood – had they thought about it – just how hard it sometimes is to be a man.
26. On Psychotherapy and Freedom
Sunshine on Scotland Street Page 9
