Sunshine on Scotland Street

by Alexander McCall Smith

  There was nothing fundamentally wrong with Jonathan’s life in Edinburgh – he enjoyed what the city undoubtedly had to offer anybody in his late twenties and of a generally sociable disposition, and so he was certainly not bored; it was more a feeling of pointlessness. That can be a problem, and a major one. Believing that one’s life is somehow without direction is undermining. The sense of a lack of purpose, like a strong weed-killer, destroys that which it surrounds, withering the satisfaction otherwise obtained from day-to-day pursuits, strangling not only excitement and joy but also one’s basic appreciation of life.

  This problem had started for Jonathan when he had read an essay in a Sunday newspaper about anomie, a concept of mismatch between the individual and society. Anomie, he was told, came into existence when social values failed to chime with the individual – a condition that the writer of the article felt was endemic. Jonathan liked the sound of the word, and felt that it somehow expressed his feelings about his life, and in particular about his life in the PR agency. Suddenly it occurred to him that a life that he had previously thought was perfectly satisfactory was far from being that. What did his existence actually mean? He went through the motions of going to work, seeing others socially, improving his material circumstances and so on, but at the end of the day he had no answer to the question: why am I doing all this?

  He had raised the subject with a friend when sharing an after-work drink in the Filmhouse bar. “I’m not exactly sure why I’m here,” he said. “Are you?”

  The friend looked at him in mild astonishment. “Well, we’re here to see a film,” he said. “Or that’s what I thought. Unless there’s some other agenda.”

  “Oh, there’s no other agenda,” said Jonathan. “Have you got another agenda?”

  The friend shook his head. “I haven’t got an agenda. I thought maybe you had – the way you suddenly said that you weren’t sure why you were here. That sounded like an agenda.”

  “No,” said Jonathan. “No agenda.” He looked about him, at the people seated in the bar. Did they have an agenda? It was hard to tell. Some people look as if they definitely have an agenda, while with others it’s rather more difficult to tell. “It all seems rather pointless,” he continued.

  The friend looked into his glass. “I suppose it can seem that way. Do you think we’re just filling time?”

  Jonathan thought about this. It seemed an extraordinarily bleak conclusion that all that he was doing was filling time. What his life needed, he decided, was meaning. But how did one find that?

  “Meaning?” echoed his friend, after he had raised it with him. “Where do most people find meaning in their lives? What are their options?”

  This question, so simple in its expression, was not easily answered.

  “Material fulfilment?” asked Jonathan.

  “Maybe,” said the friend. “That’s probably it for just about everybody these days. People think that satisfying their material wishes will make them somehow happier. It doesn’t, of course. It only makes them want more.”

  “Yet it does provide a goal,” said Jonathan. “If you’re on twenty-five thousand a year and you want to be on thirty thousand, at least you have an objective. If you’ve got an old car and you want a new one, then at least you have something to work for.”

  “Maybe,” said the friend. “Maybe. But the goal is always elusive, isn’t it? And it’s always just over the horizon.”

  “All right. Then comfort. Maybe that’s what we’re all striving for. Just to be comfortable. To be warm. Not to be hungry. To have somewhere comfortable to sit. Pretty basic stuff, but all understandable goals.”

  “To an extent. But …” The friend looked about him. “We’ve got somewhere comfortable to sit, and yet you’re not happy, are you?”

  Jonathan sighed. “No.”

  “Religion?” asked the friend. “What about that? A lot of people find the answer there, don’t they? Religion answers your question as to meaning fairly definitely, doesn’t it? Or most religions do. They tell you why you’re here and what you’ve got to do. And they often keep you busy doing it by inventing all sorts of rituals to underline the point. All of that gives people a structure and a sense of purpose.”

  Jonathan smiled. “If you accept the basic premise,” he said. “But I’m not sure I do.”

  “That there’s a divine purpose?”

  Jonathan nodded. “I can’t,” he said. “That’s the problem. I look at where we are and …” He shrugged, in sheer helplessness. “I see our real situation. I see us as tiny specks of life that happen to have come into existence on a lump of rock hurtling through space. We’re tiny – really tiny. And yet we somehow claim that our ant-like existence is special and that the creator of all this is actually listening to us. I can’t, I’m afraid.”

  The friend listened. “If you think that,” he said quietly, “then there’s absolutely no point in continuing. Nothing has any meaning.”

  “But that’s the whole point,” said Jonathan. “Maybe it hasn’t.”

  “Except in a limited context,” said the friend. “We can still identify happiness and unhappiness. We can still identify pain and the absence of pain. Even those basic things give us a … a reference point for all the rest. It creates value – value for us.”

  Jonathan listened intently. The friend, who had rather surprised himself by the direction the conversation had taken, now drained his glass and smiled. “You know your problem, Jono? You need a change. Simple.”

  62. Encounter in Dundas Street

  The conversation that Jonathan had with his friend in the Filmhouse bar proved to have far greater implications than either of them could have imagined. For most of us a discussion about the things that really matter – the fundamental questions of how we are to live our lives and, just as important, how we are to make sense of the lives we live – is a rare event. We do think about such matters, but our contemplation of them tends to be sporadic and darting. And when it comes to talking about them with friends, embarrassment often prevents us from anything but the most superficial discussion. Or life gets in the way: we are too busy, too preoccupied to ask each other what we think about these most essential and profound matters. For most of us, life is lived with the philosophical volume turned half down. Yes, the world may be beautiful and intense and moving; yes, the very fact of human existence poses the most extraordinarily profound dilemmas; yes, our every act may involve finely nuanced decisions that have to be made; but we have a bus to catch, but we have a bill to pay, but we have to collect the children from school, but …

  Jonathan went home that evening in a frame of mind that was completely unfamiliar to him. It had not been a particularly long conversation that he and his friend had had, but it had given him a glimpse of the way in which he might think about his life – about life in general. And even if the advice that he had received at the end of it – the suggestion that he needed a change – might have sounded glib – the sort of nostrum that the dispensers of practical wisdom love to recommend – it predisposed him to action. And now, after that quite unexpected meeting with Bruce, his double, he had been able to engage in a wild and ridiculous escapade that offered the most significant change imaginable: that of becoming, for a brief period, somebody else. The temptation was too great to resist, and he did not resist it.

  Of course Jonathan had Bruce’s measure even before they gave each other their keys. He had observed certain similarities in their tastes and in the externals of their lives, but beyond that it was clear to him that they were very different people. Jonathan had encountered narcissists before, and he could see that Bruce was a classic example of the type. That said, he rather liked him. There was a certain cheery confidence to Bruce – a rather jaunty, optimistic attitude that he found curiously appealing. There was no question of Bruce’s being haunted by doubts as to what his life meant; that would be the challenge, really. If he were to pass as Bruce, then he would have to stop thinking for a couple of days. He wo
uld have to stop thinking and start doing.

  On the morning that they each went into the other’s office – the morning when Bruce made such a thoroughly bad start and had his uncomfortable encounter with Freddie’s boil – Jonathan had actually rather enjoyed himself. The deception worked perfectly. His in-tray had several requests for properties to be given a general evaluation, and he had been able to do that easily enough. Indeed there was a standard form that the firm used that merely required the ticking of boxes and the appending of the occasional additional comment. He had managed that without any difficulty, and, on returning from the second of these assignments – a flat in Northumberland Street that was just about to come onto the market – he had noticed a small coffee bar in a basement in Dundas Street. He must have walked past it before, he thought, but had never given it a try. Well, he was in no hurry to get back to the office and he could detect the delicious smell of freshly ground coffee wafting up the steps. He went in.

  Jonathan entered Big Lou’s coffee bar at a busy and rather interesting time. Matthew and Bo, the Danish filmmaker, were there. From behind her vigorously polished coffee bar, Big Lou was talking to Bo, who had a video camera on his shoulder, the lens pointed directly at her. Matthew, who had just been served with coffee by Big Lou, was seated at a table, looking rather glum.

  “Aye,” said Big Lou to Bo as Jonathan pushed open the door, “I remember how it was with the lambing. Some of the lambs didn’t do too well and we used to bring them on in the kitchen. We had one of those big ranges, great for keeping porridge warm, and we’d put cardboard boxes in front of this for the heat and put the lambs in them. Pair wee things, with their spindly legs and their bleating for their mothers. And my Uncle Davey would come in from the fields and bring another one in for us to look after till the whole place was a bit of a nursery.

  “My mother was a very good cook. She also made marmalade and jams and things like that, and there was a whole line of preserving jars on a kitchen shelf. She read the People’s Friend, which an aunt of mine used to send on from Dundee when she’d finished with it. We used to line the boxes for those lambs with old issues.

  “The local policeman was a friend of my father’s. He was called PC Murdoch as I recall …” She stopped and glanced at Jonathan. “Well, well, it’s himself.”

  Jonathan hesitated. It was immediately apparent to him what had happened – this coffee bar must have been a haunt of Bruce’s, and these people, not only the owner but also the couple sitting at a table, were staring at him. They knew him – or rather, they knew Bruce.

  It was too late to withdraw. “Good morning,” he said to Big Lou, and then nodded briefly to Bo. “Don’t let me interrupt anything.”

  Bo switched off his camera. He was looking at Bruce with interest.

  “Your usual, Bruce?” asked Lou.

  That was easy enough. “Yes please …” He faltered. He did not know Lou’s name but had noticed something embroidered onto the rather curious housecoat that she was wearing. “Yes please, Big Lou.”

  The salutation passed without comment.

  “This is Bo,” said Lou. “He’s making a film for …”

  “For Danish television,” said Bo, extending his hand. “How do you do? Please tell me your name – you have a very interesting face, you see.”

  63. Economic Statistics, and Other Creative Activities

  “You know,” said Stuart, looking out of the kitchen window, “I’ve had a very demanding day – a very demanding day.”

  The evening sunlight had caught the tops of the trees at the end of Scotland Street, had painted them with gold. The air was still – heavy with the weight of a long summer’s day behind it – and the branches of the trees were motionless in their torpor.

  “Working hard on a warm day like this is so much more difficult than in winter,” Stuart went on. “I don’t feel it in winter, but in this heat …”

  “I’ve been busy too,” said Irene, tipping strong bread flour into the top of her bread-making machine. “I had a meeting of the Melanie Klein Reading Group and an essay for my Open University course. ‘A Durkheimian Analysis of Post-Industrial Society.’ Not simple.”

  “No,” mused Stuart. “Are we post-industrial in Scotland, by the way?”

  Irene gave her husband a withering look. “Everybody’s post-industrial, Stuart.”

  Stuart frowned. “Everybody? But somebody must make something – unless we don’t need things any more. Do we need things, do you think?”

  “Of course we need things,” said Irene. “Things are made …” She waved a hand in the air, in a vaguely eastern direction. “Things are made in China.”

  “So I believe,” said Stuart. “So what’s there left for us to do?”

  “Service industries,” said Irene. “Intellectual industries. We can earn our living through thinking, Stuart.”

  “Inventing things?” asked Stuart.

  “Yes, if one has to put it simply.”

  Stuart thought about this. “But of course that pre-supposes that other people won’t invent them first.”

  “They might,” said Irene. “But there’ll be some things we invent first, and then protect the intellectual property.”

  Stuart looked doubtful. “But there are lots of places that won’t respect intellectual property,” he said. “China for one. They just ignore it – or many of them do.”

  Irene sighed. “International capitalism will find a way of dealing with that,” she said.

  “I thought you disapproved of international capitalism,” said Stuart mildly.

  “Of course I disapprove of it,” snapped Irene. “Who doesn’t?”

  Stuart could think of one or two names. But he did not want to get into a discussion with Irene about international capitalism, and so he returned to the subject of his own day.

  “I had a very trying meeting,” he said. “The minister is about to make a speech to some gathering of influential businessmen at Gleneagles and …”

  “Typical,” interrupted Irene. “People like that love Gleneagles.”

  Stuart shrugged. “It’s rather nice, yes …”

  “If you can afford it,” said Irene forcefully. “What about all those other people who can’t afford to go to Gleneagles? What about them?”

  “Oh, I imagine they’ll find somewhere else to go,” said Stuart. “They could go to the pub, for example.”

  “As Marie Antoinette might say,” retorted Irene.

  Stuart bit his lip. “I didn’t mean it in that way. There are lots of people who would actually prefer to go to the pub than to go to Gleneagles. They’d feel more comfortable in the pub.” He paused. None of this was going down well with Irene, and so he returned – again – to the subject of his trying day. “Well, be that as it may, the minister was jumping up and down about getting some figures on North Sea oil. She needed them in order to prove that Scotland would be the sixth richest nation in the world if our economy were to be looked at on its own.”

  “In your dreams!” said Irene.

  “Well, as you know,” Stuart continued, “you can do all sorts of things with statistics – which is where we as statisticians came in. And because John is off at some meeting or other in Amsterdam, it fell to me to deal with the ministerial request. I got out my calculator and did a few sums on the back of an envelope and showed them to the minister. As far as I could work out, we’d actually be the sixty-second richest country in the world.”

  “Ah!” said Irene. “I bet she didn’t like that.”

  “Not very much,” said Stuart. “She’s doing her best, though. So she asked me to look at the figures again and see whether I could present them in a different light. They all do that – all the parties. I asked her what she had in mind, and she said that I could perhaps base my calculations on the assumption that a whole lot more oil will be found, and perhaps quite a bit of gold and other precious metals too. If those possibilities were taken into account, perhaps it would be possible to portray
us as the sixth richest country in the world, or even the richest, if they found lots of these things.”

  “I see,” said Irene, shaking the contents of a small packet into the breadmaker’s nut dispenser. “Nuts.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Stuart. “And so I explained that this was not an accepted technique in economic forecasting or in statistics. So she looked very disappointed and then said that surely we could do the calculations again on the basis that the fifty-six or so countries above us could all become poorer, in which case we would then be the sixth on the list. She seemed quite pleased with this suggestion, but I’m afraid I had to pour cold water on it.”

  “On politicians,” said Irene.

  “Anyway, I told her I couldn’t do any of that and so she told me to come up with some figures for North Sea production that she could use. What she wanted was how much oil would be produced next year. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the data, and so I had no idea what to do.” “Olive oil,” said Irene, pouring a small quantity into her bread-maker.

  “No, crude,” said Stuart. “So you know what came to the rescue? The Scotsman’s Sudoku. One of the interns in the office had completed the Sudoku, filling in all the numbers, and then left it lying on a desk. So I decided to put it to good use. I wrote down all the Sudoku numbers and passed them on to the minister, and she was very pleased. She seemed to think that they looked good. She asked me whether they could be interpreted as suggesting that Scotland would be the sixth richest country in the world after all, but I said that the statistics were still tentative and that it would be best to wait, and she reluctantly accepted that.”

  Irene had stopped listening. The following day was a Saturday and she had remembered something that she had planned to do. “I mustn’t forget the Yoga Fest,” she said. “I’m planning to take Bertie.”

  “Yoga Fest?” asked Stuart. “I was actually hoping to take him fishing. Remember how I took him fishing last year? He loved it so much. I thought we might go again. We could invite that wee friend of his, Andy – the one we met last year. The one with the Swiss Army penknives.”