Bertie Plays the Blues

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “There’s not much for me to do,” said Alex. “I have a really good stockman who does everything. He prefers to have me out of the way, and so I get away a lot. Here, the Peebles Hydro, a hotel near Ballachulish. It fills the time.”

  Big Lou looked at him. She had last seen Alex MacPhail when they were both sixteen. He was about to leave school to go and work on his father’s farm, Mains of Mochle, and she was about to start looking after her elderly uncle on his farm. Neither had had any great sense of a future, other than that which involved their doing what they had always done, which was hard work, in one place, until marriage or fate took them away from the land where their people had always been, living their life in a Scotland that they thought would be there forever

  71. The Pros and Cons of Rare-breed Pigs

  Big Lou and Alex MacPhail had a great deal to talk about. There were reminiscences of well-known Arbroath characters; there was discussion of the difficulties of running a farm compared with those involved in running a coffee bar. Alex, it transpired, was thinking of raising rare-breed pigs, as a sideline to his Aberdeen Angus cattle, but was concerned at the growing cost of animal feed and the slow growth rate of some of the breeds.

  “The standard production pig these days matures quickly but tastes of very little,” he said. “Look at the bacon you get in your average supermarket. Look at what happens when you cook it. Water comes out. Water and salt.”

  Big Lou agreed with this. “Disgusting,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Alex. “But let me tell you something, Lou. I had a nice piece of bacon the other day that Mrs Forrester smoked herself. You remember her? Mains of Morriston? She had that wee dog that won all those prizes in Dundee one year. Remember? Best dog – dog of the year. Something like that. There was a full page spread in the Courier.”

  Big Lou remembered. “A great dog,” she said.

  “Anyway,” Alex continued. “She gave me some of her bacon. It came from a Gloucester Old Spot and Tamworth cross. Nice-looking pig. And it couldn’t have been more different from supermarket bacon. Fantastic, Lou. Thick rashers with real taste.” He paused. “You should serve bacon rolls in your coffee bar, Lou. Real bacon. Those Edinburgh types would love it. Muckle great rolls with big bits of bacon in the middle. How about it, Lou?”

  Big Lou thought for a moment, but only for a moment. “Great idea, Alex,” she said.

  “Mind you,” Alex went on, “you have to be careful with some of these pigs. Some of them get quite vicious. Mike Stuart – remember him, Lou? – he was attacked by one of his pigs. Aye, a few years back. It was a nasty business. He slipped when he was dealing with one of his breeding sows and she went for him. Bit his ear, and he was lucky not to lose it, Lou. A pig will easily take your ear off. Of course, some of them have very easy temperaments. The British Saddleback, for example. There’s a great pig. Pretty, too. They’re the black ones with that thick pink stripe round them. A bit like Belted Galloway cattle. Do you remember Willy Lawson, Lou? He had Belted Galloways. But that was after your time, I think.”

  “I think so,” said Lou.

  She suddenly looked at her watch, and gave a start as she realised that it was almost time for the banquet and there was still no sign of Darren.

  “I’m meant to be going to a dinner,” she said to Alex. “I’m with this fellow, you see, and there’s a big meeting of these …” She did not say it; she did not want Alex to know about the Elvises.

  He looked crestfallen. “Oh.”

  She reached her decision. “Look,” she said. “I’m not really in the mood for a big, formal dinner. I think I’ll just go and tell them that I’m not going to be there.”

  The disappointment on Alex’s face lifted immediately. “I’ll wait,” he said. “I’ll wait right here.”

  Big Lou got up and made her way to the reception desk, from where she was directed to the function room in which the Elvis dinner was being held. This was on the ground floor, not far away, and even as directions were being given she heard the sound of Elvis voices drifting down the corridor. And as she approached, this noise became louder, until she stood at the doorway of a large room thronged with Elvis impersonators and their wives, girlfriends, and boyfriends.

  It seemed to Lou to be an impossible task to find Darren. She thought she saw him, and made her way purposively across the room to have a word with him, but when she came face-to-face with the person she had seen, she realised that she had been wrong. He looked like Darren from a distance, but then so did everybody else, because they all looked like Elvis, and deliberately, defiantly so.

  She turned round and gazed over the sea of faces. There he was. No, that wasn’t him. Was that him? No, that Elvis was too short. Darren was a tall Elvis, but so were fifty or sixty other Elvises in the room.

  Big Lou turned round and walked out of the room. On her way out, she inadvertently bumped into an Elvis who was standing by the door, talking to another Elvis.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Lou!” said Darren Gow. “Sorry, I’ve been talking to Harry here about the karaoke and …”

  “I’m going home, Darren,” said Lou. “Thanks for inviting me, but I have to go now. I hope you enjoy yourself.” He opened his mouth to say something, but she was gone.

  Back in the bar, Alex MacPhail had ordered himself a drink and asked Lou what she would have.

  “I’ve been thinking about bacon,” he said. “I wonder if there’s much of a market for good bacon in Edinburgh. Or do you think people can’t be bothered?”

  Lou thought that it all depended. There were some people, she said, who would go out of their way to buy good bacon, as long as they had the time.

  Alex nodded his agreement. “Time’s the thing,” he said. “You’re right there, Lou. Time.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. Then he said, “You wouldn’t want to have dinner with me, would you, Lou? They have a very good dining room here.”

  Big Lou smiled. “I’d love that, Alex.”

  They finished their drink in the bar and then went into the dining room, where they were found a table at the window. Outside, even in the dying light of the day, the hills of Perthshire were touched with soft gold. They looked at the menu, and Alex pointed out that the lamb probably came from a local farmer whom he had known for years. “He sells a lot of meat to these people,” he said. “It’s very good.”

  “I’m sure it is,” said Lou.

  She looked at Alex, and it was with fondness, and he looked back at her in much the same way. And she realised, as she sat there at the window, that each of us eventually comes home to the thing that we have always been, to the thing that we really are.

  72. Edinburgh for Phobics

  At the end of Antonia’s letter to Angus, after loving and detailed descriptions of her new life in the Tuscan convent that had been so kind to her, there had come a paragraph that caused him not only an agony of indecision but also a considerable amount of lost sleep. It was not any particular ambiguity that gave rise to this; the message was simple. “As for that painting you mentioned,” wrote Antonia, “I want you to have it even if it is valuable. I know that a Cadell can sell for goodness-knows-what at an auction these days, but that’s not the point. Please have it and enjoy it or, if you will, sell it and buy something else. This is a gift to you, Angus. Material things no longer mean to me what they once meant. I am released from their tyranny, and quite frankly I can tell you: this feeling of freedom is quite exhilarating. And please do not come back to me and seek to persuade me otherwise. It is important, you know, to be able to accept gifts from the hands of others, and to do so graciously is an ability which I am sure you will find within you – if you look.”

  Angus had read and re-read these words and each time he had come to the same conclusion: Antonia wanted him to have the painting. But more than that, she wanted him to have the value that the painting represented, and this meant that he could, if he wished, sell it and use the money, as she had suggested
, to buy something else. At first he had thought that he would have no wish to do this, but more recently, following the discouraging conclusion that Domenica’s feelings for him had changed, a new thought had occurred. He would sell the painting and use the proceeds to buy Antonia’s flat for Domenica. This could be a gift from him to show that however disappointed he might be by her change of mind – and he was certain that she had, indeed, changed her mind – he was not one to resent her nor to harbour a grudge. That is what he would do, and it would mean that he could retire from this whole engagement with Antonia feeling that he had behaved honourably and generously. And that was exactly how he had always wanted to behave.

  By the time he reached the Scottish Gallery on Dundas Street he had worked out the exact terms of the letter he would write to Antonia. “I accept your generous gift, dear Antonia – and it is generous. You mentioned in your letter that the painting comes to me free of any restraint on what I might do with it. That, I suppose, is a paradigm of the gift: the thing that is given becomes the property of the recipient, free of any encumbrance as to purpose or destination. I note that you said that I could sell it myself, if I so desired. That is so thoughtful of you …” He stopped, and for a moment stood rooted to the spot in Great King Street where this thought had occurred.

  From his customary position at his master’s heel, Cyril looked up at Angus expectantly. The dog was used to walks that were punctuated with these unscheduled moments of reflection, and it would give Cyril the time to carry out a more in-depth sniff of their surroundings. Great King Street had a particular smell at dog-level, a smell that humans were completely unaware of but which to dogs meant a great deal. Indeed a canine map of Edinburgh, were such a thing possible, would have an entirely different look to it from any maps drawn up by human beings. Human maps referred only to the names of the streets, and gave little other information, apart from the recording of distances. Dog cartographers would be uninterested in such a concept, but would include so much else. The streets in the immediate surroundings of butcheries, for example, would be red-lined, triple red-lined perhaps, while those occupied by cats would be specially marked in some other prominent colour. Feline escape routes of cats – the paths taken by cats fleeing for their lives from pursuing dogs – would be carefully traced, allowing the more intelligent dogs to waylay their quarry further down the line. Lampposts would be individually illustrated, with attention being drawn to those that were more promising – a helpful guide to what canine argot, for some obscure reason, refers to as cottaging. The homes of those known to object to dogs, along with the houses of prominent cat-lovers, would be marked out with a symbol designed to encourage loud barking in that area. And so on …

  Such a map is pure fantasy. Less fantastic are the obscure but non-apocryphal Burglars’ Map of Edinburgh, the Social Climbers’ Map of Edinburgh, and Edinburgh for Phobics, a map which sets out those spots which are best avoided by those suffering from various phobias. George IV Bridge, for instance, is not recommended for those affected by vertigo, as is the Castle Esplanade. Princes Street is best given a wide berth by those with a fear of crowds, while the gardens that lie alongside it are marked on this map as having particular dangers for anthophobics (those afraid of flowers) and chorophobics (those afraid of dancing). A symbol for this latter phobia is printed next to the Ross Pavilion, because of its association with Scottish country dancing events during the summer, when the innocent passer-by, enjoying a walk through the upper levels of the gardens, may suddenly look down and see a group of otherwise rational people, bedecked in kilts and tartan skirts, weaving past one another in strange tribal rituals known as Strip the Willow or the Dashing White Sergeant. Nothing can guarantee that one will not suddenly come across public dancing – public dancing is in a sense like lightning, and must be accepted as such – but a glance at the phobics’ map will at least enable the chorophobic to visit Edinburgh without running too great a risk of encountering the thing that he or she fears most. And if we can get through life without encountering the thing that we fear the most, then we are not doing too badly.

  And for most of us, the thing that we fear the most is to find that nobody loves us. Which is what Angus felt at that moment, in Great King Street, in spite of the fact that his dog, who loved him so intensely and unconditionally, was directly at his feet and trying, wordlessly, to convey the length and depth and breadth of that love.

  73. A Venetian Interior

  When Angus arrived at the Scottish Gallery, Guy People was in the middle of a telephone call in his office. “Don’t disturb him,” said Angus to Elizabeth Wemyss, who was busy hanging a new exhibition. “I shall wait.” He looked at the painting that the other assistant, Tommy Zyw, was holding in position for Elizabeth’s approval. Tommy was the grandson of an artist, Aleksander Zyw, who had come to Edinburgh from Poland and whose paintings Angus had long admired; grandfather and grandson both had a good eye.

  “Exactly right,” said Angus. “Right where you’ve got it.”

  The painting was secured in position.

  “Cyril likes it,” said Elizabeth. “See the way he’s staring at it.”

  Angus looked down at Cyril, who was looking intently at the recently hung painting, a street scene in what appeared to be Naples, or possibly Palermo.

  “There must be a dog in it somewhere,” said Angus. “Cyril loves to see pictures with dogs in them. He always finds the dog.”

  “Surely not,” said Tommy, who had not met Cyril before and had no idea of his abilities.

  Angus moved forward to inspect the painting at closer range. As he had suspected, there was a small dog making its way down the colourful Mediterranean street. “There,” he said, pointing. “Do not underestimate Cyril’s powers, Tommy. They are considerable.”

  Guy appeared from his office and suggested to Angus that they adjourn to Glass & Thompson up the road to talk. Once there, Angus ordered coffee for them both before extracting a small parcel from his briefcase and starting to unwrap it.

  “I have a painting here, Guy,” said Angus.

  “So I see. I’m intrigued.”

  Angus paused in his task of unwrapping. “So you should be. Isn’t it the most delightful moment – to be waiting for a painting to reveal itself?”

  Guy looked at the parcel. “You’ve obviously found something very nice.”

  “Indeed I have,” said Angus.

  He began to remove the final layer of paper in which he had carefully wrapped Antonia’s painting when he removed it from her flat.

  “Here we are!” he whispered. “Just look at this.”

  Guy took the painting from Angus and held it at arm’s length. For a few minutes he said nothing, but gazed at the painting, occasionally moving it slightly to allow the light to play on it from a different angle. When he spoke, it was in quiet, almost reverential tones.

  “This is exquisite,” he said. “Absolutely exquisite.”

  “Cadell?” asked Angus.

  Guy did not hesitate. “Yes. Undoubtedly.”

  The word undoubtedly was exactly what Angus wanted to hear, and to hear it from Guy, the grandson of S.J. Peploe, made it mean all that more.

  “I’ve never seen this before,” said Guy. “Do you know anything about the provenance?”

  “Domenica’s neighbour,” said Angus. “I think that she inherited her paintings from a distant relative. They were Glasgow ship-owners, I think.”

  Guy nodded. “Many of those people were great patrons of the arts, you know. Not just the Burrells of this world, but lesser families. They were very generous to artists.”

  “What do you think?” asked Angus.

  Guy put the painting down on the table and took a sip of his coffee. “There’s a very interesting thing here,” he said, pointing to the right hand side of the painting. “This is an interior of a woman arranging flowers. A fairly popular subject, by the way. Vuillard did a number of them, as you probably know. Also very intimate interiors. But take a look at
the view from the window behind her. Familiar?” Angus peered at the painting. Although the painting was painted in a very free, impressionist style, there was enough detail to make out … a canal. And not just any canal … “Venice?” he said.

  Guy nodded. “I’d say so. And that ties in very nicely with Bunty Cadell’s career. He went to Venice in 1910 at the behest of a patron of his, Sir Patrick Ford. He did some lovely Venetian paintings, and this, I think, is one of them. Look at the fluidity of it – the beautiful freedom of expression. After the War he changed …”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. He served in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. When he came out – and he was lucky to get out in one piece – he sought more structure in his work. His post-War paintings are much tighter.”

  “I love them all,” said Angus.

  “And so do I,” said Guy. “And I love this painting, Angus. Does the owner want to sell it? Is that why you’ve brought it to me?”

  Angus hesitated. He felt ashamed. “She wants to give it to me.”

  Guy inclined his head slightly. “Oh yes.”

  “And she said that I could sell it if I wanted to.”

  Guy was silent.

  “She really does,” said Angus. “And she knows it’s a Cadell. It’s not as if she isn’t aware of its value. I think …”

  Guy interrupted him. “Which is really considerable, Angus. You are aware of that, are you? I mean, really considerable.”

  “How considerable?”

  “It could be three or four hundred thousand,” said Guy quietly. “One went for more than that not all that long ago. And this is something very special. It really is.”

  Angus nodded. “I know that.”

  “I would take a second opinion,” said Guy. “I always suggest that. Take it up to Bonhams, if you like. Speak to Miranda Grant about arranging something. I expect they’ll say much the same sort of thing as I’ve said.”