Chance Developments: Unexpected Love Stories

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “And God?”

  She caught her breath. “You shouldn’t ask questions like that.”

  He busied himself with his sketchbook. “Surely we would have seen God by now. They’ve got those big telescopes. Surely we should have seen him.”

  “God is invisible,” she announced. “You can’t see him through a telescope.”

  “But if he’s all powerful—and you know that hymn that says that? Almighty, invisible God, la, la, la…If he were so mighty, then he would be able to let people see him and then they’d behave better and we wouldn’t have had the Great War, would we? God would have stopped it. God would have stopped all those men killing one another. He would have deflected the bullet that went into your father’s leg…”

  He stopped himself. She was glaring at him. “I don’t know about that. And I don’t want to know. My father’s leg has nothing to do with it and I don’t think you should talk about it in that way. He, at least, was in the trenches…” Now it was her turn to feel that she had crossed some invisible line; her mother had told her it was tactless to talk about who went and who stayed behind. “Anyway. I’ve got enough to think of, Harry—you may not have anything to think about, but I’ve got plenty.”

  She rose to her feet. “We’ll have a picnic tomorrow, right? Up by the waterfall?”

  He agreed. He had finished the sketch of the dove and he showed it to her.

  The potentially awkward direction of the theological conversation was forgotten. She studied the shape of the pinions, traced with a transcendent delicacy. “You’re going to be really famous, Harry,” she said.

  “Oh, I don’t know…”

  “Yes, you are. You’re going to be very famous and I’m going to help you. You know that, don’t you? You’re going to be an artist of great distinction.” She liked the sound of the phrase, and repeated it. “An artist of great distinction.”

  He said nothing. He never thought about his own future, which was something that would happen, of course, but could not be guessed at. She, it seemed, was the one who thought about him, who had ideas as to what he would do.

  —

  He carried the picnic basket—a hamper with a handle of desiccated leather. He walked ahead, up the rough path that led to the point where the burn tumbled off the lip of a hanging valley, creating a waterfall of thirty feet, a few wisps of white in dry weather but now, after the previous night’s rain, a convincing torrent. At the foot of the waterfall was a pool, hollowed out of rock, in which the water lingered before completing its short journey to the sea.

  He put the hamper down on the flat rock beside the water.

  “I want to climb up to the top,” he said, pointing to the head of the waterfall.

  “Be careful,” she said. “Wet rock is slippery.”

  He began to clamber up the rocks. Once at the top he looked down through the spray that the wind blew up in thin white puffs, like smoke, he thought. He saw that she was looking up at him, and he waved. He felt light-headed.

  He made his way back down to the pool. He felt warm, not just because of the exertion of the climb, but because the sun was high in a cloudless sky. It was noon.

  She had opened the hamper and extracted two plates on which she laid out the chicken and the sandwiches. There was a bottle of lemonade, still cool, from which she had poured a glass for him and one for her.

  “Lemonade makes me sneeze,” he said.

  “It’s the bubbles.”

  “They get up my nose.”

  She laughed. “Hold your nose while you drink.”

  He tried, but the lemonade ran down the front of his shirt. “Look what you’ve made me do.”

  She took a napkin from the hamper, soaking it from an upended bottle of water, and then dabbing at the moist patch on the shirt. “Take it off,” she said. “It’ll dry on the rock.”

  The moisture felt uncomfortable against his skin, and he did as she told him to do. She watched him, but when she saw that he noticed her, she looked away.

  “Here,” he said, passing the shirt to her.

  He sat down, his arms hugging his knees. “It’s so hot,” he said.

  She laid the shirt out on the rock. “We could swim,” she said. “The water will cool us off.”

  He said nothing.

  “Why not?” she said.

  “Why not what?”

  “Why not swim?”

  He bit his lip. His heart was racing; he felt it. He was warmer than he had been before. “I haven’t brought my swimming trunks. I didn’t think it would be so hot.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  His heart hammered within him. “But we can’t swim if we haven’t…”

  She leaned over. She put a finger against his lips. “There’s nobody to see us.”

  She stood up and he saw that she was beginning to undo her blouse. He stared down at the rock. He was at a boarding school and was used to nudity, but not this.

  “What if somebody comes?” he said.

  “They won’t,” she said. “Come on.”

  He stood up and began to unbuckle his belt. He turned, so that his back was to her, and soon he was naked. He did not look at her. He looked only at the sky and the water.

  There was a splash. She had jumped into the water, and was calling him from the pool. He kept his eyes on the sky, not looking where he was going. He felt the breath of the wind on his skin and then the cool embrace of the water.

  She was beside him. He looked at her and smiled. Her hair was bedraggled. He felt her touch him—her foot had kicked against his inadvertently. The water was shallow and he leaned back, the rock beneath him.

  She said, “I feel that I’ve known you for ever.”

  “Well, you have, I suppose.”

  She had moved closer to him. “Are you cold?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Neither am I. When you first get in, you feel cold, but then it goes, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  —

  That was in late July. By mid-September he was back at school, more senior now in the hierarchy, eligible for the few highly sought-after privileges given to those in their last two years there. He had a study to share with another boy, and he used his half of this as a studio. A sympathetic art master had spotted his talent and was encouraging him. “I see you at the art college in Edinburgh,” the teacher said. “My own alma mater, of course, and I would hesitate to influence you too much but…well, we had the most marvellous fun there, you know. And at the same time we received a very fine education in drawing and painting—every bit as good as what you’d find in Florence.”

  He needed no persuading. “That’s what I want,” he said.

  “Well then, you know what to do…draw, draw, draw. Have your sketchbook with you at all times. Look at the world and see the lines. The world is all lines, you know—lines and shapes. See them; feel them, Harry. Lines and shapes.”

  He was drawing when word came that his housemaster wanted to see him.

  “Trouble,” said the boy who came to fetch him. “You know how he looks when he’s angry? Well, sorry to say, that’s how he looks. But double it.”

  He searched his memory. “I’ve done nothing…”

  The other boy shrugged. “I’m only saying what I saw.”

  He knocked at the door and was called in. His father was there, sitting in a chair by the housemaster’s desk.

  His heart stopped. His mother had died. That was the only explanation for his father’s presence.

  “Sit down,” said the housemaster flatly before turning to Harry’s father. “Mr. MacGregor?”

  His father looked at him but only held his gaze for a few moments before looking away. “Do you realise what you’ve done?” he said, his voice strained with emotion. “Do you have the faintest idea?”

  Harry felt perplexed. He did not know what to say. And then he realised this could be only one thing. Somebody had seen them.

  “Because if you don’t,�
� his father continued, “I’m going to have to spell it out to you.”

  The boy started to shake. He was unprepared for it, but it took hold of him, starting in his hands. He grasped them together, hoping to stop the movement.

  “You have made that girl pregnant,” said his father. “You…yes, you have done that.”

  He closed his eyes. It had simply not occurred to him, possibly because he had blocked it out. The guilt—and there had been guilt—had obscured the more practical issue.

  He spoke automatically. “I didn’t.”

  His father stood up, towering above him. His face bore an expression he had not seen before—one of pure anger. “Don’t deny it, Harry. Don’t add lies to your mountain of misdeeds.”

  The housemaster raised a hand. “Mr. MacGregor, perhaps…”

  “I’m sorry,” said his father. “I shall try to control myself.”

  “Your feelings are completely understandable,” said the housemaster quietly.

  They both looked at Harry.

  “We have made every effort to contain the situation,” said his father. “I have spoken at length to her father, who has been extremely understanding—more so, in fact, than one could reasonably hope for in normal circumstances. That, at least, has made our position less awkward.”

  The housemaster nodded. “That’s fortunate,” he said.

  “Jenny has been sent down south. There’s a place where girls who…girls who get themselves into trouble are able to go and have the baby. They arrange adoption.”

  The baby. He caught his breath. This was about a baby. This was not about something that happened on that picnic, with the waterfall behind them and the sun. The full enormity of what he had done came home to him. He started to cry.

  “I’m going to kill myself,” he said.

  The words came unbidden, and their effect was immediate. His father gasped, and exchanged a quick glance with the housemaster.

  “Don’t say things like that,” said the housemaster. “You don’t mean that, Harry.”

  “I do.” He felt his body shaking with his sobs. He wanted to die.

  His father moved over towards him. He put his arm around his shoulder. “Listen, Harry, this is not a tragedy. This is a mistake that…well, that happens. We had to talk to you about it. We had to make sure that you understood.”

  The housemaster rose from his desk and crossed the room. A boy had committed suicide the previous year—a boy under his care. That had been something to do with sex as well. You had to be so careful with these young people. They were impetuous.

  “We think that perhaps it would be best if you went home, Harry,” said the housemaster. “I think what you’ve just said is not something you really mean. Go home with your father.”

  He struggled with his tears. “I’m to take all my things?”

  The housemaster inclined his head. “Yes. I’m sorry about this, but we cannot countenance such things.”

  “You’re not being expelled,” said his father. “Mr. Sanderson—and the headmaster—have been very understanding. You’re not even being asked to leave. You’re going of your own accord.”

  “Yes,” said the housemaster. “I don’t for one moment approve of what you have done, and you will have time to reflect on that, I imagine. But I don’t want to ruin your prospects. You’re planning to go to art college, aren’t you? I’m sure there’ll be no difficulty with that. And I’m sure, too, that you will not repeat what you’ve done, will you?”

  His father answered for him. “He will not. He won’t be seeing the girl again. You can rest assured of that.”

  “Good,” said the housemaster.

  He offered Harry his hand to shake.

  5

  He took readily to the regime at the art college. They started early, even in the winter term, when the light that flooded through the windows of the great studios was a cold northern one, struggling to make an impression on the half-darkness in which winter clothed Scotland. There was little time for individual flourish—just the constant discipline of drawing under the critical eye of the tutors; they were artists themselves, some rumoured to lead a bohemian existence, but not here, not in the college with its formalities and proprieties.

  He discovered the work of James Cowie, and made the trip to Hospitalfield to visit him. The quiet painter spoke to him about preparatory studies. “Do everything three, four times. And then do it again.” He looked at the work that Harry had brought to show him, paging through the sketchbooks. “On the right lines,” he said.

  In 1939, shortly after his nineteenth birthday, he went to Glasgow to visit Fergusson, who had returned to Scotland from France. “Painting under a cloud is going to be difficult,” Fergusson said to him. “The light will be blocked out, you know. That’s what’s happening now in Europe—the light is being blocked out.”

  On the train back to Edinburgh, he sat in his compartment with a kilted soldier, a corporal. The man said nothing, but as the train drew into the station, he lowered the window, opened the door, and leapt out onto the platform. Harry struggled with the swinging door but managed to close it before the train came to a halt. He sketched the incident in his sketchbook—the man’s back, the pleats of the kilt caught in the wind, the Edinburgh skyline in the distance.

  Later, sitting at the table in his lodgings with the young man with whom he shared a room, a medical student, he described what happened. “Despair,” said the medical student. “We see it in the infirmary every day—or almost every day. Despair. Guilt.”

  He asked him about guilt. “Why do we feel guilty?”

  The medical student laughed. “Because there are plenty of people who are only too ready to peddle guilt. The Wee Free Church does it. They’re always at each others’ throats, but they’re made of the same hodden, you know. And they find fertile ground for their efforts, believe me.” He paused, looking at his watch. Their landlady was slow; even the cooking of a haddock seemed to take her for ever. “Your problem, Harry, is that you will never have done anything that makes you feel that way.”

  He looked at him. “How can you tell?”

  The medical student laughed. “Because if you had, I could see it in your eyes.”

  Harry held his gaze.

  “I believe I might see something,” said the medical student. “What is it, old fellow? Something to confess?”

  “No.”

  “That tells me everything. People who say they have nothing to confess have everything to confess.”

  In a dream that night he saw his baby. It came to him and stretched out a hand. It was wearing white, a mort claith, he thought, the Scots term for a shroud. It tried to say something to him, but was taken away by a woman in a blue tunic. And suddenly the child was no longer there, but had been replaced by a man in a grey suit who said, “Draw everything twice, Mr. MacGregor.”

  —

  In 1940, at the age of twenty, he left the art college and enlisted in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. “You’re doing the right thing,” said the college principal. “Your place will be open when hostilities are over.” It was shortly after Dunkirk, and he had none of the illusions of the previous year.

  “You’ll be an officer, I take it,” said the principal.

  He shrugged.

  “But of course you will be. Were you in the Corps at school? Yes? Because that’s what they look at.”

  “I’m not sure that I’m cut out for that.”

  “For leadership? But of course you are. Listen, one of the things we do here is instil self-discipline. Drawing class at eight thirty in the morning is exactly the sort of thing that develops that…that ability to cope with the world. The average young man won’t have that, you know.”

  “Miners start early…”

  “That’s not the point. Miners are not officer material.”

  The principal was right. He was sent off on a week’s selection course and emerged an officer cadet. Four months later he was commissioned, and found hims
elf in charge of a platoon of men recruited from rural Argyll. Some of them seemed to be no more than boys—sixteen-year-olds taken from the farms where they were starting their lives as stockmen, shepherds, gamekeepers. They looked at him as if he came from another world, accepting an authority that for his part he felt he had no right to exercise.

  He was sent to North Africa. In 1942, he was at El Alamein. He had been seconded to a camouflage unit, and his skill at creating the illusion of tanks and fuel dumps out of netting and wood had been noticed by his superiors. He was promoted to captain and mentioned in despatches. He saw Monty himself, who inspected one of his bogus tanks and pronounced it good. “I’m not fooled, of course,” he said. “But let’s hope that General Rommel is.”

  A few days after the victory, he was in Cairo. In Shepheard’s Hotel a man in the uniform of a lieutenant in the Royal Scots Greys came up and introduced himself. The lieutenant offered to buy him a drink. “I feel I almost know you,” he said. “But not quite. My cousin, you see, is Jenny Currie—you two were quite friendly, I believe.”

  When the other man returned from the bar, Harry’s hand trembled as he took the drink. They exchanged toasts.

  “Somebody said that you were up at El Alamein,” said the lieutenant. “Well done. I hear you were one of the camouflage chaps. Magicians, people said. You made things disappear.”

  “They remained exactly where they were,” he said. “We just made it look as if they were something they weren’t. The human eye will believe what it wants to see.”

  “Oh, I know that,” said the lieutenant. “Try looking out of a tank in the desert.”

  They had lapsed into silence before he summoned up his courage. “What news of Jenny, then?”

  The cousin visibly relaxed. “I thought you were never going to ask.” He paused. “You see, I do know about…” He left the sentence unfinished.

  Harry felt himself blushing, and the younger man noticed it.

  “I’m sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

  He reached out and laid a hand on the other man’s forearm. The cousin looked down with surprise at the hand on his arm. Harry withdrew it.