The Importance of Being Seven

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Elspeth glanced down at her stomach. ‘I have an increasingly large corporation,’ she muttered. ‘And it’s going to get even larger.’

  Matthew touched her arm lightly. ‘My darling! You’ll go back to normal size – after the baby … babies.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘You will. Of course you will. People who have triplets don’t look massive for ever. That’s not the way it works.’

  They reached the end of the corridor. Somewhere, a clock was ticking loudly – a sound that served to emphasise the overall silence of the flat.

  ‘It’s so quiet,’ said Matthew, peering into the room ahead of them. ‘Apart from that clock.’

  They entered the drawing room, a large room that stretched out to a set of wall-high windows overlooking a terrace. For a few moments they stood quite still. Then Matthew turned to Elspeth and looked at her enquiringly. ‘Do you see yourself here?’ he asked.

  She walked into the middle of the room. ‘It’s very elegant. Our stuff …’

  He reassured her. ‘Our stuff will be all right,’ he said. ‘And if it isn’t, we can get some new stuff – or some new old stuff. There’s that place down in Leith that sells all that Georgian furniture. We could go there.’

  Elspeth moved to the windows. The garden outside, which was surrounded by a high wall, had been carefully tended. It sloped down sharply, and at the end, beyond the top of the wall, the view was of the tops of the trees in Lord Moray’s Pleasure Garden beyond.

  She gazed at the trees for a few moments, noticing how the wind was making them sway slightly. They were like the surface of a green sea, she thought; a green sea of gently moving leaves.

  She turned to Matthew, who was standing at the other end of the room, peering at a painting on the wall.

  ‘What is it?’ she said.

  Her voice sounded small in the large room. She repeated her question, unsure that he had heard it.

  His reply was half mumbled. ‘Fergusson,’ he said. ‘A picture of a woman reading. His sister, I think. He painted his sister reading – I’ve seen another one just like this somewhere.’

  Her eyes were drawn to the garden again. There was a small lead statue placed close to the wall on one side. It was a child, a girl, with skirts that reached almost to the feet. Half of the child’s face was in shadow; the other in the sun. It was very skilful, she thought, to make lead seem so light, so flowing. She thought that she might draw Matthew’s attention to this and say …

  She fell – not to the floor, but halfway across a chair, so that her head did not hit the ground. As she fell, she saw for a moment the face of the child. The sun had disappeared behind a cloud and the light that had played on the statue was no longer there.

  46. What We Really Are

  After Angus Lordie had made his purchases at Stewart, Christie in Queen Street, he decided to walk directly to Domenica’s flat in Scotland Street. He had intended to visit his friend the day before, but had been distracted from his purpose by a series of telephone calls and minor disturbances. His electricity meter had to be read; there was a parcel delivery for his neighbour, who was out at the time; there was a surveyor who wanted to get access to the shared roof space because the flat next door was for sale and his ladder was not long enough; and so on. By the time all of this had been dealt with, his morning, he felt, was ruined, and it was too late to visit Domenica, who would have left for Valvona & Crolla by then. She went every day, it seemed, often for small purchases – a handful of mushrooms, a few slices of salami, a single serving of pasta.

  ‘You could do a big shopping trip once a week,’ Angus had once pointed out to her.

  ‘Please mind your own business, Angus,’ she had replied. And when he had looked injured by this abrupt response she had relented and explained. ‘Shopping is a small, quotidian transaction. We need these to anchor our lives.’

  He had looked at her blankly, and she had continued. ‘The day needs to be punctuated, you see. The hours of the Church, for instance – lauds, terce, sext and all the rest – are a way of breaking up the day, a way of making landmarks in our lives.’

  He had smiled. ‘You’re talking like an anthropologist.’

  ‘I am an anthropologist, Angus.’ She paused. ‘Or I was.’

  He looked thoughtful. ‘Surely one doesn’t stop being an anthropologist – just because one isn’t doing anthropology. Would I stop being an artist if I stopped painting? I’m not sure about that.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ said Domenica. ‘Does a doctor stop being a doctor when he or she stops practising? I don’t think so. He could resume practice.’

  Angus looked up at the ceiling. Talking to Domenica sometimes required one to think really hard – rather harder than he was accustomed to thinking. She was like a sudoku, in a way – not that he should make that comparison openly. He pulled his thoughts together. ‘But a politician doesn’t remain a politician once he’s out of politics, does he? Or a plumber?’

  ‘The politician – no. The plumber, yes, because it’s a skill. Rather like the doctor. That’s the difference, perhaps. If the description of what you are is based on a skill, then that’s what you remain.’

  A further thought occurred to Angus. ‘What if you want to stop being something and people say, “No, you can’t stop being that,” because once you’re it, you’re it for life? What then?’

  Domenica rose to make coffee. ‘Give me an example.’

  Angus shrugged. ‘Oh, membership of a religious faith, for example. Some groups say you can’t get out. If you’re in, then you’re in and that’s it.’

  ‘Apostasy,’ said Domenica. ‘Yes, that’s difficult. It depends on whether you accept the group’s view. I wouldn’t – in most cases.’

  ‘If I joined the Mafia,’ said Angus, ‘would I be a mafioso forever? Or would I stop being one if I resigned?’

  ‘I don’t think you can resign,’ said Domenica. She paused, and smiled at Angus indulgently. ‘But I wouldn’t call you a mafioso for the rest of your life. I would call you a reformed mafioso.’

  ‘But the label would always be there?’ asked Angus. ‘It wouldn’t ever go away?’

  It took Domenica some time to answer this. And when she did answer, she was brief. ‘No, it wouldn’t go away,’ she said.

  Angus raised an eyebrow. ‘So one can never change? Not completely?’

  That, she accepted, seemed hard. Could we never become something different from what we started off as? People did change – they clearly did, and she knew many examples of people whom she knew who had changed completely. Angus himself had changed, she thought. He was far less … how would one put it? Difficult? And even Cyril … She stopped. That was the example for which she had been searching.

  ‘Cyril,’ she said. ‘Take him as an example. Whatever moral effort Cyril made – no matter how hard he tried – he would still be a dog, wouldn’t he? It’s the same with us. There are some things about us that are fundamental to our identity – things we can’t change. That bit always remains.’

  ‘But that fundamental bit is very small, don’t you think?’ asked Angus. ‘I can’t stop being a man, can I? But I can become a very different sort of man.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Domenica. ‘You could. Of course, some men do stop being men, don’t they? If one undergoes sex reassignment and takes on a female identity – surgery, the lot – then you stop being a man.’

  She looked at Angus. It was difficult, if not impossible, to imagine him as a woman. It was difficult, in fact, to imagine any of the men of her acquaintance as women. And yet some men did want to become women and tried so hard, and some women wanted to be men and made a similar effort. It was not easy to empathise, but one had to. Imagine waking up every morning and feeling that there was something fundamentally wrong with the way things were; it would be insupportable. And yet, did ordinary human empathy require people in general to believe things that simply were not true? Some aspirations were unrealistic. The middle-aged may
wish to be seen as young, but did that mean that people should treat them as youthful simply because that was what they wanted? Did courtesy and consideration for the feelings of others go that far?

  ‘But do you ever stop being a man?’ asked Angus. ‘Or are you a woman on the outside and a man inside?’

  ‘Some would say those are merely social labels,’ said Domenica.

  ‘And Cyril might say that being a dog is merely a social label,’ Angus retorted.

  Cyril did not say that, of course. He was listening to this conversation, but there had only been one word so far that he had recognised – which was Cyril. He was not sure what that word meant – it was different from walk, which he understood very well. The word Cyril meant, in his mind, that something was going to happen. It was a verb. He had no idea that it was him, that he was an object.

  He waited for some further sign, but none came. So he lowered his head and went to sleep. Before he dropped off, pictures came to him, and scents too. He saw a field, and a path. He saw a ball in the air, describing an arc across the sky. He smelled something rich and exciting; rabbits, perhaps. He saw a face peering at him. He saw water at the edge of sand. He heard verbs.

  47. The Symbolism of Birds

  The conversation that Angus had with Domenica over personal identity was just one of the many exchanges they had on such topics. He did not have such conversations with anybody else – not with Matthew, with whom he spoke about day-to-day things, although they did discuss art from time to time; nor did he have them with Big Lou, to whom and with whom he tended to listen, rather than engage in conversation. Domenica was different; she made him think.

  And of how many of one’s friends could one say that, he wondered. The answer, when he came up with it, was very few. There were his friends in the Scottish Arts Club, with whom Angus had lunch from time to time; all of them were good conversationalists, but for the most part the talk was light-hearted. They talked about other artists, about shows, about who had said what to whom, and about what was going on at the National Gallery of Scotland; a broad enough agenda, of course, but not the same as the agenda he pursued with Domenica. Why, he asked himself, was that? The question came to his mind as he climbed up the stairs that morning to Domenica’s flat. And the answer, which came on the second landing, outside the door of that awful Pollock woman, the one whose ankle Cyril had so embarrassingly nipped, was revelatory. He had those conversations with Domenica because she, uniquely among his friends, understood him. It was as simple as that.

  He stopped, and looked down at Cyril. Something was worrying the dog, as the hairs on the back of his neck were bristling. Was there a cat about? It was the reaction commonly produced by a taunting feline presence, only this time rather more pronounced.

  ‘Anything wrong, Cyril, old chap?’

  Cyril now growled – a low, throaty utterance.

  ‘My goodness,’ said Angus, reaching down to reassure the dog. ‘Traces of feline? Quite understandable, of course.’

  But it was not that – not that at all. As Angus bent down to pat Cyril, the door on the landing opened and Irene looked out. For a moment her expression registered confusion – what was this man doing on the landing? – followed quickly by recognition and understanding.

  ‘Oh, it’s just you,’ she said.

  Angus inclined his head politely. ‘Indeed it is.’

  ‘And that dog of yours,’ said Irene, looking at Cyril with a mixture of distaste and disapproval.

  ‘Cyril,’ said Angus. ‘My dog.’

  Cyril stared at Irene and gave another low growl.

  ‘He’s a most unfriendly creature,’ said Irene.

  Angus ignored the comment. ‘And how is your little boy?’ he asked. ‘Bertie, isn’t it?’

  ‘He’s fine,’ said Irene. ‘And we have another one now. Ulysses.’

  Angus suppressed a smile. ‘Such a nice name,’ he said. And thought – but did not say – for a Greek.

  Irene nodded absent-mindedly in response to the compliment. There was something else on her mind. ‘You’re an artist, aren’t you, Mr Lordie?’

  Angus inclined his head again. ‘A humble limner,’ he said.

  ‘And somebody told me that you paint portraits.’

  ‘I do indeed. I paint other subjects, of course, but I suppose one or two people know me as a portrait painter. Not exactly Henry Raeburn, of course, but a portrait painter nonetheless.’

  Irene wrinkled her nose. ‘Raeburn was so predictably bourgeois,’ she said. ‘All those pictures of the propertied classes, all congratulating themselves.’

  Angus was silent.

  ‘I’m really of the John Berger school myself,’ she went on. ‘I look behind the sitter and see the possessions. Those portraits are all about power and ownership.’

  Cyril growled very softly.

  ‘But not all portraits are like that,’ Irene conceded. ‘I’m sure that yours aren’t. I’m sure that you have abundant psychological insight.’

  ‘I would hope to get a bit of that,’ mumbled Angus. Really, this woman! What they said about her was absolutely correct. She’s insufferable – quite insufferable.

  Irene now emerged fully from the doorway. ‘You wouldn’t care to paint Bertie, would you?’ she said. ‘I’ve read about this big portrait competition. The BP Award, I believe it’s called. In fact, I went to see some of the portraits when they came on tour. Some of them were very good.’

  ‘I’m glad you approved,’ said Angus. ‘Portraiture is rather unfairly neglected, I think …’

  Irene interrupted him. ‘Bertie would make a very interesting subject,’ she said. ‘He’s a remarkable little boy.’

  ‘I’m sure he is,’ said Angus. He saw Bertie from time to time in Drummond Place – a rather lonely little boy, he thought, who had once told him that he would like to have a dog. That’s right. And then he had said something about his mother not allowing him to have animals for some reason or another.

  ‘Yes,’ said Irene. ‘Bertie perhaps against a suitable background …’

  ‘I usually do studio portraits,’ said Angus.

  ‘There’s that wonderful portrait of Seamus Heaney,’ Irene enthused. ‘Do you know the one? It has Heaney against a background of a laurel bush, with birds on the branches of the bush. We could have Bertie—’

  ‘I know the portrait you’re talking about,’ said Angus. ‘It’s in Belfast, I think. The Ulster Museum. Of course birds are used as a symbol for poets, aren’t they? Sometimes unconsciously, of course. The Westwater portrait of Hugh MacDiarmid has seabirds flying around in the background.’ He looked at his watch. ‘You must forgive me. I’m expected at Domenica Macdonald’s upstairs.’

  Irene cast a dismissive look upwards. ‘I’m sure you’ll find her in. I fear she doesn’t get out a great deal.’ She laughed. ‘But do remember about painting Bertie. Should you wish to, we’d be delighted.’

  Angus nodded. ‘Thank you.’

  He completed the climb up the stairs and rang Domenica’s doorbell.

  ‘I met your downstairs neighbour,’ he said. Domenica sighed. ‘She suggested that I paint Bertie’s portrait,’ Angus went on.

  ‘There’s no end to her ambition for that poor child,’ said Domenica. ‘But let’s not dwell upon such matters. We have so much to plan for the Italian trip.’

  ‘Good,’ said Angus. ‘I’ve just been to buy a few clothes. I can’t wait.’

  ‘Very soon now,’ said Domenica. ‘I’ve been to the bank and picked up some euros. Such a pity about the lira. I would have had hundreds of thousands of them. And such a colourful currency.’

  ‘The world is very grey now,’ said Angus.

  ‘And Antonia showed me a photograph of the villa …’ She broke off.

  ‘And?’

  ‘I can’t believe her cheek. I really can’t.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She pointed out that the villa is very small, and actually only has two bedrooms.’

  ‘Oh …
’

  ‘Yes. And would you believe it, but … but she’s put you in with her in one of the rooms – separate beds, she hastened to point out – while I’ve got the other room to myself.’

  Angus gasped. ‘Me? Sharing with her?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Domenica.

  ‘But that’s outrageous,’ said Angus. ‘If anybody has to share, then it should be the two of you … Sorry, but that’s only appropriate … I’m not old-fashioned, of course …’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘And Cyril?’

  ‘Outside.’

  48. The Breaking of the Heart

  ‘I suppose she’s trying to be modern,’ suggested Angus. ‘It’s like those awful mixed-sex wards in hospitals. The theory was that it was old-fashioned to put men in one ward and women in another.’

  ‘People hated it,’ said Domenica. ‘I remember going to visit somebody who was utterly miserable. She was in a ward with ten men, and she was the only woman. It was a nightmare.’

  ‘Antonia might have liked that,’ said Angus.

  Domenica laughed. ‘Perhaps. But I’m not sure that she is simply trying to be modern. I think that …’ She paused. Angus was looking away, and she could sense his embarrassment. ‘Well, I’m sorry to have to say this, but she’s ruthless, that woman. She wants a man and she doesn’t care who it is. It all shows how desperate she is.’

  Angus thought about this. Was Domenica implying he was the bottom of the barrel and only a desperate woman would show any interest in him? That was hardly flattering. With his new outfit from Stewart, Christie in Queen Street, and Cyril in his red bandanna, they might look quite the thing – in the right light.

  Domenica herself had realised the tactlessness of her remark, and was thinking of ways to repair the damage. Angus was more sensitive than people thought, as men often are, and she would not like him to think that she believed that no reasonable woman would consider him attractive.