The Unbearable Lightness of Scones: A 44 Scotland Street Novel

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Bertie said nothing. He did not like Tofu referring to his mother in those terms, but it was difficult to contradict him. The barricades in this life, his father had once observed, are often in the wrong place. Bertie had not been sure what this meant, but he felt that it might have some bearing on his dilemma in the face of anti-Irene comments from people such as Tofu.

  Tofu thought for a moment. ‘Of course, it’s a bit awkward that your mother thinks like that, but it shouldn’t stop you.’

  Bertie was puzzled. ‘But how could I go to cubs if she won’t let me?’ he asked. ‘How could I? Don’t they wear a uniform?’

  He was not sure whether cubs still wore a uniform or not, but he very much hoped that they did. Bertie had always liked the thought of wearing a uniform, particularly since his mother had such strong views on them.

  ‘Yes, there is a uniform,’ said Tofu. ‘But I could get hold of one for you. Your mother wouldn’t have to buy it.’

  ‘But she’d see it,’ said Bertie. ‘I’d have to change into it and then she’d see it. She’d say: “What’s that you’re wearing . . . ?”’

  Tofu was shaking his head in disagreement. ‘She needn’t see it,’ he said patiently, as if explaining a rudimentary matter to somebody who was rather slow. ‘There’s a place nearby, a place where they sell coffee. It’s called Starbucks. We can go in there and change into our uniforms in the toilet. See?’

  Bertie was still not convinced. He was a truthful boy, and he would not lie to his mother; he would not mislead her as to where he was going and it was inconceivable that he could just slip out of the house, as Tofu appeared able to do. He looked at Tofu with admiration and a certain amount of envy - what it must be like to have such freedom.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tofu,’ he said. ‘I don’t like telling fibs.’

  ‘But I do,’ said Tofu. ‘I’ll tell her that we’re going to a special club. I’ll get her to say yes.’

  Bertie felt quite torn. One part of him wanted no part of Tofu’s machinations; another was desperate to join the cubs, indeed was desperate to have any sort of life of his own. ‘But what will you say?’ he asked. ‘What sort of club?’

  Tofu shrugged his shoulders. He saw no particular challenge in this deception; the name of the club was a minor detail. ‘I’ll tell her that it’s . . .’ he paused. Bertie was listening carefully. ‘I’ll tell your mummy that it’s the Young Liberal Democrats Club.’

  Bertie’s eyes opened wide. The Young Liberal Democrats sounded almost as good as the Junior Melanie Klein Society, if such a thing existed. ‘She’ll like that,’ he said. ‘It’s the sort of thing . . .’

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Tofu nonchalantly. ‘Now all you have to do is to invite me to play at your house some afternoon and then I’ll talk to her. How about tomorrow?’

  Bertie swallowed. There was a very good reason why tomorrow would not be suitable, but all his other afternoons were taken up with Italian lessons and saxophone practice and it was difficult to see how he could otherwise fit Tofu in. ‘There might be somebody else there tomorrow,’ said Bertie. ‘But you can come too.’

  ‘That’s settled then,’ said Tofu. And then, quite casually, he asked, ‘Who is this other person, by the way?’

  Bertie looked away. ‘It’s Olive,’ he said shakily. ‘My mother invites her to play at my house. It’s not me, Tofu. I don’t invite her. I really don’t.’

  Tofu wrinkled his nose in disgust. ‘Olive! You actually let her into your house?’

  ‘I can’t stop her,’ wailed Bertie. ‘It’s my mother, you see. She likes Olive.’

  ‘You have big problems, Bertie,’ said Tofu, shaking his head. ‘But I suppose I’ll have to come anyway. Olive!’

  The conversation ended at that point and Bertie went away to think about what Tofu had said. His feelings were mixed. While he was excited at the prospect of joining the cubs - a uniform! - he felt anxious about the web of deceit that Tofu was so nonchalantly proposing to weave. The deception might work, but what if it did not, and his mother discovered that he had secretly enrolled in the cubs? There would be a most terrible row if that happened, and Bertie could just hear what his mother would say. When you tell a fib, Bertie, you’re telling a fib to yourself. Did you know that? And why, Bertie, why ever do you feel the need to wear a uniform? Is there something missing in your life?

  Bertie shuddered. The dressing-down would be bad enough, but what would be worse would be the practical consequences. More psychotherapy. More Melanie Klein. More everything. More mother.

  But then suddenly his defeatism lifted. He remembered a few days ago he had bumped into Angus Lordie, who was walking Cyril - and some boisterous puppies - in the Drummond Place Gardens. It was shortly after Bertie had read the Baden-Powell book and he asked Angus Lordie if he had ever been a scout.

  ‘I was both a cub and a scout,’ answered Angus. ‘And a great time I had too. I was kicked out of the scouts, of course, but I enjoyed it when I was in. Yes, you should join up, Bertie. Absolutely.’

  He remembered now. It had been such a humiliation being kicked out of the scouts. It was like being excommunicated from the Catholic Church, where a candle was ceremoniously snuffed out to signify the exclusion. In Angus Lordie’s case, the scout master had taken his woggle from him. Such humiliation. Dewoggled.

  21. Lost Opportunities

  Domenica Macdonald, anthropologist, native of Scotland Street, confidante of the portrait painter and dewoggled scout, Angus Lordie, was sitting somewhat morosely at her kitchen table. Before her on the table was an open copy of that day’s Scotsman newspaper. She had just finished reading the letters column, a daily task she set herself in order to keep abreast with what people were thinking about. Today it had all been rather tame, and she found herself thinking back nostalgically to the days when the Scotsman letter column contained a greater number of letters from regular correspondents with a sense of mission. There had been Anthony J. C. Kerr of Jedburgh, for instance, who had written a letter to the paper virtually every week, and sometimes more often than that. His letters had been well informed and entertaining; perhaps just rather frequent. Then there was the late Major F. A. C. Boothby, an energetic writer of letters on the subject of Scottish nationalism - right up to the time of his unfortunate removal to prison for conspiring to blow up an electricity pylon. Such people certainly had things to say, but blowing up pylons had been no way to convince anybody, thought Domenica.

  Fortunately those days of excitable Scottish nationalism were over. While it had been necessary, Domenica felt, to repatriate the Stone of Scone by direct action, that is, by stealing it back, it was no longer necessary to do things like that in an age when the Government actually sent it back voluntarily, in a blaze of absurd, Ruritanian ceremony. She herself had been there in Parliament Square, watching in bemused astonishment as the Stone of Scone was driven up the High Street on a cushion; such a stressful day for any stone. And then it had been taken to the Castle where it had been examined by a geologist! Really, she thought, was there no end to the comedy? Of course, Domenica rather approved of Ian Hamilton and his friends who stole the Stone of Scone back from underneath the coronation throne in Westminster Abbey; indeed, she took the view that the stone should have been repatriated a great deal earlier than it was. After all, it was stolen property, rather like the blue Spode teacup which her neighbour Antonia had removed from her flat, and both it - the stone - and the teacup should have been restored to their rightful owners a great deal earlier.

  She glanced at the letter column in front of her and sighed. Those heady days were over. Now there were no more theological disputes, or historical debates, just letters about airport runways and European treaties and the like. And the Times letters column was much the same; the eccentrics, it seemed, no longer bothered to write letters about hearing cuckoos or, as in one famous letter, seeing a horse wear a pair of spectacles. It was all very bland.

  She looked up at the ceiling. It was almost half past ten
in the morning and she had not achieved a great deal that day. In fact, she had achieved nothing, unless one could count reading the paper as an achievement. And what about the rest of the day? What lay ahead of her? Domenica had never been one to be bored, but now, for the first time in years, she felt the emptiness of her future. Her social diary for the week was virginal, unsullied by any appointment; not one solitary invitation, not a single engagement of any sort. That, she knew, was the fate of those who made no effort to socialise, who never invited others and who received no invitations in return. But she had heard that it was also the fate of those who were very well known; famous people who received no invitations because everybody assumed that they would not be able to come. This point had been made to her very poignantly by Iris Murdoch, the novelist and philosopher, who had been in Edinburgh to deliver the Gifford Lectures and who had been seen by Domenica sitting alone in the University Staff Club in Chambers Street. Domenica had hesitated, and had then gone up to her and asked her, somewhat apologetically, whether she minded if she came and said hello.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Iris Murdoch. ‘Nobody comes up to me and says hello. They feel that they cannot, and yet I wish they would. I’m sometimes terribly lonely, sitting by myself, with nobody daring to come up and say hello.’

  That had surprised her, but then she had remembered that W. H. Auden experienced the same problem when he returned to Oxford and had taken up residence in a cottage in the gift of Christ Church. It had been hoped that Auden would sit in a coffee shop and undergraduates would come up and engage him in - for them - improving conversation. Auden was willing to sit in the coffee shop, and did so, but very few people plucked up the courage to go and sit at his table and talk to him. So mostly he sat alone. Mind you, Domenica thought, Auden, for all his brilliance and for all the timeless beauty of his poetry, was very dishevelled. His suits were dirty, stained with soup and as covered with ash as the higher slopes of Etna; both Auden and Etna smoked. Of course the great poet did not change his clothing as frequently as he might have done; that may have discouraged people from joining him at his table. How sad, and what opportunities lost! To have been able to sit down at Auden’s table and ask what exactly he had meant when he wrote some of his more obscure poems - those puzzling words, for example, about looking through the lattice-work of a nomad’s comb: Domenica had her theory about that and would have liked to try it out on the poet himself. Too late now. One could no more have coffee and a chat with Auden than one could pop into Milne’s Bar and buy a whisky for more or less the entire Scottish Renaissance. We have lost so much, she thought, and here am I sitting in my kitchen thinking about loneliness and what one cannot do, when what I need to do is to go next door, immediately, and visit Antonia; not my first choice of company - especially after the incident of the blue Spode teacup - but better than nobody, and, of course, a source of amusement, with her extremely questionable taste in men.

  22. Room for Misunderstanding

  There were two flats off the top landing at 44 Scotland Street - that belonging to Domenica Macdonald and that belonging to Antonia Collie. Of the two, Domenica’s flat was the better-placed: its front windows gave a view of a slightly larger slice of Scotland Street and allowed a glimpse, too, of the distinguished roofs of Drummond Place. Antonia’s view, although pleasant enough, was mainly of the corner of Royal Crescent. And although the symmetry which inspired the architecture of Scotland Street and indeed of the entire New Town should have led to both flats having the same number of rooms, Domenica had one more room than her neighbour. This was strange, and could only have been explained by the carrying out in the mists of the past of a structural rearrangement within the building; a wall had been knocked through and a room had been taken from Antonia’s flat and added to Domenica’s. Such modifications were not without precedent in the area, and had occasionally been carried out when two adjoining flats had ended up in the ownership of the same landlord.

  When Antonia had bought the flat from Bruce Anderson at the end of his first Edinburgh sojourn, he had said nothing about the clear outline of a doorway which could be made out on one of the walls adjacent to Domenica’s kitchen. It was only when Antonia had been invited into Domenica’s flat for drinks one evening shortly after her purchase of the flat that the subject had been brought up, and even then raised indirectly.

  ‘You’re most fortunate,’ Antonia had said, ‘to have an extra room. You really are.’

  Domenica had affected surprise. ‘But I don’t have an extra room,’ she said. ‘I have the number of rooms that I have - and always have had.’

  Antonia had looked into the glass of wine that Domenica had poured her; the wine came barely halfway up the side of the glass, but that, she thought, was another thing. ‘What I meant,’ she said, ‘is that your flat, which one would have thought would be the mirror image of mine - being on the same landing - appears to have two more rooms than I do. That’s rather surprising, would you not agree?’

  Domenica would not. She knew exactly what Antonia meant - she was suggesting that the owners of Domenica’s flat had at some point stolen a room from next door. What a ridiculous thought! ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not really. Many flats in this part of town are of different sizes. Some flats were intended for people of greater means than other flats. Some flats had maids’ bedrooms, for example.’

  Antonia looked out of the window. She, or her predecessors in title to the flat, had lost a room, and she was in no doubt about where it had gone. It was, she thought, like one of those historic injustices that resonated down the centuries - a land grab of the sort that was imposed on the weak or the inattentive. This was exactly how Paraguay must feel about the loss of so much of its territory to its now larger neighbours. But, like Paraguay, there was not much she could do, and the conversation had turned to other matters.

  Domenica remembered this conversation as she stood before Antonia’s door and prepared to press the bell. The two women had known one another for a long time, even before Antonia had moved to Edinburgh from Fife on the break-up of her marriage, but their relationship had not developed into the friendship which both had initially wished for. Now they had settled into a reasonably amicable, if slightly strained, modus vivendi in which each kept largely to herself but responded readily and with good grace to the duties of neighbourhood. Social invitations were extended and reciprocated, but they were carefully judged so as not to be so frequent as to lead to any form of imposition.

  When Domenica had been on field work in the Malacca Straits, her flat had been looked after by Antonia. This had been a convenient arrangement for both of them, but on Domenica’s return she had made the shocking discovery that Antonia had removed a blue Spode teacup from her flat and was using it, quite openly, in her own. It was this teacup that now crossed her mind as she pressed Antonia’s bell.

  When Antonia appeared at the door she did not seem to be at all surprised that it was Domenica who stood on her doorstep.

  ‘Oh, it’s only you,’ she said.

  Domenica caught her breath. Only you . . . ‘You were expecting somebody more exciting?’

  Antonia treated this as a joke. ‘Oh no! Well, maybe yes. But that’s not to imply that you’re not exciting . . . in your way.’

  A short silence ensued. Declarations of war have come in more subtle forms than this, and Domenica would have been quite within her rights to interpret this as such, but then Antonia smiled and gestured for her to come inside, and Domenica decided that she would forgive the other woman’s tactlessness. There was no point in being at odds with one’s neighbour, whatever the provocation: selfishness in all its forms was what neighbours manifested and one simply had to accept it - unless one wanted distrust and downright enmity.

  ‘Who were you expecting?’ she asked. ‘I don’t want to get in the way, you know.’

  This last remark was intended to imply that Antonia was the sort of woman to engage in trysts at ten-thirty in the morning, and that was exactly how it was in
terpreted.

  Antonia smiled sweetly. ‘It’s a bit early for that,’ she said. ‘Even for me.’

  Domenica watched her neighbour. What exactly did that mean? That even if she were the sort to entertain a lover at eleven in the morning, ten-thirty would be slightly early?

  ‘But let’s not stand in the hall forever,’ Antonia continued, ushering Domenica into the living room. ‘As it happens, I’ve brewed some coffee already.’

  And will it be served, Domenica asked herself, in my cup?

  Antonia left to go into the kitchen. And it was then that Domenica noticed the smell. It was not an unpleasant smell, sweetish perhaps, slightly cloying, but certainly sufficiently pronounced to linger in the nose and on the palate; an olfactory memory without a link to substance. It was not the smell of coffee, Domenica thought. Definitely not.

  23. Omen Away

  After their walk on the path that led along the top of Cottesloe Beach, Matthew and Elspeth had returned to the hotel and sunk into a deep jet-lagged sleep that lasted for over two hours. When they awoke, it was almost six in the evening, and the fiery Western Australian sun had been drained from the evening sky, leaving it a strange, washed-out colour, almost a soft mauve.

  What awoke them was not the change in the light, but the sound of a flock of parrots returning to one of the trees that towered over the hotel’s back garden. It was a sharp chattering, an excited flurry of sound that seemed to fill the air completely, echoing off the walls of the hotel courtyard in a profusion of high-pitched squeaks. ‘Our little friends,’ said Matthew, raising himself on an elbow to peer out of the window at the small green birds. ‘Hundreds and hundreds of them.’

  He shook his head and let it flop back onto the pillow. The air was still warm, and a light film of perspiration was making him feel sticky. He would shower, he thought, or have a swim.