The Unbearable Lightness of Scones: A 44 Scotland Street Novel

by Alexander McCall Smith

  While he busied himself with the kettle and the ladling into a jug of several spoonfuls of coffee, Domenica moved over to the notice-board and bent down to examine the photographs. She had never seen them before. The notice-board was nothing new to the room, but she had never seen it before, and she felt ashamed, because Angus was her friend, one of her closest friends, and she had never even bothered to look at his notice-board.

  ‘Do you mind?’ she asked. ‘Do you mind if I take a look at these photographs?’

  He half-turned from his position at the sink. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind. Of course you can look at them. I’ll tell you what they are, if you like.’

  Domenica peered at the photographs. There were about a dozen of them, and they seemed to be of varying ages. Some, the older ones, had an almost sepia look to them, as if they had been taken from an old family album. Others were more vivid, the colours still there, even if fading slightly.

  ‘I assume that’s you,’ she said. ‘That’s you as a boy.’

  Angus, who was fetching cups from a cupboard, glanced over his shoulder. ‘Yes. That’s me. And a friend of mine. He came from Mull. His dad was a doctor over there. The doctor drove a Lagonda. I remember it. Beautiful car. We were at school together. He was called Johnnie.’

  Domenica looked more closely. Two boys, aged twelve or so, stood in front of a dry-stane dyke, both wearing kilts and jerseys. She noticed that the shadows on the ground were long; it was afternoon. Behind the dyke she could make out a field, a hillside, rising sharply to a high, empty sky. She closed her eyes, very briefly, and for some reason the words came into her mind, unexpected, unbidden, but from the region of the heart, from that very region: I love this country.

  She became aware of Angus behind her. She heard his breathing.

  ‘We had just started at Glenalmond,’ he said. ‘Our first year there, I think. It was quite tough in those days - and they turned us out to roam the hills on a Sunday. In the summer term, at least. Johnnie and I used to go all over the Sma’ Glen. There was a farm called Connachan down towards Monzie where we used to go for tea when we were meant to be up at the top of the hill. The farmer had a couple of daughters our age and they’d tease us. We got on famously.

  ‘And at the back of the farm,’ Angus continued, ‘there was the River Almond. You probably know it. Well, further up, along the road to Auchnafree, the farmer had a wire cable across the river with a basket suspended from it. You could pull yourself across in the basket. He and his shepherds used to use this to get across the river without getting their feet wet. The sheep-dogs too. Dogs like Cyril. The dogs loved it. Dogs love anything like that.

  ‘We used to swim in the river too. It was always freezing, even in summer. And then we’d eat sandwiches on the rocks. Bully beef sandwiches. Remember bully beef? Do you think anybody eats it now?’

  He paused. ‘There are some lines,’ he said quietly, ‘that come to me when I look at that photograph. “We twa ha paidled in the burn / From morning sun til dine” . . .’

  ‘“But seas between us braid hae roar’d” . . .’ Domenica supplied.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Angus. ‘Johnnie . . .’

  He stopped. She waited for him to say something more, but he did not.

  65. From Hero to Zero in One Simple Word

  Bingo! thought Bruce. He was sitting in the small restaurant over the road from Nick McNair’s flat in Leith, into which he had just moved. Then he thought: Julia Donald! That dim, dumb . . . zero. Yes, that’s what she was. She was a zero, a minus quantity even. And to think that she had me believing that her baby - her stupid zero baby - was mine, when all the time she was seeing Watson Cooke, the Watsonian zero in that Clarence Street dump of his. Number Zero, Clarence Street, EHZero ZeroYS! What a narrow escape. And they deserved each other, just as they would deserve all those zero nappies for that dim baby of theirs. No thank you! Not pour moi!

  Now, at the table in the restaurant, with seven of Nick’s friends, Bruce felt much happier. There was a bit of an unresolved issue over the fact that the advertising agency for which Nick was working was owned by Julia Donald’s father, but Bruce was beginning to think of a way out and he would deal with that later. There would be plenty of time. For the moment he would have to work out how to respond to the woman on the other side of the table who was looking at him. More than that; she was giving him the look. And that was when he said to himself, Bingo!

  There was a slight problem, of course, and that was that Bruce had not caught her name when they had been introduced. Shelley? Sheila? It was something like that. Well, that was not a problem, really. If you don’t know somebody’s name, thought Bruce, then ask them. It was an excellent chat-up line, in fact. What’s your name? is seriously romantic, he thought. It works every time.

  He leaned across the table. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  The young woman on the other side of the table smiled. She was undoubtedly attractive, and when she smiled she became even more so. ‘Shauna,’ she said. ‘And you?’

  Bruce returned the smile. ‘Bruce. Just call me Bruce.’

  There was no need to add the ‘just call me’ part, but Bruce found that it was another thing that worked every time. I work every time, he thought. It’s not what I say, it’s me!

  ‘Do you work with Nick?’ Bruce asked.

  Shauna nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Now and then. I do shoots with him.’

  She looked down the table and waved at Nick, who was seated at the other end. Nick winked back at her.

  Bruce smiled. ‘You’re in an agency?’ Everybody surrounding Nick, he had decided, seemed to work in some agency or another.

  ‘Yes,’ said Shauna, ‘but I’m strictly advertising. Nick shoots for PR people. I’m very specialised. Just soaps, moisturisers, things like that. I do ads for the beauty industry.’

  ‘Great,’ said Bruce.

  ‘You might have seen some of my work,’ Shauna went on. ‘Do you read the mags?’

  Bruce thought for a moment. What mags was she talking about? The sort of magazines that Julia liked to read - those vacuous glossies?

  ‘Sometimes,’ he said.

  Shauna was looking at him. ‘Let me guess what you do,’ she said, propping her chin on her hands in mock concentration. ‘You’re a model, right?’

  Bruce sat back in his chair. ‘Well . . .’

  ‘I knew,’ said Shauna. ‘I could tell. You can always tell the clothes horses.’

  Bruce was silent.

  ‘No offence,’ Shauna said. ‘Some of my best friends are clothes horses.’ She laughed.

  Bruce bit his lip and looked away from her. He muttered something to himself, something unrepeatable. But she, too, had turned away and was talking to the man beside her, a thin man with a pair of round wire-framed spectacles; not a clothes horse, thought Bruce.

  He looked about him. There was a man to his left, who was talking to somebody on his other side, but on his right was a woman, also attractive, but in different way from Shauna. She, though, was engaged in animated conversation with the man on her right. Bruce looked down at his hands. He suddenly felt very lonely.

  He rose to his feet and looked about the restaurant. A small sign at the far end of the room pointed the direction: a picture of a man’s hat and a pair of women’s gloves. Bruce crossed the room, leaving the noise behind him. He pushed open the door of the lavatory and stood in the small space before the basin. There was a mirror. He looked in it.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he whispered to the reflection. ‘Just what do you think you’re doing?’

  There was no answer. He reached out and traced the line of his chin on the mirror.

  ‘Is this it?’ he asked. ‘Is this all you are?’

  He was suddenly aware of somebody pushing open the door behind him. He leaned forward to allow the person to pass.

  ‘Bruce?’

  It was Nick McNair. He was standing directly behind Bruce, and Bruce could see his expr
ession in the mirror. He looked concerned.

  ‘Are you all right, Bruce?’ Nick asked. ‘You got up and charged out. You looked sick to me.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ said Bruce. ‘I just felt . . .’

  Nick was staring at him. He shook his head. ‘You’re not all right, Bruce. You look really upset.’ He paused. ‘Is it the splitting up? Is that it?’ He reached out and placed a hand on Bruce’s shoulder. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I know what it’s like. You feel all raw inside. You just do. And you just have to wait for time to do its thing. It will. Eventually.’

  Bruce looked down at the floor. ‘I lied to you,’ he said. ‘I said that I left her. It was the other way round. She chucked me out. She’d been two-timing me.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Nick.

  ‘Yes. And her old man took back the car he gave me. And he’s Graeme Donald. Yes, that’s him. The guy who owns the agency. He hates me, you know.’

  Nick was silent. He took his hand off Bruce’s shoulder. ‘You’re in a bad way, Bruce,’ he said. ‘I suspected that you’d been chucked out. That’s why I offered you the room.’

  ‘Why bother with me?’

  Nick put his hand back on Bruce’s shoulder, a gesture that Bruce found strangely comforting.

  ‘Because I’m a Christian,’ said Nick.

  66. Greed All About It

  The ending of a honeymoon is, in metaphorical terms, the ending of a period of charity during which the other is able to do no wrong or, rather, is able to do wrong but also able to get away with it. As we all know, politicians have a honeymoon period during which the electorate forgives if not everything, then at least rather a lot. Then, when the metaphorical honeymoon comes to an end, the mood shifts, and every slip, every ill-advised step, indeed every sign of simple human fallibility, is eagerly pounced upon. There! shouts the opposition in triumphant chorus. There! You see what he’s like! Sleaze! Ineptitude! The very qualities that we ourselves so conspicuously lack! The end of a real honeymoon, one might hope, is not quite like that, even if one has discovered, on the honeymoon, perhaps, that one has married a sleazy and inept person. Even then, one’s spouse does not typically become critical and unforgiving, as an electorate may be. Yet life is certainly different after the honeymoon.

  To begin with, one has to work, and for Matthew that meant going in to the gallery on that first morning back - easier work, perhaps, than clocking in at a factory or a busy office, but work none the less. The mail, which had been moved from the doormat to his desk by a helpful friend, was stacked in neat piles: three weeks of catalogues, enquiries and bills. The bills had yet to turn red, but would require reasonably prompt attention; the catalogues would need to be perused; the enquiries answered. Three weeks may not be an overly long time in a slow-moving business, but it seemed to Matthew that his working life, there in the gallery, was part of an altogether different world - a world which was of course familiar, but which in some ways was now strange. That would pass, of course, but for the moment the world of Dundas Street, of Edinburgh, somehow felt very alien. The light was different - this attenuated, northern light; the colours, too - these subtle shades - greys, greens - everything was so much more muted than the bright tones, the strong light of Australia.

  He sat at his desk and contemplated the piles of mail. He had left Edinburgh a newly married man, blissfully happy, excited beyond measure. Now he was back as a man who had faced death in shark-infested waters, who had been rescued by a dolphin - a rescue he could not bring himself to talk about because nobody would believe him; a man who had been wrongfully detained and threatened with psychiatric confinement; a man who had thought that he was his father’s son, only to discover that he might well be the son of another man altogether, the president of the Cat Society of Singapore. Those were transforming events for anybody, but how much more so for one who had been on his honeymoon at the time?

  He had left Elspeth behind in the flat, still in bed, still deep asleep in her state of unadjusted jet lag. He had looked at her fondly from the door of the bedroom, standing there gazing upon the form under the blankets: his wife. The word still came uneasily to his tongue; it was so new. And he, Matthew, who had thought that he would never find anybody, was now a husband; moreover he was a husband setting off to work. It was such a mundane, unexceptional situation, the great domestic cliché, but for Matthew it was something to be relished, and committed to memory.

  They had not discussed what Elspeth was to do. She had said that she would no longer teach, but that she wanted to be occupied in some way. Matthew had suggested that she work in the gallery with him, but she had been reluctant to do that: a marriage, she thought, stood its best chance if both parties had their own areas of activity within it. Seeing one another all day and then again in the evening could become claustrophobic, Elspeth thought, even if one was head-over-heels in love with one’s spouse. So the gallery would be Matthew’s, and she would do something else.

  ‘Something will turn up,’ she said.

  And he had agreed. She was the sort of person for whom something would always turn up.

  Matthew thought of this as he sat at his desk in the gallery and worked through the pile of mail. Even if there were bills - and one of them, a bill from his framers, was quite large - there was good financial news from the managers of his portfolio. Some of his shares had done particularly well during his absence on honeymoon and the letter was bullish in tone. ‘Even further gains can be anticipated, ’ it said, ‘and we are inclined to advise against profit-taking at this point.’ He was relieved that he was no poorer, but he was not sure if he necessarily wanted to be all that much richer. And he was convinced that he did not want to engage in profit-taking, either now or at some stage in the future. That sounded so greedy, he thought; the sort of thing that fat cats took, or the sellers of junk bonds, or speculators in currency. They took profits and gobbled them up in the way in which a greedy person cuts off the best part of a pie.

  He laid aside the financial report and attended to the rest of the letters. One was a hand-written note in a script he recognised: that of Angus Lordie.

  Dear Matthew,

  Welcome back! Make sure you contact me the moment you get in as I have some extraordinary news for you. Remember Lard O’Connor, your somewhat dubious pal from Glasgow? He of the ample proportions? Well, he turned up while you were away - with a picture for you, which he consigned to my eager hands pro tem. You’ll never guess what it is! A well-known Scottish portrait painter, Raeburn, no less! And his subject? A Scottish poet, from Ayrshire, to be precise. Yes! Contact me soonest for delivery of said masterpiece and chat about what can be done.

  Matthew looked at his watch. If Angus came round shortly, they could go over the road for coffee, and Big Lou would welcome them warmly, as she always did. That was the reassuring thing about Edinburgh. It was always the same; nothing ever changed.

  67. A Private View

  Matthew’s telephone call produced an assurance from Angus that he would be round at the gallery within half an hour. ‘With the painting,’ Angus added. ‘It may as well have another outing, since it’s been carried around the streets of Edinburgh ever since Mr O’Connor graced us with his presence. And he brought it over from Glasgow in the train. He probably put it in the guard’s van.’

  ‘There are no guard’s vans any more,’ Matthew pointed out. ‘In fact, many of our trains don’t even have seats any more. Look at the number of people who have to stand.’

  Angus rang off and Matthew returned to his pile of mail. There was a sale of Scottish art coming up at Sotheby’s, and he had been sent the catalogue. There was a Raeburn, but an undistinguished one, thought Matthew; one might walk right past it and not bother to enquire as to who the sitter was. But Robert Burns . . . One could not walk past him.

  He was still looking at the catalogue when Angus arrived twenty minutes later. He was carrying a large, wrapped parcel, and Cyril was with him. On entering the gallery, Cyril, who liked Matthew, ra
n across the room to greet him, licking his hands appreciatively. Then he lay down at Matthew’s feet and stared at his ankles.

  Cyril had long wanted to bite Matthew’s ankles. He did not want to do this out of hostility - quite the contrary: Cyril admired Matthew’s ankles, which he thought presented the perfect target into which to sink one’s teeth. Had he been able to articulate this desire, he would have had to resort to Mallory’s famous explanation as to why he wanted to climb Everest: because it was there. Matthew’s ankles were there, too, and the sight of them made Cyril drool as he rested his head on the carpet below Matthew’s desk. Just one little nip, he wondered. If he was quick enough about it, they might not even notice. But it was not to be. Cyril knew that he was just a dog, and that it was not given to dogs to do all the things they might wish to do. There was neither rhyme nor reason for this limitation; it, again, was just there. Angus, who fed him and took him for walks, was a god; and in Cyril’s theology, vaguely sensed, like some obscure article of faith handed down from a previous generation, it was the duty of dogs to do the bidding of their gods and to accept whatever small mercies they might be shown. Cyril’s heart, therefore, was filled with gratitude: gratitude for Angus, for whom he would sacrifice his life if called upon to do so; gratitude for the smells which suffused his world, smells sometimes so strange and beguiling that they challenged even his acute olfactory memory; gratitude for being here with these two men rather than outside.

  After a quick enquiry about Matthew’s trip, Angus busied himself with the unwrapping of the painting. ‘Your fat friend from Glasgow has surpassed himself,’ he whispered. ‘The missing Raeburn portrait of Burns. Absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt. And he had it! Lard O’Connor had it!’