Chance Developments

by Alexander McCall Smith

  He put down the newspaper and rose from his chair. He went outside, and stood for a while in the shadow of the house, feeling the breeze on his face. There was a smell of peat smoke, drifting from one of the houses further down the road; it was a smell that he had missed in Dublin, where coal, rather than turf, was used; it was a smell that reminded him that this was where he belonged. He felt unsettled—he had convinced himself that he could never stay in this place, but now he was not so sure.

  He wondered if he could wait until Saturday to see her, but knew, of course, that he had no alternative but to do so. And it was while he was wrestling with this that he realised how he would be able to ensure that he met her next week. It was an outrageous notion, and he flushed with shame at the thought that he—the teacher—could do such a thing. It was almost as if the decision to act was being made by somebody else altogether—by some agency, some other presence, that was within him, operating through his mind, but at the same time nothing to do with him. This, he thought, is how it must feel to be possessed; to be aware that what you did was the act of something, some other person, within you that was not your real self, not the self that looked out on the world through your eyes when you awoke each morning, that accompanied you through the day, that experienced and remembered the things that happened to you, that whispered to you of memories, of love, of regret—of all that made us who we were.

  He went that afternoon to the house of the local carpenter and his wife. They had two children in the school, and these children watched him through a chink in a door, awed by the presence of the teacher in their home on a Saturday afternoon.

  “You fix furniture, don’t you, Noel?”

  The carpenter replied that he did.

  “Upholstery too, I hear?”

  Again the carpenter nodded. “You’ll need to provide the fabric yourself.”

  “It’s not that,” he said. “I was wondering whether you could let me have some tacks. You use those, don’t you?”

  The carpenter left the room. Through the crack in the door the children watched him. He saw their shadows at the bottom of the door, thrown by the afternoon sun shining directly through the windows behind them.

  “I know you’re there, Padraig and Brigid,” he said in a loud voice.

  The shadows froze, and then the carpenter returned with a small paper bag. “There’s about thirty in there,” he said, handing the bag to him. “Will that be enough for whatever it is you’re doing?” He paused. “I could come over and give you a hand, you know. There’d be no charge.”

  Ronald shook his head. “That’s good of you,” he said. “But not this time, I think.”

  6

  It was cold for spring, and he hugged his knees as he sat and waited for the sound of the car. Mr. Heaney had said that she went every Saturday to visit her aunt, but he had not said anything about her going at the same time each week. Ronald was a creature of habit, who liked to keep to a routine, but not everybody was like that. She might have decided to go in the afternoon instead, or possibly in the evening, and he could hardly sit out there all day in that weather. He looked at his hands, and thought: These are the hands of a criminal. But then he put the thought out of his mind. I’m not stealing anything or harming anybody, I’m simply…

  His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of an engine somewhere in the distance. It was a strained sound, as if it were struggling up a hill, but then it relaxed as the driver changed gear. Now it was louder. Sit still, he told himself. Look the other way—gaze out at the water of the lough.

  He focused on a duck, an eider, that was leading a brood of early hatchlings in a sedate line across the surface of the water. He counted the ducklings. Six. And how many would survive the next few weeks? Two? One? In an attempt to keep his mind off the approaching car, he tried to envisage their fate: the fox, for whom they would be a tasty appetiser, a voracious rat, a harrier or other bird of prey.

  He was thinking of birds of prey when he heard the popping sound. It was not very loud, but it was audible enough, and now he could legitimately stand up and look towards the road. The car had stopped, and the driver was climbing down from his elevated seat.

  Ronald walked towards the road.

  “Having a problem?” he called out. “Broken down?”

  Roger Kelly turned round, surprised by his sudden appearance. “Blow-out,” he said. “A flat tyre.”

  Ronald shook his head. “Can I help you change the wheel?”

  Roger gestured towards the rear of the car. “Thank you. I’ll get the jack and the spare.”

  Ronald saw that the young woman was getting out. Another young woman—the cousin, he assumed—was with her.

  “What is it, Mr. Kelly?”

  “A flat tyre, miss. Easily fixed. Especially with some help.” He nodded in the direction of Ronald, who smiled, and glanced at her shyly.

  “That’s very kind of you,” said the young woman.

  “Not at all,” said Ronald as he stepped forward and offered his hand. She shook it.

  “My name’s Anthea Farrell,” she said.

  He gave her his name.

  “You’re the teacher at that school,” she said. “The national school. That’s you, isn’t it?”

  She looked down at the ground.

  “I am,” he said.

  There was something in her expression that puzzled him. She seemed amused.

  “You’d better help Mr. Kelly. I have my camera. I shall take a photograph of the lough.”

  “It’s a fine view,” he said.

  She looked out over the water, as if seeing it for the first time. “I should like to walk round it one day. Have you done that?”

  He felt the back of his neck becoming warm. “I have,” he said. “I could show you, if you like.”

  “I would like that.”

  “Tomorrow?” he said.

  She adjusted her veil. “I think that would be very pleasant. We could fetch you in the car.” She looked at the driver, who threw a glance in Ronald’s direction. “Well, Mr. Kelly?”

  He nodded. “As you say, miss.”

  She smiled at Ronald. “Eleven o’clock in the morning?”

  “That would be perfect.”

  “Unless, of course, you’ll be at Mass then.”

  “I shall go earlier,” he said quickly.

  He helped Roger Kelly replace the wheel with the spare. While they worked, both Anthea and her cousin took photographs. As the punctured wheel was laid aside, the driver ran his hand over the tyre. “Two tacks,” he said curtly. “You see? Here and here. Unusual, that.”

  Ronald peered at the tacks as they were extracted from the tyre. “You’d think people would be more careful,” he muttered.

  The driver looked at him sideways.

  7

  Three months later, when summer was beginning to tilt towards autumn, the Standard Tourer, driven by Roger Kelly and with Thomas Farrell sitting on the buttoned-leather rear seat, drove slowly past the teacher’s house. A few minutes later, Thomas Farrell lowered himself from the car and walked, unaccompanied by his driver, to the front door.

  Ronald answered the knock. He knew immediately who it was—even before he saw the car parked discreetly a short distance down the road. He stood in the doorway, momentarily unable to say anything.

  “I take it that you’re Ronald O’Carroll,” said Thomas.

  “I am indeed, sir.”

  “Then you will invite me in, if you don’t mind.”

  Ronald stepped to one side. “Of course.”

  As he did so, he said to himself: You are not to be intimidated by this man. You are the teacher. You are a graduate of the National University of Ireland. You are not some ignorant…

  They entered the living room. Thomas looked round it appraisingly. Then he turned to Ronald.

  “They told me that your father was a very fine man,” he said.

  Ronald had not expected this.

  “Thank you,” he said. “He’s
retired now. He’s living near Sligo.”

  Thomas nodded. “So I hear.”

  There was a silence.

  “We have somebody working on the farm, you know, who was taught by him. A fellow by the name of Severin.”

  Ronald raised an eyebrow. “Yes…”

  Thomas interrupted him. “They’re not a good family,” he said. “Some of them…Well, the least said about them the better. But this fellow—the fellow who works for me—is different. He says that your father got him to make something of his life. He’s very grateful to him, you know.”

  Ronald’s relief showed.

  “You’re pleased to hear that?” said Thomas.

  “It’s a good thing to hear that of one’s da,” said Ronald. “Who wouldn’t be pleased?”

  Thomas crossed to the mantelpiece, where there was a photograph of Ronald’s parents. “He looks a lot like you,” he said.

  Ronald shrugged. “So people say.”

  Thomas turned to look at him directly. Ronald tried not to flinch at the intensity of the gaze.

  “You’ve been seeing my daughter,” he said.

  Ronald took a deep breath. “We’ve been seeing one another, yes.”

  “Driving around in my car together,” said Thomas.

  “She invited me,” said Ronald quietly.

  Thomas suddenly took two steps forward, bringing himself right up against Ronald. He reached out to grip the lapels of the younger man’s jacket. When he spoke, Ronald smelled something on his breath. It was not alcohol, but aniseed, he thought.

  “She’s hiding you from me, you know. She hasn’t wanted me to know…” He broke off, releasing the lapels. “Kelly has told me. That’s how I know. My own daughter won’t speak about it.”

  Ronald plucked up his courage. “Perhaps she thinks you won’t approve…”

  This was brushed aside, but not in a tone of anger. “She’s all I have, Mr. O’Carroll. She’s everything to me.”

  Ronald did not reply. He was unsure what to say.

  Thomas reached out to touch his sleeve. It was a curious gesture; one of supplication, it seemed. “So please don’t take her away. Please don’t take my whole life away from me.”

  Ronald gasped. “I hadn’t intended…”

  “Please marry her,” said Thomas. “Please marry her and then come and live on the farm. Don’t go off to Dublin like all the others. Everyone—going off to Dublin. We have two empty houses—fine buildings. I’d get one done up just for you.” He paused. “And I’d consider myself honoured to have a man of your quality marrying my only daughter. I would be proud. If you are anything like your father, that is—which I believe to be the case.”

  Ronald sat down. “I hadn’t thought…”

  “You think she might not agree to marry you? But, my dear fellow, she’s besotted with you. A father can tell.”

  Suddenly the mood changed, and it seemed to Ronald that Thomas felt the matter was settled. He watched him as he moved to the bookshelf and reached for one of the books. “William Butler Yeats…I’ve heard that he’s your man. He’s just the thing this country needs.”

  “You read him?” asked Ronald.

  “Not exactly,” said Thomas. “Not as such. But then there are an awful lot of people who do.” He opened the book and flicked through the pages. “He has a way with words, this fellow. You can tell, can’t you?”

  Words. He thought of how he would have to work out what to say. He would ask her tomorrow.

  And when he did, she said, “Yes, I would love to marry you, Ronald O’Carroll.”

  She was smiling at him. “It’s strange how two tacks could change our lives, isn’t it?”

  He looked steadfastly ahead. “Yes, it is.”

  “Or were there more?” she asked, with a smile.

  1

  Two people—a young man and a young woman—were looking at a photograph. Two people of their own age looked back at them. The young man holding the photograph had just said something that had surprised the young woman.

  “Really?” she said, looking up, and when he nodded, she continued, “Where did you read about that?”

  “Oh, somewhere—I forget. It was an article about mateship, of all things—the idea of a…well, a sense of fellowship. It’s a particular thing we have in Australia. Or the word is, at least.”

  She smiled. She was a New Zealander; it was different, even if the outside world knew little of the distinction. “Just a man’s thing.”

  “Women go in for it too, I suppose. They call it sisterhood.”

  He studied the photograph again.

  “My grandfather,” he said.

  She leaned over and touched his brow lightly. “I love you so much,” she said. “I don’t know why, but I do.”

  He took her hand and pressed it briefly to his lips. He liked her non sequiturs. He said, “The Australian officers, you see, were closer to their men than the British were. There wasn’t a sense of distance between them. That had an effect, you know, on morale and, well, on physical well-being too. They looked out for them more. They helped them survive.”

  “Survive those terrible things they say the Japanese did?”

  “Oh, they did them all right. Yes. When all that was going on.”

  He looked at the photograph. The afternoon sun was still warm on his face as it was in the picture, on the face of his grandfather who, when the photograph was taken, was about to leave Melbourne, on the first stage of his journey to Malaya.

  She said, “I find pictures of smiling soldiers just so sad. So sad. How could they have smiled? How could anyone have smiled?”

  “They did,” he said, and then added, “But have you noticed that women who are photographed with them—their girlfriends, their wives—are smiling in a different way? Have you noticed that?”

  She frowned. “Maybe. Why?”

  “Is it because women know?” he asked.

  She did not answer. He was right, though; she had always thought that women somehow knew more about how the world was, even if they were prevented from using that knowledge to full effect—prevented by men, who wanted to hold on to the privileges they had. That was going to change, and was already changing. Yet she did not want to destroy men; she did not want men to become discouraged, to give up, to stop being men. She wanted men to be strong. She wanted maleness to survive the loss of power.

  But then her mind returned to the photograph. She turned to him and said, “You know the really interesting thing about these old photographs?”

  “How they took them?”

  “No…well, that’s interesting enough, I suppose—in its way. But what really fascinates me is the question of how people got to where they are at the moment the photograph is taken. Who are they? How did they come to be where they are?”

  “I told you: that’s my grandfather.”

  “Yes, but how did he get to be there—that exact place—wherever it is.”

  He shrugged. “This was taken in Melbourne.”

  “So…how did he get to be there? How did he get to be in Australia in the first place? Where did they—you, for that matter—all come from?”

  “Everyone comes from somewhere,” he said. “Didn’t we all migrate from Africa, originally? Even the aboriginal peoples?”

  He made a gesture that seemed to suggest that the question was an impossibly complicated one.

  “Yes,” she said. “I suppose so. And we’re all cousins, aren’t we? Very, very distantly, I mean.”

  He thought about this. She was right: everybody came from somewhere else or owed his or her presence to somebody who had made the decision to travel from a long way away. Newcomers, he thought, even if after three, four generations; and if people claimed otherwise, they were just trying to justify excluding those who had arrived more recently, or who would like to arrive, given the chance.

  “It makes one want to weep,” he said.

  “What makes one want to weep?”

  “History,” he re
plied.

  2

  The man in the photograph, sitting on the deck of a boat with a young woman at his side, was called David, and he was an only child. His father, Lou Rowse, owned a small agricultural machinery business in Bendigo. Lou was a Cornishman who had gone out to Australia in 1907 to join a childless uncle who had offered him a job and a chance to escape the poverty of life in England. “It’s the richest, most powerful country there is,” his Uncle Jack wrote to him, “and yet what do the likes of you have? England owns the world—look at the red on the map—and yet it can’t give her people a proper breakfast. Why? Because the working man can’t get a decent chance.”

  The mention of breakfasts was an odd way of putting it, but the words had struck a chord in the mind of the young Cornishman. A decent breakfast. It was true: sometimes he got a piece of bacon or a sausage for his breakfast, but this did not happen every day; most days it was bread, with a thin spreading of lard—a sniff of lard, as his mother put it. This would be accompanied by a thin porridge and some milk, or curds of milk. And here was his Uncle Jack, a miner and prospector, talking about Australia and the lavish breakfasts they had there; not that he gave details, so it was left to him to imagine the plates of fried mushrooms, the abundant rashers of bacon, the generous slices of toast covered with real butter, yellow and creamy, on which thick-cut marmalade had been spread. That was a breakfast to set you up for the day, and that, in essence, was what his Uncle Jack was offering.

  Uncle Jack had never found gold, but Lou was told that he would. “You find gold if you look hard enough,” said his father. “He’ll find it all right, if I know Jack.”

  He was sent the fare for his passage, along with six pounds. He used two of these pounds to buy a suit, and ten shillings to buy a large trunk and a pair of best boots. He was wearing these boots, the leather still stiff and shiny, when he arrived in Melbourne. His uncle met him at the docks. “You’re a strapping boy,” he said admiringly. “Sixteen, now?”