44 Scotland Street 4ss-1

by Alexander McCall Smith

14

  Fathers and Sons

  The code keyed in, he flicked the light switches, bringing to life the spotlights that were trained on the larger paintings on the walls.

  He enjoyed doing this because it seemed to transform the room so entirely, from a cold, rather gloomy place, inadequately lit by natural light from the front window, into a place of warmth and colour.

  It was not a large gallery. The main room, or space as Matthew had learned to call it, stretched back about thirty feet from the two wide display windows that looked out onto the street.

  Halfway down one side of this room there was a desk, which faced outwards, with a telephone and a discreet computer terminal.

  Beside the desk there was a revolving bookcase in which twenty or thirty books were stacked; a Dictionary of Scottish Artists, bound catalogues of retrospectives, a guide to prices at auction. These were the working tools of the dealer and, like everything else, had been left there by the former owner.

  Matthew had acquired the gallery on impulse, not an impulse of his, but that of his father, who owned the building and who had repossessed it from the tenant. Matthew’s father, who was normally unbending in his business deals, had been an uncharacteristically tolerant landlord to the gallery. He had allowed unpaid rent to mount up to the point where the tenant had been quite incapable of paying. Even then, rather than claim what had been owing for more than two years, he had accepted gallery stock in settlement of the debt and had paid rather generously for the rest.

  Matthew’s father, despaired of his son ever amounting to much in the world of business. He had started Matthew off in a variety of enterprises, all of which had failed. Finally, after two near-bankrupt stores, there had been a travel agency, a business with a promising turnover, but which under Matthew’s management had rapidly lost customers. His father had been puzzled by this, and had eventually realised that the problem was not laziness on his son’s part, but a complete inability to organise and moti-vate staff. He simply could not give directions. He was a completely incompetent manager. This was a bitter conclusion for a father who had dreamed of a son who would turn a small Scottish business empire, the result of decades of hard work, Attributions and Provenances

  15

  into something even bigger. So he had decided that he might as well accept his son’s limitations and set him up in a business where he would have virtually no staff to deal with and where there was very little business to be done anyway – a sinecure, in other words. A gallery was perfect. Matthew could sit there all day and would therefore technically be working – something which he believed to be very important. He would make no money, but then money appeared not to interest him. It was all very perplexing.

  But he’s my son, thought Matthew’s father. He may not be good for very much, but he’s honest, he treats his parents with consideration, and he’s my own flesh and blood. And it could be much worse: there were sons who caused their fathers much greater pain than that. He’s a failure, he thought; but he’s a good failure and he’s my failure.

  And for Matthew’s part, he knew that he was no businessman.

  He would have liked to have succeeded in the ventures that his father had planned for him, because he liked his father. My father may have the soul of a Rotarian, thought Matthew, but he’s my Rotarian, and that’s what counts.

  5. Attributions and Provenances

  It was not Pat’s first job, of course. There had been that disastrous first gap year, with all the varying jobs that that had entailed.

  She had worked for the person she could now only think of as that man for at least four months, and had it not been for the fire – which was in no sense her fault – then she might have spent even longer in that airless, windowless room. And one or two of the other jobs had hardly been much better, although she had never encountered employers quite as bad as he had been.

  This was clearly going to be very different. To start with, there was nothing objectionable about Matthew. He had been offhand at the interview, quite casual, in fact, but he had not been rude 16

  Attributions and Provenances

  to her. Now, as she reported for work on that first Tuesday, she noticed that when she came into the room Matthew stood up to greet her, holding out his hand in a welcoming way. The standing up was something that her mother would have noticed and approved of; if a man stands up, she had said, you know that he’s going to respect you. Watch your father – when anybody comes into the room he stands up, no matter who they are. That’s because he’s a . . . She had hesitated, looking at her daughter.

  No, she could not bring herself to say it.

  “Because he’s a what?” Pat had challenged. It was always gratifying to expose parents as hopelessly old-fashioned. She was going to say gentleman, wasn’t she? Hah!

  “Because he’s a psychiatrist,” her mother had said quickly.

  There! She would find out soon enough, the difference between the types of men, if she did not already know it. And I will not be patronised by her, just because she’s twenty and I’ve reached the age of . . . My God! Have I?

  Matthew, sitting down again, unaware of the memory he had triggered, indicated the chair in front of his desk.

  “We should talk about the job,” he said. “There are a few things to sort out.”

  Pat nodded, and sat down. Then she looked at Matthew, who looked back at her.

  “Now then,” Matthew said. “The job. This is a gallery, see, and our business is to sell paintings. That’s it. That’s the bottom line.”

  Pat smiled. “Yes.” This was surprising. But why was the sale of paintings the bottom line? She was not at all sure what bottom lines were, although everybody talked about them, but perhaps he would explain.

  Matthew sat back in his chair, propping his feet on an upturned wastepaper basket at the side of the desk.

  “I freely admit that I haven’t been in this business for very long,” he said. “I’ve just started, in fact. So we’ll have to learn together as we go along. Is that all right with you?”

  Pat smiled encouragingly. “I like paintings,” she said. “I did a Higher Art at school, at Edinburgh Academy.”

  “The Academy?” said Matthew.

  Attributions and Provenances

  17

  “Yes.”

  He looked thoughtful for a moment. Then he said: “I used to go there. You didn’t hear anything about me there, did you?”

  Pat was puzzled. “No,” she said hesitantly. “Not that I remember.”

  “Good,” said Matthew, with the air of one changing the subject.

  “Now, the job. You need to sit here when I go out. If somebody comes in and wants to buy a painting, the prices are all listed on this piece of paper over here. Don’t let a painting out of the gallery until they’ve paid and the cheque has cleared, so tell them that they can collect the painting in four or five days, or we’ll deliver it. If we know them, we can take their cheques.”

  Pat listened. Matthew was making it clear enough, but surely there must be something else to the job. He could hardly be expected to pay her just to watch the shop for him when he went out.

  “Anything else?” she asked.

  Matthew shrugged. “Some bits and pieces.”

  “Such as?”

  PEPLOE: Samuel John Peploe (1871-1935), Edinburgh-born artist much influenced by French Impressionist painters such as Cézanne. In his later years, his still-life works brought him recognition as a colourist.

  18

  Bruce Takes a Look at a Place

  He looked about him, as if searching for ideas. He looked at the paintings and then turned his gaze back on Pat. “You could do a proper catalogue of stock,” he said, and then, warming to the idea, explained: “I had something like that, but I’m afraid that it got lost somewhere. You could go through everything and find out what we have. Then make a proper catalogue with the correct

  . . . correct . . .” What was the word they used? “Attributions.

/>   Yes, attribute the paintings. Find out who they’re by.”

  Pat glanced at the wall behind her. There was a painting of an island, in bright colours, with strong brush strokes. She could just hear the voice of her art teacher at school, intoning, reverentially:

  “That, boys and girls, is a Peploe.”

  But it couldn’t be a Peploe. Impossible.

  6. Bruce Takes a Look at a Place

  Bruce worked in a firm of surveyors called Macaulay Holmes Richardson Black. In spite of the name, which implied at least four partners and a global reach, it was not a large firm. There were in fact only two partners, Gordon Todd and his brother, Raeburn, known to the staff as Gordon and Todd. They were good employers, and both of them were prominent in the affairs of their professional association, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Gordon always wore a tie with the Institute crest on it, and Todd had a gold signet ring on which the same crest had been engraved. Both were strong golfers. Gordon had become a member of Muirfield (after a rather long wait), and Todd was hoping that the same honour would one day befall him.

  “I can’t understand why I have to wait longer than he did,”

  Todd said to his wife, Sasha.

  “Does it matter?” she asked. “What’s so special about that place? Surely one golf course is much the same as another.

  Fairways, greens, holes. What’s so special about Muirfield?”

  Bruce Takes a Look at a Place

  19

  Todd had looked at her with pity. “Women don’t understand,”

  he said. “They just don’t.”

  “Oh yes we do,” she said. “We understand very well.”

  “Then explain it!” Todd had crowed.

  “But that’s what I just asked you to do,” she said. “I asked you what the difference was, and you don’t answer that question by batting it back to me. What’s the difference? You tell me.”

  Todd had said nothing. He was confident that Muirfield was special, but he was not sure that he could explain it. Ultimately, it had something to do with the people who played there; special people. But that was not something one could put into words –

  without a measure of embarrassment – and it was certainly not something that his wife would understand. She would not think of these people as special; that was her mistake.

  The firm preferred, if at all possible, to employ sporting assistants. Both brothers found that they could relate easily to sporty types, and such people were also rather good at generating business. Business was done on golf courses (or some of them), and it helped to have sociable employees who would meet clients at parties and in pubs. It was a sociable profession.

  Bruce was popular in the firm. Both brothers liked him, to an extent, and Todd had given him a spare seat at Murrayfield on several occasions. Todd had a daughter, Lizzie, who might be suitable for Bruce, so Todd thought, if only she would get over her unreasonable prejudice about him. She seemed to have taken against him on first meeting, and it was quite unfair, although there was perhaps something about this young man which was not quite right – something to do with the way he preened himself? Todd had seen him preening once, looking at himself in the rearview mirror of the firm’s Land Rover, and he had been slightly surprised by it.

  “Satisfied?” he had said to him, in a joking tone, and Bruce had leapt up, surprised, and muttered something about needing a haircut. But there had been something else going on, and Todd had remembered it.

  Now, as he arrived in the office that morning, the morning on which Pat began at the gallery, Bruce saw that Todd had put 20

  A Full Survey

  a file on his desk, to await him. He was to do a survey by eleven o’clock that morning, to report back to the client by eleven-thirty.

  The property in question, a large top-floor flat overlooking the Dean Valley, had offers closing at noon and the client wanted to bid. This was tight, as he would need to pick up the keys, inspect the property, and dictate a short written report within half an hour of returning to the office.

  Bruce took a taxi to the firm of solicitors in York Place. It did not take long to sign for the keys, go back to fetch the company car, and then make his way over the Dean Bridge to the quiet terrace where the flat was located. Once inside, he moved from room to room, noting the condition of the floors and the many other things which it had become second nature to observe.

  Power points. Fireplaces. The state of the cornices (if any).

  He walked through to the kitchen, which was the last room he inspected. There was nothing exceptional about it. The cupboards were in bad taste, of course, because they had stinted on the joinery, but the floor (a sealed cork) was new, and that would not need replacing for some years. So you could live with this kitchen.

  He walked past a large microwave oven, which had been placed at eye-level. Its wide, opaque door of smoked glass made him stop. There was something inside it. No. Just me.

  He stood still for a moment, and then smiled.

  Nice micro-onde, he wrote in his notebook. Bruce liked to give French names to certain things, if he knew the words. Of course he would use English terms in his official report. Imagine Todd wrestling with words like micro-onde!

  Now for le toit, Bruce said to himself.

  7. A Full Survey

  The flat which Bruce was surveying was on the top floor of a four-storey, late-Georgian tenement. The way into the roof space A Full Survey

  21

  was through a trapdoor in the ceiling immediately above the top landing of the common stair. A stepladder was needed to reach this trapdoor, but there was one conveniently to hand in the hall cupboard of the flat. Bruce set this up below the trapdoor and climbed up to open it.

  He pushed against the trapdoor, but it would not budge. He tried again, and this time it opened, reluctantly, but only halfway.

  Something – a heavy object of some sort – was preventing the trapdoor from opening inwards into the roof space. Bruce lowered it, and then tried again. Still it would not open sufficiently for him to crawl through.

  Bruce swore softly under his breath. Looking at his watch, he realised that he now had only fifteen minutes or so to finish the survey if he was going to have sufficient time to write it up by the deadline. Looking up, he peered through the half-open trapdoor into the darkened roof space. He sniffed: if there was rot he might be able to smell it. He knew surveyors who could diagnose the various forms of rot merely by smelling. He could not yet trust himself to rely on that, but he was still able to recognise at least some of the musty smells that could mean that something was wrong. He sniffed again. The air was quite fresh.

  There was no rot up there.

  Closing the trapdoor, Bruce climbed down the ladder. He would have a look from outside, he decided. He had a pair of binoculars in the car and he could use those. He would be able to see if there was anything that needed to be done, which he was sure that there wasn’t.

  He replaced the ladder, locked the flat, and then made his way downstairs. On the other side of the street there was a set of gardens which sloped steeply down the hill to the Water of Leith below. Bruce crossed over and stood on the pavement, his binoculars trained on the roof of the building. It was by no means ideal, he thought; the angle from which he had to observe the roof made it impossible for him to see more than the first third of it, but that seemed perfectly all right. He ran the binoculars over the stonework along the front of the roof. That seemed fine as well. Roof inspected and found to be in good condition, he dictated 22

  A Full Survey

  to himself. He looked at his watch. He had ten minutes to get back to the office, twenty minutes to dictate the report, and that would mean that the client would get it just in time. There was the valuation to think about, of course, but that was not going to be a particular problem. The location was good: the flat was a ten-minute walk from Charlotte Square; the street was quiet, and there was nothing to suggest that the neighbours were difficult.
A flat three doors down had gone recently for three hundred and eighty thousand pounds (Todd had told him about that transaction) but that was on the first floor, which added to the price, and so: Three hundred and twenty thousand pounds, thought Bruce, and then, feeling benevolent to the purchasers and their mortgage needs, he added a further eight thousand pounds for good measure. A fine, late-Georgian flat with many original features.

  Superb cornice in the south-facing drawing room; wainscoting in all public rooms; a fine bath which a purchaser might wish to preserve, and a decorated fireplace in the rear bedroom depicting the Ettrick Shepherd, Walter Scott and Robert Burns in conversation with one another in a country inn. These reports wrote themselves, thought Bruce, if one was prepared to loosen up one’s prose a bit.

  He drove back to Queen Street, parked the car in the mews garage (for which the firm had paid the equivalent price of a small flat in Dundee) and made his way into the office. There the report was dictated, presented to the secretary, and delivered to Todd in a crisp blue folder.

  Todd gestured for Bruce to sit down while he read the survey.

  Then, looking up at his employee, he asked him quietly: “You inspected the roof, did you?”

  “Yes,” said Bruce. “Nothing wrong there.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Todd, fingering the edge of the folder.

  “Did you get up into the roof space?”

  Bruce hesitated, but only for a moment. There was nothing wrong with that roof and it would have made no difference had he been able to squeeze through the partly-blocked trapdoor. “I went up,” he said. “Everything was fine.”

  Todd raised an eyebrow. “Well,” he said. “It wasn’t when I went up last week. I looked at it for another client, you see. He Hypocrisy, Lies, Golf Clubs

  23

  lost interest in offering before I wrote a report, and so I thought a fresh survey appropriate. Had you really gone up, you might have seen the fulminating rot and also noticed the very dicey state of one of the chimney stacks. But . . .”

  Bruce said nothing. He was looking at his shoes.