44 Scotland Street 4ss-1

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Todd looked at Sasha, who was staring at her daughter. “Well, I like it very much,” he said. “Twenty-something, forty-something

  – what’s the difference?”

  Silk Organza

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  “Twenty years,” said Lizzie.

  Sasha bent down and picked up a piece of buttered brown bread with its small covering of smoked salmon. For a moment Todd wondered whether she was going to use it as a weapon, but she popped it into her mouth and quickly licked the tips of her fingers.

  “Actually,” Sasha said, “I had this dress made up for me from a photograph I saw in Harpers. And, if I remember correctly, the person wearing it in the magazine was not in her twenties.”

  “Teens?” asked Lizzie.

  Sasha looked at Todd. He saw that she had coloured, and that her lower lip was quivering. He turned to his daughter.

  “Do you have to be like this?” he asked. “Do you have to say cruel things? Do you have to upset your mother?”

  Lizzie’s expression was one of injured innocence. “But I didn’t say anything,” she protested. “I merely said that that sort of dress was very popular among younger people. What’s wrong with that? It’s just an observation.”

  “Except that you think that I’m too old to be wearing it,”

  Sasha blurted out. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re never happy unless you make me feel small. You’ll be forty-four one day, you know.”

  “Forty-five,” said Lizzie.

  At this remark, Sasha turned sharply away and walked out of the room, leaving her husband and daughter staring mutely at one another. Todd lifted his glass of whisky and drained it.

  “I think you should say you’re sorry,” he said. “It’s a big night for your mother, and I really don’t think that you should ruin it for her. Couldn’t you just go through there and say that you’re sorry? Would it cost you that much effort?”

  Lizzie shrugged. “She could say sorry to me,” she said. “She could say sorry for making me feel so bad all those years. For nagging me. For making me do things that I never wanted to do. For ruining my life.”

  He spoke quietly. “For ruining your life?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He looked down at his sporran and at his patent-leather Highland dancing pumps. This is what it has come to, he thought.

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  Bruce Fantasises

  This is what all their effort had brought forth: the accusation that they had ruined her life.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I really am very sorry if you think that.

  And I take it that you think the same of me – that I’ve done the same.”

  Lizzie shook her head. “Not really. I don’t blame you for it.

  You can’t help the way you are.”

  “And what, may I ask, is that? What way am I?”

  Lizzie looked up at the ceiling, as if bored by the task of explaining the obvious.

  “All of this,” she said. “All this respectability. This whole Edinburgh bit. All of that.”

  Todd tried to look her in the eye as she spoke, but she avoided his gaze. “All right,” he said. “You’ve made your speech. Now please just try for the rest of the evening. That young man is walking up the path out there and I would prefer it if he didn’t witness a family row. I’m going to fetch your mother. Please try.

  Please just try. I’m not asking you to approve of us, but please just try to be civil. Is that too much to ask? Is it?”

  53. Bruce Fantasises

  “You’ll remember my wife,” said Todd. “And my daughter Lizzie, of course.”

  Sasha, smiling and holding out her hand, advanced upon Bruce, who shook hands with her formally. Lizzie, who had been standing at the window, half turned to their guest and nodded. She made no move to shake hands.

  “Well,” said Todd, rubbing his hands together. “I must confess that I’ve jumped the gun. I’ve had a dram already. What about you, Bruce? Whisky? Gin? A glass of wine?”

  Bruce asked for a glass of wine and while Todd went off to fetch it, Sasha took Bruce by the arm and led him to a sofa at the far end of the room. She sat down, and patted the sofa beside Bruce Fantasises

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  her. And it was at this point that Bruce suddenly realised that in his haste to leave the flat he had dressed inadequately. He had donned his full, formal Highland outfit, his Prince Charlie jacket with its silver buttons, his Anderson kilt, the dress sporran that his uncle had given him for his twenty-first birthday, his white hose from Aitken and Niven in George Street, and, of course, his new dress shirt. But he had forgotten to put on any underpants.

  Bruce knew that there were those who refused to wear anything under the kilt as a matter of principle. He knew, as everybody did, that there were traditions to this effect, but they were old ones, and he had never met anybody who followed them. It was not just a question of comfort, and warmth, perhaps in the winter; it was a question of security. And now he felt that security issue very acutely as he prepared to sit down on the sofa beside Sasha.

  He lowered himself carefully, keeping his knees close together and making sure that the folds of the kilt fell snugly along the side of each leg. Then he looked at Sasha, who was watching him with what he thought was a slightly bemused expression. Had she guessed, by the way that he had sat down? He remembered, blushing, the last time this had happened when, as a thirteen-year-old boy he had similarly rushed off to a school function and had been laughed at by schoolgirls, who had pointed to him and giggled. One might have thought that such painful episodes were well and truly in the past, but now here he was reliving the burning awkwardness of adolescence.

  Sasha raised her glass, although her husband had not yet come back with a drink for Bruce. “We haven’t seen one another for a long time, have we?” she asked. “Was it last year, at the office dinner at Prestonfield House?”

  “I think so,” said Bruce vaguely. He had worn his kilt on that occasion too, but had wisely donned underpants then. How on earth had he managed to forget to put them on tonight? What could he possibly have been thinking about?

  Sasha looked across at Lizzie – a glance which was intercepted by Bruce. There was a feeling between these two, he thought; mothers and daughters were often at one another’s throats, he had found; something to do with jealousy, he thought. Bruce’s 138

  Bruce Fantasises

  theories of female psychology were simple: women competed with one another for men and there was great distrust between them. Women did not like one another, he had decided – unlike men, who had easy friendships, with none of the ups and downs and moodiness of women’s relationships.

  Bruce was used to being fought over, and relished the experience. If he was in a room with two women, then he would imagine that both of them would be vying for his attention, and he liked to look for the signs of this subtle, under-the-surface competition. It was easy to miss, but if you kept your eyes open you could see it. In these particular circumstances, Lizzie would be glowering at her mother because the older woman had invited Bruce to sit beside her and now she was talking to him in this familiar way. This would be annoying Lizzie, because she, quite naturally, would be wanting Bruce to notice her, not her mother.

  Bruce smiled. How delicious! Mother and daughter are both interested in me, and she, the older one, is the boss’s wife.

  He looked at Sasha. She’s crammed herself into that dress, he thought, but she’s not all that bad-looking in the right light.

  And there was a certain brassiness to her which he rather liked, a suggestion that she understood what it was to have fun.

  Interesting. Now for the daughter. Well, what a frump, with that frown and that way of slumping her shoulders. He knew the sort well enough; she would have given up, that’s what she would have done – she would just have given up on the prospect of finding a man. So she would have decided to behave as if she did not care, which of course she did. How sad. If she made an effort then she could prob
ably be reasonable-looking, and might appeal to some man or other.

  Bruce wondered. He was free at the moment, and he would be doing a service for this rather unhappy-looking girl if he paid her a bit of attention. She might do for a few weeks, to bridge the gap, so to speak, before somebody a bit more suitable turned up. He could even look on it as a form of community service of the sort that was handed out at the sheriff court. You are sentenced to one hundred and forty hours with Todd’s daughter.

  You are warned that if you don’t comply with the terms of this Supporting Walls

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  order then you will be brought back to the court to explain yourself to the sheriff.

  And he would say to the sheriff: “My lord, have you seen her?”

  And the sheriff would look down from the bench and shake his head and say: “Young man, that’s what community service is all about. But I see what you mean. You are free to go.”

  That’s what Bruce thought. He found the fantasy rather amusing, and smiled again; a smile which was misinterpreted by Sasha, who thought: this dishy young man is smiling at me! It’s not too late, obviously. It’s not too late to have some fun in this life.

  54. Supporting Walls

  “This is a nice place you’ve got, Todd,” said Bruce to Todd as he was handed his glass of wine.

  Todd smiled warmly. “It’s a very good corner of town,” he said. “We’ve been here for – what – sixteen years now and I don’t think we’re planning to move, are we Sasha?”

  Sasha shook her head. “I couldn’t move,” she said. “I’ve put so much effort into the garden and if you go further into town these days it’s so noisy. Students and the like. All sorts of people.”

  Bruce nodded in sympathy. He knew all about students and the noise they made, although it was only a few years since he had been a student, and had made a lot of noise himself, if one were to be strictly honest. Mind you, he reflected, the noise he made was not from music being played at full throttle, it was rather from parties, particularly after rugby internationals. Those parties had produced a sort of roar which was far more acceptable than the sort of noise that came from student flats these days.

  “Marchmont’s impossible,” he said. “I was pleased when I moved down to Scotland Street. It’s much better.”

  Todd, who had taken a few paces back from the sofa and was standing with his back to the fireplace, gestured to the room around them. “Of course, we had to do a lot to this place when 140

  Supporting Walls

  we moved in,” he explained. “It was typical of those houses they built in the Twenties – the rooms were just far smaller than they needed to be. This room, for example, was two rooms. We took a wall out over there – right down the middle, and made it into a decent-sized drawing room.”

  Bruce looked about him. He could see where the earlier wall had been, as there was still a detectable line across the ceiling and one of the light fittings had clearly been moved. For a few moments he stared up at the ceiling, his surveyor’s instinct asserting itself. Was that a bulge running where the wall must have been? And did the ceiling not seem to sag slightly in the middle? He looked over at the far wall, where the now-disappeared wall would have met the room’s perimeter. It seemed to him that there was clear evidence of buckling.

  He looked at Todd, who was running a finger around the rim of his whisky glass. “It’s a very comfortable room,” he began.

  “But that wall . . . would it not have been a supporting wall? I suppose that you had an engineer look at it?”

  Todd snorted. “Engineer? Just for a partition wall in a bungalow? Good heavens, no. I looked at it myself. It was absolutely fine. I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t load-bearing.”

  Bruce looked back at the ceiling and at the bulge. “Are you sure?” he said. “Hasn’t there been a bit of movement?”

  Todd frowned. “What exactly are you saying? Are you suggesting that the house is going to fall down about our ears?”

  Sasha picked up the tension which had arisen between the two men, and made an attempt to defuse it. It was bad enough, in her view, to have Lizzie behaving like a sulky child without having an atmosphere develop between her husband and Bruce.

  “I’m sure he doesn’t mean that,” she interjected. “Heavens no!”

  Lizzie now spoke. “If your ceiling did come down,” she said,

  “you would have lost a room, but you would have gained a courtyard. Think of that.”

  Sasha turned her head to stare at her daughter and Bruce, who now regretted raising the issue of the possible collapse of the Todd house, started to cross his legs, but stopped in embarrassment, and brought his knees together sharply. Lizzie, however, had been Discovered

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  looking at him – or so he feared – and he saw her surprised expression. This made him blush, and Sasha, thinking him embarrassed by Lizzie’s general attitude, reached over and touched him lightly on the sleeve.

  “Everything will be fine,” she whispered.

  The conversation resumed, avoiding surveying issues, and focusing instead on Scotland’s prospects in the forthcoming rugby season. Todd revealed that he had debenture seats at Murrayfield and spent some time extolling the virtue of their position in the West Stand. There then followed some disparaging remarks about dirty play by the French and the Italians.

  Bruce agreed with Todd’s analysis of this, which seemed to relieve the tension considerably, and earlier remarks about structural unsoundness seemed now to be forgotten, or at least shelved.

  When Todd looked at his watch and declared that it was time for them to start off for the Braid Hills Hotel, Bruce rose to his feet, carefully. Could he visit the bathroom quickly before they left? Of course, of course; down the corridor. Last door on the left.

  He made his way down the corridor. The bathroom, which he noted had hunting prints on the wall, was more or less what he had expected, and he took the opportunity of looking at himself quickly in the mirror. This restored his confidence. One might have no underpants on, but what did it matter if one had the looks? Not at all. You don’t really need underpants if you have the looks, Bruce thought to himself, and almost laughed out loud at the very idea.

  He walked back down the corridor. The door next to the bathroom was open, with the light switched on. It was a drying room, with washing machine and tumble dryer, and a clothes-horse. On which there were several pairs of underpants.

  55. Discovered

  As he peered into the Todds’ drying room, Bruce felt more than the normal curiosity (mild in the case of most) which we feel 142

  Discovered

  when we look into the drying rooms of others. After all, a drying room is hardly Chapman’s Homer . . . nor is it a peak in Darien.

  This drying room, in fact, was of little interest, apart from the fact that there were at least four pairs of underpants on the clothes-horse and Bruce was conscious of the fact that social embarrassment might await him at the ball in his current state of incomplete dress. A simple solution would be to borrow – and it would just be borrowing – a pair of these underpants, obviously Todd’s, slip into them when some suitable opportunity presented itself at the ball, and then return them, laundered, a few days later. This would not be theft; it would be borrowing of an entirely understandable and justifiable sort.

  Of course the means of return would have to be considered.

  Borrowed items could normally be returned openly, but those that were borrowed informally, or borrowed with implicit consent, might have to be returned in a more discreet way. The clothing could be put into the post, perhaps, with an anonymous thank-you note – or with one signed in an illegible hand – or it might just be slipped into Todd’s in-tray in the office when nobody was looking.

  Bruce looked over his shoulder. The corridor was quite empty and he could hear the murmur of conversation coming from the drawing room. It was highly unlikely, he thought, that anybody would come this way: they were waiting for him
to return before setting off for the Braid Hills Hotel. He could take as long as he liked, and be quite safe.

  He stepped forward into the drying room and reached for a pair of underpants from the clothes-horse. As he did so, he saw that the pair which he had chosen had a large hole in the seat; how mean of Todd! It was typical of him – he was mean with stationery supplies in the office and he was always going on about keeping costs down.

  So he applied that philosophy to his clothing as well!

  Bruce replaced the rejected pair of underpants on the clothes-horse and reached for another pair. This was better. Although the garment was certainly too large, the elastic would hold it in place. So he quickly folded the pants, stuffed them into his sporran and turned to go back out into the corridor.

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  He stopped. There, standing in the doorway, was Todd, an empty whisky glass in his hand.

  Bruce swallowed. “Todd,” he said, in strangled tones.

  “Todd.”

  Todd was staring at him, and Bruce noticed, for the first time, how the whites of his eyes were unnaturally large.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Bruce swallowed again. “Well, I’m more or less ready to go,”

  he said. “We don’t want to keep people.”

  Todd blinked. “The bathroom is further along,” he said. “This is the drying room.”

  Bruce laughed. “Oh, I found the bathroom all right,” he said airily. “I took a wrong turning on the way back and ended up . . .” He paused, and then gestured around the drying room,

  “here. I ended up in here.”

  Todd moved back from the doorway in order to allow Bruce to come out into the corridor. “A rather odd mistake to make,”

  he said. “After all, this is not a particularly confusing house. The corridor runs fairly straight, wouldn’t you say? It goes up there, and then comes back. Frankly, I don’t see how one can get lost in this house.”

  Bruce smiled. “I have a very bad sense of direction,” he said quickly. “Terrible, in fact.”