44 Scotland Street 4ss-1

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Angus looked at Pat and smiled warmly. “Domenica here is jealous, you see. She’d like me to take her for a walk in the Drummond Place Gardens, but I take Cyril, my dog, instead.

  Much better company.”

  Pat stared at Angus, fascinated. He had three gold teeth, she noticed, one of which was an incisor. She had never seen this before.

  Domenica noticed the direction of her gaze. “Yes,” she said loudly. “Extraordinary, isn’t it? And do you know, that dog of his has a gold tooth too!”

  “Why not?” laughed Angus.

  72. Angus Lordie’s Difficult Task

  After a few minutes of coruscating conversation with Angus Lordie, Domenica was distracted by another guest. This left Pat standing with Angus Lordie, who looked at her with frank interest.

  “You must forgive me for being so direct,” he said, “but I really feel that I have to ask you exactly who you are and what you do. It’s so much quicker if one asks these things right at the beginning, rather than finding them out with a whole series of indirect questions. Don’t you agree?”

  Pat did agree. She had observed how people asked each other questions which might elicit desired information but which were ostensibly about something else. What was the point of asking somebody whether they had been busy recently when what one wanted to know was exactly what they did? And yet, now that she had been asked this herself, how should she answer? It seemed so lame, so self-indulgent, to say that one was on one’s second gap year. And to say that one worked in a gallery was almost the same thing as saying outright that one was still on the parental pay-roll.

  But then there was a case for truthfulness – one might always tell the truth if in an absolute corner, Bruce had once remarked.

  “I work in a gallery,” she said with as much firmness as she could manage, “and I’m on my second gap year.”

  She noticed that Angus Lordie did not seem surprised by either of these answers.

  “How very interesting,” he said. “I’m a portrait painter myself.

  And I’ve done my time in galleries too.”

  Pat found herself listening to him very carefully. His voice was rich and plummy, deeper than that which one might have expected from an ascetic-looking man. It had, too, a quality which she found fascinating – a tone of sincerity, as if every word uttered was felt at some deep level.

  She asked him about his work. Did he paint just portraits, or did he do other things too?

  “Just portraits,” he said, the gold teeth flashing as he spoke.

  “I suspect that I’ve forgotten how to paint mere things. So it’s just portraits. I’ll do anybody.”

  200

  Angus Lordie’s Difficult Task

  “How do you choose?” she asked.

  Angus Lordie smiled. “I don’t choose,” he replied. “That’s not the way it works. They choose me. People who want their children painted, or their wives or husbands, or chairmen for that matter. And I sit there and do my best to make my subjects look impressive or even vaguely presentable. I try to discern the sitter’s character, and then see if I can get that down on canvas.”

  “Who do you like doing best?” Pat enquired.

  Angus Lordie took a sip of his wine before he answered.

  “I can tell you who I don’t particularly like doing,” he said.

  “Politicians. They’re so tremendously pushy and self-important for the most part. With some exceptions, of course. I’d like to do John Swinney, because he strikes me as a nice enough man.

  And David Steel too. I like him. But nobody has asked me to do either of these yet. Mind you, why don’t you ask me who I like doing absolutely least of all?”

  “Well?” said Pat. “Who is that?”

  “Moderators of the obscure Wee Free churches,” said Angus Lordie, shuddering slightly as he spoke. “They are not my favourite subjects. Oh no!”

  “Why?” asked Pat. “What’s wrong with them?”

  Angus Lordie cast his eyes up to the ceiling. “Those particular churches take a very, how shall we put it? – a very restricted view of the world. Religion can be full of joy and affirmation, but these characters . . .” He shuddered. “There used to be a wonderful Afrikaans word to describe the position of rigid ideologues in the Dutch Reformed Church – verkrampte. It’s such an expressive term. Rather like crabbit in Scots. All of these words are tailor-made for some of these Wee Free types. Dark suits.

  Frowns. Disapproval.”

  “But why do you paint them, then?” asked Pat.

  “Well, I don’t make a habit of painting them,” answered Angus Lordie. “I’ve just finished painting my first one now. I’d love to paint a resolved Buddhist face or a flashy Catholic monsignor with a taste for the pleasures of the table, but no. These people – the Portrait Gallery people – are having an exhibition later in the year of portraits of religious figures. It’s called Figures of Angus Lordie’s Difficult Task

  201

  Faith, or something like that. And I’ve drawn the short straw. I’ve got the Wee Free Reformed Presbyterian Church (Discontinued).”

  Pat laughed. “What a name!”

  “Yes,” said Angus Lordie. “These Free Presbyterians are always having rows and schisms. Well, this Discontinued bunch is quite different from the mainstream Free Presbyterians, who are very nice people – nothing to do with them, or with any of the other well-known ones. But they’ve got a couple of hundred members, which isn’t too bad even if it’s the Church Universal.”

  Pat smiled. She was enjoying this conversation; there was something appealing about Angus Lordie, something vaguely anarchic. He was fun.

  “So I was asked,” continued Angus Lordie, “to paint a portrait of a Reverend Hector MacNichol, who happens to be the Moderator of this particular bunch of Free Presbyterian types.

  I agreed, of course, and he came down to my studio for the first sitting. And that’s when I found out that he more or less expressed, in the flesh, the theology of his particular church, which takes a pretty dim view of anything which might be regarded as vaguely fun or enjoyable. There he was, a tiny, crabbit-looking, man – minuscule, in fact – who gazed on the world with a very disapproving stare. He noticed an open bottle of whisky in my studio and he muttered something which I didn’t quite catch, but which was probably about sin and alcohol, or maybe about Sunday ferries, for all I know.”

  “It can’t have been easy to paint him,” said Pat.

  Angus Lordie agreed. “It certainly was not. I sat him there in the studio and he said to me in a very severe, very West Highland voice: ‘Mr Lordie, I must make clear that I shall under no circumstances tolerate any work being done on this portrait on a Sunday. Do you understand that?’

  “I was astonished, but I made a great effort to keep my professional detachment. I’m sorry to say that the whole thing was destined – or pre-destined, as a Free Presbyterian might say

  – to go badly wrong.”

  “And did it?” asked Pat.

  “Spectacularly,” said Angus Lordie.

  73. A Dissident Free Presbyterian Fatwa Looking at his new twenty-year-old friend, Angus Lordie, member of the Royal Scottish Academy and past president of the Scottish Arts Club, reflected on how agreeable it was to have a young woman to talk to in a room of his coevals. He liked young women, and counted himself lucky to live in a city populated with so many highly delectable examples of that species, even if none of them ever bothered to talk to him.

  “My dear,” he said to Pat, touching her gently on the wrist,

  “you are so kind, so considerate, to listen to the conversation of an academician of my years – barely fifty, I might add.”

  “I’m interested in this story,” said Pat. “This Moderator person sounds awful. And you had to paint him!”

  “Indeed I did,” said Angus Lordie. “But, do you know, as I began the task it seemed to me as if I had become possessed. It was almost as if I had been taken over by an entirely foreign energy. I had
absolutely no difficulty in beginning. I saw the portrait in my mind’s eye, even before I began.

  “I had set up a large canvas, you’ll understand – I normally paint portraits on a generous scale. But now, as I looked at this tiny, crabbit man, sitting there in his clerical black suit and staring at me with a sort of threatening disapproval, I found that I sketched in a tiny portrait, three inches square, right in the middle of the big canvas. This just seemed to be the right thing to do. He was a small-minded man, in my view, and it seemed utterly appropriate to do a small portrait of him.

  “We had several sittings. I didn’t let him see what I was doing, you’ll understand, and so he had no idea of the picture which was emerging in the middle of the canvas – a picture which set out to express all the sheer malice and narrowness of the man.

  I thought it was very accurate. I had boiled down his spirit and it came to a tiny half-teaspoon of brimstone.”

  Pat listened in fascination. She could imagine what might have happened next; the Reverend MacNichol would see the picture

  – which is exactly what happened, as Angus Lordie explained.

  “It was during the third sitting,” said Angus Lordie. “I went A Dissident Free Presbyterian Fatwa 203

  out of the studio to answer the telephone, and while I was out MacNichol took it upon himself to get up and have a peek at progress so far. When I came back into the studio he was standing there, purple with rage, wagging a finger at me. ‘How dare you insult a man of the cloth,’ he yelled at me. ‘You wicked, wicked man!’

  “I tried to pacify him, but he would have none of it. He fetched his hat – a black Homburg which was far too big for a tiny man like that – shoved it down over his ears, and marched out of the studio. But as he left, he turned to face me and said: ‘You will be sorry, Mr Lordie! You will find out what it is to incur the wrath of the Discontinued Brethren!’ Then he left, and I sat down, somewhat shocked, and considered my position.

  “What had happened, I was later told, was that he had pronounced some sort of Free Presbyterian fatwa on me. I was shocked. What exactly will they try to do to me? Put me to the sword? Burn me out of my studio? I have absolutely no idea what the implications are, as this happened only a few days ago.”

  Pat was silent. Many people find it hard to know what to say to one who has just had a fatwa pronounced on him, and Pat was one of these. Words somehow seem inadequate in such circumstances, and any further enquiry tactless. It might help to ask: “Is it a temporary fatwa, or a permanent one?” But Pat just shook her head in disbelief – not at the story, of course –

  but at the mentality of those who would pronounce a fatwa on another.

  Angus Lordie sighed. “Still,” he said. “One must not complain. Portraiture has its risks, and I suppose a dissident Free Presbyterian fatwa is one of them. Not that one would expect to encounter such a thing every day . . . But, to more cheerful subjects. Would you like to visit my studio some time? I’m just round the corner from Scotland Street, on the same side of the square as Sydney used to be – Sydney Goodsir Smith, of course.

  And Nigel McIsaac too. Nigel was a very fine artist – lovely, light-filled pictures – and I still see Mary McIsaac in the square from time to time.”

  204

  A Dissident Free Presbyterian Fatwa He looked over towards the other side of the room where a young man was circulating with a bottle of wine, refreshing glasses.

  “I’m so bad at catching the eyes of young men at parties,” he said airily. “Such a limitation! Perhaps you could do it for me?”

  Pat looked across the room and immediately attracted the attention of the waiter, who came over to them and refilled Angus Lordie’s glass. Pat, who was generally abstemious, asked for only half a glass.

  Angus Lordie looked again at Pat. His gaze was intense, Pat felt, and it was almost as if he were appraising her. But she did not feel threatened in any way – why? Because he was an artist looking at a potential subject, rather than a middle-aged roué looking at a girl?

  “Yes,” he said, resuming the interrupted conversation.

  “Sydney was one of the lights of this city, one of our great makars. Would it be rude of me to say that I assume that you’ve not read any of his work? No? Well, there’s a treat for you. He was a great man – a great man. He loved his drink, you know, as all our poets have done. If the Scottish Arts Council had any imagination, it would have a system of whisky grants for poets, rather like the Civil List pension that Grieve got. Each poet would receive a couple of bottles a month – once they had produced a decent work between covers. What a gesture that would be!

  “Sydney sometimes had these sessions that would last all night and into the morning. Conversation. Friendship. Wonderful ideas bouncing about. Beautiful invented words. And, do you know, he had this terribly funny toast that he would give from time to time. He’d raise his glass and say: ‘ Death to the French! ’

  Wonderfully funny.”

  Pat frowned. “But why would he say that?”

  Angus Lordie looked at her in astonishment. “But, my dear, he didn’t mean it! Good heavens! Do you think any of us here –” and with a gesture he embraced the entire room and GRIEVE: Christopher Murray Grieve, better known as the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid.

  A Man’s Dressing-gown

  205

  the northern part of the city from Queen Street onwards, “Do you think any of us here actually mean anything we say? My dear!”

  “I do,” said Pat.

  “You mean everything you say?”Angus Lordie exclaimed. “My dear, how innocent you are!” He paused. Then: “Would you mind posing for me – in my studio? Would you mind?”

  74. A Man’s Dressing-gown

  Domenica and Pat left the reception at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery shortly before nine. Pat was hungry but she nevertheless turned down Domenica’s invitation to join her in her flat for a mushroom omelette. She liked her neighbour, and enjoyed her company, but she knew that if she accepted then she would not get to bed before eleven at least, as Domenica liked to talk. Her conversation ranged widely and it was entertaining enough, but Pat felt emotionally exhausted and she wanted nothing more than to take to her bed with a sandwich, a glass of milk, and a telephone. She had not spoken to her father for some time and she felt that a chat with him would help, as it always did.

  She said goodbye to Domenica on the landing.

  “I hope you’re feeling better,” said the older woman. “And remember what I said. Whatever you do, don’t let him upset you. Just don’t.”

  Pat smiled at her. “I won’t,” she assured her. “I promise you.”

  “Good,” said Domenica, and leaned forward and planted a kiss on Pat’s cheek. Her lips felt dry against her skin and there was a faint odour of expensive perfume. For a moment Pat stood still; she had not expected this intimacy – if it was an intimacy.

  Everybody kissed one another these days; kisses meant nothing.

  Then the moment of uncertainty passed, and she thanked Domenica for the evening. “You’ve been so kind to me,” she said.

  206

  A Man’s Dressing-gown

  “I haven’t,” said Domenica, turning her key in the door. “I’ve been a neighbour, that’s all. And you’re a sweet girl.”

  Domenica’s door closed behind her and Pat went into her own flat. The hall was in darkness as she entered and she reached to switch on a light. Then she stopped; light was emanating from under Bruce’s door. So he’s back, she thought. He can’t have had much of an evening.

  The thought pleased her. She wanted him to be there – as in a sense that meant that he was with her. And that was what she wanted; she wanted it against all the promptings of the rational part of her being.

  She stood still for a moment, in the darkness of the hall, debating with herself what to do. She and Bruce had parted on awkward terms that evening. She had been angered by his failure to apologise for giving away her painting, and she had stormed
out of the kitchen. Now she felt that she wanted to make it up with him; she should tell him that she was not holding it against him and that all she wanted was for him to give her the telephone number of the people who had won the picture.

  Getting it back from them might not be easy, and Bruce’s support might be needed in that, but in the meantime she could do all that was necessary.

  She decided to knock on his door and speak to him. Perhaps he would suggest that they have coffee together or that . . . What do I really want? she asked herself.

  She now stood before his door and knocked gently. There was silence inside, and then, hesitantly, Bruce’s voice called out.

  “Pat?”

  There was something in the tone, in the way he answered, that made her realise immediately that he was not alone in the room. And the realisation filled her with embarrassment, that she had disturbed them, and with intense, searing jealousy.

  Horrified, she moved away from Bruce’s door and ran over the hall to her own room, slamming the door behind her. She thought she heard Bruce’s door open, but she was not sure, and she wanted to shut out all sound from that quarter. She threw herself down on the bed, her hands over her eyes.

  A Man’s Dressing-gown

  207

  She lay there for over half an hour, doing nothing, her eyes closed. She felt as if she was paralysed by misery, and that even the effort of lifting the telephone and keying in her parents’

  number would be too much. But somehow she managed that, and heard her father answer at the other end.

  “Are you all right?”

  She took a moment to answer; then, “Yes. I’m all right. I suppose.”

  “You don’t sound very convinced.”

  She made an effort to sound more cheerful. “I’ve lost something at work – something that was entrusted to me.”

  “Tell him,” said her father simply. He had the ability to diagnose problems even before they were explained. “Tell your boss about it. Own up.”