44 Scotland Street 4ss-1

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “I was going to do that,” she said. “But that doesn’t make it any easier.”

  Her father paused before answering. “There is nothing – and I mean nothing – that doesn’t look less serious if confessed, or shared. Try it. Tell your boss tomorrow what has happened.

  Tell the truth, and you’ll see how the world carries on. Just try it.”

  She spoke to her father for a few minutes longer before ringing off. She felt slightly better just for having spoken to him, and now she got off the bed and walked towards the door. She did not want to go out of her room but she would have to cross the hall to get to the bathroom. She could not bear the thought of seeing Bruce – not just now – but she thought that he would be unlikely to come out.

  She crossed the hall to the bathroom. The light still showed under Bruce’s door – At least they aren’t in there together in the dark, she thought – but no sound came from the room. And what does that mean? she asked herself.

  Inside the bathroom, she stood in front of the mirror and brushed her teeth. Then she washed her face, splashing it with cold water afterwards.

  “Hallo.”

  She spun round. A tall young woman, with streaky blonde 208

  News of a Loss

  hair, was standing in the door. She was wearing Bruce’s dressing gown and her hair was dishevelled.

  Pat stared at the young woman.

  “What do you want?” she asked. She did not intend to sound as brutally rude, but that was how the question emerged.

  The other girl was taken aback, but recovered quickly.

  “Nothing,” she said. “At least, nothing from you.”

  She turned on her heel and disappeared and Pat stared into the mirror. At least she had seen her face, and this would enable her to answer the question which every jealous person wishes to have answered. Is she/he more attractive than I am?

  And the answer in this case, she thought, was yes. And there was something else – another respect in which she was outclassed; another respect in which she could not compete. She could never wear a man’s dressing gown like that, with such complete shamelessness.

  75. News of a Loss

  There was every temptation to put off the moment when she would confess to Matthew that the Peploe? was no longer in her possession, but Pat resisted this firmly and successfully. When Matthew came into the gallery the following morning – twenty minutes after Pat had arrived – he barely had time to hang up his coat before she made her confession.

  Matthew listened carefully. He did not interrupt her, nor did his expression reveal any emotion. When Pat had finished, she looked down at the ground, almost afraid to look back up at him, but then she did and she saw that the anger she had expected simply was not there.

  “It’s not your fault,” Matthew said evenly. “You couldn’t have imagined that he would do such an inconsiderate thing.” He paused, and shook his head in puzzlement. “Why on earth did News of a Loss

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  he assume that the painting belonged to nobody? Somebody had to have put it there.”

  “He assumes a lot,” said Pat. “He’s a little on the arrogant side.” As she spoke, she wondered where Bruce would be now, and what he would be doing. She had never wondered that before, but now she did.

  “I think I’ve met him,” said Matthew. “He goes to the Cumberland, doesn’t he? Tall, with hair like this . . .”

  Pat nodded. Bruce was tall, and his hair did go like that; and why should it make her catch her breath just to think of him?

  Matthew sat down at his desk and looked at Pat. “We’ll get it back,” he said. “As you’ve just said, it still belongs to us, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s what my neighbour pointed out,” said Pat. “I hope she’s right.”

  “I’m sure she’s right,” said Matthew. “So all we need to do is to find out who these people are – the people who won it – and ask them to give it back.”

  Pat waited for Matthew to say something more, to censure her, perhaps, but he did not. Instead he spoke about some paintings which somebody had brought in for sale the previous day and which they were planning to take a look at that morning. Neither of them thought that there would be anything worth very much, but they were looking forward to spending a few hours searching for the names of artists in the books and relating them, if possible, to the paintings before them. Some names, of course, would simply not occur; would have faded into complete obscurity.

  “Why do people insist on painting?” asked Matthew as they stared at a late nineteenth-century study of an Arab dhow.

  “It’s their response to the world,” muttered Pat, peering at the signature below the dhow. “People try to capture something of what they see. It’s like taking a photograph. Why do people take photographs?”

  Matthew had an immediate answer. “Because they can’t look at what’s before them and think about it for more than two seconds. It’s a sign of distraction. They see, photograph, and move on. They don’t really look.”

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  Pat looked at him, and noticed the way that the hairs lay flat against the skin of his wrist, and the way that one of his eyebrows was slightly shorter than the other, as if it had been shaved off.

  And she noticed, too, his eyes, which she had never really looked at before, and the way the irises were flecked with gray. And Matthew, for his part, suddenly noticed that Pat had small ears, and that one of them had two piercings. For a few moments neither spoke, as each felt sympathy for the other, as the same conclusion – quite remarkably – occurred to each: here is a person, another, who is so important to himself, to herself, and so weak, and ordinary, and human as we all are.

  They worked quietly together, looking carefully at the paintings, before Matthew stood up, stretched, and announced:

  “Nothing here. Nothing.”

  And Pat had to agree. “I can’t imagine that we could sell any of these for more than . . . forty, fifty pounds.”

  “Exactly,” said Matthew. “Let’s say thank you, but no.” He glanced at his watch. It was early for coffee, but he felt that he wanted to get out of the gallery, which suddenly seemed oppressive to him. That feeling would pass if he could get out and see his friends in Big Lou’s coffee bar.

  With Matthew across the road at Big Lou’s, Pat picked up the telephone and dialled the office number that Bruce had given her when he had reluctantly agreed to find out how to contact the Ramsey Dunbartons. She listened anxiously as the telephone rang at the other end and when Bruce answered, with a gruff

  “Anderson”, she almost put down the receiver. But she mastered her feelings, and asked him whether he had obtained the necessary information from Todd.

  “I have,” said Bruce. “And here’s the number.” He paused. “I don’t know whether they’ll be terribly pleased.”

  “Why not?” asked Pat. “Surely they’ll understand that there’s been a mistake.”

  “Yes,” said Bruce quickly. “Your mistake.”

  Pat ignored this. “We’ll see,” she said.

  Bruce laughed. “Right, we’ll see. Now, is there anything else you wanted to say?”

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  Pat was on the verge of saying that there was not, but then, for reasons which she could not understand, and before she could stop herself, she said: “That girl – that girl, Sally – do you like her?”

  There was a silence at the other end of the line, and Pat felt herself tense with embarrassment. It was a ridiculous question, which she had no right to ask, and Bruce would have been quite entitled to tell her to mind her own business. But he did not, and replied quite brightly: “What do you think?”

  “Do you mean what do I think of her?” It was a question that she could have answered with a remark about how she wore his dressing gown and the flaunting that this entailed, but she said instead: “Or what do I think you feel?”

  “Yes,” said Bruce. “What
do you think I feel?”

  “You hate her,” said Pat. “You can’t stand her.”

  Bruce whistled down the line. “Very wrong, Patsy girl. Very wrong. I want to marry her.”

  76. Remembrance of Things Past

  Neither Ronnie nor Pete had arrived at Big Lou’s when Matthew came in that morning. As Matthew approached the counter, Big Lou, who had been tidying the fridge, looked up and greeted him warmly. There was nobody else in the coffee bar – indeed Matthew was the first customer that morning – and she was pleased to have somebody to talk to.

  She prepared Matthew’s coffee and brought it over, sitting down next to him in the booth.

  “Those other two are late,” she said. “Not that I mind. They never have anything interesting to say – unlike you.”

  “And I just have bad news today,” said Matthew, rather gloomily. “My Peploe?”

  “Not a Peploe?” asked Big Lou. “Somebody’s looked at it?’

  “It may be a Peploe,” said Matthew. “But whatever it is, it’s gone.”

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  Remembrance of Things Past

  Big Lou drew in her breath. It did not take her long to work out that Pete must have heard the discussion about it going to the flat in Scotland Street, and must have stolen it from there.

  She was sure that he was in league with that man, the man whom he described as John, but whom he then denied knowing. Well, she for one was not fooled by that.

  “I’ll wring his neck when he comes in,” said Big Lou. “He’s your man. Pete’s taken it – or he’s mixed up in it.”

  “It’s not him,” said Matthew. “It’s somebody from the South Edinburgh Conservative Association.”

  Big Lou was trying to work out the meaning of this puzzling remark when Matthew explained about the tombola.

  “That’s not too bad,” she said. “At least you know where it is

  – and you’re still the owner.”

  Matthew nodded. Everybody seemed confident about the recovery of the painting, and perhaps they were right. It was a stroke of good fortune that it had fallen into the hands of the Conservative Party, as they would always behave with honour and integrity. He wondered what would have happened if the painting had ended up at a Scottish Socialist Party function. They would have cut it up into little squares and shared it round all those present. The thought made him smile.

  “Do you think that great art only comes into existence when there is surplus wealth?” he asked Big Lou.

  Big Lou frowned. “You have to have time to create art,” she said. “If you’re busy surviving, then art probably doesn’t get much of a look in. Look at Proust.”

  “Proust?”

  “Yes,” explained Big Lou. “Marcel Proust wrote an awfully long novel. Twelve volumes, wasn’t it? Or there are twelve volumes in the set I have down in Canonmills. If Proust actually had to work – to earn his living – then he would not have had the time to write A la recherche du temps perdu. Nor, come to think of it, would he have had any of those people to write about if they had been obliged to do any real work.”

  Matthew raised an eyebrow. He had never read Proust, although he knew one quote which he had been able to use from time to Remembrance of Things Past

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  time. Proust, he had read, had said that steamships insult the dignity of distance, and Matthew had occasionally mentioned this to others, and had enjoyed their discomfort. He had said it to his father once, when he had been taking a close interest in one of his son’s failed business ventures – the travel agency, that was –

  and that had stopped him in his tracks. Proust was useful that way.

  “Should I read Proust, Lou?” he asked.

  “Aye,” she replied. “If you’ve got the time. I’m on volume five now, and I like it. Combray reminds me of Arbroath.”

  Matthew nodded. What was Proust about? He decided to ask Lou, as it was not the sort of question one could raise in the presence of Ronnie and Pete.

  “A lot of things,” said Big Lou. “Not much actually happens in Proust, or rather it takes a long time to happen. Marcel writes a lot about things that remind him of something else. That’s what happened when he ate those little Madeleine cakes and the taste brought back to him the memory of Combray.”

  Matthew sipped at his coffee. Did that remind him of anything?

  He closed his eyes, and took another sip. Yes! Yes! He was transported back to a period of greater happiness, when he was twelve and was visiting his grandfather in Morningside. They had a house behind the Royal Edinburgh, a large house with a garden, the house now long since demolished and the garden built over with flats with ridiculous, inappropriate names like Squire’s Manor (built by an English builder who had no idea that squires and manors did not exist in Scotland). But it was not the flats that he thought of, but that house, that great, rambling Victorian house with its turrets and shutters and high ceilings.

  His grandfather had sat with him in the morning room, which looked out over the lawn, and which smelled of nasturtiums and coffee and damp India paper of the books that lay out there on his reading trolley. And Matthew had listened, while the old man tried to talk. He had been badly affected by a stroke, and many of his words had gone from him, but he had managed to whisper to the boy, in a painfully slow fashion, each word punctuated by long silences, “Never trust anybody from Glasgow.”

  And Matthew had looked at the old man, and smiled in disbelief,

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  Into Deep Morningside

  and asked why should one not trust anybody from Glasgow. His question had brought a puzzled look to his grandfather’s brow, and this was followed by a further search for words.

  “I can’t remember,” the old man had said eventually, disappointed at the loss of precious knowledge. “I can’t.”

  And then Matthew had sipped at the coffee which his grandfather had given him – coffee which was stone cold, but strong

  – and which tasted just like the coffee which Big Lou now served him.

  “I’ve had a Proustian moment,” Matthew said, bringing himself back to reality.

  “That happens all the time,” said Big Lou. “We all have Proustian moments, but don’t really know about it until we read Proust.”

  77. Into Deep Morningside

  Pat sat at her desk in the gallery, numbed by the effect of Bruce’s words. He hardly knew that girl, she thought. He had met her the day before the dressing-gown incident, which said something about the speed with which she had allowed the relationship to progress. What a tart!

  And what exactly did he see in her, she wondered. She was Into Deep Morningside

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  undoubtedly attractive, but there were numerous girls just as attractive, if not more so. Bruce would only have to go into the Cumberland Bar and stand there for twenty minutes or so and he would be mobbed, yes mobbed, by girls who would be only too anxious to develop a closer acquaintance with him. So surely the mere factor of physical attractiveness would not be enough to make Bruce talk about marriage.

  Was it something to do with her being American? Some people were impressed with that, because they felt that the Americans were somehow special, a race apart. That used to be how the British regarded themselves when they bestrode the world; perhaps it was not surprising that Americans should have a similar conceit of themselves now that they were the great imperial power – a special race, touched with greatness. And there would be people like Bruce who might share this self-evaluation and think that it would be something privileged, something special, to be associated with an American.

  She thought of all this, her despair growing with each moment. I hate him, she said to herself. He’s nothing to me.

  But then she thought of him again and she felt a physical lurch in the pit of her stomach. I want to be with him. I want him.

  I’m ill, she thought. Something has happened to my mind.

  This is what it must be like to be affected by one of those illnesses
which her psychiatrist father had told her about.

  “People who are brewing a psychotic illness often have some degree of insight,” he had said to her. “They know that something strange is happening to them, even if the delusions are powerful and entirely credible once they are experienced.”

  Perhaps this was what was happening to her; she had been overcome with a powerful delusional belief that Bruce was desirable, and even if she knew that this was a destructive belief, she still felt it – it still exercised its power over her. So may an addict feel when confronted with the substance of his addiction: well aware that the drug will harm him but unable to do anything about it. And so may an addict deprived feel when he realises that what he craves is not available to him; the emptiness, the panic that she now felt.

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  Into Deep Morningside

  Matthew, when he returned, was a welcome distraction from this discomfort.

  “I’ve telephoned Mr Dunbarton,” said Pat.

  Matthew looked at her with anticipation. “And?”

  “He was very good about it,” she said.

  Ramsey Dunbarton appeared to have been pleased to receive her call, having initially assumed that she was from Party Headquarters, and that she was enquiring about the success of the event.

  “It was a very satisfactory evening,” he had said. “Nice of you to ask. The turnout was modest, perhaps, but that didn’t appear to dampen spirits. And we had some of the younger members there too. A charming fellow with . . . with hair, and that Todd girl, the one who was studying over in Glasgow but who’s now back in Edinburgh.

  “My wife bumped into her, actually, a few times at the Colinton tennis courts. You know the ones just off the Colinton Road, just after that Mercedes garage. No, hold on, is it a bit before? – I find that bit of Colinton Road a bit confusing. I suppose it depends on whether you’re coming from the direction of town or from the other direction, you know, the road which goes up to Redford and to Merchiston Castle School.

  “Funny that you should mention Merchiston. I was there, you know, a good time ago. We had a great time, although, my goodness, it was fairly Spartan in those days, I can tell you.