44 Scotland Street 4ss-1

by Alexander McCall Smith

  A bit like a prison camp, but that didn’t bother us boys. I see nothing wrong with communal showers, and some boys actually liked them. Why not? Things are very different now – much more comfortable, and a very good school altogether. But I hope that the boys don’t go too soft.

  “My godson, Charlie Maclean, went there, along with his two brothers. Charlie had a splendid time and right at the end he went to a cadet camp in Iceland. There was a bit of a row there, and the master who was in charge of the cadets, who was some sort of captain or major, got into a terrible stramash with the boys.

  Anyway, the long and the short of it was that there was a mutiny, led by Charlie. This master said: ‘Maclean, you’re expelled!’

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  Whereupon Charlie said: ‘But I’ve just left school anyway. You can’t expel me!’ Whereupon this character shouted: ‘Then you’re forbidden to join the Old Merchistonian Association!’ What a hoot!”

  It was at this point that Pat interrupted him, and explained what she was calling about. Ramsey Dunbarton listened, and then laughed.

  “I would have been delighted to return it to you,” he said.

  “Unfortunately, we’ve already given it away. I’m so sorry. It went down to a charity shop this morning. Betty knows the people who run it and they’re always looking for things like that. But you could go and see them, no doubt, and get it back. They’re the ones in Morningside Road. They’re not all that far down from the Churchhill Theatre. Do you know where that is? I used to take part in Gilbert and Sullivan there. The Gondoliers. Do you know The Gondoliers? I was the Duke of Plaza-Toro once. I was frightfully lucky to get the role as there was a very good baritone that year who was after it. Then I met the director outside the Edinburgh Bookshop and . . .”

  78. Steps with Soul

  At roughly the same time that Matthew returned to the gallery from his morning coffee, Domenica Macdonald was edging her custard-coloured Mercedes-Benz into a parking place at the foot of Scotland Street. She was observed by three pairs of eyes

  – those of the taxi drivers who sat in their cabs at the bottom of the street and ate their early lunch before setting off for their next call. One of the taxi drivers knew her, as he had occasionally exchanged a few words with her in the street, and he smiled as he remembered a witty remark that Domenica had so casually and cleverly made, something about pigeons and local councillors; terribly funny, as he recalled it, although he could not remember the punchline, nor indeed how the story began. What 218

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  would it be like to be married to a clever woman like that, he wondered. Could he take her to the taxi-drivers’ ball at the Royal Scot Hotel on the Glasgow Road? Hardly. The men talked about golf at the taxi-drivers’ ball, and the women inevitably talked about the pros and cons of self-catering accommodation in Tenerife. This woman would not want to talk about things like that – he could tell. There were those who had something to say about Tenerife, and those who did not.

  Domenica brought the car to a halt and switched off the ignition. She had been for a drive around Holyrood Park

  – exercise for the car, as she called it – and had been thinking as she drove. What, she had been wondering, would Edinburgh be like if it were not so beautiful? If Edinburgh looked, for instance

  – well, one had to say it, like Glasgow? Would it be inhabited by the people who currently lived there – that is, by people of taste (there was no other expression for it – it just had to be said) – or would it be inhabited by the sort of people who lived in Glasgow

  – that is by people who . . .? She stopped herself. No, this was not the sort of thought that one should allow oneself. Those sorts of attitudes – of condescension towards Glasgow – were decid-edly dated. When she was younger it had been perfectly acceptable for people to think that way about Glasgow – to turn up their metaphorical noses at it – but now it seemed that nobody thought like that any more. Edinburgh was different from Glasgow, it was true, but it was no longer considered helpful to remark on the differences to any great extent, even if here and there were to be heard faint echoes, very faint, of the old attitudes. Her aunt, for example, who was Edinburgh through-and-through, had even possessed a map which she had drawn as a schoolgirl in which Glasgow simply did not feature. It was not there. Dundee was marked, as was Aberdeen, but where Glasgow was there was simply a void. And the map had been marked by the geography teacher, who had placed a large red tick on the side, and had written underneath: A very fine map indeed. Well done.

  Why, she asked herself, was Edinburgh so beautiful? The question had come to her as she rounded the corner on the high road, round the crumbling volcanic side of Arthur’s Seat, and saw Steps with Soul

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  the Old Town spread out beneath her – the dome of the Old College with its torch-carrying Golden Boy; the domestic jumble of Old Town roofs, the spires of the various spiky kirks – such beauty, illuminated at that very moment by shafts of light from breaks in the cloud. This was beauty of the order encountered in Siena or Florence, beauty that caused a soaring of the spirit, a gasp of the soul.

  It was a privilege to be a citizen of such a place, thought Domenica. The beauty of the New Town had been created by those who believed in the physical embodiment, in stone and glass and slate, of order, of reason, and this had found expression in architectural regularity. And yet surely it was more than a matter of mere proportion; for the regular features of the male film star, the broad forehead, the neatly-nicked chin, the equal eyebrows, are actually rather repulsive – or so at least Domenica thought. Those regularly-featured Hollywood males made her feel slightly nauseous; and the same could be said for their female equivalents, hardly intellectuals they. These people had regular features but were actually ugly because they tended to be so completely vacuous. Regularity without some metaphysical value behind it, some beauty of soul or character, was more disappointing – and indeed repulsive – than the honestly hap-hazard, the humanly messy. It was more disappointing because it promised something that was not there: it should engage the soul, but did not. It was shallow and meretricious. So Mother Teresa of Calcutta, with her weepy eyes and her lined face, was infinitely more beautiful than . . .? Than the current icons of feminine beauty? Than that woman who called herself Madonna (whoever she was)? Of course Mother Teresa was more beautiful – infinitely so. Only a culture with a thoroughly upside-down sense of values could think otherwise. And that, mused Domenica ruefully, is precisely the sort of culture we have become.

  Now that girl, Pat, her new neighbour whom she was getting to know rather better; she had harmonious features, a reasonably pretty face one might say, but was far more beautiful than girls who might appear to be more attractive. That was because Pat had character, had a depth of moral personality that ostensibly more 220

  A Meeting on the Stair

  glamorous girls almost always lacked. And Bruce? Domenica herself had described him as beautiful in her recent conversation with Pat, but was that strictly true? Did Bruce have anything of substance behind his Greek-god features? That was difficult to say. He was not vacuous; he was irritating. So at least there was something there.

  Domenica stepped out of her car and began to make her way along the pavement to the door of No. 44. The subject of beauty would be shelved for the time being, she decided, as she now had to think about lunch. There was some mozzarella in the fridge, and that would go rather nicely with tomatoes. But did she have any basil? Probably not, but then basil was not essential. There were some who lived entirely without basil, she reflected; some who had never heard of it; and smiled at the thought, absurd though it was, like a line from the pen of Barbara Pym.

  She opened the front door and began to climb up the stone steps.

  They were well-trodden steps, and the stone had been worn away in the middle so that the treads were uneven. This did not matter, of course, because these steps, although irregular, were still beautiful.
And why were they beautiful? Because they had character. Steps with soul. Barbara Pym again. She would have to be careful.

  79. A Meeting on the Stair

  On her way up the stairs, Domenica found herself directly outside Stuart and Irene’s flat when the door was opened by Irene, who was on the point of leaving the flat with Bertie. Both women were taken aback, although there was no real reason for surprise.

  Doors opened onto the stair, which people used regularly, and it was inevitable that these doors should sometimes be opened at precisely the time that others were passing by. But for some reason it seemed to happen rather rarely, and Domenica was now offered a glimpse into a flat which she had never before seen.

  Irene had never invited her in because she disliked her, and she had similarly omitted to include Irene and her husband in any A Meeting on the Stair

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  of her sherry parties. What contact there had been between them had been in the street outside, or sometimes at the bottom of the stair – brief, civil exchanges, but concealing only-guessed-at depths of mutual antipathy.

  For a moment both women stood there in silence, mouths slightly open, Irene just inside the flat, with Bertie at her side, and Domenica directly outside, one foot on the coir doormat which resided just outside the door.

  Domenica broke the silence. “Well,” she said, “it’s certainly a good morning to be going out. I’ve just been round Holyrood Park and the city looked gorgeous.” As she spoke she took the opportunity to glance beyond Irene and Bertie into the flat. She noticed a bowl of papyrus grass on a hall table – curious, she thought – and a large framed poster of a Léger painting on the wall behind. Even more curious. Why Léger?

  Her composure recovered, Irene noticed Domenica’s glance and shifted slightly to obscure her view. What a cheek, she thought. It was typical of this woman’s arrogance, that she should imagine that she had the right to stare into her hallway. And what would she be doing? Making a socio-economic judgment, probably, which is what these Edinburgh-types simply couldn’t resist doing. And how dare she go on about her car, her gross, flashy, fuel-guzzling, piece of German machinery!

  “I take it you walked,” said Irene quickly. “One wouldn’t drive in Holyrood Park these days, would one?”

  This was an opening salvo, but from such opening shots might spring a full-scale war. “Oh no,” Domenica said airily. “I drove.

  In my Mercedes. It was lovely. You’ve seen my nice big car, Bertie?

  The custard-coloured one? Would you like a ride in it one day?”

  Bertie’s eyes lit up. “Oh yes please, Mrs Macdonald,” he said.

  This brought a sharp intake of breath from Irene. “I’m sorry Bertie,” she said. “We can’t go for a ride in any and every car.”

  She lowered her voice to a whisper, but one still quite audible to Domenica. “And, anyway, she’s not Mrs Macdonald. She’s Miss Macdonald.”

  Domenica smiled, even if somewhat icily. “Actually, it’s perfectly all right for Bertie to call me Mrs Macdonald. I don’t mind in the 222

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  slightest. I was married you know, some time ago. Strictly speaking, though, I should be called Mrs Varghese. I went back to my maiden name, although I am not, if I may make this clear, a maiden.”

  Irene affected polite interest. “Mrs Varghese? What an exotic name!”

  “Yes,” said Domenica. “Perhaps I should use it again. You won’t know India, of course, but it comes from the South, from Kerala.” She turned to Bertie. “And why aren’t we in nursery school today, Bertie? Is it a holiday?”

  “I’m suspended,” said Bertie. “I’m not allowed to go back.”

  Domenica raised an eyebrow. She looked at Irene, who was frowning down on Bertie and about to say something.

  “Suspended?” said Domenica quickly, before Irene had the time to speak. This was delicious. Dear little Mozartino suspended!

  “For doing something naughty?”

  “Yes,” said Bertie. “I wrote on the walls.”

  “Oh dear,” said Domenica. “I’m sorry to hear that. But I’m sure that you’re sorry for what you did.”

  Irene, who now looked agitated, was again about to say something, but Bertie spoke before she had the chance to start.

  “And now I’m going to psychotherapy. That’s where we’re going right now. We’re going to see Dr Fairbairn again. He makes me talk about my dreams. He asks me all sorts of questions.”

  “Therapy!” exclaimed Domenica.

  “That’s enough, Bertie,” snapped Irene. Then, turning to Domenica, she said: “It’s nothing really. There was a bit of difficulty with a rather limited teacher at the nursery school.

  Unimaginative really. And now we’re giving Bertie a bit of self-enhancement time.”

  “Psychotherapy,” said Bertie, gazing down at the floor. “I set fire to Daddy’s Guardian. ” He paused, and looked up at Domenica. “While he was reading it.”

  “The Guardian!” exclaimed Domenica. “How many times have I wanted to do that myself! Do you think I need psychotherapy too?”

  “We really must get on,” said Irene, pushing Bertie through the door. “You must excuse us, Domenica. We have to walk to Male Uncertainty, Existential Doubts, New Men etc 223

  Bertie’s appointment.” She paused, before adding pointedly: “We don’t use our car in town, you see.”

  “I think our car’s been lost,” said Bertie. “Daddy parked it somewhere when he was drunk and forgot where he put it.”

  “Bertie!” said Irene, reaching out to seize his arm. “You must not say things like that! You naughty, naughty boy!” She turned to face Domenica. “I’m sorry. He’s confabulating. I don’t know what’s got into him. Stuart would never drive under the influence.

  Bertie’s imagining things.”

  “Well, where is it then?” asked Bertie. “Where’s our car, Mummy? You tell me where it is.”

  Domenica looked at Irene politely, as if waiting for an answer.

  “Our car is parked,” said Irene. “It is parked in a safe place somewhere. We do not need to use it very much as we happen to have a sense of responsibility towards the environment. Some people . . . some people may choose to act otherwise, but we do not. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Of course if you have lost it,” said Domenica, “it’ll probably be down in the car pound. That’s where they take irresponsible cars.”

  “Our car is not irresponsible,” said Irene. “It is a small car.”

  “Easy to lose, I suppose,” said Domenica.

  “It is not lost!” said Irene, chiselling out each word. “Now come, Bertie, we mustn’t keep Dr Fairbairn waiting.”

  “I don’t care,” said Bertie, as he was hustled past Domenica, but still within her hearing. “You’re the one who wants to see him, Mummy. You’re the one who likes to sit and talk to him. I can tell. You really like him, don’t you? You like him more than Daddy. Is that right, Mummy? Is that what you think?”

  80. Male Uncertainty, Existential Doubts, New Men etc

  Matthew called the taxi while Pat wrote out a notice saying that the gallery would be closed for an hour.

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  “It won’t take us much longer than that,” said Matthew. “We’ll nip up to Morningside Road, buy the painting back, and be back down here in no time.”

  “Buy it?” asked Pat. “Isn’t it still ours?”

  Matthew gazed up at the ceiling. “It may be ours technically.

  But it may be simpler just to pay whatever they’re asking. It can’t be very much.”

  Pat was doubtful. It might not be as simple as Matthew imagined. She had heard that charity shops were more astute than one might think, and the days when one might find a bargain, an misidentified antique or a rare first edition, were over. “Sometimes these places send anything interesting off for valuation,”

  she pointed out. “T
hey do that with books, for example. Anything that looks as if it might be worth something is looked at – just in case. First editions, you see. Some of these first editions can be pretty valuable, and these charity shop people know it.”

  Matthew smiled. “Not these Morningside ladies,” he said.

  “That place will be staffed by Morningside ladies. You’ll see.

  They won’t know the first thing about art.”

  Like you, thought Pat, but did not say it. And she was not so sure about Morningside ladies, who tended, in her experience, to be rather sharper than people might give them credit for. Peploe was exactly the sort of painter of whom such ladies might be expected to have heard – Peploe and Cadell. These ladies might not like Hockney – “He paints some very unsuitable subjects,” they might say – but they would like Peploe: “Such nice hills. And those lovely rich tones of the flowers. So very red.” – and Cadell:

  “Such lovely hats they wore then! Just look at those feathers!”

  Faced with a Peploe? it was perfectly possible that they might have set the painting aside for valuation, and if they had done that it would be impossible to get it back from them. They would have to contact a lawyer, perhaps, and take the matter to court. That would take a long time and she wondered whether Matthew would have the stomach for it. Even if he did, then at the end of the day if the painting turned out not to be a Peploe, they would have wasted a lot of time and money on something quite valueless. Not that Matthew had much to do with his time, of course. His day, Male Uncertainty, Existential Doubts, New Men etc 225

  as far as she could make out, consisted of drinking coffee, reading the newspaper, and doing one or two tiny little tasks that could easily be fitted into ten minutes if he really exerted himself.

  What was it like to be Matthew? This rather interested Pat, who often wondered what it would be like to be somebody else, even if she was not entirely sure what it was like to be herself.

  That, of course, is something that one is not sure about at twenty, largely because one is not yet sure who one is. Being Matthew must be, well, it must be rather dull. He did not appear to believe in anything with any degree of passion; he did not appear to have any real ambitions; there was no sense of disappointment or loss – it was all rather even.