44 Scotland Street 4ss-1

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Matthew did not seem to have a particular girlfriend either.

  His evenings, as far as she could ascertain, were spent with a group of friends that she once glimpsed in the Cumberland Bar.

  There were two young women – slightly older than Pat – and three young men. Matthew called them “the crowd” and they seemed to do everything together. The crowd went to dinner; it went to see the occasional film; it sometimes went to a party in Glasgow over the weekend (“One of the crowd comes from Glasgow,” Matthew had explained). And that, as far as Pat could work out, was Matthew’s life.

  The taxi arrived and they set off for Morningside Road.

  “Holy Corner,” said Matthew, as they traversed the famous crossroads with its four churches.

  “Yes,” said Pat. “Holy Corner.” She did not add anything, as it was difficult to see what else one could say.

  Then they passed the Churchhill Theatre, scene of Ramsey Dunbarton’s triumph all those years ago as the Duke of Plaza-Toro in The Gondoliers.

  “The Churchhill Theatre,” observed Matthew.

  Pat did not say anything. There was no point in contradicting the obvious, and equally little point in confirming it. Of course if one did not know that this was the Churchhill Theatre, one might express surprise, or interest. But Pat knew.

  The taxi crested the hill, and there, dropping down below them was Morningside Road. At the end of the road, beyond the 226

  Morningside Ladies

  well-set houses, the Pentland Hills could be seen, half wreathed in low cloud. It was a reminder that the city had a hinterland – a landscape of soft hills and fertile fields, of old mining villages, of lochs and burns. She looked away, and saw Matthew staring down at his hands. It occurred to her then that he was nervous.

  “You mustn’t worry,” she said. “We’ll get your painting back.”

  He looked at her, and smiled weakly. “I’m such a failure,” he said. “I really am. Everything I touch goes wrong. And now there’s this. The one painting of any interest in the gallery, and it ends up in a charity shop in Morningside! I’m just thinking what my old man would say. He’d split his sides laughing.”

  Pat reached out and took his hand. “You’re not a failure,” she said. “You’re kind, you’re considerate, you’re . . . .”

  The taxi driver was watching. He had heard what Matthew had said and now he witnessed Pat’s attempt to comfort him. This was not unusual, in his experience. Men were in a mess these days – virtually all of them. Women had destabilised them; made them uncertain about themselves; undermined their confidence.

  And then, when the men fell to pieces, the women tried to put them together again. But it was too late. The damage was done.

  The taxi driver sighed. None of this applied to him. He went to his golf club two or three times a week. He was safe there.

  No women there; a refuge. I am certainly not a new man, he thought – unlike that wimp in the back there. Good God! Look at him! What a wimp!

  81. Morningside Ladies

  “See,” whispered Matthew as they stood outside the charity shop.

  “There they are. Morningside ladies.”

  Pat peered in through the large plate-glass window. There were three ladies in the shop – one standing behind the counter, one adjusting a rack of clothing and one stacking a pile of books on a shelf.

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  She glanced at the contents of the window. A wally dug, deprived of its mirror-image partner, and lonely; an Indian brass candlestick in the shape of a rearing cobra; several pieces of mock-Wemyss chinaware; an Oor Wullie annual for 1972; and then a painting, but not the Peploe?. Yet the subject of this painting was uncannily similar to that of the painting they sought – a view of a shore and hills behind it. Pat nudged Matthew, who was peering through the window into the depths of the shop.

  “Look at that.” She pointed to the painting.

  “Not ours,” said Matthew gloomily.

  “I know, but it looks so like it,” said Pat.

  “Everybody paints Mull from Iona,” said Matthew. “There are hundreds of those paintings. Virtually every house in Edinburgh has one.”

  “And in Mull?” asked Pat.

  “They have pictures of Edinburgh,” replied Matthew. “It’s rather touching.”

  They stood for a few moments more outside the shop before Matthew indicated that they should go in. As he pushed open the door, a bell rang in the back of the shop and the three women turned round and looked at them. The woman who had been stacking the books abandoned her task and came over to them.

  “Are you looking for anything in particular?” she asked pleasantly. “We’ve just received a new consignment of clothing and there are some rather nice things in it. We could let you have first look if you like.”

  Pat glanced at the clothes on the rack. Who could possibly wear that? she thought as her eye was caught by a brown suede fringed jacket. And Matthew, looking in the same direction, noticed a loud red tie and shuddered involuntarily.

  The woman intercepted their glances. “Of course they’re not to everybody’s taste,” she said quickly. “But students and people like that often find something they like.”

  Pat was quick to reassure her. “Of course they will,” she said.

  “I have a friend who gets all her clothes from shops like these.

  She swears by them.”

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  Morningside Ladies

  The woman nodded. “And it all goes to a good cause. Every penny we make in this shop is put to good use.”

  Matthew cleared his throat. “We’re looking for a painting,”

  he began. “We wondered . . .”

  “Oh we have several paintings at the moment,” said the woman keenly. “We can certainly find you a painting.”

  “Actually, it’s a very specific painting,” said Matthew. “You see, it’s a rather complicated story. A painting that belongs to me was inadvertently given to the South Edinburgh Conservative Association. Then unfortunately . . .”

  The woman frowned. “But how can one give a painting to the Conservatives inadvertently?” she interrupted. “Surely one either knows that one is giving a painting to the Conservatives, or one doesn’t.”

  Matthew laughed. “Of course. But you see in this case the painting was given by somebody who had no right to give it. He effectively stole the painting – stole it inadvertently, that is.”

  The woman pursed her lips. She cast a glance at Pat, as if to seek confirmation from her that there was something strange about the young man with whom she had entered the shop.

  Pat responded to the cue. “What my friend means to say is that somebody took the painting, thinking it belonged to nobody, and gave it as a prize at the Conservative Ball at the Braid Hills Hotel.”

  The mention of the Braid Hills Hotel seemed to reassure the woman. This was a familiar landmark in the world map of Morningside ladies; like a shibboleth uttered at the beginning of some obscure social test, the name of the Braid Hills Hotel signalled respectability, shared ground.

  “The Braid Hills Hotel?” the woman repeated. “I see. Well, that’s quite all right. But how do we come into it?”

  Pat explained about the prize and the conversation that she had had with Ramsey Dunbarton. At the mention of this name, the woman smiled. Now all was clear.

  “Of course,” she exclaimed. “Ramsey himself came in this morning. Such a nice man! He was once the Duke of Plaza-Toro, you know, in The Gondoliers. And . . .”

  “And?” prompted Matthew.

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  “And he was in several other musicals. For quite some time . . .”

  Pat stopped her. “Did he bring in a painting?”

  The woman smiled. “Yes he did and . . .” she paused, looking hesitantly at Matthew. “And we sold it almost immediately. I put it in the window and a few minutes later somebody came in and bought it. I served him myself.
He came right in and said:

  “That painting in the window – how much is it?” So I told him and he paid straightaway and took the painting off. I’m terribly sorry about that – I really am. I had no reason to know, you see, that it was your painting. I assumed that Ramsey Dunbarton had every right to have it sold. But of course nemo dat quod non habet. Perhaps if you speak to him about it, perhaps . . .”

  Pat glanced at Matthew, who had groaned quietly. “You wouldn’t know who bought it, would you?” It was unlikely, of course, but she could ask. The purchaser might have written a cheque, and they could get the name from that. Or he might have said something which would enable them to identify him.

  It was just possible.

  The woman frowned. “I don’t actually know him,” she said.

  “But I had a feeling that I knew him, if you know what I mean.

  I’d seen him somewhere before.”

  “In the shop?” asked Pat. “Would anybody else here know who he was?”

  The woman turned to her colleague, who was standing at the cash desk, adding a column of figures.

  “Priscilla? That painting we sold this morning to that rather good-looking man. The one who hadn’t quite shaved yet. You know the one.”

  Priscilla looked up from her task. She was a woman in late middle-age, wearing a tweedy jacket and a double string of pearls. There was an air of vagueness about her, an air of being slightly lost. When she spoke, the vowels were pure Morningside, flattened so that I became ayh, my became may.

  “Oh my!” said Priscilla. “The name’s on the tip of my tongue!

  That nice man who writes about Mr Rebus. That one. But what is his name? My memory is like a sieve these days!”

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  On the Way to Mr Rankin’s

  Matthew gave a start. “Ian Rankin?” he said.

  “That’s his name,” said Priscilla. “I don’t read his books personally – they’re a bit noir for me – but I suppose those stronger than I read them. Still, de gustibus non disputandum est, as one must remind oneself, and believe me, I do! How could one possibly survive these days without repeating that particular adage all the time? You tell me – you just tell me!”

  82. On the Way to Mr Rankin’s

  Ian Rankin! This revelation took Matthew and Pat by surprise, but at least they now knew where the painting had gone and whom they would have to approach in order to get it back. Once the name had been established, the third woman in the shop was able to tell them where Ian Rankin lived – not far away – and they prepared to leave. But Pat hesitated.

  “That painting,” she enquired, pointing at the window display.

  “Would you mind if I looked at it?”

  Priscilla went forward to extract the painting from its position in the window and passed it to Pat. “It’s been there for rather a long time,” she said, fingering her pearl necklace as she spoke.

  “It was brought in with a whole lot of things from a house in Craiglea Drive. Somebody cleared out their attic and brought the stuff in to us. I rather like it, don’t you? That must be Mull, mustn’t it? Or is it Iona? It’s so hard to tell.”

  Pat held the painting out in front of her and gazed at it.

  It was in a rather ornate gilded frame, although this was chipped in several places and had a large chunk of wood missing from the bottom right-hand corner. The colours were strong, and there was something decisive and rather skilful about the composition. She looked for a signature – there was nothing – and there was nothing, too, on the back of the frame.

  “How much are you asking for this?”

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  231

  Priscilla smiled at her. “Not very much. Ten pounds? Would that be about right? Could you manage that? We could maybe make it a tiny bit cheaper, but not much.”

  Pat reached into the pocket of her jeans and extracted a twenty pound note, which she handed over to Priscilla.

  “Oh!” said the older woman. “Twenty pounds. Will we be able to change twenty pounds? I don’t know. What’s in the float, Dotty?”

  “It doesn’t matter about the change,” said Pat quickly. “Treat it as a donation.”

  “Bless you, you kind girl,” said Priscilla, beaming with approbation. “Here, let me wrap it up for you. And think what pleasure you’ll have in looking at that. Will you hang it in your bedroom?” She paused, and glanced at Matthew. Were they . . .?

  One never knew these days.

  They took the wrapped-up painting and left the shop.

  “What on earth possessed you to buy that?” Matthew asked, as they left. “That’s the sort of thing we throw out all the time.

  One wants to get rid of things like that, not buy them.”

  Pat said nothing. She was satisfied with her purchase, and could imagine where she would hang it in her room in the flat. There was something peaceful about the painting – something resolved

  – which strongly appealed to her. It may be another amateur daubing, but it was comfortable, and quiet, and she liked it.

  They crossed the road at Churchill and made their way by a back route towards the address they had been given.

  “What are we going to say to him?” asked Matthew. “And what do you think he’ll say to us?”

  “We’ll tell him exactly what happened,” said Pat. “Just as we told those people. And then we’ll ask him if he’ll give it back to us.”

  “And he’ll say no,” said Matthew despondently. “The reason why he bought it in the first place is that he must have realised that it’s a Peploe?. Somebody like him wouldn’t just pop into a charity shop and buy any old painting. He’s way too cool for that.”

  “But why do you think he knows anything about art?” asked Pat. “Isn’t music more his thing? Doesn’t he go on about hi-fi and rock music?”

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  On the Way to Mr Rankin’s

  Matthew shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just that I’ve got that bad feeling again. This whole thing keeps giving me bad feelings.

  Maybe we should just forget about it.”

  “You can’t,” said Pat. “That’s forty thousand pounds worth of painting. Or it could be. Can you afford to turn up your nose at forty thousand pounds?”

  “Yes,” said Matthew. “I don’t actually have to make a profit in the gallery, you know. I’ve never had to make a profit in my life.

  My old man’s loaded.”

  Pat was silent as she thought about this. She had been aware that Matthew did not have to operate according to the laws of real economics, but he had never been this frank about it.

  Matthew stopped walking and fixed Pat with a stare. Again she noticed the flecks in his eyes.

  “Are you surprised by that?” he said. “Do you think the less of me because I’ve got money?”

  Pat shook her head. “No, why should I? Plenty of people have money in this town. It’s neither here nor there. Money just is.”

  Matthew laughed. “No, it isn’t. Money changes everything. I know what people think about me. I know they think I’m useless and I would never have got anywhere, anywhere at all, if it weren’t for the fact that my father can buy me a job. That’s what he’s done, you know. He’s bought me every job I’ve had. I’ve never got a job, not one single job, on merit. How’s that for failure?”

  Pat reached out to touch him on the shoulder, but he recoiled, and looked down. She felt acutely uncomfortable. Self-pity, as her father had explained to her, is the most unattractive of states, and it was true.

  “All right,” she said. “You’re a failure. If that’s the way you feel about yourself.” She paused. Her candour had made him look up in surprise. Had her words hurt him? She thought that perhaps they had, but that might do some good.

  They began to walk again, turning down a narrow street that would bring them out onto Colinton Road. A cat ran ahead of them, having appeared from beneath a parked car, and then shot off into a garden.

  “Tell me somet
hing,” said Matthew. “Are you in love with But of Course

  233

  that boy you share with? That Bruce? Are you in love with him?”

  Pat made an effort to conceal her surprise. “Why do you ask?”

  she said, her voice neutral. It had nothing to do with him, and she did not need to answer the question.

  “Because if you aren’t in love with him, then I wondered if . . .”

  Matthew stopped. They had reached the edge of Colinton Road and his voice was drowned by the sound of a passing car.

  Pat thought quickly. “Yes,” she said. “I’m in love with him.”

  It was a truthful answer, and, in the circumstances, an expedient one too.

  83. But of Course

  He was sitting in a whirlpool tub in the walled garden, wisps of steam rising from the water around him. A paperback book was perched on the edge of the tub, a red bookmark protruding from its middle.

  “I find this a good place to think,” he said. “And you feel great afterwards.”

  Matthew smiled nervously. “I hope you don’t mind us disturbing you like this,” he said. “We could come back later if you like.”

  Ian Rankin shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. This is fine. As long as you don’t mind me staying in here.”

  There was a silence for a few moments. Then Pat spoke. “You bought a painting this morning.”

  A look of surprise came over Ian Rankin’s face. “So I did.”

  He paused. “Now, let me guess. Let me guess. You’ve heard all about it and you want to buy it off me? You’re dealers, right?”

  “Well we are,” said Matthew. “In a way. But . . .”

  Ian Rankin splashed idly at the water with an outstretched hand. “It’s not for sale, I’m afraid. I rather like it. Sorry.”

  Matthew exchanged a despondent glance with Pat. It was just 234

  But of Course