A Time of Love and Tartan

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Domenica smiled. “Guid gear in sma’ buik,” she said.

  Cavafy’s Poem

  As Angus and Domenica contemplated the impending visit to Scotland of the Rwandan Forest People, or pygmies, at Nine Mile Burn, just outside Edinburgh, Matthew and Elspeth were busy putting their triplets, Tobermory, Rognvald, and Fergus to bed. Matthew sensed his wife’s exhaustion, and had it been possible for him to deal with bedtime single-handed, he would have offered to do so. But it was physically impossible for one person, however adept at handling small children, to cope with the three young boys, now just past their second birthday, and endowed with apparently boundless energy, inordinate appetites, and incorrigible boisterousness.

  “I’ve had it,” said Elspeth, as they manoeuvred the boys into the bath. “I’m absolutely whacked. Finished.”

  Matthew reached out to put a sympathetic arm on his wife’s shoulder. “I know how you feel,” he said.

  She glanced at him. She was not sure that Matthew did know: he spent most of the day at work while she looked after the boys, and so it was easy for him to tackle bedtime when he arrived home. He would have the boys for no more than an hour, while she . . . She did a quick mental calculation: she had been on duty for exactly twelve hours, ever since Tobermory, who always woke up first, had called out from his room that there was a lion under his bed.

  “You go,” Elspeth had muttered as she emerged into consciousness.

  Matthew grunted.

  “It’s Tobermory,” said Elspeth, louder now. “Could you go and deal with the lion . . . ?”

  Matthew grunted again. “Where do all these lions come from? He was going on about lions last night. Have you been reading them stories about lions?”

  “No,” said Elspeth. “I haven’t. But Birgitte and her friend . . . ”

  Matthew snorted as he hauled himself out of bed. “It’s their fault – I should have known.”

  The girls in question were the two Danish au pairs, Birgitte and Anna, who had stayed with Matthew and Elspeth for some time before their contrariness, manifested in disagreements about virtually everything, coupled with a sullen, resentful sensitivity to even the slightest criticism, had led to the ending of their contracts.

  “They had some ghastly Danish children’s book that they’d found somewhere or other,” Elspeth continued. “They used to translate it for the boys. It was all about a lion that ate his way through an entire village, polishing everybody off one by one.”

  “Scandinavian noir for children,” said Matthew. “It’s completely unsuitable.”

  “Well that’s where these particular lions come from,” said Elspeth. “Those girls . . . ”

  Matthew made his way down the corridor to the triplets’ room. Opening the door, he saw that Tobermory was standing up in his cot, rattling the bars, while his brothers continued to sleep.

  “There’s a lion,” said the child. “Right under the bed.”

  Matthew yawned. “There are no lions in Scotland,” he said patiently. “But Daddy will look, just to be sure.”

  He bent down and peered under the bed. A stuffed toy lion lay there on its side, its button eyes glaring at Matthew with all the intensity of a real lion on the African savannah. For a moment, they looked at one another. Don’t run away from a lion – instinct will drive them to pursue you. So what does one do? Matthew asked himself.

  “Oh,” said Matthew. “There’s a lion.”

  “That’s what I said,” crowed Tobermory.

  Matthew retrieved the toy and handed it to his son. “There,” he said. “Nice lion.”

  Tobermory took the creature. “Løve,” he said, hugging it to him.

  Matthew reached down to pick him up. “What did you say, darling?”

  “Løve,” said Tobermory.

  “What’s Løve?”

  “Løve,” repeated the little boy, flourishing the lion.

  That was twelve hours ago – twelve hours that had been filled with domestic crises of one sort or another – a fight between two of the boys, the breaking of a cafetière that covered the kitchen floor with slivers of glass; the regurgitation, by Rognvald, of his breakfast over a newly upholstered chair; the loss, somewhere in the garden, of one of Tobermory’s shoes; a difficult telephone call from a somewhat clingy friend; all of which were fairly typical incidents in Elspeth’s day. She wondered how many more such days lay ahead of her. The boys would go to school at about five years of age, which meant that she had just under three years to endure, which made about a thousand days.

  The thought defeated her, and she made the decision to tackle Matthew that night. She would have to have help. After the experience of the two young Danes they had decided they would try to manage by themselves, but now she realised that this was simply impossible. She would contact Mother’s Angels, the agency she had used to find the Danes, and throw herself upon their mercy.

  The boys having been bathed, clad in their tartan pyjamas, and read to by Matthew – a short and repetitive book that was chosen as the antithesis of juvenile Scandinavian noir – Elspeth retreated to the kitchen. There she poured herself a gin and tonic and informed Matthew of her decision.

  “We can’t cope,” she said. “Or, rather, I can’t.”

  Matthew did not argue. “We have to get somebody.”

  “I’m not going to get another girl,” said Elspeth. “I want an au pair boy.”

  Matthew was surprised, but said nothing.

  “A Spanish boy,” said Elspeth, taking a generous sip of her gin.

  “Why Spanish?”

  Elspeth explained. Her cousin in Dundee had employed a young Spaniard, who had been popular with her children. “He played football with them,” Elspeth said. “They loved him.”

  Matthew looked thoughtful. “But will you be able to find one?”

  “There are any number of them. Unemployment in Spain is so high. One in five young Spanish males has no job.”

  Matthew winced. “How did that happen?”

  Elspeth sighed. “Something to do with . . . ” She shrugged and mentioned the reason for the economic woes of the Spaniards, the Italians, the Greeks . . .

  Matthew smiled. “How useful to have a scapegoat to blame for all one’s problems.”

  “But what if it really is the scapegoat’s fault?”

  “Ah,” said Matthew. And then “Ah” again. He thought of something. “Have you ever read Cavafy?” he asked. “That Greek poet. He lived in Alexandria and he wrote a wonderful poem called “Waiting for the Barbarians.” The Barbarians don’t arrive and the people think about how they were a really convenient solution to their problems – the waiting, that is.” He paused. “The thing you fear may sometimes be the solution.”

  “Are we waiting?” she asked. “I mean, are we, here, in Scotland, waiting for something?”

  Matthew looked out of the window. It was hard to tell. He thought they were waiting – possibly – but then he was not quite sure what they were waiting for.

  O Tempora! O Mores!

  In the Scottish Office of Statistics in Leith, a meeting was being attended by Stuart Pollock, senior statistician, father of Bertie and Ulysses, and of course husband of Irene, although she herself never used the patriarchal term husband, preferring ally, which expressed, she felt, the conditional, egalitarian goals of the relationship more widely known as marriage. Not everybody, of course, understood the term ally in this context. The plumber, for instance, had looked blank when Irene had mentioned that she would need to consult her ally about the installation of a new shower head. “Stuart,” she explained when she noticed his incomprehension. “I must talk to Stuart.”

  “Ah,” said the plumber. “Your man.”

  Irene had bristled. “I don’t own him,” she said.

  “No, of course not. But he is your man, isn’t he?”

  “We are in an alliance,” said Irene coldly.

  The plumber had not pressed the point, but had bitten his lip. You certainly encounter them,
he said to his wife that evening. Especially in Edinburgh.

  The alliance between Irene and Stuart had lasted for ten years. Irene did not think much of anniversaries, which she regarded as sentimental celebrations largely encouraged by the makers of greetings cards.

  “The fact of the matter,” she said, “is that for many women so-called marriage is a sentence. Would you send a card to somebody when they’ve served fifteen years, or whatever, of a sentence? I think not.”

  Stuart did not argue, confining himself to the mild observation that for some people, at least, an anniversary might be a reminder of happiness and its duration.

  “False consciousness,” muttered Irene. “People don’t necessarily know what their true condition is.”

  He thought he might say that people who thought they were happy probably were happy, but he did not. There was no winning an argument with Irene and he merely sighed, but not audibly, of course. Release for him came in the office, whence he could escape on weekdays from eight in the morning until five-thirty, when he returned to Scotland Street to put Bertie and Ulysses to bed. That gave him nine and a half hours of freedom, during which nobody accused him of anything, nobody corrected him, and nobody made him feel that he should be thinking – and saying – something he did not agree with.

  He enjoyed his work, which was largely concerned with presenting facts and figures in such a way that was positive rather than negative. In particular, he was responsible for making economic prospects look good even if the figures suggested otherwise. So if there were, for example, a fifteen-billion pound deficit in public spending, this could be presented as a marked improvement on the sixteen-billion pound deficit forecast by some others.

  “We have such fun,” Stuart observed to one of his colleagues in another department. “It’s creative work, you know – in fact, you’d think Creative Scotland would give us a grant for what we do.”

  Stuart was not overly ambitious. He had been an academic high-flier as a young man, graduating with one of the best first-class honours degrees awarded at a Scottish university that year, and this had been followed by two years of work on a PhD. Financial pressures put an end to that, as he had already met Irene and they had decided to buy the flat in Scotland Street. Stuart needed a job, and the Scottish Government post offered a reasonable salary and access to a preferential mortgage.

  Over the years he got the promotions that one would expect, moving slowly up the grades, but had now reached the point where, if he were to be promoted further, he would need to go before a special board. This board was informally called The Perspex Ceiling, and it made recommendations for head-of-department appointments and above. The people who occupied these positions were known as mandarins, and were, ex officio, eligible for membership both of Muirfield Golf Club (subject to certain conditions) and the New Club, should they so desire.

  Irene had no time for mandarins, but, rather in the manner of Lady Macbeth, was ambitious for her husband/ally. Apart from anything else, money was tight and the additional salary would be more than welcome; so when Stuart was told at work one day that he was to be invited before the Perspex Ceiling he realised that, whatever his own feelings about occupying a much more senior post, Irene would require him to apply.

  The information about his selection came from his closest friend in the office, Morrison Purves. Morrison was only a few years away from retirement and so had no interest in further promotion, but was keen for Stuart to be successful.

  “I shouldn’t be telling you this,” he said. “But . . . ”

  It was the usual preface to an important piece of information.

  “Of course you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Stuart assured him.

  That, too, was the standard reply to such an overture, and it meant the opposite of what it said.

  “No, I’ll tell you because I know how discreet you are,” continued Morrison.

  That again was very much in the script, and once it had been said, the information could be revealed.

  “Three of you are going up for interview,” said Morrison, his voice lowered. “Would you like to know who the other two are?”

  For a few moments, Stuart attempted to look indifferent, but then he nodded conspiratorially. “If you insist,” he said.

  “All right,” said Morrison, his voice lowered even further. “That eighty-four horsepower sook, Elaine.”

  “Oh no,” said Stuart. “Not her.”

  “And that snivelling toady, Faith.”

  Stuart cast his eyes up to the ceiling. “What a field!”

  “You’ve got to get it, Stuart,” went on Morrison. “If either of them gets chosen, I’m bringing forward my retirement. Guaranteed.”

  “Elaine can’t even do long division,” said Morrison. “Let alone statistics.”

  Stuart smiled. “And Faith . . . ”

  “Have you seen her with the politicians?” asked Morrison. “She sends them birthday cards. Can you believe it? She gets their birthdays from Who’s Who in Scotland and she sends a card. They love it.”

  “O tempora, o mores,” muttered Stuart.

  “Come again?” asked Morrison.

  “It’s Latin for Jeez,” explained Stuart.

  Tolerance and Intolerance

  Morrison said to Stuart, “How about going to the Old Chain Pier? We can talk more freely there.”

  The Old Chain Pier was a well-known bar, perched on the shore at Newhaven, once festooned with old fishing floats and maritime paraphernalia.

  They were sitting in the staff canteen at the time, and it was there, over a standard civil service lunch (healthy option) that Morrison had given the news to Stuart that he was on the shortlist for promotion.

  “No,” replied Morrison. “I don’t mean that we can’t talk, it’s just that . . . well, I detect a certain change in the atmosphere in this place recently. I don’t think we can speak quite as freely as we used to.”

  Stuart raised an eyebrow. “You mean there’s less freedom of opinion?”

  Morrison looked over his shoulder. “To an extent.” He hesitated. “And not just here. Everywhere.”

  “You aren’t over-reacting, are you?”

  Morrison shook his head. “Liberty can drain away very slowly. So slowly, in fact, that you may not even notice it. We lost freedom of speech some time ago. You can’t say what you think these days, can you? About some things – yes, but not everything. Far from it.”

  Stuart considered this. “In some areas, perhaps. You certainly can’t insult others. You can’t whip up hostility against them.” He paused. “And don’t you think that’s a good thing? Don’t you think it was about time people stopped demeaning others?”

  Morrison stared at Stuart, as if weighing him up; as if uncertain whether to trust him. When he answered, he spoke cautiously. “I’m not suggesting it’s a good thing to demean people. What I’m worried about is the creation of a climate of fear – so that people feel they can’t say anything that might offend some group.”

  “Give me an example,” said Stuart.

  Morrison looked about him again. “All right,” he said, his voice lowered. “Let’s say you take the view that you shouldn’t be able to change the sex you’re born into. Let’s say you believe that people who have sex change operations are still men or women because that’s what they are chromosomally. Can you express that view?”

  Stuart shrugged. “Yes, if that’s what you think. As far as I’m concerned, though, I see nothing wrong with sex change. People in that position feel very strongly about what they are. Why prevent them from living their lives as they want to?”

  “That’s not the point,” said Morrison. “I happen to agree with you on that, but there are some who don’t. The point I’m making is this: should those who take a different view be allowed to express it?”

  Stuart shrugged again. “Who’s stopping them? It’s not illegal to express an opinion on that.”

  “Not yet,” said Morrison. “But y
ou could lose your job if you did.”

  “Oh, come on . . . ”

  “Or be crucified on the social media,” Morrison continued. “Or de-platformed, like Germaine Greer.”

  “Well, I don’t condone that,” conceded Stuart. “But think what’s at stake here. In the past we’ve been so casual about hurting people, about allowing people to be disparaged because they’re different in some way. If you disparage people for what they are, then you’re saying something about their nature, about who they are. You’re saying You don’t count as much as others because of what you are.” He paused. “And that’s pretty devastating, isn’t it?”

  Morrison looked down at the floor. It seemed to Stuart that his friend looked rather ashamed of himself, and so he added, “Not that I think you’re saying any of that. It’s all a question of kindness, isn’t it? And you’re fundamentally kind.”

  He sensed that something unexpectedly raw and difficult had opened up between them; a difference of opinion that went rather deep.

  Morrison looked up. “Look, I don’t have any difficulty with people being whatever they happen to be. It’s not that at all. It’s just that I don’t like being told that I can’t express a view – or can’t even hold a view. And what about religion: what are we allowed to say about that?”

  Stuart shrugged. “You can express a view if you want to. You can say that religious belief is a delusion – if that’s what you think. Nobody’s stopping you from saying that.”

  “But I can’t sing certain songs?”

  Stuart hesitated. “You mean ‘The Sash my Father Wore’?”

  Morrison nodded.

  “You shouldn’t sing that at a football match. No, you shouldn’t.”

  Morrison sighed. “Well, there you are. We’ve now become a society that stops people singing the wrong songs.”

  Stuart was reluctant to let that pass. “That’s not about religion, anyway. That’s all about group antagonisms. And why would you sing it? You’d sing it to taunt others. You’d sing it to encourage a bit of a rammy between Protestants and Catholics. You’d sing it to promote division and hatred.”