“The old man was pretty furious and said that he was entitled to the dukedom, or whatever it was that he had been promised, and so we just assumed the title. And without stealing anybody’s cattle or land, or slitting anybody’s throats! Rather good performance on our part, I’d say.”
The Duke was warming to his theme. “Of course, Paddy Auchtermuchty’s people were a bit run-down – rather on their uppers, truth be told. Angus Auchtermuchty, who was Paddy’s father, or possibly grandfather – who knows? – went out to Kenya when it was the sort of thing people did. We Scots like to say that the British Empire was nothing to do with us and that it was all the doing of the English, but my goodness, who do we think we’re fooling?” The Duke shook his head in wonderment. “Ourselves, of course. We tell that to ourselves in the same way as we make these claims about our educational system – which is rapidly declining – and feel all warm inside. Wha’s like us, Matthew? Anyway, we were completely implicated in the British Empire, and it wasn’t just in the engine rooms or the plantations, or whatever, it was actually governing great chunks of it. We were one hundred per cent involved, and then we say, ‘But oh, we were different . . . ’ We weren’t.
“The Auchtermuchtys had a farm in Kenya. Now you don’t get land in Kenya, or anywhere else for that matter, without taking it from somebody, and so let’s have none of that nonsense. We stole it. We took vast chunks of land all over the globe. Stuck up a flag and that was it. Have you heard of terra nullius, Matthew? Complete nonsense. I’m not exactly sure what it means, of course, but I’ve got a Latin dictionary somewhere in the house and I’m going to look it up one of these days.
“I sometimes wish I had a bit more Latin than I do – and also a bit of Greek. I never had the chance to learn Greek, you know, Matthew. There was this chap appointed to teach Greek when I was at school, but he didn’t last long. A rather portly man with a moustache, as I recall, who looked a bit furtive, as these chaps often do. I think it was only a day or two before they took him away. Some of the boys said that he was put in Carstairs, but one fellow said he had seen him in Glasgow when they went to have dinner at Rogano with his parents. He said he was there, as large as life, tucking into a fish supper and reading the Dundee Courier, of all things.
“Anyway, Matthew, back to Kenya and Angus Auchtermuchty. There he was growing coffee but probably not doing it terribly well. Somebody said that he tried to grow decaffeinated coffee – that he had a decaffeinated coffee estate – and that this was the flaw in the business plan. People in those days liked a real jolt when they drank a cup of coffee – it was said to wake them up, and they weren’t as interested in decaffeinated coffee as they are today. So he pretty much failed and lost what little money he had. Yet, he had a good time, by all accounts, and ran around with that Happy Valley crowd, you know the ones who were always shooting one another. Terrible business. You’d go out for dinner with that bunch and fully expect that one of the guests would get shot during the course of the evening. That happened to poor old Errol, didn’t it? Got shot after the pudding was served. Dreadful for everybody, but particularly him. Some of those people, Matthew, were real shockers. Not him, of course, rest his soul, but some of the others. There was that woman, for instance: I forget her name, but you know what they said about her? Apparently, she went out for her honeymoon on the boat to Mombasa or wherever and on the way, on her actual honeymoon, Matthew, she had an affair with some young man she met on the boat. On her honeymoon! That takes some doing, Matthew, to have an affair on your honeymoon. They don’t make them like that these days, do they?”
Matthew looked doubtful. “I wouldn’t be so sure,” he said.
Who Was Homer?
The Duke of Johannesburg continued. “I mentioned my lack of Greek?”
Matthew nodded. “I didn’t learn it either. We could choose to do it at the Edinburgh Academy, but I didn’t. I did art instead. But there was definitely Greek being taught – there are Greek inscriptions in the stonework.”
The Duke shook his head. “It’s a pity, isn’t it? As you go through life you realise what gaps there are in your education. Mine had major gaps, as I suppose just about everybody’s did – unless you were very lucky.” He paused. “Did I tell you about the prep school I went to?”
“No, not that I recall.”
“Well,” said the Duke, “in those days it was rather more common for really quite young children to be sent off to boarding school. I have no time for that – it’s a ridiculous, absurd thing to do – but it happened. Can you imagine it? Seven, or whatever? Being packed off, sent away from home, to some distant place? It’s inhuman.”
“I don’t like the idea of it,” said Matthew.
“What’s the point of having children if you’re not going to live with them?” asked the Duke.
“Precisely,” agreed Matthew. “I’ve often thought of the psychological damage done to those poor children. The maternal deprivation.”
“The world was very cruel,” said the Duke. “Positively Dickensian. But be that as it may, it happened to me. I was sent to a place down in Dumfriesshire. It’s long since closed. A small place that you could easily miss if you drove past too fast. In fact, people used to say that some boys never actually got to the school – their parents took them down but couldn’t actually find it, and so drove back to Edinburgh or Glasgow and put them into schools there. I’m not sure if it’s true, but it’s a nice story.
“We found it and I was dumped there and put in a dorm with a lot of other boys, and we all cried our eyes out for days. Then somebody said, ‘No use crying, may as well get on with it’ and we did. I’ve actually used that as my motto for life, you know: No use crying, may as well get on with it.
“I spent four years at that school you know, Matthew, and I sometimes reflect on what I learned. And you know what? I can’t recall a single thing they taught me – not a single thing, except for one thing. We had this teacher there – he was my form master – who had made a special study of the Boer War. He’d actually written a book on it – probably published it himself – called The Boer War Reconsidered. The school was very proud of the fact that one of the staff had written a book – the rest of them having not much more than a DipEd from Jordanhill, if that. So they put it in the brochure and described him as a ground-breaking historian.
“Well that was all very well, but the fact of the matter is that all he ever taught us was the Boer War. We had the Boer War in the morning, and then again in the afternoon. Every day for four years. That was it. It was very tedious. And then I came to school in Edinburgh and I learned about the French Revolution. Still, there we are, Matthew – none of us knows quite as much as we might like. And so, I can’t read classical Greek, nor modern Greek, for that matter. Not even the alphabet. I can start, of course: Alpha, Beta, Gamma . . . then it gets a bit hazy.”
Matthew sighed. “Me too. I wish I could read Homer in the original.”
The Duke agreed. “A great regret, that.”
Matthew thought of something. “You know, I used to think of Homer as a person.”
“Most people do,” said the Duke. “Wasn’t he?”
Matthew had chanced upon Adam Nicolson’s The Mighty Dead. “I used to think he was. I remember seeing a bust of Homer in the Louvre. He had a rather long face, a flowing beard, and some very poetic-looking curls.”
“But how could one tell?” asked the Duke.
“They couldn’t. This one was based on a Roman copy of a Greek original. But even that original was made long after the poet died – if he existed, of course. One has to exist first to die.”
“So, nobody knows what he looked like?”
“No, and the point is that The Iliad and The Odyssey are ancient, traditional stories rather than the work of one hand. There may have been somebody who gathered them, so to speak, and that might have been the person we refer to as Homer, but it’s all shrouded in the mists of . . . ”
“ . . . Of antiquity,” supplied th
e Duke. “The mists of antiquity are a lovely notion, aren’t they? I can just see them rolling in, coming off the Firth of Forth, covering the low plains of East Lothian, and people, seeing them, would say, Oh, my goodness, here come those mists of antiquity again, it’s going to be a cold day!”
Matthew stared at the Duke, who smiled blandly. “Like the waters of oblivion,” he said.
“Don’t swim,” said the Duke. “Rip tides there.”
“Hah!” said Matthew. “And the grapes of wrath?”
“I looked for them in the supermarket,” said the Duke, laughing. “Nowhere to be seen. On order they said.” He paused. “Seriously though: Homer – I’m dismayed to find I never knew he didn’t exist.”
“Not only that,” said Matthew, “but there are theories that he was a woman. I came across a book that makes a case for that – the author says that there is a very clear feminine sensitivity at work in the poems. He makes quite a strong case.”
“Interesting,” said the Duke. “And are there those who say that Jane Austen was a man?”
“If you look hard enough you’ll find somebody who says just about anything. Including . . . ” Matthew searched the recesses of his memory. “Yes, there’s an Italian scholar, believe it or not, who argues that The Iliad and The Odyssey don’t belong in Greece at all, but actually come from the Baltic. He’s looked at the geography of the whole thing and finds that it fits the Baltic perfectly, whereas it doesn’t really square up when applied to Greek geography.”
“Quot homines, tot sententiae!” exclaimed the Duke.
“You said you didn’t know much Latin,” Matthew pointed out.
“Don’t assume that people always know the meaning of what they say,” the Duke confessed.
The Evening Sun, Warm and Buttery
Now, from the kitchen window of their house at Nine Mile Burn, Matthew and Elspeth watched the Duke of Johannesburg’s car make its way slowly up the drive, disappearing briefly amongst the rhododendrons before emerging on the final stretch of drive. Matthew, who had been polishing a wine glass as he remembered his last conversation with the Duke, put down the glass and left the kitchen to welcome their guest.
The Duke’s car was driven by his stockman, Padruig, who climbed out of the driving seat to open the door for his passenger.
“Thank you very much, Padruig,” said the Duke. “If you’d be good enough to fetch me at eleven.” He looked enquiringly at Matthew. “I hope that’s about right. One should never assume too much.”
“Perfect,” said Matthew. “Elspeth gets rather tired, you know. What with the triplets and everything.”
The Duke nodded. “I understand. I’m an early riser myself and I like to get to bed in good time.”
Padruig, the driver-cum-stockman, joined in the conversation. “Early to bed, late to rise,” he said. “In Gaelic we say . . . ” He declaimed a rather long Gaelic sentence, which neither Matthew nor the Duke understood.
“There you are,” said the Duke, a note of pride in his voice. “Padruig speaks a great deal of Gaelic. He understands all our road signs.” He paused. “Although, without wishing to boast, I understand quite a bit myself. The other day I successfully translated a sign to a place called Cupar.”
“Oh yes,” said Matthew. “And it was?”
“Cupar,” said the Duke.
Matthew turned to Padruig. “What does that mean? What you’ve just said?” he asked.
Padruig gave him a penetrating look. “It cannot be translated,” he replied. “I’m sorry.”
The Duke tried to explain. “Padruig tells me that Gaelic is a very subtle language,” he said. “There’s a lot that can’t be exactly rendered into English.”
Padruig nodded. “Eiridh tonn air usage balbh,” he said.
Matthew stared at him, wondering whether this was also so subtle that there would be no translation. The Duke intercepted the stare. “I think you should translate that for Matthew,” he admonished. “You can’t leave him in the dark.”
Padruig looked up at the sky. “Waves will rise on silent water,” he muttered.
Matthew looked first at the Duke, and then at Padruig, who in turn stared at the Duke.
“I see,” said Matthew at length.
“Oh well,” said the Duke. “There you have it.”
They waited as the car drove off.
“Such an interesting-looking car,” observed Matthew.
“I must confess I’m rather fond of it,” said the Duke. “I think I told you before: I bought it from a chap I met at Haymarket Station. I know you shouldn’t buy cars from people you meet at Haymarket Station – or at any station, I suppose – but he was very enthusiastic about it and was offering it at a good price.”
“And have you had any trouble with it?” asked Matthew.
The Duke shook his head. “No, not really. I had to replace the engine – and the wheels – but otherwise it’s been a pretty good buy.” He paused. “There’s been a bit of a mystery about it, though. My mechanic said he was totally flummoxed as to what make of car it is. He said that initially he thought it was German, but then there was no sign of any German parts in it. Then he wondered about Italian, but there was no sign of that either. Eventually he concluded that it was Belgian. But I’m not too sure about that: it doesn’t feel like a Belgian car. Padruig says that it was made in Stornoway, although I can’t imagine why he thinks that.”
They made their way inside, where Elspeth greeted the Duke with a kiss on both cheeks. Then they went into the drawing room, which faced due west, and through the windows of which the evening sun, warm and buttery, was streaming. Matthew poured the Duke a dram, while Elspeth dispensed red wine for the two of them. The Duke raised his glass in toast.
“It’s Johnnie Walker Blue Label,” said Matthew. “Somebody gave me a bottle for my birthday.”
The Duke inclined his head appreciatively. “So very smooth,” he said. He looked at Elspeth. “I hear you’ve dispensed with the services of those unusual Danes,” he said. Birgitte had been gratuitously rude to the Duke and this had not been forgotten.
“They had to go,” said Matthew. “And they went.”
“But that leaves me a little bit in the lurch,” said Elspeth. “It’s all very well for Matthew – he doesn’t have to . . . ”
Sensing marital disagreement, the Duke quickly took control of the conversation. “You must be shattered,” he said. “I’d have no idea nowadays how to cope with one – let alone three. And tell me, are you going to replace your errant Danes?”
Elspeth nodded. “That’s the plan.”
“And who will you get?” asked the Duke. “Not more Danes, I take it?”
“We were thinking of somebody Spanish,” said Matthew. “A young man.”
The Duke looked surprised. “I thought au pairs were female.”
Matthew smiled. “You’re a bit out of date, Duke. That used to be the case, but now there are bags of male au pairs. We’re thinking of a Spaniard because we know somebody who employed a young man from Spain and he was terrific.”
For a few moments the Duke seemed to mull over this. Then he said, “Couldn’t you get somebody local?”
Matthew glanced at Elspeth, who looked embarrassed. “I’m not sure we could find anybody,” he said.
There was an awkward silence. Then Elspeth spoke. “Perhaps they’re too busy. That’s why we import people all the time.”
“So, what are our local young people doing?” asked the Duke.
There was another silence, more awkward than the last. This was not the sort of question one asked.
“I have no idea,” said Matthew. He had read the figures somewhere for youth unemployment. “I think, though, that roughly ten per cent of them are unemployed.”
Elspeth sighed. “I’d take on a local boy if I could find one,” she said. “But . . . but . . . ” She shrugged in a gesture of hopelessness. “Can you name one, just one, who would be prepared to do this job?”
�
�My godson,” said the Duke. “He’s a fine boy, and he’s coming up for a gap year.”
“But they all go to India and Thailand,” said Matthew. “Or at least the privileged middle-class ones do. They don’t work as au pairs.”
“Not this one,” said the Duke. “He’s not privileged and he wants to work. He’s just finished his Advanced Highers at James Gillespie’s and he’ll do anything.”
Matthew gave Elspeth a glance.
“Speak to him,” said the Duke. “Give him a chance. He’s a lovely boy. A keen cook . . . ”
Elspeth brightened. “Keen on cooking?”
“And flower arranging,” added the Duke.
“We’ll give him an interview,” said Elspeth.
“And rugby,” the Duke added.
A Conversation under the Night Sky
Elspeth said goodnight to the Duke at the end of dinner, leaving Matthew to see their guest to his car. Padruig had already arrived and was parked under the oak tree at the front of the house. Emerging from the car as they approached, he opened the rear passenger door for his employer.
“You and Elspeth are very good to me,” said the Duke as he shook Matthew’s hand. “It’s not easy, you know.”
Matthew was not sure how to respond. He was not quite sure what was not easy, and so he simply made a non-committal noise – something that could have been agreement or simply an acknowledgment of having heard.
But if elucidation was necessary, it was provided by what the Duke said next. “We live in difficult times, Matthew – very difficult times.”
Matthew felt he could agree with that; and yet, he reflected, people had always thought they lived in difficult times. He thought of his father’s generation, and his grandfather’s before that. His paternal grandfather had lived through the Depression as a boy, at a time when the family had had very little money. Matthew had never known him, as he had died before he was born, but he had heard how hard it had been. Then there had been the War, in which his grandfather had served with the Cameronians. His entire life, it seemed to Matthew, had been overshadowed by crisis and the moral disaster of war – difficult times by any standards. And his father? He had been born in the post-war period when, for a brief time, it looked as if the sunny uplands might have been reached, but then there had been the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation. His father had been twelve at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and even at that age had understood that at any moment the country might have been reduced to ashes – difficult times again.
A Time of Love and Tartan Page 11
