The Revolving Door of Life

by Alexander McCall Smith

  There were many such exchanges and it became apparent to the Edinburgh committee that, as one of their number drily observed, “The game’s up, chaps—the Weegies have finally rumbled us.” The constitution of the Association was changed so as to allow for equal voting rights to be given to all parts of the country, and the new committee elected under these provisions became much more representative of Scotland as a whole. The defeated Edinburgh clique, although bemoaning its changed circumstances, nonetheless felt that vague sense of relief that any toppled undemocratic group must feel when it abandons the power to which it was not entitled.

  “I keep thinking of Cavafy,” said the former secretary. “You know, his poem about the people waiting for the invaders. You know that one? I feel a bit like that.”

  “Entirely understandable,” said the former chairman. “I imagine Napoleon must have felt like that when he finally realised that his ambitions were unachievable. You dread the moment but then you feel that a great weight has been taken off your shoulders.”

  They mused on this for some moments.

  “Like dressing for dinner,” said the secretary. “People used to do that. Remember? And then they stopped.”

  “Of course, we used to undress for dinner, didn’t we?” said the chairman. “But the idea was much the same.”

  The secretary looked thoughtful. “I think that this takes us right to the heart of the problem of civilisation. Nobody likes to talk about civilisation these days, do they? It’s regarded as passé, as reactionary—as if talk of civilisation implies that one’s values are superior to the values of others—which is pretty much anathema to most people these days—most people having been cowed into accepting moral relativism. And yet…”

  “And yet,” supplied the chairman, “if we don’t have a concept of civilisation, what is the alternative? A free-for-all? A Hobbesian society in which liberal individualism rules the roost and people can pretty much do what they want provided they don’t overstep some rather minimal boundaries?”

  The secretary nodded. “Mind you, I’m not sure that I’d call such a society Hobbesian. That suggests that Hobbes would have approved of such a society, whereas that’s exactly what he was warning us against.”

  The chairman did not respond to this. He had always felt that the secretary had a slight tendency to pedantry, but that, of course, was a desirable quality in a secretary: pedants kept good minutes, by and large.

  “Manners,” said the chairman, returning to the theme of their discussion. “Manners are the basic building block of any civilisation. Manners spring from a shared sense of membership—or create it, rather. And membership is right at the heart of any concept of civilisation. You participate in something. You are part of it. It gives you something to which you can aspire. And on those tiny little personal aspirations are constructed the great glories—great art, great architecture, great poetry, great…great acts of humanity and generosity. We must not forget those.”

  The secretary thought about this. It was all very well, he felt, to talk about manners, but what justified manners in any particular instance? Could they not be mere meaningless custom? You raised your hat (or you used to raise your hat) because it was considered polite, but raising your hat was meaningless when you came to examine the act itself. Or did you raise your hat to signal an inner attitude—an attitude of respect for the other—for the person to whom you raised your hat (if you had one)? That was obviously it.

  A thought occurred to him. “Raising one’s hat?” he said.

  The chairman looked puzzled. “Raising your hat? Well, that’s important—yes it is. It shows that you value the other person—that you acknowledge their presence and give it weight.”

  “You’d always raise your hat?” asked the secretary.

  “Of course. Call me old-fashioned if you will, but of course I would.”

  The secretary shook his head. He saw difficulties. “But we nudists don’t wear hats,” he said.

  The chairman frowned. “Yes we do. We can wear hats if it’s sunny. Look at the Australian members of the movement—they wear hats.”

  “But we should only wear hats for protection,” said the secretary. “Is that right? We shouldn’t wear them for adornment.”

  The chairman agreed that this was so. But even as he pronounced on the subject, he felt a sudden weariness. “I don’t know if I have the heart for all this,” he said. “It used to be so nice before we had to start thinking about all these issues. We just ran the Association from Edinburgh as we wanted to and everything worked out well enough. And now…”

  “And now it’s all changed,” said the secretary. He paused. “Have you heard, by the way?”

  The chairman sighed. “What now?”

  “The new committee wants to change the name to Nudism Scotland. It’s all the rage. Police Scotland, for example; Transport Scotland. And so on.”

  The chairman sighed even more deeply. “It’s really most vexing. People think that it’s clever to put two nouns together like that. Look at the BBC. They’ve abandoned adjectives altogether. So we get things like ‘Italy Prime Minister’ for ‘Italian Prime Minister.’ Where do they get that from?”

  “Education Scotland has a major task ahead,” said the secretary, with feeling.

  And it was at this point that the former chairman had an idea—an idea so seditious and unsettling as to cause, once revealed, a sharp intake of breath in the former secretary.

  “No!” said the secretary when the chairman finished. But then he said, “Do you think it possible? Do you really think we might get away with it?”

  The chairman nodded. “Indubitably,” he said, adding, “Audaces fortuna iuvat.”

  The secretary smirked. “Would the Weegies get that?” he asked.

  But the chairman rose above such crude taunts. “We must be charitable to our dear friends from Glasgow,” he said. “The least we can do is furnish them with a translation.”

  “Hah!” said the secretary.

  “What fun we’re having,” concluded the chairman.

  31. Ankles and Temptation

  When he had lived in India Street, Matthew’s journey to work was rarely more than ten minutes. That is how long it took him to walk up to Heriot Row, turn left, stroll to the junction with Dundas Street, cross the road, and then take the few steps down the eastern side of Dundas Street to his gallery. If that simple journey took more than ten minutes it was always for social reasons, usually one involving a chance encounter with Angus Lordie and his dog Cyril, a word with the postman, or a brief chat with an India Street neighbour, perhaps James Holloway, who lived several doors away and who could sometimes be seen, sleeves rolled up, polishing his Ducati motorbike in the street.

  Any meeting with Angus and Cyril was always welcome, and could result in a substantial delay as they considered the news of the day. Of course they would have a subsequent opportunity to do exactly this, as they normally met at midmorning coffee time in Big Lou’s coffee bar, but bumping into one another on the street provided an opportunity for an informal setting of the agenda for their subsequent conversation.

  Unknown to Matthew, these meetings in the street were an occasion of almost unbearable temptation for Cyril. Although Cyril’s inclination was to wag his tail and smile at any human he met, he had an inner life that was less straightforward. Cyril subscribed, of course, to the prevailing worldview that virtually all dogs accept: a canine Weltanschauung constructed on the simple notion that an immutable order of things existed, and this order was based on packs. You were allocated to a pack by a process that was not for you to question: it was simply there, in the same way as the weather, or trees, or rabbit holes were there. Man may have tried a whole raft of cosmologies to explain how it is that we—and the world—came to be; dogs are spared that dilemma by virtue of their limited intellect (which, of course, is not to be disparaging about your dog, who is undoubtedly of immense intelligence and has an uncanny ability to empathise with the feelings of h
umans; but no matter how much we admire their intelligence, we have to remember that dogs have never made anything, and have no literature or art to speak of).

  For dogs, the world is there, and it is owned by packs. It is the canine destiny to belong to a particular pack and to find an appropriate position in it. For most dogs this will entail subservience to a more dominant dog—if there is one—and thereafter to a human who outranks that more dominant dog. That is just the way it is. There are few dogs to whom it occurs to contest this: one may as well argue with the sun. But if a dog does take it into his head to challenge the natural order of human dominance, he will soon find out that such questioning is not tolerated for long: the fate of radical dogs is celebrated in no ballads of freedom; it tends to be ignominious and final.

  Cyril was certainly not a radical dog. He accepted that Angus was divinely ordained to determine the shape of his days. He fully appreciated that food came at Angus’s whim, and that the highlights of the day, the walks along Northumberland Street, the moments of blissful freedom in Drummond Place Gardens, the occasional outing to the Pentlands or the beach at Gullane, were all within Angus’s gift and the subject of his sole discretion.

  Cyril also understood the rules, of which the most important was that you did not, in any circumstances, nip ankles. This was a cruelly restrictive rule, but it admitted of no exception, even in those cases where the ankles were flaunted before one’s nose in such a way as to suggest that being nipped was exactly what the owner of the ankles wanted. That was so obvious, but Cyril knew that this made no difference to the severity of the legislation under which he lived.

  In general, he had abided by this natural law. But every so often, the temptation was just too great, and he had been unable to resist. That had happened once in Big Lou’s café, when he had succumbed and had given Matthew a quick bite on the right ankle—just a momentary one, and of insufficient force to break the skin, but a nip nonetheless. And he had been forgiven: to his utter astonishment, the punishment he had expected had not been meted out. This had strengthened the knowledge, harboured somewhere deep inside him, that the human heart was one of infinite compassion, that it loved dogs even in their moments of weakness, and that this is how the world would be forever. It was, in short, a theology as complete as any devised by any theologian in Geneva, Rome, or any holy place on the Ganges.

  But it was still tempting, particularly because there was something about Matthew’s ankles that drove dogs to distraction. It was not smell—although that must have come into it somewhere—it had more to do with canine ley lines. These were the dogs’ version of those invisible currents of energy that crisscross our world and make special those places where they converge, or surface, or do whatever it is that believers in ley lines think they do.

  So when Matthew stopped on his way in to work to talk to Angus, Cyril, although civil, would deliberately look away, so as not to be confronted with the sight of those ankles. And there was usually enough to engage him: a squirrel might be spotted scampering up a tree trunk in Queen Street Gardens; a cat might be seen glowering in an upstairs window in Heriot Row, with all the arrogance and contempt that only cats can muster; another dog might pass on a lead—there was usually enough to keep the mind off ankles.

  But now those moments of temptation would be far fewer—at least in Heriot Row—as Matthew no longer went that way to work. Instead, his new routine was to leave Nine Mile Burn shortly after nine, to drive down the Biggar Road to Hillend, and then make his way to the small mews behind Nelson Street on the other side of town. There Matthew was the owner of a lockup garage with a small flat above it.

  He parked the car that day and took out a neatly wrapped parcel. In the back of the car were three other similarly wrapped parcels. He would leave those there and fetch them later with the help of Pat MacGregor, his assistant, to whom he was burning to show the result of his breaking into the concealed room. He knew that Pat loved Vuillard—and Cowie and Fergusson too. She would be so excited…

  But then he thought: what if she says, “Excuse me, Matthew: who actually owns these paintings?”

  32. Stepmother Days

  Rather to Matthew’s surprise, Pat showed no interest in his parcel. She had arrived in the gallery ten minutes before he had that morning, and was already seated at her desk when he came in. He laid the wrapped painting beside his chair without opening it and looked at her. Normally, her innate curiosity would have prompted her to ask what was behind the bland packaging, but that did not happen now.

  It was the start of another week, and so Matthew began, “Well here we are,” and then added with a weary smile, “Again.”

  This was not an unreasonable thing to say. It may have been a somewhat trite remark, but there was no reason why it should have provoked tears—which is what it now appeared to do.

  Matthew stared at Pat in incomprehension. Was the prospect of another week that depressing?

  “Did I say something?” he muttered after a few moments. “I know it’s Monday, but…”

  This seemed only to make matters worse. As the volume of her sobs increased, Pat reached into a drawer for a tissue. She dabbed at her eyes and then blew her nose. “I’m sorry,” she stuttered. “It’s got nothing to do with Monday…or with you.”

  Matthew left his desk and crossed the gallery floor. Putting an arm about Pat’s shoulder, he gave her a hug.

  “Has something happened?”

  She sighed; her sobbing now abating. “Everything,” she managed to say. “Absolutely everything.”

  He hugged her again. It was a strange sensation—one about which he felt a certain caution. He and Pat had been emotionally involved some time ago—indeed, he had once even proposed to her—but things had changed since then: he now had a wife and three small sons…and yet, and yet…the heart could still be stirred by proximity to one with whom an intimacy had been shared. He reduced the pressure of his embrace, and moved away just enough so that only his arm touched her. They could be seen from the street outside, and if anybody were to peer through the large expanse of the glass display window they would see him with an arm around his young assistant. Any explanation of such a situation would sound so hollow: She was crying and I was comforting her…

  That, he realised, was impermissible: we could no longer put our arms around others to comfort them. The most natural of human reactions—to embrace, to touch in sympathy—had now been forbidden by lecturing moralists who had interdicted ordinary tactile reactions and put in their place a cold rectitude. Latin cultures, of course, had ignored this, but in northern latitudes this coldness had settled on the human landscape like a thick layer of frost.

  He drew up a chair and sat down. “Tell me,” he said. “Is somebody ill?”

  Pat shook her head. “No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just that…” She broke off, staring morosely at the floor.

  “You don’t have to,” said Matthew. “Only if you want to…” He thought: it’s that boy. Of course it’s that boy. What was his name? Michael, that was it. He was a woodworker, wasn’t he? He made the table that Pat had pointed out so proudly in the Scottish Gallery over the road when they had called in to see Guy Peploe.

  “It’s my father,” Pat said suddenly “It’s him…and other things.”

  Then the other things must involve that boy, thought Matthew; but first things first.

  “Is your dad in some sort of trouble?”

  Pat sniffed. Her tears had stopped now and her voice had returned to normal. “I think he is. I’m not sure if he realises it—in fact, I suspect that he doesn’t.”

  Matthew frowned. Pat had said something about her father the other day, but he had not taken it in. He did not know Dr. MacGregor all that well, but he liked him. He seemed so grounded, so reasonable in his views—which he had to be, Matthew decided, given the nature of his work. If one spent the entire day dealing with disturbed people, then one’s own world would have to be fairly firmly anchored.

  “
You know that he’s been seeing this woman?” said Pat.

  Matthew tried to remember whether she had mentioned a woman. “Not really,” he said. “Have they split up?”

  “No, that’s the problem. They haven’t split up. They’re…” She paused, and looked at Matthew as if she were expecting his help. “They’re now engaged and he’s going to marry her.”

  “Ah,” said Matthew. “And you don’t think that’s a very good idea?”

  “No,” said Pat. “It’s a very bad idea.”

  “You don’t like her?” It was such a trite question, and the answer was perhaps obvious, but there did not seem much else that he could say.

  “I hate her,” said Pat. “I hate her.”

  “Ah.”

  “With good reason.”

  “Oh?”

  He waited. He was trying to remember something somebody had said to him about the Wicked Stepmother Syndrome. He himself had had a stepmother and knew that the relationship was a potentially difficult one, but what had surprised him was to hear that the concept of the wicked stepmother had such profound roots. In classical times, a good day was called a “mother day” while a bad day was called a “stepmother day.” And in a hundred other traditions and practices was this relationship cast as entirely negative. And here was Pat expressing it in its very essence…

  “Are you sure you hate her?” he asked.

  His question was mildly put, but it triggered a passionate answer. “Of course I’m sure! And let me tell you just why I’m so sure…”

  He recoiled at the intensity of her response. “Shall I make you a cup of tea?” he asked.

  It was the classic response to crisis practised throughout these islands—in England, Scotland, and elsewhere. Emotional turmoil, danger, even disaster could be faced with far greater equanimity if the kettle was switched on. War has been declared! There’s been a major earthquake! The stock market has collapsed! Oh really? Let me put the kettle on…