Espresso Tales

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “Actually, Bruce,” said George, “actually, I didn’t promise. I said that I was interested, but we didn’t make any firm arrangements, did we? We agreed that we would draw up a partnership agreement, but you never showed that to me and I never signed it. We were talking about the prospect of going into business, not the actual mechanics. We didn’t do a proper deal, you know.”

  “There’s no proper deal,” chipped in Sharon. “No contract. No deal.”

  Bruce turned round and glared at her. “Do you mind keeping out of things that don’t concern you? This is between me and my friend, George. So please don’t interfere.”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Sharon. “So what my fiancé does is no business of mine? Is that what you’re saying? Well, I’ve got news for you: it’s very much my business!”

  Bruce bit his lip. He looked at George, but George was looking down at the floor, staring at his shoes. It was typical. A woman came in and tried to take over. And now this ghastly girl had taken control of this useless man and was twisting him around her pudgy little finger.

  Bruce looked at her. “So you’re calling the shots now,” he said. “Little Sharon McClung has at last got hold of a man and is calling the shots big time! Pleased with yourself, Sharon? Pity you couldn’t do any better.”

  George looked up from his shoes. “What do you mean by that, Bruce?” he asked. His voice was strained and his eyes were misty, as if he was about to cry.

  Bruce sighed. “No criticism of you, George,” he said. “It’s just that you’re letting Sharon push you around a bit, aren’t you?”

  “But you said: ‘It’s a pity you couldn’t do any better,’” George insisted. “What did you mean by that, Bruce? What did you mean?”

  “Yes,” said Sharon. “What exactly did you mean by that, Bruce? Did you mean that George isn’t much of a catch? Well, if you did, I can tell you what I think of that. I think that he’s ten times, twenty times nicer than you. Nobody–nobody in her right mind–would look at you, you know. You do know that, don’t you?”

  Bruce sneered. “Don’t make me laugh,” he said. “Just don’t make me laugh. You were happy enough to look at me back then in Crieff. Oh yes, don’t think that I didn’t notice you sitting there staring at me, along with all the other girls, mentally undressing me. I noticed those things, you know.”

  Sharon shrieked with indignation. “What? What did you say? Mentally undressing you? Are you mad?”

  “Listen,” said George mildly. “I don’t think there’s much point in talking like this…”

  “Yes, there is,” snapped Sharon. “I’m not going to stand here and listen to this self-satisfied creep saying things like that. I’ve got some more news for you, Bruce. The girls back in Crieff hated you, you know. They hated you. They really did. You should have heard the sort of things they said about you! You would have died of embarrassment if you had heard half of them. Did you know that there was something about you written on the wall of the girls’ toilets for two years? Two years. And every time the cleaners rubbed it out, somebody wrote it back, and in the end they just left it there. And do you know what it was? You would hate what it said, I promise you. You’d just hate it. But I can’t tell you–I’m too embarrassed.”

  “Was it written with one of those marker pens?” asked George. “Those can be quite difficult to rub off.”

  Both Bruce and Sharon looked at him. Sharon did not answer.

  “You’re a liar,” said Bruce. “I would have heard about it. I never heard anything.”

  Sharon arched an eyebrow in amazement. “Do you think that anybody would actually tell you something like that?”

  “It depends what it was,” cut in George. “And anyway, I don’t think that it’s very fair not to tell him, Shaz. You’ve got him all upset now. You should tell him.”

  “No, Georgie,” said Sharon. “I’m not going to tell him.”

  “Would you tell me then?” asked George.

  Sharon thought for a moment. Then she leant over and cupped a hand around George’s left ear and whispered to him. George’s eyes widened. Then he let out a laugh. “Really?” he asked. “Did it really?”

  Sharon nodded with satisfaction. “Yes, it did. Funny, isn’t it?”

  “Do you think it’s true?” asked George.

  Sharon shrugged. “Who knows?” She paused. “So that’s it, Bruce. That’s what we thought of you.”

  Bruce looked at George. “You’re marrying this person?” he asked quietly. “You’re actually going to go ahead and marry this person? This…this haggis?”

  It was as if George had been given an electric shock. Pulling himself up to his full height–and he was considerably shorter than Bruce, and Sharon–he poked a finger in the direction of his erstwhile friend. “You are not to call my fiancée a haggis,” he said. “Don’t ever let me hear you call her a haggis.”

  And with that, he turned to Sharon, took her arm, and nodded in the direction of the door.

  “Goodbye, Bruce,” he said. “I’m sorry that this has happened. But you’ve only got yourself to blame. Come, Shaz. We must go.”

  Sharon gave Bruce a look of triumph. “Would you really like to know what was written on the wall? Would you?” She paused. She had spotted a piece of paper and a pencil on the counter and she went over to this and scribbled a few words. Then she folded the paper, passed it to him, and quickly rejoined George at the door.

  After they had gone, Bruce sat down. He held the piece of paper in his hands, fingering it for a moment before he opened it and read what she had written. He crumpled up the paper and threw it across the room.

  79. At the Gallery

  Matthew came back from Big Lou’s eager to tell Pat about what had happened. “Cyril bit somebody,” he said, grinning. “There’s a woman who lives in Scotland Street. One of your neighbours, I believe. She’s got a little boy who looks as if he’s seen a ghost most of the time. He was patting Cyril and Cyril was lapping it up and then this hatchet-faced woman said something to Cyril that he didn’t like, and he bit her in the ankle! Not a serious bite. A nip really. I don’t think he even broke the skin. But she howled and tried to kick him but Cyril backed off. It was the funniest sight. And we had to keep a straight face through all this. And Angus Lordie had to say how sorry he was and gave Cyril a wallop with a rolled-up copy of the Scotsman. Poor Cyril.”

  “I know her,” said Pat. “Domenica can’t stand her. She says that she pushes that little boy an awful lot. She makes him learn the saxophone and Italian. Domenica says that he’s going to rebel the first chance he gets.”

  “Mothers can be like that,” said Matthew. “They create a lot of problems for their sons. Anyway, it was a very amusing incident.”

  They returned to the business of the gallery. An auction catalogue had arrived with the morning’s post and Pat had already perused it, noting down the lots in which she thought Matthew might have an interest. There were early twentieth-century studies of Kirkcudbright Harbour which she thought he might go for, and Matthew was busy looking at photographs of these, wondering about the price at which he would be able to sell them if he were to bid for them, when the door opened and a woman came into the gallery. For a moment he did not recognise her, but then he realised who she was. This was Janis, his father’s new girlfriend, the florist with whom he and his father had enjoyed a somewhat less than satisfactory evening in the New Club. He rose to his feet and greeted her. He tried to sound warm, but it was difficult.

  “So this is your gallery,” said Janis, looking around her.

  Matthew nodded. He wondered about her tone. Had she sounded a little bit dismissive? He was determined that he would not be condescended to by this woman, whatever her relationship with his misguided father was.

  “Yes,” he said, his tone becoming noticeably colder. “This is where I work.”

  “I hope you don’t mind my dropping in like this,” said Janis.

  Matthew shrugged. “You’re very welcome,” he said, a
dding: “I might drop into your flower shop some time.”

  “Oh, please do,” said Janis. “Any time at all.” She cast an eye around her. “Not that we have much to interest you up there. Unless you’re particularly keen on flowers.”

  “I don’t mind flowers,” he said. “In their place.” It was an enigmatic remark, capable of interpretation at many different levels. In one reading, it suggested that one should not concern oneself too much with flowers; that there were better things to think and talk about. In another sense, it could be taken to mean that flowers should remain where they grew, and should not be picked. And in another sense altogether, it could be taken as implying that people who dealt in flowers should not take up with the fathers of those who dealt in pictures, especially when the father was considerably older than the florist.

  “Well, I’m not sure,” said Janis evenly. “Flowers bring a lot of pleasure to people–ordinary people.”

  This was itself an enigmatic observation. At one level, it might have been self-deprecatory: working with flowers made no claims to being anything special, unlike dealing in art, which gave pleasure to a slightly grander set of people. That was one interpretation. Another was this: at least people who sell flowers to people who buy flowers have no pretensions; they get pleasure from flowers and that is justification enough.

  Whichever meaning Janis had in mind, she did not pursue it. Smiling politely at Pat, whom Matthew had not bothered to introduce to her, she made her way over to the far side of the room and began to peer closely at a painting of a girl picking flowers in a field.

  “My father’s girlfriend,” whispered Matthew to Pat. “The florist. Note how she goes straight for the picture of flowers. Typical.”

  “I don’t know,” said Pat. “She seems nice enough to me. And that’s a nice enough painting.”

  “You don’t understand,” hissed Matthew. “Can’t you see the pound signs in her eyes? Can’t you see them?”

  “No,” said Pat.

  Matthew cast his eyes upwards in an expression of frustration, but said nothing, and returned to his catalogue. After a few minutes, Janis came over to his desk.

  “You’ve got some nice paintings,” she said. “That Crosbie over there is very pretty.”

  Matthew glanced at the painting in question. “Somebody may like it,” he said grudgingly. “You never know.”

  “I thought that I might buy it,” said Janis. “That is, if you’ll sell it to me.”

  “You’re welcome to it,” said Matthew. “It’s for sale.”

  “Then I’ll take it,” said Janis, adding: “It’s a present for your father. I’m sure that he’ll appreciate it.”

  Matthew hesitated. The purchase of the painting as a gift for his father was a sign of intimacy between the two of them. One did not purchase paintings for those with whom one had a casual relationship.

  “He’s not a great one for paintings,” muttered Matthew. “Are you sure?”

  Janis nodded. “I’m very sure, Matthew. I’ve got to know him quite well, you know.”

  Matthew said nothing. He rose from his desk and walked over to the place where the painting was hanging. Lifting it off its hook, he brought it back to Janis. He looked at the scene which Crosbie had captured so swiftly–a harbour-side scene with several fishermen sitting on upturned fish-boxes. It was a deft painting, a confident painting, of a subject that could so easily have appeared posed and trite. But that had been avoided.

  Janis looked at the painting and smiled. “He’ll like that, you know.”

  “I hope so,” said Matthew.

  Janis hesitated. “Would you mind if I did something?” she asked. “Would you mind if I told him that you chose it for him?”

  It was Pat who answered the question. “You’d be very pleased with that, Matthew? Wouldn’t you? Yes, he would.”

  80. Dogs and Cuban History

  Two days later, Pat knocked on Domenica’s door. Domenica had never appeared to be anything but pleased to see her younger neighbour, and today was no exception. Of course it was convenient; of course Pat must come in and have coffee.

  Pat realised, of course, that Domenica liked conversation, but she had always felt that their encounters had been somewhat one-sided, with Domenica doing most of the talking. And that was because Domenica had just done so much more than she had; more happened in sixty years than in twenty, as a general rule, although naturally there were exceptions. Some people did very little in their lives, and such habits of inaction could last for generations. She had read in a newspaper somewhere of the work of Professor Sykes, who had used the techniques of modern genetics to look at the roots of people who bore the surname Sykes. People called Sykes, he discovered, tended to come from a small village in England, and there were still people of that name there–families that in eight hundred years had moved no more than a few hundred yards. That was stability on a thoroughly heroic scale.

  On this visit, Pat had rather more to say than usual, as the previous two days had been full of incident. There had been the reported incident of Cyril’s biting of Irene; there had been the visit of Janis to the gallery and the resulting row with Matthew. And finally there had been the outing with Peter to the nudist picnic in the Moray Place Gardens, an occasion which she needed to talk about.

  They sat in Domenica’s study, Domenica in the chair that she liked to occupy at the side of her desk, flanked by a pile of books, Pat in the chair normally reserved for visitors underneath Domenica’s framed photograph of her father.

  Domenica had not heard from Angus Lordie of Cyril’s disgrace, and was delighted with the tale.

  “I wouldn’t normally wish a dog-bite on anybody,” she said. “However, in this case there is an element of poetic justice. I myself have wished to bite that woman for some time, and I can thoroughly sympathise with Cyril. I wonder whether she’s learned anything from the experience. I doubt it.”

  “Matthew says that she provoked him,” said Pat. “She insulted him in some way.”

  “Dogs are sensitive to insult,” said Domenica. “And, you know, it’s an interesting thing–dogs from highly sensitive cultures are more prickly about how they’re treated. There’s been a very interesting piece of research on that. Somebody from Stanford got it into his head that the behaviour of dogs reflected the national characteristics of the human culture in which the dogs lived. I think that the idea came to him when he visited New York and found that the dogs he saw were all highly-strung and neurotic–just like their owners. So that set him off thinking that these differences might be manifested at a national level too. A very interesting bit of research, but highly contentious, of course; almost eccentric.”

  Pat was intrigued. “And what did he find out?”

  Domenica smiled. “He found out what he had set out to find out,” she said. “Which always makes research a bit suspect. You have to keep an open mind, although you can have a hypothesis, of course. He looked at dogs in Spanish-speaking cultures–Colombian dogs, I think–and then he looked at Swedish, Australian and Japanese dogs.”

  “And?”

  “Well,” continued Domenica, “Swedish dogs showed themselves to be quieter and more cautious. Their behaviour, in fact, showed signs of depression. They sat around rather mournfully and did not bark to the same extent as other dogs. The Colombian dogs were very excitable. If you subjected them to stress, they made a terrible fuss. They were always dancing about and chasing things.”

  “And the Australian dogs?”

  “They behaved in a fairly boisterous way, too,” said Domenica, “although not as markedly as the Colombian dogs. They seemed less concerned about their appearance–they were much scruffier–and they were very outgoing. They were also very good at chasing balls.

  “The Japanese dogs” she continued, “were very interesting–from the animal behaviour point of view. They were very sensitive. Very concerned with face.”

  Pat laughed. “All rather like their owners?”

  “
You could say so. And I suppose it shouldn’t surprise us. Animals with whom we live in close proximity are bound to throw our behaviour back at us, aren’t they? I’m not sure if we should be surprised by such findings.”

  “No,” said Pat. “But it seems a little bit far-fetched.”

  Domenica looked thoughtful. “I had occasion to reflect on this myself,” she said. “Last year, when I was in Havana. I recalled that bit of Stanford research while I was there. And I must say I thought that he had a point. But I’m not sure if you want to sit there and hear all this from me. You have that picnic to tell me about.”

  Pat wanted to hear about Havana. There would be time enough for Moray Place later on.

  Encouraged to continue, Domenica picked up one of the books from the pile, glanced at it thoughtfully, and replaced it. “I wanted to go to Havana,” she said, “before two things happened. The first of these is before the place fell down altogether. Do you know that over one hundred of their lovely old buildings collapse every year? And the second is before the Americans got their hands on it. I am not one of those people who are uncharitable about the Americans, but the truth of the matter is that the United States has been breathing down Cuba’s neck since the early nineteenth century and continues to do so. I cannot believe–I just cannot believe–that if the average person in the United States knew how that lovely island has been treated over the years they would feel anything but shame. Pure shame. Indeed, everybody has bullied Cuba. The Spanish were simply murderous. Then they looted the place. We had a go at it. Then the Americans tried to buy it. They occupied it. They treated it as a private playground. Organised crime ran the place. They built big hotels. They had their meetings there. And then Castro and his crew appeared and we all know what happened then. Thousands and thousands imprisoned and held under the thumb. Poor Cubans. It’s ever thus.”

  Pat wondered what this had to do with dogs, and Domenica sensed her puzzlement.