44 Scotland Street (29 page)

“Do you feel like eating?”

Sally looked him up and down. “I could eat you up,” she said.

Bruce laughed. “Cool.”

71. At the Scottish National Portrait Gallery

While Bruce and Sally were engaged in culinary self-appraisal in the Cumberland Bar, Domenica and Pat were making their way up the stairs at the National Portrait Gallery in Queen Street.

“Such an edifying building,” observed Domenica. “A wonderful mixture of Gothic and Italianate. There are two galleries I really love – this one and the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Do you know New York?”

Pat did not. “In which case,” Domenica continued, “you should go there as soon as you get the chance. Such an exhilarating place. And the Metropolitan Museum is such a wonderful box of delights. It has all those marvellous collections donated by wealthy New Yorkers who spend all their lives acquiring things and then give them away.”

“Perhaps they feel guilty,” suggested Pat.

Domenica did not agree. “The very rich don’t do guilt,” she said, adding, “as one might say today. President Bush said that he didn’t do nuances. Isn’t that wonderful! The verb ‘do’ does so much these days. Even I’m beginning to do ‘do’.”

They reached the top of the stairs and made their way into the hall where rows of chairs had been set up for the lecture. There was already a fair crowd, and they had to find seats at the back. Domenica waved to one or two people whom she recognised and then turned to address Pat, her voice lowered.

“Now this is interesting,” she said. “This is a
very
interesting audience. There are some people here who are just
itching
to have their portraits painted. They come to everything that the gallery organises. They sit through every lecture, without fail. They give large donations. All for the sake of immortality in oils. And the sad thing is – it
never
works. Poor dears. They just aren’t of sufficient public interest. Fascinating to themselves and their friends, but not of sufficient public interest.”

Domenica smiled wickedly. “There was a
very
embarrassing incident some years ago. Somebody – and I really can’t name him – had a portrait of himself painted and offered it to the gallery. This put them in a terrible spot. The painting could just have been lost, so to speak, which would have been a solution of sorts, I suppose, but galleries can’t just lose paintings – that’s not what they’re meant to do. So they were obliged to say that he just wasn’t of sufficient public interest. So sad, because he really thought he was of great public interest.

“Then there are people who are of some interest, but not quite enough, or at least not quite enough while they’re still alive. It will be fine when they’re dead, but the gallery can hardly tell them that the best thing to do is to die. That would be rude. It’s rather like the way we treat our poets. We’re tremendously nice to them after they’re dead. Mind you, some poets are rather awkward when they’re still alive. MacDiarmid could be a little troublesome after a bottle of Glenfiddich. He became much safer
post-mortem
.”

“I can tell you the most remarkable story about MacDiarmid,” Domenica continued. “And I saw this all happen myself – I saw the whole thing. You know the Signet Library, near St Giles? Yes? Well, I was working there one day, years ago. They had let me use it to have a look at some rather interesting early anthropological works they had. I was tucked away in a corner, completely absorbed in my books, and I didn’t notice that they had set out tables for a dinner. And then suddenly people started coming in, all men, all dressed in evening dress. And I thought that I might just stay where I was – nobody could see me – and find out what they were up to. You know how men are – they have these all-male societies as part of their bonding rituals. Tragic, really, but there we are. Poor dears. Anyway, it transpired that a terribly important guest was coming to this one, none other than the Duke of Edinburgh himself. Frightfully smart in his evening dress. And there, too, was MacDiarmid, all crabbit and cantankerous in his kilt and enjoying his whisky. I was watching all this from my corner, feeling a bit like an anthropologist observing a ritual, which I suppose I was. A little later on, the Duke stood up to make a speech and I’m sorry to say that MacDiarmid started to barrack him. He was republican, you see. And what happened? Well, a very wellbuilt judge, Lord somebody, lifted the poet up and carried him out of the room. So amusing. The poet’s legs were kicking about nineteen to the dozen, but to no avail. And I watched the whole thing and concluded that it was some sort of metaphor. But I’ve never worked out what it was a metaphor for!”

“Is that true?” asked Pat.

Domenica looked severe. “My dear,” she said, “I
never
make things up. But, shh, here comes our lecturer, the excellent James Holloway. We must listen to him. He’s very good.”

Pat had been distracted by Domenica’s monologue and James Holloway was several minutes into his lecture before she began to concentrate on what he was saying. But as Domenica had predicted, it was interesting, and the time passed quickly. There was enthusiastic applause and then the audience withdrew to another room where glasses of wine and snacks were being offered.

Domenica seemed in her element. Acknowledging greetings from several people, she drew Pat over to a place near a window where a sallow, rather ascetic-looking man was standing on his own.

“Angus,” she said. “This young lady is my neighbour, which makes her a neighbour, or almost, of yours.” She turned to Pat. “And this, my dear, is Angus Lordie, who lives in Drummond Place, just round the corner from us. You may have seen him walking his dog in the Drummond Place Gardens. Frightful dog you’ve got, Angus. Frightfully smelly.”

Angus looked at Pat and smiled warmly. “Domenica here is jealous, you see. She’d like me to take
her
for a walk in the Drummond Place Gardens, but I take Cyril, my dog, instead. Much better company.”

Pat stared at Angus, fascinated. He had three gold teeth, she noticed, one of which was an incisor. She had never seen this before.

Domenica noticed the direction of her gaze. “Yes,” she said loudly. “Extraordinary, isn’t it? And do you know, that dog of his has a gold tooth too!”

“Why not?” laughed Angus.

72. Angus Lordie’s Difficult Task

After a few minutes of coruscating conversation with Angus Lordie, Domenica was distracted by another guest. This left Pat standing with Angus Lordie, who looked at her with frank interest.

“You must forgive me for being so direct,” he said, “but I really feel that I have to ask you exactly who you are and what you do. It’s so much quicker if one asks these things right at the beginning, rather than finding them out with a whole series of indirect questions. Don’t you agree?”

Pat did agree. She had observed how people asked each other questions which might elicit desired information but which were ostensibly about something else. What was the point of asking somebody whether they had been busy recently when what one wanted to know was exactly what they did? And yet, now that she had been asked this herself, how should she answer? It seemed so lame, so self-indulgent, to say that one was on one’s
second
gap year. And to say that one worked in a gallery was almost the same thing as saying outright that one was still on the parental pay-roll. But then there was a case for truthfulness – one might always tell the truth if in an absolute corner, Bruce had once remarked.

“I work in a gallery,” she said with as much firmness as she could manage, “and I’m on my second gap year.”

She noticed that Angus Lordie did not seem surprised by either of these answers.

“How very interesting,” he said. “I’m a portrait painter myself. And I’ve done my time in galleries too.”

Pat found herself listening to him very carefully. His voice was rich and plummy, deeper than that which one might have expected from an ascetic-looking man. It had, too, a quality which she found fascinating – a tone of sincerity, as if every word uttered was felt at some deep level.

She asked him about his work. Did he paint just portraits, or did he do other things too?

“Just portraits,” he said, the gold teeth flashing as he spoke. “I suspect that I’ve forgotten how to paint mere things. So it’s just portraits. I’ll do anybody.”

“How do you choose?” she asked.

Angus Lordie smiled. “I don’t choose,” he replied. “That’s not the way it works. They choose me. People who want their children painted, or their wives or husbands, or chairmen for that matter. And I sit there and do my best to make my subjects look impressive or even vaguely presentable. I try to discern the sitter’s character, and then see if I can get that down on canvas.”

“Who do you like doing best?” Pat enquired.

Angus Lordie took a sip of his wine before he answered. “I can tell you who I don’t particularly like doing,” he said. “Politicians. They’re so tremendously pushy and self-important for the most part. With some exceptions, of course. I’d like to do John Swinney, because he strikes me as a nice enough man. And David Steel too. I like him. But nobody has asked me to do either of these yet. Mind you, why don’t you ask me who I like doing absolutely least of all?”

“Well?” said Pat. “Who is that?”

“Moderators of the obscure Wee Free churches,” said Angus Lordie, shuddering slightly as he spoke. “They are not my favourite subjects. Oh no!”

“Why?” asked Pat. “What’s wrong with them?”

Angus Lordie cast his eyes up to the ceiling. “Those particular churches take a very, how shall we put it? – a very restricted view of the world. Religion can be full of joy and affirmation, but these characters …” He shuddered. “There used to be a wonderful Afrikaans word to describe the position of rigid ideologues in the Dutch Reformed Church –
verkrampte
. It’s such an expressive term. Rather like
crabbit
in Scots. All of these words are tailor-made for some of these Wee Free types. Dark suits. Frowns. Disapproval.”

“But why do you paint them, then?” asked Pat.

“Well, I don’t make a habit of painting them,” answered Angus Lordie. “I’ve just finished painting my first one now. I’d love to paint a resolved Buddhist face or a flashy Catholic monsignor with a taste for the pleasures of the table, but no. These people – the Portrait Gallery people – are having an exhibition later in the year of portraits of religious figures. It’s called Figures of Faith, or something like that. And I’ve drawn the short straw. I’ve got the Wee Free Reformed Presbyterian Church (Discontinued).”

Pat laughed. “What a name!”

“Yes,” said Angus Lordie. “These Free Presbyterians are always having rows and schisms. Well, this Discontinued bunch is quite different from the mainstream Free Presbyterians, who are very nice people – nothing to do with them, or with any of the other well-known ones. But they’ve got a couple of hundred members, which isn’t too bad even if it’s the Church Universal.”

Pat smiled. She was enjoying this conversation; there was something appealing about Angus Lordie, something vaguely anarchic. He was fun.

“So I was asked,” continued Angus Lordie, “to paint a portrait of a Reverend Hector MacNichol, who happens to be the Moderator of this particular bunch of Free Presbyterian types. I agreed, of course, and he came down to my studio for the first sitting. And that’s when I found out that he more or less expressed, in the flesh, the theology of his particular church, which takes a pretty dim view of anything which might be regarded as vaguely fun or enjoyable. There he was, a tiny, crabbit-looking, man – minuscule, in fact – who gazed on the world with a very disapproving stare. He noticed an open bottle of whisky in my studio and he muttered something which I didn’t quite catch, but which was probably about sin and alcohol, or maybe about Sunday ferries, for all I know.”

“It can’t have been easy to paint him,” said Pat.

Angus Lordie agreed. “It certainly was not. I sat him there in the studio and he said to me in a very severe, very West Highland voice: ‘Mr Lordie, I must make clear that I shall under no circumstances tolerate any work being done on this portrait on a Sunday. Do you understand that?’

“I was astonished, but I made a great effort to keep my professional detachment. I’m sorry to say that the whole thing was destined – or pre-destined, as a Free Presbyterian might say – to go badly wrong.”

“And did it?” asked Pat.

“Spectacularly,” said Angus Lordie.

73. A Dissident Free Presbyterian Fatwa

Looking at his new twenty-year-old friend, Angus Lordie, member of the Royal Scottish Academy and past president of the Scottish Arts Club, reflected on how agreeable it was to have a young woman to talk to in a room of his coevals. He liked young women, and counted himself lucky to live in a city populated with so many highly delectable examples of that species, even if none of them ever bothered to talk to him.