44 Scotland Street (33 page)

“Well, where is it then?” asked Bertie. “Where’s our car, Mummy? You tell me where it is.”

Domenica looked at Irene politely, as if waiting for an answer.

“Our car is parked,” said Irene. “It is parked in a safe place somewhere. We do not need to use it very much as we happen to have a sense of responsibility towards the environment. Some people … some people may choose to act otherwise, but we do not. That’s all there is to it.”

“Of course if you have lost it,” said Domenica, “it’ll probably be down in the car pound. That’s where they take irresponsible cars.”

“Our car is not irresponsible,” said Irene. “It is a small car.”

“Easy to lose, I suppose,” said Domenica.

“It is not lost!” said Irene, chiselling out each word. “Now come, Bertie, we mustn’t keep Dr Fairbairn waiting.”

“I don’t care,” said Bertie, as he was hustled past Domenica, but still within her hearing. “You’re the one who wants to see him, Mummy. You’re the one who likes to sit and talk to him. I can tell. You really like him, don’t you? You like him more than Daddy. Is that right, Mummy? Is that what you think?”

80. Male Uncertainty, Existential Doubts, New Men etc

Matthew called the taxi while Pat wrote out a notice saying that the gallery would be closed for an hour.

“It won’t take us much longer than that,” said Matthew. “We’ll nip up to Morningside Road, buy the painting back, and be back down here in no time.”

“Buy it?” asked Pat. “Isn’t it still ours?”

Matthew gazed up at the ceiling. “It may be ours technically. But it may be simpler just to pay whatever they’re asking. It can’t be very much.”

Pat was doubtful. It might not be as simple as Matthew imagined. She had heard that charity shops were more astute than one might think, and the days when one might find a bargain, an misidentified antique or a rare first edition, were over. “Sometimes these places send anything interesting off for valuation,” she pointed out. “They do that with books, for example. Anything that looks as if it might be worth something is looked at – just in case. First editions, you see. Some of these first editions can be pretty valuable, and these charity shop people know it.”

Matthew smiled. “Not these Morningside ladies,” he said. “That place will be staffed by Morningside ladies. You’ll see. They won’t know the first thing about art.”

Like you, thought Pat, but did not say it. And she was not so sure about Morningside ladies, who tended, in her experience, to be rather sharper than people might give them credit for. Peploe was exactly the sort of painter of whom such ladies might be expected to have heard – Peploe and Cadell. These ladies might not like Hockney – “He paints some
very
unsuitable subjects,” they might say – but they would like Peploe: “Such nice hills. And those lovely rich tones of the flowers. So very red.” – and Cadell: “Such lovely hats they wore then! Just look at those feathers!”

Faced with a Peploe? it was perfectly possible that they might have set the painting aside for valuation, and if they had done that it would be impossible to get it back from them. They would have to contact a lawyer, perhaps, and take the matter to court. That would take a long time and she wondered whether Matthew would have the stomach for it. Even if he did, then at the end of the day if the painting turned out not to be a Peploe, they would have wasted a lot of time and money on something quite valueless. Not that Matthew had much to do with his time, of course. His day, as far as she could make out, consisted of drinking coffee, reading the newspaper, and doing one or two tiny little tasks that could easily be fitted into ten minutes if he really exerted himself.

What was it like to be Matthew? This rather interested Pat, who often wondered what it would be like to be somebody else, even if she was not entirely sure what it was like to be herself. That, of course, is something that one is not sure about at twenty, largely because one is not yet sure who one is. Being Matthew must be, well, it must be rather dull. He did not appear to believe in anything with any degree of passion; he did not appear to have any real ambitions; there was no sense of disappointment or loss – it was all rather
even
.

Matthew did not seem to have a particular girlfriend either. His evenings, as far as she could ascertain, were spent with a group of friends that she once glimpsed in the Cumberland Bar. There were two young women – slightly older than Pat – and three young men. Matthew called them “the crowd” and they seemed to do everything together. The crowd went to dinner; it went to see the occasional film; it sometimes went to a party in Glasgow over the weekend (“One of the crowd comes from Glasgow,” Matthew had explained). And that, as far as Pat could work out, was Matthew’s life.

The taxi arrived and they set off for Morningside Road.

“Holy Corner,” said Matthew, as they traversed the famous crossroads with its four churches.

“Yes,” said Pat. “Holy Corner.” She did not add anything, as it was difficult to see what else one could say.

Then they passed the Churchhill Theatre, scene of Ramsey Dunbarton’s triumph all those years ago as the Duke of PlazaToro in
The Gondoliers.

“The Churchhill Theatre,” observed Matthew.

Pat did not say anything. There was no point in contradicting the obvious, and equally little point in confirming it. Of course if one did not
know
that this was the Churchhill Theatre, one might express surprise, or interest. But Pat knew.

The taxi crested the hill, and there, dropping down below them was Morningside Road. At the end of the road, beyond the

well-set houses, the Pentland Hills could be seen, half wreathed in low cloud. It was a reminder that the city had a hinterland – a landscape of soft hills and fertile fields, of old mining villages, of lochs and burns. She looked away, and saw Matthew staring down at his hands. It occurred to her then that he was nervous.

“You mustn’t worry,” she said. “We’ll get your painting back.”

He looked at her, and smiled weakly. “I’m such a failure,” he said. “I really am. Everything I touch goes wrong. And now there’s this. The one painting of any interest in the gallery, and it ends up in a charity shop in Morningside! I’m just thinking what my old man would say. He’d split his sides laughing.”

Pat reached out and took his hand. “You’re not a failure,” she said. “You’re kind, you’re considerate, you’re … .”

The taxi driver was watching. He had heard what Matthew had said and now he witnessed Pat’s attempt to comfort him. This was not unusual, in his experience. Men were in a mess these days – virtually all of them. Women had destabilised them; made them uncertain about themselves; undermined their confidence. And then, when the men fell to pieces, the women tried to put them together again. But it was too late. The damage was done.

The taxi driver sighed. None of this applied to him. He went to his golf club two or three times a week. He was safe there. No women there; a refuge. I am certainly not a new man, he thought – unlike that wimp in the back there. Good God! Look at him! What a wimp!

81. Morningside Ladies

“See,” whispered Matthew as they stood outside the charity shop. “There they are. Morningside ladies.”

Pat peered in through the large plate-glass window. There were three ladies in the shop – one standing behind the counter, one adjusting a rack of clothing and one stacking a pile of books on a shelf.

She glanced at the contents of the window. A wally dug, deprived of its mirror-image partner, and lonely; an Indian brass candlestick in the shape of a rearing cobra; several pieces of mock-Wemyss chinaware; an
Oor Wullie
annual for 1972; and then a painting, but not the Peploe?. Yet the subject of this painting was uncannily similar to that of the painting they sought – a view of a shore and hills behind it. Pat nudged Matthew, who was peering through the window into the depths of the shop.

“Look at that.” She pointed to the painting.

“Not ours,” said Matthew gloomily.

“I know, but it looks so like it,” said Pat.

“Everybody paints Mull from Iona,” said Matthew. “There are hundreds of those paintings. Virtually every house in Edinburgh has one.”

“And in Mull?” asked Pat.

“They have pictures of Edinburgh,” replied Matthew. “It’s rather touching.”

They stood for a few moments more outside the shop before Matthew indicated that they should go in. As he pushed open the door, a bell rang in the back of the shop and the three women turned round and looked at them. The woman who had been stacking the books abandoned her task and came over to them.

“Are you looking for anything in particular?” she asked pleasantly. “We’ve just received a new consignment of clothing and there are some rather nice things in it. We could let you have first look if you like.”

Pat glanced at the clothes on the rack.
Who could possibly wear
that?
she thought as her eye was caught by a brown suede fringed jacket. And Matthew, looking in the same direction, noticed a loud red tie and shuddered involuntarily.

The woman intercepted their glances. “Of course they’re not to everybody’s taste,” she said quickly. “But students and people like that often find something they like.”

Pat was quick to reassure her. “Of course they will,” she said. “I have a friend who gets all her clothes from shops like these. She swears by them.”

The woman nodded. “And it all goes to a good cause. Every penny we make in this shop is put to good use.”

Matthew cleared his throat. “We’re looking for a painting,” he began. “We wondered …”

“Oh we have several paintings at the moment,” said the woman keenly. “We can certainly find you a painting.”

“Actually, it’s a very specific painting,” said Matthew. “You see, it’s a rather complicated story. A painting that belongs to me was inadvertently given to the South Edinburgh Conservative Association. Then unfortunately …”

The woman frowned. “But how can one give a painting to the Conservatives inadvertently?” she interrupted. “Surely one either knows that one is giving a painting to the Conservatives, or one doesn’t.”

Matthew laughed. “Of course. But you see in this case the painting was given by somebody who had no right to give it. He effectively stole the painting – stole it inadvertently, that is.”

The woman pursed her lips. She cast a glance at Pat, as if to seek confirmation from her that there was something strange about the young man with whom she had entered the shop.

Pat responded to the cue. “What my friend means to say is that somebody took the painting, thinking it belonged to nobody, and gave it as a prize at the Conservative Ball at the Braid Hills Hotel.”

The mention of the Braid Hills Hotel seemed to reassure the woman. This was a familiar landmark in the world map of Morningside ladies; like a shibboleth uttered at the beginning of some obscure social test, the name of the Braid Hills Hotel signalled respectability, shared ground.

“The Braid Hills Hotel?” the woman repeated. “I see. Well, that’s quite all right. But how do we come into it?”

Pat explained about the prize and the conversation that she had had with Ramsey Dunbarton. At the mention of this name, the woman smiled. Now all was clear.

“Of course,” she exclaimed. “Ramsey himself came in this morning. Such a nice man! He was once the Duke of Plaza-Toro, you know, in
The Gondoliers
. And …”

“And?” prompted Matthew.

“And he was in several other musicals. For quite some time …”

Pat stopped her. “Did he bring in a painting?”

The woman smiled. “Yes he did and …” she paused, looking hesitantly at Matthew. “And we sold it almost immediately. I put it in the window and a few minutes later somebody came in and bought it. I served him myself. He came right in and said: “That painting in the window – how much is it?” So I told him and he paid straightaway and took the painting off. I’m terribly sorry about that – I really am. I had no reason to know, you see, that it was your painting. I assumed that Ramsey Dunbarton had every right to have it sold. But of course
nemo dat quod non
habet
. Perhaps if you speak to him about it, perhaps …”

Pat glanced at Matthew, who had groaned quietly. “You wouldn’t know who bought it, would you?” It was unlikely, of course, but she could ask. The purchaser might have written a cheque, and they could get the name from that. Or he might have said something which would enable them to identify him. It was just possible.

The woman frowned. “I don’t actually know him,” she said. “But I had a feeling that I knew him, if you know what I mean. I’d seen him somewhere before.”

“In the shop?” asked Pat. “Would anybody else here know who he was?”

The woman turned to her colleague, who was standing at the cash desk, adding a column of figures.

“Priscilla? That painting we sold this morning to that rather good-looking man. The one who hadn’t quite shaved yet. You know the one.”

Priscilla looked up from her task. She was a woman in late middle-age, wearing a tweedy jacket and a double string of pearls. There was an air of vagueness about her, an air of being slightly lost. When she spoke, the vowels were pure Morningside, flattened so that
I
became
ayh
,
my
became
may
.

“Oh my!” said Priscilla. “The name’s on the tip of my tongue! That nice man who writes about Mr Rebus. That one. But what is his name? My memory is like a sieve these days!”

Matthew gave a start. “Ian Rankin?” he said.

“That’s his name,” said Priscilla. “I don’t read his books personally – they’re a bit
noir
for me – but I suppose those stronger than I read them. Still,
de gustibus non disputandum est
, as one must remind oneself, and believe me, I do! How could one possibly survive these days without repeating that particular adage all the time? You tell me – you just tell me!”