Espresso Tales (21 page)

56. Domenica Meets Pat

It was a time to take stock–not that any of those who lived under the same roof at 44 Scotland Street knew that it was such a time. But had they been considering their position, then they might have realised that there were metaphorical crossroads ahead.

Irene and Stuart Pollock, parents of that gifted six-year-old, Bertie, might have realised, but did not, that their marriage was going nowhere–if marriages are meant to go anywhere, of course; there are many people who are very happy in marriages that show no sign of movement in any direction, neither forwards, backwards, nor indeed sideways. Such people are often contented, not realising, perhaps, that they are going in that direction in which we all go–downwards.

Irene and Stuart, though, were about to face a fundamental trial of strength, in which Irene, who thought that she made all the decisions in the marriage–and did–would have to deal with Stuart's new determination to do something about the way in which Bertie was treated. Stuart had realised that he had not been a good father to Bertie, and had resolved, in the course of those luminous moments on the Glasgow train, those moments when he had held his son's hand and discussed friendship, that he would play a much greater role in Bertie's upbringing. And if this meant a clash with the iron-willed Irene, armed as she was with a great body of knowledge and doctrine on the subject of child-raising, and supported to the rear by her ally, Dr Fairbairn, the renowned psychotherapist, author of the seminal volume on the analysis of Wee Fraser, the three-year-old tyrant, then so be it. Or rather, to reflect Stuart's weakness, then so might it be. (Wee Fraser, incidentally, now almost fourteen, had been spotted recently crossing the road at the end of Princes Street, heading in the direction of South Bridge. He had been seen by Dr Fairbairn himself, who had stopped in his tracks, as Captain Ahab might have sighted Moby Dick and stood rooted to the deck of his whaler. In this case, though, there had been no pursuit.)

Even if his parents were not consciously taking stock of their position, Bertie still reviewed his plight from time to time, with a degree of insight which was quite remarkable for a six-year-old boy. He was quite pleased with the way things were going. There had been setbacks, of course, his ill-fated attempt to enrol at George Watson's College being one, but that was compensated for by his discovery that Steiner's was where he wanted to be.

Friendship had been an area fraught with difficulties. Adults sometimes glimpse only in the dimmest way the intensity of the child's need for friends; this need is profound, something that seems to the child to be more powerful and pressing than any other need. And Bertie felt this. Jock, brave Jock, with whom his first meeting had been so very promising, had proved to be callous and disloyal. That had been very hard for Bertie. But then he had almost made a friend, in the shape of Tofu, although it was sometimes difficult to get Tofu's attention, engaged as that boy was in a constant attempt to secure the notice of all around him through displays of bravado and scatological comment. But the few scraps of attention that he did obtain were worth it for Bertie, and made it easier for him to bear his psychotherapy sessions with Dr Fairbairn, his yoga in Stockbridge, his advanced Italian, and his preparation for his grade seven saxophone examinations.

Pat's life was one in which there were no such significant saliences. She was about to begin her course at university, and was looking forward to the student life. It would have been marginally better, she thought, if she were sharing a flat with other students, rather than with Bruce, but Scotland Street was convenient and she had become fond of it. And now, of course, she had met Peter, the part-time waiter from Glass and Thompson, who was also a student of English literature and given, she had surreptitiously learned, to skinny-dipping.

She was not sure what to make of Peter, and wanted to discuss him with Domenica, whom she had not seen for some time, but whom she now encountered while turning the corner from Drummond Place into Scotland Street. There was the custard-coloured Mercedes-Benz being manoeuvred laboriously into a parking place which was almost, but not quite, too small for it. Pat waited while her neighbour extracted herself from her impressive vehicle.

“Everything,” began Domenica, as she locked the door behind her, “is getting smaller and smaller. Have you tried to sit in an aeroplane seat recently? Legs, it would appear, are to be left behind, or carried, separately, in the hold. Houses are getting smaller, ceilings are being lowered. Offices too. Everything. Not just parking spaces.”

Pat smiled. Domenica had an endearing way of launching straight into controversy. There was never any warming up with remarks about the weather or inquiries after health. “I suppose you're right,” she said.

“Thank you,” said Domenica. “Not that I wish to complain. There is nothing worse, in my view, than people of my age–which is not unduly advanced, I hasten to point out–nothing worse than such people complaining all the time.
O tempora, O mores!
That sort of thing. That comes from seeing the world changing and not liking it simply because it's different. We must embrace change, we're told. And I suppose that's a sensible thing to do if the change is worthwhile and for the better. But why should we embrace change for its own sake? I see absolutely no reason to do that. Do you?”

Pat did not, and said as much as she accompanied Domenica down the street.

“The problem,” said Domenica, “is that the cost-cutters are in control. They are the ones who are setting the tone of our age. They are the ones who are insisting that everything be cheap and built to the barest specifications. Nobody can do anything which is large and generous-spirited any more, because a cost-cutter will come along and say: Stop. Make everything smaller.”

Pat said nothing. She had been thinking about Peter. Perhaps it would be an idea to discuss him with Domenica. “I'm thinking about a boy,” she said suddenly.

“How interesting,” said Domenica. “Interesting, but often a terrible waste of time. Still, come up with me, my dear, and we shall talk about boys in the comfort of my study. How delicious!”

57. The Natural Approach

“Well,” said Domenica, perching on the edge of her chair. “Tell me, then. You went to see him? That rather handsome young man whom we jointly encountered? You went to see him?”

Pat thought the question rather pointed. She had forgiven Domenica her tactless attempt to introduce the two of them, through the transparent device of offering to lend Peter a book of Rupert Brooke's verse. She had even laughed, in retrospect, over the obviousness of the ploy. But in view of her neighbour's somewhat heavy-handed, not to say socially clumsy, behaviour, she did not think that she was in a position to criticise her going to Peter's flat. “He did ask me,” she said, defensively, and went on to explain to Domenica about the meeting at the Film Theatre and the invitation which Peter had extended to her. He had meant it, she said, even if by the time she went to see him he had forgotten that he had invited her.

“And did it go as planned?” asked Domenica.

“I had no plan,” said Pat. She frowned. What did Domenica imagine she had intended to do once she got to Peter's flat? Sometimes people of Domenica's generation, in an attempt to be modern, missed the point. Young people no longer bothered about engineering seduction. It happened if they wanted it. And if they did not, it did not. People were less coy about all that now.

Domenica provided the answer. “But you must have gone hoping to find something out–to learn a bit more about him? Did you?”

Pat nodded. “I learned a bit,” she said. “But I'm not sure about him. I'm just not…”

Domenica waved a hand. “The most important thing these days is whether he…whether he's interested. There are so many young men who just aren't interested these days. It never ceases to surprise me.”

Pat studied her neighbour. It embarrassed her slightly to have this conversation with a woman so many years her elder–even if circumlocution was employed.
Interested
was such an old-fashioned way of putting it; laughably so, she thought. And yet Domenica was a woman of the world; she had lived abroad, lost a husband, done anthropological fieldwork in South America. She was no innocent. Why did she need circumlocutions?

“Of course, the terminology has changed,” Domenica went on, waving a hand airily. “In my day we used to refer to men as being musical. That was a code word. The other words came in, and now, of course, everybody spells it out. Is he, do you think?”

“Is he what?”

“You know. Cheerful?”

“You mean gay?”

Domenica blushed. “Yes.”

“I don't know,” said Pat. “I really don't.”

Domenica laughed. “But you must. Any woman can tell. We can just tell.”

“I'm not so sure,” said Pat. “Do you think men can tell when a woman isn't interested in men?”

Domenica did not hesitate. “Of course they can't,” she said. “But that's because men aren't as perceptive as women. Men don't pick these things up. They just don't notice the obvious.”

“And the obvious is?”

Domenica picked her glass up off the table beside her chair. “Trousers,” she said. “Big, baggy trousers, and boots. Certain tattoos. Subtle clues like that.” She paused. “But tell me–is he available, so to speak?”

“I think so,” said Pat. “I get the impression that he is, but…”

Domenica's eyes widened. “There was something?”

Pat looked down at the floor. She would not emerge very well from this story, but she wanted to tell it to Domenica, and so she continued. “There was a photograph,” she said. “It had something written on the back–
skinny-dipping in Greece with T
. And I had a quick look at it when he was out of the room. I couldn't help myself.”

“Entirely understandable,” said Domenica. “Anybody would have done the same. Anybody.”

“Well, I did. And it was a picture of him, of Peter, standing in the sea. It looked as if it had been taken on a Greek island somewhere. He was a little bit off the shore and so the water came up almost to his chest. It was a perfectly respectable photograph.”

Domenica sighed. “How disappointing.”

Pat was not sure what to make of that. There was something racy about Domenica, something liberated. And yet at the same time, she was in no sense coarse. There was no scatological language of the sort that is so casually pumped out by the foulmouthed, for whom the obscene, predictable expletive is an obsessive utterance. And yet there was a complete lack of prudery. It was contradictory–and puzzling.

“T must have taken it,” said Pat. “But I didn't know who T is.”

Domenica shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“Well, I think it may,” said Pat. “If T is Tom, for example, then perhaps Peter wants me just to be a friend. But if T is Theresa or Tessa, then, well, it could be different.”

“You should have asked him,” said Domenica.

“I tried to. I made the photograph fall on to the floor and when he came back in I picked it up and said: “Oh! Who's T?”

“And?”

“And he said, ‘Oh, that! That was on Mykonos.' And then he said–and this is the bit that really surprised me–he said: ‘I'm a nudist, you know.'”

For a moment there was complete silence. Pat watched Domenica's reaction. In all the time she had known her, she had not seen her at a loss for words. Now she was. She looked beyond Domenica, to the bookshelf behind her. Margaret Mead,
Coming of Age in Samoa
; that was all about nakedness and the innocently carnal, was it not?

And then there were the books on feral children that rubbed spines with Mead and Pitt-Rivers. Feral children wore no clothes. More nakedness. Why should her neighbour be surprised by nakedness in Edinburgh?

Domenica herself supplied the answer to the unspoken question. “A nudist? In Edinburgh? Does he realise what parallel we're on?”

Pat smiled at that. This was vintage Domenica. Then she told her what Peter had said.

“And then he invited me to something,” she said, dropping her voice as if others might somehow hear.

“To?”

“To a nudist picnic in Moray Place Gardens,” she said. “Next Saturday night.” And then added: “Subject to confirmation.”

58. Moray Place

Domenica had just opened her mouth to speak when the doorbell sounded. She looked towards the door with evident irritation. She had been on the point of responding to the extraordinary disclosure that Pat had made of her invitation to a nudist picnic in Moray Place Gardens, and now, with a visitor, her comments on that would have to be delayed.

“Nobody is expected,” she muttered, as she rose to go to the door. “Please stay. We must discuss that invitation.”

As she approached the door a loud bark could be heard outside. “Angus,” Domenica said. “Announced by Cyril.”

She opened the door. Angus Lordie, wearing a white linen jacket and with a red bandana tied round his neck, was standing on the doorstep, his dog Cyril sitting at his feet. Cyril looked up at Domenica and smiled, exposing the single gold tooth in his lower jaw.

“Well,” said Domenica. “This is a rare pleasure. Is this a visit from Cyril, with you in attendance, Angus, or a visit by you, with Cyril in attendance?”

“The latter,” said Angus. “At least from my point of view. It's possible, of course, that the canine point of view on the matter is different.”

He came in and was led through to Domenica's study, where he greeted Pat warmly. Cyril licked Pat's hand and then lay down at her feet, watching her through half-closed eyes. She thought that he winked at her, but she could not be sure. There was something deeply disconcerting about Cyril, but it was difficult to say exactly what it was. While Domenica fetched Angus a drink, Angus engaged Pat in conversation.

“The reason why I'm here,” he said, “is artistic frustration. I've just been working on a portrait of an Edinburgh financier. I mustn't give you his name, but suffice it to say that his expression speaks of one thing, and one thing alone–money. But that, oddly enough, is a difficult thing for me to get across on canvas. You see it in the flesh, but how to capture it in oils?” He paused. “Can you tell when somebody is rich, Pat? Can you tell it just by looking at them?”

“I can,” said Domenica, as she came back into the room. “I find it easy enough. The signals are usually there.”

“Such as?” asked Angus.

“Self-assurance,” said Domenica, handing him a glass of wine. “People with money carry themselves in a different way from the rest of us. They have a certain confidence that comes with having money in the bank. A certain languor, perhaps.”

“And their clothes?” suggested Pat.

“Look at their shoes,” said Domenica. “The expression well-heeled says it all. Expensive shoes have that look about them.” She turned to Angus and smiled. “Speaking of clothing, Angus,” she said. “Pat has had a very interesting invitation. Do tell our visitor about it, Pat.”

Pat was not sure whether she wanted to discuss Peter's invitation with Angus, but could hardly refuse now. “I've been invited to a nudist picnic,” she said quietly.

Angus stared at her. “And are you going to go?” he asked.

Pat shrugged her shoulders. “I don't know. I'm not sure whether…”

Domenica interrupted. “It's not just any nudist picnic, Angus,” she said. “It's to be held in Moray Place Gardens. Would you believe that, Angus? Isn't that rich? Can you believe it?”

Angus did not appear to be surprised. “Of course I can,” he said. “Moray Place has quite a few of them.”

“Who?” Domenica demanded.

“Nudists,” said Angus. “Moray Place may think itself very grand. It may be a frightfully smart address. But there are more nudists living there than any other part of the New Town! It's always been like that. They meet in Lord Moray's Pleasure Grounds.”

Domenica gave a snort of disbelief. “I find that very difficult to swallow, Angus. Nudists in Moray Place? All those Georgian drawing rooms and grand dinner parties. Nudists? Certainly not!”

Angus raised an eyebrow. “Of course I'm not saying that everybody in Moray Place goes in for naturism, but there are some of them who do. I believe they have some sort of association, the Moray Place Nudists' Association. It doesn't advertise, of course, but that's because it's Moray Place and advertising would be a bit, well, a bit beneath them.”

For a moment there was silence. Then Domenica turned to Pat. “You do know, don't you, to take whatever Angus says
cum grano salis?
”

Pat said nothing. It seemed unlikely that there would be any nudists at all in Edinburgh, given the temperature for most of the year, but perhaps there might be in summer, when it could get reasonably warm, sometimes. Perhaps that brought them out. And, of course, Peter had declared himself to be one, and he had seemed to be serious when he issued the invitation.

Angus frowned. “You may not believe me, my dear Pat, but this old trout here,” and at this he gestured towards Domenica, “is somewhat out of touch, if I may say so. No offence, of course, Domenica,
carissima,
but I'm not sure whether you understand just how deep is the Deacon Brodie streak in this dear city of ours.”

Pat glanced at Domenica. She wondered whether she would take offence at being referred to as an old trout, but her neighbour simply smiled. “You may call me an old trout,” Domenica said. “But if there's anybody fishy around here, Angus, it surely is you. And let me tell you that I do understand the whole issue of social concealment and its place in the Scottish psyche. But let's not waste our time in idle banter. My question to you, Angus, is this: how do you know that there are nudists in Moray Place? Have you seen them? Or is it just gossip that you've picked up in the Cumberland Bar?”

Angus took a sip of his wine. His expression, thought Pat, was that of one who was about to produce the clinching argument.

“I'd like it to be true,” he said. “Moray Place and nudists. Can't you just see it?”

“No,” said Domenica. “I can't.”

“Bob Sutherland would have loved it,” mused Angus. “My goodness, he would have loved it.”

Domenica looked puzzled. “Bob Sutherland?” she asked.

“Robert Garioch,” said Angus. “A great makar. And one of our neighbours, you know. He lived in Nelson Street. Lived. Dead now, alas.”

“Garioch,” mused Domenica.
“At Robert Fergusson's Grave?”

“You'll make me weep,” said Angus quietly.