Espresso Tales (22 page)

59. Robert Garioch

“Yes,” said Angus. “
At Robert Fergusson's Grave
. Such a wonderful poem. I could recite it to you, you know, all fourteen, heartbreaking lines. But I won't do that.” He paused. “Tell me, Pat…and Domenica, for that matter, how important is poetry to you?”

Pat thought for a moment. She had read some poets, but now that she came to think of it, who had they been? Chaucer had been forced on her at school–the respectable parts, of course–and there had been Tennyson too, and MacDiarmid, although she could not remember which bits. And then Yeats: something about an Irish airman, and towers, and wild swans. But how important had that been to her? She had stopped reading it after she had left school, and had not gone back to it. “Not very important,” she said. “Although…”

Angus nodded. “I'm afraid I expected that answer,” he said. He looked at Domenica.

“I find comfort in it,” she said. “But why bring up Garioch? And why would he have been so amused by nudists in Moray Place?”

Angus laughed. “Because he had a fine sense of the contrast between grandeur on the one hand (not that I'm suggesting for a moment that Moray Place is overly grand) and the ordinary man in the street on the other. He's the heir to Fergusson, you know. Just as Burns was. An awful lot of Burns is pure Fergusson, you know.”

“What a tragedy,” said Domenica. “Do you know how old Robert Fergusson was when he died, Pat? No, of course you don't. Well, he was just a little bit older than you. Just a few years. Twenty-four.”

“And he died alone in his cell in the Bedlam,” said Angus. “That bonny youth.”

“That seems to be the lot of so many poets,” said Domenica. “To die young, that is. Rupert Brooke.” She glanced at Pat.
The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke
had been the ploy to bring Pat and Peter together–and where had that led? To an invitation to a nudist picnic in Moray Place.

“Don't talk to me about Brooke,” said Angus dismissively. “Or at least don't talk to me about Brooke in the same breath as Fergusson. What a pain that young man was. Have you read his letters to Strachey? Ghastly egotistic diatribes. Full of upper-middle-class swooning and posturing. The Cambridge Apostles! What a bunch of twerps–and so pleased with themselves. All deeply damaged by the English boarding school system, of course, but still…”

Domenica was more tolerant. “They were gilded youth,” she said. “One must allow gilded youth a certain leeway…And, anyway, they were all doomed, weren't they? They knew that once they were sent to France they didn't stand much of a chance.”

“Fergusson was the real thing,” Angus interrupted. “He had a real feeling for what was going on in the streets and taverns of Edinburgh. And he suffered. Brooke and his like are all too douce. That's why their poetry is so bland.”

Domenica rose to her feet to refresh the glass which Angus was holding out to her. “I'm not sure where this is going,” she said mildly. “But then I never am with you, Angus. Your thoughts…well, they do seem to drift a bit.”

“Along a very clear path,” said Angus. “I was speaking about Garioch and how he would have appreciated the contrast between the outward respectability of Moray Place and the desire of at least some of the inhabitants to practise nudism. That's just the sort of thing that he liked to write about.

“He wrote a wonderful poem, you know, called ‘Glisk of the Great '. The narrator sees a group of people coming out of the North British Grill, ‘lauchan fit to kill'. Then the party climbs into a ‘muckle big municipal Rolls Royce' and disappears off towards the Calton Hill. The narrator thinks how grand this is, although the rest of us can't join in. It gives the town some tone, you see.”

He paused. Pat and Domenica were looking at him expectantly. Cyril, who had raised his head, appeared to be listening too, one ear cocked towards his master. Cyril had no idea what was going on–which is the lot of dogs for most of the time. But he did know that he had been enjoying a pleasant dream before his master's voice disturbed him. In this dream he had been biting Matthew's ankle, something he had wanted to do for a long time. And he was getting away with it too.

“Well,” said Domenica, after a few moments, “be that as it may. Robert Garioch is not here to write about this invitation of Pat's. We have to decide–or, rather, Pat has to decide–whether to go. And I would say certainly not.”

“Oh, I don't know,” said Angus. “They'll all be perfectly respectable. These nudists are a very tame lot, you know. They don't practise nudism for any lascivious reasons. It's all very pure and aboveboard.”

“That may be so,” said Domenica. “But doesn't it strike you as a bit strange that this young man should have invited Pat, who is not currently a practising nudist, to join them?”

“They have to recruit somehow,” said Angus. “It's like people inviting you to come along to a church service or an amateur orchestra. They're hoping that you'll join. People are recruiters at heart, you know. It makes them feel more comfortable to see the ranks of their particular enthusiasm swelling.”

Pat listened to this with interest. She had been intrigued by what Angus had to say, but felt at heart that any advice he gave was bound to be wrong. Angus was harmless enough, she thought, but his view of things was such a strange one–almost a poetical turning upside-down of the world. Domenica, by contrast, seemed to understand things as they were, and if she were to listen to anybody, she should listen to her. Of course, there were other people she could ask. There was Matthew, but she sensed that he would be jealous and resentful if she even told him about Peter's existence, let alone his bizarre invitation. Then there was her father. He had a profound understanding of the world, but it would embarrass her to talk to him about something like this. Finally, she could make her mind up for herself; she could follow her instincts. But what were her instincts? She thought for a moment. She closed her eyes, trying to imagine the scene in the Moray Place Gardens. Then she opened them again. She wanted to go.

60. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part IV–Legal Matters

High above the city, in their house in the Braids, Ramsey Dunbarton was embarking on a second reading of excerpts from his memoirs to his wife Betty. They had finished with his account of their courtship and early years in Craiglea Drive before they moved to the Braids. Betty had enjoyed the reading, although she had detected a number of inaccuracies in her husband's recollection of events. He had confused the place of their first meeting and had got his age at the time quite wrong. He had also mixed up the name of the late Duke of Atholl, whom he had described as Angus, but who had actually been called Iain. These were little things, of course, although the cumulative effect of a number of errors of that nature could make for a narrative which was perhaps less than reliable, but she had refrained from correcting him. Ramsey had many virtues, but he also had a slight tendency to become peevish when it was pointed out to him that he was wrong about something. So Betty had remained silent in the face of these mistakes and had confined her reaction to nods of agreement and small exclamations of appreciation. And she reflected on the fact that nobody was ever likely to read Ramsey's memoirs, even if he found somebody prepared to publish them. That was not because they were intrinsically irrelevant, but because these days people seemed to be interested only in reading about vulgar matters and violence. And there was no vulgarity or violence in Ramsey's memoirs…at least so far. Betty sighed.

“I shall now move on to some legal reminiscences,” said Ramsey, looking down at his wife in her comfortable chair. He preferred to read while standing, as this gave freedom to the diaphragm and allowed the voice to be projected.

“Legal things,” muttered Betty. “That's nice, dear.”

“I have been a lawyer for my entire working life,” Ramsey began. “And I have never regretted, not for one single moment, my choice of the law. Had I decided differently at that fateful lunch with my prospective father-in-law in Broughty Ferry, I might have ended up in the marmalade business, but I did not. I stuck to the law.

“Now that should not be taken to mean that I have anything but the highest regard for those in the marmalade business. I know that there are some who think it in some sense undignified to be involved in that sort of trade, but I have never understood that view. In my view, it is neither the bed you are born in, nor the trade you follow, that determines your value. It is what you are as a man. That's what counts. And I believe that Robert Burns, our national poet, expressed that philosophy perfectly when he wrote
A Man's a Man for A' That
. It does not matter who you are or what you do; the ultimate question is this: have you led a good life, a decent life? And I believe, although I do not wish to be immodest, that I can answer these questions in the affirmative.

“I have, as it happens, had a strong interest in Burns since the age of ten. That was when I started to learn his works off by heart, starting with
To a Mouse.
I always recommend that poem to parents who want their children to learn to love poetry. Start with that and then move on to
Tam O'Shanter
when the child is slightly older and will not get too nervous over all those references to bogles and the like.

“But I digress. I knew from my very first day as a law student that the law was the mistress for me. I remember very clearly my first lecture in Roman Law when the professor told us all about the
Corpus Iuris Civilis
of Justinian and of how it had been transmitted, through the agency of Italian and Dutch scholars, to Scotland. That was romance for you! And it got better and better as we went on to topics such as the Scots law of succession and the principles of the law of delict. Succession was full of human interest, and I still remember the roar of appreciative laughter that rose up in the lecture theatre when Dr George Campbell Paton told us about the case of Mr Aitken of Musselburgh who instructed his executors to erect in his memory a bronze equestrian statue in Musselburgh High Street. And then there was the man in Dundee who left his money to his dog. That was very funny indeed, and it was only through the firmness of the House of Lords that the instruction was held to be
contra bonos mores.
I shudder to think, incidentally, what would have happened had the courts decided otherwise. It's not that I have anything against dogs–anything but–it's just that all sort of ridiculous misuse of money would have to be sanctioned in the name of testamentary freedom. I have very strong views on that.

“One never forgets cases like that. And there were many of them, including the famous case of Donoghue v. Stevenson, which was concerned with the unfortunate experience of a Mrs May Donoghue who went into the Wellmeadow Café in Paisley and was served a bottle of ginger beer in which there was a decaying snail. Mrs Donoghue was quite ill as a result, and so we should not laugh at the facts of the case. But it must certainly be very disconcerting indeed to find a snail in one's ginger beer! And there were other very good Scots cases, such as the case of Bourhill v. Young, which dealt with the claim of Mrs Euphemia Bourhill, a fishwife, who saw a motorcyclist suffer an unfortunate accident very close to the bus in which she was travelling. There is a remarkable, but little known fact about that case. The former professor of jurisprudence at the University of Edinburgh, the late Professor Archie Campbell, employed a housekeeper whose nephew was involved in the accident! I happen to know that, but not many others do. And there is a further coincidence. Archie Campbell used to live in one of those streets behind the Braid Hills Hotel, which is not far from the house occupied by me and my wife, Betty. Edinburgh is a bit like that.”

Ramsey Dunbarton paused after these disclosures, and looked at his wife. She had gone to sleep.

61. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part V–Johnny Auchtermuchty

“I do think it's a bit rude of you to nod off like that,” said Ramsey Dunbarton. “Here I am going to the trouble of reading you my memoirs and I look up and see you fast asleep. Really, Betty, I expect a bit more of you!”

Betty rubbed at her eyes. “I'm terribly sorry, dear. I was only away for a moment or two. I think that you had got to the point where somebody was building a statue of a dog in Dundee.”

“Oh really!” Ramsey said peevishly. “You've got it all mixed up. It was Musselburgh that the bronze equestrian statue…”

“Of a dog?” interrupted Betty. “Surely not. Surely one couldn't have an equestrian statue of a dog? Wouldn't that look a bit odd, even in Musselburgh?”

Ramsey sighed. “My dear, if you had been listening, instead of sleeping, you would have understood that the dog was in Dundee, and there was never any question of erecting a statue to it, equestrian or otherwise. But, look, do you want me to go on reading or do you want me to stop?”

“Oh, you must carry on reading, Ramsey,” said Betty enthusiastically. “Why don't we do this: you read and then, every so often, take a look in my direction and see if my eyes are closed. If they are, give me a gentle nudge.”

Ramsey agreed, reluctantly, and took up his manuscript again.

“Well, after all that legal training and whatnot I was duly admitted as a solicitor and found myself as an assistant in the Edinburgh firm of Ptarmigan Monboddo. It was a very good firm, with eight partners, headed by Mr Hamish Ptarmigan. I liked him, and he was always very good to me. If ever I needed advice, I would go straight to him and he would tell me exactly what to do. And he was never wrong.

“‘Always remember,' he said, ‘that although you have a duty to do what your client wishes, you need never do anything that offends your conscience. If a client asks you to do that, you can simply decline to accept his instructions. And if you do this, you will never get into any trouble with either the Law Society of Scotland, or God.'

“And I remembered this advice when a client came to me and said that he wished to transfer all his assets into immoveable property–or land, as laymen call it–and in this way to defeat the right of his son, whom he did not like, to claim his legal rights to a share of the property on his father's death. I was appalled by this, because I knew the son, and knew him to be a perfectly decent man. So I said to the client that I did not think that this was the right thing to do, especially as the person who stood to benefit from the arrangement was his mistress, a sleazy woman who drank a lot and had a real roving eye.

“The client became very agitated by this and said: ‘If that's the way you feel, then I can always go to another firm.' So I said to him, ‘You do just that! I would remind you that I am a professional man and not some paid lackey you can order to do this, that and the next thing.'

“He took his business away from the firm and I had to report this to Mr Ptarmigan. I shall never forget his reaction. He said: ‘Dunbarton, you have done the right thing, even if this is going to cost the firm a lot of money, for which I must express a slight regret. But well done, nonetheless.'

“Later, I am happy to say, the son, whose interests I had sought to protect, and who had heard of my stand, became very successful and brought his business to us. Mr Ptarmigan noted that fact and pointed out that virtue was not always its own reward, in the sense that it sometimes brought additional benefits of a material nature. We both had a good laugh over that!

“Of course that particular client was an important one, but I never got to know him particularly well. I knew other clients rather better, and one or two of them even became friends. Johnny Auchtermuchty was one of these.

“Johnny had an estate up near Comrie. His father, Ginger Auchtermuchty, had been a well-known golfer, but had not been particularly good at keeping the estate in good order. In fact, he was rather bad at that, and by the time that Johnny had left the South East Scotland Agricultural College everybody thought that it would probably be too late to do much with the farms that they had in hand. The fencing was in a pretty awful state and a lot of work needed to be done on the steadings. In fact, when Ginger handed over to Johnny and went to live in Gullane, we were very much expecting to have to sell off a large parcel of land just to keep the place from folding up altogether.

“I first met Johnny when he came in to discuss the possibility of raising some money to do essential repairs. I prepared a deed which gave security for the loan and I remember thinking that he would never be able to repay even part of what he had to borrow. How wrong I was! Johnny proved to have a real nose for the managing of shooting and fishing and within a few years the estate was one of the most successful in Perthshire. And Johnny was also one of the most socially successful people of his day. Everybody liked him and invited him to stay with them. He used to make people laugh and told the most wonderful stories.

“I had heard about his house parties, which were legendary, but I had never received an invitation to one of them. This slightly distressed me, and I began to wonder whether Johnny thought of me as just his lawyer and not worth having anything to do with socially. That would have been very unjust. I enjoyed a party in exactly the same way as the rest of them did and even if I was not a particularly experienced shot I saw no reason why I shouldn't be invited to join in now and then.

“And then at last the invitation came. Would I care to come up to Mucklemeikle to shoot? Friday to Sunday? I replied that I would be delighted to do this. I did not ask what it was that we were going to shoot. Betty, who did not treat the invitation with the same enthusiasm as I did, suggested that it might be fish in a barrel. That was meant to be a joke, but I must admit that I did not find it very funny at the time. Indeed, I don't find it funny now. In fact, it has remained as unfunny as it was when she first uttered it–it really has.”