Love Over Scotland (38 page)

110. Domenica talks to Dilly

When Dilly Emslie went upstairs to the coffee room at Ottakars Bookshop, she was concerned that she might not find a seat, as it was busier than usual. What had brought people out on a Tuesday morning was not clear to her; the town seemed bustling, and even George Street was thronged with shoppers. But they were well-behaved shoppers, who did not push and shove, as shoppers did on Princes Street, but moved aside graciously to allow others to pass, lifting their hats where appropriate, making sure that nobody felt that he or she was about to be crowded off the pavement and into the road. Even the motorists, contending for the scarce parking places in the middle of the road, would concede a space if they saw another car about to turn in, gesturing with a friendly flick of the wrist for the other driver to go ahead. It was just as life in Edinburgh should be (
c
. 1950).

Dilly ordered a pot of coffee for two and found a table. She looked about her, glanced idly at a magazine which had been left behind by a previous customer, and began her wait. This was not long; barely five minutes later into the coffee room came Domenica Macdonald, smart in her newly-acquired Thai silk trouser-suit, her face and her forearms deeply tanned by exposure to the sun. Dilly rose to greet her long-absent but now-returned friend. She was not quite sure what to say. If she said, simply: “You’re back!” it would come out in a surprised tone, because she had half-expected Domenica not to return. And a simpler “Hallo” would clearly be inadequate to mark return after several months in the Malacca Straits. And of course she could not say: “You’ve caught the sun”, because that would be on the same level of triteness as the late President Nixon’s words on being taken to the Great Wall of China (“This surely is a great wall.”). So she said: “Domenica!”, which was just right for the circumstances.

When two friends meet for the first time in months, there is usually a fair amount to be discussed. How much more so if one of the friends has spent those months in a remote spot, the guest of pirates, living amongst them; and yet that was not the first topic of discussion. First there were books to be talked about: what was new, what was worth reading, and what could safely be ignored.

Domenica confessed that she had read very little in the village. “I had my Proust with me,” she said. “The Scott-Moncrieff translation, of course. But I must admit that I got as far as volume four and no further. I also had
Anna Karenina
in reserve, and of course I always take Seth’s
A Suitable Boy
with me in the hope that this will be the year that I actually read past page forty. But, alas, I did not. It’s a wonderful book, though, and I shall certainly read it one of these days. I carry it, you see, in optimism.”

“Rather like
A Brief History of Time
,” observed Dilly. “Everybody has that on their bookshelves, but very few people have read it. Virtually nobody, I gather.”

The conversation continued in this vein for a while, and then Dilly, reaching forward to pour a fresh cup of coffee, said: “Now, what about the pirates?” She spoke hesitantly, as it was she who had urged Domenica to go out to the Malacca Straits in the first place and she felt a certain responsibility for the expedition. It was, in fact, a matter of great relief to her that her friend had returned safely to Edinburgh.

“Oh yes,” said Domenica. “The pirates. Well, they were very hospitable–in their way. And I certainly found out a great deal.”

Dilly waited expectantly. What exactly had Domenica seen, she wondered. And had it changed her?

“I spent a lot of time on their matrilineal succession patterns,” said Domenica. “And I also unearthed some rather interesting information about domestic economy matters. Who does the shopping and matters like that.”

“It must have been fascinating,” said Dilly. “And the pirates themselves? What were they like?”

“Smallish, for the most part,” said Domenica dryly. “I was a bit taller than most of them. Small, wiry people, usually with tattoos. Their tattoos, by the way, would make an interesting study. They were mostly dragons and the like–more or less as one would expect–but then I came across quite a number with very interesting contemporary motifs. Fascinating, really.”

“Such as?” asked Dilly.

“Well, mostly pictures by Jack Vettriano,” said Domenica. “
The Singing Butler
is very popular out there. The pirate chief had it on his back. I noticed it immediately.”

“How extraordinary,” remarked Dilly.

They were both silent as they thought about the implications of this. Then Domenica continued: “Right at the end of my stay I followed the pirates, you know. I followed them all the way to a little town down the coast. They tied up outside a warehouse, a sort of godown, as they call them out there.”

“And?” said Dilly.

Domenica smiled. “Well, I crept up the jetty and managed to find a small window I could look through. I had my friend, Henry, with me. He gave me a leg-up so that I could look through the window.”

There was now complete silence, not only at their table, but at neighbouring tables, where they had overheard the conversation.

“The window was rather dirty,” Domenica went on, “so I had to give it a wipe. But once I had done that, I could see perfectly well what was going on inside.”

Dilly held her breath.

The denouement came quickly. “It was a pirate CD factory,” said Domenica. “That’s what they did, those pirates of mine. They made pirate CDs.”

For a moment nobody said anything. Then Domenica began to laugh, and the laughter spread. “It was terribly funny,” she said. “I had imagined that they were still holding up ships and so on. But they’ve adapted really well to the new global economy.”

“And the CDs?” asked Dilly. “What sort of pirate CDs were they making?”

“Mostly Italian tenors,” said Domenica. “As far as I could see. But I noticed some Scottish Chamber Orchestra recordings and one or two other things.” She paused. “I didn’t see
The Pirates of Penzance
…”

This was tremendously funny, and they both laughed, as did one or two people at neighbouring tables who had heard the joke and who were, strictly speaking, not entitled to laugh.

111. Matthew Bears Gifts

That afternoon, Matthew closed his gallery early–at two o’clock, in fact. He had sold two paintings at lunch time–one an early Tim Cockburn, painted during his Italian period, depicting an Umbrian pergola–and the other a luminous study of light and land by James Howie. He had felt almost reluctant to let the paintings go, as he had placed them on the wall immediately opposite his desk and had become very fond of them. But they had been taken down, cosseted in bubble wrap, and passed on to their new owners. And then, looking out of the window, Matthew had decided that it was time to go shopping.

Matthew had done his arithmetic. The four million pounds which he had had invested on his behalf produced, as far as he could ascertain, a return of round about four per cent. That meant that his income–if one ignored the gallery–was, after tax had been taken off at forty per cent, ninety six thousand pounds per annum, or eight thousand pounds a month. Matthew had no mortgage, and no car; he had very few outgoings. With eight thousand pounds a month, he had an income of two hundred and fifty-eight pounds a day. On average, over the last few months, he had spent about seven pounds a day, apart from the occasion on which he had gone to the outfitters in Queen Street and bought his new coat and the distressed-oatmeal cashmere sweater, now languishing in a dark corner of his wardrobe. There had also been an expensive dinner to celebrate Scotland’s victory over England in the Calcutta Cup, an occasion on which Matthew paid for a celebratory meal for six new acquaintances he had met in the Cumberland Bar on the evening of that great rugby triumph. It was only after the dinner had been consumed that one of the guests inadvertently disclosed that they were in fact supporters of England rather than Scotland, but Matthew, with typical decency, had laughed at this and insisted that he had been happy to act as host to the opposition. At which point a further disclosure revealed that one of the party was actually Turkish, and had no idea what rugby was anyway–again a revelation that Matthew took handsomely in his stride. Turkey, he pointed out, might start to play rugby some day; if the Italians could do it, then there was no reason why the Turks should not at least have a try. The Turk agreed, and said that he thought that Turks would certainly be better rugby players than the Greeks. Matthew did not comment on this observation, and for a moment there had been silence. That had been an expensive evening–three hundred and seventy-two pounds, to be exact, which was, for that day at least, an over-spend. But the overall position was undeniably rosy, and so Matthew decided that it was time to spend a bit more.

His comparative parsimony towards himself, of course, had not been reflected in what he had done for others. Matthew was a generous man at heart, and he had made handsome donations to a range of charitable causes, with particularly large cheques going to the Artists’ Benevolent Fund and the National Art Collection Fund. Matthew had, in fact, been the anonymous donor who had enabled a public collection to purchase, at a price of sixteen thousand pounds, the Motherwell Salt Cellar, a fine example of the eighteenth-century silversmith’s art described by none other than Sir Timothy Clifford as “beyond important”. He had modestly eschewed publicity on this and had even declined to attend the unveiling of the salt cellar at a special exhibition in Glasgow. There were many other examples of his quiet generosity, including his discreetly settling Angus Lordie’s coffee bill with Big Lou after Angus Lordie had consistently forgotten to bring his wallet over a period of eight weeks. That had amounted to a total of one hundred and thirty-two pounds, which Matthew calculated was really only twelve hours’ worth of his daily, after-tax income.

After he had locked the gallery, he walked up Dundas Street and turned left into a small lane of jewellery shops and designer studios. He paused outside a jewellery shop and looked in the window. He had no need for jewellery, of course, but then he remembered
I have a girlfriend!
Pat liked necklaces, he thought, although when he came to think of it he realised that he could not picture exactly what sort of necklace she wore. That, of course, was a male failing. Pat had once pointed out to him that men did not notice what women were wearing, whether it was clothing or jewellery. Matthew had defended men, but Pat had then asked him what she had been wearing the day before and he had no idea. And Big Lou? An apron? Under the apron? No idea. And the woman who had come in to look at that small still life an hour ago? Wasn’t that a man?

He spent an hour in the jewellers. When he came out, he had in his pocket a black velvet box in which nestled an opal necklace, early twentieth-century, provenance Hamilton and Inches of George Street. Then, on impulse, rather than walking down the street, Matthew made his way up to George Street and to Hamilton and Inches itself. Inside, attended to by a soft-voiced assistant, he purchased a silver beaker on which were inscribed the words of one of the sentences in the Declaration of Arbroath:
For as long as there shall but one hundred of us remain alive
…He paid for this–eight hundred and seventy-five pounds–and then went out into the street again.

He walked slowly back to his flat in India Street. It was quiet inside, and it seemed empty, too, now that Pat had left. But he would see her that evening, when they were due to go out for dinner, and that is when he would give her the opal necklace. And the other present–the solid silver beaker inscribed with those stirring words, that statement of Scottish determination, he would give to Big Lou, who came from Arbroath. But it was not just the Arbroath connection which prompted the gift; it was the confidence which Pat had revealed to him a few days ago. Big Lou could not remember when she had last been given a present, by any one. She could not remember.

112. Giving and Receiving

It seemed very strange to be back in Scotland Street. Domenica had looked forward to her return and had imagined that she would immediately feel at home, and now she did not. She knew that she would soon adjust, but for a few days everything seemed disjointed and not quite right. The very air, warm and languid on the Malacca Straits, was brisk and fresh here–almost brittle, in fact. And there was also the hardness of everything about her: this was a world of stone, chiselled out, solid, bounded by corners and angles. She had become used to the softness of vegetation, to the malleability of cane, the femininity of palm fronds; so different, so far away.

But if there were difficulties in becoming accustomed to her surroundings again–and these, surely, were to be expected, for what greater contrast can there be between a world of pirates and the world of Edinburgh–there were still compensations in being back at home. There were the consolations of finding that the streets, and the people, were exactly where she had left them; that the same things were being discussed in the newspaper and on the radio, by the same people. All of this was reassuring, and precious, and was good to get back to.

Domenica thought about all this at length and decided that she was happy, and fortunate, to be back. Now she would spend the next three months writing up her findings and preparing the two papers that she proposed to write on the community in which she had been living. She was confident that these papers would be accepted for publication, as the people with whom she had stayed had never been the subject of anthropological investigation before, if one discounted the efforts of that poor Belgian–and what happened to him remained a mystery. She had tried to discover his fate, but had met at every point with evasion. Nobody had anything to say.

But it was good to be back, and in recognition of this Domenica decided that she would give a dinner party. She had not entertained at all while away, and her social life had been limited to cups of tea with the village women. She believed that this had been enjoyable for them as it had been for her, and she had gone so far as to form a book group in the village, a development that had gone down well with the women, even if there were very few books to be had in the village. And she had also laid the foundations of a small credit union, whereby the poorer wives could be helped by the richer. These were positive achievements.

Pat had agreed to come and help Domenica with the preparations for the dinner, and now they were both in the kitchen on the evening on which the dinner was to be held. Domenica had planned an elaborate menu and Pat was busy cutting and preparing vegetables while Domenica cooked an intricate mushroom risotto.

“I heard about Matthew,” Domenica said, stirring chopped onions into her arborio rice. “I must say that you could do far worse. In fact, you have done far worse in the past, haven’t you? What with Bruce…”

Pat had to acknowledge that her record had not been distinguished. “I only liked Bruce for a very short time,” she said. “For the rest of the time I found him repulsive.”

Domenica laughed. “He was fairly awful, wasn’t he? All that hair gel and that preening in front of the mirror. And yet, and yet…” She left the rest unsaid, but Pat knew exactly what she meant. There was something about Bruce. Did he have
it
? Was that it? Yes. It.

“Matthew’s such a kind person,” Domenica went on. “You’ll find him so different from Bruce.”

Pat looked thoughtful. “He gave me this yesterday,” she said, pointing to the opal necklace about her neck.

Domenica put down the packet of dried mushrooms she was slitting open and peered at Pat’s neck. “Opals,” she said. “Look at their colours. Fire opals.”

“Do you like it?” asked Pat.

“I love it,” said Domenica. “I’ve always liked opals. I bought myself an opal ring in Australia when I was there ten years ago. I often wear it. It reminds me of Brisbane. I was so happy in Brisbane.”

Pat was silent. She began to finger the necklace, awkwardly, as if it made her feel uncomfortable.

“Is there anything wrong?” asked Domenica.

Pat shook her head. “No…Well, perhaps there is.”

“Do you feel bad about accepting such an expensive present from him? Is that it?”

“Maybe. Maybe just a bit.”

Domenica took Pat’s hand and pressed it gently. “It’s very important to be able to accept things, you know. Gracious acceptance is an art–an art which most of never bother to cultivate. We think that we have to learn how to give, but we forget about accepting things, which can be much harder than giving.”

“Why?”

“Possibly because of our subconscious fears about the gift relationship,” said Domenica. “The giving of gifts can create obligations, and we might not wish to be encumbered with obligations. And yet, there are gifts which are outright gifts–gifts which have no conditions attached to them. And you have to realise that accepting another person’s gift is allowing him to express his feelings for you.”

Yes, thought Pat. You are right about this, as you are right about so many other things.

“He gave Big Lou a present as well yesterday,” Pat said. “I was there when he did it. A silver beaker with some words from the Declaration of Arbroath engraved on it.”

“A somewhat odd gift,” mused Domenica. “And was Big Lou pleased?”

“Very,” said Pat. “She hugged him. She lifted him up, actually, and hugged him.”

Domenica smiled. “It’s very easy,” she said. “It’s very easy, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“To increase the sum total of human happiness. By these little acts. Small things. A word of encouragement. A gesture of love. So easy.”

Domenica looked at her watch. “We must get on with our labours,” she said. “Angus, Antonia, and all the rest will be here before we know it.”

“Will Angus have a poem for us, like last time?”

“He always does,” said Domenica. “When we reach the end of something.”

“But is this really the end of something?” asked Pat.

Domenica smiled, somewhat sadly. “I fear it is.”