Love Over Scotland (8 page)

20. Truth and Truth-Telling in Gayfield Square

At Gayfield Square Police Station, Irene and Bertie were greeted by a policeman, who smiled warmly at Bertie. “Lost your bicycle, son?” the policeman asked. Bertie looked at the policeman blankly. “I don’t have a bicycle,” he said. “I wish I had a bicycle, but I don’t. Mummy won’t let me…”

“The officer is just being playful, Bertie,” Irene interrupted. “It’s his idea of a joke, you see.”

The policeman looked at Irene sharply. “And what can we do for you, Madam?” he asked coldly.

“I’ve come to report the theft of a car,” said Irene.

“I see,” said the policeman. “And are we sure it’s been stolen? It hasn’t been towed, has it?”

Irene gave a start. Towed? It had not occurred to her that the car might have been legitimately removed. What sort of line was there on the road at that point? Was it residents’ parking? It was residents’ parking, surely…

“I don’t think it will have been towed,” she said. “It was parked in Scotland Street, where we always park it. Now it’s gone.”

The policeman nodded. “The most surprising cars get towed, you know. You’d be astonished at how many people come in here to report their car stolen and all the time it’s down at the vehicle pound.”

Irene gave the policeman the number of their car and he went away briefly to feed the details into a computer. While he was gone, Bertie looked around the room with interest. There were several notices pinned on a board and he sidled over to these and peered up at them. There was a notice about the depth of tread required on a car tyre and one about the closing of a road. And then there was a Wanted poster, complete with the photograph of the wanted person. Bertie peered at the photograph. It was very interesting. Surely not…

“Mummy,” he whispered. “Come over here and look at this. Look at this Wanted poster.”

“Not now, Bertie,” said Irene. “We must deal with our car first.”

“But I recognise the person in that photograph,” Bertie persisted. “Look, Mummy! Look at the person in the photograph.”

“Oh really, Bertie,” said Irene, the exasperation rising in her voice. “I don’t see what…” She stopped. Slowly she leant forward and studied the picture. “My goodness…” she began.

“You see,” said Bertie. “It is him, isn’t it?”

Irene stood up again and pulled Bertie away from the notice board. “Hush, Bertie,” she said. “We haven’t come here to look at Wanted posters. We’re here to find our poor car…”

“But,” said Bertie. “But the notice says that anybody who recognises…”

The policeman was now returning to the front desk.

“Your car has not been towed,” he said. “So if you’d like to tell me when you last saw it and where it was when you last saw it.”

“We’ve just see that pho…” Bertie began, but was interrupted by Irene.

“Now then,” she said loudly. “When did we last see the car, Bertie? Can you put on your little thinking cap? When did Mummy park the car up at the top of Scotland Street?”

Bertie scratched his head. “Last week, I think. Yes, Mummy, it was last week. Daddy was out drinking, remember, and you…”

“Last week,” interrupted Irene. “Yes, last week. And, Bertie, Daddy does not go out drinking, as you put it. Daddy had gone to meet somebody from the office and it just so happened it was in the Cumberland Bar. It was a working meeting.” She smiled at the policeman. “Honestly! Out of the mouths of babes…”

The policeman looked at Bertie and winked. “So it was last week some time?”

“Yes,” said Irene. “I think it was Tuesday. Yes, it was Tuesday.”

“So it was stolen some time after Tuesday but before the day on which you found it to be missing, which was…”

“Yesterday,” said Bertie. “I took Mummy up the street to show her that it wasn’t there. She was very cross. She said a rude word.”

“Bertie!” exclaimed Irene. “I did not say a rude word. You’re making it up.”

“But you did, Mummy,” said Bertie. “You said…”

“No need,” said the policeman. “None of us is perfect. Let’s proceed. I shall need to take all your details at this stage. Then we’ll enter the particulars of the car on the national stolen-cars register. And we shall make inquiries.”

“It might have been stolen before,” said Bertie suddenly.

Irene spun round sharply and glared at him. Then she turned back to the policeman. “He has a very vivid imagination,” she explained. “You know how children are. They construct these vivid imaginative worlds. Melanie Klein…”

The policeman looked at Bertie. “You said it was already stolen?” he asked. “Who stole it? This Melanie Klein? Your Dad?”

“No,” said Bertie. “Daddy would never steal a car. He works for the Scottish Executive.”

“So,” the policeman continued. “Who stole it then?”

“Oh really!” Irene interrupted. “This is completely pointless. It was just a bit of childish fantasy. You were making things up, weren’t you, Bertie?”

Bertie shook his head. “I think it might have been that friend of Mr O’Connor’s. You remember, Mummy, I told you about him. Gerry. He might have…”

“I think we’ve had quite enough of this,” said Irene, reaching out for Bertie’s hand. Turning to the policeman, she explained that they had to do some shopping and that if there was anything further that the police needed to know they could telephone her. Then, pushing Bertie before her, she hurried towards the exit.

“But what about that poster?” Bertie said, as they made their way out.

“Later, Bertie,” said Irene. “We’ll talk about that later.”

Outside now, and heading up the square in the direction of Valvona and Crolla, Irene pointedly refrained from meeting Bertie’s gaze. The little boy, head down, was a picture of dejection.

“I’m sorry, Mummy,” he said after a while. “Did I say something wrong?”

Irene pursed her lips. “There are times when it’s best to leave things to grown-ups, Bertie,” she said. “That was one of them.”

“But I was just telling the truth,” protested Bertie. “Do grown-ups not tell the truth?”

“They do,” said Irene crossly. “They certainly do. It’s just that grown-ups know how to handle the truth. You’ll learn that in due course, Bertie. You’ll learn.”

Bertie said nothing. He was thinking of the poster and the photograph on it. Who would have guessed?

21. Missing Domenica

Angus Lordie knew immediately that the letter came from Domenica. When he picked it up, there it was–a brightly-coloured Malaysian stamp portraying local flora, and beneath it the address, written out in Domenica’s characteristic script. She had learned that script at St Leonard’s School, St Andrews, all those years ago, at the feet of the redoubtable Miss Powell, a teacher who, so Domenica had once informed Angus, believed that clarity of expression in handwriting and speech was the greatest of goods which an education could confer. “It does not matter, girls,” she had said, “if you do not have the most profound thoughts to convey–and I suspect that you don’t–as long as you convey them clearly.” Miss Powell, Domenica explained, had been a teacher of great antiquity, and had died in office, in the staff room, with much dignity. They had found her with an open exercise book on her lap with two words written, in her own handwriting, on an otherwise unsullied page–“the end”. Or so the story went–schoolgirls, put together, were notoriously prone to fancy and indeed to the exchange of wild rumour.

The letter Angus now extracted from the small bundle of mail. The brown envelopes and the unsolicited advertisements which the Post Office saw fit to inflict on him, he tossed to one side; the advertisements would be recycled and would no doubt be made into fresh advertisements, endlessly perhaps, while the brown envelopes would be opened after breakfast. Angus was not one to put off the opening of mail, a habit which he had heard was extremely common. Sometimes it took the form of leaving the letter unopened for a day or so–something which was in the range of normality–but the condition could become more serious and could lead to mail remaining unopened for weeks, even months. A friend of his had suffered from this and had sought the help of a clinical psychologist, who had revealed to him that the letters represented an emotional claim–one emotional claim too many–and he was simply denying this to protect himself.

But this did not afflict Angus, who slit Domenica’s envelope open with relish and read it while seated at his kitchen table, a cup of coffee in front of him, the morning sun streaming in through his window. It was a delicious feeling, this anticipation of word from Domenica, and he thought for a moment that he would paint such a scene, a small, carefully-worked canvas in the style of…well, let us not be too modest about our abilities, Vermeer. Yes, that would be entirely appropriate. A small tribute to Vermeer: the reading of a letter in an Edinburgh kitchen, with all that stillness and quiet which Vermeer could put into his paintings, and which Angus Lordie could, too.

The letter began with the usual salutation. Then: “You will see from the postmark–and the stamp–that I have reached my destination safely. When I embarked on that questionable ship I confess that I began to doubt my decision to make the journey by sea, but I must say that I do not regret it for a moment. Air travel is completely artificial. One enters a gleaming metal tube and subjects oneself to the experience of being carried through the sky while breathing the recycled air of several hundred other people. And then they have the effrontery to suggest that one should settle back and ‘enjoy the flight’! Of course, these airline people speak a different language altogether, a sort of debased mid-Atlantic English which is full of circumlocutions and cliché. The word ‘now’, such an honest, workmanlike word, has been replaced by ‘at this time’, as in ‘please fasten your seat belts at this time’, or ‘we are commencing (anglice starting) our descent at this time’. Why can’t they say ‘now’?

“Well, as you know, I refrained from all that and took a passage on a merchant ship, a large Norwegian container vessel of no discernible character. They had twenty passengers–a motley crew–and indeed they had a motley crew too. But we were able to read and play bridge with the Captain (a most eccentric bidder, I might add), and there was a simply immense deck to walk about for exercise.

“It got hotter and hotter, of course, and several of the other passengers became very morose and low. I was comfortable enough; my cabin windows opened and the ship’s movement made for a pleasant breeze. I lay about a lot, reading suitable books. I must confess, Angus, that I reread Somerset Maugham because it seemed to be just the thing in such circumstances. You know, Maugham really could write, unlike some novelists today, who go in for pretentiousness in a very big way. Maugham told marvellous stories, in the way in which nineteenth-century writers told stories. No artifice. No play with words. Just stories. I read
Rain
several times on board, because it’s all about a voyage, as you know. What a story! And
The Painted Veil
too, because it’s so refreshing to see a male writer having a go at a truly nasty woman; male writers don’t dare do that these days, Angus. You wouldn’t get a modern Flaubert punishing Madame Bovary as the real Flaubert did. Oh no. By the way, did you know that Flaubert wrote terribly slowly? He managed five words an hour, which meant that on a good day he wrote about thirty words. Now they were good words, of course, but even so…”

Angus put down the letter and rose to his feet. He looked out of the window. It was as if Domenica was in the room with him. He could hear her voice. Her laughter. She was there, and not there at the same time. He did not want the letter to end, and so he decided to go for a brief walk and return to savour the rest of the letter. This would give him something to look forward to.

He whistled for Cyril, who appeared from the other end of the flat, one ear cocked inquisitively.

“Do you miss Domenica too?” Angus asked as he attached the lead to Cyril’s collar.

Cyril was silent. As a dog, he missed everything–intensely. He missed Lochboisdale. He missed favourite, remembered bones. He missed the tooth he had lost when he had bitten that other dog’s tail. Everything–Cyril missed everything.

22. An M.A. (Cantab.)

Angus returned from his walk round Drummond Place. There were people about, and one or two greeted him, but he barely noticed them, so absorbed was he in thoughts of Domenica’s letter. He began to compose his response mentally–he would tell her about Antonia and how he had let her in and how he had decided that she…no, he would not do that. He should remember that Antonia was, after all, Domenica’s friend. I must make more of an effort in that direction, he told himself. I shall persist. I shall give her the chance to prove that she is as charming and good company as Domenica herself. At the very least, I shall be civil; I shall do the neighbourly thing and invite her in for a drink some evening, although perhaps it might be wise to dilute her. And not just to dilute her with alcohol, which has the power to transform difficult company into good, but dilute her with other guests, perhaps Matthew and that engaging girl, Pat–if they would come.

Now entering his kitchen, into which the slanting rays of sun still shone, Angus made himself another cup of coffee and sat down to read the rest of Domenica’s letter.

“We eventually arrived in Malacca. I must confess that I had made no arrangements to speak of and had to find myself a hotel more or less on the spot. This proved to be remarkably easy and I was soon ensconced in a rather charming old building with a wide veranda and a garden full of frangipani trees. The hotel called itself the São Pedro and was run by a charming Malaccan Portuguese and his Indonesian-Dutch wife. They made me extremely comfortable, but were much alarmed when I disclosed that I proposed to find a pirate community in which to do anthropological observation. They felt, for some reason, that I had some kind of death-wish (the very thought!) and were completely unpersuaded by my attempts to reassure them. I told them that anthropologists were accustomed to putting themselves in dangerous situations. Look at the number of people who did their field work in New Guinea amongst people who still resorted to occasional head-hunting. Look at the people who did their research in the mountains of Corsica, which are pretty dangerous at the best of times. Very few anthropologists opt for the soft life when it comes to their field work. In fact, I know only two–one went to the Vatican to study the domestic economy of a male-dominated society, and the other went to Monaco to study sense of place and permanence amongst tax exiles. Both of these were rather condescended to by their peers later on–they were treated as if they had not really earned their spurs, so to speak, as anthropologists. There were sniffy remarks about doing one’s research in a meadow rather than a field–that sort of thing. Not really funny, but very barbed.

“But do you think that my hosts would be reassured by any of this? They would not. Eventually, they shrugged their shoulders and said that if called upon they would be happy to identify my remains and have them shipped back to Scotland. I thanked them for this; the offer was genuinely meant.

“Of course, I had to find somebody who would give me the necessary introductions. The Royal Institute of Anthropology had given me the name of somebody who was in the business of arranging academic exchanges for students, and they said that this person had been very helpful to another anthropologist who had studied minority-group relations in several of the Malaysian states. He was called Edward Hong, and I eventually found his office near a row of old godowns by the river. It was in a charming old Chinese house, with red roof and pillars which had been painted light blue. On the front door there was a sign which announced that this was the office of the World Scholar Cultural Exchange, of which the proprietor and director was Edward Hong, M.A. (Cantab.).

“I do like to meet an M.A. (Cantab.) in a place like Malacca–it’s so reassuring! Of course, one does come across one or two of them who might not be the real thing, but they are usually utterly charming and tremendously Anglophile (and remember, Angus, before you say anything: Anglophilia includes Scots in its generous embrace). Do you remember, by the way, that charming habit of putting letters behind one’s name, even if one failed the degree in question? Did you ever meet a B.A. (Calcutta) (Failed)? Or were they apocryphal? I certainly remember speaking to somebody who had seen a plate outside a dental surgery in the Yemen which said: Bachelor of Dental Surgery (Failed). I suppose that if one’s toothache were severe enough, one might just take the risk.

“Edward Hong was very urbane. He was an impressive-looking man with a pencil moustache and elegant patent-leather shoes. He appeared terribly pleased to see me and summoned a maid to produce a tray of tea, which we drank out of Royal Doulton cups.

“‘I do so miss good old John’s,’ he said, referring, I assumed, to St John’s College, Cambridge. ‘I had such a well-placed room in Second Court, and from time to time I took tea with the Master and his wife in the Lodge. He had a strong interest in Chinese ceramics, and I used to help him read the reign marks on the base of vases. We also used to discuss Waley’s translations of Tang poetry. We discussed those for hours. Hours.’

“I listened to this talk about St John’s and Cambridge for almost half an hour. At one point, he asked me if the Church clock continued to stand at ten to three, and I replied that there was, as far as I knew, honey still for tea. He was delighted with that, and at the end of our conversation I think that he would have done anything for me. So that was when I asked him whether it would be possible to arrange an introduction to some contemporary pirates.

“He hesitated for only the briefest of moments before he smiled and said that this could certainly be arranged. It would take a day or two, he said, and in the meantime would I care to meet his daughter, Mary, who was studying piano and French? ‘She loves Chopin,’ he said, ‘and I love listening to her playing. I can listen to Chopin for hours–hours and hours.’”