The Unbearable Lightness of Scones (3 page)

And Matthew thought: until a very short time ago, you could have been only a spectator. And now it’s too late.

The car that was due to take them to the reception had turned round and was now pointing back up the driveway of the church. The chauffeur, wearing a smart black uniform and peaked cap, had opened one of the passenger doors and was
standing by it. Matthew caught Elspeth’s eye, and she nodded. She whispered something to Uncle Harald, and then came over to join Matthew. They climbed into the car.

As they turned out into King’s Stables Road, the chauffeur turned to them and said, “A busy day for me. I did an airport collection first thing and then I did a chap I used to know at the pub.”

“He got married?” asked Matthew.

“Yes,” said the chauffeur. “A dreadful mistake.”

There was silence in the back of the car.

Matthew smiled. “Do you mean it’s a mistake to get married, or your friend made a mistake in his choice?”

“Both,” said the chauffeur.

Elspeth laughed. “Very funny,” she said.

“No, I’m serious,” said the chauffeur.

The reception was held in two large marquees pitched in Moray Place Gardens. After his own wedding to Janice, a second marriage that his son had found difficult to accept at first but to which he had eventually become resigned, Gordon had moved to a house in Gullane. This is pronounced “Gillan,” on the basis of the Gaelic etymology of the word, a matter which divides the population of the East of Scotland into warring factions every bit as much as heresies divided the population of early Christian Europe. Those early heresies had led to bloodshed, and so had the issue of the correct pronunciation of Gullane (which is, as has been said above, “Gillan”). In late 1973 a fight had broken out in the neighbouring town of North Berwick when a passing motorist had stepped out of his car and, innocent of the controversy, had asked the way to Gullane, giving the
u
an
i
value. The response of the person asked had been to punch the motorist squarely in the face, breaking his
nose and a small bone below the right eye. The motorist had then hit his assailant with a golf club that he had extracted from the back of his car.

This unseemly incident had resulted in the appearance of both parties
in Haddington Sheriff Court, where they were charged with assault and breach of the peace. In the course of his judgment, the sheriff, an erudite man, had commented on the
casus
belli
, pointing out that arguments over place names were inevitable, but that they should never deteriorate into physical violence. That was a perfectly normal thing for a sheriff to say when dealing with immoderate behaviour, but he went further.

“The place name Gullane,” he pronounced, “is, as we all know, shrouded in obscurity, and indeed controversy, as this unfortunate incident reminds us. The name comes from the Gaelic word
gollan
, meaning a small loch, or possibly from another Gaelic word, meaning the shoulder of a hill. If the derivation is from
gollan
then, in one view, the pronunciation should be
o
rather than
u
or
i
. However, it is likely, in my view, that if indeed the name comes from
gollan
then, for the sake of clarity, popular usage would have sought to differentiate the place name from the geographical feature word (small loch), and this differentiation would most naturally have been ‘gill’ – rather than ‘gull’ – the former being easier on the tongue. I myself have never doubted that the correct pronunciation is ‘Gillan’ rather than ‘Gullane.’ There are many reasons for this, one of which I have already animadverted to, but a particularly persuasive reason is that that is the way I have heard it pronounced by the Lord Lyon, Sir Thomas Innes of Learny, GCVO, WS. If there is a greater authority on names in Scotland, then let him step forward.” None did.

This is the only time that a Scottish court has ruled on the matter. Some have pointed out, of course, that the sheriff’s remarks were
obiter
, and therefore not binding, but, in the absence of any more authoritative ruling, others have argued that we must accept ourselves as being bound by what was said in Haddington Sheriff Court. It may be, they say, that the Court of Session itself will rule on the matter – and indeed that would be helpful – but until the court does, those who have insisted on a
u
value should have the good grace to recognise that they are wrong.

When Matthew’s father had moved to Gullane, he had discovered that the pronunciation of the town’s name appeared to be determined by the side of an economic and social fault-line on which one dwelled. Those who lived in the large houses on the hill, great villas favoured by the Edinburgh haute-bourgeoisie, would never have said anything but Gillan, while those who lived on the other side of the High Street would choke rather than use that pronunciation.

Gordon considered the matter to be one of extreme unimportance. He had no time for such pettiness and for the verbal signals by which people set out to demonstrate that they belonged to this or that segment of society. What did it matter if one said table napkin or serviette? It mattered not at all, not in the slightest, although the correct word, of course, is napkin. But everybody knows what is meant by serviette, and that is the important thing, rather than the issue of getting it right and saying napkin.

Although they spent much of their time in their house in Gullane, Gordon and Janice kept a flat in Moray Place, which they used when they had something on at night and when it would have been tiresome or inconvenient to drive out to East Lothian.

This flat was on the north side, looking out over the Dean Valley towards the Firth of Forth and the hills of Fife, a city view of incomparable beauty; or, if comparisons were to be attempted, they would have to be with the views enjoyed by those with the good fortune to live on the Grand Canal in Venice or Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

Gordon was not sure how far Janice appreciated the aesthetic pleasure of living in the classical New Town; she was not one to spend much time in the admiration of beauty, and when
they had inspected the flat before buying it he had noticed her indifferent expression when he had first commented on the astragals. She had been more interested in the kitchen and in what would be required to bring it up to a satisfactory standard.

“Everything must go,” she said. “We’ll have to get rid of everything and start from scratch.”

“Everything?” Gordon had been surprised. Had she not noticed the lovely old Belfast sink? Had she not appreciated the ancient meat safe, half recessed into the wall? Janice had been adamant, though, and in due course men came round to take everything out.

“An awful pity,” said one of the men. “This good stuff. This lovely old sink.”

Gordon had looked away, ashamed. I’ve married beneath me, he suddenly thought. It was an odd thought, the sort of thought that people now would never admit to thinking. And yet there were occasions on which people married beneath them – not in social terms – but in terms of intelligence or sensitivity. Why deny that such unions took place?

And this dispiriting judgment was later to be confirmed, when Janice dropped a hint about a present for her forthcoming birthday. Had he heard correctly? Had she really said: “I’d love something like that picture of the people dancing on the beach. You know the one I mean?”

Elspeth Harmony’s parents were both dead and so there had been nobody to object to Gordon’s offer to pay for everything connected with the wedding, down to the last canapé. Of course the custom that the bride’s parents should pay for the reception had changed, although it was still sometimes defended by the fathers of grooms. It was common enough now for the
couple themselves to pay, thereby relieving the parents of all costs, and Matthew would certainly have been in a position to afford anything (he had, after all, four million pounds; rather more, in fact, as the market had been kind to him). But Gordon had been insistent and Matthew had not argued.

The rental of the marquees, of which there were two, was expensive enough in itself, costing over two thousand pounds – and that was before anybody had so much as sat down at the tables at which they were to be served the menu that Janice had arranged with the caterers. This was Menu E on a scale that progressed from Menu A – the you’ll-have-had-your-tea menu, at six pounds per head (inclusive of half a glass of champagne per guest) – through Menus B, C and D, to the higher glories of Menu E, described in the brochure as a meal of which passing angels might well feel envious. But it would have been unlikely that any passing angel would have guessed at the cost of what was seen below – fifty-eight pounds per head.

The caterer, a short, stout man, had recited the delights of Menu E to Janice when he came to visit her with his illustrated brochure and notebook.

“We shall start,” he intoned, “with the parcel of oak-smoked salmon, with fresh crab, bound in a lemon and dill mayonnaise.” He paused, watching the effect. “And then,” he continued, “there will be a gazpacho, over the surface of which a fine amontillado sherry has been dribbled.”

Janice raised an eyebrow. “Dribbled? Or drizzled?”

The caterer had laughed. “Drizzled. Of course. Silly me. It’s just when talking about such delicious things, one’s inclined to …”

“Of course.”

“And then, a
trou Normand
, followed by loin of Perthshire lamb with mushroom mousse, wrapped in …” again he paused for effect, “puff pastry.”

“Delicious,” said Janice.

The caterer agreed. “Indeed.” He raised a finger. “And to
pile Ossa upon Pelion, if you’ll permit the allusion, biscuits and cheese, rounded off with strawberries, meringues glacés and clotted cream.”

Menu E was chosen, as were wines – champagne, a good Pouilly-Fumé, and an equally good, but considerably more expensive, Brunello di Montalcino.

Then there was the music, which was provided by the Auld Reekie Scottish Dance Band under the leadership of David Todd, an accomplished musician who was also the nephew of that great man, the late Sir Thomas Broun Smith, author of the
Short Commentary on the Law of Scotland
. Dancing would take place in the second of the two marquees, with the band at one end, heroically making their way through “Mhairi’s Wedding” and the like, and the dancers at the other, flinging each other about with all the enthusiasm which Scottish country dance music engenders in the normally sedate Scottish soul. Tribal memories, thought Matthew, as he watched the spectacle of the dancing that evening; distant tribal memories that were still there.

As Matthew surveyed the guests enjoying themselves, the reality of what he had done came home to him. It made him feel more adult than he had ever before felt. Now he was responsible for somebody else, and that somebody else, who was at that moment dancing a Gay Gordons with Angus Lordie, was responsible for him. He felt the ring on his finger, twisting it round and round – it was a strange feeling, a symbol of the profound thing that had happened to him.

Elspeth caught his eye from the dance floor and smiled. Angus Lordie nodded. And then they were swept away by the whirl of dancers. Matthew saw the children dancing too – he noticed Bertie with a rather bossy-looking little girl; Bertie seemed to be an unwilling partner and was grimacing, which made Matthew smile. What did little boys see in weddings? he wondered. The end of freedom? The end of fun? Or something simply inexplicable?

Matthew moved outside. The evening sky was still light and
the air was unusually heavy for early June. He moved further away from the open sides of the marquee, from the light and sound that spilled out from within. There were days, he thought, which one was meant to remember in all their intensity; days such as this, his wedding day, which he should be able to bring back to mind years from now when the rest of this year would be forgotten. And yet he found that he could barely remember anything that had transpired within the church, and that even the journey from the church to the Moray Place Gardens, a journey of ten minutes at the most, seemed to have passed in a flash of … of what? Confusion? Elation?

He threw a glance back into the marquee. The band had started to play something slower now and the crowd of people on the dance floor had thinned. He should not stay out here, he decided; he should go back into the marquee and claim his bride.

He had reached the entrance to the tent when a figure came out – Elspeth’s Uncle Harald, holding a glass of champagne in his hand.

“Are you enjoying yourself, Harald?” Matthew asked. It was a banal question, but he did not really know what else to say.

Harald nodded. “Of course I am. And if I appear to be somewhat emotional – which I am – then that is purely because this music makes me pine for Scotland. I go back to Portugal tomorrow, but every time I return to Scotland it becomes more difficult to leave.”