Espresso Tales (37 page)

103. All Goes Well for Bruce

“So he's going away,” said Dr Macgregor. “To London, you say?”

Lying on her bed, talking to her father on the telephone, Pat gazed up at the ceiling. “Yes,” she said. “He came back this evening looking tremendously pleased with himself.”

“But that's not unusual for that young man,” said Dr Macgregor. “The narcissistic personality is like that. Narcissists are always pleased with themselves. They're very smug.” He paused. “Have you ever come across anybody who always looks very smug? Somebody who just can't help smiling with self-satisfaction? You know the type.”

“Yes,” said Pat.

“Apart from Bruce, that is,” said her father.

Pat thought for a moment. There had been a boy at school who had been very smug. He came from a smug family in Barnton. All of them were smug. And what made it worse was that he won everything: the boys' 100-metre dash; the under-sixteen 50-metre breaststroke; the school half-marathon…

“Yes,” she said. “There was somebody like that.”

“And did you feel envious?”

“Yes,” said Pat. “We all felt envious. We hated him. We wanted to prick him with a pin. Somebody actually did that once.”

“Not surprising,” said her father. “But it really doesn't help, you know. These people are impervious to that sort of deflation. They're psychologically tubeless, if I may extend the metaphor.”

“Bruce is exactly like that,” said Pat. “He's undeflatable.”

Dr Macgregor laughed. “So he announced his departure? Why is he going?”

“It's a bit complicated,” said Pat. “He lost his job, you see. Then he started a business, a wine dealership. He says that he was let down by somebody who had promised to invest. He bought some tremendously grand wine at a knock-down price. He sold most of it today at a wine auction in George Street.”

She remembered Bruce's triumphant return to the flat earlier that evening, brandishing the note of sale from the auction house.

“He made over thirty thousand on the wine,” she went on. “He was very pleased. He said that he wouldn't bother with the wine trade now and would go down to London instead. He would live there for a while on the proceeds of the auction and then get a job. He said that he was keen to try commodity trading.”

“And what about the flat?” asked Dr Macgregor.

“I'm afraid he's selling it,” said Pat. “He's going to put it on the market next week.”

“Which means that you're going to have to move out.”

“Yes,” said Pat. “That's the end of Scotland Street for me.”

There was silence at the other end of the line. The world was a lonely place, a place of transience, of change, of loss; only the bonds, the ties of friendship and family protected us from that loneliness. And what parent would not have wished his daughter to say: “Yes, I'm coming home”, and what parent with Dr Macgregor's insight would not have known that this would have been quite the wrong answer for Pat to give him?

“You're always welcome to come back here,” he said. “But you'll want somewhere with other students, which would be much better. Will it be hard to find somewhere?”

“I've got a friend in Marchmont,” said Pat. “She says that there's a place in her flat. It's one of those big flats in Spottiswoode Street.”

“You must take it,” said Dr Macgregor.

After they had concluded their conversation, Pat got up and went through to the kitchen. Bruce was sitting at the table, a newspaper spread out on the table in front of him. He looked up and smiled at Pat.

“Do you realise how much this place is going to go for?” he asked her. “I'm looking at some of the prices of places nearby. I'm going to make a packet, you know.” He sighed. “Pity you can't afford to buy it, Pat. Then you could stay here instead of moving out to some obscure street on the South Side. Acne-Timber Street, or whatever it's called.”

“Acne-Timber Street?”

“That's what I call Spottiswoode Street,” Bruce said. “Where's your sense of humour?”

“Of course, if you buy something in London,” Pat said, “then you're going to have to pay through the nose for it, Bruce. You won't get anything in Fulham for what you get for Scotland Street, you know. You're going to be in some dump somewhere, Bruce. Or Essex. You might even end up in Essex.”

Bruce laughed. “No danger of that for me! I'm moving in with somebody in Holland Park. You know it? Just round the corner from that nice restaurant, Clarke's. You know the place? You can get a Clarke's cookbook. Everybody goes there. All the creative people. You get noticed there. I saw Jamie Byng there once.”

Pat stared at him. They might part company on bad terms or good. If it was to be bad terms, then she could tell him now, before it was too late, what she thought of him. But what would be the point of that? Nothing could dent Bruce–nothing; it was just as her father had said. Bruce was perfection incarnate in his own eyes. It would be good terms, then. She was big enough for that.

“You're going to love London, Bruce,” she said. “And you'll do pretty well there.”

“Thanks,” said Bruce. “Yes, I think it's going to go rather well. And this flat I'm moving into, very bijou–I'll be sharing with the girl who owns it. Her old man's pretty well-off. He likes me, she says. And she's got her views on that, too, if you know what I mean. She's a stunner. English rose type. Long, blonde hair. Job in PR. Who knows what lies ahead? Who knows?”

Pat nodded. “That's very nice for you, Bruce.” She paused. “And thanks, Bruce, for everything you've done for me. Letting me live here and so on.”

Bruce rose to his feet. Taking a step forward, he reached out and placed both his arms lazily on her shoulders.

“You're not a bad type, Pat,” he said. “And you know what? I reckon I'm going to miss you a bit when I'm down there. And so…” He bent forward and then, to Pat's astonishment, planted a kiss on her lips, not a gentle kiss, but one that was remarkably passionate, for Edinburgh.

Drawing back, he looked down at her and smiled. “There,” he said. “That's what you've been wanting for so long, isn't it?”

Pat could not speak. Cloves, she thought. Now I smell of cloves.

104. Preparing Dinner

“Porcini mushrooms,” intoned Domenica. “Place dried porcini mushrooms in a bowl of hot water and allow the mushrooms to reconstitute. Keep the liquid.”

“Why?” asked Pat. “What are we going to do with it?”

“We are going to cook the Arborio rice in it,” explained Domenica. “In that way, the rice will absorb the taste of the mushrooms. It's the same principle as in the old days when people in Scotland ate tatties and a pass. The pass was the passing of a bit of meat over the tatties. The father ate the meat and the children just got a whiff of it over their tatties.”

“Life was hard,” said Pat, slitting open the packet of mushrooms.

“Yes,” said Domenica. “And now here we are, descendants of those very people, opening packets of imported mushrooms.” She looked out of the window, down onto Scotland Street, to the setts glistening after the light evening rain which had drifted over the town and was now drawing a white veil over Fife. “And to think,” she went on, “that the woman who lived in this house when it was first built probably had only one or two dresses. That's all. People had very few clothes, you know. Even the wives of well-to-do farmers–they might have had only one dress. Life was very different.”

“It's hard to imagine,” said Pat.

“Yes,” said Domenica. “But we need to remind ourselves. We need to renew that bond between ourselves and them, our great-great-grandparents, or whatever they were. It's what makes us a people. It's the knowledge of what they went through, what they were, that brings us together. If we lost that, then we'd be just an odd collection of people living on the same little bit of land. And that would be my nightmare, Pat–it really would. If our sense of ourselves as a group, a nation, as Scots, were to disappear.”

Pat shrugged. “But nobody's going to make that disappear,” she said. “Why would they?”

Domenica spun round. “Oh, there are plenty of people who would be quite happy to see all that disappear. What do you think globalisation is all about? Who gains if we're all reduced to compliant consumers, all with the same tastes, all prepared to accept decisions which are made at a distance, by people whom we can't censure or control?

“I, for one, refuse to lie down in the face of all that,” went on Domenica. “I want to live in a community with an authentic culture. They may sound trite, but I can find no other words for it. I want to have a culture that is the product of where I am–that engages with the issues that concern me. It's the difference between electronic music and real music. Between the predigested pap of Hollywood and real film. It's that basic, Pat.”

Domenica reached for her recipe book. She sighed.

“I sometimes feel very discouraged,” she said. “You must forgive me. I look out at our world and I just get terribly discouraged. And if I ever turn on a television set, which I try to avoid if at all possible, it only gets worse. All that crudity, that dumbing-down. Inane, mindless game shows. People laughing at the humiliation and anger of others. The most basic, triumphalist materialism, too.

“And the crassness, the sheer crassness of the characters who are paraded across the national stage to be jeered at or applauded. The vain celebrities, the foul-mouthed bullies. What a wonderful picture of our national life all this presents!

“And what voices are there in all this…all this noise? What voices are there to say something serious and intelligent? When the justice minister went to her own constituency to try to do something about the selling of alcohol to young teenagers, she was barracked and sworn at by teenage boys, and nothing was done to stop it. Did you see that? Did you see that shocking picture? That poor woman! Trying to do an impossible job as best she could, and that's her reward.

“I don't know, Pat. I don't know. I have the feeling that we've seen the dismantling of civilisation, brick by brick, and now we're looking at the void. We thought that we were liberating people from oppressive cultural circumstances, but we were, in fact, taking something away from them. We were killing off civility and concern. We were undermining all those little ties of loyalty and consideration and affection that are necessary for human flourishing. We thought that tradition was bad, that it created hidebound societies, that it held people down. But, in fact, what tradition was doing all along was affirming community and the sense that we are members one of one another. Do we really love and respect one another more in the absence of tradition and manners and all the rest? Or have we merely converted one another into moral strangers–making our countries nothing more than hotels for the convenience of guests who are required only to avoid stepping on the toes of other guests?”

Domenica put down her recipe book. “I'm so sorry, Pat,” she said. “You shouldn't have to listen to all this from me. I know that one could argue the exact opposite of what I've just said. I know that one might point out that moral progress of all sorts has been made–and it has. In many respects we are more aware of others' feelings than we used to be. And, of course, there's the ready availability of porcini mushrooms…”

They both laughed, and Domenica looked at her watch. “The guests will be here in an hour,” she said. “And we still have a great deal to do. Open the wine, will you, Pat? We must let it breathe. It's very kind of you to bring those bottles.”

“I found them in the cupboard,” said Pat. “They belong to Bruce, actually, and I didn't have the chance to ask him. But he's always helped himself to my wine and replaced it later with cheap Australian red. So I thought I'd do the same.”

“Quite right,” said Domenica.

Pat stood up and went over to the table where she had placed the three bottles of wine.

“Chateau Petrus,” she said, reading the label. “I wonder if they'll be any good?”

“No idea,” said Domenica. “Never heard of it.”

105. Farewell

They stood around the fireplace in Domenica's drawing room, glasses of wine in their hands, the guests of Domenica. They were her friends, and here and there the friend of a friend. Angus Lordie was there, wearing a frayed cravat and a jacket patched with leather at the elbows and cuffs; without Cyril, now, who was tied to a railing below and who was happy, nonetheless, with the smells of Scotland Street in his nostrils and the occasional glimpse of a furtive cat on the other side of the street. And standing next to Angus, smiling at a remark which the painter had made, James Holloway, Domenica's friend of many years, and Judy Steel too, perched on the arm of a chair and talking to one who was sunk within the chair, Willy Dalrymple, who had been the only one to recognise the Chateau Petrus and had complimented Domenica on it. And then there was Olivia Dalrymple and Pat herself, and Matthew, who had come as her guest, and who stood on the other side of the fireplace, curiously remote in his attitude towards her, Pat thought–but Matthew had his moody periods, and this must be one.

The conversation had ranged widely. They had considered the question of the Reverend Robert Walker skating on Duddingston Loch and had been equally divided. Some believed that it was beyond doubt by Raeburn; others were convinced by the Danloux hypothesis. The summer: some believed that it had confirmed that global warming had arrived; others felt that the summer had been indistinguishable from any other summer of recent memory. And so the areas of potential agreement and disagreement had revealed themselves, to be dissected and discussed and passed over for the next topic.

At nine o'clock, Domenica led her guests through to the dining room, where they sat about her large mahogany table while she and Pat went through to the kitchen to collect the first course.

“That wine is quite delicious,” said Domenica. “Willy seemed to imply that it was something special.”

Pat felt a momentary pang of doubt. Bruce had told her that she could help herself; she clearly remembered his saying so, and he had himself taken two bottles of her Chilean Merlot on one occasion. So she had nothing to worry about, and she put the thought out of her mind.

The risotto was perfect, acclaimed by all, and after the plates had been cleared away, Angus Lordie tapped his glass with a spoon. The glass, which was empty, the Chateau Petrus having been consumed to the last drop, rang out clear across several conversations and brought them to silence.

“Dear friends,” he said, “we are coming to the end of something here. When I was a little boy I hated things to end, as all children do, except their childhood–no child, of course, wants his childhood to go on forever. And when I became a young man, I found that I still hated things to end, though now, of course, I was learning how quickly and hard upon each other's heels do the endings come.

“Today, our dear friend, Domenica, told us that she was proposing to go away for some time. She is a scholar, and she obeys the tides of scholarship. These tides, she told us, now take her to the distant Malacca Straits, to a particularly demanding piece of fieldwork. I have my own views on that project, but I respect Domenica for her bravery in going to live amongst those whom she intends to study.

“We who are left behind in Edinburgh can only imagine the dangers which she will face. But tonight we can assure her that she goes with our love, which is what we would wish, I'm sure, to any friend about to undertake a journey. You go off clad in the clothes of our love. For that, surely, is what friendship is all about–about the giving of love and the assurance of love.”

Angus stopped, and there was silence. He looked at Domenica, across the table, and she smiled at him.

“Dear Angus,” she said. “A poem is called for.”

“It is,” said James Holloway.

Angus looked down at his plate, at the crumbs that lay upon it; all that was left.

“Very well,” he said. “A poem about small things, I think.”

He stood up, closed his eyes briefly, and then opened them as he began to speak.

         

Dear one, how many years is it–I forget–

Since that luminous evening when you joined us

In the celebration of whatever it was that we were celebrating–I forget–

It is a mark of a successful celebration

That one should have little recollection of the cause;
As long as the happiness itself remains a memory.
Our tiny planet, viewed from afar, is a place of swirling clouds
And dimmish blue; Scotland, though lodged large in all our hearts
Is invisible at that distance, not much perhaps,
But to us it is our all, our place, the opposite of nowhere;
Nowhere can be seen by looking up
And realising, with shock, that we really are very small;
You would say, yes, we are, but never overcompensate,
Be content with small places, the local, the short story
Rather than the saga; take pleasure in private jokes,
In expressions that cannot be translated,
In references that can be understood by only two or three,
But which speak with such eloquence for small places
And the fellowship of those whom you know so well
And whose sayings and moods are as familiar
As the weather; these mean everything,
They mean the world, they mean the world.