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The Revolving Door of Life
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Praise for Alexander McCall Smith’s
44 SCOTLAND STREET SERIES
“Irresistible….Packed with the charming characters, piercing perceptions, and shrewd yet generous humor that have become McCall Smith’s cachet.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“Feel the warmth of McCall Smith’s wit, deft characterization, and overarching theme of kindness….You’ll be treated to an astonishing view of changes in characters’ lives, very much like a time-lapse video in book form.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“McCall Smith, a fine writer, paints his hometown of Edinburgh as indelibly as he captures the sunniness of Africa. We can almost feel the mists as we tread the cobblestones.”
—The Dallas Morning News
“Just about perfect….Contains a healthy helping of McCall Smith’s patented charm.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Will make you feel as though you live in Edinburgh, if only for a short while, and it’s a fine place to visit indeed….Long live the folks on Scotland Street.”
—The Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
Alexander McCall Smith
THE REVOLVING DOOR OF LIFE
Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, the Isabel Dalhousie series, the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series, the 44 Scotland Street series, and the Corduroy Mansions series. He is professor emeritus of medical law at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and has served with many national and international organizations concerned with bioethics.
www.alexandermccallsmith.com
BOOKS BY ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH
IN THE 44 SCOTLAND STREET SERIES
44 Scotland Street
Espresso Tales
Love Over Scotland
The World According to Bertie
The Unbearable Lightness of Scones
The Importance of Being Seven
Bertie Plays the Blues
Sunshine on Scotland Street
Bertie’s Guide to Life and Mothers
IN THE NO. 1 LADIES’ DETECTIVE AGENCY SERIES
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
Tears of the Giraffe
Morality for Beautiful Girls
The Kalahari Typing School for Men
The Full Cupboard of Life
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
Blue Shoes and Happiness
The Good Husband of Zebra Drive
The Miracle at Speedy Motors
Tea Time for the Traditionally Built
The Double-Comfort Safari Club
The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party
The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection
The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon
The Handsome Man’s De Luxe Café
The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine
FOR YOUNG READERS
The Great Cake Mystery
The Mystery of Meerkat Hill
The Mystery of the Missing Lion
IN THE ISABEL DALHOUSIE SERIES
The Sunday Philosophy Club
Friends, Lovers, Chocolate
The Right Attitude to Rain
The Careful Use of Compliments
The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday
The Lost Art of Gratitude
The Charming Quirks of Others
The Forgotten Affairs of Youth
The Perils of Morning Coffee (eBook only)
The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds
At the Reunion Buffet
The Novel Habits of Happiness
IN THE CORDUROY MANSIONS SERIES
Corduroy Mansions
The Dog Who Came in from the Cold
A Conspiracy of Friends
IN THE PORTUGUESE IRREGULAR VERBS SERIES
Portuguese Irregular Verbs
The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs
At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances
Unusual Uses for Olive Oil
OTHER WORKS
La’s Orchestra Saves the World
The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa
Trains and Lovers
The Forever Girl
Fatty O’Leary’s Dinner Party (eBook only)
Emma: A Modern Retelling
AN ANCHOR BOOKS ORIGINAL, FEBRUARY 2016
Copyright © 2015 by Alexander McCall Smith
Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Iain McIntosh
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd., Edinburgh, in 2015.
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book is excerpted from a series that originally appeared in The Scotsman newspaper.
The Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress.
Anchor Books Paperback ISBN 9781101971918
eBook ISBN 9781101971925
Author illustration © Iain McIntosh
Cover illustration © Iain McIntosh
www.anchorbooks.com
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Contents
Cover
About the Author
Books by Alexander McCall Smith
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
1. Moving Can Be Good for You
2. Distressed Furniture
3. Boys Are So Physical
4. Glasgow—A Promised Land
5. E Portugallia Semper Aliquid Boni
6. A Mother-in-Law Reflects
7. The Transmissibility of Cowness
8. Mitigated Beige
9. The Ethics of Portraiture
10. Lions, Sociobiology, and Maleness
11. A Selfish Climber
12. Alpha Males and Sociopathy
13. Enter Nairn MacTaggart
14. Above Edinburgh Airport, She Wept
15. The Sad Fate of the Danish Car Industry
16. Hen Parties and the Scottish Enlightenment
17. Suitcases as Hostages to Fortune
18. Tartan Light
19. Big Lou Makes a Change
20. The Sodium Chloride of the Earth
21. Wee Hettie
22. Scotland’s Shameful Diet
23. A Tram Goes Past
24. Drummond Place Issues
25. He Never Thought of Love
26. Because It’s Small and It’s Ours…
27. Hand Sanitiser Issues
28. French Intimisme
29. We See More of the Scottish Nudists
30. Nudist Disharmony
31. Ankles and Temptation
32. Stepmother Days
33. The Czechess
34. Verbalisation Precedes Resolution
35. The Conversation of Men
36. Clothing Speaks
37. Problems of Ownership
38. Things Improve for Bertie
39. Do Something, Stuart
40. The World According to Bruce
41. The Ethics of Temptation
42. The Canny Man’s Plan
43. Tiny Slivers of Favour
44. The Decline of the Dinner Party
45. The Symbolism of the Sphinx
46. A Moment of Insight
47. A Cocktail Party in Moray Place Gardens
48. The Dastardly Plot Is Revealed
; 49. Macbeth and Proportional Representation
50. On the Way to the Kilt-Maker
51. More about Fersie MacPherson
52. Bertie’s Sporran
53. The Trap is About to be Sprung
54. What to Take to a Dinner Party
55. Celebs, Popes, Tattoos
56. I’m Going to Try Now
57. The Switching On of Magnets
58. A Meeting with Marchmont
59. Fear and Jeopardy in Mary King’s Close
60. I May Be Some Time
61. Friends and Others
62. At the Scotch Malt Whisky Society
63. In Valvona & Crolla
64. At St. Fillan’s
65. A Nice Surprise for Bruce
66. You Have a Good, Hollow Back
67. A Father Forgives
68. The Caledonian Antisyzygy
69. In Drummond Place Gardens
70. In the Cumberland Bar
71. Friendship, Camouflage, Love
This book is for Louise Richardson
1. Moving Can Be Good For You
Matthew had read somewhere—in one of those hoary lists with which newspapers and magazines fill their columns on quiet days—that moving house was one of the most stressful of life’s experiences—even if not quite as disturbing as being the victim of an armed robbery or being elected president, nemine contradicente, of an unstable South American republic. Matthew faced no such threats, of course, but he nevertheless found the prospect of leaving India Street for the sylvan surroundings of Nine Mile Burn extremely worrying. And it made no difference that Nine Mile Burn was, as the name suggested, only nine miles from the centre of Edinburgh.
“What really worries me,” he confessed to Elspeth, “is the whole business of selling India Street. What if nobody wants to buy this flat? What then?”
He looked at her with unconcealed anxiety: he could imagine what it was like not to be able to sell one’s house. He had recently been at a party at which somebody had whispered pityingly of another guest: “He can’t sell his flat, you know.” He had looked across the room at the poor unfortunate of whom the remark was made and had seen a hodden-doon, depressed figure, visibly bent under the burden of unshiftable equity. That, he decided, was how people who couldn’t sell their house looked—shadowy figures, wraiths, as dejected and without hope as the damned in Dante’s Inferno, haunted by the absence of offers for an unmoveable property. He had shuddered at the thought and reflected on his good fortune at not being in that position himself. Yet here he was deliberately courting it…
Elspeth’s attitude was more sanguine. She had been unruffled by their previous moves—from India Street to Moray Place, and then back again to India Street. The prospect of another flit—a Scots word that implies an attempt to evade the clutches of creditors suggests, misleadingly, that moving is an airy, inconsequential thing—did not seem to trouble her, and she had no concerns about the sale of the flat. “But of course somebody will want to buy it,” she reassured him. “Why wouldn’t they? It’s one of the nicest flats in the street. It’s got plenty of room and bags of light. Who wouldn’t want to live in the middle of the Edinburgh New Town?”
Matthew frowned. “The New Town isn’t for everybody,” he said. “Not everybody finds the Georgian aesthetic pleasing.” He paused as he tried to think of a single person he knew of whom this was true. “There are plenty of people these days who are suburban rather than urban. People who like to have…” He paused for thought. He knew nobody like this, but they had to exist. “Who like to have garages. Homo suburbiensis. Morningside man, who is a bit like Essex man but just a touch…”
“Superior?”
“You said it; I didn’t.”
Elspeth smiled. “You shouldn’t worry so much, Matt, darlingest. And so what if we don’t sell it? We can afford the other place anyway.”
Matthew winced. “If I dip into capital,” he said.
Elspeth shrugged. “But isn’t money for spending? And surely there’s enough there to be dipped into.”
Matthew knew that she was right; at the last valuation, his portfolio of shares in the astute care of the Adam Bank had shot up and he could have bought the new house several times over if necessary. But Matthew had been imbued by his father with exactly that sense of caution that had created the fund in the first place, and the idea of selling shares in any but the direst of emergencies was anathema to him.
In general, Elspeth did not look too closely at Matthew’s financial affairs. She had never been much interested in money, and very rarely spent any on anything but family essentials and the occasional outfit or pair of shoes. She was nonetheless aware of their good fortune and of the fact that thanks to the generosity of Matthew’s businessman father they were spared the financial anxieties that affected most people. Her capacity for moral imagination, though, was such that she could understand the distorting effect that poverty had on any life, and she had never been, nor ever would become, indifferent to the lot of those—perhaps a majority of the population of Scotland—who were left with relatively little disposable income after the payment of monthly bills. This attitude was shared by Matthew, with the result that they were tactful about their situation—and generous too, when generosity was required.
The farmhouse near Nine Mile Burn had not been cheap. Although it was far enough from Edinburgh to avoid the high prices of the capital, it was close enough to be more expensive than houses in West Linton, a village that lay only a few miles further down the road. Their house, which they had agreed to buy from no less a person than the Duke of Johannesburg, who lived at Single Malt House not far away, had been valued at seven hundred thousand pounds. For that they got six bedrooms in the main house—along with a study, a gun room (Matthew did not have a gun, of course), and a drawing room with a good view of both the Lammermuir and Moorfoot Hills to the south and east; a tractor shed, a byre, and six acres of ground.
The Duke had been pleased that Matthew was the purchaser; they had met on several occasions before, although the Duke seemed to have only the vaguest idea of who Matthew was. Matthew’s quiet demeanour, however, had been enough to endear him to the Duke.
“I must say,” the Duke had remarked to a friend, “it’s a great relief to have found somebody who’s not in the slightest bit shouty. You know what I mean? Those shouty people one meets these days—all very full of themselves and brash. We used to have very few of them in Scotland, you know; now they’re on the rise, it seems.”
The friend knew exactly what the Duke meant. “Nouveau riche,” he said. “They’re flashy—they throw their money around.”
The Duke nodded. “Whereas I’m nouveau pauvre. I’ve got barely a sou these days, you know—not that I ever had very much.”
“And you a duke,” said the friend. “Fancy that!”
“Well, a sort of duke,” conceded the Duke. “I’m not in any of the stud books, you know: Debrett’s and so on. Or I’m in one of them—just—but I gather it’s not a very reliable one. It was rather expensive to get in; you had to buy sixty copies, as I recall, and I think quite a number of people in it are a bit on the ropey side. In fact, all of them are, I believe.”
“People take you at your own evaluation, I’ve always thought,” said the friend. “Behave like a duke and they’ll swallow it.”
“True,” said the Duke. “But frankly, that’s a bit difficult for me, old man. I’m not quite sure what the form is when it comes to being a pukka duke.”
“Take a look at some of the people who are what they claim to be,” advised the friend. “Watch the way they stand; the way they walk. They’re very sure-footed, I’m told. And they look down at the ground a lot.”
“That’s because they own it,” said the Duke. “Doesn’t apply to me—or not very much. I’ve got fifty-eight acres in Midlothian and forty-one up in Lochaber, but most of it is pretty scrubby. Lots of broom and rhododendrons.”
The friend looked thoughtful. “No, you’re n
ot quite the real thing, I suppose. And then there’s always the risk that the Lord Lyon will catch up with you.”
The mention of the Lord Lyon made the Duke blanch. This was the King of Arms, the official who supervised all matters of heraldry and succession in Scotland. He had extensive legal powers and could prosecute people for the unauthorised use of coats of arms and the like.
“Do you think Lyon would ever bother about me?” asked the Duke nervously.
His friend looked out of the window. “You never know,” he said. “But I shouldn’t like to be in your shoes if he did.”
It was not the sort of thing a friend should say—or at least not the sort of thing that a reassuring friend should say.
2. Distressed Furniture
The Duke of Johannesburg proved to be a most considerate seller, more than prepared to include all the contents of the house in the sale without adding anything to the purchase price.
“We haven’t lived in the place for years,” he said. “And recently we let it out, of course. But all the stuff is ours, and some of it is actually quite good, even if it’s a bit distressed, as the antique dealers say. Mind you, distressed is not quite strong enough for some of my furniture. My furniture has moved beyond being distressed. Terminal might be more accurate. I can just imagine the auction catalogues—can’t you?—‘a table in terminal condition’ and so on. Hah!”