44 Scotland Street Read online

  Stuart lowered the paper. “Some of these kings were influential,” he said. “They ran things then.”

  “That’s not what history is about,” snapped Irene. “History is about ordinary people. How they lived. What they ate. That sort of thing.”

  Stuart looked down at the review. “And ideas,” he said, mildly. “History is about ideas. And monarchs tended to have some influence in that direction. Take Jamie Sext, for example. He had ideas on language. He was quite enlightened. He would have enjoyed the newspapers, if they had been around.”

  Irene stared at him. “Which newspaper?” she asked. But he did not answer, and she continued: “What a peculiar thing to say!”

  “No,” said Stuart. “Not really. In fact, it’s quite interesting to speculate what people would have read if these papers had existed. Queen Victoria, for example, read The Times, but what would Prince Albert have read?”

  “The Frankfurter Allgemeine?” ventured Irene.

  They both laughed. This was undoubtedly very funny.

  “And was she amused by The Times?” asked Stuart.

  “No,” said Irene. “She was not.”

  Irene joined him at the table.

  “Enough levity,” she said. “We must talk about Bertie. We have to do something. I can’t face going back to that awful Macfadzean woman. So Bertie’s going to have to go elsewhere.”

  “Couldn’t he wait?” asked Stuart. “He knows a great deal as it is. Couldn’t we give him a gap year?”

  “A gap year?”

  Stuart seemed pleased with his suggestion. “Yes, a gap year between nursery and primary school. So what if he’s only five? Why not? Gap years are all the rage.”

  Irene looked pensive. “You know, you might have something there. It could be a year in which he did his Grade seven theory and one or two other things. It would take him out of the system for a while and allow him to flourish. We could make a programme.”

  “Send him abroad? Perhaps he could work in a village in South America, or Africa even.”

  Irene thought for a moment, as if weighing up the suggestion. “Hardly. But it would be a rather good way of letting him develop without having to look over his shoulder at other children. I’m sure he’d benefit. And perhaps I could take him to Italy – to perfect his spoken Italian.”

  Stuart laid aside his newspaper. “I was thinking of taking the pressure off a bit, rather than adding to it. I thought of a year out, so to speak. Perhaps we should leave Italian for the time being.”

  This suggestion did not go down well with Irene. “It would be a criminal waste of everything we’ve done so far if we let his Italian get rusty,” she said coldly. “And the same goes for the saxophone and theory of music. For everything in fact.”

  “But perhaps at this age we should concentrate on his langue maternelle,” said Stuart. “Italian is a very beautiful language, admittedly, but it isn’t his langue maternelle.”

  “Neither here nor there,” said Irene dismissively. “There is evidence – ample evidence – that the development of linguistic skills in the early years leads to much greater facility with language when one’s older. Every minute is precious at this age. The mind is very plastic.”

  Stuart opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it and was silent. He knew that he could not win an argument with Irene, and nine years of marriage to her had convinced him that he should no longer try.

  “I’ll think about it further,” said Irene. “The only decision we have to make now is not to take him back to that woman and her so-called nursery school. And I don’t think we should.”

  “D’accordo,” said Stuart.

  Irene looked satisfied. “In that case, I shall have a look around and see what’s possible. I’ll do this after we’ve started his therapy.”

  Stuart gave a start. This was new information. Had therapy been discussed before? He could not recall anything being said about it, but then sometimes he stopped paying attention when Irene was talking. He might have missed the discussion.

  Irene, noticing his puzzlement, explained. “The Scottish Institute of Human Relations,” she said. “We have an appointment there on Monday. A Dr Fairbairn. He’s been highly recommended and he’ll be able to advise us on why Bertie has suddenly started playing up.”

  “Do we really need all this?” asked Stuart.

  Irene stared at him. No response was necessary, or at least no verbal response.

  48. Plans for the Conservative Ball

  On the other side of the city, in their house in the higher reaches of the Braids, Raeburn Todd and his wife, Sasha, had finished their breakfast and were now drinking a cup of coffee in the conservatory. This was where they liked to sit after breakfast at weekends, particularly on a fine day, such as this was. The Braids could be cold, with their extra three hundred feet or so, but that morning the weather was warmer than normal and they had even opened a window of the conservatory. It was the day of the South Edinburgh Conservative Ball, and Todd, who was the chairman of the ball committee, was reviewing the prospects for that evening’s entertainment. He had made a list of things to do and was going through this with Sasha.

  “First thing,” he said in a businesslike fashion. “First thing is hotel bits and pieces. Meal and ballroom.”

  “All fine,” said Sasha, who composed the rest of the committee, the other members having sent their apologies. “The menu’s approved and the hotel said they would look after the flower.”

  Todd smiled. “Flower? Only one?”

  Sasha nudged him playfully. “You know what I meant. Flowers. The fact that we have very few people coming doesn’t mean we’re only going to have one flower.”

  Todd looked down at the list in front of him and shook his head. “On which subject,” he said, “this is really very disappointing. Nothing’s come in this morning, I take it? Nobody else signing up?”

  Sasha shook her head. “When the phone went before breakfast I hoped that it would be somebody. But it was the dress shop about my dress. So it looks like that’s it.” She paused. “Are you still sure that we should go ahead? Couldn’t we come up with some other explanation for a late cancellation?”

  Todd’s reply was firm. “No. Absolutely not. We’ve been through this before. And, anyway, other parties have their problems with parties, so to speak. Have you ever been to a Labour Party do? Awful. Dreadfully dull events. Like a primary school parents’ evening, but not quite so much fun. And the Liberal Democrats have these terrible dinners where everybody wears woolly pullovers and rather shabby dresses. And as for the SNP, well, everybody’s usually tight at their events, rolling all over the floor. Ghastly. No, we don’t do too badly, I’m telling you!”

  “Even with … how many is it?”

  Todd consulted his list. “I make it six,” he said. “You, me, Lizzie, that young man from the office, and Ramsey and Betty Dunbarton. They’ve confirmed, so that’s six.”

  Sasha picked up her coffee and took a sip. “We could have just one table, then,” she said. “We could all sit together.”

  This idea did not appeal to Todd. “No,” he said. “I think we should have two tables. Table One and Table Two. This is because it would look rather odd just to have one table, and then I’m not sure if we want to spend the whole evening with the Dunbartons, charming company though they undoubtedly are. It’s just that he’s such a bore. And I’m sorry, but I can’t stand her. So, no. Let’s have two tables. We’ll be at Table One, and they can be at Table Two.”

  Sasha accepted the reasoning behind this, and moved on to raise the issue of the band and the dances. “I’ve spoken to the man who runs it,” she said. “They come from Penicuik, I think, or somewhere out that way. I’ve told him that we want middle-of-the-road dance music to begin with and then something suitable for reels. He said that’s fine. He said they could do anything.”

  Todd nodded his agreement and was about to go on to another matter, but stopped. “Reels?”
he asked. “Eightsomes and the like?”

  “Yes,” said Sasha. “People love that.”

  “But there are only going to be six of us,” Todd pointed out. “How will we be able to do an eightsome if there are only six people there? And Ramsey Dunbarton is pretty frail these days. I can’t imagine him doing an eightsome. The old boy would probably drop down stone dead. Then there’d only be five of us.”

  “There are other dances,” said Sasha quickly. “A Gay Tories, for example, I mean a Gay Gordons! You only need two for that. And there’s the Dashing White Sergeant. That needs three for each set, so there could be two sets.”

  Todd thought for a moment. “But don’t you go in opposite directions with the Dashing White Sergeant, and then meet up? If three of us went off in one direction and three in another – always assuming that Ramsey Dunbarton is up to it – then we would only meet once we’ve danced round the whole room. The band would have to adapt. They’d have to play on and on until we got all the way round the room and met up on the other side. Wouldn’t that be a bit odd?”

  “Some of these bands are rather good,” said Sasha.

  49. Tombola Gifts

  Todd left Sasha in the house while he went off to play golf. His golf partner had declined to buy a ticket for the ball, and Todd intended to reproach him for this, although he knew that there was no possibility of his relenting. He was reconciled now to the idea of a ball of six, which was, in his view, quorate. Even two would have been enough; had he and Sasha been the only people there, they would have persisted and danced in the face of adversity. That was the only way in politics. A ball with six people one year could be a ball with sixty the next year, and then six hundred the year after that. Political fortunes shifted, and it was no good throwing in the towel because of temporary set-backs. The Scottish Conservative Party would rise again and be the great force that it once had been in the affairs of the nation; it was only a question of time. And then people would be clamouring for tickets to the South Edinburgh Conservative Ball and he, Todd, would take great pleasure in turning them away.

  After her husband had left for the Luffness Golf Club (Gullane, but not Muirfield), Sasha made her way into the dining room, where the prizes for the tombola were laid out on and around the large, four-leaf table. The members of the local party association had been generous, even if they had declined to attend the ball, and there were at least forty prizes waiting to be listed. Sasha sat down at the head of the table and began to compile a catalogue and assign a number to each prize. These numbers would then be put into a hat, and those at the ball – and those alone – would then be permitted to buy the tickets.

  She dealt first with the items on the table. There was a Thomas Pink shirt, in candy stripes, with a collar size of nineteen and a half. Now this was a fine shirt, well-made and with double cuffs, but the collar size was rather large. Todd took size seventeen, and even that was sometimes a bit large for him; he was a big man and presumably this shirt would fit an extremely well-built man. Was there anybody in the Conservative Party quite that large? There was Mr Soames, of course, but he was probably the sort of man who had enough shirts already. So this might not be the most useful of prizes.

  She assigned the shirt a number and turned to the next prize. This was a set of six fish knives and forks, made by Hamilton and Inches, and a very handsome prize for somebody. This would be popular at a Conservative function, but would be useless at a Labour Party event. They had no idea, she believed, of the use of fish knives and forks and used the same cutlery for everything. That was part of the problem. The Liberal Democrats, of course, knew what fish knives and forks were all about, but pretended they didn’t care! Liberal Hypocrites, thought Sasha.

  There were many other fine prizes. A digital radio, still in its box; a round of golf at the Merchants Golf Course; a large caddy of Old Edinburgh Tea from Jenners; and, now, what was this? – yes, the finest prize of all: lunch with Malcolm Rifkind and Lord James at the Balmoral Hotel! That was a splendid prize and it occurred to Sasha that she would dearly love to win that herself.

  This thought made her abandon her task of cataloguing for a few minutes and ponder the implications of this tombola. If there were forty prizes and there were only going to be six people at the ball, then that meant that each person would get at least six prizes. That assumed, of course, that each person bought an equal number of tickets (which would be limited to forty in all). If that happened, then everybody present at the ball would do rather well, and would certainly win prizes which very much exceeded in value the cost of the ticket.

  In these circumstances, Sasha reasoned, it would be permissible, perhaps, for the organiser – herself – to ensure that sensitive prizes were won by the right people. Now that would mean that the round of golf should not go to Ramsey Dunbarton, who was pretty unsteady on his legs and who could hardly be expected to play. So that, perhaps, could be directed towards Bruce, as a reward for agreeing to accompany Lizzie. Or perhaps, even more appropriately, he could win the dinner for two at Prestonfield House and take Lizzie with him, to give them a chance to get to know one another a bit better. That would be very satisfactory, and indeed the fairest outcome. The Ramsey Dunbartons could win the tea, which would suit them far better.

  That left the lunch with Malcolm Rifkind and Lord James. In Sasha’s view, the best possible person to win that would be herself. This was not because she was selfish, and wanted the glamorous prize, but because she wanted to protect the two generous donors from having to put up with Ramsey Dunbarton. It would be too much for them; they simply shouldn’t have to face it. And for this reason – the best of all possible reasons – Sasha decided that she would have to ensure that she won this prize herself.

  50. Bruce Prepares for the Ball

  When Bruce received Sasha’s call that morning – to invite him to pre-ball drinks at the house – he was about to leave 44 Scotland Street to buy himself a new dress shirt. His previous one, which had been a bargain, had washed badly, and looked grey, even under artificial light.

  “There isn’t going to be a big crowd there,” said Sasha, “but the Braid Hills Hotel does a very good dinner, and I hear that the band is excellent.”

  “How many are coming?” asked Bruce.

  There was a short silence at the other end of the line. “Not many. Probably fewer than fifty.”

  Bruce was polite. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. And I don’t like those really big affairs. You can’t hear what you’re saying to anybody.”

  “We’ll have a lot of fun,” said Sasha.

  He doubted that – at least for himself – but did not say anything. With any luck, he thought, he might be able to get away shortly after twelve – Conservatives probably went to bed early – or at least Bruce’s parents, both members of the Crieff Conservative Association, tended to retire by ten. So if it all came to an end in reasonable time, he would be able to get to a club and see what was going on there.

  “One thing,” said Sasha, before she rang off. “We’re having a tombola. We’ve been given a lot of good prizes, but if you can bring a little something along to add to it, please do.”

  “I’ll try,” said Bruce.

  He left the flat, feeling slightly restless. He found his life rather unsatisfactory at the moment. He had finished all the institute examinations, and so he was free of that particular burden, but it seemed as if nothing much else was happening. Part of the trouble was the absence of a girlfriend. I need somebody to hang about with, he thought. I need company. There was that girl in the flat, of course – Pat – but he found her a bit irritating. She seemed cool, indifferent even, although he suspected that this was a bit of an act. She’s probably pretty interested in me, he thought. She probably wants me to take notice of her, but the poor girl’s got a long wait ahead of her. Far too young, too unsophisticated. Pretty green. As he walked up to George Street, he glanced at his reflection in the occasional shop window. What a waste, he muttered. There I am loo
king like that, and no girlfriend. What a waste.

  The shirt purchased, he returned to Scotland Street and spent the afternoon on his bed, watching videos of classic rugby matches. There was Scotland against Ireland at Murrayfield of a few years previously – a great Scottish victory, with a fine try from a player whom Bruce had known at Morrison’s Academy. Then there was the Springboks playing Fiji, a terrific game in which four players were taken off to hospital in the first half! And Scotland meeting France in Paris, when France scored seventy points and Scotland scored three. That was not such a good game, Bruce thought, and he turned it off at half-time.

  At five o’clock he went into the bathroom, ran a hot bath, and after a few moments in front of the full-length mirror, immersed himself in the deep, soapy water. He felt more cheerful now. That Todd girl would cramp his style, no doubt, but there might be other girls to dance with there; he wouldn’t be stuck with her all night. And one of these other girls might be just right for him. There were stranger places to meet women than at a Conservative Ball. Such as … He wondered about that. Where was the most unlikely place to meet somebody? A dentist’s surgery? Warriston Crematorium?

  Bruce dressed himself with care. Gel was applied to the hair and cologne to exposed flesh. Then there was a quick inspection. Perfect. Great.

  He left his room and went out into the hall. It was at that point that he remembered Sasha’s request for a contribution to the tombola. This was irritating, but perhaps there would be some bric-à-brac in the cupboard. So he opened the door and looked inside. There were things which had been left there over the years by a succession of tenants. There might be something.

  He found the parcel, and opened it. He held the painting up to examine it under the light. He did not like it. The colours were too bright and there was not enough detail. This was the problem with amateurs – they couldn’t draw properly. You had to scratch your head to find out what they were trying to portray. Bruce liked Vettriano. He knew how to draw. Still, this would do for the tombola. It was obviously the work of somebody’s aunt, long forgotten and abandoned in this cupboard. But at least he would not arrive empty-handed. So he slipped it back into its wrapping, picked up his coat, and left for the Todd house in the Braids, the painting under his arm.