Love Over Scotland (10 page)

26. Matthew Meets an Architect

Depressed at the thought of his shortage of friends–or “viable friends”, as he put it–Matthew made his way that evening into the Cumberland Bar. He looked about him: there were one or two people he recognised, but nobody he knew well enough to go and join. So he bought himself a drink and sat at a table on his own. Sad, he thought; how sad. Here I am sitting in a bar, by myself, drinking; a situation in which I never imagined I would find myself. What lies beyond this? Drinking by myself in the flat? Of course, people drank by themselves; there was nothing essentially wrong in that–a glass of wine at one’s solitary table in the company of
The Scotsman
crossword or a book. There were worse things than that. It was hardly problem-drinking.

He looked at his watch. He would sit there for perhaps half an hour, and if nobody he knew had come in by then he would go out and buy himself a pizza and take it back to India Street and eat it in the flat. India Street was not the sort of place where people sat and ate pizzas by themselves; it was dinner-party territory. Now, that was an idea! He would plan a dinner party and invite a group of brilliant guests. The wit at the table would be coruscating; the exchange of ideas vital and exciting. There would be elegant women and clever men, and people would go off into the night buoyed by the stimulation of the evening…

But then he thought: where would I get the guests? Do I actually know any brilliant and witty people? He thought of his friends: none of the crowd by any stretch of the imagination could be described as brilliant company, and the crowd was breaking up now anyway. Then there was Ben, who would only talk about running–he had heard that Ben actually went to dinner parties in his running kit so that he could run there and run home again afterwards. There was Paul, who would only talk about babies, and who would only accept an invitation if it included the babies. So that ruled both of them out. Would Pat come? He would like it if she did, but now that she had that ridiculously-named boyfriend of hers, Wolf, she would probably not want to come without him, and Matthew could not face the prospect of entertaining that Wolf. What would one serve him? Raw venison? Wolves liked venison.

He sighed, and looked at his watch again. Ten minutes had passed. If he bought another half pint of lager, then that would last him until the thirty minutes was up and it was time to go and order the pizza. Thirty minutes of loneliness in a place of society, he thought; thirty minutes to himself while everyone else in the bar was with somebody. A sudden, vaguely shameful thought struck him. Nobody else in this bar has four million pounds–nor even one million pounds–and yet I am alone. It was an absurd, self-pitying thought, a thought which implied that money brought social success, brought happiness, which it patently does not; and yet he thought it.

He stood up and went to the bar, suddenly wondering whether his distressed-oatmeal cashmere sweater was right. Nobody else in the bar was in distressed oatmeal; in fact nobody else was in cashmere. Yet should it matter? Teenagers worried about whether their clothes were the same as everybody else’s; when you were safely into your twenties, that was not so important. You could wear what you like…Or could you? Could you get your colours entirely wrong and wear a colour that nobody else would wear? The colour of failure?

When Matthew reached the bar, the barman was waiting for him. Matthew saw the man’s glance move quickly to the distressed-oatmeal sweater and then slide back again, discreetly, professionally. Or had he imagined it? Barmen saw everything; it was all the same to them. He ordered another half pint of lager and then, half turning, he saw a young woman standing beside him. They looked at one another almost inadvertently and one of them–and it was Matthew–had to say something, or at least smile.

“It’s quiet,” he said. “I don’t know where everybody is.”

“Wherever they are,” she replied, “it’s not here.”

Matthew laughed. “Actually, this place gets quite busy. I don’t know…”

“Oh, people go home sometimes,” she said, “if they’re really stuck.”

Matthew gestured towards the barman. “Could I get you a drink?”

He had expected a rebuff, but it did not come. Instead, there was ready acceptance, and after the barman had served him again they went together to the table which Matthew had occupied. She introduced herself, smiling at Matthew in a way which immediately lifted Matthew’s depression. She likes me, he thought. I can see it in her eyes.

Her name, she revealed, was Leonie Marshall and she was an architect, barely qualified, but still an architect. Matthew listened carefully. The accent was difficult to place. “Australian?” he asked.

She nodded. “Melbourne–originally. Until I was ten. Then we moved to Canada, to Saskatoon, and I lived there until I was eighteen. Then, when my parents went to live in Japan, I went back to Melbourne to uni, did my architectural degree there, and my office years, and then came and did my diploma year at Newcastle.” She paused and took a breath while Matthew, watching her, mentally compared their lives: Australia, Canada, Japan, England, Scotland (her); Scotland (him).

“I finished in Newcastle,” she continued, “and had to decide what to do next. I could go back to boring old Melbourne, or I could get a job somewhere over here. There was a vacancy in a practice here in Edinburgh–a firm called Icarus Associates–and I applied and got it. So here I am.” She took a sip of her drink and looked at Matthew. “What about you?”

Matthew stared at the table. Small rings of liquid had formed where the glasses had stood. He moved a beer mat sideways and mopped one up. Then, in the other, he traced a pattern with a finger.

“I run a gallery,” he said. “I try to sell pictures. It’s in Dundas Street, near…” He stopped.

“Yes?”

“Would you like to come and have a pizza in my flat?”

“Yes.”

27. Leonie Talks

They walked back towards India Street along Cumberland Street. “I really like this street,” said Leonie. “You see the windows? Look at those ones over there. Astragals. Perfect proportions. And the buildings themselves are not too big. A comfortable size.”

Matthew had not paid much attention to Cumberland Street, but now, through Leonie’s eyes, he did. “This street is not as impressive as the next one up,” he said. “Great King Street has great big houses. It’s much higher.”

“Social distinctions revealed in architecture,” said Leonie. “Big houses–big people. More modest houses–more modest people.”

“Have you seen Moray Place?” asked Matthew. “It’s just round the corner from me.”

Leonie nodded. “Yes, I know it. One of the people from Icarus took me round and gave me the architectural tour of the New Town. We had a look at Moray Place.”

“And what did you think?” asked Matthew.

“Well, I wondered who lived there,” she said. “That’s what I thought.”

“Very grand people,” said Matthew. “The very grandest people in town.”

She made a gesture of acceptance. “I suppose that’s no surprise,” she said. “It’s very classical. Grand people gravitate to the classical. I suppose one wouldn’t find any funky people there?”

Matthew thought for a moment. Were there any funky people in Moray Place? He thought not. He was not at all sure whether there were any funky people in Edinburgh at all. Some towns were distinctly funky–San Francisco was an example–but Edinburgh was not one of them, he thought. He answered Leonie’s question with a shake of the head.

“I thought not,” she said. “Mind you, Edinburgh has its groovy side. There are some quite groovy places.”

“Groovy?” asked Matthew.

“Yes,” said Leonie. “I was in quite a groovy street the other day. I forget what it was called. But it was definitely groovy. The doors were all painted different colours and there was this strange old shop that sold the most amazing old clothes.”

“Stockbridge,” said Matthew. “It must have been in Stockbridge. St Stephen’s Street, probably.”

“I can’t remember,” said Leonie. “But it was just like one or two streets we have in Melbourne. In fact, there’s a street there that has the same sort of old clothes shops. Vintage clothing, they call it. They sell all sorts of things. Old military uniforms. Flapper dresses. Sweaters just like yours…”

It slipped out. She had not thought about what she was saying, and the remark slipped out. And she knew immediately what she had done, and regretted it. For his part, Matthew was assailed by the remark. It came from the side, struck him, and lodged. His distressed-oatmeal cashmere sweater, which he had paid so much for at Stewart Christie in Queen Street…

She reached out and took his arm. “I’m sorry,” she blurted out. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

He tried to smile. “My sweater? This thing? It’s just an old…”

“I really didn’t mean it. I promise you. Look…there’s nothing wrong with it. There really isn’t. I like beige.”

Matthew bridled slightly. “Beige? It’s not beige. It’s distressed oatmeal.”

She thought: porridge. It’s a porridge-coloured sweater. They must like porridge-coloured clothes in Scotland, and I’ve gone and hurt this really gentle, nice man with my stupid Australian tactlessness.

“I really didn’t mean…”

They had now reached the end of Cumberland Street and Matthew, who wanted to change the subject, pointed out St Vincent’s Church and the beginning of St Stephen’s Street. “And up on the corner there was where Madame Doubtfire had her shop,” he said. “She was a real person whose name was used by Anne Fine in her book. My father knew the original Madame Doubtfire. She was an old lady who kept a large number of cats and claimed that she ‘had danced before the Tsar’. That’s what she told everybody. Danced before the Tsar.”

“Who’s the Tsar?” asked Leonie.

Matthew hesitated. Was it possible that there were people who did not know who the Tsar was? He was about to explain, when Leonie said, “Oh him! The president of Russia.”

He burst out laughing, and immediately regretted it. The laughter had slipped out, as had her remark about his sweater. It just slipped out, as the best laughter will always do, in spontaneity, uncontrollable. He recovered himself quickly and looked grave. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh. It’s just that the Tsar was not exactly a president.”

Leonie did not seem offended. “I never learned much history,” she explained. “I was always drawing in history lessons. I drew houses–all the time.”

“And so you became an architect.”

“Yes.” She looked at him, and smiled. “What about you? I bet you knew that you were artistic when you were a little boy. Did you draw things too?”

Matthew felt flattered. Am I artistic? I suppose I am. I own a gallery. I can talk about art. “Yes,” he said solemnly, “I knew. I always knew.”

They continued their conversation easily. There was no further talk about sweaters or tsars. They moved on to the subject of where Leonie lived. She explained how she had a studio flat in a converted bonded warehouse in Leith. “It’s very fashionable to live in a bonded warehouse,” she said. “It’s the same as living in a loft in New York. All the really fashionable people live in lofts in New York. Bonded warehouses and lofts provide very flexible space. You can put in moveable room dividers. Tent walls. Living curtains.”

“What’s a living curtain?” Matthew asked.

“It’s a curtain you live behind,” answered Leonie. “Curtains are replacing walls. Take your flat, for example. Do you really need your walls?”

Matthew thought that he did, but he decided it sounded rather stuffy, rather conventional, to say that one needed walls. People who lived in Moray Place were welcome to walls–they clearly needed them. India Street was far less psychologically dependent on walls.

“No,” he said. “I’d like to get rid of some of my walls.”

“Great,” said Leonie. “When we get to your place, I’ll take a look around. I can do some sketches. We can work out what walls can come out.”

Matthew said nothing, but Leonie continued. “The thing about walls is that they hide things. Society is much more open now. Everything’s more open. The old culture of walls is finished.”

Matthew frowned. “But what about…what about bathrooms?”

“Open plan,” said Leonie, adding: “these days.”

28. The Boy in the Tree

Antonia Collie had settled into Domenica’s flat rather more quickly than she had imagined would be the case. Antonia did not consider herself a city person; she had been born and brought up in St Andrews, the daughter of a professor of anatomy, and apart from her student years in Edinburgh had lived the rest of her life in the country or in small towns. She had always felt vaguely uncomfortable in large cities; in a metropolis it felt to her as if something unsettling was always on the point of happening, but never quite happened. She had spent two weeks in London once, researching in the British Library, and had felt confused and threatened by the crowds of people on the street (“All going somewhere,” she had complained. “Nobody actually staying where they are.”)

Antonia had married young. Her attractive looks and her amusing tongue had caught the attention of the son of a prosperous East Perthshire farmer, a man who was regarded by his father as a hopeless prospect, by virtue of his complete lack of interest in crops and cattle, but who had, nonetheless, a talent for dealing in stocks and bonds by telephone. This young man, Harry Collie, found in Antonia an easy companion. They set up home in a converted mill at the edge of his father’s sprawling farm, and enjoyed the country life that such people might lead. This was an existence dominated by a social round that both of them came to regard as ultimately rather pointless, although diverting enough at the time.

Harry encouraged Antonia to pursue her interest in history. She enrolled for a Ph.D. at Edinburgh, and spent a great deal of time travelling to and from the National Library of Scotland and the Scottish Records Office. She found herself drawn ever deeper into the mysteries of medieval Scotland, and completing and submitting her doctoral thesis was, as she described it, like having, at last, a baby, which one then promptly gives away. Its publication by the Tuckwell Press was a matter of pride not only to her father, the now retired professor of anatomy, who had taken to writing monographs on silkworms, but also to her husband, who liked the idea that intellectual distinction might shine from a corner of Perthshire generally only associated with the cultivation of soft fruit.

Antonia and Harry had two children, a son and a daughter, Murdo and Antonia, known in the family as Little Antonia. When the children were ten and eight respectively, Harry started to see a woman in Perth who owned and ran a dress shop. Antonia became aware of this, and thought that his dalliance with this woman, whom she called the Dress Shop Assistant, would pass once he saw through what she imagined to be the other woman’s intellectual vacuity. She was wrong. Although he was not by nature fickle in his affections, what developed between Harry and the Dress Shop Assistant was a deep mutual dependence which neither was capable of defeating. Antonia suggested that Harry should move into Perth, but he refused. His family had lived on that bit of land for several hundred years, and it was all he knew. So Antonia decided that she would move back to St Andrews, taking Murdo and Little Antonia with her, and would live in a corner of her father’s house.

Then disaster struck. When she explained to Murdo and Little Antonia that they would be coming to live with her in St Andrews, they refused to go. Murdo, in particular, had a deep affection for the farm, and said that he would simply run straight back if taken to St Andrews. Little Antonia wept copious tears and said that she would not touch a morsel of food until the decision had been rescinded. She was as good as her word. She simply stopped eating, and in admiration for his sister’s act of defiance, Murdo climbed a tree in the garden of the house and refused to come down.

“But if you stay here, then you’ll be staying just with Daddy,” shouted Antonia into the foliage.

“Exactly,” came a disembodied voice from above. “That’s what we want to do.”

Antonia left him where he was. Those who climbed trees usually came down from them after a short while, although in the back of her mind she remembered Calvino’s novel
The Baron in the Trees
, a favourite book of hers. Calvino’s hero, the twelve-year-old Baron Cosimo Piavosco di Rondo, takes to the trees after a row at the dinner table over the eating of snails. He never comes down, and thereafter leads a full life in the treetops, covering considerable distances by moving from tree to tree; impossible, of course, but a very affecting story nonetheless. Murdo could hardly remain where he was for very long. Cosimo lived in a more forested age; Murdo had only the one tree, with sky on every side.

She returned to call him down an hour later. He was still there, though uncommunicative, and an hour after that she returned with the eighteen-year-old son of the stockman. “I’ll get him down for you,” muttered this young man, and he promptly scaled the tree, worked his way out onto the bough on which Murdo sat, and grabbed at the young boy’s shirt.

In his attempt to avoid capture, Murdo hung for a moment on the branch and then fell, crashing through lower branches on his descent. Antonia screamed and ran forward to attempt to catch him. She could not, of course, and the boy fell heavily on a grass-covered mound of earth at the base of the tree, winded and unable to cry, but otherwise unharmed. For the next five days, he refused to talk, and turned his face away from Antonia whenever she addressed him.

She had little alternative. The children stayed on the farm with their father and the Dress Shop Assistant. Antonia went to live in St Andrews, which made it possible for her to see the children regularly and also to look after her father. It was an arrangement that seemed to make everybody content, and Antonia, rather to her surprise, found that she was inordinately happy. Even the formal ending of the marriage was amicable, and she had the satisfaction of knowing that it was not her fault. In this state of blessedness, she began to write her novel.