Love Over Scotland (3 page)

5. The Judgement of Neuroaesthetics

“Now then,” said the woman on the doorstep of Domenica’s flat. “You must be Angus Lordie. Thank you for letting me in. I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”

“You have not,” said Angus, looking at the woman standing before him. “Not at all.” His portraitist’s eye, from ancient habit, noted the high cheek bones and the slightly retroussé nose; noted with approval, and with understanding too, as he knew that a feminine face such as this was subliminally irresistible to men. Men liked women whose faces reminded them of babies–a heightened brow, a pert nose–these sent signals to men: protect me, I’m vulnerable. ‘Neuroaesthetics’ was the term he had seen for this new discipline; not that such a science could tell him anything that he did not already know as a painter and connoisseur of the human face. Regularity was good, but not too much regularity, which became tedious, almost nauseating.

Of course, there was far more that Angus was able to read into the physical appearance of Antonia Collie as she stood before him. They had barely introduced themselves, and yet he was confident as to her social background, her interests, and her availability. The clothes spoke to the provenance: a skirt of cashmere printed in a discreetly Peruvian pattern (or, certainly, South American; and Peru was very popular); a white linen blouse (only those with time on their hands to iron could wear linen); and then a navy-blue jacket with a gold brooch in the form of a running hare. The navy-blue jacket indicated attachment to the existing order, or even to an order which no longer existed, while the brooch announced that this was a person who had lived in the country, or at least one who knew what the country was all about. Of course, the fact that this Antonia Collie was a close friend of Domenica’s would have told Angus Lordie all this, had he reflected on the fact that people’s close friends are usually in their own mould. Antonia would thus be a blue stocking, a woman of intellectual interests and marked views.

Angus smiled at the thought, relishing the prospect of a replacement for Domenica. It was all most convenient; his visits to Domenica, his enjoyment of her conversation–and her wine–would now be replaced by the exact equivalent, provided by Antonia Collie. It was a very satisfactory prospect.

“Please let me take that for you,” he said, pointing to the small brown case beside her. “Is this all you have?”

“Sufficient unto the day,” said Antonia, stepping aside to allow Angus to pick up the suitcase. “I didn’t need to bring much of my own stuff. Domenica and I are the same size, you see. She said I could just wear her clothes if I liked. And drive her car too. She’s such a generous friend!”

Angus nodded. He did not show his surprise, but it seemed a very odd arrangement to him. Clothes were very personal and he could not imagine being happy in the knowledge that somebody else was wearing his clothes. He had once found himself wearing a pair of socks that he did not recognise and had been appalled at the thought that he had inadvertently taken his host’s pair of socks when he had stayed with friends in Kelso. What a dreadful thought! For the next few days he examined his toes carefully for signs of fungal infection; or would a normal wash effectively rid socks of lurking fungus? His host had been a perfectly respectable person–a lawyer, no less–but athlete’s foot was no respecter of professional position: it could strike even a WS. Of course, women were much more relaxed about these matters, he thought; they shared clothes quite willingly. Perhaps this was because they did not find one another physically disgusting. Men, in general, found one another vaguely repulsive; women were different.

With these thoughts in mind, Angus carried Antonia’s small suitcase through to the study and laid it down near the fireplace. Antonia had moved to the window and was peering down to the street.

“It’s a long time since I was in this flat,” she mused, craning her neck to look. “I seem to remember Domenica having a slightly better view than this. Still, no matter. I doubt if I shall spend my time gazing out of the window.”

She turned and looked at Angus. “Domenica often spoke of you,” she said. “She enjoyed the conversations the two of you had.”

“And I too,” Angus said. “She was…” He looked at her, and she saw the sadness in his expression.

“Let’s not use the past tense when speaking of her,” said Antonia cheerfully. “She’s not exactly dead yet, is she? She’s in the Malacca Straits. That, I would have thought, amounts to being amongst the quick.”

“Of course,” said Angus hurriedly, but added: “That does seem a long way away. And it’s going to be months and months before we see her again.”

Antonia shot him a glance. Was this man Domenica’s lover? It was difficult to imagine Domenica with a lover, and she had never seen her with him. But people such as Domenica liked a certain amount of mystery in their personal lives, and he may have been something special to her. Curious, though, that she should choose a man like this, with his intrusive stare and those disconcerting gold teeth; to have a lover with gold teeth was decidedly exotic. And yet he was a handsome man, she thought, with that wavy hair and those eyes. Dark hair and blue eyes were a dangerous combination in a man.

And Angus, returning her gaze, thought: she’s younger than Domenica by a good few years; younger than me, too. And she’s undoubtedly attractive. Does she have a husband? Presumably not, because a woman with a husband would not come to stay for six months in a friend’s flat and not bring the husband with her. A lover, then? No. She had that look, that indefinable yet unmistakable look, of one who was alone in this world. And if she were alone, then how long would that last, with that concise nose of hers that would break ilka heart, but no the moudie man’s? It was a play on a poem about the moudie and the moudie man, and it popped into his mind, just like that, as off-beat, poetic thoughts will break surface at the strangest moments, leaving us disturbed, puzzled, wondering. The mole’s little eyes would break every heart, but not the molecatcher’s.

6. Gurus as Father Substitutes

While Antonia went into the bedroom with her suitcase, Angus Lordie busied himself in the kitchen making coffee for the two of them. After coffee he would show her round the rest of the flat; there was a trick with the central-heating controls that he would need to explain (the timer went backwards for some reason, which required some calculation in the setting) and he would have to tell her about the fuse-box, too, which had idiosyncrasies of its own.

They would have to have black coffee, as there was no milk in the fridge. A woman would have thought of stocking the fridge with essentials for an arriving tenant: a loaf of bread, a pint or two of milk, some butter. But men did not think of these things, and Angus had brought nothing. His own fridge was usually empty, so there was no reason why he should think of replenishing Domenica’s.

“Have you known Domenica for long?” he asked, as Antonia, returning from the bedroom, seated herself opposite him at the kitchen table.

“Twenty years,” she said abruptly. “Although I feel I’ve known her forever. Don’t you find that there are some friends who are like that? You feel that you’ve known them all your life.”

Angus nodded. “I feel that I’ve known Domenica forever too. That’s why…” He stopped himself. He was about to explain that this was why he felt her absence so keenly, but that would sound self-pitying and there was nothing less attractive than self-pity.

Antonia continued. “I met her when I was a student,” she said. “I was twenty and she was…well, I suppose she must have been about forty then. She was my tutor in an anthropology course I took. It was not my main subject–that was Scottish history–but I found her fascinating. The professors thought her a bit of maverick. They forced her out in the end.”

“Very unfair,” said Angus. He could not imagine Domenica being forced out of anything, but perhaps when she was younger it might have been easier.

“Very stupid, more likely,” said Antonia. “The problem was that she was far brighter than those particular professors. She frightened them because she could talk about anything and everything and their own knowledge was limited to a narrow little corner of the world. That disturbed them. And universities are still full of people like that, you know. People of broad culture may find it rather difficult in them. Timid, bureaucratic places. And very politically conformist.”

“I don’t know,” said Angus. “Surely some of them…”

“Of course,” said Antonia. “But, but…the trouble is that they’re so busy with their social engineering that they’ve lost all notion of what it is to be a liberal-minded institution.”

“I don’t know,” said Angus. “Surely things aren’t that bad…”

“Not that I’m one of these people who goes round muttering ‘
O tempora, O mores
’,” went on Antonia. “Mind you, I don’t suppose many people in a university these days understand what that means.”

Angus laughed. He had always enjoyed Domenica’s wit and had been missing it already; but now it seemed that relief was in sight. Or, as Domenica might have it, relief was insight…

“Scottish history,” Angus said.

Antonia nodded. “Indeed. I studied under Gordon Donaldson and then under that very great man, John Macqueen. Such an interesting scholar, Macqueen, with his books on numerology and the like. You never knew what he would turn to next. And his son writes too–Hector Macqueen. He came up with some very intriguing things and then for some reason wrote a history of Heriot’s Cricket Club–a very strange book, but it must have been of interest to somebody. Can you imagine a cricketing history? Can you?”

“I suppose it has lists of who scored what,” said Angus. “And who went in first, and things like that.”

They were silent for a moment, both contemplating the full, arid implications of a cricketing history. Then Antonia broke the silence.

“I’ve never played cricket,” she said. “Yet there are ladies’ cricket teams. You hear about them from time to time. I can’t imagine what they’re like. But I suppose they enjoy themselves. It’s the sort of thing that rather brisk women like to do. You know the sort.”

Angus did. He was enjoying the conversation greatly and had decided that he very much approved of Domenica’s new tenant. He wondered whether he might invite her for dinner that night, or whether it would be considered a little forward at this early stage in their acquaintanceship. He hesitated for a moment; why should he not? She had said nothing to indicate that she was spoken for, and even if she was, there was nothing wrong in a neighbourly supper à deux. So he asked her, suggesting that she might care to take pot luck in his kitchen as this was her first day in the flat and she would not have had time to get in supplies.

Antonia hesitated, but only for a moment. “How tempting,” she said quietly. “You really have been too kind to me. And I would love to accept, but I think that this evening I must work. I really must.”

“Work?”

Antonia sighed. “My poor book, you know. I’m writing a book and it’s suffering from maternal deprivation. Bowlby syndrome, as they call it.”

“Bowlby?”

“A psychologist. He was something of a guru once. He took the view that bad behaviour results from inadequate maternal attention.”

Angus thought for a moment. I need a guru, he said to himself. Would Antonia be his guru? He blushed at the unspoken thought. It would be wonderful to have a guru; it would be like having a social worker or a personal trainer, not that people who had either of these necessarily appreciated the advice they received.

“Of course it’s absurd, this search for gurus,” Antonia said. “People who need gurus are really searching for something else altogether, don’t you think? Fundamentally insecure people. Looking for father.”

Angus looked at her. He was beginning to dislike Antonia. How strange, he thought, that our feelings can change so fast. Like that. Just like that. And he thought of how the sky over Edinburgh could change in an instant, between summer and winter, as the backdrop can be shifted in a theatre, curtains lowered from the heavens in each case, changing everything.

7. Angus Goes Off Antonia, in a Big Way

Angus Lordie was deep in thought as he walked home. At his side, Cyril, sensing his master’s abstraction, had briefly tugged at his lead at the point where Dundonald Street joined Drummond Place; he had hoped that Angus might be persuaded to call in at the Cumberland Bar, but his promptings had been ignored. Cyril understood; he knew that his life was an adjunct life, lived in the shadow of his master, and that canine views counted for nothing; yet it would have been good, he thought, to sit on the bar’s black-and-white chequered floor sipping from a bowl of Guinness and staring at the assorted ankles under the table. But this was not to be, and he was rapidly diverted from this agreeable fantasy to the real world of sounds and smells. It is a large room, the world of smells for a dog, and Drummond Place, though familiar territory, was rich in possibilities; each passer-by left a trail that spoke to where he had been and what he had been doing–a whole history might lie on the pavement, like song-lines across the Australian Outback, detectable only to those with the necessary nose. Other smells were like a palimpsest: odour laid upon odour, smells that could be peeled off to reveal the whiff below. Cyril quivered; a strange scent wafted from a doorway, a musty, inexplicable odour that reminded him of something that he had known somewhere before, in his previous life in Lochboisdale, a long time ago. He stopped, and tugged at his leash, but Angus ignored his concern, yanking him roughly to heel. Cyril had never bitten his master, not once, but there were times…

Angus was thinking about what Antonia had told him. He had steered the conversation swiftly away from gurus, and had asked her about her book. So many people in Edinburgh were writing a book–almost everyone, in fact–and Angus had ceased to be surprised when somebody mentioned an incipient literary project. So he had inquired politely about Antonia’s book. She had looked at him sharply, as if to assess whether he was worthy of being told, whether he was serious in his inquiries; one could not tell everyone about one’s book.

“It’s nothing very much,” she said, after some moments of hesitation. “Just a novel.”

He had waited for further explanation, but she had merely continued to stare at him. At last he said: “A novel.” And she had nodded.

“Well,” he said, “may I ask what sort of novel it is?”

“Historical,” she said. “Very early. It’s set in early Scotland. Sixth century, actually.”

Angus had smiled. “You’re very wise to choose a period for which there is so little evidence,” he said. “You can’t go wrong if you write about a time that we don’t really know about. When people start to write about the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries–or even the twenty-first, for that matter–they can get into awful trouble if they get it wrong. And they often get something wrong, don’t they?”

“Writers can make mistakes like anybody else,” said Antonia, rather peevishly. “We’re human, you know.” She looked at Angus, as if expecting a refutation, though none came. “For instance, was there not an American writer who described one of his characters on page one as unfortunately having only one arm? On page one hundred and forty the same character claps his hands together enthusiastically.”

Angus smiled. “So funny,” he said. “Although some people these days would think it wrong to laugh about something like that. Just as they don’t find anything amusing in the story of the man who went to Lourdes and experienced a miracle. The poor chap couldn’t walk, and the miracle was that he found new tyres on his wheelchair.”

Antonia stared at him. “I don’t find that funny, I’m afraid.” She shook her head. “Not in the slightest. Anyway, if I may get back to the subject of what we know and what we don’t know. We happen to have quite a lot of knowledge about early medieval Scotland. We have the records of various abbeys, and we can deduce a great deal from archeological evidence. We’re not totally in the dark.”

Angus looked thoughtful. “All right,” he said. “Answer me this: were there handkerchiefs in medieval Scotland?”

Antonia frowned. “Handkerchiefs?”

“Yes,” said Angus. “Did people have handkerchiefs to blow their noses on?”

Antonia was silent. It had not occurred to her to think about handkerchiefs in medieval Scotland, as the occasion had simply not arisen. I’m not that sort of writer, she thought; I’m not the sort of writer who describes her characters blowing their noses. But if I were, then what…

“I have not given the matter thought,” she said at last. “But I cannot imagine that there were handkerchiefs–textiles were far too expensive to waste on handkerchiefs. I suspect that people merely resorted to informal means of clearing their noses.”

“I read somewhere that they blew them on straw,” said Angus. “Rather uncomfortable, I would have thought.”

“I imagine that it was,” said Antonia. “But I am writing mostly about the lives of the early saints. Noses and…and other protuberances have not really entered into the picture to any great degree.

“And anyway,” she went on, “you should not expect fiction to be realistic. People who think that the role of fiction is merely to report on reality suffer from a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is all about.”

Angus Lordie’s nostrils flared slightly, even if imperceptibly. His conversations with Domenica had been conducted on a basis of equality, whereas Antonia’s remarks implied that he did not know what fiction was about. Well…

“You see,” went on Antonia, inspecting her nails as she spoke, “the novel distils. It takes the human experience, looks at it, shakes it up a bit, and then comes up with a portrayal of what it sees as the essential issue. That’s the difference between pure description and art.”

Angus looked at her. His nostrils had started to twitch more noticeably now, and he made an effort to control this unwanted sign of his irritation. He had entertained, and now abandoned, the notion that he might get to know Antonia better and that she would be a substitute for Domenica; indeed, as the lonely-hearts advertisements had it, perhaps there might have been “something more”.

He imagined what he would say if he were reduced to advertising. “Artist, GSOH, wishes to meet congenial lady for conversation and perhaps something more. No historical novelists need apply.”