Love Over Scotland (33 page)

95. A Portrait of a Sitting

The portrait which Angus Lordie was painting was not going well. It was not a commissioned work–those paintings always seemed to go smoothly, aided, no doubt, by the thought of the fee–but the result of an offer which he had made one day in the Scottish Arts Club. It was one of those rash offers one makes, more or less on impulse, and which are immediately taken up by the recipient. Most people understand that offers of that nature are not intended to be taken seriously, or are only half-serious, and do nothing about them. Others–and they are in a small minority–take them literally, largely because they take everything literally.

Ramsey Dunbarton, the retired lawyer and resident of the Braids, now sat in Angus Lordie’s under-heated studio in Drummond Place, gazing at a fixed point on the wall with what he hoped was an expression that combined both dignity and experience. This was his third sitting, the first having taken place very shortly after Angus had made his subsequently regretted offer to paint his portrait.

“It’s very good of you,” said Ramsey, sitting back in the red leather chair in which Angus positioned his sitters, “but I hope that I give you a bit of a challenge. One or two people have said that this old physiognomy is a typical Edinburgh one. Perhaps you’ll be able to catch that. What do you think?”

Angus was non-committal. He would do his best by Ramsey, but there were limits.

“I wondered whether you’d like to paint me in one of my thespian moments,” Ramsey went on. “I played the Duke of Plaza-Toro once, you know. It was at the Church Hill Theatre.”

Angus busied himself with his brushes.

“It’s not an easy character to play,” Ramsey went on. “It requires a certain panache, of course, but the difficulty with parts like that is that one can go over the top. But I hope that I didn’t. We still sing a bit, you know. One’s voice changes, of course–like so much else.”

Angus nodded. He tended to listen with only half an ear when Ramsey was talking. It was like having the radio on in the background, he thought. One picked up what was being said from time to time, but for the most part it was just a comfortable drone.

“Yes,” said Ramsey. “The world has certainly changed. And not necessarily for the better. When I compare the world of my youth with the world of today, I have to shake my head. I really do.”

“Please don’t move your head like that,” said Angus. “I’d like you to stay still as far as possible.”

“So sorry,” said Ramsey. “I was getting carried away. But the world really is a different place, isn’t it? And Edinburgh has changed too. There used to be a good number of people who disapproved of things. Now there are hardly any, if you ask me. Everybody is afraid to disapprove.”

“Yes,” said Angus. “I suppose we’ve become more tolerant.”

“Don’t speak to me about tolerance,” said Ramsey. “Tolerance is just an excuse for letting everything go. Tolerance means that people can get away with anything they choose.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Angus. “I think that we needed a slightly more relaxed view of things.”

Ramsey snorted. “Look at what’s happened to breach of the peace,” he said. “We didn’t do any criminal law work in my firm, of course–we’re not that sort of firm–but I used to take a close interest in the subject and would follow the Sheriff Court reports in the
Scots Law Times
. It was fascinating stuff, I can tell you.”

“A bit murky, surely,” said Angus. “Aren’t the criminal courts full of people who do nasty things to other people?”

“To an extent,” said Ramsey. “But there are some very amusing moments in the criminal courts. I heard some frightfully funny stories, you know.”

Angus’s brush moved gently against the canvas. “Such as?” he said.

“Well,” said Ramsey. “Here’s one. It was the Sheriff Court at Lanark, I think, or maybe Airdrie. Anyway, somewhere down there. I don’t really know that part of the world very well, but let’s say that it was Lanark. The sheriff was dealing with the usual business of the court, and I think that this was a speeding matter. A local butcher was caught doing something way over the odds and was hauled up in front of the sheriff. There he was, in his best suit–there are lots of ill-fitting suits in the Sheriff Courts, you know, taken out of mothballs for each court appearance. Anyway, the sheriff looked down at him from the bench and said: ‘How are you pleading?’ And the butcher looked up and said: ’Oh fine, sir. I’m fine. How’s yoursel?’”

When he finished this story, Ramsey burst out laughing. “Can’t you just hear it, Angus?” he said.

Angus nodded. “Very funny,” he said. “And then what happened?”

“No idea,” said Ramsey. “He was fined, no doubt. But how did we get on to this? Oh, yes, the criminal law. Well, then, breach of the peace: I was always a great supporter of it, because it was so broad. They could deal with any nonsense by calling it breach of the peace. And there were some wonderful examples. This is a bit risqué, Angus, but some of those cases were terribly funny. I always remember a breach of the peace prosecution that followed upon some events that took place at Glenogle Baths. There was this chap, you see, who had been spying on the ladies’ changing rooms, and so they got a woman police officer to go to the baths and she found that somebody had drilled a peep-hole in a partition wall. Well, the woman constable looked through the hole at the same time as the accused looked through the hole on his side of the partition…”

Ramsey’s voice tailed off. Angus, behind his canvas, applied a small dab of paint to a passage he was working on.

He added another dash of colour and stared at the result. Colour was strange; one’s life as an artist was one long affair with colour.

And how should we live that life? How should we make the most of our time, make a difference with it?

He paused. Ramsey was quiet. Through the window, Angus saw a gull fly past, a brief flash of white against the blue. Ramsey had stopped talking. Strange. Angus looked past his canvas. The limbs of his sitter were immobile, and the face composed. The eyes were closed. He was perfectly still.

96. Angus Reflects

On the following day, Angus wrote to Domenica a letter on which, had the intended recipient held it up to the light, might have been made out the faintest of watermarks–a tear.

“My dear Domenica,” he began. “I write this letter seated at the kitchen table. It is one of those cold, bright winter mornings that I know you love so much, and which make this city sparkle so. But the letter I write you will be a sad one, and I am sorry for that. When one is alone and far from home, as you are, then one longs for light-hearted, gossipy letters. This is not one of those.

“Yesterday, as I was painting his portrait, Ramsey Dunbarton, a person I have known for a good many years, died in my studio. He was seated in my portrait chair, talking to me, when he suddenly stopped, mid-anecdote. I thought nothing of it and continued to paint, but when I glanced from behind my canvas I saw him sitting there, absolutely still. I thought that he had gone to sleep and went back to my painting, but then, when I looked again, he was still motionless. I realised that something was wrong, and indeed it was. Ramsey had died. It was very peaceful, almost as if somebody had silently gone away, somewhere else, had left the room. How strange is the human body in death–so still, and so vacated. That vitality, that spark, which makes for life, is simply not there. The tiny movements of the muscles, the sense of there being somebody keeping the whole physical entity orchestrated in space–that goes so utterly and completely. It is no longer there.

“You did not know Ramsey. I thought that you might perhaps have met him at one of my drinks parties, but then, on reflection, I decided that you had not. I do not think that you and he would necessarily have got along. I would never accuse you of lacking charity, dear one, but I suspect that you might have thought that Ramsey was a little stuffy for you; a little bit old-fashioned, perhaps.

“And indeed he was. Many people thought of him as an old bore, always going on about having played the part of the Duke of Plaza-Toro at the Church Hill Theatre. Well, so he did, and he mentioned it yesterday afternoon, which was his last afternoon as himself, as Auden puts it in his poem about the death of Yeats. But don’t we all have our little triumphs, which we remember and which we like to talk about? And if Ramsey was unduly proud of having been the Duke of Plaza-Toro, then should we begrudge him that highlight in what must have been a fairly uneventful life? I don’t think we should.

“He was a kind man, and a good one too. He loved his wife. He loved his country–he was a Scottish patriot at heart, but proud of being British too. He said that we should not be ashamed of these things, however much fashionable people decry love of one’s country and one’s people. And in that he was right.

“He only wanted to do good. He was not a selfish man. He did not set out to make a lot of money or get ahead at the expense of others. He was not like that. He would have loved to have had public office, but it never came his way. So he served in a quiet, rather bumbling way on all sorts of committees. He was conservative in his views and instincts. He believed in an ordered society in which people would help and respect one another, but he also believed in the responsibility of each of us to make the most of our lives. He called that ‘duty’, not a word we hear much of today.

“There is a thoughtless tendency in Scotland to denigrate those who have conservative views. I have never subscribed to that, and I hope that as a nation we get beyond such a limited vision of the world. It is possible to love one’s fellow man in a number of ways, and socialism does not have the monopoly on justice and concern. Far from it. There are good men and women who believe passionately in the public good from very different perspectives. Ramsey was as much concerned with the welfare and good of his fellow man as anybody I know.

“People said that he had a tendency to go on and on, and I suppose he did. But those long stories of his, sometimes without any apparent point to them, were stories that were filled, yes filled, with enthusiasm for life. Ramsey found things fascinating, even when others found them dull. In his own peculiar way, he celebrated the life of ordinary people, ordinary places, ordinary things.

“I suspect that Scotland is full of people like Ramsey Dunbarton. They are people whose lives never amount to very much in terms of achievement. They are not celebrated or fêted in any way. But there they are, doing their best, showing goodwill to others, paying their taxes scrupulously, not cheating in any way, supporting the public good. These people are the backbone of the country and we should never forget that.

“His death leaves me feeling empty. I feel guilty, too, at the thought of the occasions when I have seen him heaving into sight and I have scuttled off, unable to face another long-winded story. I feel that I should have done more to reciprocate the feelings of friendship he undoubtedly had for me. I never asked him to lunch with me; the invitations always came from him. I never even acknowledged him as a friend. I never told him that I enjoyed his company. I never told him that I thought he was a good man. I gave him no sign of appreciation.

“But we make such mistakes all the time, all through our lives. Wisdom, I suppose, is seeing this and acting upon it before it is too late. But it is often too late, isn’t it?–and those things that we should have said are unsaid, and remain unsaid for ever.

“I am heart-sore, Domenica. I am heart-sore. I shall get over it, I know, but that is how I feel now. Heart-sore.”

He finished, read it through, and then very slowly tore it up. He would not send it to Domenica, even if he meant every word, every single word of it.

97. Domenica Makes Progress

Domenica may not have received the letter from Angus Lordie, but she had enough to think about anyway. Her life in the pirate village on the Malacca Straits was becoming busier–and more intriguing–after a somewhat disappointing start. She had at last done something about Ling, the interpreter who had proved to be excessively interventionist and unreliable. Matters had been brought to a head when she had gone with him to see an elderly member of the community and Ling had refused point-blank to interpret what the man had said to her.

“You need not bother with what this old man is saying,” Ling had said dismissively. “He is all mixed up.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Domenica. “You can be assured that I can distinguish between reliable and unreliable material.”

“It is a waste of time,” said Ling, looking scornfully at the elderly pirate in his rattan armchair. “Stupid old man.”

“I don’t think that’s very helpful,” said Domenica. “And I really must insist on making my own decisions as to what is significant material and what is not.”

“No,” said Ling. “I do not want to waste your time.”

Domenica sighed. It was a hot morning and her clothes were sodden with perspiration. She did not want to spend her time arguing with Ling, and yet she was now adamant that she would not accept his decisions as to what she should listen to and what she should not.

“Look, Mr Ling,” she said loudly. “I am the one who’s paying you. Understand? I decide what we do. And that’s final.”

Ling’s lower lip quivered. “You cannot make that decision when you don’t know anything,” he said. “I do not wish to be rude to you, honourable anthropologist, but you don’t know anything, do you?”

That had been the last straw, and Domenica had dismissed him on the spot. Ling appeared to be taken aback by this, and stormed off, leaving her alone with the retired pirate. She turned and smiled at the old man, who gave her a toothless grin in return.

“Tok Pisin?” he suddenly asked (Do you talk Neo-Melanesian Pidgin by any chance?).

Domenica clapped her hands in joy. “Ya. Mi toktok Pisin gutpela. Mi amamas” (Yes, I speak very good Neo-Melanesian Pidgin, I’m happy to say).

The old man became quite animated, pointing in the direction of Ling’s retreating figure. “Dispela man bilong pait!” (This can best be translated as: That fellow’s somewhat aggressive, don’t you think? Note man bilong pait: pait is fight).

Domenica nodded. “Yumitupela toktok. Dispela Ling autim!” (You and I can talk. We can do without that chap Ling! Note autim, literally out him, to get rid of ).

“Ya. Mipela holem long tingting,” said the old man. “Mipela roscol boscru.”

Domenica had to think about this remark for a few moments. What he had said was: Yes. I remember (a lot). (Holem long tingting, hold on to many things for a long time, is simply translated as to remember. Here it has an additional contextual meaning of recalling things long past, in an almost Proustian sense. If Proust’s
À la recherche du temps perdu
were to be translated into Pidgin–which has not yet happened–then perhaps it might be called: Onepela Proust bilong Frans Holem Long Tingting.) Then he had said: mipela roscol, which would normally be translated as: I am a criminal. This puzzled Domenica for a few moments, until she realised that there might be no word in Pidgin for pirate, and that roscol was possibly the closest one could get, if one added to it boscru, which means sailor (boat’s crew).

“Yupela roscol boscru? Yupela no damn gut?” she asked.

“Ya,” he confirmed. “Mipela Roscol! Yupela man bilong savvy!” (Yes, I am a pirate! You, by contrast, would appear to be a scholar). (This makes one think of the Pidgin translation of the Pirate King song from Gilbert and Sullivan, ‘For I am a Pirate King, /And it is, it is a glorious thing to be a Pirate King!’ The Pidgin Gilbert and Sullivan has this as: Mipela Rocol boscru luluai, Ya, Ya!/Roscol boscru luluai nambawan ting, Ya, Ya!)

Once they had established that they would be able to enjoy a good conversation in Pidgin, Domenica sat down with the old man, who introduced himself as Henry, and began to ask him the questions which she had been prevented by Ling from asking. She rapidly established his lineage (his family was one of the oldest ones in the village), his status (he was a widower, his wife having died ten years previously) and his means of support (he had a son in Singapore who was a senior clerk in a firm of merchants and another who was a first officer with a Taiwanese shipping line–both of these sent him money each month).

Henry was happy to talk about all the other households too. He explained about the family who lived next to Domenica–the one with the two sons, Freighter and Tanker. Freighter was a clever boy, Henry said, but Tanker was not. Henry suggested that this could be because he was really not the son of the woman’s husband, but the result of an affair she had had with a fisherman from a neighbouring village. Domenica did not note this last piece of information down. Once an anthropologist began to question acknowledged genealogy, then everything could unravel.

After they had talked for an hour or so, Domenica asked Henry about the pirates’ work. She explained that she had seen the men going off early in the morning, walking down the path that led to the sea. Was this them setting off to work?

Yes, said Henry. That was exactly it. He paused for a moment and then asked Domenica whether she would like him to take her–discreetly, of course–to watch what they got up to. They could follow them in his small boat, he said. Would she like to do that?

Domenica only hesitated for a moment before she said yes. She had not imagined that she would get mixed up in piracy, but this offer was just too tempting to resist. And she would not actually participate in any illegal activities. That was out of the question. She would simply watch.

“Tumora moningtaim,” said Henry. “Samting sikispela. Klosap haus bilong mipela” (Tomorrow morning, then. Around about six. At my house).