112. Giving and Receiving
It seemed very strange to be back in Scotland Street. Domenica had looked forward to her return and had imagined that she would immediately feel at home, and now she did not. She knew that she would soon adjust, but for a few days everything seemed disjointed and not quite right. The very air, warm and languid on the Malacca Straits, was brisk and fresh here–almost brittle, in fact. And there was also the hardness of everything about her: this was a world of stone, chiselled out, solid, bounded by corners and angles. She had become used to the softness of vegetation, to the malleability of cane, the femininity of palm fronds; so different, so far away.
But if there were difficulties in becoming accustomed to her surroundings again–and these, surely, were to be expected, for what greater contrast can there be between a world of pirates and the world of Edinburgh–there were still compensations in being back at home. There were the consolations of finding that the streets, and the people, were exactly where she had left them; that the same things were being discussed in the newspaper and on the radio, by the same people. All of this was reassuring, and precious, and was good to get back to.
Domenica thought about all this at length and decided that she was happy, and fortunate, to be back. Now she would spend the next three months writing up her findings and preparing the two papers that she proposed to write on the community in which she had been living. She was confident that these papers would be accepted for publication, as the people with whom she had stayed had never been the subject of anthropological investigation before, if one discounted the efforts of that poor Belgian–and what happened to him remained a mystery. She had tried to discover his fate, but had met at every point with evasion. Nobody had anything to say.
But it was good to be back, and in recognition of this Domenica decided that she would give a dinner party. She had not entertained at all while away, and her social life had been limited to cups of tea with the village women. She believed that this had been enjoyable for them as it had been for her, and she had gone so far as to form a book group in the village, a development that had gone down well with the women, even if there were very few books to be had in the village. And she had also laid the foundations of a small credit union, whereby the poorer wives could be helped by the richer. These were positive achievements.
Pat had agreed to come and help Domenica with the preparations for the dinner, and now they were both in the kitchen on the evening on which the dinner was to be held. Domenica had planned an elaborate menu and Pat was busy cutting and preparing vegetables while Domenica cooked an intricate mushroom risotto.
“I heard about Matthew,” Domenica said, stirring chopped onions into her arborio rice. “I must say that you could do far worse. In fact, you have done far worse in the past, haven’t you? What with Bruce…”
Pat had to acknowledge that her record had not been distinguished. “I only liked Bruce for a very short time,” she said. “For the rest of the time I found him repulsive.”
Domenica laughed. “He was fairly awful, wasn’t he? All that hair gel and that preening in front of the mirror. And yet, and yet…” She left the rest unsaid, but Pat knew exactly what she meant. There was something about Bruce. Did he have it? Was that it? Yes. It.
“Matthew’s such a kind person,” Domenica went on. “You’ll find him so different from Bruce.”
Pat looked thoughtful. “He gave me this yesterday,” she said, pointing to the opal necklace about her neck.
Domenica put down the packet of dried mushrooms she was slitting open and peered at Pat’s neck. “Opals,” she said. “Look at their colours. Fire opals.”
“Do you like it?” asked Pat.
“I love it,” said Domenica. “I’ve always liked opals. I bought myself an opal ring in Australia when I was there ten years ago. I often wear it. It reminds me of Brisbane. I was so happy in Brisbane.”
Pat was silent. She began to finger the necklace, awkwardly, as if it made her feel uncomfortable.
“Is there anything wrong?” asked Domenica.
Pat shook her head. “No…Well, perhaps there is.”
“Do you feel bad about accepting such an expensive present from him? Is that it?”
“Maybe. Maybe just a bit.”
Domenica took Pat’s hand and pressed it gently. “It’s very important to be able to accept things, you know. Gracious acceptance is an art–an art which most of never bother to cultivate. We think that we have to learn how to give, but we forget about accepting things, which can be much harder than giving.”
“Why?”
“Possibly because of our subconscious fears about the gift relationship,” said Domenica. “The giving of gifts can create obligations, and we might not wish to be encumbered with obligations. And yet, there are gifts which are outright gifts–gifts which have no conditions attached to them. And you have to realise that accepting another person’s gift is allowing him to express his feelings for you.”
Yes, thought Pat. You are right about this, as you are right about so many other things.
“He gave Big Lou a present as well yesterday,” Pat said. “I was there when he did it. A silver beaker with some words from the Declaration of Arbroath engraved on it.”
“A somewhat odd gift,” mused Domenica. “And was Big Lou pleased?”
“Very,” said Pat. “She hugged him. She lifted him up, actually, and hugged him.”
Domenica smiled. “It’s very easy,” she said. “It’s very easy, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“To increase the sum total of human happiness. By these little acts. Small things. A word of encouragement. A gesture of love. So easy.”
Domenica looked at her watch. “We must get on with our labours,” she said. “Angus, Antonia, and all the rest will be here before we know it.”
“Will Angus have a poem for us, like last time?”
“He always does,” said Domenica. “When we reach the end of something.”
“But is this really the end of something?” asked Pat.
Domenica smiled, somewhat sadly. “I fear it is.”
113. Domenica’s Dinner Party
One of Domenica’s little ways was to give each of her guests a different arrival time, thus staggering them at ten minute intervals. She felt that this was a good way of ensuring that each person got the attention a guest deserves right at the beginning of an evening, even if it should become, as it often did, more difficult for a hostess to devote herself to individual guests later on.
The first to arrive, of course, was Angus, whom she had already seen on her return, even if only briefly. He had been over-excited at that meeting, and had blurted out all sorts of news with scant regard to chronology or significance. He had told her about Cyril’s disappearance and miraculous return; about Ramsey Dunbarton’s demise; about his new shoes; about Lard O’Connor’s appearance in Big Lou’s café and the routing of Eddie–it had all come tumbling out.
Then Antonia came from over the landing, and had brought with her a sickly orchid and a box of chocolates as a present. Domenica thought that she recognised the box of chocolates as one that had been doing the rounds of Edinburgh dinner parties over a period of several years, passed from one hand to another and opened by no recipient. She did not reveal this, though, but put the box in a drawer for the next occasion on which she needed to take her hostess a present. It might even be Antonia, should she reciprocate the invitation, but by that time the chocolates would be wrapped in a fresh piece of gift paper and might not be identified. The real danger in recycling presents came in forgetting to remove the gift tag from the wrapping, as sometimes happened with recycled wedding presents.
Then Matthew arrived, wearing a curious off-green jacket, and her friends, Humphrey and Jill Holmes, and James Holloway, who brought her an orchid in much better condition, and David Robinson, bearing a small pile of novels which Domenica had missed and which he suspected she would enjoy. That was the party complete;
a small gathering, but one in which everybody knew one another and would be sure to enjoy this celebration of return and reunion.
They stood in Domenica’s drawing room, where the friendly evening sun came in, slanting, soft.
“Domenica,” said David Robinson. “Please reassure us that you are back for good.”
Domenica looked into her glass. “I have no immediate plans to leave Edinburgh again,” she said. “I suspect that my field work days are over, but you never know. If there were a need…”
“But you’ve finished with pirates?” asked James. “I really think that we’ve had enough pirates. Hunter gatherers are fine, but pirates…”
Domenica nodded. “My pirates proved to be rather dull at the end of the day. They were a wicked bunch, I suppose. Their attitude to intellectual property rights was pretty cavalier. But bad behaviour is ultimately rather banal, don’t you think? There’s a terrible shallowness to it.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” said Antonia. “I would have found Captain Hook a very dull companion, I suspect. Peter Pan would have been far more fun.” She looked at Angus as she spoke, but Angus, noticing her gaze upon him, looked away.
“Peter Pan needed to grow up,” said Matthew. “That was his problem.”
All eyes turned to Matthew as this remark was digested. Pat looked at his new off-green jacket and made a mental note to talk to him about it. But she knew that she would have to be careful.
And then, faintly in the background, the notes of a saxophone could be heard, the sound travelling up the walls and through the floor from the flat below. Domenica smiled. “Our downstairs neighbour,” she explained. “Little Bertie. His mother makes him practise round about this time. We get ’As Time Goes By’ a lot but this…what’s he playing now?”
Angus moved to a wall and cupped his ear against it. “It’s ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ I believe. Yes, that’s it. ‘He is trampling out the vintage/where the grapes of wrath are stored’–good for you, Bertie!”
The conversation resumed, but not for long. Angus now stepped forward, glass in hand, and addressed the company.
“Dear friends,” he began. “Domenica is back from a distant place. Would you mind a great deal if I were to deliver a poem on the subject of maps?”
“Not in the slightest,” said David Robinson. “Maps are exactly what we need to hear about.”
Angus stood in the centre of the room.
“Although,” he began, “they are useful sources
Of information we cannot do without,
Regular maps have few surprises: their contour lines
Reveal where the Andes are, and are reasonably clear
On the location of Australia, and the Outer Hebrides;
Such maps abound; more precious, though,
Are the unpublished maps we make ourselves,
Of our city, our place, our daily world, our life;
Those maps of our private world
We use every day; here I was happy, in that place
I left my coat behind after a party,
That is where I met my love; I cried there once,
I was heartsore; but felt better round the corner
Once I saw the hills of Fife across the Forth,
Things of that sort, our personal memories,
That make the private tapestry of our lives.
Old maps had personified winds,
Gusty figures from whose bulging cheeks
Trade winds would blow; now we know
That wind is simply a matter of isobars;
Science has made such things mundane,
But love–that, at least, remains a mystery,
Why it is, and how it comes about
That love’s transforming breath, that gentle wind,
Should blow its healing way across our lives.”
ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH
LOVE OVER SCOTLAND
Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the international phenomenon The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, the Isabel Dalhousie series, the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series, and the 44 Scotland Street series. He is Professor Emeritus of medical law at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and has served on many national and international bodies concerned with bioethics. He was born in what is now known as Zimbabwe, and he was a law professor at the University of Botswana.
Visit his Web site at
www.alexandermccallsmith.com.
BOOKS BY ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH
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
IN THE ISABEL DALHOUSIE SERIES
The Sunday Philosophy Club
Friends, Lovers, Chocolate
The Right Attitude to Rain
The Careful Use of Compliments
IN THE PORTUGUESE IRREGULAR VERBS SERIES
Portuguese Irregular Verbs
The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs
At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances
IN THE 44 SCOTLAND STREET SERIES
44 Scotland Street
Espresso Tales
Love Over Scotland
The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa
PRAISE FOR THE
44 SCOTLAND STREET SERIES
“A characteristically sly and eccentric portrait of Edinburgh society.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“[McCall Smith’s] sense of gentle but pointed humor is once again afoot.”
—The Seattle Times
“Soulful [and] sweet…. 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)
“It is McCall Smith’s particular genius to be able to look on the brighter side of life, and he’s seldom done so more enjoyably.”
—The Scotsman
“A lively new series.”
—The Washington Post
“Alexander McCall Smith is the most genial of writers and the most gentle of satirists…. [The] characters are great fun…[and] McCall Smith treats all of them with affection.”
—Rocky Mountain News
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, NOVEMBER 2007
Copyright © 2006 by Alexander McCall Smith
Illustrations copyright © 2006 by Iain McIntosh
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn, Ltd., Edinburgh, in 2006.
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
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.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948–.
Love over Scotland / Alexander McCall Smith.—1st Anchor Books ed.
p. cm.
1. Edinburgh (Scotland)—Fiction. 2. Apartment houses—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6063.C326L68 2007
823'.914—dc22
2007022072
Author illustration © Iain McIntosh
www.anchorbooks.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-38759-2
v3.0
Alexander McCall Smith, Love Over Scotland
(Series: # )
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