“And yet you’ve brought me a pound of sausages,” said Angus. “For which, thank you very much indeed. But doesn’t that suggest that you, too, feel that men need meat?”
“Not at all,” said Domenica. “Men can get their protein from anywhere in the protein chain, if there’s such a thing. You’d be better off not eating meat at all, you know. Look at the statistics for the survival of vegetarians. They do much better. Perhaps I should take those sausages back.”
“As long as they drink,” said Angus. “Vegetarians who drink a couple of glasses of wine a day do terribly well.”
“A thirty-five per cent improvement in mortality,” said Domenica.
Angus Lordie peered at the sausages. “And yet the government can’t exactly encourage us to drink, can it?”
“Certainly not,” said Domenica. “We know that the government itself drinks, but on this issue it has to be hypocritical.”
Angus Lordie, who had stopped painting when Domenica arrived, moved to the window. Picking up a rag, he wiped a small spot of oil paint off his hands. “I’ve never understood the objection to hypocrisy,” he said. “There must be some circumstances in which it’s permissible to be hypocritical.”
“Such as?”
“Let me think,” said Angus. “Yes. On the receipt of a present that one doesn’t like. Do you really think that one should say how much one likes it?”
Domenica thought about this. “I suppose so. But is that being hypocritical, or is it something different?”
“Hypocrisy is saying one thing and doing another,” said Angus. “If you say that you like the gift and say how much you’re looking forward to using it or looking at it, or whatever, then surely you’re being a hypocrite.” He paused for a moment. “So, should a politician tell other people not to drink or not to eat sausages, and all the while he drinks and eats sausages himself, then he’s being hypocritical. But it may be the right thing for him to do.”
“But would you yourself choose to be hypocritical?”
Angus replaced the oily rag on a table. He smiled. “I’m as weak as anybody else,” he said. “I suppose I’ve told my share of lies. I’ve been hypocritical on occasions.”
Domenica laughed. “Tell me, then. You don’t like sausages.”
“No, I don’t,” said Angus.
Domenica saw that he meant it. “You should have told me,” she said.
“But I didn’t want to offend you. And I can’t stand apple pie either.”
Domenica frowned. “But why not tell me? You would just have wasted them. I would have gone away thinking that you would be enjoying my little offerings and all the time you’d be putting them out in the bin.”
Angus shook his head. “I would not,” he said defensively. “I would have given the sausages to Cyril, and I would have put the apple pie out in the gardens for the squirrels.”
“I will not have you giving my Crombie sausages to that dog of yours,” said Domenica. “You presume on my friendship, Angus!”
“I didn’t ask you to bring me sausages,” said Angus peevishly.
“And I certainly shall not bring you any sausages in the future,” said Domenica stoutly.
“Good,” said Angus. “So, no sausages then.”
They looked at one another reproachfully. Then Angus shrugged. “What are we to do about these sausages?” he said, gesturing to the package on the table. “I suppose you’d better take them back and eat them in Scotland Street.”
“But I don’t like sausages myself,” said Domenica. “I can’t stand them, in fact.”
For a few moments they stared mutely at the package of sausages.
“Do you know anybody who would like them?” asked Domenica. “Any of your neighbours?”
“My neighbours would find it very strange if I started offering them sausages,” said Angus. “We don’t have that sort of relationship.”
“I wasn’t aware that there was a category of relationship which permitted the giving and taking of sausages,” said Domenica.
“Well, there is,” said Angus. “You have to know people quite well before you start giving them sausages.”
Domenica said nothing. She knew that Angus occasionally became argumentative, and there was no point in engaging with him when he was in such a mood. “Well, let’s…”
Angus cut her short. “Before we abandon the subject of sausages,” he said, “I must tell you about an occasion on which I was obliged to eat sausages–and with every visible sign of enjoyment. It was at a terribly grand house in Sutherland. I went there for lunch one day and there were ten people round the table. We were looking forward to a good meal, but we certainly didn’t get that. We had sausages with boiled potatoes. And that was it. But what I remember about that meal was that the subject of flying boats came up. I don’t know how it did, but somebody must have raised it.
“And I said to our hostess: ‘You know, Your Grace, you should get yourself a flying boat. You’ve got that great stretch of loch out there–it’s ideal for a flying boat.’ And you know what she said? She said: ‘But we do have a flying boat somewhere or other.’ Then she turned to the factor, who was sitting down at the end of the table, and she said: ‘Mr Grant, have you seen the flying boat? Do you know where it is?’”
That was all there was to the story. Angus Lordie looked at Domenica. Then he burst into laughter, into wild peals of laughter. And Domenica laughed too. It was extremely funny for some reason. It may have been hard to put one’s finger on the reason, but neither of them was in any doubt but that it was terribly funny.
But it was also rather sad. And again, to work out why it should be sad, required a measure of reflection.
88. Bruce Reflects
After his unfortunate experience with George and his new fiancée, Bruce returned to Scotland Street in what almost amounted to a state of shock. He had set off for his shop in a mood of confidence and optimism, but this had been conclusively shattered by the confrontation with his erstwhile business backer, now his former friend. There was to be no money from George, and with the disappearance of that support his liabilities now exceeded his assets. The payment to the wine dealer in Leith could not be put off for more than a short time, and now he simply did not have sufficient funds to pay. He would have to return all the stock, virtually every bottle of it, and that would leave him with empty shelves, including in that new section of which he was so proud–the innovative Wines for Her.
Pat was in her room when Bruce returned. For a moment he hesitated, unsure whether to knock on her door and offer to make her a cup of coffee. He did not want her to think that he needed her company in any way–she should be in no doubt that he could take or leave that as he wished–but eventually his need for comfort and reassurance got the better of him.
Pat greeted him politely. Yes, that was kind of him; she would join him for a cup of coffee in the kitchen in a few moments.
“So,” she said. “The business. How’s it going?”
“Great,” Bruce started to say. “Just great…”
He broke off. He looked at the floor. “Actually,” he went on, “it’s going badly. Really badly.”
Pat raised an eyebrow. “Is there a problem with that shop you’re renting?”
Bruce shook his head. “No, it’s more than that. In fact, Pat, it’s awful.” He sat down at the kitchen table, his head sunk in his hands.
Pat looked down at him. Poor Bruce–to be so vain and so pleased with yourself and then to become so obviously wretched. It was difficult not to sympathise with him.
“Money?” she said.
Bruce nodded miserably. “I’ve been let down.”
“By?”
“By somebody I was at school with back in Crieff,” said Bruce. “He should have stayed there.”
Pat frowned. “Why are you rude about Crieff, Bruce? Aren’t you proud of the place you came from?”
“No,” said Bruce. “I’m not.”
Pat thought about this. “May I ask
why?” she said. “I don’t see anything wrong with Crieff. In fact, I think it’s really a very nice place.”
“You would,” said Bruce bitterly.
Pat almost let this remark pass, but decided that Bruce had gone too far. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, you do think that you’re superior, don’t you? You think that by being rude about Crieff you can build yourself up. Well, you’re wrong, you know. You’re wrong about Crieff, completely wrong. Crieff is a great place. I know people who live there who like it very much indeed. And these are people with rather better judgment than yours, Bruce. By running Crieff down you tell me more about yourself than about Crieff. That’s true, you know.”
Bruce said nothing, while Pat fixed him with her stare. “The trouble with you, Bruce, is that you think nowhere and nobody is good enough for you. You think that you’re too good for Crieff. You think that you’re too good for your old friends. You think that this old friend of yours has let you down, but I suspect that it’s exactly the opposite. I suspect that you’ve been trying to use him.”
Bruce looked up abruptly. “And why do you think that, may I ask?”
Pat shrugged. “Because that’s the way you do things.” She paused. “But there’s no point in my talking to you like this, is there? I doubt if you’re going to change.”
Bruce stood up. “No,” he said. “There’s no point. Because I have no intention of listening to you, Patsy girl, thank you very much.”
And with that he left, crossed the hall into his room, and slammed the door behind him. Inside his room, though, the confidence which he had tried to show crumpled. He owed money, and he owed a great deal of it. The thought occurred to him that he could go back to his parents and ask them to lend him the money to pay the most immediate bills, including the one from Leith, but he simply could not face that. He could imagine what his father would say to him. He would be lectured about caution and misjudgment. He would be told that he should never have attempted go into business without getting the necessary experience first. And if he tried to explain about George, and how he had brought all this about, his father would probably just take George’s side. He had always liked him, Bruce recalled, and had said that he thought he was the best of his son’s friends. That shows how much judgment he has, thought Bruce.
He sat on his bed and considered his situation. Assets and liabilities–the fundamentals of business. He knew the assets and he knew the liabilities. The assets were the flat in Scotland Street, which was heavily mortgaged, a small amount of money in a deposit account at the bank, and…He had almost forgotten. There were three cases of Petrus. It was only George’s view that these were not the real thing–but there was a chance, even if only a slim chance, that the Petrus was genuine and he remembered that he had read somewhere that there was a wine auction coming up in Edinburgh. They might be able to take late entries, and if the wine were genuine, then…
But who could advise him on that? If he asked the auctioneers, then that might plant a doubt in their mind. So he should seek a private opinion, and who better than Will Lyons! If anybody could distinguish between genuine and false wine then it would be him, and he had very generously given Bruce advice in the past. He would ask Will round for a glass of Petrus, not say anything to him about the price he had paid, and then see what the verdict was. It was a brilliant idea, and he would see if Will was free that very evening! How handy it was to live in Edinburgh, he reflected, and to have expertise so ready to hand.
89. The Restoration of Fortunes
Will Lyons had better things to do than to visit Bruce, but agreed, out of sheer kindness, to call in at 44 Scotland Street that evening shortly before eight. He would not be able to stay long, he explained, as he had work to do. He had recently agreed to write a history of the Edinburgh wine trade, and the manuscript was growing slowly beneath his hands. It was a pleasant sensation seeing the pile of pages grow higher, but, like every author, he knew that he had to guard jealously the spare hours in which he could write. There were histories to be written about those whose histories had never progressed beyond chapter one, or indeed the introduction.
Will sighed as he made his way up the stairs to Bruce’s flat. He did not particularly like Bruce, whom he found both opinionated and ignorant in equal measure. He had tried to warn him about the drawbacks of going into the wine trade, but his warnings had not been heeded. It was clear to him that Bruce did not have even the basic knowledge that would enable him to run a wine shop. Nor did he possess the specialised knowledge and taste that would be required to run a wine shop in somewhere like Edinburgh’s New Town, where the number of opinionated and demanding people was very high, and where many of these prided themselves on their knowledge of wine. Any enterprise of Bruce’s was bound to fail, the only question being how long the failure would take, and how spectacular it would be.
Bruce opened the door to his guest and ushered him into the flat. He had been preparing coffee and it was into the kitchen that they now went and took a seat at the large, scrubbed pine table.
“I see that you have the original flagstones,” said Will, pointing at the fine stone floor.
“For the time being,” said Bruce. “I haven’t got round to fixing that up yet.”
“Fixing it up?” asked Will. “It looks in quite good condition to me.”
“Modernising it,” said Bruce. “I want an oak-look effect. There’s a new sort of flooring that looks just like oak. I’d challenge anybody to tell the difference. It’s a bit pricey, though.”
Will kept his counsel. His eye had been caught by a bottle standing on a nearby shelf. Could it be? Was it possible?
“Yes,” said Bruce jauntily, noticing the direction of his host’s gaze. “Petrus. Would you like to take a look?”
“It’s a very fine wine,” said Will. “Many people would say that it’s the finest wine there is, you know.”
“Oh, I know that,” said Bruce. “That’s why I got in a supply.”
“A supply?”
Bruce affected nonchalance. “Actually, I bought three cases for that new business of mine. I thought that Edinburgh being the sort of place that it is, there might be demand for it. There are a lot of wealthy people who live here, you know–people who will be prepared to fork out for this sort of stuff.”
“Oh, I know that,” said Will. He peered at the bottle on its shelf. “Would you mind if I took a look?”
“Of course not,” said Bruce. “In fact, how about a glass?”
Will raised an eyebrow. “That’s very generous of you,” he said. “I wasn’t…”
“Of course not,” said Bruce, rising to his feet. “I’ve been looking forward to trying it myself and who better to share it with?”
He crossed the room to take the bottle from the shelf. Then he handed it to Will, who examined it closely.
“Lovely year,” said Will. “I take it that you know that this is pretty valuable?” He hesitated. “I suppose that you must know that, if you bought three cases of it.”
Bruce was not giving anything away. “Yes,” he said, smiling. “This wine isn’t cheap, by any means. But what’s the use of having the stuff if you aren’t prepared to have the occasional glass?”
He reached for a corkscrew and passed it to Will. “Care to do the honours?”
Will carefully exposed the cork and looked at the top of it. Then, as Bruce fetched the glasses from the cupboard, Will gently twisted the screw into the cork and drew it up the neck of the bottle. It emerged with a satisfactory pop and he immediately sniffed at it and smiled.
“So far, so good,” he said. “Now if you pass me the glasses, we’ll see what we have here.”
Bruce’s expression was anxious as he passed over the glasses. This, he thought bitterly, is the moment of humiliation–the crowning humiliation, in fact, coming on top of everything that had gone wrong for him in recent months–that business over that stuck-up American girl, the loss of his job at that pathetic firm of Macauley Holmes Richardson Black, a
nd finally that terrible betrayal by George and his haggis-like fiancée. He closed his eyes briefly, hardly daring to look at the dark red liquid which Will was now sniffing at and swirling round his glass.
He watched in fascination as Will took a sip of the wine and moved it about his mouth, drawing in air through the lips. Nervously, he raised his own glass and sipped at the wine. It tasted all right to him–rather good, in fact–but then, in a rare moment of honesty, he said to himself: what do I know about this?
Will looked at Bruce. “What a stunner!” he said.
Bruce looked startled. “Stunner?”
“A beautiful wine,” went on Will. “So supple and ripe–yet it has elegance and length. One can understand why this is seen as such a great wine. One really can.”
Afterwards, when Will had left the flat, Bruce went into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. His face was lit with triumph, and in his ears rang Will’s parting words. His visitor had explained that he thought there would be no trouble in entering the remaining wine, now reduced to thirty-five bottles, but still a very impressive quantity, in the wine auction that was due to take place in a few days’ time. And then he had said: “And I suspect that you’ll clear at least thirty thousand for the lot, once commissions are taken.”
Bruce looked back into the mirror and smiled at himself. “You’re a stunner yourself,” he said in self-compliment. “A human Chateau Petrus!”
90. Self-assertiveness Training for Civil Servants
It was about this time that the Scottish Executive decided that all civil servants above a certain level of seniority should receive self-assertiveness training. The reason why this training was offered only to those in more senior positions was simple: there appeared to be no need to increase the self-assertiveness of the more junior civil servants, whose confidence generally exceeded that of their superiors. Indeed, greater self-assertiveness in the higher echelons of the Executive was thought to be the only way in which policies could be implemented in the face of opposition from below. And in due course, it had been announced, ministers themselves would receive self-assertiveness training to assist them to assert unpopular policies in the face of widespread public opposition and thereby to force their acceptance. (This is not to say that these policies were bad. Indeed, many of them were good; it’s just that the public cannot always be trusted to recognise a good policy when they see it.)