51. A Letter of Comfort
As soon as they reached their flat in India Street, Matthew went into the room he used as a study and looked up the telephone number of Turcan Connell, the lawyers who looked after his affairs. They had bought the gallery for him; they had advised him – rather perspicaciously and effectively – on the disposition of the funds that his father had so generously, and unexpectedly, showered upon him. They were a comforting presence in his life, rather like a godfather or a trusted uncle, who would stand between him and a world that contained so many potential snares and disasters.
The partner with whom he dealt listened to what he had to say about India Street. She had not heard about the triplets. ‘Congratulations,’ she said. ‘You must create a trust.’
Matthew thanked her. ‘And move,’ he said.
‘Ah.’
Matthew explained about the flat in Moray Place. She approved. ‘That side in particular has wonderful views. And it has a garden?’
‘It does,’ said Matthew.
‘You’ll need to get it surveyed.’
Matthew was silent for a moment. ‘I want to buy it,’ he said. ‘There’s going to be stiff competition. I want to put in one of those quick offers.’
The lawyer frowned. Matthew could hear the frown. ‘A timed offer?’
‘Yes. They’re asking for offers over eight hundred and fifty thousand. I thought that if we put in nine hundred and fifty they might take it straight away.’
The lawyer cleared her throat. ‘Well, they might, but they might want to give the other people a chance – the ones who have noted an interest.’ She hesitated. ‘And although we can make it subject to survey, I would advise rather strongly against going in with an offer when you haven’t checked up on some pretty basic things.’
Matthew tried to sound firm. ‘I want it,’ he said. ‘Elspeth loves it. I want to get it for her.’
The lawyer understood. ‘I have to advise you of the dangers,’ she said. ‘But ultimately it’s your decision. Are you sure?’
He was sure.
‘Then I’ll phone their solicitors and have a word with them. Who is it?’
‘McKay Norwell. They’re in Rutland Square. I spoke to their property person, Lesley Kerr, I think it was.’
‘I know her,’ said the lawyer. ‘And they’re a good firm. I’ll have a word.’
Matthew put down the phone and went into the kitchen, where Elspeth was boiling an egg. ‘I suddenly felt hungry,’ she said. ‘I know it’s odd to be sitting down eating a boiled egg on impulse, but …’ She shrugged.
‘You can have a boiled egg whenever you want,’ said Matthew. ‘You can have anything – anything.’
She looked at him fondly. Dear Matthew – he was so generous. And yet she did not want anything. She wanted only those things that she deserved, and she was not sure that she deserved all this attention, all this solicitude. She was not sure that she deserved a flat in Moray Place just because she had walked past it and decided that she might like to live there. Would it be different, she wondered, if Matthew had actually earned all this money? Would her feelings of guilt be any different then? Or should she not feel guilty about good fortune – whatever its source? Was it a peculiar Scottish trait to feel guilty about what you had in this life; was this all down to the Reformation and to the stern doctrines of individual effort and merit that had sprung from all that? Such an effect did exist – she was sure of it; she had had an uncle who had felt like that. Anything good, anything positive, was seen by him as a dubious privilege that would be paid for dearly; even a fine day – in Scotland a rare gift of those most fickle local weather gods – would be paid for by cold and damp later on. The bill for a warm spring was a miserable, rain-sodden summer; the bill for happiness was subsequent anxiety about the loss of exactly that happiness – it was a bleak system of double-entry book-keeping, but one that had a firm root in the Scottish psyche. And was that what she was like, she asked herself.
The egg boiled, and Elspeth sat down to eat it. Matthew sat at the table opposite her. He was jumpy – she could tell that. And this nervousness increased until the telephone rang and he shot up from his chair to answer it.
It was his lawyer. ‘I’ve spoken to Lesley Kerr,’ she said. ‘And she’s drawn my attention – quite properly – to an issue with that place. She’s worried that the sellers have done something to the flat.’
‘But of course they have,’ said Matthew. ‘They’ve decorated it really well. And the kitchen was beautifully done up. That Clive Christian person – really very swish.’
‘Not that,’ said the lawyer. ‘She said that they had removed a wall.’
Matthew was silent.
‘Are you still there?’ asked the lawyer.
‘Yes. But people remove walls, don’t they?’
‘They do. But you have to remember something: Moray Place is listed. It’s an important piece of architecture and you have to get permission to do anything to a listed building. The people who owned that flat didn’t. They just took a wall out.’
‘Oh. But why are they telling us this?’
‘Because it’ll come up in the transaction. Her clients know that they must reveal it. She says quite rightly that everybody needs to be aware of the problem.’
Matthew thought for a moment. ‘So which wall are we talking about?’ he asked.
‘One in the middle,’ said the lawyer. ‘Apparently.’
Matthew sighed. Across the room he saw Elspeth looking at him. He loved her so much. He wanted her to have that flat. He wanted them to be in that bedroom with the Chinese-themed wallpaper. He could see her in the garden, sitting near that lead statue of the young girl with the skirts.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I really want to go ahead with this. Please put in that offer. We can deal with bureaucratic difficulties later on.’
‘I’m not at all sure that removing a wall from a listed building is a mere bureaucratic difficulty,’ said the lawyer. ‘And I don’t think you’d get a letter of comfort from the council for this sort of thing.’
‘A letter of comfort?’
‘It’s a letter that says that even if something has been done, it’s all right and you can go ahead. But I don’t think that you can get them for infringements of listed building requirements.’
A letter of comfort, thought Matthew. What a marvellous term! And wouldn’t we all like to get letters of comfort from time to time? Even one letter of comfort a year would be enough. My dear, such a letter would say. Don’t worry! Everything will work out for the best.
52. The Meaning of Always
‘Don’t you think I should use this time to practise my saxophone?’ suggested Bertie. ‘Or even my Italian, Mummy? I could go to Valvona & Crolla with you and translate the labels on the cans and packets.’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Irene, taking Bertie by the hand and beginning the walk up Dundas Street to psychotherapy. ‘Your saxophone playing is coming along really well. Grade Seven already, Bertie, and you’re only six!’
‘When will I be seven?’ asked Bertie. ‘I’ve been six for ages.’
Irene laughed. ‘Being seven is a state of mind, Bertie. You’ll be seven on your next birthday, but you can be seven inside, you know, any time.’
Bertie frowned. He was used to his mother making elliptical comments which, for the most part, it was safe to ignore; this one, however, related to birthdays – an important subject for a child, and one about which there should be no ambiguity.
‘How can you be seven inside?’ he asked. ‘Am I seven inside?’ It was clutching at straws, of course; to be seven inside would be no substitute, he thought, for being seven on the outside.
Irene did not answer for a few moments. She was preoccupied with thoughts of Bertie’s new psychotherapist, Dr St Clair. She realised that she did not know much about him – other than the fact that he was Australian – and she wanted to find out more. There was something about him that intrigued her; some of the same qu
ality that she had seen in Dr Hugo Fairbairn. Why, she wondered, were these people so interesting? Did psychotherapy as a career attract a certain type of man, who might then appeal to a certain type of woman? If it did, then what type of woman was she? Intelligent, I suppose, thought Irene; women who have no time for those matters which occupy so many women still in a state of false consciousness – cooking, friendship, romance, clothes. What a shameful list, she thought; how limiting; and how fortunate was she, Irene, not to be in a state of false consciousness, unlike other women.
The attractiveness of psychotherapists, she decided, lay in their ability to interest themselves in what other people were thinking. It was quite simple, really: for most of us the topic of greatest interest in this world is undoubtedly ourselves. That is where the real fascination of the world lies – what happens to us, and what we think about it, is infinitely interesting, even if it is of surprisingly little moment for others. Psychotherapists understood this, and made it their concern to find out what we were thinking. In this respect, they showed that quality which marks out the sympathetic from the unsympathetic, and of course that was attractive – of course it was. I myself am simpatica, thought Irene – that is obvious enough – but we are surrounded – surrounded – by those who are not.
‘What were you saying, Bertie? Mummy was busy thinking.’
‘I asked how you could be seven inside,’ said Bertie.
‘Oh, yes. Well that’s subjective age, Bertie. It depends on how you feel and think inside you. So you may be twenty, but not feel twenty. Sometimes there are such people. People who don’t grow up, for example.’
‘Like Peter Pan?’ asked Bertie.
Irene shook her head. ‘Peter Pan? Oh no, Bertie. Peter Pan was a projection of J. M. Barrie’s fantasy, Bertie. He was a wish fulfilment. Peter Pan would have loved to grow up, but he wasn’t allowed to by Barrie. And that’s because Barrie wanted to regress to that age himself. That’s where he was stuck.’
Bertie looked concerned. ‘Can you get stuck, Mummy?’
‘Yes, you can, Bertie. Lots of people are stuck.’
‘Even in Edinburgh?’ asked Bertie.
‘Even in Edinburgh, Bertie. Edinburgh is full of people who are stuck. Most of them don’t realise it, of course, but they’re stuck all right.’
‘Are you stuck, Mummy?’
Irene laughed. ‘Certainly not, Bertie. I assure you – I am far from being stuck!’
‘And Ulysses? And Daddy? Are they stuck?’
Again Irene laughed, but less spontaneously, perhaps. ‘Ulysses is currently at the oral stage, Bertie. You may have noticed that he sucks everything he can find. He wants to eat everything up, you see. That’s perfectly normal. As long as he moves on, which I am sure he will. And as for Daddy, of course …’ She faltered. Stuart was clearly stuck, but she did not feel that she could explain that to Bertie.
Poor Stuart, she thought. Stuck in that dreadful office in the Scottish Government. Stuck with all those other statisticians conjuring up figures for ministers who were themselves stuck. It hardly bore thinking about.
‘Is Daddy stuck?’ persisted Bertie.
‘No, of course not. Daddy is entirely … You mustn’t worry about Daddy, Bertie. Daddy is fine … in his own way.’
Bertie looked relieved. ‘But I still think it might be better to do something else,’ he said. ‘What about Italian? There’s always Valvona & Crolla …’
‘We aren’t going there just now, Bertie. And there are better ways of practising your Italian than reading the labels of packets of pasta and tins of goodness knows what. No, Bertie, we have an appointment with Dr St Clair, and we must keep it. That’s all there is to it.’
Bertie looked down at the pavement, making sure that he did not tread on any of the lines. Tofu had said that somebody had been lost in Edinburgh only the week before because he trod on the lines. The police were looking into it, he said, but they had been able to come up with nothing. All they found, said Tofu, was his shoes.
Bertie did not believe this entirely, as Tofu was known to be a terrible liar. But there were many things that one did not really believe that one did not want to disbelieve, just in case they might be true – which they clearly were not, of course. There was stepping on lines for thing, and then there was Santa Claus. He did not exist – obviously – but if one stopped believing in him – if one professed disbelief – then there was a risk, surely, that one might get no presents.
He sighed. They were now at Dr St Clair’s door, and Irene was poised, ready to press the door bell.
‘Mummy,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if you had another baby and …’
Irene looked down at him with amusement. ‘Mummy is not going to do that, Bertie! Two boys are quite enough.’
‘No, what I was going to say was: wouldn’t it be funny if you had another baby and he looked like Dr St Clair – just like Ulysses looks like Dr Fairbairn.’
Irene bent down. ‘Bertie,’ she hissed. ‘What did Mummy tell you? Never, ever say things like that. They are very, very rude, Bertie!’
‘But you always said I should say what I’m thinking,’ protested Bertie. ‘You did.’
‘Always doesn’t mean always, Bertie – you should know that. Always means generally. And sometimes it means never. Just remember that.’
53. An Offer is Made
After he put down the telephone on the conversation with his lawyer, Matthew went into the kitchen, where he found Elspeth sitting at the table, a cup of tea in front of her.
‘I’ve done it,’ said Matthew.
‘Put in the offer?’
Matthew nodded, and sat down. He felt light-headed; Elspeth had already fainted that day and he wondered whether he would be next. If he did, he could imagine people thinking that this was a striking case of sympathetic reaction in pregnancy, where a father-to-be shares psychosomatically in the discomfort of the expectant mother. There were plenty of men, he gathered, who felt stomach pains and put on weight during the pregnancy of their wives and partners. This was different, though; this was the light-headedness that comes from having spent close on one million pounds. And even if he had not actually spent it, then he had as good as done so. Was he bound by what he had done, he asked himself. He tried to remember what the lawyer had said – something about the whole thing needing to be formally concluded in writing. If that were so, then he could still get out of it – not that he would want to; Matthew was a man of his word and thought to do that would be like accepting an invitation to lunch subject to the proviso that if a better invitation came along then one would take that in preference.
‘How much did you offer?’
‘We,’ corrected Matthew. ‘My money is your money, remember. What did I say: with my worldly goods I thee endow.’
They had been married in the Church of Scotland, but the minister had agreed to the use of parts of the liturgy of the Scottish Book of Common Prayer, which Matthew liked for its richness of language. ‘Computers can marry one another according to the modern wording,’ he had said. ‘But not me. I want “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together” … and words like that.’
Elspeth looked at him. ‘Our money then,’ she said. ‘How much did we offer of our money?’
‘Nine hundred and seventy-five thousand,’ said Matthew. ‘I discussed it with the solicitor. She looked up some recent transactions and said that this should be an attractive figure, even if another flat in Moray Place went for one million three hundred thousand pounds recently. But that was bigger, having both the ground floor and the drawing-room floor.’
Elspeth was silent. For a moment it occurred to Matthew that she might faint again. What happened if they both fainted at the same time? Who would be left to revive whom?
‘Nine hundred …’ she began weakly, and then trailed off.
Matthew tried to sound businesslike. ‘Yes. If you put in one of these timed offers, then you really have to take their socks off.’
?
??Knock their socks off,’ corrected Elspeth. ‘You don’t take somebody else’s socks off – you knock them off.’
Matthew frowned. ‘But how? How can you knock socks off? You have to peel socks.’
Elspeth did not think it really mattered. ‘Metaphors don’t always mean what they say,’ she said. ‘That’s the point of metaphors.’
‘Well, we put in the offer and …’ Matthew looked at his watch. ‘And we should know quite soon.’
Elspeth winced. ‘When do we have to pay?’
‘When we get entry,’ said Matthew. ‘I think that this should be soon enough – there’s nobody living in the flat at the moment. All we have to do is to move our stuff out.’
‘And sell this place,’ said Elspeth.
‘I know somebody in Rettie’s,’ said Matthew. ‘They’ll do it.’
‘And what if we have to pay for Moray Place before we sell India Street?’ asked Elspeth. ‘Will we need a bridging loan of a million pounds?’
‘I can do that,’ said Matthew. ‘Remember, my father gave me over four million pounds.’
‘But isn’t that in shares?’ asked Elspeth. ‘This would have to be cash.’
Matthew shrugged. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said.
Twenty minutes later the telephone rang. As he picked it up, Matthew felt his heart beating more quickly. He closed his eyes. Had he done the right thing?
‘I’m happy to report success,’ said the solicitor. ‘Moray Place is yours. They accepted immediately. In fact …’ She hesitated momentarily. ‘They said that the client was delighted to sell it to you and accepted your offer. They noted that you accepted and understood the listed building consent issue. I said that you did, as you instructed me. So you are now the proud owner – or almost – of a flat in Moray Place. Congratulations.’