But what? As he made his way to The Shore, he thought of the possibilities. He could retrain. He could acquire some sort of trade that was in demand; he did not need to be shackled to a desk for the rest of his working life. He could become a plumber or a joiner. He had always been interested in working with his hands, and now he could do it. He could become a taxi driver, or a commissionaire in the Caledonian Hotel, or a roofer. There were all sorts of honest jobs that he could do once he had fallen out of the white-collar sector into the blue-collar world – if indeed, it was a fall. It could be seen as a sideways move, or even an ascension.
The restaurant had just started serving lunch, and Stuart was quickly given a table. He looked about him with a satisfied, contented air. He was a free man, sitting down to his lunch at an excellent restaurant. He was a man whose wife was going off to Aberdeen to live with her lover. He was a man who had a flat in a friendly street and had just paid off his mortgage. He was a man who had no job but who would probably be able to find one in a few weeks or a few months. He was a man who had two wonderful small boys who loved him as much as he loved them, and who was twice fortunate because he had a helpful and understanding mother who had expressed her readiness to move in and look after the boys once their mother went off to Aberdeen. There were so many respects in which he was blessed, and he thought of these as he ordered his lunch: hand-dived scallops, a nice piece of grilled haddock, a pint of chilled Guinness, and a piece of strawberry tart.
The Slush Pile
At the very time that Stuart was waiting outside that fateful promotion board door, Matthew was crossing Dundas Street to open up his gallery. It was already nine forty-five, the later opening hour being an inevitable concomitant of his having moved out of town to Nine Mile Burn. Matthew had explored the various ways of getting into work and had opted for what he described as the semi-green option. This involved a car journey into Fairmilehead, where he could park well beyond the limits of the controlled parking zone. Then he would wait to catch a bus that would take him all the way into the city centre, dropping him off a mere five minutes from Dundas Street. The entire journey took forty-five minutes, which meant that he had to leave the house at nine if he were to open the gallery before ten.
During the summer, the journey was easy; he had yet to spend a winter in the new house and he was not sure that it would be so pleasant waiting for a bus in the dark, particularly on days when there was rain or sleet. Anticipating this, though, he had reached an agreement with Pat that in the winter months she would come in early on three days a week, while he would do two. Her journey in to work, even in winter, involved not much more than a meander across the Meadows, a stroll down the Mound, and a brief walk thereafter across the ridge of George Street down to Dundas Street.
That morning Pat was due to come in to the gallery, but only later on. She had an appointment with the dental hygienist, she said, and would not be able to be in until half past ten, by which time Matthew would be enjoying his morning cup of coffee at Big Lou’s. So it was that when she arrived she found Matthew’s usual notice on the door; she let herself in, took down this notice and substituted one saying Open. Then she tackled the mail, putting bills to one side, catalogues to another, and dealing with the enquiries from prospective artists seeking representation or an exhibition.
These letters were placed in a folder Matthew described as the slush pile. It was a term used by publishers for unsolicited manuscripts sent in by prospective authors, and Matthew had been told about it by a publisher friend.
“We get the most extraordinary things,” he said. “The slush pile is never boring.”
“Such as?” asked Matthew.
“Oh, endless memoirs. Two Years in the French Foreign Legion, for example. You’d be astonished to discover how many people have spent two years in the Legion – and then written about it.”
Matthew tried to remember whether he had met anybody who had served in the Foreign Legion. He decided he had not, but then it depended to a great extent, he thought, on the circles one moved in. Presumably there were circles for those who gravitated towards service in the Foreign Legion – people who had something to forget, apparently. Of course, the Legion itself must be aware that many of those who signed up would in due course write their memoirs; perhaps they had a class, as part of basic training, in which memoir-writing was taught to new recruits. Along with instruction in weapons drill, camouflage, and hand-to-hand combat, there would be a weekly lecture on some aspect of biographical writing, or on the merits of obtaining a good literary agent, or on some finer points of copy-editing or grammar.
“And what else?” he asked. “You presumably don’t just get memoirs of the Legion?”
His friend shook his head. “No, we do get other manuscripts. There’s a regular stream of accounts of the life of Bonnie Prince Charlie. They’re very common – I get about five a year. They all claim to have new insights, but it’s frankly rather difficult to identify what these insights are.” He paused. “The authors of those particular books all tend to have a certain look in their eye. It’s difficult to describe it, but it’s there all right.”
Then, he said, there was fiction. “These manuscripts are usually by people who are quite good at doing other things, but who feel for some reason that they have to write a novel. In fact it’s rare these days to find somebody who hasn’t written a novel, at least in Edinburgh.” He paused, and smiled at a recollection. “You know, I went to a dinner party in Great King Street once where everybody, including the host and hostess, had written an unpublished novel. In fact, it was at that dinner party that I first heard – as an opening gambit – the question: ‘What novels are your children writing?’ This is a variant on the question as to whether children play football or tennis, or are learning how to drive.
“Of course, the vast majority of these novels are unpublishable – some very much so. Then many of them are what used to be called obscene and now are called, simply, adult. We received one of these recently that was all about a man who was kidnapped by a shipload of nuns – and these nuns were – how shall I put it? – very friendly. The author suggested it might be of interest to a Catholic readership, but I think he meant it might appeal to those of catholic tastes. That’s a different department, you know.”
“Do you have to read them all?” asked Matthew.
“That depends,” said his friend. “There are some firms that simply throw them out with the waste paper. I think that’s discourteous. Then there are others who ask for them in electronic format, so they can delete them at the push of a button. We take the view that you have to be careful: there are so many cases where publishers have rejected a manuscript only to discover, a short time later, that it has been published to great acclaim – and with great success – by somebody else. A famous Glasgow firm once turned down Enid Blyton. Fredrick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal was rejected, as was The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. I could go on.”
Matthew laughed. “Please do. Hearing about the mistakes of others gives one such a warm feeling.”
“All right,” said his friend. “Golding’s Lord of the Flies was rejected twenty-one times and no less a person than T. S. Eliot turned down George Orwell’s Animal Farm on the grounds that it was not convincing. He’d obviously never met a speaking pig.”
“So, you look at everything in the slush pile?” asked Matthew.
His friend looked embarrassed. “We don’t always actually do what we say we should do,” he said. “We’re only human.”
Distressed Oatmeal
Pat handed Matthew the slush pile after he had hung up his lightweight summer scarf. She did not like that scarf, but of course had never expressed her views openly. Clothes were personal in a very special sense: you might compliment another’s clothes, but you should never criticise them.
All she could say about his scarf, then, was this: “That’s an interesting colour – what do you call it?” She knew about his distressed-oatmeal sweater, and ab
out his mitigated-beige trousers, but the colour of this scarf, she thought, was something altogether different.
Matthew glanced at his scarf, now hanging on a peg near the office door. “Understated-brown,” he replied. “At least that’s what they said it was.” He paused. “Do you like it?”
Pat mustered her thoughts. There were many ways of avoiding questions. “It suits you,” she said.
Matthew smiled. “Do you mean I’m understated?”
She made light of this. “You? No, not at all, Matthew. You’re . . . you’re just right.”
He thanked her, as he could tell that she meant it. Pat was kind to him; their relationship was an easy one – the relationship of people who may have been more than that to one another in the past, but who were now just old friends.
“You’re not so bad yourself,” he said.
She returned his smile. “What a nice way to start the morning. A compliment or two before work . . . How nice.”
“We don’t pay enough compliments,” observed Matthew. “We should tell people more often that we like them, or that they’re doing a good job, or that they look great. It doesn’t cost very much, and yet we don’t seem to like doing it that often.”
“Some people never do it,” said Pat. “They can’t bring themselves to say something complimentary to anybody else – they just can’t. It sticks in their throat.”
Matthew knew what she was talking about. It was something to do with envy, he thought – that most powerful emotion that is there in most of us – to an extent – but that could dominate the entire world view of some.
“Envy,” he said. “That’s what stops us.” He paused to remember his most envious friend, one whose face fell if anybody told him of some piece of good fortune. He found that sad – to go through life resenting what others achieved, or had, because one had not been successful oneself. What a waste of energy it was to sit there and fume, and what a loss. It was so easy to share the joy of another, and thereby experience, at no cost to oneself, some of the pleasure that the other felt. So, if you met a friend who had been invited to a party that you would dearly love to be invited to yourself, then rather than being consumed by envy, you might bask in the pleasure of just knowing that the party in question was taking place and that your friend would be there.
“Two letters,” said Pat, pointing to the file. “One from a final-year student at the Art College offering to interview us – for him to interview us – with a view to our representing him.”
“Oh dear!” said Matthew. But then he thought: what if this young man were the next David Hockney? And so he said, “I’ll look at his work. Are there any photographs?”
“He’s attached a set of photos of a series of paintings he’s called The Triumphs of Mother. He says something about the pictures. They all feature his mother in a number of heroic situations – climbing K2, crossing the finishing line of the New York marathon, meeting the Pope.”
Matthew saw that Pat was grinning. “Ah!” he said. “Nothing matters as long as he admires his mother, as the psychiatrist said to Oedipus.”
“And there’s a letter from an installation artist from Glasgow.”
“Rubbish bin,” said Matthew.
They moved on to a discussion of the forthcoming visit of a client who was considering the purchase of a work by Edward Atkinson Hornel, Kirkcudbright Harbour at Low Tide. Matthew did not like the painting, but would do his best. “It would have been so much better if he had put a few Japanese girls in it,” he confessed to Pat. “Hornel was terrifically good at painting Japanese girls – and flowers. But I suppose neither of those occurs naturally in Kirkcudbright Harbour, even at high tide.”
Pat laughed. “Don’t say that to the client,” she muttered.
Matthew looked towards the door. A customer was about to enter . . . or was it . . . He stood stock still, hardly breathing, chilled within. Mrs. Patterson Cowie, his former English teacher, and the victim of that dreadful incident in the bookshop, was poised to enter the front door. She it was whom he had knocked over in his flight from that intolerable and embarrassing situation. And now, just as he was beginning to forget the uncomfortable information that the police were looking for him in connection with that, here she was – the one person in Edinburgh he did not want to see: she would identify him, and he would be arrested.
Pat realised that something was wrong. “Are you all right?” she asked.
Matthew found himself whispering. “That woman at the door. I don’t want to see her.”
Pat glanced towards the door. “Why not?”
“I just don’t,” said Matthew. “She was my English teacher.”
Pat looked at him in astonishment. “And you haven’t done your homework? Is that it?”
“Don’t joke,” hissed Matthew. “I’m going to hide.”
And with that, just as Mrs. Patterson Cowie opened the door, Matthew ducked under the well of his desk. The space there was large enough – just – to conceal him – although if Mrs. Patterson Cowie got too close to the desk, she would be sure to see him.
Pat, struggling with her astonishment, stood up to greet their customer.
“Do you mind if I take a look round?” asked Mrs. Patterson Cowie.
“Please do,” said Pat. “And let me know if I can do anything.”
Mrs. Patterson Cowie approached a painting and peered at it closely. “Venice,” she said.
“Yes,” said Pat, glancing down at what she could see of Matthew. “Venice. Yes.”
Mrs. Patterson Cowie now moved closer to the desk.
“That’s a rather interesting painting over there,” said Pat, pointing to a watercolour on the other side of the gallery. “That’s a William Gillies. May I show it to you?”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Patterson Cowie. “I rather like Gillies. I always have.”
Relieved at being able to steer her away from the desk, Pat led Mrs. Patterson Cowie over to the Gillies. “Lovely, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Patterson Cowie. “It certainly is. That’s Temple, isn’t it? I love that part of . . . what is it, East Lothian or Midlothian? I’m never sure where boundaries lie.”
“Midlothian,” said Pat quickly. “Or maybe East Lothian. Who knows?”
Mrs. Patterson Cowie smiled. “Well, somebody will know, don’t you think?”
From the other side of the room, there came an unexpected sound – a knocking of something against wood. Matthew must have shifted, thought Pat, and bumped a leg against the desk: cramp, perhaps.
Mrs. Patterson Cowie heard the noise, too, and turned her head.
Dental Flossing
Pat had to think quickly, and she did. Looking at her watch, she gave a gasp. “Oh, my goodness! The time! Would you look at the time!”
Mrs. Patterson Cowie glanced at her own watch. “Well, it’s only twenty past ten.” As she spoke, she turned her head to look back in the direction of the desk under which Matthew was hiding. “Is there something . . . ” she began.
Pat interrupted her. “Twenty past ten! Oh, heavens, we’re going to have to close. Immediately. Right now.”
Mrs. Patterson Cowie looked puzzled. “But you’ve only just opened. Why on earth do you have to close?”
Pat looked at her reproachfully. “Operational reasons, of course,” she said, as if this should have been only too apparent.
“And what does that mean?”
“Stocktaking,” said Pat, sounding as firm as possible. “We have to close for stocktaking.”
Mrs. Patterson Cowie looked even more puzzled. “Stocktaking? Most of your stock, I would have thought, is on the walls. Why do you need to close if . . . ”
Again, Pat cut her short. “Look, I’m terribly sorry,” she said. “But I’m going to have to ask you to leave. And I can’t really discuss management issues with you – it really isn’t any of your business.”
It was against Pat’s nature to be rude, but she felt that the only way of getting Mrs. Patter
son Cowie out of the gallery was to give offence; with any luck she would take the hint and storm out.
“No need to be so snippy,” said Mrs. Patterson Cowie.
“I’m sorry,” said Pat. “But you really must go.”
“Well, really,” complained Mrs. Patterson Cowie. “I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this rudeness. I assure you, I shan’t linger.”
“Good,” said Pat, and moved towards the door to let her out.
When Mrs. Patterson Cowie had left, Pat made her way over to the desk and peered under it. “You can come out now, Matthew,” she said. “Hide and seek finished. Playtime over.”
These comments were delivered with maximum sarcasm, even scorn, but this was lost on Matthew, who only seemed interested in confirming the departure of Mrs. Patterson Cowie.
“Yes, she’s definitely gone,” said Pat. “I told her that we were about to close for stocktaking. I was horribly rude to her – and I feel wretched about it.”
“Good,” said Matthew, rubbing at his leg to relieve the cramp that had set in while he was under the desk. “That was quick thinking, Pat. I owe you.”
“What you owe me is an explanation,” said Pat. “What a ridiculous performance. The least you can do now is to explain what that was all about.”
Matthew sighed. “It’s very complicated, you know. But I suppose you’re right – I suppose I do need to tell you about it.”
“You certainly do,” said Pat. “She heard you, you know. She heard you bump against the desk. I think she knew there was someone there.”
“You could have told her it was a poltergeist,” said Matthew, grinning. “You could have said that we’re plagued with poltergeists in the New Town and that she had better get out before chairs started whizzing through the air.”