Love Over Scotland by Alexander McCall Smith
He had planned the menu carefully. They would start with ravioli Caprese, ravioli stuffed with a mixture of parmesan and goat’s milk cheese. Angus had decided against using sheep’s milk caciotta, the sort used in Tuscany, on the grounds that in Capri itself he had read that caciotta was made of goat’s milk. That is something that he thought he might raise with Antonia, telling her, perhaps, that he had assumed that she would want the Caprian version rather than the Tuscan. That would catch her out, because she would not know anything about that. They would then move on, for their main course, to sogliole alla Veneziana, sole with Venetian sauce. That would involve a white wine sauce in which he would put a lot of garlic, and with it he would serve carciofi ripieni alla Mafalda, stuffed artichokes which he had learned to make by reading Elizabeth David’s Italian Food. That was quite a complex recipe, involving more garlic and some anchovies, but he had plenty of time to get everything ready; and what was the time now that he had laid out all the ingredients?–five-thirty, which was time, perhaps, for a drink. He had obtained two bottles of a southern wine, a Cirò Bianco from Calabria, and he already had a supply of Biondi-Santi Brunello di Montalcino, which a friend had given him in payment for a portrait a few months ago.
Antonia would know nothing about Brunello, of course. He might mention Montalcino and ask her whether she thought it had been spoilt. “You don’t know Montalcino? Oh, you should go there. But maybe it’s a bit late, now that it’s become so popular. That’s the trouble with Tuscany. Terribly busy.”
He had opened one of the bottles of Brunello to let it breathe, and while he was thinking these delicious thoughts involving the putting of Antonia in her place, he decided to allow himself a glass of the elegant Italian wine. He raised the glass to the light and stared at it lovingly. It would be wonderful to be back in Montalcino, perhaps walking in the woods with Cyril. Would Cyril have a good nose for truffles? he wondered. It would be interesting to take him there now that dogs could get a passport.
The Brunello slipped down very easily and Angus decided to refill his glass. The second helping would be more subtle, he felt, and he could savour it as he prepared the stuffed artichokes. He took a sip and closed his eyes. It was delicious. But what he needed now was some music, and this is where Cyril came in.
Angus had taught Cyril very few tricks. There were some dogs who were trained to carry the newspaper back from the paper shop, walking obediently behind their master, the day’s news clamped in their jaws.
That, thought Angus, was a rather pointless trick. Like Mr Warburton in Somerset Maugham’s The Outstation, a pristine newspaper was one of Angus Lordie’s main delights, and it would not do to have canine toothmarks all over the front page.
But Cyril’s inability to perform such standard tricks did not mean that he could do nothing useful. In fact, Cyril had been trained to perform a trick of which he was inordinately proud and which Angus Lordie felt was positively useful. On the command “Cyril! Music!” the obedient dog would bound through to the drawing room and press the on/off button of the CD player with his nose.
That would activate the disc, one of which Angus always kept in the player, and music would be heard. And in anticipation of the Italian cuisine planned for Antonia, Angus had loaded a disc of Florentine music of the sixteenth century.
On his master’s command, Cyril dashed off to perform his trick. In the kitchen, Angus called out his thanks and cut off a small piece of anchovy to feed to Cyril as a reward. Then, into the white enamel bowl from which Cyril was given liquid treats, he poured a small quantity of Brunello di Montalcino.
It was far too good a wine to give to a dog in normal circumstances, but Angus was still enjoying the euphoria of being reunited with Cyril after his recent kidnap, and felt that an exception should be made.
Cyril wolfed down the anchovy fragment and then turned to the Brunello, which he sniffed at appreciatively before licking it quickly from the bowl. By this time, Angus had poured himself a third glass of the Brunello.
It’s extraordinary how the level of a good wine in the bottle sinks so quickly, he said to himself as he lifted the bottle to the light.
Oh well, that was a gorgeous piece of early Florentine music playing: Ecco la Primavera, a favourite song of his. Spring has arrived. At last, at last. And here, Cyril my boy, is a toast to spring! La Primavera!
Cyril gazed at his master. There was much that he did not understand.
77. Angus Impresses Antonia
Antonia Collie, bound for dinner in Angus Lordie’s Drummond Place flat, but none too enthusiastic about the prospect, left Domenica’s flat shortly before twenty-to-eight that evening. She imagined that it would take her not much more than five minutes to walk up the street and round the corner, which would mean that she would arrive at about the right time for a seven-thirty invitation. In the event, it took her only two minutes to reach the top of Scotland Street, from which point the walk to Angus Lordie’s front door would require only another forty-five seconds. So, rather than arrive too early, she decided to walk round the square once before ringing his doorbell. These things might not seem important, but Antonia thought that they were, and she was right, and Immanuel Kant, famous for the utter regularity of his walks around Königsberg, would doubtlessly have agreed with her.
Unknown to Antonia, her host was at that moment peering out of the window of his drawing room, which looked over the gardens in the middle of the square. He had finished his preparations in the kitchen, and had moved into the drawing room, taking with him Cyril and the second bottle of Brunello di Montalcino. Angus had not intended to have more than one or two glasses of wine while cooking the dinner, but he had found that the sheer quality of the Brunello had dictated otherwise. The contents of the first bottle had slipped down almost unnoticed, and now the second bottle was seriously broached.
He was now in an extremely good mood. The sinking feeling which he had experienced earlier on at the thought of entertaining Antonia had been replaced by a rather more positive attitude. In fact, now he was looking forward to her arrival, as he hoped to show her a recently-acquired Alberto Morrocco still-life, a present from an old friend. It had been a handsome gift, and Angus had given the painting pride of place on his walls. Antonia, he thought, was bound to like it, just as he imagined that she would in due course approve of the portrait he was planning of the retired lawyer Ramsey Dunbarton. Angus Lordie knew Ramsey Dunbarton from the Scottish Arts Club, where they occasionally had lunch at the same table. He found Ramsey’s conversation somewhat dull–in fact, extremely dull, for most of the time–but he was a tolerant man and was prepared to put up with long-winded stories about Morningside as he ate his lunch, provided that the subject could be changed by the time they went upstairs for coffee. In a rash moment, Angus had offered to paint Ramsey’s portrait, and the offer had been immediately accepted. Ramsey had taken out his diary and said: “When? Will next week do? Monday morning?”
Now, looking out of his window, he saw the figure of a woman come up from the top of Scotland Street and hesitate. He thought that it might be Antonia, but then his long vision was not very good at night and he could not make out the woman’s features. He saw her hesitate, look about her, and then start to stroll around the square. That was interesting, he thought. “That woman has an agenda,” he said to Cyril, who was sitting on the carpet in the middle of the room looking up at the light. Cyril cocked his head in his master’s direction in acknowledgement of the comment addressed to him, and then resumed his contemplation of the light. Angus poured himself another glass of Brunello.
Angus was still at his window when Antonia completed her walk round the square and arrived outside his door. He was now very interested in the behaviour of this woman, but when the doorbell rang shortly thereafter he realised that it was, after all, Antonia. But why would she have gone for a walk round the square? Killing time, of course. He looked at his watch. Yes, that was it. How considerate of her.
He went into his hall to
“Come on up!” he called out, and added: “Yoo hoo!” His voice echoed rather satisfactorily against the stone walls and stairway and so he decided to call out again. “Hoots toots!” he shouted, using the exact phrase which David Balfour’s uncle used when he received his nephew in the House of Shaws. Would Antonia get the reference, he wondered? Did she know her Robert Louis Stevenson? Of course, this stair was considerably safer than that up which Balfour’s uncle had sent him; there were no voids here into which one might step. So Angus shouted out to Antonia as she began her climb up to his floor: “No voids! Don’t worry! This is not the House of Shaws!” Unfortunately, his voice was slightly slurred and he ended up shouting something which sounded rather like “This is not a house of whores”. Or so it seemed to Antonia, who paused and looked up in puzzlement.
Angus met her at his doorway. “Antonia, my dear,” he said, reaching out to kiss her on the cheek. “You are very welcome. Totally welcome.”
She glanced at him sideways as she took off her coat. “I hope that I’m not late,” she said.
“But not at all,” said Angus, taking the coat. “My mother had a coat like this, you know. Virtually identical. In fact, this could be the very coat. Remarkable. Hers was in slightly better condition, I believe, but otherwise pretty similar. Amazing. Shows that fashion doesn’t change, does it?” He paused. “My mother’s dead, you see.”
Antonia smiled, but said nothing.
“On y va,” said Angus. “Let’s go through to the drawing room. You’ve met Cyril, of course. He’s my dog. Got a gold tooth, you know. Do you mind dogs, Antonia? Because if you do, I can send him out. Or should I say: Do you mind men? Because if you do, I can be sent out and Cyril can stay! Hah!”
Antonia smiled again, but more weakly.
“By the way,” said Angus, “I saw you walking round the square. I didn’t know it was you. And you know what?–I thought you were a streetwalker. I really did! Shows how wrong one can be–at a distance.”
78. The Third Person
“Purely a social call,” said Irene as she put her head round Dr Fairbairn’s door. “I was passing by, you see, and they said downstairs that you had no patients until twelve o’clock. So I thought…”
Dr Hugo Fairbairn, seated behind his desk and absorbed, until then, in an unbound copy of The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, greeted her warmly.
“But there’s no need to justify yourself,” he said. “Not that you entered apologetically, of course. You’re not one of those people who announces themselves with: ‘It’s only me’.”
Irene slipped, uninvited, into the chair in front of the psychotherapist’s desk. “But does anybody really say that?” she asked.
Dr Fairbairn nodded. “They certainly do. And it shows a fairly profound lack of self-esteem. If one says: ‘It’s me’, then one is merely stating a fact. It is, indeed, you. But if you qualify it by saying that it’s only you, then you’re saying that it could be somebody more significant. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Irene did agree. She agreed with most of Dr Fairbairn’s pronouncements, and wished, in fact, that she herself had made them.
“You see,” went on Dr Fairbairn, “how we announce ourselves is very revealing. J.M. Barrie, you know, used to enter his mother’s room saying: ‘It’s not him, it’s me’. He was referring, of course, to David, his brother who died. And that shaped, and indeed explained, everything about his later life. All the psychopathology. The creation of Peter Pan. Everything.”
“Very sad,” said Irene.
“Yes,” said Dr Fairbairn. “Very. And then there’s the interesting question of those who use the third person about themselves.”
“Oh,” said Irene, vaguely. It occurred to her that she used the third person on occasion when talking to Bertie. She said things such as: “Mummy is watching, Bertie. Mummy is watching Bertie very closely.” That was using the third person, was it not? In fact, it was a double use of the third person; first (I, mother figure) became third, as did second (you, son). What did this reveal about Irene? she asked herself. No, deliberate play; what does that reveal about me?
“Yes,” said Dr Fairbairn. “I knew somebody once who did this all the time. He was called George, and he said things like: ‘George is very much hoping to see you tomorrow.’ Or: ‘George had a very good time yesterday.’ It was very strange.”
“Why did he do it?” Irene asked.
Dr Fairbairn looked up at the ceiling, which was a sign, Irene had noted, of an impending insight. “It’s a form of dissociative splitting of the self,” he said. “Or that’s what it is in the most extreme cases. It’s as if a decision has been taken that there are two persons–the person whose actions and thoughts are reported and the person who does the reporting. So if you’re George and you say that George has done something, then it’s as if you’re speaking from the perspective of another person altogether, an observer.”
Irene thought about that for a moment. “I can see that,” she said. “But this self-bifurcation?”
Dr Fairbairn leaned forward and made an emphatic gesture with his right hand. “Ah!” he said. “Two possibilities. One is that it’s a defensive withdrawal from a threatening social reality. I don’t like what I see in the world and so I stand back for a while and let the alter ego get on with it. I take a breather, so to speak.”
“And the other possibility?” asked Irene.
“Smugness,” said Dr Fairbairn. “Have you noticed something about the people who do it? Well, I have. They’re often smug.”
Irene hesitated. She had been about to say that she sometimes referred to herself in the third person when talking to Bertie, but she was going to suggest that it was different with children. Adults spoke to children in the third person because it provided the child with a key to the understanding of a social world which would otherwise be too subjective. The extraction of the subjective element in the situation conveyed to the child the understanding that the social world involved impersonal, objectified transactions between people. In other words, we were all role players, and the child may as well get used to that fact.
That was what she was going to say, but she could not say it now. Smug? Was she smug? Of course not.
Dr Fairbairn leaned back in his chair, pulling at the cuffs of his blue linen jacket. “Smugness is a very interesting concept,” he said slowly. “You may know that there’s a fascinating literature on it. Not a very extensive one, but very, very interesting.”
He reached for the journal which he had been reading when Irene entered the room. “Right here,” he said. “As it happens. Much of this issue is devoted to the topic. Fascinating stuff.”
Irene listened attentively. She knew that it was disloyal, but she could not help but compare Dr Fairbairn with Stuart. The worlds of the two men were surely about as different as one could imagine. Indeed, there were so few men like Dr Fairbairn–so few men who could talk with such ease and insight about matters such as these. It was like being with an artist who simply saw the world in a different way; saw colours and shades that others just did not see. Proust must have been like that too. He saw everything, and then everything behind everything. Behind the simplest thing, even inanimate objects, there was a wealth of associations that only somebody like Proust could see. So it was with Dr Fairbairn, and for a moment it made Irene feel a great sense of regret. Had she married somebody like this, then her daily lot would have been so different. She would have been able to explore the world with him in a way in which she would never be able to do with Stuart. Stuart lived in a world of statistics and brute facts. Dr Fairbairn inhabited a realm of emotions and human possibilities. They were so utterly different–two sides of a mountain range, she thought, and I am on the wrong one.
She told herself that she should not waste these precious minutes with Dr Fairbairn in thinking about what might be, bu
79. Smugness Explained
“Have you ever encountered a really smug person?” asked Dr Fairbairn, fixing his gaze on Irene as she sat before him in his consulting room. Not that this was a consultation; this was a conversation, and a rather enjoyable one, with no therapeutic purpose.
Irene thought for a moment. Who, in her circle, was smug? But then, she thought, do I really have a circle? She was not at all sure that she did.
“Plenty,” she said. “This city is full of smug people. Always has been.”
Dr Fairbairn laughed. “Of course it is,” he said. “But can you think of anybody in particular?”
Irene’s mind had now alighted on one or two examples. Yes, he was smug all right. And as for her…“Well, there’s a certain facial expression,” began Irene.
Dr Fairbairn cut her short. “There might be, but not always. If there is, it’s the expression of oral satiety. The smug person has what he really wants, the good object, which is the…Of course, you know all about that. So he has it and he feels utterly fulfilled. He isn’t really interested in anything else–not really. That’s why smug people never talk about you–they talk about themselves. Have you noticed that?”
Irene had. She was now thinking of a cousin of hers, a man whom it had never occurred to her to label as smug, but that is what he was. He was insufferably smug, now that one came to think about it. And it was quite true; when they met, which was relatively infrequently, he never once asked her about herself but spoke only of himself and his plans.
“I have a cousin,” she said. “He’s extremely smug.” She paused. “And do you know, he makes me want to prick him with a pin. Yes, I have this terrible pin urge.”
Dr Fairbairn stared at his friend. Pin envy. He had been about to tell her of the common pathology of those who reacted with violent antipathy towards smug people. A lot of people were like that; the mere presence of a smug person made them livid. But he decided that it was perhaps best not to mention that aspect of it just at that moment.