Espresso Tales

Betty nodded. “Of course, if you had gone into politics, you’d now be sitting down writing your memoirs. That’s what they all seem to do these days.”

120 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part 1 – Early Days Ramsey spun round and looked at his wife. “Memoirs?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Betty. “Your political memoirs.”

Ramsey put down his cup. “Betty,” he said. “There’s something that I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. The question of memoirs.”

Betty looked at him inquiringly. “Yes?”

Ramsey lowered his gaze, as if in modesty. “It’s funny you should have mentioned memoirs,” he said quietly. “I’ve actually been writing them. I’ve got quite a bit down on paper already.”

For a moment, Betty said nothing. Then she clapped her hands together. “That’s wonderful, my dear. Wonderful!”

Ramsey smiled. “And I thought that you might like to hear a few excerpts. I was plucking up courage to offer to read them to you.”

“I can’t wait,” said Betty. “Let’s hear something right now.

I’ll fetch more coffee and then we can sit down.”

“It’s not going to set the heather on fire,” said Ramsey modestly. “But I think that my story is every bit as interesting as the next man’s.”

“Even more so,” said Betty. “Even more so.”

37. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part 1 – Early Days Ramsey Dunbarton, having shuffled through a sheaf of papers, looked at his wife over the top of his reading glasses. “I shan’t bore you with the early stuff,” he said. “School and all that. I had a pretty uneventful time at school, and nothing much happened; it’s hardly worth recording. So I’ll start off when I was a young man. Twenty-five. Can you imagine me at twenty-five, Betty?”

Betty smiled coyly. “How could I forget? The year we met.”

Ramsey frowned. “No, sorry, my dear. Not the year we met.

We met when I was twenty-six, not twenty-five. I remember it very well. I had just finished my apprenticeship with Shepherd The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part 1 – Early Days 121

and Wedderburn and had been engaged by another office. I remember it very well.”

Betty took a sip of her coffee. “And I remember it very well too, my darling. You were twenty-five because I remember –

very clearly indeed in my case – going to your twenty-sixth birthday party, and I couldn’t have done that if I hadn’t already met you. You don’t normally go to the birthday parties of people you have yet to meet, do you?”

Ramsey laid down the sheaf of papers. “That party – and I was going to say something about it in the memoirs – was not my twenty-sixth. It was my twenty-fifth. I did not celebrate my twenty-sixth because – if you cast your mind back

– I had tonsillitis and was having my tonsils removed in the Royal Infirmary! I remember getting a card from the office wishing me a speedy recovery, and a happy birthday too. It was signed by the senior partner, and I kept it. I was very pleased to have received it.”

Betty pursed her lips. For a moment it seemed as if she was about to speak, but then she did not.

“I suggest that we stop arguing,” said Ramsey. “If you’re going to find fault with my memoirs on matters of detail, then I’m not sure if it will be at all productive to read them to you.”

Betty sprang to her own defence. “I was not finding fault, as you put it. I was merely wanting to keep the historical record straight. These things are important. Imagine what the world would be like if memoirs were misleading. You have to be accurate.”

“And I am being accurate,” retorted Ramsey. “I’m checking every single fact that I commit to paper. I’ve been consulting my diaries, and they are very full, I’ll have you know. I’ve gone down to George IV Bridge to make sure that everything I say about contemporary events is true. I am being very historical in all this.” He paused, and then added peevishly: “I don’t want to mislead posterity, Betty.”

Betty thought for a moment. She was certain that she was right about the birthday being the twenty-sixth rather than the twenty-fifth, but she felt that she should let it be, even if it was 122 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part 1 – Early Days a serious mistake on her husband’s part. “Of course you don’t want to mislead, Ramsey,” she said placatingly. “Let’s not discuss it any further. Twenty-five, twenty-six – it’s very much the same thing. You carry on, dear. I’m listening.”

Ramsey Dunbarton picked up the sheaf of papers again and cleared his throat. “I was now twenty . . . somewhere in my mid-twenties. I had recently finished my years as an apprentice lawyer and had been admitted to the Society of Writers to Her Majesty’s Signet. This was a great honour for me, as this entitled me to put the letters WS after my name. I lost no time, I must admit, in having new notepaper printed and cards too. I was proud of the new letters, and I must admit that I became very impatient with people who affected not to know what WS

stood for. (One of these people even had the gall to ask whether I was a water surveyor!) ‘If you live in Edinburgh,’ I would point out, ‘you should know these things. Wouldn’t you expect a Roman to know what the Swiss Guard is?’

“This question often silenced people, and I hope that they were sufficiently chastened to go home and look the abbrevia-tion up. I did not want to embarrass anybody, of course, and one should be slow to point out to others their ignorance. But there are limits, and I think that ignorance of the meaning of WS is one of them.

“One very important feature of the WS Society is that it’s always mainly been for lawyers working in Edinburgh firms, and not every Edinburgh firm at that. There may be some members who have their practices elsewhere – even in places like Pitlochry

– but in such cases it is perfectly obvious that they are really Edinburgh types. This is as it should be, as the Society has its premises here in Edinburgh and was founded by Edinburgh lawyers for themselves and nobody else. Lawyers from Glasgow have their own societies and are welcome to join those, if they wish – and I’m sure that