towards Domenica, “is somewhat out of touch, if I may say so. No offence, of course, Domenica,
Pat glanced at Domenica. She wondered whether she would take offence at being referred to as an old trout, but her neighbour simply smiled. “You may call me an old trout,” Domenica said. “But if there’s anybody fishy around here, Angus, it surely is you. And let me tell you that I do understand the whole issue of social concealment and its place in the Scottish psyche. But let’s not waste our time in idle banter. My question to you, Angus, is this: how do you know that there are nudists in Moray Place? Have you seen them? Or is it just gossip that you’ve picked up in the Cumberland Bar?”
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Angus took a sip of his wine. His expression, thought Pat, was that of one who was about to produce the clinching argument.
“I’d like it to be true,” he said. “Moray Place and nudists.
Can’t you just see it?”
“No,” said Domenica. “I can’t.”
“Bob Sutherland would have loved it,” mused Angus. “My goodness, he would have loved it.”
Domenica looked puzzled. “Bob Sutherland?” she asked.
“Robert Garioch,” said Angus. “A great makar. And one of our neighbours, you know. He lived in Nelson Street. Lived.
Dead now, alas.”
“Garioch,” mused Domenica.
“You’ll make me weep,” said Angus quietly.
“Yes,” said Angus. “
. . . and Domenica, for that matter, how important is poetry to you?”
Pat thought for a moment. She had read some poets, but now that she came to think of it, who had they been? Chaucer had been forced on her at school – the respectable parts, of course
– and there had been Tennyson too, and MacDiarmid, although she could not remember which bits. And then Yeats: something about an Irish airman, and towers, and wild swans. But how important had that been to her? She had stopped reading it after she had left school, and had not gone back to it. “Not very important,” she said. “Although . . .”
Angus nodded. “I’m afraid I expected that answer,” he said.
He looked at Domenica.
“I find comfort in it,” she said. “But why bring up Garioch?
And why would he have been so amused by nudists in Moray Place?”
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Angus laughed. “Because he had a fine sense of the contrast between grandeur on the one hand (not that I’m suggesting for a moment that Moray Place is overly grand) and the ordinary man in the street on the other. He’s the heir to Fergusson, you know. Just as Burns was. An awful lot of Burns is pure Fergusson, you know.”
“What a tragedy,” said Domenica. “Do you know how old Robert Fergusson was when he died, Pat? No, of course you don’t. Well, he was just a little bit older than you. Just a few years. Twenty-four.”
“And he died alone in his cell in the Bedlam,” said Angus.
“That bonny youth.”
“That seems to be the lot of so many poets,” said Domenica.
“To die young, that is. Rupert Brooke.” She glanced at Pat.
“Don’t talk to me about Brooke,” said Angus dismissively.
“Or at least don’t talk to me about Brooke in the same breath as Fergusson. What a pain that young man was. Have you read his letters to Strachey? Ghastly egotistic diatribes. Full of upper-middle-class swooning and posturing. The Cambridge Apostles!
What a bunch of twerps – and so pleased with themselves. All deeply damaged by the English boarding school system, of course, but still . . .”
Domenica was more tolerant. “They were gilded youth,” she said. “One must allow gilded youth a certain leeway . . . And, anyway, they were all doomed, weren’t they? They knew that once they were sent to France they didn’t stand much of a chance.”
“Fergusson was the real thing,” Angus interrupted. “He had a real feeling for what was going on in the streets and taverns of Edinburgh. And he suffered. Brooke and his like are all too douce. That’s why their poetry is so bland.”
Domenica rose to her feet to refresh the glass which Angus was holding out to her. “I’m not sure where this is going,” she said mildly. “But then I never am with you, Angus. Your thoughts
. . . well, they do seem to drift a bit.”
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