“Along a very clear path,” said Angus. “I was speaking about Garioch and how he would have appreciated the contrast between the outward respectability of Moray Place and the desire of at least some of the inhabitants to practise nudism. That’s just the sort of thing that he liked to write about.
“He wrote a wonderful poem, you know, called ‘Glisk of the Great ’. The narrator sees a group of people coming out of the North British Grill, ‘lauchan fit to kill’. Then the party climbs into a ‘muckle big municipal Rolls Royce’ and disappears off towards the Calton Hill. The narrator thinks how grand this is, although the rest of us can’t join in. It gives the town some tone, you see.”
He paused. Pat and Domenica were looking at him expectantly. Cyril, who had raised his head, appeared to be listening too, one ear cocked towards his master. Cyril had no idea what was going on – which is the lot of dogs for most of the time.
But he did know that he had been enjoying a pleasant dream before his master’s voice disturbed him. In this dream he had been biting Matthew’s ankle, something he had wanted to do for a long time. And he was getting away with it too.
“Well,” said Domenica, after a few moments, “be that as it may. Robert Garioch is not here to write about this invitation of Pat’s. We have to decide – or, rather, Pat has to decide –
whether to go. And I would say certainly not.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Angus. “They’ll all be perfectly respectable. These nudists are a very tame lot, you know. They don’t practise nudism for any lascivious reasons. It’s all very pure and aboveboard.”
“That may be so,” said Domenica. “But doesn’t it strike you as a bit strange that this young man should have invited Pat, who is not currently a practising nudist, to join them?”
“They have to recruit somehow,” said Angus. “It’s like people inviting you to come along to a church service or an amateur orchestra. They’re hoping that you’ll join. People are recruiters at heart, you know. It makes them feel more comfortable to see the ranks of their particular enthusiasm swelling.”
Pat listened to this with interest. She had been intrigued by
what Angus had to say, but felt at heart that any advice he gave was bound to be wrong. Angus was harmless enough, she thought, but his view of things was such a strange one – almost a poetical turning upside-down of the world. Domenica, by contrast, seemed to understand things as they were, and if she were to listen to anybody, she should listen to her. Of course, there were other people she could ask. There was Matthew, but she sensed that he would be jealous and resentful if she even told him about Peter’s existence, let alone his bizarre invitation.
Then there was her father. He had a profound understanding of the world, but it would embarrass her to talk to him about something like this. Finally, she could make her mind up for herself; she could follow her instincts. But what were her instincts? She thought for a moment. She closed her eyes, trying to imagine the scene in the Moray Place Gardens. Then she opened them again. She wanted to go.
High above the city, in their house in the Braids, Ramsey Dunbarton was embarking on a second reading of excerpts from his memoirs to his wife Betty. They had finished with his account of their courtship and early years in Craiglea Drive before they moved to the Braids. Betty had enjoyed the reading, although she had detected a number of inaccuracies in her husband’s recollection of events. He had confused the place of their first meeting and had got his age at the time quite wrong. He had also mixed up the name of the late Duke of Atholl, whom he had described as Angus, but who had actually been called Iain. These were little things, of course, although the cumulative effect of a number of errors of that nature could make for a narrative which was perhaps less than reliable, but she had refrained from correcting him. Ramsey had many virtues, but he also had a slight tendency to become 198
“I shall now move on to some legal reminiscences,” said Ramsey, looking down at his wife in her comfortable chair. He preferred to read while standing, as this gave freedom to the diaphragm and allowed the voice to be projected.
“Legal things,” muttered Betty. “That’s nice, dear.”
“I have been a lawyer for my entire working life,” Ramsey began. “And I have never regretted, not for one single moment, my choice of the law. Had I decided differently at that fateful lunch with my prospective father-in- law in Broughty Ferry, I might have ended up in the marmalade business, but I did not.
I stuck to the law.
“Now that should not be taken to mean that I have anything but the highest regard for those in the marmalade business. I know that there are some who think it in some sense undignified to be involved in that sort of trade, but I have never understood that view. In my view, it is neither the bed you are born in, nor the trade you follow, that determines your value. It is what you are as a man. That’s what counts. And I believe that Robert Burns, our national poet, expressed that philosophy perfectly when he wrote
“I have, as it happens, had a strong interest in Burns since the age of ten. That was when I started to learn his works off
by heart, starting with
Start with that and then move on to
“But I digress. I knew from my very first day as a law student that the law was the mistress for me. I remember very clearly my first lecture in Roman Law when the professor told us all about the
