standing at his table, drying his hands on a brewery towel. Angus looked up.
“You seemed very deep in thought,” said the barman.
Angus tried to smile. “I suppose I was,” he said. “An unhealthy state to be in. Sometimes.”
The barman laughed. “Well, I wanted to tell you that that fellow who works down in the Royal Bank of Scotland – I forget his name – a nice guy. Comes in here from time to time. He phoned earlier today and left a message for you. I meant to tell you when you came in, but I forgot.”
Angus looked confused. “I’m not sure if I know him,” he said.
“Which . . .”
The barman finished drying his hands and began to fold the towel neatly. “He said he found your dog. He found Cyril. He’s bringing him in here this evening. He didn’t know where you lived and he couldn’t find you in the phone book . . .”
He did not finish, for at that moment the door opened and a man entered with Cyril on a lead. When Cyril saw Angus, he launched himself forward, as if picked up and propelled by a great gust of wind. The lead was pulled from the man’s hand, but he did not try to stop it, as he had seen Angus at his table and he understood.
Cyril bounded over the floor of the bar, a strange sound coming from his mouth, a howl of a sort that one would not have thought a dog capable of, a whoop, an almost human wail of delight. Angus rose to his feet, and with a great leap Cyril was in his arms, licking his face, twisting his body this way and that in sheer delight, still howling in between gasps for air.
In a far corner of the bar, a young man sitting quietly at a table with a friend, turned and said: “You see that? You see that?
That shows you – doesn’t it? – how if you’re looking for love in this life, you’d better buy yourself a dog.”
The other said: “That’s rather cynical, isn’t it?”
“Realistic, you mean,” said the first.
And they were silent for a moment, as were many in the bar who had witnessed the reunion, for they had all seen something which touched them to a greater or lesser extent. And at least some felt as if they had been vouchsafed a vision of an important truth: that we must love one another, whatever our condition in life, canine or otherwise, and that this love is a matter of joy, a privilege, that we might think about, weep over, when the moment is right.
Matthew had become so accustomed to living on his own that when he arose that first morning of Pat’s residence in his India Street flat he quite forgot that she was there. His morning routine was set in stone: he would pick up any post lying on the doormat, glance at the letters, and then he would take a shower in the very bathroom whose walls might have been knocked down had Leonie’s plans progressed. Leonie, though, was not in his mind as he slipped out of the Macgregor-tartan jockey shorts in which he liked to sleep and stepped into the shower.
Matthew was thinking of whether he should wear his new distressed-oatmeal sweater that day. He was not one to worry unduly about clothes, but he had recently realised that there was a uniform for art dealers and that if he wanted to be convincing in the role, then he had to look the part. And the one thing that art dealers in Edinburgh did not wear, it seemed, was distressed-oatmeal sweaters. That had been a mistake.
Many people in Edinburgh, it seemed to Matthew, had a uniform. Lawyers were most conspicuous in this respect, of course, with advocates in their strippit breeks striding up the Mound on their way to Parliament House each morning. India Street and its environs provided a good place for the more pros-perous advocates to live, discreetly, of course, behind Georgian doors on which professional brass plates had been fixed, and 206
Matthew knew some of them sufficiently to nod to in the morning when he made his way to the gallery. What was their life like? he wondered: full of arguments and interpretation and the drafting of answers? His father, Gordon, had wanted him to study law, but Matthew had resisted. He had read – and quoted to his father – Stevenson’s account of life in Parliament House, where the courts sat, and where advocates had to pace up and down the Hall deep in conversation with their instructing solicitors and their clients. They could make very incongruous groups, marching up and down, heads bowed in thought. Tall advocates were at an advantage, in that they could look down on their bread and butter trotting beside them – bread and butter that, by having to look up, would be reminded just who was running the case. But height could work to the disadvantage of these tall advocates, who might not be instructed by short solicitors who did not like to be overshadowed in this way, whatever the realities of the professional relationship.
Matthew had heard of one very short advocate whose career had been built upon instructions given him by not-very-tall solicitors, who could walk in Parliament Hall with him and enjoy the – for them – rare experience of being able to look down on an advocate. He had done very well, even if the cases he received were small ones, with short hearings. That, thought Matthew, was an unkind story, typical of the unkind stories which lawyers told one another. The Bar, he had been told, was a strange place, given to the imposition of nicknames, which stuck. An acquaintance of Matthew’s had once told him of some of these, and Matthew had listened in fascination. Who was the Pork Butcher?
Who was the Tailor’s Dummy? Who was the Head Prefect?
Stevenson, he pointed out to his father, had been forthright.
He had been unhappy while training to be a lawyer and had called Parliament Hall
“intelligent men have been walking daily here for ten or twenty years without a rag of business or a shilling of reward . . .”
Matthew’s father had sighed. “What Stevenson wrote is hardly anything to do with the law today,” he said. “Think of what fun you could have, Matthew. Look at Joe Beltrami.”
“Who’s Joe Beltrami?” Matthew had asked.
“He’s a very influential criminal lawyer,” Matthew’s father had replied. “A very great jurist, I believe. Glasgow, of course.”
