Love Over Scotland

I really must.”

“Work?”

Antonia sighed. “My poor book, you know. I’m writing a book and it’s suffering from maternal deprivation. Bowlby syndrome, as they call it.”

“Bowlby?”

“A psychologist. He was something of a guru once. He took the view that bad behaviour results from inadequate maternal attention.”

Angus thought for a moment. I need a guru, he said to himself.

Would Antonia be his guru? He blushed at the unspoken thought. It would be wonderful to have a guru; it would be like having a social worker or a personal trainer, not that people who had either of these necessarily appreciated the advice they received.

“Of course it’s absurd, this search for gurus,” Antonia said.

“People who need gurus are really searching for something else altogether, don’t you think? Fundamentally insecure people.

Looking for father.”

Angus looked at her. He was beginning to dislike Antonia.

How strange, he thought, that our feelings can change so fast.

Like that. Just like that. And he thought of how the sky over Edinburgh could change in an instant, between summer and winter, as the backdrop can be shifted in a theatre, curtains lowered from the heavens in each case, changing everything.

7. Angus Goes Off Antonia, in a Big Way Angus Lordie was deep in thought as he walked home. At his side, Cyril, sensing his master’s abstraction, had briefly tugged at his lead at the point where Dundonald Street joined Drummond Place; he had hoped that Angus might be persuaded to call in at the Cumberland Bar, but his promptings had been ignored. Cyril understood; he knew that his life was an adjunct life, lived in the shadow of his master, and that canine views counted for nothing; yet it would have been good, he thought, to sit on the bar’s black-and-white chequered floor sipping from a bowl of Guinness and staring at the assorted ankles under the table. But this was not to be, and he was rapidly diverted from this agreeable fantasy to the real world of sounds and smells. It is a large room, the world of smells for a dog, and Drummond Place, though familiar territory, was rich in possibilities; each passer-by left a trail that spoke to where he had been and what he had been doing – a whole history might lie on the pavement, like song-lines across the Australian Outback, detectable only to those with the necessary nose. Other smells were like a palimpsest: odour laid upon odour, smells that could be peeled off to reveal the whiff below. Cyril quivered; a strange scent wafted from a doorway, a musty, inexplicable odour that reminded him of something that he had known somewhere before, in his previous life in Lochboisdale, a long time ago. He stopped, and tugged at his leash, but Angus ignored his concern, yanking him roughly to heel. Cyril had never bitten his master, not once, but there were times . . .

Angus was thinking about what Antonia had told him. He had steered the conversation swiftly away from gurus, and had asked her about her book. So many people in Edinburgh were writing a book – almost everyone, in fact – and Angus had ceased to be surprised when somebody mentioned an incipient literary project. So he had inquired politely about Antonia’s book. She had looked at him sharply, as if to assess whether he was worthy of being told, whether he was serious in his inquiries; one could not tell everyone about one’s book.

Angus Goes Off Antonia, in a Big Way 21

“It’s nothing very much,” she said, after some moments of hesitation. “Just a novel.”

He had waited for further explanation, but she had merely continued to stare at him. At last he said: “A novel.” And she had nodded.

“Well,” he said, “may I ask what sort of novel it is?”

“Historical,” she said. “Very early. It’s set in early Scotland.

Sixth century, actually.”

Angus had smiled. “You’re very wise to choose a period for which there is so little evidence,” he said. “You can’t go wrong if you write about a time that we don’t really know about. When people start to write about the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – or even the twenty-first, for that matter – they can get into awful trouble if they get it wrong. And they often get something wrong, don’t they?”

“Writers can make mistakes like anybody else,” said Antonia, rather peevishly. “We’re human, you know.” She looked at Angus, as if expecting a refutation, though none came. “For instance, was there not an American writer who described one of his characters on page one as unfortunately having only one arm? On page one hundred and forty the same character claps his hands together enthusiastically.”

Angus smiled. “So funny,” he said. “Although some people these days would think it wrong to laugh about something like that. Just as they don’t find anything amusing in the story of the man who went to Lourdes and experienced a miracle. The poor chap couldn’t walk, and the miracle was that he found new tyres on his wheelchair.”

Antonia stared at him. “I don’t find that funny, I’m afraid.”

She shook her head. “Not in the slightest. Anyway, if I may get back to the subject of what we know and what we don’t know.

We happen to have quite a lot of knowledge about early medieval Scotland. We have the records of various abbeys, and we can deduce a great deal from archeological evidence. We’re not totally in the dark.”

Angus looked thoughtful. “All right,” he said. “Answer me this: were there handkerchiefs in medieval Scotland?”

22

Angus Goes Off Antonia, in a Big Way Antonia frowned. “Handkerchiefs?”

“Yes,” said Angus. “Did people have handkerchiefs to blow their noses on?”

Antonia was silent. It had not occurred to her to think about handkerchiefs in medieval Scotland, as the occasion had simply not arisen. I’m not that sort of writer, she thought; I’m not the sort of writer who describes her characters blowing their noses.