The World According to Bertie

He reached for a couple of glasses from a library shelf to his side. “Some years ago,” he continued, “The Oldie ran a series called Great Dumps of the World – a brilliant idea. They got a rather clever friend of mine, Lance Butler, to write about Monaco, and he did a brilliant job. What a dump that place is!

All those rich people busy not wanting to pay tax and living in chi-chi little apartments above glove and perfume shops.

Disgusting place! And their funny wee monarchy with its clock-work soldiers and the princess who took up with a lion tamer –

can you believe it? What a dump! But they didn’t like it at all.

There was an awful fuss. These people take themselves so seriously.

“Come to think of it,” the Duke continued, “Johannesburg isn’t all that bad. Once they get crime under control, it’ll be rather nice, in fact. That beautiful, invigorating highveld air.

Marvellous. And nice people. They put up with an awful lot in the bad old days – oppression, cruelty etc. – but they came out Minimalism Is Not Confined to the Canvas 149

smiling, which says a lot for them. So I hope things turn out well.”

He handed Pat and Matthew their glasses. “You may be wondering why I’m the Duke of Johannesburg. Well, the reason is that my grandfather gave an awful lot of money to a political party a long time ago on the express understanding that they would make him a duke. He had visited Jo’burg years before when he was in the Scots Greys and he rather liked the place, so he chose that as his title. And then they went and ratted on their agreement and said they didn’t go in for creating dukedoms anymore and would he be satisfied with an ordinary peerage? He said no and used the moniker thereafter, as did my old man, on the grounds that he was morally entitled to it.

So that’s how it came about. There are some pedants who claim that I shouldn’t call myself what I do, but I ignore them.

Pedants!”

He raised his glass. “Slainte!”

45. Minimalism Is Not Confined to the Canvas But there were others in the room. Matthew and Pat had hardly noticed them, so engaged had they been by the flow of their host’s conversation. So that was the reason why there was no mention of a Duke of Johannesburg in Who’s Who in Scotland –

there was no such duke, at least not in the sense that one would be recognised by the Lord Lyon. Yet what did such recognition amount to? Matthew asked himself. All that it did was give a stamp of purely conventional authenticity, conventional in the sense of agreed, or settled, and ultimately that was merely a question of arbitrary social arrangements. There was no real difference between this duke and any other better-known duke, just as there was no real difference between a real duke and any one of Jock Tamson’s bairns. We were all just people who chose to call ourselves by curious things known as names, and the only

150 Minimalism Is Not Confined to the Canvas significant difference between any of us lay in what we did with our lives.

Matthew found himself drawn to the Duke of Johannesburg, with his easy-going conviviality and his cheerful demeanour.

This was a man, he thought, who dared and, like most men, Matthew admired men who dared. He himself did not exactly dare, but he would like to dare, if he dared.

“Yes,” said the Duke, looking around the room. “There are a couple of other guests. And I’m ignoring my social responsibilities by not introducing you. I shouldn’t go on about these old and irrelevant matters. Nobody’s interested in any of that.”

“Oh, but we are!” said a man standing near the fireplace.

“That’s where you’re mistaken, Johannesburg. We all like to hear about these things.”

“That’s my Greek chorus over there,” said the Duke, nodding in the direction of the man by the fireplace. “You must meet him.”

The Duke drew Matthew and Pat over to the other guest and made introductions.

“Humphrey Holmes,” said the Duke.

Matthew looked at Humphrey. He had seen him before – and heard of him – but he had never actually met him. He was a dapper man, wearing a black velvet jacket and bow tie.

Minimalism Is Not Confined to the Canvas 151

“I hear you sold Johannesburg a painting,” said Humphrey.

“He was telling me about it. Something very minimalist, I gather.”

Matthew laughed. “Very.” He glanced around the room, at the pictures on the walls. There were several family portraits –

a picture of three boys in kilts, in almost sepia tones, from a long time ago; one looked a bit like the Duke, but it was hard to tell. Then there was a powerful James Howie landscape, one of those glowing pictures that the artist scraped away at for years in order to get the light just as he wanted it to be. Matthew knew his work and sold it occasionally, when Howie, a perfec-tionist, could be persuaded to part with a painting.

“I was surprised when he said he’d bought something minimalist,” remarked Humphrey. “As you can see, this isn’t exactly a minimalist room.”

“Perhaps he’ll hang it somewhere else,” said Pat.

Humphrey turned to her and smiled politely. “Perhaps.

Perhaps there are minimalist things here already – it’s just that we can’t see them. But, tell me, do you like