44 Scotland Street (21 page)

order then you will be brought back to the court to explain yourself to the sheriff.

And he would say to the sheriff: “My lord, have you
seen
her?” And the sheriff would look down from the bench and shake his head and say: “Young man, that’s what community service is all about. But I see what you mean. You are free to go.”

That’s what Bruce thought. He found the fantasy rather amusing, and smiled again; a smile which was misinterpreted by Sasha, who thought: this dishy young man is smiling at me! It’s not too late, obviously. It’s not too late to have some fun in this life.

54. Supporting Walls

“This is a nice place you’ve got, Todd,” said Bruce to Todd as he was handed his glass of wine.

Todd smiled warmly. “It’s a very good corner of town,” he said. “We’ve been here for – what – sixteen years now and I don’t think we’re planning to move, are we Sasha?”

Sasha shook her head. “I couldn’t move,” she said. “I’ve put so much effort into the garden and if you go further into town these days it’s so noisy. Students and the like. All sorts of people.”

Bruce nodded in sympathy. He knew all about students and the noise they made, although it was only a few years since he had been a student, and had made a lot of noise himself, if one were to be strictly honest. Mind you, he reflected, the noise he made was not from music being played at full throttle, it was rather from parties, particularly after rugby internationals. Those parties had produced a sort of
roar
which was far more acceptable than the sort of noise that came from student flats these days.

“Marchmont’s impossible,” he said. “I was pleased when I moved down to Scotland Street. It’s much better.”

Todd, who had taken a few paces back from the sofa and was standing with his back to the fireplace, gestured to the room around them. “Of course, we had to do a lot to this place when we moved in,” he explained. “It was typical of those houses they built in the Twenties – the rooms were just far smaller than they needed to be. This room, for example, was two rooms. We took a wall out over there – right down the middle, and made it into a decent-sized drawing room.”

Bruce looked about him. He could see where the earlier wall had been, as there was still a detectable line across the ceiling and one of the light fittings had clearly been moved. For a few moments he stared up at the ceiling, his surveyor’s instinct asserting itself. Was that a bulge running where the wall must have been? And did the ceiling not seem to sag slightly in the middle? He looked over at the far wall, where the now-disappeared wall would have met the room’s perimeter. It seemed to him that there was clear evidence of buckling.

He looked at Todd, who was running a finger around the rim of his whisky glass. “It’s a very comfortable room,” he began. “But that wall … would it not have been a supporting wall? I suppose that you had an engineer look at it?”

Todd snorted. “Engineer? Just for a partition wall in a bungalow? Good heavens, no. I looked at it myself. It was absolutely fine. I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t load-bearing.”

Bruce looked back at the ceiling and at the bulge. “Are you sure?” he said. “Hasn’t there been a bit of movement?”

Todd frowned. “What exactly are you saying? Are you suggesting that the house is going to fall down about our ears?”

Sasha picked up the tension which had arisen between the two men, and made an attempt to defuse it. It was bad enough, in her view, to have Lizzie behaving like a sulky child without having an atmosphere develop between her husband and Bruce.

“I’m sure he doesn’t mean that,” she interjected. “Heavens no!”

Lizzie now spoke. “If your ceiling did come down,” she said, “you would have lost a room, but you would have gained a courtyard. Think of that.”

Sasha turned her head to stare at her daughter and Bruce, who now regretted raising the issue of the possible collapse of the Todd house, started to cross his legs, but stopped in embarrassment, and brought his knees together sharply. Lizzie, however, had been

looking at him – or so he feared – and he saw her surprised expression. This made him blush, and Sasha, thinking him embarrassed by Lizzie’s general attitude, reached over and touched him lightly on the sleeve.

“Everything will be fine,” she whispered.

The conversation resumed, avoiding surveying issues, and focusing instead on Scotland’s prospects in the forthcoming rugby season. Todd revealed that he had debenture seats at Murrayfield and spent some time extolling the virtue of their position in the West Stand. There then followed some disparaging remarks about dirty play by the French and the Italians. Bruce agreed with Todd’s analysis of this, which seemed to relieve the tension considerably, and earlier remarks about structural unsoundness seemed now to be forgotten, or at least shelved.

When Todd looked at his watch and declared that it was time for them to start off for the Braid Hills Hotel, Bruce rose to his feet, carefully. Could he visit the bathroom quickly before they left? Of course, of course; down the corridor. Last door on the left.

He made his way down the corridor. The bathroom, which he noted had hunting prints on the wall, was more or less what he had expected, and he took the opportunity of looking at himself quickly in the mirror. This restored his confidence. One might have no underpants on, but what did it matter if one had the looks? Not at all. You don’t really need underpants if you have the looks, Bruce thought to himself, and almost laughed out loud at the very idea.

He walked back down the corridor. The door next to the bathroom was open, with the light switched on. It was a drying room, with washing machine and tumble dryer, and a clotheshorse. On which there were several pairs of underpants.

55. Discovered

As he peered into the Todds’ drying room, Bruce felt more than the normal curiosity (mild in the case of most) which we feel when we look into the drying rooms of others. After all, a drying room is hardly Chapman’s
Homer
… nor is it a peak in Darien. This drying room, in fact, was of little interest, apart from the fact that there were at least four pairs of underpants on the clotheshorse and Bruce was conscious of the fact that social embarrassment might await him at the ball in his current state of incomplete dress. A simple solution would be to borrow – and it would just be borrowing – a pair of these underpants, obviously Todd’s, slip into them when some suitable opportunity presented itself at the ball, and then return them, laundered, a few days later. This would not be theft; it would be borrowing of an entirely understandable and justifiable sort.

Of course the means of return would have to be considered. Borrowed items could normally be returned openly, but those that were borrowed
informally
, or borrowed with implicit consent, might have to be returned in a more discreet way. The clothing could be put into the post, perhaps, with an anonymous thankyou note – or with one signed in an illegible hand – or it might just be slipped into Todd’s in-tray in the office when nobody was looking.

Bruce looked over his shoulder. The corridor was quite empty and he could hear the murmur of conversation coming from the drawing room. It was highly unlikely, he thought, that anybody would come this way: they were waiting for him to return before setting off for the Braid Hills Hotel. He could take as long as he liked, and be quite safe.

He stepped forward into the drying room and reached for a pair of underpants from the clotheshorse. As he did so, he saw that the pair which he had chosen had a large hole in the seat; how mean of Todd! It was typical of him – he was mean with stationery supplies in the office and he was always going on about keeping costs down. So he applied that philosophy to his clothing as well!

Bruce replaced the rejected pair of underpants on the clotheshorse and reached for another pair. This was better. Although the garment was certainly too large, the elastic would hold it in place. So he quickly folded the pants, stuffed them into his sporran and turned to go back out into the corridor.

He stopped. There, standing in the doorway, was Todd, an empty whisky glass in his hand.

Bruce swallowed. “Todd,” he said, in strangled tones. “Todd.”

Todd was staring at him, and Bruce noticed, for the first time, how the whites of his eyes were unnaturally large.

“Yes,” he said.

Bruce swallowed again. “Well, I’m more or less ready to go,” he said. “We don’t want to keep people.”

Todd blinked. “The bathroom is further along,” he said. “This is the drying room.”

Bruce laughed. “Oh, I found the bathroom all right,” he said airily. “I took a wrong turning on the way back and ended up …” He paused, and then gestured around the drying room, “here. I ended up in here.”

Todd moved back from the doorway in order to allow Bruce to come out into the corridor. “A rather odd mistake to make,” he said. “After all, this is not a particularly confusing house. The corridor runs fairly straight, wouldn’t you say? It goes up there, and then comes back. Frankly, I don’t see how one can get lost in this house.”

Bruce smiled. “I have a very bad sense of direction,” he said quickly. “Terrible, in fact.”

Todd said nothing, and so Bruce, forcing the best smile he could manage, began to walk back down the corridor towards the drawing room. His insouciance was misleading; the encounter had been deeply embarrassing. It was bad enough to be found in the drying room, but he wondered whether Todd had seen him pocket, or sporran, the underpants. Would he have said anything, had he seen him? The answer to that was far from obvious. If he had seen him, then one could only speculate as to what he would have thought. Presumably he would have thought of him as being one of those unfortunate people who steal the clothing of others for reasons too dark, too impenetrable, to discuss. That would be so unjust: the thought that he might harbour a trait of that sort was inconceivable. After all, he was a rugby enthusiast, a recently-admitted member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, and … It was difficult to put one’s finger on other badges of respectability, but they were certainly there.

Well, there was nothing that he could do about it. What did it matter if Todd thought that of him? He reached the drawing room before he managed to provide himself with an answer to that question.

“Bruce got lost,” said Todd in a loud voice, behind him. “He ended up in the drying room.”

Sasha, who had been talking to Lizzie, looked up in surprise.

“Lost in our house?” she exclaimed. “How did you manage that?”

“I took a wrong turning,” said Bruce. He turned to look reproachfully at Todd. A host had no excuse to embarrass a guest like this, even if the host was the guest’s boss.

“Very strange,” said Lizzie, looking coolly at Bruce. “So you ended up among all the family underwear?”

Sasha’s head swung round sharply, and Lizzie found herself fixed with a hostile stare from her mother. Bruce, who was now blushing noticeably, turned to look out of the window.

“I hope it doesn’t rain,” he said.

56. At the Braid Hills Hotel

“The nice thing about this job,” observed the functions manager of the Braid Hills Hotel, “is that it has its surprises.”

His assistant, surveying the room in which the South Edinburgh Conservative Association Ball was to be held, nodded his agreement. The room, although well-decorated with several sprays of flowers, had only two tables, one with four chairs around it and one with two. And even if the hotel had fielded its best napery – starched and folded to perfection – and chosen bright red glassware – there was a distinctly desolate feel to the almost-empty room.

“You’d think that they would have sold just a few more tickets,” said the assistant, adding, “in an area like this.”

The manager shrugged. “I’m sure that they did their best. Still, I cannot understand why they’ve insisted on keeping the tables apart. Surely it would have been much better for all six of them to sit together – somehow less embarrassing.”

When Sasha had called round earlier that day to review arrangements, he had suggested to her that the tables be put together, but she had firmly refused.

“I wouldn’t mind in the least,” she said. “But my husband has views on the matter.”

So the tables had remained apart, and they were still apart when the first guests, Ramsey and Betty Dunbarton, arrived in the hotel bar, several minutes before the arrival of the Todd party.

Ramsey Dunbarton was a tall, rather distinguished-looking man who was only now beginning to stoop slightly. He thought of himself as being slightly on the Bohemian side, and had been a stalwart of amateur dramatic circles and the Savoy Opera Group. On more than one occasion he had appeared on the stage of the Churchhill Theatre, most notably – and this was the height of his stage career – as the Duke of Plaza-Toro in
The Gondoliers
.