The Unbearable Lightness of Scones (27 page)

“That’s fine by me.”

“Good,” said Nick. “He’s actually quite good company. I’ve met him a few times. He owns a couple of wine bars in George Street and places like that. Mister Donald, as everybody calls him. Graeme Donald, I think. Yes, Graeme Donald. Big chap. Funny hairstyle, like Donald Trump’s.”

Bruce stood absolutely still. Julia’s father. If a few words can end a world, they can have no difficulty in ending a career. Although Nick was unaware of it, he had just disclosed the reason why Bruce would never be the face of Scotland. Unless … unless Graeme Donald was a fair-minded man who would not let personal factors influence a business decision. That was always possible.

“I know him,” said Bruce. “I used to work for him.”

“Great,” said Nick. “That means it’s a walkover.”

Matthew and Elspeth returned to Edinburgh on a morning flight from Heathrow Airport. They had again broken their journey with two nights in Singapore, staying once more at Raffles. There, sitting before dinner in the Long Bar, under the swaying, hypnotic movement of the ceiling punkahs,
Matthew had turned to Elspeth and said: “I find this very strange. This is the one place in this country where you can drop things on the ground with impunity. And yet I can’t do it. I just can’t bring myself do it.”

Elspeth glanced down at the layer of discarded peanut shells, inches deep in places, that covered the floor in every direction. At the far end of the room, a teenage boy in a sarong swept away at this detritus, a modern Sisyphus.

“It provides release,” she said. “A lot of these people spend their day working in … what? Banks and trading firms and places like that.”

“I had an uncle who lived here,” said Matthew. “He came out here when he was twenty-four and he only came back to Scotland once. My father came here to see him, but he wouldn’t talk about it when he returned. I was about eight then. I remember it quite well.”

Elspeth was intrigued. “He said nothing?”

“He talked to my mother about it. I heard them. But when they realised I was listening they stopped. You know how parents do that – and it only makes you all the more eager to hear what they were talking about.”

“What happened to him?”

“I forgot all about him. Until the time he came back. I was about thirteen then.”

Elspeth took a sip of her drink and reached for a few of the unshelled peanuts in the dish before her. She would only eat one or two, she thought; in that way she would not have to drop the shells on the floor. And yet she wondered why she and Matthew should feel inhibited about dropping the shells – everybody else was doing it. Was it something to do with coming from Edinburgh? Were Edinburgh people the only people who held back from dropping peanut shells on the floor of the Long Bar?

She looked back at Matthew. “And?”

“He turned up virtually without warning. My father suddenly said to me: ‘Your Uncle Jack’s coming for dinner tonight.’ And
he did. I went into the drawing room when I came back from school – I had been at a rugby practice – I remember that because a boy called Miller had tackled me and caused a nose-bleed. I had stuffed a bit of cotton wool into my nostril and it was still there. You know how blood dries and the cotton wool makes a sort of plug? It was like that.”

Elspeth knew about nose-bleeds. Occasionally the children had them – Hiawatha, in particular, had been susceptible – and she had been obliged to deal with them. “You have to be careful about that,” she said. “You can breathe the cotton wool in. I think it’s better to let the blood form a natural plug.” She paused, struck by the intimacy of the conversation. And this, she supposed, was what marriage entailed – all sorts of intimate conversations – about nasal matters, for example – that one would not normally have with others. And yet there must be some barriers, she thought. There must be some things that married couples did not talk about between themselves; some areas of reticence. Or was that just Edinburgh again?

“But this uncle of yours,” she said. “What happened when he came to dinner?”

Matthew closed his eyes. He had a good visual memory; he could not remember music, for some reason, but he could remember seeing things. And now he saw himself again, at thirteen, going into the drawing room of his parents’ house. And he thought: My mother is still alive, and he felt a momentary twinge of regret. He had not loved her enough. He had been keen to cut the apron strings, to prove that he was his own person, and he had not returned her love. And then the apron strings had been cut for him, decisively and swiftly, by an aggressive tumour, and he had a lifetime to regret his unkindness.

He opened his eyes and reached for Elspeth’s hand, which he held in his, gently. She looked surprised. “Is something wrong?”

“Just remembering.” He let go of her hand. “I went into the room, and my Uncle Jack was there. He was sitting in a
chair near the window, and when I came in he stood up. He was unsteady on his feet, and I thought that he was going to fall over, but he had hold of the back of the chair and he straightened himself.

“He was a tall man and he seemed to me to be very thin. But what I really remember was his hair – he had very neatly brushed hair, parted down the middle, and slicked down, like those hairstyles you see on the men in black-and-white films. Thirties hairstyles. He was smoking – he had a cigarette holder, a short black cigarette holder with a mother-of-pearl band across it. I remember that so well.

“Then he said to me, ‘Come here, young man, so that I can get a good look at you.’ And he took hold of my arm and pulled me over towards the window. I looked down at the floor; I was embarrassed. When you’re thirteen, and a boy, you’re embarrassed about everything. And I had that bit of cotton wool in my nose, you see.

“He looked at me for what seemed like a very long time. I heard his breathing. And I smelt the nicotine that must have covered him. All those nicotine particles.”

Elspeth shivered. “And then?”

“And then he let go of me and he turned to the window, without saying anything. And my father came in and whispered to me, ‘Your Uncle Jack gets very easily upset. He’s a nice man. But he gets easily upset. Just leave him now.’”

Matthew became silent.

“And that was all?” Elspeth asked.

“I had dinner in the kitchen. I didn’t see him again.”

“And that’s all you know about him?” asked Elspeth. It occurred to her that he might still be alive, might still be there in Singapore.

Matthew hesitated. “I’ve just looked in the Singapore phone book up in the bedroom,” he said. “While you were having your bath. I looked under his name.”

“And was he there?”

“Yes.”

They took a taxi from the front of Raffles, ushered into the car by the Sikh doorman with his large handlebar moustache.

“He reminds me of somebody,” said Elspeth. “Somebody with a moustache …”

“The Duke of Johannesburg,” said Matthew. “Remember – we had dinner at that restaurant near Holy Corner and then went to the Duke’s house. Remember?”

Elspeth looked at him blankly. “When?”

Matthew was astonished that she did not remember, and was about to express his astonishment. They had gone out to Single Malt House and one of the Duke’s sons had played the pipes and … Wrong woman. It had been Pat, not Elspeth.

His hand shot up to his mouth instinctively. “Oh …”

“I really don’t remember meeting a duke,” said Elspeth. “I’m sure I’ve never met a duke. I would remember, surely. After all, it’s not an everyday thing. There aren’t all that many of them and it’s the sort of thing one would remember – even if the duke himself was not particularly memorable. Some of them are quite dull, I understand.”

Matthew, keen to cover his mistake, was happy to move the conversation on to dukes in general. “I suppose that some are. But then, there are some who are quite interesting. The Duke of Buccleuch, the one who died not all that long ago, was an interesting man. And a very nice man too. You wouldn’t really have known that he was a duke, just to look at him. And he did a lot of good work.

“And then there was the Duke of Atholl. He was a very good bridge player. He had a private army, you know. A sort of ancient historical privilege. The only one in the country. But he never declared war on anybody. Not once.”

Elspeth stopped him. “But the Duke of Johannesburg …”

“You would have thought,” Matthew continued quickly, “that having a private army, one might want to use it. But he never
did. It’s rather like having a nuclear weapon – you have it, but you can’t really use it.”

“But, Matthew, who’s the Duke of Johannesburg? I’ve never met him. I really haven’t. Are you sure that we went there for dinner?”

Matthew realised that he was trapped. But at that exact moment, just when he was about to confess that he had made a mistake and that it was somebody else who had been with him that evening – and, after all, there was no shame in that – it was well before he had even met Elspeth and he was entitled, surely, to a past life – just at that moment the taxi-driver, who had been following the discussion with some interest in his rear-view mirror, chose to make a pronouncement.

“Maybe breakfast,” he said. “Maybe breakfast, not dinner.”

Elspeth threw an amused glance at Matthew, who raised a finger to his lips.

“Maybe,” said Matthew to the driver. “Maybe.”

The driver nodded. “Anyway,” he said, “we’re nearly there. This is the Tanglin Club. See. This is a very good place.”

They drew up in front of an elaborate, wide-eaved building, surrounded by lush trees and shrubs, a small slice of jungle allowed to flourish in the middle of the gleaming city. Matthew paid the driver and they walked up to the front door.

“That dinner,” he said. “That dinner. I’m sorry; I was getting things mixed up. I went with somebody else. It was Pat. My last girlfriend.”

Elspeth looked away. “I knew,” she said. “But I wish you’d told me.”

“I’m sorry,” said Matthew. “I really am. I didn’t want to hurt you. It’s just that getting one’s wife mixed up with one’s girlfriend is not a very tactful thing to do … on one’s honeymoon.”

Elspeth laughed. “Oh don’t worry about that, Jamie. Let’s just forget about it.”

They were almost at the door. Jamie? But there was no time to go into that.

“Will you recognise him?” Elspeth asked. “If you haven’t seen him for … what is it? Fourteen years? Something like that?”

“I think so,” said Matthew. “He looks fairly like my old man. And if he’s still got that middle parting then he should be pretty recognisable.”

They went through the wide entrance doors and found themselves standing in a broad, panelled lobby. At the far end, a staircase swept up to the first floor; to one side two young women sat demurely at a high mahogany reception desk. The overall feel was one of a solid opulence over which a blanket of deadening silence has descended.

Matthew walked over to the reception desk and announced himself. The women smiled. “Your uncle is waiting for you in the Tavern,” said one of them. “My colleague will show you the way.”

The Tavern was a fair imitation of what an outsize English pub might have looked like before the invasion of electronic gambling machines, muzak, and cheap, chilled lager (and the culture that went with that particular brew). It was entirely deserted, apart from one table in the centre of the room, where they saw a tall, dapperly dressed man with a centre parting in his thick head of slicked-down hair. Next to him was a small Chinese woman in a dark dress, a smart red leather handbag resting on her lap.

The waiting couple rose to their feet as Matthew and Elspeth made their way over to meet them. Matthew’s uncle spoke quietly, his voice rather hoarse, like the voice of one who has just risen from his bed in the morning and not yet cleared his throat. Matthew saw a cigarette holder lying on the table, without a cigarette in it. It was the cigarette holder he remembered: black, with the mother-of-pearl band.

The woman was introduced as Jack’s wife, Maria. “My wife is Catholic,” said Jack. “I, of course, am still Church of Scotland – after all these years. We have a number of Presbyterian
churches here, you know. And a few Presbyterian schools too. What’s the name of that place, dear?”

“Pei Hwa,” said Maria, in a high-pitched, rather sing-song voice. “Pei Hwa Presbyterian Primary School.”

“That’s it,” said Jack. “And there’s another one too. What’s its name again?”

“Kuo Chan,” said Maria. “It’s a secondary school. Two schools. One primary. One secondary.”

“Oh yes,” said Matthew, and then, brightening, he said, “Elspeth is a teacher. Or rather, was one. She taught at a Steiner School in Edinburgh. Then we got married.”

“Jolly good,” said Jack.

Jack and Maria led Matthew and Elspeth into the Churchill Room. This was a large, wood-panelled dining-room with a dance-floor in the centre and tables arranged round the sides. A grand piano stood at the edge of the dance-floor, and a man in white tie and tails was playing this, while behind him two other musicians, a drummer and a guitarist, were fiddling with equipment.