44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith [104]
“My godson, Charlie Maclean, went there, along with his two brothers. Charlie had a splendid time and right at the end he went to a cadet camp in Iceland. There was a bit of a row there, and the master who was in charge of the cadets, who was some sort of captain or major, got into a terrible stramash with the boys. Anyway, the long and the short of it was that there was a mutiny, led by Charlie. This master said: ‘Maclean, you’re expelled!’
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Whereupon Charlie said: ‘But I’ve just left school anyway. You can’t expel me!’ Whereupon this character shouted: ‘Then you’re forbidden to join the Old Merchistonian Association!’ What a hoot!”
It was at this point that Pat interrupted him, and explained what she was calling about. Ramsey Dunbarton listened, and then laughed.
“I would have been delighted to return it to you,” he said.
“Unfortunately, we’ve already given it away. I’m so sorry. It went down to a charity shop this morning. Betty knows the people who run it and they’re always looking for things like that. But you could go and see them, no doubt, and get it back. They’re the ones in Morningside Road. They’re not all that far down from the Churchhill Theatre. Do you know where that is? I used to take part in Gilbert and Sullivan there. The Gondoliers. Do you know The Gondoliers? I was the Duke of Plaza-Toro once. I was frightfully lucky to get the role as there was a very good baritone that year who was after it. Then I met the director outside the Edinburgh Bookshop and . . .”
78. Steps with Soul
At roughly the same time that Matthew returned to the gallery from his morning coffee, Domenica Macdonald was edging her custard-coloured Mercedes-Benz into a parking place at the foot of Scotland Street. She was observed by three pairs of eyes
– those of the taxi drivers who sat in their cabs at the bottom of the street and ate their early lunch before setting off for their next call. One of the taxi drivers knew her, as he had occasionally exchanged a few words with her in the street, and he smiled as he remembered a witty remark that Domenica had so casually and cleverly made, something about pigeons and local councillors; terribly funny, as he recalled it, although he could not remember the punchline, nor indeed how the story began. What 218
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would it be like to be married to a clever woman like that, he wondered. Could he take her to the taxi-drivers’ ball at the Royal Scot Hotel on the Glasgow Road? Hardly. The men talked about golf at the taxi-drivers’ ball, and the women inevitably talked about the pros and cons of self-catering accommodation in Tenerife. This woman would not want to talk about things like that – he could tell. There were those who had something to say about Tenerife, and those who did not.
Domenica brought the car to a halt and switched off the ignition. She had been for a drive around Holyrood Park
– exercise for the car, as she called it – and had been thinking as she drove. What, she had been wondering, would Edinburgh be like if it were not so beautiful? If Edinburgh looked, for instance
– well, one had to say it, like Glasgow? Would it be inhabited by the people who currently lived there – that is, by people of taste (there was no other expression for it – it just had to be said) – or would it be inhabited by the sort of people who lived in Glasgow
– that is by people who . . .? She stopped herself. No, this was not the sort of thought that one should allow oneself. Those sorts of attitudes – of condescension towards Glasgow – were decidedly dated. When she was younger it had been perfectly acceptable for people to think that way about Glasgow – to turn up their metaphorical noses at it – but now it seemed that nobody thought like that any more. Edinburgh was different from Glasgow, it was true, but it was no longer considered helpful to remark on the differences to any great extent, even if here and there were to be heard