44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith [121]
Big Lou Receives a Phone Call
they did not have to live in China at the time. And they knew, too, that what they preached would never be put into effect. Big Lou stood before her window and remembered the young man who had come into her coffee shop wearing a tee-shirt with a picture of Castro on it. She had served him his coffee and then pointed at the picture.
“Do you really admire people who put others in prison for speaking their mind?” she had asked. “Would you wear that shirt if you lived under him?”
The young man had looked at her and smiled. “You’re so naïve,” he had said, and taken his coffee to his table. And then, to follow this remark, he had turned to her and said: “Have you ever heard of false consciousness?”
“Aye,” said Big Lou. “I have.”
But the young man had laughed and turned to the reading of a magazine he had brought with him. Of course she had thought later of the things that she might have said to him, but she had remained silent and had merely gone to the door and locked it, discreetly. Ten minutes or so later, the young man had got up to leave – he was the only customer at the time – and had tried the handle of the door. When he realised it was locked, he had turned to her and demanded that she let him out, which she had done. He had looked indignant, as she had taken her time to walk to the door and unlock it. So might the jailer in a prison swagger to his task. And as she opened the door for him she said: “You’re a university student, aren’t you? I’ve never been that, you know. But don’t you think that I’ve just been able to teach you a lesson about freedom?”
She smiled at the memory – it had been a moment of gentle victory – and was smiling still when her telephone rang. She walked across the room to answer it and heard the voice of the man from Aberdeen, her chef, the man whose letter she kept in that special drawer, and whose voice she had not thought she would hear again.
“I’m in Edinburgh, Lou,” he said. “Can I take you out for dinner? Are you free?”
She thought of determinism. Of course she was free. 89. Big Lou Goes to Dinner
Eddie was the name of Big Lou’s friend from Aberdeen. He was waiting for her, as he promised he would be, in Sandy Bell’s Bar in Forrest Road. He was a tall man in his early forties, with dark, lank hair and an aquiline nose. She saw him immediately she entered the bar, and he smiled at her and nodded. For Big Lou this was a moment of great significance, as it always is when we see one whom we loved a long time ago, and might love still; it had been years, and she had thought of him often – if not each waking day, then almost every day; and now here he was, unchanged, it seemed, and standing there smiling at her as if they were friends who had not seen one another for a mere week or so.
She made her way over towards him, squeezing past a group of young men who were listening earnestly to something being said by one of their number. And in the far corner, sitting at a table, a fiddler worked his bow through a tune that could just be heard above the hubbub of conversation. The notes were jagged and quick, and she remembered that they had sat in a similar pub one evening in Aberdeen when a Shetland fiddler had been playing, and her heart gave a lurch and she wondered whether he would remember that too. Men did not remember these things; or they had their own memories. When she reached him he put his glass down on the bar and leaned forward to kiss her lightly on the brow.
“Well,” he said. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, Lou?”
She nodded. She would not cry, she had determined, but there were tears to be fought back. Discreetly, unseen by Eddie, Big Lou bit her lip.
“Aye, it’s been a good long time. And now . . .”
“And now here we are,” said Eddie.
She said nothing and glanced at the bartender, who was hovering. Eddie ordered her a drink – “I remember that you like Pernod, Lou. Pernod! Yes, I remember that well.”
“I don’t drink it very much any more,” she said. “But thanks, Eddie.”
254
Big Lou Goes to Dinner
They looked at one another.