44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith [67]
“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 140
Supporting Walls
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 Discovered
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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,