44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith [76]
“We have marvellous prizes,” she said. “And since it’s only a modest crowd here tonight, there’ll be plenty for everybody.”
“Hear, hear,” said Ramsey Dunbarton, raising his glass of whisky. “Plenty for everybody – the Party philosophy.”
“Quite,” agreed Sasha. “Now, to save the bother of a draw, I simply divided the tickets – on a totally random basis, of course
– into six groups. I then put each group in a separate envelope and wrote a name on the outside. On payment of six pounds –
one pound per ticket – you will each get your envelope. And The Tombola
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then you can open it up and when you tell me the numbers, I will tell you what you’ve won.”
“Sounds fair,” said Bruce, but he noticed that Ramsey Dunbarton looked doubtful. Did he suspect Sasha of cheating, Bruce wondered? Surely that would be inconceivable. And yet she would have had every opportunity to dictate which tickets went into which envelope, and thus effectively determine who won what.
The Ramsey Dunbartons, slightly reluctantly, handed over twelve pounds and were given two white envelopes with Ramsey and Betty written on the outside. Then Lizzie completed the same transaction, in her case with an ostentatious show of boredom. Bruce, by contrast, handed over six pounds with good grace and smiled as he took the envelope from Sasha.
“Right,” said Sasha. “Betty, if you would like to start by calling out the numbers on your tickets, I’ll tell you what you’ve won.”
While she was organising the tickets, Todd had gone out of the room and now he wheeled in a large trolley. This was covered with a sheet, which he took off with a theatrical gesture. There, stacked high in munificence, were the prizes – the silver fish knives and forks from Hamilton and Inches; the decanter from Jenners; the envelopes containing the vouchers for golf and dinner and other treats. All was laid out before them, and the guests immediately realised that this tombola represented remarkable value for the six pounds that each of them had been asked to pay.
The fish knives and forks went to Betty Dunbarton, who received them with exclamations of delight.
“Hamilton and Inches,” said Sasha knowingly.
“Wonderful,” said Betty. “Ramsey loves Hamilton and Inches.”
The other prizes she won were less exciting, but still represented a good haul. And when it came to Ramsey’s turn, although he was unmoved by the prize of the round of golf at Craiglockhart, he was extremely pleased with the two free tickets to the Lyceum Theatre to be followed by dinner (up 160
The Tombola
to the value of twenty-five pounds) in the Lyceum Restaurant. His final prize was the picture which Bruce had brought as his contribution.
“A view of somewhere over in the west,” announced Sasha as she handed the Peploe? over to him. “A very nice prize indeed, thanks to Bruce.”
Ramsey and Betty nodded in Bruce’s direction in acknowledgment of his generosity. Then they placed the Peploe? with the fish knives and forks and waited for the next stage of the draw. This saw Lizzie win the dinner at Prestonfield (“too fattening,”
she said), a jar of pickled red peppers from Valvona and Crolla (“can’t stand red peppers,” she remarked) and a copy of the latest novel by a well known crime-writer (“Ian who?” she asked). When it came to Sasha’s turn, she won, of course, the lunch with Malcolm Rifkind and Lord James at the Balmoral Hotel. This brought some envious muttering from Ramsey Dunbarton, who clearly would have liked to have won that, but this merely confirmed Sasha’s conviction that she had done the right thing.
“I couldn’t have imposed him on them,” she said to Todd later.
“Imagine them having to sit there and listen to stories about North Berwick and broken teeth.”
Laden with prizes, the party began to break up. The Ramsey Dunbartons’ taxi arrived to take them the short distance back to Morningside Drive and Bruce telephoned for a cab back to Scotland Street. Then he remembered the underpants. He had intended