44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith [97]
“My dear,” he said to Pat, touching her gently on the wrist,
“you are so kind, so considerate, to listen to the conversation of an academician of my years – barely fifty, I might add.”
“I’m interested in this story,” said Pat. “This Moderator person sounds awful. And you had to paint him!”
“Indeed I did,” said Angus Lordie. “But, do you know, as I began the task it seemed to me as if I had become possessed. It was almost as if I had been taken over by an entirely foreign energy. I had absolutely no difficulty in beginning. I saw the portrait in my mind’s eye, even before I began.
“I had set up a large canvas, you’ll understand – I normally paint portraits on a generous scale. But now, as I looked at this tiny, crabbit man, sitting there in his clerical black suit and staring at me with a sort of threatening disapproval, I found that I sketched in a tiny portrait, three inches square, right in the middle of the big canvas. This just seemed to be the right thing to do. He was a small-minded man, in my view, and it seemed utterly appropriate to do a small portrait of him.
“We had several sittings. I didn’t let him see what I was doing, you’ll understand, and so he had no idea of the picture which was emerging in the middle of the canvas – a picture which set out to express all the sheer malice and narrowness of the man. I thought it was very accurate. I had boiled down his spirit and it came to a tiny half-teaspoon of brimstone.”
Pat listened in fascination. She could imagine what might have happened next; the Reverend MacNichol would see the picture
– which is exactly what happened, as Angus Lordie explained.
“It was during the third sitting,” said Angus Lordie. “I went A Dissident Free Presbyterian Fatwa
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out of the studio to answer the telephone, and while I was out MacNichol took it upon himself to get up and have a peek at progress so far. When I came back into the studio he was standing there, purple with rage, wagging a finger at me. ‘How dare you insult a man of the cloth,’ he yelled at me. ‘You wicked, wicked man!’
“I tried to pacify him, but he would have none of it. He fetched his hat – a black Homburg which was far too big for a tiny man like that – shoved it down over his ears, and marched out of the studio. But as he left, he turned to face me and said: ‘You will be sorry, Mr Lordie! You will find out what it is to incur the wrath of the Discontinued Brethren!’ Then he left, and I sat down, somewhat shocked, and considered my position.
“What had happened, I was later told, was that he had pronounced some sort of Free Presbyterian fatwa on me. I was shocked. What exactly will they try to do to me? Put me to the sword? Burn me out of my studio? I have absolutely no idea what the implications are, as this happened only a few days ago.”
Pat was silent. Many people find it hard to know what to say to one who has just had a fatwa pronounced on him, and Pat was one of these. Words somehow seem inadequate in such circumstances, and any further enquiry tactless. It might help to ask: “Is it a temporary fatwa, or a permanent one?” But Pat just shook her head in disbelief – not at the story, of course –
but at the mentality of those who would pronounce a fatwa on another.
Angus Lordie sighed. “Still,” he said. “One must not complain. Portraiture has its risks, and I suppose a dissident Free Presbyterian fatwa is one of them. Not that one would expect to encounter such a thing every day . . . But, to more cheerful subjects. Would you like to visit my studio some time? I’m just round the corner from Scotland Street, on the same side of the square as Sydney used to be – Sydney Goodsir Smith, of course. And Nigel McIsaac too. Nigel was a very fine artist – lovely, light-filled