Espresso Tales - Alexander Hanchett Smith [149]
“I had a very strange dream last night, Daddy,” said Bertie suddenly.
“Oh yes, Bertie. And what was that?”
“I dreamed that Mummy had a new baby,” said Bertie. “And the baby was dressed in blue linen, which is what Dr Fairbairn wears. It was very funny. A little blue linen baby suit.”
Stuart looked at his son. Down below a train went past and sounded a warning whistle, audible for a moment, but then caught by the wind and carried away.
96. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story:
Part VII – Bridge at Blair Atholl
Ramsey Dunbarton looked at Betty with all the fondness that comes of over forty years of marriage. “I don’t think that you’re finding my memoirs interesting, Betty,” he said. “But don’t worry, I’m not going to read much more.”
“But they are interesting,” protested Betty. “They’re very interesting, Ramsey. It’s just that it gets so warm here in the The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VII – Bridge at Blair Atholl 315
conservatory and I find myself drifting off from the heat. It’s not you, Ramsey, my dear. You read on.”
“I’m only going to read two more excerpts,” said Ramsey, shuffling the papers of his manuscript. “And then I’m going to stop.”
“Read on, Macduff,” said Betty.
“Why do you call me Macduff ?” asked Ramsey, sounding puzzled. “We have no Macduffs in the family as far as I know. No, hold on! I think we might, I think we just might! My mother’s cousin, the one who came from Forres, married a man whom we used to call Uncle Lou, and I think that he had a brother-in-law who was a Macduff. Yes, I think he was! Well, there you are, Betty! Isn’t Scotland a village!”
“Do carry on,” said Betty, closing her eyes. “I love the sound of your voice, Ramsey.”
“Now then,” said Ramsey, referring to his manuscript. “This happened about twenty years ago. I had a client, not Johnny Auchtermuchty, but somebody quite different, who had a large hotel in Perthshire. We acted for them in some Court of Session business that they had and I went up there one Saturday to have lunch with my client and to discuss the progress of the legal action down in Edinburgh. It was a very complicated case and I was not at all sure that the counsel we had instructed understood some of the finer points involved. I had suggested this to him – very politely, of course – and he had become quite shirty, implying that advocates generally knew more about the law than solicitors did, which is why they were advocates in the first place. I replied that I very much doubted this and to prove the point I asked him whether he could name, from the top of his head, a certain section of a statute to do with the sale of goods. He looked at me in a very rude way, I thought, and then he had the gall to tell me that the legislation to which I was referring had been repealed the previous year, and did I know that? It was not an amicable exchange.
“The client, though, was a very agreeable man, and it was a mark of his status in that part of Perthshire that just as we were finishing lunch at his house the telephone went and it was none other than the Duke of Atholl! Now deceased, sadly.
“The Duke was a very strong bridge player – international 316 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VII – Bridge at Blair Atholl standard, in fact – and they were just about to have a game of bridge up at Blair Atholl and they needed a fourth player. The Duke wondered whether my host would care to