51. Velvety Shoes
Groaning inwardly, Lizzie Todd walked up the short path that led to the front door of her parents’ house in the Braids. She had grown up in this house, but she felt little of the affection that one was supposed to feel for the place in which one spends one’s early years. Indeed, when she had left home to go to Glasgow Caledonian University to take her degree in Indeterminate Studies, she had done so with such a measure of relief that it was visible.
“Do you think she’ll miss us?” Todd had said to his wife shortly after her departure. “She looked so happy. It was almost as if she was pleased to go.”
Sasha sighed. “She’s a strange girl. I’m not sure if I understand her, but I’m sure she’ll miss us.”
Todd had been silent. He had wanted a son, who would play rugby for Watson’s and who would in due course join the firm. But life rarely worked out as one planned it and when no further children had arrived he had accepted his lot, to be the father of a daughter who seemed each year to become more distant from him, and increasingly uninterested in his world. He looked to his wife for an explanation, and a solution, but it seemed that she was as incapable as he was of communicating with their daughter. It crossed his mind that it was dislike – as simple as that – a failure of the intricate, inexplicable chemistry that makes one person like or love another. But that was a bleak conclusion, and was only once, very briefly, articulated when Todd had said to the then sixteen-year-old Lizzie: “I suppose you’d like me more, wouldn’t you, if I were Sean Connery?” And she had looked at him blankly, perplexed, and had said: “But you aren’t,” before she added: “And I suppose you’d like me more if I were Gavin Hastings.” It had not been a profitable exchange.
Years on now, Lizzie slipped her key into the lock and opened the parental door. She sniffed at the air. This was the familiar smell of home, but not a smell that she particularly liked. Her mother’s cleaner used a lavender-scented furniture polish and the smell of this pervaded the house. It had always been there, from the earliest days of Lizzie’s childhood, and it had ruined lavender for her, forever.
From within the house there came the sound of a bath being run. Todd was late back from the golf course and needed a bath before changing into his kilt. Sasha, by contrast, was always ready well in advance, and was making her way down the corridor, fully dressed, when she heard Lizzie come in. When the two of them met in the hall, Sasha glanced quickly at Lizzie’s dress. Had she made an effort? That was the issue. It would be typical of her to agree to come to the ball and then do nothing about looking her best for the occasion.
The verdict was positive. “That’s a very pretty dress, dear,” said Sasha. “And those shoes …”
They were standing at the entrance to the drawing room and Lizzie now turned away and walked towards the window that looked out over the distant rooftops of Morningside.
“They hurt my feet,” she said. “I’m going to have to take something else with me.”
“I can lend you a pair,” Sasha said brightly. “I bought them just a few weeks ago. They’d go very nicely with that dress.”
She went off to fetch the shoes, while Lizzie stared moodily out of the window.
“Here,” said Sasha, holding out the shoes. “Slip into these. They’ll be much more comfortable.”
Lizzie looked at the pair of velvety, bejewelled shoes which Sasha was holding out to her. There was a slight movement of her nose, almost undetectable, but insofar as it could be detected, upward.
“Where did you buy those?” she asked. And then, before Sasha could reply, Lizzie continued, “I saw a pair just like that in Marks and Spencers the other day. Did you get them at Marks?”
Sasha froze. “Marks? Marks?” Her voice wavered, but then became steely. “Certainly not. I got these from a shoe boutique in William Street. If you care to look at the label, you’ll see exactly where they’re from.”
Lizzie reached out and took the shoes from her mother. She looked inside and shrugged when she saw the boutique’s label.
“Not really the sort of shoe I like to wear,” she said. “Of course, they might suit you. In fact, I’m sure they do. Don’t get me wrong.”
“I’d never force you to wear my shoes,” Sasha retorted.
Lizzie smiled. “Just as well,” she said. “I’m a six and you’re, what are you – size eight?”
Sasha did not reply. In one sense she was an eight, but she could fit perfectly well into a six-and-a-half, provided she did not have to walk. But she was not going to be drawn into a discussion with Lizzie about shoe sizes. It was typical of her daughter, she thought, just typical, that she should walk into the house on a day like this, a special day when they should all be getting ready to enjoy themselves, and start an argument about shoe sizes. It was all so undermining of her, and so unfair. She had never criticised her daughter’s dress sense, in spite of obvious temptations, and yet all she could do was reject every attempt that she made to help and advise her. Lizzie was beyond pleasing, she concluded, and this meant, she thought grimly, that she would never find a man, as no man was perfect; far from it, in fact – just look at Raeburn.
52. Silk Organza
Todd glanced at his watch. Bruce might arrive at any moment, but there was time for a whisky before that. He had picked up some of Sasha’s anxiety over the evening, which was inevitable, he supposed, in view of the fact that they were the organisers; a whisky would reassure him. He poured himself a small glass of Macallan and wandered into the drawing room where Lizzie was standing by the window.
“I’m very grateful to you,” he said quietly. “I know that you don’t always enjoy these things. But it means a lot to your mother that you’re coming tonight. So thank you.”
Lizzie continued to look out of the window. “I don’t mind,” she muttered. “I didn’t have anything else on.”
“Even so,” said Todd. “It’s good of you.”
He heard a door close behind him and he turned round to see Sasha coming into the room, holding a plate of sliced brown bread and smoked salmon. She put the plate down on a table and came to his side.
“You look so good in your kilt,” she said, turning to Lizzie. “Your father does look good in it, doesn’t he?”
“Yes,” said Lizzie, without any great enthusiasm.
Todd shot her a glance. He did not mind if she was lukewarm about what he was wearing, but it would be nice, would it not, if for once she complimented her mother.
“And your mother looks good too, doesn’t she?” he said. “With that magnificent dress. And the shoes.”
Lizzie looked Sasha up and down. “Silk organza. Fish-tail hem, I see,” she said.
“Fish what?” asked Todd.
“Fish-tail hem,” repeated Lizzie, pointing at Sasha’s dress. “You’ll see that it’s higher in the front – shows her knees – and then goes down at the back like a fish tail. Very popular among the twenty-somethings.”
Todd looked at Sasha, who was staring at her daughter. “Well, I like it very much,” he said. “Twenty-something, forty-something – what’s the difference?”
“Twenty years,” said Lizzie.
Sasha bent down and picked up a piece of buttered brown bread with its small covering of smoked salmon. For a moment Todd wondered whether she was going to use it as a weapon, but she popped it into her mouth and quickly licked the tips of her fingers.
“Actually,” Sasha said, “I had this dress made up for me from a photograph I saw in Harpers. And, if I remember correctly, the person wearing it in the magazine was not in her twenties.”
“Teens?” asked Lizzie.
Sasha looked at Todd. He saw that she had coloured, and that her lower lip was quivering. He turned to his daughter.
“Do you have to be like this?” he asked. “Do you have to say cruel things? Do you have to upset your mother?”
Lizzie’s expression was one of injured innocence. “But I didn’t say anything,” she protested. “I merely
said that that sort of dress was very popular among younger people. What’s wrong with that? It’s just an observation.”
“Except that you think that I’m too old to be wearing it,” Sasha blurted out. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re never happy unless you make me feel small. You’ll be forty-four one day, you know.”
“Forty-five,” said Lizzie.
At this remark, Sasha turned sharply away and walked out of the room, leaving her husband and daughter staring mutely at one another. Todd lifted his glass of whisky and drained it.
“I think you should say you’re sorry,” he said. “It’s a big night for your mother, and I really don’t think that you should ruin it for her. Couldn’t you just go through there and say that you’re sorry? Would it cost you that much effort?”
Lizzie shrugged. “She could say sorry to me,” she said. “She could say sorry for making me feel so bad all those years. For nagging me. For making me do things that I never wanted to do. For ruining my life.”
He spoke quietly. “For ruining your life?”
“Yes,” she said.
He looked down at his sporran and at his patent-leather Highland dancing pumps. This is what it has come to, he thought. This is what all their effort had brought forth: the accusation that they had ruined her life.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I really am very sorry if you think that. And I take it that you think the same of me – that I’ve done the same.”
Lizzie shook her head. “Not really. I don’t blame you for it. You can’t help the way you are.”
“And what, may I ask, is that? What way am I?”
Lizzie looked up at the ceiling, as if bored by the task of explaining the obvious.
“All of this,” she said. “All this respectability. This whole Edinburgh bit. All of that.”
Todd tried to look her in the eye as she spoke, but she avoided his gaze. “All right,” he said. “You’ve made your speech. Now please just try for the rest of the evening. That young man is walking up the path out there and I would prefer it if he didn’t witness a family row. I’m going to fetch your mother. Please try. Please just try. I’m not asking you to approve of us, but please just try to be civil. Is that too much to ask? Is it?”
53. Bruce Fantasises
“You’ll remember my wife,” said Todd. “And my daughter Lizzie, of course.”
Sasha, smiling and holding out her hand, advanced upon Bruce, who shook hands with her formally. Lizzie, who had been standing at the window, half turned to their guest and nodded. She made no move to shake hands.
“Well,” said Todd, rubbing his hands together. “I must confess that I’ve jumped the gun. I’ve had a dram already. What about you, Bruce? Whisky? Gin? A glass of wine?”
Bruce asked for a glass of wine and while Todd went off to fetch it, Sasha took Bruce by the arm and led him to a sofa at the far end of the room. She sat down, and patted the sofa beside her. And it was at this point that Bruce suddenly realised that in his haste to leave the flat he had dressed inadequately. He had donned his full, formal Highland outfit, his Prince Charlie jacket with its silver buttons, his Anderson kilt, the dress sporran that his uncle had given him for his twenty-first birthday, his white hose from Aitken and Niven in George Street, and, of course, his new dress shirt. But he had forgotten to put on any underpants.
Bruce knew that there were those who refused to wear anything under the kilt as a matter of principle. He knew, as everybody did, that there were traditions to this effect, but they were old ones, and he had never met anybody who followed them. It was not just a question of comfort, and warmth, perhaps in the winter; it was a question of security. And now he felt that security issue very acutely as he prepared to sit down on the sofa beside Sasha.
He lowered himself carefully, keeping his knees close together and making sure that the folds of the kilt fell snugly along the side of each leg. Then he looked at Sasha, who was watching him with what he thought was a slightly bemused expression. Had she guessed, by the way that he had sat down? He remembered, blushing, the last time this had happened when, as a thirteen-year-old boy he had similarly rushed off to a school function and had been laughed at by schoolgirls, who had pointed to him and giggled. One might have thought that such painful episodes were well and truly in the past, but now here he was reliving the burning awkwardness of adolescence.
Sasha raised her glass, although her husband had not yet come back with a drink for Bruce. “We haven’t seen one another for a long time, have we?” she asked. “Was it last year, at the office dinner at Prestonfield House?”
“I think so,” said Bruce vaguely. He had worn his kilt on that occasion too, but had wisely donned underpants then. How on earth had he managed to forget to put them on tonight? What could he possibly have been thinking about?
Sasha looked across at Lizzie – a glance which was intercepted by Bruce. There was a feeling between these two, he thought; mothers and daughters were often at one another’s throats, he had found; something to do with jealousy, he thought. Bruce’s theories of female psychology were simple: women competed with one another for men and there was great distrust between them. Women did not like one another, he had decided – unlike men, who had easy friendships, with none of the ups and downs and moodiness of women’s relationships.
Bruce was used to being fought over, and relished the experience. If he was in a room with two women, then he would imagine that both of them would be vying for his attention, and he liked to look for the signs of this subtle, under-the-surface competition. It was easy to miss, but if you kept your eyes open you could see it. In these particular circumstances, Lizzie would be glowering at her mother because the older woman had invited Bruce to sit beside her and now she was talking to him in this familiar way. This would be annoying Lizzie, because she, quite naturally, would be wanting Bruce to notice her, not her mother. Bruce smiled. How delicious! Mother and daughter are both interested in me, and she, the older one, is the boss’s wife.
He looked at Sasha. She’s crammed herself into that dress, he thought, but she’s not all that bad-looking in the right light. And there was a certain brassiness to her which he rather liked, a suggestion that she understood what it was to have fun. Interesting. Now for the daughter. Well, what a frump, with that frown and that way of slumping her shoulders. He knew the sort well enough; she would have given up, that’s what she would have done – she would just have given up on the prospect of finding a man. So she would have decided to behave as if she did not care, which of course she did. How sad. If she made an effort then she could probably be reasonable-looking, and might appeal to some man or other.
Bruce wondered. He was free at the moment, and he would be doing a service for this rather unhappy-looking girl if he paid her a bit of attention. She might do for a few weeks, to bridge the gap, so to speak, before somebody a bit more suitable turned up. He could even look on it as a form of community service of the sort that was handed out at the sheriff court. You are sentenced to one hundred and forty hours with Todd’s daughter. You are warned that if you don’t comply with the terms of this order then you will be brought back to the court to explain yourself to the sheriff.
And he would say to the sheriff: “My lord, have you seen her?” And the sheriff would look down from the bench and shake his head and say: “Young man, that’s what community service is all about. But I see what you mean. You are free to go.”
That’s what Bruce thought. He found the fantasy rather amusing, and smiled again; a smile which was misinterpreted by Sasha, who thought: this dishy young man is smiling at me! It’s not too late, obviously. It’s not too late to have some fun in this life.
54. Supporting Walls
“This is a nice place you’ve got, Todd,” said Bruce to Todd as he was handed his glass of wine.
Todd smiled warmly. “It’s a very good corner of town,” he said. “We’ve been here for – what – sixteen years now and I don’t think we’re planning to
move, are we Sasha?”
Sasha shook her head. “I couldn’t move,” she said. “I’ve put so much effort into the garden and if you go further into town these days it’s so noisy. Students and the like. All sorts of people.”
Bruce nodded in sympathy. He knew all about students and the noise they made, although it was only a few years since he had been a student, and had made a lot of noise himself, if one were to be strictly honest. Mind you, he reflected, the noise he made was not from music being played at full throttle, it was rather from parties, particularly after rugby internationals. Those parties had produced a sort of roar which was far more acceptable than the sort of noise that came from student flats these days.
“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 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.