44 Scotland Street: Chapter 65 of Alexander Mccall Smith’s latest series
He stood behind the door. He looked at the panels. He stared at the brass surround of the letter box and at the letter that lay in the wire-mesh basket underneath it, the recipient of their mail. That letter had arrived that morning, but he had not noticed it for some reason; now he fished it out, he saw that it was addressed to Ms Irene Pollock and that it came from the Edinburgh Carl-gustav Jung Drop-in Centre. He tossed it aside, sending it fluttering and failing to reach the small table to which he had intended to consign it, along with a selection of other letters due for redirection to Aberdeen. He immediately felt guilty: she was his wife, even if she had left him, and he owed her the courtesy that he would show to anybody, and to the letters of anybody. And then there was the Edinburgh Carl-gustav Jung Drop-in Centre, with which he had no quarrel, and which, when all was said and done, was only trying to help people. That it was not particularly helpful to try to analyse the dreams of people who dropped in in the belief that they would be offered a free cup of coffee was not the point: there were many ways of trying to make the world a better place, even if some of them were patently misguided.
He bent down to retrieve the letter, and as he did so he heard a sound. It was a familiar noise, one to which he would not normally pay a great deal of attention, but that now made his heart miss a beat. It was the sound of the stair’s front door being opened, the door that led out onto the street, the very door by which Katie would enter the building when she came to drink peppermint tea with him.
Quickly placing the letter on the table, Stuart moved into position a few feet from the door, ready to step forward and open the door when the bell sounded. He had rehearsed what he would do. He would stand there and wait for a few seconds after the bell was rung, as he would not want to give the impression of being too eager. Then he would step forward to open the door, slowly and casually, almost as if he had forgotten that he was expecting somebody and was slightly surprised to see Katie standing before him.
Calmly, casually, he would say, “Oh, Katie, of course.” That would be all. The “of course” would be welcoming and friendly, but it would not be too gushing. When starting a relationship one should never gush; Stuart had read that in a copy of GQ he had found in the hairdresser’s salon. There had been article entitled How to play it cool with hot chicks. One should not give the slightest hint of desperation, the article advised: “Desperate guys are seriously tragic”, it continued. “So, if you want to avoid registering high on the tragimeter, avoid giving the impression that you’re too keen. Experts are unanimous: excessive keenness is a proven turn-off …” Stuart had smiled when he read that article and drawn it to the attention of Kenny, his barber, who had laughed and said, “Very funny, but it could be true, you know. Never be too obvious.”
Now, as he heard footsteps on the stair below, it was just too much for Stuart, and he moved towards the door. He waited. Was she outside? And, if she was, then why had she not rung the bell? He waited another a further agony-filled minute. There were no further steps. Had she gone? Were those steps he had heard the sound of her retracing her way back down the stair, having decided for some reason that she was not going to come after all?
Stuart crouched down, and very carefully began to lift the flap of the letter box. Through the slit he would be able to see out onto the landing outside and would see Katie, or the lower part of Katie, if she were standing outside. But what happened was that he found himself peering directly into Katie’s face, eyeball to eyeball, as she had, at the same time as he, entertained exactly the same idea. She had decided, for whatever reason, to peer into the flat just as he had decided to peer out.
Both drew back in shock. Then Stuart, standing up, fumbling with the doorhandle, opened the door and exclaimed, “Got you!”
It was exactly the right thing to say, as it converted a tense moment of mutual embarrassment into one of goodnatured humour. And Katie, for her part, responded in similar vein, naturally and skilfully. “Touché,” she said.
He invited her in. She looked about. She said, “These flats are really pretty. I’ve always liked Scotland Street.”
He said, “I’ve lived here for ages.” He did not say we’ve lived her for ages. Aberdeen receded. All the humiliation and oppression was becoming distant, like a vaguely-remembered dream. Over.
“I knew somebody who lived on the other side of the street,” said Katie. “He was a great yachtsman and free diver. And I knew Iseabail Macleod, who used to work on The Scottish National Dictionary. She lived on this side of the street, I think.”
“She did,” said Stuart. “Dear Iseabail – everyone liked her.”
“Edinburgh is like that,” said Katie. “People know one another. There are all sorts of links, all sorts of bonds between people.”
“Citizenship,” said Stuart. “We feel as if we’re citizens of the same … the same ….” “Place,” suggested Katie.
“Yes, place.”
He looked at her. “I was so looking forward to seeing you,” he said. It was directly contrary to the advice proffered by
GQ magazine. But what did they know? What did they know about how you felt when you had waited for years to be free of something that hung over you and made you miserable, and then, when you were free, you discovered somebody who seemed to like you, and who was beautiful, and who was doing a PHD in Scottish poetry? What did GQ magazine know about Scottish poetry? Precisely nothing.
And she did not answer, but suddenly reached out and touched him, and he touched her back, and then she said, “I would love that peppermint tea you mentioned.” And they both laughed, and drank peppermint tea together, and were still sitting there in the kitchen two hours later when there was a sound of a small boy hammering on the door and a man’s voice, that of Angus Lordie, saying, “If nobody’s in, Bertie, you can wait upstairs with Domenica and me. We’ll take good care of …” But the rest was mumbled and was lost.
Stuart looked at her. ‘I was so looking forward to seeing you,’ he said. It was directly contrary to the advice proffered
by GQ magazine. But what did they know?