Martini time

While Bruce was preparing his lobster bisque in Abercromby Place, Sister Maria-fiore dei Fiori di Montagna was mixing a martini for her flatmate, Antonia Collie, in their Drummond Place flat, only a few doors away from where Compton Mackenzie, Jacobite, spy, author of Whisky Galore and President of both the Siamese Cat Society and the Croquet Association, had lived with his two Macsween wives, seriatim. Sister MariaFiore and Antonia had taken to the regular consumption of a martini at six-fifteen in the evening, when the evening sun, slanting in from the western end of Drummond Place, shone at such an angle through their large front windows as to illuminate the right half of their carved wooden mantelpiece with its figure of Demeter dispensing sheaves of wheat to worthy recipients. The previous year, Antonia had made an extraordinary discovery: she had found that at the summer solstice, a beam of evening sunlight, entering the flat by their principal Drummond Place-facing window, fell on a point of salience in the mantelpiece carving, and then directly shone through a gap in the carving of Demeter onto a half-concealed surface. There, on that surface, had been carved the words My journey starts afresh.

Antonia had pointed out her discovery to Sister Maria-fiore dei Fiori di Montagna, who had peered at the inscription in fascination. “I assume that this is meant to be the sun talking,” she said.

“Indeed,” said Antonia. “There is no doubt in my mind about that. This is undoubtedly the Scottish equivalent of Newgrange in Ireland.”

Sister Maria-fiore looked blank, but only momentarily: she did not know much about Ireland, and had no idea where Newgrange was, yet even in such circumstances she was able to find a suitable aphorism. “One place,” she pronounced, “is often a reminder of another place. And that place may, in turn, bring to mind a third place. So it is that we find our place – among places.”

“Yes,” said Antonia. “Quite possibly.” And then added, “Of course, Newgrange allows the sun to enter the chamber in the mound at the winter solstice, whereas the light falls on our mantelpiece at the summer solstice.”

“Summer and winter are two sides of the same coin,” said Sister Maria-fiore. “Summer says to us the things that winter says, but in a different voice.”

Antonia did not disagree with that. She found Sister Maria-fiore’s observations charming, and had even been thinking of compiling them into some sort of book, once she had finished her current work on the lives of the early Scottish saints. Perhaps Sister Maria-fiore’s book of aphorisms might have the same measure of success as had been enjoyed by Kahil Gibran’s The Prophet. The Lebanese mystic had been immensely successful with that compilation of utterances on all sorts of subjects including, she recalled, the eating of apples. Had he not said something about what you should say in your heart when your teeth sank into an apple: “I, too, am an apple …” Or was that about something else? It was difficult with mystics to work out what they were talking about, which, of course, was one of the things that made being a mystic relatively easy. If you were a mystic, then the more obscure your observations, the better – or the more mystical. The most successful mystics were those whose saying and writings were quite impenetrable, tantalizing others with a shifting allusiveness that promised enlightenment, even if not just yet.

But now, as the sun reached the mantelpiece, Sister Maria-fiore handed a martini to Antonia. The nun was the one who mixed the drinks, using gin and dry vermouth, and adding, to Antonia’s glass, but not to hers, an olive and a small amount of olive brine, the key ingredient of a dirty martini.

“Dirty,” said Sister-maria, raising her glass.

“Dirty,” replied Antonia. It was their private toast, one of the little things that cemented their friendship.

“Where did you learn to make martinis?” asked Antonia. “Did you have them in the convent?”

Antonia liked to get Sister Maria-fiore to talk about her convent days, as she had fond memories of the time she had spent there herself, after the sisters had taken her in for recuperation. Antonia’s attack of Stendhal Syndrome had been towards the more serious end of the condition’s spectrum, and it was the kindness of the community of nuns in their remote Tuscan house that had brought about her recovery.

“It was one of the things we learned as novices,” replied Sister Maria-fiore. “One of the senior nuns was in charge of our training in routine tasks. She had been a waitress in Harry’s Bar in Venice before she received the call. Many of the nuns brought with them the skills they had acquired in the outside world. Sister Beatrice, for example, was a very good mechanic, and there was another sister who had been a glass-blower in Murano. There was usually somebody for whatever task required to be done.”

Antonia sipped at her martini. “Do you have many regrets, MariaFiore?”

Sister Maria-fiore frowned. “About what?”

“About leaving all that behind you.” The nun looked into her martini glass. “Life,” she said, “is a bit like a martini. You take a sip – and then you take another sip.”

Antonia nodded. “I suppose so. But I just wondered whether you miss the routine of that other life you had. You know what I mean – getting up at the same time every morning, going to morning prayers, having the same breakfast. Going off to work in the dairy …”

“I never worked in the dairy,” Sister MariaFiore corrected her. “I mainly worked on the lettuce farm. And I helped with the beekeeping.”

“Yes, but it was a routine, wasn’t it? And everything was provided. You didn’t have to worry about where your next meal was coming from.”

Sister Maria looked thoughtful. “That’s true. But we weren’t passengers, you know. The convent earned its crust of bread.” She paused. “I valued the routine – yes, I did. But I felt a strong call to come to Scotland. I felt that there was a place somewhere, where I could realise my potential, if you see what I mean. And so when you suggested that I might come, it seemed to me that this was a message that I was destined to receive. You never know when a call will come. You might be doing something very ordinary – brushing your teeth, for instance – when a call arrives. The important thing is to receive those things that are sent to you. Do not send away things that are brought to your door. Embrace them. Nothing comes without first having been sent.”

“No,” mused Antonia. “That’s probably true.”

“Speaking of which,” said Sister MariaFiore, “I was on the 23 bus earlier today. I was coming back from a meeting at the National Gallery.” Sister Maria-fiore had recently been appointed to the Board of Trustees of the National Gallery of Scotland, and had attended her first meeting earlier that day. It had been an important meeting, at which the trustees had discussed a proposal that all the gallery’s paintings should be hung at a slightly lower level in order to ensure their accessibility to shorter people.

Antonia sipped at her dirty martini. “And?”

“And I found the most extraordinary thing. Somebody had left something on the bus – it looked like a skull of some sort.” “A human skull?”

Sister Maria-fiore nodded. “It couldn’t have been, though. You don’t find human skulls on Edinburgh buses – at least not on the 23 bus.”

Antonia laughed. “You’re a hoot, carissima!” And then, “So what did you do?”

“I threw it in the bin.”

“Our bin?”

“Yes.”

Antonia shrugged. “People leave all sorts of things on buses. Trains too.”

“What we leave behind, others find,” said Sister Maria-fiore.

© 2020 Alexander Mccall Smith Available in book form from November as A Promise of Ankles (hbk, £16.99). The Peppermint Tea Chronicles is available now in paperback.