44 Scotland Street
‘The cajoling that had been a feature of the boys’ dinner time before James’s arrival became a thing of the past: now plates were licked clean and demands made for extra helpings’
VOLUME 14 CHAPTER EIGHT
By ten o’clock, Matthew had hung six pictures, two of which he had subsequently taken down and substituted with others. By ten-thirty he had swapped a further two and moved one to a new position. He was pleased: the effect was good, and he seemed to be achieving what he set out to achieve, which was to give each painting the room to be itself without fighting with its neighbour.
He looked at his watch and saw that it was time to cross the road for his morning coffee. He put on his jacket and hung up on the glass front door the sign given him by a German friend: Ich bin bald wieder zurück. Then he made his way across the road towards Big Lou’s coffee bar.
He only remembered as he descended the steps to Big Lou’s basement premises that fifty-one-per-cent of Big Lou’s, as the café was widely known, now belonged to him and Elspeth. This had come about as a result of a rescue operation mounted by Matthew: Big Lou, needing to raise money to send her adopted son, Finlay, to ballet school in Glasgow, had been on the point of accepting an offer for her coffee bar from a developer; Matthew had stepped in, offering to buy half of the business for Elspeth. She and Big Lou would then expand the coffee bar and run it as a partnership. They would employ another au pair to help with boys and thus make Elspeth available to work in the coffee bar for at least half the day. That would give her time out of the house, away from the incessant demands of the triplets, without the constraints of a full-time job. “When you have more than one small child on your hands,” a friend had advised, “you need a retreat if you are to maintain your sanity.”
That had proved to be true: there had been times when Elspeth had been at the end of her tether and had only survived thanks to the help she received from Matthew, from James, their young male au pair – nephew of the Duke of Johannesburg – and from a bottle of Tio Pepe bone-dry sherry kept in the fridge and self-administered judiciously – and responsibly – when the mayhem got too overwhelming. James, the au pair, had exceeded all expectations. He was an exceptional cook, with a particular talent for turning what Matthew called nursery food – fish fingers, baked beans etc – into concoctions that the triplets found irresistible. The cajoling and persuasion that had been a feature of the boys’ dinner time before James’s arrival quickly became a thing of the past: now plates were licked clean and demands made for more even as the food appeared on the table.
And the same culinary skills were in evidence when James cooked for Elspeth and Matthew, which he did four nights a week. His preference was for Italian cuisine – for rich Tuscan bean stews with floating chunks of bread that he himself had made; for antipasto plates decorated with marinated artichoke hearts and dried-tomatoes that he prepared in the baking oven of Elspeth’s Aga; for delicate sauces that accompanied homemade tagliatelle. These dishes he would announce as he served them at the table, explaining their origin and the circumstances in which he had learned to make them. Once a week, he took a bus into town to visit Valvona & Crolla and stock up with the provisions that he used in these dishes, although, he had also found local sources of which he made full use – a farmer who sold him chickens; a woman in the nearby village who cultivated chanterelles in her shed; an angler who had a source – not investigated too closely – of trout and occasionally of langoustines.
But James, of course, being an au pair, would not last forever. Elspeth had hardly dared ask him about his plans, but she knew that he was intending at some point to go to university, and that she would lose him. He was now just a few weeks short of his twentieth birthday, and she realised that sooner or later she would have to discuss with him the climbing trip that he planned to take to
Switzerland with Pat, Matthew’s assistant in the gallery. Elspeth had her misgivings about that relationship: Pat was four years older than James and although there was nothing inherently wrong in that age gap, she still felt that James was, in some vague way, vulnerable and that Pat should be careful.
Matthew did not share that concern. “What’s four years?” he asked. “And anyway, if it were the other way around – if she were twenty, or whatever, and he was twenty-four, would anybody bat an eyelid? They wouldn’t, would they?”
Elspeth looked wistful. “I know, I know. But still. James is just so … so special. I suppose that’s what I want to say. He’s special.”
Matthew was puzzled. “What do you mean? So, he can cook. And he’s good with the boys. And he …”
“And look at how kind he’s been to his uncle,” Elspeth added. “After the Duke crashed his flying boat up in Argyll, look at how James went to the hospital every single day and then took him to physiotherapy for weeks. He never complained.”
“Yes, he’s great,” said Matthew. “But we must face the fact that James won’t be with us all that much longer. We’ll have to get somebody else.”
Elspeth looked thoughtful. “I’ve had an idea, Matthew.”
“You’ve thought of somebody?”
She shook her head. “No, but it’s occurred to me that we could somehow hold onto James.”
Matthew frowned. “He’s not going to want to be an au pair for the rest of his life.”
“No, I know that. Obviously not. But he’s spoken about going to university in Edinburgh, hasn’t he? He’s never said anything about going away.”
Matthew agreed: James had indicated on more than one occasion that he wanted to study in Edinburgh.
“Well, why don’t we give him a parttime job? That’s what Pat had all the way through her student days. He could do the same. We could employ him.”
“At the gallery?” asked Matthew. Pat had worked for him in the gallery, and still did.
“I wasn’t thinking of that,” said Elspeth. “He could do some work there, I suppose, but I was thinking of Big Lou’s. He could do shifts at Big Lou’s once we get going there. Then he could do the odd weekend for us, perhaps. The triplets would love to have him about the place. Tobermory in particular: he loves him to bits. You can see that.”
Matthew smiled. “But we can’t keep him forever,” he said. “Boys like that grow up.”
“We can at least keep him for a bit of forever,” said Elspeth.
© 2020 Alexander Mccall Smith Alexander Mccall Smith welcomes comments from readers. Write to him c/o The Editor, The Scotsman, Orchard Brae House, 30 Queensferry Road, Edinburgh, EH4 2HS or via e-mail at scotlandstreet@scotsman.com