The Unbearable Lightness of Scones (29 page)

But what had unsettled Angus more than anything else was that curious meeting with Lard O’Connor in Glass and Thompson and the entrusting by Lard into his hands of the picture he had brought to show Matthew. The moment he had said goodbye to Lard, with a promise to telephone him once Matthew arrived home from his honeymoon, Angus had left Glass and Thompson and made his way back to his flat in Drummond Place, bearing the large, wrapped parcel in which the painting was concealed. If people knew what I was carrying, he thought, how surprised they would be. A portrait by Sir Henry Raeburn no less; but not just any Raeburn …

He met nobody in Abercromby Place or Nelson Street, but when he turned into Drummond Place itself, and was only a few hundred yards away from home, he bumped into Magnus Linklater.

Magnus was clearly in the mood for a chat. “Well, Angus,” said Magnus. “That’s an interesting-looking parcel you’ve got there. One of your own?”

Angus thought quickly. He would have loved to reveal to somebody else – anybody else – what he thought he had, but Magnus was a newspaper editor, and would it be a good idea to reveal to the world just yet that a Raeburn portrait of Burns had at last turned up? No, thought Angus, it would be premature. He could not be absolutely sure that this was Burns by
Raeburn. He could not be absolutely sure even if this was anybody by Raeburn. There were plenty of Raeburn imitators, inferior artists who painted in the style of the master. Indeed, there were Russian factories, Angus believed, that would turn out a Raeburn today for a few hundred pounds. Could this, he wondered, be a Russian Raeburn?

He had to say something to Magnus, who was looking at him politely while at the same time glancing sideways at the painting. Angus noticed that the top of the wrapping had slipped and had revealed the upper edge of the frame.

“My own? Well, not really,” he replied vaguely. “Somebody else’s painting. I’m just … just looking after it for him.”

“Nice frame,” observed Magnus. “What’s the painting like? It’s not a MacTaggart, by any chance?” He pointed to a door behind them; they were standing directly outside the house once owned by Sir William MacTaggart.

Angus laughed. “No. Nothing like that. Nothing of any real consequence.” He felt himself blushing as he spoke; Angus, a direct speaker, had never found it easy to lie, and rarely did so.

“Well,” said Magnus. “It’s good to see Cyril. And how are Cyril’s puppies? I haven’t seen them in the gardens recently.”

Angus blushed again, more deeply this time. “I’m sure that they’re all right,” he said. “They’ve gone off to a good home.”

Magnus smiled. “Well, that’s good news,” he said. “I had been wondering how you would find homes for all of them. But you obviously did. And one can’t be too careful, apparently. I was reading the other day about somebody whose puppies were stolen and sold to a restaurant. Would you believe it?”

Angus swallowed hard. “That’s bad,” he said. His voice sounded distant.

“Oh well,” said Magnus. “I mustn’t linger. And you’ve got your Raeburn to get back to the studio.”

Angus gave a start. “Raeburn?”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s not that,” said Magnus. “But one might live in hope.”

Angus forced a laugh. “I wish I owned a Raeburn,” he said.
He did not blush this time; he did not own a Raeburn, even if he happened to be carrying one. He did not own this portrait of Burns; that was the important point. Lard O’Connor owned it, or … perhaps somebody else.

He completed his journey to the flat and carried the painting carefully into his studio. Then, setting it down against a wall, he carefully slit the paper down one side and removed it. For a few minutes he did nothing other than stand in front of the painting, absorbing every detail: the well-kent face, with its finely sculpted, intelligent features; the dark hair; the prominent eyebrows; the white, pleated neck stock. And behind it the colours: the dark reds, the rich blacks against which Raeburn painted his sitters, although in this painting there was a table behind the sitter and on this table there was a large, decorated jardinière.

Angus dropped down to his knees and examined the jardinière at close quarters. He had seen a picture of it before somewhere; he was sure of that – somewhere, a jardinière, or a memory of a jardinière. He looked at Burns, and the poet stared back at him.

“Dear Rabbie,” he muttered. “We’re a parcel of rogues in a nation. I know that. But one day, maybe, that will all change. Maybe.”

“What on earth are you doing down on your hands and knees, Angus?” Domenica had knocked, but had not been heard. When Angus was in his studio, with the door closed, that could happen, and so, finding the front door ajar – Angus did not bother about security: “such a bourgeois notion,” he had said to Domenica – she pushed it further open and entered the flat.

Domenica wrinkled her nose. She had always found that Angus’s flat had a strange smell to it – not an entirely disagreeable smell, it must be said, but a strange one nonetheless. It was a mixture of oil paint from the studio, kippers from the kitchen – Angus bought kippers each week from Creelers at the farmers’ market – and dog. Domenica had been assured by Angus that Cyril was bathed regularly – at least twice a year – and that as dogs went he was not particularly smelly. But she could still detect his presence through the odour of slightly damp fur and gaminess that wafted about him.

She moved through the corridor, noticing that Angus had not opened his mail for a few days but had left it where the postie tossed it each morning, in a pile in the corner. If Angus were married – not that anybody would marry him, she thought – then all of this would be changed. The skylights, which she now looked up at, would be cleaned, the floorboards would be stripped and revarnished, Cyril would be shampooed once a week; everything would be sparkling.

And Angus himself would be spruced up. A wife could get rid of his clothes and march him round to Stewart, Christie for a complete new wardrobe. That Harris tweed jacket of his would be the first to go, although even a charity shop would draw the line at that. Perhaps the best thing would be to get the Council to come round for a special collection, in the way in which they came round to uplift old fridges and beds, if you booked them. The Council could come and take away all of Angus’s clothes.

But all of this was completely hypothetical, Domenica
reminded herself. Nobody would marry Angus; nobody could bear to take the whole project on. Certainly she would not … She stopped herself. It was all very well for her to say that she would never marry Angus, but could she really say that nobody else would? There were many desperate women in Edinburgh – legions of them – who would probably be quite happy to marry any man, even Angus, if a man were to ask them, which alas he had not. These women would do anything to secure a husband, and would overlook any defects in a man if needs be. Domenica herself was not in this position, but she knew many who were. Lack of inclination on the man’s part to marry was a comparatively minor issue for such women. One friend of Domenica’s had married a man of such talent and sensitivity in the field of interior decoration that it was widely felt that he was unlikely to have the time to marry. Single-minded pursuit, traps and – or so Domenica felt – sheer force on the woman’s part had eventually settled that matter. Another friend, having despaired of finding a full-size husband, had settled for a man who was so thin as to be almost invisible when viewed from the side. He had himself been keen to marry, but had never found anybody, probably, Domenica thought, because nobody had ever actually seen him. “Better than nothing,” her friend had said philosophically. And it had been a very happy marriage; from the merest scraps, from part of something, may something whole be made.

But then the thought occurred to Domenica: what if another woman, one of these desperate women, were to marry Angus? Would she resent this other woman’s taking her friend from her? Angus would presumably not be allowed to drop in on Scotland Street with the comfortable frequency of their current arrangement. Women did not like their husbands to have other women as friends, no matter how innocent the relationship. Angus had always been there in her life; without him, things would be quite different. Perhaps … But what was the point of marrying Angus, other than to look after him? Did she really want to be in his company all the time, or at least for
as much time as being married to him would entail? She thought not.

She pushed open the studio door and saw Angus on his hands and knees. He looked up, smiled and rose to his feet.

“I was inspecting a painting,” he said. “A very beautiful – and, if I am proved right – a very important painting too.”

Intrigued, Domenica crossed the floor of the studio to stand before the portrait.

“I see,” she began. “Is it who I think it is?”

Angus brushed the dust off the knees of his trousers. “It certainly is,” he said. “Or rather, I think it is.”

“And who painted it, do you think?” asked Domenica.

Angus let the question hang in the air for a few moments. Then he said, “Raeburn. Henry Raeburn.”

Domenica leaned forward and peered at the portrait. “It has that feel, doesn’t it? That richness.” She paused. “Is it signed?”

Angus shook his head. “Raeburn didn’t sign. You decide these things on technique and on the documentary evidence.”

“And the technique in this painting is right?”

Angus opened his hands in a gesture of uncertainty. “I think so,” he said. “But then there are people who know more about these things than I do.”

“James Holloway?”

“Precisely. We’ll obviously have to show it to him and see what he says.” He moved away from the painting and took an outsize, red-bound book from a shelf. “This is Armstrong’s book on Raeburn,” he said. “There’s a long list of his sitters at the back here. Look.”

“And is Burns mentioned?”

“No. But that doesn’t mean too much. This list is not exhaustive.”

Domenica straightened up and took a few steps back to admire the painting from more of a distance.

“You know,” she said, “I’m not sure why women found Burns attractive.”

Angus frowned. “But Burns was handsome,” he protested. “Look at him.”

“To an extent,” said Domenica. “It’s what one might call an easy face. Reasonably harmonious.”

“Perhaps women liked him because he liked them,” said Angus. “Isn’t that how women feel?”

“I’ve heard that said,” answered Domenica.

What happened next was to change Domenica’s view of Angus and, indeed, of Cyril. It was in part a sudden moment of mystical insight, a vision of
agape
, a Cloud of Unknowing moment; but it was also a simple realisation on her part of the qualities of both man and dog. And the agent of this transformation was to be Robert Burns himself.

She was standing in the studio with Angus, looking at the Raeburn portrait of Burns. Cyril, who had been sitting on his blanket in another corner of the room, now joined them. He looked up at Domenica, whom he liked, and wagged his tail. Domenica, however, absorbed in the portrait, barely noticed this greeting and continued to talk to Angus. Cyril then sat down and looked about him. As a dog, he had that vague sense that all dogs possess that something was about to happen, although he was not sure what it was. A walk could be ruled out – he had already had that; and dinner-time, if it ever came, was hours away. So the most he could hope for was a word of encouragement or recognition, a pat on the head perhaps, some gesture which indicated to him that the human world was aware of his presence.

He looked about him, and it was at this point that he saw the portrait of Burns. Now dogs are usually insensitive to art. Even the dogs of great painters, whose existence has been footnoted by art historians, have been largely unaware of the
artistic greatness of their masters. Botticelli’s dog, Nuovolone, an example of the no longer extant breed of Renaissance Terrier, appeared to be indifferent to the large canvases that dominated his master’s studio. And Vermeer’s dog, Joost, who was of an even rarer breed, a Still-Life Retriever – dogs known for their ability to retrieve objects which had fallen from the still life table – even he paid no attention to the light which shone forth from his master’s paintings. This is because dogs rely on smell, and for them a picture is an object with a single smell: a smell forged into one by the separate odours of stand oil, pigment, the hair of the paint-brush and so on. So if a dog comes into a studio, the smell of a painting bears no relation to the objects it depicts. Even a painting of something which would normally be expected to excite the attention of a dog – a hare hung up after the hunt, for example – will not be seen for what it is, but will just be something made of paint and a few other things. In this sense dogs are extreme reductionists.

But now Cyril, having failed to elicit a response from Domenica, turned and looked in the direction in which she and Angus were looking. And suddenly he saw Burns staring back at him. When this happened, he did nothing to begin with, but then he very slowly walked across the studio, approaching Burns as he would a stranger whose intentions he had not yet ascertained.