“Very unfair,” said Angus. He could not imagine Domenica being forced out of anything, but perhaps when she was younger it might have been easier.
“Very stupid, more likely,” said Antonia. “The problem was that she was far brighter than those particular professors. She frightened them because she could talk about anything and everything and their own knowledge was limited to a narrow little corner of the world. That disturbed them. And universities 18
Gurus as Father Substitutes
are still full of people like that, you know. People of broad culture may find it rather difficult in them. Timid, bureaucratic places.
And very politically conformist.”
“I don’t know,” said Angus. “Surely some of them . . .”
“Of course,” said Antonia. “But, but . . . the trouble is that they’re so busy with their social engineering that they’ve lost all notion of what it is to be a liberal-minded institution.”
“I don’t know,” said Angus. “Surely things aren’t that bad . . .”
“Not that I’m one of these people who goes round muttering
‘ O tempora, O mores’,” went on Antonia. “Mind you, I don’t suppose many people in a university these days understand what that means.”
Angus laughed. He had always enjoyed Domenica’s wit and had been missing it already; but now it seemed that relief was in sight. Or, as Domenica might have it, relief was insight . . .
“Scottish history,” Angus said.
Antonia nodded. “Indeed. I studied under Gordon Donaldson and then under that very great man, John Macqueen. Such an interesting scholar, Macqueen, with his books on numerology and the like. You never knew what he would turn to next. And his son writes too – Hector Macqueen. He came up with some very intriguing things and then for some reason wrote a history of Heriot’s Cricket Club – a very strange book, but it must have been of interest to somebody. Can you imagine a cricketing history? Can you?”
“I suppose it has lists of who scored what,” said Angus. “And who went in first, and things like that.”
They were silent for a moment, both contemplating the full, arid implications of a cricketing history. Then Antonia broke the silence.
“I’ve never played cricket,” she said. “Yet there are ladies’
cricket teams. You hear about them from time to time. I can’t imagine what they’re like. But I suppose they enjoy themselves.
It’s the sort of thing that rather brisk women like to do. You know the sort.”
Angus did. He was enjoying the conversation greatly and had decided that he very much approved of Domenica’s new Gurus as Father Substitutes
19
tenant. He wondered whether he might invite her for dinner that night, or whether it would be considered a little forward at this early stage in their acquaintanceship. He hesitated for a moment; why should he not? She had said nothing to indicate that she was spoken for, and even if she was, there was nothing wrong in a neighbourly supper à deux. So he asked her, suggesting that she might care to take pot luck in his kitchen as this was her first day in the flat and she would not have had time to get in supplies.
Antonia hesitated, but only for a moment. “How tempting,”
she said quietly. “You really have been too kind to me. And I would love to accept, but I think that this evening I must work.
I really must.”
“Work?”
Antonia sighed. “My poor book, you know. I’m writing a book and it’s suffering from maternal deprivation. Bowlby syndrome, as they call it.”
“Bowlby?”
“A psychologist. He was something of a guru once. He took the view that bad behaviour results from inadequate maternal attention.”
Angus thought for a moment. I need a guru, he said to himself.
Would Antonia be his guru? He blushed at the unspoken thought. It would be wonderful to have a guru; it would be like having a social worker or a personal trainer, not that people who had either of these necessarily appreciated the advice they received.
“Of course it’s absurd, this search for gurus,” Antonia said.
“People who need gurus are really searching for something else altogether, don’t you think? Fundamentally insecure people.
Looking for father.”
Angus looked at her. He was beginning to dislike Antonia.
How strange, he thought, that our feelings can change so fast.
Like that. Just like that. And he thought of how the sky over Edinburgh could change in an instant, between summer and winter, as the backdrop can be shifted in a theatre, curtains lowered from the heavens in each case, changing everything.
7. Angus Goes Off Antonia, in a Big Way Angus Lordie was deep in thought as he walked home. At his side, Cyril, sensing his master’s abstraction, had briefly tugged at his lead at the point where Dundonald Street joined Drummond Place; he had hoped that Angus might be persuaded to call in at the Cumberland Bar, but his promptings had been ignored. Cyril understood; he knew that his life was an adjunct life, lived in the shadow of his master, and that canine views counted for nothing; yet it would have been good, he thought, to sit on the bar’s black-and-white chequered floor sipping from a bowl of Guinness and staring at the assorted ankles under the table. But this was not to be, and he was rapidly diverted from this agreeable fantasy to the real world of sounds and smells. It is a large room, the world of smells for a dog, and Drummond Place, though familiar territory, was rich in possibilities; each passer-by left a trail that spoke to where he had been and what he had been doing – a whole history might lie on the pavement, like song-lines across the Australian Outback, detectable only to those with the necessary nose. Other smells were like a palimpsest: odour laid upon odour, smells that could be peeled off to reveal the whiff below. Cyril quivered; a strange scent wafted from a doorway, a musty, inexplicable odour that reminded him of something that he had known somewhere before, in his previous life in Lochboisdale, a long time ago. He stopped, and tugged at his leash, but Angus ignored his concern, yanking him roughly to heel. Cyril had never bitten his master, not once, but there were times . . .
Angus was thinking about what Antonia had told him. He had steered the conversation swiftly away from gurus, and had asked her about her book. So many people in Edinburgh were writing a book – almost everyone, in fact – and Angus had ceased to be surprised when somebody mentioned an incipient literary project. So he had inquired politely about Antonia’s book. She had looked at him sharply, as if to assess whether he was worthy of being told, whether he was serious in his inquiries; one could not tell everyone about one’s book.
Angus Goes Off Antonia, in a Big Way 21
“It’s nothing very much,” she said, after some moments of hesitation. “Just a novel.”
He had waited for further explanation, but she had merely continued to stare at him. At last he said: “A novel.” And she had nodded.
“Well,” he said, “may I ask what sort of novel it is?”
“Historical,” she said. “Very early. It’s set in early Scotland.
Sixth century, actually.”
Angus had smiled. “You’re very wise to choose a period for which there is so little evidence,” he said. “You can’t go wrong if you write about a time that we don’t really know about. When people start to write about the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – or even the twenty-first, for that matter – they can get into awful trouble if they get it wrong. And they often get something wrong, don’t they?”
“Writers can make mistakes like anybody else,” said Antonia, rather peevishly. “We’re human, you know.” She looked at Angus, as if expecting a refutation, though none came. “For instance, was there not an American writer who described one of his characters on page one as unfortunately having only one arm? On page one hundred and forty the same character claps his hands together enthusiastically.”