Domenica put down the packet of dried mushrooms she was slitting open and peered at Pat’s neck. “Opals,” she said. “Look at their colours. Fire opals.”
“Do you like it?” asked Pat.
“I love it,” said Domenica. “I’ve always liked opals. I bought myself an opal ring in Australia when I was there ten years ago.
I often wear it. It reminds me of Brisbane. I was so happy in Brisbane.”
Pat was silent. She began to finger the necklace, awkwardly, as if it made her feel uncomfortable.
“Is there anything wrong?” asked Domenica.
Pat shook her head. “No . . . Well, perhaps there is.”
“Do you feel bad about accepting such an expensive present from him? Is that it?”
“Maybe. Maybe just a bit.”
Domenica took Pat’s hand and pressed it gently. “It’s very important to be able to accept things, you know. Gracious acceptance is an art – an art which most of never bother to cultivate. We think that we have to learn how to give, but we forget about accepting things, which can be much harder than giving.”
“Why?”
“Possibly because of our subconscious fears about the gift relationship,” said Domenica. “The giving of gifts can create obligations, and we might not wish to be encumbered with obligations. And yet, there are gifts which are outright gifts – gifts which have no conditions attached to them. And you have to realise that accepting another person’s gift is allowing him to express his feelings for you.”
Yes, thought Pat. You are right about this, as you are right about so many other things.
“He gave Big Lou a present as well yesterday,” Pat said. “I was there when he did it. A silver beaker with some words from the Declaration of Arbroath engraved on it.”
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“A somewhat odd gift,” mused Domenica. “And was Big Lou pleased?”
“Very,” said Pat. “She hugged him. She lifted him up, actually, and hugged him.”
Domenica smiled. “It’s very easy,” she said. “It’s very easy, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“To increase the sum total of human happiness. By these little acts. Small things. A word of encouragement. A gesture of love.
So easy.”
Domenica looked at her watch. “We must get on with our labours,” she said. “Angus, Antonia, and all the rest will be here before we know it.”
“Will Angus have a poem for us, like last time?”
“He always does,” said Domenica. “When we reach the end of something.”
“But is this really the end of something?” asked Pat.
Domenica smiled, somewhat sadly. “I fear it is.”
113. Domenica’s Dinner Party
One of Domenica’s little ways was to give each of her guests a different arrival time, thus staggering them at ten minute inter-vals. She felt that this was a good way of ensuring that each person got the attention a guest deserves right at the beginning of an evening, even if it should become, as it often did, more difficult for a hostess to devote herself to individual guests later on.
The first to arrive, of course, was Angus, whom she had already seen on her return, even if only briefly. He had been over-excited at that meeting, and had blurted out all sorts of news with scant regard to chronology or significance. He had told her about Cyril’s disappearance and miraculous return; about Ramsey Dunbarton’s demise; about his new shoes; about Lard O’Connor’s appearance in Big Lou’s café and the routing of Eddie – it had all come tumbling out.
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Then Antonia came from over the landing, and had brought with her a sickly orchid and a box of chocolates as a present.
Domenica thought that she recognised the box of chocolates as one that had been doing the rounds of Edinburgh dinner parties over a period of several years, passed from one hand to another and opened by no recipient. She did not reveal this, though, but put the box in a drawer for the next occasion on which she needed to take her hostess a present. It might even be Antonia, should she reciprocate the invitation, but by that time the chocolates would be wrapped in a fresh piece of gift paper and might not be identified. The real danger in recycling presents came in forgetting to remove the gift tag from the wrapping, as sometimes happened with recycled wedding presents.
Then Matthew arrived, wearing a curious off-green jacket, and her friends, Humphrey and Jill Holmes, and James Holloway, who brought her an orchid in much better condition, and David Robinson, bearing a small pile of novels which Domenica had missed and which he suspected she would enjoy.
That was the party complete; a small gathering, but one in which everybody knew one another and would be sure to enjoy this celebration of return and reunion.
They stood in Domenica’s drawing room, where the friendly evening sun came in, slanting, soft.
“Domenica,” said David Robinson. “Please reassure us that you are back for good.”
Domenica looked into her glass. “I have no immediate plans to leave Edinburgh again,” she said. “I suspect that my field work days are over, but you never know. If there were a need . . .”
“But you’ve finished with pirates?” asked James. “I really think that we’ve had enough pirates. Hunter gatherers are fine, but pirates . . .”
Domenica nodded. “My pirates proved to be rather dull at the end of the day. They were a wicked bunch, I suppose. Their attitude to intellectual property rights was pretty cavalier. But bad behaviour is ultimately rather banal, don’t you think?
There’s a terrible shallowness to it.”
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“I couldn’t agree more,” said Antonia. “I would have found Captain Hook a very dull companion, I suspect. Peter Pan would have been far more fun.” She looked at Angus as she spoke, but Angus, noticing her gaze upon him, looked away.
“Peter Pan needed to grow up,” said Matthew. “That was his problem.”
All eyes turned to Matthew as this remark was digested. Pat looked at his new off-green jacket and made a mental note to talk to him about it. But she knew that she would have to be careful.
And then, faintly in the background, the notes of a saxophone could be heard, the sound travelling up the walls and through the floor from the flat below. Domenica smiled. “Our downstairs neighbour,” she explained. “Little Bertie. His mother makes him practise round about this time. We get ’As Time Goes By’ a lot but this . . . what’s he playing now?”
Angus moved to a wall and cupped his ear against it. “It’s
‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ I believe. Yes, that’s it. ‘He is trampling out the vintage/where the grapes of wrath are stored’
– good for you, Bertie!”
The conversation resumed, but not for long. Angus now stepped forward, glass in hand, and addressed the company.
“Dear friends,” he began. “Domenica is back from a distant place. Would you mind a great deal if I were to deliver a poem on the subject of maps?”
“Not in the slightest,” said David Robinson. “Maps are exactly what we need to hear about.”
Angus stood in the centre of the room.
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“Although,” he began, “they are useful sources Of information we cannot do without, Regular maps have few surprises: their contour lines Reveal where the Andes are, and are reasonably clear On the location of Australia, and the Outer Hebrides; Such maps abound; more precious, though, Are the unpublished maps we make ourselves, Of our city, our place, our daily world, our life; Those maps of our private world