The Private Side of Friendship, page 1
First published in hardback in Great Britain in 2025 by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd
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Copyright © Alexander McCall Smith, 2025
The right of Alexander McCall Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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ISBN 978 1 84697 729 9
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This book is for Cheri Bird.
One
Glasgow, June 1988
A Portrait Group
I’M STARING INTO SPACE, Julie thought. It’s my twenty-fourth birthday; I’m single; I have a job; I’m sitting at a desk and staring into space. The problem was the music. Andrew, who was her employer and who ran the gallery, liked to have music playing in the background, whatever was happening. It was not obtrusive – he always kept the volume low – but when, as now, she stopped to think about it, it distracted her from whatever she was doing. Andrew said the clients appreciated it; he said there were studies that showed that people felt more comfortable spending money if there was music in the background. Julie had been doubtful.
“What studies?” she asked. People were always invoking the support of studies, many of which, she was convinced, were apocryphal.
He grinned. “Don’t you believe me?”
“I’m not saying that I don’t believe you, it’s just that there seem to be studies for everything. There are studies that say eggs are bad for you, and then there are studies that say we should eat at least one egg a day.”
“That’s for the iron,” he said. “You need to keep up your iron levels, Julie.”
She persisted. “But these music studies?”
He waved a hand airily. “I read about them. They exist. Apparently, music makes you feel less anxious, and if you’re less anxious, you’re more inclined to spend money.”
She sighed. “Even if you know you shouldn’t?”
He became serious. “Julie, we’re a business – remember. We sell paintings. That’s why we’re here. Paintings are often a real impulse purchase. That’s just the way it is.”
She said that she understood. She told him that she did not mind the music too much. It was always discreet. She had no argument with his taste, which was light classical. But on days when Andrew did not come into the gallery – when he was at an auction, or visiting his girlfriend in Edinburgh – she was tempted to turn off the music. It was only her innate honesty that stopped her from opting for silence.
That day she was on her own. Andrew, who was conducting an affair with a woman ten years his senior, had gone off to Edinburgh to meet his lover for lunch, leaving Julie in sole charge of the gallery. She was undaunted by this, even if she found that days spent by herself in the gallery tended to drag, especially when it came to late afternoon. On this occasion, there were a couple of appointments that would break up the day and give her something to do, other than prepare copy for future catalogues.
The first appointment was with an artist. These were meetings that Andrew was keen to delegate to her – at least in the first instance. “You can be the gatekeeper, Julie,” he said. “If you find anything remotely interesting in their work, then I’ll see them. But in most cases . . .” He sighed. There were too many would-be artists who were convinced that they had talent but who in reality had none – or none that would interest the public, let alone persuade them to make an impulse buy. And it was getting worse, he said. The art schools had signalled their unwillingness to teach traditional drawing and painting skills, and the results were only too evident. “Conceptual art is all very well,” Andrew had said to her. “But it’s bad news for galleries. You can’t hang a concept on a wall.”
They had worked out a system. Julie would respond to the artists’ first approach. She would ask them to submit photographs of their work. If she thought they were worth a closer look, she would invite them to bring a portfolio to the gallery. If she liked what she saw, she would arrange for the artist to meet Andrew. In most cases, that led to a serious conversation about a future show. It was slow, painfully so at times, and she felt sorry for the artists.
She looked at the diary. Ralph Macauley. Glasgow School of Art. 11 a.m.
And now he was there, appearing on the other side of the gallery’s glass front door, a young man of about her age, possibly a year or two older. He was neatly dressed – for an artist – and she noted his corduroy trousers, which lent an old-fashioned look to his appearance. That boded well for his ability to paint. Painting was an old-fashioned skill – especially figurative painting of the sort she had seen in the photographs he had sent.
He entered hesitantly. “Am I early?” he asked. There was a note of anxiety in his tone.
She made an effort to put him at his ease. “You’re exactly on time.”
“I’m Ralph,” he said, offering his hand.
They shook hands, and she invited him to sit down.
“I’ve brought my portfolio.” He gestured to the flat black case he had with him. “And photographs of other works.”
She smiled encouragingly. “I’m looking forward to seeing them.”
He looked at her as if he was trying to work out whether she meant it. He had shown his work to more than twelve galleries, and none had bitten. Now, he opened the portfolio and took out a few sheets of watercolours and a handful of photographs. He passed these over the desk.
She looked at the watercolours. She nodded. “These are nice.”
“Nice?”
He was right to remark on the overused word, she thought and tried to correct herself.
“I mean good. These are good.”
She picked up one of the photographs. Her gaze moved away and then returned. It dwelt on the picture.
“And this one,” she said, “is lovely.”
He caught his breath. “You think so?”
She nodded. “Look at it. Look at the faces . . . Well, you did, didn’t you? I take it you know James Cowie’s A Portrait Group.”
He hesitated. “This is different.”
She was quick to reassure him that she was not accusing him of plagiarism. “I’m not saying this is based on that. It’s just that looking at this picture, your picture, makes me think of Cowie. That painting of his in the National Gallery in Edinburgh. The four young people.”
He was still suspicious. “I know it. But I didn’t—”
“No, I wasn’t saying that. It’s just . . . just reminiscent of Cowie . . . that haunting painting of his.”
He relaxed. “I agree. Haunting’s the right word.”
“Haunting, yes.” She gestured to the photograph. “As is yours.”
He looked pleased. “I knew them,” he said.
“The subjects?”
“Yes.” He pointed to the young woman on the left of the group of figures sitting round a kitchen table. “Her. She was Maggie. She was one of my flatmates. As were the other three. We shared a flat for three years. The same place. The same people. We were all at the Art College together – in the same year. Two of us shared a birthday.”
She looked up. “It’s my birthday today.”
He smiled. “Congratulations.”
She stared at the picture in silence. “It’s like one of those interiors by Vuillard,” she said. “You know, the ones with pots and pans in the background.”
He agreed. “I love those. Intimisme. Yes, I suppose it is a bit like that.” And then he added, “How can one not like Vuillard?”
He said this with the air of one establishing a shared passion. Of course, there would be nobody to whom Vuillard did not appeal.
She said that she could not conceive of how anyone might be indifferent to Vuillard. “But it’s not the background that interests me here,” she said. “It’s what’s going on between the people.”
He looked at her with sudden interest. “That’s what you see?”
She said that it was. “What I see here is four people on the cusp of something. Four people beginning.”
He was staring at her. Had nobody said anything like this to him about this picture? It was the obvious way of looking at it.
She asked whether she was on the right lines.
“Of course you are,” he replied. “But it’s also about four people saying goodbye to one another. There’s that, too.”
She was quick to agree. Looking at the picture more closely, she said, “Two of them are looking out – at the artist, so to speak. One is looking over to the left, and the fourth is—”
“Looking at one of the sitters,” he supplied.
“Yes.”
“Because he was in love with her,” he said.
She stared at the grouping of the sitters. “Did she know that?
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I may be wrong, but I don’t think so.”
She asked him whether the young man in the picture had told him about how he felt.
“He didn’t have to. I could tell.” He paused. “It’s hard being in love with somebody who doesn’t return your feelings.”
“Unreciprocated love.”
“Yes,” he said. “Unreciprocated. It’s common enough, I think.”
She studied the photograph again. “It’s such an important time in anybody’s life, isn’t it? You’re at an age when you’re ready to fall in love. You’re at a stage when you make intense friendships very readily. And then suddenly it’s all over, and you’re by yourself again.”
He fixed her with an intense look. “Did you share a flat? Did you go through all that?”
She put the photograph down on her desk. “I did,” she said. “I had flatmates. And one of them is getting married in Edinburgh next week. I’ll be seeing most of them again. We’re all getting together once more.”
“You’re looking forward to that?”
She hesitated. She was, she decided. Of course, she was looking forward to seeing them again. But it had still made her cry – just the thought of it. It was ridiculous: the prospect of their reunion had made her cry.
She remembered a poem she had read some years before. It was about memory. Memory was an onion – it made you cry. It could make her cry, even after four years. And presumably it would do the same after forty.
She said, “It was four years ago. It was a very difficult time.”
“All times are difficult,” he said. “In their way.”
“And sad.”
He reached for the photograph that she had laid back on the table. “I wish I could go back to that time. To that kitchen. With those particular people.”
“You can’t,” she said.
“I know that. But don’t you wish the same thing yourself?”
She admitted that she did. “But we’re told that we shouldn’t be nostalgic. That nostalgia’s a bad thing. That we should live in the present rather than the past.”
He said, “We’re told all sorts of things all the time. There’s nothing wrong with nostalgia. You could argue that nostalgia gives you a stronger sense of who you are. And if you have that, your immune system will be healthier and you’re less likely to die.”
She responded, “We’re all bound to die. It goes with human territory.”
He was looking at the photograph wistfully. “I was probably happier then than I’ve ever been. Or will be, I suppose.”
She did not say anything. But she thought that what he had said was true for her too. But now she needed to look at the rest of his portfolio.
“Let’s look,” she said. “We can talk about the past some other time.”
“Of course,” he said. “Because one thing about the past – it doesn’t go away, does it?”
She closed her eyes for a moment. He was right. The past might fade, might become less vivid, less present, but it did not go away.
Two
Edinburgh, March 1984
No lease for Caravaggio
THERE WAS THAT SMELL. It was, she thought, the characteristic smell of stone – although most people assumed that stone had no smell. But it did, and it was here now, emanating from the flagstones beneath her feet, and from the walls perhaps, although they were for the most part plastered and painted. Plaster had a particular smell too, as did paint – but this stone smell was neither of those.
At the far end of the entrance, spiralling upwards in a tight curve, was the flight of stairs that served the flats that made up the tenement block. The steps, too, were stone, worn away in the middle after all those years of feet going up and down each day, through summers and winters, through two world wars and the fall of empires, local and distant.
That smell – she would have recognised it anywhere – even out of context, because she had always had a good memory for scents. As a child, she would close her eyes and say vanilla, or dates, or Patum Peperium, the fish paste that Daddy puts on his toast and that makes me want to throw up; she could identify these things just by sniffing. Her younger sister, Prue, who throughout her childhood was envious of so much, challenged her, “You think that you can tell anything by its smell – well, you can’t. What am I holding in my hand then, if you’re so clever?”
She opened her eyes to look at the clenched fist, and then said, “A nutmeg.”
Prue tightened her lips. Then came the accusation: “You saw, didn’t you? You looked.”
“I didn’t. You’re just cross because I can do things you can’t.”
Of course, there was the air. Sometimes air could just smell of itself. She was not sure how this worked, but that was how it seemed. Air trapped in a space had a smell that had nothing to do with the things around it. When it was stale, it was as if the air itself had gone off. Perhaps that was why these Edinburgh stairways had that smell. The front door was usually kept closed – those doors were sprung on wheezy closing mechanisms – and there were no open windows. In those conditions, was it surprising that air should smell?
Of course, the dust made a contribution. That smell, that slightly starchy smell, was not only stone, but dust as well. People brought dust in with them on their shoes and it could lie there for days until somebody swept it up and washed the steps down with buckets of lukewarm water and mild disinfectant. Perhaps the smell was partly that of the disinfectant – that odour so reminiscent of hospital corridors and small emergencies.
She stood at the foot of the stair and looked up to the glass cupola four floors above her. The morning sun was at just the right angle for the light to fall across the highest of the landings, which was where she was heading. She craned her neck and saw the door on the landing – the door that would be hers if Mrs Donald approved of her, as she hoped she would. She was used to waiting for approval; everything in her life so far, it seemed, had depended on the say-so of others. They said that this changed – that at a certain point in life we all suddenly find ourselves in a position where we no longer depend on the decisions of people in authority – of parents, teachers, employers. They said that you realised you were at that stage when you looked over your shoulder and saw that there was nobody there: that it was you yourself who would give the nod of approval. They said it was like having a window opened on a view that you had only imagined before.
That had not happened to her yet. She was twenty, which was meant to be a significant milestone, but she still felt that her life was not yet her own. She lived independently – but it was still under a roof that belonged to somebody else. She could choose what books she read, but she still had a reading list that other people, the lecturers on her university course, had compiled for her – in those days, the fallacy that we ourselves could decide what we needed to learn had yet to become dogma. And her share of the rent of this flat – if she managed to secure the lease – would be paid by her parents. What would real independence be like? What would it be like to wake up one morning and say to oneself: I can do whatever I like today?
She started to climb the stairs and, through a habit that had persisted from childhood, she counted them as she made her way up to the top floor. It was a burdensome task, but she continued to do it, as one persists with a ritual that has long since lost its rationale. At the back of her mind was that kernel of superstitious behaviour: the thought that if she failed to perform the necessary ritual, then an unspecified disaster would ensue. It was like the childhood belief that if you stepped on the lines in the pavement, bears would materialise from nowhere and snatch you. She knew where that came from, of course: it was in a half-remembered children’s book, in which a small boy in his floppy sunhat went to such pains to avoid standing on the cracks. Childhood’s shadow could be a long one.
A friend who was studying psychology, and who, full of new knowledge and a whole fresh vocabulary, had pronounced, “Superstition, Julie. Simple superstition. You count steps – other people don’t walk under ladders, or take a seat in the thirteenth row, or they throw salt over their shoulder. It’s all the same. It’s because we’re frightened. We look out on the world and realise we can’t control the things that happen to us, and so we invent ways of keeping it all at bay. You count stairs. That’s the way it is.”
