Probably because they didn’t have enough taps and baths in the houses. It’s all very well for the middle classes to go on about cleanliness, but people used to have a terrible battle.
“Mind you, I had an aunt who was an officer in the Wrens during the war. She used to tell me that some of the recruits were charming, just charming, but she could never get them to wash. She had to force them into the showers. But I suspect that she was exaggerating. She had a slight tendency to egg things up a bit.
“That aunt had wonderful stories, you know. When they sent her off to officer training school in 1940 she was in a batch of twenty women. They all slept in those long Nissen huts – you can still see some of them standing if you go up to Cultybraggen, near Comrie. Well, there they all were, all thrown together. And my aunt, who was from Argyll, was thrown in with people from all over the shop. The woman in the bed next to hers was terribly grand – her uncle was an admiral or something like that – and when she joined up she brought her lady’s maid. Would you believe that? It sounds absolutely astonishing today, but that’s what she did – and the Navy allowed it! The maid enlisted at the same time and was given a bed at the end of the hut. She 16
All Downhill from Here
cleaned her mistress’s equipment, polished her shoes, made her bed, and all the rest. It was an absolute scream, but apparently nobody batted an eyelid. It was a different country then, you know.
“And apparently this grand person drank. Every night after lights were turned out in the hut, my aunt heard a bit of fiddling about in the next bed and then she heard ‘glug, glug . . .’ as she downed the gin. Every night! But there was a war on, I suppose, and people had to get by as best they could. Which they did, you know. They did just that and they very rarely complained.
Can you imagine how we’d behave today if we had to knuckle down and deal with another fascist monster on our doorstep?
We’d fold up in no time at all. We couldn’t do it – we simply couldn’t do it.” She paused, and for a moment, just a moment, looked doubtful. “Or am I simply making that great mistake, which everyone of my age makes, I suspect, and which leads us to believe that things have got worse? Are they worse, Pat?”
Pat was glad to be given the chance to answer. “No, they aren’t. If you look at it from the perspective of people of my age, things are much better now than they were then. Much better. Think of colonialism. Think of what was done to people at the receiving end of that. You couldn’t do that today.”
“That’s true,” said Domenica. “But since you mention these values – self-determination, human rights and the rest – my point is this: would we be able to defend them if push came to shove? Those young men who climbed into their Spitfires or whatever back then – many of them were your age, you know.
Twenty. Some even younger. They knew the odds. They knew they were going to die. Would the boys you were at school with do the same thing, do you think? Would they do it now? Be honest. What do you think?”
Pat was silent. She was not sure. But then the thought occurred to her: some of the girls would do it. Maybe that was the difference. Yes!
Chapter title
17
6. Domenica Gets into Top Gear
Deep in conversation on the subject of the defence of values, and courage, Pat and her neighbour, Domenica Macdonald, had now reached the point where Heriot Row becomes Abercromby Place. Domenica glanced at the Open Eye Gallery on the corner; a private viewing was in full swing and for a moment she wondered whether they should drop in and look at the pictures.
“That’s Tom Wilson’s gallery,” said Pat. “He’s been very good to Matthew. He’s given him advice and helped him. He’s a very nice man. And he can draw, too.”
“Well, that’s something,” said Domenica. “Very few artists can. They’ve stopped teaching people how to draw at the art colleges, with the result that very few of their graduates can represent the world they see about them. They can arrange it, of course – they can install the world – but they can’t represent it. At least not in any recognisable form. Do you think Mr Damien Hirst knows how to draw?”
“I have no idea,” said Pat, gazing at the knot of people who had spilled out onto the front steps of the gallery, glasses of wine in their hands. “He may – I don’t know. But Tom draws very well. He does portraits of people by drawing the things 18
Domenica Gets into Top Gear
they have. Bits and pieces that say something about their lives.
Letters. Books. A favourite place. Things like that.”
“Very interesting,” said Domenica. “I wonder how my life would be represented? Perhaps by the bed in Scotland Street in which I happened to be born, and in which I propose, in the fullness of time, to die.”
“Or something from India? The house you lived in?”
Domenica thought for a moment. “Too sad. I have a picture of my late husband’s electricity factory in Cochin. But I can’t bring myself to look at it. I really can’t.”
“Do you miss him badly?” asked Pat.
“Not in the slightest,” said Domenica. “I regret the hurt I caused him. And I regret his untimely electrocution – not that any electrocution, I suppose, can be considered timely. But I do feel a certain nostalgia for India itself, particularly for Kerala. For frangi-pani trees. For the sight of a man washing an elephant in the road.
For the sight of a group of little boys sitting in an old Ambassador car, down on its springs, pretending to drive it. For overstated advertisements for hair products in lurid purple and green. For white-washed churches where they set off fireworks on saints’ days.
Little things like that.” She looked at Pat. “Do you think Tom Wilson would be able to draw those things for me?”
“I’m sure he could,” said Pat. “Ask him. There he is in the doorway. That’s him.”
“I can’t intrude,” said Domenica. “Perhaps later.”
They crossed the road, having decided that the opening at the gallery was too crowded to allow them a view of the fishing boats and pagodas.
“We can stop over there for coffee,” suggested Domenica, pointing to the café immediately opposite the gallery. “Do you go in there very much? I rather like it.”
Pat explained that she usually frequented Big Lou’s coffee house slightly further down the hill. It being a Saturday afternoon, Big Lou’s, of course, was closed. And on a Saturday afternoon in the Festival it was very closed, as Big Lou did not approve, in general, of Festival visitors: “Gey pretentious,” Pat had heard her muttering.
Domenica Gets into Top Gear
19
“One must stick to what one knows,” observed Domenica. “I shall try Big Lou’s one day, but this is highly convenient for me and they have a very good range of olive oils. And as for their staff – well, you’ll see what I mean.”
They found a table at the back – the café was very crowded
– and Domenica glanced round at the other customers. A woman at a nearby table inclined her head slightly, and the man she was with nodded curtly in her direction.
“That couple over there,” whispered Domenica, returning the greeting. “They’re very friendly with that awful woman downstairs, Bertie’s mother. I think that they go to the floatarium together, or at least she does. I bumped into her on the stair one day and then I overheard their conversation while I was looking for my key – you know how sound travels on that stair. It was exactly what you would expect. Exactly.
All about some plan to start an orchestra for five-year-olds.
To be called the Edinburgh Junior Symphony. Can you believe it?
“And then, curiously enough, I met him when the two of them went to a talk at Ottakar’s Bookshop. Willy Dalrymple had just written a new book about India and was talking about it. It was wonderful stuff, and he told a marvellously funny story about a misunderstanding he had had with an official somewhere in India or Pakistan about the pronunciation of the name of that English cricketer, Mr Botham. The official pronounced this