B O O K S B Y A L E X A N D E R M c C A L L S M I T H
I N T H E S U N D A Y P H I L O S O P H Y C L U B S E R I E S
The Sunday Philosophy Club
Friends, Lovers, Chocolate
I N T H E N O . 1 L A D I E S ’ D E T E C T I V E A G E N C Y S E R I E S
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
Tears of the Giraffe
Morality for Beautiful Girls
The Kalahari Typing School for Men
The Full Cupboard of Life
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
I N T H E P O R T U G U E S E I R R E G U L A R V E R B S S E R I E S
Portuguese Irregular Verbs
The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs
At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances
The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa F R I E N D S, L O V E R S, C H O C O L A T E
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F R I E N D S, L O V E R S,
C H O C O L A T E
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h p a n t h e o n b o o k s
n e w y o r k
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2005 by Alexander McCall Smith All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Alfred A.
Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Originally published in Great Britain by Little, Brown, London.
Exerpt from “Streams” by W. H. Auden reprinted by kind permission of the Estate of W. H. Auden.
Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McCall Smith, Alexander, [date]
Friends, lovers, chocolate / Alexander McCall Smith.
p. cm.
eISBN 0-375-42392-3
1. Women editors—Fiction. 2. Heart—Transplantation—Patients—
Fiction. 3. Italians—Scotland—Fiction. 4. Edinburgh (Scotland)—
Fiction. 5. Delicatessens—Fiction. 6. Housekeepers—Fiction.
7. Nieces—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6063.C326F75 2005 823'.914—dc22
2005046430
www.pantheonbooks.com
v1.0
For Angus and Fiona Foster
F R I E N D S, L O V E R S, C H O C O L A T E
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C H A P T E R O N E
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THE MAN in the brown Harris tweed overcoat—double-breasted with three small leather-covered buttons on the cuffs—
made his way slowly along the street that led down the spine of Edinburgh. He was aware of the seagulls which had drifted in from the shore and which were swooping down onto the cob-blestones, picking up fragments dropped by somebody who had been careless with a fish. Their mews were the loudest sound in the street at that moment, as there was little traffic and the city was unusually quiet. It was October, it was mid-morning, and there were few people about. A boy on the other side of the road, scruffy and tousle-haired, was leading a dog along with a makeshift leash—a length of string. The dog, a small Scottish terrier, seemed unwilling to follow the boy and glanced for a moment at the man as if imploring him to intervene to stop the tugging and the pulling. There must be a saint for such dogs, thought the man; a saint for such dogs in their small prisons.
The man reached the St. Mary’s Street crossroads. On the corner on his right was a pub, the World’s End, a place of resort for fiddlers and singers; on his left, Jeffrey Street curved round and dipped under the great arch of the North Bridge. Through 4
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h the gap in the buildings, he could see the flags on top of the Bal-moral Hoteclass="underline" the white-on-blue cross of the Saltire, the Scottish flag, the familiar diagonal stripes of the Union Jack. There was a stiff breeze from the north, from Fife, which made the flags stand out from their poles with pride, like the flags on the prow of a ship ploughing into the wind. And that, he thought, was what Scotland was like: a small vessel pointed out to sea, a small vessel buffeted by the wind.
He crossed the street and continued down the hill. He walked past a fishmonger, with its gilt fish sign suspended over the street, and the entrance to a close, one of those small stone passages that ran off the street underneath the tenements. And then he was where he wanted to be, outside the Canongate Kirk, the high-gabled church set just a few paces off the High Street. At the top of the gable, stark against the light blue of the sky, the arms of the kirk, a stag’s antlers, gilded, against the background of a similarly golden cross.
He entered the gate and looked up. One might be in Hol-land, he thought, with that gable; but there were too many reminders of Scotland—the wind, the sky, the grey stone. And there was what he had come to see, the stone which he visited every year on this day, this day when the poet had died at the age of twenty-four. He walked across the grass towards the stone, its shape reflecting the gable of the kirk, its lettering still clear after two hundred years. Robert Burns himself had paid for this stone to be erected, in homage to his brother in the muse, and had written the lines of its inscription: This simple stone directs Pale Scotia’s way/ To pour her sorrows o’er her poet’s dust.
He stood quite still. There were others who could be visited here. Adam Smith, whose days had been filled with thoughts of F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E
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markets and economics and who had coined an entire science, had his stone here, more impressive than this, more ornate; but this was the one that made one weep.
He reached into a pocket of his overcoat and took out a small black notebook of the sort that used to advertise itself as waterproof. Opening it, he read the lines that he had written out himself, copied from a collection of Robert Garioch’s poems.
He read aloud, but in a low voice, although there was nobody present save for him and the dead:
Canongait kirkyaird in the failing year Is auld and grey, the wee roseirs are bare, Five gulls leem white agin the dirty air.
Why are they here? There’s naething for them here Why are we here oursels?
Yes, he thought. Why am I here myself ? Because I admire this man, this Robert Fergusson, who wrote such beautiful words in the few years given him, and because at least somebody should remember and come here on this day each year.
And this, he told himself, was the last time that he would be able to do this. This was his final visit. If their predictions were correct, and unless something turned up, which he thought was unlikely, this was the last of his pilgrimages.
He looked down at his notebook again. He continued to read out loud. The chiselled Scots words were taken up by the wind and carried away:
Strang, present dool
Ruggs at my hairt. Lichtlie this gin ye daur: Here Robert Burns knelt and kissed the mool.
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Strong, present sorrow
Tugs at my heart. Treat this lightly if you dare: Here Robert Burns knelt and kissed the soil.
He took a step back. There was nobody there to observe the tears which had come to his eyes, but he wiped them away in embarrassment. Strang, present dool. Yes. And then he nodded towards the stone and turned round, and that was when the woman came running up the path. He saw her almost trip as the heel of a shoe caught in a crack between two paving stones, and he cried out. But she recovered herself and came on towards him, waving her hands.