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that clarity of expression in handwriting and speech was the greatest of goods which an education could confer. “It does not matter, girls,” she had said, “if you do not have the most profound thoughts to convey – and I suspect that you don’t – as long as you convey them clearly.” Miss Powell, Domenica explained, had been a teacher of great antiquity, and had died in office, in the staff room, with much dignity. They had found her with an open exercise book on her lap with two words written, in her own handwriting, on an otherwise unsullied page – “the end”.
Or so the story went – schoolgirls, put together, were notoriously prone to fancy and indeed to the exchange of wild rumour.
The letter Angus now extracted from the small bundle of mail.
The brown envelopes and the unsolicited advertisements which the Post Office saw fit to inflict on him, he tossed to one side; the advertisements would be recycled and would no doubt be made into fresh advertisements, endlessly perhaps, while the brown envelopes would be opened after breakfast. Angus was not one to put off the opening of mail, a habit which he had heard was extremely common. Sometimes it took the form of leaving the letter unopened for a day or so – something which was in the range of normality – but the condition could become more serious and could lead to mail remaining unopened for weeks, even months. A friend of his had suffered from this and had sought the help of a clinical psychologist, who had revealed to him that the letters represented an emotional claim – one emotional claim too many – and he was simply denying this to protect himself.
But this did not afflict Angus, who slit Domenica’s envelope open with relish and read it while seated at his kitchen table, a cup of coffee in front of him, the morning sun streaming in through his window. It was a delicious feeling, this anticipation of word from Domenica, and he thought for a moment that he would paint such a scene, a small, carefully-worked canvas in the style of . . . well, let us not be too modest about our abilities, Vermeer. Yes, that would be entirely appropriate. A small tribute to Vermeer: the reading of a letter in an Edinburgh kitchen, with all that stillness and quiet which Vermeer could put into his paintings, and which Angus Lordie could, too.
66
Missing Domenica
The letter began with the usual salutation. Then: “You will see from the postmark – and the stamp – that I have reached my destination safely. When I embarked on that questionable ship I confess that I began to doubt my decision to make the journey by sea, but I must say that I do not regret it for a moment. Air travel is completely artificial. One enters a gleaming metal tube and subjects oneself to the experience of being carried through the sky while breathing the recycled air of several hundred other people. And then they have the effrontery to suggest that one should settle back and ‘enjoy the flight’! Of course, these airline people speak a different language altogether, a sort of debased mid-Atlantic English which is full of circumlocutions and cliché.
The word ‘now’, such an honest, workmanlike word, has been replaced by ‘at this time’, as in ‘please fasten your seat belts at this time’, or ‘we are commencing (anglice starting) our descent at this time’. Why can’t they say ‘now’?
“Well, as you know, I refrained from all that and took a passage on a merchant ship, a large Norwegian container vessel of no discernible character. They had twenty passengers – a motley crew – and indeed they had a motley crew too. But we were able to read and play bridge with the Captain (a most eccentric bidder, I might add), and there was a simply immense deck to walk about for exercise.
“It got hotter and hotter, of course, and several of the other passengers became very morose and low. I was comfortable enough; my cabin windows opened and the ship’s movement made for a pleasant breeze. I lay about a lot, reading suitable books. I must confess, Angus, that I reread Somerset Maugham because it seemed to be just the thing in such circumstances.
You know, Maugham really could write, unlike some novelists today, who go in for pretentiousness in a very big way. Maugham told marvellous stories, in the way in which nineteenth-century writers told stories. No artifice. No play with words. Just stories.
I read Rain several times on board, because it’s all about a voyage, as you know. What a story! And The Painted Veil too, because it’s so refreshing to see a male writer having a go at a truly nasty woman; male writers don’t dare do that these days, Angus. You
Missing Domenica
67
wouldn’t get a modern Flaubert punishing Madame Bovary as the real Flaubert did. Oh no. By the way, did you know that Flaubert wrote terribly slowly? He managed five words an hour, which meant that on a good day he wrote about thirty words.
Now they were good words, of course, but even so . . .”
Angus put down the letter and rose to his feet. He looked out of the window. It was as if Domenica was in the room with him.
He could hear her voice. Her laughter. She was there, and not there at the same time. He did not want the letter to end, and so he decided to go for a brief walk and return to savour the rest of the letter. This would give him something to look forward to.
He whistled for Cyril, who appeared from the other end of the flat, one ear cocked inquisitively.
“Do you miss Domenica too?” Angus asked as he attached the lead to Cyril’s collar.
Cyril was silent. As a dog, he missed everything – intensely.
He missed Lochboisdale. He missed favourite, remembered bones. He missed the tooth he had lost when he had bitten that other dog’s tail. Everything – Cyril missed everything.
22. An M.A. (Cantab.)
Angus returned from his walk round Drummond Place. There were people about, and one or two greeted him, but he barely noticed them, so absorbed was he in thoughts of Domenica’s letter. He began to compose his response mentally – he would tell her about Antonia and how he had let her in and how he had decided that she . . . no, he would not do that. He should remember that Antonia was, after all, Domenica’s friend. I must make more of an effort in that direction, he told himself. I shall persist. I shall give her the chance to prove that she is as charming and good company as Domenica herself. At the very least, I shall be civil; I shall do the neighbourly thing and invite her in for a drink some evening, although perhaps it might be wise to dilute her. And not just to dilute her with alcohol, which has the power to transform difficult company into good, but dilute her with other guests, perhaps Matthew and that engaging girl, Pat – if they would come.
Now entering his kitchen, into which the slanting rays of sun still shone, Angus made himself another cup of coffee and sat down to read the rest of Domenica’s letter.
“We eventually arrived in Malacca. I must confess that I had made no arrangements to speak of and had to find myself a hotel more or less on the spot. This proved to be remarkably easy and I was soon ensconced in a rather charming old building with a wide veranda and a garden full of frangipani trees. The hotel called itself the São Pedro and was run by a charming Malaccan Portuguese and his Indonesian-Dutch wife. They made me extremely comfortable, but were much alarmed when I disclosed that I proposed to find a pirate community in which to do anthropological observation. They felt, for some reason, that I had some kind of death-wish (the very thought!) and were completely unpersuaded by my attempts to reassure them. I told them that anthropologists were accustomed to putting themselves in dangerous situations. Look at the number of people who did their field work in New Guinea amongst people who still resorted to occasional head-hunting. Look at the people An M.A. (Cantab.)