The man nodded and they climbed the steps that led into the 6
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Scottish Gallery. Isabel sat back in her seat. It was not remarkable in any way; a wealthy couple from somewhere else, driving into town, leaving their car where they should not—but out of ignorance rather than arrogance—and then going into one of the galleries. There was nothing particularly interesting about all that, except for one thing. Isabel had seen the man’s face, which was drawn up on one side from Bell’s palsy, producing the condition’s characteristic grimace. And the woman’s face had been, by contrast, a beautiful one—if one’s standards of beauty are the regular features of the Renaissance Madonna: soft, composed, feminine.
They are none of my business, she thought. And yet she had nothing to do until twelve o’clock—it was then ten-thirty in the morning—and she had been half thinking of going into the Scottish Gallery anyway. She knew the staff there, and they usually showed her something interesting by the Scottish artists she liked, a Peploe sketch, a Philipson nude, something by William Crosbie if she was in luck. If she went in now, she would see the couple at closer quarters and reach a more considered view. She had been wrong to dislike them, and she owed it to them now to find out a little bit more about them. So it was not pure curiosity, even if it looked like it; this was really an exercise in rectifying a mistaken judgement.
T H E E N T R A N C E TO the Scottish Gallery was a glass door, behind which a short set of open stairs led to the upper gallery, while a slightly longer set led down into a warren of basement exhibition spaces. These lower spaces were not dark, as base-ments could be, but brightly lit by strategically placed display lights, and brightened, too, by the splashes of colour on the T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
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walls. Isabel went up and passed the desk of her friend Robin McClure to her right. He sat there with his list of prices and his catalogues, ready to answer questions. What impressed her about Robin was that although he could tell who bought paintings and who did not, he was civil to both. So those who wandered into the gallery because it was wet outside, or because they just wanted to look at art, would receive from him as courteous a welcome as those who wandered in with the intention of buying a painting or, in the case of those who were weaker, a readiness to be tempted to buy. That, thought Isabel, was what distinguished Dundas Street galleries from many of the expensive galleries in London and Paris, where bells had to be rung before the door was opened. And even then, once the door had been unlocked, the welcome, if it was a welcome, was grudging and suspicious.
Robin was not at his desk. She glanced around her. It was a general exhibition, one where a hotchpotch of works were displayed. The effect, thought Isabel, was pleasing, and her eye was drawn immediately to a large picture dominating one of the walls. Two figures were before a window, a man and a woman.
The man was staring out at a rural landscape, the woman looked in towards the room. Her face was composed, but there was a wistful sadness about it. She would like to be elsewhere, thought Isabel; as so many people would. How many of us are happy to be exactly where we are at any moment? Auden said something about that, she remembered, in his mountains poem.
He had said that the child unhappy on one side of the Alps might wish himself on the other. Well, he was right; only the completely happy think that they are in the correct place.
She glanced about her. There were several people on the main floor of the gallery: a man in a blue overcoat, a scarf 8
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h around his neck, peering at a small painting near the window; a couple of middle-aged women wearing those green padded jackets that marked them immediately as leading, or at least aspiring to, the country life. They were sisters, Isabel decided, because they had the same prominent brow; sisters living together, thoroughly accustomed to each other, acting—almost thinking—in unison. But where were the man and the woman she had seen? She took a few steps forwards, away from the top of the stairs, and saw that they were standing in the small inner gallery that led off from the main floor. He was standing in front of a painting, consulting a catalogue; she was by the window staring out. It was the reverse of the large painting that she had spotted when she came in. She was looking out; he was looking in. But then it occurred to Isabel that in other respects the scene before her echoed the painting. This woman wanted to be elsewhere.
“Isabel?”
She turned round sharply. Robin McClure stood behind her, looking at her enquiringly. He reached out and put a hand lightly on her arm in a gesture of greeting.
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “You’re standing in awe before our offering. Overwhelmed by the beauty of it all.”
Isabel laughed. “Overcome.”
Robin, his hand still on her arm, guided her towards a small picture at the edge of the room. Isabel glanced over her shoulder into the smaller room; they were still there, although the man had now joined the woman at the window, where they seemed absorbed in conversation.
“Here’s something that will appeal to you,” said Robin.
“Look at that.”
Isabel knew immediately. “Alberto Morrocco?” she asked.
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Robin nodded. “You can see the influence, can’t you?”
It was not apparent to Isabel. She leaned forward to look more closely at the painting. A girl sat in a chair, one arm resting on a table, the other holding a book. The girl looked straight ahead; not at the viewer, but through him, beyond him. She was wearing a tunic of the sort worn by schoolgirls in the past, a grey garment, with thick folds in the cloth. Behind her, a curtain was blown by the wind from an open window.
“Remember Falling Leaves?” Robin prompted. “That painting by James Cowie?”
Isabel looked again at the painting. Yes. Schoolgirls. Cowie had painted schoolgirls, over and over, innocently, but the paintings had contained a hint of the anxious transition to adolescence.
“Morrocco studied under Cowie in Aberdeen,” Robin continued. “He later discovered his own palette and the bright colours came in. And the liveliness. But every so often he remembered who taught him.”
“Morrocco was a friend of your father’s, wasn’t he?” Isabel said. Scotland was like that; there were bonds and connections everywhere, sinews of association, and they were remembered.
Isabel had a painting by Robin’s father, David McClure; it was one of her favourites.
“Yes,” said Robin. “They were great friends. And I have known Morrocco ever since I can remember.”
Isabel reached out, as if to touch the surface of the painting.
“That awful cloth,” she said. “The stuff that schoolgirls had to wear.”
“Most uncomfortable,” said Robin. “Or so I imagine.”
Isabel pointed to the painting beside it, a small still life of a white-and-blue Glasgow jug. There was something familiar 1 0
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h about the style, but she could not decide what it was. Perhaps it was the jug itself; there were so many paintings of Glasgow jugs—to paint one, it seemed, had been a rite of passage, like going to Paris. Artists, she thought, were enthusiastic imitators, a thought that immediately struck her as unfair, she conceded to herself, because everyone was an enthusiastic imitator.
“Yes,” said Robin. “Well, there you are . . .” He turned his head. The man whom Isabel had seen had left the inner gallery and was standing a few steps away from Robin, wanting to speak, but reluctant to interrupt.