Domenica, who had been looking out of the window as if expecting inspiration from that quarter, suddenly turned round. “Do you ever get the feeling that there’s something going on in Edinburgh? Something that you can’t quite put your finger on?”
Dilly thought about this and was about to answer when Domenica continued: “Remember that book by Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities? Marco Polo tells Kubla Khan all about those cities that the Emperor has never visited. The cities aren’t real, of course, but he gives the most wonderful descriptions of them.”
“I remember it,” said Dilly. And she recalled, for a brief moment, that haunting line, “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree…” And did Willy Dalrymple not entitle his first book In Xanadu? But if she said anything about Kubla Khan, or Xanadu, or even Willy Dalrymple, then she would be a Person from Porlock, and so she waited for Domenica to go on.
“I think there’s something going on in Edinburgh,” Domenica said. “There’s an invisible city just underneath the surface. Every so often we get a glimpse of it; somebody makes an unguarded remark, begins a sentence and then fails to finish it. But it’s there. What we anthropologists would call a realm of social meaning.” She paused. “Have you noticed how so many people in Edinburgh seem to know one another? How when you go to a do of some sort, everybody smiles and nods? Have you noticed how in conversation too there is an automatic assumption that you know the people the other person is talking about?”
Dilly shrugged. “I suppose…”
“There’s a whole network,” Domenica went on.
Dilly looked at her friend. Domenica was always so rational, so balanced. Had she become a tiny bit… a tiny bit paranoid? Surely not.
“A network of what?” she asked.
Domenica hesitated. Then she leant forward. “Watsonians,” she whispered.
At that moment, a bank of cloud, which had been building up in the east, moved across the sky, obscuring the sun that had been streaming down upon Dundas Street. The familiar suddenly became unfamiliar; the friendly, threatening.
Dilly raised an eyebrow. “But of course,” she said. “We all know that.”
“But do we know how it works?” Domenica asked. “We know that they’re there. But how do they operate? That would make a really interesting anthropological study. ‘Power and Association in a Scottish City’ – I can see the title of the paper already!”
Dilly had to agree. It would make fascinating reading. But how would Domenica penetrate the closed circles of Watsonians? She posed the question, and waited for a reply as Domenica sat back in her seat, a smile spreading across her face. “There will be no difficulty,” she said. “I have the perfect cover.” She paused, and then delivered her bombshell. “I’m one myself.”
96. A Scorched-Earth Wardrobe
Elspeth Harmony sat at the kitchen table in the flat in India Street and contemplated her situation. It was not one of those stock-takings that follows upon a personal crisis, it was, rather, a leisurely dwelling on where she was and how she had got there. Unlike Dante, she did not find herself in the middle of a dark wood; such woods might lie ahead, but she was not yet old enough to feel them pressing in on her. Nor did she feel that she had lost Dante’s straight path, even if she had, within the space of a few months, sold her flat, left her job and married Matthew. Even her name had changed – for some purposes at least – although she still thought of herself as Elspeth Harmony, and would use that name for professional purposes. But what professional purposes? she asked herself. She was no longer a teacher, and that she missed.
My life, thought Elspeth Harmony, has been totally transformed. How many months ago was it that I said goodbye to the children at the Steiner School? Five? Six? That had not been easy, as she had gone back specially to see them after her suspension – for pinching Olive, under severe provocation – had been rescinded. The children had been puzzled by her sudden replacement by a new teacher. One afternoon Miss Harmony had been there, and then the next morning they had Mr. Bing welcoming them into the classroom, with no sign of Miss Harmony.
There had been speculation in the playground, of course. “She’s been kidnapped,” announced Tofu. “You just wait. There’ll be a note from the kidnappers asking for ransom. And we’ll all have to give up our pocket money for months, just to get her back.”
Bertie did not think that this was a very credible theory, but said nothing. He thought that Miss Harmony would be back; she would not leave them like that; she would not desert them. And a few days later he was overjoyed when she did come back, not permanently, but at least to say goodbye properly. “I’m getting married,” she said. “I’m very happy, but I shall miss all of you so much.”
“Even Tofu?” asked Olive. “Will you even miss him, Miss Harmony?”
If Miss Harmony hesitated, it was only for the briefest of moments before she replied. “But of course I’ll miss Tofu, Olive! I shall miss all of you.”
Olive looked doubtful.
“Will you have children yourself, Miss Harmony?” asked Skye, and added, “Are you already pregnant?”
“Goodness no,” said Miss Harmony. “I mean, I’m not expecting a baby just yet, but I would certainly like one.”
“Does your husband know how to make you pregnant, Miss Harmony?” Skye persisted. “Will you be able to teach him?”
Miss Harmony blushed, and laughed. “Let’s not talk about me,” she said. “Let’s talk about what fun you’re going to have with Mr. Bing as your new teacher.”
And then, after that conversation, there had been the leave-taking. Many of the children had cried, and Elspeth Harmony had found herself weeping too, and had been obliged to stop her car in Spylaw Road and compose herself before she could drive on. It had been a good school in which to teach, and she had loved the children, for all their little ways. Love: the quality in a schoolteacher which no training can instil; it must be there, in the heart, ready to be discovered, poured out.
Now love would find a different focus in her life. She had a husband, and a home to make out of this rather austere bachelor establishment into which she had moved. Of course that required tact; Matthew was proud of his flat and of the things it contained. He had shown her his British aviation prints in the bathroom and his framed batik from Bali. Neither of these, she felt, had a long-term future in the flat, but she had refrained from saying anything just yet. And as for the kitchen, the only possible approach, she felt, was a scorched-earth one. She had seen pictures of Clive Christian kitchens and she thought one of those would fit very well in India Street; it was not the sort of street to have Clive Christian kitchens at present, but all that could change.
Then there was the question of Matthew’s wardrobe. On the second day after their return from their honeymoon, while Matthew had gone off to the gallery, Elspeth, still clad in the silk dressing gown she had bought in Singapore, had looked through Matthew’s wardrobe and bedroom cupboard, examining his clothes. It had felt a bit strange at first, to be looking through the clothing of another like that, but she had reminded herself that they were married now and married people had no secrets from one another, or should have no secrets. And surely the most obvious place to start in this policy of sharing was the wardrobe.
She started with his sock drawer. There were no surprises there – in that few of the socks seemed to match. She smiled: that was a universal problem, connected in some way with the Bermuda Triangle which most washing machines seemed to possess and which swallowed socks, flushing them away to some unknown destination somewhere. She had the solution to that, though – those small rubber rings through which socks could be threaded in pairs, thus keeping them together in the wash, like swimmers sharing the same lifebelt.