Alexander Smith - Unbearable Lightness of Scones

Not that Domenica found she had much to clear: she had nothing on in the morning, she noticed, and nothing on in the afternoon. And the evening, too, was blank. And that, she decided, was one of the issues she needed to discuss over lunch: she needed a project and could think of none. There had, of course, been some excitement, which had given some salience to her days – there had been the business over the blue Spode teacup, which had run for some months, and then there had been the issue of Antonia’s marmalade. That had provided excitement for others as well, but its denouement had been very tame indeed. Now there was no prospect of Antonia’s arrest – marmalade, she expected, was beneath the notice of the police, although one should never over-estimate, she felt, the potential pettiness of officials. Scotland was not France, where the diktats of Brussels were routinely ignored; Scotland was a law-abiding country, and there was always the possibility somebody somewhere would take it upon himself to make a fuss about illegal marmalade. But even if that happened, Antonia was unlikely to be sent to prison.

So, with that prospect precluded, what was there to look forward to?

“I need to do something,” Domenica said to Dilly as they settled at their window table in Glass & Thompson. “I feel rather… rather useless at the moment.”

Dilly looked at her with concern. “You’re not depressed, are you?”

Domenica shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I know what depression feels like. I was depressed for a while after my husband was electrocuted.” She looked thoughtful. “You know, I had the most extraordinarily tactless medical advice on that occasion.”

“I suppose doctors can be tactless, like the rest of us,” said Dilly.

“In this case even more so,” said Domenica. “We were in Cochin then, which was where we lived at the time. I went to see my normal doctor and he referred me to a colleague – a psychiatrist, I suppose. I thought that this man would put me on a course of anti-depressants, but no. You know what he suggested? Electric shock treatment.”

Dilly tried not to laugh, but could not help herself. “Unfortunate,” she said.

“Yes,” said Domenica. “In the particular circumstances. And anyway, I recovered once I had made my booking to come home. The prospect of saying goodbye to my mother-in-law cheered me up immensely. The depression lifted more or less immediately.”

Domenica looked about her. The café was busy, but she did not recognise anybody in it. That could change, and probably would; Edinburgh was still sufficiently intimate for there to be no real anonymity.

Dilly looked at her friend. “Yes, you need a project, Domenica. A person like you can’t sit around. But…” She was being very careful. The last time they had had this conversation, Domenica had embarked on a highly dangerous field trip to the pirate communities of the Malacca Straits. Providence had already been tempted once, and might not allow for a satisfactory ending if tried again.

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.”

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.”