With My Little Eye (2 page)

It was several years since he and Douglas had belonged to the same clay pigeon shooting club. At that time he must have been nearly fifty while Douglas was still in his late twenties. Despite the difference in their ages they had got on well enough that they would still meet occasionally for a pint in their local pub on occasional weekend evenings, but Douglas, on obtaining his qualification and a job, had changed his digs to be nearer his work and each had rather lost interest in breaking inanimate targets.

Douglas diverged from his shortest way home after work the next day and took to well-remembered streets that brought him to a brightly lit forecourt on a main artery where traffic was filtering westward out of Edinburgh. The autumn day had turned foul and a mist thrown up by wet tyres hung over the road. The workshop was closed but the part-time staff, wives of Seymour's mechanics, were busily accepting payment for petrol and diesel. The showroom and offices were still busy. Seymour was in his office, supposedly signing the day's mail, but it was a measure of his alertness that he recognized Douglas's BMW and came out to meet him before he'd finished topping up.

‘Well, here's a face I haven't seen for a long while,' Seymour said in his typically cheery manner.

They shook hands. ‘Would you have time for a visit to the pub?' Douglas asked. He knew this man would appreciate him cutting to the chase immediately.

Seymour glanced at his watch, reflected for a moment and then shook his head. ‘Sorry,' he said. ‘Can't. Betty fixed something up and she wants me home by eight without fail.'

‘There's something I want to show you,' Douglas explained and hoped he implied a certain amount of enticement into his tone to pique Seymour's interest. ‘An hour or two on Sunday afternoon might be better.'

Seymour looked at him speculatively, but Douglas had never been one to waste anybody's time. He nodded and smiled. ‘I could manage that.'

‘I'll pick you up around two thirty. You're still at the same place?'

Seymour's smile flickered for a fraction of an instant. Douglas was satisfied. Seymour was still in the flat in which his family had been raised. It was convenient to his business, but, that said, he would have run out of favourable comments.

By the Sunday afternoon the sunshine had made a return. Douglas drew the little sports BMW to a halt on the dot of two thirty. On a fine, autumn day he would usually have been running with the top down but he wanted to take some soundings while they travelled.

Seymour's flat was only two storeys up but they were two very high storeys. Douglas was bracing himself for the formidable climb when Seymour emerged from the building, rotund, cheerful and balding, and settled into the passenger seat. ‘We rebuilt this for you, didn't we?'

‘And very soundly too.'

‘I was waiting for an enquiry from your insurers but it never came.'

‘I wasn't covered. The damage happened while I was competing in a piddling little rally,' Douglas said bitterly, ‘so they turned me down. My policy excluded any sort of competition.'

‘Expensive!'

‘Very.' As though the subject was still too painful to pursue, Douglas changed it; but he had already made his point. And they were already out of Edinburgh. ‘How are Betty and the children?'

‘Betty's fine,' Seymour said. ‘But lay off the talk of children. Geraldine's nineteen now and Harry isn't far behind. Either of them would eviscerate you if they heard themselves referred to as a child. It must be three or four years since you've seen them.'

‘I suppose it must. Are they still at home?'

‘Geraldine is. Harry goes to boarding school but he's with us for every holiday. Gerry's still looking for a mission in life.'

Douglas remained hopeful. The flat had always seemed too small for the couple plus two children plus their own friends and the children's friends. Betty had always complained about the lack of storage.

‘Did you never find anything more suitable?' Douglas queried.

‘Every so often.' Seymour answered and sighed heavily, misting his half of the windscreen. ‘But if I didn't hate it, Betty did. One was almost perfect and in just the right place but it didn't have any garden at all. I can't live,' Seymour said plaintively, ‘if I don't have some private outdoor space to be eccentric in.'

Douglas hid his amusement. Seymour was the least eccentric person that he knew.

Seymour seemed to sense it. ‘It's not that I want to be eccentric,' he said. ‘It's just that it would be nice to know that I could be if I wanted to.'

Douglas turned in at the gates. ‘That seems reasonable,' he said. ‘And I think that this might be the very place.'

D
ouglas's guess that Seymour McLeish would be keen turned out to be an underestimate. Spring is usually the optimal time for showing off a property but if the weather is kind a colourful autumn day is as good. Confronted for the first time by the prospect of generous accommodation in rural surroundings, within easy reach of his business, he was enthralled. His wife, fetched in haste that same afternoon to view the potential, had less eyes for old stonework, gracious rooms and lush countryside and was more taken with the possibilities for cupboards galore, some of them heated, and for space not overlooked by many critical or envious neighbours. Seymour would have written a cheque on the spot.

Douglas was only too well aware that building projects not large enough to attract and hold the interest of major contractors may safely be expected to take longer than for ever. It was a shock to his system when he found that the project was rushing ahead, apparently under its own momentum.

Seymour was able to offer inducements, such as immediate attention to a mechanical problem, a jump up the queue for the newest model or a very fair trade-in value. In this manner he found Harris Benton, a young architect in the employ of the Regional Council, who was persuaded to transfer Douglas's sketches into working drawings and to blast them through the processes for official approval. In similar manner, small contractors were persuaded to prepare keen tenders in a very short time and then to live up to the rash promises that had been extracted.

Seymour also found a Mrs Jamieson, a grass widow whose husband was on contract in the Middle East. The Jamiesons' house had become subject to a not ungenerous Compulsory Purchase Order so that the disproportionately large garden could be added to several others for the benefit of one of the local universities, to form a site for a much needed hall of residence. She visited Seymour's garage in search of a car spacious enough to carry her growing family around and left in a two-year-old hybrid people carrier that the previous owner, a mechanical engineer blessed with considerable ingenuity, before he succumbed to a fatal heart attack, had converted to run on natural gas between its bouts of running on electricity. She also found that she had promised to come and look at Underwood House.

Mrs Jamieson was a down-to-earth woman, handsome rather than beautiful, with a rich head of auburn hair and a conspicuous beauty spot beside her mouth. Her figure was definitely
de luxe
. She dressed to be comfortable, regardless of style or fashion, and yet never looked dowdy. She claimed that she could still get into her wedding dress though nobody had dared to challenge her on the point. She was brisk in manner and well able to take a decision which she was absolutely certain her husband would endorse.

When she made the promised visit to meet Seymour at the house a few days later, he was surprised to note how philosophically she accepted the CPO. ‘It's been a good family home to us,' she said, ‘but the house will soon be too small and the garden was always too big. Frankly, it's got beyond me and do you know how much a private gardener can get away with charging per hour these days? If they've decided to pay us enough to set up somewhere else with a communal garden, why should I object to a hundred students a year getting a comfortable hall of residence on those sites? My only worry is finding the right place soon enough and not having to make do with a temporary second best which would probably turn out to be a permanency.'

She looked around her at Underwood House. ‘You know, I think we've found it,' she exclaimed with a satisfied smile.

It chanced that Harris Benton and Douglas were also on site at the time of her visit. The opportunity for an impromptu committee discussion was too good to miss. It soon became clear that the families represented would fit almost perfectly into the accommodation available.

The main entrance doors to Underwood House gave onto a generous hallway and a wide semicircular staircase which circled round a fat central column which contained the flue from the central heating boiler. Behind and below the stair was a large, old fashioned kitchen with several small sculleries, larders and preparation rooms. It happened that kitchens were the one area in which each participant was determined to
gang their ain gait.
The original kitchen, though arranged for a single household, had been sensibly fitted out and was backed by an attractive garden room. Douglas was only too well aware of the explosive mixture created by more than one woman to a kitchen, but the ladies of the proposed occupancy were remarkably like-minded. There was a general anxiety to get the initial stage of the work completed so that they could gain occupation and set about creating their individual kitchens.

The contentious area of central heating was agreed with surprising ease. The house had recently been piped for new radiators. The old boiler was uneconomic but a new and frugal balanced flue boiler was installed, the running cost to be shared in proportion to a formula devised by Douglas to which nobody objected – largely because nobody else understood it. Everyone breathed again.

On that basis the allocations were agreed. Mrs Jamieson was well suited with the larger ground-floor apartment, which would allow her family a room apiece and give them quick and easy access to the garden. The thunder of little feet would thus not be transmitted to downstairs neighbours.

Mrs Jamieson had difficulty finding child minders for her diverse and growing family (she was becoming noticeably pregnant again) so the next discussion was held at her old house a week later. Douglas had had time to estimate the values of any properties to be sold and of any grants applicable; and a contractor who owed Harris Benton a favour had put some figures on the costs of the work – exclusive of decoration and kitchens, which would be left to each occupier.

Douglas had seen enthusiasm for comparable projects evaporate when discussion of money came to the fore but, perhaps because in each case comparison between the cost of the new and the value of the old had proved very satisfactory, momentum was increasing. He was gratified to be appointed to conduct the sales of the now superfluous properties.

Colour charts and swatches of wallpaper and carpet had already made their appearance and a designer and installer of kitchen fitments was offering to bring samples and brochures. It was high time to remind the purchasers that they did not have any of the necessary consents.

‘But we'll get them,' Mrs Jamieson said. The arrival of her third son had not in the least reduced her enthusiasm. ‘Why wouldn't we? We're not planning anything that anyone could possibly object to, we're rescuing a piece of heritage that might otherwise fall derelict. There's something else even more important. What about the fourth unit? Bottom right as you look at it, across the hall from me. I know it's the least valuable of the lot if you don't count the granny flat, but we won't want it standing empty.'

‘Of course not,' Douglas said. ‘But we're hardly started and three-quarters of our quality accommodation's spoken for already. I was waiting to see who turned up.'

‘Well, I think he's turned up already. He's a professor of Urban Studies but I think that urban life has been getting him down. He wants to rusticate for a while.'

‘Any children?' Douglas asked. He tried not to sound suspicious but Mrs Jamieson was forcing him to remember that couples can multiply. He did not want to live in a mixed sex St Trinian's.

‘He's not married and not likely to be.' Mrs Jamieson said casually. She raised her firm bosom against any criticism that might follow. ‘He has a partner. A male partner. He's what they call gay. But not a transvestite or anything like that,' she added hastily. ‘In fact, you'd never know except that they're quite open about it. Inseparable but not openly affectionate, just the way that gay couples should be – and the other kind too.'

Douglas wondered how, in that case, Mrs Jamieson came to know that a discreet same-sex couple was an item. Her exposition seemed to include several contradictions in terms but he decided not to pursue the matter. There was a tense little silence while each balanced the pros against the cons and decided that the pros had it.

‘We'll have to meet again next week. See if he can come then,' Douglas said. ‘Better still, both of them. And I've been thinking that however well we may get on with each other now there may be occasions in the future …'

Seymour had been a silent listener up until now, nodding his agreement as each point was made, but he spoke up almost for the first time. ‘I've been thinking along the same lines. We wouldn't want some co-owner to grab for the best offer he could get and sell to. We could find ourselves with a rock group in our midst.'

‘Or worse,' said Douglas. He hoped not to be asked what would be worse. ‘We need something along the lines of an American condominium contract whereby general approval is required of a proposed purchaser. I'll dig something out and frame a version that will stand up under Scots law.'

They met again the following week. This time Professor Cullins was present, a small but bustling man in his forties, and he had brought his partner, one Hubert Campion. They were present together, not defiantly but in a gesture of openness. Neither man was noticeably macho nor effeminate, although Campion did have a neat little beard. The professor, unusually for one of his sort, was inclined to pepper his sentences with minor swear words, principally ‘bloody', in lieu of adjectives. Apart from this, their manner did not invite criticism or approval and neither was offered; but during conversation it was clear that they were looking forward to setting up home where their orientation seemed likely to be accepted or ignored.