Free Chance Developments by Alexander McCall Smith

him. He put his arm around his shoulder. “Listen, Harry, this is not a tragedy. This is a mistake that…well, that happens. We had to talk to you about it. We had to make sure that you understood.”
    The housemaster rose from his desk and crossed the room. A boy had committed suicide the previous year—a boy under his care. That had been something to do with sex as well. You had to be so careful with these young people. They were impetuous.
    “We think that perhaps it would be best if you went home, Harry,” said the housemaster. “I think what you’ve just said is not something you really mean. Go home with your father.”
    He struggled with his tears. “I’m to take all my things?”
    The housemaster inclined his head. “Yes. I’m sorry about this, but we cannot countenance such things.”
    “You’re not being expelled,” said his father. “Mr. Sanderson—and the headmaster—have been very understanding. You’re not even being asked to leave. You’re going of your own accord.”
    “Yes,” said the housemaster. “I don’t for one moment approve of what you have done, and you will have time to reflect on that, I imagine. But I don’t want to ruin your prospects. You’re planning to go to art college, aren’t you? I’m sure there’ll be no difficulty with that. And I’m sure, too, that you will not repeat what you’ve done, will you?”
    His father answered for him. “He will not. He won’t be seeing the girl again. You can rest assured of that.”
    “Good,” said the housemaster.
    He offered Harry his hand to shake.
    5
    He took readily to the regime at the art college. They started early, even in the winter term, when the light that flooded through the windows of the great studios was a cold northern one, struggling to make an impression on the half-darkness in which winter clothed Scotland. There was little time for individual flourish—just the constant discipline of drawing under the critical eye of the tutors; they were artists themselves, some rumoured to lead a bohemian existence, but not here, not in the college with its formalities and proprieties.
    He discovered the work of James Cowie, and made the trip to Hospitalfield to visit him. The quiet painter spoke to him about preparatory studies. “Do everything three, four times. And then do it again.” He looked at the work that Harry had brought to show him, paging through the sketchbooks. “On the right lines,” he said.
    In 1939, shortly after his nineteenth birthday, he went to Glasgow to visit Fergusson, who had returned to Scotland from France. “Painting under a cloud is going to be difficult,” Fergusson said to him. “The light will be blocked out, you know. That’s what’s happening now in Europe—the light is being blocked out.”
    On the train back to Edinburgh, he sat in his compartment with a kilted soldier, a corporal. The man said nothing, but as the train drew into the station, he lowered the window, opened the door, and leapt out onto the platform. Harry struggled with the swinging door but managed to close it before the train came to a halt. He sketched the incident in his sketchbook—the man’s back, the pleats of the kilt caught in the wind, the Edinburgh skyline in the distance.
    Later, sitting at the table in his lodgings with the young man with whom he shared a room, a medical student, he described what happened. “Despair,” said the medical student. “We see it in the infirmary every day—or almost every day. Despair. Guilt.”
    He asked him about guilt. “Why do we feel guilty?”
    The medical student laughed. “Because there are plenty of people who are only too ready to peddle guilt. The Wee Free Church does it. They’re always at each others’ throats, but they’re made of the same hodden, you know. And they find fertile ground for their efforts, believe me.” He paused, looking at his watch. Their landlady was slow; even the cooking of a haddock seemed to take her for ever. “Your