Free The Unbearable Lightness of Scones by Alexander McCall Smith Page B

aphorism of which one might remind oneself after a dream in which one is revealed in perhaps not the best of lights.
    “And I really have dreamed of you,” he said. “I meant that when I said it.”
    It was true. He had dreamed of Elspeth a few nights earlier. They had been walking along Princes Street together, arm in arm, on the unspoiled side, and he had looked down into the gardens, to the Ross Pavilion, where there were flags all around the open auditorium and a Scottish country dance band was striking up. He had felt so safe, so secure, and had looked up at the Castle on its rock and felt even more so.
    It had been a dream of contentment, and would no doubt have been forgotten on waking up, had it not suddenly changed. He had looked down below again and the band had gone, danced away, and the flags hung limp and dispirited, no Saltires, just alien, puzzling symbols – put there without a referendum, without asking the people! And he had turned to Elspeth for reassurance, but she was no longer there. The woman on his arm was his mother.
    He could not tell Elspeth this, of course, and he blushedeven at the memory. Somebody had once remarked to him that men married their mothers, and girls married their fathers; or at least chose those who came as close as possible to these ideals. He did not think that true, though; it was just another piece of misleading folk psychology.
    “Let’s change the subject,” said Matthew. “Let’s not talk about dreams. Tell me, Elspeth, what was your father like?”
    She thought for only the briefest moment before she answered. “You,” she said.

18.
The Blind Biker of Comrie
    Matthew thought: perhaps it’s true, perhaps I really am like Elspeth’s father, and she, in turn, is like my mother. Perhaps we really have fulfilled the old saw that one marries one’s parents. And what had Freud said? That at the conjunction of two there are four other people present? That was an observation invested with great unsettling power: that we are not ourselves, our own creation, reduces us rather more than we might wish to be reduced. And yet there was the social self, was there not, which was undoubtedly the creation of others, of tides of history, of great sweeps of human experience over which we had exercised no control; and ultimately the creature, too, of tiny strands of DNA bequeathed, wrapped, handed over to us as a present at birth – a little parcel bomb to carry with us on our journey.
    What did he know about Elspeth’s father, Jim Harmony, whom he had never met, and who existed for him merely as a photograph on Elspeth’s table?
    “My father, Jim,” she had said as they packed up the contents of her flat in preparation for her move to India Street.
    He took the small, silver-framed portrait and examined it. The frame was worn, with the silver-plating rubbed away across the top and sides, but the photograph inside seemed fresh enough.
    “That was taken in Bridge of Allan,” said Elspeth. “Years ago. They lived there then, and I did too, of course, until I was eighteen.”
    “Bridge of Allan,” muttered Matthew. It was the right place for her to come from; a reassuring small town of the sort that one found scattered throughout Scotland.
    “He worked for an insurance company,” said Elspeth. “He was a loss adjuster, and he used to cover Stirling, Linlithgow, Falkirk – places round there.”
    “Loss adjusters have to be tough,” said Matthew. He looked at the picture. Jim Harmony’s face was not a tough one. If one had to pick an adjective to describe it, then the best choice, he thought, would be kind.
    Elspeth shook her head. “He wasn’t tough,” she said. “He was the kindest man I ever met. A most trusting man too. I think that he approved just about every claim.”
    “I’m sure that’s right,” said Matthew, looking down at the picture again. “He has that sort of face.”
    “He had to retire early because he began to have problems with his eyes,”