The Unbearable Lightness of Scones by Alexander McCall Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

that.”
    “It’s true. Nobody. Until you came along and then we knew, didn’t we? We just knew.”
    Elspeth smiled. “I suppose that’s right. I thought that I was on the shelf. I thought that I would spend the rest of my days teaching Olive and Bertie and … Tofu.” She gave an involuntary shudder: Tofu. “But you took me away from all that.”
    Matthew took her hand, moved by the frankness of what she had said. These words, he felt, were like an act of undressing. “You took yourself away.”
    He dropped her hand and walked across the hall to switch on a light. “Is your suitcase all ready?”
    She nodded.
    “And your passport?” Matthew asked.
    She laughed. “Do we need that for Arran?”
    “I wouldn’t mind going to Arran,” said Matthew. “We used to go over there when I was a boy. My uncle had a house near Brodick and we would go there in the summer. It was mostly Glasgow people and there was a boy there whom we called Soapy Soutar and who threw a stone at me because I was from Edinburgh. He said I deserved it and that if I came back next summer it would be a rock. I remember it so clearly.”
    “So it’s not Arran. Why don’t you tell me?”
    “Because I want it to be a surprise.”
    She reached out and slipped her hand back into his. “You’re a romantic.”
    “If you can’t be a romantic about your own wedding,” he said, “then what can you be romantic about?”
    “So no clue at all?”
    He thought for a moment. “A tiny one … maybe. All right. A tiny clue.”
    She looked at him, searching his expression. She hoped that it would be Italy; that he would say something like “where there’s water in the streets” or “the Pope lives nearby” or hum a few bars of “Return to Sorrento.”
    “It’s a big place,” said Matthew at last.
    So they were going to America (or Canada, or Russia, or Argentina).
    “You’ve got to tell me more than that. You must.”
    Matthew looked at her teasingly. “I really want it to be a surprise. So that’s all I’m going to say.”
    “Texas. Texas is big.”
    Matthew frowned. If she insisted on guessing, sooner or later she would come up with the right answer and he was not sure that he would be able to remain impassive when at last she did.
    “So it’s not Texas.”
    “No. It’s not Texas.”
    She moved forward and kissed him gently on the cheek. “It’s Australia, isn’t it?”
    She knew immediately that she was right, and at the same time she immediately regretted what she had done; now she had spoiled it for him. They had been married for less than twenty-four hours and she had already done something to hurt him. How would that sound at marriage counselling?
    Mind you, there had been brides who had done worse than that. She had recently read of the wife of one of the Happy Valley set in Kenya all those years ago. She was said to have had an affair with another man on her honeymoon, on the boat out to Mombasa. That took some doing; took some psychopathology.
    She put her arms round Matthew. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to spoil it for you. I shouldn’t have asked. It’s just that …”
    “What?”
    “It’s just that you should have asked me where I wanted to go, Matthew. What if I didn’t want to go to Australia? What then?”
    Matthew turned away. It was spoiled – already.

12.
Of Love and Lies
    But by the time they were in the taxi on the way to the airport, travelling through the well-set neatness of Corstorphine, past the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland’s zoo, they hadforgotten about their minor tiff over the secrecy of their destination. And the night had brought self-forgiveness too, and reassurance that marriage would be an arrangement of delight and enhancement, not one of doubts and quibbles.
    Matthew, who like many young men imagined that he could never be loved, not for himself, now at last thought: I have found the one person on this earth, the one, who loves me. And Elspeth did love him,