Matthew and Elspeth found themselves seated at the same table as Domenica and Angus. Matthew was in his kilt, as were his three small boys, Tobermory, Rognvald, and Fergus, all in their father’s tartan, a dark green weave shot through with red. Each of the boys wore a miniature sporran of badger hair that Matthew had had made for them by a sporran-maker in Fife. The face of each boy quickly reflected the contents of the plates on the table before them, with chocolate, jam and powdered sugar soon leaving their trace on the juvenile features. Elspeth sighed: she had been unable to keep the triplets clean, and had now given up. Boys were dirty – they just were – and perhaps it was best to accept that as being their natural state, ordained into that estate by biology and destined to remain there until, in teenage years, they discovered the self-consciousness that might make them attend to their appearance.

  They knew everyone at their table, as Big Lou had been careful to ensure that friends found themselves seated together. So Elspeth was seated next to Domenica, while Angus was beside Matthew, and the Italian socialite nun and Turner Prize judge, Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori di Montagna, with her close friend, Antonia Collie, were on the opposite side of the table facing Domenica. The triplets had been given a seat each, but had so far been keener to sit under the table where, unobserved by adults, they moved amongst the feet, untying shoelaces here, leaving traces of jam on socks and trousers there.

  Matthew leaned across the table to engage Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori di Montagna in conversation.

  “You must drop into the gallery one of these days,” he said. “I’ve seen you walking past once or twice. I waved to you, but you were deep in thought and didn’t notice me.”

  Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori di Montagna considered this. She smiled sweetly as she replied, “We do not always find what we are looking for. Mirabile dictu, that is frequently the way things are. Our eyes are fixed on one thing, and we fail to notice another. How many times has that happened?”

  It was a rhetorical question, typical of the rhetorical quest-ions and aphorisms for which Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori di Montagna was so well known. But Antonia took it as a question that called for an answer, and replied, “Twice, in my experience.”

  They looked at her.

  “Last week,” she continued, “I was walking along Dublin Street, climbing the hill, you’ll understand.”

  “We must climb such hills as they are before us,” interjected Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori di Montagna.

  Antonia Collie looked impatient. “Yes, yes,” she said. “No-body said you shouldn’t climb hills.” She paused, and before Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori di Montagna could resume, she continued, “I was walking along Dublin Street, as I was saying, and I almost tripped up over a hole that had appeared in the pavement. There was nothing to mark it – no barrier – nothing.”

  “Hills,” said Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori di Montagna, “are often lower than we think they are going to be. A high hill may be a low hill once one starts the ascent.”

  “You’d think the council would make sure that holes had barriers around them,” said Antonia. “If you dig something up, you should warn people.”

  “Why were they digging?” asked Domenica.

  “Gas,” said Antonia. “Somebody smells gas and they have to dig things up. They might be considered negligent if they don’t. But the point is that I almost fell into the hole.”

  Matthew sought to continue his conversation with Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori di Montagna. “I hear that you’ve been looking at some of the nominees for this year’s Turner Prize. How are things going?”

  Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori di Montagna looked furtively about her. “I shouldn’t really be talking about it, you know.”

  “Of course not,” said Matthew. “But anything you say to me…well, I understand about confidentiality.”

  “It would go no further?” asked the nun.

  Matthew reassured her. “Not a soul,” he said. “I shan’t say a thing.”

  Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori di Montagna leaned forward. She lowered her voice. “The most frightful rubbish,” she said. “Rubbish on an ocean-going scale.”

  Matthew nodded encouragement. “I can just imagine,” he said.

  “Not a single one who can paint. Not one,” said Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori di Montagna.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I have a plan,” said Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori di Montagna. “I’m going to create an artist from scratch. I’m going to invent him, and then make sure he’s added to the list of nominees. He will, of course, be completely made-up, but his work will be cutting-edge rubbish – and therefore a very strong possibility for the Turner Prize.”

  Matthew smiled. “Like Ern Malley?”

  Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori di Montagna looked at him blankly. “Ern Malley?”

  “One of the greatest artistic frauds of the last century,” Matthew said. “Ern Malley was an Australian poet who didn’t exist. It sounds as if your Turner Prize nominee will be very much the same thing.”

  Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori di Montagna was intrigued. “Tell me about this Malley person.”

  “It’s a highly amusing story,” Matthew began. “It starts in Melbourne in the nineteen-forties.”

  Matthew was aware that Angus was listening too and he raised his voice so that Angus could hear.

  “Ern Malley came into existence because of intellectual pretension,” he began. “Without intellectual pretension, the story would be nothing.”

  “Just like many examples of conceptual art?” said Angus.

  Matthew nodded. “Yes, exactly. But let’s imagine: Melbourne, back in 1943. Melbourne is far away from the literary centres of the English-speaking world, but there are people there who want to establish an Australian literary identity. Angry Penguins is a literary magazine that receives a letter from a woman about poems written by her brother, Ern.”

  They waited.

  “And?” asked Angus.

  “Well,” said Matthew. “Let me tell you what happened.”

  11

  A Modernist Poet

  “You can imagine what it was like to be interested in modernist poetry in Adelaide in those days,” said Matthew.

  Angus frowned. “I’m not sure if I can.”

  “Frustrating,” said Matthew. “The real literary world was elsewhere – thousands of miles away. While Eliot, Auden, MacNeice were pushing out the boundaries, quite a few Australian poets were still going on about gum trees. You know the sort of thing.”

  Angus smiled. “And painting them too, I imagine.” He paused. Not every Australian painting of the time featured gum trees. “Sidney Nolan had started to change all that.”

  Matthew nodded. “Yes, he was a much-needed breath of fresh air. Although he left the country.”

  “Yes,” said Angus. “He absented himself from the forces during the War. He would have been sent to Papua New Guinea.”

  Matthew was silent. Would he have gone elsewhere had he been faced with being sent to Papua New Guinea? Who amongst us could be sure? One should not be too harsh in the judgement of others, he felt.

  “You know he did thousands of paintings?” Angus continued. “Some great rubbish. Some masterpieces. I saw his Ned Kelly series in Canberra when I went there some years ago. Very atmospheric. Haunting, even.” He paused. “But in poetry? Fiction? It wasn’t the most exciting of times.”

  Matthew shrugged. “Maybe not. Yet there were people who were making waves. In particular, a young man called Max Harris – a big champion of modernist poetry. He set up a literary journal with a backer in Melbourne. They called it Angry Penguins – a laughable title now, but quite the thing in those days. Angry young men, I suppose, was the idea. Anger over the conformism of the country, the pub culture, the cultural cringe – everything, really. Very different from Australia today – which is a terrifically creative place. The arts thrive there. And it’s the nicest country there is – after Scotland, of course.”

  Angus laughed. “Wha’s like us? as they say.”

  “Scottish exceptionalism,” observed Matthew. “Alive and well and all about us.”

  “I’ve never quite grasped the notion of exceptionalism,” Angus said. “When people talk about it, I just nod. Maybe it’s time to find out what it is.” He paused. “Unless you’re similarly in the dark, of course. You might be one of those people who uses words they don’t understand – or which we have understood wrongly.”

  “Oh, I know about that,” said Matthew. “The other day I heard somebody say that somebody was a sight for sore eyes. I thought they were being uncomplimentary, but the opposite turned out to be true. I’d always thought that when you were a sight for sore eyes you were dishevelled, or something like that. But I think it can actually mean that you’re an attractive sight – a picture of perfection.”

  “It might be said ironically,” suggested Angus. “In other words – you’re a sight for sore eyes – not! The not is implicit in every ironical observation.”

  “Not,” said Matthew. “When people use the word ironically these days, they mean oddly enough. They don’t mean to use it in that other sense.”

  “Wicked,” said Angus, and laughed.

  “What’s wicked?”

  “I mean, that’s another example of a change in meaning. Bad has come to mean good. Fake has come to mean anything you don’t like.”

  “My truth,” said Matthew. “That’s a really sinister develop-ment. The false can be true if it’s yours. Magical thinking.”

  “That’s the post-factual world,” Angus observed. “The triumph of subjectivity. Was Allan Ramsay a great artist? Was Michelangelo? That all depends on what you think of them.”

  Matthew sighed.

  “The concept of truth lies at the very heart of civilization,” Angus continued. “Take it away, and what have we left. Anarchy. A fight for survival. The disappearance of all morality. Human life becomes a nightmare.’

  “So when somebody in authority lies, then…”

  “It’s the end,” said Angus. “If he or she gets away with it. It really takes away the foundations of everything, you know. Of civilization, for want of a better term.” He looked at Matthew. They believed in the same things, he thought. He was older than Matthew, but Matthew understood. “We were talking about Scottish exceptionalism. Enlighten me, Matthew.”

  “Exceptionalism is the belief that you’re different. You think that the normal rules don’t apply to you. Or you think that your interests outrank everybody else’s. It’s a sort of divine right belief – but a bit different, I suppose.”

  “I’ve read about American exceptionalism,” said Angus.

  “Yes, the Americans suffered from it. They thought America was quite different from everywhere else, and could do as it wanted. And so did the British – for a long time. Remember the British Empire? You needed a healthy dose of exceptionalist belief to create something like that.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. The God is an Englishman view of the world?”

  Matthew smiled. “Yes. And did we think He was Scottish? Did the French think He was French?”

  Angus considered this. A French God would be a comfort-able sort of figure – not too demanding in his proscription of adultery, for instance, and very accommodating when it came to overindulgence in the pleasures of the table. A Scottish God, however, would probably be Calvinist and rather strict. He would be a God of the weel, ye ken noo variety, not at all soft on sin. Closed on Sunday, more or less definitely.

  “I think we make God in our image,” Angus said, “even as we assert that He made us in His image.”

  Matthew was looking at Angus intently. He was reflecting on the fact that there were certain questions we seldom asked our friends, and one of them was Do you believe in God? People found that question embarrassing – too personal, perhaps, like asking somebody about a medical complaint. He had no idea whether Angus had any religious belief, and yet surely it was important to know that about a friend – it was such an important part of a life, after all. So he asked him.

  Angus took a sip of wine. “Yes and no,” he said. “I happen to believe there’s some greater purpose, if you will, in life. I’m not always sure what that is, but I feel it, you know. And since I happen to have been born where I was born, at the time when I was born, then a particular spiritual means of expression is available to me – is part of my story, so to speak. And so I participate in that willingly. I respect what it stands for and I respect those who profess it.”

  “But inside?” Matthew pressed.

  “Inside should, as far as possible, be the same as outside,” answered Angus.

  12

  Angry Penguins

  Sitting at their shared table at Big Lou’s wedding reception, Angus and Matthew had in their conversation touched on exceptionalism, truth, art, and spirituality. Now they came back to Ern Malley, one of the great modernist poets of twentieth-century Australia – although, unfortunately, he had not actually existed.

  Angus was thinking of Australia, and what it had been like when Ern had lived – or not lived, to be precise. “Now,” he said, “I suspect, we look back on those times with a certain nostalgia – an age of innocence, perhaps. Pre-guilt; pre-regret; pre-cynicism.” He suddenly looked wistful. “I rather think I would have liked to live in Australia then – before people doubted themselves.”

  Matthew looked thoughtful. “It would depend who you were,” he said.

  “Maybe,” said Angus. “I suppose it wasn’t all that easy being a woman, with all that unchallenged masculinity about. Or gay. Or to be a different colour from the majority. All of that.”

  “Same as just about everywhere in those days,” said Matthew. “We’re lucky, aren’t we, to live in an era of antibiotics and relative tolerance?”

  Angus smiled. “Both of those are under threat, don’t you think? Antibiotics through overuse and resistance, and tolerance…Well, the threat to that is human nature and the desire that people have to silence others. There’s an unbroken line between the persecutions of the past – in which Scotland joined in enthusiastically, let us remind ourselves – and the online mob of the present. Unbroken. It’s the same moral energy finding expression in each case – only the nature of the victims has changed.”

  Matthew was thinking of the editors of Angry Penguins. “They were quite brave, actually – Harris and his friends. They knew that they were considered pretentious. They knew that there were plenty of people to whom they were – well, an affront, I suppose. People who challenge an existing view of things are often very much resented.”

  Angus sighed again. “Which is what happens to traditionalists today, don’t you think?”

  Matthew looked thoughtful. “You mean that traditionalists are cold-shouldered?”

  “Yes,” said Angus. “There comes a point, you see, where positions that were once seen as radical or revolutionary become the new norm. The consensus shifts. And then those who were outside, so to speak, but who are now inside, treat the former insiders as outsiders. A new establishment comes into existence. It’s an old story. Those who were oppressed don’t take long to become oppressors themselves.”

  Matthew said, “Harris and his friends were ridiculed by people I suppose one might call hearties – rugby-playing types.”

  This amused Angus. “Rugby players are not necessarily…how shall I put it – anti-intellectual?”

  Matthew raised an eyebrow. He remembered his contemporaries at school who made it into the First XV. Hamilton, a winger, known as the Armpit; Grieve, a stalwart of the scrum, built like a fridge and with cauliflower ears; Maclean, a Borderer with a broken nose and so tone deaf that he could not even manage a recognisable rendition of “Flower of Scotland” – none of them struck him as being interested in the arts. Hamilton became a potato farmer in East Lothian; Grieve ended up running a car hire business; Maclean joined the army, became a helicopter pilot, and was a major now. None of them, he imagined, were particularly sympathetic to modernist poetry.

  “They threatened to throw Harris into the river,” Matthew continued. “It was their idea of an intelligent response to his poetry.”

  “And did they?”

  “Yes, they did. Muscular philistinism, one might call it.”

  “I suppose it’s ever thus,” said Angus.

  “Yes, I’m afraid it is,” said Matthew. “But to get back to Malley: there were a couple of people who decided to be a bit more subtle in registering their opposition to modernism. And this is where the letter from Ethel Malley came in. She wrote to Harris to tell him that she had found a manuscript when sorting out the possessions of her late brother, Ern, who had died of Grave’s Disease. The manuscript consisted of a series of poems. She said that she had not known that her brother had written poetry – he had latterly been an insurance salesman, after working for a time as a mechanic.

  “Harris read the poems,” Matthew continued, “and he was pretty impressed with them. He showed them to a colleague, who was of the same view. They decided that they had discovered a major new poetic talent.”

  “Who was, nonetheless, dead?”

  Matthew nodded. “Dying is a good career move for any young poet,” he said. “You can’t go wrong by dying. Byron. Rupert Brooke. Dylan Thomas. The list is quite a long one. Thomas made it to thirty-nine, I think.” He remembered something. “I think they’re now saying he died of pneumonia rather than drink. Drink is often part of the poetic legend. I don’t think it was alcohol that did Brooke in, though. He was bitten by a mosquito, and the bite became infected. Septicaemia.”