Lord
Armadoodle’s Memoirs:
Snippet 1
Pentland Picnic:
Me, Maureen and the pubic
portcullis
John
Armadoodle
I remember
much of my youth with a sense of embarrassment tinged with a nostalgic glow for
a time when life was all about possibilities and prospects. Alas, no longer.
But there are occasions when, despite my status as a senior judge in the
Scottish Supreme Court, the events of the distant past are brought to life
again, often in startlingly vivid form. The other night, at a meeting of a
private dining club for senior lawyers in Edinburgh, I had one of my more
exciting flashbacks.
*
After the
dinner, then the speeches, we, the members of the Select Society of North
Britain, push back our chairs and refill our glasses, mine with vintage port. Everyone
gets up and moves around. The room has two large sofas on either side of the
stately Adam fireplace. I plump down in one of them and signal to Maureen who
sat opposite me at dinner. I have an important case on my hands and I have some
points of law I want to ask her opinion about—at least that is my excuse.
As she
stretches out in the generous depth of the settee, a glass of cognac in her
hand, the quiet murmur of friendly conversation round about us seems to fade
and the years roll away. She looks at me over her glass and smiles. Without
saying a word, we sit for a minute or two together gazing into the glowing heap
of low-carbon, greenhouse-friendly coal in the grate.
Questions of
law forgotten, my mind arches back to the occasion, forty years ago, when she
and I enjoyed a night of passion in the heather. In those days Maureen not only
had the flaming temper she is famous for in the Court of Session today, but
flaming red hair too. Now it is more the colour of lime marmalade. But it is
still thick and bushy and, as the shampoo advertisements might say, full of
body—as indeed is Maureen herself. In fact it is that very quality of bushiness
and bodiness which led to our little venereal extravagation on the lumpy turf between
two gorse bushes and some old heather.
The facts of
the case are as follows. Sometime in my second year at the University, I was
driven by the tedium of the Roman Law of Obligations to spend an evening
drinking in the Couthie Bar in Nicolson Street with my slightly naff half-friend
Andy McNeil. He was a lightly socialist wimp who in later years rose to high
eminence in the Justice Department. This the branch of the Scottish civil
service which specialises in tormenting judges by trying to deprive them of
their independence in the name of “openness”, “transparency” and
“accountability”.
Maureen was
a fresher then and both Andy and I were mature second-year admirers of her
evident female charms. Which law student wasn’t? She had a restless,
demonstrative, arm-waving manner which was carelessly tactile and on occasions
almost erotic. She could gesticulate, reticulate and articulate all at the same
time. Nobody was going to deprive her of her independence, whether she became a
judge, or merely—as in fact happened—a very highly paid advocate who made it
her business in life to entertain judges by the way she tormented her advocate
opponents in court. But then as now, Maureen never seemed to have a steady
boyfriend, which both encouraged and puzzled Andy and me. Was there something
wrong with her that we did not know about? After about five pints of filthy
beer that fateful undergraduate night, Andy thought he had come up with the
only solution that seemed to fit the few facts we had at our disposal.
Maureen had,
he announced triumphantly just as Last Orders were being called, a problem with
her pubic hair. Andy had noticed, he said with the farcical assurance of
inexperience that was later to carry him to success in his civil service
career, that women with her type of thick, curly, “Irishish” hair on their
heads, and “half a gorse bush under each arm”, had pubic hair that was so dense
as to be “almost impenetrable”. I did not believe he had ever been in a position
to test such a theory, but I did not want to offend the matey convention of
late-night blether by cross-examining him. His argument was that Maureen’s
physical and emotional restlessness sprang from an advanced case of sexual
frustration due to the fact that so many men were put off by the difficulties
they encountered in what he primly called the “après-date department”.
“Let me put
it like this, John,” he said, leaning tipsily over towards me and putting the
arm of his sports jacket in a pool of spilled beer on the bar counter, “Many’s
the fine man who has galloped up to the castle gate and found they could not
get their lusty steed past the portcullis.”
“Portcullis
or barbed wire entanglement?” I said with drunken vacuity. “Think the Somme and
Vimy Ridge.”
“No, not
Vimy Ridge, John. Mons Pubis,” said Andy roaring with laughter.
The joke
escaped me, so I said, “But still, she’s a vimmy girl, you have to admit.”
“That’s why
they all become nuns,” Andy said mysteriously. It must have been the drink
thinking, I concluded.
“All who?
Why?”
“All those
Irish girls with thick red hair and a vimmy way about them, John. It’s not
because they believe in God, it is because sex with men has so many practical
problems.”
As Andy and
I lurched out into the street at closing time, we decided we had to find out.
We walked home with our arms around each other’s shoulders singing an old song
that sprang to mind in the circumstances: “She’s got ginger hair/Underneath her
underwear.” I couldn’t remember the rest, so we repeated that endlessly.
Finally, while standing outside Andy’s front door in Newington, we took a bet
on who would be first to establish the facts of this puzzling case.
The result
was that a month later I found myself sitting in the Couthie bar one glorious
early-summer evening, with exams behind us and my smart Daimler parked outside
in the street with the hood down. In those days about the only luxury I could
afford was a fancy sports car and I had inherited—in Scotland that means
“bought”—from my mad Uncle Alec a Daimler SP250. This was the sharp-finned
number, with the pokey little V8 engine, that James Bond drove in the film
version of Dr No during the chase round the mountain. Though my father was a
judge and pretty well-off, all things considered, his allowance to me was as
mean as a Sunday helping of Protestant pottage. I think he imagined that would
stiffen my character and keep me away from things like unreliable sports cars
and undesirable women.
Luckily a
favourite aunt died and left me enough money to scrape together the price Uncle
Alec demanded for his second-hand, and half-knackered, motor. Buying it was one
of the best things I did in the course of my otherwise not especially
distinguished university career. When it was out of the repair shop and
running, that little V8 made a gorgeous noise, especially in the echoing glens of
the Highlands where I used to take all my “undesirable” girlfriends in those
golden days of legal innocence when the sex act in Scotland could be undertaken
without reference to the Sex (Scotland) Act—another of Comrade McNeil’s later
achievements.
As we sat as
the bar, Maureen did her best to make fascinating conversation, but I was
distracted, wondering exactly where in the Pentland Hills I might be able to
take her for an exploratory “picnic” in the gloaming. I was nervous, not
because she intimidated me, but because I actually rather liked her, almost
fancied her. I got the impression she rather liked me too. But we were not
exactly on “portcullis” terms. So I was keen to get going while there was still
some light, otherwise we might never find a suitable spot where I could have
decent crack at settling the wager with Andy.
Maureen must
have sensed something was up, because she started being extremely nice to me,
more so than I would ordinarily have expected. I began to think that maybe the
whole idea wasn’t so daft as I had imagined. I might get lucky after all.
The second I
mentioned a wee run out into the hills above Bonaly, she was off her bar stool
and out towards the car, all legs and arms and genial gesticulations. “Gosh,
this is going to be fun!” she said with an excited squeak.
I told her
that in the car I had a small flask of 17-year old Ochandaidh—a rarity in those
pre-malt-whisky days—which I had liberated from my father’s drinks cabinet. I
had even brought along a couple of slightly soggy oatcakes, which we all I
could find at short notice, just so that I could tell Andy it was just a picnic
if I failed in my secret mission, and a torch in case things developed and it
was dark before we had to find our way back to the car.
“That’s
wonderful, John!” she said, grinning with what seemed to me like genuine
pleasure.
There
weren’t all the traffic regulations then that make driving such a bore today.
Soon we were out beyond Braid Hills and really motoring, with two pints down
and the wind in our hair. It was a warm, clear evening, and the Daimler was pulling
like a racehorse. Even with an amateur like me at the wheel, it was a thrilling
feeling and I could see it was thrilling Maureen too. So far so good. Eat your
heart out Andrew McNeil on the Number 37 bus.
Half an hour
later, Maureen and I were lying on one of the rugs I had brought along, and underneath
the other one, surrounded by enough waist-high gorse to feel reasonably
private. With the action, or attempted action, about to happen I took an extra
long look at my companion, lying on her back beside my left elbow. The warm but
fading light seemed to make her russet hair glow. I took a deep suck of the
whisky and had a thought: actually I really rather like Maureen. This was
slightly more than “fancy”. Situation evolving. Emotions sneaking into the
picture. Then it occurred to me that I should not really be doing this. Sod
Andy and his stupid bet. It is abusive, cheapening, and maybe Maureen and I
could get serious and one day and perform the appropriate rituals in a more
orderly fashion in more comfortable surroundings.
Frankly, any
girl who liked fast driving in those days, when everyone was trying to look
cool in bare feet, was welcome in my Daimler—especially if she has a brain in
her head, a twinkle in her eye and “a body to boot”, as my Uncle Alec used to
say with a mad chuckle. Maureen struck me at that moment as just the right sort
of girl. So the idea of trying to satisfy Mr McNeil’s prurient curiosity at the
expense of her honour and dignity seemed both sordid and unwise.
As the last
of the sunlight faded and we were enveloped in the heather-scented twilight, I
remember giving her a kiss which I tried to calibrate as half-chaste and
half-potentially-unchaste. By that I mean, I wanted her to understand that I
would have liked all this to continue, but that, contrary to what any ordinarily
dirty-minded undergraduate might have thought, I had not brought her up here to
take advantage of her physical sociability. The idea was sort of to say, thank
you for coming out like this; it was great fun; and can we see each other again
sometime soon, perhaps for something a bit more romantic than lying on an unfurnished
hillside in the gathering darkness?
I must have
got it all wrong because Maureen responded rather peculiarly, or at least
unexpectedly—which in those days seemed like the same thing to me.
“Is that
all?” she said, looking at me with surprise.
“What do you
mean?” I said, probably looking even more surprised.
“Well,
wasn’t there something you were going to ask me?”
I had just
seen a film in which an Irish girl in World War II had refused to go to bed
with an American airman stationed in her “bally” in County Londonderry until he
asked her to marry her. Oh my God, I thought, this is getting a bit heavy. I
mean, Maureen’s sort of Irish, isn’t she? And maybe I will ask her to marry me,
maybe, one day, but not just quite yet. These are big decisions. They
shouldn’t be rushed. One is, after all, a potential future lawyer, isn’t one?
And so is she, of course. But could she be the type who turns vim into vitriol
and holds a man fast in legal handcuffs if she gets a whiff of a potentially
profitable Breach of Promise action? Careful, John! Ga’ canny!
“Well, I’d
like to,” I said, trying not to sound too hesitant while still answering the
question. “I might well do so one day, probably in the not too distant future,
but perhaps we ought to get to know each other a bit better, which I’d very
much like to do. So how about dinner sometime soon?”
“That’s not
the question I was expecting, John, not at all.”
“Are you
disappointed?”
“In a way,
yes.”
“Well, how
about tomorrow night?”
“For
dinner?”
“Yes. I know
a wonderful new place in Stockbridge-”
She cut me
off, saying, “Do I have a man of honour on my hands, or do I have a wimp.”
“A man of
honour entirely,” I said. But I was puzzled. “But why do you ask that?”
Maureen
looked at me in a way I had not been looked at before. I did not know what to
make of it. Had I got the whole thing hopelessly wrong? Was this another
catastrophically cack-handed undergraduate blunder? Or did she want me to rip
her knickers off then and there, and horse up to the portcullis with no further
ado? I felt I had completely lost my socio-erotic bearings.
“Can I ask you
something,” she said with what might have been a hint of annoyance in her
voice.
“Of course,
please do.”
“Do you
want, as it were—and I am not calling you vulgar, at least not in the ordinary
sense—but do you not want to get inside my pants?”
“Whaaaat!”
I dropped the whisky flask. Fumbling round to pick it up to stop its precious
contents spilling onto the rug gave me just the two seconds I needed to recompose
myself. But still I did not know what to say. “No” would be an insult to her
undoubted attractiveness, and “Yes” was exactly what respect seemed to demand I
did not say. To say, “Yes and no, Maureen,” would have sounded flippant,
indecisive and logically absurd since the two answers were incompatible.
Being one of
nature’s players, Maureen understood my dilemma and came to my rescue by
putting her arms round my neck and pulling me down towards her. Then she
started whispering in my ear.
“I had a
drink last night with that numpty friend of yours Andrew McNeil—at his
invitation I hasten to add, and it’ll be the last occasion on which I accept.
As we were leaving the pub, he told me that the reason you had asked me out for
tonight was because you wanted to find out what colour my public hair was,
whether it was ginger or not. I gather that is an issue of great interest to
men who like red-haired girls. I don’t mind, John, because I like you—I really
do—and I’ll happily tell you what you want to know. I’d only like to know if
that is true. Is that why you asked me out, why you brought me up here? And if
so, why leave it till it’s dark and you can’t see?”
I was lost
for words. Once again she gallantly rode to my rescue.
“Are you nervous?”
she said gently and caressingly into my ear. “By which I mean, is that just a
torch you’ve got in your pocket there, or are you going to give me the real
Errol Flynn?”
I pulled
back just far enough that I could look her in the eye. “Maureen, I think you
are a very beautiful woman, and I would like to you to be quite clear that I
honestly never had any intention of using this occasion to try to find out the
colour of your public hair.”
“Really?
Scout’s honour?”
“Scot’s
honour.”
She laughed.
“What’s the difference?”
“A bit more
realistic.”
“Realistic,
eh! Is that the best I get?”
“Seriously,
Maureen, the subject of the colour of your pubic hair has never been discussed
between Andy and me. That I promise.”
I thought I
ought to say it twice in order to lodge in the jury’s brain, so to speak, the
fact that I had not told an untruth—Andy and I had never discussed the colour
of the matter under advisement, only its density. We had sung about the
colour of a totally different, and unidentified, woman’s pubic hair as we
staggered home from the pub, that is true, but we had not discussed
Maureen’s. I could say what I had just said without perjuring myself.
“I hope that
does not mean you have no interest in me,” Maureen said with a combination of
coyness and deep-chested come-and-get-me-ness which would have got even the
limpest steed galloping proudly towards her portcullis. “Because I rather fancy
you right now,” she added.
That was all
I needed. We were off. The earth beneath us may not have moved, but the gorse
round about us certainly did. Maureen, when erotically provoked, was a
four-limbed gesticulator!
Driving back
down into Edinburgh an hour later, with the roof up and the hopelessly
inefficient heater going full blast, we were laughing like drains as she sat
with her right hand resting on the back of my neck discussing how we were going
to pull a fast one on Andy.
I stopped
outside her flat, which was also in Newington, not far from Andy’s, and we went
over the details of our plan. She told me that after she had slapped his face
on the street outside the pub the night before, and told him what she thought
of him in, apparently, very colourful language, she had shouted back over her
shoulder as she walked away, “You are going to be wrong whatever colour you
say, you wimpy little waster. I am no colour at all. I shave! When
you’re old enough to shave too, I might let you have a look—if you pay me enough.”
Maureen and
I agreed that the likeliest reason for his conduct was that by the time the two
of them left the pub he had come to realise that he was never going to get
close enough to her that to win the bet, so he decided to make sure I could not
win it either. He thought he would spike my guns by telling Maureen that we had
made the bet. But he was too embarrassed to describe it accurately, hence the
question about colour which sounded a little less prurient. Or perhaps he had
been too drunk the night we made the bet and had remembered only the song we
sang on the way home. In either case, it was not exactly the way you would have
thought one gentleman would behave towards another. But there it was. His
assumption presumably was that Maureen would refuse to come out with me after
learning what I was supposed to want to find out about her. Andy could then
claim victory on an invented revelation about the shaving—which is about the
most caddish stratagem imaginable. A brighter soul would have realised that
that would have undermined the portcullis argument. But perhaps Andy thought
winning the bet was more important than being a successful bar-stool
psychologist.
Then a final
thought occurred to me in the light of my experiences an hour before. “Why did
you tell Andy that you shave?”
“That was
just for your benefit, John.”
“How? I’m
lost.”
“Well,
obviously, if Wee Andy thought his stratagem had worked and you had been too
embarrassed to ask me the question you wanted to ask, or you had been a
gentleman, as I suspected you might be,
and had decided you would not put such a question to a lady, then he might have
claimed victory on false pretences by telling you that I shaved.”
“Which, of
course, you do not.”
“Which, as
you now know, I do not. It would have been the work of moment in some deserted
ally to prove him a liar which, to be frank, by that stage I really wanted to
do. The embarrassment would have been worth the price of seeing him exposed for
what he is.”
I think that
was the moment when I realised that I needed a simpler woman to share my life
with. Maureen was about the most exciting thing that had come my way since
buying the Daimler. But Daimlers do not have such serpentine reasoning
processes. They go when you press the accelerator and stop when you press the
brake—as a general rule. It was not long after that evening when I met Alice.
But that episode deserves a story of its own.
*
I take a
deep swallow of my Full Vintage port and turn round to take another look at
this remarkable, and still unmarried, woman. To think that she and I once
tacitly explored the idea of an intimate relationship! Then Alice comes to
mind, and I need to take another swig of the port. I bury my gaze in the fire
again. I think of the open pathways of youth and the closed doors of seniority.
Maureen, who
is still a woman with a talent for conversation, and probably much else
besides, lifts up her cognac and says to me with an inviting smile, “Well,
John, wasn’t there something you were going to ask me?”
For more
Armadoodle Stories, see Kindle
May we also
recommend The Justice Factory: “Show me the judge and I’ll tell you the law”
which is available at www.amazon.co.uk
© Culloden Place
Productions, 2014. All rights reserved. The author asserts his moral right.
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