Alexander Mccall Smith - Las Orchestra Saves the World

BOOKS BY ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH

I N THE N O . 1 L ADIES D ETECTIVE A GENCY S ERIES
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
Tears of the Giraffe
Morality for Beautiful Girls
The Kalahari Typing School for Men
The Full Cupboard of Life
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
Blue Shoes and Happiness
The Good Husband of Zebra Drive
The Miracle at Speedy Motors
Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

I N THE I SABEL D ALHOUSIE S ERIES
The Sunday Philosophy Club
Friends, Lovers, Chocolate
The Right Attitude to Rain
The Careful Use of Compliments
The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday
The Lost Art of Gratitude

I N THE P ORTUGUESE I RREGULAR V ERBS S ERIES
Portuguese Irregular Verbs
The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs
At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances

I N THE 44 S COTLAND S TREET S ERIES
44 Scotland Street
Espresso Tales
Love over Scotland
The World According to Bertie

The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa

Las Orchestra Saves the World

This book is for J. K. Mason

T WO MEN , who were brothers, went to Suffolk. One drove the car, an old Bristol drophead coup in British racing green, while the other navigated, using an out-of-date linen-backed map. That the map was an old one did not matter too much: the roads they were following had been there for a long time and were clearly marked on their mapnarrow lanes flanked by hedgerows following no logic other than ancient farm boundaries. The road signspromising short distances of four miles, two miles, even half a milewere made of heavy cast-iron, forged to last for generations of travellers. Some conscientious hand had kept them freshly painted, their black lettering sharp and clear against chalk-white backgrounds, pointing to villages with names that meant something a long time ago but which were now detached from the things to which they referredthe names of long-forgotten yeoman families, of mounds, of the crops they grew, of the wild flora of those parts. Garlic, cress, nettles, crosswortall these featured in the place-names of the farms and villages that dotted the countrysidetheir comfortable names reminders of a gentle country that once existed in these parts, England. It still survived, of course, tenacious here and there, revealed in a glimpse of a languorous cricket match on a green, of a trout pool under willow branches, of a man in a flat cap digging up potatoes; a country that still existed but was being driven into redoubts such as this. The heart might ache for that England, thought one of the brothers; might ache for what we have lost.

They almost missed the turning to the village, so quickly did it come upon them. There were oak trees at the edge of a field and immediately beyond these, meandering off to the left, was the road leading to the place they wanted. The man with the map shouted out, Whoa! Slow down, and the driver reacted quickly, stamping on the brakes of the Bristol, bringing it to a halt with a faint smell of scorched rubber. They looked at the sign, which was a low one, almost obscured by the topmost leaves of nettles and clumps of cow parsley. It was the place.

It was a narrow road, barely wide enough for two vehicles. Here and there informal passing places had been established by local useplaces where wheels had flattened the grass and pushed the hedgerows back a few inches. But you only needed these if there were other road-users, and there were none that Saturday afternoon. People were sleeping, or tending their gardens in the drowsy heat of summer, or perhaps just thinking.

Its very quiet, isnt it? remarked the driver when they stopped to check their bearings at the road end.

Thats what I like about it, said the other man. This quietness. Do you remember that?

We would never have noticed it. We would have been too young.

They drove on slowly to the edge of the village. The tower of a Norman church rose above a stand of alders. In some in explicable mood of Victorian architectural enthusiasm, a small stone bobble, rather like a large cannonball, had been added at each corner of the tower. These additions were too small to ruin the original proportions, too large to be ignored; Suffolk churches were used to such spoliation, although in the past it had been carried out in a harsh mood of Puritan iconoclasm rather than prettification. There was to be no idolatry here: Marian and other suspect imagery had been rooted out, gouged from the wood of pew-ends and reredoses, chipped from stone baptismal fonts; stained glass survived, as it did here, only because it would be too costly to replace with the clear glass of Puritanism.

Behind the church, the main street, a winding affair, was lined mostly by houses, joined to one another in the cheek-by-jowl democracy of a variegated terrace. Some of these were built of stone, flinted here and there in patternstriangles, wavy lines; others, of wattle and daub, painted either in cream or in that soft pink which gives to parts of Suffolk its gentle glow. There were a couple of shops and an old pub where a blackboard proclaimed the weekends fare: hotpot, fish stew, toad-in-the-hole; the stubborn cuisine of England.

That post office, said the driver. Whats happened to it?

The navigator had folded the map and tucked it away in the leather pocket in the side of the passenger door. He looked at his brother, and he nodded.

Just beyond the end of the village, said the driver. Its on the right. Just before

His brother looked at him. Just before Ingoldsbys Farm. Remember?

The other man thought. A name came back to him, dredged up from a part of his memory he did not know he had. The Aggs, he said. Mrs. Agg.

SHE HAD BEEN WAITING FOR THEM , they thought, because she opened the door immediately after they rang the bell. She smiled, and gestured for them to come in, with the warmth, the eagerness of one who gets few callers.

I just remember this house, the driver said, looking about him. Not very well, but just. Because when we were boys, and he looked at his brother, when we were boys we lived here. Until I was twelve. But you forget.

His brother nodded in agreement. Yes. You know how things look different when youre young. They look much bigger.

She laughed. Because at that age one is looking at things from down there. Looking up. I was taken to see the Houses of Parliament when I was a little girl. I remember thinking that the tower of Big Ben was quite the biggest thing I had ever seen in my lifeand it might have been, I suppose. But when I went back much later on, it seemed so much smaller. Rather disappointing, in fact.

She ushered them through the hall into a sanctum beyond, a drawing room into which French windows let copious amounts of light. Beyond these windows, an expanse of grass stretched out to a high yew hedge, a dark green backdrop for the herbaceous beds lining the lawn. There was a hedge of lavender, too, grown woody through age.

That was hers, said the woman, pointing to the lavender hedge. It needs cutting back, but I love it so much I cant bring myself to do it.