An Exquisite Sense of What Is Beautiful Read Free Page A

to a swift end, you’ll see. Save the lives of countless American soldiers. And Japs too.’
    ‘But that would have been in combat,’ Edward protested. ‘This was just… I don’t know… a… a massacre. A massacre of innocent people.’
    ‘You’re just over-sensitive to these things, Eddie,’ his father said kindly. ‘Just like your mother.’
    ‘But…’
    His father raised a hand to stop him. ‘Those bombs could have saved your life too, lad. In far-off Asian places. You’ll be old enough to enlist in a couple of months. Your mother and I will be glad if we don’t have to worry about that.’
    His father was right. The war in the Pacific ended six days later.

    Edward went on to take an MA degree at the University of Glasgow , with no more imagination or ambition other than to be an English teacher. He was quite happy to set the rudder of his career firmly on course with his parents’ expectations, not realising he had any desires to the contrary nor any choice in the matter until he and his father were called to the reading of his late Uncle Rob’s will.
    ‘I still dinnae understand what this is all about,’ his father grumbled . ‘Rob’s got a fine family of his own to be his legal heirs and descendants.’
    ‘Perhaps he’s left you a keepsake, father. A memory of your childhood together.’
    ‘To tell you the truth, lad, your Uncle Rob had more of a fondness for you than he did me, his own younger brother. Maybe it was because he only had lassies of his own.’
    Edward had really liked his uncle – a towering, tree-trunk of a man with sunny cheeks and a flat cap of sandy hair. A rugby fanatic, always with a sweet in his pocket for his young nephew and a word of advice about getting a decent education. His uncle had also been a traveller in his younger days, setting off for the Orient at a time when Edinburgh was the furthest east most Glasgow men ever went. He had returned armed with a network of Asian contacts that he later leveraged into a highly successful trading company. He also brought back with him an eclectic collection of artefacts. There had been the ivory knife, of course, several miniature toggle-like carvings, cloisonné vases, lacquer bowls and a series of Japanese woodblock prints. Some of these prints Uncle Rob had hung up on his study wall – actors on the kabuki stage, beautiful courtesans running combs through their hair, birds perched on cherry blossom branches. But others he kept in a drawer.
    ‘I see you have to shave the hair off your chin,’ his uncle had commented after a rare invitation to join him in his study. ‘That means you’re old enough.’
    ‘Old enough for what, uncle?’
    ‘These.’ And he had unlocked the drawer, taken out a folder wrapped up in a silk cloth, spread the prints across his desk. ‘Just dinnae tell your Aunt Cathy.’
    Edward had just stood there staring. He knew his cheeks had flamed up but his embarrassment had not been enough to drag his eyes away from what lay in front of him. Naked women bathing , naked women pouring water over each other, naked women douching themselves between their legs. Women with breasts poking out slyly from beneath robes, a fully clothed courtesan pulling on a naked man’s penis. He had to press his groin against the desk to hide his own erection.
    ‘Just a taste of what’s in store,’ Uncle Rob had sighed. ‘Oh, how I envy the young.’
    A heart attack had now taken his uncle at fifty-five, leaving his Aunt Cathy a widow with two married daughters. Edward wondered what she would think when she found the prints.

    ‘What we have here is a substantial legacy bestowed upon your son for the purposes of his education,’ announced Mr Wilson Guthrie, Practitioner of Law at the legal firm of Guthrie, Henderson & Co.
    ‘He’s already finished his education,’ his father said.
    ‘Is that true, Edward?’ Guthrie asked, whirling in his swivel chair to confront him across the large desk. ‘Is that true?’