The Orkney Scroll Read Free Page A

a home to be a little more relaxed,” I replied. “Consistency can be a virtue of course, but rigid adherence to one particular design aesthetic may not be an entirely good idea if you have to live with it. There comes a point where it’s just too much, and with Art Nouveau, that point may come sooner rather than later. I haven’t told Blair that, of course. I’m not that stupid. Actually maybe I am. I did tell him once early on that he might consider mixing stuff up a little. I believe all he said was ‘babe’ in a pained tone.”
    “Personally, I believe a home decorated entirely in one style is the product of a diseased mind,” Clive said. He does, too. A house like this makes Clive, who is the designer of our team, nauseous. Given his surroundings, on this particular occasion, he was holding up rather well.
    “I think I’d have to agree with you there, Clive,” Rob said. This was something. Rob and Clive agreed about once every year or so. “The desk thing is nice, though. It seems cleaner in design.”
    “Yes, Mackintosh’s furniture is more pleasingly geometric than most of the pieces from that period.”
    “It’s the bugs on everything I wonder about,” Moira said.
    “But that’s the point, you see,” I interjected. “Art Nouveau appeared in the late nineteenth century as a reaction to industrialization, the mass production of everything. The people who espoused it believed objects should be made by hand, by artists and real craftspeople, and the motifs went back to nature, tendrils, leaves, insects and crustaceans, organic designs really.”
    “Okay, but who wants to eat off platters with bugs on them?” Rob said.
    “Just about everybody, apparently,” Clive said. “Have you seen the way people are attacking the mounds of shrimps and oysters and lobster, to say nothing of the gallons of real champagne being swilled? You can fault Blair’s design sense, but you can’t complain about the food.”
    He was right. The party was an extravagant event. Blair didn’t seem to know how to do anything in a quiet way. I confess I do not enjoy parties like this, but both Blair and Trevor were so excited about the Mackintosh it would have been churlish to refuse to attend, and furthermore, as Clive is always pointing out, it is good for business for us to be seen in such company. Everybody, but everybody was there: media types, film stars, the usual hangers-on, titans of industry, various civic leaders, including the mayor, and even the chief of police, which was a bit of a surprise, considering how a fair number of Blair’s legal successes must have galled him and how many of Blair’s clients, some of whom looked to be auditioning for a part in
The Sopranos,
were also in attendance.
    “Didn’t I arrest that guy for something?” Rob said. He’s a Mountie, an officer in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, so he can ask questions like that.
    “Arrest whom?”
    “The guy on the far side of the buffet table scarfing down all the shrimp. What is he doing here? I’m sure I arrested him for something.”
    “If you didn’t, you should have. Anyone who wears a green suit like that deserves to languish in a dungeon forever,” Clive said.
    “You are such a design snob, Clive,” Moira said.
    “Yes, I am. Someone has to try to set some aesthetic standards for this great city of ours. Tough job, I’ll grant you. Ah, Trevor, there you are. Nice sale. We at McClintoch and Swain are consumed with envy.”
    “What? Oh, thank you, Clive,” Trevor said, before he hastily moved on to the next room.
    “What’s eating him, I wonder?” Clive asked. “It’s not every day I hand out a compliment. I expected him to be revoltingly cheerful, if not downright triumphant about the whole thing, and he just looks kind of nervous. Maybe he’s having a fight with his girlfriend. Attractive one, that. What’s her name? Balsam or something?”
    “Willow, you twit,” Moira said, giving him a dig in the