The Importance of Being Seven Read Online Free PDF Page B

still wrote to her occasionally, giving her news of their families; and she always responded, sending books to the children and the annual
Scotsman
calendar to the pirates themselves.
    But after that there had been nothing, and she wondered whether it would be more truthful to describe herself as a sometime privatescholar. She liked the word sometime, which people still used occasionally to refer to a previous position or status. There remained a few scholars – institutionalised, not private ones – who described themselves on the title pages of their books as sometime Fellow of this or that Oxbridge college. There was nothing wrong with that – if you once were something, then it was understandable to remind people of the fact, if it was relevant. But one should not cling too doggedly to these scraps of past dignity, as was being done, Domenica feared, by a friend of hers whose hall cupboard she had once inadvertently opened, thinking that it was the bathroom. And had seen, hanging on a rail, an old coat belonging to her friend, with, pinned to its lapel, a familiar old badge bearing the legend
Captain of Hockey
. She had wanted to laugh at the discovery, but had stopped herself. The thought occurred that this was all that her friend had; this was the summit of her achievement, and that life for her thereafter had been a matter of disappointment. Small things may be important to us; to be a sometime anything is sometimes something.

8. Domenica Has Coffee With Dilly
     
    As a private scholar, of course, Domenica’s only motivating factor was the intrinsic interest of her subject. In her position there were no considerations of promotion and the financial advantage it brought; there were no chairs to be won, no colleagues from whom to receive plaudits – her only gain was the satisfaction of finding something out, of shining a light upon some obscure passage in the human tapestry. That was reward enough, of course, and Domenica needed none other – but it did mean that if she wanted to do field work, she had to do it entirely off her own bat. And that was not always easy.
    She spoke to her friend, Dilly Emslie, about this, meeting her for coffee in the Patisserie Florentin in North West Circus Place. It was Dilly who had encouraged her to go to the Malacca Straits and had enthusiastically supported her project there. Now shelooked again to her friend for guidance: should she start another piece of research, or should she hang up her … whatever it was that anthropologists hung up – their mosquito nets, perhaps? – and lead the life of a sometime private scholar?
    ‘You have to do something,’ said Dilly. ‘Sitting about is not an option for somebody like you, Domenica.’
    For a brief moment Domenica imagined what it would be like to be banned from sitting about. One might sink gratefully into a comfortable chair at the end of a demanding day, only to be urged up out of the chair and back onto one’s feet. No sitting about, please. Surely there came a point at which one was entitled to a bit of sitting about?
    ‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘They do say, do they not, that one should keep one’s brain active.’
    ‘Of course,’ said Dilly. ‘And it would be such a waste if you stopped writing. I love your papers. That piece on the domestic economy of pirate households was very good indeed.’
    Domenica accepted the compliment gravely. ‘I was rather pleased with the way it worked out.’
    ‘Of course you were,’ said Dilly. ‘Now what?’
    Domenica reached for her cup of coffee and took a sip. ‘The difficulty with anthropology is the going away side of it. I’m not the sort of anthropologist who can work on museum collections. I have to get out into the field. And that takes a lot of planning.’
    ‘But surely you don’t have to go far,’ said Dilly. ‘What about that work you were talking about on Watsonians in Edinburgh? Weren’t you planning to do something on Watsonian social