44 Scotland Street (35 page)

“It’s probably worthless,” she had said to Matthew in the taxi. “I don’t think Ian Rankin really believed that it was worth anything. That’s probably why he let us have it back.”

Matthew was not convinced. “He gave it back because he thought it was the right thing to do. I could tell that he thought it was a Peploe too. I’m pretty sure you’re right.”

“And what are we going to do with it now?” asked Pat. “I’m not sure if I should take it back to the flat again.”

Matthew laughed. “That’s all right. I’ll take it back to my place. Or even to the old man’s place. He’s got a safe.” He paused. “Shall we have a celebration? What are you doing this evening?”

Pat considered this for a moment. She had no plans for that evening, and there was every reason to celebrate, but she was not sure how Matthew would interpret an acceptance of his invitation. There had been a purpose behind his asking about her feelings for Bruce – she was convinced of that – and she did not want to encourage him. If he was falling for her, then that would be messy. He was her employer; he was some years her senior – almost thirty, was he not? – and there were was another major reason why it would not work. She felt nothing for him, or, rather, not very much. He was decent, he was kind; but there was no attraction beyond that. He would be perfect for somebody who wanted a reliable, undemanding boyfriend, for somebody in
the crowd
. Surely there must be a girl there who would love Matthew to take an interest in her? They could go to the Dominion Cinema together and sit in the more expensive seats and then, on the way out, look at the kitchenware in the kitchenware shop on the corner of Morningside Road. Pat had seen young couples doing that – standing in front of that window and gazing at the stainless steel cafetières and the Le Creuset saucepans. What would it be like to stand there with somebody else – a man – and look at the pots and pans that seemed to be such potent symbols of future domestic bliss? What would it be like to stand there with Bruce …?

With Bruce? She stopped herself. The thought had come into her mind unbidden, as delicious, tempting thoughts do. Bruce would be wearing his Aitken and Niven rugby sweater and his olive green mock-moleskin trousers, and he would have his hand against the small of her back, and they would be thinking of their kitchen … No! No!

“Well?” said Matthew. “Are you doing anything tonight? I thought we could go to the Cumberland for a drink to celebrate. It’ll be on me.”

Pat brought herself back from fantasy to reality. It would be churlish to refuse Matthew, and an outing to the Cumberland Bar would hardly be compromising. Plenty of people dropped in at the Cumberland with their workmates and nothing was read into the situation. It was not as if he was proposing an intimate diner à deux in the Café St Honoré.

“And then we could and have dinner in the Café St Honoré,” Matthew said. “That is, if you’ve got nothing else on.”

He looked at her, and she saw the anxiety in his eyes. But she could not accept; she could not.

“Let’s just go for a drink,” she said. “I have to …” What lie could she come up with to put him off? Or could she tell the truth?

“I want to see Bruce later on,” she said. And as she spoke she realised that she had told the truth. She did want to see Bruce; she wanted to be with him again; it was physical, like a nagging pain in the pit of her stomach. And it alarmed her, for what he wanted was not what she wanted.

Matthew lowered his eyes. He’s disappointed, she thought; and it would have been so easy for me to have dinner with him and make him happy, and now I have disappointed him.

“What about your crowd?” she asked brightly. “Will they be there?”

Matthew shrugged. “They may be. Maybe not. One’s going off to London for a few days this week – he may already have gone. And another has a heavy cold. So if the crowd turns up there won’t be many of them.”

He looked at her again, and she wondered what he was thinking. She had not lied to him, and so she could look back at him, meeting his gaze with all the satisfaction of one who has told the truth. She did want to see Bruce.

“Why are you so keen on him?” Matthew asked. “I thought – from something you said some time ago – that he got on your nerves. Isn’t he vain? Didn’t you say something about that?”

“Yes,” said Pat. “Yes, he’s vain.”

Matthew looked impatient, as if there was something that was not being explained to him clearly enough. “How can you like him if he’s vain?” he asked. “Doesn’t that turn you off?”

Pat smiled. “It should,” she said. “Yes, it should. But it doesn’t, you know.”

“Very peculiar,” said Matthew. “Very peculiar.”

Pat said nothing. She did not disagree.

Sexual attraction, thought Matthew. The dark, anarchic force. More powerful than anything else. Always there. Working away, but not for me.

85. In the Cumberland Bar

Carrying the discreetly-wrapped Peploe? under his arm, Matthew escorted Pat to the Cumberland Bar for their celebratory drink. Any disappointment he had felt at the turning down of his invitation to dinner was, if still felt, well concealed. Matthew was used to being turned down by women, and had come to expect it. He was not sure why he should be so unlucky, but had a suspicion that it was something to do with his eyes. He knew that they had strange grey flecks in them and he feared that there was something about that which disturbed women – some primeval signal that warned them off men with grey-flecked eyes. He had noticed women looking into his eyes and then frowning; indeed, he had seen Pat do that when they had had that conversation on the way to their encounter with Ian Rankin.

It was very unfair. There was Pat, who was attractive in every sense, throwing herself away on that vain flatmate of hers, who presumably had an insufferable conceit of himself. And there he was, Matthew, who only wanted to give Pat some fun and take her to dinner at the Café St Honoré and spoil her. Bruce would treat her badly – that was obvious – and she would be horribly upset. He would treat her well and maybe, just maybe, there would be some future in it for both of them. There would be no future with Bruce.

He almost wanted to tell her, to warn her, but it would seem odd to speak like that, like an older brother, or even a parent. And so he was silent, at least on that subject, and she spoke no more of it either.

The Cumberland Bar, when they reached it, was already filling with early-evening drinkers.

“Busy,” said Matthew, scanning the heads for signs of the crowd. None of them was there, which rather pleased him. He wanted to be with Pat, and the presence of members of the crowd could distract her attention.

They found a couple of seats together and Matthew went to the bar to buy Pat the glass of Chardonnay she had requested. Then, glasses in hand, he made his way back to their table and sat down beside her.

“Do you know many of these people?” asked Pat, looking at the crush of figures that was forming around the bar.

“A few,” said Matthew, raising his glass of Guinness in a toast. “Here’s to you. Thanks for getting the picture back.”

“To Ian Rankin,” Pat replied. “What a nice man.”

“A real softie,” said Matthew.

Pat was not sure what to make of this. Did Matthew consider him a softie because he had given the painting back? That was nothing to do with being a softie. That was to do with principles. For a few moments she felt irritated. Who was Matthew to call anybody a softie, when he so obviously was the softie? No, Ian Rankin was no softie, what with his designer stubble and the black tee-shirts.

She decided not to say anything about this. “And now what?” she said. “What do we do about that painting? Shouldn’t we get an opinion on it now?”

Matthew agreed with her. He was not sure, though, who they would get to do this. That would require some thought because he did not like the idea of being humiliated by some condescending art expert. He had already secretly imagined the scene in which the expert, looking down his nose, would sneer at him. “Peploe? You must be joking! What on earth makes you think this is a Peploe?”

She was waiting for Matthew’s reply when she looked up to see a familiar figure coming towards her. For a moment she had difficulty placing him, but then she remembered: Angus Lordie, the man she had talked to at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery after the lecture. He had come into the bar, looked around him, and seen her at the table. She noticed, too, that it was not just him, but his dog as well – a black collie with a lop-sided ear and sharp eyes.

Angus Lordie had entered the Cumberland Bar in low spirits, but seeing Pat he broke into a wide smile.

“My dear!” he exclaimed, as he approached their table. “Such a perfect setting for you! Even a bar in the St Germain could do no more justice than this simple establishment! And at your side, your young gallant …”

“This is Matthew,” said Pat quickly. “I work with him at his gallery.”

Angus Lordie nodded in Matthew’s direction and extended a hand. “I would normally not shake hands with a dealer, sir,” he said with a smile. “But in your case, I am happy to do so. Angus Lordie.”

Matthew rose from his seat and shook the outstretched hand. Pat noticed that he did not seem to be very enthusiastic, and for a moment she felt pity for him. Their private celebration, it would seem, was over.

“And now,” said Angus Lordie, handing his dog’s lead to Pat, “if you wouldn’t mind holding Cyril for a moment, I’ll go and get myself a drink.”

Pat took the end of the lead and tugged gently to bring Cyril towards the table. The dog looked at her for a moment and then, to her astonishment, gave her a wink. Then he took a few steps forward and sat down next to her chair, turning to look up at her as he did so. Again he winked, and then bared his teeth in what looked like a smile. Pat noticed the glint of the gold tooth which Domenica had mentioned at the reception.

Pat leant over towards Matthew. “This is a very strange dog,” she said. “Do you see his gold tooth?’

Matthew looked down into his Guinness. “I had hoped that we would be able to have a celebration. Just you and me. Now it looks as if …”

Pat reached out and touched him gently on the forearm. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t ask him to join us.”

“Well, now we’re stuck,” said Matthew sulkily. “And that dog smells.”

Pat sniffed. There was a slight smell, she had to admit, but it was not entirely unpleasant – rather like strong mushrooms.

Angus Lordie returned now, a glass of whisky in one hand and a half-pint glass of darkish beer in the other. He put the whisky down on the table and then set the glass of beer on the floor next to the dog.

“Cyril drinks,” he explained. “It’s his only bad habit. That, and chasing after lady dogs, which is more of a call of nature than a bad habit. Here we are, Cyril – make it last.”

Pat and Matthew watched in astonishment as Cyril took a few sips of beer and then looked up and gave Pat a further wink.

“Your dog keeps winking at me,” said Pat.

“Yes,” said Angus Lordie, pulling a chair across from a neighbouring table. “Mind if I join you? Thanks so much. Yes, Cyril has an eye for the ladies, don’t you, Cyril?”

86. On the Subject of Dogs

“On the subject of dogs,” said Angus Lordie, taking a sip of his whisky, “I’ve just discovered the most marvellous book. I came across it quite by chance –
The Difficulty of Being
a Dog
. It’s by a French writer, Roger Grenier, who was a publisher apparently. He knew everybody – Camus, Sartre, Yourcenar – all of them, and he had a wonderful dog called Ulysse. The French title was
Les Larmes d’Ulysse
, The Tears of Ulysses, which was rather better, in my view, than the one they used in English. But there we are. You don’t know it, by any chance?”

Pat shook her head. Was it all that difficult to be a dog? Dogs had a rather pleasant existence, as far as she could make out. There were miserable dogs, of course: dogs owned by cruel and irresponsible people or dogs who were never taken for walks, but most dogs seemed contented enough, and often seemed rather happier than the humans attached to them.

“It’s a remarkable book,” Angus Lordie continued, glancing down at Cyril, who was inserting his long pink tongue into the glass to get to the dregs of his beer. “It’s full of extraordinary snippets of information. For example, did you know that Descartes thought of dogs as machines? Outrageous. Wouldn’t you agree, Cyril?”

Cyril looked up from his beer glass and stared at Angus Lordie for a few moments. Then he returned to his drink.

“You think that he looked at me because he heard his name,” mused Angus Lordie. “But then it’s always possible that he looked at me because he heard the name Descartes.”

“Descartes?” said Pat, raising her voice.

Cyril looked up and winked at her.

“There you are,” said Angus Lordie. “Cyril has good taste. He has a low opinion of Descartes because of his views of animalmachines, and he has a correspondingly high view of Voltaire, who sided with the dogs against Descartes, and also, I might add, of Kant, who disposed of Descartes’ argument like that – pouf! – in a footnote. Kant said that dogs think in categories, and therefore aren’t machines.” He paused, and looked down at Cyril who looked back up at him, his gold tooth exposed. “Of course it’s typical of the Germans that they should argue in terms of categories of thought, whereas Bentham said that dogs weren’t machines because they were capable of suffering in the same way in which we do. The English are much more down to earth, you know.”

Pat cast a glance at Matthew, who had a glazed expression. She was not sure what to do. It would not be easy to get rid of Angus Lordie, and yet she could understand how Matthew must feel. He could not compete with the older man, with his easy garrulousness and his tirade of facts about dogs.

She tried to include Matthew in the conversation. “Do you have a dog, Matthew?”

Matthew shook his head. “No dog,’ he muttered.