Matthew was not so certain about that. He had endured long periods of being uncluttered, and, on balance, he preferred to be cluttered. He thought of Elspeth Harmony. He would see her that night – he had asked her to have dinner with him and she had agreed. He would cook something special – he had a new risotto recipe that he had mastered and he would give her that.
And champagne? Or would that be a little bit too much? Yes, it would. Perhaps they would have a New Zealand white instead.
Or something from Western Australia. Margaret River, perhaps.
And what would he wear? That was more difficult, as he obviously could not wear his distressed-oatmeal sweater – not after those remarks that Pat had made. It was not beige! It was not!
But there was no point in going over that – it was obvious that distressed oatmeal was not a colour of which every woman approved, and in that case he would wear . . .
“Pat,” he said. “What should I wear? I mean, what should I wear for special occasions?”
She guessed at what he was talking about. “For when you’re seeing what’s-her-name? Elspeth Harm . . .”
“Harmony.”
“Yes, her. Well, let me see. Don’t think that . . .”
“I won’t wear my sweater. Don’t worry.”
“Good. Well, look, Matthew. You have to decide what your colour is. Then go for that. Build around it.”
Matthew looked interested. “Build around my colour?”
Pat looked at him intensely. “Yes. And your colour, I would have thought is . . . ultramarine.”
Matthew stared at her. “As in Vermeer?”
“Yes,” said Pat. “Do you know how Vermeer got that lovely shade of blue? By crushing lapis lazuli.”
A Shopping Trip for a Special Dinner Date 279
“Of course I knew that,” said Matthew.
“And that’s why there’s that terrific light in his pictures. The girl with the pearl earring, for instance. That blue in her head-scarf.”
“Do you think I should wear that exact blue?”
Pat nodded. “I think so. But you shouldn’t wear everything in that blue, of course. Maybe a shirt in that blue and then get some trousers which are . . . well, maybe blackish, but not pure black. Charcoal. That’s it. Charcoal trousers, Matthew, and an ultramarine shirt.”
“And a tie?”
“No, definitely not. Just the shirt, with the top button undone.
And don’t, whatever you do, have a button-down collar. Just have it normal. Try to be normal, Matthew.”
Pat went off to the university at lunchtime, leaving Matthew to spend the afternoon in the gallery by himself. He closed early, and made his way up to Stewart Christie in Queen Street. The window was full of brown and green clothes – a hacking jacket, an olive-green overcoat with corduroy elbow patches, green kilt hose – but they were able to produce several blue shirts which struck Matthew as being close to ultramarine. He chose two of these, along with a pair of charcoal trousers and several pairs of Argyle socks, which he needed anyway. Then he made his way down Albany Place, crossed Heriot Row, and was in India Street, where his flat was.
India Street was, in Matthew’s view, the most appealing street in the New Town. If he thought of the streets in the immediate vicinity, each of them had slight drawbacks, some of which it was difficult to put one’s finger on, an elusive matter of feng shui, perhaps, those almost indefinable factors of light or orien-tation that can make the difference between the presence or absence of architectural blessedness. This, he thought as he walked down his side of the street, is where I want to live – and I am living there. I am a fortunate man.
And he discovered, as he thought of his good fortune, that what he wanted to do more than anything else was to share it.
280 The Matthew He Wanted Her to Know In recent days, he had given two valuable gifts, and the act of giving had filled him with pleasure. Now he would give more; he would sweep Elspeth Harmony up, celebrate her, take her from whatever place she now lived in, and offer her his flat in India Street, his fortune, himself, everything.
He looked at the parcel he was carrying, the parcel in which the ultramarine shirt and the charcoal trousers were wrapped. He saw himself in this new garb, opening the door to Elspeth Harmony, ushering her into the flat. In the background, the enticing smell of cooking and music. I have to get this right, he thought. If this doesn’t work, then there’s no hope for me.
He climbed the stairs to his front door and let himself in. On the hall table, a red light blinked insistently from the telephone: somebody had left a message.
He dropped the parcel and pressed the button to play the message. It will be from her, he thought.
It was.
83. The Matthew He Wanted Her to Know Matthew listened to the message left for him by Elspeth Harmony. In the rather sparsely furnished hall of his flat in India Street, the recorded voice, with its clear diction – it was, after all, the voice of a teacher – echoed in the emptiness. And it seemed to Matthew that the chambers of the heart were themselves empty, desolate, now without hope.
“I’m really very sorry,” Elspeth began. “It was very sweet of you to ask me to dinner, but I can’t make it after all. I’m a bit upset about something and I don’t feel that I would be very good company. I’m so sorry. Maybe some other time.”
He played the message through and the machine automa-tically went on to the next message, which was from a company that had tried to deliver something and could not. The company spoke in injured tones, as if it expected that people The Matthew He Wanted Her to Know 281
should always be in to receive its parcels. Matthew ignored that message; his thoughts were on what Elspeth had said.
Women had all sorts of excuses to get out of an unwanted date: family issues – my mother’s in town – I’d much prefer to be seeing you, but you know how it is. And then: I’ve had a headache since lunchtime and I think I should just get an early night, so sorry. He listened again to what Elspeth had to say. There was no doubt that the tone was sincere, and from that Matthew took a few scraps of comfort. This was not a diplomatic excuse concealing a simple reluctance to have dinner with him; this was the voice of somebody who was clearly upset, and for good reason.
He switched off the machine and stood up from the crouching position in which he had been listening to the message. How he reacted to this would, he thought, determine whether he saw Elspeth again. If he did nothing, then she might think that he simply did not care; if, on the other hand, he tried to persuade her to come, in spite of everything – whatever everything was – then he might appear equally selfish. He decided to call her.
As the telephone rang at the other end, Matthew tried to imagine the scene. Her address was on the other side of town, in a street sandwiched between Sciennes and Newington, and he thought of her flat, with its modest brass plate on the door, harmony, and its window box with a small display of nasturtiums. Or was that mere romanticism? No, he thought, it is not.
Her name is Harmony, and there’s no reason why she should not have a window box with nasturtiums, none at all.
“Elspeth Harmony.”
The voice was quiet, the tones those of one who had been thinking of something else when the telephone had rung.
“It’s Matthew here. I got your message. Are you all right?”
There was a momentary pause. Then: “Yes, I’m all right. But I’m sorry about tonight. I just couldn’t face it.”
Matthew’s heart sank. Perhaps it had just been a lame excuse after all. “Oh,” he said. “But . . .”
282 The Matthew He Wanted Her to Know Elspeth interrupted him. “It’s nothing to do with you. Please don’t think that.”
He imagined her sitting in a chair in the kitchen, looking out at the nasturtiums.
“Has something happened?”
“Yes,” she said. And then, after a momentary hesitation, “I’ve lost my job. Or rather, I’m about to lose my job.”
Matthew g
asped.
“Yes,” Elspeth went on. “There was an incident at the school yesterday and . . . and, well, I’m afraid that I’ve been suspended, pending an inquiry. But they think that it might be best for me to go before then. I’m rather upset by this. Teaching, you see, has been my life . . .”
She broke off, and Matthew for a moment thought that she had begun to cry.
“I’d like to come and see you,” he said firmly. “If I get a taxi now, I’ll be at your place in ten, fifteen minutes.”
She sounded tearful. “I don’t know. I really don’t . . .”
“No, I’ll be there,” said Matthew. “Ten minutes. Just wait for me.”
He put down the receiver and went into his bedroom to change into a new ultramarine shirt. But then he stopped. He looked at the shirt that he had laid on the bed. No, that shirt was not him, that was Pat’s idea of what she thought he should be. The real Matthew, the one that wanted to go and help Elspeth Harmony in whatever distress she was suffering, was not the Matthew of ultramarine shirts and charcoal trousers; it was the Matthew of distressed-oatmeal sweaters and crushed-strawberry trousers; that was who he was, and that was the person whom he wished Elspeth Harmony to know.
The taxi arrived promptly, and Matthew gave the driver instructions. They travelled in silence and, in the light traffic, they were there in little more than ten minutes.
“Number eighteen?” asked the driver, as they entered the small cul-de-sac. “I had an aunt who lived at number eight.
Dead now, of course, but she used to make terrific scones. We The Matthew He Wanted Her to Know 283
used to go there for tea as children. There were always scones.
And she made us kids eat up. Come on now, plenty more scones.
Come on!”
Matthew smiled. There used to always be scones. The taxi driver was much older, but even Matthew’s Scotland had changed since his own childhood, not all that many years ago. Things like that were less common – aunts who made scones. There were career aunts now, who had no time to bake scones.
They stopped outside number 18 and he looked up towards the third floor, where Elspeth Harmony lived. There were window boxes at two of the windows and a small splash of red.
Nasturtiums. He smiled.
She let him in, and he could tell that she had been crying.
He moved forward and put an arm around her shoulder.
“You mustn’t cry,” he said. “You mustn’t.”
“I feel so stupid,” she said. “I feel that I’ve let everyone down.”
“Tell me exactly what happened,” said Matthew.
She told him, and he listened carefully. When she had finished, he shook his head in astonishment. “So all you did was give her a little pinch on the ear?”
Elspeth nodded. “There was really no excuse,” she said. “But there are one or two of the children who are seriously provocative. There’s a boy called Tofu, who really tries my patience.
And then there’s Olive, whose ear . . . whose ear I pinched.”
“It’s entirely understandable,” said Matthew. “Teaching is so demanding, and you get so little support. That pinch will have done Olive no harm – probably a lot of good.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Yes,” said Matthew. But then he went on, rather sadly, “But I suppose that’s not the world we live in, with all these regula-tions and busybodies about.” He paused. “I think you’ve struck a blow for sanity. Or rather, pinched one.”
She thought this very funny and laughed.
“I’m rather fed up with teaching anyway,” Elspeth said.
Matthew thought: if you married me, then you’d never have to work again. Unless you wanted to, of course.
84. A Tattooed Man Stirs Up a Painful Past Dr Hugo Fairbairn, author of that seminal work of child psychotherapy, Shattered to Pieces: Ego Dissolution in a Three-Year-Old Tyrant, was walking in from his flat in Sciennes, on the south side of Edinburgh, to his consulting rooms in Queen Street. It was as fine a day as Edinburgh had enjoyed for some weeks, with the temperature being sufficiently high to encourage shirt-sleeves, but not so high as to provoke some men to remove their shirts altogether. A few more degrees and that would, of course, happen, and many men who should, out of consideration for others, remain shirted, would strip to the waist, treating passers-by to expanses of flesh that was far from Mediterranean in its appearance, but was pallid and perhaps somewhat less than firm. After all, thought Dr Fairbairn, this was what Auden had described as a beer and potato culture – in contrast to the culture of the Mezzogiorno, which he had then been enjoying; and beer and potatoes led to heaviness, both of the spirit and of the flesh.
Of course, it was not every male who felt inclined to strip down in the better weather; lawyers did not, and for a moment Dr Fairbairn imagined the scene if lawyers, striding up the Mound on their way to court, were to take off their white shirts in the same way as did building workers; such a ridiculous notion, but it did show, he thought, just how firmly we are embedded in social and professional roles. He, naturally A Tattooed Man Stirs Up a Painful Past 285
enough, did not dress in a manner which in any way showed an acceptance of imposed roles. His blue linen jacket, with matching tie, could have been worn by anybody; it was class-less garb of the sort that said nothing about him other than that he liked blue and linen. And that was exactly as Dr Fairbairn wanted it.
He had been looking down at the pavement; now he looked up, to see a young man approaching him, without his shirt. The psychotherapist suppressed a smile: never believe that you will not see something, he thought – because you will. This does not mean that the thing that you think you will not see will crop up – what it does mean is that you may think that you have seen something which you actually have not.
But this young man, walking along the pavement in the slanting morning sun, was real enough, as was the large tattoo on his left shoulder. It was an aggressive-looking tattoo, depicting what appeared to be a mountain lion engaged in mortal combat with what appeared to be a buffalo. Or was it a wildebeest? Dr Fairbairn imagined himself stopping and asking the young man if he could clarify the situation. Is that a wildebeest? One might ask, but such questions could be misinterpreted. As Dr Fairbairn knew, men could not look too closely at the tattoos of others, without risking misunderstandings. But it was a mistake, he knew, to assume that somebody who provided the canvas for such a scene of combat would have an aggressive personality. This was not the case; a real softie might have a tattoo of a mountain lion for that very reason – he was a real softie.
These reflections made him remember that Wee Fraser, the boy whose analysis he had written about in Shattered to Pieces, had a tattoo, even though he was only three years old. He had had inscribed in capital letters across the back of his neck Made in Scotland, just below the hairline. When he had first noticed it, Dr Fairbairn had been astonished, and had wondered if somebody had written this in ballpoint ink on the boy’s skin, as some form of joke. But closer examination had revealed that it was a real tattoo.
286 A Tattooed Man Stirs Up a Painful Past
“You have something written on the back of your neck, Fraser,”
he had said gently. “What is it?”
Fraser had replied in very crude terms, indicating that it was no business of Dr Fairbairn’s, using language which nobody would expect so young a child to know; but then, Dr Fairbairn reflected, he would have heard these words on the BBC, and so perhaps it was inevitable. And some people had always wanted their children to speak BBC English and were now getting their wish fulfilled in this unusual way.
“You mustn’t talk like that, Fraser,” he said. “Those are bad words. Bad!”
At the end of the session, Fraser’s father, a fireman, had appeared to collect his son and Dr Fairbairn had taken the opportunity to ask why Fraser had Made in Scotland tattooed on the back of his neck.
“Because he was,” said the father simply, and h
ad winked at the psychotherapist.
That encounter was never mentioned in Shattered to Pieces.
Nor was that fateful occasion on which Dr Fairbairn had smacked Wee Fraser after the boy had bitten him, an episode which Dr Fairbairn had attempted to forget, but which kept coming back to haunt him, reminding him of his weakness. Indeed, the memory came back to him now, as he walked past the tattooed man, but he put it out of his mind, muttering, “We do not go back to the painful past.”
Dr Fairbairn was looking forward to the day ahead. He had a few hours to himself at the beginning, which would provide an opportunity to deal with correspondence and to do some further work on a paper that he was preparing for a conference, in collaboration with a well-known child psychotherapist from Buenos Aires. The conference was to be held in Florence, and for a moment he reflected on how pleasant it would be to be in Florence again, enjoying the always very generous hospitality of the Italian Association for Child Psychotherapy, an association whose corpulent president placed great emphasis on the importance of elaborate conference dinners and a good A Dangerous Turn in the Conversation 287
cultural programme. At the last such conference, when Dr Fairbairn had given his paper on early manifestations of the Oedipus complex, the delegates had been taken to a restaurant on the banks of the Arno where, as the sun set, they had been treated to a chocolate pudding borne in on a trolley, the pudding being in the shape of Vesuvius (the chef was a Neapolitan). The pudding’s very shape had been enough to draw gasps of admiration from those present, which turned to exclamations of surprise when fireworks within the chocolate crater had erupted into incandescent flows of sparks, like bright jets of lava, like tiny exhalations of fiery gold.
85. A Dangerous Turn in the Conversation Dr Fairbairn was pleased with the amount of work he had got through by the time Irene arrived in his consulting rooms at eleven o’clock.
“I have had a very satisfactory morning, so far,” he said, as he ushered her into the room. Then he thought that the words
“so far” might suggest that the morning was about to change, which had not been the meaning he had intended to convey. So he quickly added: “Not that I’m suggesting the tenor of the day will change because of your arrival. Au contraire.”
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