Pat shrugged. “I don’t mind.”
“Which means you want me to do so,” said Domenica. “And I shall. Of course, if you don’t want to come along, you needn’t. You could leave that nice young man to me.”
Pat stared at her in astonishment. Did Domenica really mean that?
Domenica, seeing Pat’s reaction, smiled coyly. “Why not, may I ask? Isn’t it fashionable these days for a…how shall we put it?–a more mature woman to have a somewhat younger man friend? Stranger things have happened.”
Pat wanted to laugh. It was absurd to think of Domenica as having a younger man; it was inconceivable. And what made Domenica imagine that Peter would even look at her for one moment? It was quite ridiculous.
“He’s a bit young for you, isn’t he?” she said. “You could have a younger boyfriend, I suppose, but not that young.”
“What you mean,” said Domenica, “is that in your opinion I’m too old. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
Pat wanted to say yes, it was, but refrained. The whole discussion was becoming embarrassing. She looked at her watch. She had forty minutes to get ready if she was to arrive at the Film Theatre in time. “I have to hurry,” she said. “I’m going to see a film.”
Domenica picked up her bag and reached for her hallway light switch. “I might just surprise you one of these days,” she said. “I could get a man if I wanted one, you know.”
“Of course you could,” said Pat hurriedly. “You’re an attractive woman. Men like you. Look at Angus Lordie.”
Domenica let out a shriek. “Oh, not Angus! For heaven’s sake! He would be desperation stakes–complete desperation stakes. No, I’m thinking of somebody a bit more romantic than that.”
Pat giggled, and gestured towards her own doorway. “Bruce?”
Domenica laughed. “There are limits,” she said. “But wait and see. I think I’m going to surprise you.”
Back inside the flat, Pat took out a fresh blouse and ran a bath for herself. She reflected on her conversation with Domenica, realising that she had made so many assumptions in it. She had assumed that somebody of sixty could not fall in love; that was ridiculous–it was ageist of her, she decided; very ageist. People said that you could fall in love at any stage in life–at eight, at eighteen, at eighty. And why not? The capacity to experience the other emotions did not wither; you could still feel anger, jealousy, distress and all the rest, however old you were. Love was in the same spectrum as these. And you could love anything, and anyone, whether or not the passion were returned. When she was very young, she had loved a knitted doll, a sailor in a blue suit. She had called him Pedro, for some inexplicable reason, and had carried him with her wherever she went. She had loved Pedro with all her heart, and she had been sure that he had loved her from the depths of his woolly being. The object of affection did not matter; the feeling did.
What did she have to love now? Pedro was no more, or, at the most, he was a few scraps of wool in the bottom of a drawer. He would have to be replaced; and Pedro…was Peter.
She reached out and turned off the taps. She was tired of being by herself. She did not want to have to go to the Film Theatre with the crowd; she wanted to go with somebody who would give all his attention to her, and her alone; who would take her out for dinner afterwards, or for a drink at the bar, and who would exchange confidences with her. And that, presumably, was the sort of thing that poor Domenica wanted for herself too. They were two lonely women wanting the same thing. And there was Bruce wanting it too, but going about the getting of it in quite the wrong way. Companionship. Tender friendship. Love. None of them had it at present, and time was leaking away, especially for Domenica.
29. At the Film Theatre
Matthew’s crowd, it transpired, consisted of five people, including Matthew himself. With Pat present, there were six of them, all sitting in a row in the half-empty film theatre. This Italian film was an obscure one, made by an obscure director and starring obscure actors, and although the programme notes referred to it as a key example of the Milanese Emptiness School, this distinction was not sufficient to draw the Edinburgh crowds. And to add to the general air of participation in an obscure event, the print was dark and scratchy, as if not enough light could penetrate it, or as if it had been made at dusk, on a cloudy day. The action took place in a small village between Milan and Parma, in the early 1950s. The village was closing, it seemed, through lack of support. The local priest, played by a man with a pronounced limp, had despaired of saving his congregation, which was now reduced to a few aged widows and a young girl who appeared to be developing stigmata. The stigmata which, if genuine, would have revived the village’s fortunes, turned out to be no more than a rash.
All the village men were in Bologna, where they were on strike. The strike had no cause and had no apparent ending. There was nobody to negotiate with, as the bosses had gone to Rome and declined to return. There was a profound crisis.
At the end of the film, the crowd had arisen from its seats and made its way through to the bar. Some people remained seated in the theatre, as if waiting for further explanation. Pat walked through with Matthew, and asked him what he thought of the film.
“Well,” he began, and then tailed off. He looked at her; she would have views perhaps; for his part, he had no idea what to say.
“Exactly,” whispered Pat. “And what did the crowd think?”
“The crowd’s not fussy,” said Matthew.
As they entered the bar, Pat looked at the individual members of the crowd. Matthew had introduced them to her before they had gone into the theatre, and now she recalled their names. Ed was the tall one in the black tee-shirt; Jim was the one with the earring; Philly was a blonde with rat’s-tail hair; and Rose had a curious pair of sixties-style glasses. Pat found herself staring at Rose, who caught her eye and smiled at her, hesitantly, Pat thought.
When they reached a table and sat down, Pat sat next to Rose, Ed on her other side. Matthew, who was several places away, looked inquiringly at Pat. He wanted her to move, thought Pat, but she would not: she was with the crowd, not with Matthew.
“You work for Matthew, don’t you?” asked Rose. Her voice was strange; rather high-pitched; not a confident voice.
“Yes,” said Pat. “I’m his assistant.”
Rose looked at her and said: “Lucky.”
“To work for Matthew? Lucky?”
“Yes,” said Rose. “I would love that.” She paused. It seemed to Pat as if she was preparing to ask something awkward, and indeed she was.
“Do you go out with him a lot?” Rose asked. “Or are you just…well, I suppose one should say, are you just…?”
“An employee,” Pat supplied. “I work for him, you see.”
This information seemed to please Rose, who glanced over at Matthew and then looked back at Pat. “I’ve known him a long time,” she said. “We used to go to a tennis club together. Not that my tennis is any good–it’s hopeless. Did you know that Matthew played tennis?”
Pat shook her head. She had always thought of Matthew as being slightly lazy; surely tennis would be too strenuous for him.
“And then,” Rose continued, “we went–the whole crowd, that is, minus Ed, who was having his appendix out–we went off to Portugal last year. For two weeks. That was such good fun.” She closed her eyes, as if to remember.
Pat looked at her. It was perfectly apparent that Rose had her eye on Matthew, but would her interest be reciprocated? She feared it would not. Rose was reasonably attractive, and appeared likeable enough, but that was not the point in these matters. What counted was chemistry, and when Matthew had introduced her to Rose he had done so in a way which did not suggest that there was anything special between them. Rose, no doubt, was trying too hard. Men did not like to be pursued–as a general rule–and Matthew would have picked up her interest–and retreated. There was no chance for Rose, Pat thought, unless she changed tactics–and people did not generally change tactics.
Ed now addressed a remark to Rose. Pat looked around her. The film in one of the other cinemas had come to an end and had discharged its patrons into the bar. They looked animated, and amused; no Milanese emptiness. She watched a couple of young men walk up to the bar. One of them was tall and was wearing a dark-green shirt. He stopped short of the bar to say something to his companion, who leaned forward to catch the remark. As he spoke, the tall young man looked out across the bar, directly at Pat. He paused, and the person with him looked back too.
He tried to place her. He had met her somewhere–at the café? Yes. At the café. With that woman who went on about that book. He nodded, and waved.
Pat thought: I want him to come over to me. That’s what I want. And he did, muttering something to his friend, who went on to order a drink.
“You,” he said, smiling.
“Yes,” she said. “Me.”
He bent down to speak to her. Rose looked up, glanced at him, and then at Pat. She thought: this is what happens to girls like that. They only have to walk into a room and they get men like that flocking round them. Bees to honey. And I can’t even get Matthew to notice me. Not even that.
“Were you in that Italian film?” Pat asked. “The Crisis?”
Peter shook his head. “No. We went to an Australian comedy. About an airline pilot and a nurse who get stuck in the Outback with a couple of Shakespearean actors.”
“I think I’ve heard about that one,” said Pat. “It’s a great idea for a film.”
She waited for Peter to say something, but for a few moments there was a silence. Then he said: “Do you want to come round some time? To Cumberland Street?”
“Yes,” said Pat. “That would be great.”
“Tomorrow evening?”
Pat nodded. She sensed that Rose had been listening.
30. At Big Lou’s
Big Lou stood in front of her new coffee-making machine, polishing its gleaming stainless-steel spouts, and admiring the fine Italian lines of the reservoir and high-pressure steam chamber. Only the Italians could produce a machine of this beauty; only the Italians would care enough to do so.
But she had more to think about than aesthetics; over the late summer, several major developments had taken place at Big Lou’s coffee bar. The purchase of this expensive new machine was one of the most important, and satisfying, and had attracted a great deal of attention from her regular customers, especially from Matthew, who had fallen in love with it the moment he had seen it. To gaze at the machine was pleasure enough; to turn the levers and control the outflow of steam–as Matthew was occasionally permitted to do–was a positive joy.
Another of these developments was the removal of the expensive newspaper rack. In its place she had installed a small table, which she had acquired from a saleroom on Leith Walk. On this table she stacked copies of the day’s papers and any magazines which were left behind by customers, provided, of course, Big Lou approved of them. The Scots Magazine was always there, and was popular, curiously enough, with some of the most intellectual customers, who read it with what seemed suspiciously close to a condescending smile. Why they should affect this expression was not clear to her. The Scots Magazine was popular in Arbroath, Big Lou’s home town, and she saw no reason why it should not be equally popular in Edinburgh. Or did Edinburgh, for some unfathomable reason, feel itself superior to Arbroath?
A further development was an important change in the mid-morning coffee regulars. Matthew still came every morning, of course, and stayed longer than anybody else, but the two furniture restorers had disappeared entirely. It was almost as if they had been written out of a story, thought Lou; simply no longer on the page. They had disappeared, and had taken their world with them. But just as they had gone, others had arrived. Mrs Constance, for instance, with her curious unkempt hair, had appeared one morning and had announced herself as “the woman from upstairs”–her flat being more or less immediately above the coffee bar. She was silent, for the most part, but occasionally joined in the conversation with observations that were remarkably acute.
Then there was Angus Lordie, the portrait painter from Drummond Place, and occasional poet. He had ventured into the coffee bar one morning and had found Matthew, whom he knew, engaged in conversation with Big Lou. Big Lou had been unsure about Angus Lordie to begin with, but had accepted his presence after she had taken to Cyril, his dog.
“There’s something strange about that creature,” she had remarked to Matthew. “He keeps looking at me and I could swear that he winks from time to time.”
“Yes, he does wink,” said Matthew. “Pat says that he winks at her all the time–as if they were sharing a secret. And he has a gold tooth, you know. It’s most peculiar. But then Angus is peculiar too. They suit one another.”
“Aye, well, he gives Cyril coffee,” Big Lou went on. “He thinks I don’t notice, but I do. He slips a saucer under the table and Cyril drinks it. The other day he ordered two cups of cappuccino. He assumed I would think they were both for him, but one was for Cyril. I saw him drink it–from the cup. He had the foam from the milk all around his jaws afterwards.”
Matthew nodded. “Cyril drinks beer too,” he said. “He’s a regular at the Cumberland Bar. Quite an intelligent dog, I think. And a good friend to Angus.”
She had thought about that over the following days. Big Lou was a sympathetic person and aware of loneliness. She had been by herself since she had come down to live in Edinburgh. Her solution had been to immerse herself in the books which she had inherited from the bookshop which had previously occupied the coffee-bar premises. These books were on a wide range of subjects–philosophy, topography, literature, and even dogs–and Big Lou was patiently making her way through all of these, one by one, completing an education which had been cut short at the age of sixteen.
That morning, nobody had come in before Matthew, and for a few minutes he and Big Lou were alone together.
“Are your parents alive, Lou?” Matthew suddenly asked. “You’ve never mentioned them, you know.”
Big Lou shook her head. “My father left us when I was eleven,” she said. “He died a bit later. Drink, I was told. My mother died when I was nineteen.”
“I’m sorry,” said Matthew.
Big Lou said nothing. She looked down at the counter. What was there to be said about the loss of parents? She could barely remember her father now, and her mother’s memory was fading. All she could recall was kindness, and love, like a surrounding mist.
“And you?” she asked. “You’ve just got your father, haven’t you?”
Matthew nodded. “He’s found himself a girlfriend, by the way,” he said quietly. “Some woman called Janis.”
Big Lou smiled. “That’s nice. That’s nice for him.”
Matthew took a sip of coffee. “I suppose so.”
Big Lou watched him. She was about to say something to him, but the door opened and Angus Lordie arrived, closely followed by Cyril. He nodded to Lou and made his way over to take his seat next to Matthew. Cyril sat down beneath the table and stared at Matthew’s ankles. He would have loved to bite them, but would not. He understood the rules.
“I’ve been reading the paper for the last hour,” Angus remarked breezily. “And the state of the world–my goodness! Everywhere one looks–ghastly. And of course we, you may recall, Matthew, are actively engaged in hostilities, together with our friends, the Americans. Not exactly on our doorstep, but hostilities nonetheless. Were you aware of that? Does it feel like wartime to you? What about you, Lou? Do you feel as if you’re at war?”
“No,” said Lou. “I don’t. Nobody consulted me about it.”
“Ah,” said Angus Lordie. “But nobody is ever consulted about a war, are they? It’s still our war, though.”
Matthew interrupted. The war was not Big Lou’s fault, as far as he was concerned–nor his, for that matter.
“There’s nothing that Big Lou can do about it,” he said. “I don’t think it’s anything to d
o with her.”
Big Lou had been busying herself with the cup of foamed coffee she was preparing for Angus. She had been listening too, of course, and now she turned round. She had something to say on this subject.
31. Act and Omission
Big Lou leaned over the counter. “Yes,” she said. “That’s very interesting, what you say, Matthew. You say that there’s often nothing we can do, but I’m not sure that that’s quite right. I’m not just talking about this war, now. I’m talking about things in general. Can you really say that there’s nothing that we can do about things that we disapprove of, when they’re done by the government? Are you sure about that?”
“You can vote,” said Angus. “Get people out.” He thought for a moment before adding: “Mind you, have you ever tried getting the Labour Party out in Scotland? Ever tried that?”
“That might be because people want them in,” said Big Lou. “I do, at least. Anyway, you can vote. But how often do we get the chance to do that? And even then, we might not have much of a choice.”
“But at least you’ve done what you can,” joined in Matthew, who had never voted, never; from lethargy, and indecision. “Once you’ve voted, that is.”
Big Lou agreed with this, but there was more to the issue than simple voting. There were many other things one could do, she thought. One could write to politicians. One could give money to causes. One could protest in the street. There were options. She pointed this out to Matthew and Angus, but then she added: “But the real question, boys, is this: do we have a duty to do anything to stop things we may not like? Is it all right just to do nothing, provided that we don’t do anything that makes matters worse?”
Angus exchanged a glance with Matthew. He was not yet used to Big Lou’s philosophical reflections, and his attitude was slightly condescending. Matthew sensed this and wanted to say something to him about it, but had not yet had the chance. He would speak to him, though, later.
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