She left the room, shaken by what had happened and by her reaction to it. She did not know what to do, and went aimlessly into the kitchen and switched on a light. She would eat something, perhaps, or put on the kettle – anything to occupy herself for a few moments and take her mind off the encounter she had just had. Everything, it seemed to her, had changed. She had left the flat that morning as a different person; as a person who was in command of herself, and come back a person in thrall. It was profoundly unsettling, just as it was completely unexpected. And it was unwanted too.
She was aware of Bruce in the background, of the opening of the bathroom door and its closing, of the sound of footsteps on the stripped pine floorboards, of the sound of a radio which he had switched on. She felt restless and confused. It was a good thing that he was going out, as this would stop her thinking of him; no, it was a bad thing, as she wanted him to be there. But I do not want him, she told herself; I do not want this. I do not.
On impulse, she left the kitchen and walked into the hall and opened the cupboard to retrieve the ironing board. She had some clothes to iron. It was a task that she never enjoyed, but it was domestic and mindless and it would take her mind off him.
She flicked the switch inside the cupboard. There was the ironing board and there, of course, would be the painting, the Peploe? that she was looking after. But it was not, of course, and she gasped at the discovery.
“Something wrong?”
He was standing immediately behind her, and she was aware of the freshly-applied hair gel.
“There was something I was looking after.” Her voice faltered. “A painting …”
Bruce laughed. “Oh that. Well, I’m very sorry, I got rid of that. I didn’t know it was yours. I thought …”
She turned to him aghast. Now he became defensive. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “If you leave things lying about in that cupboard they’re fair game. Rules of the flat. Always have been.”
69. The Turning to Dust of Human Beauty
Domenica opened the door of her flat to a neighbour clearly in distress. Wordlessly, she ushered Pat in.
“I feel that I don’t even have to ask you,” she said as she led Pat into her study. “It’s him, isn’t it? Bruce.”
Pat nodded. She had fought back her tears while Bruce explained to her what had happened to the painting, but now they came, a cathartic flood. He had been unapologetic. “How was I to know?” he asked. “There are all sorts of things in there.”
“Can you get it back? You must know who has it.”
Bruce shrugged. “Some old couple won it. Ramsey something or other, and his gas-bag wife. I don’t know anything about them. Sorry.”
Pat felt outraged. “You could ask,” she shouted. “That’s the least you could do.”
Bruce drew back, shaking a finger at her. “Temper! Temper!” He had done this to her before, after the incident with the hair gel, and the effect had been the same: the provoking of a seething anger. But she had said nothing more; she felt too weak, too raw to do anything, but the exchange had ended with a weak promise from Bruce to ask Todd for the Dunbarton telephone number. A few minutes later she had heard the front door close as he left the flat, and she sat in her room, her head in her hands. How was she to tell Matthew, as she would have to do? It occurred to her that she might lose the job at the gallery, and while she would be able to find something else, there was the ignominy of dismissal.
Telling Domenica helped.
“It’s not the end of the world,” she said, when Pat had finished. “You should be able to get it back. After all, these people who won it have no right to keep it. It was not Bruce’s to give in the first place, and that means that they can’t acquire any right to it. It’s that simple.”
This had encouraged Pat, although doubts remained. “Are you absolutely sure about that?”
“Of course,” said Domenica. “Bruce effectively stole it from you. It’s stolen property. And stolen property is stolen property.”
Pat wiped at her eyes. “I feel so stupid,” she said. “Coming in here and burdening you with all this.”
Domenica reached out and laid a hand on her forearm. “You shouldn’t feel that. I’m very happy to help. And anyway, we all feel weak and sniffly from time to time.” She paused. “Of course, there is something else, isn’t there?”
Pat looked at her. Domenica could tell, she knew, but she was not at all sure if she wanted to speak about that.
Domenica smiled. “He’s got under your skin, hasn’t he?”
Pat did not answer. She stared down at the floor. She was thinking of her anger, her irritation with Bruce, but then the image came back to her of him standing there before the window, his shirt off. She looked up. Domenica was watching her.
“I thought that it might happen,” said Domenica. “I thought that it might happen in spite of everything. If one puts two people together and one of them is a young man like that, well …”
“I don’t like him,” said Pat. “You should hear what he says.”
“Oh, I know what Bruce is like,” said Domenica. “Remember that I’ve been his neighbour for some time. I know perfectly well what he’s like.”
“Well, why has this … why has this happened?”
Domenica sighed. “It’s happened for a very simple reason,” she said. “It’s a matter of human reaction to the beautiful. It’s a matter of aesthetics.”
“I feel this way about Bruce because he’s …” It was difficult for her to say it, but the word was there in the air between them.
“Precisely,” said Domenica. “And that’s nothing new, is it? That’s how people react to beauty, in a person or an object. We become intoxicated with it. We want to be with it. We want to possess it. And when that happens, we shouldn’t be the least bit surprised, although we often are.
“It’s an age-old issue,” she went on. “Our reaction to the beautiful occurs in the face of every single one of our intellectual pretensions. We may be very well aware that the call of beauty is a siren-call, but that doesn’t stop it from arresting us, seizing us, rendering us helpless. A soul-beguiling face will make anybody stop in their tracks, in spite of themselves.”
Pat listened in silence. Domenica was right, of course. Had Bruce not looked the way he looked, then she would have been either indifferent to him or actively hostile. He had done enough to earn her distaste, if not her enmity, with his condescension and his assumptions, and if it had not been for this aesthetic reaction, as Domenica called it, he would have been unable to affect her in this way. But the reality was that he had, and even now she cherished that moment of bizarre shared intimacy in his room, when he had removed his shirt and she had looked upon him.
“So,” said Domenica briskly. “Do you want my advice? Or my sympathy? Which is it to be?”
Pat thought for a moment. She had not expected these alternatives. She had expected, at the most, that Domenica would listen sympathetically and make a few general remarks, instead of which she had provided what seemed to be a complete diagnosis and was now offering something more.
“Your advice, I suppose.” She realised sounded grudging, which was not her intention, but her tone seemed not to disconcert Domenica.
“Well,” said Domenica. “It would seem to me that you have a clear choice. You can move out of the flat straightaway and endeavour never to see him again. That would be clean and quick, and, I suspect, rather painful. Or you can continue to live there and allow yourself to feel what you feel, but do it on your own terms.”
“And what would that mean – on my own terms?”
Domenica laughed. “Enjoy it,” she said. “Let yourself feel whatever it is that you feel, but just remember that at the end of the day he’s not for you and that you will have to get rid of him. And there’s another way in which this would be highly satisfactory.”
“Which is?”
“You might have the additional satisfaction of teaching him a lesson. He�
�s played with the affections of numerous young women – that’s the type of boy he is. Teach him a lesson. Help him to moral maturity.”
“But what if I still feel something for him?”
“You won’t,” said Domenica. “Believe me, there’s nothing more brittle than human beauty. Encounter it. Savour it, by all means. Then watch how it turns to dust.”
Pat sat quite still, watched by Domenica. “Anyway,” said Domenica, rising to her feet. “I’m about to go off to listen to a lecture at the Portrait Gallery. I suggest that you come with me. It’ll take you out of yourself for a couple of hours, and there are drinks afterwards to which I’m sure you can come. How about it?”
Pat thought for a moment. She did not want to go back to the flat, which was cold and empty. So she said yes, and they went out together, out into Scotland Street and the night.
70. An Evening with Bruce
Bruce did not feel apologetic about the scene which had developed over the missing painting; he felt annoyed. There was no reason for him to reproach himself, he thought, because he had had every reason to assume that the painting had been abandoned. It was valueless, anyway. Pat had screamed something about it being by Peploe, whoever he was, but Bruce doubted that unless, of course, this Peploe person was somebody’s uncle. He could tell when a painting was worth something, and that painting was definitely not worth the cost of the frame, which must have been pretty little anyway. What a fuss over nothing! You could get a painting like that any day of the week from one of those charity shops – useless pictures of the Trossachs or St Andrews or places like that. Completely useless. If she was so upset about it, then he might, just might, pick up something from one of those shops and give it to her to make up for it. But why should he? He had done no wrong, and her reaction was typical of a woman. They make the most ghastly fuss over little things; he had seen it all before and he had no time for it.
And what made it worse, he thought, was that that silly, half-hysterical girl was falling for him; her lying on his bed just confirmed the suspicions he had been entertaining for some time. Having had a great deal of experience of these things, Bruce could tell when somebody was falling for him. It was the way they looked at you; that slightly unfocused look. It was something to do with body chemistry, he imagined. The effect of pheromones made women’s eyes go all watery. It was curious, but he had seen it so many times when women looked at him.
Bruce had decided that she would get no encouragement from him. Being mixed up with her would make his life too complicated. She would be possessive, he expected, and would cramp his style. It would be difficult, for example, to bring other girls back to the flat as she would always be there, thinking that she had a prior claim on him. No, he would have to play this very carefully.
He might give Pat the occasional thrill, of course, as he had done when he had removed his shirt. She had been watching him – he had felt her gaze – and there was no doubt about her interest. But that would be about as far as it would go. She could look, but she would not be allowed to touch.
Now, this newly-acquired girl, Sally, was a different proposition altogether. Bruce had met her in the Cumberland Bar when she had been brought there by friends of his, and he had become immediately interested in her. He had known at once that she was his type: a tall, willowy girl, with a good eye for casual elegance in clothes. She had attracted his attention right away and he had sidled up to her and asked for an introduction. She had looked him up and down appraisingly and had smiled at him, which was no more than he expected, of course.
“Yo!” Bruce said.
“Ya!” came the reply, and with these short, potent words the compact had been sealed. They had talked enthusiastically. Sally was American, and in Edinburgh for a year – “long enough,” thought Bruce – and was studying for a master’s degree in economics.
“Cool!” Bruce said, and she had nodded.
“Yeah,” she said. “Cool.”
At the end of the evening they had agreed to meet the following evening, and now Bruce stood in the Cumberland Bar awaiting her arrival. There were one or two people he recognised in the bar, but he did not feel like talking to them. He had put the row with Pat out of his mind, and he was now thinking about something rather more important – his job. He was becoming bored with surveying, and was particularly disenchanted with Raeburn Todd, his boss, and the firm of Macaulay Holmes Richardson Black. This feeling had been building up and had been brought to a head by his experiences at the Conservative Ball. That had been a particularly depressing occasion from Bruce’s point of view, as it had given him a vision of what might become of him if he did not make a change. Todd was the warning incarnate, thought Bruce: that is how I shall talk and behave if I remain where I am. I shall become exactly like Todd, with a wife exactly like Sasha, and a house in the Braids. No, that would not do: there must be an alternative.
But the identification of the rut was one thing; the finding of a way out was quite another. Bruce had thought of other possibilities, only to reject them. Many of his friends were accountants or lawyers – the Cumberland Bar was full of them. But it would take too long now for him to qualify for either of these professions, and the accountancy examinations were notoriously stressful. So those two options at least were firmly ruled out. What else was there? Finance was a possibility, but that was ruthlessly competitive and dominated by people with a background in mathematics. Bruce acknowledged that he was not very good with numbers, and so he would need to go for something where he could use his social skills. He looked about the bar, and at that moment the idea occurred. The wine trade. He knew a few people in wine, and they struck him as being very much his type. If they could do it, then there was no reason why he should not make a go of it. Bruce Anderson, MW, he muttered under his breath. Specialist in Bordeaux and California. He caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror behind the bar and he smiled. MW – Master of Wines. It would be considerably more impressive than being a surveyor.
He was still smiling when Sally came into the bar.
“You’re looking great,” he said.
“You too.”
“Gracias.” He would normally have said merci to a compliment of this sort, but he remembered that she was American and that Americans tended to speak Spanish rather than French.
He bought her a drink – a glass of Margaret River Chardonnay – and they chatted easily, perched on stools at the bar. Half an hour later, Bruce looked at his watch.
“Do you feel like eating?”
Sally looked him up and down. “I could eat you up,” she said.
Bruce laughed. “Cool.”
71. At the Scottish National Portrait Gallery
While Bruce and Sally were engaged in culinary self-appraisal in the Cumberland Bar, Domenica and Pat were making their way up the stairs at the National Portrait Gallery in Queen Street.
“Such an edifying building,” observed Domenica. “A wonderful mixture of Gothic and Italianate. There are two galleries I really love – this one and the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Do you know New York?”
Pat did not. “In which case,” Domenica continued, “you should go there as soon as you get the chance. Such an exhilarating place. And the Metropolitan Museum is such a wonderful box of delights. It has all those marvellous collections donated by wealthy New Yorkers who spend all their lives acquiring things and then give them away.”
“Perhaps they feel guilty,” suggested Pat.
Domenica did not agree. “The very rich don’t do guilt,” she said, adding, “as one might say today. President Bush said that he didn’t do nuances. Isn’t that wonderful! The verb ‘do’ does so much these days. Even I’m beginning to do ‘do’.”
They reached the top of the stairs and made their way into the hall where rows of chairs had been set up for the lecture. There was already a fair crowd, and they had to find seats at the back. Domenica waved to one or two people whom she recognised and then turned to address Pat, her voice low
ered.
“Now this is interesting,” she said. “This is a very interesting audience. There are some people here who are just itching to have their portraits painted. They come to everything that the gallery organises. They sit through every lecture, without fail. They give large donations. All for the sake of immortality in oils. And the sad thing is – it never works. Poor dears. They just aren’t of sufficient public interest. Fascinating to themselves and their friends, but not of sufficient public interest.”
Domenica smiled wickedly. “There was a very embarrassing incident some years ago. Somebody – and I really can’t name him – had a portrait of himself painted and offered it to the gallery. This put them in a terrible spot. The painting could just have been lost, so to speak, which would have been a solution of sorts, I suppose, but galleries can’t just lose paintings – that’s not what they’re meant to do. So they were obliged to say that he just wasn’t of sufficient public interest. So sad, because he really thought he was of great public interest.
“Then there are people who are of some interest, but not quite enough, or at least not quite enough while they’re still alive. It will be fine when they’re dead, but the gallery can hardly tell them that the best thing to do is to die. That would be rude. It’s rather like the way we treat our poets. We’re tremendously nice to them after they’re dead. Mind you, some poets are rather awkward when they’re still alive. MacDiarmid could be a little troublesome after a bottle of Glenfiddich. He became much safer post-mortem.”
“I can tell you the most remarkable story about MacDiarmid,” Domenica continued. “And I saw this all happen myself – I saw the whole thing. You know the Signet Library, near St Giles? Yes? Well, I was working there one day, years ago. They had let me use it to have a look at some rather interesting early anthropological works they had. I was tucked away in a corner, completely absorbed in my books, and I didn’t notice that they had set out tables for a dinner. And then suddenly people started coming in, all men, all dressed in evening dress. And I thought that I might just stay where I was – nobody could see me – and find out what they were up to. You know how men are – they have these all-male societies as part of their bonding rituals. Tragic, really, but there we are. Poor dears. Anyway, it transpired that a terribly important guest was coming to this one, none other than the Duke of Edinburgh himself. Frightfully smart in his evening dress. And there, too, was MacDiarmid, all crabbit and cantankerous in his kilt and enjoying his whisky. I was watching all this from my corner, feeling a bit like an anthropologist observing a ritual, which I suppose I was. A little later on, the Duke stood up to make a speech and I’m sorry to say that MacDiarmid started to barrack him. He was republican, you see. And what happened? Well, a very well-built judge, Lord somebody, lifted the poet up and carried him out of the room. So amusing. The poet’s legs were kicking about nineteen to the dozen, but to no avail. And I watched the whole thing and concluded that it was some sort of metaphor. But I’ve never worked out what it was a metaphor for!”
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