“I must say that is amazing,” said the accountant, pointing to the balance sheet which he had prepared for Matthew. “I’m quite astonished. You’re showing a profit.” He said this, and then immediately felt embarrassed. It was tantamount to saying that he expected Matthew to fail–which of course he did.
Matthew had not noticed the slight; he looked at the figures. “According to this, I’ve made eleven thousand pounds in three months. Are you sure there’s no mistake?”
The accountant smiled. “We’re very careful about that. And I’ve checked the spread-sheets. You’ve made just over eleven thousand, as it says there. Profit. But remember, trading goes in cycles. A good quarter doesn’t make a good year.”
“But even if I made no more this year, that’s still a respectable profit…” he tailed off, and then added, “for me.”
The accountant nodded. “I’ve told your old man. I hope you don’t mind. He’s been quite chirpy over the last few weeks, I think. This news cheered him up even more.”
Matthew barely took in this news about his father, so ecstatic was he over the gallery’s success. And the news from Pat, that she was going to stay in Edinburgh and could continue to work part-time while at university, had boosted Matthew’s spirits. In fact, he realised that Pat had had a great deal to do with this profit. She was good at sales. She knew the ten secrets of retail, even if she did not know that she knew them. He must talk to her about that.
Having opened the gallery that morning, and having switched on the lights that illuminated the paintings, Matthew sat back in his chair and browsed through an auction catalogue that had arrived the previous day. There was to be a sale of Scottish art at Hopetoun House, and it occurred to him that now was the time for him to start buying. With that eleven thousand pounds’ profit behind him he could go to the bank and get a line of credit for the expansion of his stock. Not little, frippery things, but big paintings. A Hornel perhaps.
He was thinking of this when he heard the bell which sounded as the front door opened. It would be Pat. He looked up. It was not. It was his father.
20. Second Flowering
Matthew greeted his father warmly. Although they had not always been on the easiest of terms, particularly in the days of Matthew’s earlier business failures, they had come to understand one another, and with that understanding had come a comfortable and undemanding relationship. Matthew’s father, Gordon, came to appreciate the fact that even if his son was a bad businessman, he was honest and well-meaning, and would not disgrace him in any way. And for his part, Matthew had reached that stage in life when one accepts parents for what they are. His father’s world–the world of Rotary clubs and business lunches–would never be his own world, but did that matter?
Matthew did not know it, but Gordon felt strongly guilty about him. He felt this guilt because he believed that he had been a failure as a father. While other fathers had made time to spend with their sons, he had not. He had gone to none of the school plays which Matthew had appeared in, and had even missed the school production of Carousel, in which Matthew had played Billy Bigelow and his friend, Mark, had played Mr Snow. He had been too busy with business affairs and with the social life that went with that. Then Matthew had grown up and left home and he had tried to make it up to him by setting him up in businesses and putting money in his bank account. And now it was too late.
Matthew rose to greet his father. “A nice surprise,” he said. “Want to buy a painting?”
Gordon smiled. “I have simple tastes in art,” he said. “Highland scenes. Seascapes.”
“We have both of those,” said Matthew. “And a very rare Vettriano abstract.”
“I came to say hello,” said Gordon. “I was on my way to the lawyers in Charlotte Square. They look after me very well, those people. I’m seeing them at eleven, and I thought I’d drop in and see how things were going. I gather you’re turning in a profit.”
Matthew sat back in his chair and smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Surprised?”
Gordon looked down. My son knows what I think of him, he thought. He expects me to be surprised if he does anything well. And that’s my fault; nobody else’s–mine.
“I wanted to congratulate you,” he said. “Yes, I was a little bit surprised. But perhaps…perhaps you’ve found your niche. And good for you.”
Matthew looked at his father. There was something about him which was slightly different. He had had a haircut, yes, and he was losing a bit of weight. But there was something else. Were his clothes slightly younger in style?
“You look in good shape,” he said. “Have you started going to the gym?”
Gordon blushed. “As a matter of fact, I have. Nothing too strenuous, of course. A bit of weight training and those running machines–you know, the ones which make you sweat. I do about two hours a week.”
Matthew raised an eyebrow. “Do you go by yourself?”
Gordon hesitated before he answered. “Actually,” he began, “I have somebody who goes with me. She does aerobics and I do my running and pushing weights.”
Matthew said nothing for a moment. She. That would explain the change. He had found a girlfriend. “Good,” he said, after a while. “It’s nice to have company. Who is she, by the way?”
Gordon moved across the room. He continued the conversation as he leaned forward to examine a painting.
“Nice landscape this,” he said. “She’s called Janis. I met her a few months ago at the Barbours’. Remember them? They send their regards. Anyway, Janis was at a dinner party there and…and, well, we hit it off. I’d like you to meet her.”
Matthew looked across the room. Why was it so hard to imagine one’s parents having an emotional life? There was no reason why this should be so, but it just was. And his father, of all people! What could any woman possibly see in him…apart from money, of course?
“What does…what does Janis do?” he asked.
“She owns a flower shop,” said Gordon. “It’s a nice little business. People still buy flowers, you know. She says that flowers are all about guilt. Men buy flowers because they feel guilty about something. About neglecting their wives, about all that sort of thing…” He tailed off. And what about neglect of sons? he thought. What about that?
Matthew listened to this information. A woman who owned a flower shop? There was nothing wrong with that, of course, but he could picture her–alone in her flower shop, amidst all those carnations and bunches of red roses, waiting for her chance. And along comes his father, with his GBP 11.2 million (or that was the figure that Matthew had last heard) and, well, it would be infinitely better, would it not, than selling flowers to guilty husbands. Gold-digger, he thought.
Gordon turned round from the painting he had been examining. “I’d like you to meet her,” he said. “How about dinner in the club this Friday? Would that suit?”
There was something almost pathetically eager in his tone that made Matthew regret what he had been thinking; more guilt, but this time the son’s rather than the father’s. There was so much guilt in Edinburgh, everywhere one turned. Everyone felt guilty about something. Guilt. Guilt.
“Yes,” said Matthew, guiltily. “I could be free. What time?”
“Seven-guilty,” said Gordon, and then rapidly correcting himself, “I mean seven-thirty.”
“Fine,” said Matthew. “I look forward to meeting…”
“Janis,” supplied his father. “With an is, not an ice.”
Matthew wondered whether this made a difference. He had a very clear idea of what she would be like, however she spelled her name. Blonde hair. And sharp features. And a nose for money.
They moved on to other subjects. Gordon had recently sold off one of his businesses and told Matthew about what had happened to it in its new hands. Then he related developments at the golf club, where a new secretary had been appointed and had upset some of the members by unilaterally changing the date of the annual dinner dance, a small thing perhaps, but a big thing for some
.
And there was more of that sort of news, although Matthew paid even less attention to it than usual. He was wondering: what if I didn’t have my father behind me? What if somebody came along and took all that support away from me? How would I react to being done out of my inheritance? Badly, he thought.
21. Demographic Discussions
Pat came into the gallery to find Matthew at his desk, sunk in thought. She looked at her watch. “You’re in early,” she said brightly. Matthew looked up at her and mumbled a good-morning.
Since his father had left ten minutes earlier, he had been sitting at his desk thinking of the implications of Janis. It was possible–just possible–that she had no ulterior intent, that her interest in his father was emotional rather than pecuniary. But was that likely? Matthew could not imagine that anybody could find his father attractive; indeed, he was a most unromantic figure, with his thoughts of balance-sheets and the Watsonian Club and Rotary lunches. Could any woman find any of that interesting? Surely not. And yet, and yet…It was one of the constant surprises of this life, Matthew had found, that women found men attractive, against all the odds, and irrespective of the sort of man involved. The most appalling men had their partners, did they not, and these women often appeared to like them. There were so many examples of that, including people in the public eye. It was well-known, for instance, that psychopaths took rather well to the world of business and that modern business culture encouraged precisely that sort of personality. Some of these business moguls were often much sought after by women. Why? Because such men were cave-men, without their physical clubs, perhaps, but with the modern equivalent, and there were some women who simply found such men interesting.
And of course one had to remember–and Matthew did–that there were many women whose condition was one of quiet desperation. There were many women who wanted a man and who simply could not find one, for demographic or other reasons. Such women will accept anybody who comes along and shows the remotest interest, even my father, thought Matthew.
He looked up at Pat. “Why are there so few men, do you think, Pat?”
He asked the question without thinking, and was immediately embarrassed. But Pat smiled at him, apparently unsurprised to be greeted this early in the morning with such a query.
“Well,” she said. “Are there so few men? Aren’t there roughly the same number–to begin with–and only a little bit later, when the men die off, does the number of women go up? Isn’t that the way it works?”
Matthew frowned. “That may be true,” he said. “That may be true in terms of strict numbers, but why is it that even before the point at which men start to die off, there do not seem to be enough men to…to go round? Isn’t that what women find?”
Pat thought about this for a moment. Matthew was probably right; there never seemed to be enough men to satisfy women. Now that sounded odd; she would not put it quite that way. There never seemed enough men to provide each woman who was looking for a man with a man. That was it. Yes, Matthew was right. “Yes,” she said. “It’s not easy to find a boyfriend these days. I know plenty of people who would love to find a man, but can’t find one. We don’t know where they’ve gone. Disappeared.”
Matthew thought: you could look under your nose, you know. What about me? But said nothing. Somehow, he suspected, he did not count in this particular reckoning.
“Why is it?” he said. “What’s happened?”
Pat thought that he must know; but Matthew had always struck her as being unworldly. Perhaps he was unaware.
“Some men aren’t interested, Matthew,” she said. “You do realise that, don’t you?”
“Oh, I know about all that,” said Matthew. “But how many men are like that?”
Pat looked out of the window, as if to assess the passers-by. “Quite a lot,” she said. “It depends where you are, of course. Edinburgh’s more like that than Auchtermuchty, you know. And San Francisco is more like that than Kansas City. Ten per cent?”
“Well, that leaves ninety per cent.”
Pat shook her head. There had been a major change in social possibilities for men. They had been trapped, too, by the very structures that had trapped women, and now they had been freed of those and were enjoying that freedom. “No, it doesn’t,” she said. “Of those ninety per cent, a very large percentage now aren’t interested not because they’re not interested–so to speak–but because they’re perfectly happy by themselves. Women clutter their lives. They don’t need women any more. There are maybe…” She plucked a figure out of the air…“Twenty per cent of men who think that they’re better off by themselves. So if you add the ten per cent who aren’t available anyway, that means thirty per cent who are out of it, so to speak.”
Matthew thought about this. “But surely there will be the same number of women who drop out too? There’ll be women who don’t like men and women who may like men but who don’t want any involvement with them. So surely these two cancel one another out, and you end up with two equal groups?”
Pat was sure that this was wrong. The objection to Matthew’s theory, at least from her point of view, was that she had not met many women who would prefer to be by themselves rather than with a man, if a suitable man came along. But that, of course, meant nothing–and she was intelligent enough to see it. One should not generalise from one’s own experience, because one’s own experience was coloured by one’s own initial assumptions and perspective. If you like men, then you’ll end up in the company of those who like men too, and then you reach the conclusion that the whole world likes men. And that clearly was not true.
She sat down, facing Matthew. She was puzzled. “Why are you asking about all this?”
“It’s because my father seems to have found a girlfriend,” he said glumly. “And I don’t know what she sees in him.”
Pat had met Matthew’s father on a previous visit he had paid to the gallery. “But your father’s very nice,” she said. She paused, before adding: “And tremendously rich.”
22. Chow
“Now tell me, Bertie,” said Dr Fairbairn, straightening the crease of his trousers as he crossed his knees. “Tell me: have you written your dreams down in that little notebook I gave you?” Bertie did not cross his legs. He was unsure about Dr Fairbairn, and he wanted to be ready to leap to his feet if the psychotherapist became more than usually bizarre in his statements. The best escape route, Bertie had decided, would be to dart round the side of his desk, leap over the psychotherapist’s leather-padded couch, and burst through the door that led into the waiting room. From there he could launch himself down the stairs, sliding down the banister, if need be, and run out into the safety of the street. No doubt somebody would call the police and Dr Fairbairn would be led off to Carstairs, which Bertie understood to be the place where people of this sort sometimes ended up. They would take good care of him there, as the doctors would all be friends of his and would perhaps allow him to play golf in the hospital grounds while he was getting better.
He looked at Dr Fairbairn. He noticed that the tie which the psychotherapist frequently wore–the one with the teddy-bear motif–was missing, and that in its place there was a dark silk tie with a question-mark motif. Why would Dr Fairbairn have a question-mark on his tie? Bertie was intrigued.
“Yes, I’ve written down my dreams,” said Bertie. “But can you tell me, Dr Fairbairn: why have you got those question-marks on your tie?”
Dr Fairbairn laughed. “You’re always very observant about what I’m wearing, Bertie. Why do you think this is?”
“Because I can see your tie,” said Bertie. “I have to look at you when I talk to you and I see what you’re wearing.”
Dr Fairbairn stared at Bertie. “You’re not jealous, are you, Bertie? You’re not jealous of my tie, are you?”
Bertie drew a deep breath. Why should he think that he should be jealous, when he already had a tie at home? “No, I’m not jealous,” he said. “I just wondered.”
Dr Fairbair
n nodded. “You wouldn’t by any chance have thought of cutting my tie off? Have you thought that about your father’s ties?”
Bertie’s eyes narrowed. Would they let Dr Fairbairn wear a tie in Carstairs? he wondered. Or would they take it away from him? Would they cut if off? Dr Fairbairn was always going on about other people’s anxieties that things would be cut off; well, it would teach him a lesson if somebody came and cut his own tie off. That would serve him right.
“I’ve never wanted to do that,” he said quietly. “I like Daddy’s ties. He’s a got a tartan one that he sometimes wears with his kilt.”
The mention of a kilt seemed to interest Dr Fairbairn, who wrote something down on his pad of paper. The psychotherapist opened his mouth to speak, but Bertie was too quick for him. “My dream,” he said, fishing into his pocket for the notebook he had been given. “We mustn’t forget my dream.”
Dr Fairbairn smiled. “Of course,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me all about it? I’m very interested in your dreams, Bertie. Dreams are very important, you know.”
Bertie opened the notebook. He did not think that dreams were important. In fact, he thought that dreams were silly, and hardly worth remembering at all. Indeed, he had been quite unable to remember many dreams recently and had been obliged to resort to a dream he had experienced some months ago, so as to humour Dr Fairbairn.
Dr Fairbairn stared at Bertie. What a strange little boy this was–only six years old, and how determined, how astonishingly determined he was to suppress the Oedipal urge. It would come out, of course, but it might take some time, and dream analysis could help. All would be revealed. There would be father figures galore in this dream; just wait and see!
“I was on a train,” read Bertie. “I was on a train and the train was going through the countryside. There were fields on either side of it and there were people standing in the fields waving to us as we went past.”
“Were these people men or women?” asked Dr Fairbairn gently, his pencil moving quickly across the paper. They would be men, of course: fathers…watching, scrutinising.
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