44 Scotland Street (7 page)

“‘As Time Goes By’,” said her father. “From
Casablanca
. And it sounds as if it’s being played on a tenor sax. Not badly either.”

“It’s very loud,” said Pat. “It comes right up into my room.”

“I suppose you must expect
some
saxophone music if you live in a flat,” he said. “Still, you could ask them to keep it down, couldn’t you? Didn’t Tommy Smith learn to play the sax with socks stuffed down it because of the neighbours? I think he did.”

“I don’t really mind,” said Pat. “It’s better than listening to Bruce.”

“Your flatmate?”

“Yes,” said Pat. “But I suppose he’s not too bad.”

There was a short silence at the other end of the line. “You don’t want to come home, do you?”

“No. I don’t.”

14. The Smell of Cloves

Pat switched off the mobile. The saxophone player had stopped, and only silence came through the walls.

She began to think of Bruce, and how she should deal with him. It was not that he had been rude or stand-offish; it was more a question of his having
patronised
her. That might have been something to do with the fact that he was a crucial few years older than she was, but somehow it seemed to be more than that. It would be better, she thought, when the other two flatmates, Ian and Sheila, arrived, as Bruce would perhaps be a little bit less overbearing. But where were these other two? Bruce had said that they were away travelling, but had not been specific. He thought that they were in Greece, but he was not sure. And he had not said what they were doing there.

Pat got up from her bed and closed the curtains. Her room still had a musty smell to it, and she had left the window slightly open to freshen the air. She had also bought a supply of joss sticks, and she lit one of these now, savouring the sharp sandalwood smell of the curling wisp of smoke.

Picking up her towel from where she had draped it over the back of her chair, she made her way through to the bathroom. It was a good opportunity to use it; Bruce tended to monopolise it when he was in, and the previous evening, when she had been trying to luxuriate in the bath, he had knocked on the door and asked her when she would be coming out. This was a small thing, perhaps, but it was irritating.

Pat closed the bathroom door behind her and began to run a bath. Putting her towel down on the bentwood bathroom chair, she slipped out of her shoes and was about to get undressed when her eye was caught by the mirrored cupboard above the hand-basin. This was a large cupboard, and she noticed that there were greasy fingerprints on the mirror near the handle where somebody, presumably Bruce, had touched the mirror as he opened the cupboard door.

A shared bathroom is not a place of secrets, and Pat felt quite entitled to open the cupboard. After all, she might store her things there too; Bruce did not have an exclusive claim to storage space, even if he was the senior resident.

There were three shelves in the cupboard, and all of them were virtually full of jars and tubes. Pat peered at the labels on the jars nearest the front:
après rasage pour hommes actifs
; r
estoring
cream for the masculine face; gel pour l’homme sportif
. Pat leaned forward and made a closer inspection. She knew that men used cosmetics, but this, surely, was an over-abundance. And did men actually use body butter? Bruce apparently did.

Pat reached forward and took out the jar of
gel pour l’homme
sportif
. Opening it, she stuck a finger into the oleaginous substance and sniffed at it. It was not unpleasant; redolent of cloves perhaps. She took a further sniff at the gel, and then the jar slipped out of her hands and fell to the floor. It bounced once and shattered, leaving a circle of green gel on the floor, like a small inverted jelly, covered with fragments of glass.

She stared at the broken glass and the now useless gel. A spicy smell hung in the air. So might Zanzibar smell, on a hot night, or an Indonesian bar with its cloud of clove tobacco smoke in the air; or the bathroom of a flat in Scotland Street. She left

the mess where it was, intending to clear it up after her bath. And she thought of her father, and a remark he had made about accidents and how they reveal our repressed wishes. W
e destroy
that which we love
, he had said. Had she intended to destroy Bruce’s hair gel, because she was falling in love with him? Impossible. She could not fall in love with Bruce. She simply could not.

15.
560
SEC

Pat left the flat the next morning at precisely the time that Domenica Macdonald opened her door onto their mutual landing. Domenica, wearing a green overcoat and carrying a scuffed leather bag, greeted her warmly and enquired about her settling in.

“I’m very happy,” said Pat, but thought immediately of the fact that she had not told Bruce about the dropping of the gel. “It’s all going well, or …”
Quite well
was what she meant to say.

“I know,” said Domenica, lowering her voice. “Bruce might be a little bit, how should we put it? Difficult? Is that the right word, difficult?”

“Different,” suggested Pat.

Domenica smiled, and took Pat’s arm as they went downstairs. “Men
are
different, aren’t they? I remember when I first lived with a man – my husband, in fact, things being somewhat more
respectable
in those days, I found it very strange indeed. Men are so … so… well, I must say I don’t quite know the word for men, do you?”

“Masculine?” suggested Pat.

Domenica laughed. “Exactly. That says everything, doesn’t it? Bruce is masculine. In a way.” She looked at Pat in a shared moment of feminine understanding. “They’re little boys, aren’t they? That’s what I think they are.”

They were now on the landing of the floor below, and Domenica gestured at the door of the flat on the right. “Speaking of little boys, that’s where young Bertie lives. You will have heard him playing the saxophone last night, I assume.”

Pat glanced at the door, which was painted light blue and bore a sticker indicating that no nuclear power was produced, nor used, within.

“Yes,” she said. “I heard him.”

Domenica sighed. “I don’t object to the noise. He plays remarkably well, actually. What I object to is his age.”

Pat was uncertain what this meant, and looked at Domenica quizzically. It was difficult to imagine how one might object to the age of another person: age was something beyond one’s control, surely.

Domenica sensed her confusion. “Bertie, you see, is very young. He’s about five, I believe. And that’s too young to play the saxophone.”

“Five!”

“Yes,” said Domenica, looking disapprovingly at the landing behind them and at the light blue door. “Very pushy parents! Very pushy, particularly her. They’re trying to raise him as some sort of infant prodigy. He’s being taught music and Italian by his mother. Heaven knows why they decided on the saxophone, but there we are. Poor child!”

Pat found it difficult to imagine a five-year-old boy playing
As Time Goes By
on the saxophone. If it was a tenor instrument, then it would be difficult to see how his fingers would span the keys. And a saxophone would be almost as tall as the boy himself. Did he stand, then, on a chair to play it?

“The whole point about childhood,” Domenica went on, “is that it affords us a brief moment of innocence and protection from the pressures of the world. Parents who push their children too hard intrude on that little bit of space. And of course they make their children massively anxious. You weren’t pushed by your parents, were you?”

Pat shook her head. “Not at all. I was encouraged, but not pushed.”

“There’s a big difference,” said Domenica. “And I could tell that you weren’t pushed. You’re too calm and sensible. You seem to be a very balanced person to me. Not that I know you terribly well. In fact, I don’t know you at all. But one gets that
feeling
about you.”

Pat felt vaguely embarrassed by this conversation, and was about to change the subject, but they had by now reached the front door and Domenica had disengaged her arm.

“You’re on your way to work?”

“Yes,” said Pat.

“I could give you a lift,” Domenica offered. “My car is right there in the street. It would be no trouble.”

“Work is just round the corner,” said Pat. “It’s kind of you, though.”

Domenica paid no attention to this refusal. “That’s it over there,” she said. “That custard-coloured Mercedes-Benz 560 SEC. That’s my car.”

Pat stared at the car which was being pointed out by Domenica. It was a sleek-looking coupé with gleaming silver hub caps and a proud Mercedes circle worked into the grille. “It’s a very beautiful car,” she said. “A lovely car.”

“It’s a dream to drive,” said Domenica. “It has a double kick-down feature. You press your foot right down and it shifts the automatic gear-box down, twice, if you need it. And the power! The engine capacity is five point six litres, which gives it the power of five Minis!”

“Five Minis!” exclaimed Pat.

“Yes!” said Domenica. “Five Minis! Now come, my dear, let’s get in it!”

16. Irrational Beliefs and the Mind of the Child

Bertie and his mother came out of the front door of 44 Scotland Street just after Domenica and Pat had strapped themselves into the front seats of the custard-coloured Mercedes-Benz. Neither couple noticed one another: Domenica was busy with the starting of the engine, while Pat was looking with admiration at the plush off-custard leather upholstery and the polished walnut dashboard. For their part, the two members of the Pollock family, young Bertie, aged five, and his mother, Irene, aged thirty-four, were concerned about getting to the East New Town Nursery in good time. For Bertie, an early arrival was important if he was to secure the train set before other boys, with lesser moral entitlements, claimed it; for Irene, an early arrival meant that she could speak to the supervisor, Miss Christabel Macfadzean, before she became too distracted by children and parents to give her any attention. There were several matters which she wished to raise with her, and it was no good writing to her as she never gave anything more than a brief acknowledgment of the note.

Irene did not like Christabel Macfadzean, even if she had to admit grudgingly that the teacher had a few good points – she was conscientious enough, and the children seemed quite attached to her. The trouble was, though, that she did not appear to realise just how gifted Bertie was and how much extra stimulation and attention he needed. This was not to say that other children did not have their needs – of course they did – it’s just that Bertie’s needs were special. The other children could not read, for instance, while Bertie read English well and was making good progress with Italian. He had a well-used Italian children’s book, L
‘Avventure del Piccolo Roberto
which he could now read in its entirety, and he had moved on to an Italian translation of
Max und Moritz
(not something with which Irene saw eye to eye ideologically, but it was better, she decided, than the
Struwwelpeter
with its awful cruelties).

As they walked through Drummond Place, Bertie held onto his mother’s hand and desperately tried to avoid stepping on any of the cracks in the pavement.

“Do come along, Bertie,” said Irene. “Mummy has not got all day. And why are you walking in that silly way?”

“Cracks,” said Bertie. “If I step on the cracks, then they’ll get me.
È vero
.”

“What nonsense!” she said. “
Non è vero!
And who are
they
anyway? The CIA?”

“Bears …” Bertie began, and then stopped. “The CIA? Do they get you too?”

“Of course they don’t,” said Irene. “Nobody gets you.”

They walked on in silence. Then Bertie said: “Who are the CIA? Where do they live?”

“The CIA are American spies,” said Irene. “They watch people, I suppose.”

“Are they watching us?”

“Of course not. And they don’t mind if you step on the cracks. Plenty of people step on the cracks and get away with it.”

Bertie thought for a moment. “Some people get away with it? And other people? What happens to them?”

“Nothing,” said Irene. “Nothing happens to anybody if they step on the cracks. Look, I’m stepping on the cracks, and nothing is happening to me. Look. Another crack, right in the middle, and nothing …”

She did not complete her sentence. Her heel, caught in a rather larger than usual crack, became stuck and she fell forwards, landing heavily on the pavement. Her foot, wrenched out of its shoe, twisted sharply and she felt a sudden pain in her ankle.

Bertie stood quite still. Then he looked up at the sky and waited for a moment. If there was to be further retribution, perhaps it would be from that quarter. But nothing came, and he felt safe enough to bend down and take his mother’s hand.