The Importance of Being Seven (9 page)

‘Are we allowed to call them pygmies these days?’ asked Angus. ‘Or are they something else? Forest people?’

Big Lou glared at him. ‘If they’re called forest people now,’ she said, ‘it must be for a good reason.’

‘Political correctness,’ said Angus. ‘That’s the reason.’

Big Lou made a dismissive sound. Attacks on political correctness, in her view, were often made by those who had never suffered insult or known what it was like to be at the bottom of the heap. Not that she approved of the wilder excesses of the movement – the Stalinist prohibitions on simple human expression and feelings – but she applauded the increased sensitivity that had grown around the vulnerabilities of others. She was pleased that people were no longer left out because they were different; or made to think the less of themselves because of what they were. She fixed Angus with a stare. ‘Maybe they had good reason not to want to be called pygmies,’ she said. ‘You’ve never had to worry about that sort of thing, have you? You don’t know what it’s like to be called something belittling.’

‘But they are little,’ said Angus, looking to Matthew for support. ‘You don’t belittle the little by calling them little. What should we call them? Big?’

Big Lou shot Matthew a discouraging glance. ‘They’re not little in their own eyes. Not as far as they’re concerned.’

‘Does it matter?’ asked Matthew. ‘Does it really matter whether you’re short, like a pyg … like a forest person, or whether you’re tall? Does it matter?’

‘No,’ said Big Lou. ‘It doesn’t.’ She passed Angus his cup of coffee and looked at him challengingly.

‘Actually, Lou,’ said Angus, taking the coffee over to Matthew’s table. ‘Actually it matters quite a lot to some people. We had a very short man in the Scottish Arts Club once, and it made him very unhappy. If he had been granted one wish – one wish – I know what it would have been. To be taller. Poor chap. He used to paint pictures of very tall people. All his figurative studies were of tall people.’

‘How sad,’ said Matthew.

‘Yes, it was,’ said Angus. ‘It must be very sad to have to go through life wanting to be something that you can’t be. To be gay when you want to be straight, for instance. That can’t be easy.’

Matthew frowned. ‘Except that most people who are gay are actually quite comfortable with their identity. These days, at least.’ He paused. ‘Do you think there are straight people who would prefer to be gay? Do you think it works that way round?’

Angus thought for a moment. ‘I’ve not heard of it. There’s no pressure to be gay, you see. The reason why gay people sometimes want to be straight is because they’ve been put under such strong pressure to be straight. It’s oppression, really; it’s very cruel. So they find themselves wishing that they were what society wants them to be. How many lives have been ruined by that.’

‘It’s like tall people not wanting to be short, ‘ said Matthew.

Big Lou looked at him. ‘I’m quite tall,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t mind being a wee bit shorter sometimes.’

Matthew looked apologetic. ‘I wasn’t thinking of you, Lou,’ he said. ‘You’re … the right size, I think.’

‘This wee chap,’ Angus cut in. ‘The one in the Scottish Arts Club – he had a pair of elevator shoes. We could tell. They had very large heels.’

They were silent for a moment.

‘People should be allowed to do what they want with themselves,’ pronounced Big Lou. ‘It’s none of our business. If somebody wants to wear elevator shoes, it’s up to him.’

Angus smiled. ‘And cosmetic surgery, Lou? What about that? All that nipping and tucking and tightening of the skin round the eyes. Don’t you think that’s grotesque?’

Big Lou reached for her cloth and began to polish the counter top. There was a certain frenzy in her movements. ‘If they want it,’ she said, ‘then it’s up to them. You’ve never had to worry about your nose, or your chin, or whatever. But what if you had?’

Angus rolled his eyes. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you, Lou. These women with their cosmetic surgery …’

‘And men,’ interjected Big Lou. ‘Men go in for it too. I saw a film, about men who were anxious about …’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Angus hurriedly. ‘That may be so. But you see the results on the women. Those awful tightened faces that end up looking like Japanese Noh masks. All the character taken out of the face. Just this tight skin. It’s ghastly.’

‘And such a waste of medical resources,’ said Matthew. ‘You get all those doctors doing good things – missionary doctors and so on, the flying doctor service – and then you get these greedy surgeons fiddling about with people’s double chins for large payments. Operating for money – pure and simple.’

Angus took a sip of his coffee. ‘You could have a flying cosmetic surgeon,’ he mused. ‘He could get in his plane and fly off to deal with remote cases of dissatisfaction with the shape of a nose or something. You could get that.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Big Lou.

‘Where’s your sense of humour?’ Angus asked. ‘I was just speculating.’

Big Lou said nothing. She had put down her cloth and sat down on her chair behind the counter, picking up her book as she did so.

‘She’s offended,’ whispered Matthew. ‘You’ve offended her, Angus.’

‘I can’t see why she’s so touchy,’ protested Angus. Big Lou appeared to be far more sensitive than usual and it seemed that he could say nothing without incurring her disapproval.

‘Perhaps she’s contemplating cosmetic surgery,’ said Matthew.

He had spoken in a low voice, not one he would have thought that Big Lou would hear, but she looked up sharply and gave Matthew a look that made him wonder – absurd thought – whether he had alighted, unintentionally perhaps, on the truth.

Some time later, Angus Lordie and Matthew went their separate ways, leaving Big Lou to serve a small group of visitors who had wandered down her perilous steps. These newcomers had caught a whiff on the street of the coffee brewing within and had been drawn down towards it, as by Sirens.

Angus, although reluctant to leave, returned to his studio in Drummond Place. He would have willingly stayed at Big Lou’s the whole morning, talking to whomsoever would engage him in conversation, verbally sparring with Big Lou or discussing the world and its ways with Matthew. But he knew that he could not put off his
return to his studio indefinitely; he had a painting to finish, he had a life to lead, even if it was a life of loneliness and longing for something else that he could never quite define, and would probably not recognise if he ever found it. For his part, Matthew crossed the road to his gallery. In the past he had stuck up a Back Soon notice on the front door when he went off for his coffee break, but recently he had decided that this was unprofessional and had engaged an assistant to help him in the gallery for several hours each morning and to cover for him when he went out for his regular coffee session. This young woman, Kirsty, was a student, as had been Pat, his last employee, but there the similarity ended. Whereas Pat had been a relatively quiet girl, an observer, Matthew thought, rather than a participant, Kirsty was gregarious and enthusiastic, perhaps even a bit opinionated at times. But she was forgiven that – not only by Matthew, but by everyone – on the quite simple grounds of her extreme physical beauty. And the beautiful are forgiven; no matter how egregious their shortcomings, they are forgiven.

Matthew had noticed this when he was still a schoolboy. There had been a boy his class, Hector McFarlane, who had been blessed with a countenance and smile so appealing that even the sternest heart would melt on being exposed to this double-barrelled charm offensive. This youth, whose boisterous boyish misdeeds were legion, got away with them all because none of the teachers could bring themselves to punish one who looked so like a Florentine painter’s image of innocence in the garden. And this had continued, Matthew believed, throughout Hector’s career. Women forgave him everything, and men too, although none realised that they were doing it. Lookism, thought Matthew in retrospect. Like ageism and sexism, lookism was everywhere, resulting in the good-looking getting the best jobs, winning all the plaudits, being let off the most parking tickets by soft-hearted traffic wardens; being generally favoured.

And Matthew himself had been guilty of this in his choosing of Kirsty for the position of his assistant. Kirsty had seen the advertisement early and had been the first to telephone to arrange an interview. Matthew had invited her down to the gallery and had asked no more than three questions when he offered her the post.

‘You’re just the person I’ve been looking for,’ he announced. ‘If you want the job, it’s yours.’

Kirsty had been slightly surprised and had asked him if he wanted to hear about the experience she had had in helping out in a Glasgow gallery owned by friends of her parents.

‘Yes, of course I’d like to hear about that,’ said Matthew politely. ‘I was going to ask you. Do tell me.’

He half listened as she told him of the exhibitions she had helped to organise, but his heart was not in it and when she had finished he merely nodded and said, ‘That’s all fine. When do you want to start?’

Angus had seen Kirsty when he had walked past the gallery on the day that she started work. He had paused, pretending to look at a painting propped up on an easel in the window, but had been secretly staring at the glamorous new assistant sitting at the desk on the other side of the room. Later he reported to Big Lou what he had seen. ‘Matthew has a new little helper in the gallery,’ he said. ‘I take it you’ve seen her.’

‘I have not,’ said Big Lou. ‘Have you?’

Angus rolled his eyes. ‘Very pretty.’

Big Lou gave him a scathing look.

‘I don’t know where he finds these girls,’ Angus went on. ‘That girl Pat was attractive enough, but this one, my goodness me!’

‘Matthew’s a married man,’ said Big Lou. ‘I’m sure that how this girl looks is neither here nor there.’

Angus corrected himself. ‘Of course, of course. It’s just that … well, she’s very … how shall I put it?’

Big Lou shook her head. ‘Matthew isn’t like that, Angus. He’s not like you.’

Angus showed his indignation. ‘Like me? Of course I appreciate beauty – I’m an artist, as you may have observed, Lou. What artist isn’t sensitive to beauty – in all its forms?’

‘Aye, well, that may be so,’ said Big Lou. ‘But I’ve got better things to do than to listen to your blethering.’

But Angus had sown the seed in his own mind, even if not in Big Lou’s. He wondered whether Elspeth Harmony had met the new assistant yet, and what she would think about her. Would any
wife be happy to think that her husband was working in close proximity to a girl like that? We are weak creatures, thought Angus. We are very weak, and what woman does not sense that, no matter how constant her husband appears to be; what woman does not fear that deep weakness in the make-up of every man? It may be no more than a niggling doubt – a twinge of insecurity – but it is there.

Back in his studio, on the day of that first encounter with Kirsty – through the glass – Angus found his thoughts returning to the young woman. He closed his eyes, recreating the vision he had been vouchsafed: Kirsty, with her back turned towards him at first, her long hair over her shoulders, half turning to reach for something at the side of her desk, thus affording him a view of her profile; such perfection of proportion and attitude, like a gazelle glimpsed in the half-cover of grass, a pert gazelle, nervous, ready to bolt if it sensed an observer.

Iris Murdoch once revealed that the idea for an entire novel had come to her following upon the sight of a boy on a road, caught in the headlights of a car. Why should not an entire painting – a
Judgement of Paris
– come to the eye of an artist who looks through a window? Yes, a
Judgement of Paris
, with Matthew’s assistant as Aphrodite herself, resolute, calm, and, as in Jan Brueghel’s treatment of the subject, disrobed. Would she agree, he wondered.

It had been an uneventful morning for Kirsty. She had hoped that somebody would come into the gallery, would buy the most expensive painting on display, and then pay in cash. When Matthew came back, she would then inform him of the sale, modestly of course. But that was not the way the morning worked out. In fact, from the time that Matthew had gone off for coffee and left her in charge, hardly anybody had so much as lingered outside the window, let alone come in to buy a painting. At one point a tall man in an
overcoat had almost entered, but had then glanced at his watch, looked up at the sky, and moved hurriedly away, as if he had just then reminded himself of an appointment, and of rain.

Kirsty sighed. She had taken the part-time job in the gallery because she felt that it was so much more interesting than the usual sort of job offered to students. Most people in her year – or at least most of those who did part-time work – were employed in bars or cafés. They might have considered it interesting to be a barista, but she did not. They were hard-worked and had no time to chat – she had heard that from a friend who worked an early shift at a coffee bar on South Clerk Street. Bars were no better, indeed were worse; there one had to contend with the flirting of middle-aged men. What made them think that somebody like her would find them even remotely attractive? It defied belief – it really did.

No, working in a gallery would be infinitely more exciting and a much more glamorous thing to report to others. ‘Actually, I have a job in an art gallery,’ she said to one of her friends. And her friend, who occasionally worked as a waitress in a lowly Italian restaurant on Lothian Road, looked suitably impressed.

‘You must meet some interesting people there,’ said the friend wistfully. There was nobody of any interest to be encountered on Lothian Road, she had decided.

‘Of course you do,’ said Kirsty airily. It was a lie, but most lies can be airily tossed off. Or perhaps it was not so much a lie as a statement that was not yet true in the strictest sense, but that was teleologically so. There were probably interesting people to meet, but she had not yet encountered any of them. So far, she had met only a few rather fusty clients of the gallery – rich people with nothing better to do than to buy paintings; and none of these were young men, who were the desired class of person with whom Kirsty wished to rub shoulders.

There was Matthew, of course, but he hardly counted as interesting. First of all, he was married, and only recently so, and then even if he had been available he was so … She struggled to find the right word to describe Matthew – so domestic? Or beige? Beige was a good word, and its application to Matthew was particularly
appropriate because of the colour of the sweater that he wore. Kirsty had complimented him on it – another lie – and Matthew had explained about distressed oatmeal and how that was the colour that he had read was being taken very seriously by menswear designers. And then there were those crushed-strawberry cords of his …

Matthew warmed to the theme. ‘Denim’s finished,’ he said. ‘Very yesterday.’

Kirsty smiled. It was very yesterday to use the expression very yesterday, but poor Matthew could hardly be expected to know that. And denim was not finished. Everybody wore it. All the guys, as she put it; all of them; and they look so cute in denim, she thought, and out of it too, now that she came to think of it. Wicked, she whispered to herself. Wicked!

‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘It’s all about what makes you feel comfortable. That’s what clothes are for, aren’t they? To be comfortable in.’

Matthew agreed, but he doubted very much that this was Kirsty’s own philosophy of dress. One only had to look at her shoes, with their narrow, pointed toes, to see that if she believed in comfort this did not extend to her feet; nor, it had to be admitted, to her midriff, which was exposed to the elements and must have been cold, even in the summer weather, when the wind came from the wrong direction, which in Edinburgh was from the north, the south, the east or the west. And that was not the end of her stomach’s suffering; her jeans were extremely tight and one could see how they pinched the skin when she sat down. They were very affectionate, of course, hugging the contours of her hips and elsewhere – as Matthew politely put it.

He wondered whether she had put on weight and had been unable to buy a new wardrobe to cope with increased girth. Many students were extremely hard up and presumably had to economise on clothing, but Matthew sensed that Kirsty’s garb reflected fashion rather than financial considerations. That was not an entirely bad thing. It was better, in general, from the gallery’s point of view to have a fashionable assistant rather than one who was a frump.

When Matthew returned to the gallery that morning, he found
her sitting at his desk paging through a catalogue from one of the London auction houses.

‘Enjoy your coffee?’ she asked, looking up from the catalogue.

‘Same as usual,’ said Matthew. ‘And what happened in my absence? Sell anything?’ He knew what the answer was, and waited for her to reply. Kirsty, however, merely gestured to the cover of the catalogue.

‘You seen this?’

Matthew glanced over her shoulder. He wished that she would not sit in his chair so often, but he had lacked the courage to confront her about it. He would just have to try to get into the chair before she could sit in it, and then he could guard it for the rest of the day.

‘Impressionist and post-Impressionist,’ said Kirsty. ‘And not as expensive as you imagine.’

‘But expensive enough,’ said Matthew cautiously.

Kirsty looked up at him and smiled. ‘To make money you have to spend money,’ she said.

Matthew said nothing. The catalogue was open at a Vuillard picture of a woman sitting on a sofa.

‘That’s a lovely painting,’ Matthew said. ‘So peaceful. I love Vuillard.’

Kirsty seemed pleased with this response. ‘We could buy it, you know. It’s coming up next week in London. We could buy it and then resell it here.’

Matthew frowned. ‘I don’t go in for those really expensive paintings,’ he said.

Kirsty smiled again. ‘That could change, you know. Come on, Matthew, let’s get things going round here.’

Matthew looked at the estimate: eighty to one hundred thousand pounds. He felt flushed, as if he had been given some sort of challenge; or it could have been the effect of Kirsty’s jeans. They are so tight, he thought.