44 Scotland Street

“You don’t have to eat this if you don’t want to,” Bruce said sulkily.

Pat thought for a moment, but shook her head and finished her helping, rather quickly, thought Bruce. Then, over coffee, which Bruce brought to the table, they talked about Matthew and the gallery.

“I’ve met him,” said Bruce. “His old man’s a big Watsonian.

Rugby. The works. Lots of tin. But the son’s useless, I think.”

“You seem to find a lot of people useless,” remarked Pat. She did not want to sound aggressive, but the remark came out as a challenge.

Bruce took her observation in his stride. “Well, they are. There are lots of useless people in this city. It’s the truth, and if it’s the truth then why bother to conceal it? I spell things out, that’s all.”

They finished their coffee and then Bruce explained that he was going to meet friends in the Cumberland Bar. Pat was welcome to come if she wished. They were interesting people he said: surveyors and people from the rugby club. She should come along. But she did not.

13. You Must Remember This / A Kiss Is Just a Kiss After Bruce had left the flat for the Cumberland Bar, Pat went back into her room and lay down on her bed. It was proving to be a rather dispiriting evening. It was not easy listening to her flatmate and his opinionated views, and she wondered if she was beginning to feel queasy. Those mushrooms had tasted all right, but then that was often the case with poisonous fungi, was it not?

She lay on her bed and placed a hand on her stomach. What would the first symptoms be? Nausea? Vomiting? Or would one simply become drowsy and fade away, as Socrates had done when given hemlock? She should have refused to eat them, of course; once Bruce had announced their origins she should have had the courage of her convictions. She would have to change. She would have to stand up to him.

She picked up her mobile phone and opened the lid. She had told herself that she would not phone home at the first sign of feeling miserable, because she had to learn to stand on her own two feet. But phoning home was always so reassuring, particularly if she spoke to her father, who was so calm about everything and had an outlook of cheerful optimism – a vindication of the proposition that the one requirement for a successful career in psychiatry is a sense of humour.

Pat started to key in the number but stopped. Somebody was playing a musical instrument, a clarinet, or was it a saxophone?

Yes, it was a saxophone; and it seemed that it was being played directly outside her door. She listened for a moment, and then realised that the sound was coming up through the wall beside her bed. It was not bad; there was the occasional stumble, but it was no rank amateur playing.

She continued dialling and heard her father answer at the other end. He asked where she was.

“I’m in my room. I’m lying on my bed listening to somebody downstairs play the sax. Listen.” She put the mobile up against the wall for a few moments.

“‘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.”

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37

“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 38

The Smell of Cloves

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