and looked at it. It was a letter from a political party asking for a donation to a fighting fund. A smiling politician beamed out from a photograph.
It was settled. Pat had agreed to move in, and would pay rent from the following Monday. The room was not cheap, in spite of the musty smell (which Bruce pointed out was temporary) and the general dinginess of the decor (which Bruce had ignored).
After all, as he pointed out to Pat, she was staying in the New Town, and the New Town was expensive whether you lived in a basement in East Claremont Street (barely New Town, Bruce said) or in a drawing-room flat in Heriot Row. And he should know, he said. He was a surveyor.
“You have found a job, haven’t you?” he asked tentatively. “The rent . . .”
She assured him that she would pay in advance, and he relaxed.
Anna had left rent unpaid and he and the rest of them had been obliged to make up the shortfall. But it was worth it to get rid of her, he thought.
9
He showed Pat to the door and gave her a key. “For you. Now you can bring your things over any time.” He paused. “I think you’re going to like this place.”
Pat smiled, and she continued to smile as she made her way down the stair. After the disaster of last year, staying put was exactly what she wanted. And Bruce seemed fine. In fact, he reminded her of a cousin who had also been keen on rugby and who used to take her to pubs on international nights with all his friends, who sang raucously and kissed her beerily on the cheek.
Men like that were very unthreatening; they tended not to be moody, or brood, or make emotional demands – they just
Not that she ever envisaged herself becoming emotionally involved with one of them. Her man – when she found him –
would be . . .
“Very distressing! Very, very distressing!”
Pat looked up. She had reached the bottom of the stair and had opened the front door to find a middle-aged woman standing before her, rummaging through a voluminous handbag.
“It’s very distressing,” continued the woman, looking at Pat over half-moon spectacles. “This is the second time this month that I have come out without my outside key. There are two keys, you see. One to the flat and one to the outside door. And if I come out without my outside key, then I have to disturb one of the other residents to let me in, and I don’t like doing that.
That’s why I’m so pleased to see you.”
“Well-timed,” said Pat, moving to let the woman in.
“Oh yes. But Bruce will usually let me in, or one of his friends . . .” She paused. “Are you one of Bruce’s friends?”
“I’ve just met him.”
The woman nodded. “One never knows. He has so many girlfriends that I lose track of them. Just when I’ve got used to one, a quite different girl turns up. Some men are like that, you know.”
Pat said nothing. Perhaps wholesome, the word which she had previously alighted upon to describe Bruce, was not the right choice.
The woman adjusted her spectacles and stared directly at Pat.
10
“Some men, you see, have inordinate appetites,” she remarked.
“They seem to be genetically programmed to have a rather large number of partners. And if they’re genetically predisposed to do that sort of thing, then I wonder whether we can actually blame them for it. What do you think?”
Pat hesitated. “They could try a bit harder not to cheat.”
The woman shook her head. “Not easy,” she said. “I believe that we have much less free will than we think. Quite frankly, we delude ourselves if we think that we are completely free. We aren’t. And that means if dear Bruce must have rather a lot of girlfriends, then there’s not very much he can do about it.”
Pat said nothing. Bruce had said nothing about the neighbours, and perhaps this was the reason.
“But this is very rude of me,” the woman said. “I’ve been talking away without introducing myself. And you’ll be wondering:
Pat gave the woman her name and they shook hands. Her explanation that she had just agreed to take the spare room in Bruce’s flat brought a broad smile to Domenica’s face.
