“I’m very pleased to hear that,” she said. “That last girl – the girl whose room you’ll be taking . . .” She shook her head.
“Genetically programmed to have lots of boyfriends, I think.”
“A slut? That’s what Bruce called her to me.”
This surprised the woman. “Male double standards,” said Domenica sharply, adding: “Of course, Edinburgh’s full of double standards, isn’t it? Hypocrisy is built into the stonework here.”
“I’m not sure,” ventured Pat. Edinburgh seemed much like anywhere else to her. Why should there be more hypocrisy in Edinburgh than anywhere else?
“Oh, you’ll find out,” said Domenica. “You’ll find out.”
“Terrific!” said Bruce, unbuttoning his Triple Crown rugby shirt.
“That looks just terrific!”
He was standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom, waiting for the bath to fill. It was a favourite mirror of his, full-length – unlike most bathroom mirrors – which made it possible to inspect at close quarters the benefits of his thrice-weekly sessions in the gym. And the benefits were very evident, in whatever light they were viewed.
He pulled the shirt up over his head and flung it down on the top of the wicker laundry basket. Flexing his biceps, he stared back at the mirror and liked what he saw. Next, by crouching slightly, as if poised to leap forward, the muscles that ran down the side of his trunk – he had no idea what they were called, but could look them up in the chart his personal trainer had given him – these muscles tensed like a series of small skiing moguls.
Moguls, in fact, might be a good word for them, he thought.
Biceps, pecs,
He removed the rest of his clothes and looked again in the mirror. Very satisfactory, he thought –
Would I look better with longer hair? What do you think, Pat?
He was not sure about this new girl. She was not going to be any trouble – she could pay the rent and he knew that she would keep the place clean. He had seen her look of concern over the state of the room, and that had been a good sign. But she was a bit young, and that might be problematic. The four years that separated them were crucial ones, in Bruce’s mind. It was not that he had no time for twenty-year-olds, it was just that they talked about different things and listened to different music. He had often had to hammer on Anna’s door late at night when he was being kept awake by the constant
She played the same music all the time, day-in day-out, and when he had suggested that she might get something different, 12
she had looked at him with what was meant to be a patient expression, as one might look at somebody who simply did not understand.
And of course Bruce could never think of anything to say to her. He would have loved to have been able to come up with a suitable put-down, but it never seemed to be there at the right time, or at any other time, when he came to think of it.
He tested the temperature of the bath and then lowered himself into the water. The cleaning of Anna’s room had made him feel dirty, but a good soak in the bath would deal with that. It was a wonderful bath in which to soak; one of the best features of the flat. It must have been there for fifty years, or even more; a great, generous tub, standing on four claw-feet, and filled from large-mouthed silver taps. He very rarely saw a bath like that when he did a valuation, but when he did, he always drew it to the attention of the client.
He lay back in the water and thought of Pat. He had decided that she was not his type, and in general he preferred to keep relationships with flatmates on a platonic basis, but one should not make absolute rules on these matters, he thought. She was attractive enough, he reflected, although she would not necessarily turn his head in the street. Comfortable, perhaps, was the word. Undisturbing. Average.
Perhaps she would be worth a little attention. He was, after all, between girlfriends, now that Laura had gone down to London. They had agreed that she would come up to Edinburgh once a month and he would go down to London with the same frequency, but it had not worked out. She had made the journey three months in a row, but he had been unable to find the time to do the same. And she had been most unreasonable about it, he thought.
“If you cared anything about me, you would have made the effort,” she had said to him. “But you don’t and you didn’t.”
He had been appalled by this attack. There had been very
13
good reasons why he could not go to London, apart from the expense, of course. And he had had every justification for cancelling that weekend: he had entered the wrong date for the Irish international at Murrayfield in his diary and had only discovered his error four days before the event. If she thought that he was going to miss that just to go down for a weekend which could be rearranged for any time, then she was going to have to think again, which she did.
He stood up and stepped out of the bath. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and smiled.
Somebody had pushed a bundle of advertisements into the mail box of the Something Special Gallery, which irritated Matthew Duncan. It was Tuesday morning, and the beginning of another working week for Matthew, who took Sundays and Mondays off.
