and she reached for the light switch near the door and flicked it on.
The room before her was relatively Spartan, and tidier than she imagined it would be. In her experience, young men let their rooms deteriorate into near-squalor. Clothes would be tossed down as they were removed, and left to fester. Books would be strewn around tables. There would be unwashed coffee cups, and tapes, and ancient running shoes with their characteristic acrid smell. In Bruce’s room there was none of this. In one corner there was a bed, neatly-made, with an oatmeal-coloured bedspread.
Opposite, against the wall, was a desk with a laptop computer, a neat row of books, and a container of paper clips. Then there was a chair across which a coat had been draped and a wardrobe.
A jar of hair gel, half used; the slightest smell of cloves.
Pat stood still for a moment, looking around her. The broad picture of the room now taken in, she began to notice the finer details. She saw the picture of the Scottish rugby team; she saw the green kit-bag that contained his gym things; she saw the disc of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers tour. All this was very ordinary, but to her surprise she found herself excited by the sight.
Everything here belonged to him, and had that strange extra significance in which we vest the possessions of those to whom we are attracted. Items which belong to them become potent simply because they are theirs. They are talismans. They are reminders.
She felt an emptiness in the pit of her stomach. It was familiar to her. She had felt it when she had become infatuated as a sixteen-year-old with a boy at school. It had been a painful, heart-breaking experience. And now she felt it again, like a powerful drug; taking hold of her, dulling her defences. She wanted to be with him. She wanted Bruce. Electricity. Electricity.
She lay down on his bed and looked up at the ceiling. The bed was comfortable; just right, whereas hers was slightly on the soft side. She closed her eyes. There was that faint smell of cloves again, no doubt from the hair gel which had rubbed off on his pillow. She took a deep breath. Cloves. Zanzibar. And electricity.
Goldilocks, or Boucle d’Or, as Bruce might have called her, lay asleep on the bed in the cottage when suddenly she opened her eyes and saw the bears. “Who’s been sleeping in my bed?” said a gruff voice.
“And who’s this sleeping in my bed?” asked Bruce, standing above her, looking down, bemused.
Pat opened her eyes and saw not the ceiling, to the sight of which she had closed them, but Bruce’s face, and she shut them again. But it was, of course, true; she was on his bed, uninvited, and now he had found her there. He looked mildly quizzical, she noticed, if not completely surprised; he was the sort of person, she thought, who imagined that people would gladly lie down on his bed, as a privilege, perhaps – a treat.
She sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I came in here and lay down on your bed. I dropped off to sleep.”
He laughed. He did not mind. “But what were you doing?”
Pat stared at the floor. She could hardly tell him that she came in because she wanted to see his things, to get a sense of him.
And so she mumbled something else altogether. “I wanted to see what your room was like – whether it was different from my own.”
Bruce raised an eyebrow. “Well . . .?”
“I know it sounds odd,” said Pat. “And I’m sorry. I’m not really nosy, I’m really not.”
“Of course not,” said Bruce, taking off his jacket and flinging it down on a chair. “Make yourself at home. Don’t mind me.
Make yourself at home.”
For a moment Pat thought that he was going to take his clothes off, as he had moved away and was now undoing buttons; but he only stripped to the waist, moving towards the cupboard, from which he extracted a clean, folded shirt. And his undressing happened so quickly, before she had time to get to her feet and leave the room. It was all very casually done, but was it intended as some sort of show?
187
She glanced at him, quickly, so that he should not see her look, and she noticed the smooth, tanned skin, almost olive, and the ripple of muscles. He was utterly confident, utterly physically at home in the space he occupied, as is any creature of beauty. For a moment she thought of Leonardo’s David, and she remembered the shock that she had felt when, on a school trip to Florence, they had wandered into the gallery in which David stood and had hardly dared look, but had looked nonetheless. “Remember, girls,” a teacher had said. “Remember that this is art.”
What, she had wondered, was that intended to mean? That young men in real life would not be like this, so noble, so marbly, so composed? Or that art might license the feminine gaze upon the male but that in real life one should not be so bold? She recalled this as Bruce crossed shirtless to the window and stood there, looking out on to the street. For a few moments he did nothing, then he unfolded the clean shirt and slipped into it.
She felt a pang of disappointment at this act; she wanted this display, crude as it was, to continue.
“I’m going out,” he said, almost as an aside. “Otherwise I would have offered to cook a meal tonight. But I’m going out.”
He turned to face her, and smiled at her in a way which struck her, surprisingly, as pitying. Was this pity because she had done such a silly, school-girlish thing as look at his room and lie on his bed? Or pity for the fact that he was going to disappoint her and go out?
“I’ve met a rather interesting girl,” he said. “She’s American.
I’m taking her out to dinner.”
Pat said nothing.
“She’s called Sally,” Bruce went on, looking in the mirror beside his wardrobe and stroking his chin. “Should I shave for Sally? What do you think?”
