that.
Domenica smiled. “He’s got under your skin, hasn’t he?”
Pat did not answer. She stared down at the floor. She was thinking of her anger, her irritation with Bruce, but then the image came back to her of him standing there before the window, his shirt off. She looked up. Domenica was watching her.
“I thought that it might happen,” said Domenica. “I thought that it might happen in spite of everything. If one puts two people together and one of them is a young man like that, well . . .”
“I don’t like him,” said Pat. “You should hear what he says.”
“Oh, I know what Bruce is like,” said Domenica. “Remember that I’ve been his neighbour for some time. I know perfectly well what he’s like.”
“Well, why has this . . . why has this happened?”
Domenica sighed. “It’s happened for a very simple reason,”
she said. “It’s a matter of human reaction to the beautiful. It’s a matter of aesthetics.”
“I feel this way about Bruce because he’s . . .” It was difficult for her to say it, but the word was there in the air between them.
“Precisely,” said Domenica. “And that’s nothing new, is it?
That’s how people react to beauty, in a person or an object. We become intoxicated with it. We want to be with it. We want to possess it. And when that happens, we shouldn’t be the least bit surprised, although we often are.
“It’s an age-old issue,” she went on. “Our reaction to the beautiful occurs in the face of every single one of our intellectual pretensions. We may be very well aware that the call of beauty is a siren-call, but that doesn’t stop it from arresting us, seizing us, rendering us helpless. A soul-beguiling face will make anybody stop in their tracks, in spite of themselves.”
Pat listened in silence. Domenica was right, of course. Had Bruce not looked the way he looked, then she would have been either indifferent to him or actively hostile. He had done enough to earn her distaste, if not her enmity, with his condescension and his assumptions, and if it had not been for this aesthetic reaction, as Domenica called it, he would have been unable to affect her in this way. But the reality was that he had, and even now she cherished that moment of bizarre shared intimacy in his room, when he had removed his shirt and she had looked upon him.
“So,” said Domenica briskly. “Do you want my advice? Or my sympathy? Which is it to be?”
Pat thought for a moment. She had not expected these alternatives. She had expected, at the most, that Domenica would listen sympathetically and make a few general remarks, instead of which she had provided what seemed to be a complete diagnosis and was now offering something more.
“Your advice, I suppose.” She realised sounded grudging, which was not her intention, but her tone seemed not to disconcert Domenica.
“Well,” said Domenica. “It would seem to me that you have a clear choice. You can move out of the flat straightaway and endeavour never to see him again. That would be clean and quick, and, I suspect, rather painful. Or you can continue to live there and allow yourself to feel what you feel, but do it on your own terms.”
“And what would that mean – on my own terms?”
192
Domenica laughed. “Enjoy it,” she said. “Let yourself feel whatever it is that you feel, but just remember that at the end of the day he’s not for you and that you will have to get rid of him. And there’s another way in which this would be highly satisfactory.”
“Which is?”
“You might have the additional satisfaction of teaching him a lesson. He’s played with the affections of numerous young women
– that’s the type of boy he is. Teach him a lesson. Help him to moral maturity.”
“But what if I still feel something for him?”
“You won’t,” said Domenica. “Believe me, there’s nothing more brittle than human beauty. Encounter it. Savour it, by all means.
Then watch how it turns to dust.”
Pat sat quite still, watched by Domenica. “Anyway,” said Domenica, rising to her feet. “I’m about to go off to listen to a lecture at the Portrait Gallery. I suggest that you come with me.
It’ll take you out of yourself for a couple of hours, and there are drinks afterwards to which I’m sure you can come. How about it?”
Pat thought for a moment. She did not want to go back to the flat, which was cold and empty. So she said yes, and they went out together, out into Scotland Street and the night.
Bruce did not feel apologetic about the scene which had developed over the missing painting; he felt annoyed. There was no reason for him to reproach himself, he thought, because he had had every reason to assume that the painting had been abandoned.
It was valueless, anyway. Pat had screamed something about it being by Peploe, whoever he was, but Bruce doubted that unless, of course, this Peploe person was somebody’s uncle. He could tell when a painting was worth something, and that painting was definitely not worth the cost of the frame, which must have been
