44 Scotland Street

193

pretty little anyway. What a fuss over nothing! You could get a painting like that any day of the week from one of those charity shops – useless pictures of the Trossachs or St Andrews or places like that. Completely useless. If she was so upset about it, then he might, just might, pick up something from one of those shops and give it to her to make up for it. But why should he? He had done no wrong, and her reaction was typical of a woman. They make the most ghastly fuss over little things; he had seen it all before and he had no time for it.

And what made it worse, he thought, was that that silly, half-hysterical girl was falling for him; her lying on his bed just confirmed the suspicions he had been entertaining for some time. Having had a great deal of experience of these things, Bruce could tell when somebody was falling for him. It was the way they looked at you; that slightly unfocused look. It was something to do with body chemistry, he imagined. The effect of pheromones made women’s eyes go all watery. It was curious, but he had seen it so many times when women looked at him.

Bruce had decided that she would get no encouragement from him. Being mixed up with her would make his life too complicated.

She would be possessive, he expected, and would cramp his style.

It would be difficult, for example, to bring other girls back to the flat as she would always be there, thinking that she had a prior claim on him. No, he would have to play this very carefully.

He might give Pat the occasional thrill, of course, as he had done when he had removed his shirt. She had been watching him

– he had felt her gaze – and there was no doubt about her interest. But that would be about as far as it would go. She could look, but she would not be allowed to touch.

Now, this newly-acquired girl, Sally, was a different proposition altogether. Bruce had met her in the Cumberland Bar when she had been brought there by friends of his, and he had become immediately interested in her. He had known at once that she was his type: a tall, willowy girl, with a good eye for casual elegance in clothes. She had attracted his attention right away and he had sidled up to her and asked for an introduction. She 194

An Evening with Bruce

had looked him up and down appraisingly and had smiled at him, which was no more than he expected, of course.

“Yo!” Bruce said.

“Ya!” came the reply, and with these short, potent words the compact had been sealed. They had talked enthusiastically. Sally was American, and in Edinburgh for a year – “long enough,” thought Bruce – and was studying for a master’s degree in economics.

“Cool!” Bruce said, and she had nodded.

“Yeah,” she said. “Cool.”

At the end of the evening they had agreed to meet the following evening, and now Bruce stood in the Cumberland Bar awaiting her arrival. There were one or two people he recognised in the bar, but he did not feel like talking to them.

He had put the row with Pat out of his mind, and he was now thinking about something rather more important – his job. He was becoming bored with surveying, and was particularly disenchanted with Raeburn Todd, his boss, and the firm of Macaulay Holmes Richardson Black. This feeling had been building up and had been brought to a head by his experiences at the Conservative Ball. That had been a particularly depressing occasion from Bruce’s point of view, as it had given him a vision of what might become of him if he did not make a change. Todd was the warning incarnate, thought Bruce: that is how I shall talk and behave if I remain where I am. I shall become exactly like Todd, with a wife exactly like Sasha, and a house in the Braids. No, that would not do: there must be an alternative.

But the identification of the rut was one thing; the finding of a way out was quite another. Bruce had thought of other possibilities, only to reject them. Many of his friends were accountants or lawyers – the Cumberland Bar was full of them.

But it would take too long now for him to qualify for either of these professions, and the accountancy examinations were notoriously stressful. So those two options at least were firmly ruled out. What else was there? Finance was a possibility, but that was ruthlessly competitive and dominated by people with a background in mathematics. Bruce acknowledged that he was not very good with numbers, and so he would need to go for

An Evening with Bruce

195

something where he could use his social skills. He looked about the bar, and at that moment the idea occurred. The wine trade.

He knew a few people in wine, and they struck him as being very much his type. If they could do it, then there was no reason why he should not make a go of it. Bruce Anderson, MW, he muttered under his breath. Specialist in Bordeaux and California.

He caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror behind the bar and he smiled. MW – Master of Wines. It would be considerably more impressive than being a surveyor.

He was still smiling when Sally came into the bar.

“You’re looking great,” he said.

“You too.”

“Gracias.” He would normally have said merci to a compliment of this sort, but he remembered that she was American and that Americans tended to speak Spanish rather than French.

He bought her a drink – a glass of Margaret River Chardonnay

– and they chatted easily, perched on stools at the bar. Half an hour later, Bruce looked at his watch.