a few grey hairs above his ears. His hair looked a bit neater, too, but that was because he had been in America, and people worried more about their grooming there.
“How are you doing, Eddie?” she asked. “Are you still in Galveston? In Texas, or wherever it is?”
He smiled, somewhat awkwardly, and looked down at his feet.
“I meant to write to you again, Lou, and tell you. I’m not the best letter-writer, you know. You did get my letter, didn’t you?”
Big Lou reached for the glass which the bartender was offering. “Yes, I got your letter, Eddie.” If he knew, she thought; if he knew how many times I have read that letter, and how I have preserved it, a token, for there were no other tokens.
“I stayed in Galveston for a few years,” said Eddie. “Then I moved to Mobile, Alabama. Great place. That’s where I am now.
You’d like it, you know.”
Big Lou listened carefully. He had said that she would not like Galveston, that she should not join him out there. Now he was saying that she would like Mobile. Did this mean that he wanted her to go back there with him; that he wanted her again? And why would he assume that she would be available? But of course he would know that; of course he would.
He asked her what she was doing, and she explained. He said that she would be good at running a coffee bar – he had always thought that she should be in the catering industry, he said – and she thanked him for that. And was he still cooking? He was, but not for oil men.
“I’m a real chef now,” he said. “Cooking in the oil industry is just industrial. Big helpings for these big guys. Lots of carbo-hydrates. No finesse.”
She imagined him again in his kitchen whites, with the cap that he liked to wear, which hid his greasy hair. She had given him a special shampoo once, which claimed that it would end greasy hair, but either it had not worked or he had stopped using it.
They finished their drink and then went over the road to the Cafe Sardi. He had booked a table there, and asked her whether
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she knew it. She did not, but she liked it when she went in. She liked restaurants with pictures on the walls and there was something about Italian restaurants which was always welcoming.
They sat at a table near the wall. He looked at the menu and told her about some of the dishes that he cooked now. Americans had a sweet tooth, he said, and so he was obliged to sprinkle icing sugar on things which would be savoury in Scotland.
“Is it very different over there?” asked Big Lou. “Would I like it, do you think?”
He fiddled with the edge of the tablecloth. ‘It’s very different in some ways,” he said. “You have to look after yourself. If you’re down, you’re down. Nobody’s going to come and pick you up.
But if you want to work, then it’s a great place to be.”
“Maybe I should come and see you,” said Big Lou. She spoke tentatively, because he had not invited her yet, in spite of his saying that she would like Mobile. What a strange name, she thought: Mobile, and he pronounced it
“There’s something I should tell you, Lou,” said Eddie. “I’m married now. I married a girl I met there. We run a restaurant together.”
Big Lou said nothing. She started to speak, but said nothing.
She looked down at the cutlery, at her side plate, at the single flower in the tiny vase, at the way the candle flame flickered in the draught.
There are, said Auden (and Tolstoy), different types of unhappiness. For Big Lou, the revelation that Eddie had married a woman in Mobile, Alabama, made her unhappy. She had never had very much, and losing what little she had was at least a suffering to which she was fairly accustomed (Auden’s phrase 256
about the poor). For Pat, who had been loved a great deal, and knew it, the sight of Bruce in the Cumberland Bar, his attention entirely given over to his American girlfriend, provided a new sort of unhappiness. This was the unhappiness of knowing that you simply cannot have what you want to have – an unhappiness which is a bitter discovery for the young. The young rarely believe that they will not be able to get what they want, because there is always an open future. I may not be beautiful today, but I shall be beautiful tomorrow. I may not have much money today, but that will all change. Not so.
As he escorted Pat out of the Cumberland Bar, Angus Lordie was aware that she was feeling miserable. One with less psychological insight than he might have attempted to cheer her up with distracting remarks, or with observations on the fact that there were plenty of other young men. But he knew what it was to love without hope, and knew that the only way to deal with that bleak state was to look one’s unhappiness in the face.
And it was important, he thought, to understand that the last thing that the unhappy wish to be reminded of is the greater unhappiness of others. Telling a person with toothache that there are others with greater toothache than their own was no help at all.
So he said to Pat, as they left the Cumberland “Yes, it’s very uncomfortable, isn’t it? You want him and he doesn’t want you
– because he’s got another girl. Oh yes. Very unfortunate. And, of course, even if he didn’t have her, he might not want you anyway.”
Pat did not consider this helpful and was about to tell him that she did not want to talk about it. But he continued. “I can understand what you see in him, you know. I can understand the attraction of male beauty. I’m an
