Pat said nothing. Domenica looked at her, and frowned. “I’m sorry. I really am. I had no idea that you would be so . . . well, so embarrassed by all that. I did it for
Pat looked up sharply. “You asked him to dinner, out of the blue, just like that – for
Domenica seemed surprised by this. “But of course I did! You don’t think that I go around picking up young men for my own sake, do you? Good heavens! I do have a sense of the appropriate, you know.”
“And it’s appropriate to go and ask perfect strangers to dinner to meet me? Do you consider that appropriate? How did you know that I wanted to meet him anyway? Just because he looks like some ridiculous poet you’ve read . . .”
Domenica put down her coffee cup – firmly. “Now wait a moment! I’m sorry if you think I’ve overstepped the mark, but I will not stand by while you refer to Rupert Brooke as a ridiculous poet. Have you read him? You have not! He wrote wonderful pastoral, allusive verse, and the story of his brief life – yes, his brief life – is really rather a moving one. So don’t call him a ridiculous poet. Please don’t. There are lots of ridiculous poets, but he wasn’t one of them. No.”
There was a further silence. Then Pat rose to her feet. “I think we should go. I’m sorry if I got upset – and I’m sorry if I offended you. It’s just that . . .”
They walked out of the delicatessen, passing Peter, working at the counter, as they did so. Pat looked away, but Domenica smiled at him, and he smiled back at her, although weakly, as one smiles at a new acquaintance of whom one is unsure.
“Look, it’s not such a terrible thing I’ve done,” said Domenica, as they went out into the street. “And if it embarrasses you, I suggest that we just forget the whole thing.”
She looked at Pat, who turned to her, frowning. “No,” she said. “Don’t do that.”
22
Domenica raised an eyebrow. “Oh? So you’d like me to invite him after all? Do I detect . . . do I detect a slight mellowing?”
Pat looked down at the ground. Her feelings were confused.
She was irritated by the assumptions that Domenica had made, but there was something about Peter that interested her, and she had seen that he had looked at her too, that he had noticed her.
There was something that her friends called “the look”, that glance, that second take, which gives everything away. One could not mistake the look when one received it; it was unambiguous.
Peter had given her the look. Had she been by herself, she would have not known what to do about it. They might have exchanged further glances, but it was difficult to take matters further when you were working, as he was. You could hardly say: “Here’s your coffee, and what are you doing afterwards?”
Perhaps people did say that, but it was not the most sophisti-cated of approaches and he would not have done that. And for much the same reason, she could hardly have said: “Thanks for the coffee, and what are you doing afterwards?” One did not say that to waiters, whatever the temptation.
So the fact of the matter was that Domenica must have intuit-ively worked out that there was potential in that casual encounter and had acted with swiftness and ingenuity. She had set up a meeting which would enable nature to take its course – if that was the course that nature intended to take. They would meet for dinner at Domenica’s flat and if the look were given again, then they could take it further. No doubt Domenica would ease the way, perhaps by suggesting that they go out after dinner to the Cumberland Bar and then she would herself decline on the grounds of tiredness, leaving the field open for the two of them.
I should be grateful to her, Pat thought, and now, back in her flat, she realised that she had been churlish. She wondered whether to cross the landing and apologise there and then, but she decided against that. An apology would lead to a conversation and she did not feel in the mood for further discussions. She felt slightly light-headed, in fact, as if she had drunk a glass of champagne on an empty stomach. She went through to her bedroom, lay down on her bed, and closed her eyes, imagining herself back in the cafe
23
with Peter standing beside the table, staring at her. She remembered the way he stooped – like the other tall employees – and he put the coffee down in front of her and then looked up. What had he been wearing? She had hardly noticed, but it was a white shirt, was it not? And jeans, like everybody else. If one could not remember somebody’s trousers, then jeans were the safe default.
Indeed, “defaults” was a good name for jeans. I put on my
It sounded quite right.
She got up off her bed and picked up her key from the table. Bruce was in the flat – she had noticed that his door was closed, which inevitably meant that he was in – but she had no desire to talk to him. Bruce was history in every sense of the word. He was history at the firm of Macauley Holmes Richardson Black, where he had lost his job as a surveyor after being found having an intimate lunch in the Cafe St Honore with the wife of his boss – an intimate
And he was history in Pat’s eyes, too, as she had quite recovered from her brief infatuation with him. How could I? she had asked herself, in agonising self-reproach. To which a Latinist, if there were one about, might have answered
– love (like anger) is a brief madness. The most prosaic of observations, but, like many such observations, acutely true. And one might add: if love is a brief madness, then it is often also sadness, and sometimes, alas, badness.
She left the flat and walked down to Henderson Row, where she bought a small bunch of flowers. This she subsequently placed outside Domenica’s door, where she might pick it up when next she opened it.
