“Yes,” said Pat.
“Apart from Bruce, that is,” said her father.
Pat thought for a moment. There had been a boy at school who had been very smug. He came from a smug family in Barnton. All of them were smug. And what made it worse was that he won everything: the boys’ 100- metre dash; the under-sixteen 50-metre breaststroke; the school half-marathon . . .
“Yes,” she said. “There was somebody like that.”
“And did you feel envious?”
“Yes,” said Pat. “We all felt envious. We hated him. We wanted to prick him with a pin. Somebody actually did that once.”
“Not surprising,” said her father. “But it really doesn’t help, you know. These people are impervious to that sort of deflation.
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They’re psychologically tubeless, if I may extend the metaphor.”
“Bruce is exactly like that,” said Pat. “He’s undeflatable.”
Dr Macgregor laughed. “So he announced his departure?
Why is he going?”
“It’s a bit complicated,” said Pat. “He lost his job, you see.
Then he started a business, a wine dealership. He says that he was let down by somebody who had promised to invest. He bought some tremendously grand wine at a knock-down price.
He sold most of it today at a wine auction in George Street.”
She remembered Bruce’s triumphant return to the flat earlier that evening, brandishing the note of sale from the auction house.
“He made over thirty thousand on the wine,” she went on.
“He was very pleased. He said that he wouldn’t bother with the wine trade now and would go down to London instead. He would live there for a while on the proceeds of the auction and then get a job. He said that he was keen to try commodity trading.”
“And what about the flat?” asked Dr Macgregor.
“I’m afraid he’s selling it,” said Pat. “He’s going to put it on the market next week.”
“Which means that you’re going to have to move out.”
“Yes,” said Pat. “That’s the end of Scotland Street for me.”
There was silence at the other end of the line. The world was a lonely place, a place of transience, of change, of loss; only the bonds, the ties of friendship and family protected us from that loneliness. And what parent would not have wished his daughter to say: “Yes, I’m coming home”, and what parent with Dr Macgregor’s insight would not have known that this would have been quite the wrong answer for Pat to give him?
“You’re always welcome to come back here,” he said. “But you’ll want somewhere with other students, which would be much better. Will it be hard to find somewhere?”
“I’ve got a friend in Marchmont,” said Pat. “She says that there’s a place in her flat. It’s one of those big flats in Spottiswoode Street.”
“You must take it,” said Dr Macgregor.
After they had concluded their conversation, Pat got up and went through to the kitchen. Bruce was sitting at the table, a 338
newspaper spread out on the table in front of him. He looked up and smiled at Pat.
“Do you realise how much this place is going to go for?” he asked her. “I’m looking at some of the prices of places nearby.
I’m going to make a packet, you know.” He sighed. “Pity you can’t afford to buy it, Pat. Then you could stay here instead of moving out to some obscure street on the South Side. Acne-Timber Street, or whatever it’s called.”
“Acne-Timber Street?”
“That’s what I call Spottiswoode Street,” Bruce said. “Where’s your sense of humour?”
“Of course, if you buy something in London,” Pat said, “then you’re going to have to pay through the nose for it, Bruce. You won’t get anything in Fulham for what you get for Scotland Street, you know. You’re going to be in some dump somewhere, Bruce. Or Essex. You might even end up in Essex.”
Bruce laughed. “No danger of that for me! I’m moving in with somebody in Holland Park. You know it? Just round the corner from that nice restaurant, Clarke’s. You know the place? You can get a Clarke’s cookbook. Everybody goes there. All the creative people. You get noticed there. I saw Jamie Byng there once.”
Pat stared at him. They might part company on bad terms or good. If it was to be bad terms, then she could tell him now, before it was too late, what she thought of him. But what would be the point of that? Nothing could dent Bruce – nothing; it was just as her father had said. Bruce was perfection incarnate in his own eyes. It would be good terms, then. She was big enough for that.
“You’re going to love London, Bruce,” she said. “And you’ll do pretty well there.”
“Thanks,” said Bruce. “Yes, I think it’s going to go rather well.
