“Fine,” said Matthew. “I look forward to meeting . . .”
“Janis,” supplied his father. “With an
Matthew wondered whether this made a difference. He had a very clear idea of what she would be like, however she spelled her name. Blonde hair. And sharp features. And a nose for money.
They moved on to other subjects. Gordon had recently sold off one of his businesses and told Matthew about what had happened to it in its new hands. Then he related developments at the golf club, where a new secretary had been appointed and had upset some of the members by unilaterally changing the
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date of the annual dinner dance, a small thing perhaps, but a big thing for some.
And there was more of that sort of news, although Matthew paid even less attention to it than usual. He was wondering: what if I didn’t have my father behind me? What if somebody came along and took all that support away from me? How would I react to being done out of my inheritance? Badly, he thought.
Pat came into the gallery to find Matthew at his desk, sunk in thought. She looked at her watch. “You’re in early,” she said brightly. Matthew looked up at her and mumbled a good-morning.
Since his father had left ten minutes earlier, he had been sitting at his desk thinking of the implications of Janis. It was possible – just possible – that she had no ulterior intent, that her interest in his father was emotional rather than pecuniary.
But was that likely? Matthew could not imagine that anybody could find his father attractive; indeed, he was a most un-romantic figure, with his thoughts of balance-sheets and the Watsonian Club and Rotary lunches. Could any woman find any of that interesting? Surely not. And yet, and yet . . . It was one of the constant surprises of this life, Matthew had found, that women found men attractive, against all the odds, and irrespective of the sort of man involved. The most appalling men had their partners, did they not, and these women often appeared to
the modern equivalent, and there were some women who simply found such men interesting.
And of course one had to remember – and Matthew did –
that there were many women whose condition was one of quiet desperation. There were many women who wanted a man and who simply could not find one, for demographic or other reasons. Such women will accept anybody who comes along and shows the remotest interest, even my father, thought Matthew.
He looked up at Pat. “Why are there so few men, do you think, Pat?”
He asked the question without thinking, and was immediately embarrassed. But Pat smiled at him, apparently unsurprised to be greeted this early in the morning with such a query.
“Well,” she said. “Are there so few men? Aren’t there roughly the same number – to begin with – and only a little bit later, when the men die off, does the number of women go up? Isn’t that the way it works?”
Matthew frowned. “That may be true,” he said. “That may be true in terms of strict numbers, but why is it that even before the point at which men start to die off, there do not seem to be enough men to . . . to go round? Isn’t that what women find?”
Pat thought about this for a moment. Matthew was probably right; there never seemed to be enough men to satisfy women. Now that sounded odd; she would not put it quite that way. There never seemed enough men to provide each woman who was looking for a man with a man. That was it.
Yes, Matthew was right. “Yes,” she said. “It’s not easy to find a boyfriend these days. I know plenty of people who would love to find a man, but can’t find one. We don’t know where they’ve gone. Disappeared.”
Matthew thought: you could look under your nose, you know.
What about me? But said nothing. Somehow, he suspected, he did not count in this particular reckoning.
“Why is it?” he said. “What’s happened?”
Pat thought that he must know; but Matthew had always struck her as being unworldly. Perhaps he was unaware.
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“Some men aren’t interested, Matthew,” she said. “You do realise that, don’t you?”
“Oh, I know about all that,” said Matthew. “But how many men are like that?”
Pat looked out of the window, as if to assess the passers-by.
“Quite a lot,” she said. “It depends where you are, of course.
Edinburgh’s more like that than Auchtermuchty, you know. And San Francisco is more like that than Kansas City. Ten per cent?”
“Well, that leaves ninety per cent.”
Pat shook her head. There had been a major change in social possibilities for men. They had been trapped, too, by the very structures that had trapped women, and now they had been freed of those and were enjoying that freedom. “No, it doesn’t,” she said. “Of those ninety per cent, a very large percentage now aren’t interested not because they’re not interested – so to speak
