I thought I could change him. You know how it is. You have somebody you think has some good points and you think that those will be enough.”
Matthew waited, but Big Lou said nothing more.
“Have you seen him?” he asked gently. “Have you ended it with him?”
Big Lou rubbed at her eyes. “I have. I saw him and told him that I didn’t think that it would work. Not after this last business with those girls down at that club of his. He said that I was being unreasonable but that he didn’t want to carry on with a woman who would lock him away. That’s what he said. Lock him away.”
“You’re well rid of him, Lou. You really are. And there’ll be other men. There are lots of nice men in this town. There are plenty of nice men who would appreciate somebody like you, Lou.”
Lou shook her head. “I’ll be going back to Arbroath,” she said. “There’s an old cousin of my father’s who needs looking after. I’ve done that sort of thing before. I can do that.”
“But Lou!” said Matthew. “You can’t leave us! You can’t leave all this . . .” He gestured helplessly about the room. At the tables.
At the newspaper rack with its out-of-date newspapers. At the rickety stairs outside.
“I don’t want to,” said Lou. “But I don’t see what else I can do. You see, when Eddie and I got engaged, I made over a half share in the business to him. Now he wants the money for that, and I can’t pay him. So he’s going to insist on selling the coffee bar. And he can, according to the agreement that his lawyer drew up.”
Matthew stood quite still. He had heard about the money that Eddie had persuaded Lou to give him; this, though, was new, and more serious. But then he thought: I have four million pounds.
And if one has four million pounds there are occasions when one should use that financial power to make a difference to the lives of others. This, he thought, was just such an occasion.
“I’ll buy him out, Lou,” he said. “I’ll buy him out and we can get rid of him that way.”
Big Lou shook her head. “I could never accept that, Matthew,”
she said. “You’re a good boy. I’ve known that all along. But I can’t accept that from you. I just can’t.”
He had to see Stuart as soon as possible. Stuart had said that he knew somebody in Glasgow who could help Lou. Had he contacted him? Had he come up with anything? Matthew realised that unless they were able to do something quickly, then Big Lou would sell the coffee bar and go back to Arbroath. He could not allow that to happen – he would not allow it. Big Lou was a feature of his life and, he suspected, the lives of so many others in that part of town. If she went, a little bit of the character of the place would die. One of the new coffee bars would move in, with its standard international decor and its bland sameness. The coffee might be good enough, but these places spelled death to the particular, to the sense of place that a real local coffee bar embodied. They were simply without character, although they might never understand how people could think that. But people did. It was the difference between French cheese, unpasteurised and odiferous (but divine), and the processed rubbery paste that the big food interests passed off as cheese. International business, once allowed to stalk uncontrolled, killed the local, the small, the quirky. International business, thought Matthew, had ruined cheese, will ruin wine, and then will move on to ruin everything. No, he thought, Big Lou’s little coffee bar was now the front line.
Eventually, Matthew decided that the only thing he could do was to go to the Cumberland Bar shortly after five that evening and wait to see if Stuart came in. And if he did not, he could ask the barman or one of the regulars; somebody was bound to know where he lived.
As it happened, Matthew did not have long to wait. Shortly
before five-thirty, Stuart came in and walked over to the bar.
Matthew left his seat to intercept him. “Listen,” he said. “I’ve got to talk to you urgently. I’ve already bought you a drink. It’s at the table.” He took Stuart by the elbow and led him away from the bar.
Stuart was slightly irritated by Matthew’s insistence, but he was in a good humour, as he had been left on his own for a couple of hours. Bertie had been returned safely from Paris that afternoon and had been dragged off for a specially-arranged session with Dr Fairbairn. The psychotherapist had been asked to determine whether there was any psychological trauma that might result from the experience of being left in Paris; Irene was of the view that early identification of trauma helped to reduce its long-term impact. And anything could have happened in Paris; anything. In fact, Bertie had enjoyed himself immensely, and had felt his heart sink when he returned to the hotel after the Sorbonne lecture to discover his mother, and several French policemen, waiting for him. The sight of the policemen had not worried him, but the realisation that his mother had come to take him home had filled him with such despair that he had burst into tears. This had been interpreted by Irene as a sign of trauma.
“My wee boy’s just come back from Paris,” Stuart remarked conversationally, as they went over to Matthew’s table. “He went over there with an orchestra. Then they somehow managed to . . .”
“Oh yes,” said Matthew, without any real interest. “Good.”
They sat down and Matthew got straight to the point. “You said you knew somebody in Glasgow who might get Eddie to pay Lou back,” he said. “Any progress?”
Stuart smiled. “Steady on,” he said. “It was just an idea.”
“But you do know somebody?” Matthew pressed.
“Yes,” said Stuart. “I do.”
“Well can we go and see him right now?” said Matthew, looking at his watch. “We could get the six o’clock from Waverley if we rush.”
“But hold on,” said Stuart. “I’m not sure if I want to go to Glasgow tonight.”
312
