calculated to descend, precisely and with great effect, on a target.
“The problem,” she said quietly, “is that the car had already been stolen. When you went through to Glasgow and found that the car was not where you had so carelessly left it – I shall pass over that, of course – your new friend, Fatty O’Whatever . . .”
“Lard O’Connor,” interjected Stuart. “He’s called Lard 40
O’Connor, and I wish you wouldn’t keep referring to him as Fatty.”
“That may be,” said Irene in a steely tone, “but the fact is that this Lard character then arranged for a similar car to be stolen to order. You brought back a stolen car – one masquerading under our Edinburgh number plates, but at heart a stolen Glasgow car! Now the stolen car has been stolen again.
And that means that we can hardly go to the police and report that our car has been re-stolen.”
“But we don’t have to tell them that we suspect it’s a stolen car,” he said. “As far as we’re concerned, that’s the car I left in Glasgow. The fact that it has only four gears rather than five is neither here nor there.”
Irene stared at him. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” she said. “I really can’t believe it . . .” She paused and threw a glance at Bertie. “Bertie, it’s time for you to go to your space and finish your Italian exercises.”
Bertie looked at his father, as if for confirmation of the order, but there was no support for him in that quarter and he picked up his playing cards and left.
“Now,” said Irene. “Now we can get down to brass tacks. I can’t believe that you openly encouraged deception in front of Bertie. Are you out of your mind, Stuart? Here I am, doing my utmost to bring Bertie up with the right set of values, and you go and torpedo the whole thing by suggesting that we lie to the police.”
Stuart hesitated. The first few faltering steps he had taken to assert himself – steps which followed his successful completion of an assertiveness training workshop at the office – had somewhat petered out. Now, faced with Irene’s accusations of delin-quent behaviour, he was silenced. Sensing this, Irene continued.
“We are, unfortunately, in a position where we can do nothing at all,” she said. “We can’t go to the police. We can’t claim the insurance. In fact, we have to forget that our car ever existed.”
Stuart blinked. Forget you ever had a car. It sounded like the sort of thing that gangsters said when they threatened one another. And yet here was his wife saying it to him – and he
41
had no answer. He turned away without saying anything to Irene and made his way into the bathroom. He took off his jacket.
He took off his tie. Then he filled the basin with tepid water and washed his face. He looked up, into the mirror, and muttered to himself: “Statistician, middle-ranking, married, one son, one mortgage.” He looked more closely at his face. “Average Scottish face,” he continued. “Small lines beginning to appear around the eyes.” He stopped, and thought. Who was having fun? Other people in the office were having fun. They went to bars and held parties. They went off on weekends to Paris and Amsterdam. He never went anywhere. They had girlfriends and boyfriends. The girlfriends and boyfriends went with them to Paris and Amsterdam. They all had fun there.
“It’s about time you had some fun yourself,” he murmured, almost mournfully. Then he brightened and said: “Well, it’s possible, isn’t it?”
Matthew left Pat looking after the gallery while he went off to seek solace in coffee. Her disclosure of Wolf’s existence had not only surprised him; he had always assumed that Pat had no boyfriend and that she would be available when he eventually got round to making up his mind about her. But added to this surprise was a stronger feeling, one which made him feel raw inside. This was jealousy. How could Pat have somebody else?
And how could she spend time with this other person, this so-called Wolf (what a completely ridiculous name!), when she might spend time with him? He disliked Wolf, intensely, although he had not met him. He would be some awful braying type from somewhere in the south of England, the sort brought up to be completely self-confident, even arrogant. And the thought that Pat should waste herself on such a person was almost too much to bear.
When Matthew entered Big Lou’s coffee bar, Big Lou herself 42
was standing in her accustomed position behind the stainless-steel service bar, reading a small book. It was evidently compelling reading, and she barely gave Matthew a glance as he came through the door. Matthew nodded to her and went to sit down in his usual place. Glumly, he opened the newspaper on the table in front of him and scanned the headlines. His state of distraction, though, was such that not even the headlines were taken in, let alone the reports.
Big Lou said something to him, which he missed. She looked at him sharply and repeated herself.
“I said that’s an orra jumper you’re wearing,” she said.
Matthew stared at her. He was vaguely familiar with the Scots word “orra”, but he thought it applied to tractormen, for some reason. An orra man was a farm worker, was he not? And why would Big Lou refer to his cashmere sweater in those terms?
He felt flustered and annoyed.
“What’s wrong with you this morning?” Big Lou went on.
“You’re looking awfie ill.”
“I’m not ill,” said Matthew curtly.
Big Lou seemed taken aback by the rebuff. “Of course by ill, I don’t mean ill in the way in which you mean it,” said Big Lou.
“In Arbroath, when we say that somebody’s ill-looking we just mean that they don’t look themselves. That’s
