The howls which they had heard – if they were indeed howls, and it sounded like that to them – had now stopped, to be 156
replaced by a peal of laughter. Then there was a voice, not raised at all, but still audible from outside.
“I wish you wouldn’t howl quite so much.” It was Tessie.
“Why not? If it makes me happy.” There was a pause, and then: “And I know what makes you happy.” That was Wolf.
Matthew glanced at Pat. There was something indecent in standing outside somebody’s bedroom door and listening to what went on within. He was about to gesture to Pat that they should leave, but then Wolf could be heard again.
“And, as you know, I like to make girls happy. It’s my role in life. We all need a hobby.”
Tessie snorted. “You’re lucky I’m not the jealous type. Most people wouldn’t hack it, you know. You’re lucky that I don’t mind.”
“That’s because you know I don’t mean it,” said Wolf. “You know that you’re the one. You know that.”
“Yes,” answered Tessie. “But how are you getting on with her over there? Pat. God, what a name! I’m fed up with acting jealous, by the way. All to keep you amused.”
“I need another week. She’s in lurve with me. Big time. But it’ll be another week or so before . . .” There was laughter.
It was as if Pat had been given an electric shock. She moved back quickly from the door, reeling, nearly dropping Sir Ernst Gombrich from under her arm. Matthew, visibly appalled, made to support her, but she drew back, humiliated, ashamed.
“Quick,” whispered Matthew, picking up the suitcases.
“Quick. Open the door.”
Out on the landing, the flat door closed firmly behind them, Matthew rested the suitcases on the floor and reached out for Pat’s arm.
“Listen,” he said. “Listen. I know how you must feel. But there’s no reason for you to feel bad. It’s not your . . .” He looked at her. She had turned her face away from him and he could see that she had begun to cry. He put down the suitcases and reached out to her.
“No,” she mumbled, starting down the stairs. “I just want to go.”
There were a few awkward moments at the front door, as they waited for the arrival of the taxi which Matthew had ordered.
Matthew wanted to talk – he wanted to reassure Pat – but she told him that she did not want to discuss what they had heard.
“All right,” he said. “We won’t talk about it. Just forget him.
Put him out of your mind.”
They stood in silence. Matthew, looking up at the wispy clouds scudding across the sky, thought of something he had read in a magazine somewhere, or was it a newspaper? – he was unsure
– of how Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir had entertained themselves with stories of their conquests. He had been appalled by the story, and it had confirmed his prejudice against a certain sort of French intellectual, who deconstructed other people; who played games with people. One might expect bad behaviour from existentialists – indeed, that was what existentialism was all about, was it not? – but to find this happening on one’s own doorstep was a shock.
Matthew looked down the street, which was quiet and taxi-less. A black and white cat was sauntering towards them and had now stopped a few yards away, staring at Matthew. An elderly woman, laden with shopping bags, was catching her breath a little distance away, holding onto a railing for support. It was a very ordinary street scene in that part of Edinburgh, and yet it seemed to Matthew that the moment was somehow special and that what it spoke to, this moment, was
Such moments can come at any time, and in unexpected circumstances, too. Those who travel to a place of pilgrimage, to a holy place, may hope to experience an epiphany of some sort, but may find only that the Ganges is dirty or that Iona is wet.
And yet, on their journey, or on their return, disappointed, they may suddenly see something which vouchsafes them the insight they had wished to find; something glimpsed, not in a holy place, but in very ordinary surroundings; as Auden discovered when he sat with three colleagues on the lawn, out under the stars, on a balmy evening, and suddenly felt for the first time what it 158
was like to love one’s neighbour as oneself. The experience lasted in its intensity, he later wrote, for all of two hours, and then gradually faded.
Matthew felt this now, and it suppressed any urge he might have had to speak. He felt this for Pat – a gentleness, a cherishing – and for the cat and for the elderly woman under her burden. And he felt it, he thought, because he had just witnessed cruelty. He would not be cruel. He could not be cruel now. All that he wanted was to protect and comfort this girl beside him.
He looked at Pat. She had stopped crying and she no longer avoided his gaze.
“Thank you, Matthew,” she said.
He smiled at her. “You’ll be much happier in India Street.
You really will.”
“You must tell me how much rent I need to pay,” said Pat.
Matthew raised his hands in protest. “None,” he said. “Not a penny. You can live rent free.”
