“You can use everything,” he said. “There’s never much food in there, but you can help yourself to what there is. Feel free.”
Pat thanked him, but thought that she would buy her own supplies. His insistence that she stay rent-free was difficult enough; to be fed by him too would have made her position impossible. I would be a kept woman, she thought; and smiled at the thought. It was a wonderful expression, she reflected; so exotic, so out-of-date, rather like the expression “a fallen woman”. She knew somebody who lived in a house in Edinburgh that used to be a home for fallen women; after their fall, the women went there to have their babies before the babies were then given up for adoption. One of the rooms in the house had been a lecture room, where the women were lectured on the avoidance of further falls, perhaps.
After she had unpacked, she went through to the kitchen, where she found Matthew seated at the scrubbed- pine table, a coffee pot and two mugs in front of him.
“Don’t you love the smell of freshly-brewed coffee?” he said brightly. “And the smell of the grounds before you make the coffee. That’s even better.” He sniffed at the air. “Lovely.”
Pat sat down. She had resolved to talk to Matthew and decided that it would be best to do so now, right at the beginning. It would be easier that way.
“Matthew,” she began. “I’m really grateful to you for letting me stay here. You know that, don’t you?” He made a gesture with his hand, as if brushing aside, in embarrassment, an unwanted compliment. “I’m happy to be able to help,” he said.
“And I really don’t mind. That room is never used.”
The guests who never came, thought Pat; he was lonely – it was so obvious. She almost stopped herself there, but continued.
She had to.
“Well, it’s kind of you,” said Pat.
“Don’t think about it,” said Matthew. “You’d do the same for me. I know you would.”
Pat was silent. Would she? Perhaps.
“And it’s not going to be for long,” she went on. “No more than a couple of weeks. Until I find somewhere else.”
182
Matthew was staring at the coffee pot. He reached out and picked it up, as if to start pouring, but then put it down. He reached for one of the mugs and peered inside it.
“Only a few weeks?”
She could tell that he was making an effort to keep his voice level, to hide his disappointment. But she had to go through with this; it would be far more difficult to say anything later on, when misunderstandings had already occurred.
“You see,” she said, “I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to share just with one person, particularly with a . . .” she hesitated for a moment before continuing, “with a man.”
Matthew continued to stare into the mug. Then he looked up. “I hoped that you’d stay a bit longer than that,” he said. “It gets very . . . very quiet around here. I just hoped . . .” He bit at his lip. “I would never make it awkward for you. Why would you think that? Why would you think I’d make it awkward for you?”
Pat reached out and took his hand. “Because it would be awkward,” she said. “Because you’re a man and I’m a girl, and
. . . you know.”
Matthew sighed. “But you don’t fancy me. I know that.
Nothing could ever happen, because you don’t fancy me.
Nobody does.”
There was no self pity in his voice; he merely spoke with the air of one stating a fact.
“That isn’t true,” said Pat vehemently. “A lot of people fancy you.”
“Name one,” said Matthew flatly. “Name just one.”
Pat did not have the time to answer the question, which she could not have answered anyway. But at that moment, with the question still hanging in the air, the doorbell rang and the conversation came to an end.
The arrival of an unexpected visitor has ruined many an important conversation and at least one great poem. When Coleridge started to describe his vision of Kubla Khan’s Xanadu, he had, we are told, the words in mind to describe what he saw. But then came the person from Porlock, who by chance knocked at the door at precisely the moment that the poet was committing his vision to paper, and it was lost. Thus began Porlock’s long career as a symbol of that which interrupts the flow.
Pat might have been able to reassure Matthew that he was appreciated, had she had the chance to do so. But she was not to have that chance. As Matthew rose to his feet to answer the door, he gave her a look which said, very clearly, that what he said was irrefutable, and that she should not even bother to dispute it. Pat made a gesture of hopelessness, the meaning of which was similarly clear: if that’s your view of yourself, then nothing will persuade you otherwise, will it?
While Matthew was answering the door, Pat poured herself a cup of coffee. She felt unhappy about the disappointment that she had caused Matthew; she liked him – she liked him a great deal, in fact, as he had always been kind to her. But there was no mistaking the difference between the affection she felt for Matthew – a rather sister-like affection – and the feelings which Wolf had aroused in her. She could hardly bear to think about Wolf now, but she had to admit that what she had previously felt for him was far from sisterly. The thought of that disturbed her, and she found herself wondering whether she was the sort of woman who was invariably attracted to the wrong sort of man. She had seen that behaviour in others, the stubborn refusal to acknowledge the worthlessness of some man. And it was always the same men who benefited from that; handsome, charming men who knew how to exploit women; men like . . .
