While Antonia went into the bedroom with her suitcase, Angus Lordie busied himself in the kitchen making coffee for the two of them. After coffee he would show her round the rest of the
17
flat; there was a trick with the central-heating controls that he would need to explain (the timer went backwards for some reason, which required some calculation in the setting) and he would have to tell her about the fuse-box, too, which had idio-syncrasies of its own.
They would have to have black coffee, as there was no milk in the fridge. A woman would have thought of stocking the fridge with essentials for an arriving tenant: a loaf of bread, a pint or two of milk, some butter. But men did not think of these things, and Angus had brought nothing. His own fridge was usually empty, so there was no reason why he should think of replenishing Domenica’s.
“Have you known Domenica for long?” he asked, as Antonia, returning from the bedroom, seated herself opposite him at the kitchen table.
“Twenty years,” she said abruptly. “Although I feel I’ve known her forever. Don’t you find that there are some friends who are like that? You feel that you’ve known them all your life.”
Angus nodded. “I feel that I’ve known Domenica forever too.
That’s why . . .” He stopped himself. He was about to explain that this was why he felt her absence so keenly, but that would sound self-pitying and there was nothing less attractive than self-pity.
Antonia continued. “I met her when I was a student,” she said. “I was twenty and she was . . . well, I suppose she must have been about forty then. She was my tutor in an anthropology course I took. It was not my main subject – that was Scottish history – but I found her fascinating. The professors thought her a bit of maverick. They forced her out in the end.”
“Very unfair,” said Angus. He could not imagine Domenica being forced out of anything, but perhaps when she was younger it might have been easier.
“Very stupid, more likely,” said Antonia. “The problem was that she was far brighter than those particular professors. She frightened them because she could talk about anything and everything and their own knowledge was limited to a narrow little corner of the world. That disturbed them. And universities 18
are still full of people like that, you know. People of broad culture may find it rather difficult in them. Timid, bureaucratic places.
And very politically conformist.”
“I don’t know,” said Angus. “Surely some of them . . .”
“Of course,” said Antonia. “But, but . . . the trouble is that they’re so busy with their social engineering that they’ve lost all notion of what it is to be a liberal-minded institution.”
“I don’t know,” said Angus. “Surely things aren’t that bad . . .”
“Not that I’m one of these people who goes round muttering
‘
Angus laughed. He had always enjoyed Domenica’s wit and had been missing it already; but now it seemed that relief was in sight. Or, as Domenica might have it, relief was insight . . .
“Scottish history,” Angus said.
Antonia nodded. “Indeed. I studied under Gordon Donaldson and then under that very great man, John Macqueen. Such an interesting scholar, Macqueen, with his books on numerology and the like. You never knew what he would turn to next. And his son writes too – Hector Macqueen. He came up with some very intriguing things and then for some reason wrote a history of Heriot’s Cricket Club – a very strange book, but it must have been of interest to somebody. Can you imagine a cricketing history? Can you?”
“I suppose it has lists of who scored what,” said Angus. “And who went in first, and things like that.”
They were silent for a moment, both contemplating the full, arid implications of a cricketing history. Then Antonia broke the silence.
“I’ve never played cricket,” she said. “Yet there are ladies’
cricket teams. You hear about them from time to time. I can’t imagine what they’re like. But I suppose they enjoy themselves.
It’s the sort of thing that rather brisk women like to do. You know the sort.”
Angus did. He was enjoying the conversation greatly and had decided that he very much approved of Domenica’s new
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tenant. He wondered whether he might invite her for dinner that night, or whether it would be considered a little forward at this early stage in their acquaintanceship. He hesitated for a moment; why should he not? She had said nothing to indicate that she was spoken for, and even if she was, there was nothing wrong in a neighbourly supper a deux. So he asked her, suggesting that she might care to take pot luck in his kitchen as this was her first day in the flat and she would not have had time to get in supplies.
Antonia hesitated, but only for a moment. “How tempting,”
she said quietly. “You really have been too kind to me. And I would love to accept, but I think that this evening I must work.
