The World According to Bertie

“You’re enjoying the course?” he asked, glancing at her in his mildly apologetic way.

Pat suspected that nobody ever told Dr Fantouse that his course was enjoyable, and yet she knew how much effort he put into his work. It must be hard, she thought, being Dr Fantouse and being appreciated by nobody.

“I’m really enjoying it,” she said. “In fact, it’s the best course I’ve ever done. It really is.”

Dr Fantouse beamed with pleasure. “That’s very good to hear,”

he said. “I enjoy it too, you know. There are some very interesting people in the class. Very interesting.”

Pat wondered whom he meant. There was a rather outspoken, indeed, opinionated girl from London who was always coming up with views on everything; perhaps he meant her.

“Your views, for example,” went on Dr Fantouse. “If I may say so, you always take a very balanced view. I find that admirable.” He paused. “And that young man, Wolf. I think that he has a good mind.”

A Fantasy Sail on That Slow Boat to China 297

Pat found herself blushing. Wolf did not have a good mind; he had a dirty mind, she thought, full of lascivious thoughts . . .

like most boys.

Dr Fantouse now changed the subject. “Do you live over there?” he said, pointing towards Marchmont.

“I used to,” she said. “Now I live at home. In the Grange.”

It sounded terribly dull, she thought, but then Dr Fantouse himself was very dull.

“How nice,” he said. “Living at home must have its appeal.”

They walked on. Dr Fantouse was carrying a small leather briefcase, and he swung this beside him as he walked, like a metronome.

“My wife always makes tea for me at this hour,” said Dr Fantouse. “Would you care to join us? There is usually cake.”

Pat hesitated. Had the invitation been extended without any mention of a wife, then she would have said no, but this was very innocent.

“That would be very nice,” she said.

Dr Fantouse’s house was on Fingal Place, a stone-built terrace which looked out directly onto the footpath that ran along the Meadows. Pat had walked past these houses many times before and had thought how comfortable they looked. They were beautiful, comfortable in their proportions, without that towering Victorianism that set in just a few blocks to the south. That an authority on the Quattrocento should live in one seemed to her to be just right.

The flat was on the first floor, up a stone staircase on the landings of which were dried-flower arrangements. The door, painted red, bore the legend fantouse, which for some reason amused Pat; that name belonged to the Quattrocento, to aesthetics, to the world of academe; it did not belong to the ordinary world of letterboxes and front doors.

They went inside, entering a hall decorated with framed prints of what looked like Italian cities of the Renaissance. A door opened.

“My wife,” said Dr Fantouse. “Fiona.”

Pat looked at the woman who had entered the hall. She was 298 Some Tea and Decency with the Fantouses strikingly beautiful, like a model from a pre-Raphaelite painting.

She stepped forward and took Pat’s hand, glancing inquiringly at her husband as she did so.

“Miss Macgregor,” he explained. “One of my students.”

“Pat,” said Pat.

Fiona Fantouse drew Pat away into the room behind her. Pat noticed that she was wearing delicately applied eye shadow in light purple, the shade of French lavender.

88. Some Tea and Decency with the Fantouses The sitting room into which Fiona took Pat was an intimate one, but big enough to accommodate a baby grand piano, along with two large mahogany bookcases. The wall behind the piano was painted red and was hung with small paintings – tiny landscapes, miniatures, two silhouetted heads facing one another. A low coffee table dominated the centre of the room, and on this were books and magazines, casually stacked, but arranged in such a way that they did not tower or threaten to topple. A large vaseline glass bowl sat in the middle of the table, and this was filled with those painted wooden balls which Victorians and Edwardians liked to collect. The balls were speckled, like the eggs of some exotic fowl, and seemed to be, like other things in the room, seductively tactile.

Pat noticed that to the side of the room there was a small tea table, covered with a worked-linen tablecloth. On this was a tray, with a Minton teapot and cups and saucers. Then there was a cake – as Dr Fantouse had said there would be – a sponge of some sort, dusted with icing sugar, and a plate of sandwiches –

white bread, neatly trimmed.

“We sometimes have people for tea,” said Fiona. “And so we keep an extra cup to hand.”

She sat herself beside the tea tray and asked Pat how she liked her tea. On the other side of the room, facing them, Dr Some Tea and Decency with the Fantouses 299

Fantouse perched on a high-backed chair, smiling at Pat and his wife.

“Miss Macgregor belongs to the coffeehouse generation,” he remarked. “Afternoon tea will not be her usual thing. Perhaps you would like coffee?”

“I like tea,” said Pat.

“There are so many coffeehouses,” said Fiona. “And they are all full of people talking to one another. One wonders what they talk about?”