he was twenty-nine and would be thirty on his next birthday. Thirty!
People, or some people, would begin to look at him with something approaching pity. He would begin to get better insurance rates and he could start going on those overthirty holidays that he had seen advertised. The advertisements, of course, did not say anything about a top age limit – all they said was that the holidays were for those over thirty, and that meant, he realised, that he might find himself on holiday with people of forty or even fifty!
No, he would have to do something about finding somebody, and that is exactly what he had done. He had not looked for Elspeth – she had just turned up, on his doorstep, or the doorstep of his gallery, and they had immediately taken to one another.
And now all he wanted to do was to make sure that she would stay with him and that she would move in to India Street. They would become a couple – a couple! – and they would build up a bank of memories, of things they had done together, places they had been. They would travel. They would go to Barbados, to the Seychelles, to India. They would take photographs of one another riding camels and sitting on a houseboat in the backwaters of 324
They would lie on a beach in Thailand, on Ko Samui, and listen to the waves. All this lay ahead, and Matthew wanted it to start as soon as possible.
His visit to Elspeth Harmony’s flat was going well enough.
She was distraught over her suspension from the school, but he was succeeding in getting her to see the positive side of this.
“Look on it as a career change,” he said. “Lots of people have them. And everybody says that it’s a good thing.”
She thought about this for a moment. “But I haven’t got another career to go to,” she said. “And do you think anyone will give a job to somebody who’s been fired? Do you think that?”
“Not fired,” said Matthew. “You can resign before they fire you. You can resign right now.”
“But everybody will know that I’ve only resigned because I was about to get fired,” she pointed out. “You know what this town’s like. Everybody knows everybody else.”
Matthew decided that it was time to be more direct. “So what if they know?” he said. “I know, and I’m still going to offer you a job.”
She stared at him in surprise.
“Yes,” he said. “You can have a job in my gallery. Straightaway.
You can start tomorrow, if you like.” He paused. “Not that you’d have to do any work. Not real work. All you’d have to do is look after the gallery sometimes – when I go to auctions or to meet a client. Things like that.”
“But I don’t know anything about art,” she protested.
“Nothing at all.”
Matthew was about to say: “And nor do I,” but did not.
Instead, he said, “That doesn’t matter. You can learn as you go along. You can read Duncan Macmillan’s book on Scottish art.
There’s lots of information there. And you’ll pick it up. But you really don’t need to bother.”
Elspeth laughed. “This sounds like a most peculiar job,” she said. “I have no qualifications for it, and I won’t have to do much
work. Will it be paid? Or will it be one of these jobs where you have to pay yourself to do it?”
“It’ll be paid,” said Matthew eagerly. “And the pay is really, really good.”
She hesitated. She did not want to ask what the salary was, but this was such a peculiar situation that she might as well.
“How much?” she inquired.
Matthew shrugged; he had not thought about the salary. “Oh, about . . .” He waved a hand in the air. “About sixty thousand a year.”
Elspeth said nothing for a moment. Then, her voice quiet:
“I really don’t think we should talk about this anymore,” she said. “It’s very kind of you, but . . .”
Matthew felt a surge of panic. I’m going to lose her, he thought.
I’ve mishandled this. She thinks that I’m trying to . . . to buy her!
He knew that he had to act, or he would have a lifetime to regret not acting. “Elspeth,” he said earnestly. “I may as well tell you that the job . . . Well, you can have the job of course, if you want it, but what I’m really talking about is something quite different. I want to ask you something, and I want you to know that whatever I’ve said up until now doesn’t count for anything. But what I’m about to say to you now, well, I really do mean it. I want to ask you if you will marry me. That’s all.
I know that we hardly know one another, I know that, but I feel that you and I are . . . well, I just think that it feels right. It feels so right that I want you to know everything that I’m thinking, and it would be dishonest to pretend that I’m not thinking this.
I want you to marry me. Please. Please. I really mean it.”
She said nothing for a few moments, but she was thinking, quickly. Nobody had ever asked Elspeth Harmony to marry him before. And she wanted to get married. She wanted to have a husband and children of her own. She liked Matthew; she liked him a great deal. Liking can become love. In fact, it had just done precisely that. Right then. She loved him.
