The man turned and smiled at her. “It probably doesn’t matter much,” he said. “Just Scotland. Quite some time ago now.”
“Yes.” She waited for him to say something else, but his gaze had shifted. Now he was looking at Angus Lordie’s painting. He moved forward and stared at the label beneath it; then he stood back and stared at it, his head slightly to one side.
Pat watched him. She was about to say something, to tell him that this was not entirely serious, but he had now turned to face her.
“Do you know ‘Four minutes thirty-three seconds’?” he asked.
“That piece by what’s his name? John Cage? Complete silence.
That’s all it is – complete silence.”
“Nothing?”
“Yes, nothing at all. Often done on the piano, but an orchestra can play it too. The conductor stands there, turning pages of the score, but nobody plays a note. And that’s it.”
“You’ve heard it?”
The man nodded. “I suppose you might say that we’ve all heard it. I heard it in New York. But if any of us has ever listened to four minutes of silence, anywhere, then I suppose you could 70
But then, we don’t listen to silence, do we? We’re too preoccupied.”
Pat looked at Angus Lordie’s painting. “Well . . .” she began.
It was as if the man had not heard her. “That performance in New York was extraordinary. The moment the orchestra had stopped, there was confusion in the audience. Some of them knew the piece, of course, and applauded. They understood.
Some laughed. Others were silent, not really knowing what to do.”
“This painting is a bit like that,” he said. “I like it, you know.”
Pat stood quite still. One part of her wanted to tell him that it was absurd, that Matthew’s joke had gone far enough; the other imagined Matthew’s pleasure if she actually sold it. It was the sort of thing that would amuse him greatly, and, of course, there was Angus to think about. He was miserable over Cyril’s plight and he would appreciate some good news.
“I don’t suppose you want to buy it,” Pat said. She was hesitant. I’m not trying to persuade him, she thought. I’m really not. And the painting was so absurdly pricey – for what it was – that only somebody who did not have to worry about money would buy it. Such people, surely, could look after themselves.
The man turned his head sideways to look at the painting from a slightly different angle. “Why not? My walls are a bit cluttered, you know. The usual stuff. I could do with a bit of minimalism. So, why not?”
Pat waited. “Yes?”
“Yes,” he said. “Bung a red sticker under it. My name’s Johannesburg. Here’s my card.”
He handed her his card.
71
Matthew did not like it when people said “guess what?” to him, which is the very expression with which Pat greeted him when he returned to the gallery. Being asked to guess what had happened struck him as pointless – one could never guess accurately in such circumstances, which was precisely why one was asked to do so.
“I don’t see why I should try to guess,” he said peevishly. “If I did, I would be completely wrong and you would just revel in your advantage over me. So I’m not going to guess.”
Pat looked at him with surprise. He had been in a good mood when he left for his appointment; something must have gone wrong with that meeting to produce this irritable response. “I was only asking,” she said.
Matthew tossed the file that he was carrying down on the desk. “You weren’t asking,” he said. “Asking me to guess isn’t really asking anything. You just want to show me that I don’t know what’s happened. That’s all.”
Pat was not sure how to react to this. It seemed to her a completely unimportant matter – an argument over nothing.
She had said “guess what?” but she was not really expecting him to try to guess. In fact, she had intended merely to point to the 72
red sticker which now adorned Angus Lordie’s painting. It was good news, after all, not bad. Aggrieved, she decided that she would defend herself. “I don’t know why you’re so ratty,” she said. “Lots of people say ‘guess what?’ when they have some news to give somebody else. It’s just a thing they say. They don’t really expect you to guess.”
“Well, I’m not guessing,” said Matthew.
Pat looked away. “Then I’m not going to tell you,” she said.
