She would not tell him; she would not.
For a moment there was silence. Then Matthew spoke. “You have to,” he said. “You can’t say something like that and then not tell me.”
“Not if you’re going to be so rude,” said Pat.
Matthew raised his voice. “You’re the one who was being rude. Not me. You’re the one who wanted to expose my ignor-ance of whatever it is you know and I don’t. That’s hardly very friendly, is it?”
Pat was still seated at the desk and now she looked up at Matthew. “You’re the one who’s not being friendly,” she said.
“All I was trying to do was to give you some good news and you bit my head off. Just like that.”
Matthew’s expression remained impassive. “You sold a painting.”
Pat had not expected this. “Maybe,” she muttered.
“There!” crowed Matthew. “I guessed! Now, don’t say anything. No, let me guess.”
“You said you didn’t want to guess,” snapped Pat. “Now you’re saying you do. You should make up your mind, you know.”
“I’m guessing because I’ve decided I want to guess,” said Matthew. “That’s very different from being made to guess when you don’t want to. You should have said: ‘Would you like me to tell you something or would you prefer to guess?’ That would have been much more polite.” He paused. “Now, let me think.
You’ve sold a painting. Right. So which painting would it be?
One of the MacTaggarts? No, I don’t think so. It’s not the sort of day on which one sells a MacTaggart. No. So, let’s see.”
73
Pat decided to put an end to this. If Matthew had been unprepared to guess when she had very politely offered him the chance, then she did not see why he should now have the privilege of guessing. “I’m going to tell you. It’s . . .”
“No!” interjected Matthew. “Don’t spoil it. You can’t get somebody guessing and then stop them. Come on, Pat – I’m going to guess. Let’s think. All right – you sold Angus Lordie’s painting. Yes! You sold the totally white one.”
“You saw the sticker,” said Pat. “That wasn’t a proper guess.”
Matthew was injured innocence itself. “I did not see the sticker! I did not!”
“You must have. You saw it when you came in and then you pretended not to. Well, I think that’s just pathetic, I really do.”
“I did not see the sticker,” shouted Matthew. “Who knows better what I saw or didn’t see? You or me? No, don’t look like that, just tell me? Who knows what I saw? You or me?”
Pat recalled what her father had said about the mind and its tricks of perception. It was likely that Matthew had in fact seen the sticker when he came in, even if he did not know that he had seen it.
“You don’t always know what you’ve seen,” she said. “The mind registers things at a subconscious level. You may not know that you’ve seen something, but you have. The mind knows it subconsciously.”
Matthew stared at her. “Look,” he said, “let’s not fight. I’m sorry if I went on about guessing. I suppose I’m just a bit . . .
Well, I don’t know, I’m just a bit.”
She held out her hand and touched him briefly. “All right.
Sorry too.”
“I can hardly believe that you sold that painting,” he said, adding, “If you can call it a painting. How did they pay?”
Pat reached for the card she had been given. “Well, he hasn’t paid yet. But he did ask for a red sticker to be put up.”
She handed him the card. He examined it and frowned. “The Duke of where?”
74
“Johannesburg,” said Pat. “He was a man with a mustache.
About your height. He was wearing a red bandanna.”
Matthew stared at the card. “I’ve never heard of him,” he said. “Are you sure he exists? Are you sure this isn’t some sort of joke?”
Pat felt defensive. She had begun to doubt herself now, and she wondered whether she should simply have taken the man’s card and put up a sticker. It did seem a bit trusting, but if one couldn’t trust dukes, then whom could one trust?
“He seemed . . .” She trailed off.
Matthew looked doubtful. “It seems a bit unlikely,” he said.
“Why would Johannesburg have a duke? And what’s all this about these clubs? Where’s the Gitchigumi Club for heaven’s sake?”
“Duluth,” said Pat. “That’s what it says there. Duluth.”
