“Ah,” said Matthew. “Now your meaning becomes clearer, Lou. We’re on to that one again. Well, you’re the one who needs a bit of a reality check. Work patterns have changed, Lou.
Or they’ve changed in countries like this. We don’t make things anymore, you may have noticed. Things are made in China. So we’re doing different sorts of work. It’s all changed. Different work patterns.”
Big Lou looked at him coolly. “China?”
“Yes. Everything – or virtually everything. Take a look at the label – it’ll tell you. Made in China. Clothes. Shoes too now.
All the electronic thingamabobs. Everything. Except for cars, which are made by the Japanese and occasionally by the Germans.
That’s it.”
Big Lou moved her polishing cloth across the bar. “A second industrial revolution. Just like the first. All the plants, all the equipment are set up in one country and that’s where everything’s made.” She paused. “And us? What’s left for us to do?”
“We’ll design things,” said Matthew. “We’ll produce the intellectual property. That’s the theory, anyway.”
Big Lou looked thoughtful. “But can’t they do that just as well in the East? In India, for example?”
Matthew shrugged. “They have to leave something for us to do.”
“Do they?”
Big Lou waited for an answer to her question, but none was forthcoming. So she decided to ask another one. “Matthew, what do you think a fool’s paradise looks like?”
Matthew looked about him. Then he turned to Lou. “Let’s change the subject, Lou. Who’s your new man?”
Lou stopped polishing for a moment. She stared at Matthew.
“New man?”
93
“Come on, Lou,” said Matthew. “You know how news gets around. I’ve heard that you’ve got a new man. Robert? Angus told me. That’s his name, isn’t it?”
Big Lou hesitated for a moment. Then she resumed her polishing. “My affairs are my business, Matthew.”
Matthew smiled. “So you’re not denying that there’s somebody?”
“There might be.”
“In other words, there is.”
Big Lou said nothing. She had been embarrassed by the public way in which her break-up with Eddie had happened; she felt humiliated by that. And if anything similar were to happen with Robert, she did not want people to know about it. Nobody likes to be seen to be rejected, and Big Lou was no exception to that rule.
Matthew lifted his coffee cup and drained it. “I hope it works out this time, Lou,” he said. “You deserve it.”
She raised her eyes and looked at him. He meant it, she decided. “Thank you, Matthew. He’s a nice man. I’ll tell him to come in one morning so that you can meet him.”
“What does he do?” asked Matthew.
“Ceilings,” said Lou. “Robert does ceilings. You know, when 94
you want to replace cornicing, you need moulds. Robert does that. And he makes new cornices. He’s quite an artist.”
“Sounds good,” said Matthew. This was better, he thought, than Eddie, with his Rootsie-Tootsie Club and his teenage girls.
“Yes,” Big Lou went on. “He’s very good at that. Architects use him. Historic Scotland. People like that. But his real passion is history. That’s how I met him. I went to a lecture at the museum and I found myself sitting next to him. That’s how it happened. It was a lecture by Paul Scott on the Act of Union.
Robert was there.”
“Nice,” said Matthew. He knew this sounded trite, but he could not think of anything else to say. And it was nice, he thought, to picture Big Lou going to a lecture on the Act of Union and finding a man. There were undoubtedly many women who went to lectures at the museum and did not find a man.
Then Matthew thought of something else to say. He was fond of Big Lou; an almost brotherly affection, he felt, and brothers should on occasion sound a warning note. “You’ll be careful, won’t you, Lou?” he said quietly. “There are some men who . . .
Well, I don’t want to remind you of Eddie, Lou, but remember what happened there. I don’t want your heart to be broken again, Lou.”
She reached out and put a hand on Matthew’s forearm. They had never touched before; this was the first time. “I’ll be careful,”
she said. “And thank you for saying that.”
Matthew lifted up his cup. It was completely empty, without even any froth around the rim to lick off. He looked at the bottom of the cup, where there was a small mark and some printing.
