“Crushed strawberries are a pink colour,” Olive retorted, pushing Bertie towards the bed. “This is a very nice room, Bertie!
But quick, you must get into bed since you’re so ill. I’m the nurse now. Come along, darling, into bed you go. That’s better.
Now, you’re very lucky that I brought my nurse kit with me.”
Bertie watched in mute horror as Olive took a small plastic box from her school bag. It had a red cross on the lid, and when she opened it he saw a tiny plastic hammer, some wooden spat-ulas, and a few small bottles. But Olive was interested in none
of these. She had taken out a disposable syringe, complete with a long, entirely real needle.
“You’re going to have to give a blood sample, Bertie,” Olive said. “It’ll only hurt a little, but you’ll feel much better afterwards, I promise you. Now where do you want me to take it from?”
It had been a very satisfactory day for Bruce. His flat-hunting, which had taken less than three hours, had resulted in his finding a very comfortable room in Julia Donald’s flat in Howe Street.
There had been no mention of rent – not once in the conversation – and Bruce saw no reason why the subject should ever come up. From his point of view, he was going to be staying with her as a friend, a close friend probably, and it was inappropriate for friends to pay one another rent, especially when the friend who owned the flat had no mortgage to pay. So that was a major advantage to the arrangement, he thought. And even if Julia should become a little bit trying – and she was a bit inclined to gush, Bruce thought – he was still confident that he could handle her firmly, but tactfully. Bruce knew how to deal with women; he knew that he had only to look at them with the look – and they were putty in his hands. It was extraordinary: the slightest smoulder from Bruce, just the slightest, seemed to make them go weak at the knees, and in the head too. Bruce smiled. It’s so very easy, he thought – so very easy.
Before he went out that evening, Bruce took a shower in Neil and Caroline’s flat in Comely Bank. There were minor irrita-tions involved in this, as he did not like the multiple bottles of shampoo and conditioner which Caroline insisted on arranging on the small shelf in the shower. Bruce moved these every time he used the shower, shifting them to a place on top of the bathroom cupboard, but he noticed that they always migrated back 120
to their position within the shower cubicle. He thought of saying something to Caroline about this, but refrained from doing so, as he was not absolutely sure if she appreciated him as much as most women did. He had tried giving her the look, but she had returned it with a blank stare, which thoroughly unsettled him.
Normally, he would have put such a response down to a lack of interest based on lesbianism, but the fact that Caroline was happily married to Neil made that judgement unlikely. So what exactly is her problem? Bruce asked himself. Was it something to do with rent? He saw no reason why he should pay them anything when he was going to be there for such a short time, and they had, after all, invited him to stay, or almost. No, there was something more complicated at work here, he decided.
And then it occurred to him exactly what this was. Bruce decided that Caroline was jealous of him. That must be it! Neil, her husband, was such a weedy specimen in comparison with Bruce, that it must be hard for Caroline to have somebody in the house who was so clearly at the opposite end of the spec-trum from him. So rather than resenting her husband for being puny, she was transferring her dissatisfaction onto Bruce himself.
This insight made Bruce feel almost sorry for Caroline, and as a result of this he had said something to her in an attempt to make things easier.
“Don’t judge Neil too harshly,” he remarked one evening when he found himself alone in the kitchen with her.
She had looked at him in astonishment. “What on earth do you mean? Judge Neil harshly? Why would I do that?”
Bruce had smiled. “Well, you know. Some men are a bit more
. . . how shall I put it? Impressive. Yes, that’s it. Impressive.”
She stared at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He winked. “Don’t you . . . ?”
She had continued to stare at him. “I really have no idea what you’re going on about, Bruce,” she had said. “And, by the way, do you mind not moving my conditioner bottles from the shower?
You know that little shelf in there? That’s where I like them to be. That’s where I put them.”
Bruce smiled. “Come and show me,” he said. “Show me when I’m in the shower.”
She did not appreciate that, he decided, which was typical of somebody like her. There was a sense-of-humour failure there, he thought. A serious one. And she did not take well either to his next remark, which took the form of a good-natured question.
“Are you interested in other women, Caroline?” he asked. “I just want to know.”
“What do you mean?”
Bruce sighed. “I’m really having to spell it out,” he said. “I mean: are you, you know, interested in other women? Don’t look so cross. Lots of people are a little bit that way, you know, now and then. It’s perfectly understandable, you know . . .”
“How dare you!” Caroline screamed. “I’m going to tell Neil when he comes back. I just can’t believe it. I can’t believe that I’m being talked to like this in my own kitchen.”
“Temper! Temper!” said Bruce. “Most people these days don’t get all uptight about these things. We live in a very enlightened age, you know. I mean, hello!”
Now, standing in the shower, Bruce poured on a bit of Caroline’s conditioner and rubbed it into his hair. His conversation with his hostess had not been an edifying one, and it was probably just as well that he was going out for dinner with Julia Donald that evening. He might even move out that very evening, which would give Caroline
