But now she was gazing at him with one of those unsettling looks of hers – as if she was trying to work out what he was thinking. Real businessmen did not have to put up with that, he imagined: you did not find that sort of thing in banks and legal offices.
“I was thinking of something,” Matthew explained.
“And it made you blush?”
He nodded. He was wary. “Could be. A rather embarrassing situation I was in a little while ago.”
She looked interested. “Oh yes? What?”
Matthew did not answer immediately. It was none of Pat’s business, and she should not have asked him. It was rather like asking somebody who has mentioned going to the doctor what they’re suffering from. One did not do it. And it was the same with blushes, really: if somebody blushed, should you ask them what brought on the blush? He thought not.
“I was accused of shop-lifting.” He would tell her that much, he decided. He need not go into further detail.
She gasped. “No! What a dreadful experience. You know, I’ve often wondered what I’d do if somebody stopped me as I was leaving a shop and said Excuse me, madam, what have you got in that bag of yours? You know, I’d faint – I’m sure I would.”
“Yes,” said Matthew. “It’s not pleasant.”
“And had you?” asked Pat.
“What?”
She immediately corrected herself. “Oh no, sorry . . . I didn’t mean to say that.”
Matthew looked at her reproachfully. “Do you think I would . . . ?”
It was her turn to blush. “No, of course not. I don’t know why I asked that. It was stupid. Of course you wouldn’t.” She paused. “Where was it?”
“In a bookshop.”
She nodded. “I’ve got a friend who works in a bookshop. She says it’s a constant problem for them. People come in and steal books. But they also read them, you know. They come in and stand for hours reading books they’re never going to buy.”
“It must be galling for the bookshop.”
“Yes, and then,” Pat continued, “then there are people who come in and head straight for the erotica section.”
Matthew stared fixedly out of the window. “Erotica?”
“Yes. The steamy stuff. Like that book . . . what’s it called? Fifty something . . . ”
Matthew resisted the temptation to look at her. He felt the back of his neck becoming warm.
“Yes,” said Pat, “they stand there in their dirty raincoats reading that stuff. Sometimes the staff have to ask them to leave.”
Matthew said nothing.
Pat laughed. “She was telling me the other day that they caught somebody with that book tucked into his trousers. Red-handed, so to speak. Apparently, he made a run for it. He pushed one of the customers over – into a pile of recipe books. Jamie Oliver’s latest. Then he ran out of the shop.”
Matthew was silent. He had not intended to collide with Mrs. Patterson Cowie – it was her fault for getting in the way. And she didn’t really fall – it was more of a slow topple.
“But they’ve got it all on CCTV,” Pat continued. “They played it back and saw everything. His face – the works. All there.”
Matthew opened his mouth. “Oh . . . ”
“They called the police.”
“Really?” he sounded distant – as if whispering from somewhere afar.
“Yes.”
“And did they . . . did they get him?”
“They’re working on it,” said Pat. “But it’s difficult. The police are not all that bothered about the theft side of it – but they don’t like the pushing of the customer. They say that he might be dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”
“Yes, as in those police warnings: don’t approach this person – he might be dangerous.”
Matthew cleared his throat. “They’ll probably never catch him,” he said.
“Probably not,” said Pat. “And anyway, she – my friend – thinks that he was just a harmless perv. He was trying to steal that book, you know. Fifty Shades. Poor man. Imagine being a perv.”
Matthew frowned, as if trying to imagine it. “Yes,” he said.
He turned around: it was time to change the subject. “What’s that book you’re reading?”
Pat picked it up again. “You probably know it,” she said. “The Eclipse of Art. It’s by Julian Spalding. It’s all about . . . ”
“I know it,” said Matthew. He was relieved that they had moved on to art. “I agree with him.”
“It’s very amusing on conceptual art. About how the whole thing has become a . . . ” She trailed off.
“A blind alley,” said Matthew. “A banal nothing, manipulated by a handful of wealthy collectors. Found objects . . . Decaying animal heads covered in flies, sharks in formaldehyde. Bits of string. You should hear Angus on the subject – particularly the Turner Prize.”
“He despises it, doesn’t he?”
“Yes. And he’s trained Cyril to lift his leg whenever he hears the words Turner Prize.”
“A bit childish,” said Pat.
Matthew smiled. “Homo ludens.”
Pat looked thoughtful. She had been unable to concentrate on her book and had read the same paragraph three times. It was Bruce. That was the problem. She could not get him out of her mind, and even now, talking to Matthew, he came back to her.
She arose from her desk. “Matthew,” she said. “I need your help.”
Waiting for Godot
It was unusual for Stuart and Irene Pollock to go out to dinner. In fact, as Stuart made his way home from work that evening, he tried to remember the last occasion on which they had gone out together – and initially failed. It was only when he was walking the last few hundred yards through Drummond Place that he recalled their dinner together, shortly before the birth of Ulysses. It had not been a success: they had gone to an Italian restaurant that had recently attracted good reviews but where, at an early stage of proceedings, Irene had fallen out with the waiter. This was a result of her correcting his pronunciation of some of the specials on offer that night – an intervention that had not gone down well; and not surprisingly, as the waiter was Italian. Matters had not improved after that: waiters enjoy a very particular form of power, and are capable of revenge in more ways than one. Some of these acts of revenge may be overt – in the form of delaying service, with exquisite judgment as to the precise delay that can be achieved without causing diners to abandon their meal altogether – others may be more indirect: food may be over-salted between kitchen and table; may be put out to cool; orders may be so easily confused or deprived of a vital element. All of this falls short of that ultimate sanction at the waiter’s disposal – spitting in the soup. This is a sufficiently distasteful sanction to be vigorously denied by those who speak on behalf of waiters, but they all know that it occurs.
Since that outing, there had been very few occasions in their mutual social calendar. There had been one or two functions at the school, where they had joined other parents at events of one sort or another, but these, too, had not been conspicuous successes. One of the school plays had in fact been chosen – and directed – by Irene: the class two production of Waiting for Godot had not been well received, as Stuart had predicted as tactfully as he could. It was all very well for Irene to claim that she had rewritten Beckett’s script to make it more approachable for young actors, but Stuart felt there was a fundamental problem in choosing a play in which only two actors dominate the stage.
Irene had sighed. “But that, Stuart,” she said, “is the whole point about Godot. It’s very intense – even to the point of unbearability.”
“Yes,” said Stuart. “I find it unbearable. The whole second act is unbearable. It goes on and on – even your version, Irene, I’m afraid, seems to go on and on.” Sensing her reaction, he quickly corrected himself. “I mean, it goes on and on a bit. Not all that much, I suppose, but I just wonder whether this is quite the right play for seven-year-olds. Just a thought, Irene.
”
Irene made a dismissive noise. It was one of those dismissive noises the French are so good at. They say pouf, or bof, or pah with such style that one can be under no illusions as to the fact that whatever is being dismissed is beneath contempt and certainly not worthy of explicit refutation.
“When I say it’s unbearable,” she explained, “I mean the tension is unbearable. That’s what makes it such a powerful piece of drama.”
So, Godot had been chosen and casting had begun. That proved to be a minefield – even if it was a minefield through which Irene sailed, blissfully unaware of the dangers lurking below the surface. Miss Campbell, the class teacher, had willingly handed the class over to Irene towards the end of a school day, going off for a much-needed cup of tea in the staff room.
“Bertie’s mummy will be talking to you about this term’s exciting play,” she announced. “She will be what is called the director. Now, children, is there anybody who knows what a director does?”
Olive’s hand had gone up, and was with reluctance recognised by Miss Campbell. “Well, Olive, dear, tell us what a director does.”
“Orders people about,” said Olive.
“Hits them,” suggested Larch.
Miss Campbell smiled blithely. “Not quite. A director helps the actors to do what is required. The director gets the whole show going – like the conductor of an orchestra.”
With that established, she left the classroom, and Irene began to discuss the play.
“Waiting for Godot is by a very famous Irish writer called Samuel Beckett,” she said. “He wrote a lot in French, but we shall be doing the play in English, which is the only language that most of you speak – apart from Bertie, of course. It’s all about two men who are waiting to meet somebody called Godot . . . ”
Tofu’s hand went up. Irene did not like Tofu; she had never approved of him, suspecting him – correctly – of holding exactly those attitudes from which she wished to shield Bertie.
She made an effort to be polite. “Yes, Tofu, have you something to say about Beckett?”
“I’ll play him,” said Tofu. “I’ll be Godot.”
Irene hesitated. It was irresistible. What a delicious thought: Tofu waiting for his role and then discovering that Godot never comes. “What a good idea, Tofu. Yes, you can be Godot.”
Tofu sat back in his seat, smirking with self-satisfaction.
Olive did not approve. “That’s not fair, Mrs. Pollock. Why should Tofu be Godot when there are lots of much better actors in the class? Bertie could be Godot.”
“Shut your face, Olive,” muttered Tofu.
“Did you hear what he said to me?” protested Olive.
“He told her to shut her face, Mrs. Pollock,” chimed in Pansy. “He’s always telling people to shut their faces. He doesn’t deserve to be Godot.”
Perhaps he does, thought Irene. She pressed ahead regardless. “And there are two other very big roles: Estragon and Vladimir.”
“Stupid names,” said Larch.
Irene ignored this. “I think that Bertie should be Estragon.”
Bertie squirmed. He had been afraid that his mother would choose him; of course, she would. “Must I?” he said in a pleading tone. “Must I really?”
“He doesn’t want to do it,” crowed Olive. “Did you hear what he said, Mrs. Pollock? Let me be Estragon.”
“That’s a boy’s name, stupid,” said Tofu. “Estragon’s a boy, isn’t he, Mrs. Pollock?”
And so the casting had continued – as had the play. Unfortunately, the actual performance had not been a success, as only the parents of the children appearing in the play came, offence having been taken over the choice of a play with only two characters. Irene had at the last minute eliminated the minor characters from her script; this had led to a boycott by the other parents, and an audience consisting only of Stuart and Irene, and Hiawatha’s mother – Hiawatha having been cast as Vladimir.
“I thought that went remarkably well,” observed Irene as they made their way home after the performance.
Stuart was silent, as was Bertie.
At the Carl Gustav Jung Drop-in Centre
Since that testing evening at the school, Stuart and Irene had not gone out together. There was no deliberate decision to remain at home – it just seemed to work out that way. Irene had a busy schedule, what with her Melanie Klein book group, her other book group, her Pilates sessions, her East New Town Community Council outreach evenings, and her commitments as a volunteer counsellor at the Edinburgh Carl Gustav Jung Drop-in Centre. The last of these, which involved her going out every Tuesday and Wednesday evening for three hours, was a commitment that Stuart would dearly have loved her to drop, but she resolutely stuck by it. In Stuart’s view, the Carl Gustav Jung Drop-in Centre should have been closed a long time ago on the grounds that even if people dropped in, most of them soon dropped out. This was because the centre, which passers-by imagined dispensed soup and coffee and handouts of various sorts, in fact was there principally to provide Jungian counselling, including advice on the meaning of dreams.
A typical evening at the centre involved two counsellors waiting several hours for a member of the public to drop in. If anybody did, then he or she would be allocated to a counsellor on a strict rotation basis. After a few minutes, it would become apparent whether or not the dropper-in was prepared to accept counselling. Almost always the answer to this was unambiguous, and became evident through the attitude of the potential client.
Misunderstandings were frequent, as in this exchange:
Member of the Great Edinburgh Public: So, I take my coffee white. Two sugars. Make it three.
Counsellor: Hah! Coffee? Well, this is not exactly that sort of Drop-in Centre.
MGEP: So what do yous do then? Soup? I wouldn’t mind a bowl of something hot and nourishing, ken what I mean?
Counsellor: Hah! No, we don’t do soup, I’m afraid. What about your dreams?
MGEP: My dreams? You joking, pal?
Counsellor: Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychologist who . . .
MGEP: You think I need a psychologist?
Counsellor: I didn’t say that. That’s for you to decide. We are here simply to provide support for those who do. I didn’t say you did. What about your dreams, anyway?
MGEP: Mind your own business. I’ll tell you one thing, and I’ll tell you free: I’m out o’ here.
That sort of thing happened distressingly frequently, as the drop-in centre was in a run-down building rather close to two popular pubs on the very eastern fringes of the Eastern New Town – and therefore virtually on Leith Walk, which was, to use Jungian terminology, a whole different ball-game.
With all these commitments, Irene found no time to go out with Stuart, even though Stuart’s mother, Nicola, was still living just around the corner in Northumberland Street and had declared her willingness to baby-sit whenever required. Irene thanked her in the icily polite tones she always used with Stuart’s mother, and said that she would think about it. “Possibly some time,” she said, adding, “Perhaps. We’ll see.”
No casting agency, faced with a talentless hopeful, had ever issued so clear a rejection, and quite understandably Nicola had taken offence.
“Most mothers,” she said to Stuart, “by which I suppose I mean, most normal mothers, would jump at an offer of baby-sitting from a grandmother, but I must remind myself that we are not dealing here with a normal mother. No offence meant, Stuart, and I hope none taken, but that is an observation that I feel compelled to make.”
Stuart had mumbled some excuse on Irene’s behalf, but even he knew that he sounded less than convincing.
“She has a lot on her plate these days,” he said. “There are problems at her yoga class . . . ”
Nicola looked dismissive. “Problems at a yoga class? Now that’s something to think about! I suppose some people might find themselves twisted into a position out of which they can’t escape. I suppose some of them might be left there for hours whil
e the instructors endeavour to disentangle them. Oh yes, I can imagine that problems at a yoga class would weigh very heavily on anybody’s mind.”
“Mother,” said Stuart. “Please! Please! There’s no need to adopt that tone. You have to understand that . . . ”
Nicola, who had shown great patience over the years, erupted. “Oh, I understand, Stuart – I understand very well indeed. I understand that you have married an eighty-four horse-power, six cylinder, fuel-injection, turbo-charged cow.”
“Mother!” protested Stuart.
But Nicola was in full stride. “No, let me finish. Let me tell you how it breaks my heart – it breaks my heart – to see my son under the thumb of that selfish, opinionated woman with her Melanie Klein nonsense and her relentless denigration of men. Do you think I don’t see it? Do you think I don’t say to myself every day – every day, Stuart – oh, I wish my son had the mettle to stand up to that ghastly wife of his. And then I find myself thinking: oh, if only my son would just go out and have an affair – not a pathetically insipid attempt like last time – but a full-blooded, passionate affair with all the bells and whistles and with a woman who doesn’t diminish him at every step, who doesn’t set out to neuter him, who doesn’t subject him and my grandsons to a barrage of politically-correct claptrap. With a woman who would cherish him, rather than undermine him. Oh, I wish the day would dawn when he would just stand up to her and push her into the Water of Leith or something like that – not a deep part, of course, but just a bit at the edge.”
“Mother! How can you say such things? How can you?”
Nicola was undeterred. “Very easily, Stuart, and with utter conviction. Because that is exactly what I wish, and what I know, in my heart of hearts, I shall never get. And that heroic little boy, Bertie, is going to have to continue to put up with a mother who to all intents and purposes is a cross between Carl Gustav Jung and a Stasi officer.”
“Oh, mother, come on! That’s a bit extreme, surely?”