At the Film Theatre
the village’s fortunes, turned out to be no more than a rash.
All the village men were in Bologna, where they were on strike. The strike had no cause and had no apparent ending.
There was nobody to negotiate with, as the bosses had gone to Rome and declined to return. There was a profound crisis.
At the end of the film, the crowd had arisen from its seats and made its way through to the bar. Some people remained seated in the theatre, as if waiting for further explanation. Pat walked through with Matthew, and asked him what he thought of the film.
“Well,” he began, and then tailed off. He looked at her; she would have views perhaps; for his part, he had no idea what to say.
“Exactly,” whispered Pat. “And what did the crowd think?”
“The crowd’s not fussy,” said Matthew.
As they entered the bar, Pat looked at the individual members of the crowd. Matthew had introduced them to her before they had gone into the theatre, and now she recalled their names.
Ed was the tall one in the black tee-shirt; Jim was the one with the earring; Philly was a blonde with rat’s-tail hair; and Rose had a curious pair of sixties-style glasses. Pat found herself staring at Rose, who caught her eye and smiled at her, hesitantly, Pat thought.
When they reached a table and sat down, Pat sat next to Rose, Ed on her other side. Matthew, who was several places away, looked inquiringly at Pat. He wanted her to move, thought Pat, but she would not: she was with the crowd, not with Matthew.
“You work for Matthew, don’t you?” asked Rose. Her voice was strange; rather high-pitched; not a confident voice.
“Yes,” said Pat. “I’m his assistant.”
Rose looked at her and said: “Lucky.”
“To work for Matthew? Lucky?”
“Yes,” said Rose. “I would love that.” She paused. It seemed to Pat as if she was preparing to ask something awkward, and indeed she was.
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“Do you go out with him a lot?” Rose asked. “Or are you just . . . well, I suppose one should say, are you just . . . ?”
“An employee,” Pat supplied. “I work for him, you see.”
This information seemed to please Rose, who glanced over at Matthew and then looked back at Pat. “I’ve known him a long time,” she said. “We used to go to a tennis club together.
Not that my tennis is any good – it’s hopeless. Did you know that Matthew played tennis?”
Pat shook her head. She had always thought of Matthew as being slightly lazy; surely tennis would be too strenuous for him.
“And then,” Rose continued, “we went – the whole crowd, that is, minus Ed, who was having his appendix out – we went off to Portugal last year. For two weeks. That was such good fun.” She closed her eyes, as if to remember.
Pat looked at her. It was perfectly apparent that Rose had her eye on Matthew, but would her interest be reciprocated? She feared it would not. Rose was reasonably attractive, and appeared likeable enough, but that was not the point in these matters.
What counted was chemistry, and when Matthew had introduced her to Rose he had done so in a way which did not suggest that there was anything special between them. Rose, no doubt, was trying too hard. Men did not like to be pursued – as a general rule – and Matthew would have picked up her interest
– and retreated. There was no chance for Rose, Pat thought, unless she changed tactics – and people did not generally change tactics.
Ed now addressed a remark to Rose. Pat looked around her.
The film in one of the other cinemas had come to an end and had discharged its patrons into the bar. They looked animated, and amused; no Milanese emptiness. She watched a couple of young men walk up to the bar. One of them was tall and was wearing a dark-green shirt. He stopped short of the bar to say something to his companion, who leaned forward to catch the remark. As he spoke, the tall young man looked out across the bar, directly at Pat. He paused, and the person with him looked back too.
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He tried to place her. He had met her somewhere – at the café? Yes. At the café. With that woman who went on about that book. He nodded, and waved.
Pat thought: I want him to come over to me. That’s what I want.
And he did, muttering something to his friend, who went on to order a drink.
“You,” he said, smiling.
“Yes,” she said. “Me.”
He bent down to speak to her. Rose looked up, glanced at him, and then at Pat. She thought: this is what happens to girls like that. They only have to walk into a room and they get men like that flocking round them. Bees to honey. And I can’t even get Matthew to notice me. Not even that.
“Were you in that Italian film?” Pat asked. “The Crisis? ”
Peter shook his head. “No. We went to an Australian comedy.
About an airline pilot and a nurse who get stuck in the Outback with a couple of Shakespearean actors.”
“I think I’ve heard about that one,” said Pat. “It’s a great idea for a film.”
She waited for Peter to say something, but for a few moments there was a silence. Then he said: “Do you want to At Big Lou’s
97
come round some time? To Cumberland Street?”
“Yes,” said Pat. “That would be great.”
“Tomorrow evening?”
Pat nodded. She sensed that Rose had been listening.
30. At Big Lou’s
Big Lou stood in front of her new coffee-making machine, polishing its gleaming stainless-steel spouts, and admiring the fine Italian lines of the reservoir and high-pressure steam chamber. Only the Italians could produce a machine of this beauty; only the Italians would care enough to do so.
But she had more to think about than aesthetics; over the late summer, several major developments had taken place at Big Lou’s coffee bar. The purchase of this expensive new machine was one of the most important, and satisfying, and had attracted a great deal of attention from her regular customers, especially from Matthew, who had fallen in love with it the moment he had seen it. To gaze at the machine was pleasure enough; to turn the levers and control the outflow of steam – as Matthew was occasionally permitted to do – was a positive joy.
Another of these developments was the removal of the expensive newspaper rack. In its place she had installed a small table, which she had acquired from a saleroom on Leith Walk. On this table she stacked copies of the day’s papers and any magazines which were left behind by customers, provided, of course, Big Lou approved of them. The Scots Magazine was always there, and was popular, curiously enough, with some of the most intellectual customers, who read it with what seemed suspiciously close to a condescending smile. Why they should affect this expression was not clear to her. The Scots Magazine was popular in Arbroath, Big Lou’s home town, and she saw no reason why it should not be equally popular in Edinburgh. Or did Edinburgh, for some unfathomable reason, feel itself superior to Arbroath?
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A further development was an important change in the mid-morning coffee regulars. Matthew still came every morning, of course, and stayed longer than anybody else, but the two furniture restorers had disappeared entirely. It was almost as if they had been written out of a story, thought Lou; simply no longer on the page. They had disappeared, and had taken their world with them. But just as they had gone, others had arrived. Mrs Constance, for instance, with her curious unkempt hair, had appeared one morning and had announced herself as “the woman from upstairs” – her flat being more or less immediately above the coffee bar. She was silent, for the most part, but occasionally joined in the conversation with observations that were remarkably acute.