‘bottom’, and this led to difficulties. Terribly funny.”
Domenica stopped, and for a moment there was a silence.
Then she leaned forward and whispered to Pat, “I mentioned the staff here. Look at them. Look at this young man who’s coming to serve us. Look at him. Doesn’t he look like Rupert Brooke? They’re all so tall – so willowy. But shh! Here he is.”
Pat felt embarrassed – the young man might so easily have heard what Domenica was saying; not, Pat thought, that Domenica would care too much about that. But she – Pat – did.
The waiter leaned forward to take their order, and Domenica smiled up at him.
“We’re probably going to be really rather unadventurous and 20
Anger and Apology
just order a couple of coffees,” she said. “Although some of those quiches over there look very tempting. Do you make them yourselves?”
The young man smiled. He glanced at Pat. “I don’t. I just work here part-time. Someone else makes them in the kitchen back there.”
“You’re a student?” asked Domenica brightly. “No, let me guess! You’re a student of . . . No, you defeat me! You’re going to have to help me. What are you a student of ?”
The young man laughed. “English,” he said.
“I see,” said Domenica. “I should have guessed that. You see, I thought that you bore an uncanny resemblance to Rupert Brooke, the poet. I don’t suppose anybody studies him any more.
Too light. You’ve heard of him, of course?”
“Yes,” said the young man. “I’ve heard of him. I’ve not read him, though.”
“Well, let me lend you one of his books,” said Domenica quickly. “Come round and have dinner with us some time and I’ll give you one. We live just round the corner – Scotland Street.
You know it?”
For a moment the young man hesitated. He looked quickly at Pat, who lowered her eyes, and blushed.
“Yes, I know it. I live in Cumberland Street, you see.”
“Perfect!” said Domenica. “Well, if you give me your name, I’ll leave a message for you here and we can arrange something.
I’ll get the book out to give to you.”
7. Anger and Apology
When Pat eventually got back to her flat in Scotland Street, she still felt angry over what Domenica had done. Their cups of coffee in Glass and Thompson’s delicatessen and café had been drunk largely in silence.
“I’ve done something to upset you, haven’t I?” said Domenica, after the silence became too obvious to remain unremarked Anger and Apology
21
upon. “Is it to do with what I said to that young man – what was his name again?”
“Peter.”
“Yes, Peter. A nice name, isn’t it?”
Pat said nothing. Domenica looked at her, and frowned. “I’m sorry. I really am. I had no idea that you would be so . . . well, so embarrassed by all that. I did it for you, you know.”
Pat looked up sharply. “You asked him to dinner, out of the blue, just like that – for me? ”
Domenica seemed surprised by this. “But of course I did! You don’t think that I go around picking up young men for my own sake, do you? Good heavens! I do have a sense of the appropriate, you know.”
“And it’s appropriate to go and ask perfect strangers to dinner to meet me? Do you consider that appropriate? How did you know that I wanted to meet him anyway? Just because he looks like some ridiculous poet you’ve read . . .”
Domenica put down her coffee cup – firmly. “Now wait a moment! I’m sorry if you think I’ve overstepped the mark, but I will not stand by while you refer to Rupert Brooke as a ridiculous poet. Have you read him? You have not! He wrote wonderful pastoral, allusive verse, and the story of his brief life – yes, his brief life – is really rather a moving one. So don’t call him a ridiculous poet. Please don’t. There are lots of ridiculous poets, but he wasn’t one of them. No.”
There was a further silence. Then Pat rose to her feet. “I think we should go. I’m sorry if I got upset – and I’m sorry if I offended you. It’s just that . . .”
They walked out of the delicatessen, passing Peter, working at the counter, as they did so. Pat looked away, but Domenica smiled at him, and he smiled back at her, although weakly, as one smiles at a new acquaintance of whom one is unsure.
“Look, it’s not such a terrible thing I’ve done,” said Domenica, as they went out into the street. “And if it embarrasses you, I suggest that we just forget the whole thing.”
She looked at Pat, who turned to her, frowning. “No,” she said. “Don’t do that.”
22
Anger and Apology
Domenica raised an eyebrow. “Oh? So you’d like me to invite him after all? Do I detect . . . do I detect a slight mellowing?”
Pat looked down at the ground. Her feelings were confused.
She was irritated by the assumptions that Domenica had made, but there was something about Peter that interested her, and she had seen that he had looked at her too, that he had noticed her.
There was something that her friends called “the look”, that glance, that second take, which gives everything away. One could not mistake the look when one received it; it was unambiguous.
Peter had given her the look. Had she been by herself, she would have not known what to do about it. They might have exchanged further glances, but it was difficult to take matters further when you were working, as he was. You could hardly say: “Here’s your coffee, and what are you doing afterwards?”
Perhaps people did say that, but it was not the most sophisti-cated of approaches and he would not have done that. And for much the same reason, she could hardly have said: “Thanks for the coffee, and what are you doing afterwards?” One did not say that to waiters, whatever the temptation.
So the fact of the matter was that Domenica must have intuit-ively worked out that there was potential in that casual encounter and had acted with swiftness and ingenuity. She had set up a meeting which would enable nature to take its course – if that was the course that nature intended to take. They would meet for dinner at Domenica’s flat and if the look were given again, then they could take it further. No doubt Domenica would ease the way, perhaps by suggesting that they go out after dinner to the Cumberland Bar and then she would herself decline on the grounds of tiredness, leaving the field open for the two of them.
I should be grateful to her, Pat thought, and now, back in her flat, she realised that she had been churlish. She wondered whether to cross the landing and apologise there and then, but she decided against that. An apology would lead to a conversation and she did not feel in the mood for further discussions. She felt slightly light-headed, in fact, as if she had drunk a glass of champagne on an empty stomach. She went through to her bedroom, lay down on her bed, and closed her eyes, imagining herself back in the café An Exchange of Cruel Insults
23
with Peter standing beside the table, staring at her. She remembered the way he stooped – like the other tall employees – and he put the coffee down in front of her and then looked up. What had he been wearing? She had hardly noticed, but it was a white shirt, was it not? And jeans, like everybody else. If one could not remember somebody’s trousers, then jeans were the safe default.
Indeed, “defaults” was a good name for jeans. I put on my defaults.
It sounded quite right.
She got up off her bed and picked up her key from the table. Bruce was in the flat – she had noticed that his door was closed, which inevitably meant that he was in – but she had no desire to talk to him. Bruce was history in every sense of the word. He was history at the firm of Macauley Holmes Richardson Black, where he had lost his job as a surveyor after being found having an intimate lunch in the Café St Honoré with the wife of his boss – an intimate and innocent lunch, but not so to the outside observer, unfortunately in this case his boss himself.