“I am,” said Matthew. “I’ve never been surer in my life.”
With his purchases cosseted in bubble wrap, Matthew left the Thrie Estaits and walked briskly back up the road. Inside the gallery, she looked at him reproachfully, but he noticed that she was struggling not to smile. “You’re very bad,” she said. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Well, I have,” said Matthew. “And here you are. Here’s your replacement. As good as the last one, I’m told.”
She took the package and unwrapped it. “Thank you,” she said. “I didn’t expect that. But thank you.”
Matthew blushed. His heart was racing now, but he felt a curious elation. “And I bought you an extra little present to make up for my clumsiness,” he said. “Here.”
He thrust the parcelled-up Meissen figure into her hands and waited for her to unwrap it.
“But you can’t!” she protested. “You really can’t. The vase was one thing, this is . . .”
“Please,” said Matthew. “Please just unwrap it. Go on.”
She removed the bubble wrap carefully. When the figure was half-exposed, she stopped, and looked up at Matthew. “I really can’t accept this,” she said. “You’re very kind, but I can’t.”
Matthew held up his hands. “But why not? Why?”
She looked down at the figure and removed the last of the wrapping. “Because I know what this cost,” she said quietly.
“And I can’t accept a present like this from somebody I don’t even know.”
Matthew looked down at the floor in sheer, bitter frustration.
It was such a familiar experience for him; every time he tried to get close to somebody, it ended this way – with a rebuff. He 234 She Could Not Help but Hear the Conversation knew that buying this present was an extravagant gesture, an unusual thing to do, but he thought that perhaps this one time it would work. But now he could see her recoiling, embarrassed, eager to end their brief acquaintance.
He thought quickly. He would be decisive; he had nothing to lose.
“I understand,” he said. “It’s just that I wanted to get you something.” He paused. He would speak. “You see, the moment I saw you, the very first moment, I . . . well, I fell for you. I know it sounds corny, and I’m sorry if that embarrasses you, but there it is. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.
Nothing.”
She cradled the Meissen figure. “I don’t know what to think,”
she said. “I’m sorry.” But then she looked up at him. “You’ve been very honest,” she said. “You really have. So I should be honest too. When I saw you, I felt I rather liked you. But . . .
But we don’t even know each other’s names.”
“I’m Matthew,” Matthew blurted out.
“And I’m Elspeth,” she said. “Elspeth Harmony.”
Matthew reached out to take the Meissen figure from her.
“Let’s put this down somewhere,” he said. Then he asked: “What do you do, Elspeth?”
“I’m a teacher,” she said. “At the Rudolf Steiner School.”
Matthew thought of Bertie. “There’s a little boy called Bertie,”
he began. “He lives near here. In Scotland Street.”
“One of mine!” said Miss Harmony.
70. She Could Not Help but Hear the Conversation Domenica Macdonald was aware that something was happening downstairs. One of the great glories of 44 Scotland Street, she had always felt, was the fact that noise did not travel – with the exception of Bertie’s saxophone practice – and that, as a result, one heard little of the neighbours’ private lives. This was thanks She Could Not Help but Hear the Conversation 235
to Edinburgh architecture, and the generosity of construction methods which prevailed during the building of the great Georgian and Victorian sweeps of Edinburgh. In Scotland Street, the walls were a good two feet thick, of which solid stone formed the greatest part.
Used to this as she was, Domenica was always astonished to see the sheer flimsiness of walls in other places, particularly in postwar British construction, with its mean proportions (oppressive, low ceilings) and its weak structures (paper-thin walls).
She had noticed how different things were on the Continent, where even very modest houses in countries such as France or Germany seemed so much more solid. But that was part of a larger problem – the problem of the meanness and cheapness which had crept into British life. And there was an impermanence too, which reached its height in the building of that great and silly edifice, the Millennium Dome, a “muckle great tent,”
as Angus Lordie had described it. “That could have been a cathedral or a great museum,” said Angus, “but don’t expect anything as morally serious as that these days. Smoke and mirrors. Big tents.”
Edinburgh at least could be grateful that it was, to a very large extent, made of stone, and that this gave a degree of privacy to domestic life. But in a tenement, if there was noise on the common stair, that could carry. As in the cave of Dionysius in Syracuse, a whisper at the bottom of the stair might be heard with some clarity at the top. And similarly, each door that gave onto the landing might be an ear as to what was said directly outside, with the result that remarks about neighbours had to be limited to the charitable or the complimentary until one was inside one’s own flat; at that point, true opinions might be voiced – might be shouted even, if that helped – without any danger that the object of the opinion might hear.
Domenica had heard none of the discussion that preceded the dreadful discovery below that the wrong baby had been picked up at the council emergency nursery. Nor had she heard the cries of alarm that accompanied the actual discovery. But 236 She Could Not Help but Hear the Conversation what she had heard that day was a great banging of doors and hurried footfall on the stairs as the Pollock family headed off to the nursery in search of the missing Ulysses. This had caused her to look out of the window and to see Irene, Stuart, and Bertie piling into a waiting taxi and racing off in the direction of Drummond Place. Where, she wondered, was the baby?
Then, a couple of hours later, she had heard them talking on the stairs as they returned. She had cautiously opened her door and peered down from the landing to see that all was well. What she saw was Irene holding Ulysses as she waited for Stuart to open the door. Bertie was there too, and he seemed cheerful enough, so she had gone back into the flat, reassured that all was well.
What she heard next was more slamming of doors. When she looked out of the window this time, she saw the entire Pollock family, including what she thought was Ulysses, again getting into a taxi and again racing off up the road at some speed. This time, it was not much more than an hour before she heard the door at the bottom of the stair close with a bang and the sound of Irene’s voice drifting upwards.
Domenica could not help but hear, even had she not been standing close to her front door, which was held open very slightly.
“Humiliation!” said Irene. “Sheer, utter humiliation! How dare she say that we should have checked the baby first to see that it was the right one! Isn’t that her job? Isn’t she meant to make sure that she’s handing over a boy rather than a girl? It’s easy enough, for heaven’s sake!”
Stuart muttered something which Domenica did not quite catch. But she did catch Irene’s reply.
“Nonsense! Complete nonsense! Your trouble, Stuart, is that you’re a bureaucrat and you’re too willing to forgive the crass ineptitude of your fellow bureaucrats. What if Ulysses had been given to somebody else . . . ?”
The door slammed, and the conversation was cut off.
She Could Not Help but Hear the Conversation 237
Domenica smiled. It sounded as if there had been some sort of mix-up over babies. But she was not sure how this could have occurred, and it had obviously been sorted out in the end. Her curiosity satisfied, she was about to close her door when she noticed that Antonia’s door on the other side of the landing was open. For a moment, she thought that her neighbour had perhaps been doing exactly what she was doing – listening to the conversation below, and she felt a flush of shame. It was a most ignoble thing to do, to listen in to the conversation of others, but there were occasions when it was, quite frankly, irresistible. And if we can’t be ignoble from time to time, then we are simply failing to be human.