Big Lou reached for the polishing cloth. There was never any dirt on the bar, but that did not prevent her polishing it assid-uously, staring into the reflective surface in the hope of finding a speck of something that she could rub away at.
“Friends?” she said. “Friends? I’ve got plenty, thank you very much, Matthew. Plenty of friends.”
Matthew, leaning against the bar, took a sip of coffee. “Here in Edinburgh?” he asked. “Or up in Arbroath?”
Big Lou polished energetically, moving her cloth in large circles that threatened to collide with Matthew’s elbow. “Both places,” she said. “Arbroath and Edinburgh. And some in Glasgow and Dundee. Everywhere, in fact.”
“Who are your Edinburgh friends, Lou?” pressed Matthew.
“Not counting us, of course.”
Big Lou glanced at him. “You’re very inquisitive today,” she said. “But since you ask, there’s Mags and Neil and Humphrey and Jill Holmes and . . . well, quite a few others. I’ve got my friends, you know. Probably more than you have, Matthew, come to think of it.”
Matthew smiled. “Maybe, Lou. Maybe.” He paused. “But, I 30
Matthew Is a Sexist (but a Polite One) hope you don’t mind my asking, Lou: who are these people?
We never see them in here, do we? Who are they? Mags, for instance, who’s she?”
Big Lou finished her polishing with a final flourish and tucked her cloth away beneath the bar. “Mags,” she said, “since you ask, is a very good friend of mine. I met her on the corner of Eyre Crescent, on the way down to Canonmills. She was standing there when I walked past.”
Matthew stared at Big Lou. “You met her on the street? She was just standing there? And you went up to her and said . . . ?”
“It wasn’t like that,” said Big Lou. “Mags was working in the street when I went past. I stopped to have a word with her.”
Matthew rubbed his hands together. “This gets better and better, Lou,” he said. “Working in the street, Lou? What exactly was she doing in the street?”
“Working in the street,” said Big Lou in a matter-of-fact tone.
“You see, Mags drives one of these small steamrollers that road crews use. She was sitting on her steamroller with a cigarette in her mouth and she bent down and asked me if I had a light. I didn’t, but I said something about her steamroller and we started to chat.”
“Just like that?” said Matthew. “You started to chat? Two complete strangers?”
“Not complete,” said Big Lou. “Mags, you see, came from Arbroath. Unlike you, Matthew, she came from somewhere.”
Matthew looked crestfallen. She was right, though, he thought.
My trouble is that I come from nowhere. Money, education –
these give you freedom, but they can take you away from your roots, your place.
10. Matthew Is a Sexist (but a Polite One) But Matthew wanted to know more about this Mags, the Madonna of the Steamroller, as he had now decided to call her.
Matthew Is a Sexist (but a Polite One) 31
“Something interests me, Lou,” he began. “What sort of woman thinks of getting a job on a road crew? How did Mags end up doing that?”
Big Lou turned from her task – emptying the grounds container – and fixed Matthew with a stare. He looked back at her, unrepentant.
“Well?” said Matthew. “It’s a fair enough question to ask, isn’t it? One doesn’t see all that many women working on the roads.”
“I thought that women could do anything these days,” said Big Lou coldly. “Or have I got it wrong? Can men still tell us what we can and cannot do?”
Matthew made a placatory gesture. “Don’t get me wrong, Lou,” he said hurriedly. “I’m not suggesting that . . .”
“Well, what are you suggesting then?”
“All I was saying, Lou,” said Matthew, “was that there are some jobs in which it’s still usual – that’s all, just usual – to see men rather than women.”
Big Lou continued to stare at him. “Such as?”
Matthew had to think quickly. He was about to mention airline pilots, but then he remembered that on the last two flights that he had taken, a female voice had issued from the cockpit to welcome passengers. And nobody, it seemed, had been in the slightest bit surprised, except, perhaps, Matthew himself. But then the woman beside him, possibly noticing his reaction, had leaned over and whispered to him: “How reassuring to have a woman at the controls, isn’t it? You do know, don’t you, that women pilots are much, much safer than men? Men take risks – it’s in the nature. Women are much more cautious.”
Matthew had nodded. “Of course,” he said. “Of course.”
So now he was having difficulty in thinking of examples.
Firefighters? But then he remembered having seen a fire engine race past him the other day in Moray Place, and when he had looked at the crew he had seen not the usual male mesomorphs but a woman, clad in black firefighting gear, combing her hair.
“I saw a woman fire . . . fireperson, the other day, Lou,” he said brightly, hoping to distract Big Lou from the subject.
32
Matthew Is a Sexist (but a Polite One)
“Plenty of them,” said Lou. “But I’m waiting for you to come up with some for-instances. What jobs do women not do these days?”
“It was in Moray Place,” went on Matthew.
“Good class of fire over there,” said Lou. “None of your chip-pan fires in Moray Place. Flambé out of control maybe.”
“She was combing her hair,” said Matthew. And then, out of wickedness, he added, “and putting on lipstick. On the way to the fire. Putting on lipstick.”
Big Lou frowned. For a few moments she said nothing, then:
“Well, it was Moray Place, wasn’t it? A girl has to look her best . . .” She paused. “Not that I believe you, Matthew, anyway.
She might have been combing her hair – you don’t want your hair to get in the way when you’re working, do you? But she would not have been putting on lipstick.”
Mathew was silent.
“Well, Matthew? I’m waiting.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Lou,” said Matthew at last. “Maybe I’m just old-fashioned.”
“Maybe you need to think before you speak,” muttered Big Lou. She looked at him reproachfully. They liked each other, and she did not wish to make him uncomfortable. So she moved back to Mags. “You asked me why Mags does what she does.
The answer, I think, is that she suffers from claustrophobia. She told me about it. If she’s inside, she feels that she wants to get outside. So she needed work that took her outside all the time.”
“And her steamroller would be open,” mused Matthew. “No windows. No door.”
“Exactly,” said Big Lou. “That’s Mags – an open-air girl.”
“It’s a perfectly good job,” said Matthew. He paused. “But the men who work on the roads can be a little bit . . . how does one put it? A little bit . . .”
“Coarse?” asked Big Lou. “Is that what you were trying to say?”
Matthew nodded.
“Then you should say it,” said Big Lou. “Nae use beating Matthew Is a Sexist (but a Polite One) 33
aboot the bush. Say what you think. But always think first. Aye, they’re coarse all right. They’re always whistling at women and making crude remarks. That’s what Mags says.”
“Very crude,” said Matthew. One did not find that sort of behaviour in art galleries, he reflected. Imagine if one did! A woman might go into a gallery and the art dealer would wolf-whistle. No, it would not happen.
“What are you smiling at?” asked Big Lou.
“Oh, nothing much,” said Matthew airily. “Just thinking about how different sorts of people go for different sorts of jobs.”
Big Lou shrugged. “No surprise there. Anyway, Mags worked on the crew for eight years and everyone treated her like one of the boys. They just accepted her and took no special notice of her. Then, one day, she ran her steamroller over a piece of jewellery that somebody had dropped in the street. One of the men found it flattened and held it up for everybody to laugh at.