44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith [100]
She turned on her heel and disappeared and Pat stared into the mirror. At least she had seen her face, and this would enable her to answer the question which every jealous person wishes to have answered. Is she/he more attractive than I am?
And the answer in this case, she thought, was yes. And there was something else – another respect in which she was outclassed; another respect in which she could not compete. She could never wear a man’s dressing gown like that, with such complete shamelessness.
75. News of a Loss
There was every temptation to put off the moment when she would confess to Matthew that the Peploe? was no longer in her possession, but Pat resisted this firmly and successfully. When Matthew came into the gallery the following morning – twenty minutes after Pat had arrived – he barely had time to hang up his coat before she made her confession.
Matthew listened carefully. He did not interrupt her, nor did his expression reveal any emotion. When Pat had finished, she looked down at the ground, almost afraid to look back up at him, but then she did and she saw that the anger she had expected simply was not there.
“It’s not your fault,” Matthew said evenly. “You couldn’t have imagined that he would do such an inconsiderate thing.” He paused, and shook his head in puzzlement. “Why on earth did News of a Loss
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he assume that the painting belonged to nobody? Somebody had to have put it there.”
“He assumes a lot,” said Pat. “He’s a little on the arrogant side.” As she spoke, she wondered where Bruce would be now, and what he would be doing. She had never wondered that before, but now she did.
“I think I’ve met him,” said Matthew. “He goes to the Cumberland, doesn’t he? Tall, with hair like this . . .”
Pat nodded. Bruce was tall, and his hair did go like that; and why should it make her catch her breath just to think of him?
Matthew sat down at his desk and looked at Pat. “We’ll get it back,” he said. “As you’ve just said, it still belongs to us, doesn’t it?”
“That’s what my neighbour pointed out,” said Pat. “I hope she’s right.”
“I’m sure she’s right,” said Matthew. “So all we need to do is to find out who these people are – the people who won it – and ask them to give it back.”
Pat waited for Matthew to say something more, to censure her, perhaps, but he did not. Instead he spoke about some paintings which somebody had brought in for sale the previous day and which they were planning to take a look at that morning. Neither of them thought that there would be anything worth very much, but they were looking forward to spending a few hours searching for the names of artists in the books and relating them, if possible, to the paintings before them. Some names, of course, would simply not occur; would have faded into complete obscurity.
“Why do people insist on painting?” asked Matthew as they stared at a late nineteenth-century study of an Arab dhow.
“It’s their response to the world,” muttered Pat, peering at the signature below the dhow. “People try to capture something of what they see. It’s like taking a photograph. Why do people take photographs?”
Matthew had an immediate answer. “Because they can’t look at what’s before them and think about it for more than two seconds. It’s a sign of distraction. They see, photograph, and move on. They don’t really look.”
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News of a Loss
Pat looked at him, and noticed the way that the hairs lay flat against the skin of his wrist, and the way that one of his eyebrows was slightly shorter than the other, as if it had been shaved off. And she noticed, too, his eyes, which she had never really looked at before, and the way the irises were flecked with gray. And Matthew, for his part, suddenly noticed that Pat had small ears, and that one of them had two piercings. For a few moments neither spoke, as each felt sympathy for the other, as the same conclusion – quite remarkably – occurred to each: here is a person, another, who is so important to himself, to herself, and so weak, and ordinary, and human as we all are.
They worked quietly together,