44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith [137]
shadows which brought out the contours of the pectorals, which Bruce Takes a Bath, and Thinks
287
provided for shades and nuances in the shoulders and the sweep of the forearms.
Bruce was not unaware of his good looks. As a small boy he had become accustomed to the admiring glances which he attracted from adults. Elderly women would reach out and pat him on the head, ruffling his hair, and muttering little angel or wee stun- ner, and Bruce would reward them with a smile, an act of beneficence on his part which usually brought forth more exclamations from his admirers. As he became older, the women who patted his head began to desist (although they still felt the urge), as one does not pat every teenage boy on the head, no matter how strong the temptation to do so. The looks of adults were now supplemented with the wistful glances of coevals, particularly the teenage girls of Crieff, for whom Bruce seemed some sort of messenger of beauty
– a sign that even in Crieff might one find a boy so transcendentally exciting that all limitations of place, all frustrations at the fact that one lived in Crieff and not in Edinburgh, or Newport Beach, or somewhere like that, might be overcome.
Beauty, of course, has its moment, which may sometimes be very brief, but in Bruce’s case the looks which had driven so many of those girls in Crieff and surrounds to an anguish of longing, survived; indeed they mellowed, and here he was, he told himself, more attractive than ever before; a picture, he thought, of the young man at the height of his powers. He moved closer to the mirror, and standing sideways, he pressed his right arm and side against its cold surface. This brought him closer to himself, like a conjoined twin. He moved his arm up, and his handsome twin’s arm moved up too. He smiled, and his brother smiled too, in immediate recognition. Then he turned round and faced himself in the mirror – so close now that his breath clouded the glass, a white mist that came and went quickly, and was strangely erotic. He moved his lips closer to the lips in the mirror, and for a moment they stayed there, almost, but not quite touching, united, for there was something that was beginning to worry Bruce. With whom, exactly, was he in love?
Sally, he said to himself as he turned away from the mirror –
a wrench, of course, but he did turn away – with Sally, the girl 288
Bruce Takes a Bath, and Thinks
he had even thought of asking to marry him. She would be keen on that, he imagined, and would naturally accept, but then he had thought that perhaps it was premature. Certainly he liked her –
he liked her a great deal – but marriage was perhaps taking it a bit far.
He slipped out of the boxer shorts and then lowered himself into the water. Lying there, he could look up through the skylight and watch the clouds scudding across the evening sky. He liked to do this, and to think; and now he was thinking about his job and how the time had come to move on. He had decided that he had had enough of being a surveyor for Macaulay Holmes Richardson Black. He had had enough of working for Todd, with his pedantic insistence on set office procedures and his tendency to lecture. What a narrow universe that man inhabited! The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors! The world of clients and their selfish demands and complaints! Was this what lay ahead of him?
Bruce found himself thoroughly depressed by the thought. He would not allow it. He was cut out for a wider, more interesting world than that, and he now had a clear idea of how he would achieve it.
He would have lingered longer in the bath, but the thought of that evening’s engagement stirred him. Hardly bothering with the mirror, he dressed quickly, gelled his hair, and went into the kitchen. He had eaten very little for lunch and made a sandwich for himself before going out: a piece of French bread sliced down