44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith [143]
– and say – about her: Far too immature – couldn’t cope. Fell head over heels for me and then disappeared. Typical! No, Bruce would not be allowed that victory; she would go back to the flat and face him. There would be no row; she would just be cool, and collected. And if he alluded in any way to what had happened she would simply say that she was no longer interested, which was the truth anyway. She would be strong. More than that; she would be indifferent. She walked up the stair at 44 Scotland Street, up the cold, echoing stair. She walked past the Pollock door, with its antinuclear power sticker and she thought for a moment of Bertie, whom she had not seen for some time and whose saxophone seemed to have fallen silent. It was a week or more since she 300
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had heard him playing, and on that occasion the music had seemed remote and dispirited, almost sad. It was, she recalled, a version of Eric Satie’s Gymnopédie, a piece written for piano but playable on the saxophone by a dexterous player. It was haunting music, but in Bertie’s hands had seemed merely haunted. It was not surprising, of course, if that little boy was unhappy; anybody would be unhappy with Irene for a mother, or so she had been told by Domenica, who felt that Bertie was being prevented from being a little boy. How different had Pat’s own childhood been. She had been allowed to be whoever she wanted to be, and had taken full advantage of this, pretending for three weeks at the age of thirteen to be Austrian (trying for her parents) and then Californian (extremely trying). Mothers like Irene were bad enough for daughters, Pat thought, but were frequently lethal for boys. Daughters could survive a powerful mother, but boys found it almost impossible. Such boys were often severely damaged and spent the rest of their lives running away from their mothers, or from anybody who remotely reminded them of their mothers; either that, or they became their mothers, in a desperate, misguided act of psychological self-defence. In spite of her determination to face up to Bruce, she found that her hand was trembling as she inserted her key into the front door of the flat. As she turned the key and began to push the door open, she felt that she was being watched, and spun round and looked behind her, at Domenica’s flat across the landing. That door was closed, but the tiny glass spy-hole positioned at eye-level above Domenica’s brass name plate suddenly changed from dark to light, as if somebody within, looking out onto the landing, had moved away from the door. Had Domenica been watching her? Pat turned away and then quickly looked over her shoulder again. The spy-hole was darkened again. Pat closed the door behind her and switched on the light in the hall. It was eleven o’clock, and Bruce’s door was shut. There was no light coming from beneath the door and she was emboldened to move forward slowly and silently. She thought that she could hear music coming from his room, but it was very faint and she did not wish to go right up to the door; or did And Then
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she? Treading softly, she returned to the light switch and turned off the hall light, and stood there in the darkness, her heart beating violently within her. She closed her eyes. He was there, in that room, and he had said to her that his door was always open. But what did she feel about him? She had been overcome with revulsion by what he had said to her earlier that evening and she had gone away despising him, hating him. But she could not really hate him, not really. She could not be cross with him, however arrogant and annoying he was. She simply could not. She slipped out of her shoes and crossed the hall again and stood directly outside his door. There was no music – that had been imagined or had drifted in from somewhere else. Now there was just silence, and the beating of her heart, and her breath that came in short bursts. Never before