44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith [31]
Bruce sighed. “Pat,” he said. “You know that it’s very important to tell the truth when you’re living with people. You’ve got to tell the truth. You know that. Now, what really happened?
Were you using it?”
The accusation made her feel indignant. Why should he imagine that she would use his hair gel? And why would he imagine that she would lie about it? “No,” she said. “I did not use it. I was looking at it.”
“Is hair gel that interesting?”
“Not yours,” she snapped.
Bruce looked at her and wagged a finger. “Temper!” he said.
“Temper!”
Pat looked at him scornfully, and then turned and made her way back into her room slamming the door behind her. He was impossible; he was self-satisfied; he was smug. She could not live with him. She would have to move.
But if she moved, then it would be his victory. She could just imagine what he would say when he showed the next person her room. There was a girl here, but she didn’t stay long. Very immature type. Second gap year, you know.
She sat down on her bed and stared down at the bedside rug. There is no real reason to feel unhappy, she thought, but she did. She had a job, she had the place at St Andrews for next October, she had her supportive parents: she had everything to look forward to. But somehow her life seemed to be slow and pointless: it seemed to her that there was a gap in it, and she knew exactly what that gap was. She wanted a boyfriend. She wanted somebody to phone up, right then, and tell about what Bruce had said. And he would sympathise with her and ask her to meet him for dinner, and they would laugh about Bruce over dinner, and she would know that this other person – this boy –
regarded her as special to him. But she had none of that. She 64
Dinner with Domenica
just had this room, and this emptiness, and that sarcastic, selfabsorbed young man out there, with that look of his, and his eyes, and his en brosse hair, and . . . She stopped herself thinking about that. Her father had once spoken to her about unwelcome thoughts; thoughts that came into one’s mind unbidden. They were often rather disturbing thoughts – thoughts about doing something outrageous or shocking – but this was not something to be too concerned about. The whole point about these thoughts was that they were never translated into action because they did not represent what one really wanted to do. So one never discarded one’s clothes and ran down the street, nor jumped over the waterfall, nor over the cliff for that matter, even if one thought how easy it would be to throw oneself over the edge, and to fall and fall down to the very bottom. So easy.
25. Dinner with Domenica
“Now,” said Domenica with a gesture that embraced the room.
“This is where I work. I sit at that desk over there and look out over Scotland Street. And if I run out of ideas, I go and sit in that chair and wait.”
“Until an idea comes along?”
“In theory. But I might just fall asleep or become restless. You know how it is.”
Yes, Pat did. She felt restless. The encounter with Bruce had unsettled her and her spirits had been low when she had knocked at Domenica’s door on the other side of the landing. Domenica, looking at her guest over her half-moon spectacles, could tell that something was wrong. So she asked Pat what it was, and Pat told her the story of the hair gel.
Domenica smiled. “Hair gel! All over the floor? The best place for it, in my opinion!” But she saw that Pat was worried, and her tone became concerned. “That young man, you know, is a Dinner with Domenica
65
narcissist. It’s perfectly obvious. Clear as day. And the point about narcissists is that they just can’t see anything wrong with themselves. They’re perfect, you see. And they are also quite incapable of laughing at themselves. So he would never think it remotely funny that his hair gel had come to an unfortunate end.”
“He didn’t make it easy for me,” said Pat.
“Of course he wouldn’t. He expects you to admire him, and he’s annoyed that you don’t appear to be falling at his