• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 831 0

she could easily share references and common experiences. And that had made it all seem so easy. She had found out a certain amount about Domenica – about India and anthropology and, tantalisingly, a few snippets about feral children – but she was sure that there was much more to come. During dinner, their conversation had not let up, but Domenica had said little more about herself. Rather, she had told Pat something of the neighbours: of Tim and Jamie, who lived in the flat below, of Bertie’s parents, Irene and Stuart, and of the man in the ground-floor flat, the man whom nobody saw, but who was there nonetheless.

“There may be a perfectly simple explanation,” said Domenica.

“Agoraphobia. If he suffers from that, poor man, he won’t want to go out at all.”

Pat noticed that Domenica spoke charitably, but when it came to Irene and Stuart, her tone changed.

“That poor little boy is nothing but an experiment to them,”

she said. “How much music and mathematics and so on can be poured into him before the age of seven? Will he compose his first symphony before he starts at primary school? And so on. Poor little boy! Have you seen him?”

“I’ve heard him,” said Pat.

And Tim and Jamie downstairs? “There are many different recipes for unhappiness in this life,” said Domenica, “and poor Tim is following a very common one. To love that which one cannot attain. It’s terribly sad, really. But people persist in doing it.”

Pat said nothing. She had seen a young man walking up the stairs in front of her, but by the time she reached the landing he had disappeared. That, she assumed, was Tim or Jamie. 76

Friendship

“Tim is very attached to Jamie,” Domenica went on. “And Jamie is very keen on a girl who’s gone to Canada for a year. So that’s that, really.”

“It can’t be easy,” said Pat.

Domenica shrugged. “No, it can’t. But sometimes people decide to be happy with what they’ve got. I’ve known so many cases like that. People hold a candle for somebody who’s never going to be for them what they want them to be. It’s hopeless. But they carry on and on and make do with the scraps of time and attention that come their way.”

“Sad.”

“Very,” Domenica replied, and then thought for a moment.

“When I had him up here one evening for sherry, all he wanted to talk about was Jamie, and what Jamie was doing. Jamie was going to Montreal to see this girlfriend of his. And all that Tim was thinking of was this. His sadness was written large for me to see. He was losing his friend.”

“And what made it worse for him was that there were so few people he could talk to about this, because he feared their lack of understanding, or their scorn. People are cruel, aren’t they?”

After that they had sat in silence for a while and Pat had thought, and thought again, now that she was back in her room: we love the unattainable. Yes, we do. Foolishly. Hopelessly. All the time. 30. Things Happen at the Gallery

Pat arrived at the gallery slightly early the next morning, to find that the postman, a cheerful man with a weather-beaten face, had already been and there was a letter on the floor. She opened it and saw that it was an invitation to an opening to be held in a gallery further down the road. They were always getting this sort of thing, and it struck her that there was a lot of this in the art world: dealer sells to dealer, round and round in a circle. Eventually a genuine customer would have to buy a picture, but where were they? So far they had sold nothing, and the only person who had shown the slightest interest in buying something had turned out to be intent on obtaining a bargain. Perhaps things would change. Perhaps somebody would come and buy one of the D.Y. Cameron prints; somebody who would not make a dismissive remark about Mr Vettriano; somebody who liked pictures of hills and glens.

She put the gallery invitation on Matthew’s desk and was about to go through to the back, when she stopped. Usually, when she came in in the morning, she would hear the alarm signal and have to key in the security number to stop it. This had not happened this morning,