44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith [88]
Zap!
When they reached the end of Cumberland Street, Matthew said goodnight and disappeared into the bar. Pat continued her way through Drummond Place and turned down into Scotland Street. She glanced up at their windows, hoping to see a 184
Playing with Electricity
light, but the flat was in darkness. Bruce was not back yet. This knowledge brought with it a pang of disappointment. She walked up the stairs, past Irene and Stuart’s door, with its anti-nuclear sticker. From within the flat there drifted the sound of a saxophone, and she stood for a moment and listened. She had not heard Bertie for the last few days, but now he had resumed, even if the playing seemed quieter and more subdued. She strained to hear the tune: it was not As Time Goes By, but it was still familiar. Play Misty for Me, she thought. The playing suddenly stopped and she heard the sound of voices, a scream, she thought; a small voice crying No! No! and then silence. Then there came an adult’s voice – Irene’s, she imagined – and then No! No! again.
Pat smiled. She remembered how she herself had resisted piano lessons as a child and had been forced to practise for half an hour a day. That had paid off, as her parents knew it would, and she had become a competent pianist. But she had often wished to cry No! No! in protest against the playing of scales and arpeggios. In Bertie’s case it must be so much worse. She had heard from Domenica just how pushy his mother was, and she felt a pang of sympathy for the small boy, burdened with that heavy tenor saxophone that must have been almost the same size as himself. She continued up the stairs and let herself into the flat; as she had expected, there was no sign of Bruce. She turned on a light in the hall. A few letters lay on the floor. She picked these up and glanced at them. One was for her – a letter from a friend who had gone to live in London and who was always having boyfriend trouble. The others were for Bruce, and she put these down on the hall table.
Bruce’s door was open. This was not unusual; he usually left the flat before her, in a rush, as he tended to get out of bed late and lingered in the bathroom – in front of the mirror, she had always assumed. So he often did leave his door open in his rush to get out of the flat, and Pat, who had never gone into his room, had been given glimpses of what it contained. Now she decided she would have a closer look.
It was a strange feeling going into Bruce’s room uninvited. Playing with Electricity
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She paused at the door and almost turned back, but she now felt a delicious feeling of daring, of sweet risk, and she reached for the light switch near the door and flicked it on. The room before her was relatively Spartan, and tidier than she imagined it would be. In her experience, young men let their rooms deteriorate into near-squalor. Clothes would be tossed down as they were removed, and left to fester. Books would be strewn around tables. There would be unwashed coffee cups, and tapes, and ancient running shoes with their characteristic acrid smell. In Bruce’s room there was none of this. In one corner there was a bed, neatly-made, with an oatmeal-coloured bedspread. Opposite, against the wall, was a desk with a laptop computer, a neat row of books, and a container of paper clips. Then there was a chair across which a coat had been draped and a wardrobe. A jar of hair gel, half used; the slightest smell of cloves. Pat stood still for a moment, looking around her. The broad picture of the room now taken in, she began to notice the finer details. She saw the picture of the Scottish rugby team; she saw the green kit-bag that contained his gym things; she saw the disc of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers tour. All this was very ordinary, but to her surprise she found herself excited by the sight. Everything here belonged to him, and had that strange extra significance in which we vest the possessions of those to whom we are attracted. Items which belong