Espresso Tales - Alexander Hanchett Smith [13]
with the wife of his boss – an intimate and innocent lunch, but not so to the outside observer, unfortunately in this case his boss himself.
And he was history in Pat’s eyes, too, as she had quite recovered from her brief infatuation with him. How could I? she had asked herself, in agonising self-reproach. To which a Latinist, if there were one about, might have answered amor furor brevis est
– love (like anger) is a brief madness. The most prosaic of observations, but, like many such observations, acutely true. And one might add: if love is a brief madness, then it is often also sadness, and sometimes, alas, badness.
She left the flat and walked down to Henderson Row, where she bought a small bunch of flowers. This she subsequently placed outside Domenica’s door, where she might pick it up when next she opened it.
8. An Exchange of Cruel Insults
It was not that there was an atmosphere between Bruce and Pat; relations, in fact, were quite cordial. Bruce was indifferent 24
An Exchange of Cruel Insults
to the fact that she had rejected his advances (“her loss,” he told himself, “silly girl”). He knew, of course, that she had been besotted by him – any man would have realised that –
and for Bruce it was nothing in the least unusual for a woman to feel like that about him. Indeed, it was the normal way of things, and Bruce would have been surprised if Pat had not found herself in this position, sharing the flat, as they did, when she had every opportunity to be in close proximity to him. Poor girl! It must have been hard for her, he thought; rather like living with a full fridge or store-cupboard when one is on a strict diet. One may look, but not touch. What a pity!
There had been a brief period during which Pat had seemed to avoid him – and he had noticed that. However, he had been tolerant. If it helped her to stay out of his way for a few days, then that was her way of dealing with the situation and he would not force his company upon her. And after a while that awkwardness passed, and there seemed to be no tension in the air when they coincided in the kitchen, or when they passed on telephone messages to one another.
Bruce was pleased that things had not become more fraught. His life over the past couple of months had not been particularly easy, and he would not have enjoyed having to deal with domestic difficulties on top of what he had been experiencing elsewhere. To begin with, there had been the problem with the job. He had been planning to leave the firm and to move on to something more satisfying even before the show-down with his employer, Raeburn Todd, joint senior partner with his brother, Jock Todd, of Macauley Holmes Richardson Black, Chartered Surveyors and Factors. But it was unfortunate, from Bruce’s point of view, that this departure should have been on Todd’s terms rather than on his own. That had been extremely irritating.
What annoyed Bruce in particular about that episode was that when he was asked by Todd’s wife, Sasha, to lunch with her in the Café St Honoré, he had agreed to do this only out of charity. He had no particular interest in her, and he had certainly not An Exchange of Cruel Insults
25
been planning any involvement with her, although it had been perfectly obvious to him at the South Edinburgh Conservative Ball that she found him attractive. That was understandable, of course, but he had not expected her to do anything about this, and indeed that fatal lunch was hardly a romantic encounter at all. It was true that when Todd walked into the Café St Honoré
unexpectedly, he had found his wife holding Bruce’s hand in hers, over the table, but that had been purely in the context of their discussion about tennis prowess and the importance of having a strong wrist. If he were going to hold hands with a married woman in an Edinburgh restaurant, then he would do so under the table, not above.
And of course Todd had behaved in exactly the way one would have expected of him. He had fired him on the spot, right there in the Café St Honor