Espresso Tales - Alexander Hanchett Smith [158]
“We shall miss you,” said Dilly, “when you’re with the pirates.”
“Oh, I expect they’re on e-mail these days,” said Domenica.
“I shall keep in touch.” They said goodbye to one another at the front door of the bookshop and Domenica began the walk back to Scotland Street. On the surface, it was an outrageous idea; but then so many important anthropological endeavours must have seemed outrageous when first conceived. This would certainly be difficult, but once one had established contact, and trust, it would be much the same as any fieldwork. One would observe the households. One would study family relationships. One would look at the domestic economy and the ideological justification structure (if any). It would, in many senses, be mundane work. But pirates! One had to admit there was a certain ring to it.
Matthew Thinks
333
102. Matthew Thinks
After Big Lou had burst into the gallery, full of her good news, and had burst out again, Matthew and Pat sat quietly around a desk, sorting out the photographs for a catalogue that they were planning.
“I’m very pleased for Big Lou,” Matthew said. “She had written him off, you know. She thought she’d seen the last of him.”
“She deserves some good luck,” said Pat. “I hope that he’s good for her.”
“Big Lou can look after herself,” said Matthew. “She’s strong.”
Pat disagreed, at least in part. “And it’s often the strong women who suffer the most,” she said. “You’d be surprised, Matthew. Strong women put up with dreadful men.”
“Anyway,” said Matthew, “the important thing is that Big Lou is happy.”
“Yes,” said Pat. “That’s good.”
Matthew looked at Pat. It made her uncomfortable when he looked at her like that; it was almost as if he were reproaching her for something.
“And I’m feeling pretty happy too,” he said. “Do you know that? I’m feeling very happy this morning.”
“I’m glad,” said Pat. “And why is that?”
“That talk I had with my old man,” said Matthew. “It was
. . . well, shall we say that it was productive.”
Pat waited for him to continue.
“I was wrong about Janis,” went on Matthew. “I thought that she wasn’t right for him.”
“In what way?” asked Pat. “Too young?”
“That . . . and in other ways,” said Matthew. “But I was wrong. And now I know that one shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”
“And you told him this?” asked Pat.
“I did. And he was really nice to me – really nice. He said something very kind to me. And then . . .”
Pat waited. She was pleased by this reconciliation – she liked Gordon and she had thought that Matthew had been too hard on him.
334 Matthew Thinks
Matthew seemed to be debating with himself whether to tell Pat something. He opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it. But at last he spoke.
“He was very generous to me,” he said. “He gave me some money.”
“That’s good of him,” said Pat. “He’s done that before, hasn’t he?”
“Oh yes, he’s done that before. But never on this scale.”
Pat sighed. “My father gave me fifty pounds last week,” she said. “How much did you get? A hundred?”
Matthew looked down at the desk and picked up a photograph of a painting. It was of a sheep-dog chasing sheep; the sort of painting that nineteenth-century artists loved to paint, on a large scale, for upwardly mobile purchasers. Nobody painted sheep-dogs any more, it seemed.
“Four million,” he said quietly.
There was complete silence. Matthew put down the photograph, but did not look at Pat. She was staring at him, her mouth slightly open. Four million.
At last she spoke. “Four million is a lot of money, Matthew. What are you going to do with it?”
Matthew shrugged. He had no idea what he would do with four million pounds, other than to put it safely away in the bank. Adam and Company would be the safest place for that.
“I don’t know,” he said. He looked about the gallery. “I could put some of it into this place, of course. I could go to the auctions and bid for the expensive paintings. A real Peploe, for example. A Hornel or two. A Vettriano.”
“You had a Vettriano,” said Pat.